Coming Out of My Shell

A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar.

- Lao Tzu

It has been a week since The Missus went back to her work. Prior to that, she had insinuated about leaving her job and becoming a full time mother on several occasions. As I was having doubt about the financial stability of my family, I responded with a reluctant no. According to my calculations, we need an additional IDR 1 million from what I’m earning now to let her job go while maintaining our lifestyle and still save some on the side.

IDR 1 million is my comfort zone, but  at what expense? For the first three days of her work, The Missus shed tears whenever we leave Pras at his grandparents’ before going to work. Four out of her six-days workweek, she didn’t leave her office on time, trapped by her work. I know she’s unhappy, and whenever she’s unhappy, I would be too. Also, I always knew that the best place a mom should be is right beside her child, especially during the early years. Something that The Missus has pointed out for several times in several ways.

So, I’m coming out of my comfort zone. I finally said yes to The Missus’ request to resign from her job. We must be a little bit frugal from now on, as a consequence, but that’s now a fully consented consequence. I hope this will turn out to be the best for our family. Amin ya robbal alamiin.

As for the IDR 1 million? Let’s just say that from now on, I’ll be more hard at work. I’m also trying to advance my career laterally, if you know what I mean. :)

Bismillah. May this be a start of an expansion into a new comfort zone.

Insights from The A/C Guy

Just bought a new air conditioner for my room as the old one leaks like an octogenarian on a wet day. As the new unit was being installed, a simple chit chat with the A/C guy gave a lot of insights into the cooling world. Worth your while if you’re getting a new one. This beats having your info from some random marketing guy at the store – which almost always lure you with some kind of customer trap. These are the words of the A/C guy, not mine, so don’t slap your libel and slander lawsuit  on me, ‘kay?

• Chinese-branded A/Cs are more adept at the cooling department, but not so in their quality control department. Obvious. Oh. They are also a bit more power-hungry.
• LG’s are considered one of the more inept at cooling. This is something I also learned by experience.
• Polytron can also be considered as a “chinese brand”.
• Panasonic’s inverter A/Cs are one of the best in term of power consumption.
• Sharp’s are also deemed not hot at cooling.

Destination: Bandung

At the end of last month, I finally had a chance to travel with my old colleagues from internal audit. They’re conducting an audit of the quality of service of The Company’s communication network providers in Bandung regional area. They invited my group, the IT internal control group, to tag along to review the process because it involves placing a monitoring utility between our CPE and the LAN at each site.

The work itself is not at all glorious. We installed and configured switches and routers where needed at ten plus sites all over the region and turned on several utilities to load-test the network. We also placed SNMP traps to be remotely monitored back at the head office with PRTG.

Technical things aside. I really loved the work. It feels like what I should’ve been doing instead of dealing with the tedious task of administering documents and data requests for those pesky external auditors, something that was never put on the job description but was born on my group despite my advices and considerations against it. Moreover, they’re my old colleagues, with whom I freely exchanged banters and friendly insults. You can see some of the pictures we took here.

Bottom line is, I loved the travel and I love auditing! Please let me do what I was supposed to do!

Interesting Study on Indonesia IT Salary

Working in the field of IT in Indonesia? How do you compare your salary to ZDNet Asia’s study? They conducted an online survey and polled a total of 2,577 respondents from various sectors including government, healthcare, IT, services, telecommunications, legal and finance. A quick run of the average monthly salary is below, but you can read the whole article here. All values are in IDR.

Job Function	Industry
	IT, Web & Telecom	Goverment, Education & Health	Legal & Finance	Media, Marketing & Sales (non-IT)	Manufacturing, Services & Others (non-IT)	OVERALL
IT Management	9,275,172	7,931,543	11,027,247	8,180,144	8,151,178	8,798,254
Project Management	7,157,231	4,581,944	6,135,078	3,976,042	7,436,058	6,879,648
Systems Development	3,599,941	2,337,694	4,508,516	3,960,880	4,939,621	3,869,551
Communications	4,864,387	2,468,277	3,617,460	2,794,667	4,453,822	4,389,592
Support	3,191,302	3,590,101	3,775,646	2,328,552	3,421,363	3,304,702
Administration	4,234,768	3,557,012	4,294,309	2,527,412	4,641,886	4,143,996
Other IT Professionals	5,664,409	1,256,510	4,218,750	2,943,056	4,062,745	4,823,323
OVERALL	5,393,677	4,577,934	5,873,444	4,629,361	5,807,240	5,416,965

ZDNet Asia via Kukuh TW’s Facebook Wall Post

You Can Call Him Pras

Prabaswara Arshad Nugraha was safely born on May 18th, 2009 through c-section. He was 50 cm tall and had a weight of 2.9 kgs.

