May 11
ErinGarbage
Long story but the gist was that I was once in the receiving end of some insult because of my use of “ciao” as my farewell greeting.
Ciao has been my “customary” farewell for all text communication except for SMS so the insult left a stinging feeling for pegging me as an Italian-wannabe (which I am not, no disrespect meant for those of Italian descent). I just love the way ciao rolls off the mouth when I got to hear it from a foreign film more than five years ago, and it is such an informal greeting that it is meant only to be used among friends. I think that got me to use it first with email signatures since I started signing up for technical mailing lists which are informal by nature.
Lately I have seen several of the local bloggers and email list participants using ciao as their farewell greeting. I would not go as far as saying I have a trademark on that behavior but I kind of feel validated on the uptake of usage. It just produces a feeling of validation that more and more people will learn that you can break free from the typical mold of using “regards” and “best wishes” or the more formal “Until our next [insert future refence]” as farewell greetings.
We are of the borg. Resistance is futile. /lol
ciao!
May 08
ErinGarbage
(A neighbor’s car overtakes us in the highway while we were going to work)
Wife: Kapitbahay natin yan di ba? [reads plate number] Ano pangalan nya?
Me: Di ko alam. Tawagin na lang natin siyang Mario [grin].
Wife: Ayan ka na naman. Bibigyan mo na naman ng ibang pangalan.
Me: Bakit, alam mo ba pangalan nya? Hindi naman di ba? At least sa akin me pangalan siya.
Wife: E hindi naman yun ang pangalan nya. Bakit di mo na lang tanungin?
Me: [lowers voice] Pare, ano pangalan mo? Kasi inaabangan kita tuwing umaga, para masulyapan man lang kita.
Wife: Yuck. Kadiri ka talaga.
Me: E syempre gagawan mo ng konting background. Alangan namang lapitan mo bigla at tanungin mo lang ng pangalan.
[pause while I was cursing the greedy jeepney driver in the road]
Me: Sige Joseph na lang. Mukha naman siyang Joseph.
Wife: Mukhang Joseph? Bakit mo naman nasabing mukhang Joseph? Ikaw ba mukhang Erin?
Me: Yup [raises eyebrows repeatedly while still driving].
Wife: E di ba si Joseph un tatay ni…
Me: Jesus.
Wife: Ano kaya tawag ni Jesus kay Joseph?
Me: Erpats.
Wife: Bakit erpats?
Me: Bakit hindi? Sabagay, di naman nya tunay na tatay un. Baog kaya si Joseph?
[I can see from my peripheral vision that my wife is giving me the ‘EYE’]
Wife: G**o ka talaga. Bakit mo nasabing baog?
Me: Me kapatid ba si Jesus? Me alam ka bang ibang anak si Joseph?
Wife: E bakit tayo?
Me: E baog tayo.
Wife: Ikaw lang.
Me: Sabi ko nga, baog ako.
Wife: Saka Virgin Mary nga di ba?
Me: So hindi sila nagtalik kahit kailan?
I am so going to Hell if I was still a firm believer that Hell exists. 🙂
Oh, I removed the giggles in the conversation. Just imagine where they will be. 🙂
ciao!
Apr 14
ErinFLOSS, Garbage, Reviews, Technology
Metrobank’s eBanking interface rates a notch better in my book since it now supports Firefox, where previously it only supports IE and *gasp* Netscape. The stupid ActiveX control that was previously required (which effectively locks the interface to IE) is also gone. Actually that is the first clue I had since I transferred to another PC at work and was curious why I didn’t get the irritating prompt about the ActiveX installation.
The office network prevents me from uploading the screenshot but you can test it for yourself. I did it with the beta 5 of Firefox 3. 🙂
Kudos Metrobank Online! But I still despise you for that 10-character password requirement. 🙂
[edit] I finally grabbed a screenshot while in Archer (my Arch system). The picture is using “Bon Echo” which is a rebranded Firefox browser. The version is 2.0.0.14.
MetrobankOnline in Linux!
ciao!
Apr 03
ErinGarbage
I love mangling sayings. 😀
Last March 28, I had a very good and very disappointing event. I almost became a millionaire!
