Journal archive: October 2006

Some women are from Mars

Posted 2006-10-17 (火) 午後8:16 by terra

Somehow during lunch today, the conversation touched on the topic on how I often think/react like a guy. Working everyday with users on the floor, female users sometimes think I’m cold or insensitive to their problems. I guess I lack in the empathy department, at least according to their standards.

When it comes problem solving and debugging, the most important thing to me is always the end result: which is to understand why things happened the way they did. Rarely does it occur to me think about the methods I use to analyse the issues. An innocent but blunt question could come across as interrogative, or even accusitive.

Apparently, most women aren’t really interested so much in getting the problem solved than being reassurred that things are going to work out fine. In other words, they like to have someone who would tell them, “I see, don’t worry too much about it, it’s not your fault.” Most men fail miserably at that, allegedly. Perhaps they’ve come to accept the fact that men don’t usually mince their words, but have yet to realise that some women just don’t think/act like the rest of them.

Subjects: General

Mood: Discoveries & Relevations

Tags: empathy, gender

Colibri

Posted 2006-10-10 (火) 午後10:34 by terra

Met 傑義 for dinner tonight. He passed me the autographed copy of Fragile Things (which I very shamelessly got him to carry back from San Francisco), but the coolest thing was learning from him about this software, Colibri, which allows one to open software on one’s PC, favourite URLs (FYI: it even opens a new tab on Firefox), etc, without having to use the mouse!

I have a love/hate relationship with the mouse: I need it especially for designing stuff but really hate using it to open software. The XP pinup menu makes it bit easier, but still, you have to either click on the Start button and keyup/down, or search through the gigantic list of items in the complete Start Programs menu AND remember to sort them alphabetically.

Mac users have probably been going nahh nahh ni nahh nahh for ages and ages. Argh, this makes me feel like saying good riddence to WinXP!!!

Colibri Banzai!

Subjects: Books 書物, Technology 技術

Mood: Discoveries & Relevations

Tags: book, Colibri, Neil Gaiman

Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 -- Released?!

Posted 2006-10-09 (月) 午前2:16 by terra

Just checked out Amazon today. Couldn’t believe what I saw: Absolute Sandman Vol.1 for sale? I thought it was supposed to be released in November. This kind of wrecks my plans of using my Amazon Associates voucher that should be paid at the end of the month. Now I’m wondering if I should just go ahead and get the book and save the voucher for next time (maybe for Vol.2).

Subjects: Books 書物

Tags: book, Neil Gaiman, Sandman

2 comments

Haze all in my eyes, things just don't look the same

Posted 2006-10-08 (日) 午前12:49 by terra

ごめんね Jimi, but that was the first thing that came to my mind…

The weather is usually such a boring topic to talk about in Singapore but this time I just have to gripe. Tiredness + smog really messes up my eyes which are naturally sensitive to dryness. Watching the 2nd episode of Smallville S6 makes me wish Clark was around to temper the smog.