Giving Positive Impact On People’s Lives

Warning: This article contains strong and provoking words that may discourage some of the readers who are currently taking bachelor of science in medical technology and/or bachelor of science in laboratory science as it is called now.

BS Medical Technology (BSMT) or also known as medtech was one of the best science course one can take in Adventist University of the Philippines (AUP) during my study there. The sight of medtech clinical students (CD) wearing white uniform and black pants for the guys with a silver name tag shining sent an exclusive image for those who wear it.

The course was designed to only allows the smartest and the brightest to survive. It was famous for its hectic schedule, long laboratory hours, and difficult curriculum. All of these create a mysterious impression of the course itself and its students altogether.

Having all of these characteristics plus the banner that constantly announced the course’s top notchers in the Philippines medical technology board exam, the course receives high respect from the campus community. Thus the future seems bright for the medtech graduates.

However, the question is, is it true? Is the future really going to be dazzling for the medtech graduates, who are mostly the brightest students of the campus? This is the question that I’m trying to answer through this article. Continue reading →

In the programmers world, there’s such thing called application stack. It’s a list of favorite tools that a programmer use to write programs. A programmer’s application stack usually differs from another programmers’s because there are so many tools available out there, and programmers have different personal taste.

So as with one’s Sabbath School (SS) stack, I believe different people have different favorite Sabbath school lesson studies and preparation books that they read. Although if I’m not wrong, this only applies to less than 10% of church members who regularly read lesson studies to prepare for the Sabbath school discussion. (Don’t you think so?)

Anyway, I’m not writing this post to judge anyone, but I just want to share my Sabbath school stack, a list of my favorite tools that I use to prepare myself for Sabbath school discussion every Sabbath. The list is sorted in order of importance.

1. e-Sword
2. Adult Sabbath School Easy Reading Lesson Studies
3. Sabbath School U Video Cast
4. Adult Sabbath School Lesson Study Outlines by Bruce N. Cameron, J.D.
5. Sacramento Church Sabbath School Discussion Video Cast

I will discuss briefly about each of the tools above. Continue reading →

Who doesn’t know the Rich Dad Poor Dad book?
It’s certainly one of the best selling book that people know that popularize the word “financial freedom” and ignite the motivation to have business to more people than ever before.

I’m certainly one of the book’s “victim”. I changed my mind from taking Medical School in 2005 and thought to rather have my own business.

I’ve heard other authors wrote that Rich Dad Poor Dad is a fiction story that Robert Kiyosaki made up, and said that Robert is actually a liar.

But is it? Did Robert really make up the story about his amazing Rich Dad, and so all of the book content is nothing but a big lie?

I tried to re read the book again after the last time I read it three years ago. For three years I mainly worked as an employee, tried to have a join business with a partner which failed just after two months, and listen to many entrepreneurs about their view about business.

The book still sounds as good as it did three years ago. Better yet, this time I understood better the message that Robert said. So once again, is the Rich Dad Poor Dad a big lie? Continue reading →

Jawaban untuk pertanyaan ini bisa berbeda-beda tergantung pada sekolah yang anda inginkan. Banyak sekolah yg tidak mengharuskan anda mengambil GMAT, dan banyak juga sekolah yg mengharuskannya.

Walaupun GMAT bukanlah satu-satunya faktor yang menentukan sukses tidaknya seorang kandidat untuk diterima di sebuah sekolah, bila nilai GMAT seseorang tidak mencapai standard sekolah tersebut maka kemungkinan sangat besar orang itu tidak akan diterima.

Mengapa sekolah-sekolah Bisnis, terutama MBA, ternama mengharuskan calon murid untuk mengambil ujian GMAT? Jawabannya adalah untuk mengetahui kemampuan calon-calon muridnya berdasarkan sebuah standardized test. Karena latar belakang pendidikan tiap calon murid berbeda-beda, sangat sulit bagi sebuah sekolah untuk mengetahui secara pasti kemampuan calon-calon muridnya tanpa test yg sama.

Contohnya, apakah seseorang yg mendapatkan IPK 3.5 di sebuah sekolah universitas biasa lebih pintar daripada seseorang yang mendapatkan IPK 3.0 dari sebuah universitas negeri favorit?

Dengan GMAT, tiap calon murid dinilai berdasarkan test yg sama sehingga sekolah bisnis dengan mudah mengklasifikasikan kemampuan calon-calon muridnya.

Perlu tidaknya seseorang mengambil kursus GMAT tergantung pada berapa nilai GMAT yg diperlukan, dan berapa nilai yang anda bisa capai pada awalnya (tanpa melakukan review GMAT sama sekali).

Kursus GMAT pada umumnya meningkatkan nilai maksimal yang seseorang bisa capai dengan memberikan informasi-informasi penting tentang ujian GMAT dan tips-tips dari pengajar yg sudah pernah mengambil ujian GMAT.

