Sunday, February 26, 2006

Weekend Thoughts

I don't know whether to like my weekends or to hate them. As far as I know, I go through my weekend as any other weekdays without stepping my foot in the office of course. For me, I still hang on to my dream of having a mobile office where I can just use a laptop as my office. My dream is nearly becoming true when my office granted me a laptop last 2 week.

Well, I redesigned my blog to a new look. It took me a couple of hours to customized it. However, the script which I took from Free Blogger Templates, is not designed using div a CSS for it's layout, it uses table. Oh well, as long as my blog looks good, I think it is okay. The owner of Free Blogger Templates is an Indonesian living in Yogjakarta.

So, what do you think about my new Blog Layout? Give me some comments.

Friday, February 24, 2006

What A Hectic Day

I'm writing this entry on my bed so I maybe a bit drowsy because of exhausted after one hell of a day. So, what happen was during my morning, I had to prepare cheque payments for my company's expenses, payroll etc..I guessed I wrote about 10 cheques if I'm not mistaken, then I moved on to reviewing a proposal my boss asked me to proofread it.

During the afternoon, I had a meeting with a bunch of college students. They wanted to do a final year project and asked for help by wanted to make my company to become their client. Of course I'm not going to suggest my company to pay them since my service level is much higher than what they are offering. So basically, I agreed to help them with an exchange of a few assignments that I'm going to give to them.

After lunch, I continued reviewing and refining more proposal which my boss wanted to give to his Dato' friend. Finished up that one, I had to make my boss business card (my boss is so stingy, he utilizes his employees ability to do all the stuff instead of outsourcing and paying very little). I hope my boss doesn't read this..haha..then I went back again to refine a standard document for a undergoing big project my company is engaged in besides supervising my team progress over their work.

During my time at the office, I had to listen to crap stuff my Indian consultant was telling. My company employs an Indian consultant and I am not happy with it. All he does is telling people what to do, e-mailing around, reading some crappy stuff and blames whatever if can when problems arises or when he cannot complete his puny task. He gets paid almost 3 times my salary while I had to cover for the job he was supposed to do. He is so imcompetent, he doesn't even know how to fax. Well, not all consultant are like that but if I am the boss, I would have sure fired him a long time ago. I'm planning subtlely to get rid of him away from the company very soon if doesn't improve.

After office hour, I had an appointment with my insurance agent. It has been more than a year I haven't seen him. I topped-up my premium to raise my standard as it is an investment link policy. I think it is wise to outsource your risk management instead of taking responsibility yourself. As usual, my agent sells his stuff very well.

Multi-tasking is a skill and it requires practice. Practice is all about spending time doing certain things learning by the experience. It's hard but someone has to do it. I'm going to bed now...Zzzzz...

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Romance..The Follow Up

This is my second weekend I haven't gone out and hang out with my friends. Normally every Saturday night I will hang out somewhere around KL most of the time having 'teh tarik' and chit-chatting with my small group of friends. Still, my life goes on with doing activities on the internet. The past week has been very intense with project meetings, research and daily or monthly job routine. One more thing is I'm still trying to get use to my new laptop. It seems uncomfortable working with a small machine with no mouse and getting my palm fried when typing. The laptop's system is also a bit sluggish, well I guess I have to deal with it one way or the other. Lucky for me, I didn't fork out my own money to buy such a slow machine. However, I'm still making use of it to it's maximum potential.

I like checking out my blog or website traffic status. I use Statcounter to track all the visitors who came to my blog. Interestingly, the past few weeks my Xfresh Blog receives traffic from keywords/phrases searched on Google. I give you 2 phrases which is quite interesting, 'how to know if a guy likes a woman' and 'when your boyfriend cries in front of you'. Actually, my Xfresh Blog didn't answer the queries made but it nearly matched the information seeked. Well, since I have a lot of free time right now, I'll try to answer them.

Okay, how to know if a guy likes a woman? Well, I'm taking myself as an example. The first thing I would do is, I'll dig out every information I can on that particular girl. I'll search for who is her friend, what time does she normally goes out, what she likes doing etc. It may sound like I'm stalking on her but this is the strategy I've used previously. Of course, my personality was a shy guy type, so I avoid having eye to eye contact with the girl (I've improved ever since). I've learned that girls admire guys who have some sort of decision making power or in other word, 'confidence'. What I did was, I got to be myself and quit thinking of how other people saw me. Simply saying, when a guy likes a woman, he is willing to spend most of his time with the woman that he likes.

