It's amazing the amount of comment spam sites receive. I mean, you open yourself up to readers of your blog or site and you expose yourself to bots plying the web to check what forms they could post ads on. It's not comforting either that its so common to see one URL being posted over and over again by different spam bots. It just means that spammers are out to get us. Good thing I've got comment moderation turned on on my blog. Otherwise legit readers would be bothered by the sheer volume

The last time I was in a Starbucks was over 2 years ago. I met up with my friend Lany. This was in the Starbucks in Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac City. So having half an hour to spare after going to the Smart Wireless Center over at SM City Clark, I swung by Starbucks to get a Grande. They recently opened shop there. After waiting for my turn, I impatiently ordered a Cafe Mocha with an extra shot of espresso. It cost more then I spend a week in fare. Well, not really. But that is what I spend in a week when I try to save a little on tricycle fare by walking to where the jeeps ply.

Anyway, I splurged but enjoyed it. I miss the smell of coffee being forced out by slow powerful jets of hot water. I miss the cozy environs of the modern coffee shop sofa and armchair. I miss the act of ordering a complicated combination of options and having the full attention of the barrista as you dictate your demands. I miss having my name called as my order is served. What i don't miss is the crowd of hyperactive wide-eyed pretentious college kids sitting on the outdoor tables, drinking their fraps, smoking their cigs, trying to look "cool" or so. So after I got my order, I walked leisurely around SM Clark, Grande in hand.

It seems that I keep going on a recurring cycle every now and then. I post sporadically often for a few weeks then suddenly go quiet.

Well, there's a reason. As most day jobs go, there are times that you really have to really work hard to get the results you want. It's been a busy 2 weeks for me, not because of added work, but because of tensions in the office.

Recently, our operations manager decided to give us extra tasks. We're now doing more QC (quality check) work on the work output that our agents do. Mostly its boring work, pulling long hours reviewing stuff. It's worthwhile work, though. We see where our guys could use some help or areas we could help them improve.

Then there's the part where you have to deal with people. We (collectively, me and my supervisors) have had to deal with really difficult people in the past month. A lot of fear mongering and whining has been going on and we can't really give them all the information we have. Speaking for myself, I come across a lot of information that explains why things are happening. But I am duty-bound not to disclose that to people who do not need to know. I can only share what I am allowed to speak about. Ironically, some of the higher up's are surprised that I sometimes get information earlier than they do. I have a secret weapon in my arsenal, and it's called Google-Fu ;-) Hehehe.

Anyway, tonight I'm staying home. My schedule got changed to 11 am instead of the night shift. I got a call yesterday morning from one of my supervisors asking if I could adjust my schedule to cover for another sup who was supposed to be working today. She filed for vacation time and was going to be out for the whole weekend. I said yes without hesitation. Tonight, before leaving the office, I talked to our shift manager and he told me he was in the office when my super called. He mentioned my super was all praises for me because I was always ready to take one for the team. That was in direct comparison to one other person in the team who always weaseled out of any schedule changes that didn't happen to suit his personal preferences. Hehehe - score one for me, yaay!

Now enough about work. I have been able to update my blogs here and there. Minor stuff, but it's coming along. Adding the Paypal Donate button on each of my blogs was the most major one. I also plan to do some more reviews for my tech blog. I haven't done those in a while and from the looks of my hits, it appears most of my Google clicks are coming from the last few reviews I did. I need to do some more of that. I'm actually lining up a mini-reviews of Puppy Linux, TinyMe 2008 and DreamLinux. And since I have old hardware that would make for interesting tinkering, I'm going to do a Part II of of my Vector Linux mini-review but focusing on how it will perform on a barely running Pentium II -266 MHz machine.

Now, to find time to do that...