of course there's the unsettled weather, perhaps caused by global warming. a summer that seems to be hanging around all year long interspersed with the furies of tropical cyclones, and when those tempests are not to be found, afternoon or early evening thunderstorms.
...boy, those are really some thunderstorms. great cracking bolts of lightning and car-alarm-tripping thunderclaps amidst instant road-flooding deluges (both in las pinas and makati).
but that's not what this post is about.
i'd been feeling a little pressure in my left groin area (wrong side for an appendicitis episode). it wasn't painful, just somewhat uncomfortable. last friday, however, it turned into a pain, but not like the stabbing pain that lit up my back when my (former) kidney stone announced its presence some years back.
drunk a couple of tylenols and waited for the pain to dull, which it took an hour to. took a bath -- and a leak, and pink urine.
blood.
worrisome to say the least.
long story short, get to makati, drag housemate to makati med e.r. and get this looked at.
took a while, and took a while longer to get the result of the urinalysis. blood in the urine.
location of the pain seems to mean that the stone is near the bladder already, so may actually pass soon. to aid that eventuality, i was prescribed a 10-day regimen of little golden spheroidal gelcaps (at 3x a day). after which, see a urologist for further instructions.
hmm. this is looking to be expensive. at any rate, that's still next week, so just take meds and lots of water and hope for the best.
...and then this morning...
parking at the las pinas apartment has its own little thing going on, primarily because the person i refer to as "the green bastard" insists on considering the whole driveway fronting the units to be his particular right (and right of way, nevermind what godforsaken hour he feels the need to go out). also, he does not park in his unit's carport, which makes it difficult to park in our carport unless i reverse up the driveway.
whole other story. suffice to say i've made an arrangement with the landlords where i use the parking allotment of the first unit (where they stay).
back to this morning. thanks to an enthusiastic attendant at a gas station, who cleaned the radiator overflow bottle unasked (and managed to crack the old, brittle plastic), i've taken to filling up the radiator every few days. today, was another of those days. i took the car out of the "unit a" carport and parked it in front of our unit. stopped the engine, popped the hood, topped up the radiator.
car wouldn't start. engine would turn over twice, and then the dash indicators would die.
um.
commute to office, check online, batteries are in the 4-5K range.
so that's my rains and pours; looming expenses for test procedures and specialized medications -- and now the car also needs attention. could be just the battery, could be more than that.
ah, well.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
scary
dark, coming back from a jaunt to find the location of the end-of-month wedding...
south superhighway, heading north, just got down from the alabang viaduct.
seeing as i try to maintain a steady 60kph in the interests of fuel economy, i have taken the middle lane.
just then, up ahead. something. blinking, dim, orange. there's a car, stopped in the center lane.
i am being passed at that very moment on either side by people impatient at my lack of velocity, and there's a car behind me closing fast.
out of gear, brake and hit the hazard button on the dash. following car sees the blinking hazards and jinks to the left - car comes to a stop and there's a man there, just now setting up those triangular warning reflectors behind his 80's s-class benz. boy, his blinkers are sure dim.
with the road behind clear, i go to the left and head off, noting that there's an 80's bmw 3-series in front of the benz, and a wrecker truck in front of the bmw.
geez, the wreckers could have at least been the ones to put out the reflectors, or have better warning markings or flashing lights or something on their vehicle.
much later, closer to home; only then do i notice just how much i was stressed by that incident.
south superhighway, heading north, just got down from the alabang viaduct.
seeing as i try to maintain a steady 60kph in the interests of fuel economy, i have taken the middle lane.
just then, up ahead. something. blinking, dim, orange. there's a car, stopped in the center lane.
i am being passed at that very moment on either side by people impatient at my lack of velocity, and there's a car behind me closing fast.
out of gear, brake and hit the hazard button on the dash. following car sees the blinking hazards and jinks to the left - car comes to a stop and there's a man there, just now setting up those triangular warning reflectors behind his 80's s-class benz. boy, his blinkers are sure dim.
with the road behind clear, i go to the left and head off, noting that there's an 80's bmw 3-series in front of the benz, and a wrecker truck in front of the bmw.
geez, the wreckers could have at least been the ones to put out the reflectors, or have better warning markings or flashing lights or something on their vehicle.
much later, closer to home; only then do i notice just how much i was stressed by that incident.
