previous night, attack of back pain - likely caused by hours on end sitting in bad chairs (story of the computer-related-employment-employee's life). get some medicated patches, apply a couple to small of back, take a couple of biogesic pills, get some sleep.
awaken late, for some strange reason. hence, breakfast late -- miss the mcdo supersizemebreakfast option, end up with the freshly cooked single piece chicken mcdo with rice. considering the mind is in a breakfast frame, the meal does not go down well: left half of the meat on the drumstick.
late, therefore taxi (if no bus appears).
naturally, all the buses that show up are of the lucena/batangas variety, grab a taxi.
...it turns into the most restful taxi ride i've ever taken (and that's not a bad thing, surprisingly). the driver maintains an unheard of velocity in the vicinity of 60kph. everything was zooming past on both sides -- he also maintained the slow lane on the expressway.
fascinating. most taxi drivers are of the gung-ho variety, for whom every inch gained on any other vehicle is an advantage worth taking to an excess; not this one.
it actually gave me time to think on a short film that might be worthwhile making -- as opposed to paying attention to a driver's lane-wayward excesses.
late to work, yes. and strangely refreshed and unstressed. hooray for 60kph.
Friday, October 21, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
a palawan adventure ... continuation
strangely enough, the post of which this is a continuation is almost a full year old. "the mind wanders/my very own titanic adventure" was posted all of october 27, 2004.
now, what brings this back to mind? well, looking through some pictures that i'd scanned in quite a whiles back when i was still in the employ of a previous company, i came across some that were taken during that particular holy week trip.
following are some snapshots from that sequence of events...
White Beach, somewhere near Puerto Princesa -- just a single short tricycle ride away. this has nothing to do with the image sequence that follows. just a nice picture, i think.
from image left to right "leo" (refer to post in october 2004 archives) , paul, and me. this is where the trek to the underground river begins. taking the picture is nash, one of paul's then-fiancee's officemates at the legend palawan. why trek to the underground river? hmm. i'll have to think about that.
however the reasoning came about, it was also decided to take the jungle trail, as opposed to the monkey trail (which offered more seaside views, as we found out in a subsequent trip). it was actually quite adventurous, having nothing to follow other than the evidence of a path through the rainforest (and some marked trees) to tell us which way to go. sometime during the trip, we came upon huge boulders (or so they seemed) that flanked the path for a ways... some large enough to have little hollows beneath that could conceivably be used for shelter... for man or beast alike. never thought to check for snakes or other stuff like that.
the rest of the trip was actually quite a blur. i do recall that at a certain point, when the trail resumed going uphill, we four were laughing uproariously at the prospect of an imagined "sari sari store" just beyond the next rise. and the hill after that, and so on. weird, in retrospect, but that's just the way it happened.
ultimately:
the end of the journey is at hand. beyond the ever-downward stairs bridging awesome chasms (awesome to the tired mind, anyways) was the park at the mouth of the underground river. at this point we had also managed to chase away a rather territorial monkey who laid claim to a piece of railing and hissed and spitted (kinda cat-like) as we approached. next time, i'll bring a water pistol.
in summary: a fun time was had by all.
now, what brings this back to mind? well, looking through some pictures that i'd scanned in quite a whiles back when i was still in the employ of a previous company, i came across some that were taken during that particular holy week trip.
following are some snapshots from that sequence of events...
White Beach, somewhere near Puerto Princesa -- just a single short tricycle ride away. this has nothing to do with the image sequence that follows. just a nice picture, i think.
from image left to right "leo" (refer to post in october 2004 archives) , paul, and me. this is where the trek to the underground river begins. taking the picture is nash, one of paul's then-fiancee's officemates at the legend palawan. why trek to the underground river? hmm. i'll have to think about that.
however the reasoning came about, it was also decided to take the jungle trail, as opposed to the monkey trail (which offered more seaside views, as we found out in a subsequent trip). it was actually quite adventurous, having nothing to follow other than the evidence of a path through the rainforest (and some marked trees) to tell us which way to go. sometime during the trip, we came upon huge boulders (or so they seemed) that flanked the path for a ways... some large enough to have little hollows beneath that could conceivably be used for shelter... for man or beast alike. never thought to check for snakes or other stuff like that.
the rest of the trip was actually quite a blur. i do recall that at a certain point, when the trail resumed going uphill, we four were laughing uproariously at the prospect of an imagined "sari sari store" just beyond the next rise. and the hill after that, and so on. weird, in retrospect, but that's just the way it happened.
ultimately:
the end of the journey is at hand. beyond the ever-downward stairs bridging awesome chasms (awesome to the tired mind, anyways) was the park at the mouth of the underground river. at this point we had also managed to chase away a rather territorial monkey who laid claim to a piece of railing and hissed and spitted (kinda cat-like) as we approached. next time, i'll bring a water pistol.
in summary: a fun time was had by all.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
the unplanned trip, part 3a
the mall.
it is, by sm standards, one of their smaller malls. perhaps a bit larger than sm centerpoint. it does have a singular feature, one that is shared by no other malls that i know of (and have been to) in the sm mall empire: it's got this open air chasm, if you will, in the center of it, topped by a permanent industrial-scale translucent tent.
makes sense, really. less airconditioning load, given the generally cool weather year-round in the city of pines. i noted that a given corner of the atrium on any given floor had at least one of the coffee chains represented. starbucks on the first, next to the main entrance, seattle's best on the floor above, and on the uppermost floor, facing west, i think, was figaro. of the three, the upper floor coffee joints had the benefit of the balconies that flanked the building on eastern and western sides.
in terms of the view, figaro had the best.
also, with the prevailing winds, figaro had more than it's fair share of the prevailing westerly winds, which meant a fair amount of wind chill. thank heavens for their coffee (decaf) and their rendition of black forest cake (which seemed to be more moist that most versions i've tried at coffee places).
now if they only had better outdoor seating (seems like the aluminum extrusion thingies that cibo also favors), it would be a fine place to spend literally hours just watching clouds roll in over the bowl of the city proper.
thus went the rest of that afternoon, a cup of coffee and a slice of cake helping the time slip by.
incidentally, and as glenn mentioned, clouds are warm.
surprising, really. stood at the balcony railing as a wall of white poured over the western hills (peaks?) and obliterated the view of the city below. the wind that drove the cloud had the bite of wind chill, and not a few drops of rain. but when the cloud finally made contact with the mall, the wind actually died and i could feel that warmth that glenn spoke of.
...then it began to rain in earnest. back to the coffee and cake.
a quite interesting though fairly uneventful afternoon. which, from time to time, is a good thing.
it is, by sm standards, one of their smaller malls. perhaps a bit larger than sm centerpoint. it does have a singular feature, one that is shared by no other malls that i know of (and have been to) in the sm mall empire: it's got this open air chasm, if you will, in the center of it, topped by a permanent industrial-scale translucent tent.
makes sense, really. less airconditioning load, given the generally cool weather year-round in the city of pines. i noted that a given corner of the atrium on any given floor had at least one of the coffee chains represented. starbucks on the first, next to the main entrance, seattle's best on the floor above, and on the uppermost floor, facing west, i think, was figaro. of the three, the upper floor coffee joints had the benefit of the balconies that flanked the building on eastern and western sides.
in terms of the view, figaro had the best.
also, with the prevailing winds, figaro had more than it's fair share of the prevailing westerly winds, which meant a fair amount of wind chill. thank heavens for their coffee (decaf) and their rendition of black forest cake (which seemed to be more moist that most versions i've tried at coffee places).
now if they only had better outdoor seating (seems like the aluminum extrusion thingies that cibo also favors), it would be a fine place to spend literally hours just watching clouds roll in over the bowl of the city proper.
thus went the rest of that afternoon, a cup of coffee and a slice of cake helping the time slip by.
incidentally, and as glenn mentioned, clouds are warm.
surprising, really. stood at the balcony railing as a wall of white poured over the western hills (peaks?) and obliterated the view of the city below. the wind that drove the cloud had the bite of wind chill, and not a few drops of rain. but when the cloud finally made contact with the mall, the wind actually died and i could feel that warmth that glenn spoke of.
...then it began to rain in earnest. back to the coffee and cake.
a quite interesting though fairly uneventful afternoon. which, from time to time, is a good thing.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Sunday, September 18, 2005
thunderbirds are ... stop
a few days back, a dvd of thunderbirds (the remake of the marionette tv series of the sixties), came across louie's desk, courtesy of one of the composers in the company's music division (we're a semi-one-stop-shop for multimedia production, so to speak).
neither of us had caught the movie during it's theater run (hard to remember why, if it was because we were busy, or due to the potential for the movie's being a dud courtesy of the director...)
later that day, while i was on a search and destroy mission for temporary files on his home computer, louie decided that it may be time to give the movie a look-see. at that time, joe also came in, so we three ...
... suffered.
it was, plainly said, horrible. at times, it seemed that i was watching a bad local movie, so lame were the situations, so centered on the teenage component of the cast, so set up with "moments" where they could throw off some "witty" quips while time stopped, then resumed as soon as their "cute" moments were over.
ugh.
i am not surprised that it bombed.
neither of us had caught the movie during it's theater run (hard to remember why, if it was because we were busy, or due to the potential for the movie's being a dud courtesy of the director...)
later that day, while i was on a search and destroy mission for temporary files on his home computer, louie decided that it may be time to give the movie a look-see. at that time, joe also came in, so we three ...
... suffered.
it was, plainly said, horrible. at times, it seemed that i was watching a bad local movie, so lame were the situations, so centered on the teenage component of the cast, so set up with "moments" where they could throw off some "witty" quips while time stopped, then resumed as soon as their "cute" moments were over.
ugh.
i am not surprised that it bombed.
