Last Friday was my last day at DME. For years, I’ve been keeping it a secret where I exactly work. Though I’ve been saying that I’m working for a gaming company, I seldom name it. Just so that I do not get customer support related issues from people.

I took a few shots just when I was about to leave, and took pictures with friends I often hang out with. I did not feel like crying, but I was sad.

Working in DME was the best and funnest experience I had so far. The people are fun, the work itself is fun (despite the super toxic jobs at times) and at the same time, you learn a lot.

I’ll miss these people and a bunch of them that I failed to take pictures (Berwin’s fault, for giving me a lot of work that I totally forgot to take pictures when they’re still around the office)…

And the McDonald’s across the street where I ate its food every single day for 3 whole years!

I was sorting out and backing up files to free some space in my hard drive and I happen upon this The Simpsons-style art drawn by Reynan Parico, or Kuya Rey or simply Kureiii to all of us. Each of us were turned into cartoons and what’s interesting about it, is that our cartoon versions looks exactly like us, IRL.

First row, from left to right: Kelvin Baluyot, Sherwin Malit, Pongstr Ordillo, Isook “Michelle” Noh, Jhon Bonifacio, Reynan Parico
Second row: Gerry Dizon, Benz Carreon, Me, Jay Limpin, Rixie Liwag, Edson Nuqui

Originally, I was a part of the Site Design team, of which Kuya Rey was the head, before I transferred to Product Development where I shifted from the usual web dev stuff with a little bit of UI and graphic designing to plainly PHP programming.

We were formerly known as Auction.ph’s UED Team, or to complete it’s name, the User Experience and Design Division. Our division’s name sounds cool, doesn’t it? It has to sound cool, since it’s been changed like, what? More than three times since the time I got hired. And I’ll have you know that all the name changing was done within a span of a few months. And by few months, I really mean 2-3 months. XD

Our division was a part of a huge department called the Research and Development Department in which was composed of everything related to the development of the site – from UI, graphic designs, programming, down to system administrations and quality assurance. It was a pretty huge department composed mostly of half the company population, I think. Within our division, there are two teams – the site design team, on which I’m a part of, is in charge of the site’s over all look and such, and the Promos and Events team. Sometimes, we help the other team out. Especially when they’re press on deadlines. The Promos and Events team are super busy and never runs out of work.

I’ve grown (not physically) a lot from working there, and it was a lot of fun. There are different types of LOL and WTF moments, every now and then, but I wouldn’t throw it all out the window.

PS: I kinda miss ‘em guys! =)

In October, Chette and Philip are celebrating their 7 years of service as  Christians. Now that I think of it, I’ve been an atheist for 7 years 2 months already. I chose to become an Atheist a few months before Chette and Philip got converted to Born Again Christians. That’s right, became an Atheist by choice. It is the religious path I’ve decided to take, in conclusion for my futile attempt  to search for my life’s purpose. I’ve been religion hopping and going to several religious services for trial until I met Tony, who introduced me and offered me to join the conversations, debates, etc, in Pinoy Atheists group for a peek of their beliefs and philosophies. And few months later, I officially joined the group.

I remembered those days back in my early years in college. When Chette and Philip met Ran-nii, and got them converted to Christianity, there were so much drama going on that things became way too serious that I kinda got annoyed, but decided to simply stepped down. “It was their choice to begin with, they looked happy with it, so let them be.” was what was in my thoughts and remained quiet. Freedom of self-expression is the one thing I wanted to grant to people around me, at least.

Several months after that, things started to settle down. Yet, to my surprise, I found Ran-nii (that friend who converted Chette and Philip to Christianity) posting in the Pinoy Atheists group. I got curious and started to wonder why would somebody of that status (religious-wise), post in the group. I simply welcomed him to the group and left him alone since I don’t want to get myself involved with their religious drama. And then, several months later, he told me that he officially converted from an Agnostic to an Atheist.

Isn’t it ironic?

<?php

for (i=1; i<=100; i++) {

echo “I will not play GaiaOnline at work anymore.”

}

?>

Even just logging into it.

Really, really.

=]

–

Edit: I take it back! XD

For April 7th:

One McKinley. The view of the condominium which you’ll see when look at the window in my old place at the office. It leaves the impression of a peaceful city life.

For April 4th, 2009:

It was Pao’s farewell party. I forgot the name of the place we went to. He’s leaving for his dream as a game developer, that lucky guy! I wish, someday, I would be able to do so as well. I shall resign and proudly say, “I’m resigning to fulfill my dream and my destiny!” =P

I wish for him all the best! That’s one quiet guy out of the IT team. Now, all that’s left are noisy guys. Noisy, noisy! *writes on the blackboard* =P

Nikki, the cute panda girl in the office the other day. She’s so cute. :3 I heard she sometimes, costrips as a lolita. Being a kurololi myself, I wanna see. :3

I haven’t been posting. My life’s gotten pretty damn busy that I don’t even have the time to blog anymore. And I don’t even have anything to blog about. I just thought I would post now to let you guys know that I might be shutting down a few sites I own, I don’t have the time to maintain them anymore. And probably, I might close a few accounts too like my deviantart, friendster, myspace and multiply accounts. I might reconsider this, however. I might just go on a long long hiatus for a while and return later.

Honestly, I’m tired. I’m tired about everything. Everyday life, work, home, and even my only get away from all this – my online life is becoming tiring.

Work. I seldom blog about work. As much as possible, I don’t blog about work. Well, other vampires might have me killed if they found out that I’m been given the great task to have the impure ones haunted one after another. And this are one of those few times that I really have to blog about my feelings from these misadventures. I’m trying really hard to have a better mood everyday, because it’s pretty important for work. Working is like painting something, you know. You have to have the good vibes and the good mood to make it work out well. Work is one thing that is really important to me and that I’m really proud of what I’m doing and what I have done. It it something that I don’t wanna lose. Well, because I have bills to pay, I need to feed myself, and my online gaming allowance also comes from it. But lately, I’ve been loosing that good feeling like I’m enjoying work, you know. I need to have a one on one reflection with myself to find out what’s wrong and/or what’s bothering me.

Online. For one, I’m tired that people just don’t follow rules even though they are clearly stated on the same fucking page, with either huge font or a striking color or something else that would make it standout. Do I have to make every thing blink for people to notice such a few line of rules? And I’m tired of people who doesn’t have their own creativity to think of something else to do and kept on plagiarizing my stuff. And it’s not even mere ideas or concepts, it’s plagiarizing head on – copying and pasting my content to their freaking damn sites. And without even asking for a permission or a credit or whatever. I don’t want to rant about these things anymore. I’m really mad this time. Mad to the point that I don’t even want to think about it anymore.

Myself. I’m tired of myself for ranting too much. I’ve become the person I hate most – the annoying type who has too much to say. But at least, I haven’t fallen so low as to reach that point that I don’t get anything done. I still have hope!

I needed rest. I wanted peace. I wanted to immitate Jeoffrey, who just disappeared one day, had the time of his life to have a peace of mind somewhere, for a while. But I don’t have the guts. Bah, I’m just a sorry ass.

My To do list until the end of the month. I decided to post it so that hopefully, I would not slack away this time (probably).

Site Maintenance

• Design a new layout for Beyond Eternal
  • Code the new layout
  • Apply the new layout with the backend
• Clean up Beyond Eternal’s directories
  • Delete duplicate files
  • Delete old and unused files
• Update fanlistings
  • Hecate Fanlisting
  • Antiques Fanlisting
  • Maximum the Hormones Fanlisting
  • GPKISM Fanlisting
• Update The Final
• Design a new layout for Ohmi Tomu Fanlisting that was recently approved
  • Code the new layout
  • Apply the new layout with the backend
• Monthly backups
  • Databases
  • Site files

Scanlation

• Finish editing/typesetting Crookclock chapters 1 and 2
• Fixed Utawarerumono‘s chapters following the book release
  • Fixed the download links from the site
  • Upload the mirror downloads

I don’t know if it’s just me or anything, but I don’t think that the essence of web designing is only for it’s visual purpose.

Imho, a good web site should not be based on how good the graphic used was made. Of course the images used are very important, as to that fact that I am very particular with details, I still think that graphic alone doesn’t make a website. Regardless of for whatever purpose it may serve, may it be a personal site, a blog, a portfolio, a company website or whatever, there are several things you need to consider to make a “good website” too. Like, you should take into note the speed of your website, how visible the texts are despite it being viewed in different monitors, how well thought of and organized are the pages and the navigations, how it follows the standard XHTML and CSS, how clean the codes are and how semantic they can possibly be.

I’m not saying this as a web developer, rather, as someone who feels that just because you’re a good graphic artist doesn’t make you a “great” person when it comes to making a website. I don’t need thousands of images to make a good website. I can make a clean and beautiful website by the least amount of images with the power of XHTML and CSS.