June 11

Post-op update

The LASIK was a success, or so I would like to believe! 🙂

Although my glasses has been replaced with a dorky protective google (two of which I have already broken in a span of 1 day), I am pleased with the results. My vision was not a perfect 20/20 but something along the lines of 20/25-30. Not bad coming from a vision that has a lens grade of 525/500 for each eye. I am willing to sport the dorky to the extreme look for two weeks as long as this dream vision lasts for at least ten years.

I am getting ahead of myself. I went on a half-day leave last Friday for the scheduled LASIK procedure (I still dont want to call it an operation). My loving wife met me in the 10th floor of the Phinma building at around 1PM before I went into the preparation room. The whole prep time was about an hour long, about 90% of which I spent snoring on a very comfortable lazy boy chair. I think the mild sedative they gave me have something to do with that.

When they brought me inside the LASIK room I was pretty scared. The reason being is that I forgot to ask Dr. Ang (the eye surgeon) how would they cut the flap in my cornea or if they have an instrument that would make my eyeball stationary. Face it, it is not normal to be unwavering if you see a blade a few millimeters from your eye. Dr. Ang was very cordial and said that I don’t need to worry about it, so I didn’t.

They made me lie down to an operating table with a specially-molded headrest that would minimize head movement. Dr. Ang talked to me throughout the whole process and keeps on reminding me to stare straight to the red blinking light. They placed something like a reverse vise on my eyelids so I wont blink. Then when it was time to cut a flap, Dr. Ang said he will place something in my eye which will darken everything and that I am to say when everything has gone completely dark. After everything went dark he said that I would feel a vibration for 30 seconds. I would assume this was the point that they were already cutting a flap. Again I would like to say that I still havent felt anything but I am completely aware of my surroundings. 🙂

The whole process then continued with my restored vision. Dr. Ang said my vision will scatter which I think was when they lifted the corneal flap. Then he said I would hear something burning but that is perfectly normal. In the background I can hear the hum of the laser and a nurse counting “25 percent, 51 percent, 76 percent, 100% percent”. Dr. Ang then placed back the flap and smoothened it with what looked to me like a small spatula and a thin wire. Then they repeated the process on my left eye.

The whole process lasted around 10 minutes. Then the nurse instructed me about the drops that would need to be administered for 2 weeks. They gave me a protective googles whose ear brace I managed to snap during the night. When I came back the following day for a checkup, Dr. Ang said there is a foreign object in the lower end of the flap and he would need to open the flap again to clean it out. So the short visit stretched to an hour since I had to go back to the LASIK room. The cleanup only lasted a few minutes so I spent much of it dozing on the lazyboy. /lol

The good thing about it is that since my wife works for Rockwell Land Corp, I was able to avail of a whooping 25% discount on the whole package cost. Neat!

Here is to a clear and lasting recovery!

Category: Garbage, Top of my head | 4 Comments on Post-op update
June 3

test scan results is a go!

Yesterday we went to the Asian Eye Institute for a LASIK screening exam. If you have not yet visited it, getting a LASIK treatment is included in my wishlist.

Anyway, after a few gruelling (or make it stomach grumbling) 3.5 hours, the medical team in the institute deemed me qualified for the procedure so I have scheduled a treatment next Friday. My vision is still blurry due to the dilation but I can now read printed text when using my glasses. Last night I was kinda worried because even if I can read without my glasses, putting them on makes the texts look blurry. Reading far and large texts is not an issue though. One peeve is my eyes seems to be more sensitive to light since the tests yesterday.

The tests yesterday seems a gamut of eye-drops, looking at a far-away object through a special machine, and the dreaded eye-dryness test. The dryness test involves the eye doctor putting some mild eye anaesthesia (this should have been warning enough) and then slipping two thin slips of paper in each lateral tear duct which happens to be conveniently located under each eyeball (yeoowww!!!). I had to look forward for three minutes while two strips of paper happily protrudes from my lower eyelid. grrr….

My wife asked me if I am not scared about the procedure. Of course I am scared, only stupid people claim they are no scared if something valuable (like eyesight) is on the line. But I am fed up with my dependency with my eyeglasses and not being able to enjoy activities like going to the beach and swimming because I have to protect my glasses. I also dislike going to the optical shop whenever some screws in my eyeglasses became lost, or if my eyeglass frame needs replacement because I somehow crunched it between two hard/heavy places.

