These Days

I spent an extraordinary three days last week. July 22-24, 2010 was the Every Nation World Conference held at SMX. Every Nation is an organization of Christian churches around the world. Victory Christian Fellowship in the Philippines is part of it. First, it was simply amazing to be in the same place with believers from around the world. It reminded me that we are one family. It doesn't matter what nationality or color we are, as long as we believe in the one true God. The parade of nations was so overwhelming. There were representatives from many countries including Afghanistan, Iran, African countries, etc. I was touched by the testimonies from fellow believers, especially those who were shared to without prior knowledge of Jesus or the Bible. Many people from other countries literally don't know/have never heard about Jesus. And now they are believers and making disciples. Even in the face of prosecution and condemnation from family, society and the government, they ...

Isaiah 41:10 (New Living Translation)   10 Don't be afraid, for I am with you.       Don't be discouraged, for I am your God.    I will strengthen you and help you.       I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

I started blogging in 2003.  There was a time when I would post in abandon, almost every day.  I've used many platforms and tools but these are the ones I'm using now. Google products !  I have several blogs on  Blogger and it's great because I can manage all of them from just one login screen.  I have a little Adsense incorporated, too.  There's a few dollars there but I hope to leverage it more in the future.  I can also post to the blogs directly from Gmail .  If the posts are short and don't require pictures, that's what I do.  When I'm writing something in draft, I would save it in Google Docs so that I can access them from different computers. I manage and edit my pictures using Picasa .  I also love Picnik , the online photo editor, for all it's really cool effects I was so happy with last year’s news that it was acquired by Google.  Now, Picnik editing has been integrated into Picasa web albums...

I had my 2nd HPV vaccine dose today.  It didn't hurt as much as the first one. More info about the vaccination here .

The little boy turns 2 today. Happy birthday, baby! Did you notice the hand? :)

The company where I work recently announced that all employees are entitled to free flu vaccination.  Good news.  I won't be taking advantage of it though because I already had my shot last month.:(  But that's beside the point of this blog. We are going into another practical application of OR. Suppose there are 1000 employees and each shot costs P500, then the total expense would be P500k, which is A LOT of money.  (I know for a fact that there are more than 1k employees, and MY flu shot was P1500).  Before any company decides to spend that much on an ad hoc benefit, it must have done some analysis, no?*.  What is the benefit of giving everyone free flu shots?  To minimize the number of people getting sick, for sure.  But does it justify the total amount to be spent?  We can look at historical data and see how many lost days there were due to flu.  This can then be equated to lost productivity (=money).  If total cost of the free flu shots < total cost due to sick days, ...

Here's something that I always think about whenever I use the automatic paper towel at the office restroom -- optimizing the length dispensed such that the total consumption is minimized.  (Humor me?) You see, in the past, the papers used to be longer (x).  I used to just take one and it would be enough.  Now, they are shorter (y), so I actually have to take 2 to completely dry my hands.  My estimate is x = 1.5y.  In my case, that's a waste.  Not only am I getting a bit more than what I need, the machine has to dispense twice, which requires more energy.  Other people used to get 2 when it was still x.  If they're still using 2 with y, then it's a net save for them.  See? Optimal tissue length problem. The easy way is to know this is for the housekeeping staff to test for different lengths and see how many rolls are used up within a certain time period.  Sure there are many variables that could affect the results but if it'...