Fire in Cotabato - April 8, 09

Just wanted to share the photos i took this afternoon when a fire hits a residential area here in Cotabato City.

I don't have the photos of the actual fire but just the huge smoke that was seen at SK Pendatun Avenue.

These photos was un-intentionally taken because i was on my way to SmartBro Wireless Center to settle my account.

Fire incident happened around 12:30PM at College area.

For actual report click here.

Strange Experience with Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger

Will make this straight. My PC got stuck and restarted it. Upon restarting my PC I decided to login again to YM since i was chatting before it got stuck. I was also surfing the net before it hangged and so I run my Firefox and have my previous sites visited restarted. One of the sites was Yahoo mail. Since I am using the Yahoo mail with chat enabled, my chat status at Yahoo mail immediately became available. After being signed out at YM due to Yahoo mail, i login again at YM and i noticed that i wasn't signed out at Yahoo mail.

Very rare though. Normally, when you are logged in at Yahoo mail chat and decided to login at YM, your Yahoo mail chat will be logged out or vice versa. Anyway, i have here the screenshot of my chat to myself using both YM and Yahoo mail chat.



Notice also that some of my contacts that are offline at YM are still on-line at my Yahoo mail. That's for now. Happy chatting..

On-line Banking in Philippines : My experience

On-line banking has been known to me way back 2005. My first discovery of on-line banking was when I got so tired inquiring about my balance at East West Bank.

First thing to do to access your savings account at on-line East West Bank is to register. I've also tried fastnet of the Equitable PCI Bank. Registration process for on-line banking for banks mentioned are both easy. ChinaBank and Bank of the Philippine Islands are also easy to register via Internet but you also need to activate your E-banking through ATM machines.

Since my East west and Equitable PCI bank accounts are all zero balance because I'm not saving anymore, i'm now using Metrobank which at first find their system very inconvenient. Why? Because you have to go to your depository branch when you want to register your account to their on-line banking, which in my case very inconvenient because mine is payroll account opened at Davao City (about 5hrs of travel from Cotabato City) by our accounting office. The system of MetroBank is merely for security reasons though. That is to avoid registering your account on-line without your permission? Duh? It's merely foolishness if you entrust your ATM or account to anyone.

Anyway, why you should register? For your own convenience as simple as that. You don't have to look for ATM's just inquire for your outstanding balance. When you withdraw, you can withdraw immediately because you have already inquired your balance on-line. This will also lessen your time spent on that ATM machine. Another thing is paying your bills, in my case i usually use this feature to pay for my SmartBro Internet account. By the way, your payment will be credited to your billing accounts in three working days.

As of today, i think almost all our banks in the Philippines are all internet accessible. One thing though, to protect your on-line banking, you should make sure that your PC is installed with updated antivirus and spyware detector. Same thing with ATM, you should not let other people know your username and password.

I'm thinking of maybe next time our local banks in the Philippines would allow us to fund transfer to our Paypal account. I just hope that our local banks will consider Paypal.

SSS On-line Inquiry - Finally online again!

Last year around July as far as i can remember, Social Security System updated their website into Java Server Page and Oracle database. I was delighted to the new design of the website and guessed we would have a great experience.

My fellow employees got so excited to check the new on-line inquiry system the SSS implemented. At first I registered, have my username and password emailed by the SSS website for at least a few minutes and start using. I was surprised after logging in, i was asked again to login. What the? And so, i login and checked if my remittances are still updated. Of course as expected, remittances are delayed for about six months.(That's their procedure of posting maybe). After that, my fellow officemates also registered. Some unsuccessfully registered while some failed to received their password because they used our organization's official email.

The updated system is more secure compared to the first one because anyone can check your contributions by just entering your last name, SSS number and birthdate.

And so, awhile ago i just decided to check their site just to read about their loan programs. I tried clicking the My.SSS menu and amazed that i can now login again. That's great! At least i can now check my contributions. I have here the screen shot of the login. Tried it and so far so good without the second login.








Screenshot after login.













Also the screenshot of the on-line inquiry itself. You will notice that the system doesn't have its menu and commonly addressed as not user-friendly =).

Actually, there are seven menus which are un-labeled blue horizontal line that will change its color into darker blue when you mouse over on them . Those with shadowed orange triangle are those with dropdown menu.

At the very left, just below birth date is employee's information dropdown menu. This is where you can check your Actual Premiums, Member Details, Employment History, SSS ID card and SSS Servicing Branch.

