purrgatory

September 14, 2006

shooting yourself in the foot

: host mx.tm.net.my[202.188.0.213] said: 550 Your IP address
219.95.159.xxx is being blacklisted by SenderBase. Please go to
http://www.senderbase.org to check for more details. (in reply to RCPT TO
command)

. . . . . I really don't know what to say.

Posted by myuu at 6:41 PM

gnome 2.14 + 768mb memory = no no

server performance has been pretty bad as of late. i've been running portupgrade over the past few days to get all my programs updated to their latest versions. actually, it was mainly to fix the Scanerss plugin for Azureus that seemed to require the latest version of Java SWT, but that didn't work.

anyways, i'm now at Gnome 2.14. and i didn't read the upgrade FAQ. :P and i think my dependencies are shot (i just select the first option in pkgdb -F without realising there are others). so the server is pretty bloated right now. every morning i find the server running out of swap space, and i'm not sure what causes it. guess it's time to take out that 256MB ram and replace it with my spare 2GB set.

mom and i are still in cold war mode. oh well.

Posted by myuu at 8:41 AM

September 12, 2006

people problems

how do you tell a grown up that his coming late to work, his sleeping at the office, and his constant disappearing acts are not appreciated?

or since his behavior is rather childish, we can treat him the same way you discipline a child? or perhaps some quick counseling will suffice?

Posted by myuu at 9:18 AM

September 6, 2006

misc

Steve Irwin, you will be missed.

Some interesting spam: http://www.phantomplate.com/

I need a new theme. Thinking Doukutsu.

Posted by myuu at 8:21 PM

August 28, 2006

return to chaos

i'm back. damn it's hot here. and sticky. water tastes more metallic. and there's work to be done on Monday. :O

it'll be a while before i manage to compile all my photos. i'll need them to recall what i've done and seen the past week. yes, i have short term memory loss. :P nazreen has yet to send me pictures taken via her T1 too.

anyways, sunday was indeed a very nice rest day. was in bed most of the time. downloaded silent hill overnight cuz i couldn't wait to see it, but now that i have, i'm rather shocked. i'll talk more abt that after the 'read more' link (spoiler alert!).

our arrival at klia on saturday night went pretty smooth. the baggage came out late, as usual, so we had a lot of time to look around the DFS shops. mom did a bit of shopping on the plane, and i had discouraged her to purchase a second item. only later did i feel guilty, for that thing would've been something to help her improve her health. remind me to look up 'cosamine' later.

fish arrived just on time to pick us up. since we didn't have much more luggage, it was the same arrangement as when we departed. we then brought back dinner from kfc, and watched part of the MU game.

anyways, i'm still feeling lethargic even after all the napping i did today. stupid neighbors and their stupid weekend hammering. really, some people just lack the decency to live in this world.

as a t-shirt my brother saw said: some people are simply alive because it's illegal to kill them.

i should've bought that.

back to the silent hill movie: i'm extremely apalled that they decided to kill off Cybil, and it such a gruesome manner. the poor thing. :( and generally, while the ambience is VERY captivating, somehow the whole package didn't come out quite right. really, these directors should know better than to mess with the original game's epic storylines. it's already hard enough to understand the game, let alone a 2 1/2 hr movie remake.

Alessa should be in a wheelchair,
characters from Silent Hill 2 should be in a sequel and not crammed into this movie,
Alessa's barb wire revenge is soooooo lame,
the limbo world concept sucks,
the characters should've retained their original names from the game, and
the movie ending kills the precedent for Silent Hill 3.

To sum it up: no justice at all. No on-screen justice for Resident Evil. Almost none as well for Silent Hill.

Thank God Spiderman is around to lighten up the season.

Posted by myuu at 12:47 AM

August 14, 2006

unknown territory

It's amazing how a simple thing can come around and bite you in the butt. Hard.

At the office, we have this web system used to track our SAP development transports from our development server to our training, staging, and production systems. It was working fine and dandy until the company decides to switch the emailing system to MS Exchange. The web system continued to work, but it no longer triggered any emails and so, a lot of things were late because the respective people weren't informed about whatever they were supposed to do.

The problem with this system is that the vendor has already lost its main programmer, and the consultant left behind doesn't even have access to it. Checking with the people in charge of the web servers also did not yield any results, except for a lot of "it's not our responsibility" and "we don't care about you, go away" type of responses.

So I decided, hey, why not I just fix it myself? It should be pretty simple, right? Find a string that defines the SMTP address and change it to the new one. Yup, sounds like something anyone can do.

I ask for developer access.

I get it the next day. Eager to get on with the rest of my work, I just dived into the code and quickly found the string I wanted to change. So I change it.

I log back onto the system: runtime error. Perplexed, I checked back the small portion of code I changed. Doesn't seem to be any problem there. Hmmm...

So there I was stuck with this problem that I didn't have a handle on with my current level of VB/ASP knowledge and access. I even went to tweaking the Web.config file to try and enable more details in the error message, but that didn't help me either. Then while I was looking here and there for a solution, I accidentally deleted it, that config file. That's when the shit hit the fan right there.

In retrospect, if I had left that file alone, I might've been able to minimize the damage.

