Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

Free iPod Shuffle, Bridge

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TD bank is giving out free iPod shuffle to any customer switch from another bank. The 512MB iPod shuffle cost about $120, and it is attractive enough for us engineers to go thru the troubles setting up a new account. Since most of us has a main account with lots of payments, credit cards, investment and obviously we don’t want to touch it for merely a hundred buck. We defeated the original purpose of this promotion scheme by first creating a new account in a third bank, then let TD close the newly created account. So this afternoon I first created an account in BMO, and walked over to TD to setup yet another account, while my true main account in CIBC is untouched. I feel sorry for the poor guy working in BMO, wasting his time serving a non-customer. The good thing is I even get a 100 air miles points with the new BMO account. At the end of the day, TD didn’t get real market share, but I get a free iPod. I really doubt anyone actually fall into this promotion and switched their main account. Maybe a 60GB iPod photo could move me to do so, maybe.

Tonight after dinner, Jackson and I try to teach Chris and Jason how to pay bridge. It seems that Jackson had tried to teach them before and they said they are scared by the complexity of the game. I was wondering how hard it is to teach someone bridge and get they start playing right away. I said 5 minutes should be enough, and start explaining the rules. While I was explaining, Jackson had a lots of says and I realize why Chris and Jason had the wrong impression of bridge. Jackson tried to dump too much information in one go. Instead of teaching them the basic rules and start having fun, Jackson go into details on the bidding and playing strategies. No wonder they thought bridge is boring. My method of learning is always by playing to gain experience. The more you play and the more times you lose, you will then realize you need to learn some orthodox techniques. In this way, you are eager to learn more in order to win, instead of forced to absorb lots dry materials that you half understand.

Daily Scribble

Weed

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There are some nasty weed growing in the drive way of Pat’s house. They grow so big that some really long branch with thorns are hanging over the drive way. Everything I drive by, the branch will touch my car and make some very unpleasing sound, although I haven’t notice any scratch so far. Tonight after I walked Charlie, I finally can’t stand the weeds anymore. I went into the garage and take out the big scissors. I chop off every branches I could find. Unfortunately due to the body of the plant is hidden behind some berry bushes, I couldn’t kill its root. Some of the branch has flower buds on it, I wonder what kind of flower would that be. I couldn’t pick up the branch with bare hand since it will poke my fingers. I have to wait a few days until the branches dry up then I can easily fold them into the bag. What’s the use of this kind of weed to human and to the nature? Someone should genetic modify this plant to make a new release to fix up the problems.

Daily Scribble

Bridge

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I had learned how to play bridge in F.1, but when my partner immigrate, I stopped playing. I had play casual games during lunch in Waterloo, but didn’t get very involved since I can’t always commit to the game, so I am the substitute player when others are busy. After putting down bridge for almost 6 years, I had chance to play it again today. We were trying out a new Korean restaurant and their service is really slow. While we were waiting, Jackson suggested play cards to kill time. By chance everyone in the table knows how to play bridge, so we opted for the sophisticated game than playing big-2. I had forgotten most of the bidding convention, all I still remember is 13 points to open, 7 points to answer, and 1NT opening means strong hand. I tried so hard to recall the meaning of 1C, but without success. Anyways, bidding is really easy for me today, since I had no hand with more than 7 points, I can only pass. I hope I get more chance to play bridge, but have to establish a stable partnership first.

Daily Scribble

Hainanese Chicken

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I am having Hainanese chicken as dinner the second time this week. There are many reasons. First the hainanese chicken at So Kei taste very good and they are boneless. Second So Kei is really close to Pat’s place, only around the corner. Third, I am too lazy to cook dinner, especially I know there will be free (but crappy) lunch tomorrow at work. I am wondering, will there be any side effects of eating too many Hainanese chicken? Albeit, I still don’t feel like cooking at Pat’s place. I am not familiar with the strove and the cooking utensils. The fridge has no space to store food. It is full of useless bottles of sauces. I only need use the very basic ingredients, soya sauce, cornstarch, salt, sugar, pepper, sesame oil and chicken powder.

Daily Scribble

Myth of reuse

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In the quarterly design analysis meeting, the manager of a cancelled project blamed the failure partly on the delay in verification. In that project, the verification schedule is underestimate at least by a factor of four. I think his comment is not totally fair to the verification team. One of the problem rooted from the myth of reuse. When there is some existing infra-structure available, the management just assume there is zero effort in reusing them in a new project. The reality is most of those so-call reused component are not structured nicely for reuse, and worse many of them lacks proper documentation due to schedule pressure. A true reuse component should have the quality of verification IP purchased from 3rd party vendors. Anything thing short of that quality should use a different term instead of reuse to stop confusion in project planning. Most of the time that falls into the port category, which require complete understand of the original code in order to use it with the new device. Sometimes that should be categorize as salvage, which is marginally better than writing fresh code. Mislabel salvage as reuse will only spell disaster later in the project