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As of this writing Globe Broadband hasn’t restored its Internet connection to the fullest capacity (since 2:00 AM yesterday). There are still numerous sites I can’t access or are slow to load and I know these sites are not slow to load (one being Amazon.com).

As usual I called up support (I don’t know whay I torture myself). As usual I get the same BS about ongoing restoration and that it will return in the soonest possible time. They won’t say what the problem is and what time it will be restored.

I then demanded to talk to a supervisor. Someone came on the line. I asked her why their engineers can’t give a specific time to the solution of their problem. Her answer was that we might hope and that they may not be able to deliver.

Can you see the absurdity of that answer? Their engineers can’t or won’t give specific times. I can only guess why:

1. They don’t know what the problem is.
2. They know what the problem is but don’t know how to fix it.
3. They’re inept.

The other time Globe Broadband was down was last August. That was 3 months ago. When I called then, a support person told me an upgrade was being done. If it was an upgrade, why has their system bogged down again?

However, this isn’t the only problem I have with Globe. I can’t call NDD although this is a feature I’ve already used. I’ve called up support several times and no one has come to my home to fix the problem. I’ve had this problem for over a week now.

That’s Globe. Behind the slick advertisements lie horrible customer service.

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Yesterday I wasn’t able to download my email nor check on my sites because of other matters I had to attend to. So when I reached home around 6:30 PM I was raring to go online.

Lo and behold there was no connection!

So I ventured to call Globe support and got a techie (or so he claims) on the line. He at first read a prepared script: “I apologize for the inconvenience, sir, but we assure you we’re doing everything to restore normal service at the soonest possible time” (or something to that effect).

I asked what was the matter. The answer: Technicians were making improvements.

I asked since when. The answer: Since this morning. (Take note I was calling early evening. So the system was down almost the whole day.)

I asked when I would get back a connection. The answer: I don’t know.

It’s understandable that systems can break down. But what’s important, and here’s an unsolicited advice to Globe, is that they don’t lie to their customers. If it was a system improvement, they would certainly know what was to improve, know the time frame of the work being done and they would do it during times when there is less traffic, sometime between 12:00 and 4:00 AM.

Obviously this was a break-down somewhere. Maybe a cockroach tripped their lines or something.

Furthermore, they should try to give an estimate as to when their system would get back to normalcy. The answer, “I don’t know,” will just infuriate customers all the more and will give the impression that the technicians don’t know what they’re doing; thus, they’re non-committal in giving a time estimate.

I was, of course, infuriated. So I started interviewing the techie on the phone.

Are you a technician? Yes, sir.

Where did you graduate? ______________ State College (I’d rather not mention the name of the school to protect the unaware).

Oh, it’s a government school. No, sir, it’s a public school.

That’s the kind of employee Globe hires.

Here’s another unsolicited advice: Stop paying hundreds of thousands of pesos for those slick advertisements. Channel those pesos instead in getting a better system and smarter techies, both on and off the phone.

Technorati Tags: Globe broadband

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It’s remarkable to know that Filipino bloggers are read more and more, especially by those who look for news and commentaries about the Philippines. I believe this is not only because the Web is easily accessible but because bloggers offer a wide range of ideas and color in their blogs.

Not only this but Filipino bloggers are quite an intelligent lot and, thus, readable, if not thought-provoking. They are unshackled by editorial policies, free from any monetary proprieties and unrestricted by government censorship. Yet, what attracts many readers to them is the passion, if not fearless realism, by which they write.

So, if you’re reading this blog, don’t stop here. Go and explore other Filipino blogs, whether they’re writing from the Philippines or abroad. By doing so you’ll get a taste of how richly varied Filipinos are.

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I don’t know about you, but this is how I’m going to do it.

I’ll first go to the bathroom and take a long, lazy crap in memory of what the Marcoses did to the Philippines during their reign.

Then I’m going to get dressed to go to the church to inquire of God why none of the Marcoses nor the Estradas is in prison and, in fact, some are even in political office.

After this I’m going to find a cheap whore to spend the whole night with as a reminder of what politicians continue to do to the Filipino people in spite of the lessons learned.

What lessons learned?!!!

Porbida!

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Why do I write?

To begin to answer this question, I quote a radical named John the Baptist: “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness…” (John 1:23).

But what a voice! It caused such a stirring that a king was forced to behead him. Was John the Baptist’s voice the voice of complaint? Was it the voice of self-righteousness? Was it the voice of boredom?