And, if I had checked to make sure the system was OK before I touched anything, I would've been able to screw the server people for breaking it. Never assume that people would do things right. :\

So here I am with a broken system, and bits of code on my hands.

Posted by myuu at 8:17 PM

XFire In-Game on W3L launched Warcraft III

I was hoping to get in-game messaging on our specially loaded Warcraft III clients, but I've yet to find a working solution.

Tried one posted by a TP_Moonstar here, but it doesn't seem to do it.

It was hard enough keeping my eyes off Elf's avatar and signature. :O Now that's hot.

Looks a little fake... but I wonder who it is? :)

[ update ]

Looks like I missed one more entry: link. Oh, and check out Hugo1988's signature spoof of Saving Private Ryan. :)

Posted by myuu at 1:28 AM

August 7, 2006

quickie

Just got back from Singapore. Will definitely consider coach instead of Air Asia next time. And, no more late night flights before a working Monday.

Also just got ripped by a midnight taxi for a trip from KL Sentral to home. RM 20. HWB 7733. Beware. Note to self: Ask the fare arrangement before boarding the cab.

All in all, a good trip with good company. :)

Posted by myuu at 1:26 AM

August 1, 2006

mtv is evil

I wanted to watch Fergie's new London Bridge video and her site pointed me to MTV which then asked me to install an ActiveX extension for Firefox. I thought sure, why not, cuz I could always uninstall it later. So after loading MTV Overdrive, watching an ad, then waiting a few more minutes for the video to load, I get the following message:

"Music videos can only be viewed in the US"

****ers.

So then I gave up, and popped open Firefox's Extensions page to uninstall whatever it was that MTV had me installed. Surprise surprise, nothing! It took me a while to google a solution, which was to delete the npmozax.dll file from Firefox's plugins\ subdirectory [source].

Moral of the story: Just stick to torrents.

Anyways, I've finished reading Death Note! An excellently twisted ending. Yummy. Now on to Berserk and other things.

Posted by myuu at 8:22 PM

July 31, 2006

burned out

Pretty much spent the weekend recovering from flu. Started out about 2 hours into the gang's gaming session on Friday night with a terrible sore throat after drinking 2 Cokes at McDs. The pain only occurs when I swallow, and it was really sharp, and only on the right side. :O

The night did not come easy. Every swallow kept me awake, and drifting in and out of sleep I was till 6am, when I had to get up to catch a bus to Bangi. Being almost sick, I was hoping that a fever would break out so that I didn't have to attend this event, but it didn't.

So off I went. I decided to drive there instead, since my wish might come late and force me to retire early. Our business division's Technical Day was being held that Saturday morning. It's basically sports day, but with events disguised as technical sports. Only one rang true to its name, which was 'Get Online', but the rest were pretty much the usual fun stuff. :)

During this time, my nose started leaking. It didn't leak much, but due to the lack of available tissue paper, I had to sacrifice my red Nike shirt to stifle it. It would've looked weird with me carrying an extra red shirt around, but fortunately our House color was red, and it looked more 'patriotic' than odd. I took part in the water event, and the aching calves I got after the relay race didn't help my condition at all.

The whole thing finished at around 4.30pm, our House had won and we'd just finished raping the hampers for our share of the spoils of war. I quickly drove back home for a quick rest before having to leave the house again that night.

It was a wedding that my mom refuses to skip. The groom's mom was a high school classmate, and there she'll meet many others whom she haven't met in a long time. The venue was at Felda's Dewan Perdana, pretty deep in KL but not hard to get to. It was fun seeing the ladies catch up. One of them even brought some black and white photos to share with the rest. Now I've got one of my mom dressed up as a cop in a costume party. Cute :) While they were having fun I would've died of boredom, but fortunately one of them brought a daughter whom I had a good time talking to. Too bad she's engaged tho.

The whole thing left me going through 18 pieces of tissue. I've also started sneezing sneezes that somehow want to pull something out of my lungs. Needless to say, I was out for the count the following day, staying in bed and having porridge meals. Was supposed to go to Masjid India to get stuff for the Singapore folk too, but it couldn't happen with my condition. The flu and the sports event have left me aching all over, and I found it hard to walk properly. I definitely need to visit the condo pool more often.

And today comes Monday, and I was planning to take the day off when my boss reminds me that I need to set my Technical & Functional competencies for the next performance year. Bleh. It was he who told me to wait for the bigger boss' email, which only got mailed out Friday night. Note to self: don't always listen to the boss. :P

Posted by myuu at 10:33 AM

July 26, 2006

oops

you know those credit card signature slips that have the TIP and TOTAL lines blank? i always assumed that if i write in an amount, it'll get charged.

but apparently not so. logically, how will they bill me the extra when they've already returned my credit card?

so i was with my mom at la bodega last night when i did that. she had a laughing fit in the car on the way home. :P

well, at least it was good to see her laugh like that after such a long time.

so i'm back with my xchat client, downloading volumes of manga that i've missed for the past few months. 3 vols of Bleach, 2 vols of Air Gear, and a few others i have queued for viewing tonight. i just lup my download server. think i'll give it more RAM as a present.

