Chasing Daydreams

James and I finished Army of Two today. It is a co-op action game about adventures of two mercenaries or private military contractors (PMC) as they prefer to be called, across several years. During this time, they go from being idealistic green soldiers, to gung-ho PMCs, to outlaws who must clear their names.

Read more…

Notwithstanding Venus Raj’s making the top 5 in the Miss Universe pageant, we have, to borrow from our almost Miss Universe, a major major disaster for the country. Yesterday, a bemedalled cop who was dismissed from service took a bus full of HK tourists hostage. Incompetent crisis management, incompetent hostage negotiation, and an agonizingly slow-motion rescue led to a tragic conclusion: several hostages dead, numerous others injured, some critically.

Repercussions were immediate: the HK government issued a travel alert telling their citizens NOT to go to the country and for those citizens already in the country to either leave or take precautions. For sure, other countries will follow suit. And even if they don’t, a lot of travel plans are definitely going to change. That’s not good for tourism and foreign investments. The decline in stocks today can partly be attributed to this.

Every developer should have version control. It can be a simple process or a process supported by tools. One of the best version  control tools is Subversion or SVN. Here’s how to set up your own SVN server on a Linux box.

Install or update Subversion: If you’re using Red Hat-type Linux: yum install subversion or yum update subversion. If you’re using Debian-type Linux: apt-get install subversion or apt-get update subversion. Others Linux flavors should have something similar.

Create your repository: svnadmin create /svnroot

Configure access: vi /svnroot/conf/svnserve.conf. In the [general] section, add:

anon-access = none
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd

Add users: vi /svnroot/conf/passwd and add:

<username> = <password>

Start Subversion as a daemon: svnserve -d.

Open up TCP port 3690 on your Linux box’s firewall.

Connect to your SVN server with the URL svn://<server name or ip>>/svnroot

Start using your SVN server. Here are some useful tips:

1. How to structure your repository
2. How to fix bugs properly
3. How to release software properly

That’s it!

Got another good chuckle reading another Inquirer article on Ramon Ang’s offer to buy Pagcor for $10B. Last time it was the legislative boys blabbing about it, now it’s the Pagcor’s turn to chime in. Quoting Pagcor’s spokesman:

“The $10-billion (about P450 billion) proposal is a good start, but I think it’s too low. If the time is right, we could make use of different valuation methods,” he said.

With an annual gross revenue of about P30 billion, Pagcor can easily earn P690 billion when its franchise ends in 2033, a difference of some P240 billion from Ang’s proposal (taking the current dollar-peso exchange rate of P45), Santiago said.

As Conrado Banal said in his article, there’s such a thing called present value. P450 billion now is better than P690 billion in 2033 and is still better than P30 billion every year till 2033. Unless of course the government doesn’t know what to properly do with P450 billion, which is quite a possibility.

Of course if they can grow revenues then maybe it’s worth more. But still quoting Pagcor’s spokesman:

“(Ang) said he could raise Pagcor’s annual revenue to at least P35 billion. If he could do it, then why can’t we do it?” the Pagcor spokesperson said.

Here’s one reason why not: competence. Ang is rich and you can’t even figure out present value :P

I went to Happy Baker at PBCom to buy something to eat for breakfast. Among the shelves, I saw P8 regular pan de sal and P8 cheese pan de sal. I decided to get the cheese pan de sal and gave the shopkeeper P10. I waited for my change but it didn’t seem forthcoming so I asked how much the cheese pan de sal is. And she said it’s P10. I said that’s not what it said on the shelf labels. She claimed the P8 cheese pan de sal is powdered cheese pan de sal and the other cheese pan de sal is P10. So I asked for the P8 cheese pan de sal and she gave me regular pan de sal. What a bunch of crap! She could have just said they mislabeled and the cheese pan de sal is really P10. I’m not buying from that place again.

UPDATE: I passed by today and it still says P8 regular pan de sal and P8 cheese pan de sal.

Shell is giving away P100 worth of fuel for every P1500 or more worth of fuel paid with Citibank credit card. That’s essentially a 6.67% rebate. Better than Citibank Shell credit card’s regular rebate of 5%. Until your fuel up goes over P2000, of course. It’s just a little over 2 liters at today’s prices. But hey, every drop counts!

Got a good chuckle reading the Inquirer article about what our lawmakers think of Ramon Ang’s offer to buy Pagcor for $10B. Specifically this one:

“Sen. Edgardo Angara is also backing Ang’s proposal as long as the government continues to get its share of Pagcor’s annual gross revenues, which last year reached P29 billion.”

Damn! The government gets $10B, its share of the revenues, and its tax collections!

And also this one also from the same article:

“Sen. Miguel Zubiri said that the government’s take from the casino operations could come in the form of franchise fees. “It’s a huge amount of money without the headaches and the charges of corruption,” said Zubiri.

Annual revenues of P29 billion doesn’t look nearly enough to justify a $10B valuation and probably already includes revenues from the lucrative franchising operation that is part of what Ang wants to buy!

This morning, as Michelle and I were driving off to work.

Here‘s a unique take on Inception relating it to personal finance. Who would have thought? But then the guy is a financial planner. The article is good and is a must read. Allow me to highlight a few statements that really caught my eye:

“…many are also trapped in the world of escapism and succumb to living a life of fantasy they can hardly afford.”

“The average Pinoy changes his cell phone every eight to 12 months; expensive coffee shops are mushrooming all over the metropolis; malls are sardine-packed with people, etc.”

“…the level of savings of Pinoys is well below that of many of our neighbors; consumer debt is rising in an alarming rate; we are not preparing for retirement; the number of people with financial investments or insurance remains to be one of the lowest in Asia—in short, the average Pinoy is not prepared for the future.”

“We need to wake up to our reality that we are responsible for the actions we take in personal finance and in life in general—and that’s the reality! There is no secret to achieving financial freedom and there is no shortcut—it is a process, and we build it little by little by the actions we take. There’s no substitute to industriousness, prudence and discipline. To believe otherwise is foolish.”

Ouch! I feel guilty already :D