First things first - here's a Happy Birthday greeting to one of my high school classmates, Mak! It's been too long since we last saw each other! Hope things are cool in your neck of the woods - figuratively speaking of course.

My training class at work is going a bit better than I had initially anticipated, and now I'm confident that I'll be able to finish a lot earlier than projected - as in around tomorrow. My work load should start to get lighter after that, the next two weeks beyond this one set to be dedicated more to working with my new trainer and getting him fully up to speed in terms of the product material. As much as I love training, the stress and tedium of running new hire class after new hire class can really wear thin on a person over time. I'm looking forward to more development-focused activities instead of just training over and over again.

The other work stuff is still there - not quite resolved for now. I'll have to come to an answer by the end of the week at the very most, although I feel like I'm almost ready to truly come to a reasonable conclusion to things. I've been consulting with a few different friends from work here and there in order to figure things out better. It makes sense that way - this is a work concern after all and so I guess the best person to consult with would definitely have to be my fellow co-workers. For the most part they should have a better understanding of the context of my decision and what elements may come into play. I might be right or I might be totally wrong, but at least with their help, I'll be able to process things better and come to a final solution of sorts that I can at least be comfortable with.

Coincidentally, I just received my Astrocenter horoscope in my email inbox - the text made me chuckle:

Your horoscope for February 10, 2010

You tend to be a perfectionist, rOckY, obsessing about details and wanting to do everything just right. Your rigor is admirable, but sometimes you could benefit from getting input from others. This is a good day to get some advice from friends or colleagues whose advice you can trust. You could be stuck on a problem that can easily be solved, once you look at things from a different angle.

I'm watching the very last episode of Lost Season 5 as I compose this entry, believe it or not. I've managed to breeze through this season and now I'm right at the precipice of the final season. It's been an interesting run and I'm sort of proud that I'll now be able to watch the final season together with Tobie. He's been all decent by not giving into temptation by watching the new season without me and so I've tried to do my part by catching up as fast as I can. It's the little things, right?

Oh, and I'm now reading Edenborn, Nick Sagan's sequel to Edenfree. It's starting out interestingly enough although it's not quite as striking as Idlewild was. Like the first book, it remains to be a fairly light read and a good one at that and I look forward to seeing how Sagan will twist things around this time. He demonstrated good control over the proverbial plot twist as a writing device and I'd like to see the continued evolution of his writing style. Seriously, if you're into cyberpunk with a twist or generally more intellectual writing than the usual, then this is definitely going to be a good series to get into.

Oh, and I'm dead set on getting a Nokia E63 this Friday. With luck the supplier Tobie and I located at SM Cyberzone Cubao should have it in stock for the same price they quoted to us last Monday. The phone is generally cheaper than most of the other phones that I looked at but this particular bargain is ridiculously cheaper than all the other prices quoted to me. It could be available right now, as in today, but then they stated the latest it could possibly be back in stock is Friday, so I'm going for the safer, more certain option.

So here's to Friday - wish me luck!

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So perhaps experimenting during your personal time can be more hazardous than you think.

First, here's a very Happy Birthday greeting to one of the kindest and dearest geeks that I've ever met - Nina! Happy Happy Birthday Nina!

Today was the first day of my new classroom assignment - handling the second week of the Management Class. It's a small group of team leaders and QA2's, which makes it a much more easily managed class. Progress is a lot faster than compared to handling a regular-sized class and I'm having a decent time for a first day. I'm just a tad worried that I'm overdoing things and giving them too much material to absorb at once. Management classes are generally tricky since you get to do away with a lot of the activities designed for larger group dynamics and you end up utilizing time a lot more efficiently in order to keep things moving along without allotting extra time normally set aside for larger classes.

Plus there's all the other stuff going on a work that I'm trying to manage as best as I can, and yet are also weighing somewhat heavily on my mind. I'm trying to do my best to keep all things balanced for the most part, but then again perhaps I'm being too smug about things or something. There are many paths that off into the future, even for work. One's career is quite the tricky thing to manage and it's hard to truly determine where the next path will lead. There are not clear measures of right and wrong - just many different possibilities. Regardless of the road I find myself on, I've always felt that I do a pretty decent job of managing things well enough.

As I keep saying here and there - only time will tell.

I've made more progress with my Lost-viewing - now at S05E11. Not much further to the end of the road, so to speak, then Tobie and I will be able to start watching Season 6 in earnest. It's a bit of a surprise to really think about just how much Lost I've watched in the past few weeks in order to get to this point. I've pretty much covered almost 4 seasons' worth of the show in order to make it to the point when I can start Season 6. How exciting, right?

