For the Love of Work

It's two in the morning. Do you know where you are?

Well, I'm at the customer data centre, sshing to a traffic analyzer, and updating some charging rules via a Java applet. I'm thinking what am I doing here? This is not my activity; I'm not being paid overtime; I'm not even supposed to be awake at this time of the morning. The customer is supposed to do it by themselves, but somehow they feel better with me on the conference bridge. Start of activity, my counterpart discovers the Java on his remote desktop is not working properly. He continues with it anyway, and messes up the rulebase. I tried to connect to the box via DSL through a VPN tunnel. Curious enough, the Java on our remote desktop in Europe isn't working, too. We got an Ops guy to try on his desktop. Fortunately his works, so we got him to make all the rule modifications for us. For verification, he emails us all a screenshot of the completed rulebase. A closer look at the status line shows that there's a problem with https, so the rules were not actually saved.

By now, my counterpart is not amused. He wakes up the IT guy and made him install a new version of Java on the remote desktop. Didn't work as now there's a version conflict. The IT guy says he'll look into it next morning. My counterpart smells blood and that's what he wants. He rings up the guy's supervisor. Remember this is around 1 am. The lady supervisor joins the bridge and she has no idea what is going on. I've been on the bridge for like 2 hours already, and I wonder what my monthly mobile bill is gonna be like. I just want to go to bed, so I offered to drive down to the data center and fix everything up.

Five minutes after I arrive, another guy drove in. Ah, it's the IT guy. Apparently, some things can't wait till morning. He got off the correct Java version from me, installed it on the server, and left. I fixed up the rulebase, and dialed back into the bridge. My counterpart is not there. Nor is he answering his 3G phone or his XDA. Jeez! The guy dropped off to sleep again!

Gosh, I love my work.

Picnic at Narrabeen

We had a summer picnic with some friends and acquaintances at the Berry Reserve in Narrabeen. Great place for fishing, kayaking, and reading a book (which I did). I would've joined the 1-hour kayaking activity had I bought a change of clothes.

After a potluck lunch, we played a round of charades using movie titles as the category. After 16 or so rounds, our team won hands-down. I mean, with movie titles such as Ishtar, Amadeus, Donnie Darko, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, The Librarian: Quest for the Spear, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, Boxing Helena, etc., there's just no way we're gonna lose.

Back to Badminton

After a months-long hiatus, I'm back to my badminton habit. I have to say they have nice courts over at the Athletic Centre of Olympic Park. I played a mere two games, and I'm hurting all over. I must be working the wrong muscle groups at the gym.

Christmas Party 2005

I skipped last year's Christmas Party at Aqua Luna Bar, Circular Quay. People tell me it's a wise decision because it's all cocktails and no food. Everybody sort of just milled around and made small talk throughout the night and that's it.

This year, we had it at Stage 11 Fox Studios. There was a line-up of show to liven things up. We had a fashion show and awards ceremony for all the guys who signed up for Movember to raise funds and awareness for prostrate cancer research. We had 10 or so Mo Bros, who raised approximately A$6,000. HR got this neat idea to sponsor one of our colleagues who has had a permanent beard since the 70's. In a matter of minutes, after auctioning off a few bottles of wine, and with our manager doing the rounds with a donation box, another A$2,000 was raised for the Prostrate Cancer Foundation of Australia. The guy was called on stage and was given a shave right then and there by a barber.

Next up, another colleague performed a sizzling Seda dance. After some intense gyrations, the piece of cloth covering her ample chest can't take it anymore, and started slipping off. So she had to dance with one hand holding on to it. Next, her black skirt had a 'wardrobe malfunction', so she had to hold on to that, too. The dance wasn't that much fun anymore from that point on, and she made a hasty retreat after the song ended.

Last act is a rock band made up of engineers. These are the guys I work with day in and day out. Quite amazing to see them on stage singing and playing like rock stars with a bad attitude. The lead singer is a Finn, keyboard is from Czech Republic, drums from Finland, and guitars/bass from India, Thailand, and Italy. You can't get more international than that! They played a succession of nine rock classics - they kind where you bodyslam, headbang, and jump up and down to. Smashing!

