24/9

Received my confirmation letter yesterday. Salary has been revised and is increased a bit. Added with living cost allowance and overtime allowance I would say it's ample to pay off the bills etc. As for work, it's the same. Just that during my confirmation interview yesterday, my manager told me that I *might* be promoted to the position of Product Manager within 1-2 months because the current Product Manager is tendering her resignation. I wow and sigh at this though. Wow because just after 3 months and they trust me to hold technical managerial position, sigh because with great power comes great responsibilities. Will I be able to withhold the responsibilities given or will I just suck it up and let it all go..

Anyhoo, my house is being built as I blog. Not really a house technically, it's a condo unit. Signed the SPA letter last 2 weeks, so far everything is looking good. Me being a meticulous guy, read every page of that letter until the lawyer told me that those are just housing Act. I chuckled, apologized because it was just me being myself and proceeded to sign the letter. Loan has also been approved, from two banks actually. Both offered good rates and services, but then I settled for the one that offered best. Pity I couldn't get cheaper MRTA, if not I'd be able to further reduce the loan by 6 to 7k. Now is just a matter of watching the unit being built day by day.

1 more week for Ramadhan. Means 1 more week for me to go back early. After this it'll be back to normal 9-6. Hate those jam-packed traffic aarrrrgghhh..


*Attention to Mr Farid Hazwan, Mr Farid Hazwan, please update your blog and/or online through your YM. You've been missing for a long time that I wanted to report to the police station. Thank you.*

Permanent

3 months already, hohoho. Gonna ask for my confirmation letter tomorrow. Sadly no bonus for this year though, I haven't been with the company for at least 1 year. Thus, not eligible for yearly bonus. But then the good thing is, they do give bonus (yay!). Still got a lot to learn within the company, although I'm considered as one of the senior developers there. Planning to venture into Java, C++ and possibly SOAP technology. Might also enroll into SCJE course and get the certificate (and ask the company to pay for the certs, haha..).

Oh yeah, although my office is in Selangor our holiday follows Federal Territory. Reason is because our HQ is in KL, easier for internal communication by standardizing the holiday. Not that I really care though, my workaholic-ism is still with me. Just that it sucks to drive to work without somebody at my side, heh. Yeah we go to work together, our offices are next to each other. Saves a lot of spending that way, easier planning too once we get married.

<proud mode>On other note, I've already secured my first property. Will post up some pictures once available.</proud mode>

Snippet

I am lazy to do a real post, so I would just like to wish Happy Fasting to all Muslims.

Interference is an event that happens when a process is disturbed while it is ongoing. As per general understanding, this is not a good thing as it disrupts the flow of the process and thus makes thing looks not smooth. It is also generally time-consuming as well as a waste of resources in order to correct, rectify and resume the process.

However, as a programmer, I generally like interference. Although I don't deny that it does make a process slower and not in smooth flow, sometimes interference is needed in order for you to look at what are the things that you did wrong. This is due to the fact that if a piece of code (for example) runs okay, you would forever assume that the code is in perfect working condition and would not take the liberty to recheck the code for any non-obvious errors. Interference would also give you a time break from your task, which is an important aspect in job. I usually find that by taking 5 to 10 minutes break after every 1 hour of work, your mind will stay focus on what you are doing and will result in you not making silly mistakes. This also applies to the phrase that it is better to work smart than work hard. As much as you can, try to do things right the first time because revisiting things that you've done for some silly mistakes is just, silly.

As for me, sometimes I do need other person to break my concentration from my work. And I find that useful if looked from certain angle..

Ballmer's Peak

I LOL-ed, hard..

My New Environment

I'm gonna tell a bit about my work. Currently I'm working with a company that provides telecommunication services. The pay is quite decent, considering that I only have a little bit more than 2 years of working experiences. Salary aside, the environment is nice. To tell the truth, this is my first time working within big organizations. My previous employers are small-to-medium organizations, with employees less than 10 people. It was quite a shock for me at first, imagining that I need to work with a large number of people. I admit that due to I'm used to work with small companies, I tend to be self-organizing and thus reluctant (or ignoring, to be more precise) on the standards defined within my unit. Oh yeah, I'm attached to R&D unit. Seeing that I came from software houses, my managers see this as a blessing while some of my colleagues see this as a curse.

Firstly, I rejected *all* development tools that they are currently using and I use my own that I am familiar with. They use WSFTP, I use CuteFTP. They use 1stPage 2000, I use EditPlus. They use HeidiSQL, I use Query Browser. This sometimes causes communication errors due to the terms used in these softwares differs although the functions are similar. But then nonetheless, some of them (mainly those experienced ones) started to understand why I use my own tools and begin to learn the advantages of both and exploit those advantages.

Then, there comes the coding part. When first assigned for a project, my supervisor gave me her (yes, her) source code from previous project with hopes that I'd just follow her coding standards and change whatever necessary to suit the new project. Lo and behold, to much of her horror, I redesigned her codes from scratch, removed any unnecessary functions and changing 90% of the code structure. To be honest, there is actually no standards at all inside her coding. There's no proper indentation, variables are declared on the fly instead of pre-assigned, unused functions/variables/procedures are carried over from previous projects and too many rubbish such as xMsg = xMsg. I mean, who the Hell writes this? But then although this sometimes irks her, my managers and Head of Department (HOD) like it as they now starting to see quality (and readable, this is the important thing) codes within the company's code repository. I do admit that I didn't take any programming certificates to boast about my coding ability, but if you are coding at least please make your code readable if you can't make it efficient. I'd rather look at a readable but inefficient code than efficient but incomprehensible code.

Working there is considered a godsend to me. The workload is minimal as compared to what I endured in my previous job. This do sometimes make my colleagues wonder why I'm so laid back in any development task. Things that are major to them, are considered as small to me. Those worked with me before knows that when I do my codes, I like to do it right the first time. I hate debugging for simple problems, it's just a waste of time. Unless it's big thing like non-working API or query optimization (as example), I'm not really thrilled in doing debugging process. So when I received a project White Paper, I like to iron out the system logic flow before I start typing my codes. This, in return, will save me time to change my code later as I have already expected the requirement changes and be prepared for them.

But then this evening, while I was doing the process flow for my project, I asked one of my colleagues on a small flow error that I want to clear off first. "No no no no, you don't care about this first. Do the core engine first, I worry you don't have time to finish it. Leave this part first, it's not important."

"Fuck la. I've code, install, debug and maintain system bigger than this okay. This thing that you call a system, for me it's just a programming tool."

Of course, this was just roaming within my brain. I was very tempted to utter it with my mouth actually, but then my brain was quick as usual. Let the error undone and unnoticed. At least when it's discovered during testing, I know who to blame.


There you go. Actually this post is just for me to vent out my frustration with the incompetence of some of my colleagues in deciding which is important and which is not (that's why you'll see the post seems like to scatter everywhere). Ah well, as long as I get my pay every end of month, the current workload isn't killing me, I can live with that. Just enjoy the minimal work while surfing aimlessly during office hour..

p/s: with my current salary, I'm now required to pay for tax. fuck..