Floating in Limbo

I’ve made a blog on wordpress.  Do check it out.

Hi everyone,

I’ll be blogging on my new site.

http://blog.phlist.com

See you there!

The weekend has passed.  I just hope my memory of it won’t fade as fast as the winds of Chicago.

We left the office on Friday 4pm, and went back to the Residence Inn to pack our stuff.
By 5pm, we were on our way to the windy city.  The drive ate 6hrs of our time.  Yet the change of time zone gave us back 1hr of precious time.
Around 8pm (on my unadjusted watch), we had dinner at Arbys.  Then, we hit the road again at an average of 80mph.
By around 10pm ET, we found our home in Chicago. 

The next day came, and the start of the marathon began.

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1st lap is from Burnham Park to Millenium Park.
Sight seeing, picture taking, and playing(taunting) with squirrels.

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2nd lap - Chicago Bulls vs Cleveland Cavaliers
Cleveland won 112 - 108 in OT.  Lead by Lebron James with 39pts and 9assists.

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3rd and Final Lap - Navy Pier
just walking around here.
no pics available yet.

Awe inspiring art monuments, goose bumps in the United Center.  What a day it really was.

It’s been approx. 2 months and 10 days since my "training" started, 5 months and 6 days since I left NSP, and  9 months and 6 days since my last blog. 

Unlike the business trips I had for my previous company, "training" time seems to just fly by soo quickly.  Those (business trips) were different, of course.  It was all winter overtimes.  It was all wandering alone in the streets of Sendai, Fuchu, Akihabara, Ueno, and Saitama.  It was all waiting for the end to come.

"Training" has definitely been soo positively different.  Working just 8hrs a day, no weekend OT, a basketball court just outside, fun and friendly new faces, places to explore.

Yep, everything’s been great lately.

This week has been a food fest for me.  Aside from having free breakfast at the hotel in Omiya, Omiya has the best looking food I’ve ever seen.

Don’t you think so?

So the most logical thing to do is to put my wallet on a diet and enjoy the feast!

I got to taste the spicy Korean Bibimba.

Starving for almost 1 hour just to eat okonomiyaki in Okonomiyaki Wahahaha is worth it.  Forgot to take some pics so here’s wikipedia for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okonomiyaki

And lastly while waiting for the shinkansen back to Sendai, I got to eat the Chinese "chia ha"??? I’m not sure if that’s correct.  Anyway, I think its fried rice w/ your choice of toppings (I chose shrimps) and Crab soup.

Yummy!

Finally, my simple insert call to MySQL using PHP worked.

Working with open-source software could be too much of a headache.  These are some of the  things I did to make this work.  Posting this here to remind me and maybe help out anyone who might encounter the same problems.

1) Placed c:\php in the Path environment variable.
2) Uncomment also the extension php_mysql.dll in php.ini (not only php_mysqli.dll)
3) Restarted the PC (some weird error came out when loading the dll)

Also, I downloaded and installed phpBB 2.0.20.  It has a very critical bug.  An error occurs when Accept is clicked during Registration.  Maybe this is a degrade from the previous version since this is just a new bug dated Wed May 10, 2006 12:14 pm.  Here’s the link:

http://www.phpbb.com/bugs/viewreport.php?b=1790&sid=2cc00fc67c57c39c847404420056767e

Open-source softwares need a lot of improvement in both documentation and quality assurance.  Maybe some open-source developers are just too lazy/busy to document and test their work.  Or maybe that’s is just how open-source works.  They code and we, the end users, test.

Aside from those problems, they work great.

The trains in the Tokyo area are always busy and sometimes even jam-packed.
It’s almost crazy when you think there’s no more space, another jap comes in and just shove and squeeze his way in too the pack.  then another comes again, then another.. Some japs just don’t know when it’s enough (just like in the workplace).

My problem is, since it’s too crowdy, I cannot take a seat.  Not that there’s no available seat.  It’s because there may be an elderly who will ride and will find no seat.  What really annoys me is when a young jap comes in and sits on the seat where I was supposed to be.  If only I know how to say in japanese "hey, I didn’t sit there so you could sit there, you a-hole!"

Also, I’m just wondering right now why there should be a designated priority seat.  Aren’t all seats supposed to be priority seats?  Is courtesy in the train just limited to four little corners?

I’ve found a new hobby now called web design.  Being a noob in this side of the programming world, I was surprised IE and Firefox does not render an html and css code in the same way.  What ever happened to the standards??  The one I’m making right now really looks ugly in IE.  Some parts also keeps on disappearing once I hover on a link

I’ve spent so many hours figuring out what is wrong with my html and css code.  I finally gave up and had to google it.

Searched "css problem in internet explorer"
Results 29,100,000.

Does Google have a grudge against Microsoft?
I know I have one.  Why don’t they create a patch for these css problems?

Better yet, why don’t we all just use Firefox as our web browser?

I’m getting really nocturnal recently.  When I think of 2am, I think "it’s still ealry.  anyway, i slept 3am last night".  This must be because of those senseless OT.  Oh well, time to break this nasty habit.  Time to hit the sack.

Working 12 to 16 hours a day (usually incl. weekends) really sucks.  I’m not gonna last too long in this job at this rate.  Especially when I think I could be at home sleeping, surfing, designing, playing, and just basically doing what I want to do.

As Ron once said, we are just "Corporate slaves".  Tiny little ants working day and night to feed the company to make the already rich stockholders even more richer.

Now some companies try to eliminate this notion of "Corporate slavery" by giving company stocks to its hard-working ants.  If the ants work extra hard, they get their tiny share of the fruits of their labor.

Unfortunately for most of us ants,  we just get the OT pay.

I therefore propose there be a law that requires all companies to share its profits to its employee…

Or maybe i’ll just find another job..