2. coupons
When my family first came to the states in '92, a family of 3 had to live on a $25k/yr budget. Back then, we did everything to stretch our budget, from coupon cutting to driving to mexican shopping mall at downtown SD for groceries. Of course back then, gas was around $1.25/ga, so it wasn't as painful to make that drive.
As time progressed and as our income went up, the art of coupon cutting slowly went away. These days, it's just a lot more time saving and a lot more convenient to go to Costco for none-grocery item, and 99-ranch or korean market for everything else. As for electronics, there are always online stores that are far cheaper than anything Best Buy or Fry's offer even when it's on sale (amazon, ebay, woot, whatever). And of course there are websites like slickdeals.net to help find good deals easier.
Nevertheless, as the economy is getting worse and everyone's belt is getting tighter, there isn't yet a good way to maximize daily expenses like groceries. I remember there used to be a time when you can ring up like 25 items for $75, apply coupon and sometime double-coupon, and end up paying $10 for them. Yes, those days still exist now, as highlighted by a recent NPR segment. Unfortunately, the art of going through weekly grocery ads and coupons, is mostly a lost art for most Americans, as is the newspaper business and along with it, the Sunday Coupons...
So, I figured, while it's not the world's easiest thing to do, it wouldn't be the most difficult either, to match ads with coupons in order to maximize every dollar you earn. Start with digital or a scanned version of local weekly ads that comes in the mail every tue/wed, along with advertisements inside the newspaper, plus coupons found on Sunday's paper or through the mail (let's face it, who religiously go through "penny saver" these days? -_-') and match them.
The hard part is proper recognition of ads and coupons, as they are often arranged in ways that are not the easiest to partition, OCR, and categorize. Once that part is taken care of, next is properly addressing expiration date of coupons. Next, having a mock shopping-cart could be useful, where the user can estimate how much things cost for them to only go to local ralphs or vons, vs. going to multiple places. Email alerts on prices would be helpful too, like say if someone wants to wait around for toothpaste to become free after coupon... Lastly, having a list of none-on-sale items at the local grocery store will complete the online grocery shopping experience. After-all, $4/lb of orange "on sale" at Ralphs is still far more expensive than $1/lb of similar stuff at 99-ranch. (Green onions are like $.40 at Food4Less, $.33 at 99-ranch, $.25 at local Korean market, lol)
This of course, would provide tremendous price-pressure on local grocery stores. But then again, Super-Walmart already did that for 80% of the country. Only in areas where it's banned by law (*ahm*city of san diego*ahm*) are grocery stores still able to charge so much. Granted they have better pay and benefits than a Walmart, but sometimes, their prices are just ridiculous... If Trader Joes can provide organic products for comparable if not cheaper prices than local grocery stores, while providing good wages and benefits, Vons and Ralphs can reduce their prices by becoming more operationally efficient!
3. cart return
Grocery carts are expensive (~$200 each), require some poor joe to collect and drag it back to the store, and gets left everywhere, especially near tree-planting areas and such. There's also the issue of "dude, where's my car?" where people forget where they park at big parking lots like those in front of Costco. So, it would be far easier if there's a dedicated cart to each parking spot, on a rail-track system, that starts and ends at the entrance/exit of the stores. When someone parks, their cart will follow them to the door of the store. When they exit, their cart will lead them back to their car.
Conceptually simple, logistically not the simplest thing to do. For starters, there's the cart-congestion issue... which I guess we can address by having a "driving lane" and a "parking lane" for carts. 4 lanes for carts is enough to park a car, which means even less parking spots... that's not ideal... So perhaps a cart-distribution location, like the current setup where 25-50 carts fit in 1 parking spot would be more preferred. Once the person park their car, the parking spot has a number in front and a sensor below. A cart will light up with the associated parking spot number and make its way to the store. On the way out, it finds its way to the back of the car where the trunk is located, then return to the nearest distribution location.
