Coredump

October 15 is Blog Action Day, and all bloggers are urged to participate by taking a stand against poverty.

Originally uploaded by tonyocruz.

Update: This is now fixed.

There’s this nagging message from AVG Free that came up just a few hours ago. The Update Manager says that update has failed because “A .bin file was missing.”

My immediate reaction was, “Whoa! Something corrupted my install?” Before investigating further, though, I opted to download the updates manually. And what do you know:

A broken link. The support forum doesn’t reveal much, except that the recent update was corrupted, and a new set of files is on its way.

I wonder how the paid version fared. Would there be an SLA for providing a fresh set of updates? There should be. I used to work for an anti-virus company, and though I didn’t have direct client (users) interaction, I understood from the support point-of-view how critical updates were and the pressure it took to ship fresh ones out the door.

Here’s hoping the AVG guys are up to par. They’ve been doing great so far.

Our son, Julian, just got out of the hospital, after being confined (again) for what appeared at first as severe cough and fever. He was diagnosed with pneumonitis on both lungs. His doctor also said he has also acquired asthma.

We spent a total of six days in the hospital. I can tell you that despite the creature comforts that the hospital provides, there’s still no substitute to lying down in your own bed or playing in the yard with the kids. We all missed being home.

Now that we’re back home, hopefully, Julian and his kuya, Gabriel, will settle in to their routine. For Julian, it would be waking up early (at around five AM), play a bit in his crib before getting his mom or yaya’s attention for his first meal of the day. The only deviation now is that he has to take a puff from a measured dose inhaler twice a day, along with a battery of antibiotics and other meds. It’s difficult, specially for him, but the prognosis is good: if all goes well, he’ll be off the fluticasone/salmeterol cocktail after two months. We’re planning for the long term as well: get him into sports (swimming, for one) when he’s old enough; and other activities that would strengthen his lungs.

Still, life goes on for all of us. Hopefully, it will be better tomorrow, and onwards.

I cannot add anything original to the current news about the blast that rocked Glorietta, a mall in the Makati central business district, so here’s a recap of the event, from bloggers’ perspective:

• Most blog posts are rehashes of news stories from the major mainstream media organizations.
• There are citizen-captured videos posted in You Tube.
• Tonyo posted a couple of videos fresh from the scene of the carnage.
• There’s a “right-wing” commentary, albeit very informative post in the Philippine Commentary blog.
• Here’s a personal viewpoint of the event from a high school social science teacher.
• Commentaries and speculations abound as well, in the usual blogger fashion.

This list is by no means exhaustive, nor would I attempt to make one. This is merely a snapshot of how bloggers perceive the event. It would also be interesting to note how these differ from how mainstream media tackles this.

Surprisingly, media people rose the occasion and — true to their calling — told the news as it is, based on whatever facts they had at the time. Analysis, speculations — editorials — can come later. This is news, this is journalism at work.

We’ve been in the hospital for three nights now. The little one got confined because of high fever. The doctors have been doing some tests on him for a few days now, trying to find out the cause: x-ray, blood chemistry, urine and stool tests turned out negative.

He’s been battered with antibiotics and other meds, and seeing him like this is very painful for us. At this age, he is already acquiring a phobia on hospitals — he freaks out every time a nurse or medical staff comes in the room.

We hope he gets well soon.