homeworkforlife

[homeworkforlife]

7th June 2025 | Sentosa

I messaged Bryon asking him if he would like to hang at City Hall and Orchard area. He suggested we checked out Labrador Park and Sentosa instead, which was an idea that I preferred. So we hung out in those places.

[homeworkforlife]

6th June 2025 | Friday

Today's a beautiful Friday! and tomorrow's a weekend. It's two days of freedom and rest. I'm so happy that I started today off right. I had enough sleep, even though I kinda snoozed on my alarm, but that's because of too much sleep and that the temperature in my room is at a really nice cool.

I'll do my best to be as productive as I can for work today, so that the rest I get this weekend will feel even better. I'm happy, and things are great at the moment.

[homeworkforlife]

5th June 2025 | SG60 Vouchers

There's a pleasant surprise I saw on the advertisement screen at the lift lobby. Singapore is dispensing SG60 vouchers to us. Can't wait to claim and use it!

[homeworkforlife]

4th June 2025 | j5create®

I highly recommend j5create® products. It's quite clear on their packaging that they adhere to official standards of HDMI, DisplayPort, USB etc. All these matters because while others that do not have the license for these technologies used, they are implemented poorly and results in incompatibility issues. While these unlicensed products work, they usually end up flashing the screen, dropping off its connection, etc. By using an officially licensed technologies of these products, it will be as what Apple loves to say, it just works. This has been my experience of it so far. At the moment, my two DisplayPort cables to my monitors, to my work laptop, and USB-C to HDMI adapter, are all j5create®. It matters to me that these cables work as they should. I wasted so much money on low costing cables that are non-licensed products and had to throw them away, I couldn't get myself to sell them either because I don't want to sell to someone a product that I wouldn't use.

[homeworkforlife]

3rd June 2025 | Work Tomorrow

I'm happy that I'm starting work tomorrow. It will be in the central area of Singapore. It's nice when the income flows.

[homeworkforlife]

2nd June 2025 | Icy Cold Water

I'm happy that the icy cold bottled mineral water sold in the supermarket remains at $0.35. It looks like they are trying to sell more of it by mentioning that there's this discount that ends by this month end. The idea that it's supposed to cost $0.51 but is sold at $0.35.

To give context, FairPrice mentioned that they were pricing it at $0.35 as there is a discount till end of May. However, at this moment they've renewed it to mention the discount is given till end of June. I mean, I'm glad this is the case, but the idea of giving an impression that the item you sell is worth more, and that they are giving a discount out of goodwill feels unpleasant.

Probably they have a story backed up defending themselves that this has been done ethically. It's always like that.

[homeworkforlife]

1st June 2025 | Muscle

I've been making my partner laugh through showing her my arm muscles randomly when no one asked for it hahaha I never realised this until I first flexed it couple of days ago. I can finally say that I do have arm muscles haha I didn't realise that I could achieve that through the strength training that I've done so far because previously, I struggled a lot in building up muscles. Looks like dumbbells are effective in helping us build them.

[homeworkforlife]

31st May 2025 | j5create®

I got my custom desktop computer recabled with DisplayPort cables that are certified with the DisplayPort protocol. I had to throw away a DisplayPort cable that's faulty because it's unlikely the store I bought it from will allow an exchange because while it seems faulty, it's more of just badly made. The DisplayPort sockets get pushed in causing it to not fit the DisplayPort female port on the computer. By holding on then pushing the cable into the housing, it brings back out the male socket, I'll be able to connect it and lock it in place. This might be intentional but it doesn't feel right to me. It's probably not intentional, but is lazily agreed that it can still be sold because technically it works, but is just poorly designed.

On another note, the j5create® official store on Shopee rejected my request for refund and shipped out the item. It's been over 12 hours now and they remained uncontactable with no replies to two of my queries to them. It'd be a better idea I leave them a review mentioning this. They are sneaky.

[homeworkforlife]

30th May 2025 | Not a Technical Interview

Today was hilarious. I was messaged to my work text app to check if I could do a call that's just a 10 mins chat at 3PM. I was busy outside and mentioned if it could be done on Monday instead.

A conversation happened and I decided that I can do it today at 3PM. I was told it's just a 10 mins chat. Upon the call at 3PM, I shared details about myself. After that it became a technical interview where I was asked very reasonable questions about my knowledge on ReactJS but lots of it were memory based. I knew the answers and I could answer them, but due to not having touched ReactJS for awhile, I couldn't answer them as much as I could have had I revised it.

After the call ended I was told not to worry so much about the technical interview, which is nice haha because while a technical interview happened, it wasn't about that.

I appreciate him saying that and I don't know what they were assessing but it was a funny experience. I of course hope to get it so that I can become even better in my ReactJS. However, if it doesn't go accordingly, I wouldn't in anyway consider that a defeat or disadvantage.

