The power of IB students?

It's new year's eve and I decided to watch a Japanese sing off show which they have every year (this would be their 60th time), in addition they are running a bunch of boring documentaries which for which I am bored out of mine watching.

The world's fattest female model? Putting a guy in a box of ice for 1.5 hours for a new Guinness record? Top 5 most "astounding" UFO videos?

My brain is exploding from boredom. Interestingly I managed to find a site online where we have a bunch of 16 (17?) year old guys in an IB program somewhere doing a marathon game of nearly all the Zelda games to raise money for charity.

It's apparently their second day and they've raised $2,600 already at the time of this writing. They've made a site with streaming video of them playing live with commentary and a IRC like open forum where everyone can post messages while they play. The dialogue is immature and hilarious at the same time, but I am quite amazed at these guys for setting up the entire website.

Goes to show that intellectual prowess does not necessarily have to go hand in hand with maturity.

If you've got time check them out here, they'll be on for only a few more days.

The nice thing about eating at home

Winter holidays started Friday for me and it feels great to be taking a break from work. This Saturday was a hotpot party with some friends, Sunday I had a chance to check out a Capoeira (a type of Brazilian martial / dance art) where there were some very excellent performances and then spent the day doing some errands, then to come home and cook some pork chops.

I got a great deal on these pork chops, 4 slabs for about $5 so not all meat in Japan is that expensive. The only thing that can get pretty pricey over here is the beef. If you want chicken, pork or fish, then you're in for a treat.

It's been a while since I did any real cooking. The limitation being time and I don't have a kitchen in my room, not that I let the lack of a kitchen stop me. A good hot plate, which costs about $50 here does a very good job of cooking meat or even for a hot pot. The other reason is that I'll be going on a trip for the next 4 days and it wouldn't be a good thing if the food in the fridge went bad.

I bought some spices a while back and spiced up the port as such in the image below and let it rest for about 10~15 mins. The dry rub consisted of coarse pepper, salt, chili powder, basil, rosemary and some 5-spice mix.

The seasoned pork chops looked a little something like this

After that, I had the hot pot at about 230C ish and started cooking. The one nice thing about using a hot plate for doing cooking is the temperature control -- I have a good idea of how hot the plate is by the setting. The biggest problem with cooking dry spiced chops is that if you cook them at too high of a temperature, the spices end up getting burnt and you lose flavor.

After cooking for about 10 mins

The one unfortunate thing about the hot plate is that the one I have doesn't go to a high enough temperature to do a good searing on the meat, just for aesthetic purposes but for consumption purposes, the pork was great.

I served the pork with rice boiled with an assortment of beans and a side of smoked salmon salad, which looks like something below.

Pork steak served with rice and smoked salmon salad

The dinner was great and I ended up having 2 pork steaks for dinner which was absolutely stuffing. I am sure I managed to put some weight on from this dinner. I still got 2 steaks left and will be having them for lunch and dinner tomorrow before I head off to Okinawa. More pictures to follow after I get back!

3 more days till holidays

The holidays just can't come fast enough. I'll be starting my holidays after this Friday and won't be in the office until next year. Yay. It's going to be a much needed break. Will be heading out to Okinawa for a few days and will be back to chill out in Japan for the winter. Getting some relaxing in is going to be great!

If it says "happy new year" then it's going to cost you extra

I looked up on the Japanese postal service website this weekend that postcards cost about 80 cents to send abroad. In Japan, it is rather customary for people to send out post cards for seasonal greetings. I bought a bunch of then wrote them up and sent out 15 of them just today.

I then go back to the site to take a look around and realize that "greeting cards" cost $1.20 to send abroad. If it says "happy birthday," "congratulations" or "merry Christmas," then instead of the usual post card price the price to send out my cards jumps up to the $1.20 price mark. Instead of "net neutrality," I think we need "postal neutrality!"

Long story short, it means that the cards that I spent a few days writing are apparently going to get trashed. If you get your card late, you'll know why... time to do some re writing....

bah humbug!

My outlook on the US economy

Obviously from the last post, I have been busy so I haven't had much time to much in depth research as of late into the economy but my forecasts are still going to be bleak for the US economy. I haven't been doing much research as of late so I'll be talking off the hip today, it's late and I should be in bed.

What I will be watching for in the US is their debt and interest levels for the foreseeable future because that will be effecting the value of the US dollar, tax rates and bank interest rates. Interest rates in the US was at about 5% before the whole housing crash, which brought down the interest rate at 0.25%.

Using a future value of money model with the internal rate of return set at the FED interest rate we can calculate for the present value of a security that provides a perpetual return. The present value is multiplied by the annuity by a constant, dependent on the interest rate. I have no time to write the formula here but for those in the know, you know where to look or how to do the calculation.

At 0.25% the factor is 401 and at the FED rate of 5% at 2007 the factor drops down to 21. This model obviously breaks down for very small values of interest rates because the multiplier starts to become huge. As interest rates drop we should expect stock prices to rise. This was exactly what happened as the FED started cutting interest rates. What they were really doing was masking the real drop in equity prices by lowering the FED rates, thus pushing up stock prices. With the FED rates at 0.25%, they have nowhere to go when it comes to rate cuts and the only direction that the interest rates is up. Unless the US decided to pull a Sweden and go for negative interest rates. This scenario is unlikely.

The multiplier curve for the present value of cash as a function of interest rate is very steep at interest rates rise from a very small interest rate. The US economy is still very weak as it is right now and raising interest rates will cause equity and commodity prices to fall considerably. While interest rates are low, however, money will be pumped into the financial system leading to inflation. The drop in the USD is already is a direct result of this. As long as the FED rates continue to be this low and the US continues to pump out debt, expect further devaluation of the USD.

The only thing that will stop value erosion of the USD is if the US economy becomes productive, producing a financial surplus to pay off their debt and with significant enough profits such that the FED can raise rated without killing the economy. I don't think this will be happening for a while.

We've already seeing speculation on a interest rate hike because the USD is getting hammered. If a rate hike does happen, it will probably be done to stave off fears of inflation in the sort term by temporarily driving down prices of say gold and oil, but I believe that the economy is still going down; I think it's just rumor mongering to temporarily stop the drop in USD and rises in gold. The economy will continue to drop until the full extent of bad investments have been realized. In other words, until when the parties that made the bad investments have taken their losses. Unfortunately, these losses are being mitigated from the private sector to the public by bailouts to banks and other large institutions.

Recovery will happen if these institutions become profitable using public money and paying off their debts. If that doesn't happen then these institutions will likely to continue on a "life support system," until someone pulls the plug on them. It's a matter of accepting the losses or trying to pretend that nothing happened and climbing out of a hole with a weight around your neck.

For US economy to improve, we need to see debt numbers to stabilize and see good investments in the economy. Right now, I don't see it. People don't have money to invest and they have too much debt. The people that can probably make the biggest difference are the ones that don't have debt, either people that are too young to have debt or the very rich with no debt. People without debt are the ones with power.

Got sent home early from work; did too much over time

Looks like there are even limits to the Japanese when it comes to doing crazy overtime hours. I've been busy building a new generation of prototype samples. The schedule is kind of tight so I've been working some long hours to get things done. In addition, I managed to develop a simple simulation model to start evaluating our devices.

The guys I work with are hard core experimental types and there seem to be a lack of theorists in the group. From the measurement data we've been collecting, I've found that I can back solve for some device properties like resistance and semiconductor constants. We've never been able to get hard numbers before and this is a first for the group. I ended up staying in the office till 2 am on a Friday night summarizing data and writing up a presentation for our Monday meetings because I knew I'd be busy with experimental work.

Apparently I hit an internal 16 hour work day limit. Meaning that it is usually mandatory for people to take the next day off. Unfortunately on my experimental schedule, I don't have the luxury of taking the next day off. Since I have booked machine time and the experiments must go on. Instead, I got sent home early, at 5 pm, because HR called in to say that I shouldn't be doing any over time. The call was at 4 pm and I got into the office by 7 am and I was already on overtime.

I spent the weekend chilling out, doing nothing but after getting home and eating dinner, I konked out and slept for 4 hours. It's 1:30 am now and I'm need to get into the office by 7 am again to start taking data. The problem is that I'm not sleepy. Tomorrow is going to be rough.

Looking forward to a vacation and I'll be taking one later this month. But more on that later.

Do they want a blood sample too?

