I QUIT!

I'm out of the place I go to work every day for the last 4 years. I'm done with the nonsense. This event requires a post here, even though I have been neglecting it too much.

A Gem By a Person So Young

I found a blog supposedly (that's what it says) written by a 16 year old:

http://www.infernalramblings.uni.cc/

The things he blogs about, his writing and his clarity of thinking astonishes me. If he keeps this up, he'll achieve great things in the future.

Bravo!

Log Deficiency

Today a colleague of ours forwarded an email to us. Another engineer asked him in the email for the algorithm to convert dBm to Watts and Watts to dBm. This is the third or fourth time my friend has been asked about dBm.

I admire his tolerance for idiots. I would've gone ballistic at the idiot the second time he/she asked me the same simple question. If you Google for the keywords "dBm", "Watt" and "conversion", you'd get PLENTY of resources about this well known conversion.

A bunch of us were laughing at how stupid this person is. The friend who is dead (see eulogy written last month in this blog), commented that "Damn, this is just log conversion! They teach that in high school. Don't everyone know how to do log?"

Ah hah, so I challenged him. I said, "If I gave you a calculator that only has log10 and ln, and I want you to calculate log2(5) (read: log base 2 of 5), how would you do it?"

He went..."Uh....I don't remember."

That's why he's dead. That's why the eulogy was written.

F*CKING IDIOT!

Something happened in the office today that has agitated me enough to blog. I was busy for a while and then lost my focus. I'm back. Apologies to my loyal readers.

There is this applications engineer who is supposed to do a competitive analysis of our product against a competitor. He was supposed to compare the measurement rate the two products. Ok, I will now disclose some information related to my company. Yes, I'm pissed off enough to lose some anonymity. I'm a designer of measurement instruments.

He collected a bunch of data from an experiment he designed, and placed the data into a table and slide-set, and presented it to us. His data was bloody meaningless. His method was all wrong. He didn't know what he was doing and just collected a bunch of useless data.

The data he collected was in log-scale. Electrical Engineers like to convert many things into log-scale. dBm, dBc, dBW, dBV and etc. He took the average and standard deviation of all his data in log-scale! I mean, WTF! I told him the first time he showed me the data that that means nothing. It has no units, no physical meaning. And he did it a SECOND TIME!

I also explained it to him the first time that the measurement rate (the time it takes to take 1 reading) is a function of the number of averages you tell the instrument to do. A simple example will be, if it takes 1 second to take 1 reading for a measurement average of 1, then it will take 5 seconds to take 1 reading for a measurement average of 5. He failed to understand this SIMPLE fact and got his data all wrong. He got a bunch of time measurements which does not follow this trend.

I've screwed him twice in two meetings. If he does it the third time, I'm no longer giving him face. Tell me what I should do.

An Eulogy To A Lost Friend...

Recently, we lost a good friend to the dark side. The following is a touching eulogy written by another friend, who is still struggling with the rest of us on the path of the light.

My Brothers,

Just recently, on the first of November, we lost a friend and colleague. The Rager succumbed to the dark side after an intense struggle lasting only six months. He was twenty-six years old.

I trust that all of you are aware that he forewent a promising career in the United Kingdom and his pastime of freestyle rock climbing in a grand gesture of patriotism and idealism, returning to his motherland so that he could cultivate the next generation of technical people.

The Rager showed extraordinary focus when he rejected favors from several large multinationals to join instead, our company. This is something all of us feel a great sense of gratitude towards, for following his tumultuous arrival he was instrumental in growing some legs for our department, without which, we surely would have outsourced the design of FPGAs.

He was a pillar, nay, a bastion of technical knowledge in these troubled times, a shining LED in the darkness of the FPGA world. It was no mystery that he rose to the exalted position of God and gained the respectful worship of many peers.

But of course, being a man of many talents, he is not only remembered for his technical prowess, but also for his colourful antics that have brightened many a working day. One cannot deny that The Rager was a man full of zest and life.

His lunch buddies will no doubt take with them vivid memories of wild but honest rages on the asphalt: The destruction of the pink car, the frequent visits to the knocker's yard, his incessant raving about Michelin tires and the various aggressive confrontations with the arrogant traffickers. He certainly understood, that feeling of heart in the mouth and sweaty palms, telling us that we are alive.

His sexual preferences, while not common, show a startling predilection for variety. From his hip shaking body swaying performances on the public stage, his wicked references to the sodomy of men, masturbating to the voice of male colleagues, to his penchant for soft, flowery white skirts and skinny women, and the activity of cock sucking... he was someone who enjoyed life to the fullest.

Male colleagues who have spent time with him will fondly remember his smelling of powder at night, and of his playfulness in the washrooms.

But most importantly, he was one of the brotherhood, that secret covenant of wise and powerful men who fought daily to stamp out the corruption and depravity that threaten the fabric of the universe.

In this, he was a stalwart defender of the Truth, a vocal member of the drive against cronyism and idiocy. Everyone here will surely attest to his hatred of the common ignorance of metastability and XOR gates, and his constant swearing even in meetings where his reporting superiors are present. The open, no-holds barred, to-hell–with-the-management mentality was one of his key signatures, and certainly one of his most memorable ones. His passionate and unwavering drive still serves today as an exemplary model of the dedicated brotherhood member.

While his passing has left a gaping hole in our ranks, we shall always remember and honour him by finishing the crusade he started. As a final parting salute, allow me to shout his favourite battle cry, the one that sends shivers down the spines of every idiot, ass kisser, lying bastard and SOB:

TIU!!!

The Rager, we will miss you.

First Visit to "The Curve"

I went down to KL this weekend. A good pal of mine, limy, brought me out to The Curve. It's a new hot night spot near 1 Utama.

The two of us guys ordered a jug of beer and started babe watching. It wasn't as good as last weekend's babe watching (Yeah, I went to KL also). Our perch wasn't at a major junction or pathway. It wasn't bad. Saw a lot of short skirts.

We also talked about the usual stuff, from politics to work to the elegence of exp(i*pi) = 1.

Later when I told my wife about the babe watching part, she asked if I saw any cleavages, or "Curves". I'd mention that we were disappointed in that department, as the girls we saw try hard to show their cleavages, but just aren't equipped.

Who is Wind River?

I like these little stories. It makes my time in office much more amusing and easy to pass. Of course, all these are true accounts.

There is this FW manager in our department. He's not the same as I previously blogged about a week ago. He came to speak to my team's FW engineers.

FW Manager (FWM) : Do you use an OS in your product.
FW Engineer (FWE) : Yep.
FWM : Who wrote the OS?
FWE : Umm...Wind River.
FWM : Is that a group here in [our company]?
FWE : Uh...no...They're another company.
FWM : How do you download your program into your CPU?

At this point, a lot of mental forehead slapping was going on with the engineers. Disbelief was abound with the engineers that this guy actually made it to manager. A manager in charge of a FW group no less...