My Secret

As my dear reader, I am going to divulge a long-hidden secret to you, right here, right now:

I got up at 6am more than once in a month, and I slept at 12am the day before.

For those who know me well, this is surprising.

Can this considered as a secret, actually not really, but I just want to add some suspense as I have so much time to kill from now until my work hours.

Getting older? Maybe, a good thing I guess as I will have more time for myself...

Rent or Buy?

Here is a handy web-based calculator to help calculating the cost of owning/renting a property:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/business/buy-rent-calculator.html

Much more convenient than a lot of PC or iPhone applications :)

FreeBSD I am

Here I am, after slotting in the new 160GB hard drive and downloaded FreeBSD 8.1.

This time it boots well, so well that I am now typing on firefox on KDE on Xorg on FreeBSD8.1

Although I am still configuring my Samba share, but to my delight, my data in ZFS can be ported to FreeBSD without much issues.

Once everything is well and smooth. I will install FreeBSD to my 500GB OpenSolaris drive, and wave OS good bye.

So be it, after 3 years. At least I still have my ZFS. :)

Banks and Competition

Recently US government has launched some initiatives to limit financial institutions from doing high-risk investments and also fined some of those who are responsible for the financial crisis.

In response to the fines and regulations, some banks said they would increase the fees for most of the items which were free before the legislation. In other words, the banks pass the expenses to consumers.

Is there anyway to counter what the banks are doing?

I think yes, the US government can set up a bank that doesn't charge consumers all those fees imposed by commercial banks. In order to compete, the banks will have to reduce or abolish all the fees altogether.

I think this will work :)

My Next 400 Posts

I have stopped blogging for a while. My last post was written on June 20, and coincidentally, it is my 400th blog post so far. Four hundred is not a small number to me, and I feel amazed I can write that many stuff.

Actually I do have some technical stuff that I wish to blog about. For example recently I am tinkering with PCSC (PC/Smart Card) daemon, and I managed to solve the issue whereby it runs properly on my iMac and not on the macbook. 

I guess I will need to organize my thoughts before I can resume my normal rate of writing. But heck, I think this will happen soon. :)

 

祝我生日快乐

On Being a Boss

I am damn pissed today by a colleague. The story is like this: I have been engaged in a project that needs this guy's involvement, lets call him 'A'.

As how a typical project goes, our project suffers changing requirements. Initially we thought to give the application a specific feature, but when the customer reviewed the app, they decided to remove the feature.

Now the problem is A refused to make the changes, saying that I can do work-around at my end. Yes, I do agree I can do the work around, however this is not the way you work. As an sub-ordinate, you can propose your ideas, but the final decision lies with the supervisor. As long as the request is within the job scope, you must comply.

Today I got a heated discussion with A, and to the end, I think the only way to proceed is to replace him.

You may say I am extreme, however do note, when I made a decision, I, not my sub-ordinates, to bear the consequences. So, as a sub-ordinate, what you do is to tell me the resources needed for a particular task, and the options available, but if I choose something that may go against your will, please just do it. I need your full cooperation.

Feel free to make your call, when you are in my seat. Thank you.

To Blog or Not To Blog

It is quite rare for me not to blog for more than one week, and here I am. My last post was on May 30.

Should I continue?

Time will tell.

Office Life

Office life is turning a bit hectic ever since I started the new project. Now I am managing a guy while writing code myself. Management is always no fun.

Today my colleague was giving quite a bit of harsh words to one of his subordinates. My colleague's tone was irritated and I overheard fragments of raised voices "You can't tell this to the customers! We must find a work-around."

It seems his man was giving him some headaches by telling him the problems, instead of the solutions. Today a headhunter emailed me about an opportunity for a European company. I replied and now waiting to see how it goes.

On Security

I am reading an article on security hashing, and when the authors mentioned the reason why one type of hashing is better than the other, here is what they said:

Bcrypt was invented by two smart guys and PHK’s was only invented by one smart guy. That's literally twice the smart

Think about it. Twice the smart, how elegant, how measurable, and how exact. Even though there is a word 'literally', but I still think this reason is really funny.

