I had decided as early as 2003 that I have had enough of Windows. I started with DOS in 1987 (I was in second year high school at the time) and eventually moved up to Windows 95 in 1996, Windows 98 in 1999, and XP in 2003.

After dealing with viruses and spyware, unexplained slowdowns and crashes, and numerous security updates appearing almost daily, I finally went on a limb and installed Linux on a separate partition of my XP machine and configured the machine for dual-boot with Linux as the primary OS. After a few months, I was using Linux more and more, and Windows less and less. Until one day, the Windows partition refused to boot except on Safe mode. That was the last straw. No more Windows for me. I had re-installed Windows XP and Windows XP Service Pack 2 three times in a span of a few months and I wasn’t going to do it anymore. But because I’m lazy, I still didn’t remove the Windows XP partition. This laziness is due to the fact that I didn’t want to backup everything, install Linux, and restore the data.

But after using Linux for a few years, I realized something was still missing. Don’t get me wrong. Linux is a great OS. It’s fast, secure, no viruses, etc. There was no problems with updates since I was using Fedore Core. I think Fedora releases the most frequent updates compared to other distributions. From what I recall, there’s a new version every six months or so.

Now all this time, there was something inside me — a small voice — that’s telling me, “Why don’t you look at Macs?”. But I’d contradict myself and say that a Mac isn’t for me, it’s too expensive, it’s only for graphic design, desktop publishing, music composition, movie special effects, and other lies. The voice became stronger during the time my wife and I were making our wedding preps. Our photographer/videographer was using a couple Macs with two cinema displays to edit and produce the video, edit and enhance the photos, and layout the album. Wow! What a great setup! How I’d love to have that at home. My wife was very impressed too.

Since seeing those Macs and the cinema displays, we’ve always talked about getting a Mac. Then early this year, as if we attended a free Mac seminar at the Glorietta. During the seminar we saw what Mac OS X Tiger could do. We were also very impressed with iLife, Dashboard, Spotlight, and other features and applications. That was it! We were speechless! We wanted a Mac!

I still had to do some research of course. How much does it cost? How do I go about service? Is it cheaper to have it imported? Which stores sells Macs at the lowest price? I had a lot of questions. Fortunately, all my googling pointed me to the Philippine Macintosh Users Group (PhilMUG). During the research phase, I merely signed up and read posts. I admit I was “afraid” since I wasn’t a Mac user yet and felt that I wasn’t “in” with the group. Besides, I was getting answers to my questions just by reading the posts.

Then in April, after three months research, we purchased our Mac. When we got it home, we unpacked it, only to realize that the store forgot to mention that we had to buy a plug adapter. Jeez! The Mac was right there, and we couldn’t even turn it on. We had to wait another day! We really had to calm ourselves. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to sleep with all the excitement. The next day, we got the plug adapter. But guess what? I made a mistake when I took measurements of the computer table and now the 17″ Mac won’t fit! We nearly cried in frustration. Since it was very late at night, we had to wait again until the next day so we could make the adjustments. We just told ourselves that when we finally turn on the Mac, it’ll just be sweeter.

On the third day after purchase, finally or should I say mercifully, we fixed the table, put our new Mac on it, attached the plug adapter, plugged it in, turned it on, and voila! What a sweet and wonderful sound! We can still remember the first time the Mac booted up. It was definitely the answer to the Windows and Linux woes. The Mac was perfect. We were able to use it immediately without installing anything. Even installing updates or new applications was easier than it was with Windows. The graphics and interface was so much better AND cooler too. Heck! Even the apps are cooler!

We have enjoyed it ever since and for the past few months, we haven’t even turned it off. My wife and I even sort of compete for time on the Mac. If one of us leaves the Mac to do something else, the other one is sure to immediately grab the opportunity to use it.

All in all we can say that we are now full blooded Mac users. Though our Intel Mac allows us to install Windows via Bootcamp or Parallels, we don’t plan to do it anytime soon. I mean, what for? We’ve already spent a lot of sleepless nights whether it’s just surfing, watching movies, listening to music on iTunes, or creating albums in iPhoto. We’ve even tried making a simple movie from the movies in our digicam and creating a DVD that can be played on a DVD player. There so much more you can do and you have fun doing it. I can’t say the same thing with Windows or Linux.

