My PC is dead.? Somehow the partition table of the c: drive is corrupted.? The good news is c: only store program executables.? All my data are intact in d: and e: drive, plus all my files are backed up in my linux box.? I am glad that I took the trouble to setup the backup utilities.? I can still do my daily works using my laptop, which only has minial installation.? Now I face a delimma.? Should I spend my time re-install the old computer or should I simply setup a new machine.? My computer is over 2 years old, almost time to retire.? Anyways, I won’t do anything about it until I finish my exam on wednesday.? It bothers me a bit my main computer is down, but it is not a show stopper.? I can still do 80% of my daily task as usual, except I can’t download BT.? Sigh…? I feel some unfortunate today.

Today I don’t have to go to work.? Instead I have a training session in SFU downtown campus.? The training is paid by the PMC but offered by a 3rd party training company.? The title of the course is working smart with Microsoft Outlook, which is a bit misleading.? This is actually a course about time management techniques and how to apply those techniques using functions in outlook.? The theory part is mostly common sense.? I have heard those time management rules of thumb many times already.? Sort the tasks into four corners of urgent/non-urgent and important/unimportant, then take difference action from act on it immediately, pospone it, let someone do it or simply ignore it.? The course also teach us how to plan our day around the calender and task list, stay way from the in box, etc.? The instructor showed us are some neat tricks in Outlook, which can be quite handy.
However I won’t force myself to follow those rules.? I believe in fun and flexibility is more important than pure raw productivity.? Productivity is a hygiene factor in overall evaluation of your preformance.? As long as it is above the reasonable standard so that it won’t drag down your rating, any marginal increase in productivity has diminish return.? Anyways, 3rd party training is a free employee benefit, so I gota take it to get most worth out of my work.? Having a day in a classroom with free breakfast and afternoon cookie, chatting to different people from different companies and learning a few somewhat usefull tricks always beats being chained to your cubicle at work.

I am having lunch with a friend and we talked about? how come there are so many single female engineers.? According to the law of supply and demand, the abnormally high boy to girl ratio in engineeer faculty should let them pick all the guys they want.? My friend pointed out one fact to explain the violation of the law of supply and demand.? In engineering faculty, the guys don’t treat the girls as girls, we simply treat then as guys.? As a result, people from other faculties don’t treat them as girl as well and learnt to stay away from them.? It also seems that the lucky female engineers who able to find husbands all married to engineers.? Most male engineers learnt to stay away from female engineers.? If the girls out there are much better, why limit yourself to the supposingly competitive pool of female engineers.? Since the female engineers, who has high qualitifaction, are also very selective in looking for guys, the lucky few female engineers who happen to find a husband usually get a good guy.? These two effects combined, the market of female engineer is high in price but low in transaction.? The premium and low volumn combined further discourage other non-engineer males who have lots of choices to enter this market.? Here is my advice to all little girls studying in highschool.? If you want find your Mr. Right, get marry and live happily ever after, don’t study engineering.

My current project is almost finish.? Hopefully it will be taping out next week.? The director gather the team together today and talk about our next project.? We havn’t heard much about the new project, since it is still in feasibility, the executive give it a green light.? The new project will be a scale up version of an existing product, in other words, the same old stuff again.? Somehow I am already indifference to the whether the project is on an exciting technology area or not, since this company has no really cutting edge stuff anyways.? The meeting briefly talk about the feature, the challanges, reuse blocks, die area, technology process etc.? I spoted an irony contradiction in the presentation slides.? The powerpoint included a marketing slide that compare our device with the competitors.? Under our strength, it listed PMC has strong analog expertise unmatched by other FPGA or ASIC providers.? Then in the next few slides on development details, it said that we will purchase analog IP from 3rd party vender because our in-house mix signal group is too busy to take the job.? I pointed out the contradiction and everyone laughed.? The director commented that we cannot trust everything comes from marketing, it is a marketing slide afterall.? I guess marketing has the reputation of not telling the whole truth, to the customer and to the engineers.

Recently, I am having some discussion on education reform in various internet forums.? Some people beleive that the current education system force school children to learn too many useless subjects.? Out of the 10 or so subjects teach in highschool, most people won’t even use the knowledge form more than a few of them.? It is a waste of time and resource for the school children learning something there is useless in the future.? I object against the idea that we should teach less knowledge to school children.? In highschool, not many people know what they want to be when they grow up.? Even for the few who set their goal, it cannot garuntee their career will unveil as they planned.? Since it is impossible to know ahead of time what subject is useful to which children, the safest bet is teach them the basics of every subject.? After learning the basics and have a taste of each subject, the school children can choose the subject he like to focus on in university.? If his plan doesn’t work out, at least he is equiped with the essential ideas to self learn whatever knowledge he may need in the future.? The school cannot garuntee every thing a student learn will be useful.? However, the school can give the essential tool box of knowledge allow the student survive in the society after graduation.? How many knowledge tools the student will ever use, all depends on how well the students use those tools.? If some tools are left untouch, it is not the fault of the school, rather it is the fault of the student who cannot come up with a creative way to utilize it.