What does making an online transaction have to be such an intrusive procedure. If I was buying a physical item, I would understand why I would need to provide my address and contact information, but when it comes to buying something like a music subscription to some streaming audio, do they need my address and telephone number?


The payment is done through paypal and this is the amount of detail they want out of people doing transactions through them. When I go in person to make a physical transaction with my card, I am not asked my age, where I live or for any contact information. What next, do they need a blood sample too? I shake my head at this.

Friday night, at the office till 2 am

I don't know why I did it. I managed to create a crude model of a resistor and a diode and it looks like I can get plenty of data out of some measurement data. I still can't convey complicated thoughts in written Japanese but after finishing experimental work at 11 pm, I was compelled to stay late at the office to finish writing a presentation for a regular Monday meeting.

I gave up writing in Japanese for the first time. I had detailed ideas that I wanted to communicate, that unfortunately are beyond my skills to convey in written Japanese. I find it awkward that I can't think as deeply in a second language and sadly a lot of information does go over my head. Learning to master a second language and being able to communicate in the subtle nuances is tough stuff. There's more to communication than just the words. It's like a good joke; it's about the delivery.

Language is more than just words.

A day off to do nothing

I decided to have the day off today and it's great. Turns out that if I worked today, I would have over run my over time limit and since I maxed out my over time hours already, I might as well take the day off and expect a nice pay cheque for this month's work.

I woke up at 10 am for once, which was nice as I've been starting work at either 8 or 7 am recently. Just because it is hard to get machine time other wise. Everyone likes to work late so I've decided to in the other direction to start early, use all of the busy machines and switch over to the less busy equipment later in the day. This method of working does wonders because I don't have to waste the day waiting for equipment to become available.

Things have been so busy as of late that I haven't had the time to catch up on doing a lot of small things like cleaning the room, going out and buying things like new socks or what not since I just don't feel like doing too much after coming home from work; it might be some exercise in my room while watching a few episodes off West Wing on the computer.

One of the nice things about having a weekday off is that no one else is available, meaning that I have plenty of time to concentrate to do things like program instead of getting dragged out (which isn't a bad thing of course). It's so much easier to concentrate on a project when you have an entire day to dedicate to it, instead of doing something after work. I've started to understand why people mention that it's really hard to work on something like a startup while working for an ordinary company. It takes free time and concentration to make something, which is something that I don't have a whole lot of after work.

Though I usually have a few hours of relaxation time before I go to bed after work, if I can get focused enough, I might be able to use those hours for something productive. So I'm going to try and see how that goes.

There ought to be good money in reporting software

The thing about working in a large company is that there are lots of meetings. It's unimaginable how many meetings there are. We have meetings for general office announcements, a meeting for one sub group, then there are other meetings for other sub-groups, other meetings for managers and etc.

In my situation, I am working on a project that has implications to a few other teams and thus it becomes necessary to attend several other meetings to keep everyone abreast of what is going on. The problem is that once you start attending many meetings, the time to make presentation material starts eating into time that could have been used for me to get real work done.

Things for me are starting to move out of the research to the development phase, which means that the work we do is starting to be come more standardized and more focused more on making incremental improvements instead of radical changes. For me, this means generally carrying out the same experiments with slightly different conditions to try and find the perfect parameters to make what we're building. There is a crap load of data that needs to be taken, plotted and then thrown into a power point presentation and that does take up a considerable amount of time.

I've already managed to cut down some of that time to automate the analysis but, it seems to me that more is possible to speed things up. Specifically, if I could find a way to automate to take data and automatically make reports and presentations out of them then life would be a hell of a lot easier for me and I can imagine how software like this could be useful in similar kinds of corporate situations. There are likely companies out there that do specifically this when it comes to finances, sales, inventory tracking and more.

There are companies that do exactly this and most likely make good money by tailoring their software to their client's needs and having something like this right now, would really be a kick ass tool.

The West Wing

Just started watching The West Wing a few weeks ago and it's a series that I've found myself rather addicted to. I wouldn't call myself a political junkie and usually I am quite happy to stay clear of politics, but for some reason, because of the exceptional writing and interesting characters, I'm hooked.

Hard to imagine that this was a pretty old series, but the story is pretty good and it's fascinating watching a series about busy people running the Whitehouse. I even thought that the series at first was about pilots... but I had it confused with another series called Wings.

Just goes to say how far out of the loop I've been with TV.

Prioritization

Prioritizing things to do is important. I've just started to have that concept sink into my head recently. Time is becoming scarce. During the weekdays, I have work and come home usually brain fried; meaning that I don't want to do any other work after work. Weekends are dedicated to going out, meeting people or other recreational things. This leaves me with the feeling that I don't have much time to do anything else and I see that as a problem.

I equate the the flow of a person's life to a position-velocity-acceleration kind of physics model. Basically, you are at some position, moving in some direction at some speed at some time in your life. Work needs to be applied to change one's momentum to change the vector of your direction and speed to get to desirable position.

Excuse the looseness of the language but to affect change in one's life occurs when one produces that "work" which I define as work = effort*time. In other words, no effort or time means no change.

I view work (as in working for a company) as "dead time" which is where a person trades time for money. Relaxation time is a by product of recovering from work which also falls into this category. Whatever is left can be invested into one's self into productive means... if one so chooses to do so and it is this kind of time that I find precious.

This is where prioritizing comes in.

When I used to be a student, my priorities used to be relatively simple. I had a set of courses that I needed to pass/obtain good marks in and I would allocate time to do what was necessary. Being human, it was usually the allocation of the "minimum" amount of time to do what was necessary and the rest to do whatever else I wanted to do, which was goofing off. Life back then was simple because my priorities were simple.

Now that I have graduated from University and moved into the work force, those priorities are gone. Now what?

What are your priorities?

I've been trying to prioritize what I've been wanting to do for the last while but couldn't come up with anything then it dawned on me for a second that I wasn't sure of what my priorities were. It wasn't one of those black and white moments that whacked me in the face, but one of those "maybe I don't know what my priorities are" kind of thoughts that made me want to write about this.

In no particular order of importance, my general priorities are :

1. Enjoy life
2. Maximize income for minimal work
3. Do work/projects that I enjoy
4. Travel
5. Have an awesome girlfriend
6. Have a circle of friends that is talented, reliable, active and fun
7. Family

Short term priorities:

1. Establish a reputation at current company
2. Perfect my Japanese
3. Learn Chinese
4. Head into automation technologies (both informational and physical)
5. Improve memory
6. Increase muscle mass, get a mild 6 pack
7. Passive income stream
8. Develop a network of talented people
9. Reduce time wasted goofing off

The list is by no means definitive and will likely chance in as my priorities change, but I'll leave it as an alpha version for now.

It's obvious that there are many things that I want to do and there isn't going to be enough time for me to do everything. Being ruthless at making decisions is not one of those things that I am particularly good at but when it comes to having a tight time budget, one does not have much of a choice when it comes to making a plan. Playing an active role in making a time table for one's self personal life seems as something unnatural, but it is going to be something that I need to do.

The other thing is that I also have a bad habit of getting sucked into events and work that aren't particularly aligned to my priorities. I just have a terrible habit of saying "yes" to everything and I am going to have to put an end to that because I've been stretching myself too thin in the time department recently.

Well, here is a start and we'll se how things go.

Developing a Crawler and Parser library

The internet has a huge plethora of readily accessible information, the problem is that the average human being isn't able to process large quantities of information in a short period of time. So I have taken to the task of developing a small library of functions to allow me to automate downloading of webpages and extract data out of them for analysis.

This project of mine has been going on and off for the past year since doing work in matlab and then moving on to python which has the advantage of running multi-threaded programs. This is a must since you are usually limited to the response time and the speed of a website instead of the processing capabilities of your CPU. Processing textual data can be ridiculously fast, even for an interpretive language like python.

Mashing up data from different sources is a very fascinating experience and I do see some interesting opportunities in the future. The first application I designed was downloading all the prices of different CPUs from an online store and then combining that data with published benchmarking data from another site. Using both pieces of information, I could easily calculate price/performance ratios for every listed CPU to select a CPU which was best suited to my computing requirements and price range. I wouldn't have to thumb through long benchmarking articles anymore to figure out what might be the best CPU for me.

It even gets better as the process can also be automated to the point where it is possible to create a program that will inform me when certain products have gone on sale and notify me if I would like to purchase something. This brings a new paradigm to shopping as it becomes possible to set up an automated notification system when something you want comes into your price range. This is a good thing since you don't have to waste time reading advertisements since you have a program that does that for you.

