Recently I think my most important contributions to my new company has been in saying “no.”  Now this might not work so well if my job was in customer service or, say, making copies for my boss.  But fortunately a good part of my job description is to develop and improve my understanding of digital imaging, and then use that knowledge to help guide our company towards the correct decisions.

Last week I spent a few days at the company headquarters in a training class to learn a new software package we are considering.  On the surface, it seems very useful for a wide range of system simulations.  But for our specific type of image processing, it’s really not the right tool at all.  After the class, I wrote to the other attendees and our managers, telling them exactly why I thought it wasn’t for us.  Perhaps it’s not politcally savvy to be so blunt; as far as I know the software company was founded by a close friend of one of my managers.  But if they want to let me go for tellling it the way I see it, then the decision to part will be mutual.  Anyway, I’ve found that in general your license to be blunt is directly correlated to your knowledge.  No one likes a loudmouthed idiot, but if you know something that will help the company, it’s your responsibility to speak up.  I think more people are guilty of these sins of omission than the other way around.

And this week my manager forwarded me an email from a business director at another site, asking me to fulfill his request.  After looking at it, I decided that doing so would be a waste of time for everyone involved.  The request was to send some of my data to an outside company who claimed they had expertise in processing it.  The problem is, how well the data is processed is a very subjective decision.  We have plenty of in-house processing experts, and we don’t need to bring in another company to help us do our job.  Put more simply, I would like to see more customer requests rather than vendor requests.  Because in the end, customers pay you money and keep your business alive.  You should only spend time talking with vendors if you believe their product will help your bottom line.  This isn’t dating — you’re not meeting up for fun.  This is business.

Maybe the whole concept of refusing your boss is odd because we’re taught to say yes to authority.  But when you consider authority from a higher perspective, sometimes the best yes is a no.

For the next two Saturdays, I’m helping Pastor Gary teach a CCFC seminar about the Christian perspective and use of money.  (Same seminar both days, just to give people a choice of which date is more convenient.)  He and I have developed a lot of the material from the Economic Discipleship smallgroup that he and Mako started about a year ago.  Back in November I thought about developing some related material into a 4-part class on money, but I never found the activation energy.  Fortunately, Gary put together the outline and most of the content, so I was able to simply comment and interject.

The class will present a balanced Biblical perspective on money, working to reconcile the opposing viewpoints of “Money is a Blessing” and “Money is a Curse.”  Then we will cover the economic state of the world, our role as Christians, and current major efforts in the area.  I will talk about budgeting and tracking finances, using the Excel spreadsheet that June and I developed last year.  And finally we’ll brainstorm ideas on how to save and give effectively, and talk about the importance of community in this effort.

Gary’s official email announcement to CCFC is in the first comment.  Please let me know if you’re interested or planning on coming.

From the Sojourners newsletter:

“Most of us know this town would have a heck of a time trying
to run itself these days without the immigrants. They’re working
at the grocery stores, the fast-food places, they’re opening
businesses and keeping this town alive and young. We’re just
being practical by telling them, ‘Look, we want you in our
community, and we want you to feel like you belong.’”

- Republican Mayor Robert Patten of
Highstown, New Jersey, whose town council unanimously approved
measures allowing undocumented residents to interact with police
and city services without fear of being reported to federal
authorities – making it one of an increasing number
of ”sanctuary cities” with no-questions-asked policies on
immigration status. (Source: The
Washington Post)

I much prefer “undocumented residents” to “illegal immigrants.”  The Indigo Girls put it so eloquently: “Funny, I thought we were on the same boat back in 1694.”  Except that boat carried firearms and blankets with smallpox.  And other boats carried opium.  Apparently the difference between civilization and illegal immigrants is purely a matter of firepower, not a moral high ground.  And it’s not a problem confined to white Americans — throughout history and today the people with more guns and butter dominate and oppress those without.  But as an American, I’d like my country to represent a convergence of morality and power, and to lead the world in its treatment of the less fortunate.  Kudos to Mayor Robert Patten and the town council of Highstown for their initiative.

Adobe Reader really annoys me.  It used to be ok, but the recent versions display Adobe ads in the upper right-hand corner of the toolbar.  Even worse, the ads occasionally move, just to draw your attention.  It freakin’ burns me up to have a company display moving adspace on my desktop.  Why not just break into my house and spray graffiti on my fridge?  Or hold me down and tattoo a bar code on my forehead?

