Carousel Ride

It's moments like these when I wish I were a kid again. I don't even remember how much fun it truly was to ride a wooden horse on a carousel. By the excited look on my nephew's face it apparently is wonderful. I love seeing things through his eyes, things are usually more fun that way.

Spam Attack

I don't think I've been as annoyed with spam as I am now. My domain has been hacked, I keep getting e-mail messages for non-delivered e-mails that I DO NOT SEND. In addition to that I have a form on my freelance site that has been hijacked. I keep getting fake quote request filled with links for products and other nonsensical garbage. I hate that I will have to spend my weekend either adding more validation on my forms or adding more server-side code to combat this internet spam. I truly feel bad for the recipients of these e-mails that are coming from my domain. The sad part is that I just renewed my domain for another three years, so I really wouldn't want to cancel it. I think I will have to place a call to my hosting provider as well :(

Feelings - woe, woe, woe, feelings

It's funny when you see a person you haven't seen in a very long time the feelings you usually think have past rise again with great strength. You not only remember the reasons for having those initial feelings, but you feel them once more. Two close friends surprised me this Friday when they suddenly showed up from out of town. I think it's been two or three years since I had seen them last. I'm not saying that I forgot about them, I just feel our friendship revived again. It's weird I didn't realize I needed that - the direct contact that is. E-ail and IM is fine, but you can't beat actually hanging out. D&V hope to see you again soon - don't be strangers! (Meow!)

Never Surprise a Police Officer

Check out this funny clip (well I think it's funny)! See how an attempted surprise party goes terribly bad.

Google Blog Gets Hacked

Everything in Google is not all a bouquet of roses. After news of the purchase of You Tube ran accross all news wires, another news alert went out. Turns out that the Giant can be succomed to hackers. I worry about my many blogs here on blogger.

A hacker broke into Google's main official blog and posted a false message on Saturday, saying that the company had decided to cancel a joint project with eBay.

The intrusion marks the second time this year that Google's official blog has fallen into unauthorized hands. In March, Google staffers deleted the so-called Google Blog by mistake and someone briefly took control of the Web address.
Blog Carries Corporate Messages
In Saturday's incident, someone exploited a bug in Blogger, the Google Web log publishing service on which Google Blog is hosted. The hacker published a note riddled with grammatical and spelling errors that said Google had ended its click-to-call advertising project with eBay because it was 'monopolistic.'
The next day, Karen Wickre, from the Google Blog team, alerted readers about the false posting and said the Blogger bug had been fixed, without detailing the breach. The eBay project remains alive and well, she wrote on the blog. | source: Yahoo! News

Record labels in deals with YouTube, Google

Several media companies announced licensing deals Monday with YouTube Inc., potentially clearing copyright hurdles as Google Inc. (GOOG) reportedly is set to acquire the popular Internet-video site. Under agreements with two record labels and CBS Corp. (CBS), YouTube will track copyrighted material incorporated in its user-created videos and share advertising revenue with the media groups that own the content. Amicable partnerships could help pave the way for the YouTube acquisition, which has been pegged at $1.6 billion and could come as early as Monday afternoon.
...
Napster shuttered its pioneering music-download service amid a barrage of lawsuits from the major record labels. In echoes of the controversy, Universal Music Group had hinted it might sue YouTube for copyright infringement. Instead Universal Music, a unit of Vivendi (12777.FR), and Sony BMG Music Entertainment were part of the deal flurry announced Monday. The companies will make their music-video libraries available on YouTube and share ad revenue for user-generated content that use their music. Google's video-sharing site reached similar arrangements with Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. (SNE) and German media giant Bertelsmann AG, and Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG), which recently signed a licensing deal with YouTube. | source: Marketwatch

Oh Yeah, There Is The Dial-up Option!

I have been using broadband internet for such a long time now that I forgot that I could connect online via dialup. These past days I have not had access to anything online. I don't recall if I checked on Friday night but Saturday morning my connection was not there. I figured my brother-in-law must have moved a cable again from the main router upstairs. I was busy all day preparing my sister's baby shower and didn't have time to check any settings or see if the connection came back. Saturday night after all the guest had left and everything was clean I opened up my browser only to receive that familiar error message of page cannot be found. It was too late to bother so I went to sleep. Today Sunday I tried a couple of times and finally went upstairs to check things out.

