Archive for January, 2007

31
Jan

Back to Reality 2007

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Work

After a month-and-a-half long vacation (paid of course, are you
crazy?), I had steadily gotten more anxious about getting back to work.
Thats actually the main reason why I dislike long vacations, because I
dread getting back on the saddle! Finally, the contract with the client
was signed, and I was on the first flight back to Detroit.

This one started off a little bit better than most other times. For
the first time, I had a lot of control over what I had to do to get the
project to succeed. I negotiated the contract, interviewed the staffing
candidates, scheduled and broke down the work, and am leading the team.
I don’t get to do any coding, but I ended up being stuck with meetings
and reviews. Yes, I am now corporate overhead! But hopefully useful
overhead.

With the sense of control over my "destiny" at work, and with less
stress from now-regular exercise, I feel good about getting back to the
old grind. Thats a first, I think.

All I need now is a bigger paycheck.

29
Jan

Hello Two Weeks of Fame

By jjao 1 Comment
Categories: Travel

011507_aw_cover It was early morning and I was on the plane to work. I was reading through American Way, the in-flight magazine for American Airlines, when I had a weird sense of deja-vu on one of the articles I had been reading. Had I read this before, I thought? Then I realized that I had. In, fact I had written it. It was the accompanying essay that I had written when I joined "American Airlines’ Ultimate Road Warrior 2006", and the magazine had published it!

Of course I didn’t actually win the contest, that probably went to someone much more travel-seasoned than myself. In fact, it was that lady in the picture to the left. The prize, 2 million hotel points and 1 million airline miles, was too big a prize to pass up though - so I joined.

What I was really pleased about was that the editors thought that what I wrote was, if you count all the entries to the contest, in the top 1/5th of one percent.

I scanned through the rest of the magazine, then I saw my name again, this time on the page about the "100k Club", i.e. folks who travel more than 100,000 miles a year. What was surprising was not that I was on it, but that there were only around 1,200 people on it! I had previously held the belief that there were at least 10,000 to 100,000 people who traveled as much as I do.

Its always nice to have some unexpected affirmation to come your way. I’ve always felt bad that none of my letters to Time magazine had ever been published, and doubly felt bad when I realized that Mabel’s little sister had hers. That whippersnapper, I thought. Until now, the best I had been able to do was get my letters to the editor published for the comic books I used to subscribe to, but that’s like lowballing it to the max.

The editors thought I wrote something interesting and hey, I’m relatively more traveled than I thought. That was nice. At the very least, I will have my 2 weeks of fame, until the next issue of American Way is published.

27
Jan

Smallville Redeemed!

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Books, TV and Movies

I had time last night to watch the latest episode of "Smallville" on my DVR - "Labyrinth".  And I was very impressed. In my last "Smallville" episode review, Superboy Tom Welling himself directed the episode, and I panned the directing and the editing to no end. This episode however, was totally different.

First, the premise. The episode made use of the old "was everything that ever happened in the series a dream?" TV trope. In the alternate fantasy world Clark was trapped in, he was a mental patient, but with a totally devoted Lana Lang by his side. To break the spell, Clark was told to kill the doctor who was treating him, which brings out the dilemma: if the new reality was real, then killing the doctor makes Clark a murderer. If he refuses to kill the doctor, then he may be trapped in the fantasy forever.

Early on in the episode I had prayed, yes prayed that the episode not fall into the standard procedure in these types of stories where somehow the villain slips and the world is unraveled as fiction. If the fantasy reality had remained consistent, then the act of killing the doctor makes it more an act of faith than that of common sense, and then the moral ambiguities associated with the act would have made the episode a cult classic for sure.

But of course, the director chickens out a bit and makes Lana and the doctor behave somewhat uncharacteristically to give us a hint that yes, the new reality was indeed a fantasy, and yes, Clark can kill the doctor in the fantasy because it’s all an illusion and the doctor ain’t really there.

But what made me write a post about this episode is really the last 3 minutes of the show. Here we see the return of some chemistry between Clark and Lana sorely missing in the last couple of seasons, as Clark recalls the more pleasant aspects of the fantasy world he was trapped in, and as Lana walks away with Lex, looks back with a half-smile as the episode ends with a fade-to-black.

And yes, I have a clip of it. It’s a wonder how fast these things show up in YouTube. Here’s the last 3 minutes that I was talking about:

26
Jan

Get Ready for a Warmer New York

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Science

This morning I saw snow on the rooftops of the buildings across the
street. The first real snowfall in New Rochelle I thought. I felt a
tinge of sadness as I realized a return to 60-degree-and-higher New
York weather was still at least 2 months away in April. Then a thought
suddenly occurred to me: wasn’t 2007 an El Nino year?

