Cha Gascon

I attended Richard Stallman’s talk on “Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks” at the University of Calgary last Tuesday, February 3. Coming over from a job interview down south of the city I was a bit late so I had to stand at the back of the packed lecture hall. I found a seat halfway into the talk.

Richard Stallman or RMS, is the founder of GNU, and ultimately the Free Software Movement. He was also responsible for gcc, the compiler I’ve been using since… forever.

One thing that interest me is his stand on OPEN SOURCE != FREE SOFTWARE. While this is true when you get down to really understand the meaning of these two terms, people still get confused upfront when presented with these ideas. Since the lecture is basically a Law series lecture, terminologies such as intellectual property, piracy and software license among other things, have to be clearly defined.

While the law students and professors left after the talk, the geeks hung out with him and it was my opportunity to have a photo with him. I’m still starstruck. Teehee!

admin Talk Free Software Movement, GNU, Linux, Open Source, Richard Stallman, University of Calgary

Its about time I upgraded my blog.

I setup Ron’s blog at http://www.intelron.com and of course with the recent Wordpress version 2.7.

My Wordpress version was 2.0.3 and there is no way to upgrade from that to 2.7… so I had to manually insert data into the new table formats from the existing data. Not that I’ve done this before. This blog has gone through several transitions since 2003. First it was a simple blog I made, then tried Mambo, then Blog:CMS, Nucleus:CMS… I can’t even remember anymore. This website is more of my playground to try and install CMSs rather than actual blog writing. Finally settled with the best, Wordpress.

Posts and comments are all accounted for. I even fixed indexing. I gave up with categories. The way Taxonomy is now setup is a wee bit different from just plain old categories. Besides, I think it is better to restructure and create new tags and such. The old one was messy and tangled up.

Now to tag several hundred posts… time to reminisce the past

admin Talk Blog, CMS, Wordpress

I’ve been working on building custom live linux systems for a while now. The problem is, everytime I reboot the live linux machine and I ssh/scp to it, I get this message:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@    WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED!     @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
The fingerprint for the RSA key sent by the remote host is
64:af:03:87:17:e4:23:51:a5:1c:12:e4:47:90:70:b0.
Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /root/.ssh/known_hosts:1
RSA host key for 192.168.1.179 has changed and you have requested strict checking.
Host key verification failed.

Normally, I’ll just remove the offending line from the know_hosts file and get ony with my life, but after repetitive rebooting and repetitive RSA host warnings, it’s starting to annoy me.

To disable rsa host checking, add a config file to your local .ssh folder,

vim ~/.ssh/config

and add the following options:

# automatically adds rsa host key to list of known hosts
StrictHostKeyChecking no
# sets know_hosts file to the data sink so it will never be written
UserKnownHostsFile /dev/null


admin Work Linux, SCP, SSH

I just completed updating my very outdated resume and I just realized I missed a lot of things I did before. Specifically, I miss the feeling of creating apps that other people actually use. I just checked up on my old projects and find that they are still alive!

With AJWCC:
http://ruby.inquirer.net/adv/mobilenews
I put a lot of work into this app to make it uber flexible and uber scalable. It’s actually a mobile news service with unlimited keywords and categories.

DNS Global Load Balancing
http://www.eradioportal.com
And now as a web mirroring service:
http://www.bnshosting.net/?p=196

Nice feelings.

admin Academics, Work Blueblade, DNS, Java, Load Balancing, Thesis

So much for this domain and webhosting, which I’m paying for, if I’m not going to use it! Now that I have internet at the place where I’m staying, no prying eyes or annoying officemates can distracting me from indulging in this guilty pleasure.

Some years ago (2003 to be exact), I got caught up in the blogging craze. I wrote about anything mostly about school, my todo list, anything new I discovered.

My personal reason for doing this was to improve my English writing skills. Think that is good enough reason? Hah! Well maybe because I wanted to be cool and my other Computer Science classmates in college were doing it as well so why not do it too. We all kept tabs with each other’s blogs and wrote comments, only to talk about it face to face the next day at school. Haha. Back then, I was also interested in learning PHP and tinkering with free webapps from sourceforge.net and needed somewhere public to dump them all in. I saw myself as an eccentric geek who wanted to suck in all the information the computing world can offer.