Everything seems to be in place all lights are flickering properly. The computers recognize that there is a signal but for some odd reason connection itself is not happening. There must be something wrong with Comcast or the router itself. After feeling defeated and just killing time with a good old fashion game of solitaire I remembered my trusty AOL. I have never been so happy to have dial-up :)

Everything is obviously slower but it's true - something is better than nothing. Too bad I realized it on Sunday night instead of Friday night.

My Cubicle

Parody from James Blunt's - You're Beautiful

Did My Trainer Beat Me Up?

Today was my first session with a physical trainer - EVER. Yep you read correctly. I not only joined a gym but I've also commited myself to workout with a fitness trainer twice a week. I had joined a gym before, but was never able to stick to a schedule. I would often feel lazy and wouldn't go to hardly any workouts. I considered it a waste of money and ended up cancelling my membership. This time I wanted to make sure I stuck with it. So I bit the bullet and forked over some cash for a personal trainer. I think that having to meet with a trainer will help me stick to my schedule this time around. Brian (my trainer) made me work every muscle in my body. The workout was so intense for me that at one point I think I seriously felt like crying. Now I feel as if I got hit by a car or as if I was beat up BADLY! Well, as they say - No Pain, No Gain!

The Birds & The Bees

Every now and then a cartoon is included in a one of my many newsletters. I think because I live in a world of cubicles and 'proceses' this one made me chuckle a bit. I figured why not share it with you, enjoy...

CEO Dad by Tom Stern

Click on image to enlarge.| Source: Monster.com
For a real kick in the career, listen to Tom Stern's "Opportunity Knocks" podcast on Monster.

Happy Mexican Independence Day!

Today is the 195th year of Mexico's independence from Spain. Even though I didn't participate in any specific celebration this weekend (no parades) or political activism, I could not let the day go by without taking notice. I was born and raised in this country and for that I celebrate it's national holidays. My heritage and culture are as important and for that I celebrate with Mexico as well.

Con un fuerte grito exclamo - Que Viva Mexico Lindo y Querido!

Timber Lanes

Bowling resumes for my company league. This year I decided to join in again and commit to attend every week until mid November. I missed the first game last week because of my cold (which knocked me out for the day). Last night was the first time I bowled in probably almost two years. Nothing has changed either, I stink at it. I really enjoy it, but I'm awful. I started the fisrt game with a 92, I then showed some progress and had a score of 102 for my second game. Somehow things turned for the worse by the third and final game of the night. My final score was a sad 82. Stay tuned for next week scores, where I'll aim to break a hundred once more.

Vota Por LODVG

La oreja de Van Gogh ha obtenido 3 Nominaciones en los premios MTV Latinoamérica:
*Mejor Grupo o Duo junto a Belanova, Maná, Miranda y Panda.
*Mejor Artista Pop junto a Julieta Venegas, Kudai, Belanova y Diego Torres.
*Mejor Artista del Año junto a Juliega Venegas, Daddy Yankee, Belanova y Gustavo Cerati.

Los Televidentes Latinoamericanos de MTV Seleccionarán los Ganadores Votando en MTVla.com a partir del 5 de Septiembre. La Ceremonia Será Transmitida en Vivo Desde el "Palacio de los Deportes" de la Ciudad de México, el Jueves 19 de Octubre, y Contará con Presentaciones en Vivo de Evanescence, Nelly Furtado y Julieta Venegas.

Recuerda, para votar: www.mtvla.com

The Charlie Face Pose

Charlie sometimes just looks so darn cute to me. As you can probably tell he still likes posing for the camera, even my phone camera. Now if I can only get him to vary his expression.

Backing Up My Pictures

WOohoo! I finally uploaded the last picture from my Spain trip on flickr. I am a photo taking addict. I took way too many pictures and choosing which ones to upload and keep has been very time consuming. I kid-you-not, I think I went through almost FIVE-HUNDRED pictures. From those a little over two-hundred made it to my online repository. It's a good thing too!

