Wall-E

Cols and Ethan went to Gen San this past Tues (Aug 12), so I'm left babysitting Caitlin. I had to take a leave today to take care of bringing her to school; then meeting with our interior decorator at Greenhills after lunch; then back again to ICA to pickup Caitlin.

After school, we decided to catch the 4:10pm screening of Disney/Pixar's latest offering -- Wall-E. As can be expected from Pixar, the graphics and story-telling was top-notch. This is a much lower-budget movie than Cars or Monsters though. The actors providing the voice-overs are not known. But then again, there's very few dialogs as the robots (Wall-E and Eve) do not really talk much.

I would say the movie is "ok", but I don't think it will be a big commercial success unlike Cars. Sure, there's the usual merchandise tie-ups with the fast food chains and lots of toys bearing the character images, but I think the topic of Earth getting destroyed and made unliveable with this floating ship programmed to return when one of its droid have found signs of life, is a bit too complicated for kids to absorb. I had to keep explaining to Caitlin what's happening.

Amazon Online Payment

Amazon opened its online payment system to other would-be online merchants and competitors with little funfare. The service comes in two flavors: Checkout by Amazon and Amazon Simple Pay.

Checkout by Amazon gives merchants the same powerful checkout feature that one experiences when buying items from Amazon. It supports real-time shipping and tax computations; cross-promotions; orders management tasks and shipping tracking. You get full programmatic access similar to PayPal's API.

Amazon Simple Pay provides a simpler model that only requires cutting-and-pasting HTML code. This is useful for integrating the payment with an existing checkout process.

Both payment options let you leverage on the existing Amazon.com customer database. In fact, the buyer has to have an Amazon.com account in order to use the system. The upside is they do not have to re-enter their billing information since its already available. Of course, it leads one to ask -- would you trust Amazon payments if you offer products that compete with Amazon? And given that Amazon seem to sells everything including the kitchen sink, would you really want to give Amazon information on what your customers purchased from you?

Yet Another PictureBook Customer Sighting

I was just commenting last week on what's the likelihood of bumping into someone in a public gathering whom I would recognize because of our picture book service. I thought that it was extremely remote given that we don't really have a lot of clients and that our products are shipped all over the Philippines. Add to that the probability that even if you meet the person by chance, you will actually recognize the face just based on recall. Well, not only did I meet such a person last week, but even more amazingly -- I met another one today!

We had our residential condominium association annual meeting today at Luna Gardens. There were the usual rants from the usual disgruntled residents. The meeting ended earlier than usual (before 6pm). As is customary, there's finger foods served afterwards.

When the meeting was adjourned, everybody stood up and headed to the food area. There was this guy sitting in front who was, of course, walking towards the back exit. I looked at him and thought that he looked familiar somehow. Since everyone at the meeting had ID lace/tags, my eyes gravitated towards his.

The name sounded a bit familiar although I couldn't place where I saw it before. Then after about 3 seconds of pause, once again, it just clicked in my head -- I did the layout for this guy's picturebook! He was not our direct client. The one who contracted for the order was his staff who gave him the picturebook as a retirement memorabilia.

I was contemplating approaching him, but he looked a bit too serious. And he was talking to a couple of other admin staff so I didn't want to intrude.

Building My Home Theater Part 3: JBL SCS260.5 Speaker System

Last month, I wrote about the Harman-Kardon audio-video receiver (AVR) that I bought for my future home theater. I picked Package Two which came with the JBL SCS260.5 Speaker System. Although it cost a little bit more than the Package One because of these speaker set, I figure I might as well spend that extra PHP10,000 since I've spent a fortune (or will be spending a fortune) on the rest of the home theather anyway.

Its a typical 5 set speaker + subwoofer setup -- 2 x front L-R, 2 x rear L-R, and one center front speaker. The sales people at SM Applicance Center have been helpful in explaining what makes these speaker set different from the more common consumer brands like Sony, Pioneer or Yamaha (or maybe I've just be sales-talked and I'm now trying to post-justify my actions). But to their credit, JBL speakers are very popular for audiophiles as compared to the likes of Sony. Most movie theaters (even the SM Imax theater), use JBL speakers. JBL belong to the Harman group of company, which also owns the Harman-Kardon AVR's.

My whole shopping experience had a bit of a kink though. The Package Two had an SRP of around PHP49k. But since I was willing to pay cash, I haggled for a discount with the JBL/SM Appliance Center people. After some deliberation, they offered me an extra 7% discount. I came back a couple of days later and left a check. Then after it cleared, I had the unit picked up.

When I opened the box at home, I noticed that the "freebie" iPod Bridge to the AVR was missing. I thought it was an honest mistake and went to SM Appliance Center to ask for it. Then the salesman gave me this stupid look and asked if nobody told me that the reason why I got the discount was because they took out the freebie! Hello?!?!! He was the only JBL salesman I was talking to there, so who else could have possibly told me. And ALL appliance stores routinely give cash discounts with no bearing whatsoever to withholding any freebies.

