[//edwin||reyes\\]

I’ve been working like never before these last 4 days. 12 hours a day, over night and early morning. The Cadburry Schweppes expirience is much more then I expected. For starters I’ve traded my laptop for a screw driver, my trendy glasses for safety glasses, my comfortable shoes for steel toes boots and my phone for a walkie talkie. I’ve gone from a clean quiet atmosphere to an atmosphere that requires earplugs and hair nets! Hmmm… what did I do? As bad as it sounds, I do have 4 days off in a row and I can take as many mini vacations as I want to… I guess I can also do much more then I had hoped for compared to my old job so thats definately a positive.

Working in production is kind of tough because while you are worried about the quality and safety of the machines, you have other people worrying about the quantity… Instead of fixing a problem that can prevent the downtime of several hours, I have managers pushing to get those next thousand bottles onto the conveyor so they can meet their goal for the day. I can handle working in a production atmosphere, but the pushing and bossing around from line managers is something I will refuse to take. Seniority is not in my scale of respect. I treat people with respect and decency the moment I meet them so I simply expect the same in return… However some people don’t think like that… I had this one manager that tried to humiliate me because according to him, I did not follow the chain of command prior to fixing a problem… I let him know what I thought about his little tyrant mode he had in front of the Operations Manager. Does he think Cadburry Schweppes is a Fraternity?

Well, I got back from Dominican Republic and I must say that I had a great trip. I arrived into Santiago at 3 in the morning. Walking off the plane and taking your first breath of air is unbelievable. It’s a mix between morning fog, cow menuer, carbon monoxide, and a tropical breeze. I swear. It’s a smell unlike any other.

No one really knew I was there until I woke up and the little kids from the area were asking my 6 year old cousin who was sleeping in the room I was sleeping in… At 8 in the morning everyone knew I was there so I just rolled out of bed and made my rounds. Getting to see my family, old acquaintances and making new friends was special as always. By noon my day had been planned by the kids and my family. Mangu for breakfast, Sancocho for lunch, and a Bar-B-Q for diner. I was all set… You can’t ask for more…

Friday night I drove myself into Santo Domingo. On my way there I encoutered a truck that had turned over on the highway… I was two steps out the door as my conscience hit me and made me get back into the car and head to that Blogger Reunion. I honestly didn’t even know where it was, but I made it. Asking for directions only once I found out that I was only three blocks away… You Dominican Bloggers are quite a crowd. I must say that I rarely read blogs due to a lack of time but the few blogs that I do read from time to time and those that I select as Blog of the Week for the site are a pleasure to read. Everyone has their own personality and their own little nitch that is reflected on their blog. And I can’t forget to mention that there are quite a few good looking women on Blogs Dominicanos… Wow… eh… Got blog?

That night I drove around the city all night long. I danced at a club called Fanta, had a few drinks at a bar, and stopped to buy some grapes just to snack on… I also stopped to talk to the Hatians that sell the paintings on the famous avenue El Malecon which overlooks the sea. Did you know that they get paid RD$1,500 a week?!?! I was blown away. The rest of the night, I was site seeing in the dark and enjoying the EMPTY streets of St. Domingo. Perhaps a bit dangerous but I figured what the hell… Let me just drive around the entire night and see what the streets of DR are really like… After all, if I can drive around the worst neighborhoods of NY and NJ, how much different can it be in DR? So thats what I did.

Saturday morning I was at my aunts house where I had breakfast and lunch… At noon time I was supposed to meet with an editor from El Nacional… he never showed up… And if experience teaches humility, remember to never show up on time for the next meeting… I can’t stand people showing up late or not show up at all… Why set a time for an event that has been planned for days in advance and simply forget or reschedule with out advising the other person… That simply irritates me but whatever… Once I ate my Shrimp Mofongo and two glasses of freshly squeezed Lemonade, I headed back to Jarabacoa.

Yet another amazing drive through the country as you gazed up at the mountains and back onto the road where you would see the endless number of pit stops where you could stop and buy fresh fish or home made sweets. That afternoon I also visited my parents home where they will be retiring, took a few pictures and headed into the town to expirience the night life. All I have to say about that is… I wish they had the same prices here in NYC!

