Tracy Arm Glacier

Tracy Arm Glacier

Originally uploaded by mothernature

This picture is amazing! Makes me want to book a trip to Alaska like right now.

 

Finally got this blog up and going again

After spending about 2 hours choosing themes and getting Live Writer to work with WordPress, I have finally decided to go back on this forgotten blog. I had to pick between my blog on blogspot and WordPress but I decided to go with the one that work best with Live Writer.

Thinking that I would probably spend some time writing some code on the blog, I found a couple of code snippet plugins for Live Writer. Unfortunately, none of them work that well with WordPress, after excruciating search for a solution, I decided to ditch color-coding and the fancy line numbering and just use <pre> instead. Luckily, the code plugins for Live Writer supports just pasting in <pre> format and all I had to do is to make <pre> look a little nicer by customizing the CSS.

Can you see me? This is a line of code.

Doesn’t look all that bad but obviously nothing compared to the blogging site on CodeBetter.com or any of those professional coding/blogging sites. The stylesheet for <pre> is pretty simple:

pre {
border:solid 1px blue;
font-size:1.3px em;
color:blue;
background:#FFFFB3;
margin:10px;
padding:10px;
}

Ha, I am finding use for the code tool already. Enjoy!

 

Posting from iphone at 20,000 ft

Ever seen the movie the clockwatchers? That’s how I feel right now on my Houston-Seattle flight at 12:35am wherever-I-am timezone. The fact that I lost my book on the previous flight certainly did nothing to help me pass the time, so I am clinging to my iPhone and the aircraft-mode to save me from absolute agony of utter boredom.

The offline mode of iPhone app wordpress is actually pretty cool but would work a lot better if it had a landscape mode because the keyboard by default is simply too small for me. As the only application besides the default iPhone apps to have an offline mode, it is a very interesting way to pass time.

By the time I get to Seattle, it will be 12am Seattle time and what awaits me is a big fat parking fee at the airport. In addition, I will have to drag my car and myself through the deserted streets of 12am seattle with my eyelids taped to my eyebrows. However, I believe I still have some of that cookie-n-cream icecream left in the freezer and I will not be denied of the sweet rewards after such a tiresome labor day weekend.

 

Does experience really matter? Part 2

It’s great that you read just about every single leadership and management books out there. It’s great that you work well with peers and have successfully lead teams to success against all odds. Even if you have accomplished in two years what many managers could not in ten, there is still a significant gap between you and the dream management job.

Majority of what it takes to be a good manager is in the grey area. In another word, 1+1 doesn’t always equal to 2 as textbooks state. Formulas that have been touted as “the right way” doesn’t always work for everybody.

For example, just yesterday, my manager gave a project management training session to our team and one of the first lessons we learned was picking the right people for the project team. As usual, part of the session consisted of a list of what you should do and shouldn’t do, picking people with the best attitudes vs. picking people with the best abilities, and so-on. After the session, I talked to my manager about answers that weren’t answered in the session, I.E. the grey areas, the what-ifs. There was only one good answer to these grey area questions: experience.

The conclusion of the two part series in experience is that even though in our web 2.0 era where under-30 seems almost like a job requirement for a successful entrepreneur, experience still determines how far you can go.

 

Support Microsoft’s humanitarian causes

If you use Microsoft MSN Messenger, ever notice that some people are using the weird “I’M” icon on their screen name? Did you know that for every person using that icon, Microsoft donates a portion of MSN Messenger’s advertising revenue to humanitarian causes? Pretty neat, huh?

In order to do this, all you have to do is to change your MSN display name to include the icon. The codes for the icon correlates to the humanitarian organization Microsoft donates to.

Text Code	Cause
*red+u	American Red Cross
*bgca	Boys & Girls Clubs of America
*hsus	Humane Society of the United States
*naf	National AIDS Fund
*mssoc	National MS Society
*9mil	ninemillion.org
*sierra	Sierra Club
*help	StopGlobalWarming.org
*komen	Susan G. Komen for the Cure
*unicef	U.S. Fund for UNICEF

 

For more information, you can checkout the MSN site here.

Thanks!

 

Does experience really matter? Part 1

I used to be a pretty rebellious little fresh grad who didn’t give a jack about more experienced managers or senior developers because I thought due to the speed at which technology is changing, experience won’t amount to much.