Then there's the liability issue... what if someone's walking along the track and get hit by a cart, who'll be responsible? I guess there has to be some kind of proximity sensor and warning/alarm system... or you just have to build the whole thing above/below ground to avoid people and reduce space usage all-together. Of course this makes the already expensive idea even more expensive, and any failures much more difficult to correct... Oh the tradeoffs -_-
Monday, March 23, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
background and outlook
Oh, before getting too far ahead with ideas, here are a bit of background for those who eventually wonder here not from facebook or friends on fb I haven't talked to lately =P
I got my BSEE from Caltech in '03, took some time off, found a job in Boeing Satellite in '04, met my wife in '07, got married in '08, found a new job in SD in '08 to move closer to my wife's job ^_^ Also, I got my MSCS from USC in '08, and currently pursuing a System Engineering certificate for what it's worth.
While I enjoy the mental stimulation from academic work, I'm more of a hands-on, break things and figure out how to fix it kind of person. I entered college knowing that I didn't want to suffer the rigor of applied physics and didn't want to become a full code-money. As I finished my BS, I came to the realization that software is a tremendous enabling technology that provides incredible amount of possibilities you can only dream of achieving in hardware... or rather, to do it in hardware will require billions of dollars, whereas software maybe a few hundred hours. That's why I decided to get a masters in CS, and took all the classes for pure personal interest rather than doing something for the sake of resume padding. (There was 1 class I hated, but 1 out of 9 isn't bad ;-))
My wife got her BSCE with a minor in Robotics from CMU in '05 and MSCE in '06, and constantly thinking about a PhD in robotics.
Between the two of us, I'm more of a hardware and firmware person, writing C-code as necessary and get things to work in a quick-and-dirty way. She's more of software person, doing OOP in java and the likes. Besides the need of a good mechanical engineer, we have most of our basis pretty well covered =)
When I left Boeing, general consensus from my co-workers were that they weren't surprised I left, but they were surprised that I left for another (here unnamed) aerospace company. And frankly, they are right. Even prior to leaving Boeing, my wife and I are getting various requests to help with various engineering aspects from various sources. While at Boeing, even though work's slow at times, I get to play with things closer to my major, ie hardware design, trouble-shooting, and the likes. These days, I sit in an open area behind thick, locked doors, working on some program as a sub-system analyst, far away from directly dealing with hardware or software. Okay, it's not as bad as it sounds... in a twisted way, aerospace is at the "cutting edge" of some aspect of software... specifically, Real Time Operating System with time and space partitioning is something that'll converge with commercial OS in the next few decades; software auto-coder starting with UML down to things like MATRIXx and Rational Rose, which maybe will replace code monkeys 30-50 years from now; Control laws, fancy ground-segment tools, and other works that are surprisingly up-to-date with industrial developments.
Meanwhile, I come up with various random ideas, but don't have the time to really explore them in depth. We still have engineering requests from others that we'll be working on after our "make-up wedding" in May, and looking to start a generic "engineering solutions" company, to help realize other people's ideas. Of course there are our own ideas that will be in various stage of development, and if we get enough work, we'll look to start a Limited Liability Partnership, bringing in new talents and old friends into the mix. Frankly, I'd rather have partners than employees, but they can start as employees and build their own client base. Over time, I'd like to encourage people to be on their own if possible, to provide healthy competition or just make operations more efficient. If enough decides to go off on their own, maybe we'll create a little technology niche in so-cal ;-)
I still remember at Boeing So-Cal Leadership Conference in 2008, I asked about the company's stance on spin-offs, and the response was along the lines of "we don't like spin-offs because we are afraid of talents fleeing"... HELLO!!! if they are truly talented, all that corporate bureaucracy won't be of interest anyway! If one day, I start to think like that, that means my organization is one on the decline, and it'll be time to re-think about my business model. So, hopefully, over time, I'll have some success with various engineering project to be able to bring and encourage more talents to follow our footsteps, and maybe even one day, supersede slow and cumbersome companies like Boeing Satellite (if I ever decide to venture in that direction, which I doubt).
So, all you MechEs, EEs, CEs, CSs, even BiEs (my dad owns a biotech company, so if you are a BiE, you are more than welcome to contribute... sorry, no ChemEs for now ;-) ), if you would like to contribute time, money, ideas, or want to hire us, we are open to it =P Hopefully, as this blog develops over time, it'll also help sell me and my wife's abilities and help generate clients. Remember, your ideas will remain fully confidential unless I get your permission to publish =)
I got my BSEE from Caltech in '03, took some time off, found a job in Boeing Satellite in '04, met my wife in '07, got married in '08, found a new job in SD in '08 to move closer to my wife's job ^_^ Also, I got my MSCS from USC in '08, and currently pursuing a System Engineering certificate for what it's worth.
