Busy but exciting

It seems like some energy is coming back now, mainly due to projects are starting at the same time.

Mobile mail solution will require me to produce a business case to MD, and check with various sister agencies for tapping on their experience with solutions they are using.

Enterprise Search project may have some changes, it seems hardware are secure for proof-of-concept, but vendor may be more than one for trial. Hope fully, this does not mess up the plan too much.

Enterprise Backup Project is moving, thanks to my powerful operation manager. Schedule are tight but it is moving a last. One more person has been drafted in to backup the main person-in-charge who is also the bottleneck due to his heavy workload. DR server upgrade will postpone by 1 day to faciliate the Disaster Recovery Drill on next Saturday.

And I am suppose to evaluate Microsoft Sharepoint, checking the feature for Document management, portal and search area. Another new product to work on.

It is going to be more exciting now, but hopefully, I can shoulder them. At least, I felt I am working again.

Feeling needed

Today is a satisfying day.
It has been a long while since I feel I am needed in work

The Mobile Mail Project is getting a lot of response now.
Admin and ICM is also helping out.
There are a lot of activities to get the trial handsets, susidarised data plans, and the solution moving with solution and internal vendors.

I have also made significant clarification in my role and targets today with boss.

Hopefully, things will get better.

Miserable work

I felt very depress now, for work again, of course.

Submited a Ops paper (the 3rd time on the same topic) successfully. Shoule be happy right? No, although it is vetted and support by my big Boss, a manager says that I am inviting questions.

Questions is fine, right? Everyday, we ask question to get thing going.
But I guess it is not fair for her to answer all these questions when she attend the meeting representing the department.

As for a existing project, I am totally losing it. I lost control on making the team work according to plan, and control how things flow. Basically, I think I have no leadership at all.

Feel tiny now, low self esteem, loosing faith.

I am not sure how long I can continue in this new role anymore.
But I am sure everywhere and everyday such things is happening.

It is not my 1st day out working, why am I feeling so bad?
I am taking it so hard and personal now, I must calm down and re-organise again.

Lovely Musical :"Forbidden City : Portrait of the Empress"

I have not posted any blog for sometime, life is simply dull, with unhappy news pouring in. But there is still a bit of joy during this period, they are
1) My 'used-to-be' golf partner just have a daughter, I am happy for him
2) Watched 2 acceptable movies: 'Monster House'(animation), 'The Host'(Korean)
3) Most of all, last Friday's Musical : "Forbidden City : Portrait of the Empress" fill the grey world with colours.

Dick Lee (composer) is just brilliant! The songs suits the background and the emotion of all the scenes, and the best of all, it makes the lyric so easy to listen. I could not catch all of the Lyrics for most Broadway performance, but for this musical, I could hear them loud and clear, may be because Dick is a Singaporean and know the taste of Singaporean?

The weakness of the performance is on the other hand, is also language. The mandrain subtitles has so many wrong words (although the pronounciation is the same), it is laughable to most chinese educated people.

Kit Chan, the leading Singer, is wonderful! I have always like her performance since her performance with Jacky Cheung in 'Snow, Wolf, Lake'.

The performance has successfully encompasses most of the emotion in life, happy, sadness, betrayal, fear, anger...

I am so glad I did not miss this performance and sure it cheer me up a bit. (I drafted this entry while listening to its soundtrack)

Summary of the week

Monday on medical leave, and recovered fully on Thursday. Thanks all of you for leaving comfort comments on my blogs. :-)

Work has begin to pick up speed this week, 4 projects on hand.
1 is on going project, 1 just kick-off, with 2 on going active feasibility studies.
Nothing really interesting happen at workspace, although the same disappointment to work efficiency at the workspace.

Today, I went to help a friend's company to clean Computer Virus, it feel good to be needed and useful. After that, I also have a short gathering at my house with 2 ex-colleagues that I know for 10 years, good to stay in touch. At least, today is a meaningful day.

Lately, there isn't any incident to feel happy, nor any special incident that feel sad, other than disappointments. Life is basically the same day in, day out. I look forward for some changes, I think it may be time to attend some course of my interest to spice up my life.

No SunShine Today

I am not feeling well since last Thursday and I am totally fallen sick with fever today. Hope I can recover soon. :-(

BLOG接力遊戲 ~ 書TAG

Thank you, Hyacinthus.
Here you are.

1.一本你不只讀了一次的書
Because I always revert back to my pessimistic character after a while, I tends to do read Andrew Mattews' 'Being Happy!' often.

