I saw this post from Mahesh today and it taught me something that I know I'll put in good use in years to come...

Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum , Philadelphia, United States March 22,2008)

Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?

Kalam:   Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India's "Rohini" satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.

By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal. It was a big failure.

That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am, and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.

The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, "You conduct the press conference today."

I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team. The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience….

Thanks Mahesh for sharing such a wonderful inspiration to us...

I saw this comment on Dustin Campbell's MVP renewal post and it made me smile

That is definetely one proud mama! Congrats Dustin and Happy Birthday too ;)

I love being busy. I do.

I love working and building applications. I love making sure that what I build is a high quality application that has the 'Wow' factor stamped all over it. I guess it's just my nature to enjoy work and build stuff.

I love building stuff. I do.

Being busy makes me feel productive. Pressure makes me better and seeing my users smile at the end of the project motivates me to do my best job everytime. Thinking of my family and our future keeps me moving. It does. It really does.

I've been busy this past few weeks (i think it's almost a month and half know) with so much stuff going on at work doing UAT and production launch in a big ASP.NET dashboard application that I have been building in the past few months and I haven't had the change to post anything useful since early February because of these work related things.

None. Zip. Nada.

Anyway, that should change soon since my schedule would be a little bit more relax in the next few weeks other than a week I need to spend with some Cognos guys to show them our data and help them mine it. Oh well! I'll post something code related tonight. Promise!

I'll keep you posted for sure! Later!

Microsoft Philippines is conducting an event for developers called "Defy All Challenges: The .NET Developer Roadshow" on March 26, 2008 at SM Megamall Cinema 4, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong City, Philippines. I think this is going to be a great event! I've already talked to few developers and they are definetely excited although some raise concerns about the cost of the event (P500).

Paolo Tioseco, a Technology Specialist for Microsoft Philippines asked me to post the event details at DevPinoy.org and I've decided to create my own banner based on their original poster.

Oh! and I have a small one too!

Tech is fun!

My wife and I went to the Heroes Happen {here} event in Los Angeles, CA last month and boy, it was a blast! The event was a fullhouse with hundreds of developers and IT professionals attending this big day. My wife took some photos of me at the event during idle time and this is what came up.

{ Staring at (IT) Heroes }

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{ Is dot you? }

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{ Waiting to launch }

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{ Curly-braced couple }

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{ I was there! }

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{ DevPinoy.org was there too! =) }

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{ Someday, in God's time DevPinoy will be a platinum sponsor in one the Microsoft events. Heheh!
My wife told me to take a picture of this banner and put the DevPinoy logo to it and right there and then I caught a vision. }

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We had fun that day. I'm really thankful that my wife is a techie like me because we can go to the same conference and enjoy the same technology. I saw Woody at the event and as always he is a cool guy. Hmmm.. I wonder if all MS Developer Evangelist are like him. Hehehe!

The next launch event that we are going to attend is the San Diego launch event which is happening sometime around May. Yipee!

Yup! Me and my wife are coming to the VS 2008 Kickoff event in Los Angeles today. Wohoo! This is the first time we'll see Bill Gates live in person and we are excited about it.

Wohoo!

I'll post some pictures here tommorow to show you guys what transpired at the Nokia Theatre and Los Angeles Convention Center.

See yah at the event!

I know. I know. I know. I wasn't able to post anything this past few weeks. It's been really busy and the amount of task that i would be dealing in the next few days is going to get crazier because of my current project. I'm currently working on a KPI project that involves building custom dashboards using Dundas Charts, Microsoft Reporting Services, ASP.NET and alot of SQL Server data. Much of the task has been data mining and making sure that data represented on the screen matches the actual amounts stored in the database.

All I can say is that it's a tedious and messy process.

Currently we are in the last leg of development and QA should be underway in the next few days. Hopefully by that time I would have some extra time to resume my blogging activites (hehe).

