tala @ so-phobic

Hoshi turned 99 last night. Alas, as with Asti, I wasn’t able to get a proper screenie. I’m trying to get over it and not be that disappointed. Nevermind, there’s still Nymie. I’m retiring Asti from siege starting tomorrow.

Uffe will be gone for another 2 weeks, and Miss Pen is absent today, so there’s nothing much to do except try to reach the target 2000 SharePoint sites. We’re at 1148. The only things keeping me awake are coffee, music (Shuffle lurve), and the thought of getting last month’s work allowance. I’ve nearly exhausted my list of site names: months, Santa’s reindeers, 50 states and their capitals, the provinces of the Philippines, pRO guilds. Next up, the names of all my guildmates.

The sky has cleared. I hope the rain doesn’t come back later, when we walk towards home.

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I’m blogging from work, whoopee! *looks around, makes sure she doesn’t get caught*

I’m back at PCIT, after being sick for 3 days. I got sick Wednesday night, so I skipped work Thursday and Friday, allowing me to have a long weekend. After I got enough sleep, I got bored. I was actually considering going to work last Friday out of sheer boredom. Good thing Mark (Shin/Zengar) was at home and online. Chatnarok! HP 6 saved me from boredom Saturday morning, but after that, I was dying for something else to do. I went with Mark’s Shin to Mino country to buff him while he levels, and I nearly got him killed, lol. I don’t think I’m ever going to get the hang of playing a full support priest. I got Ian’s merchie killed thrice at the Sandman map last night, lol! I have really bad aim, and I’m not used to my hotkeys. I healed the Hodies and the Sandmen instead of healing Ian, and cast Suff instead of Heal (F2 Hotkey). It’s a good thing Ian was able to gain back the lost 3%. I got to help Tata unload his boys using Kumi the other day! Hahaha, he says I can log Kumi on when I feel like it. I’m going to bring him to Prontera and look for chicks. Not chicksilogs though. Lol.

Now that it’s back to the Internship routine, I wish I was home playing RO and hanging with my guildies instead. It’s a bit slack today (and yesterday). The mornings are so slow. I’ve been yawning while watching an endless loop of InfoView shows. It’s in the late afternoons when most of the work is done. Hey, maybe they could change the work schedule so that it starts in the afternoon, like 2pm maybe?

I really need an MP3 player. The music will help keep me awake. I miss Mark when I’m not online.

It’s kind of boring when Nix isn’t here. I wish he’d take the darned medicine and get well so that he can go back to work too.

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A bit of a lull here yesterday and today. The release candidate was sent out yesterday, and we’re not expecting any feedback till tomorrow. Right now, Jane and I are busy learning the art of .NET. We’re using this neat tool called ASP.NET Web Matrix, a free download from the ASP.NET Dev Team. Free and M$ in a sentence. *ducks at the thunder and lightning*

Now I have an idea why people say that ASP.NET is easy. Even the code for connecting to a database is made simple by just a few clicks. I don’t need to alt-tab to my database cp to create dbs and tables. Web Matrix has an interface for it. I just have to trust the tool - that it’s producing the correct code. One of the first things I had to Google for was the character to use when continuing a line of code to the next line, teehee.

I Googled for .NET-powered blogging engines and came across 2: DasBlog and .Text (now called Community Server :: Blogs). .Text looks pretty, but, based on the sample sites I saw, it lacks functionality that I deem important in a blogging tool, like the Search function. I can’t find a decent free .NET host either. I found my old .NET-powered MIT blog though. Maybe I’ll blog about my .NET progress there.

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The last 2 working days have been my most productive days at PCIT yet. I’m done with the Installation and Configuration Guide, although the styles are still a bit out of whack. Word sucks, I use OpenOffice at home. We managed to come up with a couple of test cases for negative testing, and we found a couple of good bugs.

Build 14 is the tentative Release Candidate for tomorrow, but knowing Miss Pen, she’ll probably stay late at the office tonight and have a Build 15 in time for tomorrow. SharePoint’s Site Usage Report has a couple of tricky nuances.

Jane and I finished the Test Cases today. Sort of embarrassing experience: Jane was supposed to go to the ladies’, but I called her over to show her something in the Test Cases document. I was asking her something and she wasn’t replying. So I turned around and discovered that the biatch was gone! Good thing only Miss Lee noticed. Further proof that I have autistic tendencies? She said I should slap you, Janey, so be prepared to get bitchslapped Thursday night.

Speaking of Thurday night, the whole office, including us lowly interns, are going out to dinner at Nielsen’s over at the Manila Peninsula. The client was so pleased with PCIT’s product that they offered to treat PCIT to dinner at a “fancy restaurant”. Uffe has great taste. Nielsen’s dinner buffet, yum yum.

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It’s our third day here at PCI Asia. It’s me, Nix, Jane, and JP/Piolo. Mog’s over at Smart (off-topic: whoa, Smart WiFi Internet!) with Ian and Gotangco. We managed to spread JP’s Piolo nickname, much to his dismay. Sorry, Piolo, looks like you’re stuck with it.

On our first day, we were tasked to come up with a concept layout for an ad. We had to produce something electronically using GIMP. I’m no graphic artist. I can come up with some creative ideas, but implementation is beyond me. So we did a couple of sketches, and the ever industrious Piolo took the work home to do them in Photoshop and/or Macromedia Fireworks. That guy may have a future in advertising.

The next day, we were herded to the Testing department and were asked to try wreck a piece of software. We found a couple of bugs. Piolo found some of the more mind-boggling ones that had to do with character encoding. His favorite shape is now a ◘. The bugs were squashed by software developer Margaux, and after a couple more rounds of testing today, I think they’re ready to submit it as a release candidate to the client.

Aside from more testing, I was asked to compare Google Desktop and Microsoft Indexing Service. I’m supposed to search a folder full of CVs and compare the relevance of the search results. The machine for this activity was Win2k powered, and I had a devil of a time trying to figure out how to activate Indexing Service for IIS 5.0, and how to make the st00pid Query Form appear. LOL.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to reading up on SharePoint because we’re supposed to come up with some test cases for this project they’re developing using SharePoint. I signed up for a hosted trial version. It looks like a nifty Project Management Tool. Praise for an M$ product, hurrah.

We’re not coding yet, but we will be in the future. We were given a background on the app that our OJT team is supposed to develop - in .NET.

PCIT Vocab:

• snagit - taken from the print-screen tool Snag It; means swanget, panget/uglee as hell. ex: Ang snagit mo Piolo!
• flock - from the FLock key on the M$ keyboard we use at the office; meaning: that swear word, yes, you know which one I’m referring to. ex: Flock you!
• AIDS - As If Doing Something (thanks, Eds); pretending to be busy with the task assigned.
• gimping - From the GIMP; verb form of using GIMP. ex: Stop bugging me, I’m gimping!

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