The Best Laid Plans

I just realized that my last post was my 500th. 500 posts covering about 6 years. Wow, I've been doing this thing for quite awhiles already. I feel like patting myself on the back.

Anyways, to the post proper. It seems like a great number of buttons have been pressed and a significant number of phone calls were made to ensure that all the vendors for this particular job that I'm working on will go down onsite tomorrow to troubleshoot the equipment. Apparently the jobsite still has intermittent issues with the equipment which I feel is not really related to things under our control. Admittedly we can fine tune it some more and we need to fix some bad parts, but most of the problems seem to be issues that involve the electronics and communications of the equipment. Which is not my company's area of expertise nor scope of supply. But when your stuff doesn't work, regardless of reasons, you have to fight for your own reputation and have to show you are willing to go the extra mile for the client.

But it's also something akin to extortion I guess, since we are working WAY beyond our contracted hours for this job. And we will not get compensated for it. We might be able to offset it with the backcharges for changes to our equipment done onsite but who knows. All I know is the global headquarters called our company to say 'Git 'er Done'. Perhaps it's pandering to power but when the bigshots call, you listen. I find it a bit distasteful, but we are a small business so we need to make them happy. I want to explore this idea in a future blog. But I'll leave it like this for now.

It's just that it seems that the next couple of months will be a busy busy period for us. There are an estimated 5 startups from now till next Mar/Apr. Which makes me really really glad that I'm going on a long vacation this X'mas. Cos I don't know when I will get a chance next year. Feast or famine I guess, that's the rhythm of the business. 就是因为这一点我想尽快拿到绿卡，过后箬想走就能走。

Also, just so I can boost my ego, I'm posting here for posterity some of the comments people have made about my guitar playing. I did a collaboration with my friend for Extreme's More Than Words, with her singing and me playing the guitar. For the record, I don't think the praise is warranted, but I'll accept it anyways. Haha.

(10:20:09 PM) J: my sister thought i'm using a background song because the guitar was so good
(10:20:11 PM) J: OMG......

Observations from a Job Site

So I'm currently in the Mid-west doing a start-up. I have spent 30 of the last 36 days here onsite at the Holiday Inn Express. And these are just a couple of things I have observed in that time.

1. When you spend 30 days in the same hotel, the staff knows your name. I asked to extend my stay twice this week and both times, the staff just set things up in the computer without asking for my name or room #. I guess they know my name and face very well now.

2. I have finished 2 tubes of travel sized toothpaste. So 1 travel sized toothpaste will last on average 2 weeks.

3. When things go bad, they might go bad in a hilariously tragic way. My equipment was running the last couple of days without incident but yesterday was a looong day. First of all, there are 2 sets of equipment here on-site. We had to shut one (called set 2) down due to a lack of feed yesterday morning. In the process of shutting set 2 down, there was a crash due to a mis-timing of the sequence. This inadvertently caused set 1 to crash as there was a programming error that caused set 1 to monitor the status of set 2. Since we only needed 1 set of equipment, we restarted set 1. We were trying to clean up the mess that crashing set 2 caused and so we went to lock out the equipment to be safe. The operator who was helping me then turned off the wrong set of equipment. So set 1 went down again. We then restarted set 1 and resumed cleaning up set 2's mess after we locked out the correct set. Then when we wanted to restart set 2 to check if we had cleaned everything up, we discovered the cross-referenced programming as set 2's equipment crashed again and led to another crash on set 1. Again, we restarted set 1 and then it was running fine for another hour when the discharge equipment that collects product from my equipment crashed. This led to yet another crash on set 1. All these crashes occured in a 6 hour period. I was sooo ready for a beer by the end of the day.

4. The Colts rock.

5. There are really some unpleasant people in the world who think that they can bully everyone else who is more 'junior' than them. I am not looking forward to working with that person again. 真是个自以为是的王八.

