Monthly Archive for November, 2005

updates

ahhhh monday. another week of slaving. promotion seems closer now; it’s silhouette floating just beyond my view. and yet, i am unable to reach out to it, just to touch it even seems hard.

sigh sigh sigh.

well, to start of the day, i’ve been updating some stuff on friendster. adding friends, updating my profile a lil bit. wooo, a lot of things to catch up on. :D me thanks the person who created the SMBB profile.

the last weekend was a busy one. a working saturday from 8 to 1 had me up at 7.30. immediately after, i went to ezree (an ex-smbbian)’s open house in bangsar park for some really good food. the caterer was actually one of the security guard’s working at his office (bank islam), but the lemang was moist and soft, the rendang tender and flavorful, the kuah kacang nice and sweet. had a good catch up with Sharina and Noreen, but there were a lot of things planned for the day so i had to take my leave before the other ex-SMBBians arrived.

left at 3 and headed down to town for some retail therapy. it was definitely going to be jammed that day, with shahrizat having her open house at dataran. took the opportunity to test my memory of shortcuts, and went in via VI without problems. witnessed a few near accidents though; lotsa evil malaysian drivers on the road. only problem was when i arrived in the ’square’, i took a turn that leads back out to jln bukit bintang hoping to get into sungei wang’s parking, but the way was barred (it was full) and that forced me to take a full circle around the area. got stuck a good 45 minutes there. :(
managed to get back in again, and did the smart thing by parking at low yat instead. went straight up to try and replace my noisy northbridge fan (failed, no warranty on fans @#$@#$) at cycom, and got a few more fans for my CPU from robyncom. made acquaintance with Ken, one of robyn’s more prominent figures (not sure whether he’s the manager or an owner). looks like they’ll be selling OCZ ram soon, which i might splurge on for reasons i’ll divulge later.

on the way down, got a call from merv to get a keyboard. stopped by a hong leong ATM and got meself some cash at an RM2 loss, which was no biggie considering the situation (weekend queues at the Maybank ATM are horrendous). and somehow, someone knew i was going down, so they broke the escalator. :P hectic, hectic!

grabbed the keyboard, while having a good chat with Gigi. picked up some dvd folders in the process. zoomed to basement level 4 to drop the computer stuff. zoomed back up for a quick run to mandy’s shop in sungei wang. didn’t get any of my games replaced, since it became obvious that it was my PS2 console that needed fixing. dropped off my rosak multitap for a replacement the following week. bought a few new games too. :D
by the time i was done it was already close to 6pm. no point going home now, so i stopped by merv’s place for a breather. watched some advent children parodies and managed to catch a very fleeting nap. the immediate gang then arrived and we took off to mid valley for dinner and our movie outing.

the movie was harry potter 4. the place was GSC mid valley, gold class. the host, andy. hooray for andy! :D it was great fun. the movie itself was a nice refresher, reminding me exactly how those kids looked like. makes me wonder what harry was thinking in book 6?! *clears throat* anyway, it was also fun meeting up with all the old #Bangsar gang, and also making some new friends as well. :)

i could’ve prepared myself though. it’s been so long since my last gold class visit that i forgot how cold it was. my neighbor, jia-li, and i were freezing our butts off, and even our hot drinks didn’t survive the chilling onslaught. oh well, gotta keep that in mind next time.

after that, the usual gang adjourned for drinks at mahbub. there was lots of catching up to do. a lot of surprising news too. about stolen cars and whatnot. it’s a really dangerous world we’re living in these days. better to stay home and sleep, which was pretty much what i did sunday.

oh sunday, how i miss you already. sleep, play, sleep, play was all i did that day. oh, and a bit of overclocking too (here i go again). with a proper cpu fan in place that can go up to 2700rpm, i’ve now managed to push the PC to 3.75 GHz. i’ve set the voltage a little high though, but without a volt-mod the voltage goes down as load goes up anyway, so it shouldn’t hurt too much. the downside of it is that the RAM can’t keep up, so it’s running way below par. which is why i’m considering the super-expensive OCZ ram when it’s available. much better handling of fast speeds and excellent timings.

ok, back to work. :P

bloody mcds

ordered 2 bubur ayam. arrived late. with most of the gravy spilled to the bottom of the plastic bag.

seems pretty obvious that the mcds delivery team lacks a certain level of commitment to do things right. all the other established delivery services from Dominos and Pizza Huts have somewhat adequate quality control to ensure their customers remain happy.

it takes 30 minutes to deliver a pizza. mcdonalds almost always take longer. c’mon people, it’s supposed to be fast food!

and the bubur. why wasn’t it in some special packaging to ensure it doesn’t spill? i’ve seen the ways these riders risk their neck to get to their destinations, and there’s definitely enough shake ups to overturn the simple polystirene cups. they do all sort of stunts, running red lights, making illegal turns, scraping other vehicles, and yet they’re still bloody late!

sigh. i can probably drive down to the section 14 branch and get my food faster. and i’d cost less than the RM 2 delivery charge driving a 2 litre carb car with a leaky gasket. don’t talk to me about convenience either. it’s inconvenient enough having to clean up the mess, yell at the rider, and call the hotline to complain. and none of the people i spoke to offered to replace the food.

kids and managers

what’s with kids and leaving the bathroom lights on? almost every other time i’d find the light on in the morning. makes me wonder if they have some sort of green invisible pet living there. it’s not like it’s hard to get up and turn it off. and feigning ignorance won’t work; my sister’s normal sleeping position gives a good view of the lighted bathroom window!

*sigh*

anyways, got back to work on monday with piles of issues to look at and work to be done. and while i was gone, somehow the boss agreed to let management take my assistant away. gosh, as if the workload isn’t big enough! even with the added burden of having to do authorisation profiles, they still like to stick to their lame formulae. 1 support personnel per 100 users does not work. get real.

fortunately, the hr manager came to the rescue. yay!

errors down south

susah susah.

my pc has been crashing relentlessly lately. i may have pushed it too far. my graphics RAM now runs properly at a lower clock rate, and prime95 has been giving lotsa errors too. checking back my documentation, i guess i set the timings too tight.

so my graphics card is broken, and my memory is failing me. what else is new? a lot of time i’ve been getting errors from a [USB] driver. i don’t know if it’s related to the memory or not, but if necessary i’ll just have to throw a heatsink onto the [southbridge] as well.

anyways, i’ve finally finished my week-long ‘Training for Trainers’ course, which was the main reason why i couldn’t blog much. the course title was Basic Instructional Skills, and we covered just that. at first i didn’t think i had to take it seriously, but this was a lesson made to perfection, with lotsa activities and a final graded presentation.

i hope i passed. we were supposed to present something related to our work, but a lot of the attendees were from the same dept as i was, so i came up with something else: overclocking. i just covered the basic components and scientific elements related to it. was up to 3am this morning finishing up my material. 42 slides presented in 45 minutes. :)
i’m so sleepy now. but i gotta go to the yacht club for some function before the raja muda regatta. well, i could use the food. skipped lunch to make some last minute touchups.

away from work. not.

today begins a week of training in Bangi. this time, we’re to be taught how to prepare and deliver proper presentations.

5-days of topics covering ‘basic’ skills. on friday, a final presentation to determine whether we’re fit to teach (and get the teaching allowance! :D). not as relaxing as i thought it’d be.

even so, the users keep calling. *sigh*