Rho Agenda Trilogy

Posted on May 20, 2013 by sinyaw

Richard Phillips was delightfully technically correct. There are many networking, cryptography, security, and mathematical nuances in the plots. He got most of them right. It is still a SciFi, of course there are creative licenses — for example the inner working of stasis field and cold-fusion technologies.

I whipped through Rho Agenda book 1 & 2 (Second Ship and Immune) only for the agony of not knowing when the final one will come. Wormhole finally came out last November. You should read all three in one sitting.

Earth was the flag and the next conquest for the battling inter-galactic civilizations. The scheme was devious: find planets with reasonable advanced species capable of managing nuclear technologies; trick them into building a wormhole connecting to the home planet; use the wormhole to send in the army to assimilate, or annihilate, the target. Yes, good old Trojan horse trick, at planet level.

Our protagonists were three teenagers who were neurologically enhanced by one of the alien civilization (the Second Ship). The antagonist was a genius physicist equally enhanced by the other side. They battled once and the good guys won. This is the “Empire Strike Back” scenario. The antagonist managed to persuade the entire G7 nations to back him. The young heroes had been trained by a master (remember Luke and Yoda?). The plot now became epic: three kids against the entire world, puppetized by the evil genius mastermind.

I imagined the final climax as a movie scene and found it way too complex visually. Too many threads were going at the same time. This is where words on pages work much better than light dots on the screen. Minds can assemble scenes with complex details at reading pace, but, if on screen, the processing of information will exceed my processing capacity. The ending was deliciously satisfying. Richard Phillips left several loose ends untied, I believe intentional. He is clearly working on a “Jack the Ripper Prequel” and a “Robby, 20 years later” sequel. I won’t be waiting for them, but will definitely check out whatever he comes up with in the future.

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Affirmative Action for Managers

Posted on May 14, 2013 by sinyaw

Anti-discrimination are laws. As a manager, it is illegal to consider actions toward employees based on the “protected classes.” Legally, it is OK to discriminate those who are not in one of those classes. But they have expanded to cover pretty much everything by now. Affirmative action gives preferential treatments to minority groups that were historically disadvantaged.

Anti-discrimination says you must treat everyone equally. Yet Affirmative Action says you must treat some groups differently. Managers should be “color blind” but, at the same time, take action to protect certain minority groups. The only way to be in compliance to both is to be mindful of minority classes but never say it out loud or put it in writing. This is the “whisper effect” and everyone hates it.

Or, we can setup coaching classes for those minority classes, but be completely color-blind in all decisions. I knew of a company that assigned a senior executive to the mentor of all new woman managers. They formed bonding rapports that last for decades. That program benefited the new manager tremendously and also helped the company to achieve its affirmative action goals.

Of course, some advocate to demolish affirmative action all together. For the majority, it is a form of reverse discrimination. For the minority, it does not give them the respect or independence. The fact of the world is there will always be disadvantaged groups and everyone of us in in one or more of them all the time. Respect and independence must be earned, with or without laws.

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Earphones, new era

Posted on May 8, 2013 by sinyaw

I have tried many pairs of earphones, cheap and expensive, and settled on Philips (and disappointed at Sony). I have used up one pair and acquired a similar model ($35) and been happy with it. I used them for work-outs and during the long flights while I travel. There are only two things. The cord always got in the way and those “ear buds” become slippery when I become sweaty. Nothing worked. I would take them off when the effort to keep them in become frustrating.

When a friend ran for Marathon, I asked which earphones he used. “JayBird,” they are the best. They are BlueTooth, so cordless. And there are those funny shaped soft plastic pieces to secure the earphones to the ears. Somehow, sweaty and running, they stay in.

The sound was clear and crisp, but skipped a beat once in a while. I needed to learn remember to turn them off to conserve battery. Guess wireless comes with a price more than in monetary form.

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World Famous Wang-Family BBQ, v2

Posted on May 3, 2013 by sinyaw

The coveted reddish rim near the meat surface, the nostril tingling smoky aroma, and the easily separated meat from the bones, are best achieved by charcoal over a long period of time. I like naturally generated smokes, teased out with wet wood chips or just branches plucked from the nearby fruit trees. But Weber is simply not an option for this Seattle condo. The building provides communal gas grills, four of them. I learned to BBQ with those.

After a near disastrous attempt, I understood the key difference: the temperature, ventilation, and control precision. A timer is really all I need.

After three to four trials, the World Famous Wang-Family BBQ ribs are back, in gas grill form. My ritual (BBQ is not about recipe) is now an easy one. Prepare the meat early, go down to the grill area 2 hours prior to serving. Set everything in motion and find a nice spot to enjoy a glass of wine and a good book. Don’t forget to set timer first. Rotate the meat once in a while and bring up everything near perfect.

I can get used to this.

