Everyone Working All the Time

Eliyahu Goldratt : A plant in which everyone is working all the time is very inefficient.
(The Goal - A novel about the theory of constraints)

"A" Players, and B and C Players

We will see more hiring in 2010 of "A" players, but the jury is still out on when hiring will improve in great numbers and companies will consider hiring B and C players to round out their teams. You can't only have teams of superstars as the work that needs to be done in many cases does not warrant being done by high achievers. 

Become What You Were Born to Be - Brian Souza

My latest audiobook, and it's a good one.

Analyze your life patterns.
Develop a burning desire for something or to get away from something.
Inspirations : Slavimir Rawicz (internet accounts are controversial, but Souza makes him sound like a hero. Definitely, the story is a bit on the fantastic side. He did on land what Capt. Bligh did on water - I guess), Momma Walker - first self-made millionairess in the US, Franklin Chang-Diaz (first Costa-Rican space shuttle astronaut). Good stuff, in general.

Souza spent tens of $k on seminars after he quit his corporate ladder job to find out who he was.

Installing Perl Modules as Non-Root : If You're Not in bash

What if you're in csh? (to Mr. X who wrote : http://linuxgazette.net/139/okopnik.html )


setenv MANPATH ${MANPATH}:~/perl_modules/man

if ( $?PERL5LIB  ) then
        # PERL5LIB not previously defined, so set it..
        setenv PERL5LIB ${PERL5LIB}:~/perl_modules
else 
        setenv PERL5LIB ~/perl_modules
endif

verify with 

perl -wle'print for grep /myperl/, @INC'

That's a bit of guru-level perl right there. Deadly one! (not mine:)

Autohotkey Eases Command Prompt Navigation

You're looking at a folder with Windows Explorer. Can you click in the path (which means windows will now select it) and hit a hotkey combo to open a Command Prompt window ready at that path?

With Autohotkey, yes.

(without AHK, it's this incredibly complex procedure)

But, we're saved :

Windows 2K :

#c::
Send ^c ; copy the text
CoordMode, Mouse, Relative
Run cmd.exe
WinWaitActive,cmd,,0.5
Send cd{Space}
Click right 110,70
Send {Enter}
CoordMode, Mouse
Return

Windows XP :

#c::
Send ^c ; copy the text
CoordMode, Mouse, Relative
Run cmd.exe
WinWaitActive,cmd,,0.5
Send cd{Space}
Click right 110,70
Send {Down}{Down}{Down}
Send {Enter}{Enter}
CoordMode, Mouse
Return

It's not pretty:) but it works. Sure, there's more than one way to do it.

MyFav : AHK : Suspend

That's a really useful hotkey - suspend all the other hotkeys.

If you're using the Easy Window Drag (KDE Style) script, be sure to put this line after the "CoordMode, Mouse" segment, or you'll see some funny stuff.

All you need is

^!Rbutton::Suspend

Just one small line for you, one giant leap for your productivity. Choose any other key combo you like - I picked CTRL-ALT-RIGHTMOUSE here.

Another one to consider :

#c::Run calc.exe

See, that's the smart way to launch the calculator when you need it. Cavemen go through the Start menu, to accessories, then whatever. Same for Paint. All you have to do is launch the task manager and find out what the name of the program is - you usually can find it because it'll be named meaningfully.

C.a.r.e.s.s. the Art of Listening

Day eight of the mastery course.

C : concentrate
a : acknowledge
r : respond
e : emotional control - don't get your buttons pushed and tune out
s : sensing the non-verbals - vocal and visual
s : structure - paying attention to the verbal

Retired Life

I have read some good trading books.

There is the classic "Technical Analysis of Stock Trends" by Edwards, Magee,
and Bassetti.
Another is "Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom" by Van K Tharp.

I have a long reading list that I am still working my way through.

(from an older, wiser friend)

Articulation - The Power of Communication

Why are social skills so important (coming from someone who wished he had started training much earlier :) ). Here's one angle to consider : The better you are with people, the easier you open up and talk about what's important to you. Smart people discuss ideas. Ideas are your real children. Have you thought about why you have ideas that you never talk about? Because you're afraid of having them mocked at. You want to protect your children. But, with good social skills, you can create a safe place for your ideas in minutes. I was surprised today to hear myself articulate how what I really want to be doing is building security systems and applications - how I want to be in surveillance and remote monitoring. That is the key to this country going green and cutting costs in healthcare and achieving energy independence. We can do it if we approach it the right way. We are spending way too much money having people watch our backs when they could be doing more useful work.

How Fast is a Wilson Current Mirror?

Assuming you want a reasonable phase margin (meaning, if you have two poles, keep the 2nd one at 2x UGB).

You'll see why your PMOS mirror usually gets away without any explicit compensation cap..

If we assume,

Then, assuming the source follower works good (i.e., its Cgs doesn't come into play because its V(S) = V(S) due to unity gain.. (nice, in reality, you don't get that because of the gmbs - so, straightaway, some of the CGS *has* to come into play)

Also, assuming that 

We get, if you go around the loop,

and 

So, if one substitutes the expression for gm, one gets, again, using 

What we are interested in is, how fast will the cap that the input current sees take to charge to the final voltage. Or, how does this Cc (which is what the I_in now sees) compare with the effective input cap for a simple current mirror? If you call that cap C_simple, it has to be 2 * W1 * L1 *Cox

Giving

Moral? If you want to see a benefit, keep the mirror devices' aspect ratio as low as possible and the aspect ratio of the cascode (which does the unity gain buffer role) devices as large as possible.