New FarmVille Giftable items: Potted plant; Blue & Green Gazing Ball

The following items are now available at the FarmVille Gifts section:

 Potted Plant

Blue Gazing Ball

Green Gazing Ball

Poor Calvin

Sick kiddo... =,(

 

Comics:  Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

About Calvin and Hobbes

Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes has been a worldwide favorite since its introduction in 1985. The strip follows the richly imaginative adventures of Calvin and his trusty tiger, Hobbes. Whether a poignant look at serious family issues or a round of time-travel (with the aid of a well-labeled cardboard box), Calvin and Hobbes will astound and delight you.

The Muppets own take on Bohemian Rhapsody

How will the Bohemian Rhapsody MTV sound and look like should the Muppets cast perform it?

  The answer is here!

FarmVille Roaming Animals: Lonely Reindeer

A new animal was observed roaming around FarmVille in search for a new home:

The Reindeer

 

This reindeer differs from the giftable reindeer as this one is decorated with Christmas lights... A part of Santa's troupe perhaps? Hmmmm...

FarmVille Market items as presents

Select items from the FarmVille Market can now directly be sent as presents to neighbors.  The items, however, can only be purchased using FV$.

Here is the list of the giftable items:

Baby turkey

Orange Tabby

Treehouse

Gazebo

Manor

Pink Tool Shed

Large Pond

Garden Gnome

Ferris Wheel

Free Fall Ride

Deluxe Carousel

Super Spin Ride

Farm Float

Balloon Stand

Scarecrow

Farmville.com exclusive gifts

The following giftable items are available exclusively through Farmville.com

Log bench

Ladder and bucket

Barrel of grapes
Wooden log

Orange Flag

Purple Flag

White Flag

 

How to gain access to these giftable items:

1. login to your facebook account
2. on a new tab/window, go to http://farmville.com, your game will be automatically loaded
   
3. go to the gifts tab
4. select giftable items
5. send gifts!
   

FarmVille Animals: Reindeer

Christmas is heralded at FarmVille by the new FarmVille animal:  the Reindeer

 

The Reindeer is available only through gifting.   It harvests _____ in __ days.

FarmVille Animals: Orange Tabby Kitten

Welcome the new Farmville animal:  The Orange Tabby

The Orange Tabby can be bought at the FarmVille market for 9FV$ and it harvests in 3 days.

 

Technorati Claim!

5PM2C9FD6ZVX

bills

I dunno which hurts more:

being sick or paying the hospital bill

health insurance wanted

Comics#1:   Bottomliners by Eric and Bill Teitelbaum

About Bottomlimers:

Cartoonists Eric and Bill Teitelbaum skewer the world of business and finance in Bottom Liners, a nationally syndicated business comic panel appearing six times weekly. Bottom Liners tackles subjects such as foreign takeovers, office politics, getting a raise and the fast-paced world of Wall Street.

Comics#2:  The Boiling Point by Mikhaela Reid

About the Boiling Point:

Self–described “angry cartoonist” Mikhaela Reid’s multi–panel weekly strip The Boiling Point offers up her unique and steaming blend of passionate political satire, darkly whipsmart humor, moral outraged–ousness and fully engaged give–a–damn fun. From “Dick Cheney’s Magical Universe” to “The Brighter Side of Middle East Violence”, from “Bush Versus My Cat” to “Every Sperm Is Sacred!”, Reid’s boldly drawn and ingeniously conceived commentaries offer those steamed off by these ill–tempered times a well–crafted outlet for mental venting.

XNHBKHUUMD3D

ESTEPHANIE

I am feeling anxious today, I need to stay sane so I recovered this poem from way back.

It was written by a friend for me.  It gives me the extra boost whenever I feel uninspired and falling apart.  The title of this poem is ESTEPHANIE

ESTEPHANIE
by guerdon

maybe you feel at home,
commingling with rocks,
buried in conundrums
between diamonds
and corundums,
wrapped in the different shades
of schist and shale;
you peer at the world
behind silicon windows,
coloring your universe
with quartz-diffracted light;
thinking of heaven
you wonder how such imperfect
elements
could belong to spheres celestial,
and then you see yourself,
and think:
carbon to diamond….
and you wonder no more.

