Thursday, June 30, 2005

blogger's block

Hi my name is Taqiyuddin. I've been blogging since December last year. I am now suffering from blogger's block.

Today, I was sent to my company's client site to deliver hardware kits. On top of that, I was given the task of taking the company's projector for a presentation at the client site. Thank God the projector is one of those mini portable ones. I am starting to feel like a dispatch boy.

Lately I've been experiencing absent mindedness. I kept forgetting things that need to be done and things that I need to keep track of. I am starting to feel that my boss is frustrated of me. Maybe thats why I'm getting those low responsibility tasks, like buying goreng pisang and such.

Maybe this absent mindedness is the reason why I'm having the blogger's block.

I think the whole reason I'm having this absent mindedness is because I am not yet comfortable with my work environment. The surrounding. You know? When you have to juggle a lot of unknown variables in your head. Like whats tommorrow going to be like. What's the person next to you is thinking. What's the boss is thinking. How am I supposed to debug that exception thrown. Those kind of things. Little little things that you'd never think about when you are in that comfort zone.

Comfort zones makes me stagnant. The unknown scares me. I like my room. I think i'll be a hermit.

That'd be kewl isn't it? Sitting in front of my PC. Communicating via the internet. Everything is stream onto my pc through open ports. When I feel threatened, I could always close the ports. And there you go, a totally controlled environment.

I got a parking ticket last two days. It was from the ever vigilant MPPJ. Fuckers. Their football club is good though. Did I ever tell you that they probably use the summons money to pay for the club expenses? Well.. I did. Oh, the ticket is worth 30 ringgit. At least it's 20 ringgit cheaper than I anticipated. I've anticipated the ticket though. I know I am going to be fined, yet I let it happen.

Come to think of it, I let a lot of things happen to me. Even though I've already anticipated it. I used to say that to really learn something, I have to experience that thing first-hand. Similarly with behaviors. To change my behavior, I have to experience a life changing event. Like being fined, being dumped. And a host of other things.

I think I'll stop writing now.

I wonder...

How do other people write blogs? Do they write each word as it come to their head? Or do they do the outline, then flesh up paragraphs and review and revise the entry?

I do wonder...

But maybe that depends on individual preferences.

Thursday, June 23, 2005

10 minutes late and it saved me 50 ringgit

Yes folks. I came to work 10 minues late today. Its a first for my new company. I woke up at around 7am as usual. Went down to have breakfast and my shower as usual. But unlike the usual day, my sayang wasn't online this morning. So i didn't know what to do with my extra 30 minutes (because usually, i'll chat with her for 15 to 30 minutes before going off to work each morning).

Then i decided to make use of that 30 minutes by napping. Yep, i napped 30 minutes before going off to work. Bad decision. I woke up at 8:45 am. 15 minutes before the official office hours. Yikes.

I drove there as fast as I could and decided to park my car nearer to the office building. Which requires me to pay the parking fee. 60 sen for an hour. Expensive. But I wish not to tarnish my integrity as an ethical worker (plus, its my probationary period, so i have to suck up to my boss. thaaha) so i figured the 60 sen per hour is not that much. I paid for three and a half hours. That'll cover my car untill lunch time, which will allow me to move my car out of the parking area to a less commercial area.

So i did. At lunch time, I moved my car to the T junction in the residency area. And guess what? Well, I think you already guessed it.

Everything happens for a reason. yep...

Well, ok. For those who couldn't guess it. When i arrived to my favorite parking spot, I founf out that every parked car there was slapped with a 50 ringgit fine by the MPPJ, the ever efficient. No wonder their football club is one of the best. They're using our money to fund the club!

Anyways, if i had arrived there on time this morning, i'd be grumbling now.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

confessions

I confess! I suck at my job! boo hoo.

Here's the thing. A couple of days ago, I misentered the pin number for the company's one and only sample smart card. The smart card got locked and my boss had to go all the way to the vendor's office to get it unlocked. It was the keyboard's fault! The shift key got stuck when i was typing the pin number. But I felt like a fool nonetheless...

Productivity went down the drain for the last couple of days because of it. My personal productivity. It makes me feel like one of those under performing dude that the company don't bother to fire since they need some bumiputras to comply with business regulations. Dang!