6. Bringing a guitar on-site was a good idea. At least I get to practice a couple of songs on the good days.

7. I cannot wait for vacation next month! Looking forward to happy times and Success!

当你的公司要被卖的时候应该怎么做？

今天我的上司确定了公司要被卖的谣言。最近几个月我们总公司决定要卖我们北美部门。

听说我们的竞争者想买我们的公司。如果真的被他们买了的话，我觉得公司会有超大的改变。我们公司文化，风俗一定会换。我对这个件事有点不安。不知道我绿卡的申请程序会不会受影响。加上会不会被逼搬到新的城市。Sianz.

Oh well, only time will tell how it goes. I should just aim to get out of this start-up as soon as possible. It's already been 4+ weeks and counting. Ugh. Hopefully I will get out soon.

Fiscal Madness

So the US is now 1.4 trillion dollars in debt. That's a whole lot of money. It's almost 6 times Singapore's estimated 2008 GDP. Most of it is the result of the economic crisis, the Bush era tax cuts and stimulus plan and the Obama stimulus plan. If someone owed that much money, I would imagine they would want to "tighten up" their belts but not the Obama administration

In light of the fact that there will be no Cost of Living Expenses Adjustment this year (since everything is cheaper this year than last), Social Security is not increasing it's monthly payment to the elderly. The monthly payment is tied to inflation to ensure a certain standard of living for the seniors. So if prices actually fell this year, there shouldn't be any increase in payments. Sounds fair right?

However, since the elderly are a disproportionately influential voting bloc (i guess being retired means that they have the time to go out and vote and nothing else to do but pay attention to politics), the Obama administration is talking about giving them another bonus $250 this year. Their basis for this payment? To compensate them for the lack of an increase in their monthly Social Security payouts. Think about this. For no rhyme and reason, the Obama administration wants to pull 13 billion dollars out of their asses to pay for an unjustifiable cause. And to top it off, they do not have any plans to come up with this sum other than borrow. This is untenable position. My father taught me not to spend more than I can earn but it appears that politicians are willing to sell the future to buy votes in the present.

I am no fan of the G.O.P. but I wonder how different is this administration different from the past? Instead ofTerri Schiavo, you have COLA for seniors. It makes one wonder if politicians are all painted with the same brush but just show different colours... It's disappointing.

The Winds of Change

So it's been a really cool year. Summer was more like a warm Spring, with the number of >30°C dagys countable on both hands. It was kinda nice to be able to escape the heat and humidity. But now, it's Fall and I think the weather has no intention of ever becoming warmer than normal this year. It's early Oct and it's already 10°C... Ugh.

It's my 6th year in the Midwest and ever winter never gets easy to handle. But I guess that makes the nice, sunny days all that more precious. Perhaps the changing of the seasons is also analogous to my changing life. I just did my first solo project, which means I have an increasing responsibility. I like that. It keeps the mind engaged and busy. Idle minds just turn to things that I cannot write on this (relatively) SFW blog.

Also, I like to think that I have started a new chapter in my social life. Moving up the real estate ladder and trying to meet more people (or at least, meet people more). This can only bode well for me. So let's see how it goes.

Finally Resurfacing

So September has been a hectic month for me so far. I was moving into my new place for the first week of the month then I had to hit the road for a job in South Carolina. In fact, I'm typing this at the airport in SC (free wireless at the GSP airport, very nice).

When I get back, I'll assemble the pics of me furnishing the new place but for now, I'll leave you guys with a pic of Jennifer Love Hewitt. She's so hot!!

Disappointing Returns...

So it's my birthday today. I'm busy with moving and stuff so there wasn't really any celebrations. Just ate some black forest cake my mum bought.

But I did decide to try my luck at the Mega Millions since it was a $252 million dollar jackpot. And the draw was gonna be on my birthday as well.

I got $27 worth of tickets, but as you can see, only 1 ticket actually won anything. And it was a measly $3 as well... I had thought to bank on birthday luck, but it wasn't forthcoming I guess. Oh well, I hope the office pool did better.