PLDT Scandal - Hell day for Customer Service

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I admit I’m a bit late in publishing this scandal involving the PLDT call center agent who was caught cursing a customer on tape. It has spawned into a viral case which prompted the blogosphere and other related social-networking services to capitalize on the heat of the scandal. It was uploaded in 2006 and made more than 200,000 hits and almost two hundred ratings, but nevertheless still important for those considering a service from PLDT. I certainly feel the weight of this being a customer of PLDT myself. Take note that I am dissatisfied myself and I feel betrayed by this ISP giant if I may say. You can read here my past tech rant on PLDT myDSL. PLDT certainly employs a lousy customer service and ill-equipped agents at worst.

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I do not condone how the customer bullied, cursed and belittled the agent. It was wrong and downright unprofessional. It is a social and moral decay of sorts for any person to treat anybody like that. As we say, “Your right as a person stops when the rights of others begin.” The person over the phone is not a machine nor a dog - whom you can lash with shame and be stripped of dignity. However, the agent involved made the worst out of that scenario. I was a call center employee before and I knew the task and the weight of the load it carries to satisfy the needs of an irate customer. Had the agent taken control of the situation and not let her emotions cloud her judgment, it couldn’t have gone the way it went. Muting your microphone while you curse back the customer is never an option.

It is what we call “Customer Service”, not customer disservice. We must bring not our emotions over the very job which we took an oath to provide with utmost responsibility. It is a moral obligation of a CSR to assure the customer how the company is doing its best to provide quality service and meet the very needs they pay for. The bad thing here in our country, bureaucracy and personal upliftment is higher in priority than selfless customer service. It is a social norm like a lingering cancer that must be eradicated so that we as a nation can progress.

The CSR or agent could have made steps to avoid the unnecessary heated altercation with an irate and disappointed client or customer. One’s effectivity in communication is crucial in not only assuring a satisfied customer but also avoiding substancial loss of a number of dissatisfied customers for your company:

How to Clean your PC DIY

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This is my simple Do-it-Yourself tutorial on how to properly and safely clean your PC without the unnecessary hiccups. I have included the pertinent steps that we must undertake to ensure the best possible cleaning regimen.

Step 1

Before all else begins, power down or shutdown your PC and remove all power cables. Ensure too that we remove all cables from peripheral devices. As a rule of thumb, it is prerogative that we label all cords, cables and devices properly either with a masking tape or labeling sticker so as to ensure we never forget to put them back into place during re-assembly of our unit. For precaution, make yourself properly grounded using a wrist grounding strap before opening the PC case. Place all the screws in a secured place so you will avoid losing it.

Step 2

Use isopropyl alcohol moistened into a lint-free fabric to wipe dirt off the external case and monitor. Be gentle in wiping and not force your hands too hard on delicate parts like DVD drives. For the keyboard, use a nylon brush to take-off dust and turn it over to force accumulated dirt out off it. Disassemble the mouse, remove dirt from inside with a cotton-bud soaked with alcohol. Remove also the mouse ball and cleanse it with lint-free fabric moistened with alcohol, reassemble afterwards.

Crysis cheats for PC

For archiving purposes, I have here posted the usual Crysis cheats for PC.

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Crysis Cheat List

Note: This technique requires an intermediate knowledge of your directories. We assume that you know what you will be doing and we strongly advise for you to back-up files to be replaced in case of any problems.

Head to the difficulty files in your Crysis folder (for example: C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\Game\Config). The four files you’re looking for are titled diff_easy.cfg, diff_normal.cfg, diff_hard.cfg and diff_bauer.cfg. Open the file (using Notepad) of the difficulty level you are currently playing or wish to edit.

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Counter-Strike: Source Cheats and Hints for PC

For archiving purposes, I have here posted the usual Counter-Strike: Source Cheats and Hints for PC.

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Counter-Strike: Source hints

Hint - Italian Closet Dweller

In the map cs_italy got to the apartments and there should be a (breakable) cabinet to hide in. To do this, go up the stack of logs by Counter-Terrorist spawn. Go through the window, up the flight of stairs (consisting of 4 steps) and into the next room. There you will see a large cabinet in the right hand corner of the room. Run and crouch jump into the cabinet. You will now be inside the of it. Although you cannot shoot out of the cabinet (it will break if you do) it is a good hiding spot.

