Reflections on 2007

2007 is another challenging year for me.

I have to fight another severe episode of depression. Luckily, I have the help of my dad's friend and a renowned psychiatrist Dr. Wong. He came to the rescue in April and I was fortunate to receive treatment immediately in April. I have been doing quite well now, continuing taking anti-depressant, and I have also kept in constant contact with a local psychiatrist and a very good psychologist in case I needed immediate attention. It's funny how my doc parallel this condition to a diabetic, but again, I am more fortunate than a diabetic because I don't necessarily have to be on medication all my life.

At work, I have created a comfortable environment for myself and I am working quite autonomously. I have gain much respect from my peers so there is now synergy at work, I am spending much less time working on issues.

I have been continuing my goal to establish myself in the soccer field. I am happy to say I have succeeded by being promoted to captain for our dept soccer team for next year. Although my ultimate goal is to coach little kids, not big kids, but it's one small step closer to my goal.

I am continuing my work helping people around me and helping the students at KWCAC. They are a handful but I think I am now enjoying my time helping them. It's a very satisfying experience.

Lucinda has been my big sister and continue to have strong influence on me in my quest to become godly. She is a wonderful person and I will learn much from her.

All my brothers are now in North America, within an hour flight from each other. I think this is the start of something tremendous as we can co-ordinate our activities with much more efficiency than before.

I am looking forward to 2008 as I believe this will be the turning point of my life and the lives of the people I care and love.

CIBC visa transaction

Date of transaction: Sept 15
Received call: approx. 12:30PM
Transaction proceeded 11:01AM
Transaction declined 4:13PM
Best buy order number 5956664

Rental agreement - draft

- Maintain cleaning schedule
- Share use of kitchen and laundry facilities
- Hydro, heat, water included?
- Phone, TV, cable
- blah blah blah...

Waterloo weekend getaway

Waterloo - Saturday afternoon - visit St. Jacobs market,
- Saturday night - German food at the Heidenberg http://www.oldhh.com/rest.html
- Games at my place.

Stratford - Sunday noon - brunch at the church restaurant, http://www.churchrestaurant.com/index.php
- Sunday afternoon - stroll at the swan river park, or catch a theater show
- Return home


Useful links:
Stratford dining ideas
Waterloo dining ideas

Long distance plan

City Telecom http://www.ctinets.on.ca
Distributel http://www.distributel.ca
Onlinetel(Call zone) http://www.onlinetel.com

Cooking for Engineers

Cooking for Engineers

My once in a lifetime poker experience

Restaurants in Waterloo region

Tried:

• Sole, Waterloo (pronounced soliel, french) - pretty good, decent price
• Thai Coconut Island, Cambridge - cheap, but shabby place and food.
• Verses, Kitchener - best restaurant in town, pricey
  

Recommended by others:

• Charcoal Steak House, Kitchener
  
• Chefs on King, Kitchener
  
• King Crab, Kitchener
  
• Modern India, Kitchener
  

Gvim custom settings

" Custom settings - DKWH
colors blue
set guifont=Lucida_Console:h10:cANSI
set lines=50

" RIM coding style - 4 characters indents, no tabs
set tabstop=4
set shiftwidth=4
set expandtab

" tags file search
set tags=tags;/

" smart search
set ignorecase
set smartcase

" taglist hotkey - needs taglist.vim installed
" - which needs ctags installed
" - see www.vim.org for details
map :TlistToggle

" syntax fold
set foldmethod=syntax
set nofoldenable

" End of Custom settings

Hitting the 100,000 milestone

Last Sunday marks the rolling of 100,000km for my trusty RSX and it also signals the end of all Acura factory warranty. Now I really have no incentive to bring my car to the Acura dealer, all the better. I will have Waterloo Honda take care of it, which costs a tonne cheaper too!

In this together

1. If you arrive at work in a bad mood, leave it at the door.
2. When offered a juicy bit 0f gossip at work, refuse to hear it.
3. Always do what you say you will do. Promise management.
4. Avoid and stop potential offensive dialog regarding sex, politics, religions.
5. The rule when it comes to sexual atttraction at work - Don't look, don't touch.
6. Keep private about your opinions.
7. "Please and thank you" at work is commom courtesy.
   

Air Canada

Incident report:

Date: Sept 10, 2006 7:15am
Location: Ottawa International Airport

Boarded flight:
AC 443 departing Ottawa 8am

Employee badge number:
Air Canada counter clerk
05/2009
1/UC
YOW/100597

Employee physical appearance:
Appeared to be in senior role
White male, grey hair - in his 50s

• Client Checks bag in. Small carry on lugguge, weighs approx. 2 pounds
  
• Placed bag next to counter clerk within clerk's arm reach
  
• Bag oriented in inconevient position
• Clerk asked client to have bag flipped
• Client responded with "The bag weighs 2 pounds", and obliged to flip bag
  
• Clerk obviously offended by the tongue-in-cheek comment, and acted in retaliation
  
• Clerk refused to process e-ticket and boarding pass - his commited duty as he offered to serve client
  
• Clerk intentionally made client wait in another line, without giving reason
• Client asked for name/identification from Clerk, Clerk refused to provide identification voluntorily
• Boarding pass smoothly processed by another counter clerk after waiting in another line.
  
