to
2021-MAR-18
21JAN puts us at about 5.8% into 2021. I've been spending a lot of the last two weeks studying software at my new job - a lovely reminder that the world is full of shitty, shitty software ... just like it is full of shitty, shitty food. So, with that in mind, perhaps I should aim to spend the next five years building software that I'm happy with, with an aim to commercialise it in the five years after that. The last five years were spent on hardware and wetware, so this seems fair - plus, I can take advantage of the slowness of my current organisation, to pace myself back, and avoid CEO duties for a bit. Last year I nailed down a couple of studies in JavaScript, a reactive store and UI, a model of Erlang, and an AWS Lambda NodeJS DynamoDB based framework. I intend to continue work in this theme of general tooling, and to iteratively polish these designs / machines, and ensure their portability. Additionally we should be approaching the end-user gradually, so it looks like I need to consolidate around an accounting or asset tracking framework of some kind, adding workflows, and bringing the overall stack into the realm of the business sine qua non.
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Studying accounting: a pedagogical fuckup of many explainations about why the equation exists [ Assets = Liabilities + Equity ]. Briefly, equity should actually be spoken of as a type of liability, which would make things clearer from the get go.
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I've been talking to a sales team that works really, really hard. I figured out why. Their cars don't have steering wheels.
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Got over-ear ANCs. Interesting, haven't had a set this good since using the ones in college 15+ years ago. Probably will remind me to play more music, since I'll end up listening to music more often at this rate.
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Media training : It's training day, errbady get in line!
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ANC makes it an option for me to convert the backseat of my car into a mobile office. Hm. What do we need?
1. Carbon monoxide detector
2. Spare battery
3. Inverter
4. Tatami mat
5. Cushions
Except for one issue: I'm not actually sure that my AC is up to the task. Prolonged running while parked tends to cause overheating.
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I used to be on a RM 456-696 /y mobile data plan. At that point adding RM 100-150 for a new phone was a better deal than buying a tablet to function as a phone. But now my mobile telecom expenses are around RM 240 /y, so I don't have access to the super cheap phones, perhaps finally justifying the tablet purchase.
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Foo Foo kerfuffle:
- private messages in public (?)
- karen exposed by (?)
- karen doxed in comment threads (?)
- leftbook revenge-classists pile onto karen (?)
- rightbook upstream meta-classists complain karen is also low in class (?)
God.
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So it turns out that one of the SAFER ways to write an industrial scale INVENTORY / asset tracking system is to have it sit on top of an ACCOUNTING data structure. Thereby physical assets are tracked as a special case of abstract assets (which are an accounting category).
SAFER : because it fits within a more generic pattern, and therefore is more portable, both in the short term for readability by accountants, and in the long term when you want to integrate with an accounting system eventually.
Alright, Oracle, I see you.
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I figured out why "financially independent" is a misnomer: this generally refers to people whose expenses are paid from savings, or whose income derives from asset management. However none of these situations imply that a person is literally financially independent, as their financial activities still depend on the regulators of their currencies, and the economies which they have invested in. In conclusion, the only people who are truly financially independent are those who don't care if they live or die, and who are able to be happy in sickness and in health.
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It turns out a $240 part can make a $900* car sound like a $150,000* one.
* stupid inflated Malaysian car prices
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DRAFT
** hiring ad for a group sales coordinator **
Scope : Group (multiple brands, 150 staff)
Function : Sales (supported by product, and marcomms teams)
Nominal title : Coordinator (see Career Path below)
Seniority : no experience required; experienced executives may apply
KPIs : quarterly sales, customer happiness
Type of company : food & beverage, retail, lifestyle
Location : Kuala Lumpur
Primary function : channel sales administration - we currently sell goods and services out of five brick and mortar premises, with multiple online channels per premise. Your task will be to minimise variance across deployments of existing and new, online and offline, channels, for current and future premises. Examples for discussion only: food delivery platforms, e-stores, walk-ins, and school canteens. You will also work with internal stakeholders to build pitches for new channels, and you should take initiative to develop old and new channels.
Secondary function : segment sales analysis - we currently serve a broad array of customers, from different walks of life. You will be tasked with building our written knowledge-base of each major type of customer, their motivations, buying patterns, and aspirations. You will work with internal stakeholders to develop product and services matrices which will contribute to (KPIs as listed).
Career path : should you deliver on the basic tasks described above, additional responsibilities befitting the titles of "manager", "AVP", etc. are negotiable, with corresponding increases in compensation and benefits. Over the next three years we will aspire to develop a best-in-class marketing operation, across products, communications, and analytics. But we are starting out very small, so expect a young, and scrappy environment where your political acumen will determine your level of influence across the firm, for years to come.
Culture & fit : our brand is aspirational, and focused both on (a) being cool and (b) making people happy. Your role in the organisation will require you to engage empathically with internal stakeholders, supporting their needs, and representing their strengths to external stakeholders. It will be possible to do this by using any of the following approaches: guarded, artisanal, rational, or idealistic. (You can pick another adjective if you'd like, and discuss it at the interview.) One thing's for sure, you MUST be comfortable navigating around all kinds of people. In fact we hope that being around other people makes you very happy. Additionally, it may make your work easier if you thrive on teambuilding and competition.
Next steps : send a ONE page resume, with NO photo, but WITH your expected starting salary, and WITH your available date to start work, to XXX.
Should you be invited to an interview, it will cover : what we sell, how we sell it, and where we want to sell it; your thoughts on how to structure your first two months of work (ask us anything, we WILL have questions for you); your experiences with people, positive and negative, in past organisations, and in your personal experiences; specific targets to reach within three months, six months, and twelve months (you should challenge these); anything else you'd like to know about us.
