Now I have the first draft of my thesis completed, the only thing left to do is wait for my surpervisor to review it, edit it and then cirulate to the examination commitee. I found I am so eager to gradunate that I can’t wait to get the defense done. I have to think what I want to do next. One natural follow up of my thesis is turning into into a paper and get it publish in a conference. Hopefully I can get it done over the X’mas holidays. I also go through the trouble to get the P.Eng title. I think PMC is paying for the application fee, I know enough P.Eng at work to sign my reference and most important it is a title that follow me for life. Although the P.Eng is really nothing more than merely a title you can put on the business card. On the side, I also have to catch up with the movies, TV series, books and animes I had stocked up due to lack of them. There are a few articles I would like to write on top of my usual review on anything I read or watched. I will probably write one about WTO, since it is the hottest topic in HK this week. I also want to complete my article on intellectural properties, it has been two years since I finished the first one third of it. For a longer term goal, I have to think about what course or program I would like to persuade. I am looking into a few part-time or even full-time programs. I don’t have enough information even to start thinking about my decision at this moment, gota do a bit more research on the prospect on those fields.

After a year of struggles, espeically the plainful process of writing out the research work, my thesis is finally completed. It is a 55 pages report that contributes to my master degree. I just sent out the thesis to my supervisor for review. I expect there will be some minor updates in the thesis, but there shouldn’t be any major rework, since I have been meeting with Dr. Hardy to report my progress every week. I will schedule my defense in mid January, and after that I am finally graduated. I have been spent 4 years in studying my master degree, where some of my friends are graduating in merely 2 years. Partly is due to I choose to work on my own research instead of turning a PMC document into a M.Eng report, and partly due to the fact that I am lazy. I don’t know my work is good enough for a M.ASc degree or not, althought it is pretty much the same stuff I have been working on. Anyways, I am happy with a M.Eng degree and getting a paper published would be a bonus nice to have. Now, I have to think about what should I do next for my life.

Tonight after dinner with Pat, I went to Jackson’s place for the annual X’mas party of friend’s at work. The focus of tonight’s party is definitely the XBox 360. The design of the wireless controller is pretty neat, but I am a bit disappointed at the games. I would expect the graphics output to HDTV would be stunning. It is pretty much the same as what I get from computer games. We spent a lot of time playing foosball. The Jackon’s foosball table is very different from the one at work. The ball moves much faster and the player’s position is a bit different. It require finer ball handling. My foosball practice everyday at work does count. Combination of Me and Louis is unbeatable. I also played pool, and by luck I won 2 out of 3 games. The highlight of the night is poker game with chocolate foundue dessert. I did ok tonight, just lost $4 in total. Now, after having so much fun tonight, I am back home to work on my thesis.

The story begins a few months ago when Uncle Bob, our CEO, sit at our table during lunch time. We ran out of topics to entertain him and I brought up the idea of having dual monitors will increase productive. I have been trying to get two monitors for a long time but due to the rigid IT policy, I have no luck so far. After the conversation, I forwarded him the research paper on larger screen and productivity, done by ATI, NEC and Micrsoft (the motivation is quite obvious) I don’t expect it will bear any fruit, but no harm try anyways. Then a month later two LCD monitors shows up in my cube one morning. I got an email from the IT department saying I am participate in the dual montors trial program, which it seems I am the only participant. Since then I heard nothing from the IT about this issue, I figured out they just give me two monitors to shut me up.

Last week after the stuff update, I saw another team member talking to Bob about the disappearing of the word Christmas in the company. Somehow I feel I should talk to Bob again about dual monitors. He is surprise to hear that nothing is happening, and he assure me he will follow up on this since it will definitely increase productivity and moral. The result is I have an meeting with the VP of the IT department this morning. He asked me to give feedback about the benefits on dual monitors. Of course I highly praise the use of dual monitor. Since the VP himself is an engineer, he totally understand my concern. However he said that he need some numbers to justify the cost of getting a second monitor to the CFO to get his approval. Getting a second monitor for every engineer cost 300k, quite a large amount. I thinked for a while, then I proposed to calculate the cost of a second monitor in reverse. Here is the equation:

350 (cost of the monitor) / 3 (years to depreciation) / 200 (work days per year) / 50 (average hourly wage of an engineer) = ~1 minute (the time need to be save per day to justify the cost of the 2nd monitor)

Having a second monitor definitely save more than 1 minute per day, and therefore it is justified. The VP told me that once he get the approval from CFO, he can start company wide deployment next month. I feel I had done something really good for all my fellow colleagues.

Horlick is one of my favourate drinks since I was a little kid. Everytime when I have to choose the drink that comes with the lunch combo at Mui Garden, I always pick Horlicks. Horlick is made form malt, and usually come in powder form. According to the nutrition label, Horlick is a health drink with lots of vitamin and minerals. You just have to add several spoonful of Horlick powder sugar and milk to hot water to make a cup of Horlick. Pat recently bought me a box of 3-in-1 Horlick, which also include milk power and sugar in the same package. The first thing to do every morning, is make myself a cup of Horlick. Now, after the box is finished, I think I will bring a bottle of Horlick to work. The 3-in-1 is quite expensive, about 50 cents a bag, where a big bottle of Horlick powder only cost several bucks and I can get milk and sugar in the caferteria. Mm… so yummy.