So, what should you expect in the next few days? Well, I have a few things listed in my notepad that I am planning to post once I get my much covetted free time. Here's some things that i have on my list: the ADO.NET walkthrough I promised Marl, a real-world example on Lambda Expressions (jakelite has my favorite explanation about Lamda), some more LINQ stuff and an ASP.NET AJAX sample application that I have been brewing in my head for more than a month.

Oh well, time to work again. I'll keep you guys updated! Later!

Hey you!

Yes you!

Yup you!

You who is reading this blog right now!

Are you one of the 75 people subscribed to my blog? Or are you just a passer by? I'm wondering if it would be ok if you could put a comment on this post and let me know why you subscribed to my blog, how you stumbled upon this space and what tech topics you'd like to see me writing.

Yup! I'd like to hear from you and this is your chance. So please leave me a note!

Post it!

Say it!

and be heard!

Hope to see those comments! Thanks!

Me and my wife will be at the Code Camp in Fullerton tommorow and we are excited. Code Camp is a great time to get together, learn new things about technology and network with people with the same mindset about technology and that is passion for learning and enriching knowledged. We are driving tonight to Fullerton so that we can be early tommorow.

There are already a few sessions that I am eyeing to go to. One of them is the session of John Bowen regarding WPF DataBinding and WPF controls. I met John Bowen 3 years ago in the .NET Rocks roadshow bus. I think this session is going to be awesome. I've been playing with alot of WPF lately and I'm interested in seeing and learning cool things about this technology.

Another session I'd love to see is the topic "Branching and Merging Guidance for VSTS 2008 and Team Foundation Server" presented by Mickey Williams. I haven't done anything with VSTS before but I know its going to be a great primer for me because merging and branching is one of the things that happens alot when you are in a team development environment.

Oh boy! This is going to be a great Code Camp. Time to go home and get ready for this event. See you there!

I was working on a report today when I opened my Excel 2007 and this is all i got:

To my surprise there was no toolbar. No menu. No spreadsheet tab. Nothing. All i got was a window with the manification option showing on top of the form. I right-clicked on the bar and this is what i got:

What in the world happened? This was working fine a few days ago! Arrrgh! :( Good thing there is Google Spreadsheet handy!

I just saw this because Jojo Paderes had his status in GTalk pointing to this link.

According to Mercer, the Philippines is still one of the cheapest IT outsourcing destination in the world. The figures states that as of 2007 IT Managers in Manila only earn $22,280/year on an averaged ranking third compared to Switzerland, the highest paying country which has their IT managers average a whooping $140,960/year^[link].

You can treat the numbers above in different ways... either Manila is not getting the big piece of the pie because we are undervalued (considering that we are the largest english speaking nation in Asia) or... That we can attract more companies to outsource to Manila because we are talented and cheap enough to do projects for other countries which means a larger economic growth for our country.

I think the numbers above would fluctuate specially knowing that the US Dollar is currently in a slow decline and Euro starting to dominate the markets. 

The Philippines has a great talent pool when it comes to IT and most of the them work hard to hone their skills even if they don't get paid that much. That's what I call responsibility and commitment to bringing ang building a world class application from a truely world class workforce.

Hayy, I hope Manila gets a bigger piece of the pie :( Till then, Mabuhay ka Filipino Developer!

"FEATURE!"

Hehehe! I just saw this in my documents folder. I can't remember where I got it but it definetely made my developer flesh chuckle! Dedicated to all Software QA's out there(specially to my wonderful wife :*).

Later!

I was explaining the benefits of outsourcing projects in Manila today to someone who has a huge project.. probably between 1 year to 2 years of development amounting to atleast $50K for the initial concept. He asked me to help him find a suitable outsourcing company preferrably in Asia. I then made a push to have him look at several company's in Manila which he agreed... what i did next was show him a website of a known development company. He read everything and browsed every page on their site to get more information about them. We were having a great conversation and I think he ha already decided that he is going to contact this one company but then he decided to look at their methodologies section... there he noticed something that he didn't like about the website...

"Some comment?" What? Nice coding standard there buddy.

