Marcos's blog

Hi, I've just arrived here. Coming from Vox after its switch-off announcement, with all my content migrated alongside, I do expect TypePad may match the same level of service.

Learning reinforcement of the day

As much as possible, be independent, intellectually and emotionally, if you don't want to run into troubles.

Never expect the world and others to praise you or to just express compliance with what you say or think. The world is too vast and your intellect and heart are unique, therefore chances to have equality in emotions and thoughts shall not be guaranteed whatsoever.

Do not expect the kindness of the world and people to come over you. If you do it, get ready for the disappointments by facing how people may be unlike you. If you receive the compliance, lucky you, but be ready to face that such a compliance may not last long.

Even unintentionally, people will hurt you. Are they always to blame for that? Not really, too much of our sufferings are due to our our weakness and ignorance about what the world really is. Real perception of life makes us prepared to live without a huge load of suffering along the way, and also putting the blame on someone's else for our weakness for avoiding being a victim of the world.

If someone expresses that my ideas / conceptions are wrong or pointless, what I do is to think them over and overcome that if it really worths my effort, such as when you say something to a specialist that refuses to accept what you say. My conceptions are not born to make sense unless to me, and the same holds true for everybody. That's why once again I say, do not expect the world to comply with your emotions and conceptions.

Hold your head up high always, your own way, but always remember: meanings can be profound, as much large as the universe depending on how much you wish to explore the world of meanings and someone's mind. Never draw precise conclusions too quickly based on your rather limited mindset. It is not that easy to find out what's on people's mind, go easy on that. Additionally, never judge or deem the fellowmen as this or that without deeply knowing what they really mean and sometimes, the reason for acting as such you see... appearances defeat a lot.

Summing up, be independent as much as possible, intellectually and emotionally, without expectations for others to support your own view of the world, how things should be; otherwise be certain that sooner or later someone will (or you will think so) hurt you for not complying with what you consider as "correct". Independently, self-sustained, auto-controlled, someone's ideas and actions shall never make you blue.

Last but not least, listen to others and filter out what you must and what you must not; sometimes the best is in another framework of ideas, in somebody's else mind...

That's the end of the victims of the apparently adverse and unfavorable circumstances of life.

NOTE: this post is dedicated to every human being...

Another distant friend, Yanina

Last year I visited Machu Picchu, in Peru. Internationally, it is recognized as one of the wonders of the world. I wanted to visit Thailand on that vacations, but sooner I realized that my visa and passport would not be ready for use in time, so I needed to go somewhere such documents were unnecessary.

In South America, countries that belong to Mercosul allow free entrance among South Americans. Having to decide between the Eastern Island (Chile) and Machu Picchu (Peru), the latter was chosen.

Machu Picchu 1

Machu Picchu

Once there, I rapidly found an accommodation at a hotel, one woman whose name I can’t recall the name now offered me a stay when I was still in the airport.

Hotel entrance

My lazy life in the hotel

During my five-day stay at the hotel, one of the servants, Yanina, made friends with me. In fact, I was always looking for her because I wanted to have exposure to Spanish language and she was open for that, according to her possibilities because she was at work.

Yanina

Yanina was always so kind, gentle, and thoughtful to me. Even when I was not in need of something she was willing to do something more, I really appreciated that.

Cutie Yanina

Every morning she would prepare an orange juice that was awfully delicious; she was told that, I really liked her orange juice. Also, we used to eat bread with strawberry jam every morning, she used to perform the cleanup and prepare everything not only for me but also for all the guests.

It’s really such a pity that we do not keep in touch very often nowadays, life is always too busy. However, today I had a chance to chat to her again and it was nostalgic to me, I truly recalled good times.

Once she doesn’t speak fluent English and neither do I Spanish, we chatted in a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, what we call her Portunhol LOL. It works, believe me, we could communicate efficiently.

If I come to study Spanish down the road, I’ll look for my Peruvian friend who’s always so willing to help me. That will also depend on her spare time, now she works with excursions to Machu Pichuu too, helping foreigners to get around the area and presenting the wonderful remaining of the Incas.

Yanina, as you already know this post is dedicated to you, thank you so much for the time in your country and I hope you’ll achieve total bliss and wealth in life. If you enrich, don’t forget to visit me here jaja!

I hope to see you soon, take care lady ~__^

Housing Before The Failure

"Housing Before The Failure" is a set entitled as such not by chance, I was recording this set and after 35 minutes the software crashed, do you believe it?