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Need for Speed ProStreet cheats for PC

For archiving purposes, I have here posted the usual Need for Speed ProStreet Cheats for PC.

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Need for Speed ProStreet money maker

For fast money, try the following multi-step technique.

This can be repeated over and over, for as much money as you want.

Start up the game and load your career profile.

Head to the in-game cheats menu, and insert the UNLOCKALLTHINGS cheat.

With the bonus unlocked, go ahead and save your career.

Reload your career and head to the garage. The code should have unlocked several new, expensive cars.

Sell the bonus cars you received for a quick $90,000+.

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Cossacks: European Wars Cheats for PC

For archiving purposes, I have here posted the usual Cossacks: European Wars Cheats for PC.

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Cossacks: European Wars Cheats
To activate the cheats listed below, hit ENTER during gameplay,
then type the phrases listed to unlock corresponding cheats.
Cheat	Effect
www	Activates “supervizor”, “multitvar” and “izmena” Cheats
AI	Control Enemies
IZMENA	Switch Player With NumPad Keys 1-9
SUPERVIZOR	Reveal Map (Code is CaSe SeNsItIvE)
MULTITVAR	Press “P” to Access All Units
MONEY	+50,000 for each resource
VICTORY	Win the game
resources	Add all resources
shield	Infinite cannon

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Need For Speed Carbon cheats for PC

For archiving purposes, I have here posted the usual Need for Speed Carbon Cheat codes and Unlockables for PC.

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Cheat Codes For NFS-Carbon
Type any of the following cheat codes at the ‘CLICK TO CONTINUE’ screen.
Some codes may work if entered at the MAIN MENU screen.
Cheat	Effect
friendlyheadlocksapplied	Unlimited Crew Charge
nosforeverever	Unlimited NOS
slowitdownwhenyouwant	Unlimited SpeedBreaker
inthezoneskin	unlocks Autozone Vlinyl
syntecskin	unlocks Castrol Syntec Viny
5grand5grand	unlocks Castrol Cash
shinycarsarethebestcars	unlocks Chrome Cars
cooperlogofreeforyou	unlocks Cooper Tire Logo
chasingmobile	unlocks Corvette Z06 Interceptor for the quick race
guesswhoisback	unlocks Cross Corvette Z06 for the quick race
trashtalking	unlocks Rhino for the quick race
bigredfiredrive	unlocks Fire Truck for the quick race
speed3foryou	unlocks Mazda Dealership
lotsoffreelogos	unlocks Need for Speed Carbon Logo Vinyls
lotsoffreevinyls	unlocks Need for Speed Carbon Special Logo
watchoutthebigtruckishere	unlocks Dump Truck for the quick race
pharrellvinylgogo	unlocks Pharrell Vinyl
canyonalltheway	unlocks all tracks
givemethechargersrt8	2006 Dodge Charger SRT8
givemethedb9	2005 Aston Martin DB9

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Unlockable Codes For NFS-Carbon
Collectors Edition cars
Successfully complete the indicated event(s) in the Challenge Series to unlock the corresponding car:
Unlockable	How to Unlock
Aston Martin DB9 (Exotic)	Defeat Wolf in Boss Battle mode
Dodge Charger RT Classic (Muscle)	Defeat the 21st Muscle Car Gang
Jaguar XK 2007 (Exotic)	Successfully complete all three Turf War races
Mazda RX7 (Tuner)	Defeat Kenji in Boss Battle mode
Nissan 240SX (Tuner)	Successfully complete all three Checkpoint challenges

Top Browsers of 2008 Showdown

2008 is the resurgence of the Internet Browser wars. I have here listed the Browsers I try frequently myself. I suggest that you try to check all these stuff first before installing your browser of choice.

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Demonoid.com back online - popular torrent site lives!

I received a message in my E-mail today from Gate_keeper, a staff from popular Demonoid torrent website and it read:

Hello THE11thROCK,
We are pleased to inform you that Demonoid.com is finally back online

The rest of the message I have no intentions presently to post online, but what a relief for all the waiting fans and general public to finally confirm that the popular torrent tracker has finally landed home. It appears that Umlauf has replaced his friend Deimos indefinitely as site admin. I personally checked out the site and without a doubt, the site is definitely back, hopefully for good.

