The Holiday

Yes, an unexpected holiday is coming this Tuesday.

"Al Adha" is one of the greatest feast of the Islam community and since the president signed it already it means - NO WORK for the most of us!

December is quickly coming and our company is "forcing" us to render vacation leaves starting December 22  (and for those who doesn't yet have VL, credits are given which will be paid when you have VL credits available).

Also on December 11 onwards, up until January of 2011 will be a BIG test on my capability to handle this project on my own since my partner and expert on this project will be having her vacation in Europe. Good luck to me (and I need it!).

Company Christmas party will be on Dec. 4, a non-working Saturday, and I will be part of IDLE HANDZ group that will present on a Showtime-like program along with my POSI teammates.

Dec 10 overnight until Dec 11 noon, will be the Christmas party of the POSI team.
Dec 11 will be the Christmas party with my SPEDmates.

Wow I think I need to jog twice as much with all those food coming!

November Mid-month

It's not yet technically the mid-month day, but its 2 days near it.

Anyways, our house smells paint.
The color my mother decided to paint the front of our house is a bright pink and blue, essentially making our house look like a preschool.

Im supposed to do some extra programming for my part time job, which I lately ignored (and I know I will be sorry for this in the future), but I cant work, didn't, because of the paint smell and it was unusually HOT today. November is supposed to be windy or a stormy month, but today it is cloudless blue super hot day.

On the upside though, I ran (more aptly slow jog) because my left knee injury is still making me uncomfortable. Also I feel pain on my lower right chest, or  sometimes on my left abdomen when I push myself to not slow down after 3 rounds of the oval (one round is approx. 400m). I walk when I feel pain and continue a jogging pace after the pain subsides.

It seems that the next few remaining days of November will quickly unravel as most people anticipate Christmas.

Random

Performed code coverage using DevPartner on our project. It's a nifty tool to know what parts of your code is frequently being accessed. We are doing this for documentation purposes on our project.

Another officemate's last day, and she only stayed for 5 months.

Invited by Leigh for a free dinner at Mooon cafe IT Park. It's a little treat and I ordered pork sisig! Yummy!

I went to SM to supposedly buy the case for my iPod touch, but when I got to the store, there's no more stocks. So I went on and bought the multiple audio out extension, so that many earphones can plugin on my iPod at once. Also bought some jogging shorts and dri-fit shirt.

As I was going home, when I stepped down from the jeep near the capitol area, it rained!
Good that there was a taxi and I was able to come home wet-free.

What a long day.

2011 It's Going to Happen!

I've had a blog entry before (I'm too lazy to look it up) where I posted the places I wanted to visit and I think I've been to most of those places.

Now a new year is coming, and it's coming fast, I want to list things that I wanted to have, and places I wanted to visit, and other things I can think of, for the next year (or if promos permits, sooner).

Places:
Tuguegarao-Banaue (Sagada)
Batanes
HK/Macau
SG

Things:
dSLR
PC/23-inch LED monitor
Smartphone

Skills:
programming (become better in any languages I know)
enterpreneurial (business!!!, I've had an idea but I dont know if its viable)
natural language (Japanese?)

And it seemed I have a wishlist ready for 2011. Yay!

Baranggay Election 2010

No work today, baranggay elections. 
I did not cast my vote, it seemed useless.
I dont have any particular candidate I like and it seemed, at least to me, that this ruckus is just a waste of our taxes.

More politicians, less to no service.

Fatalistic? Yes.
Hopeless? Quite.
Solutions? Can't think of any.

Untitled

I have a major major problem right now. It's not really my problem because Im not directly involved, but since its somewhat connected to me, Im bothered.

That son of a b*tch brother-in-law of mine! The nerve! He had done absolutely minimal supervision in the raising of his son, and now that they have a newly born daughter doesn't even, in my opinion, give effort in helping take care of her, raises my blood pressure.

I must say time is ticking fast when I will be confronting him, so please help me God.

