OJT at Media Farm

It’s my third day on the job, not counting the orientation and I can only say that this will be a great learning experience, if not only a test of endurance and stamina. Working as a network administrator in a call center is taxing, as an agent disconnected from the interent means losing dollars per minute. Constantly monitoring the network, we have our indivdual tasks as well. For example, I just finished setting up a PHP and MySQL site as instructed by the head.

I’m learning all about VoIP technology, ATA boxes, softphones and the configuration of the Trixbox IP-PBX system. We’ll also be tackling Ubuntu and I just finished learning about PHP programming. Before this internship I have no clue what ATA boxes or IP-PBX are.

I gotta go, I’m eating up bandwidth reserved for our agents.

Call In The Tech Tag

>> Listening to Daughtry - Over You 

Ok, so I haven’t posted for quite some time. That’s because it’s summer and I’m stuck at home. There’s absolutely nothing to do! So since I have nothing to write about, I’ll share one of my favorite batch files with you guys. Ok, say you have an extensive song collection saved in your My Music folder, and you want a complete list of songs.

Open up notepad and type the following lines:

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\<Insert account name here>\My Documents\My Music"
tree /f /a > "C:\Documents and Settings\<Insert account name here>\My Documents\Songlist.txt"
pause

Take mine for example, my user account name is Mark Christopher Lim, therefore

cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Mark Christopher Lim\My Documents\My Music"
tree /f /a > "C:\Documents and Settings\Mark Christopher Lim\My Documents\Songlist.txt"
pause

Now, save your text file with the Save as… option, and name it songlist.bat. Remember that the file name should be .bat and not .txt or it’ll just be a normal text file.

Run your simple code.

I’m not really slacking off waiting for Bangko Sentral to tell us when we start our practicum. I’m over at the Geekstogo forums learning the intricate patterns of malicious software like viruses and trojans, learning how to comprehend HijackThis logs and helping others with computer-related problems. 

Nostalgia Attacks

>> Listening to True Faith - Sumasarap Ang Gising

It hits hard, how old we seem after reliving our past. I’m not talking about grade school classes or old songs. I’m talking about old cartoons! My thesismates and I do this everytime we have nothing to talk about. And due to the wonders of Youtube, we can relive the opening credits of cartoons like Jem and the Holograms, Prince Babar, Arthur, Rupert Bear, Adventures of Tintin, Bravestarr and so much more.

I assume I tickled some people’s fancy with this post, with Swat Kats, Street Sharks and The Centurions. "Power Extreme!!" anyone? With Little Lulu, Pirates of Dark Water, Doube Dragon, WildCATS and Captain Caveman, Magic School Bus, Dinosaucers, Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, Space Ghost and Birdman; all the memories, I miss this.

Captain Planet, Power Rangers (with Zordon and Alpha5; Jason, Kimberly, Zach, Billy and Trini; Goldar, Rita Rapulsa etc.), Voltron, Galtar, Yaiba, Voltes V, He-Man, She-Ra, Spiderwoman, and Lamb Chop’s Play-a-long. Legends of the Hidden Temple, Global Guts, Crystal Maze are few of the game shows I remember as a kid. Sky Commander, Dink the Little Dinosaur, Flintstones, Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Richie Rich, Top Cat and Rainbow Brite. Someone’s reading with a big crooked grin right now.

Pete and Pete, Secret World of Alex Mack, Rocko’s Modern Life, The Angry Beavers, Ahhh Real Monsters and Kablam (The Flesh!), Ricochet Rabbit, Wally Gator, Peter Potamus, Touche Turtle, Secret Squirrel and Morroco Mole. I could go on and on…

Thanks to the individual Youtube uploaders. 

Sad State of Philippine Politics

>> Listening to Parokya ni Edgar -  Taimo Pesticide

The bahala na mentality, the single most damaging thing in recent Philippine presidenial elections, might come up from behind and grip us with its scaly claws again. I was scanning Inquirer.net for articles because I have nothing to do, and I want to update myself on the current state of the nation. I almost spewed my drink across my laptop screen when I saw the article "Estrada ’50-50 chance’ of running in 2010" and "Erap trust rating up at 47%".

It seems we haven’t learned anything during the 1998 general elections. With the hype and pomp surrounding this actor, along with the easily impressed mind of the common folk, Joseph "ERAP" Estrada won the whole damn thing from more deserving candidates such as Raul Roco and Alfredo Lim! Well, here we are living out the consequences of his term as president, a country in turmoil and divided, caused by the " irregularities", to put it mildly, of the Arroyo administration.

The easily molded mind of the masses spawned the bandwagon mentality. When Estrada was in power, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was touted as the strength of the people, to oust this president whose bank account under the name Jose Velarde was being tried. The people turned to the then vice-president GMA to free us from a corrupt government.

Now that GMA is leading a government filled with corruption charges and breach of trust (No, we haven’t forgotten the Hello Garci scandal) issues, we looked to impeached President Estrada to lead us against this president with the swine, rice, land development and ZTE corruption charges. We should hang by our thumbs in shame.

Granted, Erap is a great rallying point against this current government, but to go as far as to elect him for another term, we would be commiting a dire bastardization against the Republic of the Philippines. With the more competent candidates for 2010, let us not make the same mistake twice!

To inject twisted humor which I’m known for, our two sins as a country was to pick Estrada over Roco, and Arroyo over Roco, we lost the funky floral shirt forever! Here’s a messed up but logical statement which I had for quite a while: Ever notice that Raul Roco to Estrada/Arroyo equates to Al Gore to George Dubya Bush?

I’ll Miss Saint Jude This Summer

>> Listening to Daughtry - Over You 

Since graduation back in 2005, even before that actually, since high two back in 2003, I’ve been returning to Saint Jude every summer to take part in the scouting leadership training. When I was in high school, I attended as a member and after graduation, as a staff member. Summers spent in Saint Jude are great, the sense of giving something back to your alma mater of thirteen years, training the future scouts of Saint Jude and continuing the Scouting Movement. This summer, with my looming intership, it’ll be the first time I’ll miss the training at the school.

I wonder if I can make the annual Summer Camp, the culminating activity of the summer training before graduation. Last year we went of to Batangas, to Cogeenik Youth Camp for three days, two nights. The pool activities, hiking, and the rappelling wall were great, but the bonfire was unforgettable. We went to the same place last December 2007 for the Christmas Camp, so read the previous post here.

But even so, I’m really looking forward to my OJT! A taste of what is to come after graduation, a chance for real world experience and not the miscellaneous projects and such of college orgs and special classes. I can actually work on things related to my interests. Of course, utilizing what I learned so far and seeing just how important they are will be a big help. Network management, network security and vulnerability assessment. Network Engineering for the win!

Speaking of Network Engineering, it seems to be gaining favor among the lower batches. The batch older than us have five NE majors. Our batch have eight NE majors. Well, we must be doing some great PR if we got the number to balloon to sixteen for the next batch. Before that, yes, out of the countless Computer Science students in La Salle, we’re eight people in Network Engineering. That isn’t even a tiny fraction of the students in La Salle.

It’ll be crowded at the Network Labratory next term.