So I did my research online to find articles on what the predicted weather for 2007 for New York was. What I found instead was a stunning article
from New York Magazine. It turns out that a confluence of El Nino,
Global Warming, and an obscure weather phenomenon known as the Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) which can change temperatures in North America for decades at a time
are now all conspiring to make New York a much warmer place for the
next 20 years or so, with the occasional sudden freak weather events
such as that blizzard in Buffalo, or that 70+ degree weekend early
January.

So break out the mothballs for the bubble jackets, And I’ll be
prepping the Spyder for a couple more top-down days than I expected.

25
Jan

On Diet Rehab

By jjao 1 Comment
Categories: Health

Heartatrophy
I started trying to lose weight January 2006 in response to my
doctor’s ultimatum: "drop 30lbs or you start taking cholesterol
medicine". Well, the last thing I wanted to happen to me was to be
carrying around cholesterol meds in the prime of my youth, so yes,
doctor I will comply.

And I did, between January to May of 2006 I dropped 20lbs, with only
10 to go when a series of personal tragedies took my mind off dieting
and other things (including blogging! check it out, my blog archives
are empty May-September). I quickly regained 10 of the original 20 lost
by December. By January, I assessed myself before starting again, and
what I found out was depressing.

All the muscle from 20 years of cycling, and 5 years of
sportclimbing were gone from my legs, back, and shoulders and the loss
was very noticeable with 10lbs of the 20 back on. Worse, my chest hurts
a bit now when I exert myself. I may be wrong but my armchair analysis explains that
as loss of heart muscle as well. That was the hidden price of losing
weight by just watching what I ate. I really couldn’t continue with my
undoubtably superficially successful, but destructive strategy just to
follow the 30lbs loss target.

So I got myself into "rehab", just like a patient who’s been
bedridden and hospitalized and severely atrophied, to gain back at
least some of the good that was lost along with the bad. Aside from
re-starting the diet, I’ve started making use of the gym downstairs,
doing flexibility exercises daily, and alternating the days between
strength training for the upper body and lower body to get back some of
the muscle and prevent further loss, and most importantly endurance
training on the treadmill, stairmaster and stationary bike to
strengthen the ol’ ticker again.

There are pros and cons of course. I lose an hour each day because
of the routine. But on the upside, I’m starting to feel the ol’ muscle
grow back where they used to be, and I generally feel healthier. My
mood has generally improved because of the endorphins released by
physical activity, and the heart is starting to feel stronger as well.

Ever since I broke my foot 10 years ago I realized that no, I’m not invincible (I’m not???),
and some things can happen that can’t be fixed 100%. So I better take
care of myself and not do anything stupid I decided then. Dieting
without exercise was stupid. God knows how much harm that did that
would not get fixed 100%. No rebooting and starting over. No loading
saved games. No starting with a new sheet of paper. You gotta continue
with what you got.

24
Jan

Finally, Some Use for My College Education

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: House & Home

I’ve spent more than a decade wondering what use I have gotten from my college education, other than getting myself a degree and thus making myself palatable in the eyes of prospective employers. Almost none of even my Computer Science related courses had ever seen much use professionally, even though I’m working smack in the middle of Information Technology. But recently, I finally found some use of the years I spent in UP.

For months now, ever since I moved into 543 Main Street, I’ve noticed that I’ve always been putting my keys, coats, and jackets on the dining table and my shoes scattered everywhere instead of neatly putting them in the coat closet near the door where they rightfully belong. Would it be too hard to do that and be marginally neater, Ive always asked myself? But then I would always find myself resisting to change. No matter how hard I tried my shoes were still all over the floor, and my coat, keys, iPod, Crackberry, wristwatch etc etc on the dining room table.

Ie3beforeI started asking myself "why"? With a little investigation, I discovered that the reason I removed my jacket and placed it on the dining table instead of taking it off near the door was because I always had stuff in my pockets. And it was a hassle to take items out of my coat pockets into my pants pockets, remove my coat, put it into the clothes closet, and place the relocated items in my pants to their proper places.

