Filipino Families Celebrate 2009 Christmas at Different Metro Manila Parks

It's Christmas time! We decided to celebrate our first Christmas as a new family here in our home. Waiting for our many inaanak to visit, mag-mano and greet us a Merry Christmas with their very sweet smile in their face. Then giving them their gifts feels very sweet this Christmas Day.

While most of my friends are having drinks, I decided not to drink this time. Because I want to spend also this Christmas with my wife and our upcoming baby to Church. We want to give thanks to our Lord for this Christmas and all the blessings that we received throughout the year.

That is how I spent my Christmas with my family. Most families spent their Christmas time this way:

For the latest Philippine news stories and videos, visit GMANews.TV

This Christmas, many filipinos living here in Manila, Capital City of Philippines decided to celebrate their Christmas in different Parks and Amusement places.

One of the favorites is the Manila Ocean Park located at the heart of Manila. With just 400 Pesos and 350 Pesos entrance fee for adult and child respectively, each one will enjoy the thrill of being in underwater world.

Those who cannot afford Manila Ocean Park can also spend their Christmas Day at different Parks and Playground just like in Kalaw Avenue. Most families brought their lunch and enjoyed their meal with their family.

Another place to stay this Christmas Day is the Baywalk in Roxas Blvd. With a very nice weather, it feels so great to be at the sea shore and watch the beautiful sunset while enjoying Christmas meal.

A lot of families also loves to feel the serenity of Rizal Park or Luneta. It is one of the historical places in Manila and many families are spending their family time here.

It's Christmas! Whatever way we decided to spend it, the most important is to spend it with our family. It's the precious time with our family and with the Lord.

Merry Christmas again. :)

Pasig PASKOTITAP Traffic Advisory and Re-routing

The metro's most awaited Christmas event will once again strike the child in everyone's heart this 6:00pm December 20, 2009 at  Pasig City. PASKOTITAP is a grand parade of musical and visual floats from different organizations that will surely thrill everyone.
Thanks to Pasig City's first couple Mayor Robert "Bobby" C. Eusebio and Mrs. Maribel Andaya-Eusebio who continues to give excitement and making every Christmas spirit alive by bringing this kind of parade every holiday season.
Here's a video taken from last year's PASKOTITAP.

Traffic Advisory

The following roads will be temporarily CLOSED to traffic to give way to this PASKOTITAP FLOAT FESTIVAL.

• Ortigas Avenue to Dr. Sixto Antonio Ave. (6:00PM - 7:00PM)
• Frontera Verde Rd. (Tiendesitas) (1:00PM - 8:00PM)
• E. Rodriguez Jr. Ave. (C-5) From Eagle St. to Ortigas Ave. (6:00PM - 7:00PM)
• Eagle St. (6:00PM - 9:00PM)
• Dr. Sixto Antonio Ave. (6:00PM - 8:00PM)
• Pasig Blvd. - Vargas Bridge / Rotonda (7:00PM - 9:00PM)
• A. Mabini Street (7:00PM - 9:00PM)
• Plaza Rizal Intersection (8:00PM - 9:00PM)
• Caruncho Avenue - Both Direction (8:00PM - 12:00MN)
• F. Manalo St. Fronting City Hall (8:00PM - 12:00MN)

