Almost Finished Project (for deactivation): commitment

Showing posts with label commitment. Show all posts

CONTEST: How Old is Old?

Cathara will be celebrating her 25th birthday on the 13th of October.

She's a new found friend here in Blogosphere. Well, actually, DedeAndro indirectly introduced me to her. D tagged me to join in Cathara's contest: "How Old is Old?"

What to win? $25.00 via paypal!

Here are the mechanics:

In every man’s (and also woman’s) life, playing games is a must. Our childhood would never be complete had we not enjoined ourselves in playing around with friends. Goofing off, running around, playing tag, hide-and-seek. It has been our nature as beings with complete consciousness to engage ourselves with acts such as these to integrate ourselves with everyone else around us.

Funny thing is it doesn’t end. As we grow older and mature, we still end up playing. The games may be different, but the premise is still there. We are bound by the rules, and we’d have to meet the objectives to win. It’s pretty simple really. Games have taught us as we were young kids, what we should learn as we mature: the instinctive nature to fight the battle and win the game.

Winning, of course, is in itself a debatable concept, for losing is still winning, although it’s winning something else. But now’s not the time to discuss that. Let’s go to the very core of the word itself.

Winning a game needs precision in moves, decisive attacks, and passive manipulation of the opponent’s pieces. This practically applies to any game, be it for children, in business, and even in poker.

Image via Wikipedia

I played poker with a friend last night, and man was he good. We put on our poker faces, like we always do, placed our bets, and started the game. It was as intense as it can get.

Of course, it’s not the type of game where you could really prepare for an attack, right? I mean, once the cards are dealt, it’s practically up to you how to play them.

Luckily, my poker face isn’t that easy to decipher. Raise a brow here, pout lips, take a deep breath, and look at him intently. Look back at your cards, take a one-second glance to the side, then back at him, back to your cards and then back at him.

I don’t really know what those glances mean, but they sure convey something. Something that he doesn’t know, ‘coz for all obvious reasons, I don’t either.

I’m playing an Ace and a King, both of Hearts. They were really good cards, and I could feel that sense of security and assurance even before we rolled in our first bets. I play safe and call in every time we start a game. The flops are turned, giving us an Ace of Clubs, Ten of Hearts, and Three of Spades.

It wasn’t intentional that the mirror had been positioned behind him; it was a really old mirror that had been hanging on my wall for ages already. Nor was it intentional that he had set up the poker table in front of that mirror. It was even more purely coincidental that the reflection showed he holds in his hand the other pair of Aces. It was a losing game for me.

Flopping a pair of Aces has no chance of winning against his Three of a Kind. He raised the bets. It takes a while for me to make a sound. Heavy drops of perspiration are already building up my brows now. I had to bluff. I check and raise the bets, doubling it. Risking this much is worth it, I believe. He calls it in.

It seems as if my heart was beating faster than the flapping wings of a flying hummingbird. But I had to keep my poker face on. Composing myself, I take another deep breath, keeping blood to flow through every part of my body, allowing as much oxygen to supply my already pounding heart.

The fourth street is turned. A Jack of Hearts appears. Was it a sign from God? I had no idea.

Drafts of cool night air rushes through the window, but somehow, it fails to win over the extreme heat I’m feeling. I wipe of the sweat off my face. He checks but I raise the bets. He still has the best hand in the game so far. He still has to play the game, and calls it in.

The intensity of the game is still rising and who knows when it will reach its climax. I see drops of sweat already forming on his face. He briskly wipes them off. That is all he can do now.

With poker faces still on, we exchange blank stares. Two amazing players bashing up against each other, not knowing how much experience each one has. It’s really an intense game.

What are the odds of drawing the Queen of Hearts on the fifth street? It is the final piece of my winning set. I am seconds away from getting my Royal Flush. He knows that all too well!

We struggle to keep our selves appease. The building squalls within us are becoming unbearable by the second. The fifth street is slow being drawn, but just before we could even see the card’s face, the power goes out.

…

Nah, the power does not go out. But I’m holding you guys off a bit. I’ll get back to you guys when I know what card has been dealt. For now, I’ll leave you with this.

Image by fithtyfithty

Did I hit the Queen of Hearts? That very thin, extremely minute and incredibly slim chance? I’ll tell you soon!

Quote of the Day:
"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it." -- Michael Jordan

BLOG UPDATE: JS-Kit ECHO Commenting System Installed

JS-Kit ECHO is basically the latest commenting system launched (Public Beta) last August 6th, 2009. Adding rich, interactive features for any blogger's site, this has been their goal.

