last saturday i turned another year older. i shared cake billing with my manager and my uncle and my three colleagues who were also celebrating their birthdays in october. some people seem to think that as you grow older, you think less about gifts and focus more on the intangible melodramatic introspection crap. on the contrary, i love receiving gifts. so if you still havent bought me any, you should start shopping now, bwahahaha *_* my wishlist includes an ultraportable and a trip to europe, i also accept cash in any currency hehehe

okay, what sane person would stay up til 3am fuzzing over basebands and nordumps? those who iunlocked the iphone v1.0.2 like me. well since i was feeling bored and brave, i decided to go ahead and upgrade to 1.1.1. but of course not before reflashing the baseband to original out-of-the-box state. well here are the steps, in case others want to take the plunge too, caution this is concise and not idiot proof:

prerequisite:
1. iunlocked / anysim unlocked iphone 1.0.2 with your choice of sim

steps:
1. preparing the iphone tools
1.1 restore to 1.0.2 through itunes
1.2 jailbreak through winstaller
1.3 activate through pacay by brasuco
1.4 install mobile terminal vsvn198 and binkit through ibrickr
1.5 set iphone to setting > general > autulock > never

2. start baseband reflash to factory settings
2.1 upload kengz pack to iphone using ibrickr (path: /usr/bbreflash)
2.2 open mobile terminal and execute the following commands:
cd /usr/bbreflash
chmod 755 *
launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.CommCenter.plist
./norz seczone.backup 0x3FA000 0x2000
./iUnlock ICE03.14.08_G.fls eliteloader.bin
./bbupdater -v
./bbupdater -f ICE03.14.08_G.fls -e ICE03.14.08_G.eep
./bbupdater -v
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.CommCenter.plist

2.3 exit to springboard and check that it displays no service.
2.4 save seczone.backup in a secure place, you might need it someday

3. upgrading
3.1 update to 1.1.1 through itunes
3.2 jailbreak and activate through carnaval by brasuco

4. unlocking
4.1 go to installer.app and add this source url: http://rep.frenchiphone.com
4.2 install bsd subsystem and anysim 1.1p
4.3 run anysim 1.1

DONE!

credits to dev team, elite team, brasuco, kengz, ppc_hhvn, karljung and the hackint0sh community.

note: this method does not use winscp, ssh, bsd and the rest of the acronyms.

last october 5 to 8 was thanksgiving weekend in canada, families are supposed to stay home and have dinner together. my cousins planned to bring their beaus to re introduce to their parents and make an elaborate celebration out of it so of course i had to book the first flight out, that's my escape mechanism - going on a trip.

everything is big in texas, so they say.

jake, mavic, chard and i left work early last friday to board the shuttle to seatac and proceed on our plane to dallas fort worth. unfortunately, we got stuck in traffic and missed our flight by 5 minutes so we spent the night sleepless in seattle, but at marriott no less, and caught the first flight out which was at 8am.

dallas is a sweltering 32 degrees, i actually got two shades darker after the trip. we arrived at 2pm and drove down to san antonio to raid the outlet malls and sample the tex-mex barbecue dinner at the river walk. our hotel room had a magnificent view of the city from the 33rd floor. the next day, we walked along the alamo and took some touristy pics before we ran off to catch the tram tours at the nasa space center in houston. i wanted to buy the shirt that said "failure is not an option" but then i was distracted by all the other items that i ended up buying nothing at all. we slept sunday night off at jake's sis' place in allen, and monday morning was spent looking for cash machines to spew out more $$$ to be burned in nike and tommy. dusk found us eating pizza at the greyhound station in downtown seattle, waiting for our ride back home. this has got to be one of the seediest places i've seen in this part of town. at the back of my mind i was hearing simon and garfunkel's "america".

finally, my blankets and the leftover thanksgiving turkey welcomed me home on tuesday 3am. despite being sleep deprived and broke, this trip is not to be missed. ^_^

"we all need to be a little crazy to be sane."

while helping my cousin do her apa formatted paper, we caught this rerun on ctv. i remember this movie was my favorite back in college. the characters are very much like the people i met and hanged out with back then. yeah we were all crazy and inebriated. angsty and immature. thinking we could change the world but the world changed us. softened our souls, hardened our hearts.

ambivalent. that's how i feel right now. torn by two strong forces into opposite directions. which path to choose? which fork to take? hmm, tough times ahead. especially when my bank accounts are not cooperating.

i wish time would give me a day to go back to that one moment. i miss the feeling of being carefree and irresponsible. just throwing caution to the wind and going to where the wind blows. there's too much at stake now, i can't slack off. the world is waiting.

finally i've decided to stop rattling the skeletons in my closet and just let them go. i don't have the time nor the energy to pull floating bodies from the mud that they chose to immerse themselves in. i can only repeat myself as much as the next person, i don't have unlimited patience, optimism is not my middle name, i am fallible. and yet, despite these faults, i know when its time to move on.

i'm just tired of making people see beyond their own little bubble. i get too involved in their problems that i forget i have issues of my own to take care of.

so today, i decided it's time i start rearranging the way i live my life and cross out the things that ceased to become possibilities for me and just focus on the ones that are more likely to be reality.