Sunday I went site seeing again throughout Jarabacoa and then headed into Santiago where more family awaited my visit. I got to visit a few places in Santiago… among them was El Monumento and a shopping center called La Sirena. They had an exhibition at El Monumento with images from across the world aside from Dominican Republic. The night life in Santiago appeared to be “happaning” and full of life. I’ll definately have to go back there and hang out…

Well, that basically sums up my trip to DR. I had a lot of fun and feel as if I made the most of my time while I was out there… After making it home on Monday morning, I checked my email and voicemail… Little did I know that I was supposed to be at work @ 8am for my first day of orientation… Reality struck and I didn’t hesitate going into work…

So me and Flickr have been really good friends lately… My last days at work have turned into a photo hunt for Dominican Images. Amongst the groups I’ve found are Dominican Flickr, Washington Heights, East Harlem, Latin Flavor, Orgullo Dominicano, and P!ndaro’s.

However, none of these groups come as close as the images I found today on Tania Pegueros’ Collection.

This lady has an amazing talent with the camera. The special thing about it is that she lives in Dominican Republic so the images she uploads are precisely what you are bound to find through out the entire Dominican Republic… Domino Games, Friendly People and Inocent Faces.

So my trip is all set for going back to Dominican Republic. Although its on short notice, it’s bitter sweet. I haven’t been there in over 6 years!

I didn’t enjoy that trip tho… I was trapped in St. Domingo with no where to go during the week and when the weekends came by, I would head to Jarabacoa where time would fly by. However I did enjoy my extended stay after going to a Bavaro Resort in Punta Cana on my final weekend. That was more of a tourist thing then anything else…

Loved the stay in Jarabacoa tho… Jarabacoa is a place where life is simple, families are close and a good time is just a hop skip and a jump away… A place where the kids are all playful and a pebble is all they need to knock a mango down for you. A place where Tuesdays feel like Fridays and Mondays feel like Saturdays. It’s definately a leisure lifestyle.

I guess it’s all a tradeoff… It is quite clear that life is much more simpler then it is here in the US. Much cheaper if you compare apples to apples… litterally… But then you look at the basic needs and the costs of obtaining those needs through the wages that are paid… not so convienient anymore… is it?

Well, needless to say I’ll be enjoying the fruits of my birthplace for three whole days with those I’ve longed to see for over 6 years. Friends and Family who have no idea of how to browse the internet or how to turn the computer on. Friends and family who will strike a pose becuase they will definately want to take a picture for me to bring back to my family wearing those stunning sandals, shorts, and tank tops… and the shiny white teeth they have…

Ready set SHOP!… I’ve launched my own template store! Now you can actually start designing your own websites with pre-made templates.

Blog Templates – They can be modified to fit your exisiting blog templates. Included with each template are the Flash Intros, Flash Files as well as the HTML and CSS files associated with each template.

Website Templates – A website template can be used to build your personal webpage or huge corporate site, online shop or offline presentation or even as a design for the software you develop! And everything you create is going to be easy, fast and professional!

Flash Templates – Flash Templates are pre-made web design products that can be easily customized to reflect your company’s branding. Flash templates are available in Macromedia Flash format. Pay per one template to get rarest design.

Flash Intros – It is an effective flash presentation created to give customers an idea about your site and activities. This is in fact an informative movie that will certainly impress the visitor and make your site more vivid and professional-looking! All flash headers come with source FLA files and are fully editable.

PHP Templates – It is actually a skin for your PHP-Nuke. PHP-Nuke is a ready-made news automated system specially elaborated to be used in Intranets and Internet. Its usage doesn’t require any technical skills and theme integration takes a couple of minutes! Please note: PHP-Nuke theme WILL NOT work if you don’t have PHP-Nuke installed and configured on your web site.

There are also Logo Templates and Corporate Logos for you to choose from…

1982… Let me see.. I was barely 3 years old. We lived in apartment 12B on Jackson Avenue. My sister and I shared a queen size bed. Our next door neighbors were the coolest people to hang out with. My father was working for NYNEX. My mom was a house wife. I wore Silver Puma sneakers. I loved flan so much that my mom used to make it every week until I got anxious and started eating it while it was still warm in the fridge… She then put my face into it… E.T., The Toy, and Rocky III were released that year. Frogger, Arkanoid, and Pac Man were my favorite Atari 2600 games. Pix by Scrubbles.net

According to the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, Get Rich or Die Trying was a rotten tomato… I actually got to see the movie this past weekend and thought it was just another rags to riches story about a drug dealer out in Queens… as one of the reviews stated…

“This is a violent look at a man who transitions from the streets to the concert hall. But it’s nothing new — just a different spin on an old story.”

I couldn’t agree more… How else do these gangster rappers come to be? The majority of their lyrics are based on true stories that are broken down into detail… and ofcourse the misguided information that is inserted from time to time… Just like a movie character they play a role and they have their own story.

