TheFranciscos.Net

Substance Abuse

This blogging thing is getting very addicting. Hardly a day goes by anymore that I don’t feel the urge to type an entry into my blogger. Yes, even during working hours – especially during working hours. It gives me an escape from all the madness that goes on daily in this office. So I just want to say that, yes, I’m Edu, and I too am a blogaholic.

Website Updates

• I just added a “comments” link to my weblog so you can post any smart-ass remarks, violent reactions, or anything else you’d want to
• I’m working on an “About Us” section so we can add a more “personal touch” to our webpage. It will be done once Aileen finishes her bio.
• Wish list section for Aileen and myself

Some people have been asking me where I go to to get my graphics for my blog, and it’s really quite simple. For my money, the best clip-art gallery can be found on http://images.google.com. They’ve got a great search engine for graphics, a huge selection, and best of all, it’s free! What more can a artisticall-challenged web programmer ask for?

The Orders From Hell

I had one of the most horrible days at work yesterday (well, at least since starting work here at my new job). I’ve been covering for one of my Indian co-workers who went on vacation. Part of my new tasks is to handle one of the e-commerce sites that the company created. I always ask why this was put on my plate since I know next to nothing about the site except that it exists and it doesn’t make any money at all.

So yesterday morning after going through the transaction for the previous day, I found a discrepancy between some credit card transactions, arising from a glitch in the system that happened early Monday. I found what the problem was, but Verisign pretty much said that the only we way we could fix it was to call the customers, ask them for their credit card again, and charge them the difference. Needless to say, I was kinda wary to do that. First of all, I’m a web developer and shouldn’t have to deal with this crap. Also, if I were to put myself in the customer’s shoes and somebody called me up for my card number, I would tell them to go to hell and curse them and their immediate family. I had to find a way around this dilemma and after consulting some of the guys in the office, I found a solution.

I had to go through the transaction logs and then find their card number and enter them in manually. But there’s a problem with that. According to company policy, customer’s card numbers SHOULDN’T be found anywhere on our network. Unofficially though, the card numbers are stored in log files somewhere that are not accesible to anybody on the Internet, and only a handful of people know about it, let alone know about it (Mark, our network security admin, I’m told, should specifically not have any knowledge of it whatsever), but thank God they were there.

I got the blessing of my immediate boss. Then I did all the research on how to do this (this was obviously an undocumented problem), I did the manual transactions, hands sweating and carefully making sure that I put the decimal places and the zeroes in the right order. By the time I finished charging the customer’s cards, it was already 6 PM. The total discrepancy amount? $12.56. The amount that the company paid me for the number of hours that I took to fix it? Around $300, more or less for 8 hours of work. After all the sweat I put in, I would have gladly just given them a check for the discrepancy.

It’s no wonder these e-com companies are falling like flies. I’m not sure if the company violated any laws by doing this, but I’m just glad this whole day’s over.

Happy Birthday Mom

I want to wish the greatest mother in the entire world a very happy birthday today!!!! We love you mom! Also, Zoe has something to say to you – click here to hear it.

Howard Stern is having a “butterface girl” contest on his show soon. Basically, the requirements are that you have a smoking-hot body but a hideous face (lots of people immediately come to mind). Everything needs to be good, but her face. Bupi, Aileen’s friend coined a good term for that – hipon or shrimp, because everybody throws the shrimp head away and eats the rest of it. I think she used it to refer to some of her friends….

Kings-Mavs

Although I wasn’t able to finish watching it last night (because of the damn EST-PST time difference, the game ended about 12 MN our time), the battle between my two favorite teams is over and as I expected, the Kings won 114-101. They just outclassed the Mavs in every way, even without the services of Peja Stojakovic in the final two games. Next up will be the Lakers (yes I know their series isn’t over yet, but does anybody really think they will lose to the Spurs?), and I think that this year the team from LA will be in for a good fight, and possibly even be dethroned (YAY!).

Just to put my money where my mouth is – I bet $20 (I’m a BIG gambler….hehehe) with a co-worker that Chris Webber and the boys will beat Shaq and Kobe’s crew.

BTW, I just realized I haven’t done a “stuff on my…” section in a while, so here an update.

