Aug 28
ErinGarbage
Zempt has a flaw. It keeps on escaping single and double quotes repetitively that the resulting post is rather unsightly. I end up having to edit it on the blogsome web interface. I have already raised this in the zempt forum and I think the developers are too busy with their real lives. The disadvantage of using FLOSS. 😀
Shave. I got around to shaving my head yesterday using Arvin’s electric razor. Being accustomed to having very short hair, the hair on the side of my head are beginning to irritate me. I am also beginning to develop a mannerism wherein I am pulling those hair so it was about time I mowed them down. I know I promised my wife I will let them grow for the duration of my stay but it is already driving me crazy. And no, trimming them with the local barber is too expensive. I just hope I shaved the back portion to a passable level. 😀
SQL. I am done with the BK and VER command in my IS238 TMA. The BK was the most complex since it involved a lot of trapping. And it also dictates the structure of my classes. I assume the others will be a breeze since they are simple in comparison. I did the VER command in an hour so I should be able to start the documentation on Wednesday since I still need to iron my clothes and cook my baon and dinner for the week.
Sleep. One thing that I am being deprived of. I cant wait to finish this TMA so I can get some well deserved rest.
ciao!
Aug 28
ErinGarbage
The dinner was great although Francis re-clarified that birthday dinners here does not mean that the person inviting (celebrant) is going to shoulder the tab. Unlike the custom back home, almost everything here is dutch treat (on some restaurants you can even request the bill to be split individually).
Did that mean that dinner was not free? Not quite because it was Francis’ despedida so it counted as a team-building dinner and Tomas picked up the tab. The cajun steak was alright but the serving was a little bit on the skimpy side, or maybe I just really have a big appetite.
One of Ivy’s Fiipino friends joined us. I initially thought it was Pen but it turned out that it was ‘Pheng’. I did not know her but she looked very familiar. Ivy said Pheng did not work for the firm so I was really trying to remember where I saw her. Apparenty she also recognized me and thinking along the same lines. I do not know if I am really that bad with faces or women just have better recall but when Pheng asked if I was from Tsukiden it dawned on me: she was from the Infosys group. That explains why I cannot recall her name or where I met her because technically we did not meet since I was in another group. What a really small world….
After the dinner at Eatz, the group went to Angleteria which is about a minute away from Arvin’s apartment. I did not touch any liquor or else risk pulling another ‘Jojo’ because I ate sorbet during the dinner. And my stomach was already rumbling. Somebody was already playing at the darts area so Ivy decided to move to another bar. The plan was that we (the onsite guys) would not go and do some Tekken tournament before Arvin goes to Malaysia tomorrow. But since Francis was already drinking beer he was easily coerced to go. The Tekken tournament did not push through since Arvin and I were already sleepy.
ciao!
Aug 27
ErinGarbage
Two days of feverish (ok so feverish is an exaggeration) work on my TMA and I am yet to finish one command. I have been working on the booking command and it was taking waaaaay too long. I did not realize there were a lot of things to be considered. A huge thanks to the Eclipse IDE for making the debugging work easier although it manages to freeze my laptop whenever I am alt-tabbing to switch applications. It does not seem to be in friendly terms with Firefox and Thunderbird. Firefox is needed for the API browsing so Thunderbird has to go.
I find it ironic that for somebody who keeps on telling the world that he doesn’t want database work gets hounded by database tasks. Database backup and restoration is one thing, but doing SQL work is really a chore for me. It is a little bit above testing and documentation but a chore nonetheless. SQL work has the same effect on me as a warm milk on others: they make me want to fall asleep. IT is all about information, and information means storing them in digital format. Database work is inevitable in IT but I still would want to avoid it as much as I can.
Back to slugging it out with the TMA. The internet radio seems to be not agreeing with me either. I was hoping to hear some oldschool alternative music (e.g. eraserheads, yano, the youth, siakol, etc.) but Xpidernet and Pinoy Radio is bombarding me with Regine Velasquez, Rey Valera and occassional Renz Verano’s. Nothing good is on TV which I think is a good thing, less distractions for somebody who is screaming to get this TMA over and done with.
Plus side, dinner is going to be free courtesy of Ivy’s birthday celebration and Francis’s farewell dinner. Im getting sick of this mexican weekend meal escapade. Maybe a steak is in order… What the heck, it is free. :woot:
Which reminds me, I need to butter up my excuse dispenser since Francis and Arvin might do a last ditch attempt to coax me to treat them. Yeah right, you guys need to provide me with a very good reason why I need to treat you. Besides, I did not charge you for eating my Nilagang Anak ng Tupa the other weekend, right? 😛
ciao!
