Pan Admun Republic of Western Blog

Well, they put it all over the cities. They put it on highways and places that people travel to. They even put it on train in Europe. But I would never think of putting it on a ship! "Hey, how's things? Me? Oh, just sun-tanning on the deck of a cruise ship." I say they're going to put a BTS on the top of K2 someday, so "adventurers" can phone home without using satelite phones.

It is all about the big picture, seeing the pattern, think out of the box and use your imagination..... How to encourage your child?

Hi Jennifer/Cedric,

Please download the following program to install the CD burning program.

Nero 6

Key is

Finally, went to the famous Whistler/Blackcomb for some snowboarding. I spent most of the time on some blue/green runs in the mid-hill on the Blackcomb side, (see map) This hill is pretty cool, runs are not too narrow as many hills I've been to. The weather was a bit cold and cloudy, so no "heaven" like you see on promotional materials. Hahaha.

The only regret is I missed the famous 7th Heaven and The Bowl... ok next time go ONLY by myself.

I just can't believed how bad it is to drive in San Francisco..... Today I spent hours driving in town to find 2 snowboarding shops (I'm looking for a washer for my binding).

I first missed the on-ramp to I-280 north (according to map) because the sign said Califonia 1, then I turned around and found that there was no on-ramp to the freeway from the opposite direction! So, I ended up driving local streets to the first shop. I drove through streets after streets, turns after turns and go wrong direction a few times before I found it. The same happened when I search for the 2nd shop, I have to turn around a few times to make the right turns to find the road the shop is located.....

It's just not right. I'm not too bad w/ map and driving to places. I surived driving Toronto/Montreal downtown, and paced around Paris/Tokyo (ok, walking is easier than driving). But nothing is like San Francisco. The road is just too mess up to drive around. There is no such thing called "city planning" there. I guess the city is just too old. All the hills and slopes doesn't help at all.

I arrived San Francisco last Friday for my annual parents visiting trip. I had the chance to go up to Northstar at Lake Tahoe on Satuday for a snowboarding.

The hill is pretty nice. Blue runs are fun and not jam with people. It also have a LOT of black runs. Overall a fun experience.

The weather is so warm in the morning, that I was sweating in just a long-tee and a jacket. I can't believed how warm it is up at 6300+ feets! However, It rained during lunch time and start getting cold there after.

It seem to me that snowboarding is not a easily accessible sports in SF because the hills are 2 hours+ from the city. Damn! How can I go snowboarding every week if I move here....

I guess kids grow up in a different world these days. There seem to be violence everywhere; video games, TV/movies, and schools. I still remembered in the old days, I used to have a toy gun and we like to use it to kill cockroaches or dirty mice move into our flat. We never thought of using it on people (ok, some might but not us) except when playing "wargame". (This is kind of like paintball, but w/ 6mm small plastic pullets. We wear protective masks and all.) Nowadays, people think games, TV, movies with ultra-realistic violence's are to blame for all the violence involved kids. But is it that simple?

In the good old days, concerned parents were complaining about toy guns and GI Joe. They believed these toys encourage violence in kids. But these items seem certainly like Mickey Mouse when compared to Doom/Quake/GTA we got today. The theory is that kids learn and act out what they see in games and movies. Is games/movie/TV to blame solely?

When I heard child mimics killing/violence in game, my questions were: Why these kids were given/getting these games without their parents noticing? Did the parents explain to the kid it is just a game and don't be stupid and serious blah, blah, and blah? These games were not the only reason bad things happened. In our society, parent-child relationship is getting weaker and weaker because many parents are busy working, they are not able to spend time to communicate and understand their kids. Let's face it, kids do need guidelines how to behave, need supervision from time to time. Kids let alone by themselves learn from their environment and behave however they like, with no bounce check on right or wrong.

As a society, we did not set a good model for our youth. We ARE violence in nature: rough hockey play, road rage, wars and killing, the big brother, SUV that bully smaller size cars, the post 9/11 all-out war against "terrorists". What kind of model we're showing to our kid?

Culture/environment different also play a part in the problem. Japan, another industrialized country, seem to have much lower youth violence crime rate. Even the problem there has surged in recent years, but the problem is nowhere near what we have in North America. Many believed the recent surge of youth violence in Japan has something to do with the education system and the attitude toward life change in the younger generation.

Yes, I don't have an answer, or even a clue. Maybe I just leave it to the sociologist.

Some links: Here and here

So, our team went to watch the highly anticipated movie as a team building activity on the 2nd day after the movie opened, which actually was surprisingly quiet.

I walked out of the cinema somewhat lost and confused, all I know was I didn't like it as much as the other movies. I couldn't think of reasons what makes me enjoy the third chapter less. Afterall, it is still a good movie w/ great FX, and a decent plot. But it's that anti-climax feeling, and my mind was kinda numb.....

Maybe I was expecting too much from the movie, the style of the movie is quite different from previous one, with some puzzling plots (i.e. super powers in the real world).

Now, after reading more discussion on the net. I started to see some reasons:

• I enjoy to think about the computer system/software architecture that make up the Matrix and the characters inside it. E.g. The French-speaking Daemon, computer/program interaction via APIs, two programs "fight" each other. But in M3, majority of the movie is outside of the Matrix. So, I don't get to think of the underlying computer geeky things.