The one thing that bugged me was that you couldn’t tell who his father was… There was several instances where you could suspect that Bill Duke was his father but they never made it clear. But then again, in an interview Curtis Jackson stated…

“…I really have no interest in meeting my father. My mother, when I was younger, she used to tell me things to make me feel special about not having my father be around, cause I’d ask questions, and she told me that I was born through the immaculate conception.”

What blows me away is that this movie was 75% factual. Now onto bigger and better things for Curtis Jackson… such as Gamer Graffix. They also have a BLOG!

A las 5.30 de la mañana pasa el mardito camion de la basura… y no se le puede decir que pasen un poco mas tarde porque son dos vecez a la semana que recojen la mardita basura… uno echando un sueño porque tiene que levantarse a las 7 de la mañana y despues no me puedo dormir porque ya estoy levantado… que vaina… y ese mardito camion si que hace buya! Como si no le pusieran grasa o aseite al sistema hydraulico que tiene… eso es… METAL CON METAL… barbaroo!

An image rotator and a simple image popup was the inexpensive and less complicated way of creating a mini image viewer for me… I actually had these pictures and the rotator script working on my website before I changed it to Flash. And before I forget… thanks to Otto Piron for the wonderful images of Dominican Republic, all of the pictures from the Blog Party back in May, and the endless number of dream cars from the ‘05 NYC Auto Show…

If you are thinking of implementing this idea, you will have to have your own hosting service amoungst other things. You will also need the Image Rotator script and you will also need to insert the Image Thumbnail Viewer script into your files if you decide to expiriment with it.

The Image Rotator is an easy way to make an image on your website change every time a visitor reloads the page. The Rotator picks a randomly selected image from a folder you specify and displays it to your visitors.

The script figures out which image files are available for rotation all by itself, so you’re free to add or remove images as you please, without the need to edit the script or a configuration file.

Read and download the Image Rotator here…

Next, the script from Dynamic Drive which turned out to be easy to implicate and add to my header and sidebar files… Read and insert the script for the Image Thumbnail Viewer from here…

My modifications were simple… a double border around the images just to give it a a little edge… and I also addeed the Reload Random Images within the border of the Image Thumbnail Viewer…

#mypix img {
border: 3px double #ccc;
}

<a href=”/index”>Reload Random Images</a>

Well that just about does it… I’m sure you can put two and two together and figure the rest out…

Here I go again… let me ramble for a few minutes… You are who you are… I don’t think that materialistic things define who you are… or a website for that matter… As I’m sure you’ve heard by others, your personality is unique. I don’t think there is anything else that can define you as a person other then the way you go about your business. This blog doesn’t define me, my website doesn’t define me, my cars don’t define me, my money doesn’t define me. This is a hobby for me as I’ve said in the past. I wouldn’t know what else could define me other then the random acts of kindness, the endless arguements I have with those that surround me, the awkward faces that I make and the dry sarcastic personality that I carry…

Whats more important to you? To be made a fool in public and walk away with nothing or to stand up for something you believe in and walk away with the respect of many more. I refuse to be made a fool. I will stand up for what i believe in if I have good reason, listen to the bullshit that others speak, and even walkway from everything knowing that I was wrong… However if I say I’m going to do something or I ask for something that is of value to me… I don’t care if it’s worth a penny or a thousand dollars… If I say that it belongs to me or if I insist on searching for anything, I will not back down until I am proven wrong. You can call it being stubborn, hard headed, hot blooded… The truth is… I don’t care and I will be respected. oooohhh… I sound so scary…

Once upon a time, I was suspended from middle school for being too clever in my opinion…

You see, every Friday we got “Pop Quizes” based on a 12 minute news report just before our day started. It was based on current events and everything that had occured throughout the week. Well, within those 12 minutes, we had to take as much notes as possible… sometimes I tried writing word for word, but that didn’t work out to wel because by the time i finished writing the words out, they were already pronouncing a 2 letter word that you would only hear in college…

Well one day, I wised up… I found out that the news broadcasts that we were watching at 8 in the morning was pre-recorded from the day before! So at that time we had the latest and greatest VCR money could buy… I programmed the VCR to record the news and when I got home, I sat down and litterally wrote every word that came out of the reporters mouth.