Here is to having a better eyesight next week. A 20/20 vision would be nice but I can settle for a grade that woudl allow me to see something from far away without scrambling for my eyepiece. 🙂

ciao!

Category: Garbage | 3 Comments on test scan results is a go!
May 13

Weekend checkpoint

After three gruesome and stressful weekends I have finally enjoyed a weekend wherein saying good morning, hi and “kitakits ulit mamaya” to the manong guards of the work building is not part of the routine. *huraahhhhh*

was the long work rally worth it? i think so, but i don’t want to go through it again. the best part of the whole deal is we aced the external audit. the auditor couldn’t find anything but given that he only inspected us for 1.5 hours then i still consider it luck.

what have i accomplished for my first free saturday? almost nothing. i splurged it on sleep; sweet, sweet and careless sleep. after driving my wife to Makati for their outing and getting some week-long supplies in the Angono palengke I just slept. Let see, I slept from 7AM to 10AM in “The Rundown” on AXN, slept on the couch, did some documentation work for my manager, slept from 7PM to 9PM, upgraded Lala to Mandriva Spring (where I have just finished reconfiguring the wireless card), and now doing some house chores. i still have some leftover bitter gourd for lunch so i don’t need to cook until this afternoon. i still have to do laundry though since the workers doing the garage will still have to work today.

ah, not bad for a lazy weekend. i still need to finish the SCM documentation so i can give it to my manager for review. the current one is pretty confusing but then the person who did it has only the basic knowhow of how SCM works, and she was merely using the copy-search-replace method from a previous instance of the document. i still have a few revisions to make before i can put my name in the revision log. 🙂

my wife is already en route to Manila so i will get to see her this afternoon. the downside is she might miss to much and give me the ‘sermon’ that i didn’t get yesterday. oh well, that is one of the perks of the married life, you no longer have the luxury of just hanging the phone when you don’t feel like listening. harharhar.

and i need to post some blog items that have been floating in my mind, mostly rants about what irritates me during the normal course of my day. 🙂 or make that 🙁

ciao!

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April 16

I am tired and not satisfied…

I have just came out from a long OTy[1] weekend, and when I said long I meant a 19-hour rally with 3 hours of sleep. All because the project I am with has once again been selected for a security audit and an internal audit will be conducted today.

The unplanned rally is caused by the short notice given to the project and the not-so-good state of our security documentation. Before somebody starts that it is our fault for not updating the security docs as we go along then please give us a charge number for that kind of work before you start pointing fingers. In typical corporate wheedling and cajoling, they (meaning the powers that be, or the power trippers as i call them) say that these should be part of the “continuous improvement” (CI) budget of the project. REALITY CHECK: WHAT CI BUDGET? We are on a fixed time arrangement with the client and just trying telling the client that “we would allocate a portion of the time you bought to spend on security work that is not part of the contract you signed, and thank you for understanding.”. Couple this with the fact that we are running overbudget for the things that the client actually paid for! It doesn’t take a super sleuth to figure out that we are between a hard rock and a PHB.

To make matters worse, I am not satisfied with the output because we are tasked to churn out security documentations “aligned” with the corporate “version”. No thank you because

  • I don’t believe the return of investment on those documentations is significant.
  • The template documents provided are either not enough or an overkill.
  • The person who created those template documents should stop using PCP. Reformatting them to look professional entails too much work.I reserve the right to save my co-team members from the atrocities of using too much colors in a document, and loud ones at that.
  • If I am going to churn out security measures, then I will at least have the decency of believing those are practical and not just for show.

Why did I go through it? Because of pressure to pass the audit since the whole office accreditation can go up in smoke for failing the external auditors, and I don’t have the heart to add more stress on my manager. She already has enough problems on her plate regarding the project going over-budget and CMMi (yes, that effectively makes it a four-letter word) demands for full compliance.

19 hours and we aren’t even halfway the 100% completion mark. I know I told my manager that what we are targeting now is just damage control but it is really disheartening whenever I see the completion ratio for the project. And after that I also need to consider going back to reality that I am also over-budget on the client deliverable that they want me to submit by end of this month. 🙁

End of rant for now. I need to check what else I can finish before the internal audit today.

[1] OTy, n., Short for O-Thank you, the free version of overtime.

ciao!