I am now ramping up the scale of this program to allow me to download larger data sets to mash up financial data from publicly stocks with their stock price to see if I can develop a valuation model to determine the fair price of a stock by using fundamental data. Instead of limiting myself to tracking small groups of stocks, I might be able to look at the stock market as a whole. Using a large data set to look at pricing distributions I can determine with greater confidence as to what makes one stock expensive or cheap compared to another set of stocks or perhaps understand what is going on with the stock market as a whole instead of the filtered (and usually useless) information provided through most financial sites.

The power of this program is immense as I have been working on downloading financial reports from every company listed company for the past 10 years. To get to this data, one must transverse several webpages to finally get to the real data. In the past week, I have already downloaded and parsed 180,000 webpages so far and will be going be downloading another 150,000 tonight while I sleep. This program has read and processed more than I will ever read in my entire lifetime and I think that is amazing.

I have no idea what I am going to learn yet, but the prospect of looking at large data sets and interpreting them has me quite excited. I am looking forward to working on this little project.

Data Backup Action: Backing up a life time of data

If you have one HD crash, you're probably more likely to have another one in the future with the same hard drive.

Just yesterday, I had a small HD crash, leaving some data corrupted. I managed to backup most of my important data before the crash happened (what a stroke of luck) and restored stuff like my e-mail address book. I just realized that I have close to a life time of data sitting on this computer, starting from my university years.

Probably the most important data are my digital pictures and old university assignments. Looking back, I think I managed to solve some rather interesting problems in my spare time and I would hate for the work I did a long time back to get suddenly lost. Who knows, I might find some interesting use for them in the future. Probably the most important data to me are my pictures. I have digital photos dating all the way back to 2002 on this computer and it would be a terrible shame to lose them all. It's also quite interesting how all the data relating to our lives have become so digitized of the span of the last decade. Children born nearly 10 years ago, may be able to store their entire lifetime of photos in a digital format and by the time they grow old, they'll have a digital photo album of their entire life. The sound of a project like that now sounds really fascinating to me and I think there are lots of interesting opportunities for this kind of data. But I digress.

After the small crash I had yesterday, I just realized how vulnerable my data was and decided it was time to start baking up data that I'd hate to lose, mainly all my application data, pictures, university work, and music collection.

The interesting part of this is how little data I have, about 130 GB of data. I have about 3 GB hard drive space on the computer! Maybe over the course of a life time, I may only have about a 2~3 TB in total. That is amazing little compared to the size of a standard HD today.

Anyways, I just finished backing up all my data today on a separate HD and found a great program in Linux that just checks files and folders for changes only and will automatically update the archive copy. I've also setup the process to be automated so I'll have a fresh backup everyday. There is no way, I want to lose a lifetime of data now.

Perhaps it is also time to consider an offsite backup location too.

OS Upgrade: Ubuntu 9.10

This is the fastest OS upgrade I've ever done.

I downloaded the newest version of Ubuntu last night and made a bootable USB stick. I nuked the old OS partition (note: I keep my profiles directory and data on a different partition) and then fired up the installer and told the installer where my profile directory was.

The computer got rebooted and all of my software settings (and most of the preinstalled software I use) just came back online without a hitch. Simply amazing.

I used to spend a half-day doing OS upgrades, where I pulled out CD after CD to install software and then configure everything and reload settings. I just opened firefox and thunderbird and all my bookmarks and e-mail settings were just there. I probably had the whole OS upgraded in about 20 minutes and installed a few extra programs (which can be done in a batch btw) and that was it.

The computer response is far better than I had with Ubuntu 9.4, so far, I haven't had any of the sound problems (yet), open office and flash seem to be running much smoother now.

I haven't timed the how long the computer boots up, but I am up and running from a cold start in about 30 seconds. All in all, I am a pretty happy camper now.

90% of your computer cycles are wasted

I usually work with the task manager open as sort of a habit so I might have a general idea when my computer might start lagging on me, and it does from time to time. But for most of the time, the task manager usually has your CPU idling at about 3~5% of it's max usage for most of the time.

For all the impressive CPU speed we've got with growing clock speed and then now with the growing number of CPU cores, we just aren't using the computer to their maximum potential and it is going to stay that way for years to come-- it's just that most programs are very dependent on human input.

But what if we could reduce the need for a computer to try on human input and perform useful work while we are not around? I believe that there is an immense opportunity for software like these. Seti@home did something like this but it's more for charitable work. What if background processes could be created for a PC to your work while you're not using it?

To me, I think that would be awesome.

The things that you should do, but don't

There are whole bunch of things that I want to do but don't get around to. I come home, read the news (most of it garbage), play some computer games, goof off some more then all of a sudden it's 2 am and it's off to bed else I'll be screwed for the following morning.

Most of the time I spend after work goes into killing time, unfortunately and nearly everyday it feels like a terrible waste, but yet... it... is... so addictive. It's terrible because the time could be used for so much better purposes.

Will power is one of those strange things about human nature. I do wonder why can it be so hard to do the things that you want/should do? I used to think like a mathematician, since the solution was possible and it could be solved/done then no further work is necessary. Unfortunately, things don't usually work out like that and a lot of will power is required to do the hard work to accomplish something.

So there are a ton of things that I want to do but never get around to doing. How does one becomes excellent with executions with plans? I don't know, but for now, it just comes and goes with me. There are times when I really want to get out and do things and other times I'm must "meh." The real trick is finding the recipe to getting the things that you know you should do. The right motivation? It's gotta be something along that direction.

On Ubuntu: Pretty good, still some raw edges

I switched out of the Windows about 2 years ago. I started of with an EEE PC, the first one that ran the Xandros linux distribution while I was backpacking through asia and didn't think it was bad at all. I got internet, could watch videos, listen to music and make skype calls through the little thing. My impressions of the Linux OS system was that it wasn't bad.

So last year, I bought myself a desktop PC because I had enough troubles with my laptops dying on me and the rediculous repair fees and the turn around time to get my computer back. If the laptop dies, then it is going to be chucked. Why spend $400~$500 for repairs if for about double the price you can usually get double the performance (which is about after the warrenty expires!). But spending $1000 for a new laptop is pricey anyways so I have moved onto using netbooks which cost in the $400 range. Completely disposable if something goes wrong. But I am going off on a tangent.

Anyways, about Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is a packaged version of Linux by a commercial group called Canonical. These guys basically put an interface on top of the thing, streamed lined the installation interface and have been working on the thing to make Linux user friendly. They've done a pretty good job of making the system user friendly as the installation process was quite smooth and testing the OS before you install it through the live CD is a nice feature. You can even install it through a USB disk if you like even.

I will note that the distribution is generally based on the same software base but with a different set of selected software installed. When some something doesn't work, it usually a configuration error or incompatibility of some software working with other software. Ubuntu it self isn't entirely to blame if the base software is buggy (the solution, however is a better selection with more stable software). Anyways, let's get started.

A little on hardware

Hardware support is fairly good, for generic pieces of hardware. You won't have problems with the video card which is usually the only piece of hardware that people install on their own. But support for other pieces of hardware is sometimes sketchy (everything else is OK though)

For example, I installed a new TV capture card designed to work on the PCI-e bus but found out after in installing the thing that there weren't any drivers that supported it. And no, it isn't as simple as looking up the part on the internet to see if the thing is supported. I was basically using commands to ID the chips the capture card used to see if there was any support for the thing. It turns out that there isn't for the time being and I would have been better off buying a card that ran on the standard PCI bus.

For "exotic" hardware sometimes things don't work, but it is a work in progress.

On Open Office, the MS office replacement

I am a heavy excel user. I do lots of calculations and usually deal with lots of data. One thing I've noticed about Calc for Open Office is that it is slow. I hate slow software. Interacting with the spreadsheet can start getting jerky when a data set is large and you are flying through the data. It is disorientating, but still usable. The spreadsheet experience on MS office is more pleasant. The Office Office word processor isn't bad, but I don't generally use word processors that much now a these days -- it's mainly simple text editors I use for programming

Sound has some bitchy quirks

If sound doesn't work properly, then it can be a show stopper. Sound didn't work perfectly me right out of the gate when I installed Ubuntu. Sure I could play music but from time to time the music would skip. I used to have skipping mp3s on a 90 MHz computer about 10 years ago, mp3s were just catching on at that time and it was acceptable. This is 10 years later and I am on a 1.6 GHz dual CPU computer having skipping sound out of the box isn't going to be acceptable for people that didn't have problems on a windows platform.

