:: MIS Insights ::

Aloha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hehehe, apologies for the few but loyal readers of my blog. I haven’t been updating my blog because I’ve been *busy* with life - where I define my life as Work, Exercise and Recreation.

Work

• Wrapping up my project with GMA7 (Yes, i’m finishing up their Table Of Contents)
• Negotiating for some school’s Chemistry Inventory System pricing (I hope our proposed budget pushes through)
• Negotiating for another school’s digital yearbook (System Design is complete, awaiting go-signal for implementation)
• Working on three web portals (one’s a done deal, another’s a scope creep and the last one’s being negotiated)
• Gathering requirements for the formal incorporation of my quasi-company (unemployed? do as i do! employ yourself!!!)

Exercise

• I’ve been faithful to Moro, attending an average of 5 days a week
• I still weigh the same, but I feel lighter and better. been cursing fewer morons on the road who don’t know how to drive
• My daily goal is to burn 1200 calories per session while I eat 800-1000 calories worth of food everyday

Recreation

• Been hooked up to lots of anime marathons lately ~ basilisk, samurai 7, samurai deeper kyo, dragon ball…
• Listening to songs and reliving the memories behind them. Some of them are old … some of them new.
• Resurrected Grunt (1Ghz AMD Athlon, 640Mb Ram) for file-serving and retro-gaming purposes. Final Fantasy 7! Woot!

Outlook

Outlook is good in life. However, I’m getting bored with having only a few projects. I almost considered going for a full-time job. As much as I wanted one, God has His own plans for me. On the day of my interview at UC and knivre fpubbyf [I’m sorry, Caesar likes writing company names that way], I :

• was held up by an MMDA officer for swerving along Edsa
• had to argue with the guards to let me park within the campus of my first interview place ~ there was no parking space outside the campus
• had to fill up forms that I *so* love to do
• had to answer a personality test. questions were conducted in a boolean manner and were repeated and rephrased over and over to check the consistency of your answers and personality. I also *love* these tests.
• ran out of parking space at galleria. a level of the basement parking was converted into a function hall for the day
• i couldn’t find the building where i had to take an interview for UC, i got redirected twice ~ walked 2kms in full battle gear of long sleeves, black pants and leather shoes
• the original interviewer at UC didn’t arrive
• waited for an hour and a half to find out. though UC was kind enough to have a replacement interviewer
• replacement interviewer was hot, oh so distractingly hot. did i say she was hot? well, she was hot
• i was supposed to end my day at the gym when i forgot to stuff a shirt in my trusty gym. Since I couldn’t possibly work out topless, I skipped gym for that day

Moral of the story?

There is no such thing as security.

I’d like to explain and connect the dots between all the bullet points I listed, but I trust in my reader’s ability to reflect and think critically. Share your thoughts. I’d appreciate them.

Here’s why you don’t have your ten million dollars yet.

You are a paycheck player.
You play with your head. Not your heart.
In your personal life? … Heart.
But when you get on the field — you’re a businessman.

After a week of working out at Moro Gym, this is the first day that I’m skipping attendance. It’s just too bad that Moro is only open in the morning during Sundays. I would have wanted to go there today this afternoon for a light workout.

<informative>

For those who want to know, Moro Lorenzo Gym’s schedule at Ateneo is:

6:00 a.m. – 9:30 p.m. (Monday-Friday)
8:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. (Saturday)
8:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon (Sunday)

My membership cost me P1,428 ~ that’s one month of gym and cardio machine use. You get a discount for quarterly, semi-annual and annual subscription of services.

</informative>

No matter, the first month of my gym experience is part of a discovery process to find out what times of the day for each day of the week is it best to work out. I want to know the times when the gym is empty, full and full of … *moving on*

This is the first time I’ve enrolled in a gym. John, my instructor, designed a workout targetting my core muscles - something to strenghten my weak back and knees. Moreover, such workout will prepare me for future muscle specific workouts - i.e. biceps, legs, abs and all that jazz.

I was supposed to jog within the village this morning, but since I woke up late, there was no squeezing that into our family’s Sunday morning church habit. The afternoon wasn’t kind to me too. The heavy rains were too much for my rainy day battle gear. Mehn, I’m missing the Moro treadmill so much already… A TV in front of you, adjustable treadmill speed and inclines, Miami Heat beside you, arghhhhhhh! I need to work out!