Traffic Re-routing

1. All vehicles going to Rotonda from Shaw Blvd. and Bagong Ilog via Vargas Bridge: Take M. Flores St. to cross Sta. Rosa De Lima Bridge, Left to A. Luna St., to destination
2. All vehicles going to Tiendesitas / SM Hypermart from Ortigas Ave.: Take E. Rodriguez Jr. Ave. (C-5) to destination.
3. All vehicles going to Dr. Sixto Antonio Ave. via Eagle St.: Take Ortigas Ave. Extn., to destination.
4. All vehicles going to Dr. Sixto Antonio Ave. from Ortigas Ave. Take C. Raymundo Ave., to destination
5. All vehicles  going to Eastern Rizal / Tiendesitas Via Ortigas Ave.: take Rodriguez / Lanuza St., left to J. Vargas Ave., to destination
6. All vehicles going to Quezon City via C-5 Road: take Greenmeadows St., to destination
7. All vehicles going to Eastern Rizal / Marikina Via C-5: take Eagle St., right to Dr. Sixto Antonio Ave., left to Stella Mariz St., left to C. Raymundo Ave., to Destination.
8. All vehicles goint to Eastern Rizal / Ever / Floodway via Ortigas Ave. Extn.: take Greenmeadows St., right to C-5 Road, left to Industria St., cross F. Manalo Bridge right to Amang Rodriguez Ave., to destination
9. All vehicles going to Public Market from Rotonda: take C. Raymundo Ave., right to Mercedez Ave., to destination.
10. All vehicles going to Rotonda / Quiapo / Crossing from Mega Market: take Market Ave., left to Mercedez Ave., left to C. Raymundo Ave., to destination
11. All vehicles going to Eastern Rizal / Ever from Mega Market: take F. Manalo St., right to V. Baltazar St., left to Market Ave., to destination
12. All vehicles goint to Public Market / Rotonda from San Joaquin / Pateros: take G. Raymundo St., left to F. Manalo St., right to Caruncho Ave.
13. All vehicles going to San Joaquin / Pateros from Mega Market: take Balderraama St., right to F. Antonio St., left to Pio Alvarez St., to cross Kalawaan Bridge, right to Elisco Rd., to destination

Source: TPMO-PASIG CITY

15,000 Budget Cheap Affordable Gaming Rig PC Clone Assemble for Christmas Season

It's Christmas Time! Here's a cheap and affordable gaming rig pc clone that you can assemble for a 15,000 pesos budget. I know you have save your money for your computer and I hope this might help you or give you idea how will you spend your money for a value pc.
If you already have a computer and just want to upgrade it to a gaming rig, all you need is just a new unit or the so-called "cpu only" by many. Anyways, take a look at this gaming rig for less than 15,000 pesos.






Processor:        AMD Athlon 64 X2 240 2.8Ghz AM3 - 2,950.00
Memory:          Kingston 2GB PC5300 DDR2 667 - 2,150.00
Hard Drive:      Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200rpm SATA -2,200.00
Video Card:      PowerColor HD4650 512MB DDR2 128Bit DVI - 2,480.00
Motherboard:   ECS G13M Intel G31 PCIE/A/V/L/ -2,100.00
DVD Writer:    Liteon DVDRW IHAS-324 24X Sata -  1,275.00
Casing:             Gleam GM03A ATX 500W - 1,180.00
Keyboard:        A4tech Comfort Key KR-85 -285.00
Mouse:             A4tech OP-620 PS2 Optical - 220.00

                                                                                                 Total:  14,840.00

The prices for the above equipments were based on pcgilmore in Gilmore Quezon City Philippines. So it will vary defending on the computer shop where you will buy. It is ideal to look for different computer shop in Gilmore Center and ask for their discounted or packaged price.
You may also ask for upgrades where you can have a higher processor, memory or video card for additional fees. But somehow, that will give you idea for you budget gaming pc for this christmas. Enjoy your bonus! :)

BCLP Computer Instructors: The Busiest Computer Instructor On Earth

Barangay Computer Literacy Program in Pasig are the busiest computer instructor the world have never known. This is what I think of my profession. I am part of this BCLP family that is serving the residents of Pasig City in the Philippines.

Unlike in most schools and training centers, BCLP Instructors are not just doing their job as teachers. Aside from conducting training to its students, a lot of jobs and task that are not part of their job description as computer instructors are performed by each and every instructors of Barangay Computer Literacy Program.

In most schools and training centers, instructors are teaching courses based on their field of specialty. For example, an instructor that is teaching in the field of graphics and design are just teaching courses like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. And other instructors that specialized in other courses are just teaching applications on their field of specialization. Well, not in the case of BCLP Instructors. BCLP instructors were asked to offer all four BCLP levels if their training centers passed the system requirements for a a certain level.
Ok, conducting those all four BCLP levels are still fine for me as BCLP computer instructor. But the other tasks that are being done and were very annoying were those tasks that I believe should be done by office clerks.

Start of Semester
The semester will start by accepting enrollees. The instructor's job is to advertise and promote the BCLP by doing some announcement and public address. Then the instructos will accept enrollees and their requirements for the entire enrollment period. The next job of the instructor is to advised the incoming students to attend the General Brainwashing Orientation. And who's going to get the attendance of the attendees? BCLP computer instructor.
At the start of the training, bclp instructor's next job is to prepare paper works or reports for the beggining of the current sem. Reports like List of Enrollees, Schedule of Classes with Student's Name per Session, and List of Students with Control Number.
While encoding and preparing those reports, the other job of instructors for the beginning of the semester is to prepare the Identification Cards of new students, collecting the student's T-shirt and to submit those shirt for printing. That will be the student's uniform for the computer training.

