Found this bit off a website.
So, what is marketing?
You see a gorgeous girl at a party.
You go up to her and say,
"I am very rich. Marry me!"
That's called Direct Marketing.
You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, "He's very rich. Marry him."
That's called Advertising.
You see a gorgeous girl at a party.
You go up to her and get her telephone number.
The next day you call and say,
"Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me."
That's called Telemarketing.
You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl.
You get up and straighten your tie; you walk up to her and pour her a
drink.
You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a
ride, and then say,
"By the way, I'm very rich "Will you marry me?"
That's called Public Relations.
You're at a party and see a gorgeous girl.
She walks up to you and says,
"You are very rich...?"
That's called Brand Recognition.
You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say,
"I'm rich. Marry me"
She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.
That's called Customer Feedback!
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Before Getting Married...
One should ask their spouse these questions, or wish they had.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/fashion/weddings/17FIELDBOX.html?em&ex=1166677200&en=9cbe5538cb1d2c45&ei=5087%0A
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/fashion/weddings/17FIELDBOX.html?em&ex=1166677200&en=9cbe5538cb1d2c45&ei=5087%0A
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Do's and Don'ts of Entrepreneurship
Interesting read at Wharton
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1623&CFID=2509797&CFTOKEN=96914375
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1623&CFID=2509797&CFTOKEN=96914375
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Baby talk
There was this program on tv that supposedly provides parents insight on what their babies (0 to 12 weeks) are trying to say.
Neh means hungry
Owh means tired
Eh means burp me
Eairth means lower wind (use bicycle legs to provide the baby relief), emphasis is on the r letter
Heh means uncomfortable
Hope that helps me, someday. But until then I'm just putting this up in case I forget. Maybe it'll help you too. I'm sure a search on google will yield further details.
Neh means hungry
Owh means tired
Eh means burp me
Eairth means lower wind (use bicycle legs to provide the baby relief), emphasis is on the r letter
Heh means uncomfortable
Hope that helps me, someday. But until then I'm just putting this up in case I forget. Maybe it'll help you too. I'm sure a search on google will yield further details.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Professionalism and Software Engineering
Interesting reads at
Is Software Engineering actually Engineering?
http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca/?module=displaystory&story_id=1051&format=html
Professional Awareness in Software Engineering
http://systemsguild.com/GuildSite/TDM/Professionalism.html
Top Ten Myths about Software Engineering
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~sahilt/research/SEMyths.html
Is Software Engineering actually Engineering?
http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca/?module=displaystory&story_id=1051&format=html
Professional Awareness in Software Engineering
http://systemsguild.com/GuildSite/TDM/Professionalism.html
Top Ten Myths about Software Engineering
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~sahilt/research/SEMyths.html
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Programmer’s Maxim
Good coders code, great coders reuse.
Never re-invent the wheel, if you already have a function that does something previously, use that function. Don't re-write. In all my work at uni I've re-used code from one assignment or another. And since it's my own work, it's not cheating. In fact I remember from one assignment I re-used code from an assignment that was done prior to even starting uni.
I re-use code in my commercial work as well. As well as other freely available code. If it's there to use, use it. The reasons being, you don't have to write the code, but also because it's another person's implementation very likely it's already been tested many times, has it's bugs ironed out and has been proven to work (and thereby saving you programming and debugging frustration).
Are you a good coder, or a great coder?
Never re-invent the wheel, if you already have a function that does something previously, use that function. Don't re-write. In all my work at uni I've re-used code from one assignment or another. And since it's my own work, it's not cheating. In fact I remember from one assignment I re-used code from an assignment that was done prior to even starting uni.
I re-use code in my commercial work as well. As well as other freely available code. If it's there to use, use it. The reasons being, you don't have to write the code, but also because it's another person's implementation very likely it's already been tested many times, has it's bugs ironed out and has been proven to work (and thereby saving you programming and debugging frustration).
Are you a good coder, or a great coder?
Saturday, November 18, 2006
$300US per second
That's how much Bill Gates makes a second, from the conception of Microsoft at 14 hours a day till sometime in 1998. That's pretty astounding.
How much do you make a second?
Use this ridiculously simple formula
Take the amount made per year divided by 12 (monthly), divided by 4 (weekly), divided by 5 (assuming 5 working days), divided by 8 (assuming 8 hours a day), divide by 60 (minutes) then divide that by 60 again to get seconds.
Very likely you're only making a couple of cents, or even less!
Here's some stuff about average salaries in the US, for programmers
Salary by school (US)
Gender distribution (US)
Salary by years of experience (US)
Salary by years of experience (AU)
I'm assuming these salaries are pre-tax values. Payscale.com has some very interesting data for salary comparison so join it (it's free) and have a look. My data's somewhere in it. ;-) Obviously I'm not from the US so I my data isn't in the US ranks.
If anyone's interested, I'll post my ranking but for now I'll keep mum.
How much do you make a second?
Use this ridiculously simple formula
Take the amount made per year divided by 12 (monthly), divided by 4 (weekly), divided by 5 (assuming 5 working days), divided by 8 (assuming 8 hours a day), divide by 60 (minutes) then divide that by 60 again to get seconds.
Very likely you're only making a couple of cents, or even less!
Here's some stuff about average salaries in the US, for programmers
Salary by school (US)
Gender distribution (US)
Salary by years of experience (US)
Salary by years of experience (AU)
I'm assuming these salaries are pre-tax values. Payscale.com has some very interesting data for salary comparison so join it (it's free) and have a look. My data's somewhere in it. ;-) Obviously I'm not from the US so I my data isn't in the US ranks.
If anyone's interested, I'll post my ranking but for now I'll keep mum.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Ericsson update
Right now I'm working at Ericsson, and it's boring. With regards to some positives, it's a good place to work, I get my own office (aka meeting room), flexible hours (maybe cos I'm freelance), few people to deal with, but damn it's boring. Not to mention I'm working with radio engineers who seem to be more concerned with saving their asses and not much sense.
Question : Why is this macro so slow?
Answer : The file's hundreds of megabytes. VBA is not meant to process files that big. In fact VBA's not even meant for processing files at all. It's interpreted for goodness sakes! It's slower than VB.
The macro's already optimised, there's no screen output at all. They're running a macro that processes a file that can range from hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes. Run that in VBA and it's going to be ridiculously slow no matter what CPU you're using. They're talking about "optimising" the algorithm, when there's nothing to be optimised, and not that I know of. It's just that VBA is just S-L-O-W. Can you imagine writing a macro to process a file that big in VBA? Not to mention deal with other constraints like 65,000 line limits, constant changing of minds (this will be the LAST graph.. (next day)... can we add another graph? Can we change this graph?).. if it's anything I learnt it's that these people cannot make up their minds and have no planning whatsoever even though they are already behind schedule) I've had to rely on all kinds of tricks to deal with the line limits, splitting up data files into multiple sheets, storing the names of these sheets and then writing functions to generate graphs and statistics from these multiple sheets. It's enough to give anyone a headache.
What on Earth are the people at Ericsson doing?? Their plans are non existent, they don't know what they want (nor their clients I might add!!) and they don't even know the contents of their own data logs. It's shocking.
The plus side is this month in renumeration alone I'm getting the most I've made out of any other month ... ever. Which is common sense of course, multiple jobs = multiple sources of income. Therefore this makes it pretty good but working for other people truly suck. In fact I wonder if it's seriously worth the amount of money.