There’s always more to see here. And not to forget, there’s also some here from the time of Pras’ delivery.

Beberapa Catatan untuk Menjawab Pertanyaan Wawancara

Selasa kemarin (22/07) gw wawancara untuk dapetin beasiswa S2 luar negeri lagi dari The Office. I don’t think it went particulary well. Ada beberapa pertanyaan yang rasanya akan lebih berguna buat gw kalo gw jawab begini.

• Apa olahraga Anda? Gw gagal melihat arah pertanyaan ini yang sebenarnya menilai apakah gw sociable, team player bukan dan apakah gw melakukan sesuatu untuk mengasah otak kanan gw. Harusnya ini gw  tetep jawab dengan jawaban jujur soal hubungan gw yang tidak harmonis dengan olahraga, tapi gw perlu perjelas bahwa gw bukan antisosial atau geek/nerd/sebangsanya. Sampai sebelum nikah, gw rajin tiap Sabtu ikut CCF – yang berarti bergaul dengan orang segala usia, dari Ibu-ibu sampai anak SMP – dan gw masih lumayan networked sama temen-temen Bemonet – komunitas Bulletin Board System – gw dulu dari jaman SMP. Dang.
• Apa yang telah Anda persiapkan untuk ikut wawancara ini? Lagi, ternyata yang ini mengorek soal kemampuan gw untuk menggali informasi. Seharusnya ini gw jawab detil sedetil-detilnya. Beberapa temen bilang kartu mati gw keluar pas gw menjawab tidak untuk pertanyaan, “Apakah sudah browsing untuk pilih kuliah?” Gw terlalu jujur dan lupa bilang alasan kenapa gw gak melakukan itu: uncertaincy - in regard to this whole selection process – sucks.

Mudah-mudahan daftar ini nggak makin panjang. Hiks. Doain gw yah, guys.

Ojeg Van Bandara

Beberapa hari yang lalu gw sempet dua kali bolak-balik Jakarta-Pontianak. Ada kegiatan super-mendadak implementasi produk baru The Company. Anyway, bukan itu yang gw mau ceritain, tapi fakta bahwa gw sekarang lebih seneng naik ojeg kalo pulang ke rumah dari bandara.

Yup. Ojeg. Udah sering liat dan ngalamin sendiri kan ditawari jasa ojeg di bandara? Ternyata enak juga loh pulang ke rumah naik ojeg. Inilah beberapa alasan kenapa gw ngomong begitu.

• Cepet. Bayangin kemarin gw pulang dapet flight yang sore dan pas sampe di CGK udah jelas jam pulang kantor. Kalau naik Bis Damri, jalur gw cuma paling pas yang ke Blok M. Turun di Slipi, harus naik taksi lagi ke arah sebaliknya. Kena macet dua kali kan? Di Tol Sedyatmo pasti padat, tol dalam kota juga mungkin demikian. Lalu dari Slipi, S. Parman ke arah balik pasti juga macet. Bweh. Kalo naik ojeg, udah jelas mereka lebih lincah. Lalu dengan local wisdom-nya mengenai jalur-jalur alternatif, bisa mempercepat lagi. Topp! Bandara SH – Grogol cukup 45 menit saja!
• Murah. Terakhir, gw naik taksi Burung Biru dari Grogol ke Bandara, gw abis sekitar IDR 70.000, di luar biaya tol. Kalo pulang naik taksi, gw rasa kena segitu juga. Bandingin sama ojeg: IDR 40.000, walaupun setelah ketat juga nego harga sih. Tapi cari aja deh, pasti ada yang mau dengan harga segitu.
• Banyak pilihan. Tukang ojegnya banyak banget, baik di terminal 1, 2, dan – kabarnya – 3. Jadi nggak usah kuatir. Cari yang tampangnya nggak sangar, dan potongannya nggak bakal ugal-ugalan.

Tapi tetep ada sisi jeleknya sih.

