The Heat is ON

Someone once told me that Good Friday is always the hottest day of the year.  He said it was a natural phenomenon and proves that God is in charge.

Not this year.  TODAY was the hottest day SO FAR.  I was working on the computer and it was as if I was crying buckets.  Perspiration was running down my face so fast, the face towel beside me could be wrung and water would come out.

Oh well, we'll live through this I guess but we really should be careful to keep cool.  I brought out a scarf that a cousin sent me and my sister was surprised I was going to wear one in this weather.  It was a scarf that was supposed to keep you cool during hot weather.  I dumped it into a bath of cold water for a few minutes then put it on.

What do you know?  It worked.  Necessity is really the mother of inventon.

And the Winners Are

Kudos to COMELEC for successfully pulling off the automated elections.  Yeah, there was a high percentage of failure but you have to realize that this was the test run so . . .

Early in the campaign period, my nephew suggested awards for the campaign ads.  Here are my suggestions for the winners.  The list concentrates on TV ads for national candidates as I did not see much of the local candidates save for Makati and Manila.  I invented most of the titles here but if you've seen the ads you can probably identify.  The letters in parenthesis are the parties that sent out the ads.

Best Campaign Jingle:  "Dagat ng Basura" (NP)
Need I say more?  Even the street urchins know this by heart.  It caught on pretty fast in a viral way.  There was even a Japanese version.

Best Ad in Drama "Babae" (NP)
A melodramatic take on woman power here.......  The script is good too.

Best Ad in Musical: "Dagat ng Basura" (NP)
This series is quite memorable.  It was actually the ad that prompted my nephew's idea.

Best Ad in Documentary: "Ang Alamatng Ama ng Bayan" (PMP)
This series showed Erap in a very good light, even having rival Noynoy's mom in the picture.

Best Ad in Comedy:  The Bitoy campaign (NP)
As usual, Bitoy came up with great comic characters.

Best Ad in Action: "Superhero" (Lakas-Kampi-CMD)
This was Secretary Bello's ad for his senatorial bid.  In case you did not see it, he wore purple leotards and tights (no, I am not sure it was really him in the costume, I only saw this once) with a big letter B on the chest.  His weapon was a gavel.  It made me think of Parokya's song, Mang Jose.  It was a good thing he did not use that song though.

Best Actor: Noynoy Aquino (LP)
Did you notice how intense he was when he said "Hindi ako mangungurakot"?

Best Actress:  Miriam Santiago (NP)
Here too is a searing performance.  Well, she's always intense when she gives a speech anyway.

Best Child Performer:  Baby James Yap (LP)
Who was he really cheering for anyway? (joke)

Most Influential:  the Chiz series
Check the last SWS survey.

Any suggestions, anyone?

The Watcher and The Fence

This fence sitter is coming down from her post because some time in your life you have to get into the action.  There are others out there who may be complaining about how things are turning out but are unwilling to get involved.  The only way for change to happen is for us to get moving and make it happen.

Actually, that is far from the point of this post.  It seems to me that we are being complacent about the automated elections.  We see that it produced a count and we trust that it will do the same on election day.  Now, there was a glitch found.  Something I find strange because shouldn't the COMELEC and Smartmatic have been working hand in hand from the start.  Were not the programmers told about the design of the ballot?

So there was a problem in the testing.  The solution?  Change the program with the corrected version.  We will just sit tight and watch as the provider replaces the memory disk in each machine.  We are giving them one weekend to run the tests.  If there is another glitch, we will probably postpone the elections or revert to manual counting which will be a nightmare for the teachers really.

So they will replace the memory disk  Has anybody audited the program they are putting in there?  Yes, I see a reason to look at the conspiracy theory.  In whose favor?  I have my guess but that's just what it is so let's not speculate here.  I am only forwarding a concern from a practicing systems person.

Who is doing quality control for the software in the PCOS machines?