Glad to know that these robots do have manners after all. Whether they're really that obedient is another matter. But hey, that's better than nothing. Right? Right?

Current music: TATU - Robot
Current mood: happy

All right, first things first: I lost yet another ring. Yup, surprise, surprise. This time on my walk home from work, I suspect when I was fishing for my cell. What is it with me and rings? They just seem to get bigger. Granted, this one was rubber. And it wasn't even a real ring, just a small rubber band I found while sweeping the floor -- yup, contrary to popular belief, I do clean my apartment, albeit once a year or so -- last year. Oh well, I guess it was an omen, telling me to put that broom to work once more.

And now every 5 mins or so I find myself rubbing my lil finger. Something just doesn't feel right. Interesting how a tiny bit like that can become such a major annoyance. Oh, all right, this ring business was not even close to become any annoyance. I just thought it would make a good prolog. Hmm, Prolog... Interesting language.

See how religious I am? Two God-thanking posts in less than a week, how 'bout that! I'm so ready for my first award.

Anyway, here are 5 reasons why that is so:
1. He gave me a new tennis idol after Boris Becker. With due respect to Agassi, Sampras, Hewitt, and Federer, I always prefer a less-than-perfect idol. BTW, if you notice, idol has appeared so many times on this site of mine. Dunno, I just like saying it. Perhaps because it rhymes with dodol.

2. He gave me something to cheer about last night after Italy and Germany had been humiliated in Euro 2004. With the risk of jinxing myself here, I say my feet are firmly on the Czech -- which I knew how to correctly spell only recently -- bandwagon.

All right, that does it! No more predictions for the rest of the championship! Well, perhaps one more. Tomorrow morning: Holland out, Germany through.

Current music: Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra - Piano Concerto No. 1 - Allegro
Current mood: happy

I wanted to post 10 things learned from a Linkin Park concert, but I was so spent. So let's just write one:

01. There's a reason why ABGs outnumber people in their late 20s at such concerts: stronger backs.

This morning's predictions: Italy -- yup, you read that right -- and Sweden through.

Current music: Metallica - All within My Hands
Current mood: happy

01. You think leaving early means reaching home before 9 PM.

02. You keep pressing "9" first when making phone calls from home.

03. You know your clients' extensions by heart but have to consult your cell phone to call your friends.

04. You have to take a half-day leave to watch a Linkin Park concert that starts at 8 PM.

05. You have to clear 10 days of last year's annual leave before end of the month.

And here are 5 reasons why that is so:
1. You can come in (even) late(r) for work. No questions asked, everyone knows it's Euro 2004 time.

2. You can leave early (read: before 8 in my case) because everyone is aware that enough sleep is important. So it's advisable that people catch a nap before the matches at midnight.

3. You can show up in T shirts and jeans at work. With two matches played everyday, even on weekends, time is a precious commodity and is not to be wasted for small things like ironing your clothes.

4. You can surf the web more for Euro 2004 articles. After all, it's essential that you keep up with the latest news. Totti banned? Do or die for the Dutch? Portugal ready for the Iberian derby? All these are must-know updates.

5. You can have (even) long(er) coffee or cigarette breaks. Equipped with -- but not limited to -- the information you have got from item 4, of course. Hey, you cannot just take everything and anything those websites say. You are expected to compare notes with your colleagues and decide which is to believed and which is trash.

WOW! Simply wow! Lakers in six, huh? Man, I couldn't have possibly been more wrong! The Pistons are champs! OK, let's cool it a bit and put Big Ben right here.

OK, lemme say this again: wow! So defense -- suffocating defense, wrote ESPN and NBA.com -- does win championships. How quickly things can turn around in 10 days. I had bad feelings after Game 1. But after that came Kobe's shot-of-the-whatever, so I thought things were still on the right track. For me and the rest of the Lakers fans, that is. Besides, hey, with all those sportswriters jumping into the bandwagon and predicting Lakers in six, you couldn't have expected anything but.

