Advice from my Dad

After I work for a few years, I remember my dad advice me to find a company which do business which can supply infinite income to my pay cheque; example, A company which can supply basic necessity for mankind. Basic necessity like food, shelter and clothing.

A company that produce rice, sugar, flour etc. is consider a stable company.

But since the 'layoff' hot period during the early 2000, I don't think joining a company, with stable income is a good idea anymore.

I think we need a tool to get income. Just like what Kiyosaki taught us - our brain! Like what he advice us, we should always use our brain power to get money. His book really change my thinking of how we should handle money. Now I understand.

Rich and Poor Dads

Finished reading Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad; which I have to put Nelson Mandela's Long Walk of freedom on hold for a while. Saki's book remind me of Dal's 'hate' email (written in my blog a few days ago.) She's right when she said, as an employee, we're all spending our time and making money for the employer we served. This is what Kiyosaki called a 'RatRace'. In the book, he want us to break away from this cycle of rat race. Offered a few advice.

I like the part When Dal mentioned how one of her colleague, believe that a certifacate is more important then attending workshops. Maybe her colleague think that it is more marketable, if one move to another company.

If you get a certificate, you only get what you learn in a classroom, learn the theories. However, you don't have real life expereince.

If you attended a workshop, you get the instrctor to simulate the problem, right in front of your eyes, probably you will not understand or understand very little; about the theories, at the moment.

Who should an employer hire? Depends on how much the employer know about the knowldge or expertise of the skill involve.

An Employer can access the candidate by hiring another expert in the field to access the knowledge of the candidate. That's what I did once, for free for one of my friend, looking for an Oracle Forms and Reports.

One should look for a interest group that can both share knowledge and experience together. I think Toastmasters is one of such program.

I wish someone one day can form an Oracle Users Group here.

Mandela and Gandhi

Reading Mandela's autobiography, Long walk to freedom, now.

I really like his usage of English words, I remember the first time I read his writings from the TIME magazine 'Person of the Century" edition, he likes to mix simple and difficult words together ... he wrote something like " constitution and guns " ... something like that.

Can't wait to go back and continue his book. A lot of times about his struggle as a Freedom Fighter, compare to Malcom X autobiography, he's book is 'less hate' sentences or sometimes I don't feel any 'hate' words at all. I see a lot of struggle in his book, and he uses a lot of laymen's term, I think. Easy to understand...

Gandhi inspired him. I quickly go and watch the VCD which I bought since 1999 last Saturday! His story is also very inspiring! How he try to defy the British, The walk to ??? to make salt.
Bapuji Gandhi!

One day I am going to make a speech about them :)

Top-N, Rank() and Partition

To get Top-N, and rank; Can do this:


SELECT * FROM
(
SELECT b.ap_prog_code, b.dealer_code, b.no_of_outlets, b.trans_Date,
rank() OVER
(
PARTITION BY b.ap_prog_code, b.dealer_code
ORDER BY trans_Date DESC
) rank_date
FROM OUTLET b
)
WHERE rank_date = 1

Sifu will not teach ... the decipel will kill the Sifu!

[ Inspired by Dal 'hate mail' to B, B reluctant to help Dal. ]

I had join both Software house (SH) like Unidata and End User (EU) like Motorola before. I had heard stories, opinions from my IT friends about both SB and EU camps, and here are the differences:

SH :
1. Have more pioneer spirits, like to explore New stuff, R&D.
2. More knowledge sharing among the IT staff.
3. Less Ego, because of No. 2 above.
4. Prefer small to medium company.
5. Business not stable, depends on the other industries, need to get projects from EUs, both govt and private.

EU :
1. Stress More on their 'core' business, like Motorola more on thier chips, (now mobile phone), like DiGi, more on the Telco business.
2. IT projects more sub-contract to SH.
3. Small to huge coporation.
4. Business more stable then SH.
5. Less knowledge sharing among IT. I have not find one big company that have the same camadarie as a SH, please let me know if you find one. I am still looking for this Mecca!
6. Bigger Ego, because everyone want's to climb up the coporate ladder. Join big company, Show BIG name in front of others. ("Do you know my son-in-law is an Engineer with DiGi/ Motorola/ Maybank?")
7. This is from number 5 and 6. The more expereince, the longer the person work in IT, the less he wants to share with you, I found out. Unless you are equally experience as the other, like Haro*. Hali* and Fu.

I did a speech about Kitty Genovese a few weeks ago. Her murder case was use as a case study by professors to study human behavior, why we never help anyone even if we know a friend, neighbour very well? What happen to Alturism?

Why we don't like to share our knowledge with others?

Haro*, Hali* and Fu has these kind of thinking: "If I teach you everything, you had learn everything from me, you are better than me, and the boss will promote you, pay you more instead of me..."

Typical Chinese thinking "The Sifu will not teach you everything, if he does, the decipel will kill the Sifu!"

We want to give because we want to be happy. Sharing Knowledge with others is also an act of kindness. We need happiness, and an act of kindness is one of them, (article from StarMag 08/10/2006 FitForLife Page 8.)

That's why I join Toastmasters! :)

Make Oracle Autostart Database

Use to see my DBA create the Autostart feature for Unix boxes, never do this before. Last few days however I took the courage to do 'Autostart' in my office's HP-UX box. Here's what I did,

1. look for oratab file, which is in /etc/oratab. Modify the file.
2. create a dbora file, which is in the /sbin/init.d/ directory.
3. chmod 755 dbora
4. chgrp dba dbora (change group to DBA)
5. Do a symbolic link: (login as root)
# ln -s /sbin/init.d/dbora /etc/rc0.d/K10dbora
# ln -s /sbin/init.d/dbora /etc/rc3.d/S99dbora

Use www.unixguide.net as a reference for different flavour of Unix.