Monday, March 17, 2008
monday
sometime in the past two weeks, an officemate handed me a little card that entitled the bearer to a free training session at the boxing gym nearby.
so: borrowed gloves and hand wraps from jo last saturday, all set for monday, then.
you know the saying about the best-laid plans? well...
not that all was in perfect readiness, mind. i'd left my workout shorts at the office, for one. for another, i overslept. then there was the crawling traffic from sucat to the alabang interchange. then there was the monday morning reactivation of user accounts (that i've yet to find a way to automate).
all said and done, i finally managed to show up at the gym a full hour later than was likely good for me (and the workday to follow): 8am.
so i go up to the gym, get to the counter, and...
...the building's water pump had just gone kaput earlier, so no post-workout showers available.
hmm.
were i a little more superstitious, i'd think that i wasn't fated to box my way to better health. hehehe.
so: borrowed gloves and hand wraps from jo last saturday, all set for monday, then.
you know the saying about the best-laid plans? well...
not that all was in perfect readiness, mind. i'd left my workout shorts at the office, for one. for another, i overslept. then there was the crawling traffic from sucat to the alabang interchange. then there was the monday morning reactivation of user accounts (that i've yet to find a way to automate).
all said and done, i finally managed to show up at the gym a full hour later than was likely good for me (and the workday to follow): 8am.
so i go up to the gym, get to the counter, and...
...the building's water pump had just gone kaput earlier, so no post-workout showers available.
hmm.
were i a little more superstitious, i'd think that i wasn't fated to box my way to better health. hehehe.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
da picz
gorilla, no mist
big birdie
tyger, tyger, pacing fast
and fast asleep
taal volcano island, another view
...long way to fall...
top of stairs...
view from the bottom
lord of the beasts
Thursday, March 06, 2008
zoo on the ridge
tagaytay ridge, that is.
once more, borrowed the handy little casio camera of jose with the intention of revisiting a zoo on the tagaytay ridge. it's actually part of a hotel called residence inn -- i'd been there god knows how long ago and didn't even remember where it was located.
the internet was less than useless insofar as a map of establishments on the tagaytay ridge, so it was an "ask when we get there" kind of thing.
the plan therefore was to leave bright and early (with makati housemate glenn in tow), have lunch at the bag o' beans and then inquire of the local populace where this zoo might be found.
now this would make the second sunday in succession that i'd be driving to tagaytay, so i decided that it would be a good "control" test too for something i'd noticed the previous trip: the car seemed to get excellent mileage -- provided one did not exceed 2000rpm in any gear (which equated to 60/70 in 5th). needless to say, that kind of velocity had others zooming by on either side, but what the hey.
at any rate, got to bag o' beans, lunched, and asked of the policeman/traffic aide outside where we might find the zoo. he didn't have a clue.
the only information i got from the web search was that the establishment was around the kilometer 62 marker or somesuch. in which direction, i had no idea. therefore we decided to ply the route to the people's park in the sky (which happened to be the end destination of the previous trip).
hmm. past the junction, past the rotonda, past the santa rosa road -- still no kilometer markers to be found. and no residence inn.
beyond picnic grove, on the right side of the road, finally a marker. it was in the 50's so that was good. onward then.
all the way to people's park. still no residence inn.
finally, glenn got out and asked one of the parking wardens at the park if he knew where the zoo was.
well, what do you know. it was just beyond bag o' beans.
back, back, then.
all the while not exceeding 60kph.
and then we found it. entrance fee was rather steep (200 pesos per -- then again, i have no idea what the fees are for other zoos). pictures next post.
picture taking done, another fairly leisurely drive back to makati.
i did my calculations and ended up with at least 15 kilometers to a liter. wow, twice the mileage of my weekly commute.
so the car can get quite a ways on a tank of gas, as it were.
just takes a heck of a lot of discipline on the gas pedal.
once more, borrowed the handy little casio camera of jose with the intention of revisiting a zoo on the tagaytay ridge. it's actually part of a hotel called residence inn -- i'd been there god knows how long ago and didn't even remember where it was located.
the internet was less than useless insofar as a map of establishments on the tagaytay ridge, so it was an "ask when we get there" kind of thing.
the plan therefore was to leave bright and early (with makati housemate glenn in tow), have lunch at the bag o' beans and then inquire of the local populace where this zoo might be found.
now this would make the second sunday in succession that i'd be driving to tagaytay, so i decided that it would be a good "control" test too for something i'd noticed the previous trip: the car seemed to get excellent mileage -- provided one did not exceed 2000rpm in any gear (which equated to 60/70 in 5th). needless to say, that kind of velocity had others zooming by on either side, but what the hey.
at any rate, got to bag o' beans, lunched, and asked of the policeman/traffic aide outside where we might find the zoo. he didn't have a clue.