I'm running the software in the Mac platform that everybody claims to be the best and never crashes. In fact, it was not the operating system that crashed, it was the software. However, Windows since the 2000 version don't crash either, as I come to the conclusion that all that hype surrounding Mac OS X died out.

Anyway, this is the set, we still have around 30 minutes to delight some more cool House tunes:

Housing Before The Failure

Headshop - Xenomorph 

Erick Morillo - Toety

Prodigy - Poison

Ace The Space - Your Special Attraction

Alexia - No Matter What I Do

Pirates Of The LA River - La Bala 95

Wink - Higher States of Consciousness

Funk Greed Dogs - Fired Up

Sample Hunters - Giant Thief

Do you like one of the songs of the playlist? Share your thoughts, I'd like to know what House Music represents to you wherever you live in the world :)

90s House Anthems #3

Finally, after 2 weeks without going to the mix, today's set is another bunch of House Music of the 90s.

I've recently found out that I like the type of mixes such style of music may yield, with long breaks and lots of possibilities to make up a cool mixed sound. Here it comes:

House Anthems #3

House Anthems #3

Transformer 2 - Pacific Symphony

High Light - Can You Feel It

Anoesis - Heavy Water

AJ Mora - The Journey 

Jaydee - Plastic Dreams - (Remix 96)

Johnny Funky - Guetto Acid

Ruffneck - Everybody Be Somebody 

D.O.P - Here I Go

Angelina - Release Me

Boris Dlugosch pres. Boom! - Keep Pushin' 

Armand Van Helden - Witch Doktor

Angelina - Tide Is High 

B.A.R. feat. Roxy - Come Together

Johnny Funky - Here Comes Johnny

The Outhere Brothers - La La La Hey Hey 

DJ Juanito - Essa Nena Linda

To Kool Chris - The Rebel

DJ Trajic - Stomp

DJ Icee - The Disco Call 

Funky Dory - Good Times

DJ Boom - To The Top

Size Queen - Walk (Rmx)

Winx - Don't Laugh (Life Raw Mix)

Do you like one of the songs of the playlist? Share your thoughts, I'd like to know what House Music represents to you wherever you live in the world :)

Total hurry

It’s amazing, it’s been 2 weeks I returned to the market, now in my area of interest, software development. Given the nature of the internal processes, I haven’t yet started professionally speaking in this area, creating / maintaining software in the area because training was all about I’ve been through till now.

Although not taking place everyday, I confess, it’s been interesting that training; I could solve some remaining questions from the past and learn new things about software development and software architecture. Also, once the trainer (my boss) has been around in that area for approximately 25 years, I can leverage his experience to clarity important points about career and give rise to my sense of curiosity of what the future may be, so opting for the best in the present, with mind focused on future tendencies.

Such has been my interest in learning technology in depth these days that short hours of sleep were predominant for these 2 weeks, staying up till maybe 2 or 3am, studying. Seriously, I don’t consider doing it everything from next week on, I could hardly stay awake in the company, lol! Try to imagine, after lunch, in a room with the lights off to watch video presentations about technology, the environment all set to a good sleep… believe me, it was hard to keep myself conscious lol!

The university has been demanding too much alongside. In some classes, they request activities and say “you’ve got Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, CorelDraw”, all available to you”… so what if you’re not familiar with any of that???

This semester is dedicated to design, design of web sites, which is going to be followed by development next semester, what is my cup of tea. I clearly see that I’ve got to make some extra efforts to learn such graphical design tools to survive along the semester, and the weekends are the only available time, without mentioning that I’ve been studying Microsoft .NET technologies avidly to master it as soon as possible, pursing certifications to make my resume shine in the market, and again, return to the financial level I was before (to reach and go over the last salary I had).

Initially, I considered making a mixed set once a week, at least, but in the last 2 weekends I did not have time for that, let’s see this one…

The hurry is present, such as the delight, and that is what definitely counts :)

Surprised at how things have changed

Today, I glimpsed something that in a tiny fraction of second made me recall of my childhood times.

After enjoying my lunch time at Trianon park today, when getting back to work, I passed next to a school and I saw a number of approximately 7… let’s put it, children. Driving the attention to 2 of them, what my best guess says they ranged from 7 to 10 years old, they work hugging each other in a slightly hot way, like feeling the taste of such an action, little by little, a bit timid of doing it but not stopping at all. Indeed, they were getting to know each other physically, a boy and a girl.

In the fraction of a second, at the highest speed of my mind, I returned to the same age in my imagination and I thought “wow, how much things have changed”. I’m not that old yet, 28, but when I was around 10, it was not rather uncommon to see children embracing one another as I was today. I would never do it at 10 and I did not see anyone doing it either.

