Face Life Positively
Today I changed my MSN Messenger signature to “Face Life Positively.”
For the foreseeable future, I’ll be living with four identities: grad student at the Telecom Institute, quasi-teacher at the Software Institute, laborer at the Software Engineering Center, and boyfriend to my GF. These four identities are four processes. I’m the CPU resource, and life is constant context switching. Speaking of context switching, the scheduling algorithm is most important — there’s the traditional round-robin… (Narrator: He’s having a work-related episode again.)
I’ve decided to use the popular “priority-based preemptive multitasking” scheduling. The benefits go without saying — this algorithm has been proven reliable and effective through engineering practice, widely used in commercial and open-source operating systems. One remaining question: how to determine priority. How to order the four processes. My reasoning is simple: if one day this unfortunate CPU burns out, which process would be most affected? With that, the priorities of the four processes become crystal clear.
Enough rambling. Lately there’s so much work waiting for me, and much of it can’t be delegated. Reflecting on my past life strategy, I think a big reason for my constant busyness is my passive, un proactive attitude — putting things off whenever possible. That’s why many things didn’t get done well. I plan to follow these principles:
- Communicate proactively with others
- Proactively do every task at hand — each one done is one less to do
- Proactively cherish time
I’ve been feeling some improvement in work, life, and study lately. Hope it keeps getting better.
Today I got notice from Professor Wan: I’m to go to Beijing for Microsoft’s Windows Embedded instructor training on March 10th. A week-long, fully-funded trip worth over 5,000 RMB. To have this opportunity is truly wonderful. After this, I’ll be a bona fide Microsoft authorized training instructor. Wahaha!
Very happy tonight. Not going back to the “messy” Hudong campus — staying in Jiading. Treating some juniors to dinner at a restaurant tonight, living it up at a three-star hotel on my own dime. Tomorrow I’ll switch back and give a lecture as the “laborer.”