Well, anything but it was. Anyway, great job, Pistons. Sorry, Karl and Gary, you did your best. Well, Mailman did his best. The Glove? Not so much, I don't think so. I feel your pain -- which, of course, contradicts what I wrote weeks ago -- but I do. All right, maybe 10.57% of your pain. And Kobe is still my American Idol. Good luck with your case.

Once, there was a pig who lived in a cowboy farm and was feeling so down. The cowboy-farmer never gave him too much attention other than the normal feeding and occasional health inspections. The pig felt he was alive for nothing. So he came to the cowboy's personal horse, who was the most respected animal in the farm.

"Yo, Horse."

The horse looked up from the green, green grass he was enjoying. "Whaddup, Pig?"

"Howya doin'?"

Gara-gara mesin pencari yang nggak tau tata krama tau-tau jadi banyak yang berkunjung. Ini musti bangga atau panik ya? Yang gua binun kok banyak banget yang dari Google Filipino nyari enemiester. Eh, sekarang udah ada yang daftarin enemiester.net ama enemiester.com. Mungkin ada yang dapet ide dari tulisan ini? Hmm...

Ocehlah, sekarang kita bales dulu atensi-atensi yang masuk. Weleh, atensi, 'bo! Mengenang 80-an.

Would you believe it, one night after praising -- or making fun of, it's your call -- Windows XP CD, it shattered on me! Shattered! As in smashed! Into pieces! My original Windows XP! My only original commercial software! Nope, I kid you not.

Here's what happened. I put the CD into the CD drive with the intention of -- and this could be what caused it -- copying it into my HD. In case I lost the CD. Or something. As in, in case I would want to install it elsewhere. So there, I inserted the CD and my Windows XP obediently changed its cursor into that revolving CD thingy. So far so good. Except that the next second I heard something break. It sounded like a jealous ex-GF smashing her ex's photo frame.

All right, better document this somewhere. And what's a better place to do just that than a blog, right? A friendly warning, though: if you're not into technical stuff, you can safely skip this entry.

About an hour ago the Apache webserver on our Linux went down. Alertra immediately notified me via SMS because that's what it was supposed to do. It's just that there were times it reported the website was down, except that it wasn't. So lesson #1 in being a webmaster: never ignore such monitoring tool, no matter how many false alarms it has given you. I'm not a good webmaster, so I did just that -- ignore it.

Anyway, when I -- finally -- found out that the webserver was indeed, well, down, I encountered this funky error when trying to restart Apache:
Tue Jun 08 00:49:50 2004] [crit] (28)No space left on device: mod_rewrite: could not create rewrite_log_lock

Which I didn't buy for one single second because df told me otherwise. C'mon, having at least 10GB of free space on every mount-point hardly means no space left.

Akhir pekan kemaren adalah akhir pekan penuh kejutan buat gua. Kejutan pertama: Anastasia Myskina juara di Prancis Terbuka setelah dengan gampangnya ngalahin Elena Dementieva di final, 6-1 6-2. Kejutan, soalnya gua nggak nyangka bakal segampang itu. Kejutan kedua: Gaston Gaudio juara di Prancis Terbuka setelah dengan susah payah ngalahin Guillermo Coria di final, 0-6 3-6 6-4 6-1 8-6. Kejutan, soalnya gua nggak nyangka dia bakal menang. Set pertama kalah telak. Set kedua kalah relatif gampang. Peringkat juga jauh banget, Gaudio nomer 44, Coria unggulan ketiga. Tapi seru abis dah, gua aja yang nonton ampe capek.

Man, my body is killing me! Never realized what two and a half hours of tennis could do to this old body of mine. I can barely move my right arm. My right shoulder feels as if Atlas and I had been taking turns lately. And my left buttock -- don't laugh -- seems like protesting every 5 mins or so. And the game didn't even take place today, it was yesterday.

Isn't it nice, getting paid to do what you like?

K, let's do some Jeopardy here.
1) When you can date someone half your age without breaking the law.
2) When almost everything hurts and what doesn't hurt doesn't work, either.
3) When your fav rock band is featured on MTV Classic.
4) When you write this kind of entry.

And the correct question is...