Blasted Notebook!

My office notebook/laptop is broken. The blasted thing can't get any power; I removed the battery then connected the power supply -- no good. I used the power supply of one of my colleagues here -- still no good. We know that it's not a problem on the two power supplies since we can use either on other laptops (same model and brand of course).

Good thing I at least managed to backup all of my work into a portable hard drive before the laptop lost all power. It was actually quite a race; I had to backup almost a gigabyte of data, while I'm seeing the bloody "empty battery" indicator flashing in the corner. I managed to save it before the battery was totally drained. Note: at full capacity, even if the battery/power indicator says it can survive for 4 hours, it can actually only just last about an hour... I guess that comes with the age; the laptop the company provided me is several years old.

We're pretty sure it's a power connector issue or something on the laptop. I checked with our service hotline who then contacted the laptop vendor since it's still under warranty. Then, the vendors called me up saying that since no replacement parts are available, they had to order it overseas and it will arrive in about 2 to 3 weeks!

If only I could wait that long. Oh well... I verified with them if they can just loan me another laptop, transfer my harddisk there, then use it until my laptop is fixed. I'll follow up with them tomorrow...

So in the meantime, I had more than enough time to fix my workplace; cleaned out the drawers, organized the shelves, even fastened loose notes into a single bundle. I also managed to find an old and unused 2007 organizer underneath the tons of debris. not much use in organizing since it's about a year too late, although now I at least have a decent-looking writing pad whenever I attend meetings. :) Hehe

Hopefully, I can get another laptop soon; I still have about a dozen tasks to do and no laptop to use. :(

TV almost like home...

It's no mystery that, as a person who literally grew up watching TV, I had to adjust after moving here in Singapore. I had to accept the fact that I won't be watching as much TV for as long as I'm here.

Things changed for the better (at least in this aspect) about a week ago. Our housemates (Neil and Cel, salamat!) decided to subscribe to StarHub for the cable TV and internet connection (a common deal offered here). Since then, I must admit that I'm much happier now to stay home than before! Well, they don't have the exact same set of shows that I want, but hey, I'm not complaining! It's better than nothin'. :)

Now, I'm getting my weekly dose of CSI from AXN, wrestling from SuperSports, and, of course, tons of shows from Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, HBO and Star Movies.

I'm just not able to watch other favorites such as the "Late Night with Conan O'Brien", although I'm watching the schedules of the CNBC, which is actually the "home" network company of the show. I just missed the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, so Conan's show should not be that far behind.

Freaky Economics Book!

Wow! There are relatively very few books which deals with ideas, which people would consider unconventional or unorthodox. Things most people would feel uncomfortable with.

Well, unlike the other unorthodox books that I like, this one does not deal with religion or morality -- such as the trilogy of Robert Greene, and books dealing with the Gospel of Judas, Mary Magdalene and the like -- this one deals with the world economy. The topic is "closer" to the real world so it should appeal to more people, unlike the books dealing with the topics stated above.

Freaknomics (by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner) is a great read for people who want to explore the world from a different angle or point of view. Many of the questions asked here are radical questions; those which a typical person would not normally think of asking. But once you get down to it, these questions make a really good sense and forces you to think of the world in a different light.

Here's a simple question asked in the first chapter of the book: What do school teachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common? Would you believe that the answer is..... CHEATING??? Yeah well, that got me stumped the first time I read it, so don't be surprised if you're stumped as well. The chapter discusses about "incentives"; what makes people do or not do something; what keeps people to be honest; what forces people to cheat. Ahh...now your brain is now processing this info... now we're getting somewhere... :)

If you decide to read it and you are inclined towards the subject, have a great fun reading it! I'm down to chapter 4 within the first two days I started reading it!

IT Expo again!

Once again, there was another IT Expo in Singapore, this time in Suntec City Convention Center. This time, the expo was much larger in every sense of the word -- bigger venue, more vendors, more gadgets, larger crowds!