Saturday, September 17, 2005
cafe by the ruins (the unplanned trip, part 3)
the plan: lunch at the "cafe by the ruins"
we left the red lion inn at the stroke of noon, and somehow decided to wear our jackets (which turned out to be a good thing, as we found out later) -- though at that moment, with the sun shining through sparse cloud cover, i felt somewhat foolish for being overdressed given the heat.
another sub-40-peso fx taxi ride and there we were at the cafe by the ruins. strictly speaking, though, it should be called the cafe "in" the ruins, seeing as the entry to the establishment is actually one of the arched doorways of the former governor's residence in the city of pines; it had been bombed to pieces during the japanese retreat of world war ii (so i read somewhere).
it's a small-ish place, no more than 15 or so tables, but it's a nice place to be nevertheless. especially that it began to drizzle as soon as we were seated.
cafe by the ruins, seen from the furthest alcove -- you can see the remnants of the ruin's wall and the two arched doorways beyond the people seated at the tables
view outside the alcove at what may have been a garden of sorts
one of the light fixtures close-up
the rest of the place
so, cool weather, made cooler by the rain. even the slightest breeze had a bite to it.
to the food:
ingredients-wise, i had a white fish in coconut milk with ginger and malunggay leaves, paired with native red/purple rice -- i forget what the dish is called. glenn had a pasta with crab fat and pan de sal with quesong puti. definitely a food trip, and good. ...and, going against the grain after my recent-ish bout with something acronymized as g.e.r.d., i had a cuppa fresh barako coffee...
neat fortification against the natural airconditioning of baguio.
lunch, to reiterate, was good. have to go back there sometime. as to the coffee bit, the diuretic effects were quite pronounced, no doubt exacerbated by the chilly weather. so off to the comfort room, then. where i noticed the signs.
note on the signs: as i recall the menu had a short introduction about the establishment, and it said something to the effect that the owners envisioned it also as a hangout for artists, and there were quite a few artworks about the place (which, sad to say, i didn't take pictures of. my phone/camera is just not handy enough to take pictures without a fair amount of hassle -- a blogworthy topic, to be sure.).
but to give you a sample of the art, here are the signs for the male and female rest rooms:
after lunch, the unplanned trip continued. took a jeep and got off around burnham park. where, it transpired, there were few people.
odd, memory serves that burnham park is one of the most congregated (if that's the proper word) places in baguio, practically one of the only open spaces in the city for people to use. it could have been the drizzle, true, but the place was really sparsely occupied, few boats making lazy circles in the rectangular man-made lake. especially odd that it was the beginning of the weekend.
we walked around the lake, avoiding enterprising salesmen of various trinkets. i was not keen on boating on the lake, so without much ado, we decided to see what shoemart baguio was all about, having heard that one of it's features, an open atrium, had caused some grief at the outset, during a rare direct typhoon hit to the city.
the walk to the mall, set on what seems to be one of the highest points in the city (site of the former pines hotel, i'm told -- that burned down years ago to some loss of life), was quite an exercise. add to that the fact that no straight way to the place was immediately visible. so it took about 30 minutes of walking to get there.
once there, we discovered where everyone who should have been at burnham park went.
they went malling.
more later.
we left the red lion inn at the stroke of noon, and somehow decided to wear our jackets (which turned out to be a good thing, as we found out later) -- though at that moment, with the sun shining through sparse cloud cover, i felt somewhat foolish for being overdressed given the heat.
another sub-40-peso fx taxi ride and there we were at the cafe by the ruins. strictly speaking, though, it should be called the cafe "in" the ruins, seeing as the entry to the establishment is actually one of the arched doorways of the former governor's residence in the city of pines; it had been bombed to pieces during the japanese retreat of world war ii (so i read somewhere).
it's a small-ish place, no more than 15 or so tables, but it's a nice place to be nevertheless. especially that it began to drizzle as soon as we were seated.
cafe by the ruins, seen from the furthest alcove -- you can see the remnants of the ruin's wall and the two arched doorways beyond the people seated at the tables
view outside the alcove at what may have been a garden of sorts
one of the light fixtures close-up
the rest of the place
so, cool weather, made cooler by the rain. even the slightest breeze had a bite to it.
to the food:
ingredients-wise, i had a white fish in coconut milk with ginger and malunggay leaves, paired with native red/purple rice -- i forget what the dish is called. glenn had a pasta with crab fat and pan de sal with quesong puti. definitely a food trip, and good. ...and, going against the grain after my recent-ish bout with something acronymized as g.e.r.d., i had a cuppa fresh barako coffee...
neat fortification against the natural airconditioning of baguio.
lunch, to reiterate, was good. have to go back there sometime. as to the coffee bit, the diuretic effects were quite pronounced, no doubt exacerbated by the chilly weather. so off to the comfort room, then. where i noticed the signs.
note on the signs: as i recall the menu had a short introduction about the establishment, and it said something to the effect that the owners envisioned it also as a hangout for artists, and there were quite a few artworks about the place (which, sad to say, i didn't take pictures of. my phone/camera is just not handy enough to take pictures without a fair amount of hassle -- a blogworthy topic, to be sure.).
but to give you a sample of the art, here are the signs for the male and female rest rooms:
after lunch, the unplanned trip continued. took a jeep and got off around burnham park. where, it transpired, there were few people.
odd, memory serves that burnham park is one of the most congregated (if that's the proper word) places in baguio, practically one of the only open spaces in the city for people to use. it could have been the drizzle, true, but the place was really sparsely occupied, few boats making lazy circles in the rectangular man-made lake. especially odd that it was the beginning of the weekend.
we walked around the lake, avoiding enterprising salesmen of various trinkets. i was not keen on boating on the lake, so without much ado, we decided to see what shoemart baguio was all about, having heard that one of it's features, an open atrium, had caused some grief at the outset, during a rare direct typhoon hit to the city.
the walk to the mall, set on what seems to be one of the highest points in the city (site of the former pines hotel, i'm told -- that burned down years ago to some loss of life), was quite an exercise. add to that the fact that no straight way to the place was immediately visible. so it took about 30 minutes of walking to get there.
once there, we discovered where everyone who should have been at burnham park went.
they went malling.
more later.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
another spur of the moment
view from the rented hut at leslie's tagaytay
rainy day that saturday, much like today. except that there were some spots of sun amidst the downpours. someone felt the need to see the sunset from the tagaytay highlands, and a bunch of us were sufficiently energized by that notion to pile into a car and drive off down south.
naturally, there were some fits and false starts thrown in before the trip actually got underway, but underway we were, at about 2 in the afternoon.
after about an hour, we were ensconced in one of the rentable cliffside huts of an establishment by the name of "leslie's". the view from our particular hut, as per the picture, was framed by two other huts with uninterrupted views of the volcano on an island within a lake on a larger island. i figure that the square structures on the water are fishpens of a sort, though how fish survive in the acidic water of the lake (which is itself a caldera lake, if you stop to think about it) is unknown to me.
after some photo shenanigans, lunch was had at about three, and the food was good, and the wind, chilly.
hooray for impromptu trips.
incidentally, the trip's instigator didn't see the sunset. we repaired to the picnic grove to see the "nature walk" i think it's called, and sunset was therefore hidden from view when that particular time rolled around.
...perhaps our next trip should be to the breakwaters at manila bay. at least the sunset there ought to be a sure thing to see.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
the unplanned trip: just get on a bus: cheap accomodations
continuation...
4 am in baguio city. the sky is impressively clear, and the air is cold -- breath condensing cold, as we speak of where to go while debarking the bus and plunging through enterprising taxi drivers handing out little slips of paper with accomodations writ thereon.
glenn, having spent quite a whiles in this collegiate city in his college days, suggested someplace that was reasonably priced, with hot water shower facilities (a plus, in the frigid early morning temperatures baguio is known for).
so off we went, fx taxi diesel roar through the ups and downs of the streets of baguio, to corfu village. see other places with big signs note that their rooms are available for 1,800 a night. expensive...
after a short trip, we arrive i know not where. the web lists the place as either "aussie (or attic) hotel and pub", while the sign says "red lion inn" and "corfu village rooms" (i think).
taking the semi-obvious entryway, the ostensible information desk is empty. glenn makes for the bar inside and lo and behold, that's where you get information about the room rates and availability (or it may have been the late hour that caused the info desk to be unmanned).
800 pesos per night per room, with complimentary breakfast thrown in.
see the room, quite oddly shaped, somewhat like a skewed trapezoid, one window, an american style fan with lights and droopy wooden blades, tv with cable, double bed, door to c.r/shower.
what the hell, lack of real sleep on the bus ride over, take it.
he takes the left side of the bed, i the right.
sleep till breakfast, somewhere around 9 or so; unlike what happens to me in the metro when i sleep during the day, i wake up without a pounding headache. hooray for natural airconditioning!
take a bath. shower is odd in the sense that it has a heating device/shower head at the end of a pipe sticking out of the wall in the equally oddly shaped bathroom (a consequence of the fact that the room is situated in a part of the building that has a sharp diagonal wall relative to the rest of the structure).
instructions are above the sink's mirror. something like "turn shower knob four revolutions and then when water is at desired temperature, turn back to adjust heat". hmm. so i shivered while waiting for the rushing stream of water to get warm -- which it didn't, even when the device was making that boiling water noise that you get from electric airpots.
on a hunch, i turned the shower knob until the flow was reduced to a trickle akin to the effect of water draining from a small can with a bunch of holes in the bottom... ...at which point the water began to warm up.
so, hot shower, sort of. but better than the arctic blast of refrigerated water that would have been the alternative.
got dressed up for baguio adventure, woke up the roomie, and watched cable tv as he got himself all refreshed and all that. the only real alternatives on the cable were cnn, bbc, and discovery travel and leisure. cnn/bbc were all on the katrina disaster, discovery travel and leisure was all global trekker (nee lonely planet). refreshing to see the latter show, which was a mainstay of destiny cable when that was the cable provider i'd had when i lived in mandaluyong...
...at the makati apartment, the cable provider is sky. they don't have discovery travel and leisure.
the breakfast was decent enough (i had the "longsilog", which is to say: native (skinless) sausage, garlic fried rice, and scrambled egg, plus their brewed coffee), not bad at all.
and after that, we repaired to the room to discuss the day's adventure. some more cable tv, and then off to the "cafe by the ruins" for lunch.
hmm. a food trip. seeing as there wasn't a real plan of activities once the ascent to baguio was made, a food trip was all right with me.
i'll have to see about how to include pictures with this blog. think i'll ask joe.
to be continued...
4 am in baguio city. the sky is impressively clear, and the air is cold -- breath condensing cold, as we speak of where to go while debarking the bus and plunging through enterprising taxi drivers handing out little slips of paper with accomodations writ thereon.
glenn, having spent quite a whiles in this collegiate city in his college days, suggested someplace that was reasonably priced, with hot water shower facilities (a plus, in the frigid early morning temperatures baguio is known for).
so off we went, fx taxi diesel roar through the ups and downs of the streets of baguio, to corfu village. see other places with big signs note that their rooms are available for 1,800 a night. expensive...
after a short trip, we arrive i know not where. the web lists the place as either "aussie (or attic) hotel and pub", while the sign says "red lion inn" and "corfu village rooms" (i think).
taking the semi-obvious entryway, the ostensible information desk is empty. glenn makes for the bar inside and lo and behold, that's where you get information about the room rates and availability (or it may have been the late hour that caused the info desk to be unmanned).