There's also another reason to that that I want to highlight. My senior who very competently taught me ReactJS has moved to a different country. While she's not recognised by one key leader in our old team as being as capable as the other person, who is actually arrogant and seemed like the most skilled developer, she certainly is. Based on my experience with them, they are both quite closely technically skilled, but that other arrogant seeming person seemed to be perceived incorrectly as being the most skilled.

While she has ample experiences under her belt, she chose to work in a startup doing what she's good at. To me, this isn't a setback, but a step forward because it's an experience to learn how to build her own company and how running a startup is like.

With that mindset in me, if I'm honest, I kinda am excited to work in a startup. Not one that's just started or struggling, but one that's promising and well managed by competent leaders. I might move on to do a startup or some SMEs. I'm not sure if doing corporate actually allows me to become better at a faster pace, or even earn the salary that I deserve. It hasn't seemed that way to me and for lots of people who I have spoken to.

All I know is that lots of highly skilled software engineers either stay in corporate being paid well with their high positions and severe stress. Or the rest, who move on to start their own startups or companies. If I'm honest, owning a company and managing one, even if it were much smaller in scale or may earn less, sounds more like success to me than those who stayed in corporate. However, in no way do I mean that corporate is bad or always worse, I'm mostly referring to this in the context of middle-aged highly skilled software engineering workers. Working in corporate has lots of benefits as well, but for sure it's not significantly better an experience than running your own startup/business or company, where you actually own an asset and have more freedom over how you can do your work.

[homeworkforlife]

29th May 2025 | Old School

The Dell MST doesn't work so well. I've went old school again and that requires using my NZXT custom desktop computer. The reason for that is because only it has two DisplayPort connectors that I can use for multiple monitors.

I've turned off MST on my main monitor, so my personal and work laptop connects to only a screen. Only my custom desktop computer is connected to my main and secondary monitor.

It's working perfectly now.

[homeworkforlife]

28th May 2025 | MacOS and MST Don't Work Together

Today, I found out that the MST feature, it enables daisy chained monitors, does not work with MacOS. It's unfortunate when brands don't do cross-compatibility in order to keep their customers within their ecosystem.

[homeworkforlife]

27th May 2025 | Ugreen DisplayPort Cable

I bought a Ugreen DisplayPort cable from Amazon probably about a year ago. I love how it looks and feels, but at that time the length was too short. Just a metre, but I required a 1.5 metre, or 2.

After receiving my secondary monitor, I was excited to finally use it. I connected it and it kinda worked, except that there was an issue of the screen not showing. I required to put my computer to sleep then wake it in order for the screen to work.

For days I felt it was a poor implementation of the MST feature. I had an idea, as I knew sometimes the China branded cables aren't made to official standards, so I switched it out with the stock Dell DisplayPort cable that came with the monitor.

After doing that, it worked perfectly.

For some reason though, I am now facing an issue of the screen not showing if the secondary monitor is turned on while connected to my work laptop through a HDMI to USB-C or DisplayPort to USB-C cable. The cable is by Mazer, a Singaporean brand, and the other a brand from Hong Kong. While it feels like it might be an issue of the cables, like the Ugreen, not being made to the display standards, I'm out of luck on trying a cable that follows the standard. I won't be able to know if it does by just looking at its packaging, though jCreate cables has been a safe bet.

Anyway, I now just turn off the power of my secondary monitor, and I can just use my main monitor without any issue with my work laptop. That'd do for now.

[homeworkforlife]

26th May 2025 | G-Wagen

My close friend bought me a gift from his trip in Japan. He mentioned that everywhere he went, he sees the Tomica cars being sold. He looked through the selections and decided on the Mercedes-Benz G-Class as it was the best looking.

At the time when we were walking down the back of Orchard Road, he told me the car he got for me looks rather similar to the Suzuki Jimny and/or the Land Rover Defender. It took awhile and I realised that it's a G-Wagen.

It turned out to be! I'm appreciative of this gift, and I have placed it at eye's view on my computer desk. I met-up with him on the recent Saturday after receiving my secondary monitor, and I always enjoy our meetups.

[homeworkforlife]

25th May 2025 | Secondary Monitor at Home

I'm happy about being at home alone, and being able to surf the web and do my stuff on my computer. I'm really happy about having a secondary monitor to allow me to multi-task better.

[homeworkforlife]

24th May 2025 | Dell UltraSharp U2424H

Today I received my secondary monitor. It's set up by now. Let's see how the experience goes, I'll be sure to update here should there be anything worth sharing about.

[homeworkforlife]

23rd May 2025 | Last Day of Training

Today marks the end of my 5 days training. I'm happy to have went through it, and I have come out of it more knowledgable. I'm thankful for that.

[homeworkforlife]

22nd May 2025 | Tenderbest

The highlight of my day happened during dinner when I decided to try the Tenderbest restaurant. They still have that Spaghetti Bolognese that I always purchase from this franchise. I got the additional spaghetti for $2 extra and ate till I was really full. The food was tasty, it was $9.90. I exited the restaurant a happy man.