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- checked in on shareholder response to exit plan
- checked in on ex-staff's court mention
- gotta go do taxes for my person, eventually
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So I have this friend, we speak maybe every six months to two years, briefly. Sometimes she reaches out, then cuts me off. Sometimes I reach out, and she cuts me off. I worry that I am being too creepy. Meanwhile I don't mind being her emotional crutch… See More
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Common perk at some offices: bring your boyfriend to work day, every day. I wonder if this also applies to itinerant girlfriends.
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Was chatting with an INTJ about INTJs. INTJs - there are are two useful kinds ... the ones that actually like you, and the ones you pay. INTJs aren't typically great lovers because they're selfish, by definition ... but they are charming companions, and reliable wingmates as long as you can retain their affections, or afford their fees.
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It's been a great month and a good year. But, that is only for me. Next month could always be the opposite, and the following year insane. Back to a desk to clean up accounting debt.
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Today's software integration concern - Vendor A and Vendor B have ready-to-use integrations. However, the mapping is one Account A must map to one Account B, and that is not the topology of our account graph. LOL
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I don't feel productive today. Nothing got fixed, and I just discerned more information that will lead to further work. But that probably means I was more productive than I felt all day.
P.S. I wore a shirt that I wore to a first date many years ago. It doesn't mean anything to the date, but thinking of her makes me happy, so it was done.
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$4 ➡$400 ? It's an ordinary correction. For a dividend-yielding stock in the tech / lifestyle / services sector ...
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Beware of conspicuous philanthropy 🤷🏻
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Does anyone want to collab with me on the video production of a whiteface skin darkening commercial satire?
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2020-Q1
Gov.my : we're doing OK. Chill.
Covid19 : I got yo 20.
Gov.my : shut up! Shut it down! Everyone down! Now! [static] We'd like to inform everyone that I am a new person.
2020-Q2
Gov.my : we're doing OK.
Lab : I got yo fiddy.
Gov.my : fuck, can't breathe. No moneh. Let it go. Let it go!
2020-Q3
Gov.my : we're doing OK.
Lab : I got yo 200.
Gov.my : hold up. Hooooldddd up. Hodl!!!
2020-Q4
Gov.my : I don't feel so good. Medic? Slow testing. Sloww it dowwnn.
Lab : I got yo 1000.
Gov.my : medic? Emergency?
Crown.my : we're doin OK.
Gov.my : wut? Can you hear me? Do you HEAR me? Amp it. Yeet the testin
2021-Q1
Lab : got yo 2000
Gov.my : we. Are. Not. Ok. I. Want. My. Holiday.
Crown.my : we no-k. Bee boo, bee boo.
Gov.my : yay, holiday!
And on it goes ...
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There should be a Facebook meme group called "Malaysians Seeking Validation" where we RT every article where the author writes "so and so of Malaysian descent, did something,".
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Almost done resetting the physical layer of my documentation from the past five years.
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If I had investments in stocks, today's when I'd be selling everything.
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Since 2021 in Malaysia is kicking off with a lockdown ... and I can't work on new space businesses ... I was thinking to invest 1-2 man months in playing video games for money. If anyone knows the textbook play for market-entry in this business, please drop me a hint. I don't know anything about video games. 🤓
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Always amusing to see people venting their frustrations via inconsequential fora. I wonder how many people who complain, that certain people P2 won't ignore others P1, are aware that:
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- P2 may not be aware that P1 want to be left alone
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- P2 may not be aware of the former, yet P2 may be unaware that it is uncivil to disturb P1
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- P2 may be aware of the incivility, yet P2 may lack motivation to be civil
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Of course, people will debate the ethics and pedagogies of educating P2s about the first two points. And they may or may not be industrious enough to change the penal code to address the third point. And if they fail at that industry, they may simply resort to vigilantism ... and so, we have an arrival at justice from their point of view.
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Amen
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Malaysia Covid case counts To the moon!
#ATH
🚀
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Multi-entity asset tracking:
1. Centralised model. Use rudimentary bookkeeping concepts. Every entity has a balance sheet. A rack can have a balance sheet. Entities can have multiple parentage, and the concept of ownership stakes applies. Begin design with Entities table, followed by Entity Asset Movements a.k.a. Journals table, each Entity begins with a balance sheet of zero value.
2. Decentralisation model. Peer-to-peer actions ... verbs. Ontology includes: documents, asset transfers, human operators, and workflows upon these.
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Doing my first freelance job as an accountant, today. 😊 send me work if you have any.
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To court. Just the next step in finding out how my ex-staff will be processed. (Meanwhile, a bout of chatter in a public intellectuals comment thread might go sour, or it may not.) Glad I managed to squeeze in a shower before heading out, but I am concerned that I am late. Much privilege to dwell on, and very little control to be exerted. Also a new Tinder match. 90 minutes past egress from bedclothes, not yet fed. Listening, and waiting to other cases.
Awake + 4.5h, a snack, and lunch, and I'm still sleepy but there is work to do. Following the court mention, my ex-staff's next mention will be 14 April. I popped into the office to get some conversations going with middle managers - I think a few obstacles are clearer now. But before addressing those, I have some deliverables at my other job for the week.
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Rites of contrition:
- well established in various religious traditions
- lack a formal procedure in secular spaces; wherein, everyone shares their opinion on what is or is not sufficient
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If I could start any company I wanted today it would be ... a middleware platform for B2B SaaSs.
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This is a questionaire I got from a Tinder match. Sounds like a research gig, but I like data, so here goes. (My answers in parentheses.)
<<< start
Hi there! Please kindly fill in the form below 🙂
Full Name:(Hwa Yang Jerng)
Job: (Freelance Accountant, 1x experience)
Salary: (RM 90 / hr, for first jobs, RM 130 / hr subsequent jobs)
Company:(I am the best company.)
