Eileen-III

Alright, it's been a while. Time to write something here.

So, Eileen-II has more or less run her course. It's not that she has broken down, but let's face it---I didn't plonk down serious cash all those years ago ``just'' to use her for web-browsing only.

It has been about the games; it has always been about the games. This time though, there was no COVID-19 lock down to justify getting yet another laptop form-factor, but it was basically a simpler statement: space is premium that is worth paying extra for.

I could rebuild Elysie-II completely, but where would I put her? I've more or less compacted myself into a single room of my childhood apartment home, as things got a little weird with the whole ``study room'' affair, and my general dislike of basically occupying ``public space'' by sleeping in the living room. The day that I discovered that I didn't really need the high-powered ceiling fan in the living room to cool me off was the day that I decided to set up base in the bedroom that I had once shared with my sister before she moved out after getting married, some four to five years ago. I don't remember if I wrote anything about that entire set up phase, but the gist of it was a complete rework of the bedroom---all my books were finally unwrapped and sorted out into the massive shelf that houses that and more.

But that's history. I'm here to talk about Eileen-III.

Eileen-III is an Alienware m16 R1, with an Intel i9-13900HX (24-core (8 P-cores and 16 E-cores), 36 MB cache, up to 5.40 GHz with Turbo Boost), 64 GB DDR5 RAM at 4800 MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 16 GB GDDR6 discrete graphics card. Her screen is 16″ (2560×1600) with a refresh rate of 240 Hz with G-SYNC, and her storage are 2× 2 TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs in RAID-0 configuration.

In short, she's an absolute beast. Her graphics card is equivalent to the desktop version of the RTX 3080 Ti, but with less power consumption and no over-sized form factor, and her CPU is also doing much, much more while consuming much, much less power.

She also has 4 cooling fans, which is 2 more than what most laptops will have. For operating such a machine in a non-air-conditioned place in SIN city the way I am, having excellent cooling cannot be overstated.

She's superlative to Eileen-II in almost any way, though the keyboard layout is a bit janky---the right shift key does not fully extend to the bottom of the enter key, with the up-arrow key occupying that last sliver. The reason for this jank is the decision to create a new right column of convenience keys for the volume up, down, mute, and microphone mute buttons. They made it such that the right arrow key is now part of that column, instead of being flush with the rest of the main typing area.

It's not bad per se, but considering how the keyboard layouts of my as at then two most commonly used machines' layout are exactly the same as what I had described, the muscle memory kept screwing the crap out of it.

And oh, I had to run Windows 11 for Eileen-III---it was the only [gaming] operating system that could ``understand'' and therefore properly schedule tasks for the heterogenous CPU set up with the P-cores and E-cores.

So, how does she perform?

Like a damn dream. Seriously. Cyberpunk 2077 running at 2560×1600 at an average of 110+ fps. My ``industrial complex'' of farms in Minecraft (link is to the old version) with all the bells and whistles of full-shadow shaders was performing at least 50% better in terms of frames per second than when it was running on Eileen-II (there was severe lag that dropped things to around 40 fps), considering also that we are rendering things at 2560×1600 instead of 1920×1080, a good 97.5% more pixels to draw.

And Grim Dawn did not have a moment of lag while rendering all the fancy effects when procc-ing things.

In short, Eileen-III is a true beast.

Am I happy with the upgrade? Hell yes. It married super-powered graphics power, with fantastic memory/general processing power, with tiny pixels, while keeping the keyboard at a comfortable enough temperature. What's there to not like?

Alright, I think I've gushed enough for now. Yesterday was the public holiday, and today was an additional leave day that I took to just sit around and do nothing.

Till next time.

What I Learnt From Working in Offices

Caveat: This entry was not written at when it was published.

When I was serving my National Service back in 2003--2006, there were some things that I learnt that has served me pretty well throughout my time in the working world.

``MT, that's cool and all, why talk about it now?''

Let's just say that after being made a manager with more than a handful of souls under my charge, I start to get a little introspective in thinking about what enables me to be a good manager, and what can enable them to be good subordinates.

I also need to remind myself that the proper term for people under a manager is ``subordinates'', not the more expressively dramatic version of ``Minions!''.

So anyway, National Service. I enlisted on Boxing Day of 2023, and was promptly sent to Pl. Tekong for Basic Military Training. I went through the course as best as I could, even with shitty skin, and passed through impressing my Officer Commanding with my positive attitude despite being excused from all field activities, and having to take hospitalisation leave at some point due to abscesses. I was then sent to a Unit populated by senior officers in a heavily office setting.

That's where I learnt those useful lessons.

I'll just summarise it roughly here, in no specific order:

• Always strive to make your Boss to look good by feeding them with good data;
• Debate all that is needed, but once the decision is made by the Boss, it will be what will be done;
• Relating to the previous point, respect the chain of command and associated Standard Operating Procedures/General Orders/established work processes;
• The clerks and the secretaries---they are gatekeepers, so treat them well, no matter how inferior their nominal rank may seem;
• When a phone call comes in, pick it up within three rings; and
• Pay attention to any and all documentation generated---if it is not documented, it did not happen.

The thing about my time working in that office as an ``augmented'' administrative support assistant (i.e. ``project executive'') was that it was much closer to how the real world office was like, sans the ease of simply leaving any toxic environment (National Service is compulsory---it was not possible to just ``quit'' before the stipulated full-time service was up).

That kind of environment allowed my headstrong self to learn how to bite my tongue and survive, before finally thriving in whatever small way that I can.

After my time from National Service though, I learnt a few more lessons, again listed in no specific order, and in a rough way:

• Not you, not here, not now---any forms of challenge against the processes/procedures should be done later, and not whilst in the midst of trying to execute the process;
• Redress seeking should follow the chain of command, even in the civil world---it is not the case that the Biggest Boss will always resolve things according to one's way, since it is more likely than not that the said Biggest Boss will still bounce everything back down the chain of command to the appropriate level to be resolved;
• Be firm, assertive, but not rude, and respect the command decision if the Boss has already decided; and
• It's just a job, and don't take it too personally.

Corporate life is strange, and the people that make up the corporate body, I will readily admit that some of them are ``lifers'' who will happily sit in their role for twenty years without any intention of doing anything more than being automata following the procedures/processes as strictly as possible. But that doesn't make them innately ``bad''---it just means that one needs to be a little more patient and creative in engaging them in ways such that their actions end up helping instead of hindering our agenda.

I think that's all I want to write for now. Till the next update.