I am registering a domain of my own just for me to organize the things and info that exploded this past few periods.

I'll go straight to the point: the Computer Registration System of UP Diliman is disgusting. It is a manifestation of immaturity and lack of professionalism. UP Diliman is said to be the flagship campus yet shaming this prestige is unforgivable.

My dream of having my siblings to study in UP is slowly being bedraggled. I am somehow chap fallen on the UP administration's (specifically the Board of Regents) decision to increase the tuition fees of up to 300%. That makes the current 6,000 peso enrollment fee rise to a whooping 20,000 per semester.

At first I was not that concerned at the issue because i believed that there will be a bargaining agreement and the raise would just go up to 500 per unit. I never realized that the administration's mind can be that somber. After passing the resolution, hundreds of students marched to the Quezon Hall to protest, I am one of them.

Yes I believe that the tuition fee of UP needs an update based on the economic status of the country. However, conducting a reality check, let us ponder on the things like the minimum wage and the percentage of poor in the Philippines. In the new scheme as I interpret it, the UP will have to admit a lot rich students displacing the poor ones to be able to earn money which will subsidize only a pinch of the poor. Is it not that the government is primary responsible for the subsidy of a state university? Yet the assistance scheme is not effective as history tells us: STFAP is a big failure. I have personally seen this implosion as my friends who belong to the "class D and E" are being categorized in the lower brackets. They seem to survive because of their manual labour in fast food chains and department stores.


The University needs an update on its fees but not that enormous! I need to work harder now as my younger brother will go to college next year.

Synopsis: The World’s Fastest Librarian is a twelve minute short film following Mary, a fictional public librarian at the Madison Public Library (as played by the UW SLIS Lab Library) as she prepares for the World’s Fastest Librarian Competition. The World’s Fastest Librarian is a humorous tongue in cheek film that shows a different image of librarians than that usually found in films. This film was a collaborative project involving over a dozen library school students. It was a labor of love and is meant as a tribute to librarians everywhere.

Three years ago when I was out of school, I was bored and tired with my life and I had nothing to do but to chat and surf the net in our cafe. Until my mailbox was filled with these strange emails coming from people "allegedly" from Africa seeking help with their financial status. An email from Burkina Faso said that there is a certain man who died in a plane crash and he left a huge amount of money which have been dormant and if unclaimed will be forfeited by the African Development Bank. The woman who emailed me also frequently called me through my mobile and she was making arrangements so I could claim as the dead man's next of kin. Then a man claiming that he's a manager from the said bank requests me to send money through western union so that the dormant account will be activated. Hell I always thought it had a catch so i was not that terribly dissapointed but nevertheless I was not still un bored with my life. Other funny stories like winning the lottery and a help seeking Loi Estrada occured and made the worse of my computing experience.

Today, internet fraud is everywhere. It even entered the local online trading and auction sited here in the Philippines. Some people from UK and India are selling cheap phones which are unbelievably low priced. Yet still a lot of Filipinos are victimized due to lack of information. One buyer from a local website got 50 grand swipped out of his pocket because he had wished to buy a fully loaded laptop. And he ended empty handed with smudges on his heart.


There is this one new online site, probably networking site or it can be just the promotion, which offers cash for every referal via draws. I still do not know if this is true but a lot of testimonials prove that it's the next charity offerer to the neighborhood. You might want to try earning by clicking this. A friend of mine got an ipod from it and he received his prize thru a parcel.

Scans of the heart of Ima would suggest that she is experiencing heart failure. This is really new to me, we have no traces of heart ailments in our family. Maybe she got since the day she played the role of a single mother to her young children after the death of her husband. My mom would tell me that Ima tasted a pityfull life, she worked hard to make her children finish high school. She would climb the mountain and make charcoal, carry heavy pile of sticks for her stringbean plants and do stuff that a strong man can do.

My birth gave a different meaning for her life. I am her first grand son, and I was a source of joy for her. She almost raised me when I was a child (because my parents were not able to raise me because they had work). She never allowed mosquitoes to bite me nor other children bully on me. She saw to it that i have new uncrayoled books after she got her paninda from the market. Though not a graduate of elementary, Ima taught me basic arithmetic skills specially when selling something. I love my grandmother more than I love myself. But time really tests us and she got this disease.

