error_in_syntax

 I thought being twenty-one is awesome. The next number, a palindrome even, I am not so sure anymore. Maybe because of all the excess responsibilities that is expected for people aged twenty-two. 

To tell you the truth, not much is to be expected of a broke entry-level employee in a government institution. A lot of things were expected of me when I was twenty-one. 2008-2009 held some of the greatest months, minutes, seconds of my life. 2009-2010 may prove to be a challenge. A challenge of never-ending change, of oft-sought realizations, of futile-bound dreams, may be some of the highlights that further needs to be sliced.

I am twenty-two now. I can still be considered young, but not that young. But it does not matter at all, right? All that matters now is how I make this year, a year to remember. With high hopes and wide grin, this journey to the uncertain future continues. 

Three days late, but still apt: Happy Birthday to me. Though it may suck to be a palindrome, I have things that can easily go my way. 

I was doing my morning rounds here at work (meaning: Reading Feeds, Email, Pipho) when I decided to just stare at the 2,800 lines of code in which I have to find the bug which displays the generated PDF report all wrong. I have been studying the code for 3 days know, my instinct as a programmer the only thing I could use. There was no documentation. I have no clue how the previous programmer coded this part of the system. Neither did my boss.

So it took me 3 days to find out where in that code was the one causing errors. I found it, and it doesn't really make sense to me on why it would turn out that way, because based on the code and my knowledge of PDF report generation for PHP, it should be working. The text should be properly displayed. The tables should be aligned. But no, it didn't.

After 3 days of racking my brains (read: trying to do something else until my mind can think of a proper solution to this), it took a pack of Cheese Ring to make it all go away.

Maybe it's luck that made me find the solution to this bug. I head for the mobile tindahan of my officemate across the room and bought Cheese Ring. It was craving for something crunchy a few minutes before, because I hear crunching sounds from afar. After I bought the Cheese Ring snack, I munched on it while mindlessly scrolling over the code. I didn't really know what I was doing, because at that time I was just concentrating on eating my morning snack, but then I found a section of the code before a big conditional statement (programming guys and gals: it's a switch-case) that needs this type of report to display an image. I tried to remove it, still while munching on cheese ring, and it worked.

After a few minutes, while enjoying the unhealthy snack, I was done. I hacked the code successfully. The boss was pleased. Although I still find it weird that, after all that time, maybe by sheer luck or coincidence, all it took was a pack of Cheese Ring snack.

Apparently, I have created a Deviant Art account only to leave it gathering all sorts of dust, rust and fungus.

'Nuff said.

One of my morning rituals during my first 30 minutes in the office is to read my news feeds. I have been using and abusing Google Reader service since I was introduced to it by my girlfriend. It's a wonderful way of having your own "newspaper" that only has the articles that you really want to read.

Well, that is not why I'm writing here today, really. The reason why I brought up Google Reader is that I came across a recent article over at Inquirer.net about a study on the advantages of Multi-tasking in terms of production:

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/infotech/view/20090826-222067/Multitaskers-distracted-by-everythingstudy

In summary, the article discussed that heavy multitaskers are mostly distracted by the little things that could overall divert them from what they must do. A perfect example of this is reading up on new Programming techniques on Wikipedia like JSF or Symfony, only to arrive at Harry Potter Wikia because you're dying to know how Voldemort died, while at the side you are frequently looking at your open Gmail inbox and open Feed reader for interesting articles that is really nothing related to what you are really working on.

The people from the internet age, with me as a perfect scapegoat, has excessive problems with maintaining a single task to have a full attention to. I am, in all honesty, having trouble controlling my impulse to look at something other than what is required because I find them more interesting to read. Or having sudden interest in reading up on the things that just randomly popped into my head. Yes, I admit, I have a severe tendency to be distracted by almost anything because, yes, I've been a multi-tasker for so long.