At those times, to simply have the attention of a cutie girl, to have her talk to us, that was enough, that would be simply amazing to go dream of her at night. If she touched us, though, our hearts could sweat and beat nervously, we’d feel passionate about that.

Today, around 10, children do what I saw today and around 15, they’re having babies. Not too later, breaking up relations due to lack to mental stability and adult responsibility and running into dangerous adventures of life when feelings are concerned.

My mom used to say and still says in fact, when she was young, couples could barely touch each other before marriage, dating was common to happen within the parents’ houses and full contact and relation with the partner allowed only after marriage.

I think, it’s common for things to change, the world and mankind is pure mutation, evolving, or just going ahead occasionally, loosely, unworried, wildly, without real sense of the path…

I wonder, either good or bad, where are we going?  

Success eventually

I've written an e-mail message to friend in India wherein I describe the latest events which are just the things I'd post here, so the message itself is dropping by in this post.

I did not succeed in that unique Java opening I described earlier, but I did it with the VB.NET one, and there's also another one that came about.

Here's the message:

=====================================================

Hello from Brazil, lady!!!

As I told you, such has been the time without proper interaction that the opportunity to deliver an e-mail message with the latest news would be appreciable, so here it goes.

I don’t know how much you’ve kept an eye on my blog along the time. Therein I’ve been describing the latest events in my pursuit for another opportunity in the market and also what I’ve been doing for relaxation, such as my mixed sets.

In sum, I left behind on purpose a job wherein I was 100% dissatisfied with my duties, deeply involved with support to the end-user and maintaining the Microsoft servers in the company. The greatest problem was that I went to that company to become a SharePoint specialist once the company’s core business is delivering SharePoint solutions, I would get my first finger dirty with software development, what I immensely wanted.

Contrary to what I expected, little did I put my hands in SharePoint and I ended up supporting end-users with their printers, Outlooks, network connectivity problems. I was the only IT professional within the company, in charge of all servers whose maintenance had never been properly done, and that was driving me nuts. First, I didn’t want to be in charge of any of that. Second, I was not totally skilful to keep up with by obligations there.

Everything contributed for me to move on to something I’ve always been interested in, software development, and I made up my mind to quit that job and take up development studies. Java was chosen then, I liked the platform, I bought books, attended a course on web development, everything within less than 2 months. Soon, I realized how uninterested the Java market was in my professional. I was searching for an intern position; my resume began to expose the necessary knowledge to start off, but no success at all.

Meanwhile, I was receiving SharePoint calls (software development and infrastructure ones), the former I was not prepared for and the latter I did not want anymore. Less frequently, .NET development positions came about. Having faced the reality about the market and the calls I was receiving, I realized that I should study .NET.

In order to avoid confusion given the similarity of Java and C# syntaxes, I began with VB.NET, and that was very appropriate because some days later I participated in a hiring process where VB.NET was demanded. However, I needed to study a bit of C# to attend similar interviews with this language.

After some ups and downs, failures and success, I succeeded in the VB.NET position and I’m starting tomorrow, this Monday. It is an intern position, strategically located, on the same avenue as my university, for a salary that is just enough for me. Concurrently, there’s another position that would be more challenging to me, in which SharePoint would also be demanded and little by little I’d have my taste with software development, but with C# instead, what is not a bad deal at all. This SharePoint position is almost certain, and for a higher salary, but I will have started the VB one when I receive the feedback about my interview, and that could be problematic. I understand the nature of the market, that it may happen for us to start a job and to quit it few days after because of a better offer, but the point is that I’d like to have 2 open doors to me, both companies, to disappoint neither.

With the VB position, I feel that I would start from scratch in software development, it would be less demanding, there would not be any SharePoint involved. In the C# one, they’d like me to install an intranet for them based on SharePoint. They don’t have any SharePoint expertise, they don’t know how demanding that could be and how much my professional could cost, because I’d be dealing with SharePoint infrastructure and development perspectives, besides ASP.NET development with C#. Practically speaking, there aren’t SharePoint professionals skilful with both infrastructure and development, but rare exceptions. If I was supposed to do both things there, I’d become a rather expensive professional and that would be too demanding for me. I’m automatically led to think that the VB offer sounds better to me for the time being.