Echo is.. the way to share your content, and watch the live reaction. Embed it on your site – replacing your old commenting system – and you get:

Real-time – Watch people react to your content live – without refreshing the page!
Social Gestures – Echo captures the Social Gestures relating to your content including comments, likes, star ratings and more!
Stream – Echo simplifies the presentation of conversation to just two levels. This simpler, cleaner style helps people keep track of contributions and engage in parallel conversations.
Hyper-Distributed – Visitors share your content with their friends across all their favorite social networks at once – broadening the conversation and driving new traffic.
Aggregated – Echo captures conversations related to your content from across the web and places them on your page.
People – Echo allows people to connect to your site using their profile from the worlds most popular social networks. Users can even bind multiple social media accounts together.
Multimedia – Echo items can include safe HTML, photos, and video for a richer conversation.
Multiplied Engagement – Echo increases engagement by providing more ways for users to get involved and express their opinion.

I haven't fully maximized it's feature yet. I just read about it over Dede Andro's blogsite, and thought it would worth the while trying it out. It would take some time to be familiar with it though. It's pretty much easy to use and navigate around with. One thing that makes this commenting system interesting is the function that allow reply threading, unlike the old commenting system that comes along with blogger.com that basically keeps the replies in a single chronological order with very little interactivity.

Another thing you need to take heed, is the fact that every comment comes with an avatar, and unless you edit your profile, an ugly blank faceless image would be displayed. Anyhow, adding in a small photo isn't such a troubling chore. You can actually log in with any of the following IDs:

-- OpenID
-- Blogspot URL
-- Facebook Account
-- Yahoo Account
-- Google Friend Connect
-- Twitter Account

Or you can also use, if you have any, JS-Kit Account or Haloscan Account. If you don't have any of the aforementioned ID's, which I highly doubt, you can create a New JS-Kit Account. Simply select this from the drop down list (it should on top of all the mentioned login IDs).

How to login? Oh, just click the Admin drop down menu and choose login and you're all set.

Well, I guess those would be the basics. I'll be monitoring how this system would turn out. Hah! I'm one to say, someone who gets a lot of hits and countless comments in a day. Yeah right! But in any case, just to prepare and pave my way to the future success of this blogger page, I'll keep it up.

If you happen to check this commenting system out, feel free to voice out your opinions. After all, this commenting system has been installed for that purpose.

Experience. Un-ended.

Experience has always been our faithful mentor. All will agree that in more ways than one, experience has taught us things we never would have known. However, one can also raise the objection that not everyone shares the same universal experience of experience. Experiencing to each and everyone is unique, regardless of how similar they may seem. The sum total of somebody’s experience will always be in contrast to that of another. In various levels, they will never be as one.

One endeavor may be savored my many, but each has his own method of capturing flavorful moments and keeping track of them in his own bank of boundless memories, forever stowed in a pit of infinity. But despite the numerous ways of experiencing every affair of our daily lives, one thing might be common, emotion.

Somehow, in a peculiar twist of cosmic events, one experience may be shared by many, but among the many that immerse themselves in that precise encounter, at least two would share the same sentiment. This is how uncanny life is. A proficient trickster that unceasingly toys with each and every soul on this vast land and other.

Take heed nonetheless that like the experiencing of the experience, feeling the emotion of a particular incident may also vary among individuals. What makes it different from experience is the fact that it breaks the rule of exceptionality, by the very fact that any two, or more, may share the same sentiment, pain or otherwise, for a particular experience, tragic or otherwise.

What’s really funny in all our own lives is that we all have our own tragedies. Even the very man who claims to be the happiest on earth could, and even sometimes would, share how his life has gone awry at one point or another. It is an inescapable fact that tragedies are engraved in our very nature, in our own DNA for that matter. And pain is our survival mechanism. It makes an individual aware of the potential bodily, physical and metaphysical, damage and provides motivation to get away from painful stimuli and avoid them in the future.

This, ultimately, is what our every record of experience is for. Our life is, in the end, geared towards that which makes us infinitely happy, should there exists such a thing. Nirvana. Gaudium. Eternal bliss. Whatever, add into the list those that which you think is applicable.

So I ask you now.

What ARE your tragedies in life to date?
What have you learned from THOSE experiences?
Where will THEY take you now?

My friend, just remember that a single drop of tear can only hold so much. The world is ours to conquer. Let us not let these tragedies blind us from this irrefutable truth.

Always in love and pain,

Dick

Quote of the Day:

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him, his own." -- Benjamin Disraeli

Credits to wonenownlee for the magnificent shot.

If it can be broken, break it.

Living in a society with rules and conformity has proven to be cumbersome at times and stifling at worst. But deny it or not, these rules are the very same governing powers that allow us to live in a society that keeps us secured and sheltered. When then are we bestowed upon our rightful privilege to exercise our purest deviant nature? I still do concur that ultimate radicalism has proven ill at times as well, and deadly at worst.

Although these may actually apply to almost any set of rules and tenets, try to keep your focus on to something more definitive and concise. Choose what best applies to you at the moment.