My wife and I had this private joke that I will someday hit the jackpot but since I rarely place bets I will just be lucky to pick up a winning ticket in the street. Just imagine a newspaper/tabloid headline stating “One lucky millionaire from a picked-up stray ticket” and then the following day will have a news item about a person who committed suicide for losing a winning lottery ticket. /lol
I keep on saying to my wife that I will place my bets but long queue lines never ceases to turn my interest off. At the sight of a long queue in the Lotto terminals I usually revert to sour graping that I won’t win anyway and I will just place my bets the next time. Nobody can blame me since my luck in chance drawings is almost dismal. One time I attended a dev seminar during a stormy night. Only five attendants were able to come and they raffled 3 books. I was one of the two persons who came away empty-handed. 😀
Before the holy week I was frequently in the northern office that is close to a mall. I was there for meetings and there is a Lotto terminal on my way to MRT. Since the queue was very short and the jackpot price was greater than Php 150 million then I made good with my pledge and place my bets. The first time I painstakingly selected my set of six numbers out of the 49 possibilities. On the day after the draw I checked my tickets and I usually have my smattering of single hits per frame.
On the Tuesday of the holy week I was once in the area so I placed another bet. This time I just opted to go for the lucky pick method wherein the lottery terminal picks the six numbers for me. I am thinking the actual draw is random so why not match it with a random way of selecting numbers? The disadvantage of lucky picks is that the numbers are usually so close to each other but who can say that it won’t be the actual numbers to come out of the draw?
By the time of the draw (March 27, since there were no draw during the Holy Week) the pot had already reached more than Php 200 million. On the morning of the 28th my wife said that the news announced that nobody won the jackpot. I left my ticket in the office so when I arrived I gamely checked how many consecutive numbers I got this time through the results posted in this site. The drawn numbers were pretty close (7-21-24-27-42-43) that my eyes were immediately zoned into the fourth frame since I got the last two numbers. I went back to the site and noted the numbers 24 and 27 which I also had on the fourth frame. Wow, so I won Php500! Then my eyes went to the first number on my ticket and it was a 7! I already have five out of the six numbers and my heart was now racing. And then when I looked at the last number my world slowed to a crawl. After that, the closes way to describe my state of mind was that I was in The Zone. The last number was a 21 and I had a 39!
After a minute my mind went out of The Zone and all hell broke loose. I think it was only natural to feel a bit disappointed since who doesn’t want to get Php200M+? That is a dream come true for anybody. Money can’t buy happiness but having lots of it does help. 🙂 With that money we would be able to start my dream of having my own bee and rock lobster farm. And maybe sleep in a bed of money. 😛
After a few minutes I calmed myself down and tried to analyze the situation (like what I sometimes tend to do). I can be disappointed or I can look at this as the first time I have won anything other than a gift certificate from the company. I prefer to do the latter. At least this way I now have a means of getting that sub-notebook to which I now have become fixated for weeks. And we can now buy that 32″ LCD TV that we were planning to buy with my mid-year bonus. 🙂
Sleeping in a bed of money is still a dream, but at least I got a bit of that dream into a reality. I guess if I change my winnings into five peso bills then I can still make that bed of money come true. But it will still be a small bed. 🙂
ciao!
Mar 04
ErinGarbage, Technology
I am sick and tired of getting these SMS information pushes about some crap service/downloads that I don’t need. The thing is I can’t remember of actually subscribing to them. What is annoying is that this specific push channel that comes from the 6960 number keeps on sending truncated messages that comes in groups of three and have no unsubscribe information. I am usually in vibra mode and there is nothing more irritating when getting three buzzes for crap information.
When I was assigned in Denmark, I got a “helpful” SMS push about how to unsubscribe by sending SMS messages. Since I was using roaming then, it was not practical to send a couple of messages as each one costs about Php15 a piece. Unfortunately I somehow deleted the messages so I am back in square one.
Today I got some spare time and energy to hunt down how to get off this list. Fortunately the telco website has this FAQ which basically instructs the user to do the following:
- Send the word CHECK to the number sending the SMS pushes. You will receive a message about the services your number is subscribed to.
- Send SERVICENAME OFF to the number to stop SMS pushes. Or you can send STOP ALL to terminate all services from that channel.
Let’s see if it works…
ciao!
