Yikes I forgot about my blog!!!

I completely forgot about my blog!

Here are some updates.  I created a new for myself Ryan Ilagan which is just a list of my work.  One of my newest apps is called ChiCameras (thats just the website) which is an iOS app.  I'll post a link to the app once its in the app store.  Basically its a navigation app, but it doesn't give you directions, but verbally warns a user if there is a red/speed camera at an intersection while you drive.  Once I show people it they get really excited since most people hate red light cameras.

Other news... Well its been so long since I've posted I'm not sure where to start.  Looking back, the last time I posted my sister had a kid (who is now 5), and she has another one who is 3.

Professionally I'm still working at Orbitz.com, but now I'm doing objective c.  I work on the ipad/iphone app and thats pretty fun.  I also work on the back end system which is a jruby app.  I guess its hard to figure out what to write since its been so long since I've posted anything so I'll just end there and just make sure to post more often.  (at least once a month).

Wow it's been more than a year since I've last posted something on this blog. I can't remember all the things that have happened over the last year so I'll skip the last year and just go on from here. So what's new. My site is doing "better" I've had sales, my wife and I are doing well. We are actually starting the process of finding a new place to live. I'll have to admit that it's been pretty slow though. We have so much junk at our place that needs to be cleaned out. Oh the biggest news is that my sister had a baby back in Feb 2009, it's been over a year and she is about to have another child due in Oct. That's as much as I can think of as big news, so I'll try and post more often so I can have more updates.

I launched a personal wedding website call thebridalbell.com back in Feb. It's been an interesting few months trying to bring in sales and get traffic to the site. It's hard to convince a stranger over the internet without ever talking to them that it is a legit site. The site is of course complete and mostly needs a few new features. I want to be able to add music, have more templates and well I'll stop there since I don't want to give away secrets. Lets just say that no wedding website will have this feature. Thats it for me now.

Wow Michael Jackson died today. Crazy, its all over my facebook account, interesting that Farrah Fawcett didn't get that many posts in my fb account (must be my age). There are a lot of people that didn't like Michael (one post said let him die, and then was edited a min later), I on the other hand thought he was great. I have to admit I was pretty disturbed when the first allegations came out, and frustrated the second time around. However was hoping that his tour would help bring about a change to his name and up lift his image. I'm worried when I get home and watch TV that all I see was that he was great and that he was crazy. Wacko Jackco, I hated that name. No matter what was printed thats the way he was described. I'm not sure why we love when our heros fall.

Hey Micheal, I'll be listening to you on my iPod. Thanks you're the best!

I almost forgot, so after the wife and I got married we had to start combining our stuff. First of course was getting rid of one of our condos. With such a bad recession going on the only choice we had was to rent it out. We went from knowing nothing to be landlords in about 2 months, thanks to some of our good friends and family for guiding the way. The couple thats moving is (June 1) seem very nice so I hope things go well. I think we got really lucky finding this couple.

Speaking of recessions, its been pretty hard on both myself and the wife, but have been very lucky. Both our companies have gone through layoffs, mine twice, but luckily we've both survived. After paying off the wedding and having to two mortgages we were pretty worried. We've been fortunate and I thank God.

Wow its been a while since I've posted anything here. A lot as happened since Sept 2008. Too bad I can't remember much of it. I guess on top of my mind is my new personal wedding website http://www.thebridalbell.com, basically is my version of a templated wedding website that people can buy. I got the idea after creating our website and realizing that there are no contemporary wedding websites out there. The site launched in Feb and I've been working on getting issues fixed. I've had a few beta customers but thats about it. Hopefully this idea does well, I really think that I'm offering something that no one else has, so wish me luck.

Northwest Airlines customer service is the worst service that I've ever encountered. I hope no one not even my worst enemy should ever have to go and deal with the customer service at Northwest Airlines. First of all there phone number is impossible to find on the web site, and if you are the few lucky to find it, well good luck. The way their phone system works is if you have an issue that doesn't fit into their options 1-4 then you are told to go to their customer service (huh, you thought the number you called was customer service nope). Their service number has options 1-4 and in each option they just give you a number to call. Couldn't they have just automatically forwarded you to the number? Well luckily their customer service representatives will for you, but they'll do it even before you are done talking. For example they'll say "Sorry I can't help you.. ring.. ring.." and now you are talking to the automated service. Don't ask to talk to a manager, because they manager is even more useless. They'll just point you to this number 701 420 6282, which is the their customer service number (the one with the 4 options that provides a bunch of numbers). Or they will point you to their website so maybe you could find your answer there. Seeing as you called them, because you are having problems, maybe the website with no answers can help you. I've dealt with bad customer service, those generally have been some company that has indian offshore people that don't know what they are doing and can't do anything for you, but that is miles better than Northwest Airlines. Northwest Airlines has people that don't seem even to try, and the more you have an issue the more they want to pass you off to someone else, or their answering machine that gives you 4 phone numbers. I have to wonder if Northwest Airlines believes the best way to handle a person with an issue is to piss them off so much that that person will just get so frustrated with them that they will stop calling. Northwest Airlines contact number is 800-225-2525 and their reservation specialist are the worst customer service people in the world.