Several months after graduation, I’ve been thinking about the prospects of taking further studies. My options are:

Another Degree

Another college degree like Management, Psychology or Economics would be a welcome addition to one’s current skill set. The extra units and focus on a certain subject matter would surely help me in my real world work. However, if it’s going to take me another three or four years, my MIS degree might be obsolete already once I graduate. Moreover, that would mean losing three years worth of opportunities. A trade that I don’t think is worth it.

Technology-specific Classes

I’ve been checking out short courses offered for specific technologies out there. Something like a crash-course program for stuff that’s rarely taught in prep school - COBOL, J2EE or Palm Programming and the likes. However, I couldn’t find any decent courses out there ~ or I haven’t looked at all places for such courses. While there are a lot of training materials online, I’m looking for ways to minimize my overhead in terms of time spent learning the material. I wouldn’t mind paying up just to kickstart such training.

Certifications

Bruce Schenier, security guru who wrote Applied Cryptography, recently discussed the relevance of certifications. From the discussion and comments of people, certifications are by no means indicative of expertise. It merely means that one can speak the language of the certification in question. It’s like your grade in school, you might net high grades, but that doesn’t mean right away that you’re good in the subject - at the least, it means that you can talk about the subject.

Will certifications get you hired? It depends on the HR person. Some HRs screen by basis of experience, certification or both.

Should one get certifications? It depends on what kind of career you are building. One cannot just get certification after certification if it doesn’t build up on one’s career strengths. Some HRs actually frown upon people with a zillion certifications. Being a Jack of all trades and Master of None can indicate the lack of experience and expertise in a specific discipline that a company is looking for. Lastly, certifications expire. So, one has to keep taking the tests every once in a while to update their portfolio.

Masters

In a recent issue of BOSS magazine, I read an article about the best MBAs in the world. It turns out that the Philippines houses one of the best and affordable MBAs in the Asia-Pacific - Asian Institute of Management (AIM). Good Job! While this is the option that I favor most, it still costs an arm and a leg if I’m going to pay for it myself right now. In addition to that, it requires several years of full-time employment. As such, I don’t think this is an option for me in the near future.

With so many options, advantages and disadvantages to weigh, this will take a bit of head work to sort through. Maybe I should just take guitar lessons. Or swimming classes. Or even photography classes. Hehe. That would still be fun.

I’m not a good singer. If you pit me against William Hung, you’d listen to Hung any day of the week over me. However, that’s not enough to keep me from grabbing a microphone and contributing to the noise pollution of the world. Last weekend, my Makati friends and I went to Providence Building (in front of DLSU) for a night of videoke. Not really the coolest or best place to be, but hey, who cares when you’re having fun?

Even though each song cost a measly 5(five) bucks, no throat pain was enough to stop us from making short work of P500 worth of tokens that night. We started at 10pm and ended by 3am. Woot! Good thing that the place was open 24 hours a day.

This isn’t your usual bar+videoke machine setup though. Each videoke slot machine had its own room so you don’t have to listen to some schmuck sing My Way for the 412qwerty56th time. There were around thirty rooms all in all - each occupying not more than 4×4meters of floor space. In tagalog, they had small rooms and a batallion of five would just fit nicely with a little room for maneuvering. The walls were transparent and sound-proofed glasses. Transparent to avoid anything kinky or illegal from happening and sound-proof to contain the frustrated sound waves within.

Although it doesn’t really sound much, what got me blogging about it was the computer network installed in their place. At the second floor of the building where we stayed, the server for all the songs and videos was located. In an air-conditioned room on its own, a desktop server can be seen connected to a 48-port switch - most of which had LAN connections that vanished into the ceilings just to reappear in the karaoke rooms. It seems that some smart bastard centralized all the songs (midi+text) so that updating the song list would be easier. Even the videos were reused and just recycled for all the songs. There were approximately 20 different types of videos of scantily clad women and Discovery Channel snippets that were rotated randomly for every song.

If you’re thinking of how the hell did the place become profitable, the beverages man. The beverages. Mineral water, Iced Tea, Beer and Softdrinks cost an arm and a leg there! A mineral water worth P9 outside was sold for P14 inside. Beers P20 outside cost P35 inside. Enough said.