After Lost, there's still a lot of good stuff to get into. I have yet to get started on the second season of True Blood and I'm still trying to finish Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I want to get started on Spartacus: Blood and Sand and I also need to catch up with the other J.J. Abrams show, Fringe. Heck, I even want to get through the current season of Heroes just because I started it years ago and I want to finally finish. Then there's Stargate Universe, The Human Target and Being Human.

The geekery never stops!

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You do realize who they're representing, right? LOL

Yesterday was geekily busy. Yay for geekery! We got to game after being delayed by a few weeks and we recorded a new episode of Fandom Live! as well. Ah yes, good times with the geeks.

For the game, things are certainly wrapping up. I don't quite have a clear plan of action just yet but I'm trying to work through things the best that I can. Despite all the contracts and merits that I've mastered thus far, it seems highly unlikely that they're actually be useful once we truly get into the final stretch of things. The end game phase is certainly near and all the plot points are coming to a head and at times I feel like I don't have a definite plan clearly defined. I know it'll come to me soon enough - that kind of thinking seems to work for my character, the Spring King. It's ironic that my character has been designed to be quick-witted and highly impulsive whereas I am a lot more careful and deliberate in real life. But that's tabletop gaming for you.

Between game turns I decided to sort my collection of downloaded comics, change their filenames to properly sort things such that they appear in a logical order when I go through them in straight sessions with my comic book reader and to generally have them in order for my personal peace of mind. This is especially challenging when it comes to the Blackest Night comics given all the one-shots and crossover titles that have truly made this story rather epic. OCD + geekery = fatal combination indeed.

We had a pretty crazy shoot for Fandom Live! for our We:View (review) of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Given the movie's subject matter, the gimmick that Tobie came up with for the shoot was to have various packages and pieces of food to be thrown at Tobie while I tried to ignore all of this and keep discussing the movie. We often get into such roles when it comes to Fandom Live - Tobie does all the crazy, zany stuff and I play the straight man, but in a comedic sense mind you. I've gotten fairly good at keeping a straight face when Tobie's off doing something weird - I've gotten a lot of practice given my everyday life with him. There are just some things that you'll only truly know about a person once you've lived with them for a fair amount of time.

This morning Tobie and I headed out for a bank run then made our way to SM Cubao to check our more phones and get more price quotations. I had spent a lot of my time between last night's game sessions going over all these reviews and write-ups about different camera phones. Initially I had my mind pretty much set on getting the Samsung Jet given its multimedia capability, WiFi connectivity and overall stylish design versus the Samsung Omnia II since the use of Windows Mobile limited its color display capability. Of course both phones were pretty pricey and that got me thinking a lot more about how much I wanted to make the touch screen jump.

So I did more researching and started thinking more about why the Nokia E72 is currently the best phone at the moment as per CNET Asia. The phone certainly has impressive features and is a rather robust smart phone. However it's still a bit more than what I need and probably more expensive than what I'm comfortable with. So I started working my way down the E Series of Nokia phones and ended up with looking at the widely popular Nokia E63. It's a bit of an upgrade from the E71 despite the loss of a few features and a plastic casing instead of the E72's metal case. The plastic case seems to be both a pro and a con, depending on which review you read. Some hate how flimsy and cheap it feels compared to other smart phones while others praise the practical nature of it being less slippery compared to the E72. When Tobie and I finally started asking around about how much it cost, some stores appear to be offering the phone below P10,000 for cash purchases, which is just awesome. It keeps my monetary investment a lot lower than if I were to buy the Samsung Jet and thus gives me more wiggle room in the future to change phones again if the E63 doesn't fully work out. As much as I didn't plan on going back to Nokia anytime soon, my side trip to the proprietary accessory world of Sony Ericsson wasn't all that much better.

And now I'm watching a few more episodes of Lost Season 5 - we're currently on episode 4. Once we finish with this one, I promise to go to bed and get some sleep before work later tonight.

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I'd like to meet someone who's fallen for a Nigerian email scam. No reason for it really. *grins*

Today's a gaming day. Yes, that definitely deserves a "whee" right there. Whee!

Last night was very, very chill. I finally finished the fourth season of Lost and am now working my way through the fifth. If I stick to relatively the same pace as what I managed last week for season four, then I should be able to start catching up with the new season by next weekend or so. The show has become quite interesting and I'm actually looking forward to seeing how everything resolves. I'm only at a point in time when Ben, who has quickly become one of my favorite characters, is stuck off the island and naturally I hope that he gets to go back. Not that I don't enjoy Ben out and about in the regular world mind you, but you have to admit that his genius and deviousness is best enjoyed in the small confines of that ever-mysterious island.