While I enjoy the mental stimulation from academic work, I'm more of a hands-on, break things and figure out how to fix it kind of person. I entered college knowing that I didn't want to suffer the rigor of applied physics and didn't want to become a full code-money. As I finished my BS, I came to the realization that software is a tremendous enabling technology that provides incredible amount of possibilities you can only dream of achieving in hardware... or rather, to do it in hardware will require billions of dollars, whereas software maybe a few hundred hours. That's why I decided to get a masters in CS, and took all the classes for pure personal interest rather than doing something for the sake of resume padding. (There was 1 class I hated, but 1 out of 9 isn't bad ;-))
My wife got her BSCE with a minor in Robotics from CMU in '05 and MSCE in '06, and constantly thinking about a PhD in robotics.
Between the two of us, I'm more of a hardware and firmware person, writing C-code as necessary and get things to work in a quick-and-dirty way. She's more of software person, doing OOP in java and the likes. Besides the need of a good mechanical engineer, we have most of our basis pretty well covered =)
When I left Boeing, general consensus from my co-workers were that they weren't surprised I left, but they were surprised that I left for another (here unnamed) aerospace company. And frankly, they are right. Even prior to leaving Boeing, my wife and I are getting various requests to help with various engineering aspects from various sources. While at Boeing, even though work's slow at times, I get to play with things closer to my major, ie hardware design, trouble-shooting, and the likes. These days, I sit in an open area behind thick, locked doors, working on some program as a sub-system analyst, far away from directly dealing with hardware or software. Okay, it's not as bad as it sounds... in a twisted way, aerospace is at the "cutting edge" of some aspect of software... specifically, Real Time Operating System with time and space partitioning is something that'll converge with commercial OS in the next few decades; software auto-coder starting with UML down to things like MATRIXx and Rational Rose, which maybe will replace code monkeys 30-50 years from now; Control laws, fancy ground-segment tools, and other works that are surprisingly up-to-date with industrial developments.
Meanwhile, I come up with various random ideas, but don't have the time to really explore them in depth. We still have engineering requests from others that we'll be working on after our "make-up wedding" in May, and looking to start a generic "engineering solutions" company, to help realize other people's ideas. Of course there are our own ideas that will be in various stage of development, and if we get enough work, we'll look to start a Limited Liability Partnership, bringing in new talents and old friends into the mix. Frankly, I'd rather have partners than employees, but they can start as employees and build their own client base. Over time, I'd like to encourage people to be on their own if possible, to provide healthy competition or just make operations more efficient. If enough decides to go off on their own, maybe we'll create a little technology niche in so-cal ;-)
I still remember at Boeing So-Cal Leadership Conference in 2008, I asked about the company's stance on spin-offs, and the response was along the lines of "we don't like spin-offs because we are afraid of talents fleeing"... HELLO!!! if they are truly talented, all that corporate bureaucracy won't be of interest anyway! If one day, I start to think like that, that means my organization is one on the decline, and it'll be time to re-think about my business model. So, hopefully, over time, I'll have some success with various engineering project to be able to bring and encourage more talents to follow our footsteps, and maybe even one day, supersede slow and cumbersome companies like Boeing Satellite (if I ever decide to venture in that direction, which I doubt).
So, all you MechEs, EEs, CEs, CSs, even BiEs (my dad owns a biotech company, so if you are a BiE, you are more than welcome to contribute... sorry, no ChemEs for now ;-) ), if you would like to contribute time, money, ideas, or want to hire us, we are open to it =P Hopefully, as this blog develops over time, it'll also help sell me and my wife's abilities and help generate clients. Remember, your ideas will remain fully confidential unless I get your permission to publish =)
previous ideas
To-date, there's been a few ideas I've had that might be worth something... but can be rather difficult to implement. Hey, if it's easy, someone would've done it already ;-)
0. scuba reservation -
An idea that me and a buddy kicked around. we wanted to form a boat reservation system for scuba diving similar to Reserve America for camping-sites. We got as far as talking to a few boats, but it's one of those things that's difficult to build momentum due to organizations like Sport Chalet signing long term contracts and boats not want to miss out on locked-in revenue. I'm not giving up on this yet, but at least for now, not actively pursuing it either.