Anyway, we didn't go to every booth in the expo because (1) we were looking for something specific, and (2) I'm flat-footed. :D

We got our friend the white Sony T2 (same as our digicam), with lots of freebies (as expected). She originally wanted the blue one but this time, the Sony only included the black and the white T2 in the Expo, so she had to settle for the white one.

As for us, we were looking for external hard drives. We went for the largest and cheapest one we could find: Western Digital's MyBook Essential Edition with 1 terrabyte disk space. We initially wanted just the portable USB-powered hard disk with the largest capacity available, but we decided that the 1TB hard drive (sold at a discounted price) is simply to good to pass up. Besides, we already have 2 portable hard drives; not very large but they serve their purpose just fine. :)
Why Western Digital, you ask? Well, during the time that we were there, it was the cheapest 1Tb disk sold. We saved around S$100, so that's good enough for us.

Check out the pictures of the above in Che's post here.

Another good buy, we think, is the Olympus camera. The freebie included is an 80GB Seagate portable hard disk. Not bad for someone who wants both a digital camera AND a portable disk. I just forgot which model it was. Tin, anong model ba yun? :)

Pacham Cantonment!

That's Che's latest recipe! The Pacham(ba-chamba) Pansit Canton! Hehehe :))

We've stocked tons of food since we returned a few weeks back. Unfortunately, many of our stocks are going to expire by April and May. Unless we are willing to eat the same thing everyday before then, we will just end up throwing everything away.

In light of this situation and the fact that we wanted to reduce our daily rice intake (yeah, you read it right; we're on a not-so-tight diet!), we decided to have a rice-less dinner!

Options are quite few, so we ended up with th LM! Pansit Canton (more than a dozen packs are there). Che, wanting to give it a little more flavor, took out some other ingredients to experiment on. Good thing, nakachamba sya, and we had a great Pacham Pansit Canton!

Pacham Pansit Canton

• 4 packs LM! Pansit Canton (original flavor)
• 12 large shrimps
• 1/2 head of cabbage, chopped
• 1 stalk of brocolli, sliced
• 1/2 cup carrots, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, diced
• 1/2 small onion, diced

Cooking Instructions:

1. Drop noodles in boiling water for three minutes then drain the water then set aside. (as per instruction at the back of the LM! Pansit Canton pack)
2. Mix the all the flavorings (the packed ingredients that came with the noodles) into a cup.
3. Saute the garlic and onions in oil, then add carrots, brocolli, cabbage, the flavoring mixture, and the shrimps (and, of course, cook until shrimps change color).
4. Add the noodles that were set aside earlier. Mix well.

Voila! Serve while hot! Enjoy!

Sleepy, rainy week...

It's been raining everyday for almost a week now. Since then, I've always been late. Most of the times, it's just below the five-minute mark. There are times, though, when I was late for almost 15 minutes. I usually arrive before my boss does, but when you're 15 minutes late, well, you really can't expect your boss not to be there (he's not the type who arrives an hour late then leaves an hour early).

Anyway, I guess it's not that much, but for someone like me who has incurred less than 5 instances of tardiness in my entire five-year-stay in my last job, this is a gargantuan leap.

I guess it's my fault anyway, since I always stay up past 12 midnight everyday. And the temperature brought about by the cold, rainy weather is not helping me to wake up sooner as well!

Anyway, since I don't wake up early enough, I no longer get my free copy of Today in the MRT station! I don't get to have my daily dose of news. Oh well...

If only I could sleep in the office. It's very conducive to sleep, with the aircon set to around 24 degrees C. Not sure, though, if it's colder here in the office or outside; it's raining like a cold day in hell now.

Maybe I'll just get some shut-eye immediately after I get home today. Assuming I get home early that is. :) For the meantime, I think I'll just continue with my work as best as I can, *yawn* or blog away, or just chat, *yawn* or email, whatever to keep me awake.....*zzzzzzzzzzzz*

My new project blog

I just launched a project blog that I've been wanting to put up for a long time now. You can find it here:

Networking Stacked Knowledge

This will serve as a quick reference for me, as well as a sharing blog for everything IT networking.