City/State in your country:(Kuala Lumpur, in er, your country.)
Property (type, amount): (This list is very long. Did you mean real estate?)
Other assets:(Four inches only.)
Liabilities: (Four inches only.)
Age:(37)
Birthday:(1983-10-31, means you can guess the last 4 digits of my NRIC already right ...)
Height: (173cm)
Weight: (55kg ... but not sure, as I don't own a measuring device, and this number changes more often than the other numbers above.)
Education level:(OK lah.)
Which university (if any):(Bates.edu)
Married before?:(Still married. To work lah.)
How many Exes:(More than I care to count.)
Reasons for breaking up: (Not convenient loh.)
Got kids?:(Only my staff.)
Want to have kids?:(No problem as long as you think it's worth paying for them.)
Smoke?: (No. But can join if you do.)
Alcohol?: (Rarely. But can join whenever you do.)
Weed?:(Hello Special Branch, it doesn't work like this!)
Religion: (Women.)
Hobbies: (Women.)
Pet: (Only humans.)
Turn ons: (You try and see lah.)
Turn offs:(People who don't want to say what they want, and then complain when they don't get it.)
Criteria for your partner: (Please refer to my profile text.)
Future plans in the next 5 years:(Work.)
Im finding serious relationship actually, If you are interested pls fill this up
End >>>
(Miss, I am also looking for a serious relationship. Are there any questions you have regarding the data already provided in my profile? If none, then here are some extended questions from my side la - I am trying to keep up with you in terms of seriousness leh ... please list your:
Level of emotional volatility :
Level of willingness to be disliked by other people :
Do you believe in God ? (If yes, does it bother you?)
Do you like math?
How about politics?
What about visual art?
Do you prefer making food, or kutuking it?
Do you prefer driving, or being driven?
What is the greatest number of partners you have had in a week?
Do you prefer men or women?
What are you working on this week?
Do you primarily look for conversation, physical intimacy, or something else?
Looking forward to your answers too! 😘)
)
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Alright. Enough fuzting around telling funny stories to strange people. Back to work, a.k.a. the good wife.
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Gross data structure, for an omniscient system.
Accountables ➡ personhood
Journal entry ➡ change in time
Journal entry row accounts ➡ N-spaces
Journal entry row units ➡ M-sub-spaces in N-spaces
Journal entry row delta ➡ quantum of spatial change
Design draughted on the Ruthenium web-development framework prototype parked on AWS Lambda.
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A whole year on: Ebit's media team deserves to win awards. 🙂 But I have nothing nice to say about the content they push. LOL. For now. I lack information.
Anyway, bit of a rushy day. I'm tired - there are a lot of systems to analyse and sort out. Half of these are human. I think a nap is in order.
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I guess my intolerance of stupid people means I rarely curate customers who would want to pay me a lot of money because they feel I am a magician 😛
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Environmental economics of driving old cars using older refrigerant (very common in developing countries!) : leaking 1kg of R134A refrigerant has the global warning impact equivalent to 1410kg of CO2, or 19-plus 32-litre tanks of petrol. That sounds pretty horrible until you consider the market price of carbon credits, where we find that a metric ton (1000kg) of CO2 emissions can be traded for just $20-30. Replacing a compressor (with a used unit) and resealing the system costs about $200.
So if you postpone fixing a leaky system, and keep recharging the gas, after 1kg has been lost you've effectively forced a cost of about $25 onto the market. (Aside: 1kg of R134A costs about $3.70 in Malaysia.) If you were to behave rationally without undue self-interest, you would recharge your leaky system and buy-and-retire $42.30 worth of carbon credits for each recharge. At that rate, after 4.5 such charges, you'd have arrived at the same total cost. So the question then is, will 4.5 charges of a leaky system last longer than one compressor replacement and recharge? You can only know if you've been measuring.
Burning engine oil hasn't even been accounted for at this point. Please note that in Malaysia it is illegal to handle refrigerants without certain qualifications.
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Up from a nap, in the hour between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.. Lockdowns mean no food is available until dawn. Running on empty streets is too boring, for now, so I have no short-term incentive to work out. I continue this month to base my schedule around a corporate job, helping to build a friend's company. I still haven't cleaned up my own company - though I made some progress last week on cleaning up my personal receipts from here and there, collected over years.
I have grapefruit and a kyuri in the fridge. Shared housing with messy neighbours is a disincentive to participate in elaborate cooking. The grammar of the last sentence runs rough. Maybe I will run myself roughly, against the sheets. The theme of the day is cultural appropriation - I am now pretending to be a writer. I have much work to do, and these dallies do not serve me well.
I am going to eat some protein and that cucumber. Powdered food is efficient in cost, and I must extend this consideration to car repairs in a bit. Dances with media - a magazine interview has flitted in and out of my mind for a few days. It is a dangerous opportunity. My body rots, and I really ought to work out some more.
I hope to get four hours of work done before heading back to bed, and then rejoining my day-job colleagues at our office.
(Nothing was eaten or done. I raised the room temperature, and continued merely thinking till I fell asleep again. Some water was eventually consumed on the belief that it would relax my circulatory system and immprove sleep.)
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It's a bit of a mid-week sleep-in kind of day, after spending the weekend on an accounting job of sorts. During such periods of convalescence, I review my actions and motivations across minutes and years.
I rarely invest in financial securities because I'm rarely concerned about financial security. All the important hedges in my portfolio have nothing to do with winning by the rules of a local game. My positions are all taken against the assumption that rules are relevant - and I have a large number of such positions vis-a-vis various cultures and systems which I have observed in my short life. I suppose some of these are "out of the money", though it should probably read "out of the happiness", but by and large I think I am still doing ok, in terms of available happiness regardless of sickness, containment, or castigation.
