February's Snow

God, snow in the middle of February! You really need a bit of luck to see snow in central London area. I remember last time I saw snow was in 2004 at Lewisham, there was quite a bit of snow falling at dusk. When I peeked over the window there were flashes being fired from the cameras, several people were taking the advantage of a nice snow photograph. It was only lasted about an hour and the snow dissolved immediately at my hands unfortunately! Prior to that I saw snow sometimes but not as strong as this week I think. It is no doubt that I feel cheerful when I see snow because I came from a sub-tropical climate but when I first saw the same degree of madness from English citizens then I thought: “Ah? Do they really mean that?”.

I’ve got this photo from my friend living in London.

New Year Catch Up

Okay, it’s the time to update my blog, haven’t done so for ages (but who cares?). I’ve to say I was occupied by the Chinese New Year: the year of rooster has meant nothing to me because I am a monkey! Still, I had a lot of food within last week, 2 buffet dinners and 4 family meals with our grandparents, and yes, I’ve got 2 grandma and 2 grandpa only, but our culture requires us to have 2 meals with them at both the new year’s eve and at the start of new year. I was horrified by the amount of food I had, but it was a refreshing experience since I never been here around this time for 6 years.
A few things have caught my attention lately, first, my new computer. I’ve made up my mind on what to buy, my main concern though, is whether a PCI Express Video Card is compatible with Linux. My configuration: Athlon64 3000+, MSI Neo4 MB, 1GB RAM, Maxtor 200GB SATA, Nvidia 6200 Turbo Cache and a decent power supply unit. Maxtor perhaps isn’t as good as Seagate in terms of popularity, however, its transfer rate is the best in its class (7200RPM).
The second thing, the plan of rolling out IE7 before Longhorn from Microsoft, is interesting because they really make a fuss over their browser business. It’s still unknown of what kind of features will be incorporated into IE7, and I’ve already mentioned Firefox is a serious competitor, but never a threat to them like Linux because it cannot generate any income. Nevertheless, Firefox will be around as long as it’s still an interest to a group of people. The final news is about the demise of a stream ripper program which is written by Japanese: “GETASFSTREAM”. It’s a useful program for recording internet radios, streaming videos and etc. So sad the author has chosen to end the development of it, perhaps under the pressure from Microsoft?

Love my fishes? They aren’t real though, I’ve them in my tummy last week!

Do you love your job?

Look, any field you get into is going to say "don't do it for the money, do it because you like it!"

Computer geeks say it about IT.

Lawyers say it about law.

Doctors say it about medicine.

But what about the fields NOBODY likes? Did you ever hear Joe Toiletscrubber say "don't clean toilets for the money, do it because you like it!"? Highly doubtful.

The truth is, people do go into fields for the money -- including the computer geeks, the lawyers (especially corporate and IP lawyers), the doctors, and so forth. People take up jobs as garbage collectors, NOT because they're passionate about it, but because it's a job few other people are willing to do -- and it pays well because of that fact. Garbage collectors do it for the money.

So do strippers. And prostitutes (indeed, prostitutes in Nevada have been known to work for about 3-4 years, then retire for life with over $1 million in income for their time in bed).

There are people who get PhD's in the natural sciences NOT because they enjoy their academic field of study, but because they know they will make more money with a PhD than a lesser degree.

Telling people to "do it because you love it" is a nice ideal. But ultimately, all things revolve around money, and people will work in IT because there is decent money to be made there (yes, even now with the offshoring and the lack of dot-bombs to leech from, IT is still a relatively well-paying career path).

Be honest: are YOU passionate about processing business reports? How about maintaining 25 year-old COBOL apps? I sure as hell am not (though the theoretical side of "computer science" does interest me).

Are you even passionate about writing code for other people in general when the project is not one of your choice or even really particularly interesting? I'm not -- but I do it anyway, because there are far worse jobs (waiting tables, shoveling shit in Louisiana) that pay far-less too, and I can find ways to trick myself into liking the work I'm not interested in.

Anybody who says "do it for the love of the work" probably enjoys their work so much that they're at the top of the pack -- and Torvalds is probably the best example in the world. If you love your labor, more power to you.

The rest of us, however, will work at what we do because we're competent enough to get paid for it and we enjoy it just enough not to do something else we enjoy more instead -- but we're mentally-balanced enough not to revolve our lives around our work.

This is a comment from a slashdotter, I do agree 99% of what he says, and certainly, he is a pessimist.

The topic originally concerns about if open-source developer is a “proper” job and has future in terms of career path.

Goodbye London

Yes, I mean it. After several years of study, I’m back to my home in the Far East. I went silence when people ask me my feeling of Britain, and to be honest Britain is a great place to live. However, life in London seemed too difficult for me, living standard could be low unless you’ve a well-paid job, and I failed to get one. I met Chris and his lady before I left, and we had a great dinner near Angel. He suggested that I could be back for my second job when I’ve got some experience on my CV, possibly in 1-2 years time, would it happen? I’ve never thought of that because HK and Britain are 2 different places, not to mention the 12hrs long haul flight. I love London more than I ever did but I just couldn’t believe I would be back for my second job. Good luck to him and hope I’ll meet him again in the near future.