Prof. Thomas Eagar said the following during one of his lectures in Fabrication Technology: "Always keep things simple, that's why complex system doesn't work." Aha... He was alluding to the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) concept. People familiar with software programming are immediately familiar with the KISS expression. Programmers are constantly reminded that implementing less code is more. In terms of generic designing, the simplicity philosophy brings consistency and durability to a design. Some of the most elegant designs are simple, take Apple's iPod as an example. But the mention of simplicity sparked my curiosity in how KISS is discussed in my System Engineering class. With all our big discussions on system/product designs and methodologies in my System Engineering class, why hasn't KISS been explicitly mentioned in class? But a closer examination reveals that the KISS concept is indeed well entrenched albeit implicit in the tools and frameworks that we learned from System Engineering. For example, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) advocates the design of a set of specifications that meets customer expectations by actively listening to the voice of the customer. So not implementing a product with extra features that customers don't want adheres to the philosophy of less is more or KISS. In Lean Thinking, the advocacy of simplicity is more obvious, although Lean practitioners would call it value driven and waste reduction. In the terms of applying a sound design framework, a designer simply can't go wrong with a simple design guideline like KISS.

8/11/2005 11:57:37 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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School

My blog has fallen victim to blog spam or link spam the past week. Luckily the spam affected mostly earlier blog postings. Since I am responsible for the maintenance of the blog application on my website, I needed to install a spam filter software on my website to prevent further spam. Thankfully, all I have to do is to turn the anti-spamming feature on and update the software with the latest spam filter list from MT-blacklist.

8/11/2005 9:37:53 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Blog

Yesterday, I had the most stressful day of the year. There weren't anything yesterday that were causing the stress but the cumulative excessive amount of work (school, work, and personal) has finally taken its toll on me. Plus, having future uncertainties, like the sale of my condo, career, finances, only exacerbate the stress. Usually, my high energy level would help in negating the effects of stress and sustain me for a while. But lately, with my energy level dipping to a 3-year low, I am simply burnt out psychologically, mentally, and physically. I am also losing my intellectual and mental sharpness because of stress.

I would usually feel great for the rest of the day after a run in the morning. Not yesterday. Yesterday's morning run with Brian was the worst ever. I hardly stop to walk during a run; but, I started walking halfway through the run after feeling a severe pain in my chest. After the run, I felt exhausted and lethargic for the rest of the day. I am overwhelmed with so may things to do that I have been having 5 hours of sleep (including weekends) on average and jumping rushing from one activity to another, often without rest in between. I start to question the value of doing too much in too little time. I am slowly realizing that "biting more than I can chew" is not a good strategy for my well being. I must, therefore, learn to relax a little and not to get burned out again.

8/10/2005 6:28:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Personal

Living in Boston, I always perceive the Big Dig as the epitome of government waste. But the upcoming Gravina Bridge project, with its $315 million government budget, is staled to overtake the Big Dig in terms of wasteful spending of taxpayers' money. Check it out from various sources:

1. Taxpayer.net
2. Yahoo! News
3. South Alaska Conservation Council
4. Alaska Wilderness League

8/10/2005 1:48:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Politics

It has now become a tradition within my network of friends that Penang is the indispensable choice for group dinner whenever Brian is visiting Boston. So the choice of having last night's dinner at Penang was obvious as Brian is in town for the canoe trip. The turnout was decent: Eimear, Milt, Jonathan, Brian, and my sister Alisa showed up. After dinner, we went for some drinks at the People's Republik, one of my favorite bars in Cambridge for its laid-back, friendly, and unpretentious atmosphere. I am glad that I was finally able visit the People's and to have a few pints of Magic Hat, which is always on tap and served fresh, for the first time since moving to an apartment across from the bar. So Ilana may have her Warren Tavern, I got my People's.

8/9/2005 4:22:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Social

Accounting is finally over. For our accounting final, the professor had us download Johnson & Johnson's 10k statements the day prior to the exam and use it as a source of reference for all our financial analyses in the test. Yesterday's accounting final wasn't as hard as I had expected as I nailed several questions right on. However, my lack of good time management and familiarity with the Johnson & Johnson's 10k financial statements cost me dearly as I was unable to answer at least 2 questions on the final. In hindsight, I should have just skipped the morning Supply Chain/Operations class to examine the 10k papers meticulously to better prepare for the final, especially coming out from a weekend of heavy partying.

8/9/2005 4:18:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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School

As some of you may have known, I am a huge fan of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. But the show isn't the same now that they have the new desk with boring desk chairs on the set. In fact, the quality of the show has deteriorated slightly ever since the couch was taken off from the set. The old couch really needs more representation from its fans. So join me in a campaign to bring the couch back to the Daily Show.

8/8/2005 11:43:08 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Personal

What an eventful weekend it has been. I finally started my summer this weekend by going on a canoeing trip with my buddies to Saco River, Maine. Our presence at Saco River this weekend coincides with the first weekend of August - the busiest weekend for canoeing and a time known for excessive partying on and along Saco River. Nonetheless, we all had an awesome time canoeing, camping, and drinking. It was especially fun tying the canoes together and drifting them down the river while we drank and engaged in water shoots with other canoeists in the area. Of course, nothing beats sitting around the campfire in a cool summer night till the wee hours looking at the fire and enjoying one another's company. Overall, a great trip. Eimear, thank you for organizing this (again). Unfortunately, I have to keep this blog entry short as I need to get my bearing together to start studying for my accounting final tomorrow.

8/7/2005 10:38:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Social

I went to yet another LFM/SDM social event at the Cambridge candle pin bowling alley where I met more cool LFM students like Brian and Jackie. I played a round of candle pin bowling with Dinesh, Shiv, Evans, and Evan's significant other. The turnout was decent but nonetheless fun. Big thanks to Uday for organizing it.