As a result, I haven’t been studying Java for some time and I do not see any offer around the corner. Everything leads me to think that I have to invest in .NET development at this time. That’d have its upsides too, I’ve grown in the Microsoft world and I could certainly take advantage of the acquired knowledge to develop targeted at the SharePoint platform down the road. Having said that, if I accept the VB position, I can defer to a later time the other position, and letting that door open could be an opportunity to exploit in the future, after I have learned much about .NET development. Then, I would knock their door and present myself as a SharePoint developer, more prepared for the challenge, and this is probably what I’ll do.

I have seen that chatting is not always possible between us due to the time zones. When you’re online, I’m either at lunch time (once at work, I’d be in a restaurant or working) or just arrived home from college, around midnight to 1am. However, Orkut and e-mail is there for us.

Now I see that I’ll definitely work with software development as I always wanted and this is undoubtedly a victory, I’m on cloud nine therefore, very happy. When? Tomorrow… 9am that’s awesome!!!

Well, let’s go, .NET ahead, toward new challenges and achievements.

Take care, kind regards from Brazil!

80s and 90s Still Alive (Black, Pop, Flash House, Flash Back, Eurodance)

80s and 90s Still Alive

Playlist:

MC Hammer - Have You Seen Her 

Haddaway - I Miss You

Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face

Randy Bush - Run, Baby Run

Solina - Summer Nights

Andrew Sixty - Caterina

Fun Factory - Love Of My Life

Randy Bush - I Love To Love

Alphaville - Big In Japan

Fun Factory - I Wanna Be With You

DJ Bobo - Everybody

Randy Bush - Elevation

Fun Factory - Celebration

Sandra - Maria Magdalena

Mr. President - Coco Jambo

Donna Summer - Breakaway

Savage - Don't Cry Tonight

Carlos Oliva e Los Sobrinhos - Macarena

N Trance - Stayin' Alive

Murray Head - One Night In Bangkok

Sect - Wasting My Life

Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing

Novecento - Day And Night (David Morales Mix)

The title speaks for itself, this is a real mixture of styles ranging from the 80s to the 90s, starting off with the melody "Have You Seen Her", and then going back and forth in time changing the style. Eurodance is still predominant, but the selected songs are cool, with lower BPM (beats per second) and that allowed them to suit perfectly with the other tunes from the 80s.

I've seen people say "I don't like Dance", but after listening to this set they realized that they didn't know it well. The genre is vast and there are all types of songs and lyrics. There are either the relaxing ones and the bombing- the-floor ones at high speed. Alike, I've already seen people say "I Don't Like Trance", but after I presented some nice tunes they begin to like it. Again, the genre is vast. Here in Brazil, the most popular Trance style is Psy and I dislike that (with rare exceptions). People not accustomed to very high BPM tend to hate Psy Trance.

Many of the Eurodance artists above have made what I'll call "higher vibes" songs, but as you can see they create the cool ones too.

I hope you'll enjoy it, the deejay who was my master at the course simply loved this set.

Do you like any of the songs in the playlist? Please, let me know what you think of it, what you recall when you listen to such a song and what it represents to you, wherever in the world you live :)

By Mars NRG

90s House Anthems #2

House the 90

Playlist:

Erick Morillo - Toety 

RAW - Unbe 

Smooth Touch - House Of Love

Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It

Sweetbox feat. Tempest - Booyah

Green Velvet - La La Land

Funk Green Dogs - Fired Up

Wink - Higher State Of Consciousness 

Circle Children - Indonesia

Daft Punk - Around The World

Club 69 - Drama (Danny Tenaglia's DTour Mix)

Armand Van Helden - Funk Phenomena

Basco - Can't Get Enough

BAR feat. Roxy - Come Together

Aly-us - Follow Me

4 Hero - Mr. Kirk

20 Fingers - Short Dick Man

Daft Punk - Rollin' & Scratchin'

Disco Yellow - Disco Yellow

Lionrock - Rude Boy Rock

C Rock - Blubokz

Green Velvet - Flash

Hysteric Ego - Want Love 

This House set is pretty hardcore for the ones who do not like the style, I hope you do it. I think the song Drama sounded just dramatic in the set, listen and verify, when I was listening after finishing the set I felt as if I was going to an obscure dimension...

I revived Green Velvet, one of the House Music masters in my point of view. The very original version of "I Like To Move It" is the one in this set, not the ones you've come across in the late years. Erick Morillo (aka Reel 2 Real) made a fortune out of that song.

There is some Techno in the middle too, sometimes we see that a mixture of similar styles yields something cool!

Do you like one of the songs of the playlist? Share your thoughts, I'd like to know what House Music represents to you wherever you live in the world :)