The Key Culprit

GM: You holding the key?
Me: Yup...
GM: This morning YL ask me why I didn't lock the door?
Me: (what the fish)... I already instructed the person who had unofficially duplicated the key to lock it before I leave. I even walked to his desk to remind him lor. He still said okay.

'Okay' 个屁啦... kns... This guy just can't be trusted to do simple thing like locking a door. FYI, this is not the first time (in fact, as I was told, many times liao). Later if I see him, will tell him off!

Chari-tee

Bought this t-shirt (for charity).

No time to take pic...
So retrieved the above pic from site of:

Give Me Back My Sunday
- the company who sponsored the t-shirts (I was told) -

Frankly, if I saw this t-shirt on-line, I wouldn't have bought it.

Terrible graphics.
The pics just don't do justice to some of the nice designs they have on the t-shirts...

They should have shown the photo of the real thing cos the actual one looks nicer imo.

Daily elements...

I just went to meet Dr. Chang S.H. rgd a collaborative work on Markov.
First impression: Very humble, polite, friendly, looks like one without temper, soft spoken.
Some great attributes... a lot to learn from him.
Great start... so far so good...
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Sup says he'll help to do the liasing.

With his hectic schedule, I wonder when he'll do it though.

He still owes me tt paper.

Urgh, when will it be done?
So maybe have a chance to clarify with another prof rgd GA stuff.
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The tight deadlines are driving me crazy...
But I'm still alive and kicking.

Feast Lobang

The nice P.E. couple jio Xian & me out for a seafood feast at Jumbo last nite promised at around S$25 per pax. How irresistible! How tempting! Look at the yummilious orders we had:
- a plate of medium (approx. 1.3kg) steamed crab
- a plate of medium chilli crab,
- a plate of medium black pepper crab,
- four little deep fried crispilious buns,
- a pot with whooping 400g of drunken prawns
- two bowls of shark fins (you can see that we are no environmentalists)
- a plate of broccoli with scallops
- a small plate of seafood fried rice
- four coconuts
Note: Thumbs up for the steamed and chilli crabs (really delicious), but the black pepper crab is quite a disappointment (actually hot is okay, but it's slightly on the bitter side - in short, the sweetness of the crab meat is masked out).

Yes! The four of us forked out slightly less than $25 each. Unbelievably cheap considering the quality of food we had. This is possible, of course, with the use of (i) a 50% discount coupon for the crabs, (ii) a $50 discount coupon that can be used when the total amount exceeds $150 after all discounts, and (iii) a further $35 offset using their membership points/dollars... Hmm, I think I need to chalk up more workout hours next week.

Call for Papers

Some of the industrial engineering, operations research, semiconductor manufacturing, manufacturing automation, scheduling, simulation related conferences are listed below (note: not exhaustive):

INFORMS International Puerto Rico International 2007 @ Puerto Rico (July 8-11, 2007)
INFORMS - Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Abstract Submission Deadline: February 1, 2007

MISTA 2007 @ Paris, France (August 28-31, 2007)
3rd Multidisciplinary International Scheduling Conference: Theory and Applications
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2007
Notification of Decisions: May 1, 2007
Camera Ready Paper & Registration Deadline: June 15, 2007

IEEE CASE 2007 @ Scottsdale, Arizona, USA (September 22-25, 2007)
Third annual IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering
Paper Submission Deadline: April 30, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: June 30, 2007
Camera Ready Paper Due: July 31, 2007

IEEE SMC 2007 @ Montreal (October 7-10, 2007)
2007 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
Paper Submission Deadline: March 1, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: May 15, 2007
Camera Ready Paper Deadline: July 3, 2007

ISSM 2007 @ Santa Clara, California USA (October 15-17, 2007)
International Symposium on Semiconductor Manufacturing
Abstract Submission Deadline: May 25, 2007

The 37th CIE 2007 @ Alexandria, Egypt (October 20-23, 2007)
37th International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering
Paper Submission Deadline: March 1, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: April 1, 2007
Camera Ready Paper Due: July 1, 2007

IJIE 2007 @ Cancun, Mexico (November 4-7, 2007)
The 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications & Practice
Abstract Submission Deadline: July 9, 2007
Full Paper Submission Deadline: September 17, 2007
Registration Deadline: October 5, 2007

IRMA 2007 @ Venice, Italy (November 23-25, 2007)
Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Manufacturing Automation
Paper Submission Deadline: August 31, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: September 20, 2007
Final Paper Submission & Registration: October 05, 2007

ITIS 2007 @ Venice, Italy (November 23-25, 2007)
Fourth International Conference on Industrial Technology and Intelligent Systems
Paper Submission Deadline: August 31, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: September 20, 2007
Final Paper Submission & Registration: October 05, 2007

WSC 2007@ Washington, DC, USA (December 9-12, 2007)
Winter Simulation Conference
Paper Submission Deadline: KIV

The author does not bear responsibility for any mistakes or inaccuracy of dates and information in the above-mentioned conferences and any damages caused by it. Please reconfirm the details and dates at the respective conference website.

H.C.

The Rothenburg songs brought back many fond memories of the times spent in H.C. From the empty shop, to the children’s day opening, the humble beginning, the constant upgrading, to having regular customers – how memorable… Unfortunately, every beginning has an ending. Having a fairy tale Xmas all year round escapade in Singapore will soon be a thing of the past. However, every ending sets up a new beginning… H.C. will be reborn outside this little red dot!

New Toy

Getting a new gadget is always a headache. With all the understanding, reading up to do…
Where webcams are concerned, we’re noobs. With not much time to spare, we did it the anyhow way and got ourselves two sets of the Creative Live! Cam Voice instead of Logitech’s… for the following reasons:

• It’s Skype-certified (We know nuts about webcams, this piece of information is the decisive factor that got us to pull the NETS card out of our wallets for payment.)
• Wide-angled lens (Xian & I just loved this aspect… We just wanted to see more of each other (including each other’s living environment/background). More importantly, wide-angled is more useful when used for remote monitoring and motion detection. Cool!
• Adaptive Array Microphone technology for noise cancellation and echo reduction (This is important to me cos I’m very particular about the clarity issues – how irritating if you cannot hear and be heard clearly right?)
• Physical Flexibility (It offers 360 degress of horizontal and 65 degrees of vertical range which is impressive. Good for lazy bums like me, who knows if I wanted to talk while lying on my bed instead… then can adjust the cam accordingly. Hoho…)

I’m sure Creative do not have the best cams out there in the market, nor the best value-for-money ones. As far as I’m concerned, it's the only one out there (from among the cams we saw in Sim Lim Square) that offers the features we wanted.

Still haven’t got much time to play with it yet cos the installation took too long and we had to rush out to catch the “Blood Diamond” movie. The only gripe I had so far is the installation – the super long wait before I can play with it. It’s great to have lots of useful bundled applications and it’s quite slick to have the software perform an auto update to check for updated versions but the download is so sluggish that took me almost an hour for three updates totaling 55MB. Urgh! We still haven’t try the remote monitoring and motion detection aspect but the Skype sound and picture quality are good. The Directional Live Audio option, when turned on, was impressive as it minimized the music we blast from the side of the cam’s mic and we could hear each other clearly (music is not completely removed but is barely audible).