Flavour of the Moment

Went to the lib the other day to borrow a book just so i could read some hours away while waiting for an event.

10 min in the library and i ended up with "live your passion, keep your paycheck".

it isn't that fascinating but it was good enough for me not to return the book immediately after the event, as i orignally planned.

Some ideas came up while reading the book.

I realise i could venture into medical writing and freelance programming!
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why medical writing?

because i like to write, it's part of the reason why i'm blogging at 3 ++ am.
and from what i see so far, writing well (as in, just using proper english), is not as common a skill as i originally thought.

i see pple at work writing really weird emails. either that or they take several hours to write an email with 15 lines.

and some of them are americans.

anyway, since (1) i like to write, (2) i have some interest in medical device engineering, and (3) i think explaining complex theories in layman terms is an admirable skill, i should just marry the two interests together!

Just did some research on the field. it looks like a lucrative one too, internationally at least. but it's hard to break in.

i think i'll start by volunteering a medical writing article for my company's newsletter.

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i just finished yet another software program at work.
this time it is a mac address generator!
just key in the start and end address, and the number of addresses you want in that range, and it'll list out all the addresses you need.

comes with password access, log records of users/date/time and the addresses they took, and a warning system when you're near the end.

unfortunately it may not be used at all.
since we found a commercial off-the-shelf computer system somewhere in the office that can do something like that.

it's ok though.
i wanted to do it just so i know it can be done.

there's another project i'm not involved in where they're doing it manually.
like really calculating and printing each mac address one by one and keeping track manually where they stopped.

i think it's terrible.
in this time and age, and especially since we are "engineers", we should minimise manual work as much as we can.

investing time into creating a program is worthy because you only do it once and you save hours of subsequent manual work, and there is also value-add because you learn something along the way.

oh well.

i'm pretty satisfied with the latest one because i did it in 2 work days flat too, after the customer issued a 2 week ultimanium.

which brings me to the next thing:

i should do freelance programming!

i can't do it professionally because i know what i know is just the tip of the iceberg. Pro programmers out there know so much more than i do. By freelancing i could learn along the way and get some money out of it.

then again i just did research (again) and there are too many experts out there. either that or the project is out of my current scope of knowledge. Just bidded for one though. see how it goes.

and then i have another brain wave.

i can't compete with the big players out there, but maybe i can start small!

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so whoever is reading my blog, including all my talented friends in whatever industry you're in,
tell me your workplace frustrations!

Especially things you think is a "big waste of time" and could be automated!

i'm especially interested in the education industry since i have many teacher friends, and there've been so many complains about the infamous "admin" work.

perhaps things like keying in grades manually into the PC?
or writing comments for every student (even though this really should be personalised to each student, i guess you can't really come up with 400 unique comments).

LET ME KNOW!

what about teaching your students to program? in a one hour session, just to get them started? obviously there are pro computer teachers out there, but i know enough to get pple started on simple stuff, and obviously i don't charge pro fees.

i could even throw in free singabola juggling balls! wow!

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my samsung phone broke down, so i had to use my backup Motorola PDA phone, which i didn't like cos i can't do one thumb sms-es. instead i had to painstakingly poke out every letter which doesn't appeal.

So pple at work saw my "new" phone, and started complimenting the "new" phone while condemning my samsung phone, until i went "i like my samsung phone! this is the old phone!"

i think the PDA one is in vogue now cos it looks like the apple iphone.


anyway, my friend just gave me a great idea the other day.

i was asking him how to bluetooth my mp3 player so i could use a wireless headset (which i found together with the motorola phone)

he suggested i just get a 2GB memory card and use the motorola as an mp3 player! which is a much more convenient way of doing things!

yay!

off to play with the bluetooth headset and transfer music to the phone.

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btw, don't forget, if you have any lobangs for medical writing and/or programming, tell me about it!!