The day I lost root privileges

I have (K)ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin installed on my Fujitsu Lifebook UH75/J (I've discussed about it in one of my previous posts). Needless to say, the experience was nice. It was the first time I ever used KDE as my primary DE for everyday use. I had used KDE on my desktop, but never thought about using it full-time, as I only switched to it whenever Unity felt a little boring.

Anyway, fast forward a couple of weeks, and suddenly I found myself unable to run commands with root privileges (with the `sudo' command). Every command which I prefix with `sudo' gets denied with a message telling me I was not in the sudoers file and that the incident shall be reported (gee, I wonder to whom they actually report these to). Frustrated, I've decided to log in directly as root with `su'. Then I remembered that Ubuntu, for some odd reason, does not allow logging in as root by default.

Instinctively, I turned to searching for solutions online. One solution told me to log in to Recovery Mode, log in as root from there, and then add myself back to the sudoers group. But even if I managed to do that, I still haven't answered one important question. How and why was I removed from the sudoers group in the first place? I don't remember intentionally nor accidentally revoking my own sudo privileges from myself. While trying out the solutions I have found, I thought of the reasons for my disappearing privileges in the background.

Then the realization hit me. I don't recall exactly how, but I remembered how exactly I lost my user privileges when I saw a command telling people how to add themselves into the `sudo' group (the group of users in an Ubuntu system who has sudo privileges). Quickly, I used the `groups' command to check what groups in my notebook I'm part of, then the horror showed up in my face:

aldo : vboxusers

Then I remember it all now. I was trying to get Virtualbox to work on my new ultrabook some time ago, and one of the things I had to do was to get USB devices to work from the host machine to the guest machines. It would involve having me put myself in the special `vboxusers' group, but because I don't really memorize console commands that well unless I have to use them a lot, I used a variant of the `useradd' command, which puts me in the vboxusers group ONLY, instead of appending the vboxusers group to the groups in which I belong to. I forgot that the `gpasswd' command was a much better solution when it comes to adding groups. I'll try to keep this in mind since I'll probably be administrating other people's boxes in the future. Screwups increase exponentially in severity the more users become affected by one's mistake.

Since Ubuntu doesn't allow root logins unless you were to go to recovery mode, I've decided to reboot into recovery mode, however, there was a conflict with the inteldrmfb and Vesa VGA drivers. After more frantic Googling, I removed `nomodeset' temporarily from the launch options of the recovery boot and I was immediately put into recovery mode. I proceeded to login as root, checked out all the available groups in `/etc/group' and `/etc/passwd', then added myself to the sudo group and other groups which I think I should be part of.

After rebooting, I was relieved to find that I now have my sudo privileges back. The world seems strange when you don't have root privileges, doesn't it?

I haven't told you about my Plan B: In case I get tired of fixing my problem, which usually never happens, I would replace Ubuntu with openSUSE since I was itching to try it out, and since I have quite a lot of free time this Philippine summer to reconfigure my system. However, since I have already fixed the problem, I don't feel the need to replace Ubuntu anytime soon. Perhaps I'll just move when another seemingly insurmountable problem arises.

Some friendly requests to professors and instructors everywhere

This probably isn't news anymore for some people, but I recently jumped ship to another college and I do not reside anymore in De La Salle University-Manila. Old news aside, I like my new school, and I'm going to be staying in it for a good two years or so. The place is great (the places around it are better though), and most people there have quite some eccentric tastes and are actually interesting.

However, there are some do's and don'ts (mostly don'ts though) that I'd like to point out regarding my professors and instructors there. These will probably apply to everybody else out who are teaching to at least one other person besides themselves.

Don't put your class's/section's group on Facebook.

I for one try to avoid Facebook like it is an ugly part of town, but sometimes it just comes back like a bad habit and I end up being there anyway. For example, this post gets automatically advertised on my wall and every unfortunate person on my Friends list's news feed. Other notable examples include looking for someone, trying to communicate with people I barely meet every week, and checking out a group my professor made for the class I'm taking.

And the latter isn't really supposed to be there. Facebook is still a long, long way from being a good choice to organize serious groups, like groups between co-workers or, in my case, groups between instructors and students. For one, every privacy issue associated with Facebook profiles apply to groups as well. You really don't want outsiders knowing what your little private group is up to. That's why some companies opt for private corporate "social networks" because apparently people can't communicate on the Internet anymore if it doesn't involve a news feed or an instant messaging platform. I still communicate through old fashioned e-mail, and handle most instant communication through IRC (and sometimes VoIP), so that probably means I'm old.

