in retrospect…

Although my job here at [hehehe] does not require me to do training or teaching for anyone, the teacher in me always surfaces whenever technical questions, most especially in Linux, arise… last week, during my 2nd day here, a question popped up that perked up my ears, and i immediately rose to the challenge… it was a fairly simple question: “Sir, how easy is it to learn Linux?“, i was asked by a subordinate… the answer? very easy!!

that was why i am now, for this week, at least, training them the essentials of running a Linux box… administration would probably come in later… we started last Monday, where i introduced them to the world of Linux [very vast], its different flavors [wow! so many!!], and what it can do for an environment like ours…

yesterday, we tackled simple installations, and today, my students will continue installation, this time, doing multi-boot environments, and so on… who knows? if my staff/students are willing enough, we might just continue this next week for advanced administration, eh?

anyway, i am now on my 2nd week at work, and i must say that i am enjoying this immensely… although my work hours are from 6am till about 4 or 5 in the afternoon, i am enjoying every bit of my stay here, so far… my co-workers are all nice [always smiling], the teachers treat me with utmost respect [everyone does, really], and my staff are all skilled and open to new ideas [like this Linux training]… i have high hopes… haayss…

next week? start of classes again, that was why we are so busy preparing everything for the re-opeing of classes… and we hope to be finished by tomorrow… see ya again soon!!

Ciao, sweetie…

aside: if you are on the lookout for Value Hotels in the Philippines to stay in for a night or even three, look no further than Legend Hotels… Legend Hotels caters to a wide range of clientele - company executives, families, OFW’s, balikbayans, provincial business travelers, local and foreign tourists. be sure not to miss it!!

Ever since 1998, when i started working on an NOS [network operating system] aside from Microsoft, i have always maintained that anything not Microsoft is infitely better… infinitely… better…

and i will still maintain that stand wherever i go, whatever compnay i am in… i have come back to work for an academe very recently, and so far, everything is working well… at least, so far as the desktops are concerned… but working with Microsoft really gives me a pain in the ass [and not because i am biased towards Linux], and I have plans now of transfeerring some of them over to Linux… of course, i cannot readily transfer applications needed primarily by the Finance and the Admissions departments, but all others, i believe i can…

for one, we have Citrix servers and about 100+ thin clients which I need to run, not because I have to, but because we already paid for them… yep, they’re not working, or if they do run, only about 40 of the 100+ clients can run all at the same time… more than that? the 2 servers will start to go crazy, and the clients will freeze up one by one… in APC before, i was able to createone whole laboratory of about 40 clients using only 1 server using LTSP… of course, i have had problems with it, like it doesn’t support a particular network card or a particular graphics card… but all in all, once the server settled down and my students started using the thin clients, everything worked fine to my satisfaction… now, i am left with the problem of making the Citrix environment run… *darn*

second, i plan to teach my people Linux administration… from there, we’d be able to plan better our next steps, i.e. which servers to migrate… prolly, we’ll start with the websites [which are, incidentally, made in ASP and dotNET] so i am now in the process of researching how to make those run in Apache…

lastly, only PLDT have lines in our area?? i am actually considering putting a redundant connection for the school, but i was told that only PLDT have rights to our area… so, do i go wireless, then?? **double darn**

anyway, that’s all for now… more [as in really more] to follow soon…

Ciao, sweetie…

Yes!! i am back in the academe, and i am loving every minute of my **still** short stay here…

you see, i have been in the academe before, on and off for about 7 to 8 years, and the longest was with Asia Pacific College, where i spent 4 glorious years of the 8 years teaching college students there…

in APC, i was the system administrator for the 1st 2 years, then moved on to being the Open Source Laboratories Administrator, doing what i loved doing: research and development of open source products!!

since then, i have been an IT consultant for 8 years, project manager, applications development manager, IT operations manager, and now, an ICT Manager for a school of up to 15-16 year olds!! yey!!

my day starts at 7am and finishes by 4pm, but i am wont to stay far longer to finish up on things, so i expect to be doing the same thing here, too… what school? I cannot tell you that, or i’d have to kill you [Bond-style]… hehehe

what can i say? i am just built for the academe, and i cannot stay away from it…

i will not be teaching, though [yebah!!]… i am part of the ICT support staff which i head, and i’ll be handling the IT needs of the whole school… i am also being asked to get at least 1 certification, and i am looking around for one… hmmmm… maybe, i can get a CCNA… hmmmm… or i can pursue my Linux studies, but the school is Microsoft-based, so i have to lean on them a bit to turn them around…

anyway, expect this blog to be technical again, from hereon, as i will be discussing all my actions here… [signing my contract as i am typing this, hahahaha]

Ciao, sweetie…

it is not very often that i get to see my share of stars and celebrities all in one night… i am not a starry-eyed buck, mind you… in fact, i abhor treating celebrities any other way than i would treat a normal person… just last Sunday during the Pinoy Photography badminton tournament [where my partner and i won the level B medals], you can see me trading jokes with the likes of Rachel Lobangco and Daisy Reyes… i still consider celebrities as normal people with normal wants and needs, and that was why i don’t go ga-ga over them…

but last night was a very different night for me… i am a part of the blogging community and i consider the top honchos of the community as MY stars… i still get edgy around the likes of Yuga, Gail, and Jayvee, the trio who spearheaded last night’s 2007 Philippine Blog Awards, considered as the wacky trio of the blogosphere… the beautiful duo of Aileen Apollo and Sasha Manuel who emceed the affair… uber-bloggers Noemi and Connie Veneracion [aka sassylawyer], Carlo “Waukeen” Ople, the Brand Manager for Philippine Ragnarok Online, and so many others that if i list them all down here one-by-one, it will probably take one whole day to do it…

i also got to trade jokes with bloggers AJ, Piere, LA, Poelle, Jeff, and Shari, [who, by-the way won the Best Personal Blog award] during the post-event party held later at the Hula-Hula in EDSA ShangriLa…

but let me keep this short and let you instead enjoy the pictures of the event found in my gallery… again, you can get as many pictures as you want, but don’t forget to give me credit, ok??

