Category Archives: Reference

Filing cabinet for a digitized world.

The nature of wealth

My economics professor once said, money is a religion. The monetary system works because people have faith that they can exchange a piece of paper or zeros in their bank account with actual goods. Somehow most people don’t know or choose to forget this fundamental concept in economics.

Continue reading The nature of wealth

Hating what you do

It is easy to keep the employees happy as long as they have hope and sense of control over their life. As long as the company is growing, making lots of money, have a deep profit margin and the employee benefits from the success, the employees will be happy. They may still complain about long work hours or lack of work-life balance, but at least they can choose take it or leave it.

Continue reading Hating what you do

Barack Obama and the Nobel peace prize

If they could not find an agreeable winner, maybe they should simply cancel Nobel peace prize. Save the prize money for a new Nobel maths prize. At least Obama is humble enough to say he does not deserve the prize.

Continue reading Barack Obama and the Nobel peace prize

Take Smart Risks

Taking some smart risk is what makes life fun and worth to live/. Taking smart risk is like my motto: “thou shalt always one step outside of your comfort zone.” I guess traveling to India, learning shooting and skiing double black diamond are smart risks.

Continue reading Take Smart Risks

How to Beat Information Overload

Before we have all those fancy new email technology, can we simply tell the companies get rid of the aging MS Outlook and exchange server, move to a cooperate gmail server. Having powerful filter, tags and search function can help us organize our email a long way.

My solution to the problem of email overload is have two computers at work. Run your email client in your windows machine and work on your UNIX machine. When you really concentrate coding in UNIX, you will simply ignore the emails coming to your Laptop. If the email is urgent enough, you will get a phone call or someone will show up at your queue.

Continue reading How to Beat Information Overload