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.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
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.
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