Happy New Year from Cebu, Philippines!

From Cebu, Philippines, we wish you all a happy 2010! May the new year bring you joy, love, good health and success. Cheers!

Sending you all Hugs and Kisses,

What To Do When Computer Boots Up Slow

Tech Tuesday this weeks will start my Windows Troubleshooting Tips series. For this week and the rest of the month of January I will be discussing common Windows errors/ issues and how to fix them. Most of the solutions that I will be presenting here are simple quick fixes. So with that said I will keep myself within simple errors and issues that most of us encounter everyday.

Let's start this series with one common source of annoyance, when Windows computer boots up slow. We are all familiar with that at some point I guess. So, you may ask, why does your computer boots up slow?

A slow Microsoft Windows boot up (it's when you turn on your computer) can be caused by a wide variety of issues. I will be discussing below some suggestions and tips that can address this issue and help speed up your computer at startup.

I have several computers and some of them tend to boot up slower than the others and the reason for that is those computers run startup programs. In which case, you may need to disable those startup programs.

What are startup programs? These are programs that are loading up as the computer starts up, these remain active in memory, and are often one of the main causes of a slow boot in Windows. Disabling programs you don't often use from automatically starting up each time the computer boots can increase the boot time. You can do this manually (I will make a separate post about this promise!) or you can opt to use a memory optimizer program, which can disable any program in any of the locations programs use to start themselves automatically.

Another thing you may want to check into is your hard disk drive space. You need to have at least 250MB of free available hard disk drive space in your computer or this will decrease your computer's boot time. So you may want to make you have at least 250MB disk space available.

Next would be make sure our computer has the latest drivers as well as any available Microsoft Windows updates! Most of the time, corrupt, incorrect, and/or out-of-date drivers can cause a number of different issues, so make sure to update them in a timely manner.

Adding more memory (RAM) to your computer can also increase the overall performance of your computer and the load times of your computer. Right now, most computers run a minimum of 1GB of memory, if your computer is running less than that, you may consider an upgrade!

How often do you Defrag and do Scandisk? Running Microsoft ScanDisk and Defrag and other similar disk utilities on the computer can help check if the hard disk drive has no errors, and at the same time make sure the data on the hard disk drive is organized in the most efficient method. I usually do this once in every few months. And if you are not doing this, you may start this one now. (I will make another post on this one too!)

You may try a registry cleaner. Though not really often recommended, in some cases this helps improve the computers overall performance including that of the Windows startup. (I will try to post more information on registry cleaners in the coming weeks.)

If all the above tips have been tried ans still your computer boots up slow, you may want to format and reinstall. Yikes! That means you need to erase everything and re-install Windows. This will clean your computer and make it like new. (I will also try to make another post on how to backup your files as you might need to do that before formatting your computer.)

Another alternative solution to this is to set your computer to hibernate mode rather than turning it off. This will also let you startup your computer faster.

I know you may have questions related to this post and please feel free to leave them in the comment section and I will try to address them come next Tuesday. I hope you learn something new today!

Mariposa's Christmas Decor

So glad to be back to Fun Monday before ending the year!

The lovely Gattina is hosting this week and her task for this week is --

Just take a picture of one Christmas ornament which you love the most, explain why, and if you don't have any explanations it's also OK. For those who haven't celebrated Christmas, just take a picture of something else you love as decoration.

This is quite easy to do and I have more than one. I remember doing a similar theme in my first year with Fun Monday, but of course I'm not posting that old photo. ;)

First off, here is my Christmas tree! This year I did not so many decors like I used to but I decided to bring the tree out the porch. This is a favorite decor as there was no Christmas without it. So here it is with its lights. I love them in evening...it feels nice listening to the lights sing those Christmas carols. 

Then under the tree is where my gifts are. (I know there are not decors but I love them and my Christmas tree is not complete without them!) I love wrapping gifts and moreso the fun of distributing them to friends and families. Here is my taking a short break with my wrapping of gifts adventure. Iwas not halfway then...but the IT Guy asked me to pose and so the obedient me did as he told me and you see there one harassed butterfly! LOL

 

 And my most favorite Christmas decor of all is the Nativity! And most especially this one as this was given by a friend 12 years ago. One of my most treasured decor. For 12 years I have kept it and I intend to keep it forever. By the way, here in my place we this Belen. We always display the Nativity in our living room every Christmas. It's not so big we can put it on top of a table, a low shelves, etc.

 

 So that's it. Let me go and visit the others now and see what they have. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2010!