This is why sometimes my productivity is questioned or my dedication is doubted. I'm lucky that my new work is very light, as I have a full list of things I have to do and when I should do them. But the next few months or a year, this might not be the case anymore. Tasks would start piling up, and my work output would start to decrease.

I have talked about this with Jen, my girlfriend, since she's the opposite of me. She can only do things one at a time, because that is how she function to work. I did ask her at a certain point, to try to do a lot of things at once. Needless to say, I was wrong in doing that. I'm really actually very envious of her mono-tasking skills and her obsessive compulsive-ness to her to-do list. I never had to deal with that because my lack of discipline hated to-do lists or careful planning.

Now, realizing that I'm doing something wrong with my way of doing mundane tasks, I sought to find a solution. To-do lists? Yes please. Day planning? Hell yeah! Organizer for dates and scheduling? Bring it on. Although at the macro level I can still plan ahead, the micro level is what needs shaking up.

Gone will be my oft open Google Reader and Gmail. Gone will be excessive tabbing and unrelated Wikipedia articles. Gone will be everything that will not be helpful to my task.

And hello to a new friend of mine, http://www.nowdothis.com/

But most of the time, I still continue in my mindless pursuit of my endless passions. I may not have a good track record of winning in life, but I think, little by little, things are getting better, whilst dreams are getting closer. Such proximity of these once-outrageous frivolous dreams makes them a sweet goal to achieve once everything commences.

But for now, even though most things are still far from me, I just have to keep planting mindlessly, endlessly, persistently. The harvest season is so far away, and I suppose my youth allows me to be stubborn about the things I want in the end. I am very far away from the golds and mirth that I wanted for practicalities sake, but for the first time, I get this awkward positive feeling that everything will be in-place for me when I played my cards right.

Of course, armors are not without their chinks and bruises. I expect the same failure that I usually have during my short twenty-one years to happen to me in the near and distant future. I am bound to commit errors along the way. But I think, even though sometimes I may sound like giving up, my fighting spirit would not wane.

I am who I am right now because of my failures, indecisions, and awful choice of paths. I have a long way to go, but in life and everything that is in it, we all converge to the path that eventually will take us the our deepest and utmost desires.

 "Oho!' said the pot to the kettle;

"You are dirty and ugly and black!
Sure no one would think you were metal,
Except when you're given a crack."

"Not so! not so! kettle said to the pot;
" 'Tis your own dirty image you see;
For I am so clean -without blemish or blot-
That your blackness is mirrored in me"

"Maxwell's Elementary Grammar" (1904)

 

Here we are. At the crossroad, to where our options are laid out and to where our future is to be decided.

It had been a fun but awfully painful path towards this turning point of landmark. How we got here, I'm not really sure, too. I just know that whatever we did, it got us here somehow. Maybe by dragging ourselves, trying our best to deal with everything on our own flawed methods, we got to this point. Whatever it was, it did us good, but also did us pretty bad for us to be faced with this predicament.

Where do we go from here? I'm not sure if that question could be answered by me alone. For one, I don't really know where I'm going right now. Maybe I'm just running around in circles trying to wait for your decision on the matter. Hindi ko alam eh, para lang akong tanga. But then I realize that what we've been doing up to this point is somewhat flawed. We, I suddenly realized, are not getting any better. We, I suddenly realized, are in a whole lot of trouble.

But then again, I'm not sure where to go without you right now. I've grown accustomed with your presence that everything else looked bleak. I built my life around you so much that I might fall apart without it. Then, I wake up. Something is wrong, with both of us, with our dynamics, with our love. It may take awhile to pin-point the reasons for these series of unfortunate events, but in a nutshell, if we want this to be salvaged, we will have to do something drastic -- because right now, we are at a point of no return.

Here, at the crossroad, we decide what we do together, and what we do apart.

And maybe, save ourselves, in the process.

"In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this word to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title. Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours."

“But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence of that which is man: for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth."

--John Galt