2.一本你如果身在沙漠時想讀的書
Should be a map or desert's survival Guide. :-)
See, the title with desert make me relate to lost in desert, which nothing mentioned about being lost, I am sure pessismistic.

3.一本令你發笑的書
That isn't much books I read recently that make me laugh. I tends to laugh while watching Japan Anime recently. So about books, it will be Doraemon Comics, which I have a lot during my childhood. Now I only collect the VCDs of its Movies. (only movies, not the 20 mins per episode story)


4.一本讓你哭的書
There are quite a number of books that make me cried.
'Tuseday with Morrie' by Mitch Albom is one of them.

5.一本你希望是自己寫的書
If I can write 'Mars & Venus : Together Forever', may be I will be able to be happily married still.

6.一本你希望從未寫就的書
Nil.

7.一本正在讀的書
I have been reading a lot of technical articles, white papers and Gartner reports. But for book, it is the pocket size book 'The little book of Advanced Sudoku - Volume three'. It is the hardest so far, after a few books that I tired.

8.一本讀來有意味的書
As it is usually able to relate to our working environment, I will choose books from the 'Dilbert' Series.

9.一本改變你一生的書
If a few more zeroes is added in it, perhaps my bank account book is the one, else there isn't any yet.

Sad : St. Petersburg Trinity Church on Fire

Having visited Russia just a few months ago, when I heard the news on 25th August that the Trinity Church in St. Petersburg caught fire, my heart sank. I hope this ancient beautiful building can be restore to its former glory.

P.S.: noted that Wikipedia has updated on the fire, it is so efficient.

Work : Enterprise Search

For the last few weeks,

I have evaluated quite a few product, and most of them are quite effective.
- Lotus Nomad (Lotus Notes client on USB)
- Windows Live Search Toolbar
- Google Desktop Seach Toolbar
- Google Spreadsheet
- Writely : Web Word Processor Application
- McAfee SiteAdvisor

Also, I went deeper with the research on Enterprise Search Product.
Enterprise Search product are a search engine that is able to search through all sources defined, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Management (ERP), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), email, files, Intranet Web Applications, Relational Databases (RDBMS), etc.

I refer to the Garnter reports on Oct 2005, it identified that Autonomy, Verity, Fast search and transfer, Endeca as the 4 leaders in the markets. While Autonomy acquired Verity in Dec 2005, it left 3 companies. OF course, they are a lot of challenger in this market too, as this technology has been rising in demand when information is growing so fast and the need for a fast and accurate search will give the business edge.

So far, Autonomy has demonstrated the product. it is very impressive. I have never know that a search engine can be that powerful and used in so many way. Fast Search and Transfer will demo in the coming week while I have contacted Endeca too.

Product should not be a issue. The harness of support and performing proof of concept will be much more challenging as it will be working with all IT systems on the organisation so as to index all information. I look forward for the challenge.

Longan Tofu

My mum make 4 bowl of Longan Tofu for me yesterday, they are so delicious. Yummy.

System Recovered

After enduring a few months of my PC doing system reset by itself, I have enough of it and decided to investigate the cause.

My actions :
1) Download Memtest86+ at http://www.memtest.org/
2) Install the floppy version to a bootable floppy disk
3) Reboot and run the test

The result is kind of funny, errors happened in 2 out of 8 passes (with each pass having 8 different memory tests). It is irregular as should the memory failed, every test should have the same result.

Follow up :
1) Open the PC casing, remove 1 of the 2 memory card (I am using 2 x TwinMOS DDR400, dual channels)
2) Reboot and run test agains

This time the result (after 4 passes) shows that everything is fine, although due to a memory card removal, dual channel access has reduced to a single channel, thus memory access speed is dropped.

Finally :
1) I replace back the memory card and test again

The time the result (after 4 passes) are fine again too.

I have no conclusion for that, and so I let it run for another 48 hrs while using bitcomet to download stuff (fully utilise the idle time).

So far so good, it has not been resetting itself again since then. Well, I consider myself lucky and I want it to at least work till next year when Microsoft Vista is released and Core 2 Duo processor stabilised.

where is the blogs?

It seems like a lot of us bloggers are slowly down in posting (except SWJ who is so diligent on her blog).

Is it because
a) Nothing interesting /no feeling to write?
b) No time to write?
c) Don't want to share?
d) Get sick of writing after a while?
e) Plain lazy? Not feel like writing...
f) All of the above?
g) Some of the above?
h) None of the above? It is because ________

For me, it is g) which is a)+e).

conversations that I dislikes

Here are some of the conversations that I really very dislike to continue.
1) Uncaring, not sentitive to feeling (indirectly hurting you)
2) Self Center talks (everything also I, me, my work, my company, my boyfriend, ...)
3) Expect you to know everything or trying to make use of you (manipulating, such as 'you tell so and so, I want to meet him, etc....')
4) Hostile, threatening
5) Arrogant, boostful (such as 'I always do this because I am good, so and so also know and praise me, bahbah....')