Category: Rubbish, Work | 4 Comments on I am tired and not satisfied…
March 9

Post Mortem

Post Mortem – After death.

This phrase is usually used in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to see what went wrong and what went right during the cycle in the hopes that it would be rectified and re-implemented in the next iteration of the SDLC. Unfortunately life is not like that. We only have one shot barring reincarnation that is not yet proven.

Before I proceed I would like to say that I don’t have suicidal inclinations, well at least not at the moment. I do however have the tendency sometimes to think about death objectively since, as they say, the only things sure in this world is death and taxes. 😀

Some have an irrational fear of death, considering it taboo to even talk about it for “fear” that talking about it is synonymous with inviting it. Experts always talk about worst-case scenarios and some of those are not even close to happening. I don’t have any fear of death but I am afraid of dying. There are still a lot more life has to offer but I am not afraid to miss those out if my time really has come. When you die you die right?

This post is really what I want and don’t want when I pass away from this existence. Feel free to join in but I would like to minimize religion to a minimum and deal with physical facts. As my father says, “when you leave this earth you no longer have a stake on what happens after”. Wise words. Death does not affect the departed but only those who were left alive.

Here are the things that I want to be done when I die:

  • If I am still young then I want my organs to be donated to those who can use them. I guess my eyes is out of the question and probably also my heart due to my unhealthy living, but somebody might need a liver or gallbladders. For those who are not aware, the back of the Philippine driver’s license can serve (upon accidental death) as a binding contract that will allow the paramedics to tag your organs for donation without notifying your next of kin. I have already checked mine and I think all should too. You won’t be able to make use of your organs after you pass away so it is much better to have somebody put them to better use.
  • I originally want my remains to be donated to medical schools for study and experimentation. I prefer if my body is donated to those medical students who have a hard time gathering the funds to buy a cadaver. I am thinking that by offering my cadaver I might be able to help save other lives. But I think this won’t come true as my wife said there is no way she is going to allow this. Since I won’t be able to object by then I don’t think I can do much about this. It is just my luck and bane that I married a loving but sentimental woman. 😀
  • If the above can’t be granted then I also would want my body to be buried in a backyard while being rolled in a straw mat. I initially wanted to be buried under a rice field so that my decomposed remains will serve as nutrients to the crops that will feed other people. I realized this would probably scare people so I settle on being buried in a backyard then have a fruit tree planted on top to mark my final resting place.

    A mango tree would be ideal. I can only imagine with glee with the thought of the tree’s primary root going through my rib cage, or its secondary root enclosing on my bones. Then after 10-15 years there would be children playing on the tree branches and enjoying the fruits. Some can even hang swings on the straight branches and maybe the thick foliage can help alleviate the heat during summer.

    Nice thoughts, I just hope it could still be done given that the land we purchased does not have any backyard and I think my family would get in trouble with the law if they did bury me there. 😀

  • The last resort would be to have my body cremated. My family can decide on what they want to do with the ashes. They can sprinkle it in the air (and cause some people asthma attacks), put it in a vase and display it the house, put them in pendants, or use them as seasoning when preparing dinner or lunch (ewwww!).

And here are the things I don’t want:

  • I don’t want my cadaver to be put on display during funerals. I don’t want to imagine people peering over my coffin and saying stupid things like “he looks like he was just sleeping” or “he looks very much alive”. Excuse me, you wont catch me wearing makeup and I would take it as an insult if you think I look better dead than alive. 😛

    My office mate’s mom had it figured out when she asked her remains to be cremated immediately after she passed away and in the funeral there were only the vase of her ashes and some pictures of her. I want it to be the same if my remains are to be cremated.

  • No flowers especially those in wreaths. I am dead remember? In case you don’t realize it, my sense of smell and sight went away with my life so I can’t smell and see anything. Do my family a favor and just give them the donation in cash so they would have something to spend for their basic needs. You can call it my final support to them if you really want to pay me respect.
  • I would really hate it if I had a funeral procession. How much respect can you get by clogging main roads just so your remains can be “escorted” to the cemetery in a snail pace? You are already dead and you are still causing grief to strangers. Nope, I don’t want that to be me. I would figuratively turn in my grave, or in that case in the coffin while on the way to my grave.

    If there will be funeral procession then please dont let anybody walk alongside the hearse. The practice of walking slowly beside the hearse is no longer applicable since that was done in the old times to avoid getting the light of the candles blown away. Nobody even uses candles during funeral processions today. Let everybody ride a car, jeep or tricycle but nobody walks. Period.