If this argument ever makes sense, then we must say Google products have a lot of smart. :)

Promise

I watched Corpse Bride again. Like Victor in the movie, I also made a promise, and I am still keeping it. So please tell me, is this a good idea...?

The Need to Write

I was away for project for a few days last week, and while staying in hotel, I wanted to blog, but the network connectivity was problematic.

Here I am, sitting here and blogging again. I don't think I am really super-motivated to blog, but at least I can write something.

Project management is tricky, technology is hard, but comparatively the human factor is much harder to manage and fathom.

A lot of times, a decision is not made on technology ground, but more on political, or business considerations. How to balance all these different forces, while maintaining my basic conscience on technology, is a challenge to me.

Sleepless

These nites I couldn't sleep well, many thoughts race in my mind.

My work life is getting busier, but I will leave those issues on other posts.

Just tired, and some heartache in late nite...

Project Management

Recently I am more involved in project management. Unlike last time in my previous jobs where I only managed (and allowed) to talk to sales and marketing people, this time I am talking to real customers, and other collaborating partners.

It is an eye-opener because now things no longer clear-cut as in science or technology. Here, human is the overwhelming factor, and how to anticipate and deal with fellow human beings is easier said than done.

Sometimes I am quite exhausted in endless meetings to talk about some very trivial stuff. I will give myself some more time to decide if this is what I wanna do.

Blog, blog, and more blog

I have not blogged for sometime due to heavy work load. I am involved in another project which involves multi-sites. As usual, it gets messy and a turf fight is imminent. Tired...

Another Fishing Trip

As you can see, I went to another fishing trip, and this time I got a small fish. The bad news is the fish swallowed the hook deep down its stomach, and our operation to extract the hook failed...

When I looked at the little fish, I was thinking what the girl told me. I was wondering what she would have done if we were on the beach then. Would she stop me from fishing, or at least, would she ask me not to use mini hooks so that little fish wouldn't swallow the hooks and got harmed?

I will say the only way to save the little fish on Singapore beach from my predating hook is for the girl to accompany me on my fishing trips. In other words, she is indirectly hurting small animals because of not accompanying me to fish. This argument is logically unsound, but it is a rock-solid politician talk. Yeah, I should go for more politicking ;)

Time to Sit Tight

Recently an MNC approached me, and the first phone interview the lady threw me a bunch of C++ questions.

I was stumped, because I really seldom used C++ on embedded devices. So I was not so sure. I told her the truth and got a reject letter soon after.

However this also marks my determination to conquer C++ properly. This time I am serious. I must fight against my laziness inertia, and s - t - u - d - y....

Fishing, Reloaded

I just bought a fishing rod and wheel. Start to fish again.

I stopped fishing for 10+ years, believe it or not, solely because a remark "The fish is innocent why you want to fish it?" by a girl. Maybe she just said without much thoughts, but for that, I really didn't fish until recently.

Why I resume fishing now you may ask. To de-stress I guess. I am damn stressed. The last fishing trip yielded nothing. My colleague got two small fish though. We released those fish back to the sea. Sometimes I feel I am also a fish trapped in an invisible aquarium...

Cat fish

A very small fish, with big mouth

Live Somewhere Cheap

I came across a blog post by an author Patrick Rothfuss. His fan asked him for a piece of advice for new writers. His answer, in my view, is candid and refreshing: live somewhere cheap.

Actually his answer rings true for anybody who wants to start their own business, be it writing a new novel, or a new piece of software. By controlling expenses carefully, you can survive longer and hopefully by that time, your competitors have all dead due to short of fundings, or your product has matured enough to be marketable.

Living costs in Singapore are getting more and more expensive. It's time for me to hunt for somewhere cheaper.