Fortunately I found that if you disable Javascripts in the options, the ads go away.  But now every time you close the program, it warns you to turn Javascripts back on, because “some documents may not display correctly.”  Shyeah, right… those documents being YOUR ADS???

But the nice thing about the age of the internet is that you’re never alone in your annoyance.  And someone out there has probably been annoyed enough to write an anti-annoyance hack.  Well, I found the anti-Adobe-Reader-hack — it’s called “PDF Speedup.”  Not only does it disable those ads, but it makes the program open up so much faster.  Now it opens up as fast as Wordpad!  Best of all, it’s free.  I might even buy their AcroPDF software just to support them and to stick it to Adobe.

link: http://www.acropdf.com/

This week’s Boston Business Journal does a profile on “MBA All-Stars of 2007″:

http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/03/19/focus5.html

I always knew she was an all-star, but now the rest of the world does, too!  Full article text in the first comment.

What happens when a well-known Asian American pastor gets into a heated disagreement with a Christian camp director during a youth retreat?

“Stage Four Christians and Stage Two Christians are not a match made in heaven.”

http://www.xanga.com/sedaqah/576219722/trouble–paradise.html

My friend jglee just took her bar exam, and a group of us went out to celebrate by getting Korean food at ChoCho’s.  Yum!

June’s dad was raised in Korea, so she grew up with a taste for it.  I like some of it — the slightly sweet BBQ, a bit of the red sauce that goes on lettuce wraps, and the neat ways you can cook raw eggs while eating them.  But I draw the line at kimchi.  Like politics, kimchi is divisive.  Some people think it’s culinary heaven on earth, while I think it should be outlawed under the Geneva convention.  June’s mom once brought us a jar from California.  She sealed it in 3 layers of ziploc bags before bringing it on board the aircraft.  But mere glass and plastic cannot contain the beast…  During the flight, a stewardess walked up and down the aisle, sniffing, and spraying some kind of air freshener.  When a passenger complained that he was allergic to the spray, the attendant replied in a loud voice, “Well, if some passeneger nearby would keep his shoes on, I wouldn’t have to spray!”  Such is the power of kimchi.

The package eventually made its way to our house.  But the first time I opened the fridge, I knew it had to go.  I made June give it away.  Then I learned that even Koreans keep a separate fridge for kimchi.  The same way pharmaceutical labs keep a separate freezer for their biohazards.

On a happier note, I found out that Sensata is back-dating our employment start dates from the time we first joined SMaL!  (Cypress did not do this.)  So I will start with 6 years of seniority at Sensata and begin accumulating 4+ weeks of vacation a year.

Barely two years after my company was sold to Cypress, we’re being sold again.

Posted: March 1st, 2007 12:33 PM PDT

Business Wire

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:CY) today announced that it has
entered into a definitive agreement to sell its SMaL Camera
Technologies, Inc. subsidiary to Sensata Technologies, Inc. The
transaction is expected to close later this quarter.

SMaL Camera provides cameras and camera subsystems to automotive
advanced driver assistance systems for such customers as Bosch and
Delphi. The company has approximately 25 employees.

“Cypress acquired SMaL Camera in February 2005 and with it came
great technology to supplement our image sensor business and achieve a
stronger position in the market,” said Cliff Drowley, vice president of
Cypress’s image sensor group. “Our decision to divest the business is
based on a strategic shift to focus resources onto our custom image
sensor business. We believe that SMaL Camera’s automotive imaging
technology will complement Sensata’s existing strengths in automotive
applications.”

In my 11-year work career I’ve only changed jobs once, but now I’ll have worked for five companies.  That’s a lot of acquisitions, an average of about once every two years.  So I guess it was right on schedule for another one.

The previous acquisition was very messy, botched badly on both sides.  About a third of the people left.  I didn’t handle it well myself, threatening to quit and actually handing in a resignation letter.  But then my group manager decided to stay and convinced me to stay on also.  I think I’m glad I stayed, as I later recruited lcshih and then became group manager myself.

If there’s anything I’ve learned through these acquisitions, it’s that there’s both a lot of danger and a lot of opportunity.  I’ve seen people laid off, and I’ve seen people get big promotions.  Things get shaken up, and it’s a good time to play your cards right and bring on your A-game.  This acquisition seems to be going much more smoothly than the last one, which means less shake-up.  But you never know…

Since the World of Warcraft expansion (The Burning Crusade) came out a few weeks ago, I’ve been playing almost non-stop.  A part of it has been getting my main character to level 70, but the more interesting part has been profiteering.  You see, it’s been widely known that the expansion would introduce a new profession called jewelcrafting.  Any new jewelcrafter would require lots of metals and gems to create magic jewelry that confers benefits to the wearer.  Already other professions such as blacksmithing and engineering used metals and gems, so I expected the demand to skyrocket once the expansion came out on 1/16.  To fully take advantage of it, I created 9 characters (also known as “alts” or “mules”) whose sole purpose in life was to carry bags full of metals and gems.  I then went to the Auction House — an in-game Ebay system — and for two months bought all of the metals and gems that were reasonably priced.

