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In an Unguarded Moment
August 5th, 2007

I wasn’t supposed to go out that night. Right after work, I wanted to go straight home and cook my last slab of steak. Instead of heating the pan, I instead eyed the couple of cans of beer in the fridge and considered them. They’ve been there for weeks then and I thought, maybe, it’s time I down them.

I had only halved my first can when I put it down for good. I just didn’t feel like drinking that night. In fact, there was a small party that was waiting for me and yet, the idea of having more beer nor wine didn’t really excite me. I went anyway, and decided early on that I’ll just have another couple and leave right after.

After all, it is very unusual for this friend of ours to invite us over for drinks. Usually, we were the ones dragging him along, so I thought, why the hey not? We would find out later on that he’s due to get married next year, and that he was having cold feet. Okay, a couple of beers wouldn’t cut it. I prepped myself for a long night and ordered grilled salmon.

It was a well-represented dinner. We had someone who never had a boyfriend, a guy who’s very much in love with his wife, someone who had an unrequited love for someone else, and one who has yet to fall in love again, well, not since 3 years earlier, when it all started to just lose sense. That last person was me.

And little did everyone know that through the whole hoolabaloo, I was there, keeping to myself, and having my own thoughts. In that dinner, realizations about a lot of things have come to surface, and it’s at this stage, that maybe, it’s about time that i become honest with myself as well, just as when I was starting to believe that I’m much better now: alone, and in control.

That’s what I used to believe. Until I met her.

Posted in Non-Poetry · 9 Comments


An Insider View Into Job Interviews
March 15th, 2007

This month, in particular, is a special month I’ve always been interested in. This month, thousands (or millions?) of students graduate and look for jobs. And as an employer who’s always on the lookout for people to hire, it can be a bit frustrating most of the time, to know that a lot of the graduates that turn up, lack a lot of the skills (fundamentals, basics, whatever) that I need in a potential hire. We’re not asking much really. All we need are students who took their studies seriously and took the time to, at least, read ahead in preparation for the real world. Or, just a bit of common-sensical take on their chosen profession. Hiring has always been hell for us and most of the time, a big waste of our time. But we have no choice but to still believe. Here, I attempt to list down some of my and my colleagues’ observations, questions, and frustrations, as we wade through tons of resumés, and sit through hours of eyebrow-raising interviews. While it may seem that this is only for fresh graduates, believe me, there ARE job-seekers out there with supposed years of experience who are just as bad. This is for them, or you, too. If you’re a job applicant, this is very useful insider tip.

  1. Applicants failed to take their studies seriously. You thought simply graduating was the key. Cheating is not good. And it’s worse if you didn’t understand a thing. And surprise! That class you took about Software Engineering, Data Structures, and Algorithms ARE useful. And oh, Philosophy and Logic rocks too.
  2. Applicants didn’t really know what they were getting into.
    Please have the initiative to at least research about the company you’re applying with, and whether what they do is really what you want to be doing. We’re not forcing you to apply, you know. You came here on your volition right? But what piqued your interest, really? One of the things we keep looking for are people who really are interested in the job, not just ANY job. And if one really wants the job, then s/he must work hard for it. In my company, we keep saying at the onset, that, it is a bi-directional interview. We want and encourage people to ask questions, the right ones, that is.
  3. Some applicants can be delusional about salaries.
    Everyone has to start from scratch somewhere. Did you really believe that that dream job will simply be outside the university gates when you come out? One has to work hard for it. But yes, there are graduates from a minority of schools who can actually pull off a good leverage. And most of them are really good, I must admit. But, just not everyone.
  4. Some applicants think they can get away with populating their resumés with buzzwords they barely know about.
    It does get our attention, but we will find out if you’re lying! So spare yourself from embarassment. While we don’t really humiliate applicants ourselves, it would be better if you were honest with yourself in the first place. Yes, we do notice those small beads of sweat and that sudden stammer in your voice. Just the same, exams should bring the humility out in everyone. Come on, I’ve known MD’s and Journalism majors whom I can discuss Linux and other geekiness with, which are totally out of context of their respective professions. These people can beat these so-called IT, CS, etc, graduates to a pulp. Heck, I even know a restaurateur who now does software development for a living. That, kids, is called genuine interest. So, unless you can stand by your bluff, just lose it.And despite most of them seminars being introductory, they can be useful, especially, if people started doing follow-through studies. If the topics didn’t interest you or if you didn’t really understand them, it ain’t going to do anyone any good.
  5. And most especially, some schools need to re-think their ancient curricula.
    Schools are supposed to be teaching stuff that will actually help the students get better jobs, and not just simply milk money out of them. Some curricula I saw were just mediocre. Or archeological. I guess it’s one of those dangers of having teachers who never really got out of their college comfort zones into the industry. Hey guys, help us out here!What’s funny too, is, I’ve talked to cum-laudes who barely know things outside college! No, textbooks are not everything (especially if they’re dated already!). Got ‘net? Use it and read up. It’s not only for Ragnarok you know. It’s just a sorry state when some more street-smart people are able to outdo cum-laudes. It really makes me wonder what kind of education and quality control his/her school had in place. And the bad thing is, it’s the students who suffers. If these cum-laudes found it hard to get a job, what about the others?And maybe, schools should also re-evaluate the relevance of each subject. I, for one, have yet to find good use for Integral Calculus, Differential Equations, and Strength of Materials, in my current job, or in those of my other batch mates’. Nevertheless, despite failing them at some point, I did enjoy these subjects, because, yes, I was actually interested in them. But sometimes, I can’t help but wonder about the man-months I spent on them, man-months which could have been better spent learning more relevant stuff. But then, a lot of my friends kept saying I might have been in the wrong course all along. Okay, okay, I was in Computer Engineering when I was supposed to be in CS. After all, I’ve always been a software guy.Man, there’s something wrong wth this picture!

