by Ariel

It pays to be nice

Smiling and maintaining eye contact when conversing with people you meet really pays off.

In the past few days, I got a number of discounts/rewards from various places, all because (or so I think haha) I was friendly (and charming? lol) with them.

Last Thursday, I checked out the nearest franchise of this large gym chain to see if it’s going to suit my needs. I talked with the person in charge, asked a few questions, and got to doing my routine.

When I was done, satisfied with the equipment and lack of people, I went up to him and asked about becoming a member. Without any prompting from me, he just straight up offered to waive a thousand pesos off my initial membership fee. He said, “I don’t own this franchise, so I do what I can to help out. Just don’t spread the word that I did this. I only do this for those who I think are nice.” LOL. Must be me and my uncanny way of making people get comfortable around me.

The second instance of me getting something waived was when I visited my dermatologist yesterday. I visited her after 3 months, just to check if I needed to refill my isotretinoin prescription. She asked how I was, if I had a health card. I answered no, and she proceeded to just waive the consultation fee. Yay! Free checkup!

After that, I got some groceries done at Rustan’s. They have this promo where you collect stickers and you get to exchange them for some freebies. Unfortunately, it has ended and I was 3 stickers short. I lined up with the cashier that recognizes me, and told her about my predicament.

“The promo’s ended, right? You no longer are giving out stickers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Aw. I’m three stickers short to get the 50-sticker item.”

She rummages for a bit.

“Sir, here. Three stickers.”

Hooray!!!

by Ariel

On client wish lists and building your own website

For the majority of my career, I work with clients in building their businesses. My part is making their application, website, card reader (yeah, I actually got one where they asked me to build a system with actual cards)–basically anything tech-related.

It’s not a surprise that the trickiest part of managing this relationship is when I need to say no to their out-of-scope requests.

Don’t get me wrong. If the request can be done in maybe 1, 2 or at most 4 hours, I’ll add it. But anything more, or if there are too many “minor” requests, I’ll have to say no.

But what if you are building your own website? Oh wow, I’m finding that I’m such a bitch of a client, to myself! I keep adding and adding features to my website! I don’t even have version 1 launched yet. Maybe I should just launch it. Then add a roadmap so that people can see where the site’s headed.

Or not. I’ll finish this when I do.

by Ariel

On self doubt and passive income

I knew it was not going to be easy but wtf, this is hard. Way way hard.

I’m currently cycling between two states: incredibly excited and ready to do some coding and work on my site; and on the other side of the spectrum, just downright sad, unmotivated, and just second guessing myself.

Today’s one of those days.

Short background, I recently quit corporate life and decided to try to build something which I can call my own, with the ultimate goal being able to generate passive income from it. Professionally, I’m a software developer specializing on making websites and mobile applications, but my whole career has always been dedicated on making applications for other people’s businesses.

I want my own.

For the past two months, I’ve been working on a website. And I’ve just recently finished it. It’s deployed and everything–ready for consumption. But, wow! Am I reluctant to share it with people! Mind you, I don’t always feel like this. Just that today’s one of those days where I just overthink.

What if it flops?
What if people don’t like it?
What if I share it and then it gets ignored?

Oh well. I think it’s just because I forgot to plan out what I am going to do today. I find that listing down things the night before really helps with motivation and focus. I just thought, “Hey, it’s a Saturday tomorrow. I can take some time off.” Noooo. My mind is not allowing me to enjoy this.

It’s been two months!!! And I haven’t released anything yet.

Here’s to all of us developers out there trying to create something of their own.

by Ariel

Mornings with Trigeminal Neuralgia

It’s started again.

Six times my sleep was interrupted. Not by the pain, but the knowledge of the coming pain. My senses are by now very good at sensing when an attack will happen. Even in my sleep, I know that once I move, the attack will start. The attack always happens a few seconds after I wake up.

Eventually, I get enough sleep. Now the next task: brush my teeth. Such a simple task, but for me, when the attacks start, it’s now a very big undertaking. I muster the courage, I get up, and head to the sink. I look forward to the few minutes after this when I will be sure there will be no attacks. For some reason, this is how this works. It’s like it has a cooldown. It needs to recharge first before it can destabilize me again. But before those glorious minutes where I am not scared that a simple action will trigger an attack, I have to endure this. I gargle water. Attack. Because of the pain, I am not able to spit out the water—I just let it drip out of my mouth. I brush my teeth. Hey, did you know? Actual brushing doesn’t trigger an attack. I’ve known this for a while, and it’s quite interesting. But oh no, I have to gargle again. Attack. Let the water mixed with stale saliva and toothpaste drip out of my mouth. Gargle again because of course, there will still be some left. Another attack.

