Iobi Thoughts

A few days back, we got hit by Typhoon Ondoy (International Name: “Ketsana”). It was a wake up call to the Filipinos, to say the least.

But that’s not the highlight of the story. last August 17, my sister announced that she was 4 weeks pregnant, a couple of weeks after, God decided that my dad should see the baby before we did. Because of that, my sister and her husband decided to move back to our house.

Then, Ondoy struck. We found out that the flat where they used to stay was under water and now, filled with mud. It was truly a tragedy that turned into a blessing because it kept them with us.

September 15, since my sister and her husband decided to stay with us for a while, I took the opportunity to stay at their condo for a week. It’s nearer to our office and to almost everywhere else. That week, I also went to a friend’s wedding and since I was not sure if my boss would allow me to go on leave on that day, at least it would be much nearer to go to work after the wedding.

So here is what happened in chronological order:

Tuesday: I packed my things and leave the house at 3:00PM. I stopped by the supermarket to get some basic groceries (I figured that I’ll be eating in the office so having food in the condo will release me from having to do the dishes and pots and pans) so all I got was two bags of pandesal, a bag of wheat bread, a liter of chuckie, and a gallon of Wilkins mineral water.

I drive off to the condo, unpacked my stuff, walked a good 10 minutes to the room, walked back down and parked the car in the allocated parking “lot”. Take note, there is no building parking but a parking lot for all tenants so it does not make a difference whether you live across it or 2-3 blocks from it. (An in-depth review of it in my review page soon)

Slept in their bed and woke up 3 hours later, took a bath and went to work. No biggie.

Wednesday: After a good meal in the office for lunch, going home, I got a little hungry. But since there was no food, all I had was 3 pieces of pandesal, a gulp of chuckie and two gulps of mineral water. During this time, my gout was starting to act up again. So I was beginning to sense that coming here was a bad idea.

Thursday, I head home after work and slept, woke up at 3:30 and went to a friend’s wedding.

Friday: The gout makes a big entrance and I call in sick. This was when I was starting to think if I should pack my stuff and go home but with the things I have and the gout. It would be close to impossible to do this. So I asked Jay to fly by after his work and get me some Feldene Flash for my gout and a BigMac and Chicken Fillet sandwich for dinner.

Saturday: The gout slowly subsides but still painful, I stood up at 5:00 PM, packed my stuff, cleaned a bit and brought all my stuff to the car because I was dead set on going home on Sunday morning after work.

Overall, the experience was overwhelming. Living alone sucks especially if you have the gout. There’s so much things to do in the condo and the surrounding places but with the gout, I was deemed useless.

So now, I am back home and so glad that it’s all over. My sister was right. You can’t live n a condo like that without a partner.

So that’s it. I’m sure I’ll be adding more stuff to this but this is what I have so far

Today, 4 new Team Leads stepped in to help us in our Campaign that brings to a total of 5 new Team Leads.

Thanks to Zuriel, Mitch, Edward, Nicky, and James who volunteered to help us out.

I just realized that I get easily attracted to women who speak really, really good english… hmmm…

My new Campaign started with 10 Team Leads. 2 of which moved to the other site which leaves us 8 to pretty much run the Manila show. 5 of us were tasked to handle the sales division while the remaining 3 (plus 1 newbie) will be handling parts and warranty.

3-4 weeks during the run, things were starting to feel personal. Egos clashing, emotions stirring and before you know it, the once 5 man management team is now down to 2. Two people resigned a couple of weeks apart. The third simply didn’t show up nor do we know if he’s gonna show up at all. No means of communicating with the bloke so we kinda assumed he’s a goner.

On the other side, 2 of the 4-man team also left for no decent reason and left the team pretty much hanging.

But there is a silver lining. It turns out that the remaining 4-man team are the most efficient in their fields and the campaign is doing better than it could have been had the 5 stayed.