I had loads of free time in between sleepless nights devoted to perfecting school projects. I had a laptop that I was always lugging behind my back that it seemed to be a part of me. Like a hunchback. I was connected to the internet 24/7 at home and at school. I had a pool of academic people, all who were better than me, who kept me inspired to learn more.

That was then.

So now what? Hmm… at least I got the internet hooked up. That’s a good start.

admin Talk Blog, Internet

2007 is almost over!

Only 12 posts (not including this one) for this year.

In response to Nuts’ year in gear: Sold the Yamaha RBX-350. I think I saw that RBX in ebay.ph stripped off of the sticker veneer. Got a Geddy Lee jazz from Onie dela Cruz. Got an M-80 bass DI. Sold the Washburn XB-400 before the Zurich trip. Almost sold the SansAmp DI but when it didn’t go through, I figured I can’t part with it yet. Got a PX4D, which eventually went to my dad. Got a regular tuner when I figured out that was the only thing i really needed from the PX4D. Hmm.. Got one of those Levy’s leather straps. 4 inches width - too thick and too long for me! Might have to sell eventually. What a waste.

As for sisig, a whole year went by with us playing mostly the same stuff over and over. What the hell.

I still can’t do triple pops but I’ve favored string jacking on the jazz over try-hard tapping on a full 24-fret instrument. Found it more fun to produce inaudible notes and percussive sounds. Hah.

I love my job, but I still yearn for the dream of studying in a far-off non-third-world country.

2007 was both an exciting and lazy. A lot of wonderful things happened, but myself is still unmoved. Hah!

admin Music, Talk Bass, Gear, Music

Last October 24, I was flown out to Zurich, Switzerland for on-site interviews with Google. They first emailed me last May asking if I was interested in any of their Software Engineering positions. Almost immediately, I dismissed it as spam. What would Google want with me anyway? What is the possibility that of the multitude of blogs of technical people out there, that the all-mighty GOOG would find mine and take interested in my little CV? Very unlikely. So I did not reply for fear that it might be some spam bot that hoards email addresses. A week later I got a call on my cellular phone from the same person that sent the email. Interesting…

A few days later, that initial recruiter called me up for a phone screen. She asked some questions regarding algorithms, complexity, arithmetic (doh!) and networking. Just basic Q&A stuff which lasted for 30 minutes. Then I was scheduled from one technical interview to another. Up until the first technical interview I didn’t have a position to which I was applying to. After which, it was determined that the position would be Software Engineer in Test. In total, I had three technical phone interviews with three different people every month, each lasting for almost 1 hour. I solved some coding problems, and on two instances we had a shared Google Word document where I can type in my solution. The questions asked were very broad, and sometimes very very vague. Something in the nature of “how would you go about doing blah blah blah”. I was asked questions regarding software development, networking in general, TCP/IP, DNS, the Internet, web development, Linux, testing processes, and many other things. After each interview, they got back to me a week or two later saying that I was to go on to the “next step”.

To some extent, I enjoyed the phone interviews. The interviewers were generally nice and patient while they probed deeper into my brain. There were some topics which I didn’t know in-depth but I found interesting, and the interviewer assured me that it was okay if I hadn’t committed into memory the details of the TCP/IP handshake, or the format of an HTTP header+body.

After the seemingly unending phone interviews and “next step” emails, I was informed that they were flying me over to Zurich, with 2 nights hotel accommodation also covered. The next hurdle would be to secure a visa from the Embassy of Switzerland which wasn’t an easy feat. The night before my scheduled flight from Manila to Amsterdam, I confirmed the e-ticket on the airline’s online booking facility, got my boarding pass, and I was finally assured that all of this wasn’t some kind of grandiose practical joke!

