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.