congratulations go to all volunteers [of which, i am a part of] of the event for without you guys, we wouldn’t have a successful one…

kudos go to all judges who tirelessly went to, and read, each and every blog-nominee, and to finally come up with the winners…

and finally, thank you go to all the event sponsors for giving us something which we cannot give back to you except for posts like this…

Ciao, sweetie…

(y) aside: i don’t believe in organized religion or any church, for that matter, ergo, i don’t believe in prayers, either… but this invocation prayer by Fr Stephen Cuyos [who is also a Linux advocate like moi] really tickled the funny bone of all the bloggers present last night… an excerpt can be found below:

Make our hearts meek and humble
that we may treat our readers as friends, not as unique hits,
that we may strive to change ourselves for the better more often than we pimp our site templates,
that we may find more time to ease the pain of someone in our own home than to reply to comments left by strangers,
that we may interact with our next door neighbors as often as we chat with our blogrolled friends,
that we may be more concerned about helping the less privileged than about the number of subscribers to our RSS feeds.

Deliver us, Father, from spams and viruses, from pride and selfishness, and from the temptation to replicate images without permission and copy ideas without crediting the original authors.

nyehehehe…

Tags: [ 2007 Philippine Blog Awards ]

have you ever done something stupid that costs your company millions of pesos worth of data??

if you have, then you prolly know how this computer technician in Alaska felt when, after formatting a hard disk, found out later on that it contained $38 billions worth of accounts of applicant information for an oil-funded sales account… it still wouldn’t have been so bad except for one thing: the daily backup tapes were unreadable!! :o

so, their final approach was to recover from another source of backup… they turned to the most unlikely source of information: paperwork consisting of application forms, birth certificates, and proof of residence stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes, costing the Permanent Fund Dividend Division more than $200,000 to re-enter everything over a period of 4 months to re-enter everything using 70 people working overtime…

i remember my biggest mistake when i was first starting out in network administration… this was way back in 1998 when i was given the task of deleting unneeded directories in a server… i was just supposed to delete the contents of the /tmp directory in a Linux server, but i didn’t look where i was at the time and simply typed in rm -rf * denoting delete all thinking that i was where i was supposed to be… you know what happened next, right?? no?? well, when the prompt was supposed to return after a brief period of time and it didn’t, i suddenly realized my mistake and immediately hit the off button of the server…

obviously, i was at the root directory, and the command proceeded to delete ALL the directories one-by-one… fortunately for me, it did it alphabetically… and since the /home [where the most important user data were in] was right in the middle of the list, and i was able to turn it off at the right time, it was saved… i simply re-installed Linux, and it was like no one knew what happened… **whew**

after that time, i was very conscientious of the things i do in a server, most especially if i was deleting something… even if it was just a file… and that was the turning point of my career in administering Linux servers…

anyway, whatever happened to that computer technician??

Ciao, sweeite…

Tags: [ computer | technician | Linux | humor ]

aside: are you looking for New York City face lifts??

WARNING: a loooonnnggggg post… really…

i am sure, after my post on how to set up a blog using free providers like Wordpress and Blogspot, thousands of you trooped to those sites mentioned and created your own blogs… i am also sure that, by now, you’d have learned the limits of these free blogging sites… like, you can only customize the theme so much… like, you have a favorite plugin but you cannot install this in your new blog… like, you created a photoblog, only to find out that your particular blog has a limit in terms of hard disk size… or many others that, although you can live with them at the start, but you find restricting as you go along…

so what do you do?? well, for a little amount of money and a little patience, you can now start your own blog using your own domain, can have as little or as large hard disk space as you’d want, and put in as much content as you can think of…

how do you go about doing it?? read on and find out…

…with chocolate??

again, with CNET TV…

an ice-cream vending company, Moo Bella, which dispenses ice-cream out of a vending machine… then again, that is not very innovative, but for the fact that the vending machine “scoops out” in 12 different flavors of ice cream… much like Linux, huh??

and the way the guy being interviewed described their product being “innovative, multi-patented, and an industry-disruptive system”, you might think that he is describing Linux… what??

and try these buzzwords he threw in the meantime on for size:

• on demand
• custom-made
• modular design
• variety of additional variations

nice!!

obligatory link: New Jersey plastic surgery

Ciao, sweetie…

what?? this early??

apparently, Tom Merritt of CNET TV already have 5 of them… there’ll sure be more in the months to come…

Bill Gates must be turning in his grave already… oh wait, he’s not dead yet… *groan* ok, he must just be experiencing a New Jersey hair loss, then…

Ciao, sweetie…

Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian Linux distribution, was invited by Microsoft on February 20 to talk about, well, the Debian Linux distribution… what else??

the erstwhile chief technology officer of the newly-formed Linux Foundation will talk about the rise of Linux and its applications in general, and Debian in particular, in front of Microsoft employees in its “Invited Speaker Series”… Eric Raymond, open-source spokesman and author of The Hacker’s Dictionary and the controversial The Cathedral & the Bazaar, was also invited in 1999…

what can this mean for Linux?? nothing, really… but, i believe, the most important question is “what can this mean for Microsoft??” Linux is the biggest threat to Microsoft’s dominance in the OS wars, so why?? a case of “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” probably…

in any case, when will Microsoft invite Linus Torvalds next?? maybe never…

Ciao, sweetie…

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY, everyone!!

don’t do what i wouldn’t do…