I eventually got the problem fixed after searching on the internet to install some patches and then do some tweaking. The problems seem to be different from computer to computer and not all of them always worked. The whole sound problem is through a sound server system (which in theory is nice, but still need more work in practice) called PulseAudio. For many people pulseaudio is the bane of their sound experience because sometimes it works properly and other times it doesn't.

Pulseaudio is a software layer that handles sound processing and mixing, which some of the older Linux sound drivers were not able to handle. Before you could only have one piece of software using the sound card at a time then software started to get developed to enable mixing.

There is a long story about this here. Read it if you have time, but it explains the development of sound for linux... and sort of why we have problems with sound from time to time.

Slow hard drive transfers (intermittent, but recently fixed)

There are times when I had to move large amounts of data around on the computer that would drive me nuts. Considering that I had bought new hard drives and wanted to redistribute my data, sometimes the transfer rates would be in the order of just a few 4~8 MB/sec. Slow compared to what you should be getting, which is in the 70~80 MB/sec range which you should be getting. The problem turned out to be a problem with the x64 version of ubuntu for AMD CPUs. I eventually downgraded to a 32bit version to get more relyable transfer rates. The 32 bit version, is also more stable than the 64 bit version (flash works properly and doesn't crash as much).

There were people out there that said that the 64 bit version of Ubuntu was stable. It wasn't good enough for me, and the 32 bit version is more mature. Had to learn it the hard way.

So you have a few problems, here's a shovel and dig

When it comes to dealing with software problems with Ubuntu your best resource is the Ubuntu forums, where many people ask questions and post about their problems. From my personal experience, searching through the forum is a pain in the ass. The search isn't good enough and sometimes the solutions I've found were for older versions which may not apply to the version I am using. This needs fixing.

There are people out there that are nice enought to post a link to a main article posted somewhere which my search didn't hit with solution for some strange reason. But still, I consider myself a competent searcher and I shouldn't have to go through a maze of comments to find what I am looking for.

Problems that many people face should be put somewhere more proiminent where people can find them easier. I've killed countless hours searching for a solution to some problem. It shouldn't be a needle in a haystack problem.

Free software is decent

Ubuntu is based on the Debian distribution, which uses a software repository system. Basically people that make software in their free time upload it to the repository and you can search the repository for something that you might need. There is a whole slew of stuff uploaded there, from video, image, sound editing, office applications, games (most amature, but some polished ones out there) and more. I am somewhat fond of the software repository because many of the programs that I would usually have to go out and buy, is there and available for free, legally.

Compared with Xandros and Windows?

I used Xandros for my first EEE-PC and I had a very enjoyable experience with that platform. The software on the computer was stable and I didn't have many bugs to deal with. I never really even have to trouble shoot the software on the system even once which I was pretty happy about.

Software should just work and perform well. I understand that making software and getting all the bugs out is a pain but polish is important. I don't have time to deal with problems. In my experience so far, there are distributions that exist out there where I have never had to debug and I may want to switch over in the future.

In general, the experience in Ubuntu is pretty decent and there are things in the Linux world that would put Windows to shame. The boot time for one is pretty quick. I can have the system up and running in about 30 seconds and I mean responsive. None of this, "let's get the log in screen quickly, but I am still loading" which we see in Windows... after logging in, I still can't use the computer for about 30 more seconds!

Conclusion

I took a leap into the Linux world, it isn't bad and there is some pretty nice cutting edge stuff out here. And if you like desktop eye candy (Compiz Fusion), some of the Linux features can blow the top of windows. See video here. This video is more than 2 years old and there are newer videos out there but I didn't care for the music to them.

Is it useful? Well, not really but it's cool. MS eventually copied some of it's features to Vista. They didn't do too good of a job of it and you got the hog which is known as Vista. Compiz fusion is to desktops as are boobs to women -- they're just sexy. But anyways...

So there you have it. I'm content with Ubuntu for now, but with some of the annoying experiences, I may trade up to something better something comes my way. The 9.10 version will be released at the end of this month and I'll be upgrading. If I get too annoyed, I'll go find another distro to try. But for now, I'm not going back to the world of windows.

Back from the country side

Back from the country side in Japan. it was a long weekend the last week and took the chance to head out to Nagano for 5 days. It was great. Photos will be up later on!

In other news, the company dorm is having the shared connection shut down and everyone will be transitioning over to and ISP of their choice. Looks like the building is wired up with a shared optical connection. Going to be spending about $48/month for internet with gigabit speed. We'll see how this thing stacks up, going to be looking forward to it though, the old shared connection that I used to be on was not the fastest thing in the world, but sufficient enough for me to do the basic internet-y stuff, downloads, online videos, music and webpages.

Stopping and Thinking

In a rare coincidence, it seems that a bunch of Japanese holidays managed to line up this month resulting in having 3 week days off. I opted to take an additional 2 days off to take the week off for an entire 9 days.

I've been away from work for about 8 days so far and it's been great to get away from everything for a while.

I'll have pictures later on, but I opted to head out to the Japanese country side in Nagano to spent 5 days to attend a fire festival and go hiking through a mountain range known as the Japanese Alps. It was also nice to get away from the internet and my computer too, as it some how ends up being a significant time sink, which allowed me to do a whole lot of activities and meet people that I wouldn't usually have the opportunity to.

I'v also realized that being away from the computer for a while has been a good thing, which has allowed me to use some of the down time to just do some thinking that I usually wouldn't do, which has left me a little rusty in the cognative and reflection department. Also, I haven't been able to put perspective into what has been going on in life recently as it's rather easy to get stuck into a repetitive grind. And when that happens, sometimes a lot of things going on around loses a lot of meaning... and it also can get quite disorientating, especially when it comes to making decisions.

This has been kind of tough these last month with the long hours and other things going on with the personal life, for which for the time being I am going to leave the details out. But I have some tough but necessary things to do for which I haven't been seeing in a positive light, which also makes it tougher. It's important to find the positive things and focus on them... and keep going, because if you don't, you'll end up in a situation/place that you don't want to be.

I'll admit that I am being a little vague right now, because it doesn't seem right to say everything at the moment, though I would much rather be entirely open. I need to put all the bad things that happened this year and a few recent things behind me and move on.

How long till your first million?

Work is starting to tire me out. The long hours and running multiple projects at the same time does bad things to one's social life, stamina, stress level and concentration. For July and August, I've done 80 hours of over time and this month I'll be trying to scale back to 50 hours. A 8~12 hour work day is not exactly the way I want to be spending the rest of my life.

The trick to living a good life is working smarter, not harder. So, I've started doing some calculations to get a general idea of how long would it take for a person to make their first $1 million dependent on the amount they are able to save per year, both dependent on whether if they just stuck that cash in a bank or earned some interest.

There are probably similar types of graphs like these in financial planning books but I have created one for myself as shown in the image below (click for an enlarged and much clearer version).



The results don't look encouraging, but let's do the math. The above graph plots the amount of money you will have saved dependent on your annual savings rate and depending if you reinvest the money to earn 7% or not. The dotted lines represents a linear savings rate.

I have been collecting expenditure data for my life style and it comes out that I spend approximately $2000/month in living expenses, including taxes. Given this, I will have expenditures at $24,000 year. Suppose now that I want to save $20,000 a year, requiring earnings at approximately $44,000/year.

Without investing, it will take me 50 years to make my first $1 million, or 23 years if I reinvest my entire savings at 7%. I'm going to be pretty old by the time I get that far, considering inflation and everything, $1 million is not going to be the worth the same thing in 23 or 50 years. This is not an acceptable solution, so we are going to have to do something to increase income.

Suppose that we bumped things up a notch and aimed for a $40,000/year savings rate. Making the bad assumption that the tax rate doesn't change, I would have have to earn at least $64,000/year to make this goal. Obviously, the time to make the first $1 million is cut in 1/2 to 25 years if you just stashed in the bank or 15 years if the funds are reinvested at 7%. The numbers are starting to look a little more reasonable.

Now, suppose for a young person that your income is $44,000 and you need to bump it up to $64,000 now to hit that $1 million target in 15 years using the 7% investment plan.

You have 2 choices:

1. work approximately 50% longer or
2. find more productive ways of generating income.

Suppose that I worked an 8 hour work day and took option 1 and extended the work day to 12 hours. Including a 1.5 hours of commute time and about 8 hours of sleep for a total of about 21.5 hours/day being used up. This leaves 3.5 hours for personal time during the weekdays.