800 pesos per night per room, with complimentary breakfast thrown in.
see the room, quite oddly shaped, somewhat like a skewed trapezoid, one window, an american style fan with lights and droopy wooden blades, tv with cable, double bed, door to c.r/shower.
what the hell, lack of real sleep on the bus ride over, take it.
he takes the left side of the bed, i the right.
sleep till breakfast, somewhere around 9 or so; unlike what happens to me in the metro when i sleep during the day, i wake up without a pounding headache. hooray for natural airconditioning!
take a bath. shower is odd in the sense that it has a heating device/shower head at the end of a pipe sticking out of the wall in the equally oddly shaped bathroom (a consequence of the fact that the room is situated in a part of the building that has a sharp diagonal wall relative to the rest of the structure).
instructions are above the sink's mirror. something like "turn shower knob four revolutions and then when water is at desired temperature, turn back to adjust heat". hmm. so i shivered while waiting for the rushing stream of water to get warm -- which it didn't, even when the device was making that boiling water noise that you get from electric airpots.
on a hunch, i turned the shower knob until the flow was reduced to a trickle akin to the effect of water draining from a small can with a bunch of holes in the bottom... ...at which point the water began to warm up.
so, hot shower, sort of. but better than the arctic blast of refrigerated water that would have been the alternative.
got dressed up for baguio adventure, woke up the roomie, and watched cable tv as he got himself all refreshed and all that. the only real alternatives on the cable were cnn, bbc, and discovery travel and leisure. cnn/bbc were all on the katrina disaster, discovery travel and leisure was all global trekker (nee lonely planet). refreshing to see the latter show, which was a mainstay of destiny cable when that was the cable provider i'd had when i lived in mandaluyong...
...at the makati apartment, the cable provider is sky. they don't have discovery travel and leisure.
the breakfast was decent enough (i had the "longsilog", which is to say: native (skinless) sausage, garlic fried rice, and scrambled egg, plus their brewed coffee), not bad at all.
and after that, we repaired to the room to discuss the day's adventure. some more cable tv, and then off to the "cafe by the ruins" for lunch.
hmm. a food trip. seeing as there wasn't a real plan of activities once the ascent to baguio was made, a food trip was all right with me.
i'll have to see about how to include pictures with this blog. think i'll ask joe.
to be continued...
Friday, September 09, 2005
jeepney moment
late to work, due to spending the night in the makati apartment as opposed to the las pinas one. after the de rigeur mcdonald's supersize me breakfast (big breakfast with muffin -- as opposed to the rice i normally get), walked about a kilometer and a half to the most opportune spot on the south superhighway near pasay road to get an alabang-bound bus.
instead of broiling in the sun at the late hour (best time to be walking there is around 8 am, in the shade of the skyway), the walk was made bearable by the threatening overcast sky. got a rare "juaymah maureen" bus (for that time, anyway. they usually come along once an hour), again mostly empty for their return trip to alabang.
went to the jeepney terminal at the alabang market and got on a zapote jeep.
i got on the shadowed side of the jeep, close as possible to the entrance/exit and immediately had an odd impression of the guy one person shy of being behind the driver. he had a very pinched face, highlighted by the hollowness of his cheeks, and his eyes struck me as somewhat downcast, yet darting about.
his long-sleeved pullover shirt was probably once very colorful but now was faded and quite thin, fabric-wise.
as is natural on a jeepney, the farther from the driver, one has to hand off the fare to passengers inbetween...
...and he took the fare, doing something strange. maybe it was a matter of timing, but i recall his receiving it with his right hand, but he then made a motion with his left hand to give it to the lady next to the driver; who was at that very time giving someone else's change back.
in that odd exchange, his left hand, fingers closed, just tapped the lady's left shoulder as he got the change with his right hand.
i really don't know why i was looking at this entire happening, but it struck me that he didn't pass my fare along at all.
the situation got stranger when the lady with the driver began to make a fuss over the fare from a passenger opposite me, asking where it was.
he mentioned quite loudly that he'd already passed it, and he had -- though i didn't notice to whom he handed it to. in the intervening period, people had gotten on the jeep, hiding colorful-faded-shirt from my view.
he got off at a stop next to a road that led to a "depressed" area, and i lost sight of him as the jeepney sped away.
mixed feelings on my part. perhaps it was just a matter of timing, but with my senses still raw over my previous loss on a jeepney, it lent a kind of unease about this kind of public transport.
granted, the amount was very small, but still...
not sure i'm making sense.
instead of broiling in the sun at the late hour (best time to be walking there is around 8 am, in the shade of the skyway), the walk was made bearable by the threatening overcast sky. got a rare "juaymah maureen" bus (for that time, anyway. they usually come along once an hour), again mostly empty for their return trip to alabang.
went to the jeepney terminal at the alabang market and got on a zapote jeep.
i got on the shadowed side of the jeep, close as possible to the entrance/exit and immediately had an odd impression of the guy one person shy of being behind the driver. he had a very pinched face, highlighted by the hollowness of his cheeks, and his eyes struck me as somewhat downcast, yet darting about.
his long-sleeved pullover shirt was probably once very colorful but now was faded and quite thin, fabric-wise.
as is natural on a jeepney, the farther from the driver, one has to hand off the fare to passengers inbetween...
...and he took the fare, doing something strange. maybe it was a matter of timing, but i recall his receiving it with his right hand, but he then made a motion with his left hand to give it to the lady next to the driver; who was at that very time giving someone else's change back.
in that odd exchange, his left hand, fingers closed, just tapped the lady's left shoulder as he got the change with his right hand.
i really don't know why i was looking at this entire happening, but it struck me that he didn't pass my fare along at all.
the situation got stranger when the lady with the driver began to make a fuss over the fare from a passenger opposite me, asking where it was.
he mentioned quite loudly that he'd already passed it, and he had -- though i didn't notice to whom he handed it to. in the intervening period, people had gotten on the jeep, hiding colorful-faded-shirt from my view.
he got off at a stop next to a road that led to a "depressed" area, and i lost sight of him as the jeepney sped away.
mixed feelings on my part. perhaps it was just a matter of timing, but with my senses still raw over my previous loss on a jeepney, it lent a kind of unease about this kind of public transport.
granted, the amount was very small, but still...
not sure i'm making sense.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
the unplanned trip: just get on a bus.
every once in a while, discussions come up in the office about going out of town on a weekend, be it just a day trip or an over-overnight at a beach resort somewhere (typically down south).
naturally, multi-person pre-arranged trips will take the successful confluence of various conditions to happen, and more often than not the trip simply evaporates into the ether as one or more proponents see to other, more pressing, matters.
on my end, self-inflicted pressure to be out of the metro for a weekend had been building ever since before my rather odd birth day.
harkening to something louie said about just jumping on a bus to somewhere, me and my roommate decided last friday night to just go to baguio. no firm plans, no nothing. off he went to the bus station to see about securing seats on the last express bus, and i did little other than stuff some clothes into a duffel bag; enough for a three-day trip, just in case.
express bus: i was also considering a trip down south to my comet-viewing haunt of white beach in mindoro's puerto galera area. but that would have entailed a bus/boat/tricycle trip one way and the reverse order of that the other way (naturally) -- and i was looking for the least hassle on this particular occasion, so the north-bound bus to baguio seemed like a good idea indeed. the "express bus" part is another inducement -- otherwise, aircon or no, the bus would have paused at every conceivable stop along the way. that would stretch the nominally six-hour journey to god knows how long.
i wasn't in the mood to be that patient.
the last express bus of the day was scheduled to depart at 11:00 pm. more time to consider what to bring or not: we decided not to lug along his megapixel digicam -- bad idea, as it turns out, but that's the way of a spur of the moment trip.
to the bus station, then. good thing i insisted on being early. i'd forgotten to consider the effect of "office time" versus "philippine time." turns out that office time was ten minutes late, oddly. if we'd been on time according to my watch, we'd have missed the bus entirely.
at any rate, bus left on time (their time) and being a late hour, we cleared the metropolis in under thirty minutes: pasay to balintawak via edsa, and thence to the privately operated north tollway. i suppose the massive increase in toll fees are worth the "world-classness" of the construction employed on the tollway. the trip was smooth and uneventful (short of the rain, but that's a given for this period of the philippine seasonal dichotomy), highway traversed in an hour.
i tried my best not to sleep (not that there was anything to see out there, really), but the sandman did his work and consciousness fled not long after the bus had departed the tollway and began negotiating the national road network heading for the mountain fastnesses of the "summer capital" of the philippines.
every once in a while, i'd wake up as the the bus did some sharp sideways transitions during overtaking maneuvers. on this matter: victory liner (the operator of the bus we were on) has a motto to the effect that they bring you to places "faster and safer."
the "faster" part was not in doubt, given the super-sharp overtaking maneuvers. we'd come up to a clot of slow movers, and the bus would shift left, then shift right after overtaking up to three vehicles in a line. immediately after that, something would flash by on the left. fun! not.
back to sleep. hard.
woke up as the bus did it's one scheduled stop somewhere in tarlac or la union, i don't remember for sure. probably the latter. it's a stop that's owned by the bus line itself, so i'm told. i'll take more notes next time.
soon enough it's the ride into the mountains. slept for a few bits, except where the g-forces of the bus negotiating switchbacks would wake me up by either pressing me against the windows or against the seat bolsters such as they were.
back to sleep.
then i wake, and i notice stars in the sky as we come up and there's a carpet of sodium pinpricks in the distant dark. we're almost there.
bus station. glenn (roommate) notes that the victory liner facility is new to him, situated where the old pnr office was. odd, i thought. a philippine national railroad (presently semi-defunct) office in baguio? i could hardly imagine their ancient hardware making that climb.
time was 4:00 am. a five-hour trip. a full hour shorter than expected. "faster" indeed.
i am glad, though, that i didn't get a ringside seat next to the driver. i figure that the climb into the mountains would have been hair-raising indeed (had i a head of hair to raise, at any rate).
so there we are. baguio. now what?
to be continued.
naturally, multi-person pre-arranged trips will take the successful confluence of various conditions to happen, and more often than not the trip simply evaporates into the ether as one or more proponents see to other, more pressing, matters.
on my end, self-inflicted pressure to be out of the metro for a weekend had been building ever since before my rather odd birth day.
harkening to something louie said about just jumping on a bus to somewhere, me and my roommate decided last friday night to just go to baguio. no firm plans, no nothing. off he went to the bus station to see about securing seats on the last express bus, and i did little other than stuff some clothes into a duffel bag; enough for a three-day trip, just in case.
express bus: i was also considering a trip down south to my comet-viewing haunt of white beach in mindoro's puerto galera area. but that would have entailed a bus/boat/tricycle trip one way and the reverse order of that the other way (naturally) -- and i was looking for the least hassle on this particular occasion, so the north-bound bus to baguio seemed like a good idea indeed. the "express bus" part is another inducement -- otherwise, aircon or no, the bus would have paused at every conceivable stop along the way. that would stretch the nominally six-hour journey to god knows how long.
i wasn't in the mood to be that patient.
the last express bus of the day was scheduled to depart at 11:00 pm. more time to consider what to bring or not: we decided not to lug along his megapixel digicam -- bad idea, as it turns out, but that's the way of a spur of the moment trip.
to the bus station, then. good thing i insisted on being early. i'd forgotten to consider the effect of "office time" versus "philippine time." turns out that office time was ten minutes late, oddly. if we'd been on time according to my watch, we'd have missed the bus entirely.