As this was my first time to fly out of the country (first time to put my passport to use), I found it even more difficult since I was alone. When I arrived at Zurich airport nearly 11 PM, the customs people rummaged through my baggage. I felt humiliated as all the other people were off and out of the airport while I was held up by these customs folks who probably think I’m going to be an illegal immigrant or something. When I was finally out, it was freezing cold and I didn’t have any Swiss Francs to pay for anything. I found an ATM machine in the adjacent airport shopping center and proceeded to go down to the SBB railway station to get a ticket to go to Zurich Bahnhoff. Unfortunately there were no ticketing booths manned by humans and the ticketing machine refused to accept my CHF100 bill. I got out again to the freezing cold hoping that there’d be a City Hotel Bus to take me to the hotel. Untrue to what the hotel’s website stated, the driver said that my hotel doesn’t have a shuttle bus. By this time I seriously wanted to go back home. I was exhausted from travelling 13 hours + 1.5 hours connecting flight + waiting hours in between, tired from lugging my baggage and I was freezing cold and found it hard to breath. There was no choice but to get into a cab despite all the travel info I’ve read saying that these cabs are extremely expensive! The fare was CHF 52.20 = Php ~2000. Argggh! Add that to the Php 3,300 that I’ve already spent for the Swiss visa. I was pissed and I wanted the whole thing to get over with.

Fortunately there were no more delays when I got to the hotel I was given a room. I tried to sleep but my ears were ringing so badly from the tinnitus caused by the noisy long flight. The next day I proceeded to walk to the Google office guided by a map I printed out of Google Maps. Unfortunately the hotel was so far away from where the interviews were to take place. It took me some 45 minutes to get to the area and another 30 minutes just trying to figure out where it was. After asking around, I found out that the Google office was located in a compound of buildings, behind several buildings and wasn’t even along the street. I was tired, cold, hungry, confused and on top of that I was late! What a first impression that’d be.

When I got there I signed an NDA at the reception and was ushered in to the interviewing room for the first of four interviews for that day. The interviews mostly involved coding on whiteboard and it would’ve helped if I practiced all sorts of programming problems, or got involved with programming competitions back in college. To prepare for this, I mostly did research on software testing since from the phone interviews I thought that this was the aspect I lacked the most. Unfortunately all the interviews were programming oriented. I made some mistakes which I corrected, some problems I answered only half, or with the interviewer giving me some hints. All in all, I thought that I didn’t do well, and I felt that the interviewers weren’t happy with me. I wasn’t confident with my answers, I made mistakes. Add to that the insecurity of being in an environment surrounded with very intelligent white folks. These Zooglers were all very bright, engaging and interested in doing a wide variety of things. I felt the brain power and could see why Google hires only the best in their respective fields.

The Google office in Zurich is a new building (not the one in Freigustrasse), and they moved in just this year. It is still undergoing construction and you’d hear drilling quite often. Nevertheless it is incredible. They have nice workstations, big 22″ or more Dell LCD monitors, spacious and so unlike in my office where we are all cramped together side by side. They have toys hanging about, I even saw a huge LEGO model of a Star Wars battle ship. There’s even a room where they have a billiards table.

Lunch at the cafeteria was awesome. The free food that Google is famed for is indeed true. They had wonderful buffet food just like in hotels. They had a fridge full of ice cream, another fridge for refreshments like juice, water, soda. These people are really spoiled! Over lunch they talked about what winter sports they plan to do, or outings since it was autumn. The last interview was via video conference with a test manager from Dublin, Ireland. The recruiting staff who took care of me gave me a parting gift. I am now a proud owner of an authentic Google T-shirt! The goodie bag also included a mouse pad, retractable pen and a notebook.

It was almost 5PM when started I walked back to the hotel. With the interview behind my back, I allowed myself to enjoy the scenery and walk slowly. Zurich is a very beautiful city and nothing like Manila at all. It is clean, organized, with lots of parks and beautiful buildings. There’s no litter in the streets, no derelicts, no polluting cars. Although I didn’t get to use it, the transportation system is very efficient. People there are proud of it. I had Friday and Saturday to go sight-seeing with my aunt and cousins who were coming over from Frankfurt, Germany via a 4-hour car ride. I had a breath-taking view of the Swiss alps on the flight back from Zurich to Amsterdam which was on Sunday morning. I was back in Manila by Monday morning.

Here is a chronology of the Google hiring process that I had undergone:

Yes, I went through all these interviews, and flew all the way to Zurich, and in the end I got rejected. I don’t feel angry at all since I saw it coming. I felt blessed that I got the opportunity to experience something unique. After going through the rigorous Google interview process, I feel that I can handle any kind of interviewing from other companies! Also I am happy I got to go out and travel although it was very difficult, I am proud to have experienced it. And best of all I’m happy to have met with my aunt and cousins whom I haven’t seen for a long time. Now I get back to life after all the Google “hoping”, finally it is over and I go back to my job, hoping to be as enthusiastic, inspired and as bright as those Zooglers. Thank you, Google, for the opportunity. It was puzzling on why you’d take interest on a little girl from the Philippines, but I’m glad it was me.

admin Talk Google, Interview, Travel

My electricity bill for the period of Aug 25 - Sept 25 is only P 575!