Assessment Period
At the end of the semester, the bclp students will have their assessment. And instructors were asked to guide accompany their students during the assessment. It is the instructor's job to gather and tabulate the scores of the students. In most cases, bclp instructors are preparing meals and treats for the assessor. Although it is not required, it is advisable to feed the assessor to have a better chance of passing large number of students. Funny isn't it? Yeah, and it became customary in bclp. If the instructor doesn't offer any meal or treats for the assessor, expect that the assessor's feeling and judgment will be erratic and bias against you.

End of the Semester / Start of New Semester
After the assessment, it is now time to prepare for another numerous reports to be passed again, by the instructors. Reports like Assessment Result, List of Graduates, Student's Performance, Top Ten, New Format of List of Graduates and Student's Profile with picture. By the way, this end part of the current semester is overlapping with the beginning of the next semester. So by doing this, bclp instructors were expected that they are doing their job for the start of the semester like promoting the program through announcements and p.a. and accepting new students for the next semester.

Graduation
Until the graduation came, bclp instructors are still working by printing their student's Certificate. After the printing of certificate, the next task of the instructor is to mark each of the certificate with the Dry Seals of the Local Government of Barangay and City Government of Pasig. The instructor should make sure that all the certificates are in ascending order for easy distribution during the graduation ceremony.
Graduation Day in bclp don't happen on a regular basis. A lot of times, the instructors are exerting effort to gather their students by sending them SMS or text and calling them from their home. This is because most graduation days are happening after so many months since the last day of assessment. On the day of the graduation, the instructor's next job is to prepare and decorate the venue. After the ceremony, who will clean the venue? Still the bclp computer instructors. Isn't this a job for engineering or maintenance people? Oh no, in bclp, these are also the job of Computer Instructors.

With this type of system, should we change our job title from BCLP Computer Instructors to BCLP All-Around-Personnel? The funny thing is, most people don't know about this thing happening to bclp. Because they believe that the BCLP office are doing those job and we bclp instructors are just focusing on conducting training.

Strange Sounds Coming From Computer

Computer won't boot and there are strange sounds coming from it. Some sounds that are coming from your computer means serious problems. If you think or suspects that your hard disk drive's life is nearly coming to an end, the safest thing to do is to turn off your computer immediately.
To find out if the hard disk drive is causing the strange noise, disconnect the drive's power cable before turning the computer back on. After you turned on your computer (this time the power cable of your hard drive is disconnected) and there is no more strange sound coming from your computer, that means there's a problem with your hard drive.
If the hard drive is the noise source, your next step is to download a utility that can read the SMART (Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) diagnostics codes off the hard drive. SMART data can tell you exactly what's wrong. Here's some of the link to drive's SMART utility download page.

IBM(Hitachi)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Seagate
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

Maxtor
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

Fujitsu
http://www.fel.fujitsu.com/home/drivers.asp?L=en&CID=1

Samsung
http://www.samsung.com/Products/HardDiskDrive/utilities/index.htm
FAQ: Low level format

Western Digital
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

Another thing to consider are the fans in your computer. If you are concerned about an unusual fan noise, you can use some utility for monitoring your computer system temperature. You can use the free SpeedFan Tool to see if a cooling fan attached to your motherboard is spinning too slowly.

SpeedFan allows you to have a deeper view of the status of your computer. Almost every computer includes support for hardware monitoring. Accessing digital temperature sensors is really useful. If you are trying to figure out why your pc hangs when under heavy load or after some hours of usage, SpeedFan might help you to find the real cause. Very often it is a poor power supply, or an improperly installed heatsink that lead to behaviours that we tend to associate with errors from the operating system, but that are not. SpeedFan automatically searches your computer for interesting chips: the hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can expose voltages, fan speeds and temperatures.

Some parts of your computer will fry themselves if not cooled, and a new fan costs far less than a new CPU or Video Card. So please maintain your PC by cleaning it regularly and by keeping it strange noise free.