Given the aches and pains both Tobie and I have been feeling this week, we really wanted to head out for a massage. Given how late we stayed up earlier in the day at Trinoma plus some work complications Tobie had for the family business, things freed up far too late to consider heading to the spa we originally wanted to go to. Heck, even with Wensha being 24 hours, its other facilities like the jacuzzi were no longer available after midnight or so, thus no longer making them a truly viable option. Instead we headed out in the wee hours of the morning to this little massage place called Spada along Taft near Buendia that in the past had proved to provide decent (but not exceptional) massages for a really good price. Thankfully, we didn't have to wait too long for the massage and it certainly helped work out the works of our pains. I wish the therapists had done a more thorough job, but then you get what you pay for I guess.

After another restful sleep, Tobie and I woke up to get the Sietch ready for the game. I totally went nuts on the bathroom and cleaned it from top to bottom (yes, toothbrushes were involved) while Tobie helped by tidying up the table, sweeping the floor and preparing a yummy brunch. In terms of my bathroom session, it was very, very fulfilling and I'd like to think I did a more than decent job of cleaning it up. Of course I had my friends like the Mr. Muscle concentrate for my cleaning solution along with my Mr. Muscle Mold & Mildew Remover to help me along - that and several scouring pads and toothbrushes. Now the bathroom is all spic and span and currently scented with one of those Glade Glass Scents. I really prefer the blue one, but it never seems to be in stock anymore. The green one was pretty weird and this orange one is definitely...fruity. I shall continue to seek out the blue one!

On the cooking front, I'm really glad that Tobie has become a lot more confident in the kitchen compared to before. In the beginning it would be a rare event on its own to get Tobie to try and cook something at all and now he's off preparing some pretty good meals. He doesn't given himself enough credit for the dishes he does manage - most recently he's been managing some pretty great experiments with eggplants. Heck, he's gone off to make tortang talong even before me, despite this being one of my long-term cooking projects. Yay Tobie! Here's to more cooking adventures together.

I doubt we'll be hitting O Bar tonight, but then I guess that also depends on who might go out tonight. As much as I enjoy a few beers and a drag show, I also feeling like staying in, enjoying the cooler weather at night and watching loads of movies or perhaps just more episodes of Lost. I do have an entire season to finish before I can even think about watching the first few episodes of the final season that are already waiting for us in my external hard drive. Whee again!

Oh, on a side note, I've managed to get both DosBox and SCUMMVM working on this netbook. So hello original Dune RPG and hello to Loom, the first adventure / RPG game that I ever finished!

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You have to love Buddha for his simple moments of brilliance. Whee.

First, some very Happy Birthday greetings to my high school classmate Marco and to one of our trainers at work, Nelson! Happy Birthday to both of you! Hope you two made the most of your birthdays!

Well, I'm finally done with this second training class and the first one also finished their first week on the phones today. Results were generally good but I think that we still have room for improvement in many different areas. Hopefully the next week will go a lot better, but truly only time will tell when it comes to that.

I have another interesting choice before me and I have until Friday of next week to truly think about it. It's a fairly major move and I'm not quite sure what my priorities in this matter should be at this moment, hence the need to consider things carefully. I'll definitely need to consult with a few different people here and there in order to come to the best possible decision, but even that won't necessarily lead to a final outcome. Such things are never truly easy, but that's life for you and all we can hope to do is roll with the punches as best as we can.

Tobie picked me up from work today, which was really nice of him considering he still hadn't slept after his own night at O Bar. He had waited for me for most of the morning by continuing to read Dune in the car, which is another *squee* thing for me since he's really trying to get into a book that will always be very, very important to me. He seems to be enjoying it so far, which is yet another plus, and I hope he makes it to the end. Dune is not an easy book to tackle and yet I always try to get more people into the series, if only to keep the legacy of Frank Herbert alive.

Given it was almost 10:00am, we opted to make our way to Trinoma in order to try and catch the first showing of Where the Wild Things Are. It was Tobie's first time to go to Trinoma and I'm not exactly a regular patron either, so it promised to be a pretty interesting experience. Once things opened up, it turned out that the first showing of the movie was all the way at 01:20pm. Despite our mutual lack of sleep, we decided it was worth waiting for, plus it meant the prospects of a good lazy day at the mall. So we walked all over the place, looked at various items of interest like mobile phones, cameras, books and toys and enjoyed a pretty heavy lunch over at Fish & Co., one of our favorite restaurants.