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[Quoted] Your high IQ will kill your startup

This is an article which I find really interesting, the original URL is here. I shamelessly copy-and-paste it here so that I have a copy in case that site is down. All the credit goes to the original author.

In 2004 I was in Brazil, walking down the hill in Lapa to get some lunch. I was with a friend who I had met in the hostel I was staying - his name was Ofer. We were having a meta discussion about intelligence, and what role it plays in success.

Then out of the side of the road stepped a man. He was holding a knife in one hand and a bottle in the other hand. He spoke to us in fast portugese, clearly asking us to hand over the things we held. I stood there, not very sure what to do. Ofer started speaking quickly to the man, telling the man not to rob us.

What you have to know about Ofer is that he had been an Israeli soldier. He hated violence of any form, but he knew how to be violent.

The man threw the bottle on the floor and it broke into pieces, he picked up the bottle and lunged at us. I ran off, and Ofer stood there and dodged the man, all the while talking to him. The man attacked several times, and each time Ofer just moved aside.

Then finally, Ofer kicked the weapons out of the guys hands, punched him, and he fell. He then told me to run, and we ran down the hill to the restaurant.

We sat there and he continued what we had spoken about. He said: That demonstrates what I mean. The man with the knife did not know how to use that knife. If he had been as trained in knife fighting as I was in hand combat, he would have been able to destroy me. But he had a tool that he felt gave him an advantage, but it's nothing compared to a person who has no tool, but has worked to develop what he has.

Intelligence is like a knife. If you are intelligent, you are at a clear advantage against people who are not intelligent. But if you are intelligent, and another person is not as intelligent, but the other person is willing to train harder than you, the other person will very quickly overtake you in ability.

How your intelligence will destroy you
People who are born intelligent start off life with everything easy for them. They don't have to work hard to get good grades, they never really have to do much to get ahead. The major challenge of early life is school - and school is designed for average people. So intelligent people just breeze through.

But there is a point where every intelligent person faces something that requires more than intelligence. It requires hard work, it requires the ability to fail, it requires being able to do tough tasks, boring tasks. For the first time in their life, in spite of their intelligence, these intelligent people are challenged, and they start failing. Like when they first attempt to create a startup.

And that's where most of them retreat. They focus on things they can't fail on, and ignore the other important things. They start to blame other things (like the school system). They procrastinate. They refuse to face new problems because they know they will not be able to handle them, and this does not fit into their worldview that they are invincible.

Let me tell another story. In 2007, I had dinner with the father of my girlfriend in Paris. He is currently a vice president at one of the top 5 consulting companies in the world. He is a jewish french immigrant from Morroco - he came in the 70s to France with no money and no connections, and he made it up to become Vice President, even though he studied to be an engineer.

I asked him: How did you do it? How did you start from being an immigrant to become executive material? He told me: I got this far because I'm intelligent. He continued: But there were many many people as intelligent as I am who graduated together with me. They are still engineers right now. The difference between me and them is that when I arrived, I knew that I did not have family here in france, I did not have connections. And I knew there were a lot of other people as intelligent as I was, and who had all these advantages. The only way to be successful then would be to gain a slight advantage over them - I had to work and train harder than they did, I had to get to know more people than they did, I had to learn more about more things that they did.

We started off equals, but at some point all the effort I put in started to pay off, and where they stopped improving themselves, I continued, and I got better and better. Where they were afraid to try new things because they would fail, I tried and I got better and knew more, till I was good enough for the job I hold now.

How this relates to you
Being intelligent is like having a knife. If you train every day in using the knife, you will be invincible. If you think that just having a knife will make you win any battle you fight, then you will fail. This believe in your own inherent ability is what will kill your startup. Success comes from the work and ability you put in becoming better than the others, and not from some brilliance you feel you may have within you.

So don't believe that the brilliance of your idea is what will make you successful. What will make you successful is when you are out there every day, doing something new, challenging yourself, trying new methods, studying new ways, having a lot of small failures, then getting better every day.