langgam.org

If I were to pick my favorite day of the week, it would definitely be Friday. I love Friday nights because I get to go home and the thought of having two more free days will be stuck in my head before I go to sleep. Saturday and Sunday for me are my panic days.

My first week at work had been both great and blar blar (I use blar blar when I can’t describe what I feel). I hope everything will turn out from blar blar to okay in no time.

An hour ago, I was anxious and panicky just thinking about being in the office after tomorrow. I feel like I’m running out of time. Good thing I started drinking beer with my boyfriend an hour ago. Really helped me calm down and think everything through.

On other news, I’m recently hooked with American Idol 8. Only five weeks left before the show ends. I’m hoping Danny Gokey would win over Adam Lambert.

My to do’s for next week :

• Learn Spring MVC
• Fix my closet in the apartment (looks like garbage at the moment)
• Download Paramore’s Final Riot
• Start using my Nikon D40 again
• Start using my Holga 120 CFN again
• Start blogging about life, not just opinions

And I realized I’m starting to miss the bum life now.

For some reason, I’m loving this song.

I’m not the sort of person who falls in and quickly out of love
But to you, I give my affection, right from the start.
I have a lover who loves me - how could I break such a heart?
Yet still you get my attention.

Why do you come here, when you know I’ve got troubles enough?
Why do you call me, when you know I can’t answer the phone?
And make me lie when I don’t want to,
And make someone else some kind of an unknowing fool?
You make me stay when I should not?
Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?
Why do you come here, and pretend to be just passing by?
I need to see you - I need to hold you - tightly.

Feeling guilty,
Worried, Waking from a tormented sleep
This old love, you know it has me bound,
But the new love cuts so deep.
If I choose now, I’ll lose out;
One of you has to fall…
I need you, and you.

Why do you come here, when you know I’ve got troubles enough?
Why do you call me, when you know I can’t answer the phone?
And make me lie when I don’t want to,
And make someone else some kind of an unknowing fool?
And make me stay when I should not?
Are you so strong or is all the weakness in me?
Why do you come here, and pretend to be just passing by?
I need to see you - I need to hold you - tightly

Since last month, I decided to get a hair spa and a hair cut on a monthly basis. The hair spa only requires two to three applications of treatments. Last month, I had three. This month, two. It may be that simple, but this month’s visit was the most agonizing experience I had.

I always pick the L’Oreal hair and scalp treatment package from the list (I just don’t know what package specifically, apparently there are tons when I try to search for them in Google) which costs me almost 1,000 pesos. And I have no idea if it’s a good price.

It’s funny because I felt stings all over my head when the guy was applying the treatments on my scalp. He was really focusing on applying the treatment by pressing hard onto my little scalp wounds. That was the first round. The second round doesn’t require effort at all because the treatment stings the moment i feel it on my head. I was trying to play Bejeweled the whole time he was doing this to my poor scalp and I always end up closing the game to control myself from screaming from pain.

The salon guy was curious where I got the little wounds on my scalp because according to him, today, my scalp has no dandruff at all. He can remember my visit from last month because my scalp was a disaster back then (dandruff + little wounds). And then we both figured that I should stop my habit of scratching my head at idle times. I have this weird habit of touching my head when concentrating or watching something or when stressed out. But it causes the little wounds not to heal. I promised him I’d try to stop. That would be good for me and my head on my next visit. No more pain.

If I still can’t control myself, I’ll follow the last guy’s advise to cut off my hands. No hands = dandruff-free and wound-free scalp? Not bad, salon guy. Not bad at all.

April 15 marks the third month I have stopped working.

After I lost a job three months ago, it was difficult to adjust at first but I got the hang of it after a few weeks. And now, I’m used to waking up at 10 in the morning unlike before where I have to wake up two hours before the office hours. I wake up, go online, check my mail, socialize with people in Plurk, play online games (JamLegend, Restaurant City and Word Challenge to name a few), watch American Idol and sleep late at night (insert two meals in between all of these, eaten whenever I feel like eating). Not productive but fun.

I have mixed feelings. I’m sad because this phase in my life will be ending after several days. I’m also excited with the new things I’ll be experiencing. And I’m nervous too.

I have ten days left. Minus one day for the medical exam. Minus four days for the family trip in Baguio. Five days left all in all. And I don’t have a clue what I missed out doing in the three-month vacation.