at any rate, bus left on time (their time) and being a late hour, we cleared the metropolis in under thirty minutes: pasay to balintawak via edsa, and thence to the privately operated north tollway. i suppose the massive increase in toll fees are worth the "world-classness" of the construction employed on the tollway. the trip was smooth and uneventful (short of the rain, but that's a given for this period of the philippine seasonal dichotomy), highway traversed in an hour.
i tried my best not to sleep (not that there was anything to see out there, really), but the sandman did his work and consciousness fled not long after the bus had departed the tollway and began negotiating the national road network heading for the mountain fastnesses of the "summer capital" of the philippines.
every once in a while, i'd wake up as the the bus did some sharp sideways transitions during overtaking maneuvers. on this matter: victory liner (the operator of the bus we were on) has a motto to the effect that they bring you to places "faster and safer."
the "faster" part was not in doubt, given the super-sharp overtaking maneuvers. we'd come up to a clot of slow movers, and the bus would shift left, then shift right after overtaking up to three vehicles in a line. immediately after that, something would flash by on the left. fun! not.
back to sleep. hard.
woke up as the bus did it's one scheduled stop somewhere in tarlac or la union, i don't remember for sure. probably the latter. it's a stop that's owned by the bus line itself, so i'm told. i'll take more notes next time.
soon enough it's the ride into the mountains. slept for a few bits, except where the g-forces of the bus negotiating switchbacks would wake me up by either pressing me against the windows or against the seat bolsters such as they were.
back to sleep.
then i wake, and i notice stars in the sky as we come up and there's a carpet of sodium pinpricks in the distant dark. we're almost there.
bus station. glenn (roommate) notes that the victory liner facility is new to him, situated where the old pnr office was. odd, i thought. a philippine national railroad (presently semi-defunct) office in baguio? i could hardly imagine their ancient hardware making that climb.
time was 4:00 am. a five-hour trip. a full hour shorter than expected. "faster" indeed.
i am glad, though, that i didn't get a ringside seat next to the driver. i figure that the climb into the mountains would have been hair-raising indeed (had i a head of hair to raise, at any rate).
so there we are. baguio. now what?
to be continued.
Friday, July 15, 2005
how do i feel
july 15, 2005. friday.
the loss of a cellphone may not matter, in the final analysis, in the greater scheme of things that one can call life.
one could as easily just have lost one's life in the defense of property (cellphone) as can be readily observed in those morbid single paragraphs in the crime sections of daily tabloids.
the inevitable reflex of the mind, to rationalize: it could have been worse. as it was, all it was, really, was a couple of gents (hoods?) staking out a likely target, making well rehearsed moves, and emerging with their prize.
as i told the production manager, hopefully their families (if they had any) would benefit from the cash influx obtained by the sale of my cellphone.
or i could equally wish them all visited by a plague of misfortune.
but that's not how the world operates, such as it is. property and ownership can be a fleeting thing, it just depends on chance at times.
and retribution? we'll never know.
all i know is that if there's a next time, when someone sits beside me in a non-crowded jeep a trifle too closely (and somewhat forward, too), it's time to check the pockets.
the loss of a cellphone may not matter, in the final analysis, in the greater scheme of things that one can call life.
one could as easily just have lost one's life in the defense of property (cellphone) as can be readily observed in those morbid single paragraphs in the crime sections of daily tabloids.
the inevitable reflex of the mind, to rationalize: it could have been worse. as it was, all it was, really, was a couple of gents (hoods?) staking out a likely target, making well rehearsed moves, and emerging with their prize.
as i told the production manager, hopefully their families (if they had any) would benefit from the cash influx obtained by the sale of my cellphone.
or i could equally wish them all visited by a plague of misfortune.
but that's not how the world operates, such as it is. property and ownership can be a fleeting thing, it just depends on chance at times.
and retribution? we'll never know.
all i know is that if there's a next time, when someone sits beside me in a non-crowded jeep a trifle too closely (and somewhat forward, too), it's time to check the pockets.
Friday, July 08, 2005
a couple of chocolate eclairs and a short cafe mocha for lunch
...odd as it may seem.
but that's not what this entry is about (sorta).
this makes twice this week that i've indulged in having a couple of chocolate eclairs as my "pastry of choice" to go with my default short cafe mocha fix, and calling that "lunch".
both times, there were some flies doing their thing in the airconditioned enclosedness of the starbucks at alabang town center.
...wonder if they ought to invest in an active bug zapper device, like the one that sits outside the italianni's across the way, sending flying bugs into the netherworld with an almighty "crack!" and a brief flash of electricity arcing across closely spaced wires with the bug forming the completed circuit...
back to the starbucks. a day or two before, one of the flies managed to land on the backside (from the vantage point of my coworker, that is) of a particular chocolate cake that he'd fancied on for his lunch thing. to the effect that he studiously avoided that part of the cake thereafter, leaving a thin wall of icing and cake standing on the saucer when he was done.
today, he decided to go against the grain and went with some sort of flakey pastry triangle with meat filling as opposed to the dome cake ("tartuffo" as per italianni's) that he'd liked the first time he tried it.
no, the flies did not land on the pastry.
the fly landed in his drink.
it was some sort of tea in boiling water, and as he was stirring a couple of tablespoons of honey into it, a large-ish fly (of the metallic-colored variety that sometimes hang in the still air of some mornings, perhaps asleep on the wing) swooped in (attracted by the honey, maybe) and likely got overwhelmed by the scalding steam from the tea...
...and was instantly stilled in the freshly boiled and brewing tea, with none of the thrashing about that most winged bugs indulge in when trapped by the surface tension of a drink one is nursing at the moment.
suffice to say that he had the drink replaced post-haste.
...there. just a random moment of, well, randomness.
but that's not what this entry is about (sorta).
this makes twice this week that i've indulged in having a couple of chocolate eclairs as my "pastry of choice" to go with my default short cafe mocha fix, and calling that "lunch".
both times, there were some flies doing their thing in the airconditioned enclosedness of the starbucks at alabang town center.
...wonder if they ought to invest in an active bug zapper device, like the one that sits outside the italianni's across the way, sending flying bugs into the netherworld with an almighty "crack!" and a brief flash of electricity arcing across closely spaced wires with the bug forming the completed circuit...
back to the starbucks. a day or two before, one of the flies managed to land on the backside (from the vantage point of my coworker, that is) of a particular chocolate cake that he'd fancied on for his lunch thing. to the effect that he studiously avoided that part of the cake thereafter, leaving a thin wall of icing and cake standing on the saucer when he was done.
today, he decided to go against the grain and went with some sort of flakey pastry triangle with meat filling as opposed to the dome cake ("tartuffo" as per italianni's) that he'd liked the first time he tried it.
no, the flies did not land on the pastry.
the fly landed in his drink.
it was some sort of tea in boiling water, and as he was stirring a couple of tablespoons of honey into it, a large-ish fly (of the metallic-colored variety that sometimes hang in the still air of some mornings, perhaps asleep on the wing) swooped in (attracted by the honey, maybe) and likely got overwhelmed by the scalding steam from the tea...
...and was instantly stilled in the freshly boiled and brewing tea, with none of the thrashing about that most winged bugs indulge in when trapped by the surface tension of a drink one is nursing at the moment.
suffice to say that he had the drink replaced post-haste.
...there. just a random moment of, well, randomness.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
dessert review: coffee bean and tea leaf
desserts have always had an appeal for me, ever since i grew out of my candy bar/chewy choco chip cookie phase. time was, i was in the habit of having two slices of cake a day -- with the inevitable expansion of the waistline that's been so difficult to remedy (laziness and all). well, when i was doing the indoor wall climbing bit, that was a step in the right direction -- reversed by the magical musically-disappearing kidney stone (but that's a tale for another day).
back to dessert. whenever i try a coffee place, i inevitably have an order of dessert tacked on to the almost invariable cafe mocha something or other. suffice to say that i'm partial to starbucks' interpretation of that particular variant...
...but back to coffee bean and tea leaf (mighty distracted am i today).
in times past, i have been stung by the rather offputting cafe mocha interpretation of the bean. and the tiramisu sucked big time. and something that had raspberry and sponge cake sucked even bigger time than the other: imagine, if you will, raspberry in white sand and that's the textural extravaganza that was that dessert.
and now, a reprieve. on the coffee front. ice blended black forest mocha. it was decent. and the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, quite good, and surprisingly, given my other strikeouts.
so there. i can at least recommend this particular dessert from coffee bean and tea leaf. give it a try.
back to dessert. whenever i try a coffee place, i inevitably have an order of dessert tacked on to the almost invariable cafe mocha something or other. suffice to say that i'm partial to starbucks' interpretation of that particular variant...
...but back to coffee bean and tea leaf (mighty distracted am i today).
in times past, i have been stung by the rather offputting cafe mocha interpretation of the bean. and the tiramisu sucked big time. and something that had raspberry and sponge cake sucked even bigger time than the other: imagine, if you will, raspberry in white sand and that's the textural extravaganza that was that dessert.
and now, a reprieve. on the coffee front. ice blended black forest mocha. it was decent. and the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, quite good, and surprisingly, given my other strikeouts.
so there. i can at least recommend this particular dessert from coffee bean and tea leaf. give it a try.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
the way of pain
we've had problems before. to recap briefly, our main server got zapped and good by an unforeseen interaction of meralco power, an uninterruptible power supply, and the building's generator. good thing we had backups. bad thing we had a gremlin in the studio. impossible man. whenever he says that something is impossible, it's a good bet that he's done something. in that case, it was to add new hard disks to the backup server's raid box without first backing up the data to a location that had space enough for the task. end result: 60% of backup lost.
fast forward. almost two months to the day that main server went down. came to work in a star wars frame of mind ("i have a bad feeling..." etc). officemate says that it was the result of a weekend spent watching the extended version of "return of the king" and then shooting the breeze with barkada during impromptu reunion of sorts. however that works, the foreboding was soon to be proven somewhat prescient.
