#025 Thailand Update: Chaengwattana On The Web

Did you miss me?

I know I’ve missed writing. It has been tough recently finding time, because I am running out of available time. My morning drive in has been plagued with work issues. It’s funny how that can happen. Work is reminding me of a virus. It starts out as an 8 hour day, than it spreads to a 1.5 hour commute in and a 1.5 hour commute home. Add to that morning conference calls and late evening emails and you end up with no time for anything except work. I can’t keep doing that. Not only does it prevent me from writing; it prevents me from having anything to write about.

To Singapore or Bust

We’re getting kicked out of the country. We have to leave Thailand by November 10 to satisfy the requirements of my work Visa, so we’re leaving this Friday for Singapore. Either that, or we stand the chance to be arrested and experience life in a Thailand jail. Although not a preferred choice, it would make for some interesting writing. Hmm...

Even better, a couple of my Thai friends will be traveling to Singapore at the same time. Plus, I have an Ex-Pat friend there that I met on a business trip. We’re gonna have quite a party. On my last trip to Singapore (only trip there so far), I got food poisoning. I sure hope that doesn’t happen this time. I think I’ve just about had it with getting sick. Of course, it doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying exotic foods. I know my stomach is about ready for a mutiny, but it will adjust right? I mean, I eventually have to get used to this food. Right?

Chaengwattana on the Web

Do you remember the lunch I had with the pastor? You know, the one that ended up getting me sick? Well, one of the reasons we had lunch was to discuss how I could help out Chaengwattana Community Church while I’m here. One of the things I thought I could do was help build them a website. A long time ago, I had a website of my own that contained tons of information about me and my family. It wasn’t a blogging site like this; it was a full blown website. It was my first attempt at establishing a web presence. I ended up having to stop the website though; I had to give the computer back to my Sister. So, it went on hiatus, but I did learn a little bit about HTML and how to post pages. Now, I get to use that knowledge to help out my new church.
It’s always scary when you offer someone your services for something you have an “idea” of how to do. I always worry that expectations get too high when people here you know how to do something. I am not a website developer. However, I have looked at many websites in my life, I’ve seen many advertisements with website addresses, and I actually know people who have developed websites. That makes me a developer by association. This is true for most things in my life. WARNING! WARNING! A rant is approaching. Forewarned is forearmed.

Many people don’t know what I do or what my company does. I am a Project Manager at a semiconductor company. My company makes little things called Microcontrollers, which are very tiny microchips that perform a variety of functions in a host of applications. I know that doesn’t help you much, but it’s all I can offer. Why? Because I’m a Project Manager. I’m not a design engineer, electrical engineer, applications engineer, or anything with an “engineer” suffix. A Project Manager tracks a project and keeps all the details on track, on budget, and within a schedule. However, because I work for a company that makes “computers,” I should know how to fix a problem with a bad hard drive, a network connection that doesn’t work, or provide advice on the next printer you buy. Why? Because of this knowledge by association. In truth, I am a technological “jack of all trades.” I can tell you a bit about many types of technology; I just don’t know the gory details (nor do I want to know). I think this knowledge by association is a bit like the “6 degrees of separation” theory that associates everyone to Kevin Bacon. 1) Your PC does not work. 2) PCs contain computer components. 3) A PIC microcontroller is a form of computer component. 4) My company makes PIC microcontrollers. 5) I work for my company as a Project Manager. 6) I can fix computers.

I think the bottom line is that if you ask me a question, the fact that I don’t know the answer will invariably lead me to the answer. This is a big character flaw of mine. I have to know the answer. If you ask me something and I don’t know the answer, chances are I will researching your question as soon as I’m away from you. It’s actually pretty sick. However, people can use this to their advantage, because I will normally not tell you something without information to back it up. Let me give you a couple of examples. I know I’m digressing again, but we should all be used to that by now.

A lady at work asked me what to call the ribbon that goes around pageant contestants. You know, the one that has the State they hail from? Anyone know? If not, you will soon enough. Just keep reading. However, it was not that easy for me. For some reason, I just couldn’t think of what it was. I went home that night with that thought still on my head. I went to bed thinking about it. I couldn’t sleep that night, so I started doing some research on the web. Here’s a good question for you: When you don’t know the word to look up, how do you search for it? If I type “pageant apparel,” I get lots of stuff relating to dresses, tiaras, gloves, shoes, and other “must have” accoutrements. However, no one actually buys the “ribbon.” Apparently, if you are willing to endure the hot lights, ogling eyes, and media attention, the ribbon is a freebie. I tried other searches that returned less than desirable results, and this searching continued on until the wee hours of the morning. It actually made me wonder what my wife would be thinking if she walked in on me at 2AM.

“Honey, what are you looking at?”
“Uh... nothin’ honey. Go back to bed.”
“Why are you looking at women in swimsuits?”
“Actually, I’m not looking at the swimsuit. I’m looking at the ribbon in front of the swimsuit. Do you believe me?”

Eventually, by blind luck, I happened across a website that described the pageant process, and how each pageant contestant is required to wear a “sash” with their State name identified.

Sash!

That’s the word! Ah, now I can sleep.

Okay, here’s another example. My son Christian (Grade 1) has been assigned homework where he needs to define how many different ways he can get a sum of 8. Initially, I’m thinking two digit calculations, right? That’s easy. There’s nine combinations beginning with zero and ending with 8, provided 0+8 is different than 8+0. But then I got to thinking, what about 3+4+1? Or 1+2+4+1? What about the combinations and permutations of all those possibilities? My math skills have diminished over the years, so I couldn’t think of a good formula to cover this. I wanted to look up the formula on the internet, but my wife was already online. My only choice was to do it all by hand and see what I come up with. After all, how hard could it be? About 45 minutes later, I discovered 96 different combinations of numbers that all add up to 8 (there were at least 20 for 1+2+2+1+1+1). Do you think this is what the teacher wants Christian to do? I sure hope not, because he also has to do the sum of 9 and the sum of 10. This could take some time...

Okay, digression over, let’s continue with our regularly scheduled blog.
What has kept me from posting recently has not been sickness; it’s been the church’s website. I want to do a good job, and the only time I have available to do it is on the drive to and from work. I’ve been using all my free time (and some of my not so free time) to get a web presence up quickly so we can get it reviewed, updated, and ready to be easily maintained before I leave. That’s a lot to accomplish in 2.5 months! Are you curious to know what I built? I have a version of it online at http://cccthailand.0catch.com. This will eventually become cccthailand.org, or something similar to that. Bear in mind, this is only a couple of days worth of work, so it’s still very rough. Right now, I use this address because it’s free to post and it gives the church something to look at. It is very basic; mostly because it’s all I really know how to do, but also because I need to make something simple enough to be maintained after I’m gone. We’ll use the latter excuse so I don’t have to admit that I don’t know how to make it any better, okay? I need it to be basic because I don’t want to leave in December and then have the website die. But anyway, I would be curious to know your thoughts. I want to make it the best I can while I’m here. If you do look at it, you will also note that I have “borrowed” a lot of material from another church in Thailand called the International Church of Bangkok (www.icbangkok.org). The format is almost identical to that one. I don’t have time to be creative. I need to save that creativity for writing.

What Did We Do Last Weekend?

It’s already Wednesday, and I haven’t even written about our past weekend. How about that? Did we do anything special? Well, we did a little “Laser Bowling,” went the Children’s Museum, explored the “Weekend Market” and found our way to “The Mall.” There’s quite a bit to talk about on those topics, so perhaps I’ll save it for another post. A veritable “cliff hanger” of blogging, if you will.

Until next time...