I received my grades for the last semester under my Masters degree program, and I lack a few points in my GPA to be considered for the final exam. That sounds bad, but I have this semester to cope up. I won’t be needing passing grades – I need very high grades.
With that, I made a prompt decision to file a leave to our business venture XSys. It was a leave of absence, and I gave the end date of November. The is without pay, and can be considered a resignation if I decided not to return at the said end date.
At first I sent an email, then proceeded to talk to Jake and Bhong personally to discuss my decision. I was a bit surprised, because there were no hassle and resistance. In fact, I felt that they were a bit relieved that I left the company. For one, the potential projects including those concerned with RFID had been obscure to say the least. Another plausible reason is that the company has problems maintaining our salaries – one person off would be a big help.
Now, all I’m left is my job in Neocode. I like this job a lot, because it’s teaching me web application development and PHP. Right now, they are giving me lots of task that has something to do with revamping site layouts. To experts, this is a real bore. To a newbie like me, this is heaven. I get to work with nice but blunt and intelligent people. I get to brush up my long gone PHP skills, and I get some money to pay for the bills.
I also entered a couple of alliances to further improve my skills with the LAMP framework. I have:
- Online survey that I plan to use for my Masters thesis work, if possible.
- Roommates web service with Warren and Lemuel and the rest of the crew. They are hardcore PHP hackers, and they make the most beautiful codes ever seen in planet Internet LOL. We hope to get money out of this in the long run, but this mostly serves as testing grounds for our team.
- RaceWarKingdom clone with Wayne. It is a text based game and it is very exciting. Wayne already did a couple of games in PHP before.
- Online gadget store with Arthur, to which we hope will become a cash cow soon. Arthur to buy the gadgets and provide hosting, me to code the site and maintain it.
- A projects site with David, which we hope to be like sourceforge.net but not just for software. I am doing this for free and I will make sure the code gets released under GPL. It is my way of pouring beer back to Mother Earth.
These are all exciting projects, and I hope to maintain my focus until they all get completed before moving on. I’m not good with staying focused, but now I’ll write these things off to remind myself to stick to these for now before moving on to bigger stunts.
Also, I need to remind myself of my financial reality (per month) :
- +25,000 = Neocode salary
- – 6,000 = Manulife savings (ends in 2012, the Mayan end of age)
- - 1,500 = PSP installment (ends in October)
- - 1,000 = SmartBro internet fee
- - 800 = Smart Gold cellphone fee
Net = 9, 300 – what is left for me at the EOM
Now, 9k isn’t much, but can sustain me and my computing needs for the coming months. It can also secure my last semester for my Masters. I can get a second telecommuting job but I don’t see the need of it for now. I’ll just focus on my projects and be more familiar on developing for the web using the LAMP stack. I’ll also devote most of my time in my Neocode tasks and my masters degree subjects. I hope to succeed here, and I really want to. I want to see all of them get completed.
To close, I also want to announce that I bought a hardbound copy of the book Free As In Freedom by Sam Williams. It is an autobiography of my idol, Richard Stallman. To him I offer this short verse from a poem by Dan Fogelberg, which reflects how I see him (RMS) and his place in my life:
The leader of the band is tired an his eyes were growing old
But his blood runs through instrument, and his soul is in my song
My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man
I’m just a living legacy to the leader of the band
I am a living legacy to the leader of the band
– Have a nice day.