I mean, come on! If you are posting a code snippet to an ad atleast make sure that the code looks good and follows your motto "Code of Discipline" because to tell you frankly it makes your company look bad when you don't QA what you push to visitors even if it's just an image.

In the end, he got turned off and asked me to show him a different outsourcing company.

Sad. Sad. Sad. A missed opportunity.

"...I told my family that I want to be a Software Developer that's why I keep on reading and studying about new programming technologies. But my family objects, especially my mom. They don't want me to study. They just want me to pick  whatever job and stick to it. One day, they even kept my programming books in a locked shelf. Imagine, they don't want me to be a programmer..."

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."

                                                   Joshua 1:9 - taken from the NIV Bible

Thanks Dave for making me laugh today!

Somebody emailed this to me today and i must say that i needed this headbanger to brighten up my day...

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it.

If I hold it for a minute, that’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you’ll have to call an ambulance.

In each case, it’s the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”

He continued, “And that’s the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won’t be able to carry on.”

“As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we’re refreshed, we can carry on with the burden.”

“So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don’t carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you’re carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can.”

So, my friend, Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now. Don’t pick it up again until after you’ve rested a while.

Here are some great ways of dealing with the burdens of life:

1. Accept that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue.

2. Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

3. Always read stuff that’ll make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

4. Drive carefully. It’s not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.

5. If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

6. If you lend someone P100 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

7. It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply be kind to others.

8. Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.

9. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

10. Since it’s the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.

11. The second mouse gets the cheese.

12. When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

13. Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.

14. You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

15. Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

16. We could learn a lot from crayons… Some are sharp, some are pretty and some are dull. Some have weird names, and all are different colors, but they all have to live in the same box.

17. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

I saw this picture on my machine today while trying to backup my machine. I can't help myself but post it pretty interesting if you ask me ;)

The Call Center industry is a booming market in the Philippines. Answer is, if you live in Manila you probably know atleast 1 or 2 people working on this industry(i think majority of my classmates in college ended working as a Call Center Agent). They even have a song being played on the Philippine radio airwaves.

It's a great job and people who work at this companies often earn more money than entry-level programmers. Yep! that's true. 5 years back when I was looking for a job fresh out of college a friend told me that he was getting paid 17K + bonus as a call center agent. My jaw dropped because a buddy of mine who is a brilliant developer just got his first job as developer for a multi-national company was just getting paid 8.5K even my first paycheck as a full-time developer was only at 12K.

It's a pretty big margin huh? I guess that's the reason why alot of fresh grads go directly to call centers as their first choice of work(or maybe because of the lack of job openings in the Philippines). I do know that alot of people just call centers as a stepping stone for their real career goal. A former colleague of mine was a call center agent for Sykes before joining my former company. He said that he needed a job while reviewing for his SWCD and some cash to payoff the certification exam fee.

It's true. Everybody has their own match. Their own weakness. Their own kryptonite that would hold them to their knees and trade their philosophies and senses for a chance to break free.

And for my friend who is a recognized Linux and Java guru(he founded the largest Java User Group in the Philippines) its the skimpy pants and hanging shirts.

The photo was taken on a Linux conference in Manila back in 2005. Just look at how hard Melvin held on to Microsoft. Mercy!

*Disclaimer* According to Melvin, He still preffers Linux over Windows and that all he did that day was touch Microsoft but never had the chance to use it. :P

comments? go here! >> http://devpinoy.org/blogs/keithrull/archive/2007/08/21/even-linux-gurus-have-their-match.aspx

I've been interviewing lately for developers to fill the 2 open positions in my company and I've just realized an interesting stat inside our development team. A year and a half ago there where:

• 4 Caucasians, 2 from India, 2 Chinese, 2 Filipino
• 2 of the 10 Developers are girls. 1 Chinese and 1 from India.

After 1 year 1/2 with people resigning and us hiring a new batch of developers, composition changed into:

• 1 Caucasian, 1 Filipino, 2 Chinese and 5 from India.
• 4 of the 9 Developers are girls. 1 Chinese and 3 from India.

