15 months almost

The lack of updates has been partly due to the added workload, added even more after the last update, and also the arrangements that had to be planned for yaya's termination from childcare. After her being sick for the whole of december, my mudder practically called me everyday to "nag" at me to terminate yaya's childcare. I sourced for alternatives, checked for vacancies for infant care around convenient places, and also tried to look for nannies, all didn't work out, and then my mudder said she will look after only mon, wed, fri, 3 days a week, and told me to take leave for the other 2 days, told me to convert to part time, and other stressful things.

In the end, my mudder said that she will look after mon, wed, thu, fri, and the balance tue every week, I had to alternate with hubby to stay at home to look after yaya, then we submitted our one month termination notice, and her last day will be tomorrow. Other arrangements we had to make include planning how to shift all her barang barang in school home tomorrow, how to plan our tuesday for the next few months, plan what time I have to reach home, so that my mudder can go home to cook, and in the past few days looking for a car seat so that my mudder can still drive around if she needs to, instead of being grounded at home with yaya. This arrangement will only be till yaya starts her playgroup childcare on 1 June. That will be another round of planning.

The rest of the time, I was planning for our holiday trip, where to go, when, book air tickets, hotels, calculating expenses, and then leave arrangements. When there is something to look forward to, the shxt at work matter less. Work wise, I will only describe it as chaotic. My supervisor was reluctant to approve my 2 weeks leave, but he still approved it in the end, very reluctantly.

Him: Must you take leave in may?
Me: Yes.
Him: Can you adjust so that it doesn't impact the project schedule?
Me: Ok, then I take leave in apr.
Him: Have you booked?
Me: No. Check with you first mah.
Him: Can it be after june?
Me: And if the project can't end in june?
Him: But if you take leave so near the launch date, you need to be around.
Me: So I go for my holiday earlier loh. I think there is a lower chance that the project can complete in may than after june. (since it hasn't started yet)
Him: It will be better if it's later.
Me: Like when?
Him: Any time after june.
Me: And what if there is another last minute project like the one I only know in end jan and the launch is mid march?

So he conceded to my request.

Randomly, one day while on the way home from work, I thought to myself, if I were to lose my job or decide to quit without a job, I think I may have a higher chance passing off as a freelance copywriter than a freelance programmer. And private tuition seems to be getting more lucrative than ever.

Using ecards system for event registration

My user manager told another user who wants an event registration function that event registration should not go onto her corporate website because a lot of customisation needs to be done, so she is recommending the ecards system to be used. Ecards isn't her system.

Me: how.... Is ecards system suitable?
Her: you just need to tweak the page a little bit to make it become a form instead of the card.
Me: but it doesn't meet the requirement of showing the form to invited ppl.
Her: it does, because you need to log in to the ecards system, choose which card to send, and type in your email address and recipient's. If you use a web form on the corporate website, the email will only go to the admin, I don't want it to come to me, if you use ecards, it will send a copy to the sender.
Me: erm ...
Her: and also not everyone can see the ecard, only those who click the email you sent, so only ppl you want to invite for registration can see, that's why I recommend to use ecards, just need to do a minor tweak.
Me: I disagree, you need to build another application for this because there are none available in our env

do you know anything about virtual machines?

That was what my supervisor asked me, I said, depends what the question is, so he was telling me about 2 server architectures proposed by the vendor, one is purely with physical servers, another was all VMs.

The PjM who was doing the calculations, all the technical guys were out for lunch, and they wanted to ask me for a second opinion. She was not aware of the various components required so I explained to her what a SAN is, what a database cluster is, VM host, mount point, etc, then she asked me, "so do i need a vm host if i just use physical servers?" Without a thought, I said no. She said, "Really?" I confirmed with her that the physical servers were not intending to host VMs. After that she went back to do her calculations and all, then my supervisor asked me what I thought of the diagram, I said, I don't think you need a database cluster unless you intend to build a data warehouse.

In the end they went to look at the details and realised that there was no database cluster required. It was also supposed to only have 1 application server, so I don't know why they need a hardware load balancer.

