On Statistics

I have been conducting research since 1997. I believe in qualitative approach since it is the best approach for my research. I need the ability to study and reveal richness, depths, and context of a phenomenon being studied. I rarely touch statistics or econometric (and other metric for that matter).

I don’t say that statistic is bad, on the contrary, I believe statistic is one of the best products of our civilization. In many cases, I would refer to the statistics gathered, compiled, and analyzed by somebody else. Continue reading On Statistics

Life is Funny

I would like to tell my story (in English since I need to keep practicing my writing).

Life has a funny way to make our desire come true. A more religious person would say God works in mysterious ways, however I am not religious person and I do not think I am qualified to write something about God’s works. Anyway retrn to my story. Continue reading Life is Funny

Managing Small and Medium Enterprises

SMEs are unique and different compared to bigger businesses, especially in the availability of organisational resources, so managing SMEs is different from managing larger businesses (Aragon-Sanchez & Sanchez-Marin 2005; O’Regan & Ghobadiah 2004; Welsh & White 1981). As SMEs grow, they face new problems. The first problem is due to their limited staff: growth means that existing staff must deal with additional workload and new duties brought by the growth. The Continue reading Managing Small and Medium Enterprises

A Milestone

Boxing Day 2005. Five years ago, I brought my family return to Indonesia after spending 3,5 years in Sydney. When we departed  10th June 2002, there were only me and my lovely wife, Retno. We were young couple (we were married less than 9 months). We brought three luggage, about A$300, a credit card, uncertain future due to problems at my work, and tons of dream. I lost my father who passed away on 17th August 2003 but witnessed the birth of lovely Sati, our daughter on 17th July 2004.

We returned with some savings, the same three luggage, a beautiful baby girl, master degree for Retno, a PhD in waiting for me (I was graduated in-absentia in September 2007), works awaiting in Indonesia for us, and few stuff we brought home (mostly my books).

Now we are definitely better off than 5 years ago. We are eagerly awaiting the next years to come. Happy New, better Year 2011.

Another New Gadget

My beloved Javelin has been with me for over a year now. We have been through a lot. It was getting too old and too slow for me. I might be able to replace the trackball and do some cleaning but it was old.

I have replaced my lovely 8900 with a brand new 9800 (no pun intended). I got a good price and a good gadget. I got two of them one for me and one for my wife to replace her old 8520 (Gemini).  The new Torch is exactly like the picture below Continue reading Another New Gadget

IT adoption within SMEs

Adoption of innovation is a complex phenomenon. Attempts have been made to explain it from three different perspectives: individual, structural, and interactive process (Slappendel 1996). We believe that Slappendels’s framework is the most appropriate framework to approach IT adoption by Indonesian SMEs. From each perspective, numerous studies have been made to explore the adoption of innovation. Research in the individualist framework Continue reading IT adoption within SMEs

Farewell Pak Mantri

Last night I received a news that my former drawing, painting, and religion teacher at high school passed away. His name was Sumantri Hadiwiyoto, but he was known for his nicknamed Pak Mantri Bong Supit. Bong supit is Indonesian for circumcision expert. He was one of the funniest teacher at my high school, with vulgar and smart jokes . He taught drawing and painting, in which I did not excel at any stage (6 out of 10 grade is enough for me). One subject that he also taught was religion, which was contradictory to his vulgar jokes he often dished out. Continue reading Farewell Pak Mantri

On Evolutionary Upgrade

On my last post, I described what was happened to my old PC and my upgrade effort. I have a beautiful LG L1753S LCD monitor, a superb PC, and crappy two sets of speakers. I have an old 4.1  Altec Lansing AVS500 speaker set which I bought right after I get married in 2001. The speaker is in bad shape after almost 9 years. There was a loud humming sound emanated from the sub woofer and most of the cable has been chewed by mice. My friend, who is a dealer for Altec Continue reading On Evolutionary Upgrade

Upgraded PC

Unstable electricity at my home was causing my beloved PC to give up. The power supply, processor (Core2Duo), and motherboard were damaged. I have to upgraded all the damaged components. Currently I am using Core i3 5300 Processor, MSI Motherboard type H55-E33., 400 watts PSU,  2 GB DDR3 RAM, and integrated video card (which is capable of HD playback). Hard drives, DVD Writer drive, and case are still from the old one. This accident also gave me a chance to upgrade Windows XP Pro SP3 to Windows 7 Pro. So far it is running beautifully, although it is a bit louder than the old components.

Changing OS

It has been less than a month after I upgraded my Javelin to OS 5.0.0681 from Hutchinson Asia. It was not good. Battery life was short, less than 12 hours or so. It mad me have to recharge my device every 12 hours or so. It was huge inconvenient for me, especially during my trips to Bandung and Jakarta. Memory leaks was also severe, I was down to less than 80 MB in 3 days. Previous OS installations would hold memory above 90 MB after more than a week.

I decided to remove the OS and replace with the same version from Indosat. So far, it has been better. The time between charging is more than 24 hours. Memory leaks is not as severe as Hutchinson version. It is still around 100 MB after two days. All and all Indosat’s version is much better than Hutchinson Asia’s (IMHO).