Design Patterns

I was browsing at Kinokuniya the other day on the programming section. Interestingly, I found some book regarding design pattern. Well, I have learned about design for IT in my college years, (Usually about creating forms or database design.) but this topic really catches my eyes. By the way, those books on the shelves at Kino are tightly wrapped and I was lazy to take the book to the counter for unwrap. Therefore, I just read the cover for some brief information and try to remember the book title.

Back at home, I did some research on the internet on what I have discovered. To my surprise, all this information was available back in 1995. Till today, none of these terminology was apply in my working years.

Perhaps I can say that, these design patterns was not that crucial or important enough to practice in real world. So, why do I need read all these stuff and talk about it here? The big advantage of design pattern is that it reduce software maintenance and adapt to change. (In IT world, a software application has to adapt to change else it will die or outdated. This also mean out of job for programmers. :D) Well, I have seen company putting in a lot of investment just to maintain an application and it doesn't adapt to change either. (Maybe that's how I and everybody else could get a job and put the food on the table. I would disagree with this because that means we lose a competitive edge to our competitor due a lot effort was spend in maintaining the software instead of moving forward for new functionality, scalability, usability and improve performance. Competition not in term just for local but applies to global competition as well)

So, what so special about it? Well, for people who interested in the Object-Oriented Programming, here a sample chapter of Decorator Pattern and it was described in Java programming. I believe this also can be done on dot Net technology since it is a OOP also.

If you have started talking in OOP language, that's great. Perhaps you can try out talking in Pattern language, trust me, that's even exciting.

Leaving the comfort zone

It’s been a week I have landed my job on my new company. I remember the first day I started my training, my mood wasn’t felt quite right. I believe that was due to the unfamiliar environment, work and colleagues. From an ERP software environment to the financial credit card system seems to be a lot of changes for me. In addition to that, my mind is still trying to fall back the daily behavior in my previous job and it took me couple of days to adjust my mind to feel a bit of comfort in my current office.

Nevertheless, the external environment still remains the same. My current job location wasn’t too far away from my previous job and I still able to enjoy my lunch hour as usual before. From time to time, I still able meet up with some ex-colleague (different department) on lunch hour or at the LRT station after working hours. Funny thing was, they didn’t know I have left (mind you that I’m just only a small potatoes) and asked me how come I’m wearing casual wear to work. Am I on MC they asked. After clearing up the confusion, a sense of embarrassment runs thru my mind. Well, they have to know it eventually and by the way, we have plenty of chances to meet up at the LRT station.

So, leaving comfort zone was just only the first step and there are many more steps waiting to be explored. Whether those steps are taking to me to higher or lower ground, in my opinion, I hope those steps would take me to more fulfillment and happier experience.

A few words before end of 2006

I got this message from a friend

''Wake up! Wake up! Today is d last day of 2006! Dun let d day slip away! Do all d evil things u wan to do! Then start anew in 2007! Hehe! Happy New Year! James (Maxis)''

Thanks James for reminding me some evil things left undone. :) There are couples of word I would like to say before end of 2006.

To my wife: Thanks for being understanding and a lot patient building this family together. I'm really blessed for having you as my wife and I’ve learned a lot from you as about family values. I'm looking forward on next year to build a more fun and joyful relationship together.

To my dad, sisters and brother: As I have my own family now, we've been seldom to see each other. I hope the coming New Year we would able to spend more time together. I miss you all.

To my friends: I hope most of you would understand my situation and that does not mean the end of our gathering. If you guys have any events coming up, please do let me know. I’ll try to squeeze out some time with you guys. ;)

To my current colleague: As you know, I’ll be moving to new company next year. It’s been wonderful working with you guys and thanks for guiding me along the way on my job. It’s been a very fruitful year to me and I hope we would able to work together again in future.

To my blog reader: Thanks for keep coming back for supporting my blog. This is the last post for 2006 and I hope you keep coming back for year 2007. For those who haven't start blogging, why not make one for this New Year? Not just for yourself but for the people who cares about you. ;)

Finally, I would like wish all the best, a prosperous and fruitful 2007 to you. Happy New Year!

Working Panda

There was a quake near Taiwan and it caused entire asia having trouble to surf the internet. most of the website is either slow or unable to reach at all and that's bad news for my company.

My company is fully dependent on internet in order to operate. Developers and QAs depend on internet connection to download the latest update or upload their work. Since the internet was down, consequently not much of productivity can be done from employees.

So, the management came out a 'brilliant' idea. Flexible working, that's how they called it. Working schedule were change from normal '9 to 6' to '12pm to 6am' or '3am to 9am'. taxi fare can be claimed since there are no public transport available on that hour. After some discussion with my team, I end up with the schedule '3am to 9am' as agreed with all my team members.

I woke up at 2 am and I'd book the cab to pick me up at 2:30 am. I reached the company at 2:50 am because the taxi driver drove so fast since there was almost no car on the road. Anyway, when I reached the company, the driver laughed at me after he found out that my working hour was 3 in the morning. I was embarrassed and quickly paid up my fare.

When I reached to my office, I was hoping the internet connection would perform much faster than daytime connection speed. Unfortunately, the speed hasn't change that much even we're work at 3 am in the morning. People in the office raise their voice in disappointment due the 'flexible hours' wasn't help at all. Anyway, we found out a trick to use the external proxy to do our work although it's a bit slow. Nevertheless, an external proxy trick is better than no proxy at all.

Internet connection speed would be much faster at early in the morning. Yeah right.

Nightmare after Christmas

No. It's not the movie that I'm talking about but the experience going home one day using the train service.

So, it wasn't the first time that the Putra LRT station had a technical problem. The train was moving slower and stay longer than usual at each of the station. I ended up as one of the office worker who queue up within a long line of people, eagerly getting back home as soon as possible. Some people was complaining while waiting and some people decided to choose another alternative way to go home. But I decided to stay quite and wait. Unfortunately, it took me 45 minutes in order to get onto the train.

I thought that was end of my nightmare when I get down on Central intersection. Well, the KTM train wasn't turn up so nicely as I thought it would be.

First, the air-cond was off. In my opinion, they can turn off anything but the air-cond. Second, a lot of people took the same train as I did. Third, the windows were tightly shut. When I was in the train, I thought I'm unable to breath due to the crowd and the tightly shut windows. Subsequently, the compartment was getting hotter and hotter. All the people started to feel the air humidity and temperature raising. I bet everybody's mind was thinking how fast the next stop would reach and looking forward the door to open again. At this time, we all would be relieved to get some fresh air gushing in.

While we all was day dreaming, the train moved for 5 minutes and then suddenly stopped in middle of nowhere. Later on, came an announcement that our train has to be halt for the commercial train to pass by. "Oh man!". That's the response came through everybody's mind.

We all waited patiently for 15 minutes and the air became so humid that all the windows were misted. Some people still had the humor to draw a "SOS" message on the windows. :D Fortunately, some people manage to get one of the window opened and this bring a little relief to us. However, that didn't solve the air problem in the compartment and it became harder to breathe. Then we saw 2 trains passed by and our train moved on after that. Some people got down on the first stop due to unable to withstand the air quality.

Anyway, I decided to stay in the train even though my mind was tempted to get down at the first stop; and I was right. After a few stop, then came a staff with special tool which specifically used to open those windows. Then the whole environment started to live up a bit due a lot people was frowning their faces all the while, including me. :D

When I get down on my stop, there was a temptation to kiss on the floor and said "I'm alive".