r o y w a n t s m e a t

14-AUG-2003: Quarter-Life Crisis

Well, not exactly. But I am now 25, in any case. Looking back, there are many things I might have regretted, but my life philosphy tells me that there can be no regrets. The past is past, and the future is yet to come. Somehow, I'm only a few steps closer towards achieving my lifetime goals, but my gut tells me to keep on dreaming. Such is the folly of a dreamer.
In case you're wondering, my lifetime goals include becoming an accomplished indie game developer, and world domination. There are more, but these are the ones that are most constant. Yes, I'm serious about the world domination part!
Anyway, I'm glad I finally got some free time. Work's been a bitch lately, but I had to call in sick today due to an unfortunate (or fortunate?) case of LBM. Filipinos in the audience know what I'm talking about. Truth be told I would've taken the slightest excuse to get off work. It's better to be absent today since the workload is rather light while we're waiting for the UAT results, rather than being absent when we have to cram for deadlines. Gee, I wonder if my officemates are reading this. ^_^

27-JUL-2003: I have made a terrible mistake

I installed Civilization III, and told myself, "Gee, I guess I'll try it out for an hour or so." I didn't stop for six hours. So much for getting anything done over the weekend.
Luckily (or not), my being awake those six hours of early morning allowed me to catch some late-breaking news. Apparently, disgruntled young officers of the not-so-prestigious Armed Forces of the Philippines had taken control of some building in Makati, laying bombs and stuff around and with snipers on the roof and all. Not sure, what's going on, but hey, at least it's never boring in good old RP.
There seem to be quite a number of broken links around here. I'll get around to fixing them soon. Maybe.
Curses, I ate up my quota of email bandwidth from Softhome again. Now I have to wait 'til August before I can check that address again.
Apparently, this website is now named "roywantsmeat", after my battle.net account. If I ever get a domain name, that's what I would use. roywantsmeat.com!

23-JUL-2003: Wow, free time!

Free time...that's something I haven't had in a while. Work is tough right now, as we've got a big deadline coming up in August. I've been putting in 10-12-hour days on a regular basis over the past couple of weeks or so, so I barely have any time to do anything. (Except for a few quick games of The Frozen Throne (yay!) before going to bed of course.)
Of course, the other reason I haven't updated this thing in a fairly long while is that my PC broke down! And since it was past the automatic replacement period, I had to wait for three weeks while PC Express ordered replacement parts. I was irritated at PC Express for most of those three weeks, as being without computer leaves me without a healthy outlet for my stress from work. I'm not bad about the PC having problems per se, I'm fairly sure it's currently impossible to make 100% defect-free electronics. What I'm particularly pissed at was the poor customer service. Their phone lines are almost always busy, their testing of components was not done properly (it was only after they replace the mobo and the power supply that they found out that it was a faulty hard drive that caused the problem, forcing me to have to wait another three weeks for a replacement drive...but I just went out and bought a new one anyway...) and it's hard to get to them because of their office hours, and...I could go on and on. I guess the distinct disadvantage of buying from cheaper stores is that the customer service is poorer. Or maybe I'm just unlucky. In any case, my next PC will be an Intel one, this time I'll probably buy one of those pre-assembled "Package" PCs from a mall outlet, just to have a basis of comparison.
New mailing list! RPG-Skies
Am tired, more later.

13-JUN-2003: No Title

Last Tuesday, I got a very rare treat (?). I was invited (under false pretenses I might add) to a seminar trying to sell me to the concept of network markets. It was by a group of people called "Network 21" who supposedly have a corporate partner in Amway. Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against these people, I'm sure they're enjoying themselves looking for sucke-I mean clients, and convincing them to buy Amway toothpaste and shampoo and vitamins and god-knows-what. I wish them well. What I'm particularly annoyed at is the guy who invited me there, a guy from my university who I don't even know, supposedly to talk about a "career opportunity." Hello!!! I'm an engineer, why the hell would I want to sell toothpaste!
"Oh no," he says, "That was my mistake at first. I thought they were going to tell me to sell door-to-door. All you have to do is refer people to our products."
"Excrement!" I wanted to shout in his face, "You get paid if you convince people to buy your products? I think that's why it's called selling!"
"Here, why don't you take this tape before you decide?", he goes on. "After all, as an engineer, you can't make a decision without information!"
Yeah right, and let you waste another hour-and-a-half of my life? (In addition to the two hours I had to listen to the talk that is.) "It's not for me," I tell him, not wanting to be rude. "Why not?" he persists, "How can you know if you don't listen to the tape?"
I wanted to smack him around a bit right there and then. "Hello! There's a part of my brain that goes screaming 'Nooooo!!!!' if I don't wanna do something, that's how I know! If I was the type of person who enjoys gathering people and convincing them to buy expensive toothpaste, then that's what I'd be doing."
Grrr. I left Megamall quite riled up after that. I had lost two hours, possibly of sleep, and I still had work the next day. They're lucky I didn't have homicidal tendencies and a gun.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Philippines Independence. On June 12 1898, Emilio Aguinaldo first raised the Philippine flag at his home in Malolos, Cavite, officially declaring independence from Spain. At that time the Republic of the Philippines, the first such government in Asia, was born. And today is a legal holiday ^_^
Random linkage: Click here if you enjoy being tortured by puzzles. I'm currently at the second gate. It has annoying BGM though.
I got a pleasant surprise yesterday. Former members of the FFF, disgusted by the tyrannical ways of a mad dictator banded together to form a new mailing list, inconveniently named the AntiFFF. (Inconvenient because, well, the group would be stuck with that name forever, always living under the shadow of needing to be better than the FFF was. Well, maybe that's a good thing in some ways.) Anyway, they're a fine bunch of guys, the same people who came together at the FFF's peak.

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