My current project is almost finish.? Hopefully it will be taping out next week.? The director gather the team together today and talk about our next project.? We havn’t heard much about the new project, since it is still in feasibility, the executive give it a green light.? The new project will be a scale up version of an existing product, in other words, the same old stuff again.? Somehow I am already indifference to the whether the project is on an exciting technology area or not, since this company has no really cutting edge stuff anyways.? The meeting briefly talk about the feature, the challanges, reuse blocks, die area, technology process etc.? I spoted an irony contradiction in the presentation slides.? The powerpoint included a marketing slide that compare our device with the competitors.? Under our strength, it listed PMC has strong analog expertise unmatched by other FPGA or ASIC providers.? Then in the next few slides on development details, it said that we will purchase analog IP from 3rd party vender because our in-house mix signal group is too busy to take the job.? I pointed out the contradiction and everyone laughed.? The director commented that we cannot trust everything comes from marketing, it is a marketing slide afterall.? I guess marketing has the reputation of not telling the whole truth, to the customer and to the engineers.

Recently, I am having some discussion on education reform in various internet forums.? Some people beleive that the current education system force school children to learn too many useless subjects.? Out of the 10 or so subjects teach in highschool, most people won’t even use the knowledge form more than a few of them.? It is a waste of time and resource for the school children learning something there is useless in the future.? I object against the idea that we should teach less knowledge to school children.? In highschool, not many people know what they want to be when they grow up.? Even for the few who set their goal, it cannot garuntee their career will unveil as they planned.? Since it is impossible to know ahead of time what subject is useful to which children, the safest bet is teach them the basics of every subject.? After learning the basics and have a taste of each subject, the school children can choose the subject he like to focus on in university.? If his plan doesn’t work out, at least he is equiped with the essential ideas to self learn whatever knowledge he may need in the future.? The school cannot garuntee every thing a student learn will be useful.? However, the school can give the essential tool box of knowledge allow the student survive in the society after graduation.? How many knowledge tools the student will ever use, all depends on how well the students use those tools.? If some tools are left untouch, it is not the fault of the school, rather it is the fault of the student who cannot come up with a creative way to utilize it.

I went to a wedding of Pat’s church friend tonight. Both of the newly wed are engineers, so the wedding is very well organized, although a bit boring. There are two special things I like most about this wedding. First is the wedding gift is very pratical, it is a small calender of 2007 with photos taken by the groom. Unlike other useless gifts I got from other weddings, I will actually keep this gift and use it. All other useless gifts go straight to the garbage can. Second is on each table, the couple leave a sheet of nicely printed paper for the guests to write them some love advices. The table with the best advice will have special gift from the new wed. It is a neat way to give your blessing or simpily some humour to the couple. Since the couple are engineers, I wrote my advice in programming code:


if (argue == 1) {
  if (wife == right) {
    husband = sorry;
  } else {
    husband = sorry;
  }
} else {
  while (1) {
    happy = husband + wife;
   }
}

We had moved our default resturant for lunch every friday from Mui Garden to North Garden. When we were paying the bill today, we bargained a 10% discount. PMC is one of the biggest group among their customers. It seems we had already forgot Mui Garden due to its lower quality of food. However, in order to maintain a health competition between the resturants, we still have to visit Mui Garden once a while to keep it alive. If Mui Garden end up closing its door due to all the customers go to North Garden, then there is no one there to keep North Garden’s food quality food in check. That is precisely what happened to Mui Garden. For a long time, it was the only eatable cafe close to work, because of the lack of competition, the food quality goes down. It goes down so much that we all ditch it once there is a better alternative. Somehow it sounds like the fate of PMC storage division as well. HP keep us as a 2nd tier provider, gives us some small order so that they can use us to bargain with LSI.

Today after work I went to check out ski equitment with my friend.? The guy whom I just converted from snowboard to ski thanks to my ski lessons.? He has a budget in mind, looking for some bargain deal on boot and ski.? The sales let him try out different boots and very cleverly let him try out a few expensive models.? The feel of wearing a nice boot is much better than wearing a cheap boot.? Once you have tried them out and notice the difference, it is hard to go back to the cheaper model.? Now he got a nice boot, he is tempted to get a nice pair of ski to match his boot.? A pair of $200 ski doesn’t look good on a pair of $300 boots.? At the end, the sales almost sold him equitment doubled his original budget.? Luckily my friend is not planning to get it today, so he can think again tonight and hopefully he will realize he don’t need such a fancy equitment. The next time a sales ask you to try on something above your budget, saying you don’t have to buy it, just try it out for a comparison.? Don’t falls into the trap!? You have to remeber the increment improvement does not always justify the price tag.? Buying a cheaper model and replace it every 2 years is better than buying an expensive model and use it for 4 years.