I can’t help but admire such a smart setup! I’d set up something like that myself if only I had capital! However, I won’t just copy such business model - I’m going to improve on it - and I’m going to do it My Way.

The one with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston.

The.

Best.

Movie.

Ever.

…

Solid.

The latest installment in my computer laboratory is an HP f1905. It’s a glorious 19-inch flatscreen LCD monitor - a big step up from my 17-inch CRT monitor (whose actual viewable area was only 15 inches). Ya-ha!

With a 1280×1024 native screen resolution spread over 19 inches of screen, I get more real estate than my previous 1024×768/17″ setup. Native means I can only set my screen resolution to its default 1280×1024 configuration. Anything more or less than that will just produce crappy visual output. However, with 19 inches of surface area, who needs more? Not me! (or not yet!)

Web Design

One of the things that I’m loving with this monitor is that I can see more of my code while working with Dreamweaver. No need to minimize / hide / close my favorite task panels! They’re always there for fast and easy access along with more of my code! Ya-ha!

Note: It’s not really good practice to write long strings of code when you can always chop it down. I was taught in my Java college class to limit the number of characters per line to 80 characters. This is in consideration of other people viewing my code on lower resoultions. A little courtesy so that they don’t have to fidget with the horizontal scroll bar while reading code. Moreover, shorter horizontal code is more printer-friendly than Telenovela Code.

Linux

While I’ve been using Linux for three years already, I still consider myself a n00b in the field. There are still a lot of instances when I have to refer to manuals, forums and tutorials to help me get my work done. This upgrade allows me to squeeze more stuff in the screen. For instance, it allows me to RTFM on the upper half of the screen while happily typing away on the lower half of the screen dedicated for the terminal. If you think four 1024×768/17 workspaces are a lot, wait till you get four 1280×1024/19! Ya-ha!

Entertainment

Of course, no kick-ass computer kicks ass until it can do everything that it’s master wants it to do. After programming or doing systems analysis or doing whatever MIS should do for a living, I usually unwind with an action-packed level of Doom3 or a funny episode of South Park. The big screen makes me feel like i’m watching from a television set. And yes, all the games I’m currently playing rock with my upgraded setup. Ya-ha!

There is a down side to this setup though. As with most LCDs, this LCD has a limited viewing angle. This means that while everything might look perfect when viewing the LCD at eye-level, image quality diminishes when viewing it from another angle (e.g. i don’t see anything when i’m watching the screen diagonally from the sofa). But I can live with that - that only means that Trailblazer will be dedicated for *cough* work *cough*!

Do You See What I See?

I’d have to say that this is better than my dual-monitor setup with Zoom (laptop monitor + CRT monitor). It offers big savings on the electricity bill (LCD consumes less power than CRT) and sets the right mood for either play or work - and sometimes, that little change in mood makes all the difference between a boring day of problem-solving and a cool day of making progress in work.

A few inches of difference for mankind, a big step for Pipboy.

The world doesn’t need Superman because the times and needs of people have changed. We can no longer rely on shows run by only one person. The plurality of today’s lifestyle has demanded for a methodology that produces varied solutions involving more than one person to crank the good stuff. Though there’s no rule against having a whole football team composed of Supermen, there is a move from having a football team entirely dependent on one Superman.

Businesses have changed already. Businesses today are no longer entirely dependent on its assembly line. Merely churning out products or doing services above the industry’s efficiency and quality standard will not suffice. Such mechanical feat can always be replicated by others, leaving businesses with temporary advantages. What businesses need are more than refinements to its production lines. They need something more substantial and long-lasting. Businesses need ideas - innovative and strategic ideas that can penetrate the competitive and saturated business environment. In this case, two heads are usually better than one.

Customers demand more nines for their Benjamin$. With 24×7 and 99.9nines uptime as a standard for business operations right now, downtimes are intolerable for our customers. It is not enough to have redundant and fault-tolerant hardware backbones for businesses. We also need redundant and reliable people manning the machines so that in case your lead person gets sick, resigns or is held up in any accident or trouble, your business will be able to deliver those four or five nines as agreed upon.