Posted by myuu at 2:08 PM

July 17, 2006

pening

back at work this week. but not really. have to facilitate some discussion in UNITEN. so the real work is still pending.

i've added photos of the bon-odori to the gallery. check them out via the corresponding bon-odori post. i know i owe you guys more photos for some of the previous posts.. might just upload them later, since my upload plugins seem to work now. [edit: uploaded to this entry] :)

it's been a few days since i picked up my oakleys from Reliance. been having a distorted view, and since then i've been making a few trips back there just to see if there's anything that can be done. on my last trip, one of the girls said that it was due to a change from a straight frame to a curved one, and that many others have experienced it as well. she then did a little straightening to ease the transition, but i feel it'll take a long while more before i can get used to this. my depth perception is all whacked, and i find myself almost missing steps and tripping over things.

still, it seems to be improving.

the colleague whom i sold the phone to seems to have some complaints about it. bleh.

Posted by myuu at 8:11 PM

July 15, 2006

bon-odori

just got back from the KL bon-odori festival. it wasn't quite as i expected.

i was thinking more of slow walks through streets of stalls with food and games to play. then fireworks and all that.

in this event, we had the food stalls. no games. next to them was a stadium field with a raised platform in the middle. we (myself, my colleague Mai, her friend Ain and her sis Muni) were there quite early, so there wasn't much happening and i thought it wouldn't be exciting. boy, was i wrong. the crowd hasn't thickened yet, so we just got ourselves some seats at the stadium's grandstand and waited. from 5pm to 7pm.

still, while we waited, it was nice to look at the crowd starting to pour in. there were girls in yukatas, girls in goth, girls in pyjamas and pacifiers. it was quite interesting. :P

when the event actually started, they nicely kept the speeches short and went straight on to the bon-odori dance! basically, on the platforms the drummers will play a beat, accompanied by music from the PA system, with a ring of 'dancers' around them. beyond the platform, visitors are also encouraged to form circles around the platform and follow the dancers' steps as they moved along.

the first round showed that many were still shy, and it took a while to get everyone into the groove of things. i myself had to wait for people to join Mai before i got into the mood. but once it started, it felt exhilirating. the steps in the dances were also very cute, and you can't help being amused by the throngs of people dancing to them.

the bon-odori performance was repeated 3 times this evening. each performance contained the same 4 songs, each with their different rhythms and steps. each song was repeated twice. my gang and i went down for all performances, and we pretty much memorized the moves at the last one.

in between performances, guest dancers did their thing: the first time was a cultural japanese dance, and the second was a local group dancing our tradisional malay dance to some song about selangor. needless to say, we skipped the second.

at the end of everything, everyone was sweaty and exhausted. the crowd then joined the huge queue of cars trying to leave the area. i'd say everyone was eager to get home, since we saw two pileups along the federal highway involving the patrons (we could tell from the yukatas). the festival was held in shah alam, by the way.

next year, i'll be more prepared. maybe even rent a yukata. :)

Posted by myuu at 11:58 PM

July 14, 2006

no rest for the addicted

i wanna go download:-

FuhQuake, Quakeworld client - relive the ol' Quaking days with this free quake client. I assume it includes the engine itself to enable a plethora of Quake mod remakes. Works on Windows XP too. :)

here, i was going to mention Ur-Quan Masters as well, but they've yet to develop network play for the SuperMelee mode. shucks. and there are rumors of a new StarCon sequel too - make it happen by signing a petition.

anyway, last night the gang caught Dead Man's Chest on screen last night. it was a blast! not as good the original, but it was riveting enough and it had it's many moments. can't wait for the sequel. ;)

Posted by myuu at 9:34 AM

July 11, 2006

a splint for a broken car

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.

Posted by myuu at 9:49 AM

July 10, 2006

splurge-fest part 2

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.

Posted by myuu at 11:42 AM

July 6, 2006

week of mess

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.

Posted by myuu at 8:09 PM

July 2, 2006

back on board

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.

Posted by myuu at 1:58 AM

June 30, 2006

super stress

sigh... stress levels peaked yesterday as the search for sydney accommodation continues. the thing is i can't do as much at home, so much time is spent on this activity in the office. and the office is already hectic as it is, with the stupid little issues that get under your skin. and then there's my mom's HK3 tax forms to submit. argh, so many expectations, so little time and brain matter.

it didn't help that i got creamed in BF2 that evening; there goes my only source of stress relief. i'm also still bummed out abt my puter...

well, at least superman returned. to a hot MILF i might add (plagiarised from Merv-speech) :P when it comes to watching movies in a cinema, i'm still amazed at how people can manage to get their legs and knees up against the seat in front, even with the huge amount of leg space given. it's like going as low as possible increases the amount of enjoyment. maybe they admire the back of our heads.

i curse thee with cronic back pain!

Posted by myuu at 10:55 AM

June 29, 2006

rain rain go away

to my utter dismay, i'm still experiencing artifacts with my new card! :O thinking back, this might be attributed to me not seating the previous card in its slot properly when i was booting up this one time. :O

that points to one thing: my radeon 9800 pro is not broken. :P

so... anyone wanna buy? :P i'll need more funds for a test motherboard. wait, i already have one. grrr but i don't want to go through the trouble of reinstalling windows again. might as well get a proper mobo and do it once and for all.

and i'm already eyeing one on lowyat.net.

anyway, this 7800 GS is pretty neat. lets me play BF2 alright with every setting set to High, altho there are a few jerks here and there. can't be helped, since i'm playing at 1600x1200. only problem is the fan noise. when it's at full speed it's really really noisy. trying to find a way to tweak the thresholds.

