Feels Like Insomnia

I'll be back to Boracay with A, the gang and the kids on May 14th until the 17th. We'll be flying through Seair and will be staying at The Tides, the same hotel I stayed the last time my friends and I went there. Hamy won't be coming with us much to my dismay. I think it would be really fun but A didn't like the idea of Hamy traveling that far. So, I didn't push it.

What can I say? I loved The Tides! I don't mind going back. I don't know about Seair though. We usually fly through Cebu Pacific or PAL so this would be our first. Seair came with this Tides peak season promo. It's pretty reasonable so we took it despite the travel arrangement. I hope we made the right decision.

Anyhoo, Best and I will attend this workshop on May 2, a five Saturday sessions on basic photography which makes the trip more exciting for me. The fact that I'll be able to shoot and practice the things I've learned from the workshop at one of the beautiful places on Earth is enough to give me insomnia! Oh gosh, I can't wait!

Out Of Whack

Last time, my iBook was giving me some scares by suddenly switching off. It has been resolved by resetting the PMU. Now, Dino won't charge or won't even turn on.

We went to PowerMac Center at Greenbelt to have it checked. I was blaming the faulty charger and the battery life the whole time but according to the technician both are working fine and the problem might be the Power Manager. Dino was sent to San Juan to be diagnosed further. I have to wait 5-7 days for the result. Ugh.

In a desperate attempt to understand it better, I went to Apple to research and here's what I got:

"The Power Manager is an integrated circuit (computer chip) that is usually on the logic board of the PowerBook and iBook. As the name implies, it is responsible for power management of the computer. It controls backlighting, hard disk spin down, sleep and wake, some charging aspects, trackpad control, and some input/output as it relates to the computer sleeping.

Over time, the settings in the Power Manager may become unusable, which can result in operational anomalies with the computer. Examples include not turning on, not waking from sleep, not charging the battery, or not seeing the AC Adapter, among others."

I'm wishing and hoping and thinking and praying that the problem does not involve replacing anything inside the computer chip. I can't afford a new logic board let alone a new laptop boo hoo! I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Honey, I Shrank The Crocs

This may sound strange but my Alice Crocs shrank about half a size smaller. I dismissed the idea that my shoe size got bigger because that's even crazier. I haven't worn it for a long time but it was just in a drawer together with my other shoes. It was the perfect size when I bought them from my SIL, what have gone wrong?

Apparently, it's not a weird thing at all. Crocs does shrink when exposed to high heat. A Google fact that will never be known to a Crocs owner had the shoes not shrink. Crocs website says extreme heat can cause warping, and that exposure to too much sun can cause them to fade but it never mentioned anything about shrinking.

I was about to call Customer Care to shoot a complain when I stumbled upon this article saying that shrunken Crocs can be unshrunk by washing them in hot water to loosen up the material and then immediately wear them for a while. There are also other ways such as putting them in a boiling water for less than a minute or throwing them in a clothes dryer with some towel for 2-3 minutes. These methods are said to be effective in loosening up the Crocs material which allows them to re-stretch when you put your foot into them and walk around in them immediately. If you want to ditch them to someone who is 2 size larger than yours, putting 2 or 3 of super thick socks before you slip your foot into them will do the trick. The hitch? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, because different pair of Crocs are made from different batches of materials blah blah blah.

Oh well, there's no harm in trying. I'll give the "washing in hot water" method a try and will probably try the "putting on socks" thing on Hamy's Crocs to re-stretch it a little. It starting to get smaller on her hehe. And if none of these methods work, I swear I'll send the shrunken Crocs back to China.