What a rip-off from those dishonest people! If only there were other JBL outlets, I would willingly return this unit for a full refund. But only a few SM Appliance Centers seem to carry JBL. None of the other appliance chain stores (Western, Anson, etc.) carry JBL.

So I guess I have to live with the discounted unit minus The Bridge. For now, its no big deal since I don't even own an iPod. But I just felt cheated from the deal. So to anyone out there reading this blog -- be very careful when dealing with SM Appliance Center (or JBL sales people for that matter). I would still strongly recommend Western Appliance stores.

Some Very Interesting Statistical Trivia

I received a mailer from the International Herald Tribune soliciting for subscription to their newspaper. The mailer was different from the usual annoying junk mail. It contained several interesting stats (from 1% to 99%). Below are some of the ones I found more interesting:

• 1% of the world's vehicles are in India
• 4% of the world's population does not live in its country of birth
• 7% of the world's male population is affected by red-green colorblindness
• 9% of the world's population is left handed
• 10% of the world has shopped online
• 11% of the world's music is downloaded
• 16% of the world's energy is produced by nuclear power plants
• 17% of the world's population is illiterate
• 21% of the world's atmosphere is oxygen (78% is nitrogen)
• 22% of the world's population is Chinese
• 24% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas lies in the Arctic
• 26% of the world's construction cranes are in Dubai
• 27% of the world's land surface is high mountain
• 30% of the world's vehicles are owned by Americans
• 34% of the world's cigarettes are smoked in China
• 40% of the world's concrete is used in China
• 42% of the world's spam email comes from the US
• 50% of the world's languages have been lost in the last six years
• 53% of the world's laptops are made in Taiwan
• 54% of the world's popcorn is grown in Honduras
• 56% of the world's suicides occur in China
• 61% of the world's birth take place in Asia
• 67% of the world's manual work is done by women
• 69% of the world's Internet searches are done using Google
• 70% of the world's population has never heard a dial tone
• 72% of the world's fresh water is frozen in Antarctica
• 73% of the world's population lives in cities
• 74% of the world's convicted serial killers live in the US
• 88% of the world's 12 year olds are familiar with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator
• 89% of the world's computers run on Microsoft Windows
• 94% of the world's population recognizes the Coca-Cola trademark
• 96% of the world's languages are spoken by only 4% of the world's population
• 98% of the world's motherboards are produced by Taiwanese companies

Globe 3G Pricing

I reported a couple of months ago that I was happy to find out that Globe finally offered time-based 3G Internet surfing on the phone. There have been recent postings in the ph-cyberview yahoogroups about exactly how Globe does their charging and how it differs from Smart.

To recap, Smart offers 30 minute surfing for PHP10. The time starts ticking when you first go online, and you can disconnect/reconnect as many as you want within that 30 minute time frame. That entire 30-min duration is considered as a single session, and thus, you will be charged PHP10.

Globe offers their Internet surfing at a smaller denomination of PHP5 for 15 minutes, but here's the caveat apparently that they never mentioned in any of their ads -- they measure your 15 mins from the time you connect until the time you disconnect (whether intentionally or due to loss of signal). So if within a 15 min timespan, you got disconnected twice and you reconnected, you are billed 3 x PHP5 instead of a single PHP5 because it will be treated as 3 very short sessions!

This explains why my last saw Globe bill had multiple billings for the same day. I must have gotten disconnected/reconnected and was billed for multiple sessions. That sucks!

Dinner with Old College Friends

A former Ateneo college classmate, Malou Espino-Leonardo, is in town (from the US). Michelle Dy gathered a few of us for dinner at Terry Selection in Podium. It was a long day for me as I have been conducting training on our new hires both in Manila and from the branches. Then from the training, I had a board meeting that went up to around 7pm. So I had to rush through EDSA traffic to get to Podium. Its been a while since I had to wade through EDSA traffic on a weekday. :P

I got to Podium slightly past 7:30pm. Had to look for Terry Selection first since I've never been to the basement area of Podium. I didn't know there were shops there already (I think they partially converted the basement 1 parking into a shopping area). Terry is a Spanish deli that caters more to the higher end crowd (as compared to the likes of Casa Armas, I guess). Mitch said its more authentic. Well, I'm not a big fan of Spanish food so I can't really tell the difference.

When I got there, Malou, Mitch, Rene Lacson and Red Atendido were already there (I was the last to arrive). Shortly after some exchange of basic pleasantries, we went for the appetizer, and the main meal. Malou's now working at Costco in Washington; Mitch is still with Intranetsys; Rene's now with ABS-CBN Interactive; and Red is in the customs brokerage business. It was fun reminiscing through old times over dinner.

The basement area closed a bit early so we had to move up to the main lobby area for desserts. We stopped by Cheesecake, Etc. to unwind. I had to leave close to around 11pm. And I guess the rest of the guys left shortly after that. Mitch volunteered to start off a mailing list for our Ateneo BS Computer Science batch 1991. So for those interested in joining, just send a blank email to admu-cs1991-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.