Posted by myuu at 12:16 AM

June 27, 2006

books gewd :D

it's been two days since my KB trip, and i've managed to finish two artemis fowl books. i had my sister pick up Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception while she was out doing errands today. in the meantime, i stayed home in solitary comfort, enjoying my off-in-lieu with Into The Blue with Jessica Alba and the original Dune. i started on the book sometime in the afternoon, and it was a very easy read.

gives me pleasure to know that there'll be a 5th book coming out. something else to look forward to besides the last part of Paolini's Inheritance, the last 3 parts of Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom, and the last 2 parts of Funke's 'Inkstuff'. still, i'm drooling mostly for Inheritance, since the story is quite epic, and i like epic stories. like Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy. wish he'd get right back on the sequel to Creature in the Case.

oh, and i have like a dozen volumes of Celestial Zone to cover as well. thanks cuzzies. :)

anyway, will be picking up my new 7800 GS tomorrow. then i'll be back on wow, and the rest of my funds dedicated to my honda's engine transplant.

Posted by myuu at 9:23 PM

June 12, 2006

happy birthday mom!

mum turned *censored* yesterday. was going to get her a new phone, but the particular model i was looking for, the 6230i, was out of stock. well, i'll just get it sooner or later. instead, i picked up a card from parkson sungei wang, and the sis picked up a cake.

so it's a non-school holiday monday today, and the roads are almost as packed as it was 2 weeks earlier. luckily i still managed to get to work on time, despite being nocturnal over the weekend to finish watching gundam seed and destiny. monday's are usually the hardest workdays, as you struggle to remember where you left off the week before. but because i'm afflicted with a 'dreaming of work' syndrome, it wasn't so hard this time.

feeling under the weather tho. sigh...

gundam seed: 50/50.
gundam seed destiny: 33/50.
my name is earl s1: 19/?? awaiting download
house md s2: 5/?? on hold
WoW: on hold.

Posted by myuu at 11:52 AM

June 6, 2006

importing goods

things to - buy from / do in - sydney:-

- MCE remote
- extra cutting discs?
- cheap devices?: sony t-30 / nano ipod / thinkpad X60?

- watch silent hill!
- go snowboarding?
- see the sights?

i need ideas people! :D and anyone wanna tag along? :D

yeah, i'll be going to sydney sometime july/august. my sister's been admitted to UNSW with a scholarship to boot. :) i'm so happy for her!!! at the same time, she got a silver for selangor in SUKMA. terer siot.

it's going to be fun to get to visit another 'western' country. and with my sister there, i can take the opportunity to order stuff via her. :D

anyway, i just saw a video of the demonstration held in front of klcc when petrol prices went up. those people got a free shower. :) can't blame them though: although our gas is still subsidized, our relative cost of living is still pretty high. heck, i don't think i'll be able to afford a house within a 50km radius of my office.

might just execute my plan to migrate. let's brain more drain! i mean drain more brain!

gundam seed: 15/50.
my name is earl s1: 19/??
house md s2: 5/??
WoW: on hold.

Posted by myuu at 10:51 AM

June 5, 2006

viewing progress

finally started watching the stuff i borrowed from az, starting with sahara, then white chicks, and finally serenity. white chicks was super fun, and serenity has a very interesting plot. i wanna go download firefly now :D

gundam seed: 8/50.

Posted by myuu at 2:11 AM

June 3, 2006

more series!

just when i thought i'd finish watching all the tv series i wanted to watch, i've discovered more goodies on merv's notebook drive.

not 'tripods'. :P but something called 'my name is earl'. really nice show, and nothing science fic or geeky. and man, nadine velazquez is HOT!

Posted by myuu at 7:06 PM

May 31, 2006

fat thunderbird

recently found my workplace Mozilla Thunderbird client acting messed up. every time a message comes in, i get a message saying my Inbox summary file has been corrupted and needs to be deleted. yet even when i did that the problem still persists.

after scouring the web for answers, it seems that Thunderbird mailboxes get crappy the bigger it gets, especially when it hits 2GB. my Inbox was 2.07GB :O it seems that Thunderbird doesn't compact your boxes for you automatically, so even if you delete files from a folder, the message is really still there.

so the moral of the story is to compact your folders regularly. there are probably some extensions you can download that'd do that for you automatically so you don't forget. while trying to recover my Inbox, i've had to rebuild files, renamed folders and whatnot to get my emails back, so don't repeat my mistake of letting it grow too big.

myuu's inbox after compacting: 571MB.

