Author: Hla Min (Lifelong Learner)

• Some people said that I have “too much time”.
• Time is an equalizer. Everyone — rich or poor — has 24 hours in a day.
• Our elders reminded us that one should get
  kutho (kusala, wholesome deeds), oksa (income or wealth), or pyinna (panna, knowledge/wisdom) in whatever we do.
• Received a zillion “thanks” from my sayas for my voluntary work in getting the alums reconnected electronically and physically.
• Committed to life-long learning.

• Finished on-line courses such as
  Democratic Development, Computer Networks, and Nanotechnology. They require reading, taking quizzes and exams.
• Audited several courses such as
  Risk Management (3 courses),
  Cryptography (2 courses),
  Algorithms (2 courses),
  Data Analysis (2 courses),
  Programming Languages (2 courses),
  Machine learning (2 courses),
  Automata,
  Combinatorics,
  Big data,
  Genetics and evolution,
  Cosmology,
  Critical thinking in Global Challenges,
  …
  

Daily Tasks

• Listen to a Blinkist
  Summary of a non-fiction book
• Listen to Merriam Webster WOTD (Word Of The Day) podcast
• Ride stationary bike for 30 minutes
• Write / revise posts for Facebook pages and my web sites

Clocks

Types

• Digital
  AM/PM Display (Possible confusion at Midnight and Noon)
  24 Hour Display (Military Time)
  Daylight Savings Time (DST) Correction
• Analog
  Hour, Minute and Second Hands
  Pendulum

• Atomic Clock / Synchronization
• Stopped
• Incorrect
  Fast
  Slow

In our younger days, we had to recite “Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the Clock” and sing “My Grandfather’s Clock”.

We had to learn to read the time.

Some Clocks (e.g. in the meeting room of the Secretariat and in front of Mandalay Zay Gyo) are part of Burma’s heritage.

We were quizzed: “Which one keeps time better : a stopped clock or one that runs fast or slow?”

Clocks at our alma mater

RIT-YIT-YTU has both types of clocks.

• One type shows the correct time twice a day.
• The other type shows the correct time (in different parts of the world) every instant.

• Grapevine says that many machinery and laboratory equipment were magically transported by the higher authorities during the Adhamma Era.
• The Swel Daw Bins razed.
• The Clocks were spared.
  They became the last standing symbols of the Thabon Kyaung, but without maintenance many succumbed to aging and death.

• New clocks could be installed, but the rebellious spirit of alumni preferred to restore and/or repair the old clocks.
• Thanks to Beik (Mergui) Soe Myint (M72) and his team, most clocks are running and keeping correct time.

U Khin Maung Zaw (EC76) wrote :

An old fashioned dead clock shows the correct time twice a day. It may not be true if a modern-day dead clock using military time. 😉

Just a coincidence that I have been looking for a small atomic wall clock for my bed room. As the reviews go, many of them on Amazon, the most common failure of these clocks is that it failed to sync up with the Atomic Clock at the DST (Daylight Savings Time) switch. I still have a big atomic wall clock in my living room, which took couple of weeks to show the correct time at the DST switch. [The Atomic Clock is located in Boulder, Colorado, US, under NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government department under Department of Commerce. It emits radio signals and the atomic clocks supposed to synchronize the time using this signals.]

Just a little anecdote with regards to Computer Time synchronization. The early Windows OSes had a hard time synchronizing the time between them due to lack of coordination between themselves. One very early authentication/authorization package used time-based schematic where it challenged a person, under the wraps, to specify a token – a feature known as handshake which sets an expiration time. This scheme occasionally failed because the return handshake went on to different server with slightly different system time. The tolerance was a fraction of a second. One Engineer came up with a small script running on each and every servers in the cluster, several thousands in those days, calling this Atomic Clock’s website, and have the time synchronized on every servers. I personally gone through this scenario, it’s a nightmare to locate, diagnose and correct this recurring problem. Thank God! Due to this problem. Windows team – and other OS vendors came up with a Time Server/Service, where only handful of servers in a big organization sync up with the Atomic Clock and all servers/desktops etc in the organization in turn sync up its own Time Server.