How I am caught up in an American sporting event

Before we arrived here in Seattle, I wasn't even aware of the Seattle Seahawks, well maybe I have heard the name before, but I had no idea who were playing on the team - just like almost all the residents of Seattle.

The Seahawks started the season with an unremarkable 2-2 record, and most people dismissed the team's chances again, like the past 30 years. But somehow, by talent, luck or a mix of both - they began winning and people started noticing. Qwest Field was full of people again, and it was named as the NFL's loudest field, contributing to a league best 20-something false starts by the opponent.

Now, I am caught up in the middle of all this frenzy. Never has a Seattle pro team won a championship since the 70's when the Supersonics were good. Not only do I know the players by name (first and last, I might add) but I can recognize them if ever I saw them walking along Pike Place or Pioneer Square.

I know I'm new here and I know I haven't experienced and can't relate to the failures of the team and the fans before but I am definitely a fan now.

I do hope they win. It would definitely put some much needed sunshine on this rainy city.

Seahawks win! Seahawks win!!!

Whoa! I never thought I would be this excited over football. But the Seahawks are good, real good! I have been watching every game since Week 7 where they defeated the Dallas Cowboys on a come from behind win. And now they are going to the Superbowl!!!

Can't wait for another 10 days for the Superbowl! I hope they win, I hope they win... Seattle really needs a winning team. The Supersonics are crap!

I just realized that it has been ten years since I graduated high school.

How time flies.

Ten years ago, if you told me that I will be married and be a father in ten years time, I would laugh at your face and tell you that you're out of your mind. Ten years ago, there was nothing more I wanted more to be than a successful, career-oriented person. I would probably own a startup company and earning seven figures annually. Marriage and settling down would be the farthest thing in my mind. Live free! would be my battlecry.

Four years of college and 5 years in the corporate world later, I am a stay-at-home (would-be) dad in an apartment in suburban Washington.

If I had the chance to change anything in the past ten years, I wouldn't. Life have been very good to me.

Don't believe technicians at retail stores - they're just salesmen

I've tried to connect my PC's soundcard to my Yamaha A/V receiver before and I kept getting this irritating humming sound in the background. So instead of trying to fix it, I just got my computer a basic Logitech 2.1 speaker system. Through the sound that comes from the speakers were fine for basic internet telephony or system sounds, I find it lacking for music and games.

One of the reasons I bought a Yamaha receiver and JBL 7.1 Surround Speakers was to enjoy music, thus it really bummed me out to find out that I can't get rid of the humming. At first I thought the problem was with the cables I used (I used a basic minijack to RCA cables) but when I tried plugging the cable to the iPod, it didn't belch out the hums, just the tunes.

I thought of many ways that I can bring the music from the computer to the A/V receiver like getting a D-link Medialounge or Buffalo Tech's Linktheater. (PC World gave Buffalo Tech Linktheater the thumbs up between the two.) But the thought of spending more than 200 bucks for this is kind of daunting.

When I went to Circuit City early this afternoon, the guy who assisted me said that the problem is my soundcard (I have a Creative Soundblaster Live! 24-bit). He said that the technology used in that particular soundcard is more than a decade old, etchetera, etchetera. He told me to get the Creative Audigy soundcard (which would have costed me $199.99).

Stupid tech person.

When I got home, I fired up Mozilla and googled "sound card humming receiver" then the solution came up. The problem was not with either the soundcard nor the cable nor the A/V receiver but a thing called earth loop. Earth loop happens mostly when you connect a myriad of components to the receiver with different grounding. To make a long story short, I disconnected all the components from the receiver and just left the PC connection - and surprise! No humming! Then, I connected the DVD player and the cable box. It is when I connected the cable box that the humming returned. Thus, I have isolated the problem.

For more information about earth loop and humming, visit http://www.jaycar.com.au/images_uploaded/humloop.pdf.

Now, I just have to buy a $16 cable earth loop isolator (from eBay) to fix the problem. Saved me a couple of hundred bucks! :)

This past weekend was perfect.

