Pan Admun Republic of Western Blog

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 surpriseingly quiet.

I walked out of the cinema somewhat lost and confused, all I know was I didn't like it as much as M3. 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 desent 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 underlaying 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

The year was 1994, I was in Medicine Hat College in Alberta starting my 1st year of university transfer program. The name Linux pops up during a chat with the sysadmin. I'd been exposed to UNIX (NCR mini) in computer processing class when I redo high school in Clareshome, AB. During my 1st year in MedHat, I read all UNIX books I can find in the library and decided that UNIX is the way of the future. Because of this, I was excited to hear that I can run a UNIX-like OS on my 386 with 8MB of RAM. Yeah! It will be heaven on earth. But school works, and the idea of getting a 30 disks Slackware kept me away from Linux until later....

After I moved to Calgary the next year, the wonderful CDROM drive is cheap enough so I can afford one. I bought a set of Walnut Creek CDROM and install Slackware on my 386. The installation isn't flawless and I have to re-install many times to get it to work the way I want it, but it's fun. Since then, I moved to Redhat (my 1st set of RH 4.0 was actually ordered over the Internet) and found it even more fun!

Then Linux changed my life. It was summer of 1996, I finished my 2nd year in the University of Calgary and looking for job in the internship program to get some work experience and extra bucks to support school. I started late and most of the jobs are gone... until a guy named Mark Lord from BNR in Ottawa called one day. We chatted for a while and he mentioned that he need a co-op student to work for him to take care of some servers and he saw my resume stated I have Linux experience (even it's just for a year), which is the key asset he's looking for in his candidates. It turned out that Mark is a kernel hacker (the Linux IDE guy) I was hired and started working in October. The story didn't just end there....

3 days after I started with BNR, Mark left BNR. It looks like a disaster at the beginning, but it's not. Since no one in the department know much about Linux and no stuff to spare on the task. I'm suddenly in charge of all the Linux terminal servers and a departmental web server that run 24/7. This is sure a big responsibility to rest on a co-op student with one year of Linux experience, but I got to be my own boss and learn anything I want/need to keep up with my work. I have to deal with s/w designers having trouble with the Linux servers, and the weekly NIS/DNS outage in the lab. But I also got to do many other cool stuffs with Linux. The world is wonderful. You learn, you work, and you got paid.

Now I'm graduated from the university and back to Nortel (Yes, BNR had since changed to Nortel and now Nortel "Networks"). I'm sure Linux open me the door that I could not have done it by myself, and I'm glad I'm still running Linux anywhere I can.

The world is even more wonderful.

So, I finished migrating from my AMD K6-2 to Duron, it rocks... only if I get the 11g card working

Yes, I just got Fedora Core 1 installed on the Duron 950 and migrated the old server to the new machine. Now, I just need to got this machine stablized (ie install SMC EZconnectG driver) then I'll start playing on new environement.

So, I've been thinking about upgrading my home server that already act as mail server, web server, time server, and NAT router/switch. I probably going to move the setup to my Duron 950 and run the new Fedora core 1.

Then the fun begins, I plan to try out more cool applications on the new platform, such as:

• Add a fax modem and install voice mail/messaging server, with a web interface that allow me to listen to it over the web
• Add a web cam module, maybe w/ remote control to turn the camera from the web
• Put a WML server to allow me to connect to my server via my cellphone. Maybe I can post to this blog over that link! It turns out I can do it from Apache by adding new media type wml, so now I can put up WAP pages!
• Try out PVR function, able to record TV and compress it to mpg, then stream it over LAN
• VoIP gateway w/ SIP/H.323, allow me to a make a out-going local call from my server via the modem
• Send SMS to my cellphone on the event of system reboot, new mail, and other interesting/disastrous events

Too much to do, too little time.

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), resposibility/ownership, the sense of achivement/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 stratch goal that the manager can put on the people to squeeze that extra peformance 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 shudown 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 recoginizing that there are stars in each team, and there are low(er) performers. We may not be able to raise eveyone's performance to that level if the star is a smart-ass workaholic that has no life so taht 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 achive Zen and Guru performance during their 8 hours work day. In other words, some goal/hope to drive them forward. Simple Physchology.

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]