Attended a Internet Marketing Interest Group last Friday

Attended a Internet Marketing Interest Group last Friday. I think they do it like a toastmasters club. Joining fee is US$260, and these guys are willing to help you to setup your own website, give advice etc. Still wonder it worthwhile for me to join this group?

Sit down last night and try to figure out what should I do in my life. Write down a few stuff in a paper, and come out with this few things:

Career: My job, Project 1, Project 2, Project 3, etc

Hobbies: Hobby 1, Hobby 2, Hobby 3, etc

Feel like there are a lot of things to learn and do in life!

I still owe the government 3302.61 since 2003

I still owe the government 3302.61 since 2003 in income tax. Must use Public Bank or BMB to pay. Must check every year. Don't want to accumulate, if not get penalty susah lah!

Completed #7

Just finished my #7 Speech. Did not prepare too well. I think I am a bit too hard on the audience, too serious I am I think. I think I should do something less serious ones.

cannot give anymore.

Just migrated data to one of K*** sub-module a few months ago and they want us to migrate again just because they mix up the old and the new records! And now they want us to change to migration script.

Mana Boleh! We only fix bug! We don't do another round of migration!

Who's going to pay us?

plsql tuning in DiG* and Installation dinner

Still have so much to learn in Oracle. Never regrets to learn from Bob.

My club is losing a valuable member because she got other commitment. Hope she'll be back someday.

Change #7 and Oracle_Home

I decided to change my #7. Change to Alturism. Asmov 3 laws is just too hard to make it to the objective of the speech.

Oracle_home made a big problem to my sql*plus to another notebook today. Just temporary take it out.

Cousin is coming today from Canada, and suppose to take him out tommorrow. Where should I bring him? Lazy.

Oracle SQL amd PLSQL training in KT

Oh dear! The KT staff is doing thier work on and off during the training! I cannot concentrate finishing the training! I did skip a few chapters here and there.

There's one staff who really doesn't have the passion and enthusiasm to learn. I do not know how to keep him interest in the subject!

Today is the last day of the training.

Oracle-SQL-PLSQL Training on Monday for KT

"I dont know what to say really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we're finished." --Al Pacino 'Any Given Sunday'

Monday is another big day for me because of this KT training. A 4-days training. The biggest challenge for me is the materials that I have in my hands. They are not written by me.

And I only have 1 and a half days to read it thru.

I have take a leap of faith again!

Attended S.Fernando Humor Workshop

Finally I get a chance to see S.Fernando in action yesterday! He's just an ordinary guy on the street if you look at him but once he get on to the stage, he can really FLY!He says that if we wanna do humor, we should start 'collecting' jokes and laugh at ourselves (bold, grey hair, dumb) first.I wake up this morning and I started to see a lot of jokes, funny things around me. How come I never see all this before?

Surprise to see Levi*** in the MII Club! It's a small world!

I make it to 2nd place in HS&SE Area W5 Contest 2006

Only 3 of us contesting in the HS&SE Area W5 Contest. I make it to number 2, lost to YWYip and SQuah unfortunately disqualify because over time!

YWY id good! He used an umbrella and a chair as prop. Stand on the chair sit on the chair, all sorts of stuff he did! I think he should take into consideration of the time. Because if he's going to get a Big crowd who cannot stop laughing, he maybe a bit over time. Remember to cater for the time. Some "laughing time".

SQuah did ok too. But I think he took some materials from the Star paper. I wonder if he's pragiarizing (sorry for the spelling), "The man .. woman" in the "Mind your English" section a few days ago. I miss that.

As for me, I think my voice is just too loud and strong, and monotonous. Need to work more on my vocal variety. Thank you for the Toastmaster who gave me advice. Don't know his name...

Lim got no. 3 in evaluation. Bravo to him becuase is his 1st time. Surprise Vinc H** lost to HSBC guy. HSBC guy, I think win because he got more friendly face.

So far the best evaluator I heard is from Tmn Indrahana. She can make you like she's part of the spekers' speech. I don't know how he did it, but she is good.

31st Ogos 2006

Hari in hari Kebangsaan negara kita Malaysia!

Setiap kali hari kebangsaan, saya akan mengingati masa kita memenangi Piala Thomas Cup 1992. Tapi tahukan anda, bagaimana pasukan kita menjadi juara pada tahun 1992? Saya rasa semuanya bermula dari tahun 1988, dimana kita dapat mengalahkan Indonesia dalam perlawanan separuh akhir, 3-2!

Walaupun kita tidak dapat menjuarai Piala Thomas 1988, tetapi saya rasa pasukan badminton kita sedikit sebanyak dapat membangunkan perasaan 'ingin menjadi Juara'; tidak lagi tertinggal dalam Dunia Badminton (Masa itu kita sering kalah kepada Cina, Indonesia dan Denmark dalam apa jua perlawanan.) .....

"Untukmu Malaysia yang tercinta! Untukmu Mengorban apa saja! "

Michael is very funny!

Last Monday's meeting we have one guest from MIHRM and he's the most funny speaker we had in the meeting! I hope I can go to his club tommorrow nite and see him in action again. Bravo to Michael! :)

How you can keep a poker face while giving humor?

A lot of people ask me how I can give a poker face while giving 'humor'?

I don't really know! Maybe it's because of my phobia. The scared to go out phobia. It's in my grand aunty in Vietnam, and my own grand mother. Some how I got the gene. And I am not sure how to communicate with a 'human'.

Because of that, somehow my human comm. skill still in some 'infancy' period. Still like a kid, I think. And because kids are sooo honest, and straight forward, and we adults think that is funny, some how I got this humor in me.

I call it a kids humor.

wmqtool

MK recomended me to use this wmqtool to access the MQ Server, and it works like magic! Good tool!