What's a good alternative for Facebook groups? I'd have gone and suggested Yahoo!, but to me Yahoo! is just a silly company trying to be like Google but instead became a Google clone for those with inept computer skills and awful English. Google Groups is a good place to start, and there are also a lot of other services out there besides Facebook and Yahoo! that you can try out.

Stop handing out documents to students in formats other than PDF.

I like the Portable Document Format ever since it became an open standard at around the year 2008. It does a great job of preserving the original content and format of documents and its sheer portability and commonness is due to Adobe pulling a Microsoft move and telling everybody that their PDF reader and authoring tools are the only things that matter, when there are actually a lot more better readers out there and numerous ways to create PDFs. I can read PDFs on my desktop, my ThinkPad, my tablet, my phone, and my Kindle. And that is good.

However, some instructors thought it was a good idea to hand out documents to their students in their original, editable document forms. The "editable" part isn't the problem here, I actually do not give a shit whether I can manipulate my copy of the document or not. The problem is, handing out documents in such formats hinders portability, because, for example, files that use Microsoft's new formats (*.docx, etc.) look messed up when you're not using something that has Microsoft's name on it to open them. Sure, LibreOffice has done a good job of at least trying to preserve the original formats and looks of Microsoft .doc and .docx files, but when I open these files in my tablet or my phone, things get really ugly. I haven't tried opening .doc, .docx, or .odf files on my Kindle yet, probably because I think that's a very stupid idea.

Instructors should save all the documents that they're going to hand out to their students as PDFs - this goes for presentations as well. This saves me (and other students as well) a lot of time trying to figure out the original format of the file when LibreOffice is having a hard time opening it. Don't know how to save a document as a PDF? Your (probably pirated) copy of Microsoft Office 2010 has that functionality built inside it already.

Don't upload your materials to Rapidshare (or some other bad "filehost").

Right now as I'm typing this, I'm also downloading an economics textbook encoded as a PDF about 69 megabytes big. The size really shouldn't be a problem here - 69 megabytes are downloaded in less than 10 minutes by my connection on average. But right now the estimate says it's going to take a bit like 40 minutes to download (not adjusted to compensate for how badly Chrome estimates remaining download times). The problem lies where the file lies - Rapidshare.

Rapidshare has earned its share of popularity for being the [probably most popular] site that annoys people trying to access it and ripping off people stupid enough to avail of their services by coughing up some euros. The site throttles down your download speed when you're just getting your files for free, and you can't even download more than 2 files at once; both problems are remedied once you've given in to your sanity and you've decided to pay up. They're also not the only one doing this, there are countless of other "file hosts" out there ripping off each other's business models.

The solution for this would be to use an actually decent file host, like Mediafire, or create a Dropbox account and share the files from there. And if the file is really big, it's not too hard to just make a torrent out of it.

Oh, and after finishing the first draft of this post, reading through it two times and doing some edits here and there, my download from Rapidshare isn't even done yet. That means I'm probably going to be staying up late again trying to create a very minimal presentation that no one can understand unless they listen to me talk while I'm presenting. Thanks a lot for making me lose my sleep, Rapidshare!

The importance of defragmenting your file system

Some time this month my desktop decided to die after three years of proud service. I ran all kinds of diagnostics and found out that it was due to my GPU constantly overheating (it was due to dust completely blocking off the airways of the heatsink). So I replaced the motherboard and the GPU and got a new copy of Windows (because apparently Windows recognizes a new motherboard as a completely new computer). I left the other partition and hard drive intact, hoping that my games are still runnable after a fresh new install.

I reinstalled Steam in the same directory on the other partition where it was before, and it recognized all my games there instantly. It even read my previous download queues. For a week I let Steam download most of the Steam games from the Valve Complete Pack, which I have bought for $50 during the Valve Summer Sale).

After acquiring an almost complete set of Valve's source games (HL2 w/EP1 and EP2, TF2, CS:S, DoD:S, etc.), Steam started to act weird and froze frequently. It freezes the first time I start it. I'm getting pissed with this because my PC is new in a sense, and that I haven't even done anything with Steam when it happened. So something was definitely wrong there.

I googled for some solutions and they recommended turning on background processes and services. So I did. I even got to turning off MSE for a while, but still to no avail. I even deleted the .blob files inside the Steam directory so that it could update itself again, but still, it completely freezes.

At some point I just let Steam freeze and unfreeze itself while running. Then a dialog box showed up telling me that my Steam game files are horribly fragmented. Then I realized that file fragmentation was the cause of Steam constantly stopping.

I ran Defraggler and I let it analyze the drive where Steam was located. The result was both surprising and sad: The total size of the fragmented files has reached 38.6GB. That's the largest amount of file fragmentation I've ever seen, since I constantly defragment my NTFS partitions. So I let it work its magic, hoping that my problem with Steam will be fixed after defragging.