They still have yet to pay me, but I should get paid by the end of the week at least.
Question : Why is this macro so slow?
Answer : The file's hundreds of megabytes. VBA is not meant to process files that big. In fact VBA's not even meant for processing files at all. It's interpreted for goodness sakes! It's slower than VB.
The macro's already optimised, there's no screen output at all. They're running a macro that processes a file that can range from hundreds of megabytes to gigabytes. Run that in VBA and it's going to be ridiculously slow no matter what CPU you're using. They're talking about "optimising" the algorithm, when there's nothing to be optimised, and not that I know of. It's just that VBA is just S-L-O-W. Can you imagine writing a macro to process a file that big in VBA? Not to mention deal with other constraints like 65,000 line limits, constant changing of minds (this will be the LAST graph.. (next day)... can we add another graph? Can we change this graph?).. if it's anything I learnt it's that these people cannot make up their minds and have no planning whatsoever even though they are already behind schedule) I've had to rely on all kinds of tricks to deal with the line limits, splitting up data files into multiple sheets, storing the names of these sheets and then writing functions to generate graphs and statistics from these multiple sheets. It's enough to give anyone a headache.
What on Earth are the people at Ericsson doing?? Their plans are non existent, they don't know what they want (nor their clients I might add!!) and they don't even know the contents of their own data logs. It's shocking.
The plus side is this month in renumeration alone I'm getting the most I've made out of any other month ... ever. Which is common sense of course, multiple jobs = multiple sources of income. Therefore this makes it pretty good but working for other people truly suck. In fact I wonder if it's seriously worth the amount of money.
They still have yet to pay me, but I should get paid by the end of the week at least.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Q & A on Banking and Careers
Cleo has a surprising good Q & A on banking.
Available at
http://cleo.ninemsn.com.au/cleo/cash/qa/banking/default.asp
Can't believe so many people are in debt. Simple math will tell you spending more than what you make = debt.
There's also a Q & A on careers, which is quite good as well.
Available at
http://cosmo.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=48315
Available at
http://cleo.ninemsn.com.au/cleo/cash/qa/banking/default.asp
Can't believe so many people are in debt. Simple math will tell you spending more than what you make = debt.
There's also a Q & A on careers, which is quite good as well.
Available at
http://cosmo.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=48315
Monday, October 16, 2006
University.. too easy.. industry best practise.. not going to happen
Sometimes I feel university courses should be made harder. Why? So that the ones of "less intelligence" will be filtered out. The matter of fact is, too many people nowadays have degrees. Therefore it's really really hard to distinguish who is really skilled at what they do.
To be honest, I wouldn't hire half of the people who I studied with. And out of the few many I'll only hire a few. And they aren't anything grand either. To enrol into currently requires an OP of 12. That's kind of low. It's like saying "if you're average you're good enough to do IT". And that's wrong, because there's always a greater need for skilled people. Skilled people are the ones who get the economy moving and expanding, factory type workers only serve to work and be part of the system. I used to come from a really competitive school where only the best 40 students out of 440 odd students are only allowed to take Science. Let's face it, having interest in something would very likely make you score well in it, but many people don't know what they are interested in, so they take something "easy to do". Or even worse, chase the area of study which has the most money. But some people just suck at things they are interested in.
There should a "generic" course for such people.
IT nowadays is treated like a factory worker type of skill. We need hundreds of programmers to finish this one project! Yeah let's just get Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z who know the basics of Java and employ them! We need factory type workers.
Good software is built by a SMALL TALENTED team. Always has been and always will be. Not a bunch of factory workers.
Look around you. Everything that's currently big, started off small. Microsoft, Apple, youtube, google, blah. Then they start becoming massive mammoths, hiring workers by the hundreds... a la factory, while the founders become billionaires. There's no company that started off BIG.
In fact, everything that's big has always started off small. Do you wonder why? Because there would be too much bureaucracy, paperwork, politics, and dim wits pulling down the productivity levels of the team.
You don't hear of a success story of a company with 100 founders. That will never happen.
If it's what I've learnt, small teams are always more powerful, more productive, and definitely more of a threat as compared to a large clunky corporation. But everyone, aka the majority of people, feel "safe" joining a large corporation or government type of organisation. Makes it look good on their resume and employable by other large corporations.
I wonder what the heck HR managers learn in uni. Who do they employ? The rebel / smart person who has tried to start his own company, or the person who will make a "loyal servant" to the company? (i.e. less risk taker, security type person, with little / no ambition, average grades) The founders of a company always want to strike out on their own. Can you imagine if they didn't? Would they even be "employable" because they are more likely to work at XYZ company and quit only after a few years having learnt everything there is to learn? In an alternate universe, what if the founders of google never started google but went to work for another corporation, would they employ them? Who are HR managers to decide how much YOU are worth? If you are a high productivity person joining a large corporation, chances are you are being gauged accordingly as a low/average productivity person and paid accordingly.
Experience is learning and tolerating the ways of overcoming problems imposed by bureauracy, and office politics. What a damn waste of time. I'll rather be learning, and having a high level of productivity doing actual work that benefits society. Large teams suck big time. Always have and always will. "Yeah I joined this super large mega huge MNC and was part of a low productivity workforce!! Hire me!"
The smartest people always stand alone improving the economy, and the rest, form the factory workers.
"Industry best practise" is another term that I find ridiculous. If every company was incorporating industry best practice, then it WOULDN'T be industry best practice now would it? It would be "average low productivity practice". If everyone was doing the same thing, how would that be best practise?
The best practises are therefore never common. Once told to others, it's not best practise anymore. If your company is following "industry best practise" from an "industrial source", chances are very likely that you are NOT following a best practise, but some form of average practise that everyone is using which has deemed to be stable. But I can tell you it's definitely not best practice.
It's like attending a seminar that says "do this and you will make a million dollars". Now if everyone does it, then honestly do you think it'll still make you a million dollars? Of course it will, but the chances of it happening again are rare. This is common sense. The people giving the seminar made a million dollars because they tried something originally different from "industry best practise" and it worked for them. Then they get richer by selling their idea to other people. It's sort of like a pyramid scheme where the people at the top get richer and richer and the people at the bottom get the scraps.
Think about it.
To be honest, I wouldn't hire half of the people who I studied with. And out of the few many I'll only hire a few. And they aren't anything grand either. To enrol into currently requires an OP of 12. That's kind of low. It's like saying "if you're average you're good enough to do IT". And that's wrong, because there's always a greater need for skilled people. Skilled people are the ones who get the economy moving and expanding, factory type workers only serve to work and be part of the system. I used to come from a really competitive school where only the best 40 students out of 440 odd students are only allowed to take Science. Let's face it, having interest in something would very likely make you score well in it, but many people don't know what they are interested in, so they take something "easy to do". Or even worse, chase the area of study which has the most money. But some people just suck at things they are interested in.
There should a "generic" course for such people.
IT nowadays is treated like a factory worker type of skill. We need hundreds of programmers to finish this one project! Yeah let's just get Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z who know the basics of Java and employ them! We need factory type workers.
Good software is built by a SMALL TALENTED team. Always has been and always will be. Not a bunch of factory workers.
Look around you. Everything that's currently big, started off small. Microsoft, Apple, youtube, google, blah. Then they start becoming massive mammoths, hiring workers by the hundreds... a la factory, while the founders become billionaires. There's no company that started off BIG.
