I recently attended a friend’s baby shower (first one I’ve been to if memory serves). Among the gift suggestions that came with the invitation are practical baby items so hubby and I shopped for some items that we know would be useful. We got some nappies, baby wipes, baby bottles, milk container, rattle, baby oil and a nappy bucket to put it all in.

Since the bucket is a bit odd-shaped and big, I initially thought of not bothering with the wrapping and just sticking a card to it and perhaps a pre-tied ribbon bought from a shop. However as the days passed and I got tired of seeing the bucket without any wrapping, I thought about how good of a challenge it would be to be able to wrap it nicely. On the other hand though, I have a love-hate relationship with gift wrapping. I love a nicely presented, creatively wrapped gift that not only keeps you guessing its contents but could also an art in itself. What I hate though, is the cost associated with the wrapping and trimmings that are meant to be ripped and thrown away afterwards. Why can’t we just invent some cost-effective way to have beautifully wrapped presents without the guilt?

Which is why I love the idea behind Wrap Art with its tag line “How to wrap presents creatively, using fragments of paper and miscellaneous items from around your house”. The site showcases several examples of beautifully wrapped presents which used recycled materials, some traditional trimmings and a lot of creativity.

So taking inspiration from the site, I decided to wrap my gift bucket with some things that I do have lying around the house. I used some drawing paper from Ikea, tape, glue, paper punch, old colourful catalogues, recycled gift wrapping paper and the only thing I bought specifically for wrapping the gift, a roll of white and gold ribbon. I came up with the idea of wrapping the whole thing with drawing paper and then tying it up with the ribbon while hubby had the brilliant idea of using my paper punch to decorate the whole thing with mini-flowers.

I was quite happy with the finished look and didn’t feel as guilty as the paper was ripped away during the party! After all, wrapping paper is meant to be enjoyed then ripped!

First of all, I know it’s later than late but Happy New Year to all!

As you could probably deduce from the title, although I haven’t been posting, I’m still here in the fringes being busy. So what have I been up to?

Sometime last year, I have purchased a Nikon d40x camera which I used while on holiday and promptly forgot about. Recently, I found renewed interest in it and have been reading up on the basics of photography and learning more about the camera. I still got a long way to go before I get satisfactory results on non-Auto mode but everybody’s got to start somewhere.

Another motivation for me to learn about the camera is our upcoming trip to Tasmania. I’ve seen photos of and heard of the great vistas in Tasmania so I’m pretty excited to try my hand at some practice landscape photography while there. In the meantime, I have also been busy planning and booking flights, accommodations, car-hire and of course, the Cadbury chocolate factory tour.

We didn’t go anywhere or do anything special during the Christmas holidays so we’re both looking forward to this opportunity to get away from work. Hubby and I have been crazy busy at work as well and are both in dire need of some rest and relaxation.

Apart from that, we’ve finally found the time to get some furniture (Ikea for now) for our living room. Let me tell you, going to the shop, assembling the thing and setting it up in the room is really hard work. My current project is to get some artwork and photos onto our walls, which are presently conspicuously bare.

So yeah, I’ve been pursuing other interests other than this blog. Not to worry though, I’d try to update more frequently than once every quarter. No promises though.

I should’ve posted this anecdote a while back but since I’ve been too lazy to update the blog recently, I’ve only written about it today.

After coming home from buying our weekly groceries last Sunday, Raquel decided to rearrange our pantry to make room for the recently bought goods. While clearing out the bottom-most level of the pantry where we kept the stack of soda cans, she noticed a black sticky puddle. It seemed that one of the cans of Coke had sprung a leak!

Although that in itself was weird, what’s weirder was that the Coke can with the leak was now empty but there wasn’t any obvious holes in it. The tab on it seemed intact and there were no puncture holes anywhere on the can’s surface.

We even submerged the whole can in a bucket of water to see where bubbles would appear to locate where the hole was, but there was nothing. I was even squeezing the can to see if I can push the air in it out through the invisible hole but there was nothing again.

So now, we have a completely sealed empty can of Coke and a black-stained pantry floor but with no reasonable explanation as to how the Coke fluid spilled out of its can. If any of you can explain how this could’ve happened, please let us know.

There was a question posed to the hosts of ExtraLife Radio, one of my favourite podcasts, on its Halloween episode: what creeps you out? Since, it is nearly Halloween anyway, I thought I might also share five things that creeped me out when I was younger.

1. Baby dolls. I hate them even now, specially those with very shiny eyes that close when you tilt their heads back. Imagine a bedroom filled with dolls at night with the lights out except for the moonlight shining through the window. That little bit of light is then reflected in the eyes of these creepy baby dolls just sitting there on the shelf, always smiling and looking straight at you while you try to sleep.

2. Department store mannequins. I guess this is somewhat related to my repulsion toward dolls. When I was very young, I couldn’t stand even looking at mannequins whenever my Mom would bring me along with her to the department store. They looked very unnatural to me because, although they looked human, they were inanimate like some petrified dead person.

