Foolish Ranting of a Pet Owner

Meet my lovely friends Flip and Hoofy. I met them in Wonderland.

The Best of Global Warming

I haven’t posted anything in months again (for the second time) and as usual I was years behind on the news and funnies circulating the web. But my summer was spent in style anyway, and I had the time of my life so missing out on the Internets probably isn’t something I would be too worried about.

Vacation after vacation gave me a lifestyle I could certainly get used to. For someone out of work at the moment, spending your summer going on four nice tours is probably the best way to go. I haven’t even finished sorting out all the photographs yet.

One common thing the vacations had in all their El Viajero glory was the sun. The unrelenting wave of heat and light that burned me to a crisp and gave me this healthy tan (as if I was white to begin with haha). Global warming certainly is rearing its ugly head this summer.

Manny Made Me Drink Beer at Noon

Oh Manny you bad, bad man.

That’s all I can utter as the alcohol muddled me up, giving me beer goggles and giving my mouth  its own brain. It’s sunny and very hot, I’m getting a little incoherent and Manny Pacquiao is the baddest man alive.

5:30 AM (Philippine time)

Woke up to my alarm, only to find that I’m the late riser, my two roommates are already up and raring to go. Roel to see the fight, Alfred to see (and eat)  the food.

6:30 AM

After showering and dressing, we hurriedly made our way to The Royal Concourse (in Cebu City) to witness the fight between Pac and Hit. It’s All-You-Can-Eat (I just hate it when I see and hear Eat-All-You-Can) for Php298 and there are  two huge PPV screens to enjoy all the slugging. We attempted to make reservations but were told to come at 7am since it’s on a First-Come-First-Served basis. We expected to be among the first customers when we arrived at 6:45am, and imagine our dismay when we saw that the place was almost full.

7:00 AM

Our dismay turned to grief when we were informed that the All-You-Can-Eat buffet will start at 10:30am. If we wanted breakfast we have to pay for it. For guys who ate a very light dinner and no breakfast whatsoever (to build up our appetites to frenetic paces), this was a killer. We carefully reduced our food intakes so we could pig out on this particular day, and having to wait almost 4 hours more when our hunger was at maximum seemed a pretty cruel joke. We weren’t laughing, as you’d expect.

7:30 AM

Watched the undercards. Some pretty good fights and some bad ones. Did not enjoy Matt Hatton’s fight as some guys were commenting while the fight was going on in the background. Viewed some Mexican, British, Filipino and Italian guys reporting on the megafight while the battle raged on in the background.

10:30 AM

Food was served and the place turned into a horror story full of mayhem and riot. More than a thousand people filled up the cavernous restaurant by this time, and there’s no way food can be served in an orderly fashion as most of the customers are Filipinos and Filipinos just have no manners when it comes to making a proper line. Shouts and ugly remarks and growls and fights erupted. All in the name of food. Did not properly see the boxing action, but saw all the animals fighting for food in front of me. Managed to grab some food and made my way back to my table just as Manny and Ricky were about to start their fight.

around 11:00 AM (I forgot exactly when)

Hatton is introduced first, which is strange since he IS the champion and Manny’s the challenger. Martin Nievera sang an interesting Philippine Anthem. Tom Jones (The Tom Jones!) sang God Save the Queen. It should have been God Save Ricky Hatton. And then something that totally made my day happened: the girl who sang the Star Spangled Banner at the Pacquiao-Diaz fight sang the American Anthem this time too. I remember she was a very beatiful and cute girl at a tender age of 15 (I think), but she had a body to die for (at least on TV), a face everyone would love, and I just had the hots for her. Her voice was sultry and low and I felt really really hot listening to that. Seems like an obsession is welling up inside of me.

I noticed that she pronounces rockets “rockits”. She said “rockits” in her last two Star Spangled Banners. But I still love her all the same. Adriana Lima, you’re out. Hello Jasmine Villegas.

around 11:15 AM

Manny was tremendous. Manny and Hatton both came out smoking but Manny later knocked Hatton down to his kness with a swift right hook that caught Hatton’s chin. Slow motion capture showed Manny swinging and Hatton just standing there. Manny is just too quick and too fast. Hatton’s strength is useless when he can’t even see where the punches are coming from.