Then expansion day came.  As expected, the demand shot through the roof, as thousands of people started buying materials to play with their new jewelcrafting skills.  I began unloading my goods at vastly inflated prices.  Now, three weeks later, I have about 9000 gold.  My best investment was buying thorium bars, buying stacks for 3g and selling for 24g.  WoW is such a big economy that there are websites devoted to tracking prices, just like regular stock quote sites: www.wowecon.com

So what does 9000 gold mean?  In the course of the game, the average person will make 1000g going from level 60 to level 70.  The most expensive thing in the game is learning to ride “epic flying mounts” which allow you to fly faster than anything else; it costs 5000g.  In real-world money, there is a black market of buying and selling gold at the exchange rate of about 1$US to 7g.  So 9000g is worth about $1300.

A 700% return (say over 2 months, equivalent to 4200% APR) vastly beats the 4% you’d get from ING Direct, or the 5-10% you can make with average luck on the stock market.  Are there lessons that carry over to real-world investing?  I can think of three:

1) Big Fish, Little Pond.  Choose an arena where your competition is very weak.  It’s hard to make money in the stockmarket because there are millions of people whose livelihood depends on it, so they take it very seriously.  In contrast, most WoW players are economic idiots.  They will waste money on the most inane things, or sell low and buy high.  Which is fine, because to them it’s a game or hobby.  Similarly, after thousands of interviews the authors of The Millionaire Next Door concluded that it’s easier to get rich in the sewage or funeral business than in becoming a doctor or lawyer, partly because of the strength of competition.

2) Watch the Tides.  The introduction of jewelcrafting in WoW was an obvious one, but real-life cases are more difficult.  Immigration legislation?  Conflict in the Middle East?  The aging of the Baby Boomers?  All of these can cause immense changes in our economy.  Investment opportunities galore!

3) Diversify.  The future is impossible to predict perfectly, so it’s best to cover all of your bases.  I had invested in a mix of metals, and thought that iron bars would appreciate more than thorium.  As it turns out, iron prices have hardly moved.  Similarly my investment in blue sapphires did not appreciate the way shadowgems did.  But the winners made up for the losers, and the overall profit was good.  For a great historical and mathematical analysis on diversification as means to mitigate risk, I recommend Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.

Do you ever open your mailbox and discover a piece of mail you know to
be junk before even opening it?  Maybe it’s the garish ALL-CAPS RED
BOLDFACE font proclaiming your already-may-be-a-winner status.  One of
the great ironies of life is that the value of a message is often
inversely related to its volume.

In the New York Times, Michael Pollan — author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma — illustrates a specific example:

Did you know that in 1977, a senate committee came up with a simple
recommendation to reduce heart disease?  It was — wait for it — “eat
less red meat and dairy.”  The guideline was promptly seized by the
cattle and dairy industries and rewritten as “Choose meats, poultry and
fish that will reduce saturated-fat intake.”  And the meaningful message was quieted and declawed to harmlessness.

The article goes on to skewer a triumvirate conspiracy between the food
industry, nutritional science, and journalism, explaining why we hear
loud and contradictory messages about the relative healthiness of
foods.  Butter vs. Margarine?  Red wine or no?  Does a low-fat diet
reduce your risk of heart disease?

The end of the article lists 9 simple rules of healthy eating.  I think
June’s favorite will be: “Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species,
not just new foods, to your diet.”  I’m pleased by discovering a name
for my recent trial of near-vegetarianism: I’m a ““flexitarian”!  To
quantify, I’ve been trying to eat using a 3-2-1 rule of proportion by
weight:

3: fruits and vegetables
2: starches
1: meats

I’ve been trying to figure out where Ben & Jerry’s fits in, so I’m
playing it safe by choosing mostly fruit flavors.  Topped with crushed
pineapple and maraschino cherries, of course.

P.S. I forgot to mention my rule of “stop eating when I’m no longer hungry,” but I couldn’t find a way to squeeze it into the 3-2-1.