11:30, main server begins to fail.
no power outage. remote access reveals that raid is not visible to server. first line of action: reboot. server comes back online -- still nothing. time for the good ol' physical inspection. in the cold room's antechamber (i suppose it could be called), i find troubleshooter and his colleagues -- working on a different problem. he was unaware of the main server's behavior, impossible man still not having informed him. i turn around and i notice that the main raid box has all it's drive access lights steadily lit. that can't be good.
at that time, impossible man shows up. he himself is surprised at the news. i opine that this does not bode well for the future of that particular server architecture if it just ups and flakes out on whim. my suggestion is to shut down the server and raid for a while (over lunch break), give it a rest, and then see what happens when it's powered on again.
back to my floor, and thence to a mac i use for remote checking on the servers. i launch a raid administration utility to see which of the four raids was powered off.
three were on, one was off. the name of the one that was off gave me chills. i recalled that earlier that morning, impossible man was going to format the raid of the machine whose name the raid bore. back to the cold room. oh no.
backtrack: the mac server/storage solution comprises two parts, a "head" or server, and a raid box that is the storage. the raid box is connected to the storage by high-speed link; but is a separate computer in its own right, and remotely controllable and accessible even from machines that are not it's primary "head". also: four "heads" and four raid boxes stacked alternately starting at the bottom of a rack. primary server/raid combination at the bottom.
the bottom-most raid was powered down.
connect the dots. since the main server's raid had the name of the machine to be formatted, this was the likeliest combination that spelled disaster. i raised this likelihood to the production manager, who spoke to impossible man, who (naturally) uttered the word "impossible" and even tried to deflect any blame my way. at this point in time i backed off. i made the observation that, yes, the machine could indeed have crashed of its own volition. we would just have to see if the machine comes back after being powered on. then we would know either way if it was a system stability on the server/raid part, or idle hands at work.
...this "my word vs. his" is getting to be tiresome.
after lunch. raid powered on. i notice that the names of the raid have been changed, as reflected in the raid admin utility. how decent, and after the fact as usual. ok, let's go have a look see. click on the now-renamed main server raid, check on disk status.
initializing 5%.
he had actually formatted it. honest mistake, or whatever. he had formatted our main server's raid. 4 terabytes of hard work: restoring from unlooked-for backup on render farm; checking and verifying database integrity; a month of full-on rendering. poof.
again, luckily i had a full backup (minus that week) on another server. but still...
strike two...
...third time's the charm.
ugh. methinks i shall not dwell on that possibility.
fast forward. almost two months to the day that main server went down. came to work in a star wars frame of mind ("i have a bad feeling..." etc). officemate says that it was the result of a weekend spent watching the extended version of "return of the king" and then shooting the breeze with barkada during impromptu reunion of sorts. however that works, the foreboding was soon to be proven somewhat prescient.
11:30, main server begins to fail.
no power outage. remote access reveals that raid is not visible to server. first line of action: reboot. server comes back online -- still nothing. time for the good ol' physical inspection. in the cold room's antechamber (i suppose it could be called), i find troubleshooter and his colleagues -- working on a different problem. he was unaware of the main server's behavior, impossible man still not having informed him. i turn around and i notice that the main raid box has all it's drive access lights steadily lit. that can't be good.
at that time, impossible man shows up. he himself is surprised at the news. i opine that this does not bode well for the future of that particular server architecture if it just ups and flakes out on whim. my suggestion is to shut down the server and raid for a while (over lunch break), give it a rest, and then see what happens when it's powered on again.
back to my floor, and thence to a mac i use for remote checking on the servers. i launch a raid administration utility to see which of the four raids was powered off.
three were on, one was off. the name of the one that was off gave me chills. i recalled that earlier that morning, impossible man was going to format the raid of the machine whose name the raid bore. back to the cold room. oh no.
backtrack: the mac server/storage solution comprises two parts, a "head" or server, and a raid box that is the storage. the raid box is connected to the storage by high-speed link; but is a separate computer in its own right, and remotely controllable and accessible even from machines that are not it's primary "head". also: four "heads" and four raid boxes stacked alternately starting at the bottom of a rack. primary server/raid combination at the bottom.
the bottom-most raid was powered down.
connect the dots. since the main server's raid had the name of the machine to be formatted, this was the likeliest combination that spelled disaster. i raised this likelihood to the production manager, who spoke to impossible man, who (naturally) uttered the word "impossible" and even tried to deflect any blame my way. at this point in time i backed off. i made the observation that, yes, the machine could indeed have crashed of its own volition. we would just have to see if the machine comes back after being powered on. then we would know either way if it was a system stability on the server/raid part, or idle hands at work.
...this "my word vs. his" is getting to be tiresome.
after lunch. raid powered on. i notice that the names of the raid have been changed, as reflected in the raid admin utility. how decent, and after the fact as usual. ok, let's go have a look see. click on the now-renamed main server raid, check on disk status.
initializing 5%.
he had actually formatted it. honest mistake, or whatever. he had formatted our main server's raid. 4 terabytes of hard work: restoring from unlooked-for backup on render farm; checking and verifying database integrity; a month of full-on rendering. poof.
again, luckily i had a full backup (minus that week) on another server. but still...
strike two...
...third time's the charm.
ugh. methinks i shall not dwell on that possibility.
Friday, May 13, 2005
it's the destination...
...not the journey.
admittedly a twist on that old saw.
however, in this instance, it does hold true. the project has now finished (indeed, at the end of last month). in relation to a previous post (april 1st), where i noted that we had two months to get to the finish line, it turned into one month after all the post-black thursday negotiations were done.
as fate would have it, i still had a spreadsheet from the very beginning of this venture which allowed some sort of projection on hardware requirements based on total frame count x projected layer count x reasonable render time per frame.
initially, this spreadsheet had resulted in a farm numbering in the low 40's (not 42 - of course that would have been neat in hindsight and a hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy sort of way).
we initially ended up with 25, of which one died (strangely enough, unit 13), and one was taken away to be a combination license and job server for our render management software. so that makes 23. and that number stayed until march the 17th.
two months shrunk into one, and the spreadsheet came up with an additional 40 dual-processor machines to add to the current farm to make the deadline. now, during the course of the project, we had been sporadically testing samples of render units from various vendors and we were settled on either an either intel or amd solution.
we'd also tested the dual g5 solution from apple and found it a third slower, so i didn't really consider it a contender.
catch being, with the time (two weeks to obtain and test and setup), only apple's asia retailer had the numbers we needed readily available... ...a point perhaps worthy of some thought.
so we are now the largest installation of dual g5 rack-mount computers outside of biological research facilities.
think projected addition plus a third more, to make up for the per-unit shortfall.
after all is said and done, we finished, we made it. how we got there, the hardware story is above.
the human angle, perhaps others can inscribe.
have to admit that i'm not really looking forward to administering such a host of hostile machines (a triumph of form over function in most all it's respects) - but it's a living, after all. a challenge. a potential heart attack.
(",)
wonder what other turns our hardware future may take.
admittedly a twist on that old saw.
however, in this instance, it does hold true. the project has now finished (indeed, at the end of last month). in relation to a previous post (april 1st), where i noted that we had two months to get to the finish line, it turned into one month after all the post-black thursday negotiations were done.
as fate would have it, i still had a spreadsheet from the very beginning of this venture which allowed some sort of projection on hardware requirements based on total frame count x projected layer count x reasonable render time per frame.
initially, this spreadsheet had resulted in a farm numbering in the low 40's (not 42 - of course that would have been neat in hindsight and a hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy sort of way).
we initially ended up with 25, of which one died (strangely enough, unit 13), and one was taken away to be a combination license and job server for our render management software. so that makes 23. and that number stayed until march the 17th.
two months shrunk into one, and the spreadsheet came up with an additional 40 dual-processor machines to add to the current farm to make the deadline. now, during the course of the project, we had been sporadically testing samples of render units from various vendors and we were settled on either an either intel or amd solution.
we'd also tested the dual g5 solution from apple and found it a third slower, so i didn't really consider it a contender.
catch being, with the time (two weeks to obtain and test and setup), only apple's asia retailer had the numbers we needed readily available... ...a point perhaps worthy of some thought.
so we are now the largest installation of dual g5 rack-mount computers outside of biological research facilities.
think projected addition plus a third more, to make up for the per-unit shortfall.
after all is said and done, we finished, we made it. how we got there, the hardware story is above.
the human angle, perhaps others can inscribe.
have to admit that i'm not really looking forward to administering such a host of hostile machines (a triumph of form over function in most all it's respects) - but it's a living, after all. a challenge. a potential heart attack.
(",)
wonder what other turns our hardware future may take.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
the hotel coffee shop
...at the dagupan village/garden hotel.
now, don't get me wrong. the food was okay. not exactly stellar, but not bad at all, perhaps mainly due to the fact of the convenience of it: the entrance was just across the corridor from room eleven, where we were staying.
for the four days we stayed at the hotel, breakfast was always at the coffee shop.
they've got fried chicken that's almost at a par with max's, and their sinigang is of a different persuasion, perhaps in the ingredients they used to attain the sourness of the soup. myself, i just had the fried chicken with another viand (which i don't recall at the moment -- that's how memorable, or not, that other dish was). and that was dinner on the first day.
back to the breakfast bit. four out of four times, i asked for scrambled eggs to go with my breakfast choice (whatever that happened to be at the time: corned beef hash, or bacon...). all those times, i heard the waiter call the kitchen to specify such an egg treatment.
and every time the breakfast arrived, surely enough, the eggs were prepared sunny side up.
most interesting. apparently, the word scrambled means nothing to the good folks over in the hotel kitchen.
...and that's the tale of the hotel cafe. perhaps next time (if there happens to be a next time), i'll just mosey on over to the kitchen and scramble the eggs myself.
vacation tale to be continued.
now, don't get me wrong. the food was okay. not exactly stellar, but not bad at all, perhaps mainly due to the fact of the convenience of it: the entrance was just across the corridor from room eleven, where we were staying.
for the four days we stayed at the hotel, breakfast was always at the coffee shop.
they've got fried chicken that's almost at a par with max's, and their sinigang is of a different persuasion, perhaps in the ingredients they used to attain the sourness of the soup. myself, i just had the fried chicken with another viand (which i don't recall at the moment -- that's how memorable, or not, that other dish was). and that was dinner on the first day.
back to the breakfast bit. four out of four times, i asked for scrambled eggs to go with my breakfast choice (whatever that happened to be at the time: corned beef hash, or bacon...). all those times, i heard the waiter call the kitchen to specify such an egg treatment.
and every time the breakfast arrived, surely enough, the eggs were prepared sunny side up.
most interesting. apparently, the word scrambled means nothing to the good folks over in the hotel kitchen.
...and that's the tale of the hotel cafe. perhaps next time (if there happens to be a next time), i'll just mosey on over to the kitchen and scramble the eggs myself.
vacation tale to be continued.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
random vacation events
departure time scheduled midnight; departed office 1:30 -- like the nation's flag carrier 'plane always late'? then again, the dynamics of individuals being what it is, it can be a minor miracle if plans start off without some sort of hitch.
especially for such a plan as very little planning at all. the only constants were the fuzzy destination of pangasinan (a province i'm almost sure i'd never visited before) and the route we would take -- edsa to the new north tollway beginning to end through tarlac of the cojuangcos (cory et al) to the goal at the end of a rainbow (well, not quite).
the final roster was not effectively known until the eleventh hour (literally).
and so the black and white company set forth northwards. south expressway to edsa, quite uneventful (which is always good). the mazda3 is a very nice car to be in. wish i had one.
edsa to north expressway (now privately operated, with tolls perhaps fit for a first-world nation to boot. then again, ever were the lopezes wont to stick it to the common man). the upside is that it is quite an improvement over memories of the previous state. now if it only went further than it does at present...
first pitstop at the shell complex on the northward lane. cinnabon and coffee for me and louie, and the others went to kfc, as i recall.
thence to the end of the expressway -- a much shorter trip than memory serves up. oddly enough. either that or people really drive like the blazes on the tollway these days.
after the end of that particular private road, i get completely lost. the pilot of the black mazda3 is now only following the four round taillights of the white civic ahead (the car of the production manager, piloted by her significant other). its a good a time as any to memorize the license plate of the lead car...