Is it time to pay her back? Yes, ofcourse. Before I went to UP, i promised my Ima that I would pull her from the ditch of poverty. And this still dissapoints me. I feel like I am a failure to her for I could not give her my hard earned diploma. All I can offer is to support her medication. Sometimes I fail to give her money because I also have personal financial shortcomings. She then will ask the bumbay to lend her money so she could purchase her medicines. My heart bleeds on these instances. I want her to enjoy my the fruits of my work but I could not give her the luxuries she has dreamed of. I really have no room for complaints but all I want is for my grandmother to be happy.

How?

It is so funny that our University's Network is not capable of catering our needs. As of the moment, I could not receive mails from it (We do not have a backup generator for our servers). This is the scenario: at the UP, the students are only allocated with only 10 mb of email space (isn't this horrible, UP is the premier university in the Philippines and some of my friends do not use their email accounts because they tell me it is always down?). I need the *.up.edu.ph domain for fundraising and official emails but hell, when i forward the mails to my yahoo and gmail account [for archiving (again 10 mb is not enough!) they are not received. Things get worse and worse as our computer registration system (online enrollment) gives the student headache because they could not enter the system (why the hell is it called online when you need to go to the office of the CRS and ask for your password activation etc?). I emailed the help desk last week and until now I am not receiving any reply (maybe i really dont receive anything on my webmail, but hey i received 3 spam mails).

I am not from dilnet, i would want to but I already work for 2 NGOs at the moment and I still have to complete my Job training and my thesis. I am telling you that I am not brillant nor do i know all things about networking, computing and stuff. I am just seeing things as an Information Professional would do and these opinions come from my heart.

Where is information science? Information science must be employed in order to fix these kind problems and how? If some one is building an application or deploying a program, an intensive system analysis and design must be done together with extensive documentation. Documentation i say is a very essential part of the processes including environment scanning cost benefit analysis and a lot of management stuff. Problem is, if a group of programmers and analysts deployed a program, they forget the documentation and user analysis. These are what we learn in LIS 163 and 166 which are taught at the Institute. I wonder if the Computer Science people have these courses? And people from that department tend to disallow the addition of programming courses in our Insitute (I'm not so certain of this political matters). Let's see what they can do.

I may be blinded by anger right now as the only email i got for my fund raising is from Senator Jinggoy Estrada, and Senator Flavier instead of replying to my email has just sent a snail mail because i think his email was bouncing back at the time the email system of dilnet was down.

Good luck to us iskolars ng bayan as our tuition fee is in danger of getting 200% higher and a factor of this is modernization of equipments. I think Dilnet needs strategic planning, not yacking and just acquiring gadgets then deploying another platform. They need to show their plans, justifications and documentations as people from that sector are paid to do that and these papers are of public domain.

I recommend reading Wards: Strategic Planning for Information Systems 3rd editon.

Cheers! It's still fun to be in UP!

I was a bit disappointed when i heard this news:
MacOS X more unsercured than Windows XP

Well this is a bit devastating and a bit old (Feb 2006) maybe apple has done something or released some fix.

I have them both, i got my MAC OS X Tiger Running on my PC, take note that this is not a MAC!

Let's keep this room neat and tidy

• My last post
• On Exorbitant Fees
• The World's Fastest Librarian
• Internet Scams Everywhere: Wanna Win Some Money?
• Ima and Her Heart
• UP's Online Infrastructure in Bad Shape? Why?
• Secured or Unsecured Macs?
• Koha 2.2.6 to be out soon
• "Freakin cataloguing bitch"!!
• The Future of ILIS, a Frustration

• December 2005
• January 2006
• February 2006
• March 2006
• April 2006
• May 2006
• June 2006
• July 2006
• August 2006
• September 2006
• October 2006
• December 2006
• April 2007

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• Mama Niel
• Mama Ching
• Focus-Julie

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