When your boyfriend cries in front of you? I supposed the boyfriend is kind of soft emotionally. It depends on your reaction whether you like it or not. Some girls doesn't like soft hearted crying guys, while some girls doesn't mind it at all. However, I think girls should support her boyfriend as a human being is not a perfect creation. So, support your boyfriend if your boyfriend cries in front of you.

Okay..I haven't had my lunch yet. Write again soon.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Office Romance?

Valentine's Day is over, actually I don't celebrate valentine but I love the idea of romance in relationship. However, romance at work is something you should consider if your workplace has some tight policy around it. Here are 10 rules you should be aware of when engaging on romance at your workplace:

Rule 1 - Know the rules. If company policy says "no dating," either chill out or find another job before approach that angel in an amorous way.

Rule 2 - Know your co-worker. If your target for Cupid's arrow is attached, a gossiper, or related to the boss, aim that shaft elsewhere.

Rule 3 - No means no. If you need that one explained to you or choose to ignore it, you may wish to familiarize yourself with the job search engine at Simply Hired. Just sayin'.

Rule 4 - Create a workplace prenup. Set limits early and be aware of what could happen when the relationship that started with dozens of roses turns into War of The Roses.

Rule 5 - Don't fish in your boss's pond. That could be taken a lot of ways, but SimplyFired advises you to not date in the same department or be prepared to let the boss know about it.

Rule 6 - Date up, not down. Dating down means leaving oneself open to a sexual harassment suit if the relationship goes pancake-shaped.

Rule 7 - Keep your privates private. Um, (blush), this means avoid affectionate touching or longing glances when others are around. Private moments, people, that's what Rule 7 means!

Rule 8 - Use Hotmail for hot mail. (I am so not making a Gmail joke here. No way.) This one about avoiding work email for off-work topics can be summarized in six words: Email administrators can read your messages.

Rule 9 - Don't drink and date. Office parties and alcohol can turn the most covert relationship into the talk of the company for months afterward.

Rule 10 - Your office or mine? NEITHER. The office is for the work you're being paid to perform as specified in your job description. 'Nuff said.

Have a wonderful romancing time and all the best.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

My New Dell Inspiron Laptop

After working hard in my employment with a very minimum wage, finally my dream of having a laptop is now fulfilled. It now justifies my contribution to te company eventhough my salary is still the same, I can always find another way to earn more, if you haven't notice, Trillions of dollar circulates around the globe every single day in stocks, forex etc... Eventhough the laptop is not really mine, but it fills my purpose of having a mobile and powerful tool so that I could utilize and push my computing skills to the limit. The price of the laptop was RM3,400. So now I want to give some reviews about the DELL INSPIRON 630m I'm using to write this post on this blog:

Ashrufzz Dell Inspiron

The first impression when I got this laptop is, it looks so basic. My preference because I use to work with all sort of tools is to have functional button everywhere. Then I realized that the functional button is on the keyboard with a blue fn tab, so on second thought, this is cool. The battery can last up to 5 hours.

I don't really like going to the spec in details, if you really want to know the details plus some other reviews, you can click on the image below:

Dell Inspiron 630m

The reviews and detail spec is written by CNet and is almost exactly the same as my laptop.

So what will I do with this mobile powerhouse? Yesterday, I had a chat with my fellow acquantaince on the million dollar project that my company is engaged on. It seems that the entire documentation needs to be revamped and reorganized. Since all the documenting and coordination lies under my responsibility, I will use this laptop to organize the documentation and making necessary improvement so that the project progress would be good. Of course, since I have some side projects of my own, I can utilize the laptop ability to multitask and create something with ease.

It's a waste if such high performance mobile processing unit is underutilized, so it is my job to make sure it will be use to its maximum performance.

P/S: Last week I reconfigured my neighbour's Acer laptop, I like that laptop very much because of it's amazing crystal clear display and apart of its 1.5GHz Centrino with Celeron M (Celeron M is a lower end of Pentium M), it works fine enough for an average PC user. The price was RM2,500 only...

