Thoughts from my head, published to the web. Punishment for people like you who have nothing better to do.
Jul 15
All vegetables. Unfortunately only ‘ampalay’ or bitter gourd is available in the cafeteria. I ordered two servings with instruction to minimize the pork amount in the serving. It was expectedly bitter but what the heck, I have to eat.
Hopefully the vegetable viands tomorrow will be better.
ciao!
Jul 14
Way past half and gorging on apples, pineapples, watermelon, turnips and grapes. This isn’t as bad as the first attempt.
I think I will survive…
ciao!
Jul 13
Ok, so I was finally coerced to try going into a diet again by my wife. My weight has plateaued in the 200lbs figure but a lot of people has stated that I look like pufferfish so off I go again into a week-long General Motors Weight Loss Diet. I already went through this last year which was pure pain for a voracious eater like me but then again I lost around 10 pounds in a week which is pretty nifty. Even if I don’t lose any pounds then it is still alright since this is also a cleansing diet, especially the dreaded fourth day wherein I can only take bananas and milk. Ok, replace milk with yogurt since I am lactose intolerant and I don’t want to spend the whole day in the thinking throne. 😉
I decided to blog about it because I read in a getting-it-done blog that it helps to blog something if you need some extra boost in achieving your goals. Even if you don’t have any readers then it would still instill a fear of failure since nobody wants to be a failure in the public eye. I might even use the bitesize blog (located in the far right of this blog) to post some mid-day updates.
So here it goes::)
Day 0: Weighed-in at 200lbs. Still feeling normal. We still have that Shakey’s pizza to finish for dinner. 🙂
General Motors Diet for Day 1
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consist of all the fruits you want. It is strongly suggested that you consume lots of melons the first day. Especially watermelon and a loupe. If you limit your fruit consumption to melons, your chances of losing three lbs. on first day are very good.
How and Why it works
You are preparing your system for the upcoming programme. Your only source of nutrition is fresh or canned fruits. Fruits are nature’s perfect food. They provide everything you could possibly want to sustain life except total balance and variety.
Unfortunately I hate melons (except watermelon) due to a early childhood psychological event. 🙂
ciao!
Jul 09
In a world of dreamers, somebody has to keep their feet planted firmly on the ground.
Jul 09
This week has been a series of disappointments. Crunch gear reports that the battery factory fire has hit MSI hard so the 6-cell version won’t be coming out until September. *sigh*
Jul 03
IT Security is for keeping intruders out. Prison Security is for keeping occupants in. My question is what type of security are we implementing?
Jun 16
Fun Stuff, Garbage, Work palmface, Work No Comments
I started the day in a bad mood, again due to draconian IT policies in the office but this real-life instance made the day a bit better and worse at the same time.
Noticing that I am always a couple of minutes early for international conference calls, I asked my counterpart for their local time and found out that my system clock is 12 minutes in advance. I asked around and found that we have varying system clocks so I asked Mike, a junior member of my team, to log a support ticket for the steps to configure our machines to synchronize with an office NTP server as I know the local domain server has that service. I know because I already did it once using w32tm on my previous project but I can’t remember the name of the server that I used. Besides, it’s the support personnel’s job.
After some time, I was already in the call. I noticed that somebody was hovering near my station. He said something about a clock so I let him do his stuff on my machine since I only need the phone. I had to restrain from laughing when the support engineer started moving my trackball like a wireless mouse. Since if I let this continue I might blurt out laughing in the call, I just pointed to the clock and when he nodded I took over the trackball and double-clicked the system tray clock. I was already wondering what options are there for NTP synchronization since I already inspected it a while ago and didn’t see anything.
And then the unthinkable happened, the support engineer adjusted my clock by 8 minutes and pressed the Apply button. I was shocked but couldn’t say anything as my Madrid counterpart was discussing something important. I just heard the engineer talking to Mike about closing the ticket so I frantically waved my hand to get their attention, and hastily scribbled the characters “N T P ?” in a scratch paper. I just let Mike do the talking as I needed to focus on the call.
After the call I asked Mike what happened and he said the engineer stated that he just took a look at his system time before coming over and synchronized all of our machine clocks. Our system clocks are still surprisingly different (duhh!) but the engineer apparently said that it’s OK to have some discrepancies. Millisecond discrepancies perhaps may be alright but a full minute? And I didn’t know that we have a gifted engineer in the company that has his body clock attuned with the network’s NTP server.