The real insult here is I get these shitty problems when I've already bought legal copies of games. I've done Valve a great favor buying their games instead of pirating them (which was what I have been doing for eight years until now), and now I'm faced with this dilemma with Steam.

I will edit this post and write an update if Steam gets fixed by Defraggler or not.

Books are dying, kept alive by tablets, e-book readers

Books are, in my opinion, one of the best innovations known to man. While many earlier forms of storing information and literature have existed long before people wrote shit on paper then binded them together, books have remained living until today. And by living, I mean it's currently holding on for dear life.

Electronic book technology has allowed people to read works of literature on their shiny tablets, Kindles, iPhones, etc. My Desire HD carries a large collection of ebooks of which I spend an hour or two everyday to read. While I do have a large collection of ebooks, I also have an equally large collection of physical books. You know, those that are written on "paper" and binded together.

Reading on paper is way better than reading on some LCD screen. I've never enjoyed looking at electronic screens anyway. No matter how many innovations in display technology are being made every day, like high resolution LCDs, LED-backlit screens and the like, I just really don't get the hang of reading text on a bright screen. I've even had a hard time writing this post because it appears that my laptop's screen is fucking me with its brightness. And that's why when I read text, I try to invest a lot in anti-aliasing and high resolution displays. Also, something that's not too bright on my eyes.

This kind of ranting is strange to hear from someone who spends his time in front of screens of all sizes, be it dark UNIX terminals on my laptop or my phone. But seriously, nothing beats the sensation of reading a physical book in the presence soft light. There's even the aroma of aged paper that pulls you in to read further. Additionally, while reading physical books, there's the strange effect where you won't try to skim the story or skip parts the first time you read it. In reading text in screens, your TL;DR instincts start to kick in. With physical literature, the concept of TL;DR simply could not exist (unless you're reading a shitty book).

I know this ranting makes me sound like I'm sixty years old, but honestly I'm not even of legal age yet. But it really sucks that lots of people (old folks included) begin to favor ebooks over the original, physical ones we've been enjoying for more than a thousand and a half years. But then again, who reads ebooks? The longest piece of literature the majority of people read today is probably a Facebook status message. And statistically, 99.99999% of Facebook statuses don't even count as literature. "Random shit jumbled into decipherable words" would be a more appropriate term for it.

TL;DR: E-books suck.

Nostalgia is a pain in the ass

After successfully installing Windows XP on a virtual machine, I was immediately amazed at my recently-earned power of installing multiple operating systems on my notebook without having to buy another system or use multi-booting. I’ve decided to amp up my virtual machine craze and install one of Windows’ infamous builds: Windows 98.

Apparently I have downloaded not only an image of Windows 98 SE but also Windows 95. I don’t plan to install Win95 right now since I’d like to try out the operating system I’m more familiar with. The first build of Windows (and first operating system) I’ve ever touched was Windows 95, and that was like twelve years ago. But I’ve been with Windows 98 for a long time, before I made the jump to XP in 2002.

I used VirtualBox for virtualization, because I love open-source applications and I dislike the corporate feel of VMWare. The virtual machine for Windows 98 isn’t really that taxing for my laptop. I think Firefox would grab more system resources than Windows 98 inside a virtual machine. I just needed 64MB of RAM, which is really a lot for Windows 98, and a 4GB virtual hard drive. I took the specifications off my old Compaq notebook which is retired and resting in my closet. It ran Windows 98, and was one of the most powerful notebooks during its time. A Pentium II 366Mhz, 128MB of RAM, 4GB of HDD, what more could you want in 1998?

Installation

Windows 98 takes longer to install than Windows XP, because 98 has all that 16-bit crap that happens to slow down its processes on my virtual machine. I laughed at the fact that the boot setup installer mentioned that a HDD larger than 512MB is considered “huge”. I should probably go back in time and show them a 32GB SD card.

The installation process of Windows 98 was flawed and boring. Sure, it only has 8-bit colors during installation, and while I’m installing a new OS I don’t really need Aero effects. I think Windows 98 should have just used a text-based installer, because it does its job of looking pretty very badly. Also, the processes are not streamlined to a “set it and go outside” layout, unlike its older successors. After one hour of waiting, you are expected to input some information, wait for another twenty minutes, input more information, etc.

It even took ten minutes to set up “Plug-and-Play”, one of Microsoft’s failed attempts to monopolize by “supporting” numerous devices through easy installation. It was developed before the days of USB, wherein buying a mouse will most likely include a floppy disk inside for drivers.

