vacation again??

the mail i received from mr. manager today was totally different from the previous mails I got from him this month. and since, im expecting a news on my project/work status from him i hurriedly decided and ask the project leader to go home early ( around 7pm ), though I usually go home between 7-8pm, I was planning to stay a little late today to finish the testing im doing. anyways, it was not so good news ( work wise ) since according the agent who put me in this client, I have communication problem. Huh??  the first question mr. manager asked, is that if  the work is difficult and if i properly report my progress. well first of all, im not a genius to master everything about the project which i did not code in less than 3 weeks, second our work progress is monitored everyday. we give our progress report of the previous day in our morning meeting, then after that someone will approach each member to ask for a status a few hours after the morning meeting and a few hours after lunch, then before we go home for day we have to give a very detail daily report and of course there is also the work schedule written on the white board. all of these, ive followed. so i wonder why they say that I’ve got a communication problem, work-related or is it a non-work related communication problem :p

although i already know that the initial contract was only for a month, to help with their bug fixes, i don’t think it is fair to make excuses. my suspicion is that the client has no more work to assign to me right now. I don’t know which side gave the reason, the actual client or the agent but if my work ends, oh well so be it too bad though, I like the atmosphere of the company , its totally different compared to the different work place ive been too but its business and im just glad that i know beforehand…

well know the final decision next week if am going to enter vacation mode again… yipee….

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Not as easy as I thought

While waiting for the another assignment, we were ask do an in-house mini-project .. the company website. I challenge myself and took the responsibility of translating the current company website to English.  Too many distraction from working at home

• anime.. lots of anime to watch
• books.. lots of catching up
• tv, music
• the very inviting bedddddd

I’ve been staring my monitor now for a couple of hours, trying to reconstruct the sentence  into an understandable english translation but somehow can’t really focused on it. working from home is really not for me…

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They have guts

After our embarrassing exit from the last company(client), they suddenly called and wanted to interview us again. Manager did not come with us this time, I think he just does not want to burn bridges with his business partners but the incident was still fresh and does not want to get into any argument with them, so he just sent us there together with our two bodyguards P and J. S and I don’t want to be really there, I know we should not be picky since it is still work, but if they did it once they can do it again and we don’t want to look stupid anymore.

But just the same, the four of us went to the meeting place after our first interview and waited for the agent. When he arrived he was surprised that Manager was not with us, then waited again for the actual company personnel to arrived.  It’s not new to me to be sent to the actual client for interview alone, but the fact that they already kicked us out ,is strange. The personnel who arrived was one the interviewee  before and I think he was an HR guy not a technical guy. When we greeted him, he apologized to us over and over again, but the damage has been done. In my part, I’m never going back there ever again.

I’m not sure what they trying to pull by calling us again, but the fact remains the same they are simply &%#$” .  Sometimes honesty no matter how painful, is better than to much politeness to the point of rudeness.

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You’re Fired

“Opaw(Baldy)” informed that our work was until yesterday. I thought that it was only about the project, and not the company. I even asked on my daily report what the next assignment would be.

This morning as I was preparing for another boring day, one of the project leaders approached me and ask if we did not hear any new information from the company, and I answered No, nothing. He then explained that our last day was yesterday, March 31,2008.

Usually, if our contract is not going to be renewed we are informed one month before not on the day itself. It was frustrating to learn it this way. At least they have the decency to tell us personally, or inform us properly that they don’t need us, not even a single email. It really made me so furious .. grrrr..

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work rant

It’s I think around five months since I got into this project. When I heard what the project is all about, the geek in me got excited. When we got here it was still on the designing phase for the system, the requirement specification was not even decided yet. This made me both excited and agitated. Excited cause I will be able to join in the design from scratch, not hand-over project but really from the beginning. Agitated cause it will mean a lot of meetings and more meetings. Knowing Japanese and their love for conference and meetings, coped up in the conference room for hours is really not my cup of tea.

A week after our arrival, all we did was researched. At first, I thought, well maybe they are still thinking what assignment to give us. I did not mind at first since what we were researching, were all about the system requirements, what software to use, what library, OS and all those area. Unfortunately, no one asked about our progress and basically just being left all alone. The other two members were busy making basic specification for the system. Sometimes they would ask for  our help, but it was mostly to fix the document format. Damn, I am not their  secretary.

After a month, it was clear that we are not going to be doing any project related work yet. I really have no idea, why they hired us then. By February, we were finally asked to prepare the development environment that includes, setting up the database, trying out tools and software that can be used during development. Finally, work at last. Now I can rest assured that I don’t need to think of a  bogus work to send for my daily report.

Then came the coding phase, at first we were only given method per method not the whole class for coding, which I really don’t like. So in the end, Shiera did most of the coding for the class and I on the other hand would sometimes help “pula” in coding for some utility/parser classes and now  I’m not coding anything, I’m making test specification, a work I totally hate hehehehe.. but for now Id rather to this.