For the uninitiated, a BitTorrent tracker is a server which assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol . And Demonoid (again, the name itself is not in anyway related to any of the site activity or of the supernatural realms) is one favorite site tracker for file-sharers alike. Note: In most countries, it is illegal to distribute copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder. So be sure to share only legitimate files.

Samsung Hard Drives: Worth buying?

I have to really let out a wail. Forgive me, but such a rant is sorely needed. Let me just remind everyone and the folk’s over there at Samsung that they can always contact or e-mail yours truly to air their respective side. Don’t ever purchase Samsung IDE ATA or PATA drives! It was pretty disappointing thinking that I thought I got a better and cheaper option by purchasing Samsung drives. Let me say that it was bad curiosity in my part why I chose to give Samsung a shot - despite being an avid user of Western Digital and Seagate. Of course, all of these headaches had been illicited by the frustration I got from Samsung drives.

Hack the Hosts file to block websites

If you work in a kiosk mode PC say a computer cafe or in a school setting, there are restrictions that you want to enforce when it comes to sites that users can browse. This is specially important when you have a family workstation which little kids can use. Filtering is an option but programs Procon and others can definitely affect system and browser performance. You can also use software like AnyWeblock but it is pretty complicated and time-consuming for busy users to configure.

For starters here’s a nifty way to filter those unwanted websites off your computer. For either Vista and Windows XP, go to the directory C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc (If C is your default Windows directory). Back-up first your Hosts file in another secured directory. Next, open the Hosts file with Notepad (or any other text editor like Vim or Darkroom). Most probably the file is in Read-Only attribute so you cannot edit the Hosts file. First off, right click on Hosts, click Properties and uncheck Read-Only. Now go open and edit it in Notepad and you will see this:

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Add the following on its own line in the hosts file below 127.0.0.1 localhost:
127.0.0.1 www.google.com (we will use it as an example).

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Teracopy - forget about the default windows copy handler

From the developer’s website, it says: TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, providing the user a lot of features:

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• Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.
• Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
• Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.
• Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
• Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.
• Full Unicode support.

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom cheats for PC

For archiving purposes, I have here posted the usual Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom cheats for PC. During game play press Ctrl + Alt + C to bring up the cheat console and type these codes:

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Random Text Cheat Codes
Cheat	Effect
Uncle Sam	Tax collectors change to become Uncle Sam
SpawnMugger	A mugger is spawned in city
Delian Treasury	Add 5000 Delians (Cash)
Shutime	New Cash code
Gimme Goods	Get Free goods in your Warehouse
LizardMan	Hero changes into giant lizard
Bad Wallpaper	All buildings are Inauspicious (related to feng shui)
IgnoreDesire	Desirability is ignored in housing evolution
Great Heat	Drought
Shake Shake	Earthquake
FunForElite	Elite house evolve without required entertainment
WaresForElite	Elite houses get 100 units of bronzeware/lacquerware
CeramicsForElite	Elite houses get 100 units of ceramics
HempForElite	Elite houses get 100 units of hemp
SilkForElite	Elite houses get 100 units of silk
TeaForElite	Elite houses get 100 units of tea
GlubGlub	Flood
Kill Enemy Units	Kill all enemy units
Kill Loan Units	Kill all loan units
Black Death	Kill all military units
SpawnBandit	A bandit is spawned in the city
Chinese Flu	One house is infected

Remove Viruses that use Autorun

Pen drives or USB drives is now the trend of tech storage in the world today. The portability, ease of use and geekiness (if I may say) makes it a must-have for all tech fans out there. Personally, it’s my first choice for tech support because I can either install any portable OS and programs without cramming-in to open a customer’s PC case. It’s also very easy to carry compared to other gadgets like external hard drives and zip drives which I often have problems fitting inside my small bag. However, there’s a big catch to all the USB hype. It is now also widely abused by hackers and virus engineers as a medium of propagation and destruction.