Posted by myuu at 3:12 PM

May 29, 2006

puter matters

my puter just experienced it's first 'ghostly reboot' yesterday while i was watching an episode of BSG. the first occurence since its return into its semi-modified casing. checked the temperature history and found it well within its normal range (i've seen it do constant 67C without any glitches). hopefully it isn't dying a slow and unknowing death. :O

the original 7800 GS i ordered got cancelled, due to Inno3d not having any more stock. but the same guy managed to hook up with BFG, so i'll be getting a new version on june 11th. yea, i know i shouldn't splurge, but the logic behind this purchase is BFG's True Lifetime Warranty, which replaces the card with the same or better in the event of the fault, irregardless of the product life. so hopefully the card dies after they run out of AGP stock and give me a PCI-Express equivalent instead :D

anyway, the new card should allow me to play BF2 better. my bigger display lets me catch tiny enemy movements easily, but the major artifacts blurring my vision removes that advantage. oh well, i still managed to get my veteran support combat badge and combat infantry medal. there seems to be a bug where i'm awarded with that same medal each time i start the game, but my stats still show one (if there's to be a bug, they should make it thorough!). unknowingly, i got myself a navy cross medal as well. a lot of the stats requirements have gone down, but that's no reason to increase my BF2-playing time with lotsa other things for me to do.

while the new holes in my pc seem to help, i can't rest until i've finished all my planned mods, including some vents on the side panel. i don't have enough cutting discs to last the project though, so i'll have to try and find some more. however, that trip to pasar road just ain't happening.

finally, some episode checkpoints:
Lost S2 E21 - betrayal!
Rome S1 E10 - soft porn!
Battlestar Galactica S2 E05 - not really soft porn!
House MD S2 E04 - starting to get boring!
O.C. S3 E25 - XO

Posted by myuu at 12:10 PM

money matters

stretched so thin... it'll take another month or two for my finances to normalize. i haven't even considered savings for my accompany-my-sis-to-Australia trip. credit card bill for the past two months have spiked due to the timing belt incident and 'promotion-related expenses'.

at least my net pay finally crossed the 2k boundary.

still, the end of my woes is nowhere near. the honda is acting up once again, this time unable to keep a decent idle rev. it'd be either too high upon ignition, or too low a few minutes after.. low enough to stall. that car will have to go soon, but it's not for me to decide whether to sell cuz it's not my car.

speaking of cars, my trust in Utama Tyre & Battery Service has dwindled. i went back to get this rev problem looked at, and they assign me this noob to look at the car. he didn't even check the symptoms before recommending a spark plug/cable change. and lo and behold.. problem still there! then he unloads a huge amount of wd40 like stuff into the carb and making my car propel tons of white smoke from the rear. the yelling from his colleagues didn't even faze him.

time to change places. the original foreman of this workshop was good and trustworthy, but he left to start his own stint in sunway. a little too far for me though. :(

so, any recommendations besides ah keong? :P

Posted by myuu at 10:50 AM

May 23, 2006

elven fetish

last weekend i was told that i had to attend training this week. so i've been at menara TH instead of the office so far during business hours. still, i find myself back there just to finish up things that needed finishing. my training will last till tuesday, so the late nights will probably continue too.

it's just been really hectic these days, and a long list of tasks await my attention. it's hard being a process improver. and while my car can move, there seems to be something wrong with the idle rev timing, causing the car to rev too low and at times stall altogether. gonna have to bring it back to the shop.

seriously thinking i should consider a new car now.

anyways, this state of mind has kept me somewhat on the edge, and i end up snapping at people for no reason. i just can't help it. being hooked on a book named Eldest doesn't help either. instead of socialising, i'd rather drown myself in its fantasy world. yes, there are elven chicks involved. it's part 2 of a trilogy; fortunately the last part isn't published yet, but my sister was kind enough to buy me Sir Thursday (part 4 of a series of 7; arigatou ayin-chan! :D) so i'll still be antisocial for a little while longer.

by the way, i just upgraded my router's firmware a while ago. there's definitely some improvement in terms of accessing my own site internally, and hopefully this version brings an end to the constant downtime. :\

also changed the body text color of this site to black. reading my own site was putting a strain to my eyes at this resolution.

Posted by myuu at 10:52 PM

May 21, 2006

feckin linksys

back from my trip. it was fun. caught up on some reading.

you probably weren't able to access this site till now. this damned linksys router is giving tons of problems, i might think i was better off with my d-link. previous versions of the WRT54G router were supposedly good, but this latest version 5 uses a different OS, and so far it sucks big time. can get past a few days without a soft reset, and the damned DDNS function doesn't work properly either.

feckin cisco and their sob.

Posted by myuu at 3:53 PM

May 18, 2006

truth prevails

was in a meeting with the VP HR yesterday. we were there to help our users explain some of the steps forward that we've taken in some issues raised by internal audit. i hoped that i could just have sat there letting my superiors do the answering, but in the end that was not to be.

although i've known him (the VP) since i joined the company (he conducted my take-in interview), there's somehow this feeling that he might snap at you if you say something he doesn't like to hear. but then again, usually, who wouldn't? but anyways, i had to speak up for a certain issue, and there was this feeling of panic in the beginning.

it's not that i don't know the facts or what's happening... it's just that the truth might actually hurt my relationship with the users, or even my colleagues. but in my cuak state i managed to blurt out a longwinded explanation (with a few repetitious statements) without incriminating anyone in particular. it was the truth, but the truth without names. or something like that.

i guess at the end of the day, it's easier to give out some form of the truth. whether you like it or not. i'll need more training in that aspect, definitely.

so tomorrow i head out for PD, for a work-out session with the project support team. will be there the entire weekend, save the later half of sunday, so you prolly won't hear from me till then. yea, rejoice while you can. :P all that's left for me to do is to pack and clear up the mess in my room a bit. bed sheets are in dire need of changing as well.

my computer seems to be happy in its new casing. i haven't totally closed it yet, but there hasn't been any crashes or reboots so far. i'll post pics later when i have the time. one tiny quirk seems to be the boot up sequence; somehow the system will report a non system disk error which a simple Enter will bypass. it's not major, but annoying.