  • Don’t let my body decompose in a concrete-enclosed grave. I consumed a lot of food in this life so it is only proper that my body be returned back to nature. Call it “returning to the circle of life” or “ashes to ashes” but I don’t want to be useless at the very end. I have been useless enough when I was living.

Ending with my father’s universal response: “What about you?”

ciao!

Category: Rubbish | 2 Comments on Post Mortem
March 6

Its not about the ending

Last night we watched “Music & Lyrics” which is another feel-good movie. I really liked the humor of the film but my wife doesn’t. She said she prefers “The Holiday” which is another feel-good movie we watched a couple of weeks ago.

I like both films but I feel they are not comparable. My wife said that M&L is too predictable but feel-good movies are not about the ending. Endings are just icing on the cake for these type of films, what is important is the journey and how the story developed to reach that predictable ending. M&L was the fast-paced story type while TH is more of a “keep you guessing what more they could squeeze in before you have to face the ending” type of story. On both types the viewers are already aware that there are only two endings: a happy one or a sad one, and I never doubted that both movies will opt for the happy one.

I don’t know if this is valid but when I saw the trailer for M&L in the movies there was a scene where Hugh’s character(?) said (in typically haughty british accent) “Oh my god, you are killing the song…” which was pretty funny. I didn’t notice it in the movie last night though so I don’t know if they edited it out, I missed it, or I am purely delusional.

Anyway, add those movies in your feel-good movie list. In mine, they accompany “Click” and “40 first dates”. Adam Sandler makes good movies of this type, well most of the time. 🙂

ciao!

Category: Movies, Rubbish | LEAVE A COMMENT
March 6

Unang Hirit rocks (or hits)!

Long live Unang Hirit!

Since the college days I have been a fan of UH over the competitor from the other network. The hosts, especially Arnold Clavio, is more realistic. I dont care if the other morning programs want to cover everything up in niceties to promote a positive energy. That is the reason why our country is shot to bits, because the *blessed* powers-that-be always try to paint a bright and giddy picture when our country is wallowing in the mud. What our people needs is a reality check. Arnold Clavio’s side-comments are really funny because they reflect the truth. The best so far in the past two weeks are the following (might be paraphrased from my memory):

  • “Ikaw siguro, pero ang mga tao sa Makati hindi.” (Maybe you do, but the people of Makati don’t) – regarding a segment wherein Manny Paquiao (the talented Filipino boxer delusional with ambitions of politics) was campaigning for Lito Lapid and was quoted to say that incumbent mayor Jejomar Binay has been serving Makati for so long and it might be time to replace him. Yeah, real rational thought from a champion. If a person is doing good service then replace him with an incompetent.
  • “Tuloy nyo lang yan, wala namang nahuhuli at napaparusahan.” (Just continue doing that, nobody gets caught and punished anyway) – referring to the irrational overspending for the senatorial elections. The comment insinuates the incompetence of the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) to enforce the electoral regulations.

There are a lot more but you have to really be an open-minded Filipino to appreciate them. More power UH!

ciao!

Category: Garbage | 2 Comments on Unang Hirit rocks (or hits)!
February 26

VSS admin password reset

MS Visual SourceSafe is the worst version control software that I have ever used. I won’t ever use it again if I had my way with it. I won’t even list down why you should avoid VSS, I will just refer you to this link. 🙂

Now what would you do if you have to exhumate (yeah, I chose that word since any data versioned in VSS should be considered dead) data from an old VSS backup and nobody remembers their password? Thankfully VSS security sucks (for various reasons) and some helpful VSS users have provided a way to easily reset any VSS user password which is apparently the way Microsoft support will tell you. I am mirroring it here because I see a lot of exhumation on my future and I can’t risk losing this gem of a resource.

NOTE: Even if VSS security sucks, using this information without prior authorization can get you in trouble. Use it for non-destructive and legal purposes only.

Dont forget to make a backup!

[tip starts here]
Edit the um.dat file to remove the Admin password from offset 80 the bytes are (all numbers are hex)

0:80  55 55 bc 7f 41 64 6d 69 6e 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0:90  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0:a0  00 00 00 00 90 6e 00 00 a8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00

This information is at YOUR OWN RISK.

