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!
Jan 18
ErinTop of my head
Leverage on the power of choice. Don’t fret too much on things you left to take its own course as that was your choice.
Dec 24
ErinTop of my head
*clicks slippers three times*There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.
Dec 21
ErinTop of my head
Inside joke that for every Christmas raffle in the company, it is the resources who are assigned onshore who gets a better chance of winning. I have been with the company for more than 4 years and I haven’t won anything.
Until this year. Since I am onshore, Lady Luck must have been drunk since she smiled at my direction. I won a consolation price, a GC for an artistic franchise. There are four of us here who won, with Tina getting a minor prize (iPod Shuffle). I am currently in negotiation with Lance Boy if she want to exchange her Department store GC with mine. 🙂
ciao!
Dec 21
ErinTop of my head
Sometimes I cannot help being analytical which, tongue-in-cheek, means I am being anal most of those times. Its the drawback of having the following factors: being able to analyze trivial things, having a twisted sense of humor, and lack of necessary tact.
Nobody is perfect, but some are more imperfect than others. 🙂
ciao!
Dec 20
ErinTop of my head
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.
Max DePree, in The Art of Leadership
Dec 13
ErinTop of my head
Everything is a state of mind. Happiness, sadness, anger, love. These can be controlled, or if not at least channeled. Some can even suppress them but that can be dangerous in the long run.
My state of mind is not perfect. I can still feel, but I can mask and to some degree dissipate the feelings through rationalization and passiveness. There would be times wherein feelings can overcome the rational mind but that is normal. The important thing is even during these times of high emotional stress (positive or negative), the rational mind retains a degree of consciousness.
I am crazy.
ciao!
Dec 13
ErinTop of my head
Some of the stuff we ate last night..
Appetizer: Fish balls . Barbequed pork strips in thin skewers. Spring roll dipped in a spicy sauce
Soup: Seafood stock with basil and other herbs with two drops of chili oil.
Chicken and seafood in green curry with fried beets on the side. Together with scallops with herbs and orchid petals.
Braised pork in fresh pumpkin brulee. Pad thai missing the main ingredient which is noodles(!?!?!) witha small shrimp cake with peanuts and mild chili oil.
Main dish: Lightly prepared duck in red curry served with fresh broccoli and jasmine rice. The dish is complimented by a spring-roll composed of a filling of duck leg marinated and spiced then left to ferment for four days, then enclosed in a freshly made rice wrapper.
Dessert: Mango sorbet with peach/passion fruit jelly.
Breath freshener: Mint paste with pop sugar rocks.
Last dessert: Baked coconut meat and banana with salted ice cream.
Nice presentation, but I was still hungry after.
Click here for the full serving
Dec 12
ErinTop of my head, Work
The good thing about being part of a large company is that you usually get more than one Christmas party. There usually is a company-level party, sometimes there is another for the department level, then there is the project level party that is mandatory to hold. Sometimes members of the various teams conduct an unofficial celebration.
On December 12, the onsite TopD team had a project celebration as it’s monthly social event (aka team building). The party was held at a Thai restaurant named Kinkin. The celebration coincides with the Client’s own Christmas celebration so we were able to go home early (if you can say that 6PM is still early).
After arriving in the place, the seating arrangement was already decided by the social committee. They distributed the pinoys to 2-3 per table, I guess in line with the maximize the networking possibility. They know that Filipinos have a tendency to clump together. 🙂
I was seated in the farthermost table with Harold and Penpen. Harold had to leave for a while due to a prior church engagement but he was able to come back after 30 minutes. We barely finished the first course when arrived so he didn’t miss much. He started the ball rolling in heckling Nana though, which lasted through the night. 😀
The food was very, uhhmm, presentable. Fine dining is intended for human interaction with food and wine as highlights. Unfortunately I have a very healthy appetite so I was skeptical on how my tummy will fare during the dinner. I think Girlie and Francis will skin me alive if I didn’t come so that also contributes a lot in the decision to go. One thing that is not lacking in the menu was the wine. Each course have its own accompanying wine but I can’t remember which ones were which since I know next to nothing when it comes to wines. All I know is that some of are really fancy sounding, and one even came in an artistic vessel:
The menu we had was composed of the following (as I remember them):
For appetizers (aside from the assorted finger foods we found in the table that we had fun in christening weird names to Nana’s discomfort) we had fish balls, pork strips in skewers (barbecue?) and spring rolls dipped in spicy sauce.
