Monthly Archive for July, 2006

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a splint for a broken car

Published on July 11, 2006 in Rants. 0 Comments

the old man and the little sis takes the honda to Batu Laut (near Morib) to pick up a Laser-class dinghy/boat/yacht. they’re able to do so thanks to the roof racks on the car. the car starts overheating on the way to Port Klang, which when recounted back to me seemed usual, altho this time it seemed more accelerated and frequent. and i’d just refilled the water quite recently.

then, adding to that a sound is produced. a constant bumping sound. i think it was at this point that my dad, being an automotive engineer, suspects that the gasket is gone. they try driving with the radiator cap off to relieve pressure, but it didn’t do much good.

as they pass by Klang town to return home, the car is unable to maintain power.. and slowly stops to a halt at the top of a 2-lane flyover. he didn’t even bother restarting the car since he knew what the problem is and started sourcing for a tow truck. then some guys came by and tried to fix the problem, but all they ended up with is a radiator fountain.

anyway, they used an old main sheet (a particularly large rope used while sailing) to get the car towed to a workshop in Klang. looks like the car will stay there for 10 days or so while the engine gets overhauled and all that. think my dad wants to sell the car too.

at least i still have my sister’s Kelisa.

thing is, the last time i refilled the water while the engine was on, the radiator seemed to reject the water i was giving it. that might’ve been an early sign. but i wouldn’t have known anyways. perhaps i won’t be doing a transplant after all.

anyway, just read an article on IT Screen Goddesses. no… it just doesn’t work.

splurge-fest part 2

Published on July 10, 2006 in Rants. 2 Comments

last weekend i sooooo wanted to stay home and not do anything and indirectly save me some money. but it was not to be.

friday it was. my dear colleague S loses her ciplak Samsung phone. she asks me whether i’ll sell mine. after some haggling, she accepted it for rm400. but i’d need a new phone to replace mine. so what else can be just as functional but affordable as a nokia 6230i?

so that was the plan. i’d have enlisted Merv’s help to pick one up for me when he goes to town like he usually does.

but no. lil bro breaks his rimless glasses for a second time this month. the first time it was a shuttle cock smash, and this time it was a soccer ball.

saturday comes. i’m supposed to take him to the optician to get another pair of glasses. thought i’d just go there, get him hooked up with the cheapest frames and lenses available (which i did). instead, we were there for about two hours, trying to cater to his ‘fashion sense’. and while that happened, i picked up a pair for myself as well.

dark bronze thread 2.0 oakley frames with RX lenses. rm980. :P

then damdam calls, says he lost his phone in a ‘post-drinking accident’. so we both went out to town to scout for phones. to summarise things, i think decisions are harder to make as you grow older. :P not referring to myself of course.

new nokia 6230i. yay. and some coolermaster chipset coolers.

and that was saturday, marking the end of the splurge-fest brunt. on sunday, went out with my mom for lunch and grocery shopping, and then a wedding in the evening. it was Bedah’s wedding, a friend from SKBD and SMBB. it was my mom who was invited, and i just tagged along, so needless to say a lot of people were surprised to see me there. :D well, she asked the bunch of us to stay for pictures, but it was late and we couldn’t stay. there were a lot of people i haven’t met for a while too: Geok Lii, Izad, Norida, Maya, Sue, Leslie, Fairuz, Gerald. and some seniors whom i recognised but didn’t bother talking to. very nostalgic. :)

so the wedding card cost me a bit. and that marks the end of the weekend.

today, i’m in town for more SAP training. hopefully i won’t be bothered by the office much.

week of mess

Published on July 6, 2006 in Rants. 1 Comment

don’t know what to rant about besides the usual work gripe. my life’s been pretty messy these days. i haven’t cleaned out the computer parts from the previous mobo switch. my desks are a mess. i’ve misplaced my 1G thumb drive.

work provides no sanctuary. so many concurrent tasks that sometimes i’m at a loss as to which one to do first.

maybe i should make use of that pool table after all.

at least, i’m covered in the entertainment sector. watched Ong Bak, Infernal Affairs 3, The Usual Suspects, Avalon, Failed to Launch. using Media Portal as my main media player now, and it’s working very well with my cordless mouse. except for dvd playback. will definitely need to get one MCE remote from oz. started playing WoW again, with all my graphics settings at maximum. :D some instability problems with BF2 tho, but i’ll figure it out.

anyways, the artifacting problem is actually attributed to the Intel 865PE northbridge not being able to compensate the different speeds at work when the computer is overclocked. so i actually got the same problems with this current motherboard at the same overclocked speed. but fortunately, someone on the net pointed out a very old and long thread about it, and i managed to fix it using a little utility that tweaks the DRAM Latency Timer on the chipset.

so i think i might actually have a lot of spare computer parts lying around. thankfully, the market for AGP-based products are still in demand on lowyat.net.

perhaps it would’ve been better to make the jump to pci-express after all.

back on board

Published on July 2, 2006 in Rants. 0 Comments

picked up a 2nd hand ASUS P4P800 today. works splendidly at default speeds. no artifacts too. :) so that leaves me with a working spare 9800 pro. was thinking of passing it to fish… then maybe get him to try a flash to make it a 9800 xt. it does have an rv360 core, which means it can do much better. memory speed will be a limiting factor though.

so tomorrow it’s back to benchmarking and overclocking. :) and it’s also nice to see CPU temperatures below 45 C instead of the usual 60+. maybe the dunking of the heatsink in some water really did the trick.