Manny knocked Hatton a second time. The place is pure pandemonium. People are shouting and cheering and I noticed that I was already standing on my seat with both arms raised, my hand clenched into fists. My voice was really hoarse from all the shouting without me even noticing it. Round 2 was the best ever. One big left hook to the chin and out goes Hatton. I pity the 25,000 Brits who came to Vegas only to see that ugly sight. We were shouting so much that it seemed the building was shaking.

12:00 PM

Roel, Alfred, Bradley and I are enjoying about four big bottles of beer to celebrate Many’s domination of the boxing world. It’s noon, the sun’s hot and brutal, and there we were in a roadside table drinking Red Horse. Life is Good. And Manny is a bad, bad man.

A Month of Silence (and Fun)

It’s been a month since I posted anything, and I missed the online community so much that I was a virtual stranger to a new world when I logged back in.  Hello Internet, it’s been a really long time. So long in fact that I needed a veritable lifetime to catch up with everything that’s been swirling around in my absence (mainly consisting of a million blog posts, NBA scores, my overflowing E-mail, Facebook notifications, Manny Pacquiao updates and the Swine Flu outbreak).

I wanted to blog about everything that happened to me in the past month (two long and  arduously exciting  vacations, bouts of emotional trauma on the Richter scale, changes in relationship status, addictive DotA gaming, pizza and beer with old friends, wine and rum with new friends, non-stop movie marathons, mild asphyxiation from watching  The Big Bang Theory, driving around in motorcycles without a driver’s license) but I couldn’t quite get the hang of condensing all that into a single post. I can’t even condense it into just 10 posts so I’ll just upload photos of nice scenery from my first vacation – to Bantayan Island in Cebu, which felt like it happened eons ago.

I had the time of my life on this vacation. I just can’t help but appreciate the raw beauty of the place. And of you’re looking for those photos with people in them, the ones where they’re: smiling agonizingly in the blazing sun and scorching sand,  jumping up and down in sequence, taking their pictures next to famous landmarks and signs, posing for pictures in really weird poses, doing things drunk people generally do, going to beach parties at night and swimming in the open sea in total darkness – you might want to check them out here.

Congratulations You Just Failed

UC San Diego – a school for the smart ones, supposedly – mistakenly congratulated nearly 29,000 applicants on their acceptance, according to university officials.

Earlier this month, about 17,000 students were offered admission for the fall, leaving nearly 29,000 hopefuls out in the cold.

But on Tuesday, the school’s communications office said an e-mail was sent Monday afternoon to all 46,377 students who applied for admission – including the 29,000 rejects – welcoming them to the campus.

A half-hour later, school officials said, they realized their mistake. Almost two hours after the first note went out, a second e-mail was sent, apologizing to 28,889 freshmen applicants for the mistake.

“No member of this department is more acutely aware of the emotional roller-coaster that this could cause for our applicants,” Assistant Vice Chancellor Mae W. Brown said.

An anonymous parent told the  Los Angeles Times it was a “colossal screw-up.”

Similar incidents have happened at other schools – including Cornell in the recent past, the paper reported – but the UCSD incident was the biggest “screw-up”.

[Yahoo!]

I don't need another screwing.

This is such a ridiculously stupid fail moment for such a respected school to have. I’m sure every once in a while people generally commit some kind of atrocious faux pas that leaves them cringing in embarrassment for the next few years. Usually a year of hibernation, meditation and reflection (or a truckload of beer) would eventually allow the Embarrassed One  to crawl out of his hellhole and notice that nobody cares anymore anyway so life might as well resume with some semblance of normalcy.