I just heard the news one of my friends at work quited PMC and joined BRCM. Most people congratulate him that he can leave the living hell of ESD. I have been talking to a few people about this news. It seems everyone agree that we don’t have to ask him why he leave, instead we should ask ourself why we stay. So the consensus is that people stay because there is no better offer out there. The golden handcliff symdrome. High pay is the only reason not leaving the company. I have talked to this friend. He said that he had a struggle before accepting the offer. BRCM is a remote office in Vancouver, while PMC is the headquarter. In case of a down turn, remote office have a higher danger being shut down than the HQ. He have calculated that BRCM should be safe for another year, while PMC is safe for another 2 years. The problem is if the company is going down, it is not safe in even in the HQ. After he hands in the resignation letter, usually a normal boss will say a few words to wish him luck and try to perusade him to stay half-heartly. His boss has the reputation being one of the worst manager in the company, he actually spent two hours trying to talk him out using FUD. At the end, the conversation more or less ended in his boss cursing him taking the new job will be worse than staying here. If I were him in this situation, instead of passively listening to all the BS, I put up my best arguments to convince my boss that he is wrong.

I just received the comments from my philosophy professor on the second draft of my final essay.? I think my paper is in a much better shape.? I don’t get any paragraphics crossed out by the professor.? He only asked me to elaborate some of my points that need clearer expression.? He also points out a few logically fallacies I had made.?? Actually, those are not real fallacies.? It is just my wording is unclear and makes them look like fallacies.? I rewrote those few points and my essay should be bug free.? The professor had hinted that if I can fix all the problems he pointed out and do not introduce any new problems, I may get a A for the essay.? In other words, the essay already worth a B.? I have no confidence to tighten up all the loop holes in my arguments.? Especially when my professor shows sympathy to socialism where my arguments in the paper all comes from the capitalism point of view.? In the first draft, I criticize the arguments from Marx makes no business sense.? The profossor replies that of course Marx has no business sense, he is a communists!

I have been posting my articles and discussing social and political issues in HK indepedent media for a while. I was attracted to that place at first for its ideology. It aims to report different voices in the society that the mainstream media usually ignored. It is good to know more about the marginalized groups. It was a fair and open platform to discuss government policy in the beginning. However, slowly I found its nature changed, it is no longer indepdent. It become an alternative reality for the exterme leftist social movement supporters. Political discussion often turns into flaming war, using ad hominem attacks instead of valid arguments. I am one of the few supporters for rightist policy and became their target. If the leftist won’t compromise and unwilling to discuss logically. By using verbal violence to shutup different opinions, they are essentially committing the same mistake they are accusing the mainstream media. I am not a pacifist, I believe in force is only way to deal with the barbarians who can’t reason with. I finally understand why their voice are systemically ignored by mainstream media. If they are unreasonable to begin with, it is only a waste of time to disscuss with them. The only problem is how can we prevent the indifferent majority in the center being misled by their false ideology.

Today I went to Whistler first time for the season.? We have early snow this year in Vancouver, Whistler has some good powder runs.? I figured that leaving 1 hour early and come back 1 hour early actually give us an extra hour of skiing time.? We left around 6:30a.m., by 9a.m. we are already having our first run.? 1 hour earlier make a big difference.? There is no line up at the gondola, which save us at 30-45 minutes.? We are having a early lunch around 11p.m., again there was no line up in the cafeteria.? We didn’t try to sqeeuze in the lift for the last run, we just took it easy and ski down at 3p.m.? Leaving Whistler around 4p.m., when there still some sun light.? The traffic is not very bad, we arrived home around 6:15p.m.? What a perfect day!? I gave some ski lesson to one of my friends.? I only gave him 1 excerise to work on, compare to 2-3 excerise in a normal 2 hour lesson.? I can see him improved quite a bit in just one day.? He never learnt how to ski properly, so he built up quite a few bad habits.? Now he likes skiing so much that he decided to convert from snowboard to ski.? I just did a good thing by saving a poor soul from the dark side.

Today we tried a new resturant for lunch.? The food is quite similiar to Mui Garden, which is our default resturant for lunch.? The new resturant opens on the location of the bubble tea places, it inherited all the setting, furnitures even the CDs.? It is kinda weird listening lastest pop songs in a HK style cafe.? I am sure they won’t buy any new CDs.? So after a few years, they will be playing out of day pop songs, which better suits its style.? The menu has a larger selection, the price is about the same.? The best thing I like about this resturant is that I can change the drink come with the lunch special for soup.? I like drinking soups, especially the HK style russian soup, more than coffee or tea.? The quality of the food is about the same as Mui, but the portion is better.? Overall, this new resturant wins in every aspect comparing to Mui.? This has replaced Mui and become our new default resturant for lunch.? I wonder what will have to Mui if it lost all the PMC and SFU customers.? It is time for Mui to update its menu, make their lunch special more worth the price.? Competition always leads to improvment.? To the consumers, more competition the better.