Jan 31
2005

Yesterday I did one of my famous ultra-quick trips to another town. This time I decided to go to Sofia, Bulgaria, this trip was a forced one since I have to get out of the country for visa porpouses. So I decided to be very organized and timed my afternoon to have everything on time.
I use my cell phone calendaring feature to do my tasklist and have everything prepared for the trip. I timed everything from the subway to writting down the important data to calling my friends before the trip.
At the end of the day I was happily on my conpartment ready to go, and with a bunch of food for the trip.
Everything was lovely until I learn something that seem so obvious and basic…. I didn\’t had a visa.

Wow, how in the world would I guess that I needed a visa for Bulgaria. The quasy-country was barely of any substance in europe, apparently when they told me that my mexican passport would be good for Europe they didn\’t count this part of Europe… I guess nobody comes here anyway… :D

So the border police was actually very nice, I was extremely nervous when they had to take me down of the train and leave some american friends I met in the train (they didn\’t needed one). So they put me in a chilly place of the station but at least they kept me company and bought me some coffee so I dont die of hypothermia.

The funny part was when the "special"e; car came and I have to leave back to Romania. The cops barely spoke english but when I jump in the car they were bumping Ludacris – Act a Fool from the 2fast 2furious sountrack.

If there is only one thing funnier than easter europeans gangsta-hiphopper, is eastern european cops with a gangsta-hiphopper ride — that don\’t even speak the language of the track.

So back to Romania and the cops there were actually more ruthless, they make me wait like for 15 minutes in the white sandy-like snow, and it just seem like forever. I really which I could have tooken some pics, but I was REALLY cold to even remember I had my digital cammera on my coat.

At the end the cops let me go with a simple Hata la vista and I had to walk for a good 10 minutes until I finally reach an oil station where I got a cab pick me up and take me to bucharest.

My roomate was puzzled when the next morning I was in my room like always. He was like — WTF!?!?!

So my sunday night wasn\’t at all dissapointed, I really enjoy it, it was dangerous and scary. But I got what I needed (my passport stamped). And a good 3 more moths before I leave again to some other country, hope to jump to a real one thought.

Friday and saturday has been ok btw. Yuki, my japanese friend is a sweatheart. I really wish she could have stayed longer, I have a really good time when I am around her. Christhian, the indonesian guy is also funny as hell and next weekend is superbowl weekend and we expect to be all together, to party and chill.
\"Yuki
\"Christian
\"teasers



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Jan 28
2005

Since my jump into the Spanish Co-Lead the site has been dramatically changed. From being a site that was updated every 6 months, it became a dynamic and fresh site which has change almost 5 times in 3 months.
Some might say that this is way too many changes however far from putting people away from the site we have recieved an unprecedented number of new users/contributors sign up to the project.
In adition the mailing list traffic has jump almost by 100 messages more. Also the topics has become more specialized and even more interesting. Dominating more business-valued discussions like using powerful databases like PostgreSQL and Oracle a backend. Using more and better macros, generating \’Intelligent\’ documents and beter ways to use OOo.
This week I just added the link of a project I found very appealing to the OOo community. This is the PHP – OOo class which generate sxw from web HTML the same way you can see the PDF plugin in Mambo.



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Jan 27
2005

I think the core value of technology is not on technology but on the hability to implement and merge technology with our human operational tasks.
Many business are big dumb consumers which like a digital cammera buyer get the best one, the one with all the features and most modern. But at the end they simply just use the point-n-click and 2 or 3 options. The rest of the features are not used.
On business this means that a lot of the money invested into the actual decision making and purchase of the tools are not exploited to the best capabilities making the operation functional but deficient.
On a competitive enviroment this is the difference between being succesful on their process versus wasting a lot of time and eventually kill deadlines and live on overhead.



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Jan 26
2005

Things are going fast as a Project Manager. With processes to be design and implemented and lots of documentation being thrown in meetings like if they were free champaing I get the sense we are giving birth to a monster. The monster of bureacracy; where, everything needs to be written down or things don\’t get done unless someone authorize it.

So we face a lot of do\’s and don\’ts, ideal vs. practical methods and managing between documenting project and making a wishlist. I am somehow against the way we are moving since we triying to do too much. The risk is that it might lead us to a bunch of usless documents that weren\’t production-ready.

Working in the government it was a constant struggle between managing this monster which kept on going phenomenon of waiting and sitting for the whole process to go around the company. Technology helped accelerate this tasks, as databases make us jump the actual signatures and the rapid authorizations of multiple tasks and activities. The productivity rise was very blurry, some tasks got effectively implemented some others were just waved on cutting processes.

I think the strongest point would be on the implementation. Implementation is not an easy task, and surely is varey undervalued on a production-intensive enviroment. Just ask the german government switching to Linux, and taking almost a year for that. I hope to monitor this implementation process as we jump in the next stage of the transition. Hopefully this eventually make sense or at least have the guts to back off before the monster caught up with us.



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Jan 20
2005

I love topics where I don\’t know what I am talking about, I usually get ranted but even more I get more knowledge. This is just one of the blunt statements without any convincint knowledge of what I am talking about.