But for an establishment of higher learning to screw it up this bad, seems so far-fetched as to be implausible. Imagine you’re checking your e-mail and there’s one in there saying: “Congratulations, you passed… blah blah blah”

So there you are feeling all good and happy and you’re savoring that moment when just a few minutes later just after you’re screaming stuff and all, you receive a second piece of mail saying:

Unfortunately, we screwed up big time. You didn’t actually pass but we thought you did so we take back what we said earlier. Please don’t feel too bad okay? Shit happens. Please think of this as some elaborate April Fool’s joke so you can live the rest of your life knowing you helped advance the essence of this wonderful holiday! Sincerely, UCSD.

P.S. Suicide is a sin and God would not be happy at all if you even start contemplating it. And we wish you all the luck in your other applications.

Happy April Fool’s Day Fools

There is disagreement about the correct placement of the apostrophe within the phrase “April Fool’s Day.” The three options are: April Fool’s Day, April Fools’ Day, or (no apostrophe at all) April Fools Day.

The phrase does not actually have a definitively correct spelling. Historically, April Fool’s Day has been, by far, the most popular choice. This is probably because it looks less awkward than the alternatives. But a more logical argument for this spelling is that The April Fool is a singular, iconic character to whom the day is dedicated. Numerous illustrations of The Fool dressed in his robes and horned hat support this view.

However, a small but vocal group believes that April Fools’ Day is the correct spelling. Proponents of this belief point to the parallel term All Fools’ Day, which indicates that the day is dedicated to All Fools (plural) in general. Though some etymologists have speculated that All Fools’ Day is a corruption of Auld Fool’s Day or Old Fool’s Day.

The third option, to drop the apostrophe entirely, would be correct if you consider the phrase to be a form of exclamation: “April Fools” being neither singular nor plural, but rather what you yell out when you’ve tricked someone. This spelling is rarely seen.

This site uses the historical standard, April Fool’s Day.

[Museum of Hoaxes]

Click on the link above to see the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time. Happy April Fool’s to all you fools out there. I hope you’ll continue to read Foolish Ranting of A Deluded Soul, the greatest  blog of the greatest fool of all time.

The Amazing Peripheral Pants

Wearable geeky gadgets have been taken to new levels with the appearance of the Peripheral Pants, a wacky (and downright stupid) wearable keyboard fashion that is certainly scandalous (and utterly useless) in its design. The weird and wacky wearable gadget is built into a pair of fashionable designer jeans; it boasts a built-in keyboard, mouse, and computer speakers that play audio at knee height. The keyboard is wireless, and while it may just look like a graphic design on the pants, will work with any laptop or desktop computer. Take a look at the picture, and you will have no doubts about why this is the most scandalous geeky gadget designed to date.

It really is amazing, so amazingly useless. Take care not to electrocute yourself when wearing this stuff. And dry cleaning is probably a must.

If you’re impressed by this strange fashion item, unfortunately, you won’t be able to get your hands on your own keyboard pants just yet. The fashionable gadget, named The Beauty and the Geek jeans, were created by product design student Erik De Nijs from Holland for a school project which required him to combine two brand items to create a new product. In part, he designed the Peripheral Pants to allow computer users more freedom of movement, but the main objective was to create a functional fashion meets technology item that would be seen as weird and wacky, and not necessarily a practical design (the understatement of the year).

I think I know where the mouse is - somewhere in the middle of his pants. Using this amazing pair is sure to make you look unquestionably stupid. The laptop keyboard and speakers seem to be just fine.

[Via  Wired and Gizmodo]

Stray Thoughts on 1962 NBA Season

Stray thoughts on the 1962 NBA season gleaned from Basketball Reference:

Last month, I watched one of the greatest point guards in history sit down for an interview with LeBron James, and Magic Johnson eventually got around to asking LBJ whether he thought he could average a triple-double for an entire season, the way Oscar Robertson did in his mythical 1961-62 campaign (30.8 PPG, 12.5 RPG, 11.4 APG). The King responded by saying something like, well, of course he’d like to do that, but it seems like a record that will never be broken, and maybe it’s not even meant to be broken. Then they moved on to talking about more important things, like how much LBJ weighs.