1. boxes -
Last time I moved, we hired a moving company. We ended up with literally 50-75 cardboard boxes. We gave most of the good ones to friends who needed them for moving, gave some to random people who were moving, and tossed plenty of them away. That got me thinking - what if we make a fully re-useable box?
At first, I was thinking about the market... when I went to the container-store, it's pretty obvious that if done right, there'll be sufficient market for these things... A cardboard box that has a fancy hanger attached to the top goes for something like $20... and we ended up using like 10 of those -_-' Lucky for us, the moving estimator underestimated our cost, so we paid a fraction of retail price for the boxes we got
Conceptually, it's rather simple. It has to be FULLY modular, ie each panel has to be identical to reduce production cost. You can have a few sizes for different size items, but ideally, you can say put together 2 smaller squares to make a rectangle. Ultimately, this box needs to be water-proof (but not flood proof), somewhat fire-proof, and can hold say 25lb (easy enough for 1 person to carry).
Instead of moving companies sell these boxes, they can just "rent them" to the people who are moving. When they finished unpacking, they can drop them off at the local uhaul or fedex office, and get their deposit back. For those who self-move, they can rent them from local fedex too.
Initially, cost of renting these boxes can be on par with buying paper ones. At least it'll appeal to the "environmentally conscious" consumers. As production and distribution becomes more mature, cost of production will inevitably go down.
Implementation wise, this is the simplest. Logistically, it is rather difficult. Operational Research, if you are into that kind of thing, must be optimized. Perhaps someday, Walmart will consider it =P
2. coupon
3. shopping-cart return
4. highway meet ATM (to come)
5. shower (to come)
0. scuba reservation -
An idea that me and a buddy kicked around. we wanted to form a boat reservation system for scuba diving similar to Reserve America for camping-sites. We got as far as talking to a few boats, but it's one of those things that's difficult to build momentum due to organizations like Sport Chalet signing long term contracts and boats not want to miss out on locked-in revenue. I'm not giving up on this yet, but at least for now, not actively pursuing it either.
1. boxes -
Last time I moved, we hired a moving company. We ended up with literally 50-75 cardboard boxes. We gave most of the good ones to friends who needed them for moving, gave some to random people who were moving, and tossed plenty of them away. That got me thinking - what if we make a fully re-useable box?
At first, I was thinking about the market... when I went to the container-store, it's pretty obvious that if done right, there'll be sufficient market for these things... A cardboard box that has a fancy hanger attached to the top goes for something like $20... and we ended up using like 10 of those -_-' Lucky for us, the moving estimator underestimated our cost, so we paid a fraction of retail price for the boxes we got
Conceptually, it's rather simple. It has to be FULLY modular, ie each panel has to be identical to reduce production cost. You can have a few sizes for different size items, but ideally, you can say put together 2 smaller squares to make a rectangle. Ultimately, this box needs to be water-proof (but not flood proof), somewhat fire-proof, and can hold say 25lb (easy enough for 1 person to carry).
Instead of moving companies sell these boxes, they can just "rent them" to the people who are moving. When they finished unpacking, they can drop them off at the local uhaul or fedex office, and get their deposit back. For those who self-move, they can rent them from local fedex too.
Initially, cost of renting these boxes can be on par with buying paper ones. At least it'll appeal to the "environmentally conscious" consumers. As production and distribution becomes more mature, cost of production will inevitably go down.
Implementation wise, this is the simplest. Logistically, it is rather difficult. Operational Research, if you are into that kind of thing, must be optimized. Perhaps someday, Walmart will consider it =P
2. coupon
3. shopping-cart return
4. highway meet ATM (to come)
5. shower (to come)
purpose
The other day, my wife said to me - "I want a sumomo for our 10th anniversary and a babblefish for our 50th anniversary... if you can't make those things, i'll divorce you." My reaction was simply o_O
She encouraged me to maybe start a blog and get some feedback from readers, so here i am =)
Anyway, the concept of babblefish is rather simple - a universal translator to eliminate all chance of miscommunication and misunderstanding... easier said than done... only way for that to work, given what I know of today, is to have some kind of mapping of neurons to electronics... perhaps a quantum computer can achieve this kind of computational capability in 40 years? leaving me 10 years to do some design? lol
As for "Sumomo," it's a toy from Chobits, a Clamp anime/comic. The concept is a personal communicator that dances and you can have a "conversation" with. To the first degree, it's a super-cute cell-phone with voice commands and then some. I have some thoughts on this one, will leave that for a later post.