Pretty interesting huh? It's really amazing how the composition of our team changed in a year and a half. I guess its because of the turnover that we have encountered in the past few months..

So how about you? Whats the composition of your IT team?

*Wanna Comment?* Go here!

Some of you might have noticed that I haven't posted anything lately... well the reason is that I've been busy the past few weeks since working on alot of Reporting Services lately for one of the biggest projects that currently in progress in the company that I work for and when I say big I really mean big.

The thing about this current project is that it doesn't involve alot of coding and is mostly data analysis and report writing with Microsoft Reporting Services(just think of it this way, I need to generate and build 30 reports in 30 days. Yikes.). This takes alot of my time in a day and it has been the same way eversince I came back from my wedding. 

But anyhow, I'm back and I'm ready to post my dev thoughts again. I can't wait to start posting about Silverlight and start showing you guys some cool things that I have built with .NET 3.0 lately (No Windows Vista samples thou.. Any sponsors for this? :P).

Just keep readin' guys. I'll have something in the next few days ;) Till then, God speed everyone!

Hmmm... I was browsing CS today when I saw an announcement about the upcoming CSDC (Community Server Developer Conference) and man was I excited! I think its about time that Telligent gets the guys together and show them the stuff that they have been baking since the announcement for CS2008. I've been running CS in the developers community that I lead for two years now and I think going to such events would help us know great things that we can do and implement at our CS install.

Gee! I'm excited.. but.. I can't go unless somebody sponsors my plane ticket and registration :P

Anybody interested? :P Scott? Alex? Rob? Anyone?

Hey guys! Please vote the DevPinoy theme as the best looking theme for Community Server. You can vote for us here. Thanks guys!

Yup! We are finally married ;) We tied the knot on July 4, 2007 on a ceremony at Blue Gardens, Quezon City, Philippines.

It was a blast, a moment we'll forever cherish!

Thanks to everyone who came to our wedding! God bless you all!

I was browsing devpinoy today when I saw a post by one of the members about his "maintenance project" boredom. While I was reading his post I kinda had this "blast from the past" moment wherein memories of how i was back when i was starting my career as developer started vividly jumping into my head. I coudn't stop laughing for a couple of minutes because I just can't believe that some of the things that I did back when I was a little bit younger.

I used to get bored easily specially if the project that I am working on is boring, not challenging, repetitive or just something that doesn't even burn a braincell to accomplish. I would get so bored that i dread the idea of even going to work.

Yup. That was me back then.

I'ts funny how far I've reached eversince that days... I was so focused on new things, new technologies, new ideas that I forgot the reason why I was hired in the first place and that is to do work and do a good job on it. I think I was so engulfed in the idea that knowledge on every aspect of technology(even if its the most useless piece of code) would give me an edge over everybody. 

It was a bad choice, a bad decision but i have learned to grow from it and now here I am, smarter than the developer I used to be. I guess I grew older and started to realize that knowledge is only important if you are using it in a positive and productive way. Any experience you learn from your daily life is a preparation for you in the future.

Through the years of working I was able to formulate a strategy on how to combat boredom... it has worked for me but believe me, it takes time to master. I can't say that I have mastered it completely but i do know that it has helped me little by little to establish myself as a better, smarter and a more patient individual. Below is the list of things i do to make work a little bit more fun than usual:

