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.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about merging word documents in C# and got great response about the article. One of the readers, Abhi, had an interesting problem. The application he wrote was throwing this error: Word was unable to read this document. It may be corrupt. Try one or more of the following: * Open and Repair the file. * Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.

A friend asked me for help today about a segment of code that was giving him a headache. After looking at the code I immediately told him the problem. Can you spot the problem too without compiling the VB code? Why is it happening?

You should see this video if you wanna know how a Microsoft MVP feels like when they get their prestigious award...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ7goW7oFO8

Hideously funny!

I know Carl's going to be there. Dustin signed up. Shawn is too. Gee! I think this is going to be fun! But i can't come. I wanted to go to Jeffrey Palermo's party but I had a more important engagement that I need to attend(I'm preparing for my wedding in July). I wanted to contribute something to his event so I decided to make this badge ;)

I had a pretty laidback today because one of my projects was halted due some requirements issue(we have just finished phase 1 and the client already wants to start phase 2 but they dont know what the want yet) so i was assigned to help one of my colleagues in a problem that they were having in their project. The problem was that they were trying to merge multiple Microsoft Word Documents into one file and for some reason the solution that they have implemented was not doing the job. They had this function that reads bits and bytes of the document and then combines those bytes into a single file. Yikes!

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.

Man, oh Man, oh Man! Another timesaver to add in my development toolbox. Jerry Jarell has just released NStub which is a Unit Test Generator for .NET Assemblies and man it looks really promising.