The following day, notes in hand, I’m ready to take my quiz and my friends all start offering money for my notes! hahaha…. No problem right? So I went to the Library, made copies, and sold my notes for $1.00 each! I made $18 bucks that day. The following Monday the teacher calls me up… tells me that i did very well on the quiz as well as many others in the class… The only problem was that the other kids that didn’t do so hot, ratted on me for selling my notes! Now I have nothing against the smarter kids in the class but they were the ones who ratted me out… those suns of %&#!@…

Well after getting home and getting lectured by my father on keeping what I know private, I’ve been very selective in sharing information and even trusting the people who are “friends”. Not to mention that as you get older you become more and more selective on the people you keep close to you. Everyone wants to use you, knowingly or unknowingly. It’s just a matter time before you figure out why your being used…

With that being said… I’m going to call this post The Take Over. It’s as simple as that… I could call it the Empire Strikes, but then that would sound too extravagant and daring…

It’s that time for me to reorganize myself and focus on what it is I need to get done… For starters I’ll be refreshing myself with Calc, Physics, and my EE formulas… I can’t live without them and they are slowly fading away… Maybe I’ll post a few of my own lessons every two days on the blog… or maybe not… This will definately keep my mind distracted Monday thru Friday for the time being. I remember I used to take up to 5 pages of notes during calc class. I wrote tiny little numbers and script writing in quad ruled notebooks. Those notes were a total of an hour and a half of lecture. For physics, maybe three pages per class. For my EE classes, it didn’t matter what the topic was about… up to 10 pages and if we were lucky we got hand outs from the proffessor.

My first lesson will be… Intergrals… you can’t go wrong with them because they are the easiest equations to solve unless you have the wrong (+) or (-) sign in the wrong spot. Your basically evaulating an equation from point A to point B.

Upper Limit – Lower Limit

OK… lessons over… Everyone can go home and practice now…

A Jar Head is a member of the USMC (United States Marine Corps). Just like most religious on goers, they memorize the following verse as if it were Our Father.

This is my rifle.
There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My rifle is my best friend.
It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My rifle, without me is useless.
Without my rifle, I am useless.
I must fire my rifle true.
I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me.
I must shoot him before he shoots me.
I will….
My rifle and myself know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make.
We know that it is the hits that count.
We will hit….
My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life.
Thus, I will learn it as a brother.
I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel.
I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage.
I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready.
We will become part of each other.
We will….
Before God I swear this creed.
My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country.
We are the masters of our enemy.
We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until there is no enemy, but Peace!

This was one of my favorite scenes throughout the entire movie… You gotta see it… you’ll crack up…

Over all, the movie itself was great but it left an emptiness at the end of the movie that you simply didn’t know what to make of it. For the most part it was pro war. There were the glimpses of the damages that Saddam had caused to inocent lives and the overwhelming presence of the US on the borders of Saudi Arabia. I personally thought that they went above and beyond the call of duty to portray a side of the war that had not been seen.

Knowing when to quit and knowing when to move on is priceless… I can thank my lucky stars that I have managed to maintain a steady job throughout my career. I handed in my resignation letter yesterday and it was bitter sweet. The general manager congratulated me with tears in his eyes and a warm handshake. That alone made me understand the appreciation they had for me. Low and behold as I walked out of the office today I came to find out that two of my co-workers were laid off. Surprised? No.

via El Blogazo | Blog Pocket | Hetemeel

I’ve added another function to Blogs Dominicanos… For the the last month I’ve been looking at the pinging that Dominican Bloggers have doing and I think it’s ready to be viewed by the bloggers themselves… Maybe they’ll have a race to reach 10,000 pings even though I doubt anyone will be looking at that number so close… The code itself was easy to write…

The function to sum the number of pings in the database looks somthing like this…

$num= “select SUM(field) as num from table”;
if(database total is equal to 0)
{
echo “0″;
}
else
{
get the total number of pings
echo $num;
}

This site is like a new toy for me… I can think of something and I’ll spend hours trying to figure out how to get it done… It has certainly been quite the learning expirience… I never expected to apply some of the things I’ve learned in my C++ class over 4 years ago into this site, but I must say that it has come in handy. Especially the if and while statements. They are used all over the place.

Well… my parents are well on thier way to Dominican Republic… They have shipped a truck load of appliances including the car! I honestly don’t know what to make of it since they won’t be around for a while… My sisters honestly can’t and shouldn’t be alone in the house… but they can’t stand the idea of me being a “figure head” in the house. They claim they can’t get along with me… Go figure… a 20 year old that does as she pleases and a 27 year old thats ready to take on the world with her dreams…

It’s Official, I have also accepted a job offer from none other then…

According to the UK Times, Cadbury Schweppes is one of the 10 Best Big Companies to Work For 2005… Cadbury is a British company by the way… Some of the perks included are health and dental insurance from day 1, enrollment into the 401k plan from day 1, a nice salary, and in my case… free Snapple and Nantucket Nectar Drinks!!! Un palo…

I have yet to give my two week notice at my current job tomorrow morning so I hope they take it on the easy side… The next step in this eventful drama story will be to determine my living status since my parents will be moving out of the country… permanently… I am going to have to think this through very carefully and be considerate of my two partially-unemployed sisters in particular.