Mar 03
ErinGarbage, Work
I wasn’t able to say a face-to-face goodbye to my “adopted” protege when she had her last day in the company since my wife and I are leaving for our annual vacation to Bohol and I was working from home the previous day. I never liked good-byes anyway and it isn’t like I will not be communicating with her after her stint with the “COMPANY”. 🙂
I have already experienced leaving a company and, many times over, have experienced being the one left in the company. Each one is hard but this one is special so I decided to write a homage to Joypo. I can’t say I am devastated since I am actually happy for her. I don’t know if its eagles or condors, but some birds teach their young how to fly by dropping them off from the safety of their nest. I won’t grab the whole credit for mentoring this specific hatchling but I think it is my due to say that I have some contribution in kicking her quiet @$$ over the edge. 🙂
For those interested, her name is not really Joypo. I have this habit of encoding the names in my phonebook and that is the name I gave her number. It is actually my wife who coined the codename because when she first talked to Joy she said she is very respectful that she inserts “po” (the Filipino term for respect) multiple times in a sentence that she started referring to her as Joypo. We have a lot of friends named Joy so it gave an easy to recall distinction. 🙂
Enough of the segue. Let me just list down the reasons why this lone wolf has taken an interest in taking this hatchling under my spiny wing:
- She was my real first subordinate. My supervisor then advised that I need to learn how to manage somebody if I want to better my chances of getting promoted to a lead position. Joypo was my first victim. 😀
- Since our work as all-around tech support and interim project infrastructure admins were very technical in nature and requires some hefty lifting (computer miniaturization was not that prevalent back then), I was actually expecting to get a male subordinate. Instead I got this wiry lass. But she proved me wrong by being my yardstick of what qualities a “DevArch” apprentice should have.
- She was my gender equalizer. I still laugh about the amount of flak I received when I actually made her lift and transport whole workstations from one cube to another. I just shrugged my shoulders to my “critics” and said it is part of the initiation for the team. Every devarch should experience lifting and moving workstations. Funny thing is that it became true. 😀
- I vowed that any devarch apprentice should just have the technical capabilities and I will handle fitting them with horns needed when coordinating with external resources. Joypo, with her uber-religious background, gave me a challenge. I think I was able to grow her some sharp horns. Unfortunately she also uses them on me. /lol
- I admire her guts. She actually gave me a prayer book. ME! A PRAYER BOOK! I wasn’t an agnostic back then but what the hell? I think I still have that prayer book in my cabinet. No offense Joy, I just have this habit of not being organized when it comes to my possessions. I value the thought more than the actual physical object. 🙂
- I value her honesty and inputs even if she doesn’t think so. Once I asked her if she thinks I am a good leader. She bluntly replied “Opo, kahit nakakainis na kayo minsan (Yes, even if you are sometimes irritating)”. I couldn’t feel more validated and prouder. 🙂
I think I am obligated to talk her out of leaving but I don’t think that makes sense coming from somebody who has left a previous company for greener pastures. I would only do such thing if I don’t think the person has thought things through but I had no doubt Joypo has already weighed all the possibilities.
So see you around kiddo. This industry is too small and too connected to be a stranger.
Me and Joypo in her farewell libre 🙂
ciao!
Feb 17
ErinGarbage, Work
I like freebies may it be useful or a one-time quirky curiosity thing. I admittedly have a weird standard on what counts as curious which sometimes explain the amount of trash in my storage spaces. My wife calls them junk, I call them as my collection of “probably usefuls”. 😀
I also have this limit on what I would like to get. To the probable disbelief of those who know me, I can say no to a freebie especially if it fails to rouse my interest. One such thing is the freebie that the company hyped and gave its employees: a dog tag.
Not the actual dogtag freebie
Yes, a dog tag. And no ordinary dog tag like what is in the image above. The dog tag is engraved with a list of qualities that the company wants everybody to be governed with in their everyday life; to breathe and live so to speak. The thought is sweet but I wonder what kind of crack is being smoked by the person who conceived this “promotion.” This is for the same company who revamped the design of its electronic badges because it doesn’t want the badges to have a distinct link to the company as a form of security against lost and forged badges.
The day they sent out the invite, Mike and the others in the Bench project was asking if I was going to get my dog tag. I gave them a big “HELL NO!” for the simple reason that I don’t see any practical nor interesting use for it. I like war video games like the Medal of Honor series which revolves about war campaigns but I am not fanatical enough to consider dog tags as a cool accessory. I also don’t have any dog that I can attach the tag. 😛 I am also trying to minimize the weight of my electronic badge since its weight alone is already noticeable. I gave a tongue-in-cheek retort that maybe we can collect all the dog tags in the project team and sell them in the junkyard for twenty pesos and buy ourselves two sticks of banana-que. 😛 Nope, I am not going to go into long queues to redeem that.
Early last week a company memo was sent to the email system which made me drop my jaws with laughter. The memo was warning against selling the tags and giving them away to non-company employed persons (e.g., friends, family, etc.). Much as I find it funny that somebody had the cajones to actually sell the tags, it kills me to think that somebody actually bought the craptag. /lol
And then here is the final kicker: I was told that the tags, like the electronic badges, should not be displayed when outside the company premises as they provide a direct link to the company. They should be hidden when going outside.
Yeah right, like I would go through the hassle of queuing for the tags, weighing down my e-badge, and then remind myself to keep it hidden from plain sight. I wonder if the organizers of that promotion really believed that people would wear them in company premises willingly. I can’t figure out any reason though but there must be something out there even if they are beyond normal reasoning.