Talks that I prefers :
1) Caring, sentitive (you will feel the warmth even through voice and words)
2) Open minded, intelligent, constructive (make you think, not agree)
3) Shared favourite topics

If none of the above, then they are mostly the unavoidable social chats.

Meaningful Lines

It has been 4 stressed and busy days.

Today, I saw these 2 lines at a colleagues desk.
"Be not afraid if you are moving, even if it is very slowly"
"But have fear if you are no moving at all"

Yes, I am slowly moving now with the efforts put in, so have no fear!
It is better to be slow than not at all.
Must have faith.

Story : Rich? Poor?

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the
express purpose of showing him how poor people live.
They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.
On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"
"It was great, Dad."
"Did you see how poor people live?" the father asked.
"Oh yeah," said the son.
"So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?" asked the father.
The son answered:
"I saw that we have one dog and they had four.
We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.
We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.
Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.
We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.
We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.
We buy our food, but they grow theirs.
We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them."
The boy's father was speechless.
Then his son added, "Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are."
Isn't perspective a wonderful thing? Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.
Appreciate every single thing you have!

Firework

Today is Singapore's National Day.
During this period, there is also a Firework Festival going on.
Yesterday is the 2nd presentation of Firework. by Singapore. The 1st is from Italy which presented a few days before.
I missed the Italian's master work but I am present for my country's.

Movies : Click & Lady in the Water

This week, watched 2 movies. I have not much expectation on both of them, especially 'Click'. But to my surprise both are very good movies, especially 'Lady in the water'.

I watch 'Click' because I wanted to relax and thought that since it is movie by Adam Sandler, it should be a comedy. It is, for the 1st half, but it get really serious since the mid point and it actually drove me to my tears at the end. The theme of the show is good, if you can bypass all your unhappiness amd undesirable portion of your life, what will you get? Or should I say what will you missed? When the character did so much fast forward, he actually reached the end of his life so far, he also missed seeing his dad for the last time, he lost his wife's love, and too much others. A touching show that means a lot.

I watched the 'Lady in the water' taking it as a simple horrow firm. It is also partially true. But the plot is so well written that it is full of twists and with a happy ending, may be because it is from the famous writer, M. Night Shyamalan. The part when the characters trying to figure out their roles in the rescue of the 'lady in the water' is the best part. I do not want to say much on the plaot but I recommend this movie greatly.

Rollerblade

Since my golf partner is studying on Sat now, I am trying something new for myself. Rollerblade, yes. Has been trying for 1 week. Today, I went out to practise brake and turn, ouch, fallen 3 times and I am still practising on flat ground, glad that I am wearing my wrist, elbow and knee guards. Too old for that? May be, but don't want to wait till older. Time is short, let's bring some color to it.

Poem : Slow Dance

This is a chain mail received. The poem does have some meaning in it.
So instead of chainmailing it further, I put it up here.
Since the objective is to spread it, guess this does not hurt.

This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital.
She wants to see how many people get her poem.
It was sent by a medical doctor.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids
On a merry-go-round?
Or listened to the rain
Slapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?
Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Do you run through each day
On the fly?
When you ask How are you?
Do you hear the reply?
When the day is done!
Do you lie in your bed
With the next hundred chores
Running through your head?
You'd better slow down
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

Ever told your child,
We'll do it tomorrow?
And in your haste,
Not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch,
Let a good friendship die
Cause you never had time
To call and say,"Hi"
You'd better slow down.
Don't dance so fast.
Time is short.
The music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere
You miss half the fun of getting there.
When you worry and hurry through your day,
It is like an unopened gift....
Thrown away.
Life is not a race.
Do take it slower
Hear the music
Before the song is over.

Thoughts

Saw LDD's blog just now. Just realise that I have not been drinking at home (with myself only) for sometime. (Ok, occasion having a beer at home is excluded). Guess, I am not too sad or happy recently. The most common emotion is stress, and stress do not really make me urge for a drink.

I have wanted to 'concoct' a 'potion' or two the past few nights, but has not done it yet, guess I do not really have the mood to do it and I have also not been experimenting new recipe too. May be it is time to catch up a bit. I am feeling a bit better now (from the stress), hope this trend will continue.