October 2022

How Citibank let down clients with Entrego

| Finance, Technology | , , , ,

A few months ago, my Citibank credit card was up for renewal. Citibank sent off my replacement card without delay via Entrego.

First Replacement Card

On the morning of the supposed delivery day, I got a text message from Entrego that my parcel was on its way. The day came and went, I got another text in the evening saying the messenger failed to deliver and they’ll attempt re-delivery the next day or so. The next day, same thing happened. After three failed delivery attempts, the parcel went back to sender.

I had to contact Citibank, and they blocked that card and dispatched a replacement to my replacement card. …

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Wesley So on Hans Niemann

| Games | , ,

He’s disrespected pretty much everybody in the chess world, calling other players idiots and stuff. And also beating the great Magnus… Everybody knows that Hans is probably the most disrespectful teenager in chess.

Wesley So

When NTC becomes the text spammer

| Mobiles, Technology | , ,

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is an attached agency of the Department of Information and Communications Technology responsible for the supervision, adjudication and control over all telecommunications services and television and radio networks throughout the Philippines.

The NTC is supposed to regulate the telecommunication companies including the use of SMS in the Philippines. Recently it ordered telcos to block clickable links in text messages.

But looking at my Messages app, it appears they are the ones spamming recently instead:

I know, a lot of Filipinos need reminding about these scams repeatedly. But NTC shouldn’t stop at just sending these reminders, and thus spamming us in the process. They need to do their job and stop these spammers from the beginning.

How to do Lookup in Excel and Power Query

| Finance, Technology | , , , , ,

Lookup in regular Excel function

The XLOOKUP function has been available to Office 365 and Excel 2021. For compatibility purposes with my workbook’s potential users, I shy away from using this function. Instead, I use the combination of INDEX and MATCH.

Why not VLOOKUP?

I’m not sure if there are any hardware efficiency benefit from using INDEX and MATCH over VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. But I use INDEX and MATCH primarily for two reasons:

  1. Ability to return the value of the column to the left of your lookup array (left-most column of the table array)
  2. Never worry about adding a column between the returned column and the lookup array. Remember, you indicate the column index number being the returned column from your table array? What if you’ve not touched your file for a long time, return to it and inserting a column in a table, forgetting that you’ve used that table as a table array as a lookup somewhere in your worksheet? You’ll certainly break your VLOOKUP formula.

How to use these formulas

Sorry, but you have to look somewhere else for the usage of these formulas.

Lookup in Power Query

Power Query Lookup Sample File

To better demonstrate the functions, it’s better if we refer to a sample file:
…

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BDO Online Mobile ‘ADD DEVICE’ Message Sending Failed

| Finance, Mobiles, Technology | , , , ,

Did I already tell you how awful and trash-worthy BDO Online Banking is? Yet, no matter how bad it is, it has been your bank of choice, because you thought they find ways.

Installing the Mobile App

You installed the mobile app, and done with your mobile app only password. When you login, it asks for your OTP. But instead of receiving the OTP directly, you received a message from (02) 25678 that you need to reply with ‘ADD DEVICE’ instead. Only then will they text you your OTP.

But replying with ‘ADD DEVICE’ the message failed sending no matter how many times you tried.

The Solution

Instead of solving the problem directly, BDO Unibank offered a solution in a Facebook comment, which involves:
…

BDO Online Mobile ‘ADD DEVICE’ Message Sending FailedRead More »

Your old Samsung phones, while in storage, may be at risk of blowing up

| Mobiles | , , , , , , ,

Arun of Mrwhosetheboss has brought up an issue about Samsung phones blowing up:

My own Samsung Galaxy Note 8, being with me for 5 years now, is decidedly showing wear as its battery cannot hold its charge as well as before. Except for the fact that it’s running on an Exynos chipset, I didn’t really have any more complaints about it. And with the Oneplus green screen issue that I personally experienced, I was ready to embrace the Samsung ecosystem.

The Galaxy devices I currently actively use include:

  1. Samsung Galaxy Note 8
  2. Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G
  3. Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 LTE
  4. Samsung Galaxy Buds2
  5. Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic

For all these devices I have, I had no experience with swollen batteries (so far!). This may be the case as I actively use them. But this is not an excuse for Samsung. As mentioned in the video (and also in the comments section), how come it mostly affected Samsung devices only?

This issue has to be addressed by Samsung soon. Otherwise, they’ll lose one loyal customer in me in the future.

The Grand Lotto Chance

| General | , ,

What’s the chance that 433 Filipinos picked a 6-number combination that are multiples of 9 (i.e., 9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54) and they all win and share equally the P236 million jackpot, leaving each with just a meager P545,245 winning?

Slim chance!

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