From Carbon to Diamond... extreme heat and pressure, trials and tribulations.

FarmVille Country Fair Items

FarmVille has released its limited edition Country Fair-Themed decorations and buildings, which will all be available until the end of November (11 days from now):

 

The long wait is over: FarmVille Storage, Finally

Finally!

Storage is now available at Farmville, in the form of functional buildings.  The Barns and Tool

Sheds can now be used to store unwanted/not needed items in farms.

 

 

Here is the official announcement from FarmVille which details the usage and capacities of the Storage system:

“We’ve heard some of you are feeling a bit cramped on your farm. FarmVille is proud to introduce STORAGE! Now you can decorate to your heart’s content while knowing that you have a place to store your stuff. By the way, have you seen the new Country Fair items? Check ‘em out and see why the sheep are having such a blast! ”
How Storage Works from Zynga:
• You can store your items in the barns and tool sheds
• Each barn and tool shed has an individual capacity amount (for example, a red barn can store 6 decorations)
• When you click on an item, you will see an option to move it to storage
• Once you have moved an item to storage, you can right click on any barn or tool shed to see your current items in storage
• Note: all your items are stored in one central location and can be accessed by barn, tool shed, or by clicking the new storage icon in the toolbar

LHC to start up today

The Large Hadron Collider will finally, after 14 long months of repairs and upgrades due to some untoward incident, start up today: Friday November 20 at 5 PM Central European Time.

With the new timetable, some collissions should be accomplished by Christmas.

See full story at TimesOnline.

FarmVille Functional Building: Garden Shed

Initially available to only a select few FarmVille players, the Garden Shed is now available for everyone to use.

As the newest functional building, the Garden Shed may be used to store up to 30 Perfect Bunches of flowers harvested from flower beds.   These perfect bunches can be used to decorate farms or shared with friends.  The blooms can live up to 14 days.  The shed is available at the FarmVille market for 30,000 coins or 30 FV. 

Newly purchased garden sheds come with five bunches each of lavender and rose blooms!  Another extra:  Mixed bouquets to share with friends!

 

Talk about stealth!

I'm not a big fan of cats (they're snobbish, moody and whiny).  But this one really made my day!

Hormonal

I've been snapping at everyone lately... and I mean EVERYONE.

Warning label created using Warning Label Generator

Thank you hormones =|

Leonid Meteor Shower

The annual Leonid Meteor Shower is here once again.

This phenomenon, which is marked by an increased occurrence of meteors in the skies, is attributed to the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which passes through our inner solar system every 33 years.  Its annual passage across the Earth's orbit leaves behind tiny bits of material, the size of sand grains or peas, which spread out through time.  Every year around November 17-18, the Earth passes through these trails, and the debris enter the atmosphere.

The speed of the debris (which is by the way very fast due to a combination of their inherent speed as they were left behind by Tempel-Tuttle plus their direction which is opposite that of the Earth's movement) compresses the air in front of the particles, which in turn heats up the air.  The heated air ignites the particles, producing the spectacular display of light bursts that we see in the sky.

This year the Leonid Meteor Shower may be observed here in the Philippines.  PAGASA said that the best viewing time would be from November 17, 11 pm through November 18, 6 am.

So, who wants to join me at the UP Observatory tonight? ;-D

How to Kill a Cow... ummm corned beef

I was browsing through old photographs and I found these pictures:

  

The story:

We went on a fieldwork at *area withheld* with only a can of Argentina corned beef and a loaf of cheap bread for lunch.  We were with two local guides.  Unfortunately, they realized they couldn't walk that far enough where we, the geologists, would like to go (where the important stuff are located), so my colleague and I went ahead and left them.  It was a three to four-hour walk along moderate to steep terrane, one-way.  At lunch time, we realized we don't have our swiss knives with us.  The  local guides supposedly have gulok, but then they are two hours away from us. 

My colleague and I had to be creative.  The only sharp object we have are our geologist's sample picks.  We don't even have utensils.  So there.  We just ignored the fact that the pen and pick have gazillion germs.  Hungry, tired geologists need to eat. 

Sentimental

I'm feeling sentimental today (result of overly bumming around the office, ugh).  

Tarot: Deja Deck

For lack of better things to do here int he office, I did some Tarot reading for myself, online of course.  Here's the card that I got:

Timely...