In fact, everything that's big has always started off small. Do you wonder why? Because there would be too much bureaucracy, paperwork, politics, and dim wits pulling down the productivity levels of the team.
You don't hear of a success story of a company with 100 founders. That will never happen.
If it's what I've learnt, small teams are always more powerful, more productive, and definitely more of a threat as compared to a large clunky corporation. But everyone, aka the majority of people, feel "safe" joining a large corporation or government type of organisation. Makes it look good on their resume and employable by other large corporations.
I wonder what the heck HR managers learn in uni. Who do they employ? The rebel / smart person who has tried to start his own company, or the person who will make a "loyal servant" to the company? (i.e. less risk taker, security type person, with little / no ambition, average grades) The founders of a company always want to strike out on their own. Can you imagine if they didn't? Would they even be "employable" because they are more likely to work at XYZ company and quit only after a few years having learnt everything there is to learn? In an alternate universe, what if the founders of google never started google but went to work for another corporation, would they employ them? Who are HR managers to decide how much YOU are worth? If you are a high productivity person joining a large corporation, chances are you are being gauged accordingly as a low/average productivity person and paid accordingly.
Experience is learning and tolerating the ways of overcoming problems imposed by bureauracy, and office politics. What a damn waste of time. I'll rather be learning, and having a high level of productivity doing actual work that benefits society. Large teams suck big time. Always have and always will. "Yeah I joined this super large mega huge MNC and was part of a low productivity workforce!! Hire me!"
The smartest people always stand alone improving the economy, and the rest, form the factory workers.
"Industry best practise" is another term that I find ridiculous. If every company was incorporating industry best practice, then it WOULDN'T be industry best practice now would it? It would be "average low productivity practice". If everyone was doing the same thing, how would that be best practise?
The best practises are therefore never common. Once told to others, it's not best practise anymore. If your company is following "industry best practise" from an "industrial source", chances are very likely that you are NOT following a best practise, but some form of average practise that everyone is using which has deemed to be stable. But I can tell you it's definitely not best practice.
It's like attending a seminar that says "do this and you will make a million dollars". Now if everyone does it, then honestly do you think it'll still make you a million dollars? Of course it will, but the chances of it happening again are rare. This is common sense. The people giving the seminar made a million dollars because they tried something originally different from "industry best practise" and it worked for them. Then they get richer by selling their idea to other people. It's sort of like a pyramid scheme where the people at the top get richer and richer and the people at the bottom get the scraps.
Think about it.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Macro mania
Well I've finally finished customising my software, at least.. for now. Ridiculously busy over the past couple of days. I thought today was Wednesday when it was Thursday. It's now actually Friday but I'm posting this Thursday night. Anyway.. today I tutored one of the undergrads, and it was... awful. The person who I'm tutoring does not know any programming whatsoever even though he is studying IT. The subject, data structures and algorithms, has a substantial programming component. He's really struggling and it would be truly a miracle if he gets something together. What on Earth are they teaching in schools?? Apparently he got credit at the uni because he "touched" on object orientation 6 years ago and even then he said it was really easy.
My software's not going to go retail cos the corporation couldn't find anyone to distribute it so they're doing it online instead. Ah well I'll just have to look for other avenues. Perhaps the person who I communicate with will know of other people who I can approach to get it sold retail.
I'm now a part time consultant for Ericsson writing their Office macros. They have hundreds of graphs to generate from their huge logs of cellular phone data. It's cool what you can do with the macros, despite its obselete language implemenation i.e. VB. I have to say I've never written a macro before last Thursday but now I'm getting pretty good at it. I'll add it as another skill that I have to my list of other skills. VB is such a stupid language sometimes but it's ridiculously popular, probably assisted by it being built into Office. I'm pretty sure I can sell these macros if I wanted to.
Some idiot last night spammed a heck lot of inboxes and made the return address my company domain. I received about a thousand bounced messages last night and had to turn off my catchall email address.
So what is a catchall email address.. ?
if your domain is ihatespam.com, you can set up a catchall email address that grabs all email directed to *@ihatespam.com to an email address, for example execute_all_spammers@ihatespam.com
So email sent to spammers_suck@ihatespam.com, spammers_must_die@ihatespam.com will be sent to execute_all_spammers@ihatespam.com
The idiot used return email addresses such as random names like Joe.Schome@mydomain.com and sent them to an invalid email, which resulted in the email being sent to mydomain.com and flooding my inbox.
I hate spammers.
My software's not going to go retail cos the corporation couldn't find anyone to distribute it so they're doing it online instead. Ah well I'll just have to look for other avenues. Perhaps the person who I communicate with will know of other people who I can approach to get it sold retail.
I'm now a part time consultant for Ericsson writing their Office macros. They have hundreds of graphs to generate from their huge logs of cellular phone data. It's cool what you can do with the macros, despite its obselete language implemenation i.e. VB. I have to say I've never written a macro before last Thursday but now I'm getting pretty good at it. I'll add it as another skill that I have to my list of other skills. VB is such a stupid language sometimes but it's ridiculously popular, probably assisted by it being built into Office. I'm pretty sure I can sell these macros if I wanted to.
Some idiot last night spammed a heck lot of inboxes and made the return address my company domain. I received about a thousand bounced messages last night and had to turn off my catchall email address.
So what is a catchall email address.. ?
if your domain is ihatespam.com, you can set up a catchall email address that grabs all email directed to *@ihatespam.com to an email address, for example execute_all_spammers@ihatespam.com
So email sent to spammers_suck@ihatespam.com, spammers_must_die@ihatespam.com will be sent to execute_all_spammers@ihatespam.com
The idiot used return email addresses such as random names like Joe.Schome@mydomain.com and sent them to an invalid email, which resulted in the email being sent to mydomain.com and flooding my inbox.
I hate spammers.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Hopeless iPowerweb Tech Support
Below is the actual tech support I received from ipowerweb. They are bloody H O P E L E S S with their tech support.
Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Max T.'
Max T.: Thank you for contacting IPOWER Live Chat. How can I help you?
Me: host120 is down
Me: what's going on ??
Me: can't view my website at all
Me: See Incident: XXXXXX-XXXXXX
Max T.: I'll be happy to assist you.
Max T.: We do apologize for the inconvenience faced by you.
Max T.: Admins are aware of your server problem and there is some network issues. They are working on it.
Max T.: We have been advised that the problem has been isolated and that the issue would be solved soon. For quality's sake, our admins tend to spend a slightly longer time investigating the root cause of an issue to completely fix it, rather than merely applying a temporary/unsafe fix, we've taken every possible step to ensure that this does not happen again. <-- copy and paste response (what lazy asses)
Me: it was fixed now it's down again
Me: yeah right I've seen that reply before
Me: please spare me the copy and paste effort :P
Me: it was fixed 3 hours ago and now it's down again so what gives
Max T.: Yes I understand.
Me: so what's going on? There's 50 other websites hosted on that server, and I can tell you they won't be happy
Max T.: I understand.
Me: and ?? What are you going to do about it??
Max T.: I apologize.
Me: please don't patronise me, just fix the thing
Max T.: It is being worked upon.
Me: how long is this so called "fix" going to take, if it was fixed before then why is it not working now ???
Max T.: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Me: just look into what's going on!
Max T.: I will be right with you.
Max T.: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Me: ...
Me: just fix the problem!
Max T.: Yes, It will be soon.