I left the place relatively early around 10:30pm. Was already at the carpark when I remembered a colleague of mine who came via taxi. Good thing I called because she was planning to take the bus to Town Hall, then to Pyrmont. And the first bus is only coming at 11:30pm. Chalk up 10 karma points for me for giving my colleague a lift home.

Climate Change Indeed

Can't believe it's December already. About a month ago, Sydney weather hit a high of 38 degrees - the highest on record. And that was spring season. We're now moving into the summer months, and it's been raining almost every day with temperature in the low 20s.

The weather shift can be quite fast. Within the same day, it can go from showers and thunderstorms to mostly sunny and hot. Kyoto Now!

Vegemite Not for Birds

Vegemite truly tastes awful. I bought the smallest bottle I can find, and still took me months before I ran out of things to spread on my bread, and was forced to try it.

I have this habit of walking down to the Pyrmont Point and eating my breakfast on one of the benches along the promenade. Today's bread is a bit tough on the edges so I peeled part of it and threw it to the bird waiting on me. He had a hard time, too but managed to break it into smaller pieces. The Vegemite spread was so bad, I decided to share some of it with my bird friend. He walked near the piece with the Vegemite, took a whiff, and walked away. Didn't even look back once.

The Importance of Being Focused

Not much use being earnest with a server like an IBM xSeries 335. What you need when installing software on a pizza box is focus. The server knows when you're not concentrating and it'll do it's own thing if you don't pay attention.

The first time the x335 booted, I was reading emails, so I didn't get to press F12, which will force it to do a network boot and fetch the primary OS from the FEWS laptop. Second time around, I was able to press F12, but went back to my emails while the kernel is loading. I forgot that the priOS will prompt for the hardware type. The server got tired of waiting, so it chose the cp1 option when the right one should be x335. In the middle of the install process, I noticed that some important files were missing. A quick check of the previous commands showed that I missed a parameter, which meant a re-installation.

Sometimes I feel the more we try to multitask and maximize time, the more time is wasted.

Top 20 Geek Novels

Informal survey was conducted by Jack Schofield, resident computer editor of The Guardian, through Survey Monkey. Results shown below:

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
3. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip Dick
5. Neuromancer - William Gibson
6. Dune - Frank Herbert
7. I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
8. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
9. The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
10. Microserfs - Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
12. Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
14. Consider Phlebas - Iain M Banks
15. Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle - Philip K Dick
17. American Gods - Neil Gaiman
18. The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy - Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

Not so happy that I've only read 5 out of 20. I have Neal Stephenson's books stashed somewhere and Microserfs, so those are next on my reading list.

Question of the Day

Imagine you're a pretty systematic driver. After parking, you put the gear in park, engage the handbrake, take your foot off the brake pedal, switch the airconditioner to fan, turn off the car stereo, switch off the fan, switch off the engine, unfasten your seatbelt, disengage the lock, open the door, step out of the car, close the door, and engage the car's security system.

What would you have thought/felt when you get back to the parking lot after a few hours to find your car unlocked with the engine idling?

Becoming an Australian

I'm truly on my way to becoming a true Australian. No, I still can't sing Advance Australia Fair or the other national anthem, or applied for a passport, but I did buy a Victa lawnmower from KMart last weekend (after months of letting the lawn take care of itself). I'll make sure the immigration officer knows about this when I go for my citizenship interview next month. I might just buy an edge trimmer or a barbie for additional brownie points.

Thank You, John Safran

Tonight, the Australian Socceroos take on Uruguay at the Telstra Stadium for a spot in next year's FIFA World Cup in Germany. Just to give you an idea of how important the game is, Australia hasn't seen action at the World Cup finals since 1974. To win a place, the Socceroos need to win by two clear goals in this second leg of the qualifier.

Watching the game (on SBS), one can see that Uruguay is definitely better than the Aussie team, who kept passing the ball around. Things started to pick up when Harry Kewell came in. All of a sudden, there was renewed spirit and a sense of direction. By half-time, it's 1-0 Australia, courtesy of Marco Bresciano. The Aussies never let off the pressure, but the Uruguay defense is tight as a drum. So at the end of the 90-min. regulation time, it's still 1-0 Australia (1-1 aggregate), forcing a 30-min. extra time.

Lots of tries and misses and saves, but no solid goals, and so the match goes into a penalty shootout. After the smoke has cleared, Australia beats Uruguay 4-2 on penalties with Harry Kewell, Lucas Neil, Tony Vidmar and Jon Aloisi scoring successful goals. Special mention goes to Mark Schwarzer for pulling off two spectacular saves.

