...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.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
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.
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