Me: how soon??
Max T.: I'm sorry but right now I'm having no ETA for the same.
Max T.: But please be assured that it is been looked into and will be resolved very soon.
Me: no ETA but soon??
Max T.: It will be up soon
Me: what 1 hour soon, 2 hours, 3? 24 hours?
Max T.: NO ETA
Me: soon but no ETA, looks like you guys have no clue what you're doing
Max T.: Please understand it is being looked .
Max T.: We do not have any ETA at the moment
Max T.: I cannot confirm the same
Me: then how can you confirm SOON? If you don't know, then just say you don't know!
Max T.: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Max T.: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Max T.: I will be right with you.
Max T.: I will be right with you.
Me: forget it, just go fix the problem. spare me your auto replies, and by the way look up the dictionary on the definition "SOON" because you misunderstood its meanining
Max T does not understand the word "soon" and is a total incompetent fool! I can't believe the employ such "technically gifted" people. I have to say another time, they needlessly modified a .htaccess file on my website and caused it to be down for hours. What morons...
Then again a lot of tech support's pretty damn hopeless. The only tech support which I found that was ever good was a technician on dodo internet but their customer service was plain stupid.
Please wait for a site operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Max T.'
Max T.: Thank you for contacting IPOWER Live Chat. How can I help you?
Me: host120 is down
Me: what's going on ??
Me: can't view my website at all
Me: See Incident: XXXXXX-XXXXXX
Max T.: I'll be happy to assist you.
Max T.: We do apologize for the inconvenience faced by you.
Max T.: Admins are aware of your server problem and there is some network issues. They are working on it.
Max T.: We have been advised that the problem has been isolated and that the issue would be solved soon. For quality's sake, our admins tend to spend a slightly longer time investigating the root cause of an issue to completely fix it, rather than merely applying a temporary/unsafe fix, we've taken every possible step to ensure that this does not happen again. <-- copy and paste response (what lazy asses)
Me: it was fixed now it's down again
Me: yeah right I've seen that reply before
Me: please spare me the copy and paste effort :P
Me: it was fixed 3 hours ago and now it's down again so what gives
Max T.: Yes I understand.
Me: so what's going on? There's 50 other websites hosted on that server, and I can tell you they won't be happy
Max T.: I understand.
Me: and ?? What are you going to do about it??
Max T.: I apologize.
Me: please don't patronise me, just fix the thing
Max T.: It is being worked upon.
Me: how long is this so called "fix" going to take, if it was fixed before then why is it not working now ???
Max T.: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Me: just look into what's going on!
Max T.: I will be right with you.
Max T.: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Me: ...
Me: just fix the problem!
Max T.: Yes, It will be soon.
Me: how soon??
Max T.: I'm sorry but right now I'm having no ETA for the same.
Max T.: But please be assured that it is been looked into and will be resolved very soon.
Me: no ETA but soon??
Max T.: It will be up soon
Me: what 1 hour soon, 2 hours, 3? 24 hours?
Max T.: NO ETA
Me: soon but no ETA, looks like you guys have no clue what you're doing
Max T.: Please understand it is being looked .
Max T.: We do not have any ETA at the moment
Max T.: I cannot confirm the same
Me: then how can you confirm SOON? If you don't know, then just say you don't know!
Max T.: Thank you for waiting. I'll be with you in just a moment.
Max T.: I'm sorry for the delay. I'll be right with you.
Max T.: I will be right with you.
Max T.: I will be right with you.
Me: forget it, just go fix the problem. spare me your auto replies, and by the way look up the dictionary on the definition "SOON" because you misunderstood its meanining
Max T does not understand the word "soon" and is a total incompetent fool! I can't believe the employ such "technically gifted" people. I have to say another time, they needlessly modified a .htaccess file on my website and caused it to be down for hours. What morons...
Then again a lot of tech support's pretty damn hopeless. The only tech support which I found that was ever good was a technician on dodo internet but their customer service was plain stupid.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
No money to pay
I found out from one of my close friends that one of the people working for the startup has no revenue! So people who are working for them aren't getting paid at all for the moment. That's shocking. For obvious reasons I won't name the startup, they are getting people to invest in it but they have no revenue at all. So essentially people working for them now are working for free. Perhaps that is why the HR manager has not gotten back to me yet... even though she said she was going to 2 weeks ago. I found out today they only just hired the VP of engineering.. who I am supposed to talk to, last week.
That reaaally puts me off from joining them. I didn't believe in their product in the first place. Frankly I wouldn't understand, nor anyone who I have talked to, the need for that kind of product. In some ways I hope it suffers and dies a tragic death, but on the other hand if they offer me insane pay I'll join them but not if they're not paying me.
On to something totally irrelevant, here's a short article on what Bill Gates wish he'd known
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2006/03/01/8370302/index.htm
And on to something else, my business is sort of plateauing. To be honest I have done as much as I can on my own, and it has been really hard work. The growth rate of my business is shown here
2002 - baseline
2003 - 158.42%
2004 - 144.96%
2005 - 142.53%
2006 - To be determined
I really need a partner to market my software. Growth has been significant over the last couple of years. But then again that's not very hard to achieve considering the small amount I was making before. (Before 2002 I don't even want to talk about how much I was making then, but it was very very very little.)
You don't realise how much work you have to do from developing a product, marketing it, handling customer email, developing the website, looking at competing products, and more. The best thing is, I learnt all of this on my own with zero academic knowledge applied. I didn't even take up any so called entreprenuership courses. Is university really that useful? All my friends are now working for people making them richer and I'm making money on my own. Would you hire me for a greater sum of money than them? (By the way my grades are also within the top 1% of the university) I applied for a position with Accenture recently I wonder if they will even reply or feel threatened with my background. Frankly I feel sometimes if you are too ambitious the company won't hire you.
Time for bed.
That reaaally puts me off from joining them. I didn't believe in their product in the first place. Frankly I wouldn't understand, nor anyone who I have talked to, the need for that kind of product. In some ways I hope it suffers and dies a tragic death, but on the other hand if they offer me insane pay I'll join them but not if they're not paying me.
On to something totally irrelevant, here's a short article on what Bill Gates wish he'd known
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2006/03/01/8370302/index.htm
And on to something else, my business is sort of plateauing. To be honest I have done as much as I can on my own, and it has been really hard work. The growth rate of my business is shown here
2002 - baseline
2003 - 158.42%
2004 - 144.96%
2005 - 142.53%
2006 - To be determined
I really need a partner to market my software. Growth has been significant over the last couple of years. But then again that's not very hard to achieve considering the small amount I was making before. (Before 2002 I don't even want to talk about how much I was making then, but it was very very very little.)
You don't realise how much work you have to do from developing a product, marketing it, handling customer email, developing the website, looking at competing products, and more. The best thing is, I learnt all of this on my own with zero academic knowledge applied. I didn't even take up any so called entreprenuership courses. Is university really that useful? All my friends are now working for people making them richer and I'm making money on my own. Would you hire me for a greater sum of money than them? (By the way my grades are also within the top 1% of the university) I applied for a position with Accenture recently I wonder if they will even reply or feel threatened with my background. Frankly I feel sometimes if you are too ambitious the company won't hire you.
Time for bed.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Name Your Price.. Need Suggestions!