...to while away the time, louie had many tales to tell -- of particular interest was the one about a charlatan's effects on a barkada. life indeed can be stranger than fiction.
however, there came a point when the pilots of the cars could not resist the call of the sandman much longer. at the first opportunity, the company stopped at a gas station and parked; and most went to sleep. i could not, seeing as the cinnabon coffee was still at work.
sunrise saw us still at the gas station, and then we proceeded onwards.
somewhere on the road, i saw a sign. the name escapes me now, but the rest of the text certainly remains: "...and his dynamic orchestra." hmm. it struck me that the sign was affixed to the gate of a fairly sized house. hard to imagine a dynamic orchestra in there. we were going a mite too fast for me to read the rest of the text. maybe next time.
onward, onward...
...and got lost. we took a turn just one corner shy of the proper turn (a left; we took a right). it was a while before the lead car noticed something unfamiliar about the locale and inquired of a local... so a u-turn was made, and off we went again, to the unusual strains of biblical passages set to a moaning cadence on some local am station. some time later, that station fell to silence, and the radio was tuned to a talk show where the host had a wierd habit of hitting something, and not a drum, to punctuate his commentary. very strange. but not so strange as one comment made: 'si hudas, hinudas si hesus.' well, what else could he do, being the namesake, the progenitor of such an act?
back to the main road, left turn, and more turns out of memory, and we came upon our dwelling for the course of the trip. i suppose it could be called the 'dagupan garden/village hotel,' as it had both names, one on top of each other, on the entry sign.
so that's where we were. dagupan. memory attaches the name to a rather severe earthquake in a previous decade, and yes, indeed they had had one.
we were shown to room eleven, just across an entrance to the coffee shop.
the coffee shop, now there's a tale. but for another day.
especially for such a plan as very little planning at all. the only constants were the fuzzy destination of pangasinan (a province i'm almost sure i'd never visited before) and the route we would take -- edsa to the new north tollway beginning to end through tarlac of the cojuangcos (cory et al) to the goal at the end of a rainbow (well, not quite).
the final roster was not effectively known until the eleventh hour (literally).
and so the black and white company set forth northwards. south expressway to edsa, quite uneventful (which is always good). the mazda3 is a very nice car to be in. wish i had one.
edsa to north expressway (now privately operated, with tolls perhaps fit for a first-world nation to boot. then again, ever were the lopezes wont to stick it to the common man). the upside is that it is quite an improvement over memories of the previous state. now if it only went further than it does at present...
first pitstop at the shell complex on the northward lane. cinnabon and coffee for me and louie, and the others went to kfc, as i recall.
thence to the end of the expressway -- a much shorter trip than memory serves up. oddly enough. either that or people really drive like the blazes on the tollway these days.
after the end of that particular private road, i get completely lost. the pilot of the black mazda3 is now only following the four round taillights of the white civic ahead (the car of the production manager, piloted by her significant other). its a good a time as any to memorize the license plate of the lead car...
...to while away the time, louie had many tales to tell -- of particular interest was the one about a charlatan's effects on a barkada. life indeed can be stranger than fiction.
however, there came a point when the pilots of the cars could not resist the call of the sandman much longer. at the first opportunity, the company stopped at a gas station and parked; and most went to sleep. i could not, seeing as the cinnabon coffee was still at work.
sunrise saw us still at the gas station, and then we proceeded onwards.
somewhere on the road, i saw a sign. the name escapes me now, but the rest of the text certainly remains: "...and his dynamic orchestra." hmm. it struck me that the sign was affixed to the gate of a fairly sized house. hard to imagine a dynamic orchestra in there. we were going a mite too fast for me to read the rest of the text. maybe next time.
onward, onward...
...and got lost. we took a turn just one corner shy of the proper turn (a left; we took a right). it was a while before the lead car noticed something unfamiliar about the locale and inquired of a local... so a u-turn was made, and off we went again, to the unusual strains of biblical passages set to a moaning cadence on some local am station. some time later, that station fell to silence, and the radio was tuned to a talk show where the host had a wierd habit of hitting something, and not a drum, to punctuate his commentary. very strange. but not so strange as one comment made: 'si hudas, hinudas si hesus.' well, what else could he do, being the namesake, the progenitor of such an act?
back to the main road, left turn, and more turns out of memory, and we came upon our dwelling for the course of the trip. i suppose it could be called the 'dagupan garden/village hotel,' as it had both names, one on top of each other, on the entry sign.
so that's where we were. dagupan. memory attaches the name to a rather severe earthquake in a previous decade, and yes, indeed they had had one.
we were shown to room eleven, just across an entrance to the coffee shop.
the coffee shop, now there's a tale. but for another day.
Friday, April 01, 2005
sacrum triduum
perhaps it's funny that in the face of an overtime-filled flog to the finish line two months hence, that when an opportunity to take a vacation pops up, all the more the need grows to be elsewhere, even for just a few days.
that and black thursday, and the impulse grows. granted, the decision to be away was announced a week before the events of march the 17th -- perhaps that made the time away all the more precious. a few moments of calm before the storm, so to speak.
another trip (and the wierdness that accompanied it throughout) i've mentioned in the past (and, admittedly, haven't gotten back to continuing that tale -- someday). this time, though, was something of a first. primarily because it was a road trip. other times, other trips, have been made over longer distances via the public transport system; planes, boats (and an odd catamaran-type thing called SiKat), bancas of various largish sizes, jeepneys, tricycles -- but no trains (leastwise, none of the variety run by the philippine national railroads).
two cars, 7 adults, 2 children. the destination, pangasinan. where precisely, i didn't know. but that was all right by me.
more later.
that and black thursday, and the impulse grows. granted, the decision to be away was announced a week before the events of march the 17th -- perhaps that made the time away all the more precious. a few moments of calm before the storm, so to speak.
another trip (and the wierdness that accompanied it throughout) i've mentioned in the past (and, admittedly, haven't gotten back to continuing that tale -- someday). this time, though, was something of a first. primarily because it was a road trip. other times, other trips, have been made over longer distances via the public transport system; planes, boats (and an odd catamaran-type thing called SiKat), bancas of various largish sizes, jeepneys, tricycles -- but no trains (leastwise, none of the variety run by the philippine national railroads).
two cars, 7 adults, 2 children. the destination, pangasinan. where precisely, i didn't know. but that was all right by me.
more later.
paradise found
well, not quite.
now we are faced with the aftermath of the company's black thursday, where the main server got zapped, and good, by the untested interactions between meralco, an uninterruptible power supply, and the building's generator.
turns out that the systems had been tested in following fashion: interrupt meralco and ups keeps power, interrupt meralco and generator activates. they had not been tried with all three in one test.
after some investigation, apparently in the haste to finish the building, the generator was wired to the ups with three identical black wires, so there was an issue of polarity (no at-a-glance way to tell which wire had to go where). so what actually happened was that meralco power went out, ups kept power on to the computers, generator came on after that -- and sucked all the power out of the ups' batteries.
...and the render farm was writing data to the main server's hard disk array.
one massive ouch.
four months of work, locked in the server, inaccessible. but we're fine, we've made backups, right?
not quite (again). i'd made a preliminary backup of our working data -- and filled up a hard disk array on another server. since we hadn't been able to get another server/storage solution, another backup was made, this time by my technical co-worker, but only of scenes that had been finalized. in this way, we were able to back up the entire project's most important data, or so we felt.
then that dark thursday rolls around, and therefore we have two backups, yes? my backup is only of the first 7 sequences, the scene backup is of the whole project. we ought to be fine.
not.
turns out that the server where we had stored the scene backup had been offline from monday that week, ostensibly to add more hard disks to the array. also turns out that the idle hands that had offlined the server had not backed the data up to some other location prior to adding the hard disks (and there was another location, with space to spare). so then the impossible had happened. we lost 60% of the project scene backups.
apple singapore troubleshooter comes in, and gives us no new hope. the system is well and truly screwed.
it is quite bleak indeed.
then, during one of the meeting-filled days that follow, where we are discussing a more redundant (hence safer) means of data management, something occurred to me.
we actually had a third, unlooked-for, backup. it was a natural offshoot of our 'localization' render process where scenes and images that a render job needs are copied locally to the render machines to eliminate network-incurred penalties.
there was a very real possibility that inspite of some blundering hands and limited inital backup space, the great majority of the shots that were finalized and rendered were intact and could be retrieved. i took the matter up first with my technical co-worker and he was enthused by the prospect.
later, i told the boss that i may have found a way to retrieve the project from almost total re-working, and he was really pleased. and he made a joke to the effect that if what i said was true, he'd treat me to a haircut. except that i'm bald... ...so i said that i'd really rather have a car...
...he thanked me for my honesty in that regard (after the thanks for saving the project), and said that that could be arranged. we'll see...
so the upshot is that prior to march 17, the project had made it to just over 95% completion -- and as of last week, after clogging the network with gigabytes of data from all render machines, and sifting through all those gigabytes, we had come to a point close enough to 95% of project data reconstructed.
a good thing, to be sure.
now comes the rendering. or re-rendering in this case. we have the project, and lost all the rendered image files.
still and all, much better than zero.
from a state of near-utter disaster, this is some form of paradise indeed.
now we are faced with the aftermath of the company's black thursday, where the main server got zapped, and good, by the untested interactions between meralco, an uninterruptible power supply, and the building's generator.
turns out that the systems had been tested in following fashion: interrupt meralco and ups keeps power, interrupt meralco and generator activates. they had not been tried with all three in one test.
after some investigation, apparently in the haste to finish the building, the generator was wired to the ups with three identical black wires, so there was an issue of polarity (no at-a-glance way to tell which wire had to go where). so what actually happened was that meralco power went out, ups kept power on to the computers, generator came on after that -- and sucked all the power out of the ups' batteries.
