Crappy Diskette-based SSS System

The Social Security System (SSS) require that local employers should submit their monthly contribution reports in diskettes. Yes, you read that right -- diskettes! Not flash drives, not CD's, but diskettes! PC's vendors have stopped pre-installing floppy disk drives for years.

I had to borrow a USB-based external floppy drive from the office and attached it to our den PC because the built-in floppy drive seem to malfunctioning and damaging all diskettes you plug in it. But as I found out, the crappy SSS program does not give you the option on where to save your data. Its hard-coded to always write on Drive A!!! Attaching my USB floppy didn't work because Windows was assigning it as Drive B.

I eventually installed the SSS program (which seem to be written in Visual FoxPro) on my HP Mini 110 which correctly assigns Drive A to the external USB floppy drive. I can't understand why a cash-rich government agency like the SSS can't even get their software re-written for the 21st century. It should already be moved to the web and the report files uploaded via http. Diskettes? Unbelievable!

Retrieving Email from GMail using POP3 Programmatically with C#

I'm writing some new Dragonpay code to interface with UCPB's online banking system. I need to retrieve some information via POP3 protocol. POP3 is a very simple protocol using TCP stream over port 110. In fact, I've written code 15 years ago to retrieve email and read it over the phone using text-to-speech synthesis using Dialogic software. But the challenge this time is I need to get the data from Google's GMail.

Unlike regular POP3, GMail's POP3 uses SSL encryption. My limited knowledge on encryption does not extend to SSL encryption. So I did some research. The UNIX fetchmail program can retrieve GMail POP3 email with SSL encryption. But to run code after retrieving the email would require having to program with Linux and procmail. Since I mainly write in C# .NET, that was more trouble than its worth.

I eventually found my answer at Code Project -- http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/Pop3MailClient.aspx. Downloaded the code and it worked like a charm.

Kaos @ ResortWorld

Cols, Caitlin, Kenneth, Stephanie and I watched the 3pm matinee show of Kaos at Resortworld. Kaos is a full stage production involving singing, dancing and, of course, death-defying acrobat. It is similar in format to a Cirque du Soleil show -- just on a slightly smaller scale, of course. The performers were a mix of European, South American and Asian acrobats.


The Resortworld theater is located in the same complex as the casino. But instead of going straight to the playing area, you take a right and go up the escalator or elevator. The theater looked great. Way much better than Meralco Theater which is quite old. Much bigger than the RCBC Plaza auditorium. The seats were very comfortable and leg room is very generous.


The show was ok. It was Caitlin's first time to watch a "circus". Production value was also good. Ticket price was reasonable. We bought it as a promo a couple of months back at the SMX Travel Expo.

PLDT Billboard

I took a cellphone shot of this PLDT billboard ad along C5. I just find it rather strange. It shows a mom and daughter spending quality time enjoying surfing the Internet. But wait -- what are they surfing? What else but their PLDT telephone utility billing! I know its kinda hard to see from this blog, but the image that seems to "float" out of the screen is really their phone bill.



Uhmmm... I don't know about you guys but viewing utility billings is not really something that I would find enjoyable. Judging by the smiles on their faces, they seem to be having a great time looking at their phone bill. There's something wrong with this ad.

Kirin Restaurant at Fort Bonifacio High

We had dinner at Kirin Chinese Restaurant at Fort Bonifacio High with the folks. Its the only Chinese restaurant at High Street. And since the kids do not eat much other than Chinese, we did not really have much choice. The food was not delicious. Service was pretty bad. The waiter kept confusing the orders and bringing the wrong food to our table. Price was also a bit high for the "quality". Not recommended.