Well the french guy today asked me how the tutorial was going, I think he's going to be disappointed if I say oh not much I'm still working on it. He also asked me to name my price for the position (which has no formal title yet by the way) in France. I'm assuming this would be development work, and other kind of work as well that I do not know yet of. The company's got no name either, it's new. Any suggestions ? (To whoever is reading this??) I'm thinking 96K EUD per annum. I don't think that's an unreasonable amount. It costs almost 4 euros for a big mac in France. If the price isn't right I'm not going to do it, simple as that.
Maybe I should work on the tutorial first.. which isn't a real tutorial by the way.
One of my resellers, SHI is selling my software for me which is great. They also resell Microsoft, Adobe, McAfee, etc software and other hardware as well. Company profile available at http://www.florida.shi.com/Global/Content/About/about.asp. They only sold a copy of my software before this, but all their sales are large sales compared to what I'm used to. I wonder how much they are actually profiting as their purchase price is exactly the same as my retail price, I am sure they are making money from this. My other seller, SoftwareCasa's also sells software for me and they're based somewhere in Europe. There's also the one in France, Avanquest. And there's Kreis I&C in South Korea which has only sold one copy for me since March. These aren't as good as they could be but they should improve over time. Why I'm doing this is because I hate to rely on google and search traffic for people to find out about my products. Need others to sell my software for me without me breaking into a panicky sweat. I always worry about each month's sales.
Maybe I should work on the tutorial first.. which isn't a real tutorial by the way.
One of my resellers, SHI is selling my software for me which is great. They also resell Microsoft, Adobe, McAfee, etc software and other hardware as well. Company profile available at http://www.florida.shi.com/Global/Content/About/about.asp. They only sold a copy of my software before this, but all their sales are large sales compared to what I'm used to. I wonder how much they are actually profiting as their purchase price is exactly the same as my retail price, I am sure they are making money from this. My other seller, SoftwareCasa's also sells software for me and they're based somewhere in Europe. There's also the one in France, Avanquest. And there's Kreis I&C in South Korea which has only sold one copy for me since March. These aren't as good as they could be but they should improve over time. Why I'm doing this is because I hate to rely on google and search traffic for people to find out about my products. Need others to sell my software for me without me breaking into a panicky sweat. I always worry about each month's sales.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
WWDC 2006 and reverse engineering
I went to WWDC last month, can't believe it's been more than a month already. To be honest I wasn't hyped by the keynote. Sure, spaces is useful, and the chat thing with moving backgronds is cool, but nothing revolutionary. Time machine looks great but's nothing new. And why all the jokes being poked at Microsoft? Found it ironic that the Mac crashed while time machine was being used. Many people cheered and clapped as if it's were God speaking during that keynote and many other presentations. It almost seemed like it's a cult. Of course people would say great things about the company that they're working at, especially if you're the CEO, VP of Engineering, etc. They are *paid* to do this sort of thing. If they went on to another rival company, do you think they would still sing praises of their former company?
The plus side? I got a cheap laptop bag, talked to the CEO of santimage, got some good chocolates, and a former yahoo group director who shall be unnamed but is heading a startup. I might go join them but I'm still waiting. I have enough money to survive for now and I'm not really in a rush to join anyone, not for the right price. San Francisco was expensive and I met some really strange people. Clam chowder was good though. :-)
Today, Codelock, a so-called PHP and HTML encrypter was reverse engineered by moi. It can be found at www.codelock.co.nz and I stumbled across it after finding out a script that was "protected" by this program. I find it funny how they say you can use it to "protect" your HTML files (in addition to PHP) using obfuscation. First of all it would be stupid to encrypt HTML as search engine robots would be unable to decipher any of the resulting obfuscated code, resulting in zero web traffic from any search engines. Secondly it would result in a total mess if you wanted to make changes and tried to edit the HTML directly and not feasible for maintenance. Lastly why would anyone steal HTML code is beyond me. The funny thing is the authors themselves didn't use the application to protect their own HTML but yet cite the software as a tool which can be used to protect HTML... perhaps they only use it to protect their PHP files.
But on to the software itself, Codelock uses a decrypter file to decrypt your "protected files". The only problem is, the decrypter itself can be relatively easy to reverse engineer, with some trickery. The decrypter stores information such as checking of expiry dates of scripts and things like that. However once the decrypter's source is revealed, you can remove these checks such that even if an encrypted script does say to check for expiration, the expiration check can be bypassed directly by editing the decrypter's source code (which has very strange variable names I have to say, probably to confuse the heck out of whoever's reading it). Once the source code is obtained, it is also relatively easy (to me anyway) to deconstruct any encrypted scripts and output the source to plaintext. Sort of like a master key to any protected house. The result? The php script that was "encrypted" using CodeLock was fully decrypted and its source code exposed, after which I made some changes to remove the limitations that were present in the script.
The website itself says :
Well off to bed!
The plus side? I got a cheap laptop bag, talked to the CEO of santimage, got some good chocolates, and a former yahoo group director who shall be unnamed but is heading a startup. I might go join them but I'm still waiting. I have enough money to survive for now and I'm not really in a rush to join anyone, not for the right price. San Francisco was expensive and I met some really strange people. Clam chowder was good though. :-)
Today, Codelock, a so-called PHP and HTML encrypter was reverse engineered by moi. It can be found at www.codelock.co.nz and I stumbled across it after finding out a script that was "protected" by this program. I find it funny how they say you can use it to "protect" your HTML files (in addition to PHP) using obfuscation. First of all it would be stupid to encrypt HTML as search engine robots would be unable to decipher any of the resulting obfuscated code, resulting in zero web traffic from any search engines. Secondly it would result in a total mess if you wanted to make changes and tried to edit the HTML directly and not feasible for maintenance. Lastly why would anyone steal HTML code is beyond me. The funny thing is the authors themselves didn't use the application to protect their own HTML but yet cite the software as a tool which can be used to protect HTML... perhaps they only use it to protect their PHP files.
But on to the software itself, Codelock uses a decrypter file to decrypt your "protected files". The only problem is, the decrypter itself can be relatively easy to reverse engineer, with some trickery. The decrypter stores information such as checking of expiry dates of scripts and things like that. However once the decrypter's source is revealed, you can remove these checks such that even if an encrypted script does say to check for expiration, the expiration check can be bypassed directly by editing the decrypter's source code (which has very strange variable names I have to say, probably to confuse the heck out of whoever's reading it). Once the source code is obtained, it is also relatively easy (to me anyway) to deconstruct any encrypted scripts and output the source to plaintext. Sort of like a master key to any protected house. The result? The php script that was "encrypted" using CodeLock was fully decrypted and its source code exposed, after which I made some changes to remove the limitations that were present in the script.
The website itself says :
Codelock for PHP is a strong deterrent. Most end users will not be able to decipher your code and will have a difficult time working through the 24 levels of encryption used by the software (V1.5). It will take more than the average programmer to decipher your scripts. The fact is, any PHP encryption program does needs to decrypt the file at some time, so the code will theoretically be available to experienced crackers during its execution. However, it would take considerable expertise, a lot of time and a rewrite of some of the core PHP decode engine (codelock.php) to get at it. Note: The Decryptor file (codelock.php) is also Encrypted. As well as all this, it would be a violation of our reverse engineering policy.
