Christmas came early for me this year

Thanks to my dear Rachel, I've just received a very early yuletide present today. A new laptop! My ThinkPad kind of died, mostly because of me. =x

Thanks sweetie! xD

YouTube - George Carlin - Modern Man

Amazing and amusing.
May he rest in peace.

long time no rant!

Yes it's been a while since I last ranted on anything. Much less about my work. Well today was one of those doggone days. I had it bad.
No I didn't get scolded. But to start the list of things that didn't go well today, colleagues from other departments have been approaching me for help. What about my colleagues in the IS department you may ask? One way or another, the stuff ends up on my desk. it's either the other guys are busy with other stuff (they really are) or they aren't as familiar with the stuff they need help on. And not to forget the classic keyword that it's "urgent" too. There are too many things under my charge, and they always use the same excuse that "you can do it the fastest" which isn't very rewarding for me to hear... result? My humongous set of unit tests have hardly moved. And this week is already its deadline to our client!!!

I'm just getting started... rewind back to the wee hours of today when I tried getting forty winks. It was difficult. There were sme chirping insects between my false ceiling and the roof! At bloody 3am! I ended up sleeping with toilet paper stuffed in my ear. In my own bedroom! *cries* Maybe that got me started grumpy the whole day.

But then when I ordered KFC over the counter for takeaway dinner just now, I forgot about the 2 cheese fries, and so did the manager! I only realised this when I reached home and Rachel told me.

I got so pissed at myself I banged on my laptop. You guessed it. Now my laptop has corrupted sectors on the HDD.

I made the call to the outlet and they promptly apologised (I know I was at fault for not checking too) So they delivered me my cheese fries to my home, nice and warm. But alas, my poor laptop!

I'm blogging from my phone now. Quite pathetic, but thank goodness for the Wifi full keyboard on this Dopod 838Pro. If it's any more consolation, at least I'll get to sleep peacefully and earlier slightly tonight... plus the length of this post is probably remarkable considering I typed all that on my phone.

I'm stil very gek and pissed at myself and everything. Nobody in particular, just issues. Yes I've got issues. That's why I'm ranting.

A pie shop in Sydney

While chatting with my colleagues about pies and stuff, I was suddenly reminded of this outlet that sells pies and such in Sydney. It's situated behind a tram station near the junction of George St and Hay St. but I can't recall what the stall it called! Nevermind, I managed to dig it out on Google Maps.


Then I'd just checked with Jason, and got the name from him! Harry's de Wheels (aka Harry's on Wheels) ooh wow and they've got a website to boot! And a proper shot of the outlet here!

Mmm...

Getting into a new routine

I've been adjusting myself to some biological reprogramming. So far it's been pretty constant.

• Wake up about 6.30am
• Prepare my 2 slices of bread for breakfast and leave house before 7.15am
• Work out on the exercise machine in the office on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays for 14/20/12 mins
• Start work at 8.30am
  

Overall, my aim was to get the heart pumping. And probably hope to train up enough for a bit of IPPT once I get down to really make a booking for one session. Otherwise, on the side, I benefit as well from bypassing the ERP gantry. I realise I haven't been topping up my cashcard as often for the past few weeks since my ICT.

first bird shit, now cat shit?

I was at the JTC hawker centre near my office for lunch just now, when I saw a cat walking along the inside of the roof beam meowing away! I was like whoah wtf! kena bird shit (I got it 2x before so far) not enough, are we gonna kena cat shit too?!

Facebook | Coalition of the Willing (to get Jade Seah off 'Tonight in Beijing')

Seriously... these people aren't expecting to see Jade Seah get off the tv programme. I think they actually mean they want to see Jade Seah getting off on the programme.

Normalcy is restored

Finally, after 16 days of gruelling training, I'm back in the office. Peace is restored and I'm back in my cubicle tapping on the keyboard. Well it wasn't that bad of course, the spa. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were the lull moments, but only then can the cheap thrills stand out.

I didn't really catch the whole NDP thing, despite being there for both the preview and actual event. Thank goodness I get to get away from that area fairly early before the crowd started pouring in on both days. Especially when on the day of the actual event, it actually started pouring cats and dogs moments after I departed from city central!

So I can essentially say although I'm sad that my "spa" period has ended, I'm just as happy to come back to work. I believe I've rested long enough. Heck... at this rate, I think I won't stand for being too free after I retire. Considering since I enjoy driving all over town, I'll probably want to get a taxi driver's license to pass the time... if I ever retire.

my spa so far

well my Saturday was very very long, not to mention an embodiment of the typical "rush to wait, wait to rush" element. other than that, my spa retreat has so far been lenient to me. the happenings there has been peachy for me, fortunately. not taking into consideration the hiccups at the office that'd happened for this month end closing processes in my absence. i'd say that we had a lot of time on our hands while we were there, but i can only insist that we did do our work and fulfilled our tasks set for the past couple of days.

so all was good...

Lesson #20080801

[WARNING: Geeky post]

Owing to what my colleague encountered (while I'm not around) and tried calling me up for help, I'd decided to put this down for learning. For myself or otherwise.

This lesson applies mostly to programming or similar high volume processing work. The problem he faced was that an error had occurred while he tried loading in an interface file (from one computer system to another) and the problem was located in one of the records. The file had over eleven thousand records in it, so finding the offending bug was no mean feat. Especially considering the error message (owing to the relatively old software) doesn't provide too much information on which row it had happened in.

So anyway, the solution is straightforward and should apply to most similar situations. I'd call it the "Half-life" solution. Simply chop the file to be loaded in half, bearing in the mind the header row to be replicated, if any.

Let's assume the 2 halves are named "A-1.csv" and "A-2.csv" respectively. And only "A-2.csv" was loaded successfully. This means the error is in "A-1.csv". Separate the records in "A-1.csv" into half again, this time assuming "B-1.csv" and "B-2.csv" are the file names. Attempt loading in both files in sequence. The file that failed to load contains the problematic item. Rinse and repeat this process until you can zoom in on the error.

The other way would have been to load in and run debug through the program. But in most situations, debugging might take longer than expected, and if the program can be left to load in a portion of the records first, while you work on other stuff, why not?

Of course it's not foolproof, but it's the best I can think of in such "dire" situations.