Since last night, I’ve been busy uploading and tagging, tagging and uploading photos and videos of this year’s fine Sabah Bloggers Gathering. Seriously, I don’t know where to begin, so I’m just gonna do my story-telling in bullet-form. But before that, here’s how I looked like.

I am Soulja Grrrl. Get it? *ROFLs to self*… Dressed to kill, coz I’m a mean grrrl. And playing too much Half-Life: Counterstrike will do this to you. I also made it a point to have an “official” pose to make things more tacky, like so.

• Enemy spotted! The first costumed guest I saw as I went out the elevator was a Japanese-uniformed dude. And he had no weapon! Dead meat
• My action plan was to get to know as many people as I could, under the pretense that I wanna take pictures of each and everyone who came to the gathering. AND EVERYONE FELL FOR IT! MUAHAHAHAHAHAH! Seriously, though, everyone was so cool, and you can count only a handful out of more than 100 guests didn’t come with costumes. I really enjoyed taking pictures of and with everyone. You peeps really rocked the house!
• The Allies ruled! It was three Allied US Army soldiers versus one Japanese Axis soldier sans ammo. But I’ll exclude the masked terrorists (you people know who you are). And luckily our War Correspondent was neutral, though he did don a US Army colour. Yeah, lucky Axis guy   The cool thing was us army troops – Charlie, Vera and I — were lounging together in the same table. That’s the spirit — stick together, team.

More photos!

(more…)

Oh em gee, Sabah Bloggers Gathering is barely a week away! What makes this year’s gathering special is that it’s held on Hallow’s Eve, and you bet everyone’s gonna get crazy with their costumes!

Speaking of costumes, the theme is suppose to be anything really freaky looking, but I’m not planning to dress like that. I worry that my kids may have nightmares when they see their mom dressing up as a boogie (wo)man. Therefore, I am dressing up as something else but no less grrrl-looking, and I’m keeping it to myself till that night comes.

The hot and hunky organizers are doing a great job, yet again. Venue will be the the scenic loft of the classy Imperial International Hotel, in the heart of Kota Kinabalu city. Local supremo guitarist Roger Wang, and Alvin from the Malaysian reality show group Infinatez will be joining the list of entertainers for the night’s show. And, will Nuffnang and our wonderful bloggers from Tawau make a surprise appearance?

So for those of you who are in Kota Kinabalu and would like to crash the party, entrance fee is just RM20 per head. If it’s anything like last year, get ready to delight yourself with some scrumptious food and gourmet/premium desserts! It’s so worth it just for the food itself!

I’m off to pick up my kids, and then do some costume shopping, see you all there!

*This may or may not be based on a true story*

Late 2006

Person: What’s that? *pointing at my computer monitor*
Me: Another web site I just made. It’s called a blog.
Person: *blank face*
Me: Just another online site for me to rant my stuff. And I finally got a domain name!
Person: *blank + don’t care face*
Me: I had to spend a little, though, for that and my hosting.
Person: *you’ve gotta be kidding face*

Early 2007

Me: You know, I’ve just found out a way how I can make money out of my blog.
Person: What? (as in what’s a blog again?)
Me: Yeah, they call it paid to blog. I just post some stuff, put links in it and then they pay me.
Person: How much?
Me: 5 bucks a post.
Person: Hrmph.
Me: US dollars.
Person: *blank + don’t care face*
Me: And it’s not like those HYIP, E-gold stuff you’re doing. There’s basically no risk involved.
Person: *you do what you want to do because I don’t care face*

Late 2007

Me: Hey, I got 30 bucks in my PayPal!
Person: *wow that’s a lot…not… face*
Me: Wow, and that’s just one program per month. If I do a few of these programs, I might just get a hundred bucks a month!
(a few days later)
Me: That PayPal money just went into my credit card account. RM100 plus. Not bad, huh?
Person: (quiet)
Me: Were you able to take out your money from your E-gold and HYIPs?
Person: (quiet)
Me: Scams again, huh?
Person: (quiet)

Early 2008

Person: Are you still making money from your blog?
Me: Yep.
Person: How much?
Me: Almost a thousand Ringgit a month now.
Person: Oh.
Me: I’m thinking of doing a few more blogs. They call it niche sites. Looks like a good way to make money, as long as I have the time to blog.