Anyway, I can go on and on, and I’m sure I missed a lot of others, but let’s start with these. If anyone has something else to share, please do drop a comment. I’m sorry if i had to be blunt about stuff, but being saccharine doesn’t work for me anymore. A lot of times, people really just need a good jolt. I just hope that for you, or anyone who’s looking for a job, that what I wrote here does serve its real purpose.

During interviews, anyway, I have learned to make good use of my poker face to hide the disappointment, unless, a spunk-wielding-applicant who thinks he can take me down decides to test my patience. Great skillsets are good but the last thing I’d want to have on board is a prima donna.

So, are you still wondering why the unemployment rate is this bad? Sigh.

Oh, well, congratulations to you, graduates! I hope you find what you’re looking for! And if you didn’t, well, it’s the price we pay for the life we choose.

Posted in Whatever · 3 Comments


Deliciously del.icio.us!
March 11th, 2007

For anyone who uses, at the least, two computers (e.g. a home PC and an office laptop), maintaining a common set of bookmarks can be very tedious. When a change is made on one computer, I used to export bookmarks from it and import into the other, and vice-versa, in an almost vicious cycle. It was a good thing del.icio.us (now a Yahoo! company) and other online bookmark services turned up (like shadows.com). It surely made things easier and a lot more convenient, especially, with its seamless integration with Firefox (I dare not mention anything else, if you’re not using Firefox already, you’re missing a lot, baby). Of course, one would need to be online to be able to access these bookmarks, right? Right. But, what’s the use of bookmarks if you’re offline anyway? However, in the more recent versions of the del.icio.us Firefox extension, synching between the browser and the server is now also supported and happens almost instantaneously. So one would think, hey, that’s pretty convenient, keeping everything in one place! And if one needs to access their bookmarks from other people’s computers, all one needs to do is go to delicious and login: and your priced bookmarks are instantly available wherever you are! But that’s just one of the features one can get from an online bookmark service.

One of the other neat things that del.icio.us can offer is of course, bookmarks sharing. With thousands of bookmarks being maintained by perhaps, millions of people, it’s a natural course to allow sharing. Of course, one has to be careful not to share confidential stuff with the rest of the world. Yes, there is an option to not share bookmarks. So, your work-related stuff and yeah, porn, is kept private unless you say so. When one bookmarks a URL, it even gives you the option to “suggest” it to a friend in your network, who may be interested in what you just found . It’s social-networking, bookmarks-style!

Another feature that’s not to be missed is tagging. With this, gone are the days when you just can’t decide which folder to place a bookmark on. Why put something in a folder or a category when its scope really cannot be pigeon-holed? And tags are one of the greatest things that ever happened and I couldn’t imagine i lived without it all these years. It’s also one of the fastest way to find information that’s been eluding you all this time. Besides, links that are in del.icio.us are bookmarked by discerning people. Google’s indexing is as great as its near-supernatural search results, but sometimes, nothing beats a human sorting through all the noise. Chances are, what you’re trying to look for has already been found and is bookmarked, tagged, and ready for your consumption! That’s User-Generated Content for you.