...and the render farm was writing data to the main server's hard disk array.
one massive ouch.
four months of work, locked in the server, inaccessible. but we're fine, we've made backups, right?
not quite (again). i'd made a preliminary backup of our working data -- and filled up a hard disk array on another server. since we hadn't been able to get another server/storage solution, another backup was made, this time by my technical co-worker, but only of scenes that had been finalized. in this way, we were able to back up the entire project's most important data, or so we felt.
then that dark thursday rolls around, and therefore we have two backups, yes? my backup is only of the first 7 sequences, the scene backup is of the whole project. we ought to be fine.
not.
turns out that the server where we had stored the scene backup had been offline from monday that week, ostensibly to add more hard disks to the array. also turns out that the idle hands that had offlined the server had not backed the data up to some other location prior to adding the hard disks (and there was another location, with space to spare). so then the impossible had happened. we lost 60% of the project scene backups.
apple singapore troubleshooter comes in, and gives us no new hope. the system is well and truly screwed.
it is quite bleak indeed.
then, during one of the meeting-filled days that follow, where we are discussing a more redundant (hence safer) means of data management, something occurred to me.
we actually had a third, unlooked-for, backup. it was a natural offshoot of our 'localization' render process where scenes and images that a render job needs are copied locally to the render machines to eliminate network-incurred penalties.
there was a very real possibility that inspite of some blundering hands and limited inital backup space, the great majority of the shots that were finalized and rendered were intact and could be retrieved. i took the matter up first with my technical co-worker and he was enthused by the prospect.
later, i told the boss that i may have found a way to retrieve the project from almost total re-working, and he was really pleased. and he made a joke to the effect that if what i said was true, he'd treat me to a haircut. except that i'm bald... ...so i said that i'd really rather have a car...
...he thanked me for my honesty in that regard (after the thanks for saving the project), and said that that could be arranged. we'll see...
so the upshot is that prior to march 17, the project had made it to just over 95% completion -- and as of last week, after clogging the network with gigabytes of data from all render machines, and sifting through all those gigabytes, we had come to a point close enough to 95% of project data reconstructed.
a good thing, to be sure.
now comes the rendering. or re-rendering in this case. we have the project, and lost all the rendered image files.
still and all, much better than zero.
from a state of near-utter disaster, this is some form of paradise indeed.
Friday, March 18, 2005
rains and pours
best blog this so i don't forget.
the day: thursday, march 17, 2005.
under the influence of the off-season typhoon auring, rains sweep into our corner of the metro. now, in our old building, such rain was cause for concern, as the electrical grid there seemed unusually reactive to wet weather. it would rain, and then the power would go out. not good for computers in general, and servers in particular, to have power outages whilst in the middle of extensive hard-disk activity (moreso for servers).
couldn't possibly happen in the new building. we're state of the art, so i've been told.
somewhere about an hour to going-home-time, lights flicker -- it rained just a while before. building's uninterruptible power supply kicks in -- computers all stay on as the building lights go dark. outside, the generator starts up -- and all the computers die. odd, but at the time no one was really concerned...
...until it was discovered that in the course of the outage, the main server had been impacted. seems that in the process of writing to the raid, the power outage had scrambled a file somewhere in the vastness of the array's terabytes of storage with the end result that the raid could no longer be accessed by the host computer.
odd, also, that such a seeming inconsequence as a single file system error would bring the whole server down like a pack of cards. small wonder that other hardware/software solutions make up the bulk of the internet hardware backbone.
for heaven's sake, not even the os-supplied raid administration or disk repair tools can seem to fix the error, and we're now approaching 24 hours since the event. for a fix, even the support line (so i've been told) could only offer that we ought to use a third-party disk repair tool -- and be prepared to wait three days to see whether we've lost anything.
so here we wait.
the day: thursday, march 17, 2005.
under the influence of the off-season typhoon auring, rains sweep into our corner of the metro. now, in our old building, such rain was cause for concern, as the electrical grid there seemed unusually reactive to wet weather. it would rain, and then the power would go out. not good for computers in general, and servers in particular, to have power outages whilst in the middle of extensive hard-disk activity (moreso for servers).
couldn't possibly happen in the new building. we're state of the art, so i've been told.
somewhere about an hour to going-home-time, lights flicker -- it rained just a while before. building's uninterruptible power supply kicks in -- computers all stay on as the building lights go dark. outside, the generator starts up -- and all the computers die. odd, but at the time no one was really concerned...
...until it was discovered that in the course of the outage, the main server had been impacted. seems that in the process of writing to the raid, the power outage had scrambled a file somewhere in the vastness of the array's terabytes of storage with the end result that the raid could no longer be accessed by the host computer.
odd, also, that such a seeming inconsequence as a single file system error would bring the whole server down like a pack of cards. small wonder that other hardware/software solutions make up the bulk of the internet hardware backbone.
for heaven's sake, not even the os-supplied raid administration or disk repair tools can seem to fix the error, and we're now approaching 24 hours since the event. for a fix, even the support line (so i've been told) could only offer that we ought to use a third-party disk repair tool -- and be prepared to wait three days to see whether we've lost anything.
so here we wait.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
plumbing
interesting, in an odd sort of way. in fact hadn't considered the matter at all -- the matter of the upstairs bathroom leaking into the nearby room on the same floor.
landperson said that it was because there had been no grout used in the shower floor drain installation. okay, took him at his word, and waited the requisite day or so for the grout to dry up prior to use.
the day of testing dawned, and there was another puddle of water in the other room.
hmm.
okay, now this doesn't make any sense. the shower floor is about an inch or two lower than the rest of the bathroom floor -- which is level with the rest of the second floor. so how is drainwater going up so as to puddle on the other side of the wall?
so, experiment time.
took a bath, this time though, in the old tried-and-true 'tabo and bucket' fashion.
end result, no puddle -- so far. from the indications, then, is that it may not have been the floor drain non-grouting that was the culprit, it may be that the piping to the shower head is leaking under pressure from the pressurized water tank.
we'll just have to see later, when we get back from work.
landperson said that it was because there had been no grout used in the shower floor drain installation. okay, took him at his word, and waited the requisite day or so for the grout to dry up prior to use.
the day of testing dawned, and there was another puddle of water in the other room.
hmm.
okay, now this doesn't make any sense. the shower floor is about an inch or two lower than the rest of the bathroom floor -- which is level with the rest of the second floor. so how is drainwater going up so as to puddle on the other side of the wall?
so, experiment time.
took a bath, this time though, in the old tried-and-true 'tabo and bucket' fashion.
end result, no puddle -- so far. from the indications, then, is that it may not have been the floor drain non-grouting that was the culprit, it may be that the piping to the shower head is leaking under pressure from the pressurized water tank.
we'll just have to see later, when we get back from work.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
blogworthy: part 2
missing event
jose, who was an integral part of that blogworthy day mentioned that i had overlooked an event that truly did cap the day off. on reflection, yes indeed i had.
on the way back to the office from the alabang town center, and while discussing what would have happened had our car-driving officemate not looked over to see the awaited one -- the discussion evolved into a song. as in literally, someone began to sing. bad pun applicable here.
but that was all right, in the context of the day. quite normal, in fact.
building blocks
every once in a while in my line of work (whatever that is) i am confronted by the spectre of the new. and, as with all apparitions, such things demand a response: either a gut-feel-knee-jerk reaction or a slow and measured pseudo-scientific approach.
much as the latter would interfere with my spasmodic compositing schedule, i resolved to check this new the slow and sure way.
what is this new of which i speak? essentially, its a computer/raid (redundant array of inexpensive disks) combination -- an all-in-one solution were one to host, say, a web portal business.
for the needs of our 3-D production, however, it would necessarily have to cut the mustard under the duress imposed by the ravenous data requirements of a sizable render farm.
...if it worked.
which, sad to say, it hasn't.
perhaps its just the way our system grew by leaps and bounds, with random elements falling by chance into some sort of workable whole. note: workable, not ideal.
but ideal might be the fruit of years, even decades in the business (think pixar), and we're barely a year old.
back to the building block. turns out it works by making some assumptions about how a web-based business would be configured. a requires b to get to c, and so on. except that in our case, we go straight to c from a -- do not pass "go", do not collect x sum of cash (monopoly speak).
so the poor building block cannot make sense of our network and the way its put together, the assumptions on which the block was built do not hold true in our reality field.
...sometimes the bleeding edge of technology can be quite painful.
jose, who was an integral part of that blogworthy day mentioned that i had overlooked an event that truly did cap the day off. on reflection, yes indeed i had.
on the way back to the office from the alabang town center, and while discussing what would have happened had our car-driving officemate not looked over to see the awaited one -- the discussion evolved into a song. as in literally, someone began to sing. bad pun applicable here.
but that was all right, in the context of the day. quite normal, in fact.
building blocks
every once in a while in my line of work (whatever that is) i am confronted by the spectre of the new. and, as with all apparitions, such things demand a response: either a gut-feel-knee-jerk reaction or a slow and measured pseudo-scientific approach.
much as the latter would interfere with my spasmodic compositing schedule, i resolved to check this new the slow and sure way.
what is this new of which i speak? essentially, its a computer/raid (redundant array of inexpensive disks) combination -- an all-in-one solution were one to host, say, a web portal business.
for the needs of our 3-D production, however, it would necessarily have to cut the mustard under the duress imposed by the ravenous data requirements of a sizable render farm.
...if it worked.
which, sad to say, it hasn't.
perhaps its just the way our system grew by leaps and bounds, with random elements falling by chance into some sort of workable whole. note: workable, not ideal.
but ideal might be the fruit of years, even decades in the business (think pixar), and we're barely a year old.
back to the building block. turns out it works by making some assumptions about how a web-based business would be configured. a requires b to get to c, and so on. except that in our case, we go straight to c from a -- do not pass "go", do not collect x sum of cash (monopoly speak).
so the poor building block cannot make sense of our network and the way its put together, the assumptions on which the block was built do not hold true in our reality field.
...sometimes the bleeding edge of technology can be quite painful.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
blogworthy
of late, the impulse to blog has been notably absent (there's that work/blog equation at work again) and i figure it would bore anyone who read this to tears if there were nothing on this page but a full-on rant about rampant incompetences...
...therefore i choose to say little if i feel that urge to vent venomously.
however, yesterday was definitely a rather unusual day by any standards.
lunch out, probably due to another old saw (be not the first on whom the new is tried -- or something to that effect). lately, the office has been trying out the lunch wares of a new addition to the constellation of companies that we're a part of.