Pre-Valentine Dinner at Robot Restaurant

I bought my first group-buying voucher from CashCashPinoy the other day. I've been waiting for a deal at the new fancy Japanese Robotayaki (aka. Robot) Restaurant-bar along Makati Avenue, and CashCashPinoy finally offered a special PHP888.00 for a multi-course sampler meal set. I made reservations and Cols and I got there by 7pm. The place was pretty bare. There were very few diners. In fact, almost all diners were availing of CashCashPinoy vouchers too. Looks like the restaurant is not living up to its hype. While waiting for our meal, a senior Chinese customer at the adjacent got really mad. He was creating a scene and shouting why the food takes more than an hour to come out when there are so many cooks at the kitchen (the kitchen is separated from the dining area by glass panes so you can see what's gong on inside). Our order actually did not take that long, so I don't know what was wrong with his. The waiter quietly confided to us that the guy was actually the dad of one of the owners. I previously thought the restaurant was owned by socialite and self-proclaimed "eventologist" Tim Yap. But the waiter said that he has no ownership and its only the image that they want to project because of his connections. Overall, I wasn't really happy with the meal. Would not want to come back.

New All-in-One Small Office Printer

Brother Philippines is running a trade-in promo this Jan 27 to Feb 11, 2011. Since we've been looking at getting a multi-function printer for the home office, we grabbed the MFC-8380DN all-in-one scanner/printer/copier/fax unit. From an SRP of P25k, I just traded in my old/non-working Brother HL-2040 and got a 50% discount. The net price came out P12,495 and 6-months installment via credit card with zero interest! Its a steal!



The unit is huge. Definitely not your typical home printer. It comes with a huge paper tray; a multi-purpose tray for paper of odd-sizes (eg. letter envelope, thick paper), and an automatic document feeder (ADF) on top for scanning or faxing multiple pages. The front panel is pretty intuitive. There are 3 main buttons - Fax, Scan or Copy. So far, I've mainly been using it for scanning since my old Samsung monochrome laser is still functional.

The 8380DN is network-ready. It has an ethernet port at the back which I connected straight to our ethernet switch. It can work standalone without a PC attached to it. Its practically a PC by itself with its own operating system. This model has a web server that allows you to remotely manage and configure the unit through a standard browser. It has an FTP client software that lets it send the document you scan into an FTP server over the network.

The 8380DN can also work with CIFS/SMB file storage systems (and this is the part I love most). Since I recently installed a home file server, it sends all my scans directly to the storage folder in PDF or JPEG depending on the profile you choose. The scanning quality is great -- way much better than my (really) old Benq flatbed. This unit has both a flatbed for small pieces of documents. You can also use the ADF for scanning multiple pages. The ADF can accommodate up to 20 pages.

The following are some of the nifty features that I really like about the unit:

1. Duplex Printing - you can print back-and-front on the same piece of paper without having to flip it. Gone are the days when you had to print all the odd pages first; flip the stack of paper; print all the even pages at the back. By setting printing to duplex mode, the printer takes care of flipping the paper and printing back and front.
2. Duplex Scanning - this allows you to scan documents with front-and-back print without having to manually flip them one-by-one. The ADF takes care of flipping the pages and scanning them both sides!
3. Scan-to-Network - scanning is supported from 100 dpi to 600 dpi with output format in JPEG, TIFF or PDF format.
4. Direct Print - if you have a PDF or JPEG file in a USB flash drive that you want to print, there is no more need to connect the drive onto a PC and print from the PC. You just stick the drive directly to the USB slot in front of the printer. You can then navigate the small LCD screen to print the document that you want from the drive.
5. Scan-to-USB - similar to Direct Print, you can also scan directly to a USB flash drive. Just stick in your drive and do a scan. Output is sent directly to the flash drive without having to go through a PC.
6. PC Fax - any of our PC can now send a fax by just using the PC Fax printer driver. The software takes care of routing it to the 8380DN and faxing it from there.

The unit is remarkably quiet. It just sits there quietly at our den with hardly any hum. The blue light is always on though. I don't know how to turn it off even if it goes to sleep.

After reading the docs, it looks like the higher model 88xx is even more interesting. It has SMTP support which allows you to do things like forward your fax to email (or scan to email?). But at P12.5k, I'm pretty happy with this one already.