有感而发：岁月不留人

二零二零年七月二十七日。

我的胡须，白的多过黑的，已经很多年如此了。

去年七月三十日写的一篇文章，没有上载部落格，内容大纲如下：

“晚上九点十分，如厕完洗手时无意间发现自己左眼上的眉毛有一条是全白的。

第一条。

唉，只会越来越多。”

几天前，发现自己连鼻毛都有白的了。

唉…

岁月不留人，朝朝催人老。

有感而发 |系列|

Acer XV270P not compatible with NB F160 mount

Bought online an Acer 27" monitor (XV270P) and a North Bayou dual monitor mount (F160) from a shop my company uses. Got them delivered to my house on Tuesday.

I did my homework verifying the two are VESA compliant before the purchase. According to the shop website they are, but when I tried to attach the monitor to the mount, they do not fit.

The mounting plate of F160 is slightly larger than the mounting cut-out section on the XV270P monitor. I don't know whether it's Acer or NB who screwed up, not following VESA specifications or has horrible tolerance control, but the end result for customer is two incompatible items.

Thought about a few ways to resolve the issue before I went to bed on Tuesday night, it's a mechanical problem after all. But none of my potential solutions is elegant, and these are brand new items that are supposed to work.

So I contacted the shop's customer support on Wednesday, who asked me to bring the items to the nearest outlet for their technician to check and resolve.

I did, and what a waste of time and effort that was.

The so called technicians are basically the people manning the till, nothing wrong with that, people can have the technical know how and skill for repair while still be the cashier.

The first alarm bell that went off inside me was when I told them I bought these and had problem, the immediate response from the 'technician' was "we can't help you."

I told them I bought these online from your shop and I contacted customer service who told me to bring them in to the nearest outlet.

The next alarm bell was that the only troubleshooting source they referred to was a video posted by someone who bought the same mount and monitor. A famous YouTuber, they said, as if that is a quality assurance or something...

The video clearly showed the YouTuber having problem attaching the monitor to the mount, but eventually got it to work, but the detail of how the YouTuber did it was not clear.

The 'technician' then claimed we just have to rotate the mount 90 degree and hold the monitor with just two screws instead of four as designed. The thing is, no two screw holes on the monitor are aligned with the 90 degree rotated mounting plate, I showed this to the 'technician' who then went back to watching the video all over again.

His next claim has merit because it's one of the solutions I thought of the day before: use something to elevate the cut-out section so the mounting plate does not have to go into the too small cut-out section, hence no interference.

My idea is to use washers (easy), or a 3D printed piece of that cut-out section (nicer), and get longer screws of same diameter and thread pitch. His solution however, only involved the first part (he suggested using nuts), and no matter how I explained, he couldn't get it that we need longer screws.

That was the third alarm bell. He insisted on trying with the existing screws, I indulged him and waited to see him fail, which of course he did. Some people only learn the hard way.

The fourth alarm bell went off when he used a screwdriver too small for the screws, do these people no know about stripped screw?

Anyway, he ran out of ideas after that, the YouTube video no longer gave him any inspiration so he raised the white flag and said the YouTuber probably forced and deformed something.

To be honest by that point I already knew I would get no help from the so call technician and customer support, so I cut my wasted time short and came home.

I filed down the mounting plate that evening, just needed to take off a couple of millimetres, I did it on three edges to get some leeway for centring the screw holes. Didn't have black paint at home so I sprayed on some clear paint, hopefully the filed areas will not rust.

Not pretty but got the job done.

Not sure if other Acer monitors have the same mounting section, but those who think of getting Acer XV270P monitor and planning to mount it on the NB F160 dual monitor mount, then let me tell you they don't fit.

And no I didn't make a video of my fix to post on YouTube.

Other |runaway rants| category entries.

有感而发：期望·失望

二零二零年七月十九日。

昨晚开启手提电脑工作时，看到那封通知不会申请专利权的电邮。

唉，好失望。

真的认为这次的发明概念很棒。

是经理的概念，他把我拉进了团队，帮忙做些模拟验证热流优化后的效果。

团队里其他同事都是拥有很多专利权的老手，无形间也让我有了期望。

还以为，我终于可以拥有一个专利权了，那可真是一个很好的人生成就。

果然，期望越高，失望就越大。

明白这道理是一回事，但感受还是真真实实的。

唉…

有感而发 |系列|

心的频道：真

真诚、坦白、直接。

做最真的自己。

这样心里很轻松自在。

何苦要掩饰、伪装、呈现假象？

刻意展现虚假的一面，骗的始终是自己。

毕竟真相终究会浮现。

没被揭穿其实是看穿的人的气度，或不屑一顾。

虚伪只会累人累己。

坦诚很简单，因为真。

简单，就快乐。

我是真的这么认为。

心的频道 |系列

End work early

I get headache if I worked long hours.

Yesterday the headache was so bad that I had to retire straight after dinner for a couple of hours before it subsided.

When the five o'clock meeting got cancelled today, I told myself I am going to end my work day early today. I have done enough overtime since the weekend that I feel no qualm whatsoever.

I deserve it.

But of course, there's always more work than work hours, and today, the colleagues seemed to gang up to not let me end my work day early...

One after another and with some overlapping each other, four colleagues pinged me for one thing or another near the end of the work day, when I was trying my darnedest to quickly post-process the latest thermal simulation results and call it a day.

Multitasking is totally ineffective and inefficient for me, I am a focus at one thing at a time kind of person. I am loyal. =P

It's unusual for me to get so many pings from colleagues in a day, even rarer when it's nearing the end of the work day.

It's like they knew I wanted to end the work day early and out in force to thwart me.

Anyway, long story short, when I got yet another ping at five past six (yea, so much for ending work at five), I decided enough is enough.

So here I am, nursing a headache while writing a rant.

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

Eighth time lucky

First thing I did after I got out of bed the past three days long weekend (Monday was a replacement holiday), was to turn on my laptop and work.

Ditto before I went to bed.

I know I am ruining my slacker extraordinaire reputation but duty calls, oh well.

The frustrating thing was, I modified a previously working model, with what I considered fairly minor changes, but the model stopped working.

Dammit.

The initial plan when I got the model modified end of Friday and set it to run overnight was to have a quick check on Saturday morning to save the case and set another case to run. Repeat twice and leave the post-processing to today.

But the solution diverged, so I fine-tuned the mesh and tried again.

And again. And again. And again...

Seven attempts, all diverged, arghhhhh!

It's Monday (yesterday) night by then, so I swallowed my pride and sent a help request to the software developer.

Knowing I won't get the support so soon, I tried again to resolve it myself, my eighth attempt, and set the case to run overnight.

And it worked! Very satisfied when I saw the results this morning.

Though I sure felt like I have wasted my long weekend, I was supposed to slack and just be a potato.

Oh well, sigh...

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

命贱

州元首生日，所以有三天长周末。

原本打算做番薯，长蘑菇。

就是睡觉、看书、休息、玩电脑游戏这类的事。

但是，每天起身后就是工作到午餐。

虽然不是周日上班的时间起身，但…

唉…

随兴随想 |系列|