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Never Run Away from Your Job

Posted on April 29, 2013 by sinyaw

I have fell into this trap several times, each time it took considerable effort to crawl out, with scars visible to date. Never run away from your current job, however intolerable it is. Always run toward a better opportunity, whatever your own definition of better.

Begin by listing what you want from the new job, not what you hate about this job and don’t list the lack of bad as good either. Start your search and reject those that do not meet your criteria. When you find one, go for it.

  • I never had enough resources or time to finish my job properly. I was always rushed. I am sick of this.

    Do you know the new company you are going to is any different than this one? By the way, if they are, you probably should not join that company.

  • Their stock went up a lot more than ours. Had I gone there, I would be a lot more richer by now.

    Stock’s past performance is a poor predictor. And an investment decision has nothing to do with jobs. If you believe their stock will go up, just buy some. Why would you change jobs for that?

  • It does not seem likely that I will get any promotion soon here.

    Career structure is like a pyramid, there are fewer jobs as you ascend. Each level also faces increasing tougher competition. Everyone eventually reached the ceiling. When you join the new company, not only you will face the same level of competition, you also get the handicap of not having the strong social network that you have built here. What make you think that you can get ahead faster there than here?

  • There is no challenging projects here for me.

    If you cannot find challenges with your current job, where you have vast knowledge and long experience, why would the new company be any different? What you really said is that you wish to play in a new sandbox. But this company does not box you in either. So, it is merely a fatigue of the same-old. Well, get it over with.

  • They gave me more money.

    Are you saying that you will stay if I match the money? (Readers, this is a trick question.)

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H20

Posted on April 24, 2013 by sinyaw

The sin of the $4 Fuji water is the carbon foot-print and the price tag, not the waste of water.

Charles Fishman, armed with excellent research, preached to change our behaviors. As I plowed through the pages, the conclusion became evident and, ironically, the opposite of his agenda: there is really nothing that I can do. There is no shortage of water in Fuji, unless you want it clean and cheap. But not buying or drinking that square bottle of Fuji water cannot quench the thirst of any one in Fuji. If I take a shorter shower in Seattle, the saved water cannot irrigate those Almond trees in California central valley, or to grow rice in China.

First some fun factoids:

  • There are more water trapped in the rocks, hundreds of miles underneath the surface, than all the oceans added together.
  • Water is not the most abundant substance on earth. In fact, by weight, it is less than a tiny fraction.
  • It is quite possible, although no one knew, that earth’s water all came from the outer space.

The book is a series of case studies on how societies, with rare exceptions, horrendously mismanaged their water. He shouted from his tome, “The hell is upon you! We are destroying our future by not investing and managing water properly.” Sigh. Fishman could very well be right. But there are a long list of things we human beings are doing to destroy ourselves, or the future of our kids: mismanaging education program, mismanaging health care, dietary habits, pollutant of the year (ozone, CO2, plastics, pharmaceutical, etc.), self chemical injection (nicotine, alcohol, botox, etc.). I have the crisis fatigue.

Of all the crisis in the world, water is actually definitively not one, agreed by Charles Fishman too. This earth has sufficient water for all of us, way into the future. There is no shortage of water on earth. There are absolutely shortages, at crisis level, of clean, drinkable, available, and free (or ridiculously cheap) water, for pockets of population around the world. This seems paradoxically absurd, that there is no global problem but many local crisis.

Since transporting water is very difficult, water problems are all regional. If someone in Seattle drink one less bottle water, that one liter of water cannot be use to irrigate the rice paddy in China, to quench the thirst for a kid in Africa, or to relieve the pollution of India’s rivers. Secondly, we have technologies to solve all water problems. There are desalination, water treatment, transportation, etc. If there are sufficient will and resources, no one person will die from dehydration and all farms can be irrigated. We can built a nuclear plant to power a desalination plant large enough for all farmers in California central valley, instead of them waiting for the opening of Lake Mead. The Los Angelesians can recycle their water like Orange County, instead of relying on the channels that crawl all the way from the north.

All water crisis rooted from the single matter: price. The dust bowl in California central valley exists only because no one is willing to pay for the irrigation water: not congress, not California state government, not Californians, and certainly not those farmers. If someone else will pay, no one would have any water problems.

Technically, no one can really waste water, you can only use it unwisely or uneconomically. Water never goes away and is nearly impossible to destroy. We are all drinking dinosaur pees, or to that matter, our own.

