Out of all things what I can get for my dad’s birthday and his retirement, I think the best gift I can get for him is this, other than a plane ticket to surprise him at home.

My dad turns 57 years old today; we’re 30 years apart so that makes it easy to remember. This one is probably his best one ’cause he gets to retire! he worked for 31 years at the United States Postal Service. He was a mail handler and for the last five or six years, he worked the forklift. To be frank, I was a little depressed to hear what did he get out of this. All he got was a plaque that’s made of paper and a cake to go with it. That’s it. Not even an ounce of cheese, summer sausage, celery, carrot or a single cracker. Zilch. Just a cake for my dad. He had a clean record—no suspensions or late warnings—and had more than 500 sick hours to spare.

It was only two weeks ago that my team and I had a nice team outing. We went to this cool indoor go-kart racing where we put on racing uniforms and helmets, then had some pizza and soda for lunch. What a contrast. The speaker box blasted on after a half hour of celebration, telling everyone to go back to work. So, after working for more than thirty years for P.O, ensuring that every box goes to your door on time, my dad’s retirement party was over in less than an hour.

I’d like to share a story about how my dad wound up at P.O. He used to work as a printer, along with his good friend who was also deaf. They were good workers who do their jobs well and would know exactly if something went wrong. It could be as obvious as ink running out or as small as a nut getting loose. My dad would see that easily and go to fix it. keeping the whole facility equipment running, which kept the business going and ultimately, for managers to be happy.

For some time, I wonder why did my dad decide to make a jump to work at the P.O. I found out it was because of me. When it came to time for my parents to have a child, they already knew they couldn’t have a child so they wanted to adopt. After they’ve found a child to adopt and that, of course, came with a cost. My dad knew they couldn’t afford the adoption, had he stayed at the printing so he applied and got the job. His math skill helped him out. He had to work on weekends, had Wed, and Thurs off and worked overnight because it paid more than the day. He thought he would eventually work in the day but he never did, though he did have better days off - on Fri and Sat.

For the first year or two, my parents didn’t see each other much but that didn’t bother them, they had the same goal, which was to save up money to afford the adoption. At that time in 1984, the cost was eight grand (16k in today’s value). They were able to save 7 grand, one thousand short but when the agency found out that I was deaf, they slashed it by half, to four thousand. Ha I’m a bargain child, so to speak.

With those said, I’m ecstatic to see my dad retired and I hope he’ll enjoy his retirement and do whatever he wants. Happy birthday and retirement, Dad. This is yours.

Something funny happened at work today.

One girl brought a UPS package box into a meeting. That UPS package box happened to be for my co-worker and I. They were giving us a gym jacket to show appreciation for our recent work on developing their webpages. The girl was having a hard time opening the box, poking into the box with a scissor.

I had to shake my head a little, got up and went to help her open the box. There was a tab on the side of a box that she can pull and the string underneath will “cut” the box and get it opened.

The girl was surprised. She said she never knew there was a tab and that she was always trying to open it with a scissor. Ha, oh man, girls can be so klutzy! *shaking my head*

The End.

That’s what I call a deaf-friendly work environment!
Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Haha this is funny.. who knows I might end up like the guy in 10 years from now…

You know it’s Fall when you find yourself completely in the dark after you step out of the building and you feel the wind blowing at you with some mist spraying at your face. When you get into the car, the first thing wasn’t to put your seat belt on but to turn the heater on and set the wipers on delay mode.

It’s been more than a week since I’ve started working at Google. I can’t indulge too much details here but I do want to share my experience here so I can reflect back when I hit 50 if I’ll live that long. The job is everything what I always want in a job. I’m not a whiz programmer who can make a working calculator right from the scratch in one sitting. What I enjoy the most is just looking for problems, find them and then solve them. I enjoy tweaking things, making things work and work on different things. This job isn’t focused on one thing only and we have flexibility to do what we enjoy working on. That way, we end up being jack of all trades. I’m learning Linux to improve my skill and enough that I will no longer need to use Windows again except for several programs such as Envision and Nextalk TTY emulator. I’ll probably vmware it eventually. However, that’s not the best part of this job. The best part is communication. In our geek world, we don’t really need to have to talk to each other through voice–in fact, some people actually prefer IMs over using their voice so some people don’t have to be distracted while listening to their fave mp3 songs. I’m glad I chose this field, so I don’t feel disabled.

