Rodel E. Dagumampan

Its monday, great sun, great morning, but all else was lost when I found out I cannot have my bath this morning because there is no water, I can’t even have a good face wash because we don’t stock water in my apartment. Our subdivision don’t have water tanks to stock water either. Few minutes after, there was no electricty. What else can I do, i went to office to check if there’s electricity there and maybe have my bath there. Fortunately we have water and electricity, but was went dead again after few hours. It goes on, then dead again.

Transco, state owned firm for power infrastructure management earlierreportedd that there has been technical problems encoutered in one of its installations in Bukidnon.

FYI Last week, Australia release a travel advisory that terrorists are in the adavance stages of attack to hit power utilities and installations in Mindanao. It has been stated also that the attack is imminent and can happen anytime. I can’t help but think if these are happening , is it the reasons why we had these multiple power failures :(. I just pray its not.

I have been bogging about our Bayatel DSL sufferings for quite sometime and if you are living in Davao City proper and planning to subscribe for a business account, require higher bandwidth, or works on a not the usual browsing stuff,  you really have to think about it many times. Bayantel DSL here really sucks!

Its funny we have something here in our office called 4 o’clock habit. Its the time when our internet connection goes out for control, always disconnected, or runs very very slow. Its more manageable now since we are working now on our local server. Before when we’re using a development server outside the Philippines, it was really hell working with  connection like this. Very unproductive and frustrating. We have called their attention countless times but I think they can’t do anything about it.

The good news is… Innove a.k.a Globe Broadband already burying down their broadband lines across majors streets in Davao City. Last week I have seen them putting up the cable lines and control boxes along Jacinto Extension.

Bayantel’s tag line “Satisfaction Guaranteed” is a boo boo, better it be “Bayan-termittent, dissatisfaction guaranteed”. Bayantel is just about to lose one customer, that’s us!

1. I drink an average of 5 mugs of strong coffee everyday. With random visit for cappuccino on nearby cafe.
2. I am natural born farmer from southern region of Rosario, Batangas.
3. I can’t sleep without “dantayan” and pillow on my legs. Got this infection from my girlfriend.
4. I sleep on floor much like a Japanese style. I have my mattress and comforter laid on floor. My bedframe now for sale lol.
5. I am single, in a relationship.
6. My first choice in college is Architecture, then Civil Engineering, then Computer Science. And ironically, Computer subject is my lowest grade in high school.
7. I have a green thumb. I love planting trees, flowers, fruit bearing plants, orchids, and ornamentals.
8. I love watching war and historical movies, terrorist attacks, news and documentaries, weapons and arms clippings, political press releases US vs. Russia vs. Iran vs. China vs. N.Korea vs Taiwan.
9. I have a 3×3x3 rubik’s cube on my backpack but left unsolved since I bought it.
10. I hate call center agent wannabe’s, mga coño and kunyari fashionista.
11. I have a carabao in Batangas but I left it to my father after I gone to college. I was thinking of selling it because its getting older and slower.
12. I only had 3 girlfriends. 2 years, 6 months, and 1 year 3 months with my present.
13. I admire ladies with short feet, straight teeth, long hair, and chinita.
14. I graduated without honors but I have the highest GPA. I have dropped ROTC course three times straight until it was revised, failed it once and our commencement day was sort of live drama.
15. I graduated from STI - Lipa City year 2004.
16. If its not for my scholarship, I would have never reached even high school.
17. My father is a no-read-no-write, he can only write his signature. My mother can only calculate thru her mind. But they are the best parents and I am very proud of them!
18. I have started to be vegetarian, I have started eating lots of vegetable, salad and I love it.
19. I hate most japanese foods, I can’t take raw and half-cooked fish and meat.
20. I can’t swim, but I float.
21. If I am not where I am now, I’m probobly in Singapore, Denmark or in jail.
22. I haven’t met yet the women whom I can settle with.
23. I have proven calendar method works and effective lol.
24. Last thing…. Its my birthday today! Marked the date Sepetember 4, 2007, I just turned 24!