Want a card for yourself?  Here's the link for Deja Deck.

Fortune Cookie

Popped a fortune cookie in facebook today:

 

I really should have gone shopping today.

*sad sad sad

FarmVille Functional Buildings: The Chicken Coop

There has been a lot of updates on FarmVille for friday the thirteenth.

The first notification that poped up on my screen upon logging in to FarmVille is this:

A new functional building to house my chickens!

it is available as a giftable item and at the FramVille Market for 5,000 coins.  As with the FarmVille Dairy Farm this new item enables simultaneous harvesting of produce (eggs this time) from 20 animals (chickens, duh).

In connection with the Chicken Coop is the introduction of the new Mystery Egg:

 

Sharing the mystery eggs with friends gives them the chance to hatch colorful chickens!

*hmmm why does this remind me of those colored chicks that they sell on town fiestas?

Friday the 13th

It's Friday the 13th today.  The third Friday the thirteenth for this year, the first two were on February and March.

Superstition says that this is a day of either good or bad luck.  I really hope it's not a bad one for me =P

THE LAWS OF HERMAN by Irving P. Herman

A guide for the perplexed graduate student doing research.

1. Your vacation begins after you defend your thesis.
2. In research, what matters is what is right, and not who is right.
3. In research and other matters, your adviser is always right, most of the time.
4. Act as if your adviser is always right, almost all the time.
5. If you think you are right and you are able to convince your adviser, your adviser will be very happy.
6. Your productivity varies as (effective productive time spent per day)^1,000.
7. Your productivity also varies as 1/(your delay in analysing acquired data)^1,000.
8. Take data today as if you know that your equipment will break tomorrow.
9. If you would be unhappy to lose your data, make a permanent back-up copy of them within five minutes of acquiring them.
10. Your adviser expects your productivity to be low initially and then to be above threshold after a year or so.
11. You must become a bigger expert in your thesis area than your adviser.
12. When you cooperate, your adviser’s blood pressure will go down a bit.
13. When you don’t cooperate, your adviser’s blood pressure either goes up a bit or it goes down to zero.
14. Usually, only when you can publish your results are they good enough to be part of your thesis.
15. The higher the quality, first, and quantity, second, of your publishable work, the better your thesis.
16. Remember, it’s your thesis. You (!) need to do it.
17. Your adviser wants you to become famous, so that he/she can finally become famous.
18. Your adviser wants to write the best letter of recommendation for you that is possible.
19. Whatever is best for you is best for your adviser.
20. Whatever is best for your adviser is best for you.

Anxiety Attacks

from stress-waived

anxiety is ok as long as a 'real' threat is present since adrenaline is used up by fleeing or fighting the threat... but when no real threat is present, anxiety is bad news. the adrenaline is not used up and so the body experiences and maintains a higher level of symptoms which excalate into an attack. the symptoms may include:

Pounding heart or chest pains
Sweating
Stomach upset or dizziness
Frequent urination or diarrhea
Shortness of breath or hyperventilation
Hot flashes or chills
  Tremors and twitches, pins and needles sensation on limbs
Muscle tension
Headaches
Feelings of detachment
and a lot others

Add to the mix are strange and depressing thoughts and feelings of despair.

A terrible disease to have.  *scared

New Look - Disqus Gone - Waaah!!!

As you all noticed (my avid stalkers, atleast... hehe) I changed the appearance of my blog.

Almost all elements are back in place, however, I'm having difficulty in reinstating my Disqus comments system!  I tried this.  Still no luck!

I want my Disqus back!!!
 

Wahhhhh!!!! 

update:  I am putting the Discuss comments box as a separate element at the bottom of this page. help!  huhuhu ='((

Love, lust, attachment

Here are the chemicals responsible for the feelings we have when we fall:

Love - adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin

Lust - estrogen, testosterone

Attachment - oxytocin, vasopressine

As I once told a friend:  "It's all in the mind!"

FarmVille Thanks Giving-Themed Items

FarmVille has launched another set of limited-edition items.  The theme now is  Thanks Giving.  These items are available either through the FarmVille Market or via gifting:

 I decorated my front lawn with Yellow Maple, Maple leaves, a Harvest Table... 

