That sock I'll hang by the fireplace...

I'll just join the bandwagon this Christmas season... the wish-listing
I'll break 'em down into 2 parts i.e. the tangibles and the intangibles. So here they go;

The Intangibles:
1- That our families to come full-circle.
2- That we remain faithfull to the values that our father's have thought us.
3- That our families would remain healthy and well.
4- That our families stay together (despite the distances, with which we are in).
5- That whatever challenges we face, we find strength in the unity of our families (in our hearts and prayers).
6- For that clock to slow down a bit, so we can chase the butterflies.
8- "The Kwan"... (from the Jerry Maguire movie)...  
9- (The Classic)... Peace and Goodwill to all mankind... animalkind... plantkind (all the ...kinds) bwahahahaha.

The Tangibles:
1- The wife's bestfriend. :-D ;-)
2- That other stick, so Ol'Faithfull can finally rest.
3- A new ride.
4- That new eye to catch those rare moments better and a few toys with it.


This wish-lists would be year-long effort moving into 2011; we're just not that rich enough to have 'em at one go...

Desparation, Ineptitude... and being usisero

Just read the news on the hostage crisis in Manila, & it's spreading reactions like wildfire on Facebook and Twitter. Sad fate these had to happen, disappointing and even shameful. While it maybe fair to consider what led to such seemingly desperate course of actions, what puts bane to it was that the end to justify the means is just downright un-condonable.

3 things:

1- While it has been said and written; what led principled men into such desperation... it's cowardice; just outright cowardice. In psychology, it must have been either fight or flight for him. Flight: would have contradicted his claims for innocence and righteous principles. Fight: perhaps a viable option, but to involve collateral damages at the expense of innocents... you make the call, I've opined already.

2- While most people would think, the Police have some short-comings and blundered big time; they probably have... but I would still opine; they just may not have been adequately trained, nor adequately equipped and neither prepared. After all, he was one of their own. They have acted the best of their capacity, under duress to address a situation where it may have presented a clear-and-danger to the innocents. To speak mostly of the negatives, may just add more insult to an already wounded morale. The thing is; they (the Police) are competent, they are capable, they are good as any other LEO’s around the world… but I’ll leave the flip-side of the coin to you…

3- The crowd; oh, don’t we just loooove to get in the middle it… public opinion, media, plausible accountability. To think and speak of the things that have and have-nots. They said, you said and I say… whatever hehehe. The benefit of the right to free speech and opinion. I say this… I say that… what do you say?

In the end, there is still no measure to the loss of lives; be it the guilty, the righteous or the ones caught in the middle. Nor such actions be condoned just to prove a point or two. We have a system, flawed, inconsistent, inept… but a system nonetheless

View from the trenches... 1

(my perspective for the year)


I posted earlier on my FB that I have to hand it to my colleague's team for setting the inititative to adapt to the evolving nature of our work tools i.e. techologies, practices. I had played with the thought of wanting to be transfered to his team so I can be involved, since I have also worked on them some years back (jeez, I'm using YEARS now with a big S; talk about vintage & redundant).

Throughout the entire tenure rendered, I have always sought to continually adapt or stay abreast with the industry's continous evolution. At every project, I would seek to recommend time and again (hoping persistence would pay-off) or at least, have the gall to do a little rnd such that we may be able to pick up some usefull concepts that can be put into practice. Or, at least have an understanding of what has been evolving out there in the wild so that; when it comes to us, we're not that lost nor helpless. Or, at least we are continously trying to increase our knowledge base if not for the benefit of our services, we can have it for ourselves.

To be fair (define fair?), the flip side of these propositions are that they may be too shortsighted. i'm only presenting a perspective from a developers point-of-view:
    -New tech,
    -Ease of development,
    -Industry-based development patterns and practices,
    -Up-to-date support and reference from the
    developer's community.
The list could probably go more. My domain at this point is only limited to the scope of what i am paid for, that is to be a Developer. My recommendations for adapting innovations, so-to-speak are confined to the technical aspects wherein the furthest I can reach out to would be looking an entire system's architecture and see what can be improved albiet; design architectures, coding standards, etc.

On the impact it'll have on the organization's LOB; again, they'd be limited to a developer's point-of-view. However; we may be able to up the level, at least see from an Architect's or a Project Manager's view:
    -Ease of development, with newer techs comes more
    advanced development tool. Advanced tool may equate to
    shorter development time or greater
    capacity to address previous technical limitations.
    -Wider developer community support.
    -New technologies, provides facilities to design solution architectures that were previously limited or enhance existing designs.
Once again, the list can be a lot more but we'll just limit them to the above.

I would say it's unfortunate, that despite all the tech's evolution and what they can provide to the value to the organizations LOB, they just do not fall on the PRIORITY list. Priority here, in the excuse that the current tech can still deliver the solutions they intended to. So why reinvent the wheel. The excuse that despite solutions designed to address business processes, the business processes can be adjusted to suit the scope of what the tech can deliver. There is also the issue of the learning curves, where it may be steep. Licensing cost is also a bit of an issue. I guess to the decision makers, it's really a balancing act between what works and what may work.

So, the recourse now ought to be; to continously seek avenues of innovation. The option currently available is to seek them outside the day job, perhaps get a formal training (financial capacity not withstanding). Seek into the developer community, there are a lot of resource out in the internet that can be leveraged into learning material (just be carefull not to go astray). So there should still be plentifull of avenues for innovation. All these would just require: TIME, FREEDOM, COMMITMENT, INTEREST, DESIRE, THIRST, HUNGER and most of all the NECESSITY to innovate...