This time I am talking about the UNO framework. OOo\’s framework that will make developers jump into the OOo development and improvement of the whole application suite. Unfortunately this development has not boomed as many have predicted. This UNOcompiler has bridges for many languages including C++, Java, Python, Basic, Perl and so on. However the bridge doesn\’t mean that everyone can code now. This only means that a certain part of the applications can be tweaked but not as far as develop homegrown new ones.

Watching Mono and other projects, it just make me wonder will the UNO ever take off as a framework. Now, when I reffer to OpenOffice.org as a framework, I mean a developing technology to create new applications that shared the toolkit, just like other libraries like gtk, qt and so on.



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Jan 16
2005

Well it has been a week of triying of compiling my modem source against my 2.6 kernel without success :(
I really can\’t standing having to switch to crappy windows just to get online. At least people on the web has been able to help me and provide me with some assistant.
Part of this misshappening has to do with the fact that I wasn\’t using dial up which changed once I came to Romania.
I found out that is incredibly dificult to get dsl, I would thought that a tech company can at least make this easier (contracting the service for their employees)
Why would they do that? Because is important capitalizing on their employees knowledge more than the working hours. What does that mean, well that if you make your employees generate more data (in or outside the company) some of this data can be capitalize.
It also have some practical solutions here in Romania, simply because companies can pay service on line as opposed to individuals. So the company wont be so hard to pay some of their employees bills with their money taken out of their paycheck but it will save and ensure at least a better benefits than having to afford bill-paying breaks.



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Jan 15
2005

Well it seems XpoLinux is back even before the last one was over. XpoLinux 2005 is in full effect and we have already got some new proposals.
The people from the Apache Foundation is already lined up. LPI is the next one on the list as well as Michael Robertson\’s Linspire.
With the new XpoLinux contest for the new event logo we plan to get the community involved in the process. I think that this will also strenghten our overal knowledge of what XpoLinux is all about.



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Jan 11
2005

So finally I could connect my headphones to my work computer, and just when I was ready to listen to my stuff one of the hp breaksdown. Oh well it was time to get new ones anyway.

Me and my roomate are looking for a crossover cable to connect our laptops, easy task right? NOT. I finally found it, oddly enough this company was Carrefour, which is a ‘wall-mart’ type store. All the specialized electronic/computer store were missing this essential and simple cable.

A simple ethernet (crossover) cable was IMPOSSIBLE to find on the computer stores. I live between two relatively big computer store and NONE had them. This essential part of networking was missing from about 5 stores around my place (2 big and 3 small shops).

This sounded extremely hard to believe, however is not an isolated case. When I got my finger messed up at the hospital, my mexican doctor suggest me to get some basic solution. Which he told me that all drug stores MUST have it. To my surprise the one infront of my apartment didnt carry it, I was shocked.

So from a distance a rather ‘normal’ city/country, I am starting to see the big holes on this countries economy. Basic products are scarse and it’s almost foolish. That’s like selling a digital video camera, but without any batteries.



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Jan 7
2005

So here i am at my desk somewhere in the exotic Romania. My position.. well is hard to tell, it changes by the second. I think I got some asignment, the first one in 2005, but still waiting on co-workers to finish their work so I can start mine.

My boss is a fatalistic, or at least his word selection sounds like that. I have a personal mission with this company and is turn it around. For that I have migrated from designer to marketing, to project management to actual manager in the space of 1 1/2 months.

Looking for new managing systems I come to 2 of the most interesting proposals I heard at XpoLinux in Monterrey Mexico. Which is BPM and Balanced Scorecards, the last one gain me a lot of respect with the project manager of the company. Now I am learning on BPM and what I’ve read so far is just great.

John Hamilton from IBM seem to be in love with this ebXML specification (oasis standard also) they call it BPML which is a structure XML language (just like the OpenDocument) which tries to achieve not just the proper documentation of processes but also integrate human resources with software systems as a single working unit and be able to manage the documentation on a real-time bases.

Sounds challenging, but one of the interesting points is that this should be thorougly deployed with an Open source mentality.

What it was supposed to be a management-business related issue now comes back to software and to open source, this left me quite interested. As business is now thinking open source from the very start. Consolidation of business should be an open solution and a standard solution, which is a radical change from what it used to be. This is just signs of the digital tipping point is happening now.

By the way, if you are looking for BPM software, I found this one.



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Jan 5
2005

So after an exciting and quite long christmass celebration. I was back on Bucharest for a little more than 12 hours. Since at 2 I was supposed to be jumping on the train for my New Year celebration in Pietra Neam, and the celebration was awesome. With lots of dancing, drinking and feeding to do I had the best time. The best part was that was awakening on 2005 on a really great mood and next to a really great friend.
food
drink
dance
This will go down as one of the most unique new year closings of all my life as I jump all over a foreign country and had the best time next to the best friends.

So 2005 is comming with lots of challenges for me, from having new projects, new responsabilities, new business outlooks and also more challenges. Right now is the best time of my life, I am just enjoying them while things are just getting better. By the time 2006 comes I hope I would be a completely different man and will achieve most of my goals and create even adventures away from home.



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