Time to say farewell

When I was told that you want to meet us for a farewell lunch, I'm neither surprise or calm about it. I guess it's time for you to go, after almost 3 years and 9 months with this company. Your last day with the company is 29-Feb, leaving on 2-March. Thanks for sharing the fun with the pre-sales team, e.g. vendor sponsored free visit to Bintan, meal treats... 

You said you wanted to go back to your hometown to help your parents with their home rice business. Being the eldest child in the family bears heaps of responsibilities, isn't it? Your other younger sister and brother are in overseas, working and studying, so you don't get much choice, right? You said you want to get married next year, even though your bf wants to do it this year. You said you will "force" him to come back to your home country, is he doing well in Oz? Any work opportunities when he go back? You said your bf don't like this place, which has people living in prison-liked blocks of flats.

Do eat more and get fatten up. Do remember me and add me to your facebook to keep in touch. If you ever come back here again, do look for me, and perhaps, I can meet you when I visit your country in future.

I'll miss you. Take care, dear.

To do list

I have completed the setup of that Windows 2008 servers and setup the alert notifications, the system was rolled out to the users last week. What a relief! I still have to do something about setting up the backup, because Wins2008 is not supported by the current netbackup software.

Next on the list would be the McAfee VirusScan client upgrade for the development servers, the ePO for the server and Netbackup server upgrade. The new Netbackup server software needs to be tested and if fine, I will have to deploy it in the PRD environment. Also, need to work on the SMTP alert using SNMP for that BMC monitoring.

That's all for the major 'to do' tasks for the next 3 months.

Sleepless nights...

I can't sleep, not just tonight, but since weeks ago, and it's getting worst.

I just cannot sleep, simply lying on the bed, close my eyes couldn't get me to sleep. Counting sheeps? Nope, doesn't work at all.

There seems to be heaps of things going on in my mind, my relationship, family matters, work, etc. they just go round and round in there. I'm getting headaches sometimes, what's going on???

I came back from work yesterday, and was not in a good mood because my boss was leaving the team to work on another project, and she wanted me to take over some of the stuff she had been doing. Really, I don't like the things that I have to do, I feel that she should hand them over to her boss! Not ME!

All these years at work, I have been helping people, my bosses, peers, etc, while they got to advance upwards, I don't get it! Not fair. Maybe I should ask for a transfer, I have my own career goals, I want to advance up too!

My heart melting...

The last I saw you was on the 4th Oct, 2011, you were with your friends. You were dressed up with a light beige-colour biz suit, you look somehow different.

When I saw u, I felt hungry, it was like there was a ounce of fat on your body that I wanted to eat! :-p

Really...how r u? I haven't seen you or have a chance to talk to u for a very long time. The last I heard from our common friend that you are thinking of quitting your job and return to your hometown to help run your family's rice business. Our friend said that you look much 'older' now, I think more correctly, 'femininely matured'.

When I miss you, I would be just happy to take out a self-pic of you to see. My heart melts when I see you in the pic.

Your will always smile in photos. Your long, straight hair, and not forgetting the eye shadow make-ups. You really know how to pose with a bouquet of flowers, I have nothing to say. Seeing the photo, I reckon you actually took it in your room? I guess so because you were wearing a spaghetti strip tank top, I have never seen you with just that, you would wear an external coat  to cover up (conservative, kind of?).

Back from China

Hey, I'm back from my holiday trip to China!

It's really an eye opener having to travel around the most north-eastern 3 provinces of China, namely, the Helongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, and not forgetting, a short shopping strip in Shanghai.

It's really cold in the northeast, esp. Haerbin, the temperature ranging from -20 to -28 degrees celsius. With cold winds, at least you should wear 3 layers of clothes, so, other than wearing a inner long john, you will need to wear at least a jacket with duck feather (down) filled, and of course, water-proofed gloves. You wear shoes that don't get you wet when walking on snow too. I actually bought my shoes there, it's cheap, but not so cheap if you compare buying it at other local shops, instead of the one that we were brought to as tourists.

It was much warmer in Shanghai, around 8 to 10 degrees celsius, you will still need to wear warm clothings though. Shanghai is a place for shopping, we went to a place called Qipu lu, a mass distribution centre, there were tons of things to buy there, so cheap, but you must bargain hard with the sellers, sometimes you could even get things at a bargain price of less than 50% of the originally quoted!