Aug 26
ErinGarbage recipe
I spent the whole day at home working on my IS238 TMA. Getting bored with adobo and other tomato (insta-mix based viands included), I decided to have a mexican meal parade. I grabbed half a kilo of ground pork (beef is too expensive here, costing as much as 30 euros per kilo), some tomatoes, a small head of lettuce, a texmex mix, a bag of salted nachos and a pack of soft tortilla wraps. I did not find any grated cheddar so I opted to go with grated mozarella since I figured it is also a hard cheese. Bad move but not a complete disaster. I also picked up 1.5 liters of coke to complete the extravagant parade. More or less I spent 10 euros which is not bad since this will be enough to last me 3-4 meals.
The plan was to make the ground meat based stew as the base for the nacho dip and filling for the burritos. So I chopped up some garlic , onions and a few of the chili peppers (siling labuyo, the taiwanese variety) that I bought from the asian store a month ago.
DANGER!!! Cover your nose with a cloth when sauteing the chili pepper. Putting it in hot oil will make the capsicum evaporate which produces a burning sensation on the sinuses and makes you want to sneeze worse than ground pepper does. When will I remember this lesson? 🙁
Ok, back to the pot. In goes the garlic and onion, then the ground pork. Add tomatoes when the pork has been browned then added the tomatoes and texmex mix, some salt and pepper and let everything simmer for a while.
Apartment lesson number 1: The range hood is not enough to absorb the smell of the tex-mex mix. You need to open the windows. WIDE!
Then it started to rain. Hard. I had to close the windows because water was getting in. Now the studio type apartment smells like it was sloshed in jalapeno pepper. But any filipino would tell you it smells like a certain anatomical crevice of a “5-6er”.
Overall, the nacho dip was ok. Just dont use mozzarella on top of the dip because it melts but does not disintegrate. Then I forgot that I left the softdrink in the freezer and it was nearly frozen. I placed it the sink and immediately unscrewed the cap. I was expecting to get a fine spray of cola but what happened was my first viewing of a slurpee rocket! 😀 A cork-sized frozen cola rocketed upwards up to eye-level.
One word describes it: COOL!
I need to get back to my TMA and eating nachos. I will do the burritos tomorrow.
ciao!
Aug 18
ErinGarbage
Good riddance Bottomfeeder, I have already found what I would replace you with when I am in windows. Zempt is currently not available in Linux but according to some reports (I did not subscribe to their mailing list and I cannot find information on their webpage) it will be available in other platforms as well. If it does not then drivel is still there.
I cant say that I will miss bottomfeeder because it was more temperamental than I am. Good thing I am a web-wanderer or else I would not have stumbled on Zempt. And it is not based on .NET which is good since I dont need to install additional libraries.
ciao!
Aug 17
ErinGarbage, Rubbish distance learning, upou
This is my reply to a recurring trend on my experiences with being a distance learner at the University of the Philippines Open University. This was triggered by the recurring theme of not getting enough time slice from the faculty-in-charge(fic), especially for an information system project…
< rant mode on />
Another thing that confuses me is that the course guideline talks about masteral research and the likes but the course catalog description is
IS 295a Information System Project I (2 units)
Design of an information system
IS 295b Information System Project II (2 units)
Implementation of an information sytem
I know we are masteral students but that description is misleading. In my opinion theses are over-rated since it only proves you are specialized in one aspect of a field. That is the reason why i picked this program, both because i can manage my time and not do a thesis.
At this point in time, introducing an ‘innovative’ addition to the knowledge tree is a tough act considering that almost everything has already been done and tried. You dont believe me? Then try wading through the freshmeat.net site. Almost everything is done at least two ways.
One more stumbling block is that you have to have an organization as your target user and you have to get your proposal approved by your adviser/committee as well. I do not know if that is just me but i have a hard time explaining to a prospective sponsor about the course proposal and then just find out it will be rejected afterwards. Getting them to at least spend the time to evaluating my request for ‘sponsorship’ is hard enough that transforming this into a chicken-and-egg (err. organization-or-adviser in this case) scenario is downright frustrating.
I can only imagine the paperwork piled on top of the FICs but these is already bordering on the absurd. They should have instituted a screening process that only students with pre-approved proposals are permitted to enroll in the course, that way the time of the majority is not wasted waiting for the second coming of Christ.