• I'm not a big fan of super hero save the world, anyway. Ok, I played RPGs like Ultima and alike, but there somehow a bit of sarcastic/cheesy feeling as the plot unflow in the movie. Don't ask me why....


• I'm not a religious person.


• I didn't saw the pattern/parallelism/contrast in the movie that link up the 3 episodes. The story looks chaos to me... even it is actually not that bad.


• There are not as many philosophical questions raised in the movie as in M3 or M, which intrigue me.

Maybe that's what makes it an interesting conclusion of the story of Savior....

See Slashdot Poll, Here, Here, and Here

So, I joined Friendster out of curiosity when a friend told me he saw a hot chick there. I joined initially because I can't see the chicks' picture until I joined (ok, did I say I'm "cu-ri-ous"), but then I started looking around to see what it has to offer. For those who didn't know, Friendster is a virtual community gears toward helping people finding date and love on-line.

Some commentary here.

The idea is if you're looking for a date/love interest, your friends are a good resource to tap into since they have other friends. If there is a virtual community that link all the people you know via all your buddies, they can help screen a potential date/love interest for you, and your chance of finding someone great is increased (instead of looking for stranger on ICQ/MSN). So, even if you're already in a relationship, it doesn't mean you have no reason to join, you can be there to "help out" other friends.

Friendster provides an environment that one can see all people in a so called "personal network", basically bunch of Friendster users you sort of "know" because of a mature link between you and this person through your/his/her buddies. You can send message to the person to ask to befriend w/ him/her, or ask your friend to "introduce" you; Basically, a virtual "matching" environment.

Sounds convincing? I am not sure how well it actually works. Ok, I do not have statistics to support my point. It just from my observation on how people interact there. It looks to me that many joined as a cluster of friends, they remain closely together. Friendster becomes another ICQ/MSN that people gather. Yes, you can search for new friends more easily (not just a stranger in ICQ/MSN, which is the selling point of Friendster). But how many of them are actually making new friends out of their personal network?

One thing to note after checking out my personal network is that the world is indeed a small place. Your social circle seem to be greatly determined by your culture, heritage, and background. I have seen person that link to me via 2 entirely difference friends which are not related. It is interesting to see this as an evident that how our society is knit together in a mesh of social networks and cluster of people.

Last night's boyz' night out (tm) discussion panel topic over drinks is given all the guys/gals in your shop have the same level of competency, how the manager able to raise the productivity of everyone, to the top performer.

It is acknowledged that the top performer in the case likely is putting more efforts into work such as overtime and etc.

So, the real question seem to be how to motivate your stuff to put in 110% of their effort.....

The discussion brought up the usual suspects; money, woman (ok.... maybe it only works for me), responsibility/ownership, the sense of achievement/pride, etc and blah.

It is agreed that no one factor is able to motivate every person, Money works for this person, may have no effect on others. It is on a person-to-person cases that what ticks him/her will motivate them to work for you.

There might be stretch goal that the manager can put on the people to squeeze that extra performance out of the stuff. But there seem to be no surefire way to do that.

It has been expressed that it may not be realistic/able to raise the productivity in this case, since you will always failed on those that with difference priority in life.

But can we do better in this scenario? My brain is mostly shutdown after 23:00 for this kind of question, so here's my delayed reaction.

One thing should pointed out (and is already did during the discussion) first is no 2 persons are on the same skill level. It makes the question somewhat flawed that it is not recognizing that there are stars in each team, and there are low(er) performers. We may not be able to raise everyone's performance to that level if the star is a smart-ass workaholic that has no life so that he/she can bring that level of performance. So, the level you're trying to raise you team to may not be realistic. All the traditional thinking probably applies if it is not because of this.....

So, back to the question. Can we motivate any one? (I think this is the real question) The answer I believed is a marginal yes.

To some extend, you can motivate any one, at long as you know how they tick. e.g. To someone that just want to fill their 8 hours "shift" and go take care of family or have fun. We might be able to motivate them for a short term that if they see by giving that 110% that they will gain more time/reward/satisfaction to take care their family or fun, might that be more overtime after putting the kids to bed, work like a Einstein so one achieve Zen and Guru performance during their 8 hours work day. In other words, some goal/hope to drive them forward. Simple Psychology.

I still remembered the 40 hours overtime days I did this time last year. Why I put in those hours so I can pull things in and improve that already late progress? more vacation for this year! and I tick on that.

But this is not going to work in the long run. Period. You're basically baiting them and once they realized he/she no longer getting more out of the 110% effort. They stop givng you more. It just human nature. Also, you're risking burning them out. Remember, afterburner makes you go mach 3, but it might also shorten your engine's life.

On the same line, my project is winding down now and I put in zero overtime now. Why? I don't see a reason for doing that. In addition, all the problems that come my way drag me down so I go back to the 100%, not 120% I used to put in.

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[announcer voice on]This boyz' night out event is sponsored by nOoNe. nOoNe, the biggest name in town.[announcer voice off]