From 2,500, thats an 80% reduction.

Wow!

At first I though that Meralco gave me a rebate for the infuriating price hike they had last June. But no, my electricity usage was just really really low.

I didn’t use the aircon and the fridge the whole month. After purchasing an aircon timer to minimize my usage, but still my electricity was high, I thought it was time that I just shut it off. I also unplug the ref every night, then replug it in the morning. When my food started smelling bad, and the ice kept melting and produced puddles inside, I thought it was time to just shut it off, stop storing and cooking my food and just eat out. There were however an addition of 2 computers, one is a desktop with a gigantic LCD, the other is a laptop. I guess those things didn’t make much of a dent compared to the aircon and the ref.

Of course I ought to have a functioning fridge soon for my food. At the rate I’m eating out, I’ll get fatter and fatter and I just feel so unhealthy with all the pork and MSG going down my system. I need to cook my own daily grub.

Next year, I hope to move to a bare apartment so I can buy new appliances. The ones in my current apartment are old and run-down. Thus they eat up unnecessarily large amounts of electricity but their output is less optimal.

admin Talk Condo, Finance

This week I ended up doing mostly one thing: providing technical support for 2 projects which I was working on. I went horribly. I can either blame myself for being inept in expressing technical instructions to someone with limited technical capability, or I can blame that person for being such. Personally, I consider the first option to be the primary.

I encountered so many difficulties, some of which were my own doing, some was just inevitably natural.

1. Communication was challenged due to language barriers. Although English was used, the other party had poor grasp of it.
2. Non-technical people on the client’s side were forced to perform technical operations involving executing command-line operations in Linux. They get exasperated when typing in seemingly complex commands, only to get unsuccessful results. Patience is definitely not one of their virtues.
3. They don’t want solutions. They just want it to work. Period. Just like magic!
4. Errors in the released software, due to lack of testing. I admit wholeheartedly that this is of my own fault. I should be beaten up and have my Computer Science diploma shoved down my throat.
5. Differences in hardware on my end, and on the clients’ end that resulted in unforeseen results that led to my own confusion.

Everyone was breathing down my neck, including both my bosses and the client’s. I felt like I was so incompetent and so inept. I wasn’t making anyone happy and I wasn’t fulfilling my obligations to everyone’s expectations. There were some instances that I wish I would get fired just to escape the humiliation and all the blame that would boil down on me. The worst part of it is that these clients are flying over here to Manila next week!

On a side note, I had fun working on these two projects. The first one involved a mobile Linux machine to be placed on police cars. It had 4-channel video surveillance, GPS with street map positioning, and although not yet implemented, license plate recognition technology. The second one involved a mammoth hardware intensive 32-channel digital video surveillance, running on a live Linux operating system installed on a 1GB Compact Flash card.

Sadly, all this coolness won’t matter at all if the clients can’t get these things up and running on their side. Sigh. L

I am a Senior Software Engineer and I am considered to be the resident “Linux Guru” in the company. I utterly detest it when I am referred to as such. Not only, does it add bearing on the responsibility of upholding to such a title, in the end I succumb to a realization that I might not deserve it after all.

admin Work Linux, Neugent, Software Engineering

After four (4) dreary months of going home to a dwelling devoid of a computer, I finally purchased a laptop. Its an Acer Aspire 4520-301G12. At Php 39,900 with 0% 12 months installment, free 2gb flash drive and HP photo printer, I think I got a really good deal! Bought it from Silicon Valley at Parksquare 1 in Makati. Prior to that, I went to Megamall but the model was out of stock in all of the stores. Even Villman didn’t have it in any of their branches (and with only 1gb flashdrive as freebie). It seems that this gemstone series is a real seller.

Thanks to dad for “lending” me his credit card. Hahaha. Thanks to Ron for seeking out this laptop and helping me get a great deal.

With the nVidia 7000m video card (shared memory), this baby can play Warcraft III at all high video settings with no problem at all.

admin Talk Acer, AMD, Finance, Gear, Laptop