The deadline for submission of entries for Fully Booked's 3rd Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards has been moved from the earlier d-date of September 30 to November 3, giving us procrastinators a month and more to finish up our stories, comics, illustrations and short films. Hurray!!!
The Rig is Dead
After just about three weeks after being repaired, the rig has again died down on me. It just decided to stop processing and my suspect is the motherboard -- four fully years of running the impossible has just snuffed out its life. So now, rather than spend thousands repairing the CPU, I'll most probably just buy a new CPU -- probably a dual-core with those new memory module standards, the DDR2s. The thing is of course this will mean spending some moolah -- something I don't have much of at the moment.
I will still try to salvage the rig because its components are still working perfectly (now this is more probable than buying a new CPU) and purchase a new motherboard for it. If and if I do get to buy a new CPU (or a new desktop for that matter) then the old rig might go to pasture in Laguna where it can be put to good use that stow it with me where it'll just sit and collect dust in one corner.
The F-Fever Has Hit Me
I'm sure a lot of my friends and acquaintances and colleagues got a surprise when they opened their inboxes and found a Friendster invite from moi. Surprising because I never was the social networking-type (am not even very sociable at all) and to suddenly get an invite from me -- that's tells you something's up.
Well, the decision to finally create a Friendster account was a result of a momentary soul-searching and one of the few times that the reality and possibility of leaving the P.I. is quite, well, quite becoming a reality. In probably less than a couple of years, I and my little family will be making our ways in what is hopefully the greener pastures of Australia (God willing and pocket money willing) and what little circle of friends and pals I had I wanted to make sure I keep in touch with continuously.
So, friends, click here to view my Friendster account. Pictures forthcoming.
Bookworm
Every time I visit and decide to have a browse at the Booksale branch in Cityland 10 (fronting RCBC on its Dela Costa entrance), I always end up buying, err, a book. The last three trips has yielded a couple of sci-fi anthologies and just this week, a treatise on the Middle Ages entitled "The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance". The last title was bought because it can become a good resource for future Middle Ages-related (translate: fantasy) fiction complete with chivalry, sex in the M.A., and codes of honor and how just about every nobility, royalty and knight break it.
Not a month goes by that I do not buy a book and more of ten than not, the book I buy is already a resale or pre-owned in retail speaks. Not that I do not have the money to buy new books (the last new book I bought was the Fritz Leiber one some posts ago), but it's just that trips to these book resellers yields great finds.
And the books, like I've also previously said, are scattered all over the house and I'm sure, one of these days, my wife will notice this and that will be the end of it. I guess, I have to start thinking real hard about getting some book shelves set up so that I'll have a proper place to, err, place my books.
More Montemar Pics
And to end this day's post, here are some more pics of the Montemar outing I took using my phone cam and a toy cam -- an old Polaroid digicam (2.3 megapixels), which unfortunately doesn't compare to the digicams of the new age. From top to bottom: the buses we rode to Montemar; the Welcome Streamer welcomes us at Montemar; Montemar front office; the beach front on a rainy Friday afternoon; colleagues playing beach volleyball in the sand and rain; another shot of the beach with some mountains on the BG; sunset; and a shot of the revelers partying in the evening. I was out of commission the next morning so, no shots whatsoever!