Just today I was surprised that tomorrow, Monday, August 27, 2007 is National Heroes Day, a legal holiday here in the Philippines. Getting people into work on legal holidays mandates us to pay double. I know it is normal and a fact every firm has to face but not until I became an employer, prepared schedules, and work items I realized it gets very very costly.

Just this month of August, we have here 3 holidays that all fall on weekdays, Ninoy Aquino Day, Kadayawan Festival, National Heroes Day. Since we don’t have work on Saturday and Sunday, the least three weeks of the month was slashed with 1 days each. Sigh…

“Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has admitted full responsibility for the city government’s failure to anticipate the problem of lack of road right of ways in building the city’s P247 million urban drainage and flood control project.”  Read more…

On my first month here in Davao City, this is one of the first thing I have noticed. Flooded roads during heavy rains and defective drainage system.

Visible areas where roads are always flooded are Torres Street, Jacinto Extension, roads inside Vicenta Subdivision, road near Bioessense Spa and several roads near Rolling Hills Subdivision. I pity those beautiful houses located at lower part of Vicenta subdivision near the Convention Center, its really impassable by walking during and after heavy rains. Torres Street is a major spot for tourist and food hunters as this is where several restaurants are located but it was disappointing roads was too muddy during heavy rains.

There are times I can’t help but complain how these road developers expand roads without the drainage system fixed first.

I once had a funny experience, on my way to Banoks at Torres St. when I have to ask a car owner to give me a lift to pass the flooded roads from Mariner St. to Torres St. near Bo’s Coffee.

But despite of, at least now I know and I hope everybody knows that the city government are already working on these. We’ll see.

I don’t mind my sleepless night because of the live bands that played one week straight in Landco car park, just few meters from my place at Dona Vicenta. Its still brings fun and entertainment to a lot of people and just shows Davao is a safe city to live in.

Friday was a non-working, I decided to treat my team mates out for simple dinner and drinks at Venue, but I am sure its only me and jason. Rommel one of our developer don’t drink, don’t smoke either. LOL, aren’t you informed that smoking is a primary qualification?. Anyway, I gave him two cans of Cali hehe :)!

Sunday was the festival proper, but it was very bad I missed the float parade because I was slept due to sleepless saturday night. At 7:00PM, I visited Matina Square. Hmm… very nice place! It was very lively that time as there’s a dance competition. While I might be the only one speaking tagalog there, its still nice place to meet lot of people, mostly young and students. Its like Baywalk with mixed design of Greenbelt and Metrowallk. I believe this place is for teens and younger peeps like me LOL.

Anyway, I got some shots of the parade near SM City.

While I am not true Davawenyo or Bisaya blogger, I am excited to join the first Mindanao Bloggers Summit. Here I’m looking to meet new people, new friends in this event.

Fellow .NET bloggers and web developers based in davao city, lets meet up here. Let me know how I may contact you by replying to this post or by sending me email thru rdagumampan[AT]gmail.com.

I really admire initiatives like this, and I hope this improves Mindanao’s reputation and at least in some way yield positive results.

1st Mindanao Bloggers Summit Sponsors:

• Join the DigitalFilipino.com Club!
• BisayaBloggers.com
• Davao’s Food Huntress
• NoKiAHOST.COM P5/day webhosting
• Globe Broadband
• Act for Peace Programme
• Web Design Philippines
• Lane Systems
• Snap Graphic & Sign
• Orange County Real Estate
• Web Developer Philippines
• Eric Clark Su
• Fwendz Diner
• Artcom Printing Services
• Cubepixels Design Studio

Not too soon, but see you all at the event.

My friend gwen just celebrated her birthday. While you always insist that you’re just 23, Irish told me your real age haha. Happy birthday gwendale! Keep those smiles, stay simple, pretty, and sweet.

We open positions to all aspiring/experienced developers and designers graduate, undergraduate, or was not able to pursue tertiary education, it doesn’t matter. We are looking for passionate people who are willing to learn, be trained and can get things done. People who value simplicty, code quality and take ownership of it. Who can work on a team.

We are a very young small start-up team headquartered in Davao City, Philippines. Temporarily we will be working in a small box-type office but will relocate once we found a better location. We offer above averarge salaries, flexible working hours, and very nice computers.

Take a look, this seat might be yours.

*

Available positions are listed:

.NET Application Developers / MidLevel / Trainees
As part of our pioneer team, you are expected to have hands-on experience on .NET Framework, C#, Sql Server and ASP.NET. Advantage if you have basic know-how of e-commerce systems and online retail application design.
Responsibilities:
- generally, you will be part of the analysis, design, development and testing of a shopping cart software.
- participate in estimating effort and schedule for the development of each feature of the product.
- participate in code reviews, rotational functional and performance testing of the system

Applicant Qualifications:
- at least SOME knowledge/experience developing web and windows applications on .NET Framework and Sql Server.
- knowledge/experience of the .NET Framework, C#, ASP.NET, Web Services and Windows Forms.
- at least some knowledge/experience writing t-sql, stored procedures, triggers, views, indexes and query optimization.
- at least some knowledge/experience on shopping cart systems, online payments and secured pages.
- adherence to standards and disciplined coding. basic to in-dept understanding of object oriented programming.
- knowledge/experience on any of the following tools and utilities is an advantage but not required: resharper, issue tracking software, wiki, and subversion.
- self-motivated, creative, and willing to work in startup environment.
- willing to work fulltime, 5days/week M-F in davao city, philippines.
- willing to work on rotational QA activities such as function and regression testing, usability testing, and code review.
- fresh graduates are also welcome to apply.

starting salary range depends on experience, just send your resume and we’ll see.

Html UI Developer / Expert Level
Responsibilities:
- you will be working closely with the graphic artists (freelancer/inhouse) in managing the html projects and transforming designs into xhtml, x-browser compliant pages.
- you will be working closely with the .NET Developers in transforming xhtml pages into a working dynamic ASP.NET pages.
- you will be using Mozilla Firefox as main testing platform, with IE6 and IE7. you are expected to utilize the best tools available like FF web developer extensions and IE DOM Explorer.

Applicant Qualifications:
- well-versed and technical know-how on nuts and bolts of XHTML, CSS, Javascript.

- knowledge/experience on cross-browser tags and/or table-less designs.

- at least some knowledge/experience of search engine optimization techniques.
- self-motivated, creative, and willing to work in start-up environment.
- willing to work fulltime, 5days/week in davao city, philippines.

starting salary range depends on experience, just send your resume and we’ll see.

Graphics Designer
Responsibilities:
- you will be working closely with the Html Developer in managing the html projects and transforming designs into xhtml compliant pages.
- you wiill be given opporuntity to learn new tools like Microsoft Expression Suite.

Applicant Qualifications:
- knowledge/expertise in logo design, visual identity and e-commerce web page layout.
- knowledge/experience in using Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop and other design tools.
- at least some knowledge in flash animations, image and text effects.
- at least some knowledge in digital photography.
- willing to work fulltime, 5days/week in davao city, philippines.
starting salary range depends on experience, just send your resume and we’ll see.

Please send your applications and referrals to address: rdagumampan[xATx]gmail.com

* dual screen setup is a benefit if you performed well, also when function and UI testing.

A lot of great things happened this week. We had a good build on our product and several major issues has been resolved. We are four now, and we’ll try to hire one more developer to join our team. This has been a great week, and as always, I want it to end with a therapeutic massage.

After a full “humba” dinner at Whaw Restaurant, I tour around downtown to try someplace new. I Visited NetFront internet cafe near Ateneo and just few steps is the BodyBliss massage. I was surprised they offer 1:45 mins full body massage for Php 250.00 only. The place is small and nice, but I doubt if foreign customers especially westerners can fit their spiral stairs.

I had a combination of Thai, Sweddish and Shiatsu. It was actually my first time to try Thai massage, it was good and I like the stretching and bending. It throws away my stress everytime I took a deep breath. But as much as I wanted to sleep more, I think they don’t allow it. I am not sure as I did not confirm. It would have been even better if they gave me at least 1-2 hours sleep.

Too dark upstairs, I don’t have shots. I took some pictures of the reception.

Visit BodyBliss at CM Recto Fronting Aldevinco Davao City .It is just beside NetFront Internet Cafe and 5 minutes walk from Marco Polo Hotel.