It’s all good now. Very stressful, YES. But the work is fun. Come Monday, 4 new souls will come in and I’m sure that things are going to get nasty. hehe

A new thought on the idea of “Stress”. It’s not rocket science. Most people, including myself, think that to relieve stress you should go on a vacation, free your mind off of work, watch a movie every week, and so on, and so forth.

We cannot just go to our “little place” every time we’re stressed. In my case, if I would task myself to go to Hong Kong each time I feel stressed then 1, I would be out of a job and 2, I would be broke-ass poor.

My sister, Chezka, said something last night over dinner that really made sense; She quoted it off a doctor she and Jay have been visiting. What we do not realize is it’s not the work that causes the stress but the decision to make that stress-stimulant affect you.

A trick to make a stress-stimulant not affect you is PREPARATION. Never wait for the last minute.

In one of the Management training courses I’ve attended, it was discussed that our everyday tasks and duties can be categorized in 4 quadrants:
Q1: Important and Immediate
Q2: Important yet Not Immediate
Q3: Not Important yet Immediate
Q4: Not Important and Not Immediate

These 4 quadrants and how you use them when categorizing your daily tasks can and will define you as a person. In a perfect world, we would want to have all of our tasks categorized under Quadrant 2 yet we know that it is never always the case.

Think about it, if we keep on procrastinating, then we will be stuck at Quadrant 1 forever.

Try using this table when doing your daily tasks and see if this makes any form of improvement.

To date, I have purhcased 5 domain names:
www.pedeliandbarkley.com (business)
www.citygatecm.com (church)
www.shekinahctc.com (alma mater)
www.eboybautista.com (personal)
www.ebzster.com (personal)

Finding the urge to get one was just an accident. A few months back I was selling C2 Green Tea to the employees of Sykes Asia, Inc for a good price. I wanted to get the prices lower so I decided to look at the Universal Robina website to inquire if it is possible. Instead, it brought me to the employees’ webmail page of UR. To my surprise, it was powered by Google Apps.

Upon research, it turns out that Google gives out free mail, document, and calendar hosting to people. If you have a domain name, you can sign up with them. If you don’t have one yet, you can buy directly from them and sign in automatically with Google Apps.

Jay said that $10.00 for a domain name is pretty expensive because he knows of cheaper alternatives but I didn’t care. Google is Google and the free service, you cannot get that anywhere else (as far as I know).

So it started with my company. Then with my Church, Then with my school, then I bought two for myself. Jay said that it is better that way than eventually having someone else buy it ahead of you.

Will this end? I hope not… hehehe… as of this writing, I am already thinking of buying two more… Habang mura pa ang dolyar…

Questions about Google Apps? Go to http://www.google.com/a/…

I took a look at my posts and found out that my Wishlist needs to be updated, again…

1. An Apple Airport Extreme. (para maging Wireless hotspot bahay ko… pang Wii, PSP, at Laptops ni Jay at ni Chez)
2. An Apple iPod Classic, 120GB
3. An XBOX 360 Elite Edition Console
4. A second (3rd or even 4th) Samsung Syncmaster 225BW LCD Monitor
5. A Canon EOS 450D (Or Rebel XSi).

So here it is:
1. An Apple Airport Extreme. (para maging Wireless hotspot bahay ko… pang Wii, PSP, at Laptops ni Jay at ni Chez) <- well, Chezka and Jay moved out BUT my mom wants to have a laptop and I'm saving up to get a MacBook so this still stands. 2. An Apple iPod Classic, 120GB <- though my 60GB is still alive and still has sh*tloads of space left. So this is not a priority. 3. An XBOX 360 Elite Edition Console <- I'm happy with my Wii so this goes off the list. 4. A second (3rd or even 4th) Samsung Syncmaster 225BW LCD Monitor. <- My videocard can support up to 4 displays so why not get the most out of it, right? 5. A Canon EOS 450D (Or Rebel XSi). <- I already got this last Christmas.. YEAH BOI!!!

