Goddess, I Am.

I didn’t think I should own a planner for next year because the Starbucks ones I got in years past always ended up gathering dust. But when I saw the 2010 Moleskine Colour-a-Month Daily Planner, I changed my mind faster than you can say “fickle!” And when I saw that Avalon.ph is giving away the last one in existence (okay, I’m exaggerating – it’s actually the last one they have on stock), I just HAD to join. It would be remiss of me not to! Seriously, look how cute it is!

So what am I thankful for for the year that’s almost ending?

Golly, where do I start? It was – and still is! – a fantastic and very eventful year that saw me marry the man of my dreams, get to know my adorable nephew, bond with the family again after being gone for some time, land the job that any freelancer will kill for, buy a house that we will be moving into in two years or less, reconnect with friends, finally able to afford a Macbook Pro and bid goodbye to the computer woes that have plagued me for the past 10 years or so (Windows, duh!), learn photography, discover Ancient Rome, help my sister launch a business that I completely believe in, and finally grow up.

Yes, the list of things I’m thankful for this year could go on and on, but I think what it all boils down to is the thing that I’m most thankful for this year, the years that have passed, and the years that are yet to come: L-O-V-E.

Love made it possible for my relationship with The Husband to transition from the almost constant turmoil and drama to the joyful, blissful, and peaceful companionship we enjoy now.

Love makes it possible for me to enjoy every minute I spend with my nephew, even when I have a serious aversion to most children and can only handle them in small quantities.

Love gives me the energy to work from sunup to the next day’s sunrise practically every day, just so I can make time for The Husband, make time for the family, and meet my scary deadlines.

Love makes me indulge The Husband’s expensive Blu-ray habit, even if does make me want to weep sometimes. And I suppose it’s love that makes him look the other way, too, whenever I get a new gadget, or buy too many clothes and shoes and books.

Love keeps me supportive of Mum’s goals, even when most of them will eventually take her far away from us.

Love had me voluntarily buy the domain and the hosting for my sister’s clothing line. Not only that, it’ll be love that will make me finish and launch said site, hopefully before the year ends. It’s also love that’s made me spend the last couple of weeks in a stuffy little booth, hawking swimwear to all and sundry.

Love has me bending over backwards for my bosses, not because I have to, but because I genuinely want to. They’re great people, and I love my job even more because of them. The fact that they love me enough to pay me extremely well is a welcome bonus. And it’s awesome that I don’t have to do a job search after every project ends – a freelancer’s nightmare.

Love (or something very close to it) keeps what few friends I have still speaking to me, even when I’m a horrible correspondent.

Love for my Mac has me taking care of him like he’s my first born and a real person, and I daresay that Octavian loves me, too, because he has never let me down!

Love of life and memories got me to buy Caesar, my camera, and it’s my newfound love of the craft that has me reading photography books aplenty and taking countless pictures.

Again, I could go on and on about why I’m thankful to and for love – but then, it’s probably going to take me another year! If this doesn’t win me a Moleskine planner, I don’t know what will, tee hee.

What about you? What are you thankful for this year? Who knows? It might win you a Moleskine. (Though nasty little me hopes not!)

UPDATE: I didn’t win the planner. I hope I can find one for sale!

It can’t be any fun being my laptop. I don’t spend my days surfing, or watching videos on YouTube, or even playing games on Facebook. All I do is work, work, and work some more. And don’t get me started on the amount of work I do. Let’s just say that in any given day, I have about 3 days’ worth of work to do IF I do everything manually. Fortunately for me, my boss loves buying me software, so most of my tasks are automated, which is definitely the only reason why I actually manage to do everything that I’m supposed to do every day.

Now, most of these software run on – surprise, surprise! – Windows. My darling Octavian, however, runs on Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard). This means that to be able to run these software, I have to run Windows on a Macbook Pro somehow. One way to do is to install it in something called Boot Camp and choose Windows when I boot up Octavian . . . Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen! Running Windows on its own on a Macbook Pro is like playing a shitty VCD on a perfectly good Blu-ray player – it’s sacrilegious, to say the least.