I’ll miss being unemployed. I’ll miss all the free time I have. I’ll miss being in the one place I love. I’ll miss everything.

Now, what to do?

An easy-to-install contact form plugin by Takayuki Miyoshi. You can download the zip file here.

You can also see the form in action here.

I was used to associating moods with my posts. After a long, long search, I found a good mood plugin for Wordpress.

After trying out three or four plugins of the same kind, I installed Cricket Moods.

1. Download the plugin here.
2. Place cricket-moods.php into /wp-content/plugins.
3. Activate the Cricket Moods plugin from the Plugin Management panel of WordPress.

Some friendly tips:

• The mood settings in the Cricket Moods page under Settings are for the default moods for new users. It is better to add your own moods in Manage Moods panel page in http://<domain.com>/wp-admin/tools.php?page=cm-manage-moods.
• In my case, I did some changes in my cricket-moods.php file for the mood panel display in Add New Post page. In the foreach loop in cm_list_select_moods(), I added style="overflow:scroll; height: 200px" for a scrollable mood panel display for the 132 moods I added. It’s better that way.

If you’re an old Livejournal user, you can use this for your Wordpress blog.

I thought last night was the last night I’ll see you alive. I was just playing Restaurant City with you. You were giving me my Plurk updates and helping me fix this blog. But when I woke up, you were dead.

But it was easy to revive you. I organized the revival steps months ago in a text file because I know that a time like this might come. But I can’t deny the fact that I’ve been thinking that you can never be revived at all.

But you’re still here. And I promise to take better care of you (shut you down every night before I go to sleep) so that this won’t happen again.

Love, Neng

P.S. Maybe you can give me a one-day notice before going dead? You don’t always have to bring the 24 and Chuck episodes to death with you.

My domain was dead for two years and now it’s back.

I thought I’ve moved on. For several months I’ve been finalizing which free blog tool to use. I’ve been in Blogger, Livejournal and Wordpress and I was never contented. Aside from the constant changing of blogging tools, I was also constantly changing usernames too.

There was also a time when I decided not to blog anymore, but of course, I still can’t resist writing something and the whole process of switching sites and usernames will happen all over again.

But last Friday, I was in a coffee shop (taking advantage of the free wifi connection) fixing my new blog in Blogger when someone volunteered to buy back the domain for me. It was an overwhelming feeling. I can’t describe it except for the teary eyes I had after the domain has been bought. Thank you. Wee.

After registering the domain, I spent several more hours in the 24-hour coffee shop installing Wordpress. I went home at 1 or 2 in the morning and continued installing themes until 5. And for the next few days, I was looking for Wordpress plugins I can use. I hope it’s better now.

Just as I promised, I’ll keep this domain as long as I can. It was nice to be on a break. But it’s better having this, my very own online release of thoughts.

Welcome back the whiny, fickle-minded, paranoid, weird and pathetic blogger. Yay.

These are the most recent plugins I installed in my Wordpress blog:

• WP-PostViews - enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed. I just found out that the view counter is not updating in Google Chrome browsers.
• Disqus - comment system that allows threaded comments. I’m currently using it.
• Plurk for Wordpress - a widget that posts plurk updates in your Wordpress blog. You can check the topmost widget in the sidebar.
• Better Blogroll - a widget that posts a certain number of links in your blogroll randomly. It’s also in my sidebar
• Add To Any Subscribe - for easy reader subscription.
• All In One SEO Plugin - for search engine optimization

Happy plugin installing!

I had a hard time exporting my Livejournal entries into this blog. I can’t find an export link anywhere in Livejournal which was supposed to be here.

Then I came across ljArchive. It cannot only export my entries, but my comments as well.

To export my LJ entries, all I had to do was:

1. Download ljArchive here and install.
2. Run ljArchive.
3. Click File -> New Archive and click Next.
4. Login using my LJ username and password, click Next and click Finish.
5. After the application has synced all my LJ entries and comments, click File -> Export -> XML writer.
6. Specify values for filename, Split Export (default is Single File), Export Settings (for protected entries) and click OK.
7. XML file is generated!

All LJ entries and comments are imported through Wordpress’ import tool (under Tools). Yay for ljArchive!