For people who wants to see Grace Lee (and Andi9) in person,  try checking out the Karl Edward bazaar in the Fort.    She has a booth there together with Andi.   Grace is actually selling a korean fashion  jewelry line and my wife bought 2 pairs of earrings.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Andi there.  Probably next week 
The jewelry pieces were quite nice if you ask me but she’s also nice…hehehe.

For the boys only: “She’s pretty compared to her photos on the net.”   Get a chance to see the tw**s as  popularized by Mo.  (I’ve your a listener of their morning show, you know what it is..)

I got this email today.   I don’t normally read such fraud/scam related spam mails but I find this interesting as it involes the Philippines.

Here’s it is………..

From:Miss Osh Diaz.
Confinement house.
Manilla,Phillipine.
email: ms_osh_diaz01@yahoo.fr

WITH TRUST AND CONFIDENCE.
Hi Dear

I am very sorry to had infringe into your privacy without permission but please with all humility i solicit your attention to hear me out.I am Miss Osh Diaz, a filippino by nationality, and a Yong Girl who has suffered so much for offence i never committed.

Honestly I would love to have a long lasting relationship with you ,if possible entrusting my life time fortune into your possession,as now I am broken hearted and needs someone to trust and to really confide on, without remembering my past and forsaken experiences from my close confidants and family.

I am really in need of someone, who would take me for whom I am and as a life time partner, after making claims of my deposited life fortuned in Abroad. Well, from your profile, I believe in my heart that you ought to be a very honest person.I would like to give you a brief description of my life autobiograph I was once the mistress of our President, Joseph Estrada, and during his tenure in office, I was often used as a courier in depositing his(the president) funds, in the Europe,and Africa because of my honesty but his wife Madam Loi and her son-Jude, accused me of having secret affair with the president ,this led to fabrication of all kind of allegation against just to disrepute my honestly earned fame .

But, not quite long, I was arrested, together with his wife and son, in connection with the 27th July, 2003, failed coup for working in the household of the ex-president Joseph Estrada .Although i was later granted bailed as there was no substantial evidence against me , now I have been released but under security watch within state confinement with limited opportunity to reach the outside world to prove my innocence.

All, I want from you is to assist me make claims of some funds, I did deposited in metallic truck box in security company in Coted Ivoire-a remote states in Africa. Every other deposit have been confiscated and seized by the the government of Madam Gloria the President of republic of philippine .But, this one is the only one they could not see, as I did kept the deposit certicate and deposit agreement with one of my close confidant.

The Amount being deposited is 11 Million United states dollars,as this was the money that was supposed to be used by the President to acquire some properties in Africa. All, I want from you, now is honesty and sincerity, as soon as this money is claimed by you, I will look for a way out and sneaked out of Abidjan and travel down to meet you in your country , the shipment cost and demurrage has being taken care of as at the time of deposit.I would like us to go investment partnership together,in investing this money in your country and anywhere else you prefer.

I will send you my Photo, and the deposit certificate and authoritative agreement which i am prepared to forward to you with more hint on how to reach the security company to retrieve and request the shipment of the metallic box containing fund on my behalf to your country while i join you at convenient time for joint investment if you desire.In addition to this i promise to give you an instant reward out of the total sum for your kind and sincere assistance.

Please reply this email with your full correspondence informations to enable me proceed fast.

Sincerely,

Miss Osh Diaz.
ms_osh_diaz01@yahoo.fr

So, it seems like these 419 scammers are using the Philippines for their crimes. This should be in the 419eater’s trophy room

I was doing some SEO research on sites that use the search key as part of their site.  To do this, the website needs to find out who the referrer was, and if it was google or yahoo, the web application needs to parse the query string and use this on the website.

Some web owners use the query string in their  title tags, and some use it also as a parameter.

For example, if I’m looking for shoes, I go to google and type “shoes”.  If I see your website and I click on it, your site can detect (if you know how to program it) that I came from google and I used “shoes” as my search key.  You can then pass this variable to your content so you can have things like

Product Catalog for $searchkey which will translate to  “Product Catalog for Shoes”  in my case above.

So I found one site doing this and tried playing with it and this is what I found…(this is so funny)

I found this accidentally as I was searching for “women” but I typed “wemen” instead.  The first one I saw was “naked wemen Manufacturer”.  So I thought,  could it be that they’re using the “searchkey” trick.   So I tried querying “naked woman” and I found these 2 entries above in google.

Just imagine…

Product Catalog for naked woman?

Trade Leads for naked woman?   (ROTLF)

Oh by the way,  they also manufacture “puke”  (as in vomit)

I’m pretty sure I can find more hilarious ones.

I just went to BFAD’s website and found this list of products found Negative for Melamine and 2 products which are positive for Melamine.

Milk and Milk Products Found Negative for Melamine
(as of 03 October 2008)

1. Anchor Lite Milk
2. Anlene High Calcium Low Fat Milk U.H.T (recombined)
3. Bear Brand Instant
4. Chikchok Milk Chocolate
5. Farmland Skim Milk
6. Jinwei Drink
7. Jollycow Pure Fresh Milk
8. Kiddie Soya Milk Egg Delight
9. Lactogen 1 DHA Infant Formula
10. M&M’s Milk Chocolate Candies
11. M&M’s Peanut Chocolate Candies
12. Milk Boy
13. Nestogen 2 DHA Infant Follow-up Formula
14. Nestogen 3 DHA Infant Follow-up Formula
15. Nido 3+ Prebio with DHA
16. Nido Full Cream Milk Powder
17. Nido Junior
18. No-Sugar Chocolate of Isomaltooligosaccharide (Cocoa Butter Substitute)
19. Nutri-Express Milk
20. Pura UHT Fresh Milk
21. Snickers Fresh Roasted in Caramel & Soft Nougat in Thick Milk Chocolate
22. Vitasoy Soya Bean Milk
23. Wahaha Orange
24. Wahaha Yellow
25. Want Want Milk Drink (Red Can)
26. Windmill Skim Milk Powder
27. Yinlu Milk Peanut
28. Yogee Yogurt Flavor Milk Drink

Milk and Milk Products Found Positive for Melamine
(as of 03 October 2008)

1. GreenFood Yili Fresh Milk (in chinese character)
2. Mengniu Drink (in chinese character)

I’m still waiting for the results of other brands to check my daughter’s milk brand.