1962, if you recall, was not only the year Oscar averaged a triple-double, but also the season Wilt Chamberlain did all sorts of ludicrous things, like scoring 100 points in a game and averaging 50.4 per. He also averaged 26 rebounds a night, Bill Russell averaged 24. The stat-stuffing that went on that year truly boggles the mind.

Jordan was the all-time leading PPG scorer in NBA history, so I guessed he could have been the greatest of all time. But then I went through a brief spell where I staunchly believed Wilt had to be better than anyone else, simply by virtue of the insane stats he put up during his prime — I mean, 50.4 PPG? Are you kidding me? Jordan never averaged more than 37.1. How could he have been better than The Big Dipper?

But then Jordan went on to do some pretty epic things in the Finals, culminating in a beautiful quasi-pushoff of Bryon Russell to swish what was, at the time (and honestly should have been), his Last Shot Ever. So I could rationalize that Mike’s 6 rings somehow offset Wilt’s monstrous scoring and rebounding feats. Besides, I argued, Wilt may have been ridiculously dominant, but what would you expect from a 7′1″/275lb athletic freak in a league where the average player was 6′5″ and 65% of the players were white? So I also believed that Wilt dominated competition that was far weaker than what he’d see today, and the fact that a 6′9″ center named Bill, was able to (some would say greatly) reduce his effectiveness was another clue that he wouldn’t put up Jordanesque numbers (much less Wilt-esque ones) in the 90s.

Okay, so you’ve all seen Wilt and Oscar’s numbers from 1962, but have you ever sat down and looked at the league averages that year? In ‘62, the average team took 107.7 shots per game. By comparison, this year the average team takes 80.2 FGA/G. If we use a regression to estimate turnovers & offensive rebounds, the league pace factor for 1962 was 125.5 possessions/48 minutes, whereas this year it’s 91.7. Oscar’s Royals averaged 124.7 poss/48, while Wilt’s Warriors put up a staggering 129.7 (the highest mark in the league). On the other hand, the 2009 Cavs are averaging a mere 89.2 poss/48. It turns out that the simplest explanation for the crazy statistical feats of 1961-62 (and the early sixties in general) is just that the league was playing at a much faster tempo in those days, with more possessions affording players more opportunities to amass gaudy counting statistics.

Let’s say LeBron ‘09 could switch paces (note that I didn’t say places, which is another argument entirely) with Oscar ‘62. That means we would have to scale down the Big O’s per-game numbers by multiplying them by .715, giving Robertson a far more reasonable line of 22.0 PPG, 8.9 RPG, & 8.1 APG — which are still really good numbers, to be sure, but not as crazy as they looked at the breakneck pace of ‘62. By contrast, we have to multiply LBJ’s stats by a factor of 1.4 if we want to see what they would look like if he played at a 1962-style pace. The results: 40.1 PPG, 10.3 RPG, & 10.0 APG! As you can see, those 35.5 extra possessions per game really make a huge difference when comparing the two players’ stats.

So, no, LeBron probably will never average an Oscar-esque triple-double in today’s NBA, but it’s more a consequence of the league’s pace than any failing on his part. This isn’t meant to denigrate Oscar and Wilt in any way, but it does mean that their eye-popping stats from back then are, in reality, not quite as impressive as they appear at first glance.

Male Restroom Etiquette

Let me share something really amusing that it had be in stitches the whole time I was watching it. It couldn’t quite get a grip of myself and I had a hard time trying to calm myself down afterward. I stumbled upon this hilarious video when I was hyperlinking my way through that wonderful messy quagmire known as Wikipedia.

I was trudging though articles on morality, ethics, etiquette when I  somehow ended up clicking a link on Male Restroom Etiquette (which piqued my interest a lot). I expected to find an anachronistic set of rules made by some noble Englishman in the 1800s. I couldn’t possibly be more wrong (what a relief). I don’t know about the girls, but I’m sure guys using public urinals  all over the world would understand this one pretty well.

