Restlessness...

...is exactly what I'm feeling right now. Why? Beats the crap out of me. For some insane reason I wanna chuck my (brand spankin' new) laptop out the window and just walk out of the office.

Must be the fact that it's a Friday. I think I just need to disconnect from work for a while and just...I don't know, walk around the mall and vege a bit.

Given my state of restlessness, I think I shall blog about a multitude of things.

The need to impulse buy something techy.
Yes, I'm quite proud of myself coz I haven't bought a tech item...actually, ANYTHING...on impulse since last year. I do believe my last impulse purchase was my DSLR, which make it a YEAR since I bought anything on impulse.

Don't get me wrong. This is a good thing. Good because it allows me to save up on money as opposed to buying something that's nice-to-have but ultimately could've waited.

It's a bad thing because a) it shows that I'm getting old (dammit) by being mature over my expenses, and b) since I haven't done this is a long time, I might end up making a BIG impulse purchase to make up for the lost time.

I actually have a hypothesis as to why I'm feeling this way. Which leads to...

I need a new mobile phone, and the N97 is taking forever to arrive.
I have 2 phones (the left and the right...eh heh), one for my work life and one for my personal life. My work phone is about 1.3 years old (and looks like it's 13 years old due to heavy usage) and is working perfectly (you gotta love Nokia Communicators). My personal phone is 2.5 years old (or so) and looks like it's 25 - my beloved N95. The reason why I still haven't bought something to replace it is because it took Nokia bloody 2.5 years to come up with something new and exciting enough to actually WANT it to be replaced. And it's taking the N97 forever to show up (it's coming in July according to my good old friends in Nokia regional and global). Sure, I was toying with the idea of getting an Xperia X1, but the WinMo 6.1 was a turnoff (so that throws the HTC line out the window) and Samsung Omnia HD was coming out at the same time as the N97, so...

Bottomline: July better hurry up.

My new office laptop rocks.
The good old office was considerate enough to provide me with a newer lighter more powerful laptop to replace the one I had which was HEAVY. Given my scoliosis, they immediately purchased a new one.

It helps that one has LT backing behind requests such as these mwehehe.

They gave me an HP EliteBook 2530p and it's a nice upgrade to my previous laptop, the Compaq 6150c. Running on Centrino 2, sporting more memory, a DVD-RW, and (I kid you not) an integrated light bulb to use when it's too dark to see your keyboard, it's light enough at 3.75lbs to avoid backbreaking instances yet powerful enough to run WOW at decent speeds and graphic levels.

Good thing the office gave me a pretty damn good laptop, or I would've been tempted to buy a personal laptop...

Running running running
Good for my health (keeps up the trend on my weight loss), good for my wallet (running is cheaper than going out!), good for my back (it strengthens my back muscles, especially the ones along the spine), and good for the environment (running's better than gas guzzling around the city!). Must keep it up!

Honesty

One of the decisions I made when I decided to live again was to be as honest as possible - to others and to myself especially. My principle in life is "honesty, in the long run, will always be better."

Honesty is difficult...hence the phrase "as possible." Not that it's a blanket excuse that I utter every time I find myself in a situation where I chose to not become honest. But admittedly, honestly is difficult. You're sometimes torn between being honest for the sake of your principles OR potentially lying because a) it would be easier for you, or b) you feel it's what the person needs.

Let me try to tackle those 2 things one by one:
1. It would be easier for you.
Let's face it - 90% of the times that we're not honest is because it would be so much easier for us. Heck, I'm guilty of this. I must admit, sometimes it would be so much easier for me to tell my folks a white lie or two when I'm going out, just to save myself the trouble of getting a mini-sermon. Or it would make my life easier at work if I told a little white lie. It's quick, it's easy, it saves you time and effort, it saves your reputation, etc.

But just because it's quick and easy for you doesn't mean it's wrong.

Ok, hell no am I going to be preachy and tell everyone to stop saying white lies...for one thing, I'm guilty of this myself, and there is no way in hell that I have sufficient moral authority to do so. I can't even get myself to stop this, what more others?

But getting used to being dishonest because it would be easier for you is a slippery slope. Kinda like drugs. You start with something weak and easy ("don't panic, it's organic!") and then you start moving on to the bigger heavier things.

Getting used to being dishonest because it makes things easier for you is a dangerous path to walk. It'll eventually lead to bigger things. Pretty soon, you'll cross a line which you never thought you would all in the name of "convenience."

I'm trying to lessen this. "Trying" being the operative word. It helps that I have a much better and closer relationship to my family and close friends now - I can be much more open about what I think and feel and, contrary to my earlier feelings, I never get judged for it. True, sometimes it gets me in hot water, but hey, at the end of the day, the feeling of being honest truly compensates for any trouble I might have gotten into.