That being done, over the years, I suppose my remaining avenues for growth are to expand the verticles which I am already heavily hedged against. And that is precisely what has led me to seek engagement with commerce since 2005.
Generally I find the human being to be a dull and predictable subject of analysis - but we don't have any other things to study, given our form, and so we must make the best of such formal studies.
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How is it that everyone talks about 3D chess but the standard implementation is 8x8x3 ??? Shouldn't it be 8x8x8 implemented in software, in this day and age?
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Non-essential purchases: I suppose that, if you already know how to make X, your main incentive to pay a premium to someone else for X, is to give them the opportunity to develop practice in X so that they can eventually become as bored as yourself. (Me, trying to talk myself into going to restaurants instead of meal prepping.)
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Let's see how much clerical work I can accomplish today.
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Apparently my car runs an ED-10, and should therefore be driven at 3200 rpm for peak efficiency. Guess I can afford to slow down a little. 😛
E-Series Engines
LIVETODAI.COM
E-Series Engines
Daihatsu E-Series Engines Please note that on a mobile device you will not see the entire tables listed in this thread The Daihatsu E-series engine is a range of compact three-cylinder, internal combustion piston engines, designed by Daihatsu, which is a subsidiary of Toyota. The petrol-driven serie...
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Today at work I made a little progress in pushing forward what the trendy people call "digital transformation". Change management is fundamentally a matter of meat management, so keeping focused on the meaty part of the problem, is what I hope to achieve here. What a take on Zoho Connect ...
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Made two comments on this:
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1. The issue discussed arises in the broader scope of internships, apprenticeships, and unregistered labour ... however these are regulated in Malaysia.
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2. In general, the point of wage floors is to prevent poverty traps. It may seem benevolent to say, "we don't want people to lose educational opportunities, if they need a higher wage", but the worst case scenarios are likely to be danker. The point of wage floors is, "if you can't get access to great education, at least you get paid X while you take the available job".
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The last thing the Bar Council (or the MOHR in general) should do, is to allow mediocre internships to become a barrier to career progression.
0:00 / 1:24:55
KLBC Young Lawyers Committee was live.
February 6 ·
Pupillage And The Remuneration Dilemma: A Dialogue On The Challenges And Practicality Of Implementing A Minimum Remuneration For Pupils-in-Chambers On 6 February 2021
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2021: I am deprecating my normal usage of e.g. and i.e. in English writing. While these are convenient abbreviations, too many readers are unfamiliar with such terms. So, I will spell out my text in common English - as it improves business functionality.
e.g. - exempli gratia ... "for example"
i.e. - id est ... "that is"
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Today: building a pay grading model, and coaching middle-managers on TCP.
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Chinese Malaysians in 2021: WUT FOOL GOV BAD NO MEET GO MARKET NIGHT CHEERS BAYB RENONION
Myself, a Chinese who does not celebrate new years: 🍿
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Brief work-out and snack. Shower and thinking of past friends. Back to work.
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Just learnt how to configure the default browser on my phone (2-3 years-old). Low priority I guess.
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Since starting a regular commute in January, I have been practicing shift-to-neutral whenever my foot is off the accelerator, in order to reduce engine braking while coasting. What I am not sure of is whether this is causing extra stress on my transmission (1996, carburetor, torque converter). In trying to read up on it, I found this related paper. Mark Hoo
D -> N : at speed, I simultaneously reducing throttle to zero, to prevent a rise in RPMs.
N -> D : at speed, shortly before shifting, I rev up the engine to match anticipated post-shift RPMs.
This does not appear to be dangerous, but I am keeping a look out for anomalous behaviour.
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Damn it. I thought I was smart. Turns out I'm just happy.
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Given the skill-sets I have acquired, I think I should just stay put in my rented room for a year. Sell that piece of shit flat I have out in boondocks. Then buy a $30,000 landed house cash, move in, and fix it up myself. Rinse and repeat ...
... wait a minute, I've heard this one before.
So, if anyone wants to be my financing partner, we can get started on this as soon as tomorrow.
Note: HOUSES, meaning landed, in KL, appear to advertise from $41,000 before even looking at auctions or doing a deep search. Paying cash and comfortably living in, there seems to be limited pressure for owner to sell, so holding it perpetually is the base case.
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- iproperty $47,000
- propertyguru $43,000
- mudah $41,000
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February report (on Jan forecast):
1. have not been fired yet
2. I have some interest, but I have yet to administer a vote
3. under control, small movements only, but non-zero
4. small progress in networks
5. paperwork is cleaned up - data entry is pending
6. ditto
7. paperwork is cleaned up - nothing has been done about it
8. got one freelance accounting job down last weekend
9. staff has been sent alms via the prison facility, stuck till 14Apr
10. completed
11. zero progress - and I am on 40% deferred salary at my 20 hr/wk job
Hwa YangJerng
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AWS revenues were $45.3B in 2020. Netflix alone accounted for $2-4B of that ...
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(Some fraction of Malaysian society, I am not sure how large): Oh my god, we are going to fall sick, we are going to die, the health system is strained, the government is incompetent, we will lose loved ones, our lives will be short, woe, dread, angst.
.
Myself, a simpleton, who chose to live in Malaysia for cheap healthcare: Sounds like each of the last thirty-some years. I suppose, I must get back to work, so that I can pay the rent.
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Last year I was charged with hiring a foreign worker without a permit, and faced the possibility of jail. As preparation, I shut down my business and ran a jumble sale. There I met a customer who claimed he had previously gone to jail for the same, on behalf of his boss, but because his boss was well-connected, while in jail he had access to the wardens' facilities. I met another customer who was in the same profession as myself - today she called me and said she was under investigation for a similar situation. I advised her that many Malaysians with more money and less time will pay their way out under the table - it is only people such as myself who have much time and less money, who would prepare for a longer judicial process, and even jail. We all know roughly how Malaysia is run - we are all players in the great Malaysian game. It is a good game, not harsh enough for me to seek game somewhere else. But I always wonder, if I shall always tolerate Malaysia, as boring and dull as it may be.