the only information i got from the web search was that the establishment was around the kilometer 62 marker or somesuch. in which direction, i had no idea. therefore we decided to ply the route to the people's park in the sky (which happened to be the end destination of the previous trip).
hmm. past the junction, past the rotonda, past the santa rosa road -- still no kilometer markers to be found. and no residence inn.
beyond picnic grove, on the right side of the road, finally a marker. it was in the 50's so that was good. onward then.
all the way to people's park. still no residence inn.
finally, glenn got out and asked one of the parking wardens at the park if he knew where the zoo was.
well, what do you know. it was just beyond bag o' beans.
back, back, then.
all the while not exceeding 60kph.
and then we found it. entrance fee was rather steep (200 pesos per -- then again, i have no idea what the fees are for other zoos). pictures next post.
picture taking done, another fairly leisurely drive back to makati.
i did my calculations and ended up with at least 15 kilometers to a liter. wow, twice the mileage of my weekly commute.
so the car can get quite a ways on a tank of gas, as it were.
just takes a heck of a lot of discipline on the gas pedal.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
anger management
best intentions notwithstanding, to date the render farm hasn't seen too much use. ergo, the best time to do some administrative housekeeping and all that.
sometime in the past months, the farm had been regenerated (the tech's term for a fresh install of various os'es). not surprisingly, the impossible man's idea of a regen involved taking some shortcuts and precious little by way of communication/consultation...
suffice to say that some whole steps were left out - and those are the things that i've been spending the last few weeks sporadically addressing (between editing and workstation troubleshooting).
in a nutshell, i made sure that each machine in the under-100-strong farm had the proper user and password; copied over the temporary database and set permissions on the folder structure; verified host lists for the whole farm system (license servers, job servers, render units); and did some render benchmarks to check if the system was usable.
so far so good.
in the latter regard, i also finally managed to inject a whole bunch of in-house code into the render system's submission script (after a call-for-help email to the software's programmer...).
the circumstances surrounding that bit of coding eureka was odd indeed. i had actually been sitting on the tip that the programmer had given for a week or two. until one day, as i came into work, an officemate (who had taken a personal mouse home the day before - without telling me) announced the need for a replacement or wouldn't be able to work. i inquired as to why that had been necessary, and the snappish reply that the mouse was "personal" after all took matters swiftly downhill...
long story short, replacement mouse was found, more ill-considered behavior and words were expressed, a heated mutual apology then transpired.
however, it takes me quite a while to descend from the plateau of heatedness to which i had levitated - oddly enough, to take my mind off the bad trip morning, i decided to take on the task of grafting the non-working code to the submission script.
lo and behold.
the script finally worked.
although i am happy to have worked that programming thorn out, the notion of having to fly completely off the handle and then redirecting the anger to solve the problem is not something i'm looking forward to applying at the next coding roadblock...
sometime in the past months, the farm had been regenerated (the tech's term for a fresh install of various os'es). not surprisingly, the impossible man's idea of a regen involved taking some shortcuts and precious little by way of communication/consultation...
suffice to say that some whole steps were left out - and those are the things that i've been spending the last few weeks sporadically addressing (between editing and workstation troubleshooting).
in a nutshell, i made sure that each machine in the under-100-strong farm had the proper user and password; copied over the temporary database and set permissions on the folder structure; verified host lists for the whole farm system (license servers, job servers, render units); and did some render benchmarks to check if the system was usable.
so far so good.
in the latter regard, i also finally managed to inject a whole bunch of in-house code into the render system's submission script (after a call-for-help email to the software's programmer...).
the circumstances surrounding that bit of coding eureka was odd indeed. i had actually been sitting on the tip that the programmer had given for a week or two. until one day, as i came into work, an officemate (who had taken a personal mouse home the day before - without telling me) announced the need for a replacement or wouldn't be able to work. i inquired as to why that had been necessary, and the snappish reply that the mouse was "personal" after all took matters swiftly downhill...
long story short, replacement mouse was found, more ill-considered behavior and words were expressed, a heated mutual apology then transpired.
however, it takes me quite a while to descend from the plateau of heatedness to which i had levitated - oddly enough, to take my mind off the bad trip morning, i decided to take on the task of grafting the non-working code to the submission script.
lo and behold.
the script finally worked.
although i am happy to have worked that programming thorn out, the notion of having to fly completely off the handle and then redirecting the anger to solve the problem is not something i'm looking forward to applying at the next coding roadblock...
Monday, February 11, 2008
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