Trying it out

After a few more setting changes by Windows 98, I was greeted by the familiar 16-bit interface, the gritty colors, the 640x480 resolution. The interface was very slow, probably slower than the average Filipino’s computer riddled with all sorts of crap. This was due to the fact that Windows 98 and its predecessors schedules (or prioritizes) its tasks poorly.

So, despite Virtualbox having the ability to run Windows 98, it does work, but it’s so slow it’s not really that useful. I can’t even connect to the Internet because this “MSN Internet Access” program thinks I’m some guy stuck in the late 90’s by trying to convince me that I’m using a dial-up modem to connect to the Internet.

Conclusion

While currently Windows 98 on my system is highly uncomfortable and slow, it works. Maybe the basics, but at least it boots up despite crashing and BSOD’ing itself a couple of minutes later. I’m yet to try out Windows 95 though, and maybe installing a couple of other operating systems such as Arch Linux and Chrome OS.

What not to do in the vicinity of a computer: Eating

You probably must have heard this quite a million times. You have heard in it television, you have read it one of your computers manuals (you did, right?), and maybe countless other people on the Internet have told you so. Maybe you stopped eating after hearing them, or maybe you just let your inner glutton out and just gorged away in front of your keyboard.

And what would happen next? Most likely you’ll attract the nearest ant horde, or maybe even have roaches gnawing under your keyboard. Hell, there are even stories of worms and even baby mice found in all sorts of places in a computer.

And guess what? This happened to me, quite a number of numerous times. Thankfully, the enemy are just some regular fire ants.

These guys, although they appear much smaller. 

First wave: Desktop keyboard

So I’ve been shitty in keeping my keyboard from being shitty. I became fond of eating all forms of breads and pastries in front of my desktop, usually while playing GTAIV or Left 4 Dead. The bread crumbs, which naturally fall down from the bread, also naturally attracts the local ant empire who illegally set base in my house long ago.

They immediately formed ranks and began scavenging my keyboard, making typing a thing for nightmares to come since every time you hit a key, there’s a high chance that a squad of ants will rush out from under that key and try to climb up your arm.

Thankfully the ants are no match for an air compressor. You don’t really have to kill them with fire, just a little blowing of wind would sort them out.

Second wave: Power supply

This was the costliest but least annoying of the ant attacks. Supposedly, a couple of ants made the weirdest and most retarded mistake of thinking that the best place to get their ant grub is the insides of my power supply. Of all places, my fucking PSU. So one night while I was probably sleeping or challenging sleep, they decided to raid my computer (which was on at the time) and committed mass suicide on my PSU.

The next morning I was surprised to see that my computer has mysteriously turned off, and believing ghosts are just pussies who believe in afterlife rather than zombification, I did what a good computer user would do. Turn the computer on again.

But it did not budge. I tried to turn it on again, but then again it didn’t. I checked the power lines for any loose or removed sockets, then traced the wires back to my power supply, where I noticed one little ant coming out of the PSU like a wounded soldier from Vietnam. I ignored him, but a few seconds later one of his comrades followed, and then another, and soon after you’ll discover a group of ants emerging from the PSU, battered and wounded, enough to inspire someone to create a Call of Duty game featuring ants.

I took the PSU out of the case and examined it. I lit up the inside and was slightly appalled at what I saw – a mass grave of dead ants, some dismembered, some clinging on the PSU cooling fans. Not that I’m appalled from what I’ve seen, as I enjoy witnessing corpses of all kinds, especially when they come in bunches, but I’m disgusted because I have to shell out a hundred and fifty dollars again to get the same exact PSU unit again.

Third Wave: My laptop, fuck

As much as I love or hate ants, I don’t really mind them running around in my house. I mean, they’re part of this weird thing environmentalists (read: hippies) call an ecosystem right? They’re just little fools whose main purpose is to clean up the little bits of food and help bacteria in eating off rotting carcasses. However, they appear to have looked for food in the wrong place.

Returning home after my finals, I received news that the ants have assaulted my laptop and is now making a forward hive inside. And I don’t mean that they’re just hiding underneath its keyboard or anything. I meant that they were inside, gnawing on the motherboard, riding the heatsink, etc.

My first idea was to blow the shit out of the ants using explosives TNT nuclear bombs compressed air, however it didn’t do much since I can’t blow much of the inside of my laptop with it being tightly closed. I tried the belief that ants hate heat, so I tried to keep my computer on for three days and two nights, but to no avail. They just get out of the laptop while it’s hot, then come back in when it begins to cool.

I opened up the laptop to peer at its internal organs and see that it’s currently infected with ant shit. Seeing that I don’t want to intentionally fry the components with vacuum or air static, I sent it to a nearby laptop technician, who accepted to clean up my system despite him insisting me to get an insect exterminator instead.

