How guilty is he?

Consider a ..hypothetical case.

Due to a certain fuck up, a large national corporation used to pay P's electricity bill. Being a good honest individual he reported their mistake to their office, and offered them a payment equal to the amount they paid. They said they would contact him again.

The following month they paid his electricity bill again. He reported this incident again to them, while checking whether the person he talked to have the authority to act on the corporation behalf. This time, they did send someone to him. He paid them although he only received their proof of payment as receipt, which wasn't enough evidence that the money would be properly received by the corporation.

..as you can guess, they paid his bill again on the following month. He called them again. They say they would get to him again. He waited and waited for months but no one ever come anymore. Meanwhile, he was getting so busy he totally forgot. When he finally remembered again, he didn't bother to contact that corporation anymore.

Interestingly, he later noticed that whenever he paid the bill earlier, they won't double pay for that month. That means they had a mechanism to check that a bill they were suppose to pay, was paid. That should raise a red flag on their system. He guess someone probably took advantage of that..

How guilty do you think is he?

How to move a car with parking break on

These last days I experienced a truly ironic event.. I'll probably post about it one day.

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Anyway, today an asshole parked in front of my employees' pool car. She (I believe a she based on items inside the car) positioned it in such a way that the pool car can't get out. What pissed me was that she pulled her parking brake thus the car can't be pushed from outside. My employees must wait for her car key to move her car from inside. The problem was, they didn't know where she was and she didn't bother to tell parking attendants her whereabouts.

My employees were getting restless waiting for her. They began kicking her car's tire and knocked the car to light up it's alarm, so that she can hear it and come to the car. Unfortunately, the car didn't seem to have any alarm.

The night was coming. They are getting more restless while still no sign of her at all. They really can't wait no longer. Then, you know what? Together they lifted her car and moved it. It was quite a show :-).

But her car position relative to wall made movement quite limited. To have the pool car get out, they have no choice but to lift the pool car instead and move it. But the pool car was more difficult to lift because the suspension seems quite long. The long suspension made moving the car difficult, because they must lift it higher to make the tires not touching the ground thus able to move it. Moving it while the tire still touch the ground was more difficult due to tire friction with ground.

So what's the solution?

They accidentally figured the solution. They realized that when engine moved tires while lifting the car, friction was decreased even when tires still touched ground. They did exactly that and finally able to orient the pool car and get out. They went home happily but not before I asked them to wrote a memo saying "Don't park your car without consideration" ("Jangan parkir sembarangan" in local language) and put it on her windshield. I'm tempted to add the word asshole, but in the end I didn't.

What lesson did I learn today?
1. The back of the car is easier to lift then the front, probably has something to do with the relatively short length of back tires suspension. (And here I used to thought the front tire suspension is shorter).
2. To easily move the back of a car: Put sand below the back tire -> lift car a bit -> press gas to move tire -> move the back of car.

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Update: The criminal was the guest of next door's establishment. At that time, they swore they already checked and assured me the criminal couldn't be any of their guests. This incident really put a dent to an already strained relationship between our employers. I'm quite tired dousing my employers with cool calm words..

It's a lot more peaceful to work for somebody else instead of having your own business.

Update2: It's funny how things work out. Although a few hours ago I have an interesting thing to blog about, later development today shows that it's for my best interest to not blog. But this later development actually help me in restraining my employees to not do anything bad to next door's establishment within foreseeable future.

The brilliance of slacker

Some colleagues of mine in a company taught a me a nice trick of using the below picture as my desktop background. They recognize that [Windows]+D or show desktop button responses a lot faster compared to [Alt]+[Tab]. Do you see the intention of using this trick? :-)

Concerning Ponds's 2007-2008 episodic TV ads in Indonesia

The woman who still loves him in all those years is pretty although her skin is not white yet. And I have a feeling that she won't be as pretty as she is right now when her skin become white-ish pale because of Ponds.. Damn consumer goods industry and their method in changing people's standard of beauty.

Anyway, I don't know whether it's just me or the woman's acting is very good. I feel like I really experience her surprise seeing him hugging another woman after being separated in all these year. I feel her pain of still loving him and knowing that he is about to be married to someone else. I feel her indecision in whether to send an SMS saying that she still loves him. I feel her bitter feeling when she actually sent an SMS wishing his happiness. I feel her depression after receiving the fake SMS from his soon-to-be-wife pretending that he doesn't want to see here anymore, ever.

Now, if I remember it right, all TV ads displayed since 2008 in Indonesia must be created by Indonesian advertising firms. I must give a 2 thumbs up for them creating such an appealing ads.

I'm sorry that I don't provide any information concerning this advertisement, yet.

Simplifying globalization: wealth redistribution and comparative advantage

IMO, for the majority of heated debate on globalization, there are 2 sides of globalization that rarely mentioned together. Globalization as method of wealth redistribution, and globalization as method to capitalizing comparative advantage.

In theory, if you're relatively poor because your work result is undervalued relative to world average valuation, you can benefit a lot from globalization. Once the whole world has access to your work, it will be valued higher. You will be richer. The bad side is that if you're relatively rich because your work result is overvalued compared to world average valuation, globalization will lower the valuation of your work. You will be poorer.

Is this mean that people from rich country is always at disadvantaged when joining globalization? Not really. Rich countries can benefit from globalization because of the second aspect of globalization, which is comparative advantage.

With comparative advantage, people can concentrate on doing what they do best thus driving down cost and increasing profit margin. People from relatively richer country can benefit from this by having access to superior product/service or cheaper product/service. The relatively poor can too.

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Globalization is also a game of give and take. A country give up protection to certain aspects of it's economy, and take up the opportunity of certain aspects of economy in other country.

Unfortunately, many countries choose to selectively open themselves to globalization. They only open aspects of economy where they will be hurt the least, and force other country to open up it's aspect of economy where they will gain the best result.

Cosmic joke of www.firstmedia.com

First Media is the new internet service provider in town, and it's playing a joke on me.

I planned to install First Media cable internet service as another redundant internet connection. But none of the 3 locations is connected by First Media.

The first location is on a major street. I'm disappointed but if they decide not to serve that street, so be it. I can live with that.

The second location is on a somewhat middle size street. They actually have a connection there, but the connection ends on the building next to mine.

The cosmic joke is on the third location. Almost every building on that street is serviced by First Media, except mine which is right in the middle of that street. So all buildings whose number below mine are serviced and all buildings whose number above mine are serviced, except mine!

I am feeling sour.

Experience using Telkomsel 3G/GPRS (kick ass dude!)

1. Per today (April 7th, 2007), speed of 42KByte/sec (using 3G) is still achievable. This is awesome, especially for me who is used to CBN XL 7 KByte/sec speed.

2. After I'm connected, web access is redirected to Telkomsel homepage. There I can click on package I want to choose.

3. The billing is based on time spent connected to internet, after choosing the package above.

4. At anytime in the session, I can see the time I had spent online or time left on the selected package. After each session, I received SMS stating the time I had spent.

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Update: 9 April 2007.
Disconnect incidents are too many, about once every 15 to 30 minutes.

Update 24 April 2008. Cbn XL unlimited 3G has been reduced to laggy 3KBytes/sec.