On the day of my sentencing, I had a few cellmates at the court - three of them were Vietnamese expatriates who worked in karaoke lounges ("KTV") ... they said, our boss knows people, so we always get out. "How many times have you been caught?" The talkative one counts on her fingers with her friend ... "four," she says in Mandarin, our common tongue. "Do the cops see you very often for favours?" "Just money, lately more frequently ... more than once a week. But when they have to show numbers, we get pulled in anyway." Later in the courtroom dungeon, before we were released, a man in a police uniform read out loud that she must pay a fine of RM1,000. Another man in a police uniform asked me thrice, if I was going to pay him anything. I said he could call me after I had paid my fine, and then we could go for lunch. He said, in Malay, "if you want to give me anything, give it to me now." He wore a chevron on his sleeve.
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Been out of the scene for too long. Totally not used to working with attractive females. Just spent ten minutes Googling profiles to avoid swiping right on someone who looks like a colleague. Professional courtesy ... I take it seriously only because it has no other definition. As for myself ... maybe I should apply for a job at a more mature lifestyle company, and then I won't feel so, er, mature. Haha. Time for a nap, then back to paperwork ...
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Well ... AppSheet is a helluva lot readier for market than HoneyCode ...
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First normal-ish paycheque in five years ... so I paid three years of late Management Fees to my flat's joint management body all at once ...
- building maintenance
- parcel tax
- assessment tax
- TNB
- water
- sewerage
- repairs
... it was nice knowing you, first paycheque. 😃
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42,000 : 12,000
Anyone got leads on mommies, can P.M. ya.
Sugarbook's published ratio of babies to daddies
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Hah! My favourite topic this week. Crypto's net effect is monetary contraction. Go figure.
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Already at breakfast after only nine hours. A whole hour before I'm supposed to be awake. Social parlays are fun sometimes, but in general better to avoid fools entirely.
Later this day, after two snacks and a slightly larger meal, I nap and wake too late for food, as the curfew on restaurants is still 10 p.m. Tactical review indicates a failure due to not stocking up on instant noodles before hand.
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I used to ask for $99/h as a "generalist for hire". I also rarely advertised, because I wasn't looking hard for work - it remained for some time, a fun and amusing hobby. This was around 2008. USDMYR was 3.3-3.7.
If you zoom into the programming side, I have had very little experience as a freelance programmer, in general, maybe 3-4 jobs ever. So today I asked a group on Facebook what their rates were, and got responses in the $50-75 range. I've been asking in the range of $22-34 this past month, so I suppose I should consider myself still cheap.
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Well. This is probably the first time I've taken notice of Gina Carano. I'm not sure how Disney+'s actions are defensible. I hope she has good lawyers. Lol.
Update: here is a good explanation (which isn't to say it is defensible)
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Either tone deaf, or completely disingenuous. While it's good that Sunway calls out another company's potentially libellous marketing campaign ... it stinks to high heaven that they have injected this with a tone of moral exclusivity. Get off your high horse. Don't throw your own under the bus.
(Sunway CEO on Sugarbook PR)
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Singapore was working on this. What happened?
I remember because I memejacked it to run an "always on", messaging campaign for a 24-hour restaurant.
California may make it illegal to remove a condom without consent
INSIDER.COM
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I ... don't understand people who celebrate CNY. I mean, I understand them conceptually, but I have very little reason to exercise empathy about this. But ok, concession, it is my civil obligation to do so. So happy CNY. #condescension #patronage #ialwaystrytoberelevant
Well, that was an awkward midweek crash. I need to try and productive today.
Spending the first day of CNY rationalising company guanxi ... flowcharting a giant staff discount program.
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Trying to memorise the local realestate market is probably going to be an arduous task.
After a brief dive into Malaysian realestate offerings, I am tending to think about realestate as another minefield of mediocre idolatry. Most consumer offerings are baroque. Just like hipster food, and fashion, and car culture, and politics, and software frameworks. If we strip down all of this culture (which deserves to exist in its own right, but you know, not as something I would pay for if I was the sole audience) ... then my approach to realestate should really be (a) buy something cheap and hack it - now I already got that going in 2011, (b) start tabula rasa and design the entire building from scratch, then find the cheapeat way to build it.
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A friend from the business community has been the latest of dozens of people in twenty-some years to say, it seems to them that, "Jerng could be doing more with his time." So to try and explain why I couldn't, being rather maxed out as it is, I described it again as follows.
Most people deemed "successful", are associated with an "achievement", typically some sort of core business from which they derived a great net worth, and from which they continue to derive constant income. Pick a currency, any currency ... the well-known ones are money, fame, relationships, power. Here's one more, how about happiness? This one is tremendously underbought. So achievements are sort of like core businesses ... typically you don't want to mess with the way they work, and you don't just let them decay ... you maintain, and even grow them vertically or through synergistic diversification.
My core business just happens to result in me having a fine degree of control over my happiness. (The business itself is a matter of quantifying the structure of human experience, but I'm just going to gloss over that really quickly.) So my general sense of happiness is typically rather solid, and I almost never want to be distracted from my core business because my core business maintains that currency of happiness for me.
Now my core business, and the asset class where I retain most of the value generated from my core business are both operations whose scopes are confined to the insides of my head, clearly. However for the sake of diversification I do dabble in all sorts of businesses outside my own head ... you know, which involve other currencies, like money, fame, relationships, and power. But all of those diversifying businesses are luxuries, not necessities, to me. My only necessity is maintaining a self-satisfied sense of well-being regardless of the presence of any luxuries.
