Wednesday November 03, 2004

It's been a while ...

Me gosh, my last blog was about The Open and since then Woods is no longer king of golf and Vijay became the first $10M man and it's already season ending Tour Championship!

No no no ... I'm still working here, and why I don't blog is precisely ... some people do actually work for a living ...

First time coming back here in months and I'm greeted with BIG RED warning that says "Please bear in mind that anybody in the world will be able to read what you are about to write...". Alright that just about reminded me why I stopped blogging months ago ... call it risk aversion.

The truth, since then my baby started running and most recently - talking. Between a bouncing bubbly toddler and the high risk game of blog? No contest.

Oh... Bush won... ok... done... moving on... (2004-11-03 10:43:26.0) Permalink Comments [2]

Sunday July 18, 2004

Todd Wins The Open (Todd who?)

The Open Golf 2004

Todd Hamilton (who?) won his first major! Holding off no less than world no. 2 Ernie Els in a 4 hole playoff.

Todd led throughout on Sunday. Still led by 1 after Ernie birdied 17th, Todd start off 18th with a bad tee shot into thick stuff and a worse second short of the green and almost into the crowd, a free drop and a chip that went long, end up making bogey; while Ernie GIR but missed a makeable birdie which could have ended the match.

The 4 hole playoff goes from hole 1, 2 and back 17, 18. A mistake in 17th tee par 3 left Ernie with the only bogey of the duo and cost him the claret jug.

Phil Mickelson didn't really choke this time (well the monkey's really off his back after Masters) but still came up short and played second fiddle again.

Tiger, yet again, didn't matter with a disappointing +1 on Sunday and finished 9th.

Lee Westwood seemed to be inspired and shot 67 to finish 4th; Davis Love too finished with 67, who wasn't shown much on prime time TV coverage climbed to 5th.

(2004-07-18 10:53:46.0) Permalink

Monday June 28, 2004

June 28

Source: Yahoo! Features

June 28, 1838, Britain's Queen Victoria was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sofia, were assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serb nationalist - the event which triggered World War I.

June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I.

Birthdays:

Actor Alessandro Nivola is 32.
Jazz musician Jimmy Sommers is 35.
Actress-singer Danielle Brisebois is 35.
Actor Gil Bellows is 37.
Actor John Cusack is 38.
Actress Mary Stuart Masterson is 38.
Rock musician Saul Davies (James) is 39.
Actress Jessica Hecht is 39.
Record company chief executive Tony Mercedes is 42.
Football Hall of Fame electee John Elway is 44.
Actress Alice Krige is 50.
Actress Kathy Bates is 56.
Actor Bruce Davison is 58.
Rock musician Dave Knights (Procul Harum) is 59.
Former White House chief of staff Leon Panetta is 66.
Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., is 70.
Actor Pat Morita is 72.
Comedian-movie director Mel Brooks is 78.
Blah! ... is one year wiser and forever 21.

(2004-06-28 12:00:00.0) Permalink

Wednesday June 23, 2004

Rest Day

After working 8 straight days (Monday to Monday), at the brink of crashing, decided to do an orderly shutdown and reboot another day. Had to take a day off, to catch some sleep and much needed exercise (which normally means golf but now, driving range is a priviledge that I cherish).

... Then of course, there was the CPF housing insurance thing I need to take care of, got that done in the morning.

... Then send the wife to office at noon because it's Tuesday and she work late on Tuesdays. The husbandly thing to do, since I'm just "resting", I might as well drop her to office, right? ...

... Then need to exercise my warranty rights on my new T630, which took all "just" 2 hours, but that's another blog.

... Then went to the mall to pick out a DVD player to be used on my baby's upcoming birthday. (You bet, another blog.)

... since I'm in the mall, might as well pick up a few other things

... it's late afternoon so coffee and fried dough (not doughnut, chinese style, mmm ... something for a new category = food); rushed through the food bec. finally,

... driving range! Whacked the usual 2 buckets, and as usual glad that I have a day job;

... Wife SMS'd (aka Text), "don't forget the milk and diapers".

... Off to supermarket ...

... got home already 7:40pm, 2 hands full of shopping bags that weighs a ton. (At least I got my arms worked out).

... Then of course the "quality time" with my baby, which at this stage of her age means chasing her around in the house while she "explores".

By the time I'm done and sat down to "rest", I realized I'd probably be less tired if I had been in office. :(

So much for "Rest Day".

(2004-06-23 11:11:11.0) Permalink

Friday June 18, 2004

Things we do to keep customer happy.

Finally weekend after a long week? No sir, mine continues. Can't help to feel dreadful having to wake up at 6am on a Saturday, not for golf, but heading for office ... yawn! Beside having been doing that for the whole week; and will again, on Sunday, Father's Day: my first ever Father's day being a father.

Since the web is 24x7, so do computers that runs them, so do vendors like Sun who support them. Having 3 geographies means we cover 8 of the 24hours in a day. So when USA is on summer time (DST), work hour here starts at ungodly 7am. Those on "duty" watch the sky for flares and do rapid response, and call for reinforcement if need be. On weekends, we are it! Singaporean says, "die die must do", doesn't make much gramatical sense but, you get the meaning.

We're paid alright, but how do I value the smile when my daughter saw me awoke as early as she, and then her bewildered look right before I rush out the door while waving goodbye?

(2004-06-18 19:19:19.0) Permalink

Wednesday June 09, 2004

MaryMaryHitMePlenty

One could never miss or resist clicking on the link to our premier blogger MaryMaryQuiteContrary. Afterall, being fixated at the top of the "Most Popular Weblogs" roster, and with 3 times plenty hits as the 2nd in line, the self-mutiplying effect is just fascinating.

To new bloggers or just surfing-bys, "What's this really popular blog?" Mmm... *click*. Ka-ching! Hits += 1.

Classic lesson on marketing. Build a brand name, get to the top, keep your customers, the new ones just follows. It helps too where there's bells and whistles, i.e. lots of pictures, stories, and my gosh, a contest with real prizes! And ships! How do you beat that? After all, it's Duke the stuffed one.

Mary knows her market well, being a marketing person. (Shhhh, being new here, I looked her up in NameFinder. ;-))
(Btw, NameFinder is so cool, and was not even by PDE aka R&D. Sometimes I wonder what else Sun have up his sleeves.)

Now how does one dislodge a market leader? Not that I have the urge (or believe I could) but you can't deny the thought.

It's like, how do you out-sell M$? Clearly a great product alone doesn't do it. Unix is clearly more rebust, scalable and not to mention, secure. Usability-wise, Mr. Jobs had it covered. But the Windows empire is still there.

Take a page from IBM PC clones war in the 80's. Long long ago in a galaxy far far away... clones sold at fifth of the price still make good profit, the clones fester, killed the IBM PC.

The fact that you got here is probably bec. of the cloned blog title "MaryMary...". 8-) I must admit, it's a conspiracy, but I prefer the term "Experiment". [tongue-in-cheeks]

(2004-06-09 09:09:09.0) Permalink Comments [3]