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Ever heard of Disk Knight? How about Brontok, Bacalid, Kopa, and Ravmon trojan viruses? I came across several hundreds of these gremlins lately whenever a client asks for a PC repair. Most of the time it will start-up with your PC or hijack some processes which make it impossible for you to access C drive, and sometimes even replaces your default copy command. There was also one time when I chance into one of these which collaborates with one virus to hijack the Hosts file in Windows.

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How do we get rid of it? Solution - proper tools and information. Disk knight is one of the best known Autorun trojans. It is even known to some tech people to be a beneficial virus. Are you kidding me? When do we associate beneficial to a PC virus? And worse, at the time of my writing - AVG, Avast and Kaspersky cannot detect most of them. Going back, here are the steps to follow:

PLDT myDSL bureaucracy sucks big time

Yeah, you heard it right. I used to like PLDT (Philippine Long Distance Telephone company) when it comes to basic telephone services. But with PLDT myDSL (their overly hyped DSL service), wow - it’s a shame if I even call it a service.

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Too good to be true?

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If you’d like to verify my qualms about this business titan of ISPs in the Philippines, go check out the hordes of discontented and frustrated clients for myDSL from the Petition Online site. The petition header reads, “We endorse the A complaint to PLDT Petition to Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT).” As I presently finish this article there are currently 851 signatures (probably those who are only aware of this petition including myself) and counting. Further below the header it states, “The A complaint to PLDT Petition to Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) was created by and written by Isamu Shinozaki (isamu@urithium.net). The petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.”

The Top 10 Golden Rules of safe Internet surfing

Are you a World Wide Web lurker? Ok, no offense meant. You are a light-saber wielding Internet wanderer. Better? Here are my personal guidelines so that you’ll be in a much safer zone when browsing the net.

• Lose IE (Internet Explorer) and use Firefox, K-Meleon or Opera instead
  • Forget about unfixed bugs, worms, and unpatched holes. I prefer Firefox and it’s better equipped due to the tons of plug-ins. It also lets you handle phishing and harmful javascript with ease.

• Use a Firewall
  • Ever used ICS Firewall for Windows? Whew. Trash it and use Comodo or Sygate firewall. Keeps hackers and unauthorized intruders at bay.

• Use an Antivirus, Antispyware, AntiAdware, AntiMalware, AntiKeylogger, Trojan and Worm remover
  • Its a cruel world out there. Without the necessary security measures, you are left defenseless. Like a lamb led to slaughter. Use AVG for real-time defense, and install Avast and NOD32 (but don’t activate them automatically) handy for manual scanning. AVG antispyware and Spybot Search and Destroy for those bots. Ad-aware cleans-up your PC from those pesky adwares. Threatfire is great for security threats and malwares. For CWS worms use CWS shredder.

Google Notebook in your Firefox sidebar: Cool!

From Wikipedia: “Google Notebook is a free service offered by Google that provides a simple way to save and organize clips of information when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits a user to write notes, and to clip text, images, and links from pages during browsing. These are saved to an online “notebook” with sharing and collaboration features.

Google Notebook is an interactive scratch pad for any visited web pages, offering to collect web findings within the browser window.”

I really like Google Notebook. It’s like a scrapbook, bookmarker, GTD-lister, clipper and organizer all-in-one. The main problem with it is that it consumes too much browser space. The notebook extension for Firefox is pretty pale for minimalistic purposes. Solution? Try this:

All you do is bookmark this link, then open the Properties for the new bookmark and check the box labeled “Load this bookmark in the sidebar.” Now, when you open the sidebar and click the bookmark, voila: your favorite scratch paper and post-it will now be lurking in your Firefox sidebar.

via [Mitchelaneous]

Darkhorse Firefox add-ons for 2008

Last year I named the top Firefox add-ons for 2007. This time around, I have accumulated several add-ons which I believe should have been included in that list but which I had not bumped into last year. Why darkhorse? Well most of them I did not notice at first glance, but whew! What a blunder. Check this list, these extensions simply rocks!

Fission: Fission combines address bar and progress bar (Safari style). Very nice eye candy indeed.

Fancy Numbered Tabs: Replaces the close tab graphic with numbers to help with quick tab navigation via CTRL + [1-8] or Alt + [1-8]. Easy swapping by using the ctrl key. Looks great too.

