I started my new job last Monday. It’s a night shift job but the pay is generous. I’m not working for peanuts anymore. So far, the workload’s pretty light and the client didn’t specify a deadline so it’s all smooth sailing for now. I get to take it easy, which is all good since I still work 2 shifts (I spend about 4 hours or so at my old office while waiting out the 30 days on my contract).

Earlier today while I was over at my former job, I overheard that a few more people are rumored to have resigned/will resign. I’m glad I’m only expected to stay there for a few more weeks. Morale over there seems to be dropping and the folks in my department have realized that they better start looking for greener pastures. I even tried to get at least one officemate to apply here out of pity. I’m lucky to have quickly found another ship to jump onto before the other one sinks.

The people here are great, at least the ones in my group. I’m still experiencing a bit of culture shock. I’ve gotten used to the bullpen setup as opposed to seemingly endless rows of identical cubicles. It’s not so bad, but I prefer the former. I guess you can blame Dilbert and Office Space for the bad rep.

My shift’s just about over, now I can drop the hardworking rookie act and go home. I have a few seasons of Lost, Family Guy and The Office waiting at home.

Just when I thought this week was going to be as bland as the last, the cosmos conspire to give me something good for a change.

First, this:

Dear Mr. Carlo [baleeted!],

Good day!

We like to invite you again to be one of our semi-finals judges for The 9th Philippine Web Awards.

Your kind cooperation and participation made in previous years’ competition/s credible in the eyes of the participants and therefore, made The Awards very successful. We are thankful for your commitment to the development of Filipino web design and it would truly honor us if you can be part of The Philippine Web Awards once more.

As you know, The Philippine Web Awards is an award-giving body that honors the best Filipino-created Web sites. Now on its 9th year, the Awards has gained industry-wide acceptance and is one of the most highly anticipated events in the Philippine Internet community.

Like in the previous years, the event will be organized by Media G8way Corp., the Philippine representative of the global technology publisher International Data Group, which publishes Computerworld, PC World, MacWorld, Infoworld, CIO, and numerous other titles.

The Pre-Finals Judging and Semi-Finals Judging are critical stages in the competition and we need competent, credible, and experienced Web professionals who can help us choose the semi-finalists and finalists. As a judge, you will score the screened official entries for three categories that will be assigned to you. Screened official entries have already been checked for eligibility and proper category. All you have to do is give a score for the four criteria for your assigned categories.

The Pre-Finals Stage (where the top 10 semi-finalists per category are drafted), and The Semi-Finals Stage (where the top 10 are further narrowed down to the top 5), will begin a few weeks prior to The Awards Night which is tentatively scheduled on November 2006.

As a show of our appreciation, we will feature your profile (brief background and portfolio) on the Philippine Web Awards Web site, e-mail newsletters and on the souvenir program during the event. This will help enhance your exposure to thousands of PWA participants, the media and potential clients. You will also be acknowledged as one of the judges during the Awards night.

Should you accept our invitation, we will be discouraging the submission of your personal sites to the competition so as to minimize conflict of interests. Your clients, however, are free to nominate sites that you developed, although you will not be judging in the categories that they will compete in.

Also, please provide us the following:
Full name
Nickname
Company (if applicable)
Tel. No. (landline and mobile phone)
Postal address
Web development training (seminars, courses, etc.)
Areas of expertise (Flash, HTML, ASP, PHP, XML, etc.)
Years in the industry
List of clients (including URL)
Personal/Portfolio site
Digital photo (300 dpi)

Additionally, our Technical Committee is in the process of looking for other judges for the competition. We acknowledge your immersion and expertise in the field and would greatly appreciate your referrals should you be familiar with any similarly credible groups and/or individuals who might be interested in participating in the judging of The 9th Philippine Web Awards.

Thanks very much and we hope to hear from you again soon!

Sincerely,

Amalia V. Curva
Technical Committee Chairperson
The 9th Philippine Web Awards

A little history lesson is in order. I was a pre-finals judge for the Webbys 4 years ago, in 2002. After that, I had no involvement with it as a judge or as a competitor. Now, it seems like I’ve been upped a little because now I’m being invited to be a semi-finals judge.

I have never been too excited about events in the local scene. I’m no scenester, and I tend to have a cynical or skeptical approach to things. I have a somewhat keen eye for work that’s really good and for those that are just pretentious. I think my nature of being not easily impressed will give a nice counter-balance to at least some of the judging.

The second good thing is, I’ve been contacted by the guitarist of Eternal Now, a local progressive metal band, for the purpose of making them cover artwork for their upcoming concept album. Apparently they held a contest for the artwork and still want more choices.

Several weeks ago, cross-posted on a couple of forums of my intention to make album cover artwork for free. I simply wanted to add some more credentials under my belt, and this one is a good opportunity. I emailed back asking for details, hopefully he will reply soon and nab me at least 2 seconds worth of popularity.

What these 2 things mean is that I’ll actually have to set aside time to update my portfolio. Not the most favorite thing for me to do, but it’s gotta be done.

Written by a decoy47 at PinoyExchange’s Realm of Thought. It’s an improved version of The Barber. It’s an interesting and thought-provoking read. If you’re an atheist like I am, it’s also funny.

