#14: Soccer dad

Today I was running around like a headless chicken. I was a soccer mom...err dad. Today is Nadire's Birthday party.

Her party started at Atlantis laser tag. A grueling 2 hour of laser gun fight with 10 rowdy twelve year old kids. It's my first time to ever play the game and I must say it kinda enjoying.

After the game, we moved the party to our house where we setup a tent at the backyard.







All of her friends are sleeping over. As I write this blog, my house is a mess, I got cellphones, shoes, socks and bags all over my room. I can still hear them giggling, laughing in the backyard. I'm not sure if they will ever sleep tonight so I guess I am in for a long haul. Tomorrow I have to cook breakfast and am wondering what to serve hungry and sleepless 12 year olds?

What a long day but one thing for sure Nadire is having a lot of fun. So am I...

#13: Consider a netbook as your next portable computer

Are you in a market for a new laptop? You may want to consider buying a netbook instead. What are the advantages of going for a netbook as opposed to a more traditional laptop?

1. Netbooks are cheap. Netbooks can have a price range of just $200-$400.

2. Netbooks are lightweight. Typically from just 2-3 pounds. Very good for road warriors

3. Netbook starts fast and runs fast. The operating system is a strip down version of either Linux or Windows XP. Forget Windows VISTA.

4. Very simple, no frills. Netbooks are designed to tightly integrate with web-applications such as email, web browsing or cloud computing.

I have an eepc as my second laptop. It's very portable and serves me well when am traveling or plan to work in a coffee shop or the library.

There are many netbook brand to choose from aside from what I just mentioned. There the HP Mini, acer one or the dell mini just to mention a few.

#12: Dancing in the dark

Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen is one of my favorite singer. I love listening to "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run" among others.

My favorite video of The Boss is "Dancing in the Dark" from his smash hit album "Born in the U.S.A.". The song's lively and make you want to dance when played.

Notice at the tail end of the video, where Bruce danced with a girl on stage. Do you recognize her? Yes it's Courtney Cox, one of the starts of friends. It was though that it was this video that started Courtney's career in showbiz.

I've been waiting to see a Bruce Springsteen concert since I came to the U.S. So far no luck. He's actually touring Europe at this moment. here goes the video...enjoy!

Dancing in The Dark

#11: After the Thrill(er) is gone

Today is all about Michael Jackson. It's information overload. Every available medium is talking about him. Every news media tried to out do each other as they talk about his rise to fame, his music and his death. I don't have to tell you what happen today as everyone probably watched the event.

But I do have to say that once in my younger years I did listen and even dance to his music, in particular to his famous Thriller album released in 1982 (If I'm not mistaken my friend Pancho has the album in vinyl - if he still have it, he might want to put it up on ebay? hehe).

Yes I admit, my friends and I were among those who would try to imitate his moonwalk moves, his spins and his outfit. Our nights at the disco will not be complete without dancing to "Billy Jean". We probably got crazy with his music for a year that our group was once called "The Punky Boys".

Eventually we have outgrown Michael Jackson. Suddenly dancing is no longer cool. We have given away our wind breakers, our tight pants and even our gloves to the next generation. Together with my friends we started listen to Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and other classic rock musicians up to this day.

When I heard the news about Michael Jackson's untimely death, I immediately asked myself "is it drugs?". Indications seems to point to that direction.

I asked my daughter Deirdre what she thinks of Michael Jackson's music and his death. She said, "His songs are ok but It's not good how he died". Obviously sounding disappointed.

Undoubtedly, Michael was a great artist. Whatever the reason he end up dead, we may never know unless we ourselves will be in a position where he was.

I've long put away my dancing shoes, but I still have good laughs recalling those days which I'm sure my old friends would also feel the same.

#10: A glimpse of the past

My whole family love humor. My late dad had endless jokes and often times he would talk about priests and nuns. There were times when a storm would knock off power for hours at night and we would light candles and snuggle with each other as my dad would belt off story after story until we would fall asleep.

I also remember when watching sitcoms became a happy family event. I remember, we would sit around and watch our favorite sitcom just after dinner. Although there's been a lot of instances where my dad would dooze-off in the middle of the show.

Anyway, definitely a family favorite was the local sitcom "John and Marsha". I just love Dona Delilah's sermon "Kaya ikaw John...magsumikap ka!". But for foreign shows, there where several. "Three's Company" was definitely a must. Different strokes, Doggie Hauser MD, The Cosby show and my mom's favorite "The Golden Girls".

Except for Three's Company, I never watched the finale of the rest of the shows i mentioned, until today when I caught the finale of The Golden Girls - in a nutshell, Dorothy married Blanche's uncle Lucas after Blanche set them up for a date. Dorothy and Lucas moved to Atlanta. Sophia decided to stay with Blanch and Rose in Miami.

I love watching old sitcoms because it reminds of the good times I shares with my family. I really miss those days.

#9: Try Ubuntu Linux the easy way

Linux is an OS (operating system) much like windows. Both are used to control the operations of a computer. A big difference is that Linux is free. Free means you can modify the codes to your liking.

There are hundreds of variants (more popularly called distos) of Linux you can choose from. Redhat, Debian and Ubuntu are some of the more popular distos out there. The way to choose the right one for you is to try some and with your experience you can decide which one to use.