I even bought a baby turkey!   

 

I hope he'll be big enough by Thanks Giving... If not, well, there's always ButterBall at Rustan's.  

Sign of Aging?

I am anemic.  At a young age, I remember being taken to the hospital by my parents because I feel dizzy all the time.  I can still feel m first pin prick so the nurse can obtain a sample of my blood.  A few tests and the doctor said I've got anemia.  I was given four different types of medicine to improve my condition.  I think I was in grade four back then. 

As I grow old, I've grown used to being pale and dizzy.  I've also gotten used to doctors prescribing Iron supplements to me even though I didn't consult with them about my being pale in the first place.  I've grown used to having big bruises on my arms whenever samples of blood are drawn from me.  I've learned to take care not to bump myself on hard objects so I won't get bruised, especially after menstruating. 

Recently, however, I noticed that I don't get pale anymore although I barely have six hours of sleep every night (notice the post times of most of my blogs).  I can't easily sleep lately again, although I don't wake up that easily now when I finally do.  The eye bags are still here though plus the ugly skin (although it has improved SIGNIFICANTLY for the past few months).  Less spots to edit in Photoshop now =P).

I read somewhere that as people grow old, they need less sleep compared to when they were younger.  Even with reduced shut eye hours, the body can still function normally.

Sign of aging?  Maybe. *haish

love you steph!

Tonight, two people told me that they love me!

Both good friends =)

I feel so loved!

Twilight Saga, in a nutshell

A friend sent an email today and it reminded me of that dreamy day I watched Twilight at the movies.  I watched it with a friend at Trinoma when it was shown early this year...  My friend purchased tickets for Laz-y-boy seats (big spender, I know.  It was a treat, so who am I to take the offer down??? =P).  The air at the cinema was excited, it was THE vampire movie of the year afterall.  While watching the film, my friend and I really got the time of our lives.  It was one of the MOST Cheesy vampire flicks I've ever watched in my entire life!  We were taking notes on the cheesy lines exchanged by Bella and Edward as the film played.  Nyahahahahaha

So without further adieu, here is the Twilight Saga, in a nutshell:

Space Solar Power System

The Japanese has yet again proven their prowess in terms of technology.

image from Wikipedia

In their efforts to provide clean, inexhaustible and cheap energy, the Japanese are planning to launch solar panels in space, where solar energy is five times stronger than what we experience here on earth.  The technology, called Space Solar Power System (SSPS), is a project of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).  It would use solar panels to capture solar energy in space.  Harvesting solar energy in space is not really an old technology.  Most spacecrafts have been relying on solar energy for their power needs.  But the SSPS will go a little bit further by beaming the harvested energy back to earth through lasers and microwaves through special parabolic antennas.

The project has been ongoing for 20 years and this year, the dream is one step closer to reality.  Several Japanese high-tech giants have been invited to participate in the project.  The satellite will be launched in 2030 but two test launches will be done in 2020 wherein the power capacities of the test photovoltaic structure will be 10 MW and 250 MW.

Bedside Loot

I met with a friend at Greenbelt Powerbooks after office today to go to a possible part-time business thing.

I picked this one on our way out the shop (shoplifting? nah, i paid for it at 10% discount.  Friend's got a Powercard. =P)

 New addition to the bedside table loot!

Random Mystery Photo for the Day - Adendum

The Random Mystery Photo for this Day was forwarded to me by a friend... It is a photo posted on facebook.  I looked at the comments and found the word "Balawis".

Curiosity hit me... I didn't know what the word "Balawis" means.  So I searched via ever reliable Google Search.  Guess what Google had in store for me?

Click here! =D

Random Mystery Photo for the Day

And for our Random Photo of the Day

Click here!

I WANT

this

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes (Calvin & Hobbes) (v. 1, 2, 3)

by Bill Watterson

and these:

 

Piled Higher and Deeper: A Graduate Student Comic Strip Collection

 Life is tough and then you graduate: The second Piled Higher and Deeper Comic Strip Collection

 

Scooped! The Third Piled Higher and Deeper Comic Strip Collection

Academic Stimulus Package (Piled Higher & Deeper) 

Piled Higher and Deeper Books 1-4

by Jorge Cham

any kind soul out there? =D