But let's not forget John Safran. Rumors has it that the Socceroos had a curse placed on them when they were playing Zimbabwe in 1969. They got a witchdoctor to put a curse on the opposing team, so the Aussies won the match. They left without paying for the witchdoctor's services, so he then placed a curse on the team. Since then, it's all downhill for the Socceroos. In John Safran vs. God, Safran tracked down the same witchdoctor in Mozambique, and offered to pay the fee (plus interest???) in order to lift the curse. Aside from that, he had to undergo a ritual, where he is sprayed with chicken blood.

Australia, say thank you to John Safran!

Black Books in The Office

Dropped by the library this afternoon, and was fortunate enough to find a copy of The Office: The Complete Second Season DVD on the racks. I've watched Season One and the Christmas Specials before, so this is the missing link I've been looking for. What will happen to David Brent after the branch merger? Will Tim and Dawn become a couple? Will Gareth ever develop a sense of humour?

A few weeks ago, I was watching another British comedy series - Black Books. It's about this grumpy, sadistic bookshop owner named Bernard Black, whose only purpose in life is to read books, get drunk, torture his assistant (Manny Bianco) , and drive away all the customers. Fran, who is their next-door neighbor, acts as the mediator. The whole series is quite entertaining as the episode plots are over-the-top ludicrous and the slapstick is hilarious.

Just noticed that Dawn (Lucy Davis) and Bernard (Dylan Moran) play as Dianne and David in the movie Shaun of the Dead.

So That's How They Do It

There are two things you can do to boost user traffic to your blog:

1. Make a controversial comment. Say, something like (paraphrased): "Handicapped toilets shouldn't be for the disabled only. Having a physical disability is their disadvantage, but their bladders are still working, right? They should queue up for the toilet just like everyone else then." Guaranteed to generate lots of comments and discussion on the other blogs and forums, thereby boosting the site statistics.
2. If it's not in your character to be tactless or rude or crass, do as I do. Write about the offending article, or link to it. Better if someone will actually link to your post. One way or another, some of the user traffic will come your way. Just a day after writing about Miss Cheng, my daily hits trebled.

My site statistics has since dropped down to normal, which explains this post. :-)

flickr Off

Keen-eyed visitors to my blog will notice something new. Amid the past post links, the Adsense ads, the Google search box, and the mini-banners, you'll find my own flickr Zeitgeist. Actually, that's the only reason I signed for a flickr account. Everybody's been raving about the service, but I don't really get what the fuss is about.

It's a site where you upload digital photos. That's it. What makes it different from other services is that it has a vibrant community of users who actively views and comments on pictures. A free account gives you only 20MB of uploads per month. High-resolution images are resized or scaled down. Only three photosets and the photostream view shows only the last 200 images. Upgrading to a pro account eliminates these restrictions, but you have to shell out US$24.95 a year.

Thanks, but I'll stick with the free account. Enjoy the Zeitgeist while it lasts.

DSL Dreams

Lately I have been in the habit of working in the dining room while watching TV. If a good show is up, I'll ditch the laptop and hop on the cushy couch. By the middle of the show, I'll be sound asleep only to wake up at 2am or 3am. No a good way to prepare for the next working day.

One time, I dozed off to sleep again and dreamed that I was working on my laptop. As I am wont to do, I surf over to my DSL provider to check my online usage. What the?! It's only the start of the month, and I've used about 600+MB already. Just yesterday, it was less than a 100MB. Must be all those nights of leaving the laptop on and Wi-Fi activated. What with all the auto-page refreshes and keepalives and retransmits. I woke up from that nightmare and realized it was just a dream. I put my laptop in suspend mode and went to my bed.

Ni Hao, Wendy Cheng?

Who is Wendy Cheng? She says she is Singapore's top blogger. A digital lifestyle magazine I picked up during my recent trip to Singapore seems to agree. Recipient of the 2004 and 2005 Weblog Awards for Best Asian Blog, xiaxue.blogspot.com gets 20,000 hits per day. Is it really that popular? The hacker who hijacked her blog seems to think so. What makes a blog good anyway? If I knew, my blog wouldn't be getting only 10 hits per day.