Hey at least I really have depleted its resources. By now it should be me more than a few minutes of reprieve. Please? I really hope so.

Next task: breakfast. Nah, not worth it. I’ll just have coffee. Which is still a trigger, but at least, I don’t have solid food in my mouth when it happens.

by Ariel

Shell script to setup local dev environment

I’m working on this one project that is getting larger and larger, and with each new feature, I’m finding that there are lots of things I need to run locally for my local setup to work: Django, Celery, Solr, and a shell.

It gets tiresome to open four terminals and enter the same commands, each and every single time I open my machine. Since laziness is one of the best qualities a programmer has, I finally decided to automate this.

Here’s my goal: $ ./run_project.sh

Here’s what I came up with:

#!/bin/bash

options=()

titles[1]="Django"
cmds[1]="cd /path/to/project;"
cmds[1]+="/path/to/.virtualenvs/project/bin/python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000"

titles[2]="Celery"
cmds[2]="cd /path/to/project;"
cmds[2]+="/path/to/.virtualenvs/project/bin/celery -A project worker -l info"

titles[3]="Solr"
cmds[3]="cd /path/to/solr/example;"
cmds[3]+="/usr/bin/java -jar start.jar"

titles[4]="Shell"
cmds[4]="cd /path/to/project;"
cmds[4]+="/path/to/.virtualenvs/project/bin/python manage.py shell"

for i in 1 3 4; do
  options+=(--tab --maximize --title="${titles[i]}" -e "bash -c \"${cmds[i]}; exec bash\"" )
done

gnome-terminal "${options[@]}"

exit 0

This currently works for me, but there are 2 things I would like to change here:

  1. That this opens new tabs in the current window, and not in a new one
  2. And, that I wouldn’t need to specify the path to the virtualenv, but instead have it activated by the workon command.

I had no success with making those two changes. Anybody have ideas?

by Ariel

I had this very ominous dream.

There’s this secret the government is hiding. That there’s this big flying machine called Manet.js which is helping the earth clean up the air.

After finding out, I looked up for more information about it. Apparently, the earth didn’t rotate before. Manet.js caused the earth to spin, which helped the earth disperse air pollution to other parts of the world more capable to process it.

by Ariel

Sans Rival

I got the recipe for baking Sans Rival from Inquirer, and that was back in 2001. (I was just in Grade 6 then!) I remember that my sister baked it, and that I really really liked it. But it takes a lot of effort to bake so no matter what pleading I did, she did not make one again. So, I baked it myself. It’s not a complicated recipe, just be prepared to spend one afternoon for it.

There are two main differences with the way I baked them then and the way I baked it just now: the egg separator, and the large oven.

Here’s the nice egg separator we got from Japan. You don’t need one, you can just use the catch-the-yolk-into-the-other-half-of-the-shell technique to separate the yolks from the whites. Get one if you don’t want the whites to touch your hand, but otherwise, whatever works.

And here’s our large(r) oven with the meringue layers cooling off.

Before, I had to wait for each layer to get finished baking before getting started on the next layer. And by then the meringue is already flat. But now yay! I can put them side by side in the oven!

Now the waiting game begins.

by Ariel

Homecoming

I guess last night was one of the best nights of my life.

I got to see some of my friends from college. I had a chance to sing with UP Circuit Chorus again, performed in front of Circuit, but made a spectacle of ourselves. It was fun though because I was able to make the audience laugh.

I liked the message I took away from the speeches of the previous presidents and chairpersons. Go beyond your comfort zone—it’ll make you a stronger person.

So that’s exactly what I did that night. I went out on a date, took a chance, met another person.

I got to our meeting place first, so I was waiting for him there. It was quite a while before he showed up, so I was getting nervous, suspicious, and having doubts on whether he’ll actually show up. When he approached, the first thing I noticed was that he was smiling. No shyness, no awkwardness, pure confidence. I was instantly hooked.

We chatted over coffee, talked about a great many things, got to know each other. Then I mentioned that I thought we’ll be drinking alcohol when he told me we’ll “talk and drink.” So he obliged—he brought me to a gay bar. It was my first time there and surprisingly, I was at ease. I am usually uncomfortable at bars, but he somehow convinced me that I just have to show a little confidence.

The music in the bar was.. chaos. There were around 10 videoke machines there, and each one was literally only 10 meters away from each other. It was chaos but I liked it. I was trying to listen to all songs playing all at once. I didn’t sing though, he told me he’ll leave me if I sing. Haha. He was joking of course. But I got a hold of myself, and was able to resist the call of the mic.

Then after we finished our drinks, we went back to his place. His room is orange.