For the first time in 28 days, the sun briefly came out and ended the second longest raining streak here in the area. Believe it or not, the last time the sun shined through the clouds here was in mid-December.

KC and I took advantage of the sun by going out and went to Poulsbo and Bainbridge Island and looked around the neighborhoods. We also tried our luck in a casino and I won $16! :P Not bad for a few minutes of work (and a $4 startup).

Well, I guess we are starting another long wet period as it is raining since we woke up this morning and is forecasted to stay that way for a while.

Last weekend also broke another streak - the Seahawks finally won a playoff game after 21 years! Seattle was in a frenzy Saturday after the Seahawks beat the Redskins to set up the first ever NFC Championship in the city next Sunday. I tried my luck on getting tickets for the game online, which went on sale 10am this morning, and after refreshing the browser for five minutes, I finally connected to the Ticketmaster site only to find out that the tickets were all sold out - in less than 5 minutes!!!

The good thing about that is that I can watch the game at the comfort of our home in all its HDTV glory - on my birthday!

MJTan.com is now up and working. There's nothing much in there now contentwise but I hope to move everything there including this blog in the near future.

Phone Home 2

Found a device that could actually work. It is made by a Chinese company that uses Skype as a gateway to relay your call via a normal phone line connected to the box. It's actually cool how somebody thought of making something like this.

Here's how it works. You connect the device "between" your computer and the phone line. The box has 3 connectors - USB (to connect to your PC), line out to connect to your phone and the last is to connect to your phone line. User in another country can call up user with Skype box in Manila or whereever the box is and after a few unanswered rings in Skype, call is forwarded to a number of the caller's choice via a simple numeric code. Call is from the local phone connected to the box which makes all calls to Manila free!

In theory, the voice quality should be the same as a Skype to Skype call - which is outstanding if both users are using broadband. Box is being sold in eBay for about 50 bucks plus 15 shipping. My brother informed me that a similar box is being sold in Manila for about P4500.

Phone Home

I've been scouring the net for more than a month now on how I can call up friends and family in Manila from here in Washington without having to shell out at least 0.18 cents a minute per call. Phone cards don't work as well as advertised as they charge a connection fee everytime you call and thus end up using a $5 phone card for just under 20 minutes.

We subscribed to Vonage and loving how VoIP works. The concept is that they give you a phone number not tied to the locality where you live which means that you can have a number with a New York area code and use your phone anywhere in the world with broadband internet access.

Now, this is where I got the idea that if there is a Philippine-based provider that offers the same kind of service, I can just order the phone adapter and have somebody bring that when they come here, thus, I can have a working Philippine-based VoIP phone with a Manila virtual number and eliminate the need for us to spend a lot of money on long distance calls to the Philippines - and our friends can actually call us and not having to spend a fortune just to say "Hello". That was the plan... and that is where it became apparent - Philippine telcos are the most idiotic and selfish sonsofbitches in the world (well, next to music companies, anyway)!

Bayantel offers VoIP service that actually cuts long distance rates from Manila to the US from the traditional 0.40 US cents a minute to 0.10 cents a minute. That works! But imagine, if you can bring that Bayantel phone adapter and connect it to your broadband internet access in any part of the world and be able to call Manila-based landlines for free, or even mobile phones for P6.50 a minute! (aside from the monthly flat rate of about P400).

I guess a lot of people had the same idea. I read forums after forums of overseas Filipinos also looking for a cheaper way to call the Philippines and failed. Bayantel blocks non Philippine registered IP addresses from accessing its VoIP servers which means that their VoIP boxes would not work outside the Philippines. Assholes!@

This is one of the reasons why most overseas Filipinos just lose touch with friends in the Philippines and are not aware of stuff happening in their homeland - it's because of the selfishness of the Filipinos themselves. Rather than help out OFWs or OCWs or whatever you call them, who by the way contributes hell of a lot to the corruption of the government officials back home, they try to milk as much money out of them as possible. (Cases in point - this and the outrageous taxi fares from NAIA, nowhere else in the world does the airport have the monopoly on how you can get home.)