As the um.dat is ordered alphabetically by login. If you have a user name that appears aplhabetically before “Admin” they will appear at offset 80. And Admin will appear further down the file. morgancrr’s tip is useful to know – as it will help you locate the Admin password on your own particular set up.

[tip ends here]

ciao!

Category: Technology | LEAVE A COMMENT
February 12

Internet is bad.

And employees are rotten. This is the reason why companies need to institute proxy filtering technologies to ensure that productivity is enforced. You won’t find any arguments from me regarding this matter. The company is paying me my salary thus I am expected to render 8 productive hours each day (I don’t have overtime pay benefits).

What I am fussing about is if the company would put such mechanism in place then they should create a fast exception mechanism since there are still good sites in the Internet. This has been a gripe I had with the Websense mechanism that have been installed since last year. The company opted for the “Filter everything except…” route which means that they are religiously applying the WebSense filter updates that trickles down daily. WebSense is actually good in the sense that they have about 90% accuracy in classifying sites if we are talking about generic rule sets. However since we are in the IT development business then the rules need to be customized which WebSense is actually recommending.

Now here is the fuzzy part. Imagine you are working in the migration of a technology used by a client to a fairly new technology. What would be your primary resource for the troubles you are encountering? If you are fairly tech savvy then the answer would be Internet, right? What would you do if you suddenly found out that the sites that may have the answer to the problem causing you to have hair loss has been blocked by your company’s proxy filter? My answer would be to file for an exemption. What if I then told you that you would receive a reply within 45 days for a resolution to a problem blocking you from completing your 7-day task? What I actually did was raise hell about it but I do not have the flair of a seasoned statesman, or a Dilbert manager. My attempts to have a fast-reacting exemption system is met with standard “those sites have information that could impact our security” type of explanations.

The problem I think is that those actually doing the security doesn’t realize that we are working on a broad fields of technology. What is wasteful in say manufacturing might not be in software development teams. They say that they are aware on the complexities of having a diverse development clients but I don’t think they understand it at all. Awareness doesn’t guarantee understanding.

Before you judge me as being idealistic, know that I have pointed out alternative ways such as creating a separate team whose task is to validate site exemption request submitted to an internal site. I even volunteered my free time for that endeavour. But apparently it will cost too much time and it is far easier to block all message boards and mailing list archives. Usenet archives? Blocked. All blogs and virtual hosted sites? Blocked. Sourceforge development utilities? Blocked. JUnit for ensuring correct code modification? Hah, dream on. They even went so far as block IBM and Eclipse information sites. DAMN IT, WHAT ELSE REMAINS?

//waiting for google.com to be blocked

ciao!

Category: Garbage, Work | 4 Comments on Internet is bad.
February 11

Red means Go, Green means stop!

We went home to Nueva Ecija over the weekend and, I don’t know if it is because election time is around the corner again, there was an improvement on the Cabanatuan portion of Cagayan road (the main highway). Stop lights have been installed at most intersections!!! Never mind that the installation posts seem to be shoddy as they aren’t even straight but *SOME* seem to be even working! Imagine that, a stoplight that actually works! In Cabanatuan! It’s like twilight zone or something…

And here is the best part; nobody is paying correct attention to them. Having been driving in more urban cities like Manila, I am extra careful of following the stop lights thus it is already instinctive for me to slowdown when I see orange, stop when it turns to red and patiently wait for the green light. In Cabanatuan this action will only get you a lot of honking as nobody expects these lights to work and most are just blinking orange.

On the way back we approached an intersection wherein the light in our direction was set to red. I was elated to see that the vehicles (mostly tricycles) in both sides of the road are following the traffic light and they aren’t slowly inching their way on crossing the intersection. I was elated since this means that there is still hope for the Cabanatuan drivers! I patiently stopped and waited for our lights to turn green which it did after a couple of minutes.

I shifted to first gear and started to get ready to move but the vehicles in front of me are not moving. A couple of minutes and we are still not moving! The lights begin to change to red and that is the only time they begin to move. Following the flow of traffic we actually crossed the intersection under a red light. What made it more disgusting is that there was a traffic policeman directing the flow of traffic on one of the corners. Sheesh! If the traffic police can’t follow the functioning traffic light then how can the drivers be expected to do so?

Nueva Ecija, kailan ka magbabago?!?!?!

ciao!

Category: Garbage | LEAVE A COMMENT