Sort of like giving a locked treasure chest along with the key, except that the key is initially a jigsaw puzzle. The "violation of our reverse engineering" seemed like a last ditch effort to persuade the consumer to part with their money, knowing that if all else fails, it's against their policy! Ehhh... so what?? It wasn't a strong enough deterrent for me and I don't really consider myself a super coder other than armed with insight, common sense and some limited knowledge of encryption. In fact, PHP isn't even my specialty. Perhaps this experienced cracking thing only applies to their latest versions. Admittingly I have no idea what version the one I was working on but it was released as a commercial version and distributed with a "protected" php script.Well off to bed!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Graduation in 24 hours
It's early Thursday and I'm graduating again tomorrow. Bachelor of Science, first class honours in the field of Computer Science. It's been a quick year. Sort of. My overall GPA is now 6.70something out of a maximum possible of 7. To the majority that would be pretty damn good but to me, well let's just say it would be good enough if I get the medal. :) It's not the first class honours that I'm really aiming for but the university medal. Hopefully my grades are still good enough to obtain it. The thing is I wouldn't know till end of the year. If not, I've tried my best, pushed myself to the limits, and I can only blame the stupid professor for being an idiot and totally giving me crap marks which I felt were unjustified. Bah!!! Either that or I can blame myself for trying to do the insanely impossible by taking on 3 special topics which no one has done previously at UQ.
Then I'm heading down to San Francisco in August for the WWDC conference, hopefully that will be interesting. I'll be catching up with an old friend too who is doing an internship in the USA.
I'm also applying for permanent residency in Australia at the moment, there's a ton of paperwork involved. Ridiculously troublesome. I can understand why some people would pay 2K to get a lawyer to do it, but it would be a waste of money. The process is not impossible, just tedious!
Then I'm heading down to San Francisco in August for the WWDC conference, hopefully that will be interesting. I'll be catching up with an old friend too who is doing an internship in the USA.
I'm also applying for permanent residency in Australia at the moment, there's a ton of paperwork involved. Ridiculously troublesome. I can understand why some people would pay 2K to get a lawyer to do it, but it would be a waste of money. The process is not impossible, just tedious!
Monday, June 26, 2006
End of the road
Well uni's over, results will be out soon. I'm sick and tired of this semester, so tired of studying. Not even sure if all this studying will pay off. I hate it how so many idiots are doing IT. WHY? God dammit so many of them are crap at what they do. Sometimes I really regret taking IT, I had all the academic ability in the world to take any field of study. Should have done something that's in demand worldwide. It's really depressing sometimes. If your field's not in demand it's really hard to distinguish yourself even if you're the best.
I just want to retire. Heck with the rat race.
I just want to retire. Heck with the rat race.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Universities are a business, who gives a damn about teaching??
My thesis supervisor told me today that the university's cutting down courses and cutting down on the number of staff. She also told me that the Uni of Melbourne, not where I'm from, will be introducing a graduate program and will be cutting 10,000 students from its enrolment over the next 10 years. All the money that universities are getting are from doing research. It's true. That's what they are doing at QUT too, the dean sacked half of his staff and hired researchers instead. Not people who are good at teaching, but people who can actually bring money into the uni! So no one cares about teaching anymore. You can be the lousiest teacher but the university will hire you as long as you can bring in research grants. Kind of a sad state to be in, I thought you go to uni to learn, but apparently not, you just contribute to their business and maybe you'll learn something along the way! No wonder so many uni lecturers are crap. There's absolutely NO incentive to teach. You don't even get paid additional to teach a subject. And hear this, if you've been selected to teach, you can actually PAY OUT a figure of 16K AUD to the university so that they hire someone else from outside the uni to teach the subject.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. People will go to uni but they'll be complaining that the lecturers are all crap. No wonder we get people who know crap who work in "the real world", because the lecturers teaching them are crap in the first place.
According to dictionary.com, a university is
Sad sad sad...
It'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few years. People will go to uni but they'll be complaining that the lecturers are all crap. No wonder we get people who know crap who work in "the real world", because the lecturers teaching them are crap in the first place.
According to dictionary.com, a university is
- An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master's degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's degrees.
Sad sad sad...
Friday, June 09, 2006
Thoughtworks
So this other company called thoughtworks is interviewing me. Apparently if you don't have more than 2 years of "real work experience" in a large commercial environment, you get placed in their graduate program and spend 6 weeks in India on their training program. They also say that they hire the smartest and brightest, however this blog post indicates otherwise.
http://www.pyrasun.com/mike/mt/archives/2005/04/23/18.29.03/index.html
Not sure if I want to work for them now, and there's no way that I'm working for a starting grad salary, no way. I like it where one person said "They helped develop me, a 22 year-old kid fresh out of college with little more than two semesters of programming under his belt." Surrounded by idiots or newbs is the last thing I want to be doing.
http://www.pyrasun.com/mike/mt/archives/2005/04/23/18.29.03/index.html
Not sure if I want to work for them now, and there's no way that I'm working for a starting grad salary, no way. I like it where one person said "They helped develop me, a 22 year-old kid fresh out of college with little more than two semesters of programming under his belt." Surrounded by idiots or newbs is the last thing I want to be doing.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Interviews
Today I had the longest interview with Redhat, whom headhunted me recently. 2 days ago I had an hour long interview over the phone and today, I had an interview that went well over 3 hours in person, in fact it was close to 3 1/2. 4 different people interviewed me. It took such a long time I thought it was going to go on forever. Some of the questions I felt were strange. Like how many cars are in Australia, how many company cars are in Australia and how many buses. I'm assuming that's how they think about your problem solving and creative process but I felt it was stupid. Anyway... I did alright I think, except I buggered up the reverse linked list question, but I figured it out in the end. I'm still not sure if I should do it though. Apparently many engineers work overtime and I'll hate that. I like to put in my 100% during office hours and after that it's enough, I don't want to live in work (unless it's my own thing.. of course). We'll see if I get it or not. But it's no biggie if I don't. Not to say I was trying not to get it, cos I am still interested in it but I want to learn as much as I can. If I can't learn or if it's not interesting there's no point in doing it.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
International Prospectus 2007 - The face of Science and Technology
So I found out from a friend today that I'm in the international prospectus for this year, on page 74. I'm the "featured graduate" in the Science and Technology section, out of five other sections. I have to say, the picture is HUGE. My face takes up more than half the page! They could have made it smaller at least. Unlike the other featured students, I made no attempt to say the university's the best, even mention the courses available, or the slightest hint that teaching was even remotely good. Maybe the international student count will drop now. Haha!!
Monday, April 24, 2006
Sleep, need.. more
It's 2am and I'm going nuts over Rails. Can't get the scaffolding to display properly if an id is not autonumber. Blah. Ian I hope you can help me. Ian's the supervisor of this subject, but somehow I feel he is busier with other things. There's no textbook on rails either that's available to borrow, so I am .. dependent on google. Waste of time this is!!
I swear by the time I finish this semester will be an incredible achievement by anyone's standards. I don't think people can live or stay sane with that amount of work that I'm doing.
