Globe Tattoo on Fedora 11

Finally got my hands on a Huawei E1552 USB Modem (disguised as Globe Tattoo with a cheap sticker). With the help of this article, I quickly got it working under my Fedora 11 (x86_64) machine.

But I needed to make some minor tweaks:

• Change the APN from internet.globe.com.ph to http.globe.com.ph
• Change DNS servers to OpenDNS servers (208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220)

Globe, from my experience, is notoriously "reliable" when it comes to their DNS servers.

My initial usage experience with Globe Tattoo was average at best. According to www.speedtest.net, my average download speed is around 400kbps which translates to 50KB/s. It was far better than I what expected it to be, however, just like the sales personnel had "warned" me, the signal indeed fluctuates, A LOT.

Apparently, the 5 Pesos for every 15 minutes means that you'll ONLY have 15 minutes of stable Internet connection. :P

Alcohol Abuse

Since Kira spends most of the day just lying on the floor, we figured we could take some really funny pictures... :P

Kira with some mini beer bottles

Kira with a bottle of whisky

Cannibalism

Kira just bit off the leg of a lizard...


a rubber lizard... ^_^

Slowdown

I went to back to Line Bank yesterday to try again. Guess what? They're still offline. PLDT never got the problem fixed. This time, however, instead of asking people to wait indefinitely, go home, or look for another branch, they will proceed with the transaction (without the validation step) if the client wishes to.

Apparently, they're not the only ones affected by the PLDT service interruption. My DSL connection has been experiencing a general slowdown for the past 2 days. I guess I won't be working on our Amazon EC2 instance for a while.

Offline

My 2nd attempt to pay my taxes this week failed miserably. Yesterday, the line outside the bank almost reached the end of the block so I decided not to even try.

This morning, I was there before the bank opened, and was 6th or 7th. The bank opened at 8:30AM. When I got to 1-person away from the teller, the unexpected happened.

Their dial-up connection failed. It was 8:55AM. I waited.

And after almost 4 hours, I've finished the book (The Last Samurai), I've learned some new stuffs from Linux Magazine, and they still haven't restored their line yet.

I finally gave up and just headed back home for lunch. Tomorrow morning, I'll be back again (3rd time this week) in Land Line Bank of the Philippines for another "uncertain" banking experience.

Compaq CQ40 ALSA Configuration

... for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope)

I'm posting this for future reference...

Append the following lines to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf:

options snd slots=snd-hda-intel
options snd-hda-intel model=hp-m4

Bad Influence

This is why humans could be such a bad influence to cats...

A Screw Up Sounds Good... Sometimes

I was told some TV anchor screwed up during the live broadcast. I never thought somebody will actually publish it.

http://ph.news.yahoo.com/abs/20090801/tph-state-funeral-for-cory-no-pomp-for-d-8061bf7_1.html