PC Tools That Need You

PC Tools Together is a community that would help in the interface translation of the popular anti-virus software THREATFIRE. This is a huge initiative from people around the world to have this free software improve itself and have different language packs for ease of use. I know I have not used this one yet, but just by reading the facts on it website and the comparison it did from other branded and paid ones. This is extremely going to be a better choice for people that could not afford subscription enabled ones. With the viruses taking shape and new form around the world, this maybe the only one that can catch up with it.

We can all contribute to this cause by just joining their community and see where we can help. I was impressed to see that they have already translated a lot in Turkish. I wonder if I could suggest to have this translated to Filipino or TAGALOG. That would be nice for people in the South East Asian region. I know we have a very high English speaking rate in the Philippines but like major websites like Google or Microsoft it would be nice to have them in the native language so we all would have a choice. I try to be the best linguist for all my friends, so I will try my luck so they could do it in our national language. I understand that I would need to request for it first in their forums, but I do not think they would shy away from someone who would just want to help. I posted this so you guys can do it too. This is for a very good cause anyway! You can do your part to save the world because there is a BETA program that you can join here. So be smart and do the right thing now!

One Good Sunday

This Sunday I will be trying my luck not to get too tired because I will be having a party over at a friend's house in Laguna. Judging from the looks of it, I have to make an effort to at least not pass out since I am going back to QC later in the evening so I could work. Yeah I know how it feels to be in the office at Sunday evening, it's just going to be a big tiring day since Laguna is hours away from Quezon City. Aside from that, I would need a couple of things done at work for reports and all. I guess I am thinking of a way to analyze most of the data I send to the US office so it would be better taking a look at it when Managers from that end read it. I am not going to do something major but I would like to make whatever I do more attractive and important. I guess it is just me.

Oh by the way I would like to congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Bernal for having a cute and cuddly baby girl. With the things we have been doing in college, it is pretty much automatic we are going to be part of each others lives. Her Christening is going to be this Sunday (main reason to go to Laguna). I hope I get to have one of my own sometime soon too. Here's a photo of her:

Cute kid! ^_^

Again, congratulations Pare! Sana dumami pa yan hehe!

Load Balancing Problems

It has been a very busy day for me and my colleagues and we are on the verge of taking our day off. We would be able to finish a lot of our work but it seems our Internet connection is taking a toll on our servers. We are Linux based and we manage traffic on our Routers but in this particular week, we feel there was something major wrong about how slow everything is. We did not experience this the other week so we did investigate the incident today. The Load Balance capability of the Router seems not working. We have a few Static IP addresses we bought from Eastern Telecommunications and BAYANTEL which are local phone carriers.

I have been configuring Routers for 3 years and I say I have been a skeptic because I thought our products were flawless about this particular problem and the only culprit I could think of was on the ISP side. I was shocked because we were working fine a few hours ago. I asked other departments for the logs and was dumbfounded that this only happens when Load Balancing kicks in. It was supposed to cure the problem about our bandwidth needs but it seems when we have this feature working on our Routers, which is the only time everything comes into a snail's pace. They rebooted our router and we had that connection problem again, but if we only stayed with one ISP connection the Internet becomes normal again. We removed this configuration from the router and everything was okay. We checked for latest updates for the CISCO Router we were using and flashed the enterprise router with the last update then boom! We were back in business. The trial and error method took a couple of hours and we were a little behind schedule on our work. With this problem resolved, maybe we can still catch up and take that well deserved break we need. This is another case of unequal load balancing according to an article we read off another site. At least that explains what happened there. I hope geeks like me do not have to spend days to find out this simple problem next time. It would definitely cost a lot of money for enterprise sized businesses like ours. Thank God!

Typhoon Emong Reaches Pangasinan

Typhoon Emong has hit Northern Pangasinan province and is expected to weaken once it hit the Cordillera Mountains in Luzon. At 10PM this evening Pagasa-DOST says the center of Typhoon Emong is in the vicinity of La Union, another province in Central Luzon.

It has sustained winds of 150 kph and could go stron to 185 kph moving North East with speeds of 19 kph. Tommorow night, it will be around 250 kilometers East North East of Tugegarao City or 210 kilometers South East of the islands in Basco, Batanes.

On Saturday night it is going to be around 395 kilometers North East of the same group of islands.While on Sunday, it will be around 680 kilometers North East off the islands which is around 100 kilometers South Southeast of Okinawa, Japan.

Signal no. 3 has been declared to Pangasinan, Northern Zambales, Tarlac, Nueva Vizcaya, Benguet, La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Kalinga, Apayao and Abra. While Signal no. 2 to the rest of Zambales, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Quirino, Isabela, Cagayan, Babuyan group of Islands and Batanes. Signal no. 1 has been also declared in Lubang Island, Bataan, Bulacan, Cavite, Rizal, Northern Quezon, Aurora and Metro Manila.

There has been a lot of damages in property and a couple of deaths reported so I pray that we would be safe by this weekend.