Monday, February 06, 2006

I've Made An Online Sale

2 weeks ago, I found a free gift in a form of a zip file which contains an e-book together with the sales letter and a thank you page. After reading the book, I repackage the gift and since the author of the book encourage to sell the book, I made a direct response marketing webpage just to practice my product packaging skill. I then left the page untouched since then and gave the link to my brother who put the webpage on his Autosurf Program list.

This afternoon, I opened up my e-mail and to my surprise, I got this message:

Image hosting by Photobucket

I jumped off my chair and screamed to my brother who sits just nearby me. It was euphoric to get a sale. The last time I had that feeling was way back in 2004 when I did online advertising, you can scroll on my earlier post to read all about it. I've been studying about doing an online business for the past 2 years but my lack of action hold me back. So, the lesson I've learned is to just do whatever you have learned.

So, if you have anything you would like to sell especially digital product. I recommend you to use this payment processor below if you don't have any budget just like myself.



Alright, I'm steaming ahead towards my online success...Toward success everyone!!

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Are You A Resourceful Person?

Everyone of us in my opinion is a resource powerhouse. Some of them in higher position or who have absorbed a lot of knowledge are much more powerful than the average person. The best thing about being resourceful is you have control over some certain thing. Some of my friends find me a very resourceful person because I know a lot of thing in a certain area. For me, I think my knowledge is still limited as there is a vast knowledge to be learned out there.

So, how do you gain resources? There are lots of ways to gain resources such as going to classes, meeting peoples, watching, observing but the most common and the best way to gain a substantial resources is by reading. I love reading since I was little, maybe my upbringing has lead me to be someone who loves to read, thank you mom. I am not an 'A++' student previously but I know my favourite subject. By the way I've heard from a quote somewhere that "Leader's are Readers", my boss doesn't read that much so maybe he is not really a leader type material..haha..

So, yesterday I spent my whole day learning about How To Make and Edit Your Own Video. The most time consuming process was the conversion part, took 1 hour just to convert from a tape form into my MMC Card using a compact digital TV recorder. Then another 3-4 hours just to convert from an ASF format (it's the default setting on the compact TV) to AVI format. Add another 1 hour just to learn how to use the Video Editing Software, then another 2 hours editing the video that I've converted. Another hour is spent on making the final edited video into MPEG and RealVideo format. 2 more hours to upload it onto some free video hosting which apparently failed. Altogether, I dedicated my whole day for a 10 minutes video of a BBQ Party I went last Tuesday. However I enjoyed every process that I've done as it is a self-satisfying learning curve. Now I know how to do it in lesser time if I have a project next time. Anyway, here is the final result (in RealVideo format):



Unfortunately for Malaysians, ZippyVideos is not available. You need to use some sort of Anonymous Proxy such as Guardster to get through. Still, you can manage to watch it by downloading the RealVideo files here. "BBQ di Rumah Santo Sg Penchala".

Going on to my career development, I am transitioning away from a functional organization (structured organization such as the normal boss-employee typo):

Functional Organization Structure

towards a Project Organizational Structure. The Project structure roughly looks lke this:

Project Management Structure Diagram

The difference between the two is that the people working under the Project Organizational Structure have less stairways to climb instead of the usual corporate ladder. Plus in a project environment, your qualification doesn't need to be high, all you need is some skill and you are on the job (of course you need some very good connection with the person responsible as well). It is perfect for me as I can do lots of different thing altogether instead of some mundane job. There is of course risk involved but I see this type of organization provides more advantage than the one I am working now.

Last night I've managed to finish an e-book about Forex Exchange, grasped some ideas about it and I'm going to put it to the test using a free demo account in the next several days. Other e-books that is on its way to be digested is:

Firewall For Dummies

Firewall for Dummies, I'm going to use this to further enhance my hacking ability since I'm going to be setting up a few servers and a system for the project (My project manager has no idea on how to set the thing up). I am a bit greedy ain't I??hehe....

Project Management Step By Step

This e-book is why I'm looking forward towards the transition. I think this would be my future career for the next several years to come.

Wishing you all the best in your endeavour.