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忧心

Posted on April 18, 2013 by sinyaw

去国后，几次几次的回北京，默默地看她变化。北京人都以北京为傲，但夸了门面后，也一定埋怨几句。热水煮青蛙，他们习惯了。我这不时的过客，看得忧心。

空气就别提了，朋友家三居室二百多米大，放了五个滤清器，没天没地的滤。停两天孩子就喘气又出疹子。滤网狠心买，有时还缺货，孩子的卧房一定开，客厅晚上就停了。出了城到河北，高速路边的广告牌，居然说“这里有呼吸的自由”。

朋友家的阿姨，住的地方传出禽流感。一下全家慌了，叫她别来家事没人干，来了又怕感染。说是这回不会人际传染，但是“我们能不小心点吗？”言下之意，把非典时代的记忆挖出来了，报纸电视说的，不一定。咱们小心点呗。

河北的农民，肥料政府给，不要钱。于是几十年来，土化验是强碱，废了。没肥料种不了任何东西。知道的人只买远地而来的“有机菜”，一周菜钱数千。没办法，要命还是要钱？

化学肥料养成强碱的土，成了工业废料，下雨全流进饮水源。我们人不敢喝，能给鸡鸭鱼猪牛喝瓶装水吗？有机饲料给它们吃吗？没事，给它们打针，猛打就不生病。怕了？你也可以只吃有机肉或进口肉。

全北京的人，都在隐隐的怕，默默的等，一天天的过日子。今天轮到不能开车挤地铁，明天注意不能吃鸡鸭，后天换空气滤网。放假敢紧跑去“自由呼吸”的地方。帮帮忙吧！

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Stable Marriage Algorithm

Posted on April 7, 2013 by sinyaw

March is the month that many families waited, anxiously, the result from NRMP, National Resident Matching Program. This centralized “exchange” determined the fate for almost every medical doctors in the US. Residency is the last stop of the long journey to become a real doctor. The program is pivotal to the career of the young graduates. “So, how do they (NRMP) do it?”, many asked this alleged computer software expert.

It is based on the, invented in 1962, Gale-Shapley algorithm. In 2012, Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley (namesake for the algorithm, picture from Economist.com) received Nobel prize for researches based on the this algorithm. It computes the stable matching: that the pairings are as good as they can possibly be.

The algorithm works quite simply: members from one side “propose” according to their preference. The other side will say “maybe” if the current proposal the best, otherwise reject. The subsequent rounds ensue with those yet to be “engaged.” Some of those “maybes” in the previous rounds can be broken when the proposed get a better choice in a later round. The algorithm ends when all proposers received an “engagement.” Supposedly, all pairs will then proceed to get married.

After NRMP, Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley moved on to solve kidney donation matching problem and saved many lives.

There are some well known “cheats” for this algorithm. One side can lock down a partner before the “settle date,” as in “early commitment” in college applications. Theoretically, both sides may lose: the student may miss out a better college and the college may not get the best students. The other cheat is to disguise the preference: rank the person differently than the true desirability. Or one can also reject certain candidates, forcing a no match even one should be possible. The kid ended up going stag because he/she will only go with her/him.

As long as people do not cheat, this algorithm gives the mathematically the best pairings. Sigh… How computers fail to solve the real life problems!?

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How to Command?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by sinyaw

New managers actually do not know how to “command and control.” Heck, many experienced ones don’t either. The class trap is to be explicit on the procedure and process. Do this, then do that, talk to that guy, then do that. They usually leave the intention ambiguous — too much explanation and not necessary. But the result is usually not satisfying: the subordinates felt they are mere robots carrying out mindless tasks; the manager is frustrated from the lack of innovation and motivation from the staff; the procedure and process become long and boring; people start to cut corners; worse, they do it only in form; management became tedious and tiring.

In modern “knowledge-based” world, the manager needs to communicate the “intention” of the decisions. There are several elements* in such communication:

What’s the purpose? Our troops need more supplies.
What’s the objective? We will secure the port so that supply ships can dock.
What is the processes, steps, tasks, that need to be accomplished in what sequence?
Why are we doing it this way?
The key points of the plan that would have force us to re-plan or abort. We suspect alternative sources of supply. In that case, we shall switch to plan B.
The things that should not happen, the goals that should not be reached. Civilians activities should be minimally impacted. The unloading equipment cannot be damaged.
The key constraints and conditions. Ships arrive in 18 hours. There will be no air-cover in this mission. Radio communications can only be done in these frequencies.

Memorize these points and make sure you cover them in your communication. In fact, the preparation for them will already make you a better manager.

*Gary Klein: the Sources of Power.

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One Country, One Marriage

Posted on March 30, 2013 by sinyaw

Years ago, I accepted a foreign assignment and convinced Kid and Wife to go with me. Unexpectedly, I needed to prove, to the other country, that this woman was indeed my wife. The destination country required a federal level document for such a proof. I was stumped. At the end, we had a State Department affidavit stating that US Federal Government recognizes my Californian marriage certificate. “How absurd,” I thought at the time. “How is it possible that Federal Government would not recognize that certificate!”

At a social event, I found myself talking to a judge (state level). I asked her, “If two people got married in the State of Washington, and one of them go to another state that does not recognize same-sex marriage, are they still married? For example, can one married again or, legally, evade child-support?”

She gave me a long explanation that my drunken brain stored as “It is messy.” And I realized that a same-sex couple wouldn’t be able to accept that foreign assignment, given DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act).

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