Currently I do not have my laptop with me, and I’m afraid it will stay that way for three or five days or maybe even a whole week if the technician decides to just procrastinate and wank off. Fortunately I won’t be needing my laptop at the moment, because I needed some time with my desktop, the whole week’s my semestral break and I don’t really need it that much.

Lesson

So, lesson learned. Don’t eat nowhere near your computer. If you are feeling the urge to gobble something up, make sure you stay out within a six foot radius from your computer. I’m sure you enjoy sitting outside, eating a pasty and drinking a cappuccino, while watching people get kicked in the nuts on Failblog, but don’t do it, for your computer’s sake. Otherwise, the situation with pests invading your computer could escalate to this:

Oh shit.

How the Philippine National Police took the title “World’s Slowest” from Slowpoke.

It’s official guys, the Philippine National Police has officially taken the title of “World’s Slowest Retard(s)” from its previous title holder (who managed to hold it from, say, the beginning of time, I might add), Slowpoke.

This guy.

You see, there happened to be a recent hostage taking that took place somewhere in the Philippines, as you can read here, here, and here. If you’re too lazy to click on those authentic links to real news sites, see the full coverage of the “event” and you just lazily wrote “TL;DR” in the comments, let me narrate the sequence of events to you, in my perspective.

The Crime

Apparently, some pissed-off cop who was recently kicked off-duty from the police force a year ago got tired of not being a cop and all, despite all his friends and family telling him that everybody hates cops. So instead of going into therapy session with other ex-cops and transforming himself into a metrosexual (as most of the squeamish would do), he stood up, put on some massive balls of steel, grabbed an M-16 assault rifle, three magazines, maybe a grenade or two, then went outside.

Everybody ignored him and all his gear because everybody assumed he was a cop, stolling around the streets more armed to the teeth than Duke Nukem. He stopped and thought what would he do to “impress” the folks at the camp and get them to get him back. A tour bus carrying Chinese nationals arose from the distance, and he thought, “Oh well, might as well take this bus, there’s a lot of cover inside plus, I fucking hate Chinamen.”

So he tried to pull the bus over, and it did. The bus driver looked at the cop before him and thought, “Oh great! A cop! Just what I needed! Now I can mindlessly drive around while masturbating and those MMDA folks won’t give me a ticket because I have someone with an automatic rifle on board!” They cruised through a little bit. The people on board noticed that someone who took a time machine to the present from the Vietnam War have boarded the bus, and seeing how much Vietnam war-machines hate people with slanted eyes, the tourists on board immediately shit their pants and put their asses on Guantanamo Bay mode.

Some folks outside saw the bus stopping all of the sudden and some guy with a powerful assault rifle inside, so after a little bit of hesitation deciding whether they were seeing some simulated airsoft match or a real hostage taking, they called the police, who happened to arrive in just a nick of time.

No, not really! The hostage taker actually had time to take a nap before the cops arrived.

They had time for a little bedtime story, too.

The “Negotiation”

When the cops did arrive, they barricaded the place and in a 1970’s Munich Olympics scenario revival, they let the press flood in. You know, people with cameras and crap who tell other people that someone just hijacked a fucking bus.

The hostage taker demanded a lot of things from the negotiators before he lets the hostages free. First he asked for some coffee, because he feels groggy after a long nap waiting for the cops to arrive. Secondly, he asks them to clear his criminal records, the same records that kicked him out of the force in the first place. Lastly, he wants some real policemen to come and get him, because those who came to apprehend him appears to be geeky cosplayers trying to look like Counter-Terrorists from Counter-Strike.

The cops just hanged around a bit, because they were waiting for their “superiors” to make the call. While they were having a pretty quiet excursion in the park in front of the Quirino Grandstand (it’s a nice place by the way), the hostage taker’s brother, who’s also a cop, appeared on scene and tried to approach the bus, where he was promptly taken down and got a nice dosage of ass-kicking.

Seeing on the bus television that his brother was having a bad case forced nightstick sodomy, the hostage taker flipped out, and began to empty his entire magazine into any motherfucker he sees inside the bus.

He must have called them cock-a-roaches too while he was at it.

After that, the cops called in the big guys, and began to barge in and kill the asshole who tried to do a Tony Montana on the Chinese tourists. Just joking! They just lied around the park watching the action.

 

The “Action”

The Philippine National Police must have big love for nighttime rescue missions, because they actually waited for night to fall before they send in the big boys, or, in other words, men with tiny balls wielding guns too big for them to even carry.

Armed with bulletproof vest, kevlar helmets, flashbang and teargas grenades that would make a COD or CS player cry in joy, these guys surrounded the bus to do – you guessed it – absolutely nothing, if you think posing for the cameras while in full gear is doing nothing.

