Nov 19
ErinGarbage
The unthinkable happened, the redundant storage that holds my site failed and I lost 2 months of blogs. That is around 25 blog posts and I dont remember even half of them. I could get mad at my service provider but I won’t since they had no control on it. It is just my bad luck that I was one of those whose backups were corrupted by the failure.
They wont get a final say from Dell (their contractor) but I am writing those posts off. It is going to be my penance for not finalizing the process for automatically downloading the backup of the databases on my site. I was lulled by the fact that the provider was creating automatic backups but I did not realize that only copies of the 60th day backup is transferred to a different server.
It sucks but you have to go with the flow. In this day of doom I have am clinging to two adages that should give me strength: that which does not kill me only makes me stronger, and it could have been worse. Either way I am not going to write anything up until monday since they might be able to salvage some data up.
ciao!
Sep 09
ErinGarbage, Rubbish, Top of my head
I am a text-book Virgo especially when it comes to the arts. Many people think I am joking whenever I say that I am ‘artistically-challenged’ but that is the truth. I enjoy and appreciate works of arts but I can never participate in them actively.
Many people have proclaimed that songs can tame the beast inside men. Aside from psychologists, many people would regard the theory of that power as romatic mumbo-jumbo. Today I got a sampling of that power. I was listening to a pinoy internet radio station and it played an old OPM song. It was a cheesy song that gained a short popularity. The song goes something like
Bakit si tisoy, pacute-cute lang...
Ipinagpalit mo na ako sa kanya...
......
Di ba non ay simple ka lang,
Tayo ay padyip-dyip lang...
The moment those waves was decoded by my brain something magical happened. I was transferred to my college days, hanging out on the UST pavillion with some of my friends. We were chiding a friend and I can feel the shade provided by the gazebo and smell the grass on the soccer field. I dont know if it sounds crazy but I was filled with a sense of carefree-ness, something that was abundant during my college days.
That is not the only song that triggers such powerful memories in me. RHCP’s “The Zephyr Song” never fails to bring chills to my spine because I always associate it with dark cold winter. The reason is it was always blaring at MTV during my first stay in Helsinki, when the sun goes up at 9AM and comes down at 3PM, usually with temperature below -14 degrees celsius. Madonna’s James Bond song also has the same effect but to a much lower degree. Certain pinoy alternative songs also bring me back as far as high school days. Sadly I cant think of any song that will bring me back much further. 🙁
Songs are really powerful, but only if you have a strong memory associated with it. Many people are familiar with this which explains why they ask for the ‘song that moves you’. Most only associate with love songs but other genres can offer a much more diverse possibility.
ciao!
Sep 08
ErinGarbage, Rubbish reality bites
Today was the last day of Hiram, a very *idealistic* friend, in the company. Being gifted with the flair for the pen, he has made an impressive farewell email showing his views. Unfortunately a lot of people were in the recipient list so I cannot post my replies there so I will do it here. For security and ethical purposes, the name of the company will not be posted here but I will be referring to is as the “firm” if I need to. I don’t have permission to post the whole email so I would comment on the parts I want…
But first, break a leg on your journey. My advice to you is to tone down your idealism. Just like what a comic said, the key to living life happily is lowered expectations. Idealism is good but you have to be realistic as well. Both are on the opposing sides of the arena that a person needs to precariously balance in order to find his happiness. Both are like powerful medicines which when taken too much will do you more harm than good.
Note that while I may be commenting on Hiram’s opinions my answers need not necessarily be aimed at him. I respect his opinions and what I put forth are my own views and opinions. The cliche goes that opinions are like assholes, everybody has them. None are absolutely correct or absolutely wrong. You were given a mind to digest things through.
Re the low salary, the correct term is “competitive salary.” The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. At least on the side of fence that we wish to see. An employee’s salary is not guaranteed to give you satisfaction, and most of the time it never will. We are always striving to get a higher compensation, always looking for the next fat increase. Unfortunately the business model can only take so much. You have economics to blame for that. Economics belongs to the realm of reality while fatter checks belong to the ideals. Make them play ball nicely with each other and you are set. Besides you still have to take into consideration other stuff like personal growth, job stability, etc.
Re health over time, I agree that on most occasions we, the staff, get the shorter end of the stick. Or so we thought. Unfortunately we only see our side of the story. Being the geek that I am, I don’t like managing other people because I prefer being a lone wolf. However I am not stupid not to observe how management works because sooner or later I have to deal with that both in the corporate world and in my personal life. If solving the next delivery/logic problem is already mentally and physically exhausting, I wonder how much more would managing a team? You think we are working long hours? Most management people that I know are working 24×7. Imagine how much exhaustion they have to bear with that kind of strain.
Time management is one skill that I wish to perfect because like you I am biting more than I can chew. Prioritization is one more skill that I need to master and hopefully I will get there someday. Part-time job? You are not allowed to do those and you explicitly agreed when you signed your contract. Don’t bitch for something you willfully tackled head-on. We make choices and we have to live with the repercussions, either good or bad.