So here's why a lot of business people don't seem to understand my business model. Most business people have business models, achievements, which consolidate their wealth in asset classes such as money, fame, relationships, and power ... these are *their* necessities, and for them *happiness* is a luxury, which they tactically choose to do with or without, based on whether it interrupts their core businesses and stores of value, or not. And there's nothing wrong with this ... you specialise in your business, and I specialise in mine.
I take a lot of time to cannibalise my own operations in order to explore opportunities for growth. But I generally don't kill the golden goose. While I'm busy diversifying, I'm not busy explaining how my business works ... come on, you're supposed to do that later in life, when you have no more capacity to do ordinary work, right? Unless you're the sort of person whose business is to earn income from teaching people how to be happy ... and that's not my core business - my core business is simply to *be* happy.
The great fallacy of many observers is this: they may perceive this to be lawless and anarchical. But it is completely ruthless and measured, I think.
Oh well ... back to work.
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Daily, probably 95% of each person's life is decided by factors outside their control. Often we encourage people to forget those factors and to focus on the 5%. The 5% becomes what people refer to as "my life, my choices, my gift to society", but the overall program requires an ignorance of the many other factors, otherwise the individual will not cooperate in a governable way. That is social life ... and this is nothing new.
Update: there are SO many people who believe that entrepreneurship without government engagement is worth discussing in and of itself. I sometimes wonder if the main proponents of this approach are government agents planted to provide the public with a false sense of security 😛
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On the second day of Chinese New Year, the aspiring potato engages with social networks, then rolls out of bed and into the loo, thereafter it heads to the office to do paperwork.
Week 6 at new job. Finally got the office printer working. Significant career progress.
Working in business development is weird. You have a bunch of labour debt and you may want to service ... then you go to a meeting, and you analyse a business you have never seen before, and how to model a solution for it. Now you have more labour debt. And you are tired.
I am tired.
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On the third day of CNY, I cleaned up and sold off an old laptop computer. It was for 180 MYR, so it was not valuable in terms of time. But it was a housekeeping project. Perhaps I should do less housekeeping, and try to make more money in the future.
But I think I will spend at least half of 2021 on housekeeping projects. There is a small backlog.
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Believers: "don't use fiat, it's backed by insitutional violence and war"
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Me, an enlightened cuck: "dude, bitcoin is fiat"
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Today was a difficult day. I can't remember if I ever opened a SugarBook account, and now I'm afraid to check. If I have an account, did I sign up to be a daddy or a baby, or both? FML. I wonder what's in my inbox ...
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I think I need to start measuring sleep data again.
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IDK what to think about this outpouring of sympathy for entirely avoidable situations. I guess it's polite to say nice things about people when they die. I hope no one has anything nice to say when I die. Lol
(singapore car crash)
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OFTEN, being patronising is more effective than simply telling people that they are idiot sandwiches. 😛 That's the whole point of communications tooling - the ends justify the means.
I have the greatest issue with people who don't use the terms patronising/condescending correctly. These terms mean, "to do something you think is of unacceptable quality" - so for example, maybe I want to politically assert that the entire demographic which is offended by fart smells are just whiny and should not be entertained ... but if I am doing business and I want them as customers, then it's my interest to avoid farting around them. That's precisely the definition of patronage and condescension. It's also how social contracts work - tit for tat.
Relatedly, the folks who want to argue that cancel culture is acceptable ... are right, it is indeed how the free market works. But it gets ridiculously funny when paradoxically ... the same people may not accept that "free market" simply means "jungle law 2.0".
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Penal Code, Malaysia: "In this section and in sections 372A and 372B, “prostitution” means the act of a person offering that person’s body for sexual gratification for hire whether in money or in kind; and “prostitute” shall be construed accordingly."
This is going to hinge on the definition of "hire". If you define it such that social relations can be inclusive of hiring, then Sugarbook et al, go to jail. If you define it such that social relations and hiring are mutually exclusive, then Sugarbook walks.
I don't know, folks. When I go on dates, I most certainly offer my body for sexual gratification of my date, with the expectation that any services rendered will be reasonably compensated in kind (conversation, cuddles, coffee, etc.). But does that mean I was for hire?
What do you think?
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The only leading indicator of monetary expansion you need today.
World’s $281 Trillion Debt Pile Is Set to Rise Again in 2021
BLOOMBERG.COM
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Not healing fast enough. Memory, mostly. So, I need to refocus on sleep and nutrition and resistance training.
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Sixth Normal Form is the new norm.
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Procurement:
- Carbon monoxide detector works great; next step to car boot office is getting the inverter
Conditioning:
- Executed one good cycle of the ideal 16h day + 10h sleep schedule.
- Reaction times still slow, so making a point to feed faster.
Off the news:
- When can we get hybrid trucks with 7.2kW inverters in Malaysia ... ?
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Last week: learnt how to do queries / with joins / with filters and groupings / with formatting ... in spreadsheets (specifically Google's) ... which means I can now essentially do all my CRUD prototyping in sheets lol.
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Thank heavens they're killing Coke Zero and replacing it with ... Coke No Calorie ??? Hoi, English department ...
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Business development for freelance generalists is about as capital intensive as enterprise cross-sales. But you run at a staff-size of one, so it's more tiring. Oh well. C'est la vie.
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The F-16 is 60-years-old. Sixty. Defense program managers need to borrow a leaf from the software industry: if it ain't broke, don't rewrite it from scratch. Upgrade it in-place. Better to have three parallel differentiated upgrade programs than another F-35 ...
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Just realised that a few months ago, AWS EC2 added Graviton2 burstable instances ... such that the lowest VPS spot price is currently 0.0013 USD/min ( 0.94 USD/mo ).