I think my computer will give out on me any day now. I don't know what I did but the sound isn't working at all. I checked the sound card, speaker connection, drivers, settings - you name it all looks ok. The system itself keeps on crashing as well, and upon reboot takes several minutes to load. I think I've had this PC for a little over three years now. I've just added so much into it that I am contemplating just changing the hard-disk and starting from scratch. I thought about selling and getting a new one, which is what I usually like to do. I'm not sure if I want to remove what I already added to this one. (TV/Video card, new USB 3.0 accelerator card, memory) I reformatted and defragged the disk about three times already, because of viruses & etc. I just doubt doing that again will make a difference. I think I'll buy an external hard-drive this weekend and just back up everything to be on the safe side.

For the most part this computer has performed the best for me. I have a Sony vaio, and compared to other brands I've had before this one has been my favorite. I use my computer for many things and I truly need a workhorse with a great graphics card that is very speedy (thus the reason I added more RAM).

Well enough geeky talk, I just hope I can back-up everything up before it gives out on me. I had a bad crash once before that caused me to loose many pictures from other trips as well as other important files. I definitely do not want that to happen again!

Happy Labor Day

I know this post is rather late in the day, but nonetheless why not wish for the best. My labor day was a bit laborious. After cleaning out some very old e-mail from various accounts, I also decided to organize some pictures.

I finally uploaded some pictures from my trip to Spain on my Flickr account. I touched up some pics and upload pics from Madrid and Granada. While in the system I figured I should post my pics from Iceland as well. Flickr has become somewhat of my picture backup placeholder. A while back I lost a large amount of pictures from my other trips after a bad hard-drive crash. I was never able to recover them and had I had them in Flickr I wouldn't be missing them as I do now. It took a couple of hours but many are now saved. I still have a few to go, hopefully I'll have those up by the end of the week.

Enjoying The New Sofa

I buy the couch but someone else is enjoying it greatly..

Busy Travel Day

Many planes took off today for the Labor Day holiday. As I rode the orange line train to Midway airport from work, I saw many travelers excited about their upcoming trips. Even though I just came home from a nice trip to Spain I must confess I was a bit jealous wishing I was traveling out for the holiday as well. I normally like to take advantage of a long weekend and travel somewhere within the States, unfortunately not this weekend. Hmm, maybe I'll plan something for next month.

La Oreja De Van Gogh En Gira

Aun no estan de venta los boletos pero espero con anticipacion para compralos! Se espera que La Oreja De Van Gogh vendra a Chicago el 24 de Noviembre. Datos sobre gira y mas informacion en su pagina - laorejadevangogh.com

LODVG sigue siendo mi grupo favorito y el disco reciente (Guapa) contiene temas que me encantara ver en vivo. Mira el nuevo video de mi cancion favorita de ese disco - Dulce Locura:

Hola Desde Madrid

I am into my third day here in Spain and all in all it had been a sightseeing frenzy. My friend Lid ("Tapadera") and I have been walking all over Madrid exploring to what feels like every nook and cranny. The architecture has been amazing to gaze at. We have been into beautiful palaces, gardens, museums and ate yummy Spanish food. The wine I had thus far hasn't tasted as well as I expected. However, more the reason to go on a hunt and drink more wine.

Lidi's food has been bland to her taste buds, but she recovered while flirting with a very young short Spaniard. (We think) She felt pressured to finish her 2 course meal - and I thought I ate slow - she has me beat. She claims to savor her food, however she was displeased by her gazpacho being cold - then realized IT"S supposed to be cold. J/K she's just silly that way. I enjoyed my paella, but perhaps it was because I haven't had one in a very long time, truth be told it was probably dry as Lids told me so. (Although she's never tasted paella before in her life)

Some guys are really nice to look at, but over all they aren't that friendly. The vendors are actually a bit intimidating. They quickly scold for not placing a book perfectly perpendicular to the bottom pile. I hate that damn Spaniard!
J/K - I bought some cheap souvenirs from him. Lids continued her flirting extravaganza with a street performer, I have the picture to prove it. I won't post it but ask me about it later.

Anyway the time here is 3:45 am - what the hell are we doing up! Actually the people here do everything later than expected. The good news is that the streets are filled with people at very late hours, so staying up and being out is more fun that way, and probably safer. Gotta go, to be continued.