Philippine SWAT team: We may as well look cool for the cameras while we make complete fools of ourselves.

They had a problem though: they had to get inside the bus, but the wise-ass hydraulic door would not break down, even when they tried tying an end of a rope on it, the other on a truck, then pulling it with machine force. They found an emergency door at the back which they could break into, but realizing that they left their tiny balls in the freezer again, they didn’t go in, and decided that chucking in flashbang grenades and tear gas was the only way to go.

The hostage taker then got bored of having his senses consistently disoriented by the endless barrage of flashbangs and teargas being thrown at him, so he stood up, and decided to do the Tony Montana again, this time with shit in his eyes and ears. He did manage to hit some random passerby outside, though.

After all the fun whirling around in circles relieving the scratch on his trigger finger, some wiseguy sniper, who probably earned his job by playing endless hours on Special Force, shot the hostage taker square in the head. That’s right kids. All those hours killing each other with AWPs in Counter-Strike will land you a good job as one of the Philippine’s greatest snipers.

Where sniping legends are born.

The Aftermath

So far, about 13 passengers in the bus made it out alive, but the remaining ones were dead, along with the hostage taker who attempted to play Grand Theft Auto: Philippines Real Life.

Also, the Philippine National Police earned two titles. The first is “World’s Slowest Retard(s)”, where, as mentioned previously, was previously owned by the Pokemon, Slowpoke. The other title they achieved was “World’s Shittiest Police Force”, where they beat the Nigerian Police Force out of number 195.

As for the Philippines, International tourism marked the entire country as “The Best Place to go to when you have a death wish”, and “The Best Country to experience a full hostage experience”. The country earned itself a sweet spot in the trending topics of Twitter, and the front pages of the biggest news sources in the world. Great job, guys!

Ancient Sulatang Tapunan attacked by lazy spambots

I was surprised to see that my already rotting Yahoo Mail account, which I dumped due to the reason that it simply sucks, has received a blitzkrieg of emails in a short succession. About 80 emails with the same subject of “Friendster Blogs: New Trackback on your post “<some post here>” flooded my inbox. The body consisted of the following line:

San diego casinos

And that’s it. Usually another line that says “WIN WIN WIN” follows it. I laughed it off and presumed it was just lazy spambots who managed to penetrate the shitty security of Friendster blogs. I’m really glad I moved out of that shitty excuse for a Blogging platform and moved to Blogger, where it’s much more secure.

I’m thinking of limiting the comments people can post on Sulatang Tapunan’s blog posts, so that I can prevent simple HTML script injection (the one problem unprotected blogs face all day) from trolls. I don’t think I have to worry about SQL injection though, since I don’t own or manage the server Sulatang Tapunan is sitting on, and there are no login forms or whatsoever on the blog.

A laptop without batteries - disaster

And so it appears that after four years of proud service, my Lenovo Thinkpad X60s’ battery has suddenly died out permanently. It’s not died out as in it just ran out of stored charges, in fact, it can’t store juice anymore. My laptop suddenly turned from an angry skirmisher to an old man in a retirement home. It can’t move around from one room to another without bringing its life support anymore. It sucks.

I’m currently in the process of ordering a new battery from Lenovo, but I don’t think when it would be coming. It’s a good thing Lenovo is actually here in the Philippines, as it makes the job easier since I don’t have to order from China or Singapore or wherever the nearest country Lenovo is at is located. Hopefully before Friday I would be getting a new battery, or I’ll be clutching wires with my notebook forever.

5 essential things in life that most people fail to possess

It's an understandable and acceptable fact that, the world is filled with retarded people. Not exactly everyone, but the majority of them can't seem to get a grip through life. We see them everyday, they walk mindlessly in school, lurk in Facebook and read this blog post.

Pic sorta unrelated.

Retards and dumbasses are formed when they can't seem to create a stable footing made of wit. Or, if they lack something like...

5. Logical reasoning

A human's daily lives is filled with more logical decisions than a supercomputer. In the morning, you decide if you should wake up or hit the snooze button. In lunch, you decide if you're going to send pissy emails to your supervisor because he's sexually harassing you (even if you're a man). In the afternoon, you decide whether to check that email with the subject line of gay dwarf pornography. Life is full of decisions.

There are people, however, who doesn't seem to be able to perform reasoning with credibility. They can't seem to pick the right choice for everything. Say, one of these people are driving down a road, and meet a fork. One path has a "One Way, Do not Enter" sign, and another has none. 70% of the time, that person will chose the route with the sign.

Above: What happens next.