So as an alternative, I’ve chosen to purchase a software called VMWare Fusion, and this is, by far, one of my best investments yet. VMWare Fusion allows me to run Windows as a virtual machine (I named it Lucius Cornelius Sulla, tee hee) so I won’t have to leave OS X to run Windows applications. This means that I’m actually running two computers simultaneously on one. Add the fact that I’m also running another half a dozen apps on the native OS X system, and I’ve got an extremely overworked laptop. Very few laptops will be able survive such a beating without crashing, and Octavian’s one of those – he’s never crashed once. Rather, he valiantly takes whatever demands I put to him without complaint. Yes, he’s a good boy, that’s why I love him to bits (no pun intended).

Octavian came with a 2GB DDR3 RAM, which was a big deal for me, considering the crap that I had to put up with before I bought my first Mac. Though it’s sufficient to run both my systems simultaneously, I do suffer lags every now and again, which is really a bit annoying when you’re trying to get things done yesterday. I knew a RAM upgrade to 4GB would take care of this, but since the DDR3 technology is fairly new, the chips weren’t readily available locally – and I felt that I had to purchase it from an authorized Apple store/service center to get their techs to install it for me. Unfortunately, there was a 2-month waiting list to order ‘em chips, plus it would be about twice the price of getting it from somewhere like TipidPC or eBay.

Now, for as long as I can remember, the guys at the PhilMUG forums have been insisting that a DIY RAM and hard-disk upgrade was as easy as pie. It’s so easy, in fact, that these sort of upgrades do not even void the warranty! I’ve been toying with the idea of doing it for the longest time. I’ve even watched videos of how it was done, and they all made it look so easy! I’ve always chickened out at the last minute, though. I don’t know what came over me this week, but I suddenly fancied that my poor Octavian was coming down with asthma from all the hard work (the real Octavian was asthmatic, after all) and that I needed to do a RAM upgrade stat! So I ordered a couple of 2GB Team Elite chips from a TipidPC seller, who came highly recommended from ‘em forum guys, on Tuesday. I paid P4,700 (about $100) for both chips plus shipping on the same day, and got confirmation that it was en route to Cebu.

The chips turned up the next day, Wednesday. The idea of opening up poor Octavian sickened me so much, though, that The Husband ended up doing it for me that afternoon. First, he tried to get the screws off with a really old #00 screwdriver that he found buried amidst his old junk. That didn’t really work – 3 of the screws won’t come off!

So we hurriedly took a trip to True Value in Ayala to get a new screwdriver and ended up with a set. This time, Octavian was successfully opened up. The Husband removed the old 1GB sticks and replaced ‘em with the new 2GB ones (there’s two of each). The process took no more than a couple of minutes. He then closed up Octavian, and I re-booted. To my horror, it showed that I only had 1GB of RAM from the 4GB I was expecting! I nearly cried. I did a test using memtest, and yep, there’s definitely only 1GB.

So The Husband opened up poor Octavian again, and sure enough, one of the chips was loose. He fiddled with them somewhat, and they were finally in nice and tight. I booted up Octavian again, and scarily enough, he only had 3GB! By this time, I was definitely in a panic. The Husband opened up Octavian again and removed the chips. We both checked if they were identical, and they were, right down to their 2GB DDR3 warranty stickers.

The Husband had the brilliant idea of trying to isolate problem. He installed just one chip, rebooted, and checked the system – definitely a 2GB. Off came Octavian’s back case yet again, and this time, he installed just the other chip. Lo and behold – it was a 1GB!

So it seemed that the problem was with that second chip. I thought it might have been mislabeled or something, but the guys on the forums believe it’s a faulty chip. I contacted the seller – who was really nice, by the way – and he asked me to send in the faulty chip yesterday so he can replace it. I thought he was going to wait until the chip got there before he sent me a new one so I was resigned to the fact that I’ll have to wait a couple more days, but no, he sent it straight away, the moment I confirmed that I’ve sent the faulty chip. I’m expecting it sometime today.

Right now, Octavian is running on 3GB RAM – the new, working 2GB chip and one of the original 1GB sticks. I have not experienced a single lag since, even when I’ve got Windows running, too. It takes a bit longer to start up (about 30 seconds), though, but that’s perfectly understandable. It’s the actual working time that matters to me, anyway, and a longer start-up time just means that I have more time to get breakfast ready.

With the favorable experience that I’ve had with the 3GB RAM so far, I can’t wait to see what the 4GB would be like! I’m getting stuff done even quicker than usual, too. A happy Octavian means a happy Mommy Iris.

Now, if only LBC would turn up with that chip already . . .

