Zakame::Blog

Sep 30, 2009

Off We Go...

Arrived at Manila yesterday. At least in the parts we passed through (Pasay, Makati, and Malate,) everything seems back to normal, with almost no sign of the previous storm's havoc. And nary a raindrop in sight.

I'm staying at my cousin Deng's place, as usual with my Manila trips. We found it in a bit of chaos, as ondoy's flooding reached here, recalling the water being almost knee-deep. The water's gone now though, but a lot of things that were not brought up to the apartment's second floor are still wet. Hopefully they will be dry before the next storm comes in...

A little history: the last time I lived in Manila was in September 2006, when Orange & Bronze got me for a 3-month contract work on a project. At the time, I was fresh off my GSoC work, and I was raring to whet my skills as a software developer. That job gave me that opportunity, as well as opportunities to meet new friends, participate in a bit of commercial software development, and get used to Manila life again.

Then awhile later I got into the Morph Labs bandwagon to become its first Systems Administrator, working from Daet via telecommuting. It was here that I began the long road to unrecovery^H^H^H^H^H learning the ropes of being a sysadmin, building some cool stuff in the process as well as maintaining it.

Now, I'm back here in Manila, to work for Orange & Bronze again, but this time in a more permanent position, as Systems Administrator Lead. I look forward to reconnecting with my old pals as well as meet new ones, use the valuable experience I've had over the years in my new job, and get back to the long road of unrecovery^H^H^H^H^H building more cool stuff.

And I start doing that tomorrow. Good times ahead.

Tags: life, morphlabs, oandb. | Posted at: 14:53 | 1 Comments/Trackbacks.

Sep 29, 2009

Help Ondoy Victims

Hey $WORLD, Philippines needs your help!

We just got hit by ondoy, and there seems to be a couple more storms coming in.

You can help out via donations to the Red Cross/Red Crescent. If you have friends or family in Manila, you can check the RescueHub and Sahana lists for persons missing and in distress.

And lastly, pray to your $DEITY for us (or do what works best for you.)

UPDATE: Google is helping out too. The local Red Cross is also accepting donations.

UPDATE 2: There's a new site up with additional info on the relief efforts.

Tags: disasters, life, ondoy. | Posted at: 13:33 | 26 Comments/Trackbacks.

Sep 28, 2009

Moving to Manila, Take 2

Ok, so I'm going ahead with my trip to Manila tomorrow, after my earlier delay. With a lot of relief efforts going on, I hope Manila's recovering now from Ondoy's onslaught. I'm both glad that the worst seems over, but sad for the loss of my fellow Filipinos, and worried about what seems to be more storms coming ahead.

Thanks to everyone praying for Manila's recovery, and for me and my companions' safety. I'll be offline the whole day tomorrow as we make the 9-hour trip. I hope nothing bad happens.

Tags: disasters, life, ondoy. | Posted at: 14:14 | 2 Comments/Trackbacks.

Sep 27, 2009

(Not) Moving to Manila

So, I'm moving back to Manila tomorrow. I hope the flood's subsided by then.

UPDATE: Delaying this, after hearing some more news. I hope it gets better and not worse, as I hear there are a couple more storms coming in.

Tags: life. | Posted at: 14:57 | 1 Comments/Trackbacks.

Sep 22, 2009

0x19

zakame++;

I have much to be thankful for reaching a quarter-century, so me and my family went to Naga city to give thanks to $DEITY and our patron (which just had its 300th year feast this weekend.) This past year saw me moving on from my old job, doing odd bits here and there, and letting me rediscover my interests. And to top it off, I found a new job. :-)

I'm looking forward to what the next quarter-century brings to me, and what I could bring to it. I already have a few in the works ;)

Thanks, $WORLD!

Tags: life. | Posted at: 15:22 | 2 Comments/Trackbacks.

Sep 24, 2008

Broken Comment Posting Fixed; New #olpc-ph Grassroots Group

Thanks to Wolfger for pointing out an HTTP 500 while trying to greet me by comment. :D I totally forgot about upgrading Net::Akismet to the new version that comes with my patch, as described previously. All the while I was thinking Net::Akismet was doing too good of a job keeping out comment spam, when it may as well have kept out all comments :( But its my fault, really.

Among other things, Jerome has finally started a new grassroots group for the OLPC effort here in the Philippines, fresh from the success at the recently-concluded SFD. There's now an IRC channel up too, with logs available locally (text-only, until I can set up a web and fileserver frontend.) I'm personally interested on running a port of Inferno and perhaps help out on the TODOs for it.

Tags: community, inferno, life, olpc, perl, www. | Posted at: 00:31 | 0 Comments/Trackbacks.

Sep 23, 2008

Turning 0x18

zakame++;

There should be a picture of me above, following the Me(me), but its late. And I have to get up early tomorrow to catch the bus to Manila for next day's Cebu flight (work calls.)

I look forward to another roller-coaster year. This year had been a ride through new stuff mostly at work, picking up CentOS and Ruby along the way, although remaining faithful to my Perl roots. And quite recently, it has come back full circle with a renewed interest in Debian again. However, I've been also coming back at exploring Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno, rekindling my lost interest in distributed systems and showing me just how bad Unix and friends have become (current meme: tell me why any xterms, mine or yours, has a baud rate, as told by stty.)

Still, I can't forget my roots; yesterday's "save" was a subtle reminder that I should come back to Debian again. I'll do what I can, and maybe learn something or two in the process ;) I guess that's how $DEITY works; always moving in indeterministic ways.

Ok, off to sleep...

Tags: debian, inferno, life, morphlabs, perl, plan9. | Posted at: 16:37 | 0 Comments/Trackbacks.