Globe Comes Back To Town

I decided to go home after lunch and do my web conference from home. Most of my colleagues (including the entire pre-sales team) had disappeared, and I was getting cold sweats due to my cold. But our Managing Director watches us peons like a hawk so we can't loosen our ties at the office.

Anyway while doing my web conference I called up Globe about our problematic DSL and a couple guys came along after a couple hours.



Better than Smart (yet again).

The culprit? apparently our building's wiring closet is extremely crowded, and when someone else's broadband connection was installed, our copper pair got disconnected. Which is pretty much what I expected.

So I have another week to enjoy Globe's free connection. It is faster, yes, but I hate the thought of butter-fingered broadband installers screwing up our connection. At least with Smart, there are no such dependencies.

And.. they sent me a birthday cake!



Decisions, decisions..

Orly Going Thirty-Two

Well, I'm thirty-two today.

Lalai and I have been here in our house for two years now, as well.

I've discovered the wonders of salbutamol in nebulized form (Ventolin). Seems that the shortness of breath I've been experiencing for the past few years whenever I have a cold, is either COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), or my childhood asthma is back. All self-diagnosed with the help of Doctor Google and Doctor Wikipedia.

Anyway, thanks to my cough or asthma or whatever it is, I missed the pre-RTV Messabout of the Pinoy Home Boatbuilders Yacht Club. And I haven't been able to put any work on my boat.

But Lalai cooked me a delicious pasta dinner. And I don't have to think about work for a couple days. I am happy.

Globe Leaves Town

After only two days of marginally-OK internet access, the "DSL" LED on Globe's Siemens Speedstream ADSL modem has gone out. So we're back on the Smart wireless connection, which isn't very "broad" band (about 60 kbps to the Speedtest.Net site in Oregon).

Globe Comes To Town

Fifteen-day free trial! I think they put brochures on the units where a Smart wireless antenna is visible.



800-plus kbps for the same price as Smart (around $20) isn't bad at all. Of course my expectations are low and this will eventually drop. But until then...

Extreme Transaction Processing

Or, what to do with Oracle Coherence.

Like Migs Paraz in this blog entry, I'm one of those guys who can build almost anything given a weekend and some plywood (figuratively speaking), but I can't think of anything original and compelling to build.

Betfair is one of the UK's largest betting sites. Bet on anything! I am sure it is a great success; it's a no-brainer that gambling and pornography are some of the gold-rush segments of the Internet. What really delights me about Betfair is that you can play on Betfair without having any real money.

Not only does that "train" the hapless Internet visitor into becoming a gambling addict, it also lets Betfair have a real live "test system."

I bring up Betfair not only because it's an interesting Internet-based business, but because it's also a fine use case for Extreme Transaction Processing.

There are too few use cases for XTP in the Philippines. And they're all in the CMU/telecom space.

What would be interesting is a compelling Internet-based service, which requires huge amounts of processor power. That's something I'd like to build.

Deal Closed

Yesterday I learned that one of the deals I was working on had closed.

I actually hadn't been engaged with the customer directly, I only wrote some code for their Proof of Concept. I didn't even know who the customer was. Here's a (tiny) snippet of the code. The variable names are suggestive.



When I learned that the deal had closed, I also learned the customer's identity.

Needless to say, they are not into IT or manufacturing or retail. They develop things that blow up other things in a shower of solid fuel.

Makes that code seem much less innocent now.