Lesson learned the hard way...

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE, READ THE MANUAL!!!!!


I am not really a techie person. But I admit, I'm into gadgets, that RSS and a couple of his friends claim that I am in fact a "biktima ng teknolohiya".

Except with mobile phone units, I usually ask advice and help from RSS, my bros, or friends when I encounter problems with any gadget (camera, laptop, pda, etc.). Because I am so ignorant when it comes to these things.

On Sunday, I planned on adding more songs and a couple of movies to my Zen. Impatient that I've always been, I easily got irritated when my transfer would literally hang and make me wait. So I would disconnect the USB, remove the battery, and wait. And everytime I would turn it on, it goes directly to "recovery mode". I did this about three times and I was really frustrated in the end. I tried to "scan disk", and to "reboot", even stopped myself from choosing "format disk" coz I knew I would loose my files by doing so. But there was one option that's been picking on my curiosity -- it said "reload firmware".

What I was thinking for choosing that "reload firmware" option is out of my grasp at the moment, but I did just that! I even chose "yes" when it asked for confirmation. I then run the CD that went with it and found nothing. NOTHING!!!! And I started to panic. Really Panic, mind you.

And upon reading the Manual, I realized that I should have downloaded first the Firmware update from their website even before I resorted to such drastic measure. That reminder was even a word of caution! Gosh!!! Naman naman!!!

The other night, RSS helped me with the downloading of the firmware (see, I'm really not into troubleshooting talaga). We were able to save it, but when we tried running the .exe file...it won't run!!! Something about the .exe file not being a valid win32 application. Sadly, RSS was not able to solve my problem. We had to give up since it was already midnight.

Until today, my Zen is considered to be on a coma. If there's any one good soul willing to help and knows the solution, please, do help me revive my helpless baby. :(

Singing Joaquin

This cutie cute cute nephew of mine never fails to make me smile. Even just looking at pictures of him. There will be lots of layouts of Joaquin that I'm planning to do...simply because he has a lot of expressive shots like this. :)

Credits -- Joaquin's pic by jmcp, papers by jade of scrapbook-bytes from gentleman's study kit, fonts - algerian and pristina

Chelsey

The picture was taken during Chelsey's 1st birthday party. Chelsey's parents are friends of Ane. I so like her eyes. I call them anime eyes. Ane calls them matang singkit na dilat. Ehehehe...I had fun doing this layout. I've applied some tecniques I recently learned. I'm happy with it but I'm sure I could have done better. :)

By the way, this is my very first attempt at 12x12 layout. Before this, I would use 4x6 and smaller. Wala lang nasabi ko lang. :)

Credits -- Picture from dep's cam, Sweet Chloe kit by mrs. schmuck of younique; fonts -- porcelain and basic font.

Quite productive

For the past few days, I've been sitting in front of the laptop reading. And actually learning! I've been surfing and searching for some techniques used in both Photoshop CS2 and Paint Shop Pro X (Thanks also for the tutorial from DEP). I realized that my learning threshold is still high but my attention span remains like that of a five-year-old, hehehe. At least I am learning. Teeehhheeee. I'm focused on digital layouting, moreso, on designing kits. I so wanna be a designer (since I'm too stingy to buy kits, I only use freebies I get in the net). I realized also that the possibilities are endless. So far I have only designed these papers:

and these ribbons (scalloped and grossgrain, respectively):

And on editing pictures (I had to learn to 'clean-up' old pictures that I scanned), I learned that from this:

I can end up with something like this (I really hope you can see the slight difference!):

So there. And aside from making my eyes hurt from too much looking at the monitor and not getting enough sleep, I was also able to prepare some tarts (13 containers!). I 'copied' 4xForce's recipe of their mango tart...just by remembering how it tasted (I had that for dessert last saturday). The tart is actually just some ref cake, packed in individual containers. I experimented further by using, aside from ripe mangoes, peaches and blueberries. My LBB loved both mango and blueberry (didn't try the peach), while Ane and FIL2B 'fought' over the one container of peach variant that I sent them. Hehe, cute. :)

Anyway, if there's one thing I'm guilty about for being that productive, it is not attending church lenten activities as actively as I have in the past years. But that's another story.

This is where I will be...

Okay. I'm back. And I decided to "maintain" just one blog (aside from the wedding blog, of course, which I have neglected as well. I promise myself though to update...soon!).

This is where I may be found from now on...whatever...whenever.

In short, halo-halo at labo-labo na dito...digiscraps, rants or raves, stories, pictures, etc. etc.

I haven't worked on the template yet. I guess I'm not so over pink and green yet...heheh...

I'm glad to be home.