2. You feel it's what the other person needs.


Ah, here's a more difficult moral decision. Do you lie because you think the truth will hurt the person, whether emotionally (simply by knowing the truth) or physically (because the act of telling the truth will potentially cause damage or pain or injury to the person) or intellectually (because the truth will set into motion a series of events which will lead the person to doubting him/herself)? This is indeed a tough call to make. There are a myriad of factors to consider, and no two situations are the same. So making the blanket statement "you should always tell the truth, no matter the potential consequences" isn't really applicable right?

In my personal opinion, I disagree.

My principle stays the same: honesty, in the long run, will always be better. No matter how much one justifies it, no matter how much one thinks about it, in the end, there is no reason that will justify a lie. Even if you think or feel that it's what the person needs.

For one thing, who are we to judge what is better for the other person? True, there may be exceptions in certain cases (e.g. a parent deciding for a child who's not yet emancipated), but by and large, who are we to position ourselves as someone who decides what's good or bad for someone?

Remember, that person whom you're thinking of telling a lie to does not have the full and complete picture. Hence he/she may make ill-informed decisions that affect the rest of his/her life. Were we not taught in school that decisions are best made when all available information is brought out into the open?

This reason, for me, is very difficult because most of the times the decision to not be honest (in these kinds of situations) is made with (hopefully) the very best of intentions. I do not judge these people to be evil. After all, who would want to see someone hurt, whether physically or emotionally? No one, save for the most evil of people, wants to see other people hurt. Especially if it's a family member or a loved one. Hence sometimes they decide to be dishonest to "spare the other person the pain."

But doesn't that justification fall under reason number 1? That the reason why you're not saying the truth is because YOU don't want to feel bad about causing pain or trouble to the other person? That it makes it easier for you since you don't have to put yourself through the pain and guilt of seeing the other person be affected by this?

Not an easy thing huh? Trust me, I'm getting a headache myself going through this moral quandary.

But at the end of the day, this moral quandary can be avoided with one simple act: tell the truth. The complete and utter truth. True, you may end up hurting the other person - but at least the person knows the truth. The person will eventually face up to it anyway - which means the pain will always be there. I think one reason why people decide to do this is because they sometimes underestimate the mettle of the people they decide to tell the lie to. In my opinion, and in my own personal experience, people are a lot tougher than they appear to be. Trust them enough that they can handle the truth and the consequences of learning about it.

Of course, there is a right place and right time to tell the truth (you don't tell someone something life changing while he/she's in the middle of a huge meeting of course!), but at the end of the day, the painful truth will always be better than a lie told in the name of "not getting the other person hurt."

Ok, enough introspection for one day. This is what I get for waking up at ungodly hour on a Saturday. *yawn*




*image credit: www.lolcats.com

The Prequel to the Prequel...which is actually a sequel

Ok, confusing title, I know.

I had some questions about the latest Star Trek movie...
...how did the Narada, a mining ship, manage to beat off 47 Klingon warbirds and 7 Starfleet vessels...?
...if a supernova destroyed Romulus, why didn't anyone get enough warning time to evacuate, like, I don't know, a couple of hundred million years advanced warning...?
...why didn't the Vulcans have any orbital defenses...?
...where were the 6 billion Vulcans...?

Apparently JJ Abrams released "Countdown" a comic that tells the story of everyone the start of the movie. The story actually begins 8 years after the events in the movie Star Trek: Nemesis and does a fine job of answering some of the questions above.


Next up is an analysis on the military aspects of the movie - which, as cool as it looked like, was actually...er, pathetic.

Yes, my geekiness is in full swing!

*image credit: startrek11.blogspot.com

Movie Review: Star Trek

Yes, my geekiness will really come out in this post. Consider yourself forewarned.

Let's get one thing straight: I loved the movie. I really admire JJ Abrams for being able to turn a cult classic into something that appeals to both the mainstream crowd (some who have never even seen a Star Trek movie!) and the geeks (such as myself). Action packed yet has just enough emotional scenes (both sad and funny) to make the characters all the more real. Which is important, because what made Star Trek so famous was not really the technology - it's really about the characters and how they used the technology in the story.


But, as I'm a geek, there are quite a few inconsistencies with generally accepted Star Trek canon - though in no way do these inconsistencies rob the story of it's greatness.

1. The U.S.S. Enterprise was built in spacedock, not on Earth - starships in the time of Jim Kirk, especially starships in the Constellation class (of which the original Enterprise is from), are not capable of surviving atmospheric flight - one reason being their weight. Also, it was generally considered to be much safer to have it built in orbit because of the extremely hazardous nature of dilithium crystals (which powers the warp core, which is the reason why starships can travel faster than light) which would potentially cause havoc on the planet. Even in the Enterprise D (commanded by Jean-Luc Picard some hundred years in the future from Kirk) could not survive atmospheric flight, though the saucer section could survive long enough to make planetfall - though it could never fly again under its own power.