I’ll try to keep it simple for now. For me, what I’d really want to zone in on are the loose rules on love and relationships. In the first place, no one has ever set these in stone, or more practically in writing. So I guess the very main fact that this is how our ways of love and relationships are lived by brings up its very fundamental dys-functionality.

More often than not however, people have enough guts and, to a greater degree, tenacity to bend the rules not just a little but even at times enough to break them. We do this for several reasons and for what it’s worth, they do make sense.

Allow me share some.

Experience. Here’s to trying out something out of the ordinary. Thinking out of the box as it were, and by box, you know what I mean. It is this thirst for new understanding and I guess familiarity to something that is not our norm which compels us to bend the rules and ultimately break them. This allows us to create something new, but in the end, these new creations give birth to a new set of rules which in time would be bent and broken. And thus the cycle continues with added experience on each round.

Challenge. Here’s to a more distinct color of seeking new experiences. We’ve known that these rules have existed for a reason, and more often than not, it is because they’ve been proven to work. Although some may be questionable, most aren’t. But the thrill we encounter in going against the rules provides immeasurable ecstasy. It is our challenge to discover new heights and newfound glory by taking a different route. And it is actually more of the getting there rather than the destination that really makes it all worth it.

Proof. Here’s to an even more particular flavor of seeking challenges. Given the knowledge that following a definite set of rules has proven wise, sometimes their lack of flexibility hinders our creativity and thus our ability to innovate and revolutionize. It is by breaking the rules that we prove to all that there is a different way of doing things, and it may not or, when successful, may be the best way of doing it. It is people like us – people who take risks – that make the world evolve and grow. Stagnation is not an option for us. And along with the courage and bravery that we posses is the responsibility to accept the consequences, that our decisions were made in good faith and for the right reasons.

Of course, other motives may prove appropriate or otherwise, but I leave it up to you to sharpen your senses and know when it is fitting to break to the rules and when not to.

Alright, I may have lost some of you there somewhere. But go over the list again, and try to put it in the context of love and relationships. That was what this entry was for, after all.

Quote of the Day:
“Life without a friend is death without a witness.” -- Eugene Benge

Credits to beforethecoffee for the High Speed Photography image.

Up Against No One

I never really had the perfect chance to blog about something worth blogging. Perhaps because I’ve been overly preoccupied with stuff that may and/or may not have any significance at all. I guess nothing else matters now. What’s done is done and there’s really no need to wallow over things that can’t be undone. And enough with this excessively emo intro. What I’m here for is something that’s been on my mind the moment I opened my eyes early this morning. I just had so much to do and to think about (obviously about something else) that I it is only until now that I am somewhat compelled to keep this to writing. Just a side note: I find blogging fun. Uhmm, I actually don’t know where that came from but as crazy as I am, I just write and write and write and think then write and write some more.

Anyway, I’ll try to make this as casual as possible for I’ve been so sick (I mean, literally sick with the unavoidable flu. I say unavoidable because somehow, no matter how hard I try, it just keeps finding its way back to me. But then again, technically the flu virus cannot attack the same person twice so the flu virus I have right now is probably something different from the one I had a month ago. See how sickly I am these days? Anyway, were going way off topic now..). And being sick actually has nothing to do with the tone of this blog entry, hasn’t it? Anyway, it’s my blog and if you’ve gone this far, then prepare yourself for more incoherent ideas just popping and pooping here and there, every once in a while, whenever I see it fit (or not! Haha!).

Now really, on to what I really intended to write about. With mellow music in the background let me just set my mood. I listen to the radio too every now and then. Ding! Ding! Off topic! But if you’ve reached this far without being annoyed and lost, congratulations because I will definitely start my entry now.

In life, I consider almost everything I do as a game. But as they always say: It’s not whether you win or lose; it’s how you play the game [that counts. Haha! I got you! I won’t be talking about that! I just wanted to make sure that I don’t have that mindset that I always have to be triumphant in every game I join in although I strive, as much as I can, to win. Oh c’mon, who doesn’t? Of course, I’d want to play something that there’s at least a minimum chance of winning! I mean, if you’re sure to lose, why bother? But then again, this could be a topic for another blog which right now I have no intention of making. But we’re clear on that, ok? It’s how the game is played that makes that game as memorable as memories can be.

But here’s the deal, what if you’re competing against someone who’s not even playing? Guess what, it happens! Just as shit does!

As annoying as it may seem, I just have to play it until the end. How unfair can that be? I mean, you give it your best shot and then she ranks you up against someone who’s not even interested in taking part in it (And maybe because he already has a girlfriend. Uhmm hello!? Lady, your game’s over!). How naïve can she be? But wait, I’m already whining! *whining mode off*

But hey, this is just my nice way of saying, "Let's get it on! This is the one game I'm sure to win, and I mean definitely sure to win! "

(to be edited… if i feel like it...)

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