Just to get a few things straightened out -
0. (hey, any "real" engineer will start with 0, lol) This blog will consist of engineering ideas that came out of my and my wife's head. If someone else wants to discuss their idea with us, it will be Confidential unless they tell me I can publish it. Chances are, there will only be a few things I will end up developing due to time and funding limitations. As far as knowledge limitations, I can always try to "pull a few strings" and get some help from Caltech or CMU alumnis if it's sufficiently interesting, and when it comes to engineering, that's plenty of support =P
1. I've decided that instead of being all secretive and protect all my ideas as if they are worth something, I am willing to let all my ideas out in the wild. By posting it on a public forum like this makes the idea unpatentable, so if someone else steals it, at least they can't sue me for patent infringement.
2. Reason I've decided on that is hopefully, i'm not a "one-trick pony." If I come up with ideas worth stealing and someone else with more time, more equipment, more money can implement it faster, at least I know I've made some small contribution to this world, for better or worse =P
3. Hopefully, if one day I get famous (haha... riiiight), it'll serve as an encouragement for others to be more interested in engineering, and to "do the right thing" instead of filing frivolous patents and suing everyone for loyalty (*ahm*qualcomm*ahm* lol)
4. All this openness is good 'n all, but if one day, I come up with some "revolutionary idea that can change the world" that's akin to the magnitude of say electricity or semiconductor, I WILL patent it -_-' lol but we all know those things come once every 100 years or so...
Lastly, due to the fact that I hold a full-time job, progress will be slow... don't expect me to implement something in a week... it might be a month before some idea starts to move into implementation -_-' Of course I do have a time constraint, so hopefully, I won't leave it there for too long =P
That's all for now =) Show some support and holla if you like it ;-)
She encouraged me to maybe start a blog and get some feedback from readers, so here i am =)
Anyway, the concept of babblefish is rather simple - a universal translator to eliminate all chance of miscommunication and misunderstanding... easier said than done... only way for that to work, given what I know of today, is to have some kind of mapping of neurons to electronics... perhaps a quantum computer can achieve this kind of computational capability in 40 years? leaving me 10 years to do some design? lol
As for "Sumomo," it's a toy from Chobits, a Clamp anime/comic. The concept is a personal communicator that dances and you can have a "conversation" with. To the first degree, it's a super-cute cell-phone with voice commands and then some. I have some thoughts on this one, will leave that for a later post.
Just to get a few things straightened out -
0. (hey, any "real" engineer will start with 0, lol) This blog will consist of engineering ideas that came out of my and my wife's head. If someone else wants to discuss their idea with us, it will be Confidential unless they tell me I can publish it. Chances are, there will only be a few things I will end up developing due to time and funding limitations. As far as knowledge limitations, I can always try to "pull a few strings" and get some help from Caltech or CMU alumnis if it's sufficiently interesting, and when it comes to engineering, that's plenty of support =P
1. I've decided that instead of being all secretive and protect all my ideas as if they are worth something, I am willing to let all my ideas out in the wild. By posting it on a public forum like this makes the idea unpatentable, so if someone else steals it, at least they can't sue me for patent infringement.
2. Reason I've decided on that is hopefully, i'm not a "one-trick pony." If I come up with ideas worth stealing and someone else with more time, more equipment, more money can implement it faster, at least I know I've made some small contribution to this world, for better or worse =P
3. Hopefully, if one day I get famous (haha... riiiight), it'll serve as an encouragement for others to be more interested in engineering, and to "do the right thing" instead of filing frivolous patents and suing everyone for loyalty (*ahm*qualcomm*ahm* lol)
4. All this openness is good 'n all, but if one day, I come up with some "revolutionary idea that can change the world" that's akin to the magnitude of say electricity or semiconductor, I WILL patent it -_-' lol but we all know those things come once every 100 years or so...
Lastly, due to the fact that I hold a full-time job, progress will be slow... don't expect me to implement something in a week... it might be a month before some idea starts to move into implementation -_-' Of course I do have a time constraint, so hopefully, I won't leave it there for too long =P
That's all for now =) Show some support and holla if you like it ;-)
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