Aileen Apolo

I was at Google’s first ever Dev Fest event in the Philippines last week. The guys from Google were great as I was expecting, of course, showing all their stuffs from Open Social APIs to App Engine and Google Maps. But the entire event was downed on its knees by one major technical problem - Internet connection was out for almost the first half of the show.

Yes Google guys, that’s how it always been like on this part of the earth.

Hooray! It’s finally up and running.

After weeks, oh no, make that months of planning, and waiting, and drafting, and coding, and getting squeezed in between client projects and all the valid excuses in the world, my portfolio website, jogsters web design + development is finally up and running!

Special thanks goes out to my friend Karl for helping me with the design and to Tin for the great logo! I’m really good at making websites work, but when it comes to design, its always end up on an oh help me God scenario. Best thing I’ve drawn so far is the stick man version of the 3 Little Pigs flying on a balloon together with Dumbo that actually looks more like a pole of bamboo.

Now it really makes me wonder how I managed more than a year of freelancing without a portfolio site. Quite a painful memory, I must admit. Imagine having to copy paste all those information on my emails to prospect clients?! Haha, not again!

OK, now that the portfolio site is up, takers, anyone?

The past few days have me heavily desiring to have that magical wand as advertised on the Disney Channel and wave either my client or his reported problem gone. For good. But too bad for me, fantasy and freelancing don’t cross paths so I was left with no other choice but to get my hands dirty and fix the problem he’s reporting.

But the problem is that I don’t think the problem he’s raising is actually a problem. Well, at least that’s the case for me and the 3 other people whom I asked to try and test the feature that the client is reporting to be faulty.

So how do I fix a non-existent problem? A product ‘error’ that I am almost sure is caused by his own ignorance. An ID-Ten-T-Error as they call it. Below are some points that I learned from this experience.

ID-Ten-T Error (also seen as ID10T and ID107) is a term often used by tech support operators and computer experts to describe a problem that is due to the user’s ignorance instead of a software or hardware malfunction. It is a masked jab at the user: when ID-Ten-T is spelled out it becomes ID10T, l33tspeak for “idiot”. (Though the usage actually predates L33T as a part of geek culture.) It is also known as a “Ten-T error” or “ID:10T error”. (from Wikipedia)

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This is I think the most common question I am being asked whenever I find myself talking with a newly met stranger.

And trust me, it’s one of the hardest to answer without finding myself being bombarded with a string of follow up questions.

I came from a society where payrents constantly remind their children “to study hard so that they could get a good paying job where they could work until they retire and live happily ever after”. Sounds sweet and too utopian right? Yeah, it sure is.

So me telling people that I, technically, don’t have a job is a sure way to raise their eyebrows. They always expect that question to be responded with the standard spiel that is “I work at <insert Fortune 500 or NASDAQ listed company here> as a <insert job title here>”.

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Yay! After weeks of procrastination and months of valid excuses, my blog site is finally up!

Welcome guys and I hope you’ll find this site both entertaining and, oh well, educational.

A blog site to keep my non-existent fans club informed of my howabouts. Somewhere where I could share my experiences as a self-employed, 20 something, web professional hoping that I, and in any case, you, won’t repeat them. And most importantly, a place where I could promote my IT Consulting services, Jogsters Solutions, for all the search spiders to see.