1. Try to learn as much as you could about the project. It doesnt matter if its a big task or not. Whats important to me is the idea that I might learn something new about project even if its the most boring project in the world. As I always say "You never know when you will find the next gem between the rocks."
2. See maintenance projects as a way for me to imporve the code. Whenever I'm assigned to maintenance project I see to it that I leave that project in a better shape than when I first got it. I usually pad my timeline with extra hours so that I could refactor the code. I always say to myself that any code that I touch is my property even if i didn't started it. You don't want to hear somebody saying something awful about your work(even if the code is not 99% yours) and perople usually blame the first developer or the last developer who touched a project. Always leave a mark of excellence on every work you do.
3. Take it as a challenge even if you hate the project. Don't dread the project because you wont be able to make good results. One of the things I learned in my career is that managers can easily spot if you don't like what you are doing and this can sometimes lead to bad impressions about your personality. What i usually do it code my heart out until my frustration(and burdens) are gone.
4. I'm paid to code and I should do it. Let's face it, even if you don't like a task but i's your job you need to do. It's the people who clean the drainage system.. they may not like cleaning, scrubbing and removing thrash in sewer but they need to do it because it's their job. We are not paid to like our job. We are paid to do the job and do a great job. Managers expect that from us thats why they assigned us to that task because the believe that we can accomplish it and think that we have the right skills to turn bad code into magic.
5. ...and finally. Smile. No matter how hard the task, No matter how boring, No matter how repetitive. Always smile. I remember someone told me before that when you smile and feel good about yourself you always end up doing great things and you make people around you feel good. Stressing yourself about a small problem takes alot of brainpower and I would rather focus my energy on building solutions than drowning myself in the sea of problem.

I hope this helps you, I know it did wonders for me and it could do the same to you too! Practice this 5 things and reap the rewards of a happier work life.

***Want to comment?*** Comments are welcome but I suggest you post them in my DevPinoy blog. ;) Click here go there now.

This is weird but everytime I go to a conference and somebody speaks about Web Apps they always talk about why people should use custom errors instead of throwing the Yellow Page of Death. Just this morning I went to the ASP.NET website to check on the forums and this is what was displayed on my screen:

Huh? No custom errors? Hmmm.. seems like they are breaking their own rules.

Anyway, A friend of mine had this joke exception code that slipped to their production and one of the accountants called him and was very scared because she thought she made a huge mistake.

Yikes! It was mean. Even if its a joke it is really mean. Striking fear to your users is not a good thing at all. If they had a custom error page then this would not have happened.

This reminded me of the IKEA incident I saw from D'Arcy Lussier a few days ago.

Custom errors gives the easy feeling to the users. It doesn't scare them to death and it makes them more comfortable with your system knowing that it can recover from such a fatal crash.

Oh well, I'm just glad I got this baby showing up at devpinoy ;)

I saw this news today courtesy of Migz Paraz about a 12 year-old kid who is starting his own company and I was amaze about his idea. I think its great idea and with the right UI and advertising i'm pretty sure it will go up, way up where everybody who has a "Making IT big in IT" dream would want to go. I salute you.

I always say to people who ask me advice about how to start their own company "If you can't invent, Innovate" ;) Believe me, there are alot of opportunities out there right now... If might not a new idea.. it could something that can make an existing app better and transform it into the "killer app". Just this morning i woke up with another idea.. did my research the whole day if it already exist and found out that it is still an untap market. I don't have the resource yet to start on this new endeavor but i do see myself working on it pretty soon(i have atleast 5 startup ideas brewing and 2 of them are currently in the works).

Life is like the game of chess... its an equal playing field where anybody can be a pawn all his life tied with living from paycheck to paycheck or work hard and climb to the top until he becomes the king. I don't want to be a pawn all my life that's why i'm dreaming big and I believe each and everyone of us should do the same way.

I want this dreams to happen and I want it to happen now.

Sucessful people dont dream the dreamers dream.. they make it a reality. The cool thing about it is that all of us can dream and all of us can make it a reality. With the right mindset, the drive to succeed and faith in God i think anyone can be somebody someday but it takes patience and alot of effort to accomplish your goals so be prepared to handle it.

Thanks for the inspiration Luke and God Bless to your startup. As for me, I'll go back to my machine... think... pray.. code... then believe that someday my simple idea can bring me to my promise land.

Hahaha! I did it! It took me 2 years to beat the Nobel prize winner with the same lastname as mine in the google search results for the keyword Rull but i finally did it :P

btw, the 3rd site on the list the site of my uncle ;)