I Think I'm In Love

When life gives you lemons...

ARGH!

I hate cliches. They suck  and they're overused but hey, most of the time they tell you the truth. And I don't know how else to start this so excuse me while I start off with a cliche.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

With that, I can say that I have NOT been working for the past months. I mean, yeah, I do complain A LOT. I can't help it. I'm a whiner. I complain about why our work schedule is just "semi-flexible" and not literally FLEXIBLE. I don't like the fact that I have to follow a new set of coding standards. I curse when I can't make things happen. I get annoyed by the changes in the business rules. I complain about my salary. I argue about this and that. But deep inside, I know that I like what I'm doing.



I am enjoying this.

I AM ENJOYING EVERY BIT OF IT.

I guess I just like to be challenged. I find joy in building things. I like programming. I like developing. I like thinking. Yup, I know it seems ironic because I'm such a brat when it comes to dealing with just about everything. But believe it or not, I like challenges. I have very little patience though so in effect I am able to either FORCE myself to do it or quit. I always feel bad when I end up choosing the latter.

Anyway, I once had a chance to talk to an officemate over a beer about passion. Yes, PASSION. Don't ask. I know it's weird. He told me nothing is impossible when you have passion. You don't just do things to earn, you got to love what you're doing. Everything will follow afterwards.



I don't know if I have the same passion as he has. He's got some INTENSE PASSION right there-- a Kobe-like passion, if I may say. One thing that he made me realize about myself right now is that I'm sure that this is what I want. I mean, I don't even know if I'm good at this but I am honestly having fun even with all the headaches and heartaches that come with it. Damn it, I think I love my job. Tell me if this is not love, what is?

Welcome To L.A., Nash!

Okay. So, I haven't officially welcomed Steve Nash here.

Welcome to LA land, Steve Nash!

Time to get Nash-ty!

 

Cars and Flowcharts

While i was on my way home, I had some sort of epiphany.

I
Am
An
Irresponsible
Brat
.

Well, for those who know me well, this is not something new.

I make stupid and immature decisions. I dont think about the consequences of my actions. I dont save for the future. I have no concrete career path in mind.

Fuck.

Dear present Kat,

No one will help you but yourself. People and friends are there for support but you should not put the burden on them. Start making smart decisions. Save up. Going with the flow is nice but you gotta have something in outline view. You make awesome flowcharts for work why dont you start charting the flow of your life. Plan. Not everything should be in autopilot mode.

Grow up.

Plan B is not plan Batman...as in "bahala na si Batman".

You cant always be a taxi driver's passenger. You have to know where you are going. You have to know the way. Get your own car and drive there yourself. Take your ass to where you want to be. Gas up. Pay the toll. Be in control. Be responsible.

Sincerely,
Kat's matinong side

Weekend Internet Havoc

So if you're an internet junkie, you would've noticed how everything good was down during the weekend. Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, Netflix, Foursquare etc. are some of the sites that were affected.

THE STORM
You probably heard the story.

Massive storms wiped out power in the Washington D.C. area causing several servers to go down.

Server  down, man down.

One of the casualties is Amazon. As I've just recently learned, Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (or Amazon EC2) powers sites like Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram. These  websites (and many others) rely on EC2's web services so if Amazon's servers are down... their supported sites will be down as well.

So, uhm... yeah, that's the reason why we were not able to use Instagram last Saturday.

TL:DR ?

Server down -> web down.

THE IRONY
Google just recently announced Compute Engine, its infrastructure that will directly compete with industry heavyweight, Amazon EC2. #LeSigh

THE LEAP SECOND

Reddit, Foursquare, Mozilla and some other sites were down yesterday. (Sunday PI time) Apparently, this is due to the clocks being altered by the experts.

WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH IT?
Hmmm... Atomic clocks are the standard time of the world. Every once in a while, a leap second is applied to the atomic clocks because the Earth's rotation speed changes irregularly. Timekeepers do this in order to keep the clocks in sync with the slowing rotation of the Earth.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?
Some computer systems found the changes in time weird so they choked up.

Check out LeBron to know more about choking. 

Computers use the NTP to keep themselves aligned with atomic clocks but with the extra second added, the components of the system (I read it's Linux?) did not know how to handle the changes.

TL:DR ?

Earth's rotation slowed down -> timekeepers sync atomic clocks -> NTP follows atomic clock -> systems based on NTP get confused -> sites down

On the other hand, since this has been happening for quite a while now, Google found a way to deal with it.

Check out their solution, it's called leap smear.