And not that it matters, but they have thier own blogging network as well… LOL…

While re-designing my website I took the time to read and search for music that I liked from the Dominican Republic. Asking for kareoke music from the era of Trujillo on Remolacha.net serveral Remolacheros came through with some music files. I was awed by the selection, the sound, and the number of songs that people sent. In particular Francisco Gonzalez and Victor Ramirez. The music is priceless… It repressents an era of an infamous leader that ruled with an iron fist. To me it represents much more then that… It’s music. I’m not into the politics of the music. It’s just music. Musicians that lived the times and hardships of this dictator and still managed to be heard.

Rafaelito Martinez, one of the few singers from that era that is still alive and well, sang with the musical group Los Hermanos Perez. Now at the age of 80 he keeps his voice tuned in and states that he has never used drugs, he has never had any drinking problems and does not smoke as frequently. His son José Martinez recently contacted me and will be forwarding tons of his wonderful music.

Once in power, Trujillo continued to clothe himself in the merengue, promoting it as a national (read political) symbol. Top merengue bands were renamed after him, propaganda songs were written and performed, and his brother Petán was allowed to run a major radio station that broadcast live merengue music. La Voz Dominicana as it was called, played a great role in consolidating national acceptance of merengue cibaeño. Petán’s penchant for live music meant that merengue bands seldom recorded, and even then only with his permission. Starved of recording opportunities and dissatisfied with the level of state control, many artists left for Puerto Rico and New York, spreading the merengue and beginning the Dominican diaspora.

Even the upper classes were not immune because they were compelled to play merengue cibaeño at all formal social occasions. Perhaps President Trujillo delighted in this: he was an avid merengue dancer although he was not originally of the Cibao region, and his early attempts to fraternise with the elite while he was of junior rank had been spurned.

Rafael Trujillo kept his grip on power for more than thirty years through his absolute control of the military, and by maintaining popular approval of rural Dominicans through the use of merengue. It did not prevent him from being assassinated as he made his way to his estate in 1961 [read the complete article]

Three words that can mend a broken heart. Three words that can wipe the slate clean. Three words that can bring you back. Three words that can mean the begining of the end. Three words that can end the begining. Three words that can break the silence. Three words that mean more to me then they do to you. Three words that can make you think. Three words that can bring you closer. Three words that can make you hate me. Three words that aren’t said often enough. Three words that can make you fall asleep. Three words that can make your day. Three words that make me wonder where you are. Three words that tell you they want you next to me. Three words that mean nothing here on this blog if you don’t know what they are. Three words that mean nothing here on this blog if you don’t know they exist. Three words that mean nothing here on this blog if you don’t know I wrote them. Three words that mean nothing here on this blog if I never say them. Three words that mean nothing on this blog if you never read them. Three words that mean nothing if you don’t feel them. Three words that mean nothing if you don’t feel the same… Three words that don’t contain the letter’s L, V, E or O. Three words that simply express my desire to be with you. Three words that simply express my desire to see you. What are they?

I’ve completed my intent to stylize my webpage with Flash. I actually spent a good part of this past weekend editing the files… I honestly don’t think it was too difficult but it certainly was time consuming.

The one thing that I had trouble with was the contact page… editing the action scripts several times in order to get it working wasn’t easy. With the help of this zip file, I was able to get it working in just a few minutes. Hopefully it’ll come in handy for someone else.

The php file itself is straight forward. Passing on the values of the name, email, subject and message from the flash input fields to the php form in order to send out the email. However I did edit the following snip of code for the submit button.

on (release) {
if (name eq “” or subject eq “” or message eq “” or email eq “”) {
stop();
} else {
loadVariablesNum(“form.php”, 0, “POST”);
gotoAndStop(2);
}
}

into this:

on (release) {
if (name==”" || message==”" || email==”"){
name = “Your name:”;
message=”Your comments:”;
email=”Your e-mail:”;
}
else{
loadVariablesNum(“form.php”, 0, “POST”);
name = “”
message=”Thank you. Your Message has been sent.”;
email=”";
}
}

The reason for the minor change was becuase I was getting error messages with the “eq” instead of the “||”… It should’ve worked either way but I guess Flash is picky like that…

Over the last week I’ve been in contact with Jose Rafael Sosa an editor from the dominican news paper El Nacional. His interest and desire to help Blogs Dominicanos are tremendous. I think he has gone out of his way to tell his co-workers, associates, and friends all about Blogs Dominicanos. You can read the article here… Jose has even created his own blog through our WordPress system…

It may not mean much, but I’d like to take this space and thank him for the support.