Googlepedia: Shows you a relevant Wikipedia article along with your search results. Clicking links in the article will trigger new Google searches, making it a very useful research tool… When you start using it, browsing google will entirely be in a new level.

Disable XPI delay: Disables default delay when installing… Yeah, those delays suck big time!

QuickRestart: Ever needed to restart Firefox after enabling or disabling an extension, switching to a new theme, or modifying configuration files (such as userChrome.css or user.js)? Finally the best way to restart.

Split Panel: Open panel to left, bottom or right (left,middle or right click) with current URL from Split on context menu (right click on page) of the tab’s page. It lets you focus on one page and still gives you the reason to check on other tabs.

Make OpenOffice startup faster and disable splash screen

I personally use OpenOffice as my default desktop office suite compared to others like the bulky and bug-ridden Microsoft Office or the online processors like Zoho and Google Office (I like Online office suites, but they are severely limited). However, OpenOffice is an excellent office tool, but the start-up is truly a turtle crawl! Follow these steps that I used and ensure that you get to start in a breeze with OpenOffice:

These are the steps to make OpenOffice launch faster either in XP or Linux. Just remember that these steps are also RAM intensive.

• Go to Applications > Office > OpenOffice.org Word Processor for Ubuntu (Linux)
• Or just hit OpenOffice shortcut for Windows
• The OpenOffice.org Word Processor is launched. Go to the Tools menu and select Options. The Options window is opened.

Best Torrent Clients of 2008

Here is an overview of the most popular file downloading software for torrent file sharing of 2008. I’ve included some of their features and what makes each client rock or suck. Personal experience may vary for each user, so my take on this maybe different from yours. However, my review of these clients may be of help to you in choosing a better torrent client.

µTorrent
Popular as both “u-torrent” and “micro torrent”, this is the most popular torrent tool today for newbies and geeks alike. µTorrent has all the functions a torrent downloader will ever need, and it only requires 1 MB of hard drive space and memory. µTorrent has all the downloading and seeding performance of its competitors, but with minimal impact to the rest of your computer’s speed. What makes me use this is that it has a portable version, pretty nifty for immediate use in any PC. Beware, however, if not properly configured, µtorrent can suck away all your bandwidth thereby rendering other net-activities paralyzed.

• Multiple simultaneous downloads
• Smart bandwidth usage
• File level priorities
• Configurable bandwidth scheduling
• Global and per-torrent speed limiting
• Quickly resumes interrupted transfers
• UPnP support (WinXP only)
• Supports popular protocol extensions
• Trackerless support (Mainline DHT)
• Localized to different languages
• Typical memory use less than 6 MB
• Incredibly small: 105 KB

BitLord
This is my favorite client. A popular tool that has a built-in torrent search engine…you may never need to use a torrent search web site ever again with this software. Never had any problems or headaches with Bitlord, though if you check at times, some trackers might try to block Bitlord for some reasons.

• Automatic optimization for different connections.
• Automatic optimization of uploads to achieve the max download
• Reduces fragmentation on the drive.
• Eliminates the time-consuming hashing when seeding / resume.
• Allows some firewalled or “NAT’d” users to connect to each other.
• Compliant with XP’s restrictions on the TCP stack by SP2.
• Block IP’s temporarily or permanently.
• All downloads are received through a single port.
• No manual ICS or ICF configuration required.
• Automatically configures UPnP compatible routers
• Can find peers from more than one source.
• Supports the UTF-8 character set.
• Automatically checks for new versions.
• Over 19 languages supported.
• Support for eDonkey (Beta version only)

Azureus
A Java language client; was considered “king” of the torrent programs until uTorrent software came along and took that crown away. Azureus is a memory and performance hog. Users are scared away because of the performance hit. If you have less than 512mb RAM and you’re a gamer like me, skip this.

• Manual peer upload blocking (when seeding) and kick-banning
• Control added to not cache small files
• Advanced network settings: MTU, SO_RCVBUF, SO_SNDBUF, IPTOS
• Plugin support for installing and uninstaling plugins
• Client identification plugin interface
• Separate protocol payload and overhead stats
• Network selection support (public, i2p, tor)