I try not to read other people's blogs, but I read one page of hers (a long one). Definitely not a role model for her visitors, but interesting and loud and R-18 enough to get them coming back for more. Surprisingly (in Singapore), she uses a lot of swear words. She blasts to pieces anyone who crosses her path or criticizes her. I would've thought that the government would've shut down her site by now. Anyway, I feel the blog's a bit commercialized. She mainly talks about parties and events she's been invited to. She models clothes and other products and services, and posts bazillions of pictures. She actively seeks out invitations and endorsements, and readily admits that blogging is her main source of livelihood. (Never ever fault her for that, so she says.)

I'll say one thing, if one day she decides to get out of the blogging business, she should become a make-up artist instead. Seriously. Just look at the before and after pictures, and tell me I'm wrong.

Back to Regular Programming

It's been more that a month since I last updated my blog (not counting the Nybble posts). It's always a busy time after coming back from two weeks of overseas training. There's the backlog of office work and emails that need to be dealt with. Bills to pay, mails to read or throw away. Photos to sort, select, annotate, and upload. Blog entries to research, write up, and publish.

Two weeks after I came back, our group leader decided to take a two-week breather in HK. I was made acting group leader. No wonder the guy needed a break. There's almost one meeting I have to attend every day. For any issue that pops up, people go to me instead of dealing directly with the concerned engineer. I start getting calls and emails from people I don't know inquiring about the status of stuff I have no idea about. Our customer calls me for every question they can think of, and each of them is urgent. Just the past two weeks alone, my group received something like half a dozen emergency calls.

I'll be real glad when my colleague comes back from his vacation.

SQ Movie Marathon (The Return)

It's like 9pm when we left Singapore. I never got to learn how to sleep properly on the plane, so it's another movie marathon session for me.

Batman Begins
Think of this as the prequel, where we get to see Batman in his formative years, how his father moulded him, why he's obsessed with bats, his ninja training at the Himalayan highlands by the League of Shadows, how his underground headquarters came about, where he gets all his cool toys and gadgets, and his first awkward steps as a crimefighter. The action scenes are nothing spectacular, but DC fans (most of them at least) will be happy with how Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, etc.) handled the movie.

Initial D (a.k.a. Tau man chi D)
Heard of Intial D the manga series before, but not the movie. I wanted to see how an anime series about outrageous car chases will translate on screen. More that than, I wanted to see what's all the fuss about Jay Chou, Taiwan's Prince of Pop. All throughout the movie, his hair is messed up and he looks sleepy. And I go, hey, I can do that. That's probably because he spends his nights delivering tofu in his father's white Toyota AE86. He was so good at downhill drifting that he beat one of the best street racers without even thinking about it. Next thing you know, there's a bunch of professional and amateur racers lining up to beat him. All you need to know is that Takumi wins all his races. Throw in a bumbling sidekick as comic relief, and a double-crossing girlfriend for dramatic moments to complete the movie. Passable car-chase scenes, bad story/character development.

She's on Duty (a.k.a. Jam-bok-geun-moo)
There were a few good Korean films on the outbound flight. They changed the movie line-up, since it's the start of a new month, so I'm stuck with this one. I'm almost convinced this is going to be a bad one, even before it started. The thing with Korean comedies is that they start to look and sound similar after you've seen a couple. Anyway, this movie is about a spoiled lady cop who goes undercover as a high-school student. Her mission is to befriend a criminal's daughter in order to find his whereabouts. The fight scenes are quite good, but like I said, it's the same wire-fu in My Wife Is a Gangster, so don't expect too much.

Last Day in Singapore

Bag-packing. Borders-browsing. Newspapers and magazines at the Orchard Library. Espresso and carrot cake at Dome Park Mall. Tour of Changi Airport.

The airport is a destination in itself. Grab a free copy of Financial Times or Changi Express. Take a break at the indoor garden and koi pond. Take a seat and watch the latest sports channels or even a free movie showing. There's a few Samsung-sponsored terminals offering free Internet access. I joined a carpet survey for Changi Airport and walked away with a handphone pouch. There's also an Airbus A380 raffle contest. Who knows? I could be coming back to Singapore for free. Oh, and the best way to use up excess coins? Donate them. If you're into philately and not philanthrophy, buy some specialty stamps at the airport post office.