LBC turned up just as we were about to head to the mall to watch New Moon. Once again, Octavian was reopened, and in less than 2 minutes, he was sporting a spanking new 4GB RAM. (Check out the wallpaper. Cute, huh?)

Owning a Mac is like raising a child. It requires expense after expense, not necessarily because it demands it, but because you always want what’s best for it. I thought my darling Gaius was a handful, but really, it had absolutely nothing on Octavian.

Octavian, by the way, is the Macbook Pro that I upgraded to a month after I got Gaius. Yes, I managed to work up the courage to tell The Husband, and yes, I really couldn’t help myself. Octavian is, without a doubt, the best laptop I’ve ever owned, and I’m completely in love with him, almost to the point of altar-worship.

But I digress. In the 4 weeks that I’ve had Octavian, I’ve bought accessory after accessory. And because Octavian IS a fabulous 13.3-inch Macbook Pro – the first of his kind – most of them do not come cheap.

Here’s the rundown of, umm, ‘damages’ . . . so far:

1. A pretty pink Sumdex laptop bag – P1,850 (approximate $38).

Now, I had a perfectly good laptop bag that I bought for Gaius. I couldn’t bear the thought of Octavian getting a hand-me-down bag from Gaius, however, so I convinced myself that it was not padded enough for skinny, little Octavian (which it really was), and sold it to Chin, who I am hoping is perfectly happy with it.

2. A scarlet CaseLogic laptop sleeve with a fantastic flower detail – P1499 (approximately $30).

I wanted to give Octavian in all his aluminum glory extra protection; hence, the sleeve. Now, I am completely aware that one can buy a perfectly functional sleeve somewhere between P100 (CDR-King) and P899 (the plain CaseLogic ones – no pretty flowers!), and I really was all set to go for the latter. However, I took one look at the red one with the flower in SM, and my self-control ran off, never to be seen again.

From time to time, in the dead of night when it behooves me to take stock of my life, I find myself wondering whatever possessed me at that very moment. But then I take one look at the beautiful scarlet sleeve and how good Octavian looks in it, and all is right with the world once again. Oh, and did I mention it was reversible?

3. A screen protector – P950.

I know, I know. One can get a screen protector for P100 (again) from CDR-King. In fact, I did get one for Gaius. The problem was that it was a DIY install, and it was so badly done that I didn’t want to risk it again.

So off I went to Digital Walker (Digital Hub in some places) in SM Cyberzone where I get a cool 10% discount, simply because I’m a member of the PhilMUG (Philippine Mac Users Group) forums. (I also bought Octavian from them, and Charlie, the owner, gave me discount of almost P11,000, which was a lot more than the usual 10%!) The guy in charge of the Cebu store personally installed my screen protector, and he did it so well that you won’t even know it’s there! There isn’t a single bubble or speck of dust trapped between the protector and the screen itself. I’ve never seen such a stellar screen protector installation in my life!

4. A silicon keyboard protector – P500 (about $10).

My life revolves around my laptop since I work 16 to 20-hour days with nary a weekend free. I even take meals with Octavian on my lap, which makes a keyboard protector an absolute necessity, myself being a scatterbrained klutz.

Thankfully, I found a keyboard protector from China on eBay that’s been made especially for aluminum unibody Macbook Pros. It features black keys on see-through silicon, so Octavian’s keyboard still gets to glow in all its prettiness. Plus, I don’t have to worry about spills and crumbs anymore!

5. A trackpad protector ($9.99) and a pretty logo ($4.99).

It has always been my intention to keep Octavian as bare as the day he was born (or at least, the day he was bought), but when I discovered SkinStyler, my resolve literally flew out the window. After all, how can I resist the oh-so pretty Apple logo of old on Octavian, instead of the newer and oh-so generic white one?

The trackpad protector was a bit of an afterthought. I figured if I was getting something shipped all the way from Malaysia, I might as well make the most of it. I’m very happy how it turned out, though. I didn’t go for the more colorful designs, even when I was sorely tempted to do so, because I figured it’ll look all wrong on Octavian’s original color scheme. The logo is ostentatious enough as it is.

6. A cooling pad – P280.

Because I have so much to do all the time, poor Octavian has to work almost non-stop every day. If he was a Windows-running laptop, he probably would’ve died of sheer exhaustion by now!