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I’m turning 24 next month. I’m not too excited about it, I feel like I haven’t accomplished enough to be at (maybe) one third of my lifespan. Am I mellowing out? Lately I’ve been listening to music like Sigur Rós, Explosions In The Sky, Mogwai, Isis, and The Gathering (my current fixation). Mostly post-rock, instrumental and atmospheric type rock music.

The heavier bands on my playlist have been getting lesser playtime over the past few weeks. I have to turn on shuffling just so I don’t consciously play the mellower songs. I’m sure my neighbors are a little happier about my current musical preference, but eww. I’m not sure I can stand being a mellow, trippy, artsy fartsy music fan. I am going to kick myself when I pass this phase.

How exactly does one go from an almost underweight 135lbs to a fatass 151lbs in a span of 3 months? I don’t know exactly, but it’s happened to me. I checked with a doctor and she said my blood pressure is a bit on the high side. Now I have to start watching what I eat for real if I expect to stay around long after I have my mid-life crisis.

Ah well, at least I’m getting a little bit of exercise now that I’ve starting commuting and walking to work on a daily basis. Although there’s still that temptation of splurging on a fatty meal with all those restaurants in the area. Argh, I should just intentionally spend on other stuff so I won’t have enough money to become a total tub o’ lard. Guhh..

I start working again as a web designer in Ortigas starting tomorrow. Yay for me.

Edit: Hmm actually no, but I’m starting soon. I’ve already been accepted, I just have to iron out some documentation.

I’m so tired. As of writing, I have been awake for roughly 22 hours. You see, my sleep cycle has this nasty habit of flipping around. I turn nocturnal, wide awake all evening and asleep like a log during the daytime.

I intentionally stayed awake in order to fix this. I the earlier half of my waking hours in front of my computer learning from instructional videos about typography, color theory, networking, advanced graphics editing and photomanipulation.

By the time I was done soaking up all that information, I was getting drowsy and my sister had already left for work. There was no one to check on me if I’m still awake (I attempted this whole thing yesterday but I fell asleep) so I started doing house chores just to keep me awake. I’m not a big fan of coffee but I think it helped.

I then spent most of my afternoon in the mall. I bought some mini CD-Rs to use as design portfolios and I scoured for a couple of hours looking for some ankle/heel padding for my new leather shoes. The back part of my crisp new leathers were pressing and rubbing against the back of my ankle, I was bound to develop some kind of blistering and whatnot if I didn’t find proper padding for it. I went to three Watson’s branches and all of them had no Scholl padding for my ankle, they were all out of stock. Ankles, say hello to a couple of band-aids

I’m going to drop any moment now. Job interview tomorrow, I hope it all goes well.

Backing up files is such a pain. I’m left to scour my partitions for files I may need in the future. But things have a way of being useful long after they’ve been deleted, so I’m taking my time going over my disks for anything I’ve missed.

Why backup? Well, it’s been over 6 months since my last reformat. I’m trying to make it a point to reformat and reinstall at least twice a year to keep my computer neat and tidy. Besides, problems are starting to appear and response times has been steadily going up. A nice clean wipe and repartitioning of my primary disk should: 1.) fix my problems; 2.) allow me to rethink and reorganize my files; and 3.) satisfy my technological obsessive-compulsiveness.

I’ve been burning off my mp3s to discs so I could fit the rest of my collection into my backup hard disk (which happens to be my sister’s discarded hard disk; she got a laptop, she doesn’t need this one anymore). I just want everything I need off my primary disk so I can neatly reformat and repartition it. I’ve gotten my partition sizes wrong, as a result I often get those Low Disk Space warning balloons every week or so. I’m going to properly reallocate space and be less indecisive about the purpose of each partition.

After 3 long weeks, I’ve finally gotten an internet connection installed. It’s Smart WiFi, probably not the best out there but definitely the cheapest considering the regular price was halved because my sister works for their parent company.

I’ve always envied people with broadband internet; now that I have my own, I’m going to indulge myself and download everything that strikes my fancy. After I’ve eaten my fill of installers, mp3s, torrents, and after I’ve caught up a little with everything I’ve missed the past few weeks, I’ll start updating this more often again.

Okay, so I made a mistake; we didn’t move to Makati City, we moved to Pasay City. Close enough, the Ayala MRT station is just a couple of stops away.

No phone line, internet connection, or even cable yet. I’m writing this post from my sister’s laptop at her boyfriend’s house just 2 spits away from our apartment. I’ve been killing time learnng from video tutorials I copied off the net months before, watching seasons of ReGenesis, Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek: Voyager. Also, I’ve made it a point to get some new games and catch up a little on the single player games I’ve neglected since I got sucked into the online gaming world.

The Smart WiFi people are supposed to come by this week and take a check if our location’s feasible for their broadband service. I’m surprised I’m doing well enough without a regular internet connection.

I’m going to continue killing time playing The Sims 2 (with University and Nightlife expansions), Black & White 2, and the almighty Civilization IV. I think those will keep me sane enough and satisfy my geek cravings for now. I think I should have gotten Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2 and Star Wars: Republic Commando though.