...problem being that some have been stung by the attempt to consume dishes with meat of, shall we say, durable consistency.
so off to the alabang town center, and thence to bizu.
they didn't have the roasted mushroom sandwich i had a craving for at the moment, nor their excellent strawberry shortcake -- so i made do with a cheese and steak sandwich and no dessert.
what was unusual about lunch? well, nothing really. short of the service time that could safely be measured in glacial terms. so a one-hour lunch turned into one of twice that duration (can't wait to see how the undertime deductions turn out).
and then we come to a real turning point in the day. ah. to backtrack, the online (naturally - this being a rather tech-oriented set of companies) ordering system for the bespoke food service relied on information in the human resource database. imagine the collective surprise when i.d. numbers and birthday information entered in the system gave back 'cannot be identified' errors. fun!
then it transpires later that other than for some unfortunate few where the data in the records was patently incorrect, there were those whose digital information had been inadvertently trashed -- no reason given, no culprit to lynch.
so, midafternoon, troop the deleted to the hr office for picture taking and scribble on tablet signature example. easiest thing in the world, no?
no.
wait for name to be called. sit in chair, smile for webcam. wait as operator goes hither and yon with program interface to locate employee record. sign on the tablet. wait, you're signing out of the digitizing region. there are no markings on the tablet, not even a little piece of paper under the acetate sheet to define a 'scribbling' zone. all right sir, right over there, write small. scribble with no visual feedback. that's not my signature but what the hell. close enough.
and then no word is given that we can leave.
for two hours.
so, literally, shoot the breeze. outside. conversations with others take turns from movies to religious matters like the revelation, old and new testaments, the deuterocanonicals/apocrypha, etc. lucky we didn't veer of into classifications of angels, their names and somesuch.
oh, there were some toy-gun-related interjections, but that's something i can ill afford, so i paid little attention.
get back to the office by 5pm. end of workday at 6pm.
so, what's for dinner? before that, go to the park part of the madrigal business park and resident photographer takes some long-exposure shots of things and us, the recent skyway patrol. end up after a while at -- for a moment there, the name escapes me -- hang on, um, fridays.
where, for some strange reason, the size of the servings still serve to surprise. the mexican nachos were quite good. didn't try the salad that was the other order. the seafood platter was also quite decent. as was the mud pie (i think that's what it was called) -- decided on getting that instead after learning that friday's version of strawberry shortcake was also hors de combat.
naturally, fridays and the plethora of choices on the menu means time to decide, order and serve; and eat; and bill. by that time, we had missed the crepe place that an officemate had wanted us to buy a food item from.
so we scattered as the mall closing time rushed upon us, gathering at the covered parking, where all six of us sat in the car, waiting.
...
until the our car-driving officemate looked over, and discovered that the person she was waiting for was already on board.
so, off we went, back to the office to deliver a crepe from pancake house instead.
jeep, tricycle, apartment. day is done.
...not quite. in the night, it turns out, apparently the upstairs bathroom, when used (for showering, it is hoped), leaks onto the master bedroom floor.
thus was the day.
amen.
...therefore i choose to say little if i feel that urge to vent venomously.
however, yesterday was definitely a rather unusual day by any standards.
lunch out, probably due to another old saw (be not the first on whom the new is tried -- or something to that effect). lately, the office has been trying out the lunch wares of a new addition to the constellation of companies that we're a part of.
...problem being that some have been stung by the attempt to consume dishes with meat of, shall we say, durable consistency.
so off to the alabang town center, and thence to bizu.
they didn't have the roasted mushroom sandwich i had a craving for at the moment, nor their excellent strawberry shortcake -- so i made do with a cheese and steak sandwich and no dessert.
what was unusual about lunch? well, nothing really. short of the service time that could safely be measured in glacial terms. so a one-hour lunch turned into one of twice that duration (can't wait to see how the undertime deductions turn out).
and then we come to a real turning point in the day. ah. to backtrack, the online (naturally - this being a rather tech-oriented set of companies) ordering system for the bespoke food service relied on information in the human resource database. imagine the collective surprise when i.d. numbers and birthday information entered in the system gave back 'cannot be identified' errors. fun!
then it transpires later that other than for some unfortunate few where the data in the records was patently incorrect, there were those whose digital information had been inadvertently trashed -- no reason given, no culprit to lynch.
so, midafternoon, troop the deleted to the hr office for picture taking and scribble on tablet signature example. easiest thing in the world, no?
no.
wait for name to be called. sit in chair, smile for webcam. wait as operator goes hither and yon with program interface to locate employee record. sign on the tablet. wait, you're signing out of the digitizing region. there are no markings on the tablet, not even a little piece of paper under the acetate sheet to define a 'scribbling' zone. all right sir, right over there, write small. scribble with no visual feedback. that's not my signature but what the hell. close enough.
and then no word is given that we can leave.
for two hours.
so, literally, shoot the breeze. outside. conversations with others take turns from movies to religious matters like the revelation, old and new testaments, the deuterocanonicals/apocrypha, etc. lucky we didn't veer of into classifications of angels, their names and somesuch.
oh, there were some toy-gun-related interjections, but that's something i can ill afford, so i paid little attention.
get back to the office by 5pm. end of workday at 6pm.
so, what's for dinner? before that, go to the park part of the madrigal business park and resident photographer takes some long-exposure shots of things and us, the recent skyway patrol. end up after a while at -- for a moment there, the name escapes me -- hang on, um, fridays.
where, for some strange reason, the size of the servings still serve to surprise. the mexican nachos were quite good. didn't try the salad that was the other order. the seafood platter was also quite decent. as was the mud pie (i think that's what it was called) -- decided on getting that instead after learning that friday's version of strawberry shortcake was also hors de combat.
naturally, fridays and the plethora of choices on the menu means time to decide, order and serve; and eat; and bill. by that time, we had missed the crepe place that an officemate had wanted us to buy a food item from.
so we scattered as the mall closing time rushed upon us, gathering at the covered parking, where all six of us sat in the car, waiting.
...
until the our car-driving officemate looked over, and discovered that the person she was waiting for was already on board.
so, off we went, back to the office to deliver a crepe from pancake house instead.
jeep, tricycle, apartment. day is done.
...not quite. in the night, it turns out, apparently the upstairs bathroom, when used (for showering, it is hoped), leaks onto the master bedroom floor.
thus was the day.
amen.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
year new
ah. it has been a while, yes, since my last post. a direct result of the work/blog equation -- more work equals less blog and vice versa. not that there isn't a ton of work remaining to be done, just that my machine is rendering a rather complicated composite which a client wants to check up on in an hour or less. so, to expedite the rendering, i'm working elsewhere -- i'm doing the blog bit on a g5 this time, as opposed to my normal windows workstation.
so, what's been happening of late?
random memories below:
fires in the sky
went to watch the fireworks show put on by the makati city government at the ayala triangle with roomie and friends. first time ever for me to watch such a thing live. quite a show. the ringing thumps of the cannons as the fireworks shells streaked into the night, their trajectories barely visible as trails of dim red sparks; the echoing crack of the shell explosions as the pyrotechnics bloomed overhead; the visible, reflexive cringe of the crowd as the expanding sparks looked close enough to touch -- or burn.
one detail. there were a bunch of rather dimmer (by comparison) circular yellow fireworks that 'graced' the sky during lulls in the whole show. it was only later that it occurred to us that it was a neat little conceit on the makati government's part. seems that they had gone so far as to have likely engaged the fireworks specialists to have their logo writ in yellow sparks across the canvas of new year sky... ...their money to burn.
still and all, a nice event. although given the relatively tight confines of the ayala triangle (we were on paseo de roxas next to the new stock exchange tower), we really had to look almost straight up to see the show. hmm. no, lying on the street may not be a good idea either, with people moving around looking up all the time.
amazing tech
by way of backgrounding, at the very start of this company, when the matter of hardware choices were being bruited about, i had the occasion to mention to the powers-that-be that one option for render power at relatively low cost would be the "hammer" line of processors from advanced micro devices: opteron. Unfortunately, given the speed at which this enterprise was put together, the only choice given was a dual intel xeon solution from the company's standard hardware supplier. hence we have soldiered on with that original configuration, now numbering in the mid-20's.
last few weeks, i got word that a brand-name supplier had delivered a dual opteron rackmount server for testing. hmm. ought to be interesting indeed.
and it was. out of the gate, the dual opteron had posted a 13% performance disadvantage versus the dual xeons. what's so interesting about that, you ask. well, it isn't bad at all given that the dual opterons were at a disadvantage of a total of 41% in the gigahertz game too, so the result is quite impressive. then the memory was upped to parity with the xeons (at the start, the dual opteron was delivered with half the ram) -- and the render benchmark improved to a 9% performance disadvantage. i asked for the top of the line opteron in the dual processor line, just to see what it would do versus our top of the line (then) xeons. supplier responded with chips just one level shy of their top offering. results: an amazing 6% advantage over the dual xeons (and still with a 31% GHz shortfall. two more tests, one a kernel change, one a missing software install, and the dual opteron now outperformed the dual xeon to the tune of 11%.
hooray for the underdog.
now we'll just have to see if the numbers are compelling enough for the powers-that-be to switch to the opterons...
so, what's been happening of late?
random memories below:
fires in the sky
went to watch the fireworks show put on by the makati city government at the ayala triangle with roomie and friends. first time ever for me to watch such a thing live. quite a show. the ringing thumps of the cannons as the fireworks shells streaked into the night, their trajectories barely visible as trails of dim red sparks; the echoing crack of the shell explosions as the pyrotechnics bloomed overhead; the visible, reflexive cringe of the crowd as the expanding sparks looked close enough to touch -- or burn.
one detail. there were a bunch of rather dimmer (by comparison) circular yellow fireworks that 'graced' the sky during lulls in the whole show. it was only later that it occurred to us that it was a neat little conceit on the makati government's part. seems that they had gone so far as to have likely engaged the fireworks specialists to have their logo writ in yellow sparks across the canvas of new year sky... ...their money to burn.
still and all, a nice event. although given the relatively tight confines of the ayala triangle (we were on paseo de roxas next to the new stock exchange tower), we really had to look almost straight up to see the show. hmm. no, lying on the street may not be a good idea either, with people moving around looking up all the time.
amazing tech
by way of backgrounding, at the very start of this company, when the matter of hardware choices were being bruited about, i had the occasion to mention to the powers-that-be that one option for render power at relatively low cost would be the "hammer" line of processors from advanced micro devices: opteron. Unfortunately, given the speed at which this enterprise was put together, the only choice given was a dual intel xeon solution from the company's standard hardware supplier. hence we have soldiered on with that original configuration, now numbering in the mid-20's.
last few weeks, i got word that a brand-name supplier had delivered a dual opteron rackmount server for testing. hmm. ought to be interesting indeed.
and it was. out of the gate, the dual opteron had posted a 13% performance disadvantage versus the dual xeons. what's so interesting about that, you ask. well, it isn't bad at all given that the dual opterons were at a disadvantage of a total of 41% in the gigahertz game too, so the result is quite impressive. then the memory was upped to parity with the xeons (at the start, the dual opteron was delivered with half the ram) -- and the render benchmark improved to a 9% performance disadvantage. i asked for the top of the line opteron in the dual processor line, just to see what it would do versus our top of the line (then) xeons. supplier responded with chips just one level shy of their top offering. results: an amazing 6% advantage over the dual xeons (and still with a 31% GHz shortfall. two more tests, one a kernel change, one a missing software install, and the dual opteron now outperformed the dual xeon to the tune of 11%.
hooray for the underdog.
now we'll just have to see if the numbers are compelling enough for the powers-that-be to switch to the opterons...
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