No doubt there was both criticism and praise for him during his time. What is essential is that he spoke up even if he felt his was just a voice from the wilderness.

And that is what writers do. We speak up! We do it in various ways, too: humorously, seriously, tongue-in-cheek, sarcastically, cryptically, just about anyway we can so long as we get our message across.

In doing so we reflect the joys, pains, frustrations, discouragements, aspirations, hopes, wonders and everything else in between of ordinary people; yes, even of those who comment by asking why we’re always complaining and not doing anything about it.

In writing, perhaps we can stir up others to do their part in expressing themselves (one way is to go out into the streets and protest). Hopefully, one voice becomes many voices. Then the many voices can bring about change.

Comment, if you will, on these articles. Just don’t lose your head going about it.

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Well, I’m back to writing again. I had a serious bout of discouragement from the spammed comments and trackbacks I would receive daily. Although I had a script that can delete them, I would nevertheless spend precious minutes just deleting them and hundreds just kept flooding my blogs.

So I upgraded my Moveable Type to the latest version (3.16), which has an option to moderate comments as they come. I don’t use it though, opting instead to just bar all comments except those that come from registrants to TypeKey. That’s a free service that allows legitimate bloggers to register so they can exchange comments with other bloggers without going through spam blocks. TypeKey can also protect your identity. TypeKey can be accessed through this link: TypeKey

I also installed a free plugin called “SpamLookup.” You can find that here: http://bradchoate.com/projects/spamlookup/

I know spammers and those who develop spamming scripts will always look for ways to go around spam-blockers, but I’m consoled by the fact that anti-spam developers are also hard at work.

My hope is there’s a special place in hell for spammers where they get slowly eaten up by spam worms.

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I’m taking a holiday break for a while. Here’s wishing you the best that this season can bring.

Next week: The Top Ten Twerps of 2004!

Watch out for it. That will be fun.

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Last weekend, after days of heavy rain, mudslides swept over various parts of Southern Leyte leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless. As of this writing resuce operations have been turned into recovery operations as mud and rocks have deeply buried scores of victims.

Those who have survived need your help! The mudslides have already ushered in an utterly bleak Christmas for them. Yet, let us not make it a hopeless one. In this season of giving, I encourage you to send in whatever you can in finances or goods to help these families, most of whom are poor. You may send your donations through any of the following:

* Rotary Clubs of Cebu c/o Ricky Ballesteros

* ABS-CBN Foundation
North Road, Jagobiao, Mandaue City
Cebu, Philippines
Tel. No. (6332)422-1958; (6332)564-3203

* The Freeman Foundation
c/o Arlene Villacrusis
V. Gullas Street, Cebu City
Philippines
Tel. No. (6332)255-0926

* Philippine National Red Cross-Cebu Chapter
Osmena Blvd., Cebu City
Philippines
Tel. No. (6332)253-9793

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Veering away from Philippine issues, here’s a perfect gift you can give to yourself or to others: An amazing but highly effective way to achieve goals no matter what you set your mind to.

By way of presenting this, allow me to introduce you to someone that you truly
should know.

He’s the founder of a company called Think Right Now!.

The work he does is in the field of behavior modification.

That’s why I want you to know him. His name is Mike Brescia.

His ground breaking research on the mind is helping thousands of people to experience emotional and behavioral changes that they’ve never been able to achieve before. Not with therapy, not with training seminars, how-to books,
equipment, and not with patches, powders or pills.

It’s just amazing stuff.

Please do yourself a huge favor and take a couple minutes now to read the rest of this note. You’ll be happy you did. Trust me.

Now I’ll let Mike introduce himself to you.

———————————————–

Thanks, Francis.

I appreciate that nice introduction.

Hello. Yes, I am Mike Brescia. You may have heard of me. It’s not difficult, because my web site is the most well traveled personal development site on earth.

The changes our mental conditioning programs make in people are often miraculous. Jaw dropping. They’ve done their magic in situations where absolutely nothing else has helped.

It’s even more amazing, since 16 years ago I was in a place that I never want to be again… living in a vehicle. I was, in every way, a bum. A drunk. Lazy as the day is long. I got fired from MANY $5/hr jobs. I didn’t have any real friends - just party buddies.

I tried to change, it seemed, thousands of times.