My shoes on the other hand are sprayed all around the place instead of the clothes closet because it was a hassle to take my shoes off standing up. I would take my shoes off while sitting on the bed, in the living room, or in the dining area and just leave them there. This whole activity is illustrated by the diagram on the left

The solution then was to 1) put a small valet table in the foyer near the clothesIe3after closet, so that I could empty my pockets in the foyer and put my coat or jacket in the
coat closet, and 2) put a stool near the valet table, so I can take my shoes off in the foyer and put it in the coat closet as well. The solution is illustrated by the diagram on the right.

It’s worked so well that I’ve never had the problem of stray shoes, coats, and related bric-a-brac around the house ever again. Was it my computer science courses? No, it was IE 3 - Industrial Engineering, part of which was the art and science of workflow management. Har-dee-har-har.

23
Jan

Spyder Goes to Bollywood

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Health

Someone sent me this Youtube link from a Bollywood movie called "Dhoom".. so funny, but why is the guy trying to fix the engine by opening the front? The engine’s in the back, silly! Still, the girl is HOT!

22
Jan

Saved by the Crackberry

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Work

Pearl_1
With my stuff, there’s always that one pivotal moment when you use it and think that "yeah, this was worth the X dollars I spent for it". For my old GPS, it was the time that it guided me back to the train station from the ruins of Pompeii to catch the last train out. For the iPod video I found, it’s every time I’m on a 5 hour flight, or caught delayed at the airport. For the old swiss knife, it was that time when I lost the key to my high school locker padlock and had to saw it off.

The pivotal moment for my Crackberry Pearl came last night. I had driven to Momsie’s to spend the night there so that Popsie could drive me to the airport early the next day. As I locked my car and headed up the stairs to their apartment, my phone beeped and there was an email from my office account. On a Sunday night. On it the engagement manager was telling the team that my project was going to be delayed for a week. Now, you would not expect - you should not expect anything this important to be sent out on a Sunday. The weekend is of course personal time. If there was something important, they should at least have the courtesy of calling you up, or better yet, emailing you on friday. But of course, that didn’t happen because somehow the office expects you to be at your desk reading your email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I mean, what if my flight was Sunday night instead of Monday morning?

Well of course you would not expect anyone above the position of manager to have any sort of common sense in the corporate world. Luckily I had my Pearl connected to email and was able to read it in time before I flew back to Detroit the next day. Was the phone worth the X dollars? For an additional week of paid vacation, yeah.

22
Jan

Weekends off from Blogging

By jjao 0 Comments
Categories: Weblogs

If anyone else is keeping track of this blog other than myself, they would notice that I post on a practically daily basis. But I’ve decided that weekends are too precious to waste on a post that can time to write and spellcheck. Therefore I’m going to limit my posts to weekdays now.

19
Jan

To Alleviate the Hunger

By jjao 3 Comments
Categories: Health

There I was, sitting on the kitchen floor, looking at my pantry, the left and right sides of my brains clawing at each other, trying to take control of my hands and the can opener. The logical left side wanted me to open the can of healthy "Chicken of the Sea" tuna while the passionate right side wanted me to grab the can of killer corned beef. I had to drop my cholesterol at least 30 more points, and the corned beef was an absolute no-no not only because it was red meat, but because it would undoubtably be served with a fried egg - God knew how much cholesterol that had. I was probably on the floor for at least 10 minutes, banging my head against the cabinet door, screaming "I cant do this! Im so hungryyy!! ", reaching for the corned beef, but backing out at the very last moment. I’m sure that anyone who walked upon me would think me going insane, and I was probably close to that. In fact I was opening and closing the freezer door, looking at the microwaveable angus beef cheeseburgers I kept for "emergencies".

It wouldn’t have been that difficult if I knew a place to buy Century Tuna, there were lots and lots of flavors to choose from. My favorite of course was Century Tuna "Adobo" and Century Tuna "Hot and Spicy". Back in the Philippines, I actually lived on canned tuna, and I liked it. Here though, tuna tasted so bland. It tasted marginally better by cooking it in oil and adding onions and the like. But the cooking oil made it unhealthy again. The only option for me was to microwave.

So in desperation I thought of an idea to make Chicken of the Sea more palatable. I added half a teaspoon of spicy oil, a tablespoon of Knorr Seasoning, mixed it with the tuna, and put it in the microwave for a minute. And it was gooood. Good enough for most of the weekends when I’m at home I thought. Good enough to have for the next day even (but the next day I would put in a little too much spicy goodness, and it was still spicy on the way out). It was so good it was practically a blessing from heaven.  Goodbye corned beef cravings for the meantime, I’m having healthy fish again. But just in case the hunger strikes again, I’m going to be on the lookout for Century Tuna at the Asian groceries.

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