My exciting holiday

I'm really looking forward to my overseas holiday starting next Friday. Yes, I will be spending a white Christmas and New year in a foreign country, China's north-east! I have never done that.

It's going to be cold, very cold, the last I checked the temperature, it was -20 degrees there! Imagining coming from a 30 degrees place, that's 50 degrees difference! Wow...I have never been to such a place before, hopefully, I can still stand the cold and enjoy myself there. Counting down now...Harbin, here I come...lolz...

One more month to a whole new year!

Time flies, it has been more than 5 years since I started writing this blog, judging for the no. of views and comments, I reckoned that this one isn't popular with people. Well, maybe what I wrote isn't interesting at all, lolz...well I don't want to care!

Today's is the 1st of Dec, so, precisely in one month's time, it will be brand new year 2012! Hey, I will be taking part in the 4-Dec's Standard Chartered Marathon, this will be my 4th race, I hope to better my timing this time round.

This is also a time for me to do my new year's target settings, which I always do every year at this time. I'm also looking forward to my end of year's overseas' trip, this time to North-East China, I heard it's going to be freezing cold there, I'm so happy, haha...

Hurray!!! Hurray!!!

Finally, we had completed the system upgrade! Although, there were some post-implementation issues here and there, but, they are mean to be the show stopper, yes, we are still trying to fix them. I can sleep better and relax now.

We had our ADnD last Wednesday, there were more than 4000 of us. I didn't get any prize for the lucky draw. The food was just ok. By the time the MC announced the 1st prize, I was already on the way out of the ballroom. Later I heard, after me, everyone had to queue to get out, lolz...I was faster, and I managed to catch the last train home!

I saw her, well, not exactly, her photo with her colleagues, worn a black laced dress, still looked the same, but then older now (yes, for someone closed to 30 yo).

Now, I'm working on something important, but, I'm not going to tell anyone yet, haha...

See light at the end of the tunnel

Finally, we are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. This weekend, the team is going to migrate and then cut-over to the new system, 36 hours of work, hopefully everything goes smoothly.

It has been two years since I started with doing the costing and budgeting for this upgrade. The primarily reason why I stayed on was because I hope to get some rewards out of this, perhaps, a good promotion? My last one was many, many years ago.

Autosys, ya, Autosys

Three more months, and it's end of the year. I have been working so hard lately, so many things to do, everyone in the my team are getting ready for the project's final UAT and testings, the PRD 'Go-live' has been planned for end Oct.

The Autosys system on the new systems had been giving me problem. Just yesterday, my system admin called to tell me that Peoplesoft jobs triggered on a Windows 2003 server can't run in Autosys, he mentioned an errror saying that the license key was not vaild.

Then, as I am quite familiar with the system because I had been 'playing' with it for the past months, managed to find out the problem, it had something to do with the key code that was generated by CA. The key code was tied to the host name and IP address, the system admin had removed the IP address on the server, so when the job ran, the Autosys license checking failed. Solved!

The last mile or KM...

Here I am, still working, this time on a disaster recovery exercise, it's already way past midnight. Most of the time, the work here requires me to guide and help my fellow junior system do system restoration. But, this time round, it's more critical, because if we don't do it well, we can't roll-out the system. This means all six months of effort wasted, and in the worst case, the project will be bleeding $$$ due to the delay (but this is the project manager's problem!?!?!). I just hope things will go smooth, and everyone can go home, sleep and hey, TGIF tomorrow! Haha...

Coming soon...

Ya, coming soon...what's coming?

In 2 days time, I will be running another race, although this is not the first time that I'm running such race, I still feel that I'm not ready yet. I had only trained for the last 1 month, and frankly speaking, I think I may not be ready for the run. I have not trained for that kind of distance for at least 9 months, shorter ones, yes, but it's just not good enough.

I just hope that I can finish the race and not worrying about the timing, just want to finish it, done. So, please cheer me on, will you? Thank you.

I'm sick

I can't remember the last time I was sick, perhaps, months and months ago.

Ya, I caught a cold, and since yesterday, been sniffing and sneezing, had took some cold/flu pills that came with Vitamin C, they did help to alleviate the symptom, but I think I need something better. I really hate to fall sick, I can't even go out like that, just to be a responsible citizen, and not spread the sickness to the public. Yeah!!!

