朋友 - 緣

呢幾日諗緊一個難題，話說有個朋友，中學識嘅。我無同佢同過班，剩係同佢一齊讀過一個星期先有兩堂嘅 Computer Studies, 但係就偏偏係依家最老死嘅朋友。



我今日都問過佢，但係佢都解唔到究竟我哋點樣熟絡。我諗唯一解釋到嘅，就係緣。緣呢樣嘢好奇妙，只要時辰一到，擋都擋唔住。無嘅話，真係住响隔籬，甚至做埋同房，都唔會識到。



我呢，人緣就幾好喇，但姻緣就嘛嘛。

Self-disposing Resource Pattern

A few mon, I have encountered a quite disturbing problem (see below). Until recently, I found that this problem can be solved by a interesting class, SoftReference, in Java. So, I formulated the following pattern. It's still a rough draft, but I would like to publish it first.

Name: Self-disposing Resource Pattern (Java)
Context: A is some expensive resource that may or may not be pooled. A is used to create another kind of resource, B. If A is disposed, it cannot create B anymore. However, if A is not disposed, the system may run out of memory.
Problem: Determine when to dispose A.
Solution: Java comes with SoftReference class for memory management. “An object is softly reachable if it is not strongly reachable but can be reached by traversing a soft reference.” An A instance can be registered to a resource manager to be a soft reference when it is no longer reachable by any thread. On the other hand, the resource manager can start off a thread to dequeue the SoftReference instances from a reference queue and clean up the resource properly.

First Week of the Semester

The school has been started this Tuesday. I attended to the classes for three consecutive nights. It's so tired. Tomorrow, I need to take another one in the afternoon. I'll need to decide whether I should drop the Tuesday class. That class was very boring.

Days of Part-time Working

I haven't blogged for a long time. I am currently working as a part time. In theory, I should have more time than before and I should have more time to blog. Obviously, it's not.

I found that there are many personal stuff have to take care in the first. Like have the MP3 player fixed, applying for CEF, etc.

The second week, I got cold again. I had to take rest at home and didn't go to work out. My body get a bit slimmer. It's not good though. After I got better, I go hiking with friends and upgrading the CPU. Actually, these few weeks I was trying to get an AMD's Althon XP CPU which was out of stock. I gave up in this week and got a Sampron. Another thing I wanted to get was a Palm T3 which was again out of stock. I am considering if I should by T5 instead.

This week, I finally started trying to swim. Rocky now is my "couch" preventing me from drowning. Even just one day, I thought I had the key to swim.

Today, we went to Leo's home to play video games and having dinner together. It's a tired but enjoyable day. Rocky and I almost missed a bus when going there. However, we still miss the stop to get off the bus. Luckily, Michael and Sammi were still enjoying their lunch.

Interesting enough, we missed the bus of the back trip. We then take the MTR to get back home. When getting the last trip of the train, we missed the train again.

Summary of These Two Weeks

Xmas eve - Had a party with colleague, then friends.
Day after boxing day - BBQ with other friends, dinner with yet some other friends. It's a great day.
New year eve - tried to buy T3. However, it seems that it was totally out of stock.

Plan on 2005 - Study. Start profiling my financial status, again.

Social Gathering

Last Saturday, I went to a colleague house club for a gathering. I played badminton, someone played squash. Then we had dinner and chatting together. It is quite enjoyable.

Vacation

It has been a long time I didn't take any leave. After two days of rest, I am really energized.

Exam

I took a two-day leave to study for the exam last week. The overall performance is good. However, I missed a 20-point question. Hope I can still get an A in this class.

Sick

I don't feel quite well since yesterday. However, I need to hold an important meeting this morning. So, I take off as soon as the meeting is done.

Another Colleague Leaving

One of my colleague is leaving the company as he does not want to keep implementing the always on-going project, which I am currently the project manager. I will not be the manager next month. However, he is a smart guy and very helpful. So, after next month, all old team member is gone. New manager, new developers, and new policy will take care the project soon.

Final Decision

Everything seems going smoothly. I can work as a valuable part-time in the company about half of the day each day. So, starting from next month, I will have plenty of time to execute my plan.

I'll start learning swimming. Maybe going to take some Japanese course. Pressure will be much relieved.

Tension Relieved

I've told my intention on Tuesday. It turns out that my reasoning is based on some false assumption. Even though my time is still a constraint, I can choose to perform another role in the company. A role that can take less time. I can even choose to be a part-time, too.

As there are too many possibilities, it will take some time to think about it.

The Intention of Leaving

I think it's about time to leave the company. I found that my job duty is going to be worthless. Even my manager has no priority to meet me for more than a week. I think it is good though. I can focus more on my study and speed up my progress.

The Last Day of Class

Today is the last day of class. Even though I've dropped the class, I loved to attend it. I just don't want to do the homework anyway.

Money Matters: The First Month Loses

I have been trying the invest on the stock market for about 5 months. The last two trading days of this month will not go up to much. So, I think this month, the fifth month, is the first month I losing the money.

The Future

I've work for this company for about 2 years. However, I found that the work load given by this company is torturing. Now, I need to be a project manager of an ERP project which has been also existing for about 2 years. I've have been already working on this project for 1.5 years, from implementation to current status.

Even though I am the project manager and there are another four team members, all of them have another projects on hand. No one can guarantee what can be done and what can't be done given a deadline. The schedule, which has been fixed, is simply means nothing.

I don't want to bear the risk of the project anymore. In fact, I don't want to be a project manager. Studying the degree already takes me so much time. Being a good project manager takes time. My life will be very hard in order to studying hard and work hard. As a matter of fact, I already need to withdraw a course in order to take care of the human resources changes of the project. I don't want this happening again. It's wasting my time and money.

Monday, I'll propose to my manager that either I'll not do any project management or I'll quit the job. Study now is my first priority. Almost nothing can change it.

Accomplishment

Today, I've finished the user interface implementation of table dependency finder, my new product. I used to develop software development tools. This is one of them. However, the company seems not quite need them.

Here's the pattern:

• My colleagues always encounter some problems over and over again.
• There are tools available on the market.
• The tools are expensive.
• My colleagues solve them manually.

However, I found that most of the tools can be easily implemented when designed well. This is the role I am being an System Architect here. Designing a piece of small tool is not hard but it is hard to finding someone to implement it. Most of the time, the someone is me. The user, however, is still me. They usually have no confidence on the home-made tools. Why? Maybe it's not user friendly. However, I think the tools are still good for development purpose.

New Diary

I have stop writing diary for a long time. First, I am busy. Second, it's hard to maintain a site of diary 2-3 years ago. So, now here I am.