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Three weeks late for monthly reporting at the old partnership. I'm not very productive outside my day job.
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Consent, in English, at this point in history, is an interesting concept:
- you can give consent for an event, before the event
- you can withdraw consent for an event, before the event
- you can give consent for an event, after the event
- you cannot withdraw consent for an event, after the event
(That is all, given no additional information, and under the lens that consent is a state, resulting from an operation on data (about states of affairs), contingent upon the completeness and veracity of that specific set of data.)
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"Initial and peak CK levels have a linear relationship with the risk of acute kidney failure: the higher the CK, the more likely it is that kidney damage will occur"
- Got this twice 2002-2004 when I used to run barefoot in a wintered indoor track. At that time the literature was a lot vaguer, simply "foot strike haemolysis", whereas this is a lot more detailed.
Rhabdomyolysis - Wikipedia
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Oops. I guess this reflects my current occupation as an organisational development officer. (When I was running the cafe, it was ESTP-A ... and I'm actually an INTP most of the time IRL ... )
Jerng - Assertive Protagonist (ENFJ-A) | 16Personalities
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TIL Sundar's pay is 0.28 billion dollars.
Who needs to be an entrepreneur? 😛
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Money Heist ... as the seasons go by, the realism gets worse.
Season 1: tellytubby SWAT formation. Ok. Why do bullets keep staying in bodies? Why isn't anyone armed to kill? (Edit: avoid overpenetration to reduce collateral damage.)
Season 3: the soldiers rank higher, but the arms handling is no better.
Spanish telenovella I guess ...
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"Are you saying you're toxic?"
"Are you saying you're intelligent?"
(article saying that intelligent women fall for toxic partners)
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I'm going to get this wrong for a few years.
If you read it baku it is koo-er tia-oo.
DBP
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Haven't sat down at my own desk in nearly a month, I think. It's good to be back in a productive space.
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PSA : the keyword is now "arkib sop"
... finding anything on the MKN site
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Shit. Today is the day to quantify all individual entities and relationships and turn it into a database day. This is a lot to handle.
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So I'm not sure if my 1Q2021 job contract will be extended. While I do have some positive feedback, it's best not to count chickens before they hatch.
So probably time to start rustling up more work for April.
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Tada ... recursive lookups on a RDBMS-on-spreadsheet view. #spreadsheetsAreADatabase
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I was watching The Bold Type (genZ x SITC) with a partner, and the relationship dynamic between Kat and Adena reminded me of something I deal with a lot. In the canon of concepts about sex, there is one model referred to as "ladder theory", briefly: "women tend to rank intimates on two ladders, friendship versus sex; whereas men tend to rank intimates on just one unified ladder". I think this broadly informs the sort of relationship issues that different people have.
For example, two-ladder people basically split their time into blocks with separate degrees of emotional vulnerability ... so the politics of which counterparty falls into which block can be resource consuming. Meanwhile one-ladder people will aggressively include anyone who doesn't fit on their monolithic block, by expanding their limits of tolerance or by mechanically flipping off such limits in a broadly agnostic fashion - options unavailable to two-ladder people.
Two-ladder people are going to deploy paradigms of "serious vs casual", or "FWB/fuck buddies vs official partner". One-ladder people don't expense energy maintaining these distinctions. Fascinating.
Lately one-ladder people are probably more associated with being aces, aros, demis, and pan ... generally more agnostic, than opinionated, I suppose.
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I just wrote a SOGIESC policy draft for HR. For the sake of talking the talk, I guess ... I'm probably: technical, male, hetero-demisexual, panromantic, and my pronouns are he/it.
I mean, I identify more with being a technician than with being male/hetero/pan etc., so you could either say gender is a smaller part of my identity, or you could say my gender is technician. I have a medium-ish sex drive, but I only find it worth deploying with people whom I can establish clear communication protocols with (fancy way of saying "people I can get along with"). And I don't identify strongly with my sex or gender in the grand scheme of things ... not with the shape of the human body, nor with its other biological requirements such as eating, and sleep.
Really I'm just an asshole program. Does it matter? Really, really, depends on whom you discuss it with.
As for running companies ... companies are made from all sorts of people, some of whom identify very strongly with their dimensions of sex and gender. Those of us with majority or passing privileges should note, that these dimensions of identity matter more to those who suffer more, due to their locus on various axes. And that's why we need clear policies to ensure that personal security is guaranteed for everyone.
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Writing this HR data structure feels like designing powered armour. It's not exactly clear which organs and tissues should be the points of contact with the new machinery, as the new machinery will change how the tissues function.
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Commerce involves a consensual hallucination about what the value of life is. It is common to find folks of these varieties:
- loud in terms of speech, yet unwilling to contribute welfare
- active contributors of welfare in one field, yet abusive in other fields
For example, the entire industry of cake eating and selling exists as a matter of entertainment. Hawkers will happily proclaim their wares as bringing joy and peace, and in some cases even social enlightenment. But mainly, nearly no one eats cake for nutritional purposes. Almost everyone eats cake as a study of flavour, texture, and class. The segment of nutritious cakes is slim, and everyone else really just gets fat at the expense of their wallets. And the advertising industry is also truly joyful in its brokerage of this message: eat cake, spike your blood sugar, maybe get fat, and don't spend your money on other things, cake is key.
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Note to self: AVOID Puchong Perdana jalan tikusi on Saturday mornings. 90 minutes from Cyberjaya to Petaling Jaya today.
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"Himalayan salt scams are trending down."
"You have a better idea?"
(mineral crystal for swimming pools ad)
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I, pre-fap: wondering if my time is sliced too thin. Designing a horizontal integration is really hard. I can't seem to find enough memory to model the data structure, so I can't run simulations, so I'm spinning in a livelock. Did I talk to too many people this week? Did I take on too many advisory cases? Why am I so confused? Is this due to the test for >100 minutes on the road daily for the past two weeks? Did I not sleep enough, or eat, or supplement?