[soure :bfad advisory ]

I’ve you’re into joomla,  you might have noticed that there’s always this “Welcome to Frontpage” message on your Jommla’s frontage.  We’ll here’s how you can disable it.

Go to “Menus” > “Main Menu” > Home.   Then on the right side, you will see a similar parameter settings column just like below.

Set the “Show Page Title” to “NO”, and then change the “Page Title” to whatever you want.  This “page title” will be the text that will be used on your front page’s  title tag.  If you are familiar with HTML is it this —->   < TITLE > page title here < /TITLE > .

Earthquake Details

[via usgs.gov ]

I found this story at nola.com. It’s quite interesting as some lawmakers are studying a plan to stop poverty by sterilization.

Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

Do you think people here in the Philippines would welcome such an idea?  I would think this would be a big issue here since the Philippines is a Catholic Country and artificial birth control is already a big issue between the Church and the government.   However, some might believe that parents that can not provide their children with basic necessities such as food, shelter, clothing, and education is committing a more bigger sin.

If you pass by some poor areas in our cities, you would very well know that most of those areas have hundreds of children ages 0 to 12.   In spite of the fact that they already know that they cannot support a family, they still go and give birth to a couple more kids.

I think poor people would agree even for a couple of thousand pesos (ie PHP2000-PHP4000) just to have their fallopian tubes tied.

I don’t say I agree or disagree if such plan takes place in our country.  But  I know this will be very controversial.
So what’s your take on this?

I wrote before that Paypal has already a facility to withdraw funds to a local bank account.   I used to withdraw funds to my HSBC credit card account as I usually use my credit card on almost anything (Sayang ang Miles/Points).   However, I noticed that each time I withdraw funds to my credit card,  my bonus points decrease.

Paypal withdrawal to HSBC’s credit card functions like a Credit Memo to the account.  Credit memo is seen as a credit transaction and such transaction negates my spending for that month and therefore, I don’t get credited for the points I should have earned from my purchases.

I therefore have no choice but to try the other route which is from paypal directly to my bank account.   I have some reservations about doing this as I know that if somebody hacks your paypal account, they can ultimately withdraw funds from your bank account by funding your paypal account from your bank account, then from there,  send money to their own paypal accounts.

I’ve also heard stories that paypal itself initiated funding of  their paypal account thru their respective bank accounts in case they need to “reverse” transactions.   I think paypal does this to protect buyers and sellers in case there are fraudulent transactions,  however,  some buyers from ebay dispute some transactions saying they didn’t receive any product even if they did.

To minimize such headaches,  I logged in to my trusty old HSBC internet banking account and just open up a new savings account.   I was able to setup a new savings account in just a minute or two.    Yup, no need to go to a branch unlike other banks where you still need to be physically on site if you want to open another account.

Once I opened my new savings account,  I use this new account to link to my paypal account.  Then I just maintain a balance of about PHP1k on this account.   This means, whatever happens, the only money I can potentially lose is the money already in my paypal account, and the PHP1k I left on the new savings account.

So that’s a tip for paypal users.   Use a bank account that doesn’t have a lot of money in it.  Don’t use your main bank account where you keep your savings.  It’s not a good practice.  You might end up losing everything if a hacker/phisher got hold of your paypal account.
Ok, back to my new savings account.  I did a test run and transferred about PHP2k from paypal to my new HSBC bank account.  It worked flawlessly!    I did however got deducted PHP100 service charge.   I then checked the rates for local inward remittances and it seems like it is a flat fee of PHP100 regardless of amount.     Not bad if you ask me.

After a few days, I then proceed to transfer a bigger amount just to see if the service charge will stay PHP100.   Yes!  The charge really seems to be a flat PHP100.

After verifiying the funds,  I did transfer the paypal money from my new savings account, to my main bank account.   No charge for this type of transfer since it’s within the same bank.   And that completes the withdrawal of paypal funds to my HSBC bank account.   So now,  withdrawing from paypal to my HSBC bank account is now my first choice.

Bank Codes of Major Banks in the Philippines

In the Philippines, to complete your PayPal withdrawal, you will need to enter the name of your bank, your bank account number and the corresponding 9-digit bank code, which identifies your bank.

I read at pinoyblogosphere that a joomla 1.5xx site was hacked.    I check out the guy’s website  cebubusinessforum.com and found out that the words “the.bilen” on the defaced website.      I checked google to see what other sites has been hacked by this hacker and found out that the forum area of Philippine Stock Exchange has been hacked.

The above is a screen capture of  http://www.philippinestockmarket.com/Forum/default.asp  as of today Sept. 11, 2008 9:00am.

Based from the other sites, it seems that it a lot of the defacing and hacking was done by turkish hackers.  I think “the.bilen” is a script that is being used by these hackers as well as RootHack.