Boy, was I WRONG

Well, kindda. Technologies do change at an amazing pace and paradigm that shifts left and right do make old concepts and skills obsolete in certain way. Some of the senior developers and managers really do know nothing about the way technology is going. The only difference is that it doesn’t matter anymore. Technology expertise matter less and less as you mature. Later on, it’s all about the soft skills.

How do you get a project from beginning to finish? How do you make sure customers are satisfied with your result and pay you money? It’s no longer about whether the if-statement is at the right spot or if the right architecture is being used. Rather, it’s about getting the team to work together and getting customers happy about changes made to their businesses.

So next time when you think you know better than your boss, look at things from a broader perspective and you will find out that you are just playing a small role in a big game.

 

Software industry in China: A bridge too far…

No one knows for sure but one magazine article I read few years back put the number of software companies in Shanghai at 3,000. (Forgot which article) Yes, three thousands in Shanghai alone. At first, it was very difficult for me to take that number for real but after spending 1 year in Shanghai I have started to believe it.

There are no shortage of talent or passion in China and many people are eager to something great. When you look at India and China, both on the same track of economic development. Yet in software industry, India is light years ahead of China in terms of industry maturity and business sense.

I walked into Shanghai Pudong Airport in a cold November day of 2005, hoping to turn the table in my lifetime. Little did I know at that point, the task is harder than I imagined by an order of magnitude. Some people tell me that the proficiency of English language in India is what contributes to great divide. Others compared the high-tech development to a race with China taking the hardware road and India taking the software road. I never directly disagreed with them (some of them are my superiors, yuck), but I knew it deep in my heart that was just bollocks (bs).

Before I put forth my own view on why there are 3,000 software companies in Shanghai and yet not one company in China can compete with Tata, Satyam or Infosys, I would like some input from other people out there.

Thanks.

 

BTW, I will start posting a lot more from now on. =)

 

$$$$$$$$

Yep, that’s money.

Does wonder for humanity, really. There are no dreams to be had, only money. No ambition, no career; only money to be made. All of us have a small calculator in our mind, it’s not for thinking about what we want to do next, it’s about how to adjust our position so we can make more money fast and easy.

We are not in highschool anymore, ambition and dream are now luxuries that we must fight for. Most of us lose hope somewhere between age of 30 and 40 and from that point on, our job is to dash other people’s hope.

It’s especially true in China, you have people from older generation (entering 50 now) who have experienced tremendous setbacks in the earlier years of the People’s Republic. Now they expect the younger generation to experience the same, preaching how we must abandon our dreams and ambitions and of course, make as much money as possible.

Life takes interesting turns, don’t obey the elders. You can respect them, but they live in the past and no path in life is taken more than once. If you wonder what it’s like to abandon your dream, take a look at them.

 

The Ying and Yang in China

So I am not going to complain about China today, I am going to say something good for once. =)

The Chinese society is a lot like Ying and Yang believe it or not, so much it’s almost ironic. Sure, in China, you get treated like dirt everywhere you go (unless you are white and are notably rich), but tight bonds among family and friends is nothing like I have ever seen. People go extra depth for friends and family here. I guess it’s due to the fact that they can’t trust anybody but their friends and family.

Yeah, I still got a lot to learn. I am relatively too selfish and “American” to be one of them. When I go to relatives’ places, I go whenever I wish and often empty handed.

Out of a world of distrust and darkness, the amount of kindness and friendship offered by a few is really noticeable. Like how in the Ying Yang, as the darkness start to envelope you, the small circle of white is really noticeable. =D

 

 

Slow

So I have been in China for almost 2 months now; it’s certainly quite a bit different from the west. For one, hardly anybody can get anything done, the bigger the organization, the slower it is, despite the fact that every kindergartner can memorize the entire periodic table.

And of course, that’s not all, the level of distrust among people here is unbelievable. On one hand, you have the local Shanghainese who treat other Chinese as crap and foreigners like gods; on the other hand, you have the rural populations moving into the city looking for low paid work and getting blamed for every single problem in Shanghai.

Now, you got kindergartners who can memorize the periodic table and nobody who believe in them, and you have a city called Shanghai.

Why am I in Shanghai you ask? The other day, I was yelled at by my uncle for coming to Shanghai, abandoning a well-paid job in US, and not understanding “the ways things are”. Yes, “the ways things are”, the answer to every problem in Shanghai. I am here to answer it somewhat differently.