On leave.... so what???

Hmmmm... I'm SOOOO HAPPY.. COZ... IN A COUPLE OF HOURS... I'LL BE FLYING OFF TO SYDNEY FOR A 6-DAY TRIP!!! Woo HOOO!!!!...

Anyway, on a slightly more sad note... I had to do some work today despite taking the day off. This is the reality of IT.. Even when you've handed over all your stuff to 2 or 3 people... (Yes... I'm soooo busy that I need at least 3 people to know what I'm doing...) I still needed to do some last minute UAT. *sigh*.. What to do. I'd rather sacrifice some time for work, getting the job done right, rather than getting my a** blown up by the boss on another occassion.

So, I'm off for my long holiday.... May login from time to time to check up on a few things... Hehehe.. Maybe take a few pictures and post it on my other website... ;)

'Til then... CATCH YOU LATER... MATE!!!

Zimmish....

Hehehe.. Over the weekend, I've just discovered another new cartoon character to add to my collection... "Invader Zim"... Hehe..

I love the storyline.... Slightly "X-File-ish" with power crazy alien invader trying to get information on earth. The reaction is over the top and comedy... outstanding!!

Anyway, enough about Zim... I just found out that next Saturday will be the best time of my life!! The Anime Festival 2003 is heading for KL, at Midvalley from 12-3pm... Hehehe... I AM SOOOO THERE!!!

It would be a very cool day.... indeed...

*sigh*.. At the moment, I've got to figure out/reverse engineer some code from ASP.NET to Java. Dang it!! What am I supposed to do with all those "Optional" parameters in that ASP.NET function?????!!! Hmmmm... Wonder why M$ did something like that...

Ooh.... 3 days left to my leave/holiday and counting... Am slightly happy today....

9-11... 2yrs on...

Hmmm... Needless to say that today is a day when a lot of people perished at one point in time. Enough has been said about 9-11. The question is, what are we going to do about it to instil peace in this troubled world? One person decided to stamp out all "evil" by targetting certain countries but that only adds fuel to the fire. Others decided to hunt down all these troublemakers in order to prevent this from happening again...

The fundamental question remains... "Why are humans being so inhuman to their fellow humans?" If we stop to think about the consequences of our actions first, would this make the world a better place to live for us, our children and our children's children? If we take another person's life to justify a cause or even to avenge another person's life lost, does this repeat the vicious cycle?

In my humble opinion, today's date is no special than any other date. On an ordinary day, a lot of people are suffering and dying because of our inconsiderate actions at times. So, what is so special about this date?? It is a reminder that even though we call ourselves human, we are inately not that "human" after all because we can do such horrendous acts against our fellow human.

.... Pause..... Reflect............

Crucified....

It is another horrible day. I'm sitting here at my place... waiting to be crucified by an inquisition crew. All because of a small bug.

*sigh*... I'm starting to type out my resignation letter...

Harrowing experience

Wow... The day is finally coming to an end... *sigh*... What a relief. Tho' its officially the weekend, I don't feel like its a weekend at all.

The reason is this... The mysterious bug that surfaced on Monday, has resurfaced... again. *sigh*.... The bug has to come from somewhere...

Anyway, just had a horrible, horrible experience of sitting through a code review with a boss. He has done programming ages and ages and ages ago. He insisted that a code review to be done. Anyhow, he doesn't seem to get it that the new fandangled programming languages like C# and Java are TOTALLY and ABSOLUTELY different from what used to go on ages ago in C, C++ days. I know about those days, I was there....

Somehow, he went through my code and didn't seem to get it that some function calls are done that way because it is just that way... A programming construct/law laid down by those hardworking, pizza-eating, beer-guzzling programmers in Redmond, Beijing, Mumbai... etc..... The example shown in the documentation is not neccessarily the best.... It is just telling you HOW TO CALL THE BLOODY F**KING function... Not the best way to use it! I had to argue my way through why I had to check for an instance if it were null or nothing (VB... Hehehe) before assigning it. Even though you have a Try-Catch-Finally statement block, it always pay to be a little bit more hardworking.... He asked, "Why do you want to check if the DataReader is closed or not when you can just call it anyway?"... I really wanted to say "So that my program won't crash.... DUMBA**!!!".... *sigh*.. But you can't say that to the face of the person who signs your cheques.... ;)

So, the lecture went on. I really felt like a 1st yr student ALL OVER AGAIN!! Bloody Hell!! I've been programming and hacking stuff even before that!!!! F**K!!!! The stupid thing lasted 3 bloody f**king hours... It was 9++pm before I could go down for a bite. Sh*t!! The last thing to hit my stomach was water at 6pm.....

I thought the experience would end there. That I could happily go on my way. I had already uploaded a new patch, which had better logic after a co-worker spotted a leak... And then, I had a call, "I think that block of checking for the DataReader is causing the problem. How sure are you that the code works?" ... This time.. I really had it... "This code has been proven. I've written this piece of code all over the place. This is recommended practice by the experts. The example in the documentation is terrible. If this code didn't work, all the rest of the other applications that has this piece of code would have crashed a long long time ago..."................ "OK........" RELIEF!!!!!

Man!!!!! I have a real horrible feeling that he is going to say on Monday, "Can I see the code again? I want to see the fix..."... Bloody hell... I think he doesn't trust me. Anyway, he's a bloody Masters holder and I'm not. I just got a small piece of paper that said that I graduated in 1997 from Australia with a degree in Comp. Sc. Yea... I'm no Albert Einstein, but he's no Bill Gates either. I have a real nasty feeling that he's going to suggest programming in C.