The Birthday Blog 10202010

Before I start this year, you maybe interested to read last year's birthday blog here: http://dwightto.blogspot.com/2009/10/27.html

So first things first, I've scrapped the how old (or young) I am from the title. Maybe its not about adding one to your years but adding a multitude of experiences to yourself which is important. 

The next thing I realized is that this is the 3rd year that Im celebrating it with new officemates, 2 yrs ago it was with Ideyatech, last year with Playtech and now with NCR. Which is to say that I've been in 3 companies for the past 3 years! It's not like I'm job hopping, circumstances beyond my control is mainly the reason for such jumps. But I'm not complaining universe! I'm just stating a fact.

Aside from new work, studies are not progressing yet. Ive delayed to fulfill my masters in education because of financial matters. I may continue it next year if I have the chance, the time and the money.

Family is ok, though we are not anymore complete because my sister has left for Australia to get married and live there for good. But we welcomed a new member of our family, a new baby girl from my youngest sister. Aren't babies the cutest beings of all (and also smells good).

Even though I was laid off from work this year (my first ever) it's still a good year. I paid my insurance, bills, and most important of all gone to Bora! Yes the most popular island in the Philippines-checked!

Ahh,this fact just springs to mind, most of my batcmates in highschool and in college are either in a committed (and hopefully loving) relationship or married (or those states past marriage), or have babies. Im just totally happy for them for their courage to take on new roles and responsibility, kudos to them!

Celebration? I didn't treat my officemates because I am still shy and doesnt have that rapport to all of them save a few. At home, I asked my aunt to cook buttered chicken and sweet and sour pork for dinner. I also bought ice cream.

I also attended Epson's web team farewell party at Zao and met my previous bridge engineer to say my thanks in the years that I was working in Epson. 

Well I guess that's it for now. Maybe next year the universe will cook up something good for me.

Enjoying my day, ahhh it's already night.

The Day After Tomorrow

Finally was able to create my first build! For those who doesn't know what a build is and cares, it's packaging your sourcodes or updates thereof for delivery to your clients as a fix to discovered bugs (or tars as they are referred to here).

It was not perfect, I have to perform it as many as three times because there were errors that I encountered along the way. And building the source code takes an enormous amount of time because it is a really big system.

I was not able to jog because my computer teased me, and I need to reboot it twice because the POS software won't start correctly. The weather is also gloomy with hints that at any moment rain will fell in torrents.

Just when I was leaving, we had conversation with some officemates and I realized in retrospect that for every company I've been, there are pros and cons. You either have a good salary but high expenses, or too much work. In the end we came to agree that it is important to have even little incentives just to make people anticipate and not think of living leaving the company.

But it all boils down that the day after tomorrow is my natal day.

The Jogs

Recently I have been committing myself to jog at least every Saturday, and if schedule and weather permits also on Wednesdays. I also try to walk the one and a half kilometer distance from the capitol to our house instead of riding the jeepney.

The reason is because I wanted to have endurance. To have the lung power to withstand long aerobic activities such as long distance walking, jogging, running and a flight of stairs. Even if I'm relatively skinny, I easily tire and caught myself catching my breath.

That was the motivating factor why I now placed priority to this jogging activity weekly. So far so good, I haven't yet skipped a single Saturday since I started. Having a gadget to track your workout distance, pace and time adds motivation to not skip the activity.

It's only been half a month since I started and I can already feel the difference. I feel lighter, in posture, and most importantly feels happy because of all those endorphines the body supposedly releases everytime you exercise.

I hope that I can keep up with this activity for a long time since I really like to be in the healthier side of things.

This Sunday

Don't expect rewards on doing things you are intended to do.

The priest continued his sermon telling the parents not to treat their children as a piece of investment. Raising your children, sending them to school, feeding them are things that are expected to be done by parents and should not be treated as sort of debt to be repaid by their children in the future.

This also goes to the children, that doing household chores - that they should not charge for those things as it should be their share of responsibility.