• Client had to note down badge number when the contents of clerk's badge was desernible.
  
• Client was greeted by RCMPs at the security line, apparently clerk persisted in his retaliatory actions by reporting this as an "incident" to the RCMPs. He further distorted the situation and made the RCMP believe client is an "eratic" individual that may cause harm to the public.
• Besides the agitated clerk, all other individuals that had dealt with client find client to be behaving in good manner. This includes the second client that processed the boarding pass, the RCMPs, the security station staff, the attendent at the boarding gate, the attendents on the plane.
• This leads to the only conclusion that clerk is acting inappropriately and with intent to cause harm to others and refusing to fulfill his duty.
  
• This behaviour is dangerous, counter productive and damages the reputation of the company the clerk represents. The clerk is in no way fit for client serving duties.
  
• Client demands 1) the clerk be disciplined appropriately 2) Clerk be removed from active client serving duties 3) a formal apology be given by Air Canada to permit this behaviour in crucial client interaction roles.
  

Ability model of emotional intelligence

1. Read People-Identify Emotions: This refers to the ability to identify accurately how you, and those around you, are feeling and your ability to express these feelings. More than awareness, this ability stresses accuracy of awareness.
2. Get in the Modd-Use Emotions: This special ability helps you determine how emotions help you and how they work in harmony with thinking. Your ability to use emotions changes your perspective, allowing you to see the world in different ways and to fell what others feel.
3. Predict the Emotional Future-Understand Emotions: Emotions have their own language, and they have their own logical moves. The ability to understand emotion means that y ou can determine why you feel the way you do and what will happen next.
4. Do It with Feeling-Manage Emotions: Emotinos convey important information, so it is valuable to be open to our emotions and to use this information to make informed decisions.

Soccer coaching

• Soccer coaching manual

• Ottawa south united

Canada to US business immigration

US Visas

Bond prices

The central tenet of Bond Market investing is that prices and yields move in opposite directions. Bond prices go up when Bond yields go down, and vice-versa.

Pursuant to this relationship, Bonds are often considered "counter-cyclical" securities, meaning that Bond prices tend to be high and yields tend to be low when the economy's performance is poor. This factor is probably the single most important reason for having some Bonds in your portfolio.

Though there is a great deal of overlap, distinction needs to be made between factors affecting interest rates and factors affecting the price of an individual bond. Interest rates shift in response to a number of factors including: the demand and supply for credit, Federal Reserve policy (monetary policy), fiscal policy (government budgeting and expenditures), tax policy, exchange rates, general economic conditions, price inflation, perceptions and forecasts for future inflation and a host of lesser factors.

Individual Bond prices are not only affected by all of these factors, but additional ones as well. These factors include: supply and demand for the specific issue, liquidity of the issue, special characteristics of the issue, credit quality, perceptions and forecasts for changes in credit quality and a host of lesser factors.

Soccer balls

Before I throw away our cherished but deflated soccer ball. I thought I should keep a picture of them all.

IT Band Treatment

Iliotibial Band Friction Syndrome Treatment

Debt free!

Woohoo! I am once again debt free! Working even harder now to get to the next stage of my life.

Software manager's checklist

Execution

• Do you have your customer's requirements?
• Do you have a n approved budget?
• Do you have an approved roadmap?
• Do you avhe an approved schedule?
• Are you delivering the product on time?
• Do you hire developers in a timely fashion?
• Is your team capable of dealing wiht change?
• Are you capable of keeping your team focused and resisting change?
• Do your customers encounter a lot of quality issues with released products?
• Do you and your team measure how well you do your work on a regular basis to find ways to improve?

Communication

• Does your team understand your company's strategy?
• Does your team understand engineering's roadmap?
• Does your team understand why the roadmap meets the goals of the strategy?
• Do you have regular communication meetings and e-mail with your team?
• Are people on y our team willing to tell you bad news?
• Do you hear information about your team from your team before you hear it from others?
• Do members of your team communicate with each other and the rest of the company in a respectful manner?
• Do you provide information to your boss before he or she has to ask for it?
• Do other people in the company know what your team is doing and accomplishing?
• Do you communicate in a positive fashion?

Empowerment

• Does your team develop and buy into their schedules?
• Do you avoid micromanagement?
• Do you delagate tasks and let your reports proceed without interference?
• Do you make it clear what your employees are accountable for?
• Do you provide leadership opportunities for your employees?
• Does your team have a sense of urgency in addressing issues?
• Do you set cleawr roles and responsibilities for your employees?
• Do all the members in your team know what they need to accomplish each week before they can go home fo the weekend?
• Do your developers consider your organization a positive work environment?

Things to juggle

• Resources
• features
• Dates
• Quality

Caveats

• If you remove too many features, you won't have a competitive product.
• If you add too many features, you won't make your dates.
• If you scrimp on quality, you'll get a bad reputation.
• If you wait until the product is prefect, you'll miss the market window.
• If you make your engineers work extra hours all the time, they'll burn out.
• If you add too many resources , you can run out of money.
• If you slip the schedule, you make it hard for the sales team to sell and you might miss a market window.