2. Starfleet never had "rapid-fire" torpedoes - space combat in the movie was a chaotic thing, filled with phasers firing constantly and torpedoes being launched in rapid-fire. Starfleet never had rapid-fire torpedoes, and the original Enterprise only had 1 torpedo launcher (forward launcher). The Enterprise D has 4 photon torpedo launchers - 2 fore, 2 aft.

3. Each ship during Kirk's time had their own logo - Starfleet only adopted the use of Enterprise's logo AFTER Kirk made the ship famous, unlike in the movie, when Starfleet was using the Enterprise logo as the official logo.

4. The original Enterprise only had room for 2-3 shuttles at the most - yet in the movie, we saw about 6-8 shuttles docking in the shuttle bay.

5. The original Enterprise did not have "touchpads" for controls, just keys and buttons - Uhura preferred keys and buttons because you knew that when you clicked something, it actually was done, as opposed to touchpads where you didn't know it was being done.

6. Engineering was not that big - the engineering room was portrayed as a...well, HUGE room filled with large tanks and the likes. It was only in Enterprise D that engineering had a 2-level room, the original Enterprise just had a smaller room to begin with.

7. Each starship only carries one warp core - not multiple ones as in the movie. The dumping of a warp core was a last ditch safety measure in case the warp core was going to go critical - and there's only one (as multiple warp cores don't necessarily mean faster travel).

But beyond those inconsistencies (hell, Gloria didn't know anything about them yet she enjoyed the movie!), the movie was absolutely great. :) Kudos to JJ Abrams for a job well done. Now, I wonder what's going to happen with the sequel...

Of apothecaries, boxers, and a diabolical plan

After suffering for about a week or so of steady tooth pain, I was felled by an astronomical level of HURT last Wednesday night by my tooth. So much so that I had to a) take a sick leave from work and NOT work from home (that has only happened once before, if I remember correctly), b) take a double dose of anti-pain meds (I felt like Gregory House when I popped in those pain pills), and c) cover my head with a pillow as I moaned out loud in pain (I never do).

Ah yes, Wednesday night was hell. I had a feeling that 1 of the 4 nerves in my tooth died on me.

I rushed to get my panoramic x-ray and made an immediate appointment with my dentist. I was really dreading the visit - aside from my innate fear of dentists, I was going to get a root canal for the first time in my life. I've heard all the horror stories and, quite frankly, I was quaking in my boots.

Gail was so sweet, she dumped all her work on that Thursday to accompany me to my x-ray and my back doctor (more on that later) and on Saturday, May 2, she walked with me into the dentist's clinic to get my root canal, which I anticipated to last about 3 hours.

The procedure took less than an hour, it was done so excellently that I felt only a small amount of pain (more of discomfort actually), and I actually survived the procedure. My dentist was just AWESOME. I highly recommend him. Pricey (thank god for medical insurance!) but well worth the expense. He was just absolutely awesome. Case in point, he had me so relaxed during the operation, I was able to check my Facebook while I was having the procedure.

I have to go back for a couple of more visits just to make sure that the canal's all cleaned up before he puts a permanent cap. And I might have to get my wisdom tooth extracted because it's impacting my affected tooth. But I feel so much more relaxed now.

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Part of my Thursday medical day was to get my x-rays checked by a back specialist. I think I'm lucky with doctors - after getting an awesome dentist, I get an awesome back doctor. Think of him as Gregory House, but minus the perpetual pain and cane. He's obviously smart, he's straight to the point, he explains things sufficiently enough to satisfy the geek in me.

Of course, my folks don't really like what he recommended as an ultimate solution, but they were reassured by his calm confident demeanor. I'm going to get myself a gajillion more opinions, but if ever things progress, I want THIS apothecary working on me.

Gail was again sweet enough to accompany myself and my mom during this visit. I'm happy that my folks, especially my mom, gets to meet and talk and spend more time with Gail. When things progress and get...er, official, I really would like my folks and Gail to really know each other.

More on my back once I get more info!

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I won't write much about the very...er, short Pacquiao-Hatton fight, since it a) lasted just 2 rounds, and b) it wasn't really a fight. It was a massacre. That was like pitting one Imperial Guard soldier vs one Adeptus Astartes. It was one-sided.

So, who's next for the Imperial Fist Manny Pacquiao?

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Gail has activated her diabolical plan. I am flabbergasted, awed, happy, nervous, and most of all, humbled. All I can say is that it's going to be an interesting time, to say the least.