I have been using Linux for quite a while. For server I like installing Ubuntu or CentOS. For the desktop or laptop, I like Ubuntu.

The safest way to try Linux in your existing windows-based computer is to do dual-booting. In this way, you will not mess up your windows installation while test driving Linux.

A cool program to do just that is using wubi - an Ubuntu Installer for windows, you can install and uninstall Linux much like you do when installing a windows application.

Once you completed the installation, you will notice when you restart your computer, you will now be prompted to choose which OS you want to load. To uninstall Ubuntu, just go to your add/remove program in your control panel and remove the software. That's it!

I've tried wubi on different desktops and laptops and it's quite great detecting every devices. It even detects my PCMCIA aircard for my anywhere internet connection.

note: the initial file installer is very small but when you start the installation, it has to download the complete OS which is about 650MB. So make sure you have a broadband connection to speed up the process.

#8: Serendipity on the web

Serendipity (not the movie by John Cusack) according to wikipedia is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. Often times this happens to me a lot when I am on the web finding something.

Today, I downloaded a program called winscp, a program i normally use to access my remote linux servers. As I started installing the program, I was asked if I want to install Flock too. Flock? I have no idea what it is but it sound harmless, I thought. So sure why not.

After some few minutes, the installation was completed. I have my winscp and flock. I fired up flock and what do you know, it's an internet browser. As I play with the program a little bit, it looked like it was designed to streamline interface with popular social networking sites, video sites, photo sites and webmails.

Digging more information, flock actually was built on mozilla firefox code according to this review from cnet.

My first impression is that it's a little bit overwhelming at first because there's to many icons. it may take me sometime to get used to it. Flock maybe useful to social networking junkies who want to have a convenient screen to access all their accounts.

Try flock and who knows you might love it. Now back to my winscp, gotta start building the new abrenian.com web 2.0 beta.

#7: Filter Unwanted Internet Contents For Free

Ever wonder where your kids are surfing on the Internet? If you have a business, do you wonder if your employees are using company time to update their facebook status or searching the latest bargain on craigslist instead of working? Do you want to protect your home or office network from visiting dangerous websites?

There are ways to do it. One way is you can buy a content filtering appliance which will cost you thousands of dollars. Another is to build your own (if you are tech savvy enough) using an open source program like dansguard.

At some point I did tried using dansguards but I gave up after few weeks because it's just not working for me until I discovered OpenDNS.

OpenDNS is a free service that make the Internet safer through integrated Web content filtering, anti-phishing and DNS. There a three ways to setup openDNS. Either on your computer, through your router, or through your existing DNS Server.

Once you're up and running, you can start by choosing different pre-configured security setup that will block unwanted traffic such as porn, ad-wares, phishing websites, known rouge sites and more. You can also have the option to block specific website by just adding to your blocked list. The changes is almost instantaneous. In addition, you can turn on access log to record websites that are being visited.

I have implemented OpenDNS in our office and the effect is remarkable. Traffic went down by almost 50%. Productivity went up and calls for virus warning just went down. Although it made me unpopular to some staff who can no longer access their favorite music sites or social networking sites. I didn't mind because it's my job to keep the company's network safe and secure.

If you decide to use OpenDNS, I would love to hear how it worked for you.

#6: Two birthdays and maybe something else

Tomorrow, I will start my 10 day vacation. I'm not going anywhere though. I will be home most of the time with my kids. I do this every year not only because I need it, but more important it's the week where my kids Deirdre and Nadire will be celebrating their birthdays.

Deirdre will be turning 16. "I don't want a party, I am a party pooper ", she said. All I want is a Mac. Ouch! pretty pricey for a gift. I told her, I can't afford it at this time but am working on it (thanks a lot Steve Jobs!). She said "Fine I can wait".

Nadire is the opposite. She'll be turning 12. She loves parties. She gets invited all the time. She invites friends to the house even when there's no party. She gets bored if she doesn't go out. She had planned her birthday party 3 months in advance. In fact her birthday will last for two days. The first day, she and her friends will go laser tagging. The party will then move to our house for a back yard camping until the next day. And guess who's baby sitting these wild kids? ahem!

Two birthdays in 10 days is not that all bad. But of course I will have some time for myself as well. Get some sleep, get to the gym earlier, maybe read a book (nah!), catch a movie (definitely - last movie I watched was slumdog milllionaire) or maybe, just maybe I can finally put up a test website of a new abrenian.com (the site needs a major face lift) using elgg - a facebook/myspace/friendster-like social networking software.

Kids' birthday parties will definitely push through. The rest? I'll just play it by ear.

#5: Surf the web faster and safer with Firefox 3.5

I just upgraded my firefox browser to version 3.5, a day after it's release and already am loving it. It's definitely much snappier than the previous version. So far the new version has reach 5 million downloads in just one day.

I've been using firefox since it was first released in 2004 and I haven't stop using it ever since. It's definitely much much better than internet explorer specially when it comes to virus protection and security.

It is now a part of my routine when I setup new computers or fix old ones to install firefox. Aside from your anti-virus software, installing firefox should be a must.

If you have not heard of firefox before, it's not to late to start. Grab your copy for free at mozilla.com. The new features are pretty awesome.