Posted by myuu at 8:16 AM

May 16, 2006

a tiring off day

yes. i took a day off today. not surprising you say? well, bleh to you. :P

slept reasonably early last night, but i ended up waking up around 11, feeling a little under the weather. maybe my body misses the workload at the office. yeah, right.

so the day started off with a visit to my workshop in DU to pick up my accord, and to service my sister's kelisa. grabbed some light brunch at dharoos, while waiting for the service which was unexpectedly fast. they tell us her tires are gone, which i guess is the reason that it's still not aligned after. oh well, at least mine only cost rm900. and that was after they threw in a new number plate and wiper motor.

back home, i continued where i left off with my computer case, and i've finally finished modding the main frame (with only 3 heavy-duty discs remaining out of 25). definitely can't continue with the side panel, so i'll have to wait till i acquire more fibreglass discs for my rotary tool.

then it was back to the order of the day, which was to mop the floor, scrub a shower curtain and the balcony. needless to say, i'm really tired.

Posted by myuu at 6:22 PM

May 15, 2006

uber mice

Bought a new funky looking Logitech mouse as a HTPC remote, but can't quite set the buttons to do exactly what you want?

Get uberOptions for SetPoint!

Posted by myuu at 6:27 PM

May 14, 2006

hips don't lie

OMFG!

'nuff said.

Posted by myuu at 3:53 AM

May 8, 2006

more interesting facts

Pos Malaysia's COUNTER SERVICES moved to Amcorp Mall. 'Serahan Tingkap' services still remain at Jalan Sultan.
Pos Malaysia is still POS. But the counter lady was so nice I couldn't get angry. :P

I'm officially broke. Money gone into the recent LYP splurge, the recent 'belanja makans', and a 7800 GS.

Going to try out Intervideo's rendition of a Home Theater.

Posted by myuu at 2:51 PM

some interesting facts

The Pos Malaysia Jalan Sultan Mail Depot has shifted its 'Tingkap' operations to 2nd floor of the Amcorp Mall.
The Pos Malaysia Jalan Sultan Mail Depot closes on the first Saturday of each month.
Pos Malaysia is truly a *POS* for not mentioning these details on their delivery cards.

The DDNS function on version 5 of the Linksys WRT54G router comes to you broken by default. To fix it, check Linksys Easy Answers. This site was on a short hiatus due to this (and I didn't want to restart my connection and lose valuable torrent progress).

FF7 graphics look awful on Radeon-based cards. The current patches available are just not good enough. There might be newer versions on Qhimm, but his forums are down at the moment. Here and here are some other FF7 patches. I'm currently using the FF7Music 1.51 util to override the lame midis with PSF versions. Also replaced some tracks with Advent Children versions, in MP3 format. :D

Posted by myuu at 1:02 AM

May 4, 2006

proton's finest

Went on a site visit to Proton yesterday morning. We were to go and see how they've setup their HR system landscape. Turns out they're not faring as well as we were. But a lot of issues that they experience are simiilar to ours.

At least we got ourselves a main plant tour. And meet their young female HR executives. :D

At night, I ended up watching MI and MI:II to possibly fill up any storyline gaps before I watch MI:III tomorrow. Didn't even touch WoW or FF7. I was also looking at a few HTPC software like Cyberlink's PowerCinema and the open-source Media Portal. It's just so hard to browse a movie collection displayed in a small window on a 1920x1200 screen from across the room. The MediaLife software that came with the mouse is just too simple.

Posted by myuu at 8:11 AM

April 27, 2006

* sigh *

It's not that I haven't noticed, but I haven't really been putting much effort into my entries nowadays. The usual feelings put into most sentences are just not there anymore. Trust me, I'm experiencing 'em, but I guess I'm a little too shy to put them in print. For now. Hopefully. Perhaps it's up to me to clean up my life first before being able to come clean.

Anyways, I seem to have exhausted my supply of The O.C. to watch. I've got Episode 22 of Season 3 (which might be the season finale) on queue, but I gotta finish downloading Superman III and IV for my boss first. I'm also downloading FF7 for the PC, just so that I can experience the storyline and maybe even pick up a few more favorites from the soundtrack. So far, I'm only hypnotuned to the battle theme and One-Winged Angel. I'll be cheating of course; don't want to spend too much time on it.

In WoW, I'm still stuck at level 51. Still have things to do in ZF and Uldaman, so I've yet to progress for Maraudon runs. Slow and steady though. My guild's implemented the Guild Event Manager, but I don't wanna put anything on there with the fear of not attending my own events. :P And I discovered a Japanese-speaking guildmate too; maybe I can start putting some in practice.