Mid 2008

Person: I wanna make a site about making money.
Me: You should try blogging. I can set it up for you.
Person: Sure.
(a month later)
Me: Why aren’t you updating your site?
Person: I’ll get around to it. I’ll do a whole bunch of updates at one go.
Me: OK.
(another month later)
Me: Are you sure you want to do this blog thing?
Person: I dunno. Looks hard.
Me: *rolls eyes* … You haven’t even started.

Late 2008

Me: Oh, my God! Check out my AdSense! USD100 finally! And that’s just from one blog! Plus my paid postings… yes!
Person: Great! How do you take that money out?

2009 – recently

Me: Where did you go?
Person: I’ve been hanging out with my friends. We went shopping for some gadgets and stuff. They say they’re spending all those with their money they get from their blogs.
Me: *keeps eyes on netbook and blog* Good for them.
Person: I wanna have a blog.
Me: *keeps eyes on netbook and blog + you’ve gotta be kidding face*
Person: I just don’t know what to blog about.
Me: *keeps eyes on netbook and blog* Just blog about anything. Like they do. Like I do. I’ll help you set yours up, and buy you your own domain while we’re at it… just make sure you update, OK?
Person: *excited* … I’m getting the digicam you wanted.
Me: *snorts sarcastically* Yeah, sure.

Much more recently

Me: You haven’t started your blog.
Person: I’ll get around to it. I’ll do a whole bunch of updates at one go.
Me: *snorts sarcastically* Yeah, sure.

——————-

Having been impressed with the demo at the recent Microsoft TechNet MSDN Roadshow here in Kota Kinabalu early September, I decided to install the freely-distributed Windows 7 RC installer on my just-repaired Acer Aspire One netbook almost immediately afterwards, and have been installing and testing many software almost non-stop since then.

I’m so psyched that Windows 7 performs as well as, if not better than, Windows XP! Not only were there no hardware and device conflict, but many of the software I used in XP is still compatible with 7! I’ll be honest and admit that there were very very small occasions where I encountered the dreaded BSOD, but those were entirely my fault since I installed certain software *cough virtualization cough* that were not compatible with my CPU, against Microsoft’s and Intel’s warnings, and again those errors were very few and far between.

As a blogger, my main concern was whether I’d still be able to use XAMPP and TortoiseSVN for my WordPress sandbox and plugin development, specifically for the Top Commentators Widget(TCW). Boy, am I glad they work on 7!

The screenshot above shows my Windows 7 desktop with the XAMPPLite program running Apache and MySQL. I’m also re-setting the TCW repository with TortoiseSVN to continue with my WordPress development, specifically the GEDCOM plugin and another plugin which will be simple but surprisingly useful – the latter will also be my first attempt at developing an AJAX-powered app.

So, yeah… I hope this lame excuse is enough of a good reason for the lack of posting in this blog

BTW, I’m typing this post via Windows Live Writer (which is bundled with the free Windows Live Essentials if you’re wondering how to get it). If this program screws up with the formatting, then this will be the last time I’ll be using WLW, otherwise I’ll be sticking to this as long as there are no better decent and free offline blog editor that comes along. I’m currently not using ScribeFire, since Mozilla Minefield doesn’t support it yet (yeah, don’t install FireFox on Windows 7, it’s very unstable).

Hope to do more posts concerning my WordPress plugins and Windows 7 experience soon.

Yep, this is what happens when the wrath of the terrible twos descended upon thou. It used to look like this, looking sweet and pretty and all:

I would like to believe that all hope is not lost. I’ve sent it for repairs yesterday, and am still waiting for a quote from the shop. I’m honestly expecting a price that’s at least half the amount of what it’s bought for.

In the meantime, I’m seriously reconsidering replacing the Number 69 hand grenade that my two-year old son owns (disguised as his milk bottle) to something with a little more padding, maybe a mile thick. Anyone knows where I can get one?