That's what the priest said in his sermon.

In my mind comes another realization. Everything we do, it should come as an internal decision. We help not because it is expected for us, but because deep inside we want to help. We do things that are interesting to us. There is no greater motivation than doing things you like to begin with - save the illegal things.

God bless peeps.

Quick

Because I had a beer on a Thursday, and went late.
Friday comes and I woke up at 8.
It's automatic, the reflexes, to wake.
Dress up, brush, no bathe.

Another Sunday

From Evernote:
Another Sunday
I'm early today at church, in my mind the mass starts at 9 but it starts at 9:30. This is not my first time to attend to this schedule but I seemed to forgot the exact time, maybe because in the past I'm always running late.

On my things to do, I've got 2 weeks worth of website update that are just hanging and add to it the recent suspension of our account because I forgot to pay the monthly subscription fee.

However, on my work at NCR, I'm still officially on training but I'm now looking at the systems behavior. It really is a complicated systsm with, Im guessing, a thousand classes and how many thousand thousand lines of codes.

But it looks so unintimidating and simple on the user's perspective, they just scan their items, follow the voice prompts, bag their items, select their type of payment and voila, humanless cashier!

I'm still on my way of understanding how the different components fit together. Maybe sometime next week I'll be tinkering with the codes.

Well that leaves another week full of something worthwhile to do and I guess that's fine.

Saturday Jog 09.25.2010

From Evernote:

I tried to use the nike plus sensor by putting it on the "tongue" of the shoe and supported by the shoelaces. I think that it actually work since when I checked the distance after I made a single round of the oval it registered a .4 kilometer.

However when I started to run, it dropped on the track. I fit it inside my shoe, feeling a little bit uncomfortable and tried to run. I doubt the result of the sensor since aftet a whole circuit when I checked it, it only registered a 0.2 kilometers.

I will have to try another antic on how to put that sensor securely on my shoe since buying a new nike free plus is not possible as of the moment.

After jogging, myk, chery and jade and I went to robinsons and ate mang inasal. It's one of mybest times for a long time.

The Dreaded Tuesday Meetings

It's Tuesday once again.

I have a new reason why I hate Tuesdays as of late.
I've been included in this weekly meeting update about my project, it's not a bad thing though. However, I'm still not meshed into the project that all I know is just superficial things about it. I say it's not my fault, I'm not guided as to what nook or cranny to inspect. I'm just left there to rot on pdf files and more pdf files to read.

I'm dreading the idea of one day being thrown into the fire and will just stare them back with a blank teary eyed gaze.

I keep saying it's not my fault, "it's not my fault". I've asked them the roadmap and all I get is a delay because they're busy with work, and I know that there's a point in the future that I will be the delay they'll be concerned about.

I hope I'm not prophetic though, I don't want to be the cause of failure or be the failure for that matter. I want to be useful not an added weight into their already heavy workload. That's the reason I was hired, to lighten their loads.

It's still early to tell my fate, I still have a full six months, already five months, probationary period and there's a planned big activity next month that maybe will test my usefulness. Until then.

Sunday Gospel Reflection

"You can't serve two masters at once..."

Is this the Lord's way telling me to stop already what I'm doing?
I'm hating myself for being in this situation. Honestly I'm tired myself. But I feel guilty everytime I think about quitting. Technically I still have obligations that I need to fulfill.

My reputation rests at hand.

I'll lose a good friend, but that's not only it I'll lose myself too.

So, it still hangs and my decision is to pull myself together and try to make this work. If it still fails, then I have to accept that sometimes luck is not at my side all the time.

Hungry For More: A Position Paper(?)

note: Don't read if you haven't finished or is about to read The Hunger Games trilogy, a lot of spoilers follow.

Panem "was", "is" and maybe "will be" upon us.

"Was" because it happened in the past. I relate the hunger games to the Gladiator games where killing was seen as a form of entertainment. The value of a slave's life, a human, was next to nothing, either being killed by other humans or mauled by lions, tigers and other wild animals. We have the Coliseum ruins as a memorial to it.

"Is" because like Panem our current world is much like the districts and the capitol. Go to the provinces where the farmers till their soil day and night, to the fishing villages where people risks their lives every night to catch fish. Are these people enjoying their fruits? No! They live in utter poverty. They can't even prepare a decent meal for their own children. But look at the cities, the megapolis. Foods abound in wet market, grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants - all you need is cash (the paper or the plastic kind) and you'll have a decent meal without breaking a sweat.

"Will be" because with all those nuclear weapons hidden, being made, will be made -we are inching minute by minute to midnight doomsday when all these countries that possess them either use them against one another, misuse them or release them by "accident".

The apocalypse in essence had happened, is happening and will happen, sooner than later.

Maybe we ourselves will put an end to our own existence.

Mara-walka-thon

It is my first time to join a marathon.

I had a great time, it was a nice experience.

Though now I feel pain all over my body and it is difficult to walk.

I think I hyper extend my muscles.

Hope this will improve tomorrow or I'll need to take those anti-muscle pain pills.

30 Minutes Into The Future

I just traveled 30 minutes into the future! Yes, this is not a hoax, I really did. No need of special engines, wormholes, time machines or any contraptions. I just kind of did.

Yesterday:
I was crossing the street when suddenly my cellphone fell and scattered itself in the middle of the road. I was embarrassingly picking up the pieces of my phone and quickly rode a jeepney home.
At home I reassembled my phone and being a Nokia 1208 classic model, it is still alive, this is one of the models that doesn't easily give up unless you throw it in fire.

This morning:
I woke up and check the time in my laptop it was still 6:47. I'm not late until 9 so I took my time. Ate breakfast, took a bath, dress-up, check email. When I was outside waiting for my ride, I checked the time. Oh my! it's already 8:35!

So instead of waiting for the jeepney I immediately took the first vacant taxi I saw. I don't like being late, I was restless the whole time inside the taxi. And then when I was in the capitol area...


It rang 8:00.

I set the wrong time in my phone.

And I arrived 30 minutes later at work.

Third Birthday

Happy Birthday to my pamangkin, MacLaurence "Lance" Gabucan Petiluna.

Wow 3 years seemed like a blink, I still remember carrying him in my arms when he was so little and just sleeps all day. Now he talks, runs, and doesn't want to sleep anymore.

My wish for you is to be the best person you can be and every success in the world when you grow much older and fulfill your own dreams.

Your aunts and uncle are always here for you.

Learn your ABCs and 123s already. :D

My Own Demons

No! This is not about supernatural beings. This is about the figurative kind of demons.

Ok, I just want to let this off my system and just move-on from it. Not so long time ago, I was this aspiring young (though I'm still young now, just not as young before) programmer working in a known software engineering company. It has always been a dream of mine to work in a software facility. And to be able to get accepted and work and have salary is enough to drive a young man with a dream to do his best.

But I guess I dreamed too long. I could have just awoken and saw the real world. But I didn't. Inception inspired? Not really.

Enough of dreams, the real thing is that I got carried away by emotions. Emotions that I should have kept at check at all times. Geeks err human as we are we let our emotions get the best of us. And now the tables are turned, I am on the position that I once hated.

All those hardwork, all those years of staying at company E and now a new guy is hired and they are on top of the career ladder ahead of me? Now it's me on that position at company N. I feel a little guilt not because I know someone is against me but because I, many years ago hated this person. Which is me, now.

For those like me whose questioning the capability (hate is just a strong word) of me (if there exists), just give me a chance. I will do my very best to prove myself that I am capable of doing what I sign-up for. Anyways if you find me really worthless, the team leads and or the manager can readily dispose me in a matter of less than 6 months, when I'm still under the probationary period.

Surprised?! Yes I have demons too! I'm not the best "goodest" person you know.