This website doesn’t really get too many hits. So it’s really surprising that my website got defaced — not once, but twice! I mean, these happened in a span of three days! Of course, I’ve got no one else to blame but myself. I had planned on clamping down a while ago, but just never got down to it.

Having a dead PC at home for a few months now didn’t really help at all.

For now, I think I’m safe. But I now have this feeling that I need to keep looking behind me. It’s really a terrible feeling. I don’t really feel safe.

Anyway, thank you so much to those who informed me of the hack. I really appreciate it.

But when I learned about computers, the terms CPU, RAM, ROM, and FDD were introduced to me. Of course there was also BASIC, COBOL, as well as EBCDIC, ASCII, and BCD.

As I entered college for my BS in Computer Science a lot more acronyms came along as computers now came with hard disk drives (HDDs) and CD-ROMs. Concepts on Operating Systems (OS), RDBMS, PROM, EPROM, OSI, TCP/IP, FTP, WWW, and VR gave my brain even more strain. With optical media nowadays there’s CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RW+.

Now that I’m an IT professional for nearly 10 years, the list just gets longer with SQL, HTML, DHTML, XML, PHP, ASP, to name a few. And if you’re not careful you and your colleague may be both talking about ASP but are referring to two totally different things: Application Service Providers or Active Server Pages. When I was a kid soap was just soap and Ajax was a brand of detergent. Now SOAP and AJAX are technologies used on the Internet.

With the abundance OSS (Open Source Software) there is an equivalent number of OSS Licenses. Take GPL, MPL, and LGPL. Of course there are the organizations that push OSS: FSF, OSI, and many others.

But it doesn’t really end there does it? With email, IM, and SMS (text messaging) now common means of communication, more and more acronyms get added to the list everyday. Can you keep up with CUL8R, BTW, IMHO, ROTFL, BCNU, or BRB?

Even love notes are embedded with acronyms. I won’t list them here lest I may accidentally divulge the cryptic codes I share with my wife.

I was already trying out different flavors of Linux even before. The only hindrance was those Linux versions apperently did not support my hardware. My first attempt was using Slackware. It won’t even boot up from the CD, so I junked that attempt. I then tried Mandrake 8.0 but eventually settled for Fedora when I got a new PC. Around that time, OpenOffice.org was becoming popular. With OO’s support for MS Office formats, which is the most important thing, I never looked back. To top it off I discovered GIMP, which is a lot like Photoshop, except that it was free.

Today, I’m using Linux at home most of the time. The only time I boot to Windows is when I need to visit websites that are use Microsoft controls. At the top of the list of such sites is one of the banks I do business with. Printing in color is another reason for me to boot to Windows as HP’s Linux support is still quite limited. But get this, I still use OpenOffice and GIMP even when I’m in Windows, so I can still say that all my software is legal.

On both platforms, the application software installed are a mix of freeware, free for personal use, and open-source.

The bottom line is you can stay legal. There are a lot of free and open-source software out there that you can use. Most of them are at par with their commercial counterparts.

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Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Windows are registered trademarks of Micosoft Corporation in the United States, in other countries, or both.

Adobe, Adobe Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Corp. in the United States, in other countires, or both.

Other products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

But if they are looking for a challenge, I always say that they should look to Java. It’s difficult to ignore that Java is everywhere today. The Web, desktops, and even mobile devices. Not learning it is a disadvantage. I know that Microsoft .NET people will react to this but the thing is, Java is a cross-platform language. It works on Linux, Windows, iSeries, Solaris, etc. You just can’t say the same for .NET.

Of course, learning and getting to use it in a project are two different things. For my part I know a little of Java but haven’t had the chance to use it in a full-blown project just yet. I have talked to my bosses about this and hopefully we can work something out in the coming months.

Focusing on the midrange platform is great. No doubt about that. Developers belonging to the midrange community are the most sought after IT professionals in the world today. But adding Java to one’s arsenal can only mean greater things. Don’t you think?

Having worked for a Filipino-owned IT service provider for almost 9 years and a now an American-owned subsidiary for almost a year, I still cannot understand why there are companies that have standarized their codes to RPG III and refuse to move to ILE RPG. You show them the advantages but somehow what you’re telling them goes into one ear and out the other just like that. I have to admit that there are companies that are doing it. But they’re doing it very slowly.

