I was talking to an engineer friend today at lunch.? I discover I have a passion for automation, I just hate manual labour with a heart.? Last friday, I have to check 200 or so simulation results at work.? The reporting tool is not smart enough to take care of simulation failed on the first run but passed on the later runs.? I estimate it will take about at most half an hour to go through the simulation log files and identify the false negative results.? Since I hate brainless manual work so much, I end up spending a day writing a program to prase the log files and fix the simulation results.? The program is very elegant and compact.? I spent most of the time reverse engineer the internal data structure of the reporting tool so I can manipulate the result.? My boss also have to go through this painful and boring process fixing the report file.? He loves my small program.? Strictly speaking, it doesn’t make sense in term of time management.? Even both of us have to check the result every week, the time spent combined would still cost less time the time I spent in writing the program.? However, I find it more fun write a program to get the work done than work on it myself.

Today I went to the info session of a new course offered by my company together with a profressor from UBC.? The course is on analog and mix signal design basics.? I have put down those technical things many years.? The info session is held during the staff update.? It is one of the few staff updates I actually find interesting enough for me to go.? I even skip the CEO’s BS staff update from time to time.? More people come to the info session than I thought, I guess we are eagar to have free lessons.? The course is much toughter than I expected.? It requires more than 10 hours every week.? The class is four hours, then the prof. expect us spend 3 hours on the textbook and 3 hours on the assignment.? Then there is one hugh 40 hours project.? The work load is crazy for a non-credit course.? All you get is a useless certificate for completion.? It is essentially a condensed version of a graduate class.? Unless your work is directly related to the analog group, this is not the best investment of your time.? The program is this taking kind of math heavy courses is you will forget most of the stuff if you don’t use it.? I am sure I had learn most of the stuff in my undergrad, but obviously I gave them back to my prof.

Today is one of the rare occassion that all of my usual lunch buddies have plans.? I don’t want to eat in the cafeteria, in fact I can’t, because I have no cash.? So I went to bank and have a quick lunch in the food court.? I am surprised I end up talking to an old man in the line when I am getting food.? We even sat down and have lunch together.? Ok, I am bored and want to pratice my listening skill out of the blue.? Actually I am just listening most of the time, asking some question to direct the flow of conversation.? The old man is retired and he used to own one of the biggest dry wall company in BC.? I learnt alot about dry walls and how the business is run.? I found that if you just ask the right question, you can turn a supposingly boring conversation into quite an interesting one.? How fun can it be listening to an old man talking about his glorious days.? I direct his talks from boosting about himself to extract useful knowledge.? Almost everyone knows something that you don’t know and you may want to know those things just in case you may need it.? If you just ask, you may surprise that people are actually very willing to share their knowledge with you.

I have been studying in Bread Garden this week almost every night for my exam.? The music playing in the cafe doesn’t bother me much, since once I concentrated, I can ignore all the noise around me.? Pat came to study with me tonight.? She complains the hip-hop style music playing there is really noisy, doesn’t suit the atomsphere of a cafe.? Hip-hop music should only use in clubing.? Cafe should play easy listening, jazz or lounge music.? Starbucks has a music policy, which helps build it coperate image and strengthen its brand as a premium cafe.? I suspect Bread Garden does not have any music policy, it let the staffs play whatever music they like.? Those young part-time staffs would like hip-hop, but the customers won’t appreciate the noise.? People go there usually for study or chat with friends.? They would feel more welcome if the music selection is better.? The cafe may want to drive the customer away so they can free up more tables.? But this is quite unlikely since there are many empty seats, no need to rush people out.? I think the music policy of any retail or resturant is very important to its business.

I found having numbers in articles or speech really turn people off.? I observe it from my reaction when I am reading finance blogs and from today’s toastmaster meeting.? The normal flow of human reception of knowledge follows words instead of numbers.? It is ok to use number to emphasis your point or to stress your point.? However, throwing out number as merely unanalyzed data should be avoided.? The listen or reader have to stop his train of thoughts and switch his brain to analyze the data.? Most of the time, he will just lose concentration and the focus never comes back.? Number is helpful if you want to examine the points given by the writer or speaker.? Therefore it is preferable to put it in a seperate table in writing or use slide when giving a speech.? Actually there is only one thing worse than numbers, equations.? It is because equations require a lot more brain power to process if it is on paper and hopeless confusing if you try to say it.