But again, I digress. Octavian does tend to get really hot when I run OS X and Windows on VMWare Fusion simultaneously, and I figured he needed a bit of help. I was initially all set to get me a Belkin cooler (P1500), but I’ve been assured that any cooling pad will work just fine. And because I’ve already spent quite a lot in less than a month, I figured it can’t hurt to get a cheap one.

I got a nice, compact, foldable one from Global Village, and so far, I’m very happy with it – at least, until I saw the same cooler in pink at CDR-King. I can’t justify getting another one right now, though, especially with a reason as trivial as color, so I’m sticking to this boring black one for the moment.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Octavian’s expenses are coming to an end. Since I bought the cooling fan, I now need a flat surface to put it on when I’m working on the couch. I have my eyes set on something called the iLap, but I’ve been told there’s a P600 CDR-King version, so I’m going to check that out. Right now, I’m just using Octavian’s box, and it’s so unfashionable, not to mention uncomfortable.

I also want to upgrade Octavian’s measly 160GB hard drive to 500 GB because I’m downloading so many movies and it’s filling up fast. And oh, I want to upgrade my DDR3 RAM from 2GB to 4GB for no particular reason other than I can and it sounds like a good idea. And I will also want another bag or two down the line because one can’t have too many laptop bags, after all.

I swear, if Octavian can go horseback riding, I’ll gladly buy him breeches. Heck, I’ll even send him to college, if he wasn’t so smart already.

Really, with a Mac, who needs children?

Have you ever bought yourself something that you feel is the ultimate representation of everything you’ve ever worked hard for? Some people would buy homes; others, cars, boats, and airplanes. As for me? I bought myself a Macbook.

Everyone, say hello to Gaius Julius Caesar Dictator – or just, Gaius. (It’s a bit overdue, I know.

As you all know, I’ve been mooning over Macbooks for, well, FOREVER. Something always came up, however, so I never really got the chance to put away enough money to get one. Until a little over a month ago, that is; hence, Gaius.

I must say that Gaius is – hands down – THE best computer I have ever owned, not to mention the most beautiful. EVER. I was originally all set on getting the 13-inch Aluminum unibody, but decided at the last minute that I don’t need to shell out almost another $400 just to get features that I’m never likely to use, as I don’t edit videos or music or even pictures. My mum’s boss, who was in the US at that time, picked it up for me – from Circuit City, I believe – and was kind enough to haul it all the way back to the Philippines, so I got a pretty good deal for it, too. Besides, I still think that white Macbooks have the quintessential Macbook look and are heartbreakingly gorgeous.

I’ve invested on VMWare Fusion so I can run both Mac OS X and Windows XP applications on Gaius. Although I would prefer to turn my back on Windows forever, the software I use for spinning (my meal ticket these days) all run on Windows XP, so until the developers come up with Mac versions, I don’t really have much of a choice. The Windows XP installation runs on a virtual computer, so basically, I have two computers running running on one laptop. I’ve named my Windows virtual machine Lucius Cornelius Sulla . . . because I just can’t help myself.

For a while, Gaius was completely devoid of physical protection (apart from my oh-so cute laptop bag), so I guess it was a bad idea to take him on holiday in Boracay. I discovered a telltale discoloration and a slight scratch on a corner of Gaius’ lid for all and sundry to see, and I was in a right state of panic. I burst into tears and yelled at my poor husband who really was only trying to help. Yes, I do scare myself sometimes. But hey, it was a 2-week old Macbook (back then) AND it didn’t exactly cost me peanuts, so I still think my panic was well-founded.

I decided to pay iStore a visit when I got back to see if they had anything that could possibly help me with Gaius’ little problem. If not, I was getting ready to resign myself to the idea that I might have to get one of those laptop skins, or worse, those tacky crystal cases. Before I did, though, I did a bit of Googling, and I found out that the cleaning products they sold on Apple stores were, well, downright shitty, and that I was better off using anything from toothpaste to Staedler erasers. Our toothpaste, however, was green, and I was afraid I will only succeed in turning Gaius into The Hulk. We eventually tried the erasers – and lo and behold! It worked! Now Gaius is as gorgeous as new, and I’m the proud momma once again.

I’ve learned my lesson, however, and have now invested in all manners of Macbook protection. I now have a screen protector, a silicon keyboard cover, and I will forever and ever probably keep a Staedler eraser handy. I’m also looking for the prettiest laptop sleeve I can find. As much as possible, I do want to keep Gaius the way he is – white and naked the way God and Apple intended him to be.