Then came the soup which is clear soup stock with basil and other herbs that I didn’t catch. The servers gave us some chili oil to spice things up. Maybe it is because the stock, while aromatic, basically tastes like weakly flavoured water?
Next came the first course which was served in a classic Danish-designed plate. The course was composed of chicken and seafood in green curry with fried beets on the side. The course was served with some scallops lightly seasoned with herbs, and some fried orchids.
I was so hungry that I finished the plate first in our table. The orchid was alright although the small serving is not enough to allow me to really give a good judgment of how it tastes like. It helps in keeping my grumbling stomach at bay and that is enough for me. I think I am so hungry that I am seeing red when the meal comes with green curry. Checking the pictures restored some sanity as the curry is indeed red in color. Note to self, if I get hungry again I only need to pick some grass and put some herbs and vinaigrette on it. 😛
After that course came something more substantial: braised pork on top of some swirls of fresh pumpkin brulee. It was accompanied with what is described as “pad thai that is missing the main ingredient which is the noodles.” Hmmn, this itself warrants a comment that I learned was the same across all tables. If a dish is missing its main ingredient, does it still have enough credibility to be called as the original dish?
Nice dish but this is also a runner-up for the Nicolas Cage movie: Gone in 60 seconds. 🙂
Next came the piece d’ resistance of the whole dinner: duck on duck. The main dish is a lightly prepared duck in red curry served with fresh broccoli and jasmine rice. The dish is complimented by a spring-roll composed of a filling of duck leg marinated and spiced then left to ferment for four days, then enclosed in a freshly made rice wrapper. Yummy although the serving size still leaves something to be desired. Nana didn’t even touch her plate but I was beaten to the punch in asking to finish her plate. 😐
The dessert actually came in waves. The first wave was a mango sorbet accented with a peach/passion jelly. This came with a “dessert wine” which I find very sour but the rest of the gang said that the wine was too sweet. I think I may have picked up the wrong glass. 😀
After finishing the mango sorbet we were given some mint breath freshener which I thought ended the dinner but then they served us some baked coconut meat with salted ice cream. The last time I tasted salted ice cream was when the salt in the ice surrounding the sorbetes (or dirty ice cream in street parlance) gets accidentally sprinkled inside the container. The taste was uhm, interesting unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to take a snapshot.
During meal intervals the party committee had some intermission numbers consisting mainly of each table doing an interpretative rendition of some Christmas songs. Our table did the Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer song and we expected to land at the last place since we had a terrible presentation. It came out that having one of the judges hatching the idea (and probably going in last which means the judges have the most alcohol during our presentation) is enough to make us win the contest. I think another factor was that we have Harold in the team, and Harold effortlessly brings cheers and happy thoughts just by being Harold. Amazing!
The best surprise of all was when we opened the give-away. Harold was quipping that it is an iPod and we were surprised when it was indeed an iPod shuffle meant for everybody. Coolness factor x 10. 😀
The party ended at around 12am and we were at the apartment at around 1am. I was already bone-tired but I was hungry so I ended up munching some crackers while being half-asleep. Social dinners are fine but I don’t think I will really enjoy one unless the multi-course menu have super sized portions. 😀
Pictures of the event can be viewed here, hosted by Picasa Google Photos of course. 🙂
ciao!
Dec 10
ErinTop of my head
It is not a question of how well each process works, the question is how well they all work together.
Lloyd Dobens and Clare Crawford
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