People need to think about their future more. My brother has no idea what he's doing in the future, other than study. Everyone only plans for the moment. I told my mum this and she said she'll advise him, with what? To work harder? Where's that going to get you? Uni work, so much of it's irrelevant. I wish it were true, but unless you apply everything you learnt everyday, you won't remember much if not all of it. Sometimes it's not what you've learnt, but what you apply what you've learnt, that gets you anywhere. A lot of technology stuff that's being taught in uni is way WAY outdated. And if it's taught? Well it's crap because they get crap lecturers to teach it. They should get people who are leaders in their field to teach it, but they're not going to do that even though they have millions. Alas alack, one can only depend on themselves. Rails would be a great subject to teach, but too bad the universities won't teach it till.. YEARS later, if ever. I can remember back in 2003 one of the lecturers said "next semester" they would be introducing this new subject to teach X, well fast forwad to 2006 and still zip!!! Another instance that I can remember was learning programming in Windows 3.1 when Windows 95 or 98 was released. It was plain stupid, when I asked the lecturer why he didn't reply, I suppose it was his way of saying heck I don't care, I'm just being paid to teach. Yes I'm in a bit of a complaining mood. But makes it easier for me to differentiate myself from the rest... I hate it how people say I only make X amount of dollars when I deserve more, when they do nothing to make themselves stand out, do nothing to make themselves improve, but complain as if the world owes them a living. If I'm a boss of some big company, and there's A, B, and C, and all of them are the same with skills, I'll pick the one with best value for money, a.ka. cheapest labour. It's only common sense. Don't these people think?!??
Anyway I've had enough of complaining, time to sleep...
I swear by the time I finish this semester will be an incredible achievement by anyone's standards. I don't think people can live or stay sane with that amount of work that I'm doing.
People need to think about their future more. My brother has no idea what he's doing in the future, other than study. Everyone only plans for the moment. I told my mum this and she said she'll advise him, with what? To work harder? Where's that going to get you? Uni work, so much of it's irrelevant. I wish it were true, but unless you apply everything you learnt everyday, you won't remember much if not all of it. Sometimes it's not what you've learnt, but what you apply what you've learnt, that gets you anywhere. A lot of technology stuff that's being taught in uni is way WAY outdated. And if it's taught? Well it's crap because they get crap lecturers to teach it. They should get people who are leaders in their field to teach it, but they're not going to do that even though they have millions. Alas alack, one can only depend on themselves. Rails would be a great subject to teach, but too bad the universities won't teach it till.. YEARS later, if ever. I can remember back in 2003 one of the lecturers said "next semester" they would be introducing this new subject to teach X, well fast forwad to 2006 and still zip!!! Another instance that I can remember was learning programming in Windows 3.1 when Windows 95 or 98 was released. It was plain stupid, when I asked the lecturer why he didn't reply, I suppose it was his way of saying heck I don't care, I'm just being paid to teach. Yes I'm in a bit of a complaining mood. But makes it easier for me to differentiate myself from the rest... I hate it how people say I only make X amount of dollars when I deserve more, when they do nothing to make themselves stand out, do nothing to make themselves improve, but complain as if the world owes them a living. If I'm a boss of some big company, and there's A, B, and C, and all of them are the same with skills, I'll pick the one with best value for money, a.ka. cheapest labour. It's only common sense. Don't these people think?!??
Anyway I've had enough of complaining, time to sleep...
Monday, March 27, 2006
Interesting times
I'm currently reviewing a contract and it talks about withholding tax of up to ONE THIRD of income. That's just crazy. This is irregardless of how much you earn!!! Damn France taxation system. I'm not sure if I can even claim it back, but I hope I can. I'll probably still want to sell it in France because of the opportunities it can provide, but still I am quite pissed off at how much tax I will have to pay.
On the other hand, my software's currently being reviewed in Japan to go retail. That will be a separate contract. It will be just fantastically awesome if it happens.. cross my fingers. It's always been a dream of mine to have it boxed on a shelf in a shop. I remember a friend who was sort of saying as a joke so you sell your software in a box about a year and a bit ago, and now it's becoming a reality. Royalty payments for life if it happens. Makes me wonder sometimes why am I even bothered about uni!! And the answer is, I have a point to prove. And because, I can!
Well, back to studying!
On the other hand, my software's currently being reviewed in Japan to go retail. That will be a separate contract. It will be just fantastically awesome if it happens.. cross my fingers. It's always been a dream of mine to have it boxed on a shelf in a shop. I remember a friend who was sort of saying as a joke so you sell your software in a box about a year and a bit ago, and now it's becoming a reality. Royalty payments for life if it happens. Makes me wonder sometimes why am I even bothered about uni!! And the answer is, I have a point to prove. And because, I can!
Well, back to studying!
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Careers Fair
I went to the university careers fair today. I was there late and it was just about to close (which has been the case for the past 3 years) but managed to pick up a handbook called graduate opportunities 2006. I was interested in the graduate employment statistics and here's some bits off it. It's called "Median starting salaries of bachelor graduates in first full-time employment and aged less than 25, in Australia 2004". Numbers in brackets are starting salaries of the different degrees.
Medicine graduates are the ones which the highest employment rate of 99.6% (50K), followed by pharmacy 99.3% (38K), veterinary science 97.1% (36K) and dentistry 96.4% (60K).
From the other end of the table, we have arts and design 56.8% (32K), mathematics 65% (40K), humanities 65.5% (35K) and biological sciences 67.4% (36K) forming the bottom 4.
The median salary was 38K, 39K for males and 38K for females. At first glance I thought these salaries were actually low. And I still feel that they are low. Including taxes it would be much lower!
At the careers fair there were no small companies, only the big (and D U L L, Australian tax office, AusAid, MasterFoods, Ford, blah blah.. zzz) ones. The ones that provide-a-stable-income-so-that-you-may-shut-up kind of company. Why?? I would rather work for a small one than a big one. I walked past 2 companies that actually have purchased software that I've developed. They just have no idea! I suspect most if not all the people who were advertising were minions.
Anyway back to work!!
Medicine graduates are the ones which the highest employment rate of 99.6% (50K), followed by pharmacy 99.3% (38K), veterinary science 97.1% (36K) and dentistry 96.4% (60K).
From the other end of the table, we have arts and design 56.8% (32K), mathematics 65% (40K), humanities 65.5% (35K) and biological sciences 67.4% (36K) forming the bottom 4.
The median salary was 38K, 39K for males and 38K for females. At first glance I thought these salaries were actually low. And I still feel that they are low. Including taxes it would be much lower!
At the careers fair there were no small companies, only the big (and D U L L, Australian tax office, AusAid, MasterFoods, Ford, blah blah.. zzz) ones. The ones that provide-a-stable-income-so-that-you-may-shut-up kind of company. Why?? I would rather work for a small one than a big one. I walked past 2 companies that actually have purchased software that I've developed. They just have no idea! I suspect most if not all the people who were advertising were minions.
Anyway back to work!!
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Why you need a university scholarship (from the perspective of an overseas student)
International students bring in heaps of money to the universities in Australia. And then spend years paying back the loans. And I mean years.
As an international student studying a Science bachelor's degree, you will spend approximately 22 K AUD each year on fees alone. This is based on a full time university load of 8 units per semester. Now let's include living expenses, which is estimated at say 15 K. That makes it a total of 37 K AUD each year. And a total of 148 K AUD over 4 years for the full degree uptil honours.
Now let's assume this international student, who is from Singapore, goes back home and finds a job that pays a graduate pay of 2.08 K AUD per month (or 2.5K SGD), which is a best case scenario, in reality this could be as low as 1.66 K AUD (or 2 K SGD) or lower even. Now let's assume the student, now working, gets a pay rise of 83 AUD per month, (100 SGD) each year.
