Category Archives: Daily Scribble

My random thoughts of the day.

Daily Scribble

How to explain what is computer engineering to 7th grade

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My friend is an elementary school teacher. Her grade 7 class is having career day to understand different kinds of jobs and she asked me as a guest speaker. I am a toastmaster, so I thought how hard can it be to speak in front of 20 kids. I was wrong. It is quite hard to explain what is my job to the little kids. I cannot use difficult words or they won’t understands. Many technical, which terms seems very natural to me, are like Martian language to them.

I did came prepared, but I did not prepare enough. I did not think hard enough trying explain my job in very simple language. I printed some photos Gameboy and iPhone circuit board. They seems quite exciting seeing how a Gameboy looks like inside. I also brought a chips to show them, but I doubt they understand exactly what it does. At the end of the day, I think they sort of know computer engineers build computer chips and there are computer chips inside every electronic device. I bet they are totally lost when I try to explain how we make build a chip. I even used the word fabrication.

The little kids asked me some questions about my job. Most of them are pretty general questions, like how’s my work environment like, what kind of education I need, working hours, etc. When I said I work flexible hours, I can come into work leave any time I like and I can take breaks whenever I want, the little kids seem very excited. Then I explained a little more that my job is project base, which means I have work long hours when the deadline is getting close. I tried to use handing in homework as an analogy, I hope some of them will get it.

I like talking to little kids about engineering.  I feel I have done some good service to my profession.  I wonder did my words inspired any kid grow up to be an engineer.

Daily Scribble

Window seat

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After the layoff last year, the size of my company has shrink quite a bit. The current office space seems to be too spacious with empty cubicles here and there. The management decide to lower the rental cost by terminating the lease of the 4th floor. As a result, we have a company wide seat reshuffle. The current location of my department is at the best spot in the building, a bright corner on the 3rd floor. It is obvious the prime location will transform into the corner office for the CEO. We were put one floor below. The cubicle move was over the weekend and I am just settling in my new cubicle.

I can’t complain about my new cubicle, it is right by the window. At first, I was a bit worry about the glare off my monitors; I may have to close the bind all the time. Luckily my windows is facing East, so I get ambient light instead of directly sun light most of the day. I can leave the bind open all the time and have natural lights shines on my cubicle. I don’t have to turn on my desk lamp and yet it is still bright enough for normal tasks. I found natural light is more comfortable for my eyes and I feel like staying in my cubicle more. I think having a window seat may even boost my productivity because I feel better at work!

Daily Scribble

The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Engineers

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Goldilocks. She went for a walk in the Silicon Valley. Pretty soon, she came upon a start-up company. She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in.

Inside the office, there are three workstations showing static timing analysis (STA) log files. Goldilocks was curious. She checked the log file from the first workstation.

“Setup time violation, the delay is too slow!” She exclaimed.

So, she checked the log file from the second workstation.

“Hold time violation, the delay is too fast!” She said.

So, she checked the last workstation.

“Ahhh, no timing violation, the delay is just right,” she said happily and taped out the design.

After she checked the three engineer’s workstations she decided she was feeling even more curious. So, she walked into the hardware lab where she was three circuit boards. Goldilock switch on the first circuit to see what happen.

“The chip does not boot, the power supply is too low!” she exclaimed.

So she switch on the second circuit.

“The chip booted and crashed, the power supply is too high!” she whined.

So she tried the last circuit.

“Ahhh, the chip boots up and start running, the power supply is just right!” She sighed. But just as she started running the firmware, it crashed with an stack overflow!

Goldilocks was very eager to get the system working this time, so she hook up the debugger. She ran the first program, but it pushed too much memory and crashed. Then she ran the second program, but it popped too much memory and crashed. Then she ran the third program and it was just right. Goldilocks gets the system up and running.

As she was tinkering the system, the three engineers came to work.

“Someone’s been messing with my STA log file,” growled the senior engineer.

“Someone’s been messing with my STA log file,” said the junior engineer.

“Someone’s been messing with my STA log file and the GDSII file is sent to TSMC!” cried the intern.

“Someone’s been switching on my circuit board”, growled the senior engineer.

“Someone’s been switched on my circuit board and burned my chip”, said the junior engineer.

“Someone’s been switched on my circuit board and it is up and running,” cried the intern.

The decided to look around some more and when they see the debugger output, senior engineer growled, “Someone’s been running my program,”

“Someone’s been running my program, too” said the junior engineer.

“Someone’s been running my program and she’s still there!” exclaimed the intern.

Just then, Goldilocks looked up and saw the three engineers. She screamed, “Help!” And she jumped up and ran out of the computer lab. Goldilocks ran out of the start-up office, and ran away from the Silicon Valley. And she never returned to the start-up of the three engineers.

Daily Scribble

focus group

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I went to an Air Canada focus group after work today. I was selected to participate in the focus group probably because I flew too much last year. I went back go Hong Kong in the beginning of the year, traveled went to India three times and went to Italy for my honey moon. The focus group is exactly like the focus group you see in TV. Eight of us gather in a conference sitting along a large table. The room has video recorder and microphone and one of the wall is a large single side mirror. I wonder what is behind the mirror, could it be the clip board men.

The focus group session is pretty relaxing and fun. The facilitator ask us some air travel related questions and we just have to express our opinion freely. We have some disagreements among the participants, but since there is no stake involve, we just resolve the difference with laughter. The focus group seems designed to test the reception of Air Canada’s new advertisement campaign. We were given four major themes: territory, change, heritage and customer; and many slogans to choose from. We have to identify which slogan fits best under which category and discuss the reason. Then we were divided up into teams and brain storm some ideas for an ad campaign based on the four themes. I suggested Air Canada changing its logo to re-brand its image. The old logo has been around for a long time and its about time to change for a new one. Somehow other people do not buy my idea.

We were trying our best to give honest answers, but I wonder how useful is the focus group. The ideas we came up with are pretty ordinary, if not merely common sense. We just complain about the poor service from our experience and asking more without changing the fare. If that is the information Air Canada is looking for, their marketing department can pretty much read complains on the web. I suspect the focus group is like a psychology experience, the real questions hides underneath the exercises. Probably the clip broad men is taking notes on our reactions instead of merely writing down our words. It is quite an interesting experience and I would like to participate in more focus group. What’s better than BS for two hours and earn $100 in cash? The pay is even better that my hourly wage working as an engineer!

Daily Scribble

Book keeping for books

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This weekend I am organizing my study room and Pat was merging our books. We have so many books that they fill up three Ikea bookcases. I used to have a list of my books but that list is very out of date. I decided to spend some time to categorize our books for a better record. I entered and sorted all the books to my virtual book shelves in Anobii. We have 355 books in total. Out of all the books, I read most of them but there are still 45 books waiting for me to read. Maybe I should stop buying more books for a while before I finish reading the books I already have.

My taste of reading is pretty board. One third of my collections are Chinese and English fictions, most of the are science fiction, popular novels and a full collection of Louis Cha. A quarter of my books are Anime or comics related, it also used up two rows in my bookshelf. The rest are non-fictions in various topics, with many titles on philosophy, religions, business and economics. I have some titles on history, popular science, culture and reading for the soul. Not to my surprise, I have no musics or arts related books. There is an old saying that the best way to know someone is to check out his books. I wonder what kind of person my books reveal about myself. I guess one thing that is pretty sure, I don’t have much artistic talent.