That obviously does not seem like a reasonable lifestyle to me. Thus working longer for more money is out, so option 1 is dead, so we consider option 2.

How does one find more productive ways of generating income? How do you go to your boss and say that you want 50% more pay? Under what conditions would they provide you with that cash? The most obvious answer to me would be to improve productivity either by doing more of the same in less time, or doing something completely different to produce more value in less time.

Negotiating with HR or management for salary increases is obviously a thorny issue, but you are going to have to be equipped with the right kind of information to make your point. From my point of view, talking directly in dollars and cents or productivity is very important to winning that salary increase. But also, there are obviously limits on the amount of money your employer is willing to pay an employee. If you really want to make the big bucks, then you are going to have to go at it alone.

I now have some real world experience in me to finally appreciate these numbers, I only wish that people would have found ways of understanding the magnitude of long term planning in their early 20s. Imagine if you were 35 and you made your first million.

The impact is huge.

So you want to gun for your first $1 million? I'll give you a chart for how much and how long you need to save to achieve it.


I will admit that the calculations done here are crude and requires refinement, but the basic analysis of the $1 million problem should give everyone a good idea of what exactly you're up against.

Attaining this goal is a very tough challenge, hard enough that it isn't easy to do alone. For all you young people out there, if this is a worthy goal for you to attain, look to your peers and find ways to help, work together and educate yourselves. Because it's going to be now or never, and the sooner the dialogue starts, the better.

What I have learned while working

What I've learned while working:

I work at my own pace
I don't like repitious work, and will usually dream at finding a way
to automate it
I am good at automating data analysis
I enjoy putting machines together that reduces my work load
I attend about 10 hours of meetings every week
I also don't care for most of the meetings
I don't generally like discussions with too many "what if's"
I also don't like discussions when everyone is shooting off the hip
I am generally slow when it comes to e-mail
I'll get back to people faster if it is important
My work related e-mails (when written in Japanese) tend to be short
I am far more motivated to work when I see an immediate goal (and
somewhat tangible reward)
I make mistakes (lots of them)
I am really forgetful
I tend to think about other things while doing boring work
I have a terrible habit of forgetting everything I've thought about
after getting home
I have not seen many young people contribute or have the opportunity
to contribute radically new ideas / projects

Observations:

Mistakes are a waste of time
If you are credible, people will generally take what you say at face value
Giving good presentations at meetings is 50% of what is required to succeed
The other 50% is doing a good job
The best managers have excellent memories and are very detailed
The best managers are good at identifying the important issues quickly
The worst ones (even though they are nice) hold too many meetings and
progress tends to be slow
Managers generally like definitave answers
If you are good at your job, managers tend to be friendlier
Being 2x more efficient than everyone else will not result in 2x more pay
Given the option to take a chance vs going the safe route, more often
the safe route is chosen
Getting something new approved requires a lot of testing... even for
small changes
Problems can occur even for small changes
Young people are often not in a position of high impact
When mistakes occur, counter measures are usually often discussed
Most counter measures usually slow work down to prevent mistakes
Having too many counter measures is a pain in the ass

A few things about Japan:

Business level customer service in Japan is amazingly good
If you really need something done, they can usually work something out

Resting the hands for now

It is a lull in writing on this blog for reasons I don't know at the moment. I probably am just a little tired and finding that I have less time to self reflect and write. There have been a lot of things I have been thinking about but usually end up forgetting about them, that or I've just been too lazy to write.

I've found that I've become much less motivated to write. The reasons why are probably numerous. For a reason, I have started keeping more to myself as of late, meaning that I do much less communication and at the same time, I realize, I have also have started to lose my communication skills in tandem.

There aren't a whole lot of people I can communicate at the same level that I think at, with some of the language barrier here. There are still many cultural "in" things (like old TV shows or want not) that I don't get either. From time to time, I find myself the odd man out and have gotten used to it, so I usually don't mind finding my own ways of going about and enjoying myself. Usually, just walks or heading out to new places I've never been to on my own.

Anyways, when it seems I am ready to come back out to the world again, I will make my return. For a person that has usually seen myself as an extrovert, I am also finding plenty of peace spending time on my own.

Upgrades

I bought my computer last year and it's amazing how prices for hardware has dropped.

Last year, I spent about $260 for a 19" monitor. One of these monitors now costs about $130 in Japan. A 500 GB hard drive ran me about $80 last year and this year, I can get 1 TB for about $70.

It's amazing how quickly prices fall. It's ironic how quickly the price of computer hardware drops but yet there are incredible opportunities if this hardware could be put to good use. The average person out there doesn't even come close to making 50% continual utilization of their PC.

I've decided to buy 2, 1 TB hard drives and a TV tuner for my PC. I'll be using it to record Japanese TV shows for when I want to watch them. Going to be trying to improve my Japanese by watching some TV and finally getting myself immersed in the culture. I haven't owned or watched TV regularly for the past 5 years. I've gotten used to it... but it comes at a cost: I tend to be out of touch with the average joe over here.

I'm going to have to understand these people so I'm breaking down and going to try and watch some TV and see what happens.

Dealing with People

One thing about being a foreigner dealing with locals is dealing with disagreements. Sometimes it seems like the cards are stacked against me sometimes, there is somewhat of a cultural difference and at the same time, I appear asian enough to understand the Japanese cultural norms. Then there is also sort of a language barrier, though I wouldn't call it a "barrier" in the normal sense, but my linguistic skills seem to be lacking for me to come off as someone with tact.

This is a source of a lot of recent frustration, leading me to be either annoyed or somewhat depressed when things don't go right.

One of those unfortunate things about language, is it is not nearly so important as what you say, but how you say it to garner the support of other people. There has been many a time when working with other people where i've been right but not persuasive enough to convince people that I am right in a diplomatic kind of way-- in the kind of way that they feel good about it.

It's damn trickly and somehow, I have lost patience when dealing with people. I used to be much better, but when things need to be done, I've hit the point where I don't want to waste time arguing with people and go off and do my own thing.

I think it's something that's developed after moving out and becoming more independent-- I've gotten used to having the freedom to doing my own thing... can especially be a problem if you've become good a becoming resourceful in the way that you don't need to rely on anyone else.

What results is that sometimes you can make the objectively right decisions, but still be politically wrong. Life can be a bitch that way, especially when a person like me operates on the belief that making the right logical decisions should be independent of the person. I've been right in many cases, but not politically correct and dealing with politics in a different language can be a pain... especially if you want to be good a diplomacy.

Nope, it's not one of those things I am good at and I've already stepped on a few toes. Working in a company is kind of different from doing work in a lab... the difference is that I've already proven my self once and its easier to earn the respect of peers in the same age range. Working in a company with much older people tends to be kind of tricky.

Sometimes, I think that this is possibly one of the reasons why not a whole lot of new, dissruptive technogies/business models are created with a group of older people... but I digress.

I need to get around this problem... I need to be better at expressing myself in Japanese. I still have a hell of a long way to go.

It's about making time

Out of work, rest and time, choose 2.

This is now my second year of working. The project that I am working on is pretty busy. I am now pulling 80 hours of over time/month. Meaning that I do on average, 4 hours of over time everyday.

Fear not, I am being compensated for it.

With the regular work day, being 9 to 5:30, I am at work until about 10:00 pm ish everyday. Well, not really but it is something like that. One of the nice things is that I live rather close to the office, so I don't have much of a commute, in effect. I am converting the time I would have spent traveling into money, which is a good thing. The problem with coming home so late is that I don't have a whole lot of time do anything else. Or is it really the case?

On a good day, I wil lget home by about 7 or 8 pm. After having some dinner and relaxing for a littl,e, it'll be about 9 pm. Usually I just end up vegging out on the internet until a bout 1 am before heading off to sleep. Thinking about it, I usually have 2~3 hours for "spare time" before going to bed.

The tricky part is getting into a productive mood after coming home from work-- it just feels kind of strange trying to do something after 9 pm. But I am going to have to kick the vegging out habit.

The one thing I've started to realize, is that my age is starting to creep up on me. I just turned 28 last month and got another 2 years before I turn 30. It's crazy, but yeah. Life is short and how much longer can I consdier myself young?

The one thing I just realized is that I want to be young and be successful at something. Saying that I'm always busy is just an excuse... and the other thing is that you're only young once.

It's now or never... and shit, I'm going to have to make time for it.