Next menu is for checking your benefit loan status followed by loan/short term application status. The rest of the menu is for you to find out because i really have to rest right now hehe..Just remember, those with orange triangle are those with dropdown menu. Explore it now. Hope we can have SSS representative here to describe the un-mentioned menus.

Anyway, I still appreciate the effort of the SSS people for updating OUR site. I just don't know how much they spent for the new system. I'm just wondering why they use the high priced database system and didn't use the opensource database system like mysql =). Yes, i'm advocating the opensource systems and Pres. Obama either because it's cheap. Well, i really have to rest because i got so tired baby sitting the whole day.

Nanny : Amazed with airplane

On March 31, my wife Ariane flew to Manila for a job interview. Of course, we took some pictures before their departure. Me and my wife really didn't took pictures that much but to the nanny of my wife's friend from a certain province who was so excited to see an airplane. =)

According to the husband of my wife's friend (also their classmate back in college) named Jolly, the nanny wasn't even got to sleep the night before his wife's departure because she was really excited. When the plane Cebu Pacific arrived from Manila, she would repeatedly says that the plane just arrived. Jolly's father told her that she can go outside to see how does the plane looks like when it lands. So, she rushed outside just to see for herself but she immediately returned and told us that she didn't have the chance to see it. By the way, we were inside the airport's secured area =)

After that, Heidi (Jolly's wife) told us that she selected a seat on a window's side, which the nanny found interesting (and also my wife hehe..). Jolly's father started to describe what you are going to see when you are on that seat. Islands, clouds and everything nice. Then i glanced to the nanny and noticed her imagining how it feels inside the plane specially on that window's seat. She's like day dreaming but suddenly stopped with her facial expression and felt ashamed when i acted to everyone how she looks like =)

Anyway, here's her pics. I'm also sorry if ever i sound mean with this post.

New design for Cotabato Exchange

Few days ago, I decided to change my cotabato exchange's layout into a simple yet appealing design. Since I am not that artistic when it comes to web designing, I downloaded from Styleshout a CSS template which i really think would fit to what i'm looking for. Simple yet appealing!

Here's the previous design of cotabato exchange.


For the info of readers, this project is basically cotabato's directory of offices, establishments and etc. Visitors are also allowed to register here to post for products they want to buy or sell..yah on-line trading. Being a Cotabato cititzen, i am also interested to have an on-line trading site like davaoexchange,gensanexchange that's why i made this site..

comments on cotabato exchange is welcome.

Opening Office 2007 files: On-line

Late this afternoon I was asked to print a document of one of our team leaders which will be use tomorrow. I was bit surprised that it was saved in office 2007. Since almost all of our units were installed with office 2003 and i know it's quite bothering situation for non-techie person. Actually, the first option for opening these files is installing FileConverter or Compatibility pack from Microsoft.

Being a Google fanatic, i decided first to upload it to Goole docs so that i can easily copy the content and have it paste to my MsWord 2003. Unfortunately Google docs does not allow .docx extension or files saved in office 2007.

So here's what i did, of course i Google with this keyword "online docx opener". As expected, you will have a lot of result and basically as Google searcher you will choose the first or second entry or in general the first few entries in first page of the result.

I chose this entry because of its tag "free docx opener". According to the site, you can use Thinkfree or Zoho to open Docx, Xlsx, Pptx, Ppsx files or saved in office 2007 version.

From the two, i preferred to use Zoho because of its GUI (grapics user interface), very user friendly and it really looks like a desktop word processor. Much user friendly than Google docs actually. =)
On the other hand, ThinkFree is also useful because upon uploading your file, you can immediately view and have it printed.


Think of it like an on-line PDF format but the option on copying the text in original version/format is very different. Based on my experience when i pasted it in word processor, it paste a series of character without even a space on it. Another thing, i once tried to edit a document file but it asks me first to verify a java application on my desktop. When i first saw the window, i felt like that application will be somehow slower compare to Zoho writer. That's make decide not to use ThinkFree.com (really sorry guys..)

So here's my recommendation, install a fileconverter/compatibility pack from Microsoft if you are frequently opening files from office 2007 to 2003. But if you have at least 376Kbps internet connection like mine, you can use webbased document processor like Zoho writer or Google docs.Somehow you will find that using webbased applications like Zoho or Google docs quite convenient.

Reminder: Google is not yet allowing office 2007 files.