• Relatif kurang aman. Jelaslah, wong namanya juga naik motor. Masih untung kok semua tukang ojegnya pasti punya helm untuk penumpang. Faktor lain juga perlu dipertimbangkan: masuk angin. Hati-hati untuk yang nggak tahan sama angin kalo naik motor.
• Gak bisa bawa banyak barang. Untuk yang seneng beli macem-macem kalo ke luar kota, jelas ini bukan pilihan. Gw biasanya bawa satu koper/travel bag untuk pakaian plus satu ransel untuk laptop. Ini udah paling sip. Koper ditaruh di antara kaki tukang ojegnya dan ranselnya gw bawa sendiri.
• Kurang higienis. Helmnya kan dipake rame-rame. Hehe. Alternatif lain sih bawa helm sendiri. Tapi, niat benerr? Huehehehe.
• Pegel. Duduk lama-lama diboncengan motor itu pegel loh. Apalagi kalau masih bawa barang di punggung. Kalo tujuannya jauh, mendingan jangan naik ojeg deh.

The Best Seats Onboard Sriwijaya Air’s B737-400s

Just took one of their direct flight from Jakarta to Pontianak today. I think the best seats are: 16 A through F as they are in the rear emergency window row. That means more legroom and the seats are still able to be reclined. Another option are 1A through F. As they are in the first row, they’re the roomiest but lacking the front tray table. They have the folded-in-the-armrest kind of tray table though.

That 3G Connection Is Darn Fast!

I’m here in Pontianak for the time being, doing some implementation for The Company. Anyway, I got a HSDPA modem in my hand and I tested the connection – this time it’s XL’s service. Whoa! It’s truly darn fast, man! Take a look at a screenshot I took of my download.

How to Flash Your Wireless Router With DD-WRT

First, the mandatory disclaimer: I only succeeded doing this on my Linksys WRH54G using its own specialized DD-WRT flash image. And, by the way, flashing the firmware will void your warranty. That said, here’s how to do it as I did it.

1. Find yourself a good straight UTP cable for this and use Internet Explorer as your browser. For safety reasons, don’t use the wifi connection to do any firmware flashing. That’s a no-no. Same thing for Firefox et al. Dust off your IE for this one.
2. First, read the Peacock Thread. If I ever say RTFM, this is it. Don’t come to me later crying about how you bricked your router. It’s a very good read and has tons of tips and what to do before, during, and after the installation and also what to do if something goes wrong. I think it would be a good idea to save the page to your local disk. Oh, and the DD-WRT installation wiki is a good read too.
3. Download the specialized DD-WRT flash image for WRH54G. You can use the link provided above or use their official, secure download page just to make sure you have the version you want.
4. While you’re at it, download the TFTP tool too. This will be essential if you failed to flash the image properly. Better safe than sorry, right?
5. Get the official Linksys firmware image. This will also be your safety net. If something goes wrong you can try to revert back to the official firmware.
6. Do a back-up of your router configuration first. So, in case something goes wrong, you should still have it to fallback on. Click the Administration > Config Management menu to do this.
7. Do a hard reset. It’s done by doing the so called 30-30-30 reset. As the Peacock Thread put it, push the reset button with your router powered on. Hold it for 30 seconds with the router powered on. STILL holding it, pull the power cord for 30 seconds. Still holding it, plug the router back in. You will have held the button for a full 90 seconds without releasing it. How can you tell if you’ve managed to do a proper hard reset? Simple. If you’ve changed the router’s default admin password before, this hard reset should put the factory default password back on.
8. Use the web configuration to flash the DD-WRT firmware. With your browser, open the web configuration of the router and access the Administration > Firmware Upgrade menu. Browse to the DD-WRT flash image you downloaded earlier and press the Upgrade button.
9. Wait for the router to reset itself. Do absolutely nothing before the router resets itself. Do not unplug the cable, do not cancel the process, do not close your browser, don’t click any button, and do not refresh your browser page. The progress bar will do its thing and the router will reset itself and finally you’ll be prompted for password once again.
10. Do another hard reset. That’s right, never mind the password prompt.
11. Access the web config address and you’ll be taken to the change password screen. If the screen displays, it means that you’ve successfully flashed to DD-WRT. Use the screen to change the default administrator user name and password. Be smart and use a highly secure password.
12. That’s it, you’re done.

Oh, by the way, if you’re having trouble and wants to reset it back to the official linksys firmware, this site might help.