In BF2, I've surprisingly made 2K points since making First Sergeant. Haven't been playing that much, but I haven't lost my edge. I'm starting to love my PKM, being able to take down squads of people without breaking a sweat. :D Think there's much room to improve though; I've seen people do 30 kills without a single death. :O But then again, they're highly ranked, so they must play like every single day. Merv is inadvertently helping me with my 'training', since the team he's on almost always loses. No offense, man. :D

At the office, I've been able to pick up the pace again after being stuck in a short rut. My fragile mind just has to take a break every few weeks or so. While I'm making good progress on my stuff, I still have to deal with the upcoming audit on our project (i.e. more work) and an upcoming renovation that will force me from my currently wide and spacious cubicle to a cramped corner with the rest of the office folk (i.e. more physical work). Kinda ironic since I just got promoted. Oh well, I've made a pact with the chief clerk to erect a wall around my area to make it more private. :)

I definitely have to finish my tax forms tonight.

And.. I've resisted the urge to migrate to PCI-Express. The cost is just too expensive for a mega-graphics and dual-core upgrade. My overclocked proc is sufficient for now, and I'll just have to live with the current graphics problems that can be rather annoying when BF2'ing (hence the urge). Imagine trying to shoot something from a tank and only be able to see panoramic black stripes flashing across the screen.

I will however, upgrade my LAN to 802.11g to save the trouble of downloading movies from my server to my PC in order to watch them, and maybe procure a decent sound card for the heck of it. :) And maybe also replace this card with an adequate if not better alternative.

Posted by myuu at 9:45 AM

April 23, 2006

stuff to watch! and others to avoid.

ES and I watched Ultraviolet Friday night. With the exception of Milla, everything else sucked. We got there a lil earlier to try out the new House of the Dead 4 at the arcade. But it was such in demand that we didn't get to play, so we settled for some Time Crisis 3. Which I could probably play on my PS2 by myself. :P

Speaking of the PS2, I think I'll bring it into my room to play on my 24". Wanna see if the gun works with LCDs as well.

And I'm a few minutes from downloading the entire Season 3 of The O.C. I like the way Azureus allows you to set priorities for each file in a torrent so that it downloads faster. That basically means I've watched the 1st episode, and can now start watching episodes 2 to 8. :)

Ooh, and the latest Nokia PC Suite has an auto update feature. I'm now on version 6.80.20 and it works very well with the WIDCOMM stack I installed earlier. Sweet! Now hopefully someone improves the Bemused protocol to allow it to control other things. :)

Posted by myuu at 3:24 PM

April 20, 2006

sakit mata

This week's news briefs:-

- I'm now able to control winamp using my nokia 6230. It's fun, but I wish I could control movies as well. Luckily for HID-capable Sony Ericsson phone users, they have an official app that allows you to simulate keystrokes using your phone. I don't have the link though, so you'll have to google it. :) In the meantime, installing the latest WIDCOMM stack was a pain, and now I can't get my Nokia PC Suite working. :\

- Almost done with the O.C season 2! Gonna start looking for season 3 now. :)

- Watched most of Nascar 3D last night. 3D is nice, but it was too short. Makes me wonder if normal PC games like BF2 can be 3D-ized. I recall looking into it a long time ago... maybe I should look into it again. Met up with Ida Maya too, from ze old primary school. It was great being able to catch up with her. :)

Posted by myuu at 6:48 PM

April 12, 2006

note to self

some links for me to look at when i get home. :P

widcomm bluetooth drivers: http://forum.gsmhosting.com/vbb/archive/index.php/t-127539.html

needed for this to work: http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~jkohne76/

and this as well: http://bemused.sourceforge.net/

Posted by myuu at 2:54 PM

late nights again

As many of you know, I'm not really good at managing time. In the past few months there's been a lull in the things that I 'd like to do, so I find myself going to sleep early and all that.

Now, those days seem to be gone. Thanks to my installation of xchat on this web server, I can now resume all the manga downloads I've stopped reading since moving my computer from the living room to my lil cramped personal space. I'm doing an alphabetical browse of things I've missed and I've only reached 'Ai', which is AirGear. Read that up to Vol 7 and that kept me up to 1.30am :O

Before the browse, I've specifically searched for the latest chapters of GantZ, Alita, & Battle Royale. More to come I guess. And now that my boss is doing a load of downloading via Streamyx, I can even pilfer some seasons of TV shows like Lost and some movies from him. :D

At the same time, I've been catching up on some of the old movies that I never got around to watch. Since I've had to wait for my sis before I can go home, I've been spending my time after hours at the office watching Dude, Where's My Car?, Elektra, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and a few other things. And since this is her last week, it seems that she'll be more late than usual, and my movie supplier is not here! :(

All this watching and reading... Seems like a form of escapism. Missing something... someone... ;)

Posted by myuu at 10:06 AM

April 6, 2006

i don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

here are the lyrics for one particularly addictive song i aoverheard on the US cartoon network while i was there. enjoy. and don't ask me how to get the song itself. :P

