b3 b0rn.. c0nf0rm, b3 si|3nt .. di3

was catching up on a friend’s blog and came across this entry. i actually wrote about her in my blogspot account but never got around to porting the entries over to this site.

update!
entries already ported over . click on September

i’ve known her for some time. we went to the same school and ended up working with the same company. and 3 months back she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

among the few remarks that i received when i alerted friends and colleagues of her illness was that ’she looked so strong and healthy, you would never have thought she could be diagnosed with leukemia’. which was pretty much on the same lines i was thinking when i first heard the news.

and now looking at her (not literally, since i never did get to visit her) being able to blog about her experience and admit her fears, now that takes a lot of courage.

everytime i chat with her online (since she’s imposed a no-visitors rule on herself due to her low immune levels while undergoing chemo treatment), i am usually at lost on what to say.

to keep it too light-hearted might come across as me not empathizing with her.

to keep badgering her with questions on her health, i think she’s received that a lot already.

so i ended up sending her quotations on tv cards . that’s the least i could do.

KUALA TERENGGANU 24 Nov. – Seorang pelajar tingkatan empat Sekolah Menengah Sultan Sulaiman, nyaris maut setelah lehernya dikelar dengan sebilah pisau rambo oleh seorang pemuda kerana enggan memberi pinjam telefon bimbitnya di kawasan hutan nipah Kampung Laut berhampiran Pengkalan Nyiur, di sini malam tadi.

utusan.com.my 25 November > muka hadapan

reading that excerpt got me worried about a promise mama made to my brothers. since they are boys -and on average, boys aren’t that excited on excelling in their studies – mama decided some incentives are in order to push them into getting good grades.

for my youngest sibling, she promised that if he obtained good results for his UPSR next year, a mobile phone would be the reward. i guess she took this cue from my neighbor whose son obtained 5As and the kid has been carrying around his reward at the playground to the envy of his peers.

i didn’t like the idea (my sis agreed with me) and we voiced it to my parents. among the points we highlighted were – we (both my sis and i) was never given the same incentives yet we still tried our best, wanting to do our parents proud should be enough a reason anyways and who’s going to foot the phone bill. to which mama said ‘it’s different for you because we were not as well off then’

oh well. i forwarded the article to mama. just to give her some food for thought. if and when pouji gets his prized mobile phone, when faced with the same situation as above, would he value his life or his gadget more?

note to self: lecture .. err.. point out to pouji on what to do if approached by dodgy characters asking to borrow his mobile.

this morning arrived at the office and was greeted with this sight on my desk.

woo hoo! now, thank god a note was left or i would’ve though somebody was trying to take off with my notebook. when i left work yesterday, all cables were intact and this morning only the notebook lock was still attached (they took out my LAN cable and my power cord):?:

last friday i was heading home and when i approached the air-gate to leave the tower, i was asked by one of the security officers to step aside for them to check the contents of my bag. what did i do?

then i noticed a few others also being asked to do the same. apparently, there was a report regarding a theft in the tower and we were required to note down the serial number of the notebooks we were taking out of the tower. funny thing is, even though i jotted down the number, the officer did not even bother checking it against my notebook. now, if i were the culprit, i could have just written some bogus serial number with a straight face and would’ve gone scot free.

so this is also another of those checks done. let me see. if i take my notebook home, i am subjected to checks. if i leave it in the office, it is also subjected to checks. time to store it in my locker then. but it’s such a hassle – sometimes i’d rather have a pc then a notebook.

“you give me good people & a great process, & we will beat any organisation with the best technology but a poor process & under-motivated people”

- doug patterson, VP/CIO at standard register co. , 26th august 2002, information week.

came across this quote while doing some reading at work. and it struck me that i have the same thought while undergoing implementation of this system that we are working at.

this have been reiterated in so many of our discussions with our clients. systems are just tools. it’s the people that can make or break the system. but most expect the tools to become the cure to all the issues that they are facing at work. and when the system acts up, the heat goes then to the implementors. thehehe. oh well.

back to reading.

UPDATE:

how not to implement a system

i. buy new-fangled system (NFS) at big *sic* discount when you renew your license for your existing systems because it’s the latest offering without knowing what it can do
ii. form a team to study whether you need the NFS
iii. discover that NFS prolly this isn’t the best system out there for its use
iv. still proceed with the implementation hoping that it will show some ROI
v. start looking for other systems to complement the NFS as it costs too bloody high for the additional modules
vi. scratch your head a lot when trying to make ducks speak chicken (and i assure you it ain’t music to your ears)
vii. do all the above while disregarding what your people are saying about the existing system.