One thing I noticed though, they have been hiring MALE new members who upon arrival would immediately received coding assignment. I wonder if us being FEMALE has anything to do with it or I’m just imaging it. I have never compared myself to any member of project regarding gender issue, I just do whatever I can but I  have also not been understimated in every project I’ve joined since coming to Japan. This might be the first, as it goes, there is always a first for everything.

If so, then I’ll just learn as much as I can in this project and use it in the future. I don’t need to prove anything to anybody anyway.. So goodluck..

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2 days to go

2 more days to go and am outta here. Yeah you here it folks, Im going to be transferred to another location on Friday.. Darn no vacation whatsoever. It’s going to just 30minutes away from home, actually, I could bike from home to office but I don’t know the way yet.. will check it out soon, so that I could save my ticket fee ( bad ideru ).

So what am I doing today? Absolutely NOTHING… “Kuya and Auntie ” are not here, they went to Yokohama today for the Embedded Technology 2007 Conference. The porting that were working on, finally worked yesterday ( for the show that is ), so made it on time for the conference .

Already shredded all my accumulated document, so my desk is basically empty right now. I have yet to clean my HD though.  I still have to say goodbye to Mr.A who I think has broken up with me, darn him… hehehhee…

So have 2 more days of doing absolutely nothing in the office

 I forgot to mention that “Kuya” gave us an invitation to the conference. He was so excited telling us that there are lots of things in store for us there. That maybe we could find something more interesting to study next.. wahahhaah.. I have enough of embedded for now.. am not saying goodbye though, I like it really but with all the information I’ve studied so far, I need time to process them all.  I rather like working with the low level actually cause its all straightforward but well I want to try something new again.. so I wonder what the next project would be hmmm…

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Bye bye Mr.A

it’s finally here.. could not believe since the last time me and shiera had a bet about whether we are going to be renewed or not in our current client, just came back from dinner with mr. manager and yes we are kicked out nahh my regret would be not going to see mr. a again lol

wahhh.. back wearing formal clothes and series of interview again, well at least its not summer so no problem with it..

work-wise , i’ve learned a lot from working there for the past year, no regrets except for the coding part..

although everything is not yet settled we will know the final decision by next week or end of this month

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A year already ???

HAPPY 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY to US ( Shiera and I ) ..

here is Shiera’s musing after a year of working here.

 So what happened:

• I join the world of bloggers
• I love wikipedia
• Meet Mr. PPC and Miss ARM
• Meet the elusive Linux
• Finally understood what a bootloader is for ( I think )
• Finally get to wear my fave outfit to the office: jeans and t-shirt
• Learn to napped while riding the train
• Bought myself an mp3 player to get rid of boredom while on the train
• Missed coding

Well I guess where still staying.. not going to be bored in the next few days..

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Can’t get enough of G&S

Last week Shiera and I betted that we will be kicked out this end of September. Why? well because we are not doing anything anymore. We are just here sitting all day long doing nothing. Then yesterday I received an email from the manager : we are extended again for another three months.

The Bet:  a cup of noodles / ramen of any flavour or variety.
( I suggested 10yen but shiera would not hear of it ).

Idel: We are going be kicked out
Shiera: Not going to be kicked out

I lost and now I owe Shiera 10yen a cup of noodles. I guess they could not let us go, they would probably miss us: 2 gorgeous, smart,witty ladies

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Finished ???

Last tuesday, our SV announced that current development of the current project will end today, July 31st. Oh no… fired ??

After the meeting, SV and “nanay” approached my area to explain what we needed to do.

1. Collate all the information that we have been researching this past couple of weeks. We still have all that info so no problem about that. Thank goodness he did not demanded for a Japanese documentation or its going to take us ages to translate the documents.
2. (NEW) Review all the driver source code and check all the register used if its endianess is correct ( bit manipulation, masking and etc ).

Even “nanay” was shocked after hearing the second request. As I have posted in my previous entry “Missing..”, we have not done any coding , particularly in this area. Drivers ?? gawd , I have not finished understanding Process switching and L2 caches now here is a new one.. and to make it more exciting we have to finish it all in less that 1 week. May God have mercy on us.

The next day on our morning meeting again, all mighty SV informally announced our next project. He mentioned pc, and serial ATA and the probability of working on the client location… NO….. I don’t want to wear formal clothes again. Im so happy with my jeans and T-shirt already, and not to mention crowded trains. Hmmm so I guess we are not yet fired huh oh did I mention that we might still do debugging/hacking page table management on linux? wahhhh… what are page tables again ???

So okay, today was the deadline. By 7pm we finished most of drivers and shiera started merging them into one file, but we could not understand CF and IDE… By 9pm I finished most of the IDE files but Im not even confident if Ive reviewed it properly. Mailed it to shiera, and mailed the SV’s of our current status. NO source code review for CF.. “deadma” should do it.. he coded it :D  did I mention that “deadma”, shie and I will be reunited in the new project ?? he will annoyed and irritated again with all our persistent , endless question

soooo tired and sleepy …

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