August
21
August
8
Work-induced vomitting
During this lifetime I have heard people say a few times that their work is too stressful that they want to vomit. I didn’t realize that this morning it would be a literal thing for me. 🙁
I went to sleep at around midnight after a healthy dose of boring reading material (aka project work package aka contract) for some big shot discussions this week. At around 2AM I suddenly awoke with a jerk with the words UAT[1] in my mouth and the feeling of having a lot of bile in my throat. Thankfully the trash bin was on my side of the bed so I swiped the cover open and started dry-heaving on it. The icky and rough feeling on my throat was not going away so I ended up drinking a lot of water and munching on fried and salted corn kernels to get the taste of bile away.
Now I can, with credibility, say that I can relate next time I hear somebody say they are sick and tired of their work that they want to vomit. 🙂
[1] User Acceptance Test
ciao!
July
17
The most Murphy’s day of my life… so far
In a nutshell, Murphy’s law states that whatever can go wrong will go wrong and at the most inopportune time. This day for me seems to to be the most literal example of that law and it seems to crown a really crappy week:
- My “so called” team has never been complete the whole week.
- Nothing seems get to the state that can be called as “done”.
- Screening of the “fit to contribute” recruits across the company isn’t going well.
- Issues germinate like dormant spores and each one comes unwrapped with a tag of “URGENT: RESOLVE IMMEDIATELY OR GLOBAL MELTDOWN IMMINENT”
- I have had the introduction to the project incident report template and mastery of accomplishing one in a single week.
- I got tagged for not finishing the work I wasn’t even scheduled to do on time even if it would supposedly only take a few hours (and which task isn’t supposed to get done in a few hours?)
- A little storm called “Basyang” decided to kill the power and water supply in our area w/c forced us to stay in an overpriced hotel-esque place. This reminds me that I need to create a mini-review for that place.
Those are just some examples for the week and just for today:
- My “change” can’t be completed because it hasn’t passed UAT execution because…
- The environment decided to crap out the whole week and be excessively stubbon today that no requested build from me ever finishes successfully. It doesn’t matter that I went to the office earlier than usual to get the testing done.
- I got tagged for not being prepared to present items in a meeting attended by the client. It doesn’t matter that the list items magically appeared in the list and it hasn’t really come into my attention.
- My change suddenly had a twin ticket that I wasn’t aware of, and the approach is still dubious as it smells of too much patch-me solution.
- Everybody is too busy to submit admin requirements. And that is because I really don’t do anything each day but be a PHB and think of useless things to assign to my team.
- I said I will leave at 7:30PM, announced to the powers-that-be that I will leave at 7:30PM, and then get stuck in ten thousand little important tasks that made me walk the hallway with the powers-that-be at 8:15PM. The powers-that-be are on their way to a meeting that I declined because I need to go leave at 7:30PM!
And to top it all off, I still don’t feel like I am contributing anything. This is the feeling that I really, really hate. Life is getting consumed by work that is starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth because I don’t feel empowered nor ingenious enough to really make a difference.
Oh life… I just need to accept that this is one of my “Shit Happens days & it will keep on pouring”.
ciao!
June
11
Sweet nothings
Who said being together for 10 years can diminish the sweetness of a relationship? The conversation below that Neth and I had while having dinner last night is a contradictory statement to that premise. Names were abstracted to protect the innocent. 😉
X: Nakakapagod kang mahalin?
Y: Bakit?
X: Kasi napapagod na ako tapos mahal kita, kaya ganon.
Y: Ganon ba? Then I am sick and tired of you.
X: Bakit naman?
Y: Kasi I am sick; I am tired; and I am with you.
I know it doesn’t make sense but aren’t those declarations sweet? 🙂
ciao!
April
11
Window Farming
I came across this Window Farming site which promotes growing some of your food on your home/apartment windows if it gets enough sunlight.
Image courtesy of Britta Riley’s Flicker Account
My gardening interests have grown dormant and my mini-produce plot has grown brown because of a couple of reasons like being away too long, extremities injury, etc. The most notable reason is still that nobody will water the plants when me and the wife are away.
The Window farm is a hydrophonic variant of home gardening and it uses an ordinary water pump (like the ones used in aquariums) to pump the nutrient-rich water into the recycled water-bottles that have been re-purposed as hanging pots. The pump makes sure the owners don’t forget to water the plants but that still means there is an electricity cost involved. I am thinking that coupling the pump with a solar panel would negate the electricity cost if there is ample sunlight and space. I haven’t gone through the manuals yet but in case the hydrophonic plants require 24×7 water flow then it might be a workable compromise to have the water pump working in the day and then adding some water retentive materials in the bottle-pot (e.g. coconut husk threads or rice husks if available) so that the plants would still have some accessible water at night.
I wonder how much solar panel is required to power an electric pump… Btw, watch this video for more information…
March
18
Sed: reduce multiple spaces to single space
January
28
In Manila, the pedestrians accident you…
In homage to the “In Russia, the … you” meme.
In a very irritating turn of event, a pedestrian actually hit our car in JP Rizal street in Makati city. The man (whom I suppose is slightly drunk) broke two cardinal and basic rules of crossing the road:
- Look out for incoming cars, and
- Look at both sides of the road .
We were already traveling at around 40kph since there was no car ahead of us when I suddenly saw a man suddenly darted from the other side of the street to cross to our side. In a split second I saw that his face was glued to the other side and didnt even took a peek at our direction. The distance between him and our car was less than 20 meters so I started slamming the breaks and blaring the horn (mind you the horn of the Toyota Avanza is very loud). I also tried to slowly turn the car to the right side of the road but I was fearful that there would be speeding motorcyles so I couldn’t pull to the side quickly. It was a slow-motion sort of experience where I saw in my peripheral vision the man’s right cheek hitting the window behind me a split second before his body bounced off the middle door and as I was just able to bring the vehicle to a full stop.
I immediately opened the door and saw the man was standing up. His companions already rushed to help and check him out. I am thankful he wasn’t seriously hurt but I would imagine that come tomorrow he will have some bruises on his face and body when the anesthetic properties of alcohol wears off. It took the man a while to slur out “Nakita mo naman akong tumatawid..” (“You already saw me crossing the street…“) to which I irritatedly replied “Oo Manong pero ang lapit at ang bilis ko na. Di ka man lang tumitingin sa mga parating na sasakyan! Mag-ingat ka naman sa pagtawid!” (“Yes but I was already too near and travelling at high speed. You didn’t even check out the incoming cars! [Please] Exercise caution when crossing the street!“). The man’s companions let us go when they were assured that the man wasn’t permanently hurt.
I know that when it comes to accidents like that it will always be the driver of the incoming vehicle who is at fault. Even if the pedestrian is too stupid for their own good to obey basic rules for crossing the street, I still have a responsibility as I was manning a vehicle. I always keep watch of the right side of the road but I didn’t expect a pedestrian to slam me from the other side especially as I was in the outer lane of a 4-lane road.
The experience was my first vehicle accident (not counting this) and strengthened both my dislike for driving, my respect and fear for the deadly nature of a moving vehicle, and that you can’t really avoid an accident. It is too easy to snuff a life when you have at least half-a-ton of moving metal at your disposal. Especially in places wherein pedestrians lack the basic common sense to know basic road safety rules.
In homage to the “In Russia, …” meme: be extra careful when driving in the city because in Manila, the pedestrians accident you.
ciao!
January
5
Changing Timezone in Ubuntu via CLI
December
21
Just finished re-watching Oscar (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102603/) which is a very fast paced,comedy movie. I can’t get tired of this film. 🙂
November
13