General

Merry Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas!!! The word Christmas comes from “Cristes Maesse”, an early English phrase that means “Mass of Christ.” It is a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (not the birth day itself which could be any one of the 365.25 days of the year). Jesus is about peace, love, and understanding (what’s so funny about that?). It’s the time of the year when we set grudges and ill feelings aside that we may have accumulated for the past year (or the past years!). Such things are sometimes unavoidable but if we clean the slate even just once a year then it make for a better world. Unfortunately, two millenniums later, it’s still far off.

Holiday Travel Blues

We made the mistake of dropping by the PhilEquity office to create an account for Michelle and Jeanne. We ended up getting delayed and got to the airport terminal late. And then we found the overnight parking brimming FULL!!! The only recourse was to head over to Park ‘N Fly. After fighting through heavy traffic, hastily parking the car at Park ‘N Fly, and fighting through traffic (this time on a chauffeured shuttle) back to the airport terminal, we found the check-in counter already closed. We were directed to the service counter where we found out that all flights were booked. We asked about being chance passengers and luckily we would be the first ones. There was a hefty change in the fare (almost four times) but we had no choice. Michelle (with  Jeanne on her lap), and I were able to on the next flight and James, who was travelling with us, got on the flight after that. Talk about being lucky!

No Net

I walked into the office this morning to find the new cubicles and partitions finally in place. It’s something overdue for about a month already. But a closer look and I saw that the cabling was not yet done, there were no plugs at the ends of the cables which were stuffed haphazardly within the cubicle panels. There was also a pile of discarded old cables on the floor. But worst of all, there were no network guys to be seen! This was at past 9AM already.

So we had to make a call to the help desk. Not straightforward as the phones rely on the same cabling so there were no working phones in the immediate area. When someone finally arrived, he went about  laying out temporary cables picked up from the pile of cables on the floor. He didn’t even check if each user has a working connection. In the end, I had to finish up my network connections myself.

I’ve worked with smaller teams with less budget and they were more proactive and could do a far better job. Sheesh!