Christmas is coming up faster than you’d think. To be inspired, I found this really cool stuff that I’m gonna use this holiday season - Photo stamps by Yahoo. With this feature, you can put your very own picture right onto a postage stamp. Now you don’t have to be famous to be on a stamp. :-)

I didn’t realize how hard it is to find a decent card to be given to someone leaving our section for a new job position (nope, it’s not me, although I’m leaving the job next week). Earlier this summer, I was asked to be a rep. for our Sunshine Club whose sole purpose is to give recognition or consoldence to someone in our section such as baby shower, retirement, or death. So, my first (and last) assignment was to find a farewell card for a black lady who’s worked 15 years for NASS, our department under the USDA agency. First, I went to a little gift shop that’s deep in the basement of our headquarters building and tried to find its respective category. Retirement? no, she’s not retiring, just moving to a new job under a different agency. Ok, “we’ll miss you!”? nope, too sappy. I looked up and down across the whole aisle and finally found the category, which was “good-bye”. Only to find out that the entire column was out of cards. Looks like I’m not the only one leaving the agency. Great, I’ll have to go to a CVS store or a similar store to get a card since the party is tomorrow or I’d look very bad at being a rep. on my first assignment.

After work, I went to play golf with Luke. Thought I’m gonna be a little rusty as I didn’t play for 2 weeks. To my own surprise, my first drive wasn’t badly off the right side into the rough under some trees. For some reason, I felt at ease playing golf, like my swing and me was one machine working in sync. In the past, I’d try to be like Tiger Woods and swing as hard as I could. Ofc, you cannot do that in golf unless you’re Tiger Woods; it’d be the opposite. The harder you try to swing, the more likely you’ll fuck up. Just ask Luke when he nearly lost his balance while trying to hit a drive. So, the key concentration here is that you’re not trying to hit the ball 100%. Try to hit it at 80% and if you’re that good, maybe 90% for a bit extra juice on the ball… (more…)

That’s the date I will start working at Google. It’s a good thing that my boss and I have a positive relationship. I was a little worried at how she would react but she was really supportive and gave me some advice. I originally wanted to end my employment with USDA early this Friday ‘cuz one of our co-workers is also leaving, so it would be killing two birds with one stone if we shared the farewell party together. However, my boss insisted that I serve the standard two weeks notice but I told her I wanted to take some time to visit my parents as I haven’t seen them all summer and it doesn’t help much that I’m the only child too. Then she told me how I can use my absence leave and extend my employment for an extra pay period (one more paycheck, :-) ). so I will be taking a whole week off before I start work at Google.

Time for me to find a fare from DCA to SPI.

Almost like what Monster.com’s tagline, “today’s the day.” (I didn’t apply for the job thru them, I got referred.), I have an interview with Google tmw. It’s gonna be for a datacenter technician. You can find more info about this position here.

I’m getting really nervous about this opportunity and it’s almost a once-in-a-lifetime chance as I doubt I will get another shot if I didn’t make it. Looks like the requirements aren’t too high but one problem is that I don’t have much real-world experience with Linux. I never worked in a computer lab where entire servers are run on Linux; only windows. The U.S. government has a love affair with Microsoft Windows, so to speak, so I never had the chance to work directly with Linux except at home. I have played around with Linux on my computer but I doubt it’s enough to be able to perform tasks Google would expect me to do. I know some basic commands but not extensively that I’m able to make a delicious meal from basic ingredients. I’d be still looking into a cookbook. That’s what I will probably tell them in the interview. I will tell them that the best way to learn is thru work environment experience and see if I can handle it. I imagine myself crawling on my knees and begging them to just give me the chance. If I still cannot do the job at the end of 3 months stint, they are more than welcome to cut me off and say I wasn’t geeky enough. I will accept that. A chance is all I need and I will practically live at their one of the datacenters and become a workaholic, if hired. If I do get it, I will come home and wipe out the windows partition on this hard drive and eat, breathe, live through Linux only.

The best advice anybody’s given me is my mom. She always tell me, “Be yourself.” So, I’m gonna be myself and answer their questions to the best I can. Good luck to myself.

Oh yeah, I’ve been interviewed by IBM, Microsoft, and now Google. As they say, “third time’s a charm.”, this damn better be true.

Saw this post from Jason Lamberton’s blog. I couldn’t agree more with this list by Ben Franklin!

Ben Franklin’s 12 Rules of Management:

1. Finish better than your beginnings.

2. All education is self-education.

3. Seek first to manage yourself, then to manage others.

4. Influence is more important than victory.

5. Work hard and watch your costs.

6. Everybody wants to appear reasonable.

7. Create your own set of values to guide your actions.

8. Incentive is everything.

9. Create solutions for seemingly impossible problems.

10. Become a revolutionary for experimentation and change.

11. Sometimes it’s better to do 1,001 small things right than only one large thing right.

12. Deliberately cultivate your reputation and legacy.