Re slave-master relationship, that is your perception. I also cuss when I have to stay late but I don’t take it personally with my superiors. They have their own jobs to do and I have mine. Before you condemn somebody you first have to walk on their shoes. If you think you can do better then prove it with actions rather than words. Politics is something that you can never avoid, especially in the corporate environment. I have been employed in companies wherein the politicking is much, much worse. We could play indifferent to these but sooner or later it will suck us into the mire. I think politics is already embedded into the human culture. You can keep putting your finger in your ears and humming loudly but that does not mean that it is not there. Oh before I forget, sitting on the fence does not mean you are not participating in politics. You are only passively participating in it by letting both sides duke it out. 😀
Re crap. Hiram is right that crap is good. Come to think of it crap is life. Hiram might not be able to stomach the corporate crap but we will always take crap from somebody else. Look at you for instance, you are already reading my crap. 😀 . Some might think that starting a business means you don’t have to deal with (corporate) crap but they are dead wrong. Being self-employed only means that you will take crap from people from more than one organization. You may end up taking up more crap than before, but hey choose your own supplier. 😀 Eventually we all will turn to crap. The bible says that we will go “from dust to dust” (no, there is no “ashes to ashes”), but we will be crap in between regardless if you were cremated or dumped in the Pasig river. 🙂
So handing out crap is good? I did not say that. Avoiding handing them out might not be totally feasible but we could work on minimizing the amount we hand out to others. Stop hoping to change the world because that is too big a goal. Work on changing the persons around you as that is more achievable. Shield others from the unnecessary crap and they might hopefully do the same when their turn comes.
Whew, this one is longer than I expected. I could go on further but I need to sleep since I need to go to work tomorrow (yeah, I need the money too). To wrap things up
– Idealism with realism goes hand in hand. The right balance between the two will greatly help us find satisfaction.
– Time management and prioritization is good but difficult to master.
– Everything is relative based on our perception.
– Crap is good. Embrace crap. Life is crap but crap is life.
ciao!
Sep 07
ErinGarbage, Laboratory
The migration of the pertinent posting and comments have been completed from the blogsome account. It may look like most of the comments were made by a single man but that is one of the drawbacks of manual migration. 🙂
The xml-rpc page of this site does not seem to work as well as the feeds section but that is something to do in the future.
ciao!
Sep 02
ErinTop of my head
Dropped!
Time and location was proving too much for this distance learning subject. If you read the previous statement again then you will see how ironic it sounds but that is the way it is.
ciao!
Sep 01
ErinGarbage, Movies, Rubbish distance learning, upou
I watched the film With Honors yesterday and since there is nothing else on the TV I placed it in the background while I was working on my TMA. Although I caught it on HBO a few time I have not seen the beginning.
The film couldn’t have a better timing. I have been thinking about my stay in UPOU, and my exasperations. Time and again I have stated that I am not taking it up for the degree. I am in it for the learning. But what have I learned during my 1.5 year stay? I would have to say a little because most have been a rehash of what I have already known from lurking from a few mailing lists. Aside from the course that teaches the concepts of assembly languages I cant remember a single thing that I learned from the program.
I am already weighing stopping as an option. In the movie, Simon Wilder (Joe Pesci) said Monty (Brendan Frasier) is a loser and he (Simon) is not because he is a quitter. Simon also said that quitters are romantics, maybe because they try to validate why they quit. Somehow those words keep on coming back to me even during my commute to the office. If I am going to quit then the only romanticism that I will attribute it is that I am no longer enjoying what I do and it is time to move on.
I assume my wife is going to have my hide for posting that. She and others might say I am wasting resources and opportunity if I will quit. Maybe I am, maybe I am not. Paraphrasing what a friend told me over dinner a few nights ago “have we come to the point wherein we have to endure things just to survive?” She was talking about bland food at cafeterias so we answered at that point in time the answer to her question is a yes. If I relate this learning endeavour to that question, is the completion of this program really the same way? Will the answer still be ‘yes’? Do I need to complete this to survive? At my deathbed will I really die without having regrets about it? One thing is for sure, I wasted nothing because I met a few invaluable people whom I am happy to call as peers. Some might even want me as their friend! 🙂
I might already be being disillusioned, or even nearing burnout, so I guess the right route for me is to take a sabbatical to sort things through. I like learning and would not stop learning but I am beginning to think that I should have stayed with my previous career course: being a jack of some trades and master of none.
ciao!
Aug 30
ErinGarbage
Francis is flying back home to the Philippines and Arvin is in Malaysia. I am left holding the fort alone for the next 3 weeks. It is a good thing that men are built with less emotional tendencies or else I would have been depressed. Well maybe not all men are built that way but I am a lone wolf ever since I have found that I enjoy books than playing outside. The same rule applies and there is still Ivy whom I can still talk to in Tagalog.
Have a safe trip Soy. Enjoy the short reprieve that you are getting because we both know that you will be back in the bloody frontlines soon enough.
ciao!
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!
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