January 5, 2010
At 5AM, the speeds are not so bad. The advertised speeds are 7.5Mps and 800kps. Not too shabby. I’ll try the speed test again later today.
By the way, I just haven’t been too motivated as of late to make an entry. I keep telling myself that I should write something, but I never get around to it. Maybe this week?
November 16, 2009
By strange coincidence I started a training course at work this week.
November 11, 2009
Well, I hadn’t noticed it before, but I guess I should have known this existed for WordPress. So, here it is. I am testing out the feature of posting by email.
WordPress gives you these next to impossible to remember, generated email addresses to which you can email your blog entries. I suppose this would come in handy for those occasions when you want to discretely write a blog entry. I guess I’ll play around with this for a while. 
November 7, 2009
Of course, that all depends on where you are. At the moment, I happen to be sitting in a hotel room in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. I’m just chillin’ a bit before I check out and head off to the airport to catch an afternoon flight that will be the start of my journey home.
So what am I doing here? Well, I’m not here on holiday. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I’m here for work. There’s a project that’s been ongoing and what I am doing is a small project that is part of this bigger project. Essentially, I am suppose to gather data and information that will be used as input in dimensioning and the eventual integration of a new node in the network. I know, I won’t go into too much details.
As a result, I really don’t get to go outside much other than for lunch. That’s the only time I get any sunshine and feel the warm 30C weather here. By the time I am done with work, it’s around 6PM and it’s starting to get dark. When I get back to the hotel, I’m pretty knackered from staring at a computer screen and figuring out numbers and calculations. All I end up doing is order room service, surf the net (when the internet connection was behaving), read a little and maybe watch some TV before I crash around 11PM. Hmm, come to think of it, it’s not that much different than being at home. I guess one big difference is that at home, I’m not totally confined to the space of one room. At home, if I wanted to go for a walk after dinner, I can without worrying about getting lost or mugged. Given that I am a rather visible minority, I think I would stick out amongst the locals. I did read somewhere that there’s about 15K Chinese living in the Dominican, but I really didn’t see any other than a few hotel guests.
So what else have I been up to since I last wrote anything significant? Well, I wish I could say that I was involved in something really exciting, but I haven’t. I have been rather busy with work. At times I was dealing with more than one project at a time. Occasionally there will be those valleys when I’m not sure what I’m doing. I guess I need the occasional valley to regain my bearings and clear my head. When I get back from this trip, I will be working on finishing off this work and starting some other stuff for a different project. Don’t think that I’m complaining here. It’s actually good to be busy!
Yesterday, my manager IM’d me. He wanted to let me know that with some forecasted work in the new year, he threw my name into the ring as someone to train up in PCN. Wooo! This means I’m being registered for a training course the week after. This is actually good. I get to learn something different! I’ll have to look into doing some reading before the training course starts. Uhm, yeah, I need to find the time for that!
In the meantime, there’s this guy. I think he’s rather special. We seem to get along quite well. And, as strange as it may seem, I’d like to try to keep him. Now, the whole deal with this is that it seems a little complicated in some ways. Without going into too many details, we’ve only seen each other a total of 3 times. Each time, we had a really great time together. In between the times we’ve seen each other, we’ve been emailing each other. He’s very busy with his work, so I think I end up emailing him more, but he doesn’t seem bothered. In fact, he’s apologetic about not writing back in a timely fashion. At some point we’ve exchanged some rather “serious” email. I think there is an understanding between the two of us. Let’s see where it all leads.
After Jum’s passing, Blue Sh*t became depressed. About 24 hrs after he noticed that Jum was not around, he stopped eating and became clingy and needy. Now when a cat decides not to eat, that’s usually not good. Boo has always been with other cats. I don’t think he’s used to being the only cat in the house. I ended up taking him to the vet where they put him on IV fluids and gave him an appetite stimulant to get him kick started again. In the meantime I started to think seriously about looking for a companion for him.
The following weekend, I found that there’s an adoption clinic at a pet supply shop in town. So I figure I’d go and see what animals they had. When I got there, they were a bit late in arriving to set up. So I just hung around and got to know this young Rottweiler that was up for adoption. She was a sweet dog that needs a bit of training. Anyway, once all the cats were there, I was drawn to this cute, friendly calico. She was the first cat I checked out. She was just all friendly and affectionate with me. It makes me wonder who was doing the adopting here! In any case, next thing you knew, I was going home with a new cat! I named her Cleo.
I kept Cleo confined to one of the bedrooms before slowly introducing her to Boo. Boo wasn’t sure what to make of this newcomer at first. There was a little bit of hissing and posturing, but eventually he warmed up to her. Cleo didn’t seem to be bothered much with his hissing. Cleo still needs to get use to the fact that Boo likes to snuggle up next to other cats to nap. Boo has to get used to the fact that Cleo is much younger (about 1.5 yrs old) and more full of energy than he is these days. It’s been about 2 months and they seem to be getting along rather well. They are both currently being boarded together at the vet clinic. I’ll be picking them up on Sunday morning.
