Category: Rants
Last night, I made my usual Sunday night grocery where I usually buy some items that I stock for consumption in the office for the coming week. These consist of fruits, milk, or whatever I deem “healthy” without sacrificing taste and satisfaction eating them. One of the foods I consider “healthy” is a can of tuna flakes in oil which I eat for lunch (sometimes but not all the times) mixed with a cup of rice.
Of course, to prepare this, I need a can opener which I don’t have but I have colleagues that own one and I borrow it from them. On situations when I feel like eating tuna and they left early for lunch, either I’ll wait for them or get another lunch instead. To skip the instances waiting for them, I planned to get myself my own can opener. When I reached the “Kitchen” area in SM Hypermarket, I was surprised to see that there’s a “discount” on regular items. The average consumer would read and understand the display (as shown above) – 20% off the tag price on regular items. Did it mention selected items? No, so the average Juan or Maria will assume everything considered as “Home” items are on sale as long as it is regular priced. Prior placing the item in my shopping basket, I reconfirmed to one of the store guys if the item is included and as he read the same display, he mentioned “Opo sir. Wala namang nakalagay na selected items kaya kasama po yan”. (Yes sir. There’s none indicated that the sale is for selected items only so it is included). To be safe, I took a picture of the ad with my mobile phone as “proof” that the item that I got is on sale.
Luckily, a schoolmate of mine (though of a younger batch), who works for Friendster Philippines has posted in our internal Yahoo Groups the official statement of Friendster regarding the “missing” friends issue (and the other issues related with it):
There have been text messages going around in PH, saying that there was a virus that wiped out the accounts in our database, and thus causing people’s friends to be lost.
To help address our users’ concerns, here are some FAQs:
1) What happened to my friends?
- Currently, the number of friends in the friends list is being displayed incorrectly.
2) Are my friends lost permanently?
- No. The data for all friend connections is intact and is not lost.
3) When can this be fixed?
- Friendster is currently working on this problem and we hope to have this fixed within 24 hours.
4) Can I still add friends while the problem has not yet been fixed?
- Yes, users can still add new friends and use other features of the site.
5) What caused this problem?
- Friendster’s data center lost power, and as a result, the memory caching of data was affected. Since Friendster has 85M users, the cache is taking a considerable amount of time to build. Once the cache has been completely built, all friends will re-appear.
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<Name Withheld>
Performance Engineer
Friendster Inc.
So there it goes. Hope it will get fixed soon. Nope, I haven’t checked my Friendster yet – I’m still working my arse off in the office. 😛 Eventhough, even if my “list” isn’t rebuilt yet, I already know at least 1 contact who was “lost” and unfortunately, she’s not just a contact but my first degree cousin. 😦
Friendster had a suuuppperrrr loooonnggggg “Scheduled Maintenance” which ended last night. Unfortunately, the promise of providing “better” service was more of marketing spiel/euphemism of something that didn’t look good.
Not that I am addicted to social networking sites but I primarily have a Friendster account open only to my contacts – those people that I really know and not just about someone who would like to hook up and pose as “friends”. I used to have 506 friends but I “lost” 22 of them making my current friends counter to 484. I also hear other my other contacts saying that some of their friends’ profiles went private even if the profile should be visible to them.
As a web developer myself and having worked on large traffic site (that is maintaining the Philippine Entertainment Portal), before, having a downtime longer than an hour has a large impact on the audience especially on the visitor’s impression on how the site lives up to their primary function.
Oh well, Friendster do really get screwed big time. I’m irked but is there something that I can do to revert the situation? Nah. Bad, bad, bad Friendster.
During my previous trip to Hong Kong, my lens malfunctioned and the camera displays an Error 99. According to various sources in the internet, an Error 99 is a generic error displayed when the real problem isn’t identified by the body. Furthermore, local photography forums tell that Error 99 could be an error between the contacts of the lens and of the body.
Prior my trip, I had 2 of my lenses and my 400D cleaned by Canon since I want to take advantage of the free cleaning while my lenses are still under warranty. I was able to get my items in less than 2 weeks thinking the things would be good to go. However, things didn’t go well as expected as when I was in Ocean Park, I continuously get this frikkin Error 99 and I thought that this is just a battery problem. Upon reaching back in the Philippines, I opened an extra original Canon battery for my 400D to test if the problem would go away but to my dismay, it persisted.
I had my unit returned to the service center where I have it cleaned and reported back the error that it gives me. I explained to them the problem that I am experiencing and I asked them for an explanation for the status indicated in the report that they have given me (for the 2 lenses) but their explanation isn’t acceptable. While they accepted my unit again for check-up, I followed-up my unit days after, and the status of my lens was they are still waiting for the delivery of the part needed to be replaced.
BuLOnG 