I, post-fap, during shower: oh, instead of mapping one team/function to each duty, we should be mapping multiple teams/functions to each duty. This allows us to represent each duty as an n-tuple of team/functional concerns, distinct from roles (sets of duties) and reporting lines (directed graphs of roles). Can't wait to get down to draft three of the table structure. But first I should schedule myself a coffee or something ...
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Sometimes I run companies which do not implement loyalty programs, beyond the focus on curating a competitve product. During such strategic plays, I bet on curating my customers' loyalty to the pole position, not to my firm ... it keeps them aligned with my product, and if a competitor takes pole position, then it generates the information that triggers either our innovation or exit from the market.
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Got backed up by technical hurdles on Monday. Sat myself down to document exactly how to print "table join" results in spreadsheets.
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Not knowing how to legally quantify personal visual appearances, and resorting to implicit or explicit hiring based on subjective approvals : a mistake made in both developed and underdeveloped markets.
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Probably the one thing I hate most about dating is the amount of time spent watching TV. Typically it's zero when I'm not dating, so it eats into work. Oh well, gotta pay your dues ...
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Am I the only one who feels the world hasn't changed much since 1997?
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One of the main difficulties I face in remaining engaged with society is remembering all the pop culture things which I have no direct interest in, which are used to entertain other people:
- food and drink
- fashion
- automobiles
- architecture, furniture, and fittings
- television, music, and other art / content
- video / card / board games
- the notion that some people hide their vulnerabilities when engaging in casual chit-chat / intercourse (or that they have enough vulnerabilities that it makes a difference, I suppose)
Oh well, one has to eat.
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Unless you refer to exs as "pre-loved", I suggest you don't apply that term to miscellaneous gifts and gear ... a widget is good or bad in and of itself ... no one wants to visualise what you previously wrought upon it.
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Corp wants you to identify the difference between
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(A) petrolheads throwing shade on Kancils and paying 20x for a used Civic
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(B) baristas throwing shade on Starbucks and not bothering to calibrate their light roasts
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"It's the same picture."
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I believe a good heuristic for any physical activity is ... if it hurts once, don't do it again the same way ... unless it hurts less each subsequent time.
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OMFG. Can't believe it took a whole week to figure out how to implement databases on a spreadsheet using ArrayFormulae. Wasn't seeking the shortest path, so a broad swarth of approaches were studied and discarded along the way.
In summary:
1. A number of simpler operations are achievable via query(), a GOOG functiion.
2. Without query() you can still use arrayformula(), if(), transpose(), to build a join table.
3. Once a join table is obtained via any method, insertion of cell and row delimiters, followed by folding all cells into a single string, and then splitting back, and formatting of the output vector can happen.
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I just extended the storage rental from last year's project till 12 May. If I don't figure out how to monetise that gear, I think I will stop renting the storage and throw a ton of stuff out. Haha.
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Fried chicken chains in Malaysia provide some of the cheapest access to protein that isn't overcooked. But the disgusting part is that they don't stock steel cutlery, and you have to eat with your hands.
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1. No refreshments. BYO.
2. Everyone has to pre-file (a) what they have to offer (b) what they're looking for. No pre-filing, no admission.
3. Instant messaging channel lets everyone find everyone digitally besides the physical layer.
4. No chairs ... standing room only ... hahaha
"What makes a good networking event ah ?"
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Today is a happy day. All of the following remains contained in just ONE spreadsheet.
An initiative I've been pursuing at work is to get the daily DUTIES of our 100+ staff listed and tracked in a RELATIONAL database. We want to clearly bag duties and tag them under ROLES, with explicit SOLID LINE and DOTTED LINE reporting relationships to other roles, criss-crossing the organisation. Any STAFF can be tagged to one PRIMARY and multiple AUXILIARY roles.
Today we released v3 of this tool, and its reporting VIEW which instantly visualises all the relationships above for any staff. This greatly advances our shifting of cognitive stress from people to computers, allowing us to model and track operation with more agility and accuracy. Modern life is so complicated - I can't imagine why people would try to do it without assistance from machines.
The upcoming v4 will enhance the basic datastructure, where each role has prerequisite TESTS, and associated COMPENSATION data. Roles will also be tagged to performance management BENCHMARKS, with annual and project-wise CALENDARS, among other dimensions.
We're a small company: implementing this using an unconventional medium has been challenging, and it provides us with some hope that we can do enterprise quality work at minimal cost.
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This is a low bar. How about you just work on abolishing uniforms? Complete waste of national resources.
(politician buys uniforms for school children)
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Malaysian weather. I think I need to wear a hat. Or that ski mask I have ...
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Darurat was due to gross negligence in public healthcare administration. Willful or not, that is up for speculation.
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100Plus Zero Sugar is my favourite thing this week ... aside from work.
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Draughting tools in place. Back to org graph design.
In other thoughts, I got a good reminder today to launch very simple products whenever it is I finally get around to focusing on distribution. That still has not yet become a core focus of my studies in all these years - a low priority.
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Oops. Can't assign a CMO at the group level because we have too many distinct horizontals. Draft solution: hive off horizontals into business units, each with their own CMO reporting to a group Competitiveness / Strategy desk. Subject to further discussion, BUs may be grouped by vertical instead ... or some other clustering parameter.
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Since most soda syrups (e.g. Coke Zero) are designed to tolerate ice dilution, I find they're more drinkable in a 1:1 mix with cold water.
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There are three ways about being unpopular:
(a) you become popular
(b) you will be killed
(c) you will be incarcerated for life
One should be prepared for all possible outcomes. This is basic education for clever children.