Even though I brought my P&S camera on this trip, there was very little opportunity to take much in the way of shots except for maybe out my hotel window. I’ll post them somewhere when I get a chance to download them.
In the meantime, I think I have written enough for now. I might take a short nap before checking out.
October 5, 2009
I know. It’s been about a month since I last wrote. I’ve been rather busy with work and stuff. The household has expanded since the loss of Jum. Her name is Cleo. I’ll try to post some pics at some point. She’s a rambunctious calico of about 1.5 years old.
More soon. Promise!
September 8, 2009
Sadly, I had to let Jum go. I had taken her to the vet on Wednesday. She had her blood taken for testing. The next day, when I took Boo for his fluids, I waited for the vet to be available to find out about her test results. The figures were very, very high. There was the option to give her IV fluids treatment, but how long would that help her for? In her case, I’m just prolonging the inevitable. Jum was almost 16 years old.
She’ll be missed.
More later…
September 1, 2009
Season 3 – Episode 1: Expansion Time
WordPress won’t allow embedding the video player, so here’s the link with picture.
Enjoy!
August 31, 2009
I think a lot of people are saying the same thing. It’s going to be September tomorrow!
[insert scream]
So, what to do next?
I dunno.
*shrug*
So I figure I’d go ahead and sign up for another photography course at Dawson. I settled on Environmental Portraiture. After taking the Creative Composition course last winter, some of us asked the instructor what course we should take next. This was one of the suggestions. Now, last I checked, it did not specify who the instructor will be for this course. I haven’t checked this week, but I will before class starts. I need to know what classroom it will be in as well!
The project I mentioned last week that I was having issues with… Well, the proverbial needle was found in the haystack! It seems that a certain variable was set to one value in the old SW, but it was set to a default value in the new one. Once the value in the new SW was set to that of the old, everything worked fine. Of course, as I was going through the test cases, the test environment started to die on me towards the end. At least I got 99% of the test cases completed! Whew!
I finally got an email today. As suspected, despite the silly thoughts that run through my mind in situations like this, he was overwhelmed with a few projects and underestimated the amount of time it would take to finish them. He’s still interested, which is good! He says things should be more stable after the next 2 weeks. I guess it’s just as well. I hope to be busy with a project at work this week and next.
Meanwhile, I’ve still got some cleaning and tidying up to do before the folks get here for the long weekend. The upstairs is not much of a problem, but the main floor still has some work to be done. The kitchen is still a bit of a mess and the dining table need to be cleared of all the clutter. I’ve already vacuumed, but I will probably swiffer before I wet jet it. I’ll probably work on that while the banana bread bakes.
August 25, 2009
Sometimes, there are days that seem to last forever. But not in a good way. Lately, I have been involved in a project where all I need to do is to generate some CDRs (don’t ask me what the acronym stands for but it has to do with billing) with an upgraded bit of software in place. Now, I had no issues with the old SW loaded. The test calls went through fine and the CDRs were generated. Now, pop in the upgraded part and nothing seems to work. Total frustration ensues when we tried to figure out what the heck is going on. Two colleagues and I stayed until a bit after 8 on Friday trying to figure out what was happening. No luck. Thankfully, we did not have to continue working on it over the weekend. Yesterday, the fun continued. Some different things were tried, but still, no luck.
Today, as a sanity check, I’m having the old configuration and sw started up. So far it looks like it was working the way it was last week when I did the baseline test calls. Now the new SW is in the process of being swapped in. Basically, I’m hoping that by starting clean we can better figure out what’s happening. Maybe. *fingers crossed*
Meanwhile, I decided to continue my foray into the world of photography. I registered for the course on Environmental Portraiture. I think it would be a good followup to the creative composition course I took last winter. For once, I will be doing this in the Fall instead of the winter. Should make for more bearable outdoor shoots! Actually, I had wanted to take a creative writing course, but the Intro to Creative Writing was not offered this fall. Ah well. Perhaps another time.
For now, it’s back to the grind. I hope things work out better today.
August 23, 2009
Well, I REALLY slept in today. I didn’t get out of bed until 2:30PM this afternoon. I was really wiped I guess.
Last night, I went out to dinner with my friends Melissa and Dan. We went to a small, neighborhood sushi place close to their place. It was pretty good! Afterward, we chilled at their place before heading out to the movie theater to catch District 9.
District 9 was a very interesting movie. I really did not go out of my way to check out the trailers. I remember seeing the advertising when I was at SDCC for the movie. All I knew was that it had something to do with aliens and humans. But what was the premise? I did not know. And I think it was a good thing because it made for a interesting movie. I had no preconceived notion of the movie.
So that was more or less my weekend. Looking forward to (toss in a hint of sarcasm) another fun week of work. That’s only because I had to work a bit late Thursday and Friday. Things are still not resolved for one of the projects. It’s to be continued on Monday. Really looking forward to that!
|
