This weekend I didn’t went to Whistler, instead I went to Cypress Mountain today. Me and my ground of friends went to Whistler for a few consecutive weekends already, we really need a weekend to relax a bit, without having to wake up early in the morning and exhausted for the whole day. My cousin suggested that we can go to Cypress in the afternoon. Althought it is not as good as Whistler, I can use some excerise this week. The snow in Cypress is not bad today, provided that it got some fresh snow over the week. I am afraid this is probably the last weekend Cypress with good snow, Spring is coming. I took a lesson as usual although I didn’t expect much to learn. The level 6 in Cypress is easier than level 5 in Whistler. I have a present surprise in today’s class. When I mention I would like to take CSIA level 1 next week and ask the instructor to take a good look at my skill, I found out the instructor will be the examiner next week! At the end of the class, he said he cannot tell me whether I will pass, but he tell me to give it a try. It is really an encouragement. I sent in the registration form once I got home. Now, I hope the class is not full yet.

Today after work, me and Pat brought Charlie to vist Rocko for one last time. Charlie and Rocko are both golden retrivers, they have spent many times together when either one of the family went to vacation as the other family will take care of both dogs. The owner of Rocko is moving back to HK for good and going to give Rocko away. Rocko is jumpy as usual, seems doesn’t aware of his change of fate lying ahead. It is very hard to make him calm down and take a good picture with both dogs looking at the camera. We walked the dogs to a near by off leash area, let them play with each other for a while then walked back home. Charlie is happy seeing his friend. Before we left, we gave the dogs an expensive dog cookies that looks like a slice of pizza. I doubt whether the dogs know how to appreciate the different between a $1.5 cookie and normal cookie. They seems don’t really care what is given to them and finish eating in no time. Maybe the premium charged of having a nice looking cookie is more for the amusement of the dog owner than for the dog.

Tonight I have lots of questions in my philosophy classe. At one point, I have asked so much questions that the professor couldn’t handle some of my totally out of the box thinking and became so frustrated that he frightened to leave the classroom. Thanks to the eassy due in this class, I have to read ahead in the textbook about the philosopher the prof is teaching today. There are three options in the eassy assignment corresponds to three different philosophers. I feel like picking the one not yet covered in the lectures since it seems this his work is actually easiest to write. When I was reading the textbook, I am totally convinced by the thoughts of this philosopher, I couldn’t find anything wrong about his ideas. However, when the prof presenting the same idea in class, suddenly I see all the holes in his theory. In fact some of my insights are correct and the same questions are challenaged by later philosophers. I think when I am reading the text, my brain work 100% on absorbing the material. This is a CPU bounded process since my brain cannot keep up with my eyes. However when the same material is given in a presentation, it becomes a I/O bounded process and my brain has spare cycles to examinate the context. That’s why I can spot the problems in the theory and even have time to formulate the challenages. This technique can apply to toastmaster or presuasion. Your are goal is to feed your target audience at the right data rate so that they can fully understand your points but don’t have spare brain power to criticize them. Once the idea sinks into the brain for some time, there is a tendency for people to take it for granted. In another word, lower the guard of gate keeper of other people’s mind is very important when you want to convince someone.

Today I am stucked in all day long meeting again. The first meeting is really boring and useless, I go only for the free lunch. The speech is given from a remote site thru teleconference. Toastmaster said 60% of communicaiton comes from gesture and facial expression, no wonder one is interested in whatever he talks about. To make it worse, the slides are pages after pages of block diagrams. Who would care all those look alike boxes. I bet if there is no free lunch, no one will show up in that meeting. The afternoon meeting is a marathon meeting from 1:30p.m. to 5:00p.m. It is a training on one of the software tool that I went through a couple of years ago. I only need to be there to refresh my memory and join the discuss on making decisions. I brought some other work into the meeting room to better utilize my time. I found when I am locked up in a meeting room, I can actually concentrate better. I able to accomplish the schedule planning and task assignment for my part of the testbench. I suggested that we should all a laptop at work so we can bring it into the meetings. Using pen and paper to calculate time in the schedule is not fun. However that raise another question if everyone has a laptop and no one will pay attention to the meeting. I proposed we can block internet access inside meeting room. So people can only access the intranet and do actual work or listen to the meeting, both are equally boring I presume. The guy sit next to me said blocking internet is useless cause he will probably setup ssh session in his Linux box for turnelling to the internet. I guess it is in the blood of engineers eager to find ways to work around any obstacles.

My old boss has finally transfered to a different role, moved to feasibility work from verification. I have been working with this boss since I joined PMC. Good or bad, I am already accustomed to his management style. I have now reported directly to the manager of the project instead of a verification leader. Althought I report to a manager directly, I am in fact under the supervisor of the senior engineer leading the project’s verification. Since the manager is quite abstrate from my daily work, as long as I don’t raise any big issues requires his action, all he knows is whether I meet the schedule. So technically speaking, the senior engineer is my new boss. I have been working with him in previous projects. Unlike my old boss who stuck in the same position forever, my new boss started the same level as I do in the company during the downturn, and promoted 2 level in just 2 years. I think he is on the fast track to be a leader in the next round of promotion and probably a manager in a few years. To be fair, he was a leader in his previous company before it went bust. His promostion is quite natural with his level of experience. Another major difference is my new boss is more technical compontent than my old boss. If I make some stupid technical judgement, at least there is someone to double check me work and able to convince me why I am wrong. My new boss seems a nice guy and easy to work with. He started the toastmaster at work, which I am a keen member. I hope I will get better luck with my own promotion under this boss. Everyone knows, if you boss doesn’t move up, you can’t move up.