Teamwork rules. Many companies have failed because of one person, but a lot more have been successful because of teams. Well-managed teams usually provide better decisions. It also helps everyone psychologically by addressing the social being in man and distributing work and stress with others. For what it’s worth, a good reason why there are more males than females in mental institutions is because that men think they can do everything. They try to do everything on their own and without external assistance. In cases like this, it is only a matter of time before they find themselves struggling with the situation, desperate and ultimately, disconnected from the world.

Having one person do everything just increases the likelihood of something critical being missed. As humans, everyone will commit a mistake, sooner or later. Whether it’s a mispelled command parameter or a forgotten step in a process, relying on one entity to do everything does have its disadvantages. Something that companies should do well to address.

God is good to me.

Just as I was getting bored of all the PHP programming that I’ve been doing, a wonderful challenge comes along. A new project has arrived to take me out of my misery - the documentation of GMA-7’s News TOC System. This is a very interesting project because it will allow me to work with other people and put my Systems Analysis skills into greater use.

During the first meeting whenI got introduced to the project, a lot of stuff didn’t make any sense. I tried to absorb everything that was discussed at the interview and took down notes about every concept that I heard. Several nights later of poring over my notes and reading up on a similar system’s manual, I got a good grasp of what the system was all about.

A second interview earlier clarified a lot of my thoughts and answered all the questions that I thought about from the first meeting. To show my gratitude to my Project Management mentor who involved me in this project, I’m going to do my best and show the world a quality of work that proves this young pup is ready to hunt with the rest of the pack.

This is the perfect time to do what I have to do. And I can be no other.

Sometimes you’re DOWN

A few days ago, my motherboard’s integrated fast ethernet network interface device broke down. In tagalog, I didn’t have any internet or access to network-supplied-resources because a computer component broke.

As part of my break-in and stress-testing procedure for Trailblazer, I had it running and downloading for twenty days. Whether it was the bandwidth stress or the lightning-filled storm last week, I can’t be sure which kicked the bucket under my MSI RS480-M2’s ethernet.

After a trip to PCX, it’s fixed and I’m back with a vengeance, ready to rip 600mb of downloads per hour once again! *evil laugh ~ mwahahahaha*… now if pldt can stop blocking the torrent ports…

Anyway, after that fateful incident, I’m going to plug in a cheap ethernet card for my network needs. (Php200~$4) for a replaceable peripheral is cheaper than the gas my car consumes to go to PCX. In addition, the 15 minutes I spend at home replacing a defective LAN card will also be faster than having my motherboard checked and replaced (2-3hours, inclusive of travel time).

Sometimes you’re UP

While the technician’s replaced my motherboard, I got an extra auxiliary fan installed (if you’ve been following my blog, then you must know that I already have FOUR auxiliary fans to make sure Trailblazer’s cool). My Athlon64 3200+ was running at 63 degrees C with three fans. After adding another fan, the system temp dropped to 58 degrees C. And yes, I’m using the stock heat sink and fan.

Why four fans? Because I can only cram four.

Why four fans? Because the cooler the insides of a computer are, the longer the component lifetimes.

But most of the times, you’re in BETWEEN

For the past week or so, I’ve been contemplating whether I should enroll at the Moro gym over at Ateneo. As a runner, I need to supplement my walks and runs with weight-lifting so that I can work the upper area of the body. Yeah, after getting my monthly allowance, I was just about ready to enroll when I got a phone call.

The person in the phone asked if I was still interested in pursuing the job application that I submitted a few months ago. To which I promptly replied, “Of course!!!”

I’m set to have an interview by the end of the week. Unfortunately, my principles of self-employment are not at ease with such plan of action. Pursuing such path will eradicate all the days when I can:

• sleep and wake up at whatever time I want
• run twice a day
• declare my own holidays
• play and work when i want
• go to ateneo library just for fun

But then again, I am getting quite bored at home. I’m starting to miss :

• Working with other people
• The frequent randomness and unpredictability of things that will be thrown your way
• The challenge of tackling something bigger than I can handle

Facing the fork that Robert Frost described eons ago, I went on a rave run to help me think about it. I ran and I ran, thinking about the possibilities between the rock and hard place that I’m in. I ran and I ran, not away from the decision, but towards it. I ran and I ran, just like how I’ve done before.

Several laps in the high school oval under the drizzling rain, I finally got the answer that I’ve usually had since before:

“I’ll cross the bridge when I get there.”