And and and, my work is purely VooDoo! click here if you don't understand voodoo. At least you'll learn something new today. Yeay. If you already knew.. good for you.

VooDoo VooDooooo ummmmm baaaaarghhhhh...

Monday, June 20, 2005

snort snort

Twas a night to remember. The sky is clear, the moon is shining its borrowed rays. The breeze was in my hair. I felt elated. I felt alive. The world, the world, it is all around me. I am right in the center of it all.

Its nearly a month since my last post. not quite nearly a month. but almost nearly a month. But the bottom line is, i've never slacked at posting before, not until lately. I think its my current job. It numbs life. Or maybe I am more inspired with tragedy. And lately tragedy eludes me. How tragic. Hence this entry.

Oh tragis nyeerrrrr tragis nyeeeeerrrrrrrr.

Ok, one of the main reason i blog is to log the stuff that i do for future reference. When i'm old and almost senile, i'd like to be able to log into the internet, surf to my own blog and look at the stuff i did when i was young. The mistakes, the good memories, the sufferings, the boredom, the salt and pepper of life.

So here goes. Today, I went to a job interview for a post in mesiniaga. The interview went well. But in retrospect, I think its a disaster. I might not be the one chosen for the post afterall.

The post requires a person well versed in microsoft products. I said a lot of 'uhhh?' when any MS product was mention. Followed by the interviewer's cringing expression. OOooohh

I went to cameron highlands for the weekend. I've been there three times before. The first one at a spur of the moment. The second, with friends on the way back from utp to kl. The third, with my family, to attend a wedding. This one, with friends for a brief respite from KL.

It was cold. Chilling. We stayed in brincang. Never stayed there before. All three of my previous visit was spent mostly in tanah rata.

Cameron Highlands is just a strech of road on a hilly area. Beside the road are farms, Tea plantations and some various other agriculture related attractions. After my second visit there, I realized that there are nothing much to see there. After my last visit, I realized that it was not the place that matters, It was the company.

A couple more years from now, I'm sure i'll go there again.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

it sort off fits in. everything is. dayme. eh.. no.. KEWL.

ok, these past weeks, i've been working. Doing some troubleshooting and configuration and such. It's hard. It's hard because the stuff that i'm doing is new to me. I'm like pushing the envelope. My personal envelope that is. And whats more? I have to do all the troubleshooting, developing, configuring in a limited time frame.

Why did I say that it all fits? Well, let me tell you. The whole of last month, I spent tweaking my old box to run linux and some other extras. My original plan was to spent the month looking at java codes and do some coding. To prepare me for doing java programming. Well, It turns out that java programming is no trouble at all. As long as you've got a good reference materials with you. Souce samples, books, Google. Yes, google is my friend.

Anyways, I find that, after that one month of doing linux configuration, I've grown accustomed with consoles, directory structures, cheats and hacks. And i'm currently being asked to set us up a secure web server thinggy and such. And where will you find a secure web server? it's in linux. yes, the dark side of the force. Why do i call it the dark side? Open up a linux console, you'll come to a prompt with a black background.

So there you go. Well, not quite yet. There's this other thing. I had a chat with heron the other day. Just now in fact. I chatted with him about how my job now is quite demanding. Demanding in terms of the responsibility being put on me. I felt as though i am 110% responsible if the stuff that I do fucks up. I mean, yeah it is supposed to be like that when you are working. But? I'm just a new guy! Well i personally think that the best way to learn in to put oneself in a tight situation, then you'll have no option but to learn. But the thought did came to my mind that i'm carrying to much responsibilies, too early in the job. So i told heron. And he said '*snort*, be you angles?'. haha, no not really. He said 'Didn't SSi harden you? Didn't it makes you strong?'. I am heavily paraphrasing just now, but the gist is all there. So i thought 'yeah.. SSi did that to me. Maybe the fact that SSi hardens me, allows me to go through each working day without cracking under the pressure.

Thanks to The Man for being such an ass. A benevolent, fraudulent ass. Without the experiance i got from him, I don't think I could handle it.

So here comes the part where I'll say that everything fits. Everything fits.

I would like to thank all my readers for their support and understanding. I would like to extend my love to my love. I would like to go to sleep now.

Thank you.

Good nite.