Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.

“Seafood Rice ?”

That was the question the waiter asked the other day in one restaurant. And then he stood there, with the plate of Seafood Rice in hand, expecting an answer from me and my friend … and nothing else.

The problem was, one of us ordered the Seafood Rice, and the waiter didn’t care about it (i.e. who ordered what). He just expected we would tell him the answer and then he would dump the dish on table and rush to another table.

I just didn’t get it, why not they marked down who ordered what, when we made the order ? Was that really a difficult task, to impress their customers ?

Lesson Learnt: No excuse, train up your staff to deliver good services.

Coffee Please …

So one of the largest coffee chains in the world openned a new shop around the corner, I thought “let’s have some good coffee” …

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“Tall Soya Latte please …”, I told the clueless young chap.

“What ?”, answered by the clueless young chap, but he’s so proud …

“Tall Soya Latte PLEASE …”, I asked again.

“WHAT ?”, answered by him again.

“TALL SOYA LATTE PLEEEEEASE …”, I yelled.

“Oh, tall soya MILK latte, a moment please …”, he finally answered.

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Of course, it’s the last time I visited that store.

Lesson Learnt: Train your staff to understand the customer’s preferred product names.

#49

After almost a month’s heavy raining, we finally see some white cloud, blue sky again … it reminds me the lyrics of the famous song “Raindrops keep falling on my head” :

But there’s one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me
It won’t be long till happiness steps up to greet me

Indeed, let’s be optimistic in everything we do, as “ain’t no mountain high enough” for us (another famous song …).

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I am not talking about our eShop, but really a shop selling “Accessories of Success”. No kidding, you can buy something for success. And the site is:

http://www.successories.com/

I am a frequent browser (not customer) of this web site, as I simply like their products a lot. Every product is inspiring … good photography and good quotation. Here is one of these, about Essence of life:

http://www.successories.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/dir_product.brand_title/product_group_id/e429709c-250d-488d-a7bb-90f537107324/brand_id/bf2c41c3-27ee-40e7-833a-589a6e9dddfc/product_theme_id/aa04f423-2aae-41cd-bebb-c9c3162b02db/ProductsForEssenceof.cfm

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Many of you love music-on-the-go, and are proud owners of Apple iPOD … so you will probably encounter one problem that needs to be solved swiftly – that is, how to carry the music player, mobile phone, Digital Camera etc. etc. with you easily. And in technical term, it is about setting up your own “Personal Area Network” – PAN.

Check out the video and you know what I mean … http://www.scottevest.com/ipod/index.shtml

And that’s why I think my next geek purchase shall be … http://www.scottevest.com/v3_product_info/features.shtml

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The three P’s of success: Passion, Persistence, and Patience. – Doug Bronson

IT Episode 2 – Flowcharting Maniac

So every line of code required a punch card (see Episode 1), and obviously for a poor student like me I had to find ways to use less card as each card costed some money. You know, the more bugs the program had, the more cards I needed to re-program (i.e. re-punch new cards). And if the program was in-efficient (e.g. lots of lines to do one simple logic), the more cards I needed as well … So, the solution was (is) Flowcharting.

Flowcharting is not new, but if you asked 100 modern-time developers the question “Which is your favorite programming tool?”. I bet 95 of them will answer “My IDE (Integrated Development Environment)”. And the other five will answer “My hand …”.

But to me, the best tool was (is) the Flow Chart. If one could not draw up a flow chart to describe the solution, I don’t think the program would work. Anyway, if you wanna know the basics of flowcharting, check out here.

Lesson Learnt: Good planning for everything, and for programming it is called flowcharting.

IT Episode 1 – Keypunch Machine

OK, it is time to blog something about IT (the trade I am in), but I reckon it makes little sense to blog the latest and greatest (as you can find easily in Internet) … so, what about something really “retro” ? Let’s start from the early 80’s (the time I get in touched with “Computing”) …

Way before the mini-computers, micro-computers (i.e. PCs), we have mainframe computers. And the only way (back then) to instruct the computers to do something smart (or stupid), was to use “Punch Cards“. To record those silly computer instructions to the Punch Cards and to “run” it, you need to do couple of silly things …

  • Get some blank punch cards by buying them from vending machines. If I recall correctly – 1 quarter for 50 cards.
  • Or you could “borrow” some from your friends, other computer centers, or other universities 😎
  • Then reserve a keypunch machine (or here) in the data center and punch in the computer programs (e.g. FORTRAN, PL/1, COBOL), line by line, with those machines.
  • Hand in the computer program (i.e. the deck of punched cards) to the computer room service desk, and the operator would submit the cards to the mainframe computer (see the card reader on the foreground …)

Lesson Learnt: WARNING – Don’t drop the punched card deck, or you need to re-sort the whole program …