Dengan mengikuti kursus, kita juga bisa saling bertukar pikiran dan pengalaman dengan sesama peserta kursus. Berdasarkan pengalaman, hal ini bisa memberikan semangat dan motivasi lebih kepada seseorang yg akan mengambil ujian GMAT dibandingkan dengan seseorang yg tidak mengambil kursus GMAT.

I’m not sure how you get interested to read this post. Maybe you are going to have interview at Balicamp and you are googling for information about the work environment in the company. Or maybe you are just interested about the company itself.

Whatever it is, I hope you find this post interesting and informative as I, myself, never found any blog post in the net that describe the work experience at Balicamp, one of the most known software developer house in Indonesia.

Workhour

Just get straight to the most important point, what is the workhour here in Balicamp?

Officially it’s 8.30 to 5.30 just as most regular office hour is…

But since we know that reality bites and life sucks, the “unofficial” workhour in the office is actually unlimited. For most of my first month here in the company, my worktime has changed to 8:00 to 9:30.

I think that won’t be a surprise for those of you who already know how work really is in a software house.

We have a joke that once you signed the work contract, you are actually have sold your soul to the company, just like in the movies where someone signed a contract with the devil who laugh loudly, “Bwahahaha…!”

Workload

Another most important point, how’s the workload at Balicamp? Hmm.. The answer actually depends on how do you perceive the workload.

Though in simple English word it’s simply called “endless”.

I think it is the common thing in a service company. There are many work to be done by so little resources in so little time.

Salary

Hmm, the most crucial part of a job and probably the most determining factor before someone signed a work contract, the salary.

Ok, I don’t know what will the company done to me once they know about this part of the post. I think I’m risking my life here..

Well, I’m not gonna post my salary nor will tell you about the salary range in Balicamp. For me it’s just enough for me, can’t say it’s one of the best though. But like most of the employees in the company, I’m after the knowledge and experience at this point so salary isn’t the issue.

I always think that I’m actually enrolled in a great software course here in Balicamp. When I think such then I will rather feel lucky because instead me who need to pay for the education fee, the course provider is the one who paid me.

Conclusion

Maybe some of the words I used here is to exaggerated in some ways. I also may not be much knowledgable to write a more accurate post about Balicamp because so far I have only work for 5 weeks in the company.

Anyway, the post certainly reflects the things that I’ve experienced so far. So just see it as another viewpoint of work environment Balicamp seen from a junior programmer.

So should you think about working here in Balicamp? Well, by all means please do so because it will be one of the best experience you have in life. Unless of course you have better option…

OMG! How could I lost the opportunity to get $50 for just writing 5 blog posts? (Ouch!)

Well, just today my friend who worked in a marketing research company asked me to be the respondent for a research. What was the research about? I don’t really know is it about, but he was looking for several bloggers who are willing to write posts with certain topic.

The requirement was so simple, male or female blogger (22-24 years old) of any religion but not fanatic, not gay, and in or have been involved in relationship with opposite sex.

What the best point? Each blogger will be required to write five posts and will get paid $10 for each post. Now won’t that be totally an easy $50..?

So how could I lost such wonderful opportunity? Well, simply because I write too much technical reviews and gadgets rather than social issues. OMG!!! It’s like I almost cried when my friend told me the reason… (Huaaa!)

Well, maybe it’s really not my luck this time. But it reminded me to write more posts about social life around me and prove to the world, “Hey, I’m not that anti-social…!” (or maybe sometimes..)

Once in a while you may need to change the SMTP IP destination of your mail relayer server. Last month our company installed a new anti-Spam software using Symantec Mail Security to reduce the significant number of incoming spam email. During this project test and deployment period I need to change the email smtp routes several times. Here I created the documented steps that I did during the process.

Just one comment about the Symantec Mail Security Anti-Spam feature. It is very good software that can help you reduce 99.9% of spam emails. It is 99% accurate in keeping the spam email from going to your inbox. Until now I only receive 1 spam email for the whole two weeks. However it needs to update its database every 20 minutes or less. And this update can take up to 4 GB of internet bandwidth every week. Well, that’s quite a price for keeping spam email out of your email huh!

Allright, back to how to change the SMTP routes of three most popular MTA (sorry, I don’t include Exim cause I didn’t able to tried it..) Continue reading →

To those of you who love to collect ebooks, most probably you have have the thought of how to print it with your own deskjet or laserjet printer. It would be really good to be able to read the ebook just like ordinary book. Because one of the great disadvantage of ebook is you need a computer monitor screen to display the book. While staring too long at your monitor screen can lead to eye fatigue or light dizziness.

Some of the printer driver have the capability to print your ebook into a book format. One of them is the HP Laserjet 4200 in my office. There is a print properties that I can choose so the printer will print the output in a half page format and after the print job is done, I can fold the papers in the middle and voila, a home-made (or office-made to be exact.. ;D) published book.

And then I thought of what if I can make it even smaller. Is there an option to print the book in 1/4 page size so I can make a pocket book? Well, unfortunately there isn’t any… So I tried to Google and try to find some kind of software that can do that. Continue reading →