I've been incredibly busy and stressed for the past couple of months that I have simply not had the opportunity to write anything here. My sincere apologies to the handful of readers I have. The past few months saw me struggling to recover after a fire swept through my room from our neighbors', enduring a major family conflict, and helping my sister deal with life after her brain tumor operation. May all troubles simmer down and leave us alone for like, oh, I don't know, ten years. Everything's been too much to handle in a span of two, three months. Hopefully, I'll be able to do a lot more blogging very soon!

See? I'm not the only one my age who is rejecting the corporate world. This article features twentysomethings who left high-paying jobs to pursue their own interests and start their own businesses. High-paying as in an insane $500,000 a year.

I'm not really counting myself among them, though, mainly because I did not leave a high-paying job to strike out on my own, but one that made me feel like a useless pawn for three years. Now if the article talked about twentysomethings who rejected cubicle life in lieu of working in cafés, restaurants, and at home, then I should be on that list!

Anyway, it's interesting to see how these people place more importance on their interests than their high-paying jobs, and not just because doing what they love will make them more money in the long run, but because they find it more inspiring and meaningful. When I was working, I often wondered if I'd have stayed at my old job if I got a massive raise: "Would being paid 30,000 a month make me happier and push me to wake up every day for this job?" I realized the answer is a resounding NO--not only will that P30,000 never happen, much less P20,000, but no amount of money would have diminished the annoyance of being a mere cog and feeling demoralized practically every day.

I flew with my parents to the U.S. over the weekend and they'll be staying here for a few months. I'll be hanging out with them for a month to get them settled in, though, but far from being a holiday, it'll be just like a regular month for me, since I'm technically not on vacation, having brought all my work for me. I DID skip working during the flight here, though--a very refreshing change!

This isn't the first time I flew to a different place and still had all my work materials with me. Last year, my mother and I went to Cebu and, thanks to my laptop, I still got to do my work, same as the time we stayed in Tagaytay for Holy Week and during trips to Baguio as well. In 2006, I stored my work files on my MP3 player on a trip to Spain, and it was a good thing I did: Instead of going straight home to Manila afterwards, my sister and I had to fly back to the U.S. because my dad underwent triple bypass surgery. I had to let my clients know where I was and what happened, and because I was only supposed to be away for a week, they were worried that I wouldn't have their materials for them done during the time when my holiday was supposed to have ended. Thanks to a little foresight, I managed to keep that from happening.

Simply put, one of the perks of freelancing has to be the mobility. I love being able to do my work anywhere--well, any place that has Internet access, at least!--even though I'm not officially on holiday. Being away from home actually makes me a lot more productive, since I don't have any errands to run, places to go to, and other such distractions.

I give myself around two weeks' vacation time however, and it's two precious weeks wherein I simply don't do a scrap of work. The rest of the time involves full-on working, but because I do get to work no matter where I am, most times it hardly feels like I have jobs.

Not too long ago, everybody went totally nuts for Agloco, which promised to pay its members if they simply install a viewbar on their browsers, which will track the amount of time you spend online. For a certain number of hours, you earn a particular amount. That's not where the real money is made though; people earn best through referrals, and a lot of people have sworn that Agloco is the real deal.

Soon, Aglocomails emerged, which everyone thought was a spin-off of Agloco. This site offers a paid-to-read program, and it sure stands out. Most paid-to-read programs pay only a few cents per e-mail; Aglocomails offers $100 per e-mail, and the minimum payout for regular accounts is $20,000, which they say should be pretty easy to hit. Oh, how I wish this program is truly legit. I mean who WOULDN'T want to get hold of $20,000 in just a few weeks and just by reading e-mails?

Sadly, everything about the program is pretty suspect. For one thing, $100 per e-mail seems utterly impossible; even if they had a large amount of capital, the sheer number of people signing up in droves will quickly deplete that money. Another thing is that they offer premium accounts, which they say will allow you to receive payouts even if you don't make the $20,000 target yet--this means you have to pay $300 for the premium membership, though. It's pretty odd why they don't just shave $300 from your supposed earnings. That will make it easier for everyone involved.
Aglocomails has responded to accusations of fraud by posting screenshots of PayPal payments they made, but it convinced nobody: The images were ripped from another site. If you're interested in signing up for a paid-to-read system, Hits4Pay will probably be your best option. The pay is a lot smaller and it will take you a significant amount of time to make some serious earnings, but at least it's a pretty reliable program.

It's been about two weeks since The Great Portable Hard Drive Crash of 2008, and I think I've recovered well enough to talk about it. Simply put, I've had a certain portable hard drive for over two months already when it suddenly sputtered into utter lifelessness, slowing down my computer and being utterly inaccessible. Even plugging it into another PC didn't do a thing. After a few tweaks and moderately unsuccessful attempts to recover my files, I was forced to conclude that the hard drive just...died. Threw me into a tizzy, it did, because it contained two months of work, most of which entailed weeping in front of Photoshop. Gone. Just like that. Ouch.

I could have had them retrieved by going to people who do data recovery, except their services cost an arm and a leg. I even looked up data recovery services online and stumbled upon Flashback Data, which looks like particularly good provider of this service; they recover data from desktops, laptops, and servers, among other things. Interestingly enough, they are also involved with Computer Forensics, a term which I didn't know existed; I do hear about the actual practice a lot, however.

The hard drive is currently out for repairs, and I think it'll take one more week till I get it back, unfortunately. The whole ordeal slapped a very important lesson in my face: Backup obsessively, and backup frequently.