Don't believe everything you're told, especially from the media

The Dow to 36,000, or so we are told in September of 1999. A new era of prosperity, where the old rules don't apply. This was the long bull, so we were told and the authors proceeded to ridicule the nay-sayers.

We never even got half way. The Dow, for all it's flaws, peaked last year at 14,000 and now it falters in the lower 8,000s.

Everyone has opinions, but no one take responsibility for them

Opinions are cheap and they're a dime a dozen. Follow the wrong ones and they may end up costing you and if they do, it's "whoops, my bad. Here's a pat on the back, I'm sorry for you." and that's about it. This is one of the reasons why I am sick of TV pundits, commentators or whatever. Watching a debate on TV makes my stomach churn because it's all garbage.

It's always with the chest thumping when they're right, and they'll pretend that they never said anything if they are wrong. Anyone can be right sometimes, a broken clock is even right twice a day. And that's the problem, we've got too damn many broken clocks, dinging all the damn time. And what if someone's opinion was wrong and it caused damages or losses to you? If they can't stick their neck out and take responsibility for what they say then there is no point in listening to them.

This is how shallow discourse has become; it isn't about trying to find the best explanations or truths together, it's instead about everyone trying to show off that their opinions are always right, all the time. I'm sorry, but as a viewer and the common man, I'm going to have to call bullshit on these people. For all the people always yammering about their opinions all the time, it is dead certain that not all of them, and not even most of them are going to be right. If I had any advice to give to them, I'd have to say "please, shut the fuck up."

If there is one thing that we are missing right now, it's honest people (and no, I don't mean people pretending to be honest). The truth is not about some person being right, quite often the truth will be inconvenient. Those loud opinionated people usually ignore anything inconvenient. When a person with the need to be right trumps the facts, that is the time when the conversation ends because you will never learn anything good from these kinds of people. People that demand that their opinions are always right have no perspective. So thus I shake my head at the mass media. I've given up on them.

If you want to find truth, then you're on your own

A person that believes everything they're told is naive or even a fool. And that's what our society is becoming, especially through the mass media. The mass media has no incentive to be right or punishment when they're wrong. All they have to be is convincing and it's easy to be convincing when everyone doesn't know better. A 10 year old, for as silly as they can be, will always be incredibly convincing to their younger sibling... and I'm afraid that when it comes to the general public, they're stuck with big brother.

If you want to find truth, it will be a hard path to walk. Every detail must be scrutinized, sources verified and your perspective must always be in check. Sometimes the truth isn't what you expect or even want it to be, those who can't except it will never find it.

For those that can't walk this path, then you're stuck with listening to the truth as told from others. But one day it might not be, and you'll never see it.

It's not my job to tell people what to do, so choose your path.

Consumed by work

It's 3:30 am, I came home from work at about 8 pm, ate dinner, fell asleep and then woke up at 12:30 am. I know I should be sleeping but I needed some time to surf the web and think.

I just started realizing that I've been using the "it's been a while" a little too often. Somehow, my spare time has been sucked up into an abyss and the only thing I've been doing is working, resting and going out on the weekends to relax. I've been at this life style pace for the last few months after my project has gotten significantly busier. It feels like I am missing something tangible, something measurable.

I don't feel like I am making real progress at work, nor does it feel like I am picking up skills that I consider to be highly valuable to me. What I am doing and learning right now, lacks impact, and yet I am toiling long hours at what I am doing. Sometimes, I wonder, for what am I working for.

I traveled through SE Asia almost 1.5 years ago. I loved my travels incredibly, it was one of the times that I felt the most alive. I remember my experiences vividly and I met so many amazing people along the way. My travels were inspiring, I felt alive, it was incredibly liberating. I've never felt so free in my life. I miss backpacking.

I've been busy and I've been tired. Even keeping keeping up with people feels like a chore for some reason. I've gotten tired of just hanging out with people. I've realize that I need more then that, I need a collection of people with inspiration and skill, people that I want to learn and share from, people that I can meet up with and when we go home, we've all gone away with something.

Now that I think of it, perhaps my surroundings haven't changed, I've probably set the bar higher.

A 6.9% Savings rate in the US?

It's July 1st, therefore, happy Canada day. It's also the first of the month, were I tally up all my living expenditures for the previous month.

It was previously posted in the National Post that the average savings rate in the US has risen to a 15-year high of 6.9%... 6.9% !? This value is also defined as the amount of disposable income saved, which I take to mean: Total income - taxes - fixed living costs = disposable income, and then divide the amount of money saved by that number, giving you a measly 6.9%. The graph posted at the National Post illustrates at positive savings rate for all but 1 year in the past 20 years, but yet it seems that the US is piled high in debt.

Seriously, how is it possible that the average savings rate be always be positive and yet you have an entire country ridden in debt? It perplexes my mind.

I've just calculated my savings rate from January to the end of June. I've decided against doing any fancy math and decided to calculate how much of every dollar I've saved that came in. My raw savings rate is 51.25%. Meaning that I've saved more than 1/2 of all the money I've had coming in. If I were to convert this number to something relative to my disposable income, it would be ridiculously high and no, I am not some crazy high roller that brings in a fat pay cheque in every month.

I'd have to lose at least 40% of my income to have a raw savings rate of around 10%. I'd be making ridiculously little money but I'd still be saving more than the average American easily that I'd have to call bullshit on those numbers. Sure the stock market crashed and the housing market crashed, but if everyone was able to save money before, then they shouldn't be in the rut that they are in right now.

Minor headaches with 64 bit Ubuntu

I've migrated away from using windows since last year as a result of the poor reviews of Vista and it's high associated cost. Considering that you need a rather beefy system and the OS is quite a hog, I decided to jump boat and go with Linux as my main OS.

The translation has been largely painless and I am, for the most part happy with the OS. There are, however some draw backs for the specific version I am using. The 64 bit version of Ubuntu still has some significant bugs compared to the 32 bit version.

Though word on the net is that the 64 bit version is as stable as the 32 bit version there are some kinks with the system that does annoy me. One of them is the slow file transfers. I am currently relocating many of my media files to a dedicated media HD. For large file transfers (42 GB) I have found that transfer rates are quite slow, running at 5.6 MB/sec. The system I use has 2x SATA 500 GB hard drives, each should be able to sustain about 60 MB/sec of read and write operations. Getting only 1/12 of the transfer performance is quite painful, especially when it comes to having to wait 2 hours for the transfer to complete.

The other problem with the 64 bit version is that Java support isn't as solid compared to the 32 bit OS. The problem often leads me to restart my browser from time to time when the web applications I use stop working.

The advantage of having a 64 bit operating system is being able to address significantly more memory than a 32 bit operating system, which is limited to only 4 GB of ram. I am currently running at 4 GB of ram and have no plans in the near future to increase my memory pool. I don't even break 2 GB of used memory quite often.

Though I have to say that Ubuntu is quite solid when it comes to performance and user experience, I would go contrarty to what people are saying on the net that the 64 bit version is OK and stick with the 32 bit version. For the most part, you won't run into problems, but there will be times when you will want to back up your data and some of these bugs will irritate you.

With the prices of 1 TB hard drives dropping incredibly fast in Japan, I am seriously looking to pick up another drive and have the computer automatically back up important files on a regular basis.

Should the price of hard drives drop further, I would consider setting up a dedicated raid array for the OS (Raid 0) to improve OS performance and setup a secondary raid array for data redundancy.

Revolutionary ideas never come from managers

Be forewarned that my quality of writing and my ability to summarize ideas has gone to the shitter as of late. I haven't been doing much writing of late, nor have I had much time to really think my thoughts through as of recent. The other thing is that there aren't a whole lot of people in my current surroundings that I can have a in depth conversation which is usually a great way for me to really hash out my ideas... but anyways... with my excuses aside. I'll just try my best to hobble through this...

Managers lacking ideas

Revolutionary ideas or products never come from the management level. Think of every revolutionary product or service that was brought into existence. The company that was formed around those ideas generally consists of 2 kids working in a garage working together to realize a dream. Something beautiful, something they would love... and in turn something that everyone would also love.

It's as simple as that.

Managers don't have ideas... they're actually disparate for them

Being so far removed from the real work and managing people, managers are the least likely people to understand the fine details when it comes to something like, say, hardware. They don't touch the stuff anymore, nor do they see the stuff in action.

I've known managers really do is set lofty project goals. For instance, say, let's double the memory density of some chips within the next year... but how we are going to do it? Well that's everyone else's job.

This is how I've seen our project managed so far. Let's make bigger, or smaller, or brighter or faster. We want this done by next year, now get to work.