I am already thinking that we are getting what we have paid for. We paid for an ‘inexpensive’ program and look where we are: a bunch of students trying to find our bearings while being guided by overloaded fics who barely have time to spare for distance-learning students. Prof. Anacleto once told me that he has a personal theory on why the MIS only has 1 graduate so far. I think I also have mine: reality erodes idealism. Bok Apao and the rest who already dropped out are proof of that.
< rant mode off/>
ciao!
Aug 12
ErinGarbage
Last night, July 11, the host office invited us inpatriates into the all-hands meeting. I thought there were going to be other inpatriates as well but the 3 of us (Francis, Arvin and me) were the only asian inpatriates present. And the whole Finland FS that attended were less than 50. The future plans in the meeting were very positive, and I hope some of those trickles down to the Manila office so we can have some more opportunities to go back here.
After the meeting, and a delicious LTC sandwich, we walked to the docks for the cruise trip. The weather was slight bad because the rain shifted from a drizzle to a light downpour. The ‘cruise ship’ was not what I expected. It’s looks casts a rather dubious note on its sea-worthiness.
After a few minutes, we were off circling around the Helsinki bay area. There was a dining room at the bottom and we were seater beside the singers. They were singing some western song that I could not easily understand. We did not take pictures in the cabin because it might seem inappropriate. We opened the door to the bow of the boat but some requested that we close it because the wind were entering the cabin. I am the one directly positioned on the door but I am not complaining! ;D
After an hour we (the pinoys) went upstairs on the deck and Tomas (our host manager) gave us a running explanation of the “scenery”. It was cold upstairs (around +14 degrees) with 2km/s winds and a slight drizzle and the skies were dark and damp. We were able to get a couple of shots from our service phones.
As I have said, the trip was uneventful but memorable. Why memorable? Because beer and dairy products never went well with my stomach. I ended up with a severe loose bowel movement that I had to use a nearby portalet on the way home otherwise I was going to dirty my pants right there and then.
This is one story that is bound to appear in drinking bouts and kulitan moments. At least I saw the inside of a Finnish portalet. It was clean enough with adequate amenities, but then again I had to drop 50 cents just to get in. And the toilet seat was very cold. Brrrrr! Good thing I have an adequate supply of the ever-trusty polymagma. hehehe.
ciao!
[edit] You can view the pictures in this album. Nothing much as I was only able to take 3 pictures. 😀
Aug 10
ErinGarbage
Whenever somebody asks me what my professed religion is, I always say that I am a NPC; a non-practicing Catholic. It is a simpler way stating that I believe most of what the Roman Catholic church teaches but not all.
But this quiz about what religion fits you produced the following result that seems to fit me:
| You scored as agnosticism. You are an agnostic. Though it is generally taken that agnostics neither believe nor disbelieve in God, it is possible to be a theist or atheist in addition to an agnostic. Agnostics don’t believe it is possible to prove the existence of God (nor lack thereof).
Agnosticism is a philosophy that God’s existence cannot be proven. Some say it is possible to be agnostic and follow a religion; however, one cannot be a devout believer if he or she does not truly believe.
|
agnosticism
|
|
83% |
|
Christianity
|
|
71% |
|
Buddhism
|
|
71% |
|
Islam
|
|
58% |
|
Satanism
|
|
58% |
|
Paganism
|
|
54% |
|
atheism
|
|
54% |
|
Hinduism
|
|
42% |
|
Judaism
|
|
8% |
|
I think I can use the word agnostic when somebody asks me and see how high their brows arch. Hehehehe. But I am sure my wife is going to skin me alive when she reads this. :twisted-grin:
ciao!
Aug 10
ErinBackburner, Garbage
Posting from drivel was more efficient, and the interface was friendlier. But I really need something that is cross-platform. Maybe my own implementation woudl be in order after I finish IS238. This would be a perfect opportunity to learn Python.
Something to chuck in the back-burner.
ciao!
Jul 25
ErinGarbage
Once you have it you will never lose it.
Sounds good to be true, but I wish it was not the case with amoebiasis. That is what you get for drinking water from unknown sources, especially in the rural areas. It has been more than ten years and still I am afflicted with this burden. I thought my digestive system was already normal since I don’t get to experience LBM often (I attribute that to the lessening of the frequency that I eat at fast food since I got married) but now it seems that my digestive system needs to adjust to the Finn food sphere, and especially with my cooking.
Good thing I brought two mats of the ever trusty polymagma. I just hope it would work sooner. My bottom is already hurting from the frequent trips. 🙁
ciao!
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