3. Windows without curtains (or blinds). I was afraid of opening my eyes in the middle of the night and see somebody (or something) staring down at me from the bare window. Actually, the curtains have to be thick so that I wouldn’t be able to even see the silhouette of someone standing behind the window. What did I think would be standing behind the windows? I was afraid to see a hovering aswang (Philippine vampire/ghoul) or a ghost staring at me.

4. Big old portraits like those serious black and white photos of somebody dead or religious iconographic paintings, specially those ones where the person in the portrait has eyes that seem to be looking straight at you wherever in the room you might be.

5. Odd noises in the middle of the night. One night when I was maybe ten years old while I trying to fall asleep, I heard what seemed like the cry of a very young child from afar. It was crying repeatedly, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” I looked at the clock sitting on top of the desk nearby. It was exactly midnight! What kind of father would leave his child outside at this hour, I thought. If that wasn’t suitably creepy enough, the cry started to grow louder, as if it was getting closer and closer to my bedroom window. I put my pillow on top of my head to cover my ears until I fell asleep. I guess that’s where I got my habit of sleeping with a pillow on my head. In hindsight, I now believe (or at least I want to believe) that the crying was probably just some shrieking cat.

There you go. How about you? What creeps you out?

As you may well know by now, I joined The Company as a software developer about eleven weeks ago. Actually, there were three of us developers who started that day. It seemed like the managers were thinking of expanding the team. Including us newcomers, the team was nearly twenty people strong.

I like the idea of working with a bigger team. It meant that the project and product knowledge is probably spread out a bit more. It’s going to be rare that only one person knows about a bit of technology or module and such. It also meant less pressure as everything won’t hinge on only one person (specially if that one person is me).

Anyway, maybe a couple of days after joining, I discovered that one of the contractors was leaving. Well, I wasn’t too surprised by that bit of news because I already knew that there was someone from the team who applied for a job in my old company. It turned out to be that contractor who was leaving.

Then, a few days later, while going down the lifts with one senior member of the team, I discovered that he was leaving the team, too! So, that’s two people who are leaving at about the same time.

But that wasn’t all. Later on, I found out that there was another contractor who wanted to move on to a different client. He left a few weeks after the first two. The team was down three people two months since we started working there. I supposed management already knew about the three people leaving even before we got the job. So, three people joining offset the three people leaving.

However, just when I thought that we probably need more new people to compensate for those that had left, our manager, the guy that hired me, informed all of us that he had accepted a reassignment to the UK. He announced his move during our Friday team-building event at a lawn bowling club. He would still work for the Company but he would no longer be our boss or part of our team. It was certainly a shock when I heard it. He’s a very cool boss and I was partly convinced to take the job due to my interactions with him during the interview stage of my job application. I hope that if they do find a replacement for him, it will be someone who is just as cool.

Come Monday, some of us were still shaken by the news of the manager’s move to the UK. But we were to receive more shocking news. Our director announced that our team leader was retiring in a few weeks’ time. Our team leader admitted that the timing was a bit bad but she had already planned this for some time before our manager’s announcement to move.

During one morning developers’ meeting, we joked that there should be a moratorium on people resigning after the news of our team leader’s retirement. But, there was one person who didn’t get the memo. Just this week, another senior member announced that he was leaving, too.

That’s three people who have left and three people who are leaving soon. We joke that maybe we newbies jinxed the team by triggering this mass exodus of senior people. I just hope that nobody else leaves in the near future. Not until we get more knowledge and develpment experience on the product.

At least our director was kind enough to remind us of the bright side of all these senior people leaving: there would now be more window-side desks available for the rest of us.

A week after my Yahoo! account got phished, I’ve finally regained control of it today. I’ve made several attempts in the past to request a new password from Yahoo by filling up relevant information for the account in the Yahoo! ID/Password Recovery form but was unsuccessful each time. Digging around Yahoo’s help forum, I found out the email address for their account security and sent a request to get a new password, reporting that a phisher is using my account to try and con people. Here’s the contents of the first email I sent.

To: account-security-help@cc.yahoo-inc.com
From: AnotherAccount@yahoo.com

Hello,

My other account, StolenAccountNameHere@yahoo.com, has been phished about a week ago. As I could no longer remember some of my registration information, I could not get a new password to recover it. Is there an alternate way of recovering the account (perhaps by answering some security questions)?

If not, is it possible to disable the account? A friend recently contacted me and said that the phisher, posing as me, was asking her to purchase recharge cards and send codes to the account.

I’m concerned that the scammer could use my name and account for illegal activities.

Cheers,
Raquel

I didn’t have to wait long before I received an automated email requesting some pertinent information about the account including the ID, name, birthday, alternate email address, secret question and answer, city/state, zip code entered during registration and country. The email also clearly specified that I should not alter the subject line in any way when replying.