Artist: Animaniacs
Song: The Monkey Song
Album: Variety Pack

One Monday morning, I got up late
And there were these monkeys, outside ze gate
Ze guard went to stop them but he had no luck
The monkeys got free and they ran amok

I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

My office was run by ze studio nurse
I came downstairs und what could be worse?
Ze monkeys was doing a crazy dance
They put buggies in my underpants

I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
Monkeys dance day and night and stew
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

I ran outside to get a stick
But I tell you friends, those monkeys was quick
'Cause when I returned, much to my disgrace
Those monkeys had the nurse in a mad embrace

Nurse:I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
Yako:For a nickel, I'll give you a clue
Dot:I didn't know your eyes were blue
I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

I went to me bath for a shower and shave
The monkeys gonna put me into my grave
The entire bathroom was laid to waste
And they shaved my head with minty toothpaste

I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
They is crazy nutso, I'm telling you
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

Well by zis time I was feeling dread
Zey was using a shoe brush to shine me head
I asked them to leave but they stayed around
Zey pulled the chain and ee! I went down

I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
Call my lawyer, I'm ready to sue
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

Well my patients ran out and I'm telling you sure
Tomorrow I show those monkeys the door
And if they don't leave, I'm inviting you
To my house for dumplings and monkey stew

I don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
Now I'm in the stew, oh pooh!
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do
Watch out for monkeys, I'm telling you
-Don't know what to say, the monkeys won't do

We're not monkeys, we're just cuckoo
Don't know what to say, the Warners won't do

Posted by myuu at 4:02 PM

April 3, 2006

another weekend gone

and another 6-day work begins.

putting more time into WoW lately. switching between realms just to expend my rested status. downloaded some ratDVD versions of The O.C. season 2, but the quality was quite poor so i might just grab a set from ES.

also cleaned up my room a bit. i can finally see the floor now. :P

Posted by myuu at 1:01 PM

March 31, 2006

a thank you to samantha

what i wanted to post:
"nice, i've been looking for the title of that song all day today, spurred by Fly Guy who noted when the vocalist's name was being mentioned in the beginning of the song. I only caught "waheeda" though, so I pretty much embarassed myself asking the whole world for the latest Waheeda song.

anyway, hope you find the lyrics. :)"

where i wanted to post: here.

Posted by myuu at 4:37 PM

March 22, 2006

furuba

i watched 11 eps of furuba last night. i love it. altho it progresses through the story very slowly, it constantly draws you in with lotsa funny bits. overall, the story is kind of sad as you start learning about each new character. kesian tohru. kesian hatori.

then i watched "Best of Banned from TV 3". :P

aaaaanyway, looks like i might not be able to catch that many eps tonight. gonna go help my cousin fix his office connection. :)

speaking of connections, i've been getting very poor service with my own streamyx lately. downloads are very slow, and almost always time out mid way. doesn't help my WoW or BF2 either.

Posted by myuu at 4:27 PM

March 21, 2006

turn it up!

HD trailers are the bomb! i only wish my monitor shows proper true color. the colors just don't seem proper. like when you have something fading out or in, you can actually see the color bands.

hopefully it's just my graphics card, and not the monitor itself. if it's just the graphics, then i'll just have to upgrade to a dual core ;) and something nice.

at the same time, i've managed to resolve some issues with the latest K-Lite Codec Pack. actually, it was just a matter of downgrading to version 1.34. the latest version had problem displaying video for some old Quicktime movies (Furuba!) and displaying subtitles for Matroska files. don't know what the problem was with QT, but MKV and OGG files were being handled by a Haali splitter, which i guess didn't agree with how the old files were structured.

so tonight, Furuba marathon! :D

in the meantime, me go download more HD trailers to watch when i get home.

Posted by myuu at 8:39 AM

March 20, 2006

sigh

friday, at the office, till 11:30pm......

blizzard......

monday......

alone.....

well, at least the food this weekend was good. :D

also looking forward to watch X3, Stay Alive, and Silent Hill! gawd i love silent hill. grab the trailers at Apple.

Posted by myuu at 9:30 AM

March 15, 2006

building in progress

Some of you may've noticed that the site has been dysfunctional for a few days. that's because i've recently attempted a supposedly easier more streamlined way to upgrade the server's third-party applications using portupgrade. a few of your techie peeps would know that FreeBSD has a nice ports collection that allows you to easily install stuff that's not native to the FreeBSD operating system.

There doesn't seem to be much problem so far. the only obstacles i've encountered are for ports that I've previously had to manually tweak their 'Makefile''s in order to install them in a specific way that i want. not a pleasant process having to repeat these tweaks each time i upgrade, so i've managed to find solutions that are portupgrade friendly.

Another set of problems i had were ports that didn't save my previous install options. these are packages that used dialog screens to allow users to select any special components they want, so somehow this time i didn't tick off as many components as i did before causing some configuration inconsistencies. luckily quick tweaks of the config files did the trick.

So enough about that. since my last post i've watched Rahtree, a thai horror comedy, and Hostel, a Tarantino movie hoping to match the goriness of the likes of Audition. doesn't quite reach there, but at least the storyline's better. Also level 44 in WoW, and i've created an alternate character on PvP realm Dragonmaw to play with whenever my original realm Khaz'goroth is mad full. My BF2 installation seems to