book shopping

Marcy and I had an impromptu get together yesterday. She was on leave, and my work won't be starting 'till that night.

We went to Shangri La, grabbed something to eat at one of my favorite restaurants - Green Tomatoes, and then went shopping. Marcy ended up buying a couple of stuff while I ended up buying, three hard bound books! There's a Fully Booked store at Edsa Shangrila and I just couldn't resist not buying them.

What books did I buy? The 4 book Twilight series. Geeze. :)

Due to its on going popularity, I just couldn't resist not attempting to read it. Of course, I did buy the first book of the series out of curiosity when the film was released. I personally though the book obviously was better compared to the movie. So upon reading the New Moon snippet from Twilight, I was mainly intrigued at its story and so I went looking for New Moon. It has been sold out in most of the bookstores I've visited so surprisingly in this exact store, we found the three other books in the series all available both paperback and hardbound. I was just going to buy New Moon but according to Marcy, I'd probably buy the remaining two in the series so why wait when I finish book 2 and later find out how hard it is to find book 3 and 4. And so I did buy the remaining 3 of the series.

Answered prayers

This one, I really have to share.

I've been working on this module that requires an end to end testing with another team. The idea is, my module will generate a list of files, and then I have to transfer them to a specific location so that the other team's process can pick up the files and process them.

The problem is, although we were able to get the read/write access to the landing directory in Production, but don't have any account for the non-production environments. So this issue's been bugging us for quite a while. And 2-3 weeks from release, we still haven't done pre-production testing due to this limitation.

So I prayed and prayed, that somehow, hoping that the Lord can lead me to some idea that we can work out with. And truly a blessing, it suddenly occurred to me that I can request an account on those two non production environments (using another project as a reason why) but the limitation there is, I will not have a write access to the supposed directory. Obviously still a problem, but at least we can now connect to that box. And truly another blessing indeed, for some reason, they granted my account a write access to the directory we need to move our files!

Oh man, after weeks and weeks of stress over this, finally it's over. And just really proves more and more, that prayers are really powerful and that they truly are answered. :)

5 Reasons why I now prefer working in the office instead of working from home.

I have been working regularly in the office for a month now ever since my laptop crashed and surprisingly, I have realized that working in the office is way better.

Here are my 5 reasons:

1. Interact with your officemates, and eventually they won't be just mere acquaintances, but will become your friends.

2. Working in the office allows you to get a lot more things done (as per my opinion that is...)

3. When I am home, I relax and don't do anything for work (unlike when I had my laptop, I had to check this, and that, once in a while, etc)

4. And since I'm working night shifts, it really helps to be with other people as well.

5. Ever since we've moved to Araneta, Cubao office, travel time has been cut down by around 25%. Not bad. :) So now, my daily commute allows me to see the city again instead of just hanging around the house all day long.

MER shares - sold!

Finally some good news on the financial side. We were finally able to sold off our MER shares with a nice profit at hand. Took a while to get it up to the price that we wanted it but after almost holding on it for over a year or so, and after getting a couple of stock dividends, finally we sold the shares at 106 a piece.

It's a nice profit considering the MER share was down to 60 at one point (or even lower perhaps? As I have not been monitoring the stock market ever since "recession" came into place).

Thanks to Pangilinan, Ang, Lopez and whoever's fighting over buying Meralco. This catfight was indeed advantageous to investors (well, at that point in time anyway). The stock will eventually correct after this whole issue calms down.

stress na naman

May boo boo ako na ginawa sa work.
I had wednesday and thursday to get some files sent over and tested with another team. But all along, I was waiting for my other teammate to finish up some script and come back from Toronto so that we can transfer the files together. So we ended up sending the files just last friday, and now, we're a bit delayed as the release is next week and we need QA sign off from their side. The problem is, I just realized on Friday that I could've done it myself altogether even as early as Wednesday. And now it's a mad scramble to work with the other team to get the testing done ASAP.
Arghh

Work is stressing me out.
Hopefully after this release (hopefully it'll be a success as well) that I may be able to get some days off to relax and not think about work even when I'm home (is this a symptom that I'm beginning to be a workaholic - when you're home and you're thinking about work problems?)

tayong dalawa update

I just watched "Tayong Dalawa" earlier, and I have this strange feeling that the story will end up something like that of Pearl Harbor, where Ben Affleck's character was thought to have died during the war and so the best friend and the girlfriend ended up together, not knowing that Ben was actually still alive.

I think that's probably what's going to happen with Dave, JR and Audrey. Argh.... I hope I'm not. I prefer Dave and Audrey rather than Audrey and JR.

This is the only remaining teleserye I watch. I sure hope it doesn't disappoint me.

what's worst?

What's worst about being in a long distance relationship?
Being in a relationship where you're both in the same place, but don't see each other. And this is exactly the situation that Chase and I are in right now. I don't blame him. I blame myself 101%.

Ever since coming back home, I've been delegated to work night shifts primarily because I have to attend meetings, talk with my teammates back in Canada. We are working on a new project and it's a ground up work which is probably why there's just a lot more work that has to be done. And since it's night shift, I just can't get myself to wake up around 5:30 pm, get dressed and go meet Chase somewhere. I'm just so lazy that I'd rather sleep, or just relax at home.

So now, our usual schedule is meeting up every Sunday instead of Saturday (because Saturday is my catch up sleep time). It's good and all... but of course, it's always better to see each other more. I'm back so how come I don't see him as often right?

And so, once this big project finishes up (release will be the weekend after this coming weekend), I might try to adjust my work time to an early shift instead. The problem with this shift is that I have no idea how I'll get to work as early as 6 am (btw, I have to go to the office everyday from now on since my laptop crashed a couple of weeks back). We'll see how it goes. I think it's a matter of adjustment from now on, but we'll see. I think I need a car (hahahahaha!).

Anyway, whatever happens, I've decided that I really need to do something about this situation. I can't just rely on Chase to work on this relationship all the time. I just can't way the next time I have to go away and we'll not see each other again for a couple of months.