Stuff On My:

CD Player: Daft Punk’s “Discovery”. I know it’s at least a year old now, but the infectious grooves really gets your my up. Great for driving. Zoe seems to like “Digital Love” a lot.

Reading Table: Dan Clowes’ “Ghost World”. So far, I’ve been finding it better than the movie.

DVD: “Training Day” starring Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, and “From Hell” with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham (love the Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell graphic novel)

Oh yeah, two more days to go until Episode 2! I doubt I’ll be able to watch it on opening day, but I’m planning to see it this weekend at least. I hope Aileen’s schedule will let us do that.

Last night we had for dinner a pretty tasty roast chicken. We made this from a combination of Mommy Digs’ recipe (which was simply rubbing the whole chicken inside-out with some salt, pepper, and interestingly enough, some sinigang mix. Then I added a touch from Nanay Nida which was to stuff the bird with some choped tomatoes and onions. It turned out pretty well, although since we didn’t have a rotisserie, the bottom half of the chicken was not as toasty as the top. Still, it was pretty good – and interestingly it had some input from Aileen and myself. It’s our first original recipe together.

Of course, the roast chicken doesn’t taste half as good if you don’t have Mang Tomas sauce to go with it. In ANY kind of roast, that’s always the key to success.

BTW, I found a good site for Filipino recipes – click here to check it out.

Serendipity

Not much time to post today, but I saw this movie over the weekend and I’ve got to say that this was one of the better romantic movies I’ve seen in the past year. The movie revolves around leaving things to fate, instead of “forcing things”. It asks you to suspend disbelief while you view this movie and believe for a moment that chance will make things happen for you. But even if you can’t do that, this movie is fun. The chemistry between John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale (for the few scenes they have together) is great, definitely one of the best on-screen pairs we’ve seen in a while.

All in all, I think that there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes besides watching this movie.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Buffets and Mother’s Day

Aileen, Zoe and I had a nice Mother’s Day dinner at China House in White Oak yesterday. I’ve never seen this place nearly as packed as it was yesterday. This is a great place, especially for such an out-of-the-way place like White Oak. They don’t have a huge selection of food for their buffet like other Chinese places do, but what they do have on hand is always delicious. The standouts are the walnut shrimp and the General Tso’s chicken. If only they served Peking Duck and more selections of dimsum, it would be perfect.

Aileen mentioned the other day that there was a good seafood buffet at the nearby Seven Springs resort. Just did a search on the web and found what she was talking about. For $36/adult and $10/children, here’s what you get – “King Neptune’s Seafood Buffet offers the finest USDC inspected seafood such as…Steamed Lobster, Peel and Eat Shrimp, Sautéed Scallops, Shrimp Scampi, Deviled Crab and Lump Crabmeat Hazel“. Not bad, no? For less than what we paid for at the Fish Market in downtown Pittsburgh, we get all this. I think we need to schedule a trip there sometime soon.

Of course, we’ll need to do that trip after losing 20 lbs., since Aileen and I agreed to go on a diet yesterday. I’ll just need to lose those pounds faster…. nothing like a buffet to motivate you to go on your diet

Happy M-Day

Happy Mother’s Day! This day reminds us all that no matter how ugly or demented you are, you’ve got a mother that’ll love you unconditionally. So even if for the rest of the year, your mom bugs the hell out of you, this is one day that you should appreciate her.

Personally, I never really fully appreciated what my mom and dad did for me until I moved out of the house (and to a whole other continent). I always took everything for granted and never really had to care about anything (yes, we were very pampered kids). Now that I’m living away from them and have a family of my own, it’s only now that I realize what a great job they did of taking care of our needs and wants, and always going beyond the call of duty to ensure our well-being. I hope that I can do half as good with Zoe that my parents did with me.

Aileen does a great, wonderful job being a mother to Zoe. She plays with her, makes sure that Zoe eats well and takes care of all her needs. One of the things that especially stands out is when she took the time out to give our daughter a birthday party at her daycare center (click here for pictures). She cooked all the food and fed all the kids (and the staff too). The caregivers were nicely surprised because apparently, not many parents do that for them.

All this is at least twice as incredible considering the fact that she has a full-time job from about 7AM to 5:30 PM, goes on-call every few days, studies at nights and has to deal with me (her other baby, and probably 10 times more bratty).

Anyway, just wanted to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers who happen to read this.