Timawa.com

This is the second time this month that I am saying goodbye. This time, though, it’s to someone much more closer.

My brother-in-law passed away this morning. Everything just happened too fast. They found him unconscious at home yesterday afternoon and rushed him to the hospital. The doctors said he ruptured a nerve in the brain, which caused blood to spill on most parts of his brain. I think the medical term is aneurysm.

He was unconscious when they found him and he remained unconscious until he passed earlier today. He was 44 and is survived by my sister and their three children.

I saw last him in December when I went home for Christmas vacation. We didn’t really talk much because I was busy with a lot of things. Looking back, I regret not spending more time with him then; I should have talked to him more. We didn’t even get to drink beer together or go to a KTV that time, something that we did a couple of times before when I went home — something that I know he enjoyed but couldn’t do more often.

He was the one who inspired me to learn guitar when I was in high school. “Chicks dig guys who can play the guitar,” he told me once. So I practiced and practiced until I was good enough to join a band. And he was right.

When they were living in Naga, I remember visiting them from Manila for a few days. He took me out for beer and we got really drunk. And then he took me to the restaurant at the ground floor of Crown Hotel and we had the best beef brisket I’d ever tasted. Until now, I don’t know if it tasted really good because it was really good. Or if I was just too drunk to know better. We never had a chance to go back sober to try their beef brisket again.

My memories of him are few. And because of that, I will miss him more. I should have spent more time with him.

Manoy,  I’d smoke with you once again even though I had already quit. If only we could. You were a good man who loved my sister and my nephew and nieces — in your own special way.

We will miss you. Say hi to Papa for us.

A few minutes ago, I received a message from Cowpunk, a friend in Singapore, on Yahoo! Messenger. He sent a sad emoticon, and then a link.

Francis Magalona, The Mouth, The Man From Manila — passed away at 12:00 noon today.

I did not know him personally,  but I saw him a few times at parties (Cowpunk was a good friend of his). I grew up listening to his music though. He was 44 years old. He is survived by his wife Pia and their eight children.

As of this writing, hundreds of people have already said their goodbyes to him on his Multiply page. Probably more would leave messages if it didn’t require creating a Multiply account.

Farewell, FrancisM. We’ll see you again. But not yet… not yet.

I created a Web directory last week using phpLD, but I didn’t have time to test it until yesterday. When I tried to submit a link as a user, I noticed that the Verification Image Security Code (similar to Captcha), which helps prevent automated submissions, did not appear at all. Instead, it showed the text “Verification Image Security Code”.

I tried looking for a fix on the phpLD forum, but all I got was “your GD library is not be bundled with PHP”. I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked my Web host if GD (image library) was bundled with PHP on my server. The support guy asked me to create and run a phpinfo page to check. True enough, GD was not included in my PHP installation. So I went back to the support guy, and this time, he told me to “customize” my PHP installation.

I have a VPS hosting account, so I have access to Web Host Manager (WHM). These are the steps that I performed:

1. Log into my WHM account.
2. Click Software > EasyApache (Apache Update).
   
3. In the list of profiles to load, click the PHP Image Manipulation option.
4. Click Build Profile Now.
   
5. Follow the rest of the instructions on the setup wizard.

That’s it. After I rebuilt my PHP installation, I went back to my phpLD site, and there it was, the image code that was missing. Problem fixed.