We have no idea if this is realistic and the grunts like myself are often flung of into some wild goose chase to put something together to appease the managers. It's pretty much as simple as that... it also sort of appalling. Is this honestly the best that they can do!? That is the wrong way of running a project, especially if you want to make something new.

Knowing what you want to build and knowing how to do it

With enough knowledge and skill you'll know the limitations of what you're doing and what you need to do to get the desired outcome. The most successful projects I've seen are run by people with the right kinds of technical ability to pull things off with the right group of people. They know what they want to put together and how they're going to do it and they don't need damn long meetings to report to "higher ups".

Anyways... I am going to give up for today with the writing.. it's frankly shit and I can't summarize anything well. There is actually, a lot of things that I want to say and there are a lot of connections that I want to make.. but I just can't seem to organize my thoughts or have the flow down right.

Practice, practice, practice... I guess...

Critical thinking skills do go dull if you stop using them. I've put my brain on hiatus for too long. Gotta resharpen my mind...

Managers and meetings

I don't know what exactly everyone did to become a manager at where I work, some people did some pretty good work and then got noticed, others were just was around long enough to get a decent idea of everything that is going on to eventually get pushed into a managerial position.

But skill and seniority aside, if there is one thing that will make or break a project, it's the managers. I'd have to say that the less involved the managers are, the better the project is off.

I have yet to meet a really good manager; the kind that knows have to motivate a team, that knows how to set realistic goals and then provide the support to help the team achieve those objectives in a timely manner. If I would define the role of a manager, it would be exactly that.

What I have seen so far in terms of management in a large corporations, is that managers are the people that schedule meetings to have everyone report in on exactly what they are doing... so they themselves report to people further up the food chain on what is going on. Middle managers, generally tend to do very little work and don't seem to have the expert skills that the "grunts" have when it comes to getting the work done.

The other thing I have noticed about managers is that they are rather detached from the rest of the team... in the sense that they are not generally spending long periods of time working with the team to have a good sense of what is really going on. If there is one thing for certain, it is that a lot of information gets filtered out in meetings, because of time constraints and the other is to make oneself look good (ie. filter out all the experiments that went wrong and then present the stuff that went well... or even present a few bad things and a few good things and then tell the manager that you need more time to look into things). Attending meetings is more about knowing how to present than getting the work done it self... because it is the only thing that these managers really see.

I should also point out that there is a big difference in a person's ability to present and their ability to get something up and running. Eventually, what you might find for a large comany is that most of the managers are the kinds of people that are good at doing the talk... but when it comes to doing the walk.. it is an entirely different matter.

In essense, people that are just good at talking are *terrible* to be put into a desicion making position.

Managers and meetings

The biggest real-life role I've seen so far with managers is that they are meeting chairmen and I think that's pretty much the only real work that they do... and I would argue against the notion that they do any sort of real work.

For the most part, I've only seen managers setting up agendas and getting people to talk... trying to glean information out of everyone to try and make project level decisions. This is, of course, coming from a person that isn't involved with the project at it's most intimate levels and with visibility limited to what is presented to them.

How is one supposed to make good decisions based on a 2~3 hour discussion involving 5~6 people doing a shit load of work? I would argue that they can't and this is where most projects fail.

Transience

Of the fond memories of coming back to Sendai is remembering all the interesting people I've met over the years. Many of them where international students from all over the world, most of them have gone back to their home countries. All of the ones that I have met were really nice people.

And now that I think of it, I haven't been in contact with most of them since they left. It makes me wonder, what are the characteristics of person that would make them your friend. Perhaps, I didn't articulate that well enough, but I also wonder what is the characteristics of the friend relationship. I've never really thought this before, not until coming back to Sendai, where I used to know a lot of people.

There are still many people that I know here, but I would only call out a few to hang out with. Many of the people I knew, were people I've met up along the way attending events or going out to my favorite bars where there were people I knew. We were all friends in passing. I've realized that I don't live here any more and my connection with these people has gone, though I would say that knowing them has brought plenty of joy while I've been living in Sendai. I've also started wondering about who are the people that I really want to spend time with, the people that I want to do things together with.

After moving away to Atsugi, I've realized that there are not that many people that pops into mind when I do want to do something. Many of the things that I really do enjoying, like going out on random walks or drives are the kinds of things that I enjoy doing on my own.

I have not found many people suited to my style of adventuring or perhaps, pace. Many of the things that I do enjoy doing now are the kinds of things that I can do on my own. Perhaps through some unconcious choices, I've chosen to lead a more solitary lifestyle. A kind of lifestyle where I can go on my own pace. It isn't just pace that I often find myself alone with, but the things I do and the kinds of things I like to think or talk about.

After joining my company and meeting the many new recruits that joined during the same year, there aren't many that I find myself hanging out with. I did hang out with them from time to time the first few months while at work, but the more I hung out with them, the more I realized that I never really did fit in with their conversations.

I met up with a good friend of mine in Sendai just yesterday for brunch. This friend of mine is an older lady in her 50's perhaps close to her 60's (I've never really bothered to ask), but she's always been volunteering and helping out new international students get settled in Sendai. I've always enjoyed our conversations, we would always discuss about our current traveling adventures, the interesting foods or places we've found or any interesting topics about different cultures.

She told me that she always found herself bored when she spent time with other housewives as they spent most of their time talking about the latest sit-coms or the cute clothing they bought for their children. She could never find inspiration in those conversations, but when it came to volunteering and helping out with the international students, there would always be plenty of interesting and fresh ideas.

The people that I find myself connecting the best with were with the international students. This afternoon, I found myself talking with a Columbian friend that has been living in Japan for the past 7 years, that is looking to go back home after graduating.

At this point, he was a little home sick and felt that it was time to go back home. As much as he had enjoyed his time in Japan and how significantly more money he could make by working over here, the place he called home was still Columbia. It was interesting discussing the whole traveling phase, but I suppose, at one point in a person's life, people living abroad will eventually have to pick a time to finally settle down.

I guess it is topics such as these that I would not find myself talking about with people that haven't had the opportunity to live in a foreign country. Especially with a normal Japanese colleague.

I have also found that I don't look at world events or the way of life in a different country the same anymore. I guess I've become more accepting of the differences and become far less judgmental. There are, of course times when I do think when things are wrong, especially when it comes to people getting annoyed at some parts of their own culture... it can be interesting sometimes at what stupid or silly things people end up doing as a result of "tradition."

But anyways, back to the topic of friends. So many people I've met through my time over here have come and gone. Everything has been so transient and perhaps I am looking for something that lasts. The question that I still need to figure out is what is the important ingredient that creates a strong bond between people.

I will leave myself to ponder over it for the next while...

A Place Called Home

If there was a place in Japan where I could call home, that place would be Sendai. I left early on a Saturday morning, taking the bullet train out of the city traveling 300 km north to Sendai. Every time I get off the train at Sendai station, it feels like I've come back home.

Everything look familiar, every time I step out of the station. The stores, the bustling car and people walking through the city. I have many fond memories of this place. Manly because of all the people I know... or perhaps knew when they lived here.

Perhaps I wonder if it's nostalgia. Sort of like visiting your old high school or university years after graduating. It's like the place hasn't changed but the people are all different. The place feels familiar but yet somehow detached, it's like I am not a part of this city anymore.

Most of my friends in Sendai were students at the university, both the Japanese students and the foreign exchange students. Most of which have graduated and moved on since the era I was here. Still, some of my friends remain but my connection to people of this city feel diminished.

I do wonder, what is it about a place that you could call a "home" so special. I know for sure that I wouldn't call the place I live right now in Tokyo, home. It's just sort of a place to me. But Sendai is different. Is it the people? Is it the place? Is it what happens? I still can't put my finger on the specific reason behind it. But I believe that it is the combination of all 3 of these. Without the right people in the right place, I don't believe that I would have fond memories of this city. There are still people here that I know, perhaps like embers of the community that I used to be a part of.

I know for sure that a new group of international students move into this city every year as part of either their university program or through the Japanese run scholarship program. Most of them will live here for a year, some others will stay for a few years longer.

History will repeat itself. Students from around the world coming together to live at the international dorms. International culture exchange between each other, experiencing life in Japan, making friends, Christmas parties and exploration. New experiences almost everyday. The first time is always special and unfortunately, first time experiences only come once. If I did come back here, I know for sure that I wouldn't be able to join and experience life with these students in the same capacity as I did before. I know for sure that I would be taking part as a different role, probably as a facilitator. I guess that the saying is true and people do have to move on. It just isn't the same experiencing the same things over again.

