After weeks of trying to make do with only one functional car headlight, I’ve finally been able to replace the defective bulb by myself! And I never knew that replacing it would be very easy! Ha!

I’ve been trying to figure out when to squeeze in a bulb replacement schedule with our car shop but failed to do so for quite some time because of our hectic work schedule and family commitments.

As an IT consultant, I’ve been very confident when it comes to tinkering with complicated server and IT infrastructure systems, but the helpless newbie in me prevails when it comes to fixing my own car.

And so after finally buying a new pair of headlamps for “Puti” I finally tried my luck on the thing.

After reading the car manual, I realized that replacing the bulb wasn’t that complicated. And so when it came to actually doing it, it was easy as pie, and I couldn’t believe why it took me that long to do the dang thing myself.

It was just a matter of opening the hood, finding the lamp’s location, removing the power source connector, removing the rubber gasket holding the bulb, unlocking the bulb clamp, removing the defective bulb, putting in the new one, putting everything back in reverse order, and viola! you’re done!

Now the only thing left to do is to replace the other good headlight, since the new one that I placed was way brighter. Heheh. :)

Cheers!

Today’s my first day at my new job. I reported for work after lunch but not after reporting to my old workplace first.

I had to drop by my old workplace first thing this morning to conduct a scheduled panel interview, together with my officemates (Cocoy and Gerald), for my replacement. Unfortunately, the guy didn’t show up and so I just had to spend the entire morning creating a list of my turnover and training activities. Gerald, on the other hand, went on with another scheduled applicant interview but for a different position, of which he had a funny and interesting story to tell us afterwards.

He came into the interview room and saw a female applicant stooping down, fidgeting with something. It turned out that the applicant was in front of a wall outlet with a phone charger in hand, apparently charging her mobile phone. Thereafter, during the interview process, Gerald was interrupted midway through one of his questions, when the applicant asked if they could cut short the interview since she had to rush to her current work to avoid being late! Ha! Yikes!

Can you believe it? I thought I heard it all. Oh well, I guess it’s all in a day’s work. Cheers!

Is subscribing to cable TV really worth it? Sometimes it is, but most often it isn’t.

You see, it all starts with the way it’s marketed. You can see it everywhere. One of the marketing points being touted by competing cable TV providers is by stating how many channels they serve. In this case, the usual spiel would be for them to: 1) list how many channels they have; 2) list some of their well known programs such as HBO, Star TV and ESPN; and 3) list channels that are targeted for a specific demographic community (Chinese, Indian, Arab, Filipino, etc).

Not that this is bad in any way. It’s actually good – if you’re a motel or realty owner and plan to resell it, that is!

You see, the Pinoy Juan’s instinctive reaction to these ads is to see which deal offers more bang for the buck. He does this by computing for the effective cost per channel by dividing the subscriber’s monthly subscription fee over the number of channels they offer. So if Cable Provider A offers a monthly cost of Php 600 for 60 channels, and Provider B offers a monthly cost of Php 700 for 80 channels, then the cost per channel of each provider would be as follows:

Provider A: Php 600 / 60 channels = Php 10 per channel
Provider B: @ Php 700 / 80 channels = Php 8.75 per channel

At first glance, this makes Provider B the better deal. And so Juan opts for Subscriber B. He even pats himself on the back for making such an astute choice, only to find out later on, to much consternation, that he might have ended up with a lemon.

You see, everything changes once the subscription starts. Why? Well, for starters, of the 80 channels, half of which use foreign language. Of the remaining 40, roughly half of this is pretty much useless stuff such as virtual aquariums, flight scheds, race results and the like. So what’s left? Oh, just about a dozen or so local VHF/UHF channels that could be seen even without cable, and about 7 or 8 channels that are good enough (at least until they start showing re-runs for the duration of the month’s program schedule) for viewing.

Juan suddenly feels gypped. He just spent 700 bucks for a measly 7 watchable channels on top of the local ones – that’s a hundred bucks per channel!

Don’t you ever wonder why won’t cable companies just sell us channels of our own choosing, a la carte style, instead of the unpalatable smorgasbord gunk of what they call intelligent programming.

Oh well, just imagine what Juan would do if it were his day off or he called in sick. You can almost picture him either catching up on a good read or just snoozing the day off.