Maybe they should have given out board magnets. Or maybe paper weights. Or maybe something useful like a shirt, notebook or bookmarks.
[update] Curiously enough, another memo is sent out regarding this illustrious freebie. It seems the voice of the disgruntled is strong. The memo clarifies that the dogtag can be worn outside office premises but should be on a separate chain than the e-badge. The rationale is that the dogtag, which displays the company name, will link the e-badge back to the company if it gets lost. That makes sense, sort of. The wife makes a strong argument against that logic: but WE KNOW that badge is from your company. Apparently taking out the company name and colors from the badge will prevent outsiders from putting two and two together and arrive at the conclusion that persons wearing badges coming out of offices with big company logo is not affiliated with the company. Yeah, that makes absolute perfect sense. In the ideal world, everybody hides the badge every time they go out.
Oh, I got a deed here for the Guadalupe bridge for anybody willing to buy it. I am selling it cheap. 😀
ciao!
Feb 11
ErinGarbage, Work
Nazistic proxy love that is.
For the first time in 5 years in the company I finally experienced being ‘benched’. That is the local term for any resources who are in-between projects. After going through several mind-benders, I figured this is a welcome opportunity to get some training done.
I have two options, either go for the trainings in the company online learning repository or pursue more job-directed tutorials that proliferate the net. In my perspective the second option means a wealth of information right in my fingertips as soon as I get clearance from my superiors that I can do so. First I have to make sure that I have completed all of those mandatory trainings. Ok, fair enough. I even tried taking some of the available CBTs to (in the words of my counselors) “round-up my non-technical skills.” Being a geek by nature, I can describe those trainings in two words: boring and under-estimated. Boring does not need further explanation and yes I already sent the proper feedback. Under-estimated means that the allocated time to complete each course is severely underestimated. My impression is that whoever timed these courses have used people gifted with super-human reading and compression skills. For the rest of us, good luck in finishing the courses in the allocated time. Think about what you can remember on the course on your way home.
After the non-technical traiing torture has ended, I set my sights on these cool Java frameworks and technologies that I kept promising myself that I would get an overview. I am talking hibernate, spring, struts, aspect oriented programming, design patters, eclipse framework, and what have you. The mere thought makes me salivate. 😀
First in line is the spring framework as this is being touted as the emerging de facto standard for J2EE development. The spring home site has a nifty tutorial that is easy to follow. Since the tutorial uses Apache Tomcat for deployment and testing and I am using Eclipse as my IDE, it makes logical sense to install an Eclipse plug-in to manage the Tomcat start/stop process. That is the goal of IDEs in the first place: so you have a one-stop shop for all your development needs.
Ok, now to put the good idea in practice: Fire up google, search for “best eclipse tomcat plugin”. What do you know, the first few hits lists the eclipse plug-in central site. The cherry is that you can sort based on rating and the best one is the sysdeo plugin which I remember using eons ago. This is where the love entered the scene: clicking the plug-in homepage returns a proxy blocked page because it is classified under “Freeware and Software Download”. Very nice. /roll-eyes
And now in order to use this “should-have-been-a-great-idea” I need to secure a manager’s approval, hunt down whoever is managing the elusive Websense white-list, make the actual appeal, probably need to secure a local security exception for something that common sense should dictate as something useful, which in turn would probably result to securing a global exception, and then doing the whole red-tape-esque dance of e-paper processing. Assuming my request gets approved I guess my grandchildren who would be in the company by then be able to use an Eclipse Tomcat plug-in if I am careful enough to word it that the request is not version-constrained. 🙁
Or I can circumvent the process by downloading the plugin from outside the external network and then send it in.
Or revert to using one command terminal to start tomcat, and then my IDE for development.
Guess which one won? Yay for progress and efficieny. CLI rules. 🙁
ciao!
Nov 26
ErinGarbage
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. ~Mark Twain
Never ask a woman her age as that is considered as impolite. I can’t remember the first time I have heard that phrase but it provides a very convenient way for women to evade answering the dreaded question.
My manager celebrates her thirty-ish birthday today, and she says that she is proud of her age. Yeah right, which makes me wonder why she sometimes rounds off her birthday to the nearest tenth position. 🙂 In her defense, she does admit to her age after some time. She says only people afraid of looking their age are those who evade answering their true age, and she is “blessed” with a baby-face that does not show her real age.