Male Restroom Etiquette is a 2006 American short subject created by Phil Rice and produced by his company Zarathustra Studios. The film is a mockumentary about unwritten rules of behavior in male restrooms and is intended to be a parody of educational and social guidance films. Narrated by Rice, Male Restroom Etiquette states restroom customs to be followed and depicts a scenario of social chaos if they are violated. The film was made using the machinima technique of recording video footage from computer games, namely The Sims 2 and SimCity 4. Male Restroom Etiquette won multiple awards and was listed by Guinness World Records Gamer’s Edition in 2009 as the most popular Sims video uploaded to YouTube.

The narrator (Phil Rice) states that increased cultural diversity has necessitated the exposition of previously unwritten rules regarding the use of male restrooms. According to these rules, males should use restrooms as quickly as possible, maximize physical separation from each other when using urinals, flush urinals when they contain concentrated urine, avoid stalls with unflushed toilets, and avoid eye contact and communication with others. The film depicts a scenario in which excess communication leads to a mess in the restroom and thus deficient hygiene and homeostasis, the latter of which is in the lowest tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As the scenario continues, the restroom occupants turn to violence, leading to police and biological hazard team involvement that closes the restroom. Forced to go elsewhere, other men repeat the scenario, eventually leading to complete societal breakdown.

Nightmare on April Fool’s

In an event that hits the computer world only once every few years, security experts are racing against time to mitigate the impact of a bit of malware which is set to wreak havoc on a hard-coded date. As is often the case, that date is April 1.

Malware creators love to target April Fool’s Day with their wares, and the latest worm, called Conficker C, could be one of the most damaging attacks we’ve seen in years.

Conficker first bubbled up in late 2008 and began making headlines in January as known infections topped 9 million computers. Now in its third variant, Conficker C, the worm has grown incredibly complicated, powerful, and virulent… though no one is quite sure exactly what it will do when D-Day arrives.

Thanks in part to a quarter-million-dollar bounty on the head of the writer of the worm, offered by Microsoft, security researchers are aggressively digging into the worm’s code as they attempt to engineer a cure or find the writer before the deadline.

What’s known so far is that on April 1, all infected computers will come under the control of a master machine located somewhere across the web, at which point anything’s possible.

Will the zombie machines become denial of service attack pawns, steal personal information, wipe hard drives, or simply manifest more traditional malware pop-ups and extortion-like come-ons designed to sell you phony security software? No one knows.

Conficker is clever in the way it hides its tracks because it uses an enormous number of URLs to communicate with HQ. The first version of Conficker used just 250 addresses each day — which security researchers and ICANN simply bought and/or disabled — but Conficker C will up the ante to 50,000 addresses a day when it goes active, a number which simply can’t be tracked and disabled by hand.

At this point, you should be extra vigilant about protecting your PC: Patch Windows completely through Windows Update and update your anti-malware software as well. Make sure your antivirus software is actually running too, as Conficker may have disabled it.

Microsoft also offers a free online safety scan here, which should be able to detect all Conficker versions.

[Yahoo!]

Run you fools! The Conficker cometh!

I really want to get that quarter million reward for myself, but whoever made  something as scary as Conficker would probably be devious and scheming enough that it’d be a waste of time trying to track his April Fool’s ass down.

So maybe I’ll just update my OS and anti-malware -  my Windows  and  ESET NOD32 in all their counterfeit, hacked version  glory (this is the Philippines after all, 99 out a hundred  PCs have hacked software – what people commonly call pirated). I just hope that Conficker thingy is allergic to pirated stuff.

And I think that maybe the techies just blew this thing out of proportion – maybe the dreaded scenario won’t play itself out after all. Maybe it’s just some elaborate April Fool’s joke played out on the masses, and all Conficker really does is make a porn site the default homepage of your Firefox.

But then again if it really is real, then we better start running around and screaming at the top of our lungs, because Confucker Conficker will fuck fick us up.