I feel so safe in the reliable hands of our support personnel. /lol
ciao!
Jun 13
Among the numerous energy drinks available in the market, the only thing I have tried is the “Extra Joss” brand mainly because of the packaging. It is very convenient as it comes in a sachet that you just add to a cold glass of water.
The last time I drank one was years ago when I had to stay with my mom in the hospital when she had a stroke episode. I would like to think that the energy drink gave me some boost in that week long “endurance” and little sleep. The citrus taste and fizzy texture was a very pleasant experience.
A couple of days ago I saw the TV ad that there were two new flavors: club soda and apple black currant. I have been wimpy and stressed for the previous week and really tired so I bought 3 packs (one of each, including the original) from the convenience store at the ground floor of the office.
The first I tried was the “apple black currant” variant because I don’t know what “club soda” really tastes like. I got a black mug from the pantry and labored with opening the sachet. In the defense of the packaging, this is really stupidity on my part. I saw two dots in the middle that I took as perforation marks so I tried to open it from there. Only after thinking it through was I able to spy the real perforation marks near the corner. 🙂
Back to the preparation, I dunked the contents on the mug and added some cold water from the dispenser. The powder fizzled so I gave it ten seconds to settle down somewhat before drinking. I first tasted apple but it might be because that is the first smell that registered in my brain. About halfway with the drink the bitter taste hit me head-on that I nearly spat the liquids in my mouth. I just swallowed what I already have in my mouth and then inspected the contents of the mug. I was surprised to see that some of the powder was still solid at the bottom. I don’t remember seeing this insolubility before. I added more water and swirled the mug a couple of time to shake things up. When I drank the remaining energy drink the taste was already too diluted but the bitterness was still there.
I am no longer sleepy so the drink must be working, but I don’t think I will try the black currant variant anymore. Once is enough. I am used to drinking black currant flavored drinks (Absolut vodka comes into mind /lol) but I can’t say that they taste bitter. Hopefully the club soda variant is going to give me a better tasting experience.
ciao!
Jun 06
Scenario At Work: A required resource service is not functioning properly.
Manager: Get somebody to fix it. ASAP!
Me: Will do.
[Me contacts internal support]
Me: Did we change something in the configuration? Product X is borked.
Internal Support: Nope. Everything is dandy. Try contacting the provider.
[Me contacts provider’s support hot line]
Me: Your service is not working properly. Please check.
ABC Support: Thank you for contacting Company ABC’s support hotline where (long spiel about how they are $DEITY’s gift to my poor existence). We’ll ask our technical team to look at it. Here is your cookie reference number.
[after an hour]
Manager: Well?
Me: (looking up from the pile of tasks being worked on) Err, ABC support hasn’t called back yet. Ill follow it up.
Manager: Should have done that eons ago…
Me: right! (whispering inside my head: and i am just twiddling my thumbs here… )
[calls ABC hot line]
Me: Im calling regarding reference number 123456. Any updates?
ABC Support: Thank you for contacting Company ABC’s support hot line where (long spiel about how they are $DEITY’s gift to my poor existence). Tech team has stated that they don’t see any problem with your service. It must be something internal (read between the lines: you are a stupid customer. all of your problems are your imagination. ITS NOT OUR FAULT, ITS YOURS). Please check your lines again.
Me: [groan]
[calls internal support]
Me:ABC said there is no problem from their side. Are you sure there isn’t any test that we need to do to isolate this?
Internal Support: We already executed all tests. Everything is still dandy.
Me: (whispering in my head: Oh crap) Uhhh, ok.
[puts down phone, somebody speaks up from behind]
Manager: Well?
Me: (startled) uhh, wait a second.
[pulls open the drawer, takes out the gun, points it in my temple and pulls the trigger]
Problem solved.
Note: Manager, ABC company, and Internal support are all fictitious characters. But they represent somebody real though may not be their literal counterparts.
ciao!
Jun 06
Katrina Tan == mapang-matang tao. Porke nasa singapore lang. Sau daw ako. Di ko naman alam kung ano ibig sabihin non.
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