Of all the information needed, the most difficult one to answer is the one about the security question and answer. I had to remember the exact security question on my own and then provide the correct answer. How the heck would I know what security question I chose all those years ago? Well, hubby suggested one security question that I could have used when creating the account. I wasn’t too sure about the security question he suggested but thought that it is likely that I could have chosen that so I decided to give it a go.

Next is the problem regarding zip code and country. I have moved around a lot since creating this particular account and it could have been any of the numerous zip codes and one of the three countries I’ve lived in during the more than 10 years I’ve had this account. However, I remember that I signed up for the account when Yahoo! wasn’t as big a company as it is now and could quite clearly recall that I had some issues with the registration form then. If I recall correctly, Yahoo! didn’t even have any other country to choose from other than US or Canada then. It’s highly likely that I might have used US as my country when I signed up. But which zip code did I use? I surmised that I might have used a zip code from an American TV show I used to watch regularly.

A day after receiving the email requesting me to confirm my account’s information, I filled up the form and answered it to the best of my ability. In questions where I was uncertain whether I’ve updated the information, I’ve put in two answers. For instance, I answered US or Philippines for the country.

I replied to the email and thought I would have to wait for a day or two for Yahoo to get to my request. Happily, I didn’t have to wait long until I got another email from Yahoo! This time, it was signed by a real name (as opposed to the earlier mail which was just had Yahoo! Account Security Customer Care). This email basically asked for the same question as the previous one - ID, name, security answer (note that it there’s no mention of the security question), birthdate on the account, zip code and country. In addition, I was asked to provide a copy of a state/government issued photo ID, an alternate email address to contact me and permission for them to enter my account.

I answered all the questions and faxed the entire exchange of emails plus a photocopy of my passport to a number they provided last night. When I checked my alternate email address this morning, several messages from Yahoo! were waiting. One of them had a title of “Your new requested Yahoo! password. Please reset your password now” which contained a temporary password to my compromised account. I quickly used that to login to my old account and gave a big sigh of relief when I was able to finally see my inbox.

After inspecting the contents of the account, it didn’t seem like the cracker had any interest in my incoming mail. All incoming mail since last week seemed to have been unread, no outgoing messages in the Sent folder (although the scammer could have deleted them to cover his tracks) and no important emails were forwarded. I was amused and a bit horrified to see though that everytime I reported the account as having been phished, Yahoo! has replied to the account!

I also logged in to the Yahoo! Messenger and looked at my friends list (which has more names than I remembered) to see who the impostor would have contacted. Fortunately, most of the IDs listed were really old and those friends either no longer use those accounts or I have lost touch with them a long time ago that they may suspect someone posing as me asking them for favors. At any rate, only one of the names regularly goes online and that friend has contacted me to verify that it wasn’t me she was conversing with last weekend.

One area the scammer definitely got into was the account settings. Here’s the screenshot of my settings (items have been pixelised to protect my email addresses). The cracker changed the account name to some rubbish text and changed the postcode for my work address. Whoever it was didn’t change the postcode to my Philippine address. Why he/she would want to change the account name is anyone’s guess. I suppose it’s just a marker for them to determine if they have already harvested the contacts list for an account should they encounter it again.

So yeah, I’m quite happy I got my mailbox back. I just wish I could help some friends to recover theirs too.

We got tagged by Linda to divulge seven interesting things about ourselves. This meme was a bit difficult for me to answer mainly because I couldn’t think of anything interesting to share! Anyway here goes, enjoy!

1. Unsure of what degree to take up in university, I did the easiest and laziest thing to do: copied from my friends. We all took the entrance exam at the university at the same time and I was the only one who got accepted!

2. If I hadn’t taken up a course in computers, I think I would have been a starving writer.

3. I was once challenged to a fight by this girl in high school because she overheard me teasing my male friend about her. I don’t know why I did it but my reaction was to smile, which made her even angrier, she stomped off and the fight never happened.

4. My mom loves to cook, I used to tease her about building a library full of cookbooks. She’s an excellent cook, by the way.

5. I cook mainly because it’s economical and practical rather than having a real love for it.

6. I used to have these nightmares everyday where I would wake up screaming when I was about five. I remember our pet kitten would sometimes climb up to my bed and lick my face to wake me up.

7. I hate having hayfever. I used to scoff at people complaining of their terrible hayfever until I got it too. I think it’s a terrible waste of my day to have to suffer blocked sinuses, headache, a runny nose, watery eyes and having to sleep it off to at least ease the symptoms. Nasal sprays and Claramax doesn’t do a thing to alleviate nor prevent it. I am suffering from it at the moment and am wishing for spring to be over soon.

And now I tag Ivy of Phenomenonemone, Alma of Spilling my own thunder, Fatima of From the sidewalk and Jennie of The sassy Melbournite.