1. i won't be an astronaut, okay i've had this dream since i was 4 when i first watched the lunar landing on our monochrome tv, but now that i'm finally going to visit NASA this weekend, i realized i'll never be one of them. i don't know the difference between polymer synthesis and olefin metathesis reaction; neither do i care. anyway, i can still go on a space shuttle as a tourist like that guy who made ubuntu. hooray computer geeks!

2. our project is not gonna make it for october release, no matter how long i stay at work trying to fix all the environment issues and trace where the messages are getting lost. that's actually good, i can sleep for more than 4 hours now. its going in on the first week of november anyway, so it won't jeopardize my travel plans.

3. some people are never gonna love me the way i want them to. might as well let them be. there might be someone better out there for me, someone to say hi to late at night, someone to watch over me, or if not, life goes on. not my loss.

last weekend we had a major production release at work, but since my project wasnt due til october, i escaped and jumped on the first plane out of town. destination: chicago.

on the way to o'hare, i had a brief stopover at mccarran, i was surprised to see slot machines scattered around the waiting lounges, i must admit, it distracted me from finding the next boarding gate hehe. another surprising thing i discovered is that our mike phones still work outside the country; that means i'm still reachable by the office.

first thing i did when i arrived at my friend's place was to unlock my new iphone which was delivered earlier that week. of course after making it work, i was all set to explore all the places i saw on the movies ^_^.

i feasted my eyes on the breath taking architectural highlights of the city, went on a speed boat ride along lake michigan, and a shopping spree at the magnificent mile; met up with old friends and had a great time sampling the godiva cheesecake; climbed the tall towers and tried my hand on window washing at hancock. rode the double decker bus and got lost at union station; watched the giant pixelated faces spurt water at millenium park and saw the skyline reflecting on the bean; craned my neck watching the bears game from afar and the cranberries in the celtic festival at grant park; my favorite building has got to be the chicago tribune, i love its spires and i went around it looking for the pieces of rocks from different parts of the world. i found the one from fort santiago. =) my trip was too short, i need to return so i could see shedd and adler and wicker, and of course, try the nightlife.. hmm, when's the next release?

going back, i had a connecting flight in seattle and went aboard the smallest aircraft i ever hopped on. it consisted of two cramped seats on each side, and around 30 rows i guess, with propellers on its wings. good thing i'm still in one piece.

next stop: dallas.

two weeks ago i was chatting with someone who used to be my friend and he said that he wanted to be happy, and that for him meant he had to find the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with. i am insensitively bitter or immune to those things so i told him that happiness is overrated, we all do what we can and it has to be good enough, if it isn’t good enough then it has to do. i mean really, what percentage of the world’s population is actually "happy". it’s so subjective and fleeting, i can go hug my iPhone and say "wee, i’m happy" and then suddenly weep coz i don’t have it with me right now, or i could eat my favorite ice cream and sigh "happiness in a cup, at last" then whine about all the calories i would have to burn afterwards. it’s absurd to be dependent on others for your own peace of mind. i remember some years ago when i asked that same question to a friend "are you happy?", and i got this reply: "just contented". maybe that’s the key - to be contented with what we have but then again i don’t think man was ever created to be content, otherwise we would have not invented the wheel or the microwave. there’s always room to innovate even if everything is working just fine. we are always in search of something better, something more meaningful, a purpose, a reason..

so today i sent this message to yet another friend "life is sad", only because i’m like a sponge that absorbs all the negative energy around me, and when my cup overflows, i would need someone to remind me of my own words in the first place. he retorted that just days ago i was doing great and loving life then he asked what was bothering me. i couldn’t really say anything. for me, everything is a choice. i could choose to lament all the woes of my life and enumerate every reason i should be grieving but then where would that lead me? pumped up with tequila or contemplating to jump off the roof which is plain silly - i’m done with being angsty, it used to be fahionable in college, to wear your heart out on a sleeve and be an idealist who marches on the streets wanting the world to listen. the world is deaf, its a body of mass revolving around the sun. it is numb and neither will it stop turning when you fall down and hurt yourself. you will have to be strong enough to dust yourself, step back into it and get lost in its blinding speed.

life is too short to waste on melodrama, there’s the tv for that, for everything else there’s mastercard haha