I just got married, well I just came back from my honeymoon. I got married on Aug 30, 2008 and it was a great wedding. Even with all the things that went wrong, the wedding was perfect and I couldn't ask for anything more. My wife and I went to Moorea and Bora Bora, Moorea is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, actually the most. Note I haven't been to Hawaii, however I've see a ton of pictures. Bora Bora on the other hand blows Moorea out of the water. I doubt I'll ever find a more beautiful place beyond the eyes and smile of my bride.

It's been a while since I posted something here. There has been a lot going one since the last time I posted. Here are the top things.

1. I'm engaged
2. 2 more months before I get married.
3. I'm the new team lead for Content Technology
4. I created a new site called thebridalbell.com
   

Here are some other notable event (important in terms of things I keep up with)

1. Ken Griffey Jr sitting at 599 Home Runs
2. Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee

Hmm there are so many more things but I'm drawing a blank, oh well. Hopefully more to come.

So its a sad day for me. Yes I was really wanted to see Barry Bonds hit his 756 home run live, just so I could be part of history, but I didn't really make the effort. A few weeks ago Barry was in Chicago, I was planning on standing out side of Wriggly, but only in hopes of catching his 756 ball so I could sell it. So why is it a sad day for me? Well I have to say that I've always believed that Ken Griffey Jr would be the one to break the record. I've always thought he be the one or atleast be the one of this era that be the closest. I think if it was him not Barry I'd have made every effort to make sure that I was watching. I still hope that Griffey still can beat 756 or whatever number that Bonds puts up last.

So I got my new ip address and domain name and had a little trouble getting my scripts to work correctly for deployment. Just for sake of clarification, the scripts I have are used for sending my changes to the server and unwaring and waring my deployment. Why would I unwar and war my deployment. Well the reason is because the number of libs required for my webapp. The jars are around 10mb and sending them locally to the server wastes valuable bandwidth that I have to pay for, not that I have that much traffic!!! Though it does waste a lot of time! So I have all the common jars located on the server and only scp the jars that change. The big pain in the behind is that I have these PermGen errors/Out of memory errors. The box has a gig of memory and so it was the last thing I'd thought I'd see. Looking on the web has revealed that the default Permgen setting is 64mb and its suggested that I bump that up to 256mb. And thats why I'm writing this blog as I wait for my fire wall changes to take effect. As a side note, although I have a gig of memory I see that at least 700mb is already used. I don't know whats running besides apache, and mysql, I'll need to figure that out sooner or later. When I launch tomcat it takes up 200mb so I'm left with 18mb left, there is still swap space, a concept that I don't truly understand so... hopefully this works before I have to start disabling things.

I'm about to launch a new site. I'm pretty excited to now have more than one, running on the same "platform" code and running on the same server. The last development thing I need to do is set up caching. I also have to fix my scripts to handle the fact that I have two sites. I think for now I won't version my code and just release a new version of the sites at once. Its kinda risky, I've had registration issues before and didn't notice, but I'd like to get this out the door first. I need to be able to pay for my sites. I'm a little concerned about the multiple ip thing not working out but, I can't see why it would. However I wouldn't consider myself an expert.

So the big item in the news lately is the iPhone. I am a big fan of it. The day after it came out I rushed out to play with it and thats it, after all it it $600 and I just bought a car so.. In any case the iPhone is just as impressive as was shown in that presentation with Steve jobs. I showed it to my girlfriend a few days later, and surprisingly she really wanted it. Again its $600 and we split the car (Acura TSX). Its pretty tough to get her to really like new technology, the same goes with me, but I'm always looking to play with the next cool gadget. Just to show how big of a fan I am I purchased some July options at a strike price of 130 for around 3.10, I purchased it a few weeks before and the price went down to $1 something, the time which I should have bought it. That however is my life so.. In any case I sold it yesterday at 4.10 as apples stock has jumped over $130 and today the option is around $5. Again the same story of my life, can't complain profit is profit =). It doesn't mean that I don't think the iPhone will do poorly, on the contrary i just purchased Jan 2008 options at a strike price of $200 for $1.58. The only reason I sold so quickly is that its a July option is set to expire July 21 and apples earnings don't come out until july 25 so..

I'm still waiting on hearing news about K.G and Kobe. I really hope K.G goes to the suns rather than the lakers. Ideally I want to see K.G in chicago. Speaking of athletes coming to chicago, here is a message directed to Ken Griffey Jr. "Please come to Chicago"

there are alot of interesting free tools out there, one of them i just ran into is the yahoo news web services. its nice to see i can implement this all via json. the biggest disappointment is all the work around that needs to be done because of browser security. although this would be a great time for me to learn json i'd rather not have to implement the work arounds. most likely ill just consume the web services via xml from my server. i'll have to implement a xml parser, but i believe the final solution will be more flexible in terms of my overall architecture.

nintendo wii.

that thing is so fun. so far i have the following games

wii sports
wii play
mario party 8
wario smooth moves
cookin mama

as for my ps3 i still haven't bought a new game, mostly likely i'll get F.E.A.R

On youtube I was a big fan of Mia Rose, but you should check out Esmee Denters, shes a good singer

Wow Kobe with the Bulls

I'm not sure how I feel about that. I've grown to hate him for so long, but I use to hate shaq. However the only reason I like shaq is cause he hated kobe.

NBA Finals

I can't believe that the spurs swept the Cavs. I wish they won at least one game and made the series a little more interesting.