4. Decent visual perception

Your eyes never lie. Well, maybe except if you got high on weed and drank gallons of alcohol at the same time. However, some people are still high and drunk even when they're not high and drunk. They perceive a world very different from what the majority of people see even if they are sober. Let's say, they see a a dumbass reading this post right now. Hey, that's right, amirite?

Are you seeing double? If so, you need to have your eyes checked.

3. Basic English proficiency

If someone speaks to you in English, would you answer them in Bulgarian? No, you answer them in English, no matter what the circumstances. However, if someone asks you something in Bulgarian, try not to speak English, because you'll only sound like a dick. The former is the main problem of the people here. They can't seem to get a grip at English.

Let's say, you're in a chat room, probably looking for a girl to cam with. You suddenly feel a hard-on for Asians, then you decided to go to the Chinese chat room. You eyed a beautiful petite Chinese girl with a great body, then you try to start a conversation by saying a simple. "Hello". Instead of the girl returning an also simple, "Hi", she says, "heyo me chinese mo no speak english good". You close the window and vow never to go back to that chat room and speak to Chinese people again, unless you have a good reason to.

Like this.

And please, don't give an excuse like, "But they not teach us English in skool" or something. Almost every school worldwide has English in their curriculum. Hell, they even have it in Africa. You probably slept through the whole English class or just too stupid to learn. If you can't speak English and would wish to participate in a chat room, please go to the room of your respective nationalities and/or languages. In other words, if you're Chinese, do NOT go to the USA room unless you are experienced in speaking to other people in English. I hope you understand.

Above: The only Chinese words everybody else can understand.

2. The inability to learn on one's own

They say, "You cannot learn without others". Sure, you won't learn to drive unless you have an instructor, and you can't train yourself to poop in the toilet than in your dog's face when you were three years old, you need the help of your parents to do that. However, there are some occasions where the task is so simple you just need to read the instructions carefully. Like, when you're going to install a game, or if you're going to download something.

This is one of the greatest nuisances in my life, considering it came with my "being awesome and all" package. There's bound to be people there looking for my skills and bombard me to death with their retarded, and ridiculously easy questions. Like, "OMG! I can't see the download link!", when the link is directly visible in the center of the screen, or, "OMG! HALP! I has virus!" when the freezing up is just the usual job of Windows and his shitty computer.

To respond to these entirely annoying questions, I just ignore and close. No use arguing to this shit, they'll just keep coming.

Oh! Jesus thinks you are too!

1. Common sense

The root of everything above. God gave man common sense in order to think logically, perceive things properly, communicate with others correctly, and to not ask Him retarded questions. If you don't have this, you're not fit enough to survive.

Debunking the "Lady Gago - Poker Face" fail video

If you think this is a reaction post about some lame parody of Lady Gaga's Poker Face, stop, and exit this window. The video I am speaking of here is not the music video, nor a weird parody of it featuring homosexuals. This is about some "weird-out-of-this-world" fail video about some faggot who failed to understand the basic laws of physics.

Unfortunately, some 58 year old mothers flagged the video as inappropriate, causing Google to bury the video under failsoil forever. I just saw the video last night before going to sleep because somebody passed the video around on Facebook and I thought it would be awesome to watch and will guarantee that I'll have nightmares during my sleep.

Here's a narration of the video for those unfortunate to miss it:

The scene begins with some non-understandable Arabian text, signifying that the video was shot somewhere in the Middle East. After the 1-second text, a scene involving a pier with a group of people is seen. One of the men is crouched on the top of a higher platform, ready to jump into Davy Jones' below. He jumps, and successfully lands into the soft, comforting, and warm Arabian waters. After climbing up and catching up with his friends above the dock, one of his other friends felt that his friend who jumped was so badass and now he desires to be just like him. The friend takes off his top, climbs up the platform, and, forgetting to crouch like a frog to increase jumping distance, then leapt carelessly and slipped in the process. Instead of falling into the water below, he fell headfirst into the steel dock directly below the pier, and finally he falls into the water, motionless. The unfortunate one's friends in the pier above gasped in horror, with their faces painted with the expression of "WTF". Rescue authorities came later, and carried the seemingly lifeless body from the water, now red with blood from the man or because Moses has risen and placed his staff on the water.

After that fail, the scene is replaced to an operating room scene where the viewer is relieved to know that the unfortunate fellow is consciously alive and not dead. However, there is a problem. His face has been completely split in half. A huge crevasse crossed in his face's center meridian, removing his nose in the process. Unfortunately, due to the lack of lighting in Arabian hospitals, the victim's brain could not be seen, giving the hint that it probably got launched out of his head after the impact. Also, the "doctor" thought his patient's face was so adorable and cuddly, so he held his patient's cheeks and began to squeeze it in and out, much like a 5-year old squeezes her dolly's firm, plastic cheeks.