But my habitual emotions, attitudes and my addictive behaviors controlled me. My will was nothing compared to the heavy chains of my life-long habits.

But in the Spring of 1987, I chanced upon some ground-breaking information in the book, Superlearning.

It chronicled the development of an effortless learning method called Suggestopedia by its creator, Georgi Lozanov.

This effortless teaching method uses 60 beat per minute music to help induce a calm stress-fr`ee mental state, and the repeating of each new piece of data three times in a special way.

The effect it has on people is similar to the way a CD-ROM installs a software program on a computer… it inserts information in a way that gives you a genuine knowing deep inside. The material literally gets inside of you. I
still think it’s weird how it works.

This effortless “teaching” method has made the words ‘Accelerated Learning’ known around the world.

Back in 1987, I wondered, since people were learning languages, science and math formulas and historic events (facts) in record time, why couldn’t I use this simple way of delivering information to teach me the attitudes and beliefs of the people who were the best at what I wanted to do. Judging by the results it was having in a variety of learning environments, it didn’t seem far-fetched to me.

I wanted to be a great salesman, so I borrowed some tape recorders and created some audio tapes using books on sales, business and general positive thinking as my guide.

To make a long story short, I got a sales job…

And I quickly sold my way out of the job (they ran out of inventory).

So I got another sales job, and became the highest paid sales exec. in the world in that industry.

Next industry… same story. I built the biggest business of it’s kind in the entire world.

Next industry… Personal Development (offering tools like the ones that changed me).

Again, because the dramatic changes our behavior modification “Success Conditioning” programs produce in people, it’s the #1 most visited site online to help change things about you that nothing else has been able to achieve.

I tell you that story, not to brag, but to inspire you.

You see, it’s the effortless teaching method of installing new automatic, programmed mental patterns that is the star, not me.

The claims on my web site are bold, dramatic…

Almost unbelievable.

But true.

So to prove the claims, I’ve recently started interviewing our customers for an audio newsletter called “You’re Telling Me!”

In “You’re Telling Me!” you’ll hear people from all over the world tell remarkable stories of change… change so amazing, if you didn’t hear it from their own mouths, you wouldn’t believe it.

You’ll hear people tell me…

==> How they’ve ended their chronic depression and panic attacks and gotten off all their medications just by playing a single $20 audio tape while they sleep.

==> How they are using a specific Think Right Now! program to increase their
sales income by 2, 3 and even 8 times.

==> How they’ve eliminated their allergies and saved all those co-pays.

==> How simple and easy it was to quit sm*king even after 20, 30 and even 40
years when nothing else stopped the cravings.

==> How they’ve lost 40, 50, 60+ pounds almost effortlessly (without pills,
powders or shakes), even though they’ve been overweight their entire lives.

==> How they’ve overcome eating disorders like bulimia by using a $20 Think Right Now! audio program.

You’ll even hear me interview a 65 year old man who is using one Think Right
Now! program to become the oldest man ever to swim the English Channel!

And if you have some issues that cause you frustration, stress, anxiety, I encourage you (don’t make me beg) to learn more about these effective yet easy to use programs now.

Go to the site and listen to an interview. They’re amazing! And sign up to get new interviews emailed to you every week.

If you are failing in some area of life and must change…

Then I just may have the answer for you.

And as an added push…

I’ve arranged for all Francis’ visitors and subscribers to get a 10% discount on every single one of our programs until midnight on Friday, December 16th.

After that, the shopping cart is programmed to stop calculating the discount.

So whatever challenges or pain you have, please don’t wait any longer.

To learn more, go to:
http://philiblogs.com/successnow/

If nothing else, if you go to the site now, you’ll learn why you do the things you do and why it’s been so hard to change.

If there are inner and outer changes you’d like to make, but haven’t been able to make them, please learn about our programs now.

You will find nothing like them anywhere.

And all our Accelerated Success Conditioning programs come with an unconditional 6 month satisfaction guar*ntee. So you’ve got success, achievement and happiness to gain and absolutely nothing to l*se except your fears, inhibitions and limitations.

And remember, while you’re on the site, sign up for “You’re Telling Me!”

It WILL inspire and convince you that greatness IS within you!

All the best!

Your new friend and partner in change,

Mike Brescia

P.S. Keep in mind, the site-wide discounts end precisely at midnight, December 16th. You just may find some ideal, affordable holiday gifts.

So go now:
http://philiblogs.com/successnow/”

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