One thing’s for sure: Gaius has made a die-hard Mac fan out of this girl. And I’m not going to say anything definite right now, but if I really can’t help myself, he’s going to get upgraded into a Pro very, very soon.

Damn, these Macs are addictive!

I think I have an abuse problem. The problem is it’s an addiction I can’t afford to sustain, so I just end up frustrated, very unsatisfied, and feeling all too silly. Why, oh why, couldn’t I just have a drinking problem? Instead, I have to be hopelessly fixated on laptops, of all things.

It all started when I bought my first one in 2007 before I left for Thailand. It was a large, bulky thing with a 14-inch screen that I got on a 6-month installment scheme, and I must say that it was definitely the best investment I’ve ever made because it ended up being my meal ticket.

Because I wrote for a living, I loved how I could take it with me everywhere. Eventually, however, the novelty wore off and it weighed me down quite literally. I used to carry all 7 kilos of it in a backpack, and it gave me horrible back and shoulder problems. And because it was a rather tacky brand (the best I could do at the moment), its performance went progressively downhill from day one – enough to be annoying, but nothing to be alarmed about.

I then developed a wandering eye. I would trawl through shops, longingly inspecting sleek, lightweight models with features that made my old, reliable, less-than-a-year-old lappie look like a relic from the ruins of Pompeii. I almost succumbed to the urge to splurge a couple of times, but thanks to the voice of reason (The Fiance’s), I managed to walk away from the shiny, pink Vaios and Macbooks aplenty in Bangkok’s Panthip Plaza.

And so it was that the next few months found me toiling with that laptop and all its familiar quirks – that is, until I managed to save up some money. I somehow convinced myself and The Fiance that I will be a hunchback in a year if I carry on lugging that monstrosity around Southeast Asia. I still couldn’t afford a Macbook, but I could get one of those ridiculously cute netbooks. I then dragged him to Future Park Rangsit one evening where I got one of those oh-so handy Acer Aspire Ones in white.

At that time, they only had the 8GB ones that ran on Linux. If I wanted the ones that ran on Windows XP, I had to wait a couple of weeks until they came in. Looking back, I probably could’ve waited, but with my typical impatience, I reasoned that I’m only going to use it to write and browse, anyway, and I still had “oldie” if I somehow needed to use Windows, so why not? Plus, it was cheaper. And that was how Gretchen (Chin forced me to name it) came into my life.

She didn’t disappoint for a while. With only a 9-inch screen, she was so small and she hardly weighed a thing. I could simply stash her in my purse and forget that she was even there. I bought an 8GB SD memory card to give her a bit of a memory upgrade and found a way to install Firefox 3 so I could browse with a slightly bigger screen, and we were happy. Still, she was nowhere near the Macbook of my dreams, so it wasn’t long before I started to tire of her and her spartan features and to look at the shiny new netbooks available these days with their huge hard drives and prettier colors.

I still have both laptops. Nearly two years old now, the bigger one is running on the dregs of its ancient battery, so it’s not good for traveling anymore. It freezes almost all the time now and crashes when pushed to do too much. It even wheezes like an old person, and if it could speak, I suspect it’ll beg The Fiance (who uses it most of the time) for retirement.

At 7 months old, young Gretchen is really not so young anymore. She has a very temperamental charger that only works when it feels like it. The older one’s charger does work with her sometimes when plugged in the right angle, but I can’t use it too often when “oldie” barely has 2 minutes on its battery. So poor Gretchen is almost always dead these days, and when she is working, she messes up the multiple inboxes I set up on my Gmail because her screen is so little. Not only that, I can’t seem to find the inspiration to write when I use her. She still runs pretty fast, though, which is an upside of her running on a Linux system. Still, I can’t be bothered to sort out her little issues because I do most of my work on my office computer now, anyway, for lack of better options.

So as you probably can tell by now, I am, once again, dying to get my hands on a new laptop. And with a rather healthy statement balance on our joint bank account, it is, indeed, quite a challenging exercise on self-control. After all, I am going to be a very married woman soon enough, so I can’t just be frivolous at a whim anymore.

But hey, that doesn’t mean a girl can’t dream, and this girl is dreaming of a 13-inch Macbook Aluminum.

Or, at least, the Vivenne Tam edition of the HP Mini 1000.

Drat. Where’s that fairy godmother when you need one?