Total earnings after 1st year = 2.08 x 12 = 24.96 K AUD
Total earnings after 2nd year = 2.163 x 12 = 25.956 K AUD
Total earnings after 3rd year = 2.246 x 12 = 26.952 K AUD
Total earnings after 4th year = 2.329 x 12 = 27.948 K AUD
Total after 4 years = 105.816 K
Deficit of 42 K!!
After 4 years that's still well over 40 K short of what they paid for their degree, in fact it will probably take about 2 more years to achieve the same amount that was spent on a degree. That's 6 years of your life. Remember the 105.816 K is the amount that they are paid for and does not take into account living expenses, one will surely not even come close to saving that amount over 4 years. What's my point ? Well if you have a scholarship, the outlook is very different.
Let's say you have a full undergrad scholarship which covers all tuition fees. After 4 years, you only spend 60K. Still a substantial amount but less than half of 148K.
After graduation, and assuming you earn the same amount as mentioned early (but of course being exceptional they will probably get much more), you will cover the costs in slightly over 2 years. That's an almost 4 year difference between not getting a scholarship. 4 years is quite a big difference in terms of money, and time. If you include living expenses this gap will be much wider.
My point is, if your parents are paying for your uni fees, think about them and what they are doing for you. You always want to provide the best for your children. Getting a scholarship, as a son or daughter, will help them (and yourself) immensely. Not to mention bragging rights too.
As an international student studying a Science bachelor's degree, you will spend approximately 22 K AUD each year on fees alone. This is based on a full time university load of 8 units per semester. Now let's include living expenses, which is estimated at say 15 K. That makes it a total of 37 K AUD each year. And a total of 148 K AUD over 4 years for the full degree uptil honours.
Now let's assume this international student, who is from Singapore, goes back home and finds a job that pays a graduate pay of 2.08 K AUD per month (or 2.5K SGD), which is a best case scenario, in reality this could be as low as 1.66 K AUD (or 2 K SGD) or lower even. Now let's assume the student, now working, gets a pay rise of 83 AUD per month, (100 SGD) each year.
Total earnings after 1st year = 2.08 x 12 = 24.96 K AUD
Total earnings after 2nd year = 2.163 x 12 = 25.956 K AUD
Total earnings after 3rd year = 2.246 x 12 = 26.952 K AUD
Total earnings after 4th year = 2.329 x 12 = 27.948 K AUD
Total after 4 years = 105.816 K
Deficit of 42 K!!
After 4 years that's still well over 40 K short of what they paid for their degree, in fact it will probably take about 2 more years to achieve the same amount that was spent on a degree. That's 6 years of your life. Remember the 105.816 K is the amount that they are paid for and does not take into account living expenses, one will surely not even come close to saving that amount over 4 years. What's my point ? Well if you have a scholarship, the outlook is very different.
Let's say you have a full undergrad scholarship which covers all tuition fees. After 4 years, you only spend 60K. Still a substantial amount but less than half of 148K.
After graduation, and assuming you earn the same amount as mentioned early (but of course being exceptional they will probably get much more), you will cover the costs in slightly over 2 years. That's an almost 4 year difference between not getting a scholarship. 4 years is quite a big difference in terms of money, and time. If you include living expenses this gap will be much wider.
My point is, if your parents are paying for your uni fees, think about them and what they are doing for you. You always want to provide the best for your children. Getting a scholarship, as a son or daughter, will help them (and yourself) immensely. Not to mention bragging rights too.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Millionaire advice and RIP Betty Anne
So I've finished reading a millionaire book, and here's an excellent quote that I've encountered.
"I am not impressed with what people own. But I'm impressed with what they achieve. Always strive to be the best in your field... Don't chase money. If you are the best in your field, money will find you."
Isn't it inspirational? I realise it's what I've been following, subconsciously. I like to highlight the phrase, "Don't chase money. If you are the best in your field, money will find you." Have a think about that.
Millionaires are frugal frugal frugal. They actually have annual planning for everything, gifts, shopping, etc. Most millionaires also own 2nd hand cars. Believe it or not. It sounds like me. I know I'll be a millionaire. It's only a matter of time. The ones who spend the most, earn high incomes but have high expenditure too. So they will never be wealthy, no matter how much they earn, aka the high volume consumer. Wealth ignores all social status. The thing to note is always live well below your means no matter how much you are earning.
Another interesting thing to note is adult children who are given monetary gifts (also referred to as "economic outpatient care") by their parents accumulate LESS wealth than adult children who are given less. True fact. Are you given lots of monetary gifts from your parents? If you are perhaps you should be worrying about your future.
Most people have two types of children and typically, the most economically productive one receives the smaller share of the parent's wealth, and the least productive one receives the lion's share of both economic outpatient care and inheritance. Suppose you as a parent have noted at an early age that your eldest child is independent, achievement oriented and well disciplined. Your instinct would be to nurture these traits by not trying to control his or her decisions. Instead you spend more time helping your less resourceful child make decisions, or you actually make decisions for him. So what happens is you effectively strengthen the strong child and weaken the weak!! And it is the weak one the becomes the product of economic outpatient care.
That's it from the book, I've picked the most interesting bits out of it.
Betty Anne was an elderly lady from Canada who I talked to over the Net every now and then. She discovered me through puter-school.com where I was listed as a volunteer to help people with their computer troubles. I helped her with her computer troubles and got to know her a bit and some things about Canada. She passed away suddenly on boxing day due to a cerebral aneurism, which is basically bleeding in the brain. Reminds me of what happened to my cousin. Anyhow. RIP Betty Anne.
"I am not impressed with what people own. But I'm impressed with what they achieve. Always strive to be the best in your field... Don't chase money. If you are the best in your field, money will find you."
Isn't it inspirational? I realise it's what I've been following, subconsciously. I like to highlight the phrase, "Don't chase money. If you are the best in your field, money will find you." Have a think about that.
Millionaires are frugal frugal frugal. They actually have annual planning for everything, gifts, shopping, etc. Most millionaires also own 2nd hand cars. Believe it or not. It sounds like me. I know I'll be a millionaire. It's only a matter of time. The ones who spend the most, earn high incomes but have high expenditure too. So they will never be wealthy, no matter how much they earn, aka the high volume consumer. Wealth ignores all social status. The thing to note is always live well below your means no matter how much you are earning.
Another interesting thing to note is adult children who are given monetary gifts (also referred to as "economic outpatient care") by their parents accumulate LESS wealth than adult children who are given less. True fact. Are you given lots of monetary gifts from your parents? If you are perhaps you should be worrying about your future.
Most people have two types of children and typically, the most economically productive one receives the smaller share of the parent's wealth, and the least productive one receives the lion's share of both economic outpatient care and inheritance. Suppose you as a parent have noted at an early age that your eldest child is independent, achievement oriented and well disciplined. Your instinct would be to nurture these traits by not trying to control his or her decisions. Instead you spend more time helping your less resourceful child make decisions, or you actually make decisions for him. So what happens is you effectively strengthen the strong child and weaken the weak!! And it is the weak one the becomes the product of economic outpatient care.
That's it from the book, I've picked the most interesting bits out of it.
Betty Anne was an elderly lady from Canada who I talked to over the Net every now and then. She discovered me through puter-school.com where I was listed as a volunteer to help people with their computer troubles. I helped her with her computer troubles and got to know her a bit and some things about Canada. She passed away suddenly on boxing day due to a cerebral aneurism, which is basically bleeding in the brain. Reminds me of what happened to my cousin. Anyhow. RIP Betty Anne.
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