CD-R King, the hardware version of the internet

CD-R King is the hardware version of what the internet is, to the internet believers..

In relation to an earlier post about people treating the internet as a treasure-trove of all that is factual, I have met people who will actually swear by the invention or non-invention of something depending on whether they have actually seen the product in the shelves of CD-R King. actually, even I have occasionally fallen into that mold. a recent case in point. Somebody told me that there already is a 16G flash drive now. Scanning my head for my last CD-R King visit, I validated his statement. "Pero di pa tinitinda sa Pilipinas" because it still wasn't on their store shelves. hahaha.

People, myself included, may fall into this maxim. "if we do not see it being sold in CD-R King, then it has not yet been manufactured!" hahaha. personal benchmarking. a very significant pitfall from a consumer marketing point of view.

But now that we are in the thick of discussions on CD-R King, let me just say for the record that I have found most of my cheap and useless electronic clutter from that store. You know, the USB Lans, USB cellphone data cables, USB bluetooth dongles, USB soda drink coolers (yes!!!), USB coffee mug warmers, PCI this and PCI that, as well as a host of USEFULL and (dirt)CHEAP stuff I normally would not have been able to buy at the god-awful prices of those other electronics consumables stores. Let me run them by you. a Kingston 1G USB flash drive then selling at P500 just 6 months after I got mine for P4,350. (now, a 1G kingston sells for P250!) USB wifi dongles at P580 versus P1,880 at another store. LAN WIFI Routers at P1,400. Philips Litescribe DVD-R discs at P25. cellphone LCD protectors at P60. laptop LCD protectors at P250.

Oh, one other thing. Bluetooth stereo receiver headphones integrated into a pair of sunglasses for just over a thousand bucks... but then the sunglasses resemble a style I call "the Terminator Look..."

and they have finally put the 16G Compact Flash drive on their shelves for a ridiculously low price of P3,380. you wouldn't believe that we paid over 15k for our very first 1G CF microdrive...

if it's not on the internet...

Ever bump into one of those shmucks who won't believe that something is for real unless they read in on the internet?? Ever since grade school my favorite pastime was reading about the biggest this, the fattest that, and the longest freaks of the animal world. way back then, the only resource I could tap for such materials was the school library. I would read all the different publications that I could get my hands on. And there was one particular book that was the ultimate authority, on print, on such subjects: the guinness book of world records. of course, I knew about it's ommissions as well, printing only what people have taken the time to report to them that they have personally verified; but I am already digressing outside my chosen topic. so, while going through it's pages, I learned about pythons, anacondas and some other monstrosities found in the deep recesses of jungles. The capybara, an 80lb. cousin of the rat, is one of the bigger meals of anacondas while pythons, who choose to live mostly at the fringes of human settlements, more often prefer chickens and the occasional dog. With the fast-diminishing rain forest, encounters between snakes and humans in the wild, although not an everyday occurence, still happen. And if it were a single human and a single large snake in the snake's territory, the snake usually will be the winning party. Now fasttrack into the internet age. I received a link sometime ago regarding a picture of a python with a huge bulge in it's body; when it was captured, the python was split open and it revealed a newly ingested human. now, the post had another link to a message board of a european car club in the Philippines, and that was what blew me away. they were arguing on how unbelievable the photographs were, and in such a rabid manner that you knew they weren't rocket scientists! among the arguments they raised was that no snake could open it's mouth big enough to swallow a human, while several very strongly insisted that they already did an internet search on it and COULDN'T FIND ANYTHING, about it; therefore it had to be FALSE. No snake could possibly do that. Nothing on the internet said so. the sad thing about it was that these were the priviledged people speaking. you would really wonder whether these guys: 1) dropped out of school earlier than their older cousins, 2) never read anything other than their eurocar manuals, 3) never understood the concept of critical thinking.

But when i discussed it one time with my fraternity brother from the University of the Philippines, Ron Taccad, he said he had already noticed that it was beginning to be a characteristic of the youth; to refer to the internet as the only credible authority. He summed up the situation like this. "People today will believe something, so long as they read it on the internet. But what is scarier, is that they will NOT believe something if they cannot find it on the internet."

His statement reminded me about something Tony Te said to me about 5 years ago. he said "the sad thing about kids today is that despite having easy access to information, they have no idea about what to do with it." he adds, "today, they have all the knowledge at their fingertips, all the intelligence, BUT NONE OF THE WISDOM."

And that is so so sad.

Contemplations in Blue, 2008

Intermission. Eye fatigue is a very real problem especially in this age of the desk jockey. The normal non-stop viewing time for computer users is 120minutes before they take their eyes away from the monitor and wander somewhere else.

Here is a photograph I took as part of a series in China. Being a cool color, blue should help your eyes relax.

And if you are among the priviledged few who use an LCD monitor, then please enjoy the moment.

Eat shit for lunch. Then pizza later.

Ever felt that work was all shitty stuff? And the guys dishing it out are all higher up than you? Yeah yeah.. everyone who has had a paycheck probably felt that way some time or another. But fresh out of school, fresh out of the best school your family could afford, you certainly couldn't quite get it. You know, how those incompetent shmucks ever got to where they are right now. And you, with your freshly minted and gold-stamped diploma, can't seem to get any recognition for the three reports they asked you to type. You know the feeling. You, with all your school debating experience, and the occasional high school quiz bee appearances televised over national TV... surely you're not cut out for this clerical shit. why doesn't anyone realize that? Your boss hands over the 4th report for you to retype. If you aren't cut out for it, then quit. but I guess the best advice is this. Eat shit in the morning. Then hopefully by nightfall, you would have made enough for you to go buy yourself a pizza.

Life's a Bitch. But then you realize you still have to swim in it..

Of course, eventually everyone realizes that life is a series of curve balls. No beef with that. My beef lies when the curve balls hit you in quick succession, which is how it happens in real life.

Early on in my professional life, I had a freak accident which almost cost me my life. I hit a parked 10 wheeler truck in a dark spot towards the end of Coastal Road in Cavite. The collision totalled my car. The actual damage line was from the left front fender, the entire engine block, the windshield, and three-fourths of the entire right side. I was lucky to have hit the truck's rear wheels, which actually saved my life. If I collided a split second earlier my car would have gone underneath it, perhaps decapitating me. A split second later and those steel bars being transported would have impaled me at my chest cavity. And both types of death weren't exactly the way anybody would want to go...

I cleared my head trying to rationalize why it happened. A night later, trying to patch up a lesson from it, I decided on this maxim: "What does not kill me, makes me strong". As if the steel bars that were just three feet away from my chest would provide some sort of headstrong tonic of invincibility..

You would think that it was already good enough for a first and last curve ball. I thought so too. However, while driving up to Davao from Bukidnon three weeks later, a huge chunk of mountain fell on the road I was driving on. It was a huge landslide, easily over a hundred and fifty meters long. And i was just two cars back... we were rescued at 2am the following day..

So, what do you do when you get more than your share of life's curve balls? You call up your insurance agent and book as much life insurance as you can afford. Which was what I did, TWICE. the second one was actually more than double the value of the first. As a sad footnote, I ended up outliving my insurance agent. She took her life 3 years later due to depression. Life really is a bitch.