After bowling, Ilana expressed interest in going to the post party that I have been advertising on the SDM email circulation. The party is 1 of the 2 parties that Paul throws every year, one in the summer and the other during the week before X'mas. His party is always cool and fun. However, it is Paul's summer party that is definitely the party to attend. There's plenty of company and it features a series live music performances at the backyard by his musician housemates and friends. They even provided a few kegs of beet for all their guests. I drove Ilana from the bowling alley to Paul's party and started drinking at 8:30pm, just when the band was starting to play. Only Dave and Matti from the SDM cohort showed up later at the party. The usual suspects from my non-SDM friends like Denise, Angela, Eimear, Camille, Blanche, Ketan, Jesse, Squibby, Milt, Joe, etc showed up at the party. It was great catching up with them as I have not had the chance to socialize with them because of my busy summer schedule. Also, since I have not hung out with sister since childhood, it was a little weird to see my sister getting hit on by guys at the party. I seriously have no idea how to react to that. Nonetheless, the company was great and I had a really good time. Thanks Paul.

I am actually quite drunk right now and need to wake up by 7:30am tomorrow to go canoeing with some of the people at the party. I don't even know if I have even written a coherent blog entry. Neverminid, I need to get some shut-eyes now. So good night...

8/6/2005 1:49:09 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Social

I have just learned from Ilana's blog that one of my favorite bars in Boston, the Littlest Bar, is wrapping up its business by December to make way for condominium development. I have many fond memories at the Littlest. After all, this is the bar where I met Liam, Siobhan, and most of my Irish friends, many who still remain as my good friends. Liam once said that the Littlest is one of the most authentic Irish bar in Boston while Siobhan celebrated her 21st birthday - a day of legalized drinking in America - at the Littlest. Aptly named, the Littlest is indeed Boston's littlest bar. Imagine putting about 35 people into an area of a 150 sq ft. In spite of the confined space, they still manage to get a band of Irish folk musicians to play at a corner, a bartender to serve a pint of good guinness, and a bouncer to stay guard at the door. Their space management is impeccable. But all this doesn't matter anymore, the bar will be gone by December. It's really sad to see this landmark go. Damn you condo developer...

8/5/2005 2:58:05 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Comments [4]

Rants

This guy is unbelievable. Ultra-marathoner Jim Dreyer com endured the chilly currents of Lake Superior to complete a 54 mile swim across Lake Superior yesterday. You should check out his website. He is perhaps the first to swim across all five of the Great Lakes. From his website, you find that his greatest accomplishment is swimming 350 miles across the length of Lake Michigan in 30 days. Wow...

8/5/2005 1:26:15 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Sports

Robbie Allen, a fellow classmate of mine, had posted links to 2 wonderful essays written by Paul Graham's on entrepreneurship a few weeks. Graham has once again intrigued us with a new thought-provoking essay about Open Source. The essay covers not about Open Source products like Firefox or Linux but highlights why the underlying processes and the people in Open Source are often more successful and less costly than those in some professional environments. This essay isn't about IT or computer programming, it actually has a lot of relevance in building successful creative, innovative enterprises by applying some of the observations and best practices in the Open Source environment. I find the following paragraph in the essay most very relevant to my career path that I currently taking:

Hackers tend to think business is for MBAs. But business administration is not what you're doing in a startup. What you're doing is business creation. And the first phase of that is mostly product creation-- that is, hacking. That's the hard part. It's a lot harder to create something people love than to take something people love and figure out how to make money from it.

8/4/2005 11:13:13 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Business

As a followup to my previous post on Apple's Might Mouse, here's an in-depth review by Ars Technica. My argument still stands, multiple-button mouse stays and to hell with the old argument about appealing the 1-button mouse to new users. Who hasn't use a 2-button mouse before? More choices is better than no choice. So Apple, if you reading this blog, ship the Mighty Mouse with all new macs.

8/3/2005 1:46:21 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Mac

For years, I have complained that Mac is way behind in a world of multi-button mouse usage. I have never seen a multi-button mouse product from Apple or a double-button trackpad in Apple's line of powerbooks/ibooks. On MacOSX, the right mouse button click has traditionally been emulated with a button click on the mouse while holding the CTRL key on the keyboard. On the trackpad, this translates to an awkward twisting and bending of fingers in trying to hold 3 buttons/keys with one hand; what a friggin' pain that is. Computers have become so ubiquitous in today's world that grandma can now survive with a double button mouse. So give us a double button mouse/trackpad!!!

Well, I finally got my wish with Apple's release of their first 2-button mouse called the Mighty Mouse today. That's music to my ears. I hope that the next line of powerbooks will spot a familar technology for the trackpad.

8/3/2005 1:13:37 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Mac

Today, we have Josiah Collens from MITRE as guest lecturer in our System Engineering class. He spoke about TBMCS one of the 2 case studies we need to do for our final project for this class. I said in a blog entry last week that I was going to work on the other case study, the Jet Engine optimization case analysis. But after listening to today's talk, I am now inclined to work on the TBMCS case as it relates closer to my professional background. Yeah, I know my wishy-washy self is surfacing again, but I'll take whatever that appeals to me.

8/2/2005 1:03:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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School

I am planning to not only give my website a new look but to migrate the website to a Linux platform in the next few weeks. Now that I am primarily a mac user, it doesn't make sense for me to continue using .NET on my website. I am particularly looking for a web host that offers MySQL, PHP, and MovableType in their hosting plan. Any advice from anyone from cyberspace?

8/2/2005 1:38:56 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Blog