Did I tell you about my trip to the Bird Park? It was an interesting trip, together with her, gee, can't remember when I last went there, many, many years ago? It was not crowded as it was during a weekday, mostly tourists, the weather was really hot and humid! Almost got dehydrated with the sweat dripping down from my body.

The wonderful thing about the park visit is watching the birds and the show time! We learned that we should treat birds well, because if not, they may go extinct one day, and that's it! The best that we can do is not disturb them or even touch them, let nature takes its course, watch them, listen to them chirping, appreciate their vibrant colored feathers if you like, but don't hurt them ya.

How come so many people?

I really got frustrated today, knocked off from work at 6pm, I waited for the bus for 35mins, all in all, 7 buses passed, guess what, all jam packed with people. I only managed to get on board one, and immediately after this bus, there was another one with the same bus no. following behind it. What the heck!!!

The govt said that the bus and train transport companies only make about 1/2 of their revenue from the passenger load, i.e. ticketing, and mostly the rest from advertising and rentals of shops at the train stations.

I think what they don't understand is, if no one patronises these shops or no one sees or reads the advs, what make them think they can make 1/2 of the adv and rentals? It's about people, people and people; no people, no passenger, so no revenue, and no profit!

Monthly Task

First Sunday of the month. Almost the whole team came back to reboot the systems and network devices. It's still me this weekend. *Sigh*.

I didn't sleep abit last night, afraid that I may not wake up in time at 3am. It's always cooler in the morning, but it's even cooler in the data centre.

Lucky thing that the PM bought us McDonald's breakfast, I usually don't eat Mc's breakfast because it's too filling. Anyway, it was a good treat.

Perhaps in another hour or two, I can go home, sleepzzz...

No time already!!!

I have been trying to fix the Autosys issue on the new machine for the last 2 weeks. First, was the license keys issues, worked with the folks at CA to get the keys generated. There were issues, each time I got the keys from them, I applied them on the servers, but it just won't work properly.

The server and client keys actually tied to the hostnames, hostids and instance, it's so complicated! Next, the Peoplesoft adapter keys for the clients, the keys just won't work.

In the end, I told them to generate a temporary 't' key, it seems to work now, jobs can be triggered on the clients, but for PS jobs, *sigh*...yes, jobs were triggered, but they are not running, how I know that? Checked the PS scheduler logs, nothing there!

So, I'm back today, troubleshooting the issue, and I have to get it fixed by Monday!!! *Sigh*

Maintenance...maintenance

Here I am, back in office, again. Same thing every month, because the other guy who is supposed to rotate this weekend's work went on holiday.

I just don't quite understand why I have to do this every month, restart of the servers? Need to? Really? I think this is really a mis-use of man-power.

I hope for the next maintenance cycle, the other guy will be back, and not me again. He has a life, I have one too!

In office, working...

Came back to office around 0330hrs, yet again another schedule maintenance work which can be done from remote access, but was told to be back in office anyway.

The other SA who was supposed to come back, couldn't, because he stays "over the other side of the bridge", so not convenient for him to come over at this hour. I really don't know how this thing is going to work out, by hook or by crook, he's will have to come back next time. I can't be always the one, I have helped him enough, taught him heaps of things, hopefully he will appreciate, and reciprocates.

Maybe 2 more hours to go, after that I can go home, back to my bed. Good.

What you wear shows how refined you are

People in this city just don't think wearing appropriate is important. Yes, it's warm and humid here, but wearing well at the right occasion, location and situation is important, it shows how mannered and refined you are. Come on, this is not a 3rd world city! Wearing slippers, flipflops and shorts for all occasions are just too "casual" and out of place.

The thing about wearing is that it doesn't just give you an opportunity to show off your new fashion wear, but also to show respect for others around you. For example, if in a business meeting, you are late, and came walking in with flipflops sandals, well, this is just not right. And yes, there are people who does that.

Busy again

I'm currently working on the "big" project. Our team of system admins have been working very hard, together with the vendors to setup the servers since they were delivered last week. We had been given a tight deadline to finish up with the setup by yesterday, and hand it over to the middleware and application teams to install and configure their applications, today.

Well, we still had some teething issues this morning, more about the network connectivities and servers boot up problems, so the handover was delayed.

The Solaris servers were using ZFS for OS, this is quite new to us, we have to learn it. It's going to be some tough learning experience, esp. for the junior system admins, but it's going to be worth it, I know, because I had went through it before.