Another weird thing on the diagram was a firewall was placed between the hardware load balancer and 2 application servers, and the load balancer was placed on the web-tier. Well... I didn't want to dig too much, so I just didn't bother, maybe people really do that.

The power of double

My friend commented that I havent been posting much on fb, which is true. Over the past 1 month, my workload doubled miraculously, but the time I have stayed the same, which meant that my response time for my original work doubled.

Simple logic right?

The power of doubling my workload in one month forced me to make changes to the way I work, for better or for worse lol. The most drastic, very unlike me thing I did was to ask others to do things that I would normally have done, like asking my user to arrange meeting, asking my user to tabulate a spreadsheet for tender evaluation, and talking with people over the phone instead of meeting them face-to-face.

The next change I observed in my behaviour is that I talk and write less. For e.g, normally I will explain to you the problem until you understand, but when I dont have time, I don't even explain to you and just tell you, once resolve, you test, ok, case close. I only talk when really necessary, otherwise I just email minimally. I reply emails only if the world will stop or the train will crash if I don't reply. Normally I will also ask people what their immediate task is to understand what my team mates are doing, that also disappeared.

In terms of tasks to be completed by me in the same working hours, it is still the same, but because more issues will accumulate before I process them, resolution actions became more efficient when there are similar issues. So maybe... Economy of scale theory applies to my queue. Workload doesn't really matter, I will end up reprioritising what to do, tasks stay longer in queue, but they still get done.

Sometimes you wonder where the phlegm got choked at

This morning I had a 9-10 am meeting, so I thought, cool I have some time in the morning to do work, then my supervisor told me I have a new mission, setting up of a website for another user whom
I haven't met before and then I ended spending my 10-12 pm with them. The choking thing was the guy I had to work with only got know about it few days ago and had no idea what the requirements are, his boss was also still in the brainstorming stage, but the good thing about the meeting was this guy had the limited edition League of Legends box on his table and played World of Warcraft before all the expansions, so we started talking about games before entering the work topic, and the atmosphere was very friendly.

But after the meeting you can't help but wonder where the phlegm got choked at, but the good thing is I will not be the only plumber clearing the phlegm from the pipes. And after writing this, I realized I used phlegm instead of the normal shxt, lol, maybe cos it just isn't as bad as a shxt-clogged pipe.

What are chances your vendor bitches about someone else's code?

I met my ex-vendor on the train, he was complaining about the code developed by the atas vendor. They hardcoded a lot of values and he had to fix their bugs even though he was only contracted to enhance the program.

We worked together for another similar program, and I decided to redevelop the whole thing because the one developed by the atas vendor wasn't scalable. So he was comparing what we did good with what atas did bad. I thought it was quite odd for us to be bitching about the atas vendor's code.

P.S: atas is Singlish for "high-class"

Do you always take very long to respond?

My colleague told me she wasted 30 min listening to my user complain about a software installation because I didn't follow up. I was glad she told me that because I thought I only had to get the software installed for them.

I didn't know that I had to teach them how to use the software. The users also didnt ask me how to use when i told them that desktop team will be going around to activate the software for them.

My supervisor told me to get the paperwork done to make sure that the users get the software. He also asked me whether anybody would be doing it, so I said the desktop team, but he added that there will be additional configuration needed, so I said that since there is no one else, I will do it. I never got to the configuration step because by the time I was done coordinating the installations for 10+ users, the trial key had expired and there was still 1 user whom we couldn't catch.

So today the same bunch of users complained to her about another issue then she told me I need to follow up, I said it's an ongoing issue and we have been updating the users. Well... Escalation is free and easy, but not effective if you try it time and again and you are not feeling any difference.

She also said I owed her the steps to create a blog entry, and because of that, the users are not doing anything, implying that I am delaying the schedule.

And then towards the end of the day, she must be quite fed up with me, she asked me, you seem to be always very cool about everything, do you always take every long to respond to things?

My answer to her, yah. She must be raving mad. :p Being at the bottom of the food chain means there will always be ppl shouting at you from the back of the toilet queue that they want to shxt but you must not be distracted, else nobody will get to finish their business.