Sunday Work and Naruto Fillers

I have to work today :( And probably tomorrow and the day after as well, although both are local holidays.

On what may very well become one of the company's biggest projects I might add, if we get the contract.

On an unrelated note, these filler Naruto episodes are just silly. It doesn't make sense that Raiga, one of the Seven Shinobi Swordsmen, can be defeated by Naruto and Lee (no matter how drunk Lee is); Raiga is supposedly on par with his former comrade Kisame, who was easily able to take on two of Konoha's jounins. There should be a big gap in power levels.

And what's up with Lee and Naruto pretty much shock-resistant?

Games - Walk of Game

Voting for the Walk of Game is up.

My votes were: Starcraft, Civilization, Final Fantasy and Street Fighter II. Also Sid Meier and the Pac-man guy.

Edit: After some thought, it's kind of silly to have a poll where you could vote everyday. There's no chance for Pac-man to beat Final Fantasy here, as FF has an army of fanboys willing to vote everyday, and Pac-man...well, a lot of his fans might vote once buy many won't even realize or care that they can vote again.

I Am Selling An Old Monitor

Here

SessionSaver Firefox Extension and Page State

A post I made today had a 23-Oct timestamp.

After some investigation, I determined it was because I had left the create post screen open in a firefox tab last 23-Oct, then closed my browser. On my next launch of firefox, the SessionSaver extension automatically reloaded my previous session, but the create post screen still had the 23-Oct date. I had to manually change the date.

Note to self: Refresh the create post screen always.

World of Warcraft - Gorilla press!

(Click the thumbnail for full-size version)

How Can You Tell When You're Sick Enough to Call In Sick?

I'm never really sure.

I woke up this morning with a slight headache, compounding my annoying cough and colds. I'm sure I would have been able to make it to work and put on a whole day's work, albeit probably at a less productive level. But then again, if I rest today, I may be able to put in a 110% productive day tomorrow, whereas not resting might cause me to be unproductive for more than one day.

I Have A Phone! (Nokia 6020)

After seemingly being the last man in the Philippines without a cellphone for so long, I broke down and bought one a couple of weeks ago. I'd post a picture, but I can't find the digicam, and the phone can't take a picture of itself.

The 6020 itself seems pretty okay, although as a phone newbie I really have not much of a basis for comparison. The camera is nifty, but it took me a while to find a data cable for the phone. And now I can annoy people by SMS! (Not that I do, just that I can.)

I am of course fairly good with technical stuff, but also a newb with regards to phones. Being so, I have had trouble setting up things like MMS/GPRS/Email using the phone. I did have the GPRS up the other day, but then I downloaded some setting using Nokia's service, and I lost it. Oh yeah, I'm on Globe.

Speaking of Globe, is their customer support service really so bad? In this internet day and age, why do I have to call a hotline or go to a Globe store to get help in setting up my phone service settings? Their forums are a mess, their website looks terribly messy, and any setup info I could get from their website doesn't seem to work.

So yeah, I have a phone, and I'm whining already.

Idyllic Sundays

It nevers fails, every week, around 1-2pm on a Sunday. For some unexplainable reason, an overpowering drowsiness steps in, and I must sacrifice 2-3 hours of my time to sleep.

it's not a normal sleep either, it's the kind of sleepm that's very hard to break. You wake up it's 4pm, and think "There's some stuff I have to do," but by 5pm you're still happily sleeping.

Only happens when I'm at home though (which is most Sundays), and not just to me. Every member of the household seems to take a siesta on Sundays.

On Journalling, or How Hard It Is to Keep Up a Blog

In my line of work, which is to say "large-scale database systems", there's always the idea of "journalling" or the "audit trail." Basically, it means that for every transaction of significance, a record is kept of that transaction, stored in a log somewhere, so that should something malefic happen, the logs can be parsed and the trail can be followed, blame can be assigned and countermeasures can be taken.

Okay, that's not really limited to large-scale database systems. Any nontrivial software system should have some sort of journalling scheme involved, as printlogging is usually part and parcel of the development process.

Ideally, I would wish that life too had a journalling system, one more reliable and less arcane than that gift humans call memory. I sometimes have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast this morning. Okay, that's a lie, I seldom forget about meals less than a week old.

But I do have a tendency to forget other things. Tasks to do, people I've met, appointments I've set. A Saturday or so (I forget when), I had set a training meeting at 10am. Of course, my job does not require me to be in the office before noon on Saturdays, so I conveniently forgot about the meeting while playing World of Warcraft, recalling such appointment only while taking a bath at 10:30am. (Luckily they didn't mide me re-scheding to 11:30)

So, frail as our memories are, we resort to other things to keep us on track. Paper, notebooks, to-do-lists, organizers, calendars, cellphones, PDAs, sticky notes and every so often, the proverbial rubber-band-around-the-finger. (Yes, I have done that, and yes I did forget what the rubber band stood for.)

Blogging, is of course, one of those outlets, one of those forms of introspection so commonplace on the web nowadays. I started quite some time ago, on another server, and have kept up, a bit sporadically if I might add. I've never been entirely too sure of my own reasons for blogging. Some parts ego, some parts experimentation, some parts therapy, perhaps some part exhibitionism? In any case, though I have considered several times to abandon this practice, especially when I have been too lazy to pursue it for months on end, I find myself giving it another go eventually. Because life should have an audit trail.

Shall I offer some excuse of why I have been so long without an entry? Some vague representations of WoW addiction, business at work or general laziness? I just did.

In any case, our story continues...