I’m back again to marble capital of the Philippines! Hehe.

Last week I arrived here in Odiongan, Romblon from a two month vacation. Schools are expected to open especially the state college near our shop so I left Friday. The next day I arrived and started fixing and preparing things. Including changing the layout of the shop since last May we had constructed a mini-mezzanine to cater our product inventories and other stuffs. This made the shop less cluttered. Sunday, I learned that CHED issued a postponement of all college classes on Monday and instead resume on June 15, 2009 due to A(H1N1) outbreak. The biggest college here is the only one who participated to the suspension. Seriously, it was a unnecessary decision of the school officials.

I started to return to my usual routine in the shop. Maintaining the photocopiers and desktop PC’s which I’ve always do for the past year. I brought my Windows 7 RC installer, reformatted and installed the new OS on my PC. It worked well and the installation lasts for just 30 minutes. Almost all of the programs I use are compatible with Windows 7. However, when I installed Adobe CS3, it installed this service called “Bonjour” that starts automatically when Windows starts. That screwed up my internet connection. Every time I boot my PC, I can’t connect to the internet. The problem was that I have a multiple connection problem. It took me two days to figure out the Bonjour service and how to properly disable and remove it.

I also tried and tested my Globe Tattoo Broadband here in Odiongan using my desktop PC I frequently use. To my dismay, it only registered GPRS at first but later began registering to WCDMA and HSDPA. I’m delighted to see and learned that Odiongan, Romblon has HSDPA or what they call 3.5G. However, I only had the chance to surf for minutes then I get disconnected either by the network or the device itself. My PC has this USB port problem before; having insufficient power to run large devices like my external Maxtor HDD 160GB drive. I guess the Huawei USB dongle Tattoo Stick draws a lot of power from the port and disconnects because my PC had this problem supplying the device with enough power. I don’t know how to fix this and thought I should buy a self-powered USB hub. On the other less superior PC (HP Compaq dc5100 business desktop PC), the USB ports are running normally. The USB dongle works perfectly on the HP Compaq and Globe Tattoo’s speed reached 2Mbps+ with HSDPA signal. I planned to use only Globe Tattoo to download large files from the internet since it will cost me P20/hour compared to my local DSL which is unlimited but crawling speed.

I only hope that Globe will implement their WiMax plan here. I learned Occidental Mindoro and Palawan is included in the area service locator from Globe’s website. Mindoro is just 3 hours away by ferry and from that distance I think there’s no excuse why they’ll bypass Romblon in the future. Hehe. If ever that happens, I can have unlimited internet at speeds up to 512kbps.

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