Oooh booy... If that were to happen... I'll just sit back and watch. See how long will it take for them to build a piece of code to just open a database connection and select 1000 records from the database.

Why can't people let me do my job???? Or the better question is, why the hell am I treated like a bloody f**king 1st yr student when I've been working for over 3yrs in the industry?????!!!!!! This is NOT going to uplift my morale.... Yea... I did the best I could. I'm proud of my work. I laid the bloody f**king foundation of this company and this is the sh*t thanks I get????!!!! I'm only human and am bound to make mistakes.

Time to move on... Perhaps I should just stick to simple stuff like being a System Integrator....

U know when u r beaten when...

*sigh*... It is confirmed. My boss is a dumba**... His e-mail today was pretty interesting. Asked me to cool it and not start any e-mail wars. **PPPHHHHHHPPPPTTTT**...

Anyhow, life goes on. The bug that caused the problem was human error. I will "selectively" choose to reply his e-mails. Anyway, he does not command any respect from me. I will just respect the title, but the man... That leaves A LOT to be desired.

My question of the day is, how often do we IT Professionals here in M'sia encounter such superiors or bosses, where they are

1. Totally technically unsound but because they can suck up to management, they get to be head of a technical department.
   
2. Able to promise a lot of things but do not deliver.
   
3. Put in software development processes but fail to implement them properly, hence worsening the situation.
   
4. UNABLE TO LEAD.......Thus rendering the entire department to run like headless chicken when the CEO starts asking technical questions ==> This... in my humble opinion is the biggest problem......
   
   

Anyhoooo.... we as professionals, have to suck it in and just do our jobs. This is contrary to what I believe in as I'm a proactive person. However, when your boss "claims" to be proactive but isn't, you tend to get very discouraged. The solution?? Move on in your life. Remember that the person behind that title is still human and thus, is imperfect in every way. The solution to my problem? Ignore the bloody boss, listen to the BIG GUY... (Hehehe... Yes... GOD FIRST!!!! CEO next... *snicker*) and do your best!!

I read this today in an e-mail and I really love it....

The one who kneels to the Lord can stand up to anything.
Amen.....

Weird Bugs??

Hmmm... After a full day's work trying to find an elusive bug, I have encountered one very disturbing thing... The application database I was working on was being tampered...!!! **SHOCK**.... * o * I did not know how or why but I suspect that someone was updating some records in the database and may have accidently removed a table and data records.... *sigh*... The result, the application acted strange and despite so many efforts to repro (reproduce) the error on the staging machine, the strange bug could not be found anywhere!

Finally, at 6:11pm today, I discovered that the database was tampered.................................. The consequences that followed are:

   
1. Application did not run properly and thus, compromised the demonstration done by product team.
      
2. Boss panicked because of No. 1 and so called up and starting screaming.
      
3. I started screaming back because I know of item No. 1
      
4. Anxiously ran unit tests and debug traces on code. Found none.... ======> MORE PANIC!!!
      
5. Told another colleague to run unit tests and debug draces. Could not repro the error ======> NEARLY DIED LAUGHING!
   

As a result of No.1 I am suffering from a minor stomach ulcer. On top of that, had a lovely chat with my CEO because of item No. 1... LOOOOOVVVVEEEEELLLLYYYYYYYY..... I also received a "nice" e-mail from the CEO regarding the problem.......... LOOOOOOOOVVVVVEEEEEELLLLLYYYYYYYYY.... Gave a lovely opinion to the CEO regarding what my boss is doing, i.e. NO SYSTEM... "Just Do It!!!"........

I think because of that, my boss is in a bad mood because he too got some lovely mails...

This is the reality of working in IT boys and girls........ You are a lovely ant working your a** off for these people and what do you get in the end???? Nothing but more work and comments about your quality of work. I do not see leadership in this place... I only see urgency and disorganization. From chaos, there should stem creativity and innovation. In fact, I see more back-biting, politicking and chaos!! Reminds me the story about Apple's early days when teams were pitted against each other to develop a better Mac... Is this place headed that way???? We'll just have to find out....

2 days after Malaysia's 46th birthday

Malaysia is now 46 years old. Technically, Malaysia has a "2nd" birthday, on Sept 16th since that is the real day when Malaysia is formed. If no one can remember, please refer to your Form Five History textbook... ;)

Anyway, Malaysia has come a long way in 46 years. There were some ups and downs, some "hidden" facts about certain "black spots" in our short history. Parents did tell me a bit about the May 13th incident but they were safely away in some friend's house. Nevertheless, I think we Malaysians are a lucky lot. How many countries enjoy such diversity in culture as Malaysia does? We can enjoy a good "teh-tarik" and "chow koay teow" at the same time. We have people who know how to speak a Chinese dialect without being Chinese.. and Bahasa Malaysia at the same time in one breath... In some parts of the world, there is a lot of segregation and division, but here, we have learnt to embrace each other's differences and learn to live in peace and harmony.

There has been a lot of talk about patriotism lately. One need not be patriotic on Aug 31st only, we should be patriotic ALL THE TIME! We should put aside our differences and strive to progress Malaysia forward in the 21st century. Focus on the issues that really need attention, not trivial ones such as whether to ban/censor a movie but important ones such as education and improving the lives of the poor in our country.

We're a big family and in any family, there are bound to be problems but when we put our minds together, we can conquer anything! Hence... the "Malaysia Boleh" slogan. This slogan too has been the butt of many humourous jokes but I think this is really the Malaysian "war" cry.. Like Braveheart's "FREEDOM"...

Lets be thankful and hope that Malaysia will see more birthdays of achievements to come!!

MERDEKA!!