Lastly, del.icio.us, aside of course from AJAX being all over making it very easy to navigate through, RSS feeds are available to serve specific tags or your friends’ bookmarks. And that makes it easy for you to keep track of what your friends or colleagues have been browsing through. In my work, del.icio.us is an important tool in sharing stuff with my colleagues; all I have to do is suggest things and it will automatically turn up in their inboxes. It sure beats pasting links over IM or emails.

If you’re just about to sign up, you’ll ,of course, be given a choice to import your current bookmarks or you can always start fresh. And if you’re interested at all, for what its worth, my bookmarks are in http://del.icio.us/nightshiphter. You can add me to your network, or simply subscribe to my RSS feeds using your favorite reader.

Cheerio!

Posted in Goodies · 2 Comments


RSS: Keeping Up With The Rest Of The World
March 5th, 2007

Years back, the only way for someone to keep him/herself abreast with what’s happening in the world (socially, technologically, etc) is by either making periodic visits to news sites or subscribing to email-based alerts. With the first approach, that would simply be time-consuming. Exactly how many news sites are there anyway? The second approach is a sure way to fill up one’s inbox especially for those who are not online all the time. And when one finally does go online and see all that mail, chances are, s/he’ll lose interest and just move them over to the trash bin. Then we end up with nothing. All that for nothing.

There’s got to be a simpler way of doing this, right? Right. Here’s where syndication, more popularly in the form of RSS or Really Simple Syndication, come in. And the ability for a user to syndicate a section or sections of a news or blog site allows that user to read all the relevant content from a single point: the RSS feed aggregator or News Reader, which takes care of keeping track of news or blog items you have read or not read, leaving you with only the stuff that matters. This means you don’t have to visit Friends A, B, and C’s blogs all the time just to check whether they have posted new steamy articles about their prior nights, or their latest bouts with their bosses. Aggregators will do that work for you. In fact, I even use an aggregator to keep track of the new photos that are being uploaded by my friends in Flickr. If things can be listed and they have a corresponding RSS feed, all you have to do is subscribe to the feed and wait for the news/blog entries to pour in. All from the comfort of one software or browser.

Aggregators come in many forms. Some are desktop client software that you install on your computer, and some are online services. Since most feeds contain only the blurbs of the whole articles, one will most likely need to click on a feed link to see the rest of the story. This means one must be online while reading the feeds. And since I’m working on a premise that I’m indeed online, the obvious preference for me would be to use an online service like BlogLines rather than have my computer do the work of aggregating all these feeds. Another popular online aggregator is Google Reader, which for my taste is too AJAX-heavy (BlogLines uses AJAX as well but is not as heavy) and full of cruft. I like it simple and clean and BlogLines allow me to read news without any distraction. The less scrolls I do with my trackpad or mousewheel, the better. But preferences differ so you might wanna try both and some others as well until you find which you’re more comfortable settling with.

So how does one subscribe to a Feed? Well, a feed usually has a unique URL associated with it. Most sites indicate the feed URL by putting the RSS Icon right beside it. Copy that URL and tell your favorite aggregator that you want to subscribe to it. How one does that would depend on which aggregator is being used. In my case, Firefox (2.x) automatically detects Feed URLs in the websites that I visit and displays the RSS Icon in my browser’s Location bar (Figure 1). If I click on it, Firefox will give me a choice to select which feed to subscribe to and which aggregator to use, or one can select a default in the Feeds section of Firefox’s Preferences (Figure 2). Right out of install, BlogLines, Google Reader, and Yahoo come as standard choices. With Firefox having that option available sure does save a lot of time in subscribing. With or without it, however, one can still go to one’s online service and put in the desired URL in the subscription field without any problem.

Figure 1. the RSS Icon in the Location bar.

Figure 1. the RSS Icon in the Location bar.

