Finally home again

After a few weeks of being alone I am finally going home and see my family again. Life is full of challenges and we must ride the wave and enjoy. Hehehehehe this is a great year for me, lots new things learned and experienced. I am particularly blessed with the new church I belong, New Hope Yokohama. They are like family to me and I am blessed with the things that we are involved in. God has really taught me a lot of lessons and received new directions in my life.
By the way I think I am not going to have any sleep today, I am excited and the adrenaline is pumping in my veins, Im going to meet my daughter and wife again! yahoo.... Since my plane leaves at Kansai Airport I made some sidetrips at Kyoto and Osaka. Its my first time to ride the shinkansen wow! after years of waiting. Thank God for this wonderful year He has given me!

Juggler

Now I am juggling four jobs at the same time...tired but I won`t give up I get my spiritual red bull from God, now that`s comforting and the best thing a human could have. Anyway, it`s difficult to sleep at night got used to my wife and Erika beside me...hmmm I miss them already, If only I could build a transporter machine...In my dreams!

Alone but not sad!

Last Tuesday November 25, my wife and Jireh Erika went for a long vacation again to our country because it`s Christmas.
Somehow sad ( only a little) but joyful since my parents would be able to see them again. I will follow on Dec 16 so not that sad plus I have a family at New Hope and my bro. Jowelle and sis. Grace with their cute child Andre besides my home to cheer me up. Christmas is just around the corner I can smell it already hahahahahahaha.

MacBirthday

After weeks of my notebook's (Dell 510M) failing keyboard saga, 

I courted my wife, Grace, for a notebook upgrade. Finally !!!  I got 

my first MacBirthday ( Will there be a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc... 

wondering ?... ). She took a big chunk from our savings.  We have 

a house government,  if I'm the president, Grace is the treasurer or 

budget officer. No funding  for the president without going through 

the approval of the budget  officer, hehehe... Another thing, I really

need to ask for her permission  because we're spending the 

holiday season in the Philippines and we're  shelling out a huge 

amount from our savings for our airfares and  allowances while 

we're in the Philippines. I can't blame her for her hesitations on a 

notebook upgrade, because it's a bit pricey. I respect all her 

decisions.  But I don't know what made her changed her mind with 

this one. Maybe it  was the "don't spend money on expensive parts 

then later fix it again, instead buy a new one" tactic, or the pathetic 

look on my face while using the notebook with exposed internals, 

hehehe...

The failing keyboard wasn't actually a plot and I thought it was really 

failing. I even thought of buying an expensive replacement built-in 

keyboard from Dell or from used components shops in Akihabara. 

The keyboard problem was really annoying and it even caused 

dropped frames and skipped audio packets while recording the 

Sunday service in the church in my notebook. 

While reseating the keyboard connector, I noticed that when the bottom

of the keyboard unit hits the metallic case of the internal optical drive, 

it would signal key pressed events. A simple DIY (do-it-yoursel) fix is 

what revived the 4.5 year old notebook. I just covered some areas of 

the bottom of the keyboard unit that hits metal parts, with thin layer of

electrical tape, to act as an insulator. It was a "quick and dirty" fix, but

it seems stable and working well. This fix looks like it will give the 

notebook another 3-4 years of service. ;-)

One time I went to an electronic store and I saw the aluminum

Macbook for the first time. I was totally impressed with the sleek

aluminum unibody, the LED backlit glossy display, and the glass

multi-touch trackpad. I showed my wife the reason why Macbook

is the top candidate for my notebook upgrade. The new Macbook

is one of the sturdiest notebook out in the market today, because 

of its aluminum unibody. The NVIDIA chipset is also a good addition

to the hardware update, giving the Macbook more graphic processing

muscle compared to the previous chipset. The only thing I hate with

this machine is the missing firewire port (IEEE 1394) which render

my HDV cam useless on this machine. However, I was able to fix 

my other notebook for HD video streaming tasks.

The unibody Macs are a bit pricey compared to the previous

polycarbonate Intel Macs. But if you bump up a similarly or 

slightly higher specd Dell systems with a LED backlit display,

internal bluetooth and type N wireless, it would also jack up

the price almost similar to the price of an aluminum Mac and

loosing the prestige and benefit of using the glamorous

Mac OS-X. 

One thing I really like with current Macs is the capability to boot

Windows, thanks to Bootcamp. There are times I'm really required

to use Windows XP, particularly MS development tools, some

devices and applications that only work on Windows. Being a

PC user, I find OS-X  is easier  than XP, and miles away better

than Vista (I hate Vista's interface ;-) ). The OS-X graphical 

interface is more similar to KDE and the console to that of a UNIX

systems, since it has UNIX ancestry. OS-X is quite sluggy on 

some applications but I still find OS-X way better and stable than

the current Microsoft's offering Vista. I'm not being biased, but I

really find Vista's system and interface a bit bloated. I'm not seeing

myself loading Vista on this machine in the near  future, not  until

Microsoft fixes Vista or optimizes whatever the next Windows

release will be. I'm still satisfied with XP, hehehe ...

Pictures to show why the new Macbook is indeed the perfect

upgrade for me ... ;-)





I won't go into detailed benchmark with the CPU and graphic

performance, I can just leave that to Engadget and other sites,

you can just google for those sites and see how the current

Macbook performs. As for me, I find the unibody aluminum 

Macbook a perfect upgrade, software and hardware wise.

And lastly, a blessing and a wonderful birthday present from

my loving wife ...

Extended Family

Another definition of church is "family" this is the one thing I have taken so lightly. Its difficult to explain but I could feel the love and care for one another at New Hope Yokohama. Last Sunday we had a Thanksgiving Party and citizens from their respective country presented something. Everybody was encouraged to say something about their country through dance, music, games, drama etc. For us, my Filipino friends made a powerpoint presentation about the Philippines and sang a song of confession titled " The Philippines is for Christ".

There was only one service that day and after that the party began, It was a very joyful party. It was like a big family reunion.
Kei the bassist observing a booth hmmmm...
The Filipino family, Mabuhay!
Variety of delicious food from all over the globe
My wife`s maja blanka sold out !
Tan tan the pastor and Jason the half Filipino half Hawaiian funny huh
Kazuya the beat boxer yeah!
Me doing some rounds, tried a Japanese wig.
Yuuichiro the sound man with Hiroshi funny guys!
Japan presentation
Jowelle at the Tech booth
Grace with our Toru the pastor
Family picture
Jireh and Koa