It is great to experience something wonderful, but I also realize that is it important to know how to gracefully move on. No matter how wonderful, you can't allow yourself to be stuck in the past.

65 hours of over time

Been hell of a month, it's coming down to crunch time and we are finally starting to get into reliability testing. The problem is that development time wasn't properly allocated into reliability testing and things are in a complete pinch.

Just making something and having it come out pretty is one thing, but it's going to have to last if people are going to buy it.

Then I get suddenly thrown into the reliability testing group and will have to do a lot of redesign and testing to get things working right. According to the schedule, I have one shot to make the device and then hand it off to another division for some post processing (which they have one shot to get right) and then perform a 1000 hour lifetime test, where the the sample must pass.

I'm basically playing for a hole-in-one game here and the schedule is tight... actually, we are already behind schedule and it looks like I'll be puling 150 hours of over time in the span of 3 months. I'll be hitting the limit for overtime over a 3 month period.

Despite this, I keep my weekends busy with visiting friends and attending events. Ironically, I don't get much rest on weekends either.

It's easy to see how one's life turns into a work-rest-work cycle when doing these kinds of hours. You'll be old and nearly dead before you realize it. There are plenty of other things that I want to do but have absolutely no time to do them.

I'll be glad when this is all over.

Fortunately, I just got clearance to procure man-power from another division and will be roping in 2 people to help me and possibly getting one more person for some sort term experiments....

My supervisor is somewhat incompetent and scatter brained (lacking in good logical and planning skills) and unfortunately I don't have his experience with working on this project. Fortunately, he's going to be busy on another project and I'll be moving myself into managing the other guys coming in (whom are much older than I, but this will be interesting).

I've got a shot at making a name for myself if I can pull of a stunt to succeed at the reliability testing and crazy state that it is in right now. If it works out, I'll be asking the boss for a bonus for the winter and it'll be something nice to add to the resume.

Summarizing and organizing data is important

I'll be brief, because I am tired. Getting hauled into work on a Sunday and then working 3 subsequent 12 hour days is not my particular cup of tea. Especially while working under a supervisor that is scatter brained and with terrible decision making skills.

I've given up on trying to blend in by nodding my head and doing what I am told as I have had my ass handed to me by higher up managers for following someone else's bad train of thought. Allow me to summarize the situation:

I am pretty much working on a somewhat complicated process using semiconductor type fabrication technology to make micro-level devices. These devices are fabricated by depositing a variety of metals and semi-conductors in an arrangement of patterns. There are some complexities depending on the geometry of the patterns you deposit or etch out and there are inevitably design trade offs or risks that one might have to take when trying out a new process.

The problem is that the supervisor that I work under shows little sign of reasoning, nor does he do a good job of explaining his reasoning to me (which might be poor in the first place). The end result is that I have no clue on what this guy is basing his reasoning on and occasionally it seems that we are flailing a little bit when it comes to trying to be focused on getting a design challenged solved in a finite amount of time. The problem really kicks in when we have a upper level manager starts questioning our reasoning for the design and experimentation to which sometimes we cannot connect the dots to. This drives me utterly crazy because it feels like the work we do that can't be properly explained is time wasted.

Ugh.

I will admit that working on a somewhat complex device can be a little challenging, though I do not think the process is all that complicated. There are multiple ways of trying to fabricate a device and often a preliminary study is required to determine it's feasibility. The problem is that my supervisor is not particularly good at keeping track of what we don't know, what information is required and comparing them to our other options. The other problem is that I am still a little inexperienced and don't know how to work all the machines we use, meaning I just can't run off and do my own thing (yet).

Anyways, if you want to succeed at a project via making good decisions. Knowing the basics and summarizing the important details is vital and working with smart people is important. I think I am going to be pissed off working with this supervisor for the next few months.

Hot damn.

Farming out the work vs doing it yourself

I had a conversation with one of my coworkers yesterday with the difference between building equipment on your own or having an outside company do it for you or buying something ready made.

I am the kind of guy that likes to build things up on my own, especially if it's something likely to be expensive. For example, I'd much rather buy a few cheap chips and put together an electronic circuit to do some data logging or motor control instead of buying a full blown system that would run into a few hundred or thousands of dollars; especially for a personal project.

Working in a company, however, it isn't unusual to just go out and buy the equipment you need to get what you need done, freeing time up for yourself to stay focused on what you really need to do. But I find that there is a problem with this way of thinking however, especially when it comes to understanding the possibilities of what you can do with the right technologies or equipment put together.

Most people in my research group aren't technologically savvy. They know how to use the machines and the basic principles behind using them but that's about it. They don't know much about electronics or programming that might make their lives a whole lot easier. I have proposed in the past, cheap tunable circuits that could be used to drive some our devices while hooking up the outputs to a data logger to allow us to take detailed data. The circuits themselves would only cost about $10 each to make.

Unfortunately, some other person took over the project and elected to purchase a multi-channel driver circuit that costs about $100 to drive a single device. We are taking about an entire difference in magnitude in cost and massive parallelism is not possible because the driver circuit is the size of a brick where as mine is the size of a cell phone pad (and I can have several driving circuits on there too!). The system will also take a few months to procure too. I simply had to just shake my head at the whole ordeal.

The co-worker of mine has been needling me from time to time that it would be more expensive for the company, money wise to expend the cash for the development time of whatever I would be building instead of purchasing it.

For cheap devices, sure I can understand that of course, but when it comes to custom programs or equipment to help speed up the work I and others do, that kind of equipment just doesn't really exist as a prepackaged system and it's going to have to be assembled from the ground up. Having the work farmed out to an external company will at least costs in the $10,000 range if not in the $100,000 range and this is the kind of stuff that I would have a hell of a time getting approval from the higher ups for. I could do the whole thing for much cheaper, on my own without the excess bureaucracy. The problem is finding the time and the resources to pull it off, which sort of has me stuck.

The one other thing that I didn't like with my colleague's thinking is that I should let "pro's" handle work (ie circuits) that is outside one's expertise. I fully believe that that kind of thinking is wrong. This is coming from a guy that has ribbed me on making programs is "easy" and that if he wanted to, he could pick it up pretty fast. To put it honestly, I think he's full of shit.

I realize that having specialized skills is important, but having a lack of good understanding in different fields of knowledge is a fatal mistake. I've seen this plenty enough when researchers here screw up their spec sheets and they're not getting the expected response times from the custom made machines. I've had to step in a few times to devise work-arounds for whatever problems they were having.

Having a poor understanding of different fields is also a recipe for creative disaster and I believe it shows with the kinds of products I've seen from this company versus other companies. They've been off the ball when it comes to anticipating future teility to summarize my thoughts has gone to the crapper since my hiatus from writing. Ichnological trends and often plays catchup with other companies.

Anyways, it's been a while since the last time I did any sort of writing and my ab am going to have to rebuild these skills because I definitely feel that my cognitive skills have been in decline since stopping. Here is hopping that it gets better after I get back into the swing of things.

Knowing when to Quit

I already know that this job isn't what I love doing and spending too much time doing it is going to be a waste of time. There was an article where Steve Jobs had once said some thing to the effect of that if you don't love what you are doing then you are wasting your time. In a sense, it would be like going out with a girl that you kind of liked but never really loved.

I know that spending my time working on working on semiconductor based display systems is not for me. The whole process is slow, boring and repetitious. I don't like slaving over the same boring thing. It's time for me to start working on my exit strategy.

I already know that is it going to be tough for me, with the terrible financial winds blowing my way. I've already lost most of my life savings in the span of half a year. It hurts to see what I wanted to have done all been blown away. Like a beautiful dream being snuffed out of existence. It hurts.

My recovery will have to be on my own. I don't feel comfortable talking to my parent's about any sort of problem. It always feels like they are blaming me for whatever mistake I made. I know that already and that isn't going to help me feel better help fix things. I guess that is one of those things about my relationship with parents. As long as I gave them good results, I wouldn't be bothered by them and I was happy with that.

So here I am, on my own. I'm going to have to get things together.

I'm not going to stay in this company forever, I know that. The management team is inefficient and the communication is not really there. The people there don't feel revolutionary and it show in the products. I don't feel inspired. I have a general idea of what I like, I need to polish up on my skills. When I'm ready, I'm going to catch my break.

This is what I want, I'm not going to be a peon forever.