Figure 2. Firefox -> Preferences -> Feeds

Figure 2. Firefox -> Preferences -> Feeds

For simplicity’s sake, I didn’t mention other syndication standards (like ATOM) or the history behind all this. Chances are, it wouldn’t matter. Whether the feed is in RSS or ATOM format, your aggregator/news reader wouldn’t care less anyway. Just subscribe away! And some of the sites whose feeds I’m subscribed to are: Inquirer, The New York Times, BBC News, CNN, Forum Nokia, IBM DeveloperWorks, NetworkWorld, SlashDot, Friends’ del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr, and blogs, of course.

Feed sets from one software or service can also be easily exported from or imported to different readers. This feature comes as a standard in most readers and usually yield an outline or OPML file which can be shared between friends with similar interests. It also helps if you want to migrate from one service or software to another, or if you want to simply back them up in a safer place. Some online aggregators, like BlogLines, even has a slimmer WAP version which you can access using your mobile phone/PDA. Pretty neat when whiling your boredom away.

NB: I am in no way associated with BlogLines. I’m just a happy user. So far. :)

Posted in Goodies · 2 Comments


Mac OS Goodies
February 19th, 2007

Here are some of what I have found to be very useful, so far. Enjoy!

Essentials:

  • Adium: an IM client like no other. Powered by libgaim! (Free)
  • AuthSight: Takes iSight snapshots during invalid login attempts. (Free)
  • Azureus: Cross-platform BitTorrent Client (Free)
  • BluePhoneElite: Allows you to send and receive SMS (and calls) via your Mac.
  • Chmox: A Windows CHM (Compiled HTML Help file) Reader. (Free)
  • Firefox: Need I say more? (Free)
  • Growl: A notification system for Mac OS X. It allows applications (like Adium, Skype, iTerm, VirtueDesktops, FlickrBooth, etc) that support Growl to send you notifications. (Free)
  • HardwareGrowler: Its an application that sends Growl notifications when devices are connected or disconnected from your Mac. (Free)
  • jUploadr: a full-featured, Java-based image uploader for Flickr (Free)
  • Little Snitch: Personal Firewall which alerts you if an app is trying to make an outbound connection. Great for containing Trojans or simply knowing where your apps are connecting to. A Must-Have!
  • MacSaber: Turn your MacBook into a Light Saber! (Free)
  • MenuCalendarClock: It’s an iCal compatible menu calendar and a configurable menu clock.
  • Merlin: MS Project-compatible poject management app
  • OmniGraffle: Visio-compatible Diagramming Tool
  • Senuti: Senuti is a simple application that allows you to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer. (Free)
  • SnapNDrag: Effortless Screen/Selection Capture (Free)
  • TextExpander: It saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used strings and images.
  • TNEF’s Enough: allows you to read and extract files from Microsoft TNEF (Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format) stream files (win.dat, winmail.dat).
  • VirtueDesktops: For Linux users used to having multiple desktops, this is for you! (Free)
  • VLC: Multimedia Player (Free)
  • Witch: lets you access all of your windows by pressing a shortcut and choosing from a clearly arranged list of window titles. (Free/donationware)

For Power Users:

  • Audacity: Cross-platform Sound Editor (Free)
  • Fugu: An SFTP, SCP, and SSH Frontend. (Free)
  • iTerm: Multi-tabbed terminal emulator ala-MultiGnomeTerminal (Free)
  • MemoryCell: See how much memory each running app is consuming. (Free)
  • Path Finder: A Finder replacement on steroids
  • ServiceScrubber: restructures the services menu, changes service keyboard shortcuts, and disables services. (Free/Donationware)
  • SharePoints: A preference pane that makes it easy to add and delete share points (Free/donationware)
  • Vim/Vi: The best Text Editor there is! (Free)
  • WindowShadeX: Collapse, Minimize-in-Place your windows, and more!

Dashboard Widgets. Since I’m not much of a fan of Dashboard, I make sure only a minimal list of widgets are running at one time. Here are my mostly-used ones:

  • BlogLines Notifier: Allows you to see the number of unread posts in your Bloglines RSS reader account at a glance. (Free)
  • Calendar: The Built-in Calendar widget.
  • CurrencyConverter: Err, Foreign Exchange Rate app, with auto rates update.
  • iStat Pro: a comprehensive system monitoring tool. (Free)
  • Weather: The Build-in Weather widget. Do make sure you search for “Manila, Philippines” if you are indeed in the PH. Yes, there are other Manilas out there.
  • WordPressDash: Wordpress Blogging tool right out of your dashboard. (Free)

Posted in Goodies · 3 Comments