Yes, it's really uncomfortable to hear the words "split" and "face" in the same sentence, with a direct relation between the two. If you didn't see the video, here's how he looked like after his ordeal:

 Like this, but the face was split in half.

Viewer reactions

Most people, after watching the video, will be all sorts of "WTF" much like the unfortunate man's friends and will keep the lights on when they sleep lest a man with a split face comes at the foot of their bed at night. Only the ones with common sense will shake the video off as a hoax meant to mock the safety of docks in the Middle East and to tell people to not dive in piers, especially if you're in Saudi Arabia.

Why it's bullshit

Overall, the whole video is a hoax. Probably the first part with the jumping and face-planting with solid steel is real, but alas, the whole operating room scene is probably not. Here's that factors that proves the whole concept of still alive with a split face is fake:

1. The impact is so strong it destroyed the front of the skull.

After the ordeal, the man's facial interior is visible as if the skull parts covering it disappeared. They really did disappear, as the bones are not powerful enough to withstand a 30mph right-into-solid-one-meter-thick-steel drop. Which leads us to...

2. Salt water went inside the exposed brain and messed with everything.

Imagine you have a small cut on your finger. Try going to the beach and wash your wound with a few drops of salt water. It hurts quite a lot right? Now turn that cut into a huge split in your face and wash it with liters of sea water. How does that feel? Obviously, you won't feel anything, since (1) You're dead, and (2) Your brain already flew off, negating any nervous processes.

3. "Doctors" attending the patient

I think the doctors fail more than the patient who is mercilessly dying on top of their operating table. Instead of trying to calm down the patient, drowning him with anesthesia (which would be a waste because he doesn't have any nervous processes anymore), and begin healing/putting out of misery operations, one of the doctors grabbed the dying man's two dislocated cheeks and began to squeeze them together, probably in an attempt to "fix" the face by gluing the two parts of the head with Krazy Super Glue.

Pictured above: Only tool required to fix a split face.

Conclusion

Putting together the three points aforementioned above, we come with two conclusions:

1. The unfortunate man is already dead, or;
2. The whole thing never actually happened, and is based on a fail jihad for Islamity.

I wish to take the liberty to officially state that this video is blasphemy and deserves its banishment from the Internet. Those who oppose to my decision, raise your hands, and I'll take you to a Middle Eastern pier with a steel dock below. I'll then push you down, letting you faceplant hard into the solid steel dock, splitting your head in the process, get liters of salt water in your already empty noggin, and have "doctors" attend to you by squeezing your already destroyed cheeks.

Pic unrelated.

A failed attempt of a scammer

So, I'm just browsing the web tonight, trying to find something to entertain me for a while, when I received a text message. And no, it's not an SMS from close people I know, it's from a complete stranger.

From: +639262631193 (09262631193)
Congratulations! Ur Sim# had won P480,000 from V-Pres CHARITY FOUND.by electronic Raffle Draw. Call me n0w Im'Atty;Rex A. Mendez DTI Permit#8094 Series\2009

Note the following:

1. The quoted message above is the original text. I included everything, including the sender's typos.
2. I recieved it on 7:17 PM, according to my phone.
3. I do not enter raffles and I have no idea I have ever joined a raffle named "CHARITY FOUND"

Having problem deciphering the message? Here is a much more proper transliteration:

Congratulations! Your SIM number had won 480,000 Philippine Pesos from Vice President CHARITY FOUND, by electronic raffle draw. Call me now, I'm Attorney Rex. A Mendez. DTI Permit#8094 Series of 2009

Here's the following reasons I find this as a retarded fail:

1. I did not enter any raffle named "CHARITY FOUND". The only raffle I seem to have entered as of this moment is a Toy Kingdom raffle for a Rock Band set, other than that, nothing else.
2. How the hell did they know my number? I did not shout my number in retarded chatrooms.
3. Why would an attorney announce to me that I've won something? Isn't it supposed to be someone else? Also, if this guy is an attorney, couldn't he text the information a little more properly? I see a text message of a ten year old here, not a professional lawyer.
4. The DTI Permit number is fake and the whole text message breaks the rules of the DTI.
5. What's with the V-Pres? Is he implying Vice President Noli De Castro facilitated this raffle draw?
   

So please, "Atty. Rex A. Mendez" or whoever you are, would you kindly stop sending people scam text messages? Because, to be honest, they're not working for people who think, which is most likely people like me. If you ask me, you're a budding homosexual who is 330 pounds and works at a gaybar with his transsexual mother who has a dick. I hope you understand.