By Christine Lambden and Casey Conner, authors of “Everyday Practices of Extraordinary Consultants” msn.careerbuilder.com

Getting along with people sometimes requires speaking their language, especially in the workplace. One of the ways employees try to emphasize their smartness is with specialized vocabulary.

Due to the nature of a lot of people’s work, technical language and terminology is often necessary, but buzzwords can make you sound pretentious. On the other hand, if you are working on a team full of buzzword-addicted co-workers, you’ll need to fit in. Learning and properly using the latest buzzwords and TLAs ( three-letter abbreviations) can help you create high-bandwidth communication with your colleagues.

Here are 12 of today’s hottest workplace phrases:
Boil the ocean
Definition: The scope is too big to do in one project. Break it up into more than one. We often hear, “We’re not trying to boil the ocean here. We just need to,” when the client is trying to keep costs down and avoid an overly ambitious project scope.

Drink the Kool-Aid
Definition: To enthusiastically perform a task or follow a leader without knowing how this may affect you or to buy the “company line” without question. In business, you may hear someone say, “He drank the Kool-Aid,” when he means, “He has been thoroughly trained in the program and we have his unconditional support,” or “He is on board with our strategy.” In political commentary, it is used to imply that people who disagree with you have been brainwashed or are under the influence of drugs.

Going native
Definition: This is what happens when a consultant stops acting like a consultant and starts thinking he is part of the client organization. If you aren’t willing to go somewhere else, go ahead and apply for a permanent job. You aren’t providing the same value you were in the beginning.

Greenfield instance
Definition: Clean, new installation of an application without customizations, configuration or data. When a brand-new application is installed, it is a “greenfield instance” until the consultants and programmers go in and start messing it up with configurations and code changes.

Holistic
Definition: A big-picture view or a solution that includes upstream and downstream impacts. Whatever it means, it’s a great consulting word and we use it a lot.
Paradigm Definition: The perspective or view you have of a situation. For example, “When ownership of our order fulfillment project moved from operations to sales, it caused a paradigm shift that resulted in a whole new project strategy and approach.”

Running in parallel
Definition: Processing normal operating data through two systems simultaneously to compare performance and output. When a client is feeling particularly paranoid about a new system that his consultants have developed or implemented, even after exhaustive testing and training, we will sometimes recommend running the new system in parallel with the old for a short period.

Straw man
Definition: First draft of a solution or proposal intended to provoke discussion. It is an object, document, person or argument that temporarily stands in for and is intended to be “knocked down” by something more substantial.

Talking to the dog
Definition: Thinking it through by talking it through out loud. You’ll often hear engineers and programmers say that they finally solved a problem by talking to the dog.

Use case
Definition: A particular circumstance or situation in which the solution would be used. For example, when designing a system, the engineer will refer to all the use cases that have been documented to determine if his solution would be effective in each situation.

White paper
Definition: An authoritative report or guide published to share technical or business information, particularly related to solving common problems. Writing white papers is a great way for consultants to get exposure in their industry and develop a reputation for expertise.

Wireframe
Definition: Simple pictures that show a proposed user interface, often used by business analysts to communicate expectations to users and developers.

We get this so often.. I read this on social networking sites where they post dozens of pictures of them with someone else.. And then, tragedy strikes… They post the comment… “Sam and I”.. Huwat!!!???? Yeah, yeah.. back in high school we were taught to use I when joining it with another noun or pronoun and “AND” but the lesson does not just end there.

The concept of a conjunction is to join two of the similar idea. Case and point.
He and I are going to the beach. (correct)
Separate the two:
He is going to the beach.
I am going to the beach.

This was written by John and I. (incorrect)
Separate the two:
This was written by John.
This was written by I (?!?!?!)
You’d, then, write it this way:
This was written by ME.
ergo.. the sentence would then become:
This was written by John and me.

Think about it… it’s a peeve of mine and it starts to get irritating when you a whole lot of people doing it.

Same as for comments under pictures… It’s not “___ and I” but, “___ and me.”