Please feel free to send me comments, suggestions, requests, questions or whatever regarding this blog.

Thanks!

Information overload!!!!

So many projects, so few people, so little time... Damn!

We have just finished our training earlier for setting up student notebooks / laptops for the upcoming school year. Just when I thought I have everything set, the big boss sends a message saying that I will be involved in another project!

Oh well, I'll know more when I meet with him tomorrow...

I feel like I'm starting to forget everything that I've learned. Sure, it took me about two months to forget everything I learned in colleage (LOL!), but I have no desire to lose everything I learned from my previous company! That's almost five years worth of knowledge and experience...

In light of this dilemma, I'm thinking of maybe logging online anything I can remember from my last jobs as well as everything I learn from my current one. Maybe another blog or something. I think I just need a name and know which publisher I should use.

Any ideas? I'd really appreciate your help! Thanks!

Signs to reconsider your job

I'm pretty sure most -- if not all -- experience burnout at work at some point. When this happens, that's a signal for you to get away from the stress and take a breather... Time to regroup, relax, recollect your thoughts, whatever it is you do to cope with work-related stress.

There are, however, times in which there is just too much stress, your mind and body literally -- and I mean LITERALLY -- cannot take it anymore: lose sleep, lose weight, cannot focus, miss appointments, etc. I guess that's a big billboard saying "CHANGE WORK", "LEAVE COMPANY", etc.

From my experience, the signs that you must look for a new job include, but is not limited to, the following. (Well, you know, work-related stress may have caused me to miss a few points! LOL)


You excessively dislike people at work. In particular, whenever you hear the name or the voice of someone -- your colleague, a boss, or a subordinate -- you have an involuntary response that equates to irritation; your ears twitching, your mouth making that funny shape, one of your eyebrows rising, your eyes roll up, your face frowning, your hands clenching, your feet stomping, etc. Little things like that betray your negative feelings toward that other person.

It is normal to dislike some people at work; there are an infinite number of personalities, some of them -- or some aspects of them -- would likely not be compatible to yours. Hence, you will come across these people at some point.

What's bad is the degree / level of annoyance to that people. How many people do you dislike? How often do you deal with these people daily? Do they consume your thoughts? Are you thinking of many dark and different ways of flaying their flesh and rending their bones? Hehehe.. Okay, I may have gone a little bit overboard, but you get the point right?

Another thing is that your hostility for these people have changed you; could be as simple and subtle as turning away your head slughtly whenever you hear something you don't like , or as apparent and obvious as swearing obscenities when normally you wouldn't.


You compromise your friends/family. How many times have we seen a scene in which the working parent would miss his/her kid's recital, first game, graduation, whatever, all because of work? I remember this ad on the papers the other day: a working mom promised her kid a picnic the next day; then he got called by her boss who wanted her to do extra work on that same picnic day. What do you do?

Sometimes, there really is a need to do some extra work, hence requiring you to sacrifice some time that you would rather spend enjoying with your family and/or friends. The question is, how many times have you sacrificed your time for them for the sake of your job? Between work and family, where do you draw the proverbial line??


You have nightmares about work. If you dream about it, that means your job is ingrained in your subconscious so deeply, that it has become a part of you. Now that's not necessarily bad; that is, if you dream about the "good" stuff of your work or if you dream something that would make you suddenly wake and shout "EUREKA! I've found it!" or something, that's all fine and dandy. This is bad, however, if all you dream about are the stress and the other "nightmarish" part of work. You'll be more restless and susceptible to stress, which gets absorbed into your subconscious, then you dream more about it and it goes on and on and on in a vicious, seemingly never-ending cycle.

Personally, good or bad, I just want to leave work in the office altogether. When the clock strikes 5:30PM, by 5:31PM I should be already be on my way home. I won't let the work consume me beyond that time, unless there is really a need to extend.


