All posts by hevangel

Daily Scribble

surrender to God

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Today is the first faith session organized by the Archdiocese of Vancouver for everyone going to the World Youth Day. Out of my surprise, everyone form our parish team went to the session, and we were probably the biggest group there. The session start off with ice breaking function, which it’s a good way to know more new friends that you may have to depend on in Koln. During the event, the MC tricked me to think that I have the chance to meet the new Pope representing Vancouver. I was over joyed and jumping up and down, then really let down after knowing it’s just a gag. The event is followed by a sharing from a guy, Paul, who walked from Vancouver to Denver as part of his pilgrimage in 1992 WYD. In his talked, he mentioned about how he learn the lesson of surrender to God and have to react upon surrender.

The 2nd part of the message about reaction to God enlightened me most. Usually the message about surrender to God stopped after the first part, only saying you have to listen to God and be glad on whatever he gave you. I never agree with the idea of predestination. It happened during his trip to Denver, when he and his friend rested in a national park and to prepare their spirituality, it was raining non-stop for the whole week. At first they pray for good weather, later they realize the heavy rain must be God’s will, so they started to accept it. They vowed to take everything God gave them gracefully without a question. After a few days, they finally able to start a fire to get warmth, somehow the wind just suddenly change direction and blow all the smoke to them. They try to accept the smoke at first, but realize they will be choked to death if they don’t move. Here the lesson of surrender to God take a new turn, after surrender and accepted what had happened is not enough, you also have to give a response to God. Suffering itself is only a mean to an end. The key is to find out what God really prepared for you, so you can skip or shorten the suffering part. Blindly take suffering as a gift per se is plain silly.

Daily Scribble

Car wash and BBQ

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Contrary to last night, I went to BBQ at Jackson’s place with a big group of colleagues tonight. I arrived a bit earlier so I also washed my car using Jackson’s fancy car washing equitments. He got everything a car washing shop has, like the pressure wash, special rinsing hose, waxing machine and blow dryer. The food tonight is mainly leftovers from last week. In addition to just eating we played a few games of pool, watched two Stephen Chow’s old movies at the same time as playing boardgame and poker. I found I enjoy spending the night in a house party more than going out to clubbing. I’m really getting old.

Daily Scribble

night life

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I think I am really getting old. Tonight I went to a bar, Bar None, in Yale Town with Pat and her friend, I found myself not really enjoying going to those places, I think the music is too noise and meaningless, the people there are doing nothing really interesting except maybe someone is trying to pick up someone. I felt tried and bored at 12a.m. already. I remember I used to go clubing quite alot in university days, and I did enjoy it. Now, I would rather go to a jazz bar or piano lounge with life performance. Why people like to hang out in the street at night? I can no longer understand it although I was part of them. I prefer to stay home to get some work done or catch up with my readings and writings. I always think myself is an extrovert but it seems I had became more like a typical introvert engineer.

Daily Scribble

Talk to the CEO

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Today during lunch Bob Bailey, the CEO of PMC, sat with our table. I knew this is going to happen when we picked his usual table in the first place. This is the first time I had ever talked to him since I joined the company. He is pretty much up to my expectation, a typical CEO. Can’t really say I like him or dislike him, he just exists, so my concern is how to make him most beneficial to myself. Most of the conversation are weather talks, nothing much other than bragging long hours or questions about the prespective of our products. His response is pretty typical too. At last I put up my courage to bring up the idea of giving two monitors to every engineer to increase productivity. He seems quite interested in the idea and asked me to give him follow up information. So I wrote up a memo in the afternoon and send it off to him together with the reseach paper I had. I don’t know what this will lead to, probably he will just throw it away without looking. If he indeed like the idea, then finally I will have dual monitors after trying so many times. I have nothing to lose anyways.

Daily Scribble

hacked

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I’m so upset today, my website at home got hacked and the front page is defaced. I suspect it is due to a loop hole in the Apache server since port 80 is the only port opened to my linux box thru the router. So I patched Apache to the latest version at once and re-store my portal page. Luckily the SQL database is not affected or I’d lose all my recent articles. I just don’t understand the mind of those hackers, what do they gain from wacking others’ web server? Why can’t they spend their talent in more useful place, such as hacking the bank system for real money or hack and leak out secret documents for our amusement? Targeting amature web hosts for their low security linux box is not a real accomplishment at all. After I had my thesis completed, I’ll definely re-install my linux box to tighten up the security, and probably give my website a renovation which I always wanted to.