Hugs and Kisses,

Managing Bad Credit

Anyone ever applied for an auto loan? I guess most of us. But have you ever been denied due to a bad credit standing? This does not just happen to car loans, this even happen to credit card applications, right? Well anyway, this is awful. At some point people need into credit because all they can afford is financing but then they can’t because they have bad credit standing. And most of the time we need to put things into financing to manage our finances. Huh, another chicken and egg situation.

I don’t know how I got into this conversation with the IT Guy. Maybe we were discussing about the economy and how bad it has been to most people. Then he told me something about people with bad credit standing still being able to get loan application approval. I was like, really? Then he said yes. All they need to do is just declare their financial standing and apply for bad credit loan. I never knew such a thing exist but then, I went ahead and check it online.

Bingo! I saw one offering bad credit auto loans. And while most people might shy away from this due to fear for a very high interest, I believe it’s just a matter of financial planning. One just need to know how much he or she can afford in a given time. Anyway just my morning thought, you might want to check it yourselves!

Christmas at CCMC Pediatrics

I promise to make a post about it so here goes. Trust me I had to struggle with this post as I just can't seem to find any strength to type anything. I'm more than happy to have shared few moments with the children at Cebu City Medical Center's Pediatrics...plus the fact that I'm still not so over with one event I saw while I was there.

First off I don't have any better photos to show as I did not go there ready to document the said activity. As most of you noticed I have stopped writing posts about my outreach programs. I don't really have any reasons for that though. Anyway, when we got home the IT Guy told me that in between his breaks (since he was helping out most of the time!) he was able to take some photos in some areas of the Pedia Ward.

Cebu City Medical Center, also known as CCMC is a public hospital run by the Cebu City Goverment. And like most state-owned hospitals, it's not really the nicest place to go to or stay with. So this Christmas I told the IT Guy that I wanted to go there and be with the children. It was a last minute thing I wanted so we did whatever we can with whatever we have. I have to thank several people too who made this project successful. I'd like to thank the man in black, Rene S. for helping me facilitate this visit as well as Dr. M. Go, the Chief of the Hospital. So many thanks to Agnes who shared some candies, juices and biscuits to the children, my sister in law Sheila for all the particular help, and of course the IT Guy who cooked the spaghetti himself. Did I mention before that the IT Guy is very good with pasta? Well he is! And we just wanted his best spaghetti to the children. :)

So here we are in action!

The Pedia Ward is located at the ground floor of the hospital and there were about 60 children there, that includes the Pedia ICU and they have an extension at the third floor where there were about 12 children.

This is the one on the third floor. Here is my SIL giving candies and biscuits to the children.

I had just to ask how come this child is alone...I was glad to know she's to check out and the parent was just checking with the nurses downstairs.

 

Here is Mariposa putting all her trash in one bag. Cleanliness is next to godliness so they say!

 

I met this baby when I went back downstairs. He just spent his Christmas at the hospital and I do hope he will be out there by New Year. (I didn't even notice the IT Guy was able to take a photo!)

 

The scene I left downstairs wasn't quite the same when I got back. The four month old baby who was in manual respirator (they call it bagging) was being pumped by the nurse. I could tell it wasn't good and I was standing there helpless seeing the baby go. I couldn't understand why we had to end the day with that. When I first stepped into the Pedia Ward the first thing I asked was what happened to her. The one who was doing the bagging told me that she had a cough. I had to ask the IT Guy how come she wasn't in normal oxygen, he just looked at me and said because she may not be capable to do it on her own. I know deep inside that once a patient is in respirator it means that patient is in critical condition, it just didn't dawn to me that, that child was in critical condition. I went to her Mom before going upstairs and told them I pray they can go home soon. It never occurred to me that they will go home sad. While I stand there looking at the nurses and the doctor trying to revive the baby, I kept asking people and myself what can I do. What do they need. Nothing. They needed the baby to respond first. I was standing there wishing one could share their lifetime with someone in an instance. I would gladly give some of my years to that child. It's just awful. I couldn't believe a child could die because of a cough. I couldn't believe how could parents wait for a simple cough to complicate before rushing them to the hospital. That baby I learned was just brought there on that day. Early that day another baby died because of the same illness. What in the world is going on?

I want to stop this post as I am just too overwhelmed with a lot of things. I know I can only do so much, and I always wish I can do more but every time I struggle to do more for people I see how helpless I am and it hurts. 

I pray for God's hand to rest on the shoulder of the family of that baby who's with the angels now. I also pray that the children there get better soon so they can spend New Year's eve at home. May God bless all the little children in world.