My wife is quite lucky as the clients that she’s usually assigned to are quite open to her using modern coding techniques. She has managed to use the /free in ILE RPG while I have not. At least I managed to use ILE RPG in a few projects in my career. I even managed to embed SQL in the programs.

Right now, I’m not even sure if just made a step back. With my current assignment, I’m using Synon (Cool/2E actually) for coding. Sure, the development is fast, but the code it generates is RPG III or RPG/400. I have looked at the generated RPG code and it’s not something that I myself will even think of coding as it contains GOTO’s, CABxx, etc., all of which are big no-no’s in modern ILE RPGÂ or even RPG/400 coding.

But there are cases of course, that programmers themselves refuse to use the modern coding styles even if they are allowed to do so. Either they are lazy or just want to make things difficult for the rest of us. I have conducted training sessions on ILE RPG and have always made suggestions on what opcodes to avoid and the concept of limiting the use of indicators to control program logic. In almost all of those lectures, you’ll find one or two training participants who refuse to listen to my inputs and instead use RPG/400 style code in an ILE RPG program. When asked why, they’ll smile and say that they’re already used to it. I wonder to myself what the point was in attending such a training if you don’t make use of what you’re learning. Oh, well…

So which do you think is worse? A client or company refusing change or the programmers refusing change?

After a few more minutes, I heard him mutter what sounded like a mixture of a curse and thank you.

I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked him what happened.

Apparently, he was trying to initialize the tape in preparation for a backup. Whenever he typed the INZTAP command on the console, it would return an error that there was no tape in the drive. He removed and re-inserted the tape. He even tried using brand new tapes to no avail. Finally, he decided to signoff of the AS/400. Just before signing back-in, he noticed that he was connected to the remote AS/400 all that time.

He was very thankful that there was no tape on the remote (production environment) AS/400. If there’d been one — and it contained important data — he would have unknowingly erased it’s contents.

Lesson learned: If you work for a company that has multiple AS/400’s — whether local or remote — make sure that you are connected to the correct machine before doing anything.

Now, the thing here is, you are using a dumb terminal. Since you don’t want to exit your current task and mess up all the library list settings and stuff, you decide to use the dumb terminal next to it. You open the code up in SEU and start coding.

All of a sudden, you remembered the user never gave you the change request form. Your boss gave everyone a briefing on the subject just the other day. Setting, the keyboard aside, you call the user and request for the necessary paperwork.

While waiting for the change request to arrive, you decide to go back to your original task. Reaching for the keyboard, you start to type. But nothing happens. You hit the reset key. Still nothing. In desperation you start hitting random keys with your fingers like you are touch typist gone mad! Nothing’s happening.

“Oh no! I haven’t even saved my work yet! That’s almost a half-day’s work!”, you murmer to yourself.

As you hang your head, you glance at the other terminal and notice that the screen is garbled. What used to be code is now a jumbled mess of letters and numbers!

“What happened?”, you ask yourself in horror.

Tracing the cable of the keyboard you are using, you realize that you were using the keyboard for the other terminal!

“This has got to be the worse day in my life. Now I messed up two program codes!”

With a prayer you press F5 to refresh the screen.

The jumbled screen refreshes and you see your code, you say a short prayer thanking the heavens for your good fortune. Just then the user arrives with the change request.

“Huh? A mid-what?”

Since our exposure in college was focused on PC’s and DOS (Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was that long ago), we only had a rough idea of what other platforms were. Heck, we thought mainframes belonged to musuems even then. The dumb terminals that were assigned to us were really big…about the size of a microwave oven.

Eventually, the other trainees and I went through…well…training. We were all coding happily one day when one of us suddenly had an endless loop in a piece of code. No problem! Just press Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break. But how? There isn’t even a Ctrl key!

Since it was almost time to go home anyway, we all suggested to our colleague, “Just turn the terminal off and we’ll go home. You can find the bug tomorrow.”

Imagine our suprise when we were all called down to our boss’ office the following day. We found out the hard way that turning the terminal off doesn’t necessarily end the job. We all were given a long lecture on how to use the System-Request key.