At this point I am stumped as I hear the same thing from my wife. She asks me from time to time if she looks her age. My wife and I are already approaching the big three-oh, although age is a somewhat touchy subject for us since my wife is older than me by one or two years depending on the month that the subject is brought up. I don’t really care about the age difference (when you love somebody, you love them for who they are and not for anything else) but the impish side of me cannot let it pass to use it as a platform for launching a tirade of personal jokes. It usually gets me some bruises on my forceps but the smiles and laughters we share afterwards is all worth it. 🙂
Back to the topic of looking their age, how does one really gauge the standard of how each age bracket should look like? I am pretty bad with remembering faces more so with describing them so I am not very credible with this topic. However I am curious on what certain ages should really look like. I think I can distinguish the “bata” (kid) and “dalaga/binata” (adolescent) look fairly well. It would be easy to assume that once a person looks like they have lost that adolescent look then they are in their twenties. Wrinkles are usually associated with the forties although our polluted environment can pretty much speed up the arrival of wrinkles. White hair are usually attributed to people in their fifties, and the amount of white hair, or receding hairlines, are used to gauge people in their sixties and onward.
But what about the people in their between the age of 25 and 35? What distinguishing facial attributes can be used to say that they are in their thirties? I have been thinking about it and I cannot pin down a single quality that would be definitive in classifying a stranger into this mysterious age group. Most of the people who know me have been pegging me in the thirties group. Even our close friends usually mistake me as older than my wife. Does that mean that I am mature looking than my wife? The closest thing I can surmise with the thirties assumption is that I have already lost whatever, if any, boyish feature my face once possessed. Any attempts to rekindle that boyish aura ends up with me looking like a retardate. 😀 Only a handful people are close enough to see that side of me so I am pretty fine with looking like a retard from time to time.
To make the age-classification game harder, there is that abomination called makeup. I know some women who looks very different when they have nothing on their face that you would do a double-take when the difference hits you. It is a seldom occurrence wherein makeup would turn an ugly duckling into a swan but when it does I feel sad. I am sad because it means that the elation brought by the alteration is something that is not real and will fade away very soon. Makeup is something that I can’t really appreciate (not because I don’t use it and I am a man). Or maybe I have this idealistic standard for the people I know. I usually associate makeup with “fake”-ness especially if it is very noticeable (aka thick application). I always admire women who wear very minute or no makeup at all. Those women are confident and comfortable with how they look. If you have to resort to using artificial things to “enhance” your looks and “boost” your confidence level then there is something intrinsically wrong with your outlook in life. I feel an extra pity for those who wage a losing, and very expensive, battle with Father Time just to keep on holding on to their presumed youth. Give me an unpainted face anytime and I will spend the time to discern how the imperfections enhance their beauty, rather than giving me a mardi gras visage that I will think ways on unraveling what horrors lies beneath.
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. ~Confucius
ciao!
Nov 12
ErinGarbage
Yesterday I had a literal rude awakening. Coming from a Friday cocktail party, I tried to get some catnap before dinnertime. I gave some parting instruction to Tina and Penpen to wake me up when dinner is ready since I am really sleepy.
Upon getting to my bed, I finished reading Deception Point and began reading Digital Fortress (The last in the Dan Brown books I am reading). Realizing that the bookworm in me will prevent me from getting the catnap that I went to my room for, I switched off the lamp in the night table and started to will myself to sleep. As was my custom, I laid flat on my back and covered my eyes with my right forearm. The idea is that the pressure and the additional “shade” provided by the forearm will help me lull into sleep.
After a few minutes I already reached a state wherein my mind is already entering the sleep state. And then something hit me in the forearm and chest area that bounced off to the right side of the bed. Pissed off and with a curse forming in my mind, I started to get a look at who thought it was a good idea to wake me up with a pillow. At the back of my mind I thought it was Jordan since he is the most probable suspect but then realization kicked in, my room was dark and I can still see that my door was still closed.
Puzzled I began looking at the floor beside my bed for the object that hit me. I usually sleep only on the right side of the bed so whatever hit me would definitely land on the floor if it bounced. I switched on the night lamp and saw that there is nothing on the floor. My extra pillow was unused and still on the head-area on the left side of the bed where it is usually placed.
Was I only dreaming, or did something really woke me? I didn’t know so I just got up and went to the living room where Penpen was watching TV. I would like to think that it was just my subconscious playing tricks with my imagination but I was pretty sure something hit me to wake me up.
I would like to think I am a logical thinker but I also believe that there are things around us that I still don’t and will never understand. I have my own stash of “paranormal” stories that is suited more in a camp fire telling, but with my more than four months stay in this apartment, I haven’t really felt anything different although there were times that I think I heard my name being called.
Chalk another one for mysterious things. Maybe I can add this in the shit happens category. 🙂
ciao!
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