You unintentionally miss your lunch and breaktimes. You are rooted in your seat so much that you lose track of time. By the time you remember you have to eat, you have already lost your appetite. Since you haven't eaten, you have even less energy and patience to resist stress and you will burnout that much sooner.

BTW, others see that missing eating times as a good way of saving money... Oh, come on!!!! Whatever you save on food will be spent on your hospitalization/treatments for your ulcer... or worse! So please... Unless you are a creature that doesn't have to eat anything, buy some food, okay?


You cannot focus on your work. You are at your desk, facing your monitor, your tasks for the day is lined up, and you know what to do. And yet, for some reason, you just sit there, stare at the monitor while there are a dozen ideas going on in your 'noggin, but still you have not done or accomplished any of those tasks.

Your brain is probably overloaded with a lot of information. Think of a PC reaching 100% CPU utilization; the PC appears to hang for a while. You are this PC! And your CPU is working overtime such that you appear to be hung, not able to do anything until some time has passed.

So what have you been thinking of, that has got 100% of your brain worked up?


You get a severe/critical health condition. This seems far-fetched, an exaggeration to emphasize effects of too much work; I just wish that this was indeed the case. :( Unfortunately, there really are STRESS-triggered ailments; I know of at least two people who have been affected so severely, they developed irreversible health problems.

This is perhaps the ultimate culmination of the effect of stress and burnout in your body. Don't wait for this to happen to you, okay?

If you are in this situation, either get rid of your condition (if possible), or change your work (change the working conditions, or leave the company outright).


These are all I can think of right now. I know I have missed a few points, but I think this post is long enough. :)

Philippines in the same boat as the X-Men?

Thanks to the newsreel at this site, I've been able to check what's going on at home. Just read the following report from the Inquirer. Below are the excerpts from PNP setting up more ‘spy cams’:

MANILA, Philippines -- Amid accusations it has been installing surveillance
cameras to trace the movements of Rodolfo Noel Lozada Jr., key witness in
the national broadband network (NBN) scandal, the Philippine
National Police (PNP) said Friday more closed-circuit television (CCTVs)
would be set up all over Metro Manila.
....

"Our people in Metro Manila
need not be afraid of these CCTV cameras but rather feel safer that with them,
our children are far more secure in our streets and other public places," said
Bartolome.

In case you're not familiar, the recent (not the latest) X-Men story goes as follows:

Mutants have always been feared by ordinary humans, the non-mutants, homo sapiens (whatever you want to call them). The government has been tolerant about the existence of mutants, but there are militant groups that would rather see them die than co-exist with them and would go to any length to see to it that they do so.

Recently, mutants were reduced from millions to just about two hundred, due to the reality-warping powers of one Scarlet Witch. Fearing persecution from both civilians and the government, most of these remaining mutants sought sanctuary at the Xavier Institute, the home and base of operations of the X-Men. The grounds literally became a refugee camp; tents pitched up, foods rationed, campfires, etc.

With a large concentration of the remaining mutants, the Institute has been frequently targetted by a militant group, the Sapien League.

In response to this, the government sent troops and human-piloted Sentinels that patrol the grounds of the Institute in order to protect the X-Men and all the mutant refugees.

This brings me to my point. Have a read at the following scan of a page from X-Men #179:

--- start ---
Cyclops: What did you call the Institute now, "A reservation for mutants"?

Valerie: It's security, Scott. Maybe that costs a little freedom.

Cyclops: That's how it begins,isn't it? Give up a little freedom in the name of security...
Cyclops: ... then you're asked to give up just a little more freedom...

Cyclops: ... and then a little more...
--- end ---

I dunno, the news just brough a funny feeling of familiarity. Like the "I've heard/seen this before" , dejavu-type of thing. Hehehe.

Then again, maybe this is just me rambling, bored, and obviously tied up with my reading of comics. :)

I hope Philippines will not go down that path, is all I'm saying, see? :)

Cheers everyone!