I recently posted a Geeky Guide entry about my search for a new mobile phone, given my current Sony Ericsson W660i is no longer performing as it should. Text messaging has become difficult, charging is a pain and the proprietary headphone jack no longer locks and so I can't use my headphones unless I hold the darn thing in place. I've been posting the question out to various social networks and my friends have had a lot to recommend. Despite my saying I didn't feel like getting a smart phone, everyone seems to keep recommending them to me and I'm not sure where to go with that.

One of the recommendations that came up fairly often was the Samsung Jet and despite my disinterest in touchscreen phones, I have to admit this one seemed pretty good. I initially thought it also had a slide-out QWERTY keypad, but apparently I was mistaken. When I finally got to check out how much it cost at Trinoma today, it seemed like the price matched the value of the product pretty well and so as Tobie and I walked around, the idea of buying the phone today really began to grow on me. It takes a lot for me to get around to that purchasing decision when it comes to non-essentials like gadgets but eventually I decided that I ought to buy it today - after the movie. Several shops had it on display and one in particular was offering it for a very affordable price on installment.

After the movie, Tobie and I walked around a bit more, saw more shops while I continued to debate whether or not I should get it. Once my mind was set, we made our way back to that shop and I went on in ahead while Tobie checked out some other store. Once I was inside and finally talking to one of the clerks, she initially confirmed that they still had it in stock but then her co-worker whispered something into her ear while pointing to the box on the table - the girl just ahead of me was buying a Samsung Jet as well. In fact, it turned out that she had just purchased the last one in stock. I had been so close to buying it but I totally missed my chance! I felt really weird about all this since my mind was so set on getting it, so I checked out the store next door. They were offering the phone at an even lower rate, but they only accepted cash and straight credit card payments, which defeated my initial budget plan of getting it on 0% interest installment. Given all this, I felt today just wasn't the day for getting the phone, and so I gave up for now, made my way back to Tobie and the two of us made our way home while discussing how everything happens for a reason.

So I'm giving myself more time to research about the phone more and try to find other alternatives. I really just want a WiFi-capable phone which is easy to use for blogging or mobile updates as needed. I don't care about the quality of the camera or whether or not it's a flat screen / touch screen. The idea of getting a QWERTY keypad phone is definitely growing on me and I'm also starting to like the idea of a larger display in case I load videos onto the darned phone. We'll see.

So this was how my weekend started. It's been a great weekend so far and hopefully it'll continue to get better. Tobie and I are considering getting a massage today if we can manage to get out of the house, hehe.

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Aww, poor elf. *snickers*

Okay, Ben is REALLY kickass in Lost S04E09 - The Shape of Things to Come. Kick. Ass. But anyway.

The work week is almost over. Hooray for that. My current training class is wrapping up although I have another one just around the corner. And what I mean by just around the corner, I mean next week. So yeah, no rest for the wicked just yet.

The fun just never seems to stop, huh?

OMFG - Smoke Monster!

...okay. So I think this episode has officially made me a Lostie.

So this is what an LJ entry looks like when I'm a bit too absorbed into something that I'm watching while blogging at the same time. People really can't multi-task as well as they think they do, especially when a character like Ben Linus unleashes his revenge on his enemies with what appears to be a human-killing monster composed of smoke that seems to be the near equivalent of Ben's pet dog. Well, perhaps more like a really vicious guard dog owned my the little skinny kid that everyone doesn't like but that's way too creepy to deal with. Yeah, something like that. I'm tempted to watch one more episode after this one but then I need to get some sleep as well. I seem to be caught in this internal argument every working day - sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.

One more work shift, and then it's the weekend. We've finally confirmed gaming plans for Sunday and we also have a Fandom Live! shoot for that day. There are no immediate Malate plans since Keith won't be in town anymore this weekend so instead Tobie and I have plans of hitting the spa or something. Both of us are feeling some major aches and pains, probably because of all the hardy partying we've had over the course of the past few weekends. The partying isn't necessarily going to stop mind you - it's just about time we rest and recover a whee bit order to party further in the future.

Beyond that, there doesn't appear to be any other immediate plans to factor in. Tobie might be trying to arrange some alternative plans for the weekend, and I'll trust him to figure out how to do that. It's not necessarily complicated or difficult - just something I know he ought to care for instead of me.

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Ah yes, the old techniques tend to be the more effective ones.

During the course of the night, I finished our download of Lost S06E01-E02...so now I've gotten started on watching Season 4! I know, I know, I have a LOT to catch up on, but I'm definitely working on it. Trust me. I'm currently on the second episode and I know I'll need to stop there in order to actually get some sleep.

Yesterday's work shift was very, very blah. Wednesday is the middle of the week, and thus is often thought of as the "hump day" of the week and it certainly felt like it took near Herculean effort to get through yesterday. Given how late I got home and thus how late it was when Tobie and I finished our weekly grocery run, I ended up sleeping rather late after completing my blog entries for the day. I woke up with just enough time to assemble a quick dinner with Tobie, but naturally that had me a little out of it all throughout my shift, even with the help of two doses of Extra Joss. Plus it was a rather busy day with lots of guided simulations for systems training and a major update training for the agents already on the phones. Such fun.

Plus there's all the other fun stuff that I have to deal with at the office like the minor fires, the never ending emails, the occasional decisions that just need to be made and all that good stuff. The creamy nougat center is hard to locate in all this so sometimes it just might make more sense to tidy things up and wrap it all nicely with a bow. Yeah, that doesn't quite make sense - it was a lot funnier in my head when I tried to write a witty retort just there. Wit fail right there. I guess I'm more tired than I realized.

Ooh, I didn't know Lance Riddick appeared in Lost! I only know him from Fringe! Squeee! I have so much to catch up on!

I'm tempted to watch a third episode before bed, but I know that'll eat into my sleeping time and ultimately I'm going to pay for this somehow. You got to love it when a character like Ben reveals he knows the names of a bunch of strangers who just arrived on the island. I really do like Ben. And Juliet. But I have an entirely different level of respect for Ben. However the flashforwards of scenes from the future are definitely making things a lot more confusing - I think I'm beginning to miss the old flashbacks. So yeah, here I am starting one last episode of Lost before bed. Really, this is the last one, I promise.

Oh, and that book Idlewild that I've been reading - you remember, right? It has turned out a LOT better than I initially expected and I'm breezing through the story pretty quickly. It's not necessarily complicated or written in a manner that's hard to read, which does help make the book go faster. But beyond that, the story just appeals to me and the writing style is fresh and creative in its own right. Plus the character has those classic echoes of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caufield - an ironic mental association given the recent death of the author. He's snarky, witty and highly intelligent but not invulnerable. I wonder if the other three books written by the author are in the same universe - I'll find out around the time I finish with this first book and start reading the second one.

Okay, I'm going to end this entry here, focus on this last episode more and eventually go to bed. Yes, that's the plan.

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Sigh, too tempting an idea for sure...

I need a new phone soon. My Sony Ericsson W660i seems to be slowly dying on me. Boo. If you have any decently-priced recommendations, leave a comment or get in touch with me more directly - you should already know how by now.

Work was tiring but not too bad. I guess it helps that I'm a lot more comfortable with the material now that we actually have people on the phones and the whole call process makes more sense to me. It's a really good thing that the QA Team was able to help me out by subbing for me last Monday in order to free me up to join the first day of nesting. I know there's a lot more to be learned on the floor in these first few weeks, but with all the other classes, I really don't have time. Darn it. As I keep saying these days, especially in reference to my work, we'll just have to make do as best as we can with what we have.

Tobie and I made our weekly trip to the grocery today in time for the first Wednesday of the month special - double loyalty points for all purchases! While we already get this bonus since we have like 5 of their reusable grocery bags, the timing for this Wednesday bonus was perfect since we had a lot of purchases in mind. The larders were practically bare before we got the grocery shopping done, leaving us with little more than garlic and tuna to possibly use to come up with something decent to eat. As much as this week's grocery cost more than our usual amount, it did help restock our dwindling reserves and put us back in a much better place in terms of food options. Now if only I had enough time to cook all the yummy meals in my head while still getting my blogging done, watching the geeky shows I'm trying to catch up with, fulfill my work obligations and ultimately maintain some semblance of a decent work-life balance.

Yeah, no pressure and all that.

The final season of Lost started today and I already have episodes 1 and 2 in queue for download. There's no real rush for me since I still need to finish watching seasons 4 and 5, all the while dealing with other on-going shows like Fringe and The Big Bang Theory while trying to find time for key shows of interest like the second season of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the one and only season of Firefly or even the second season of True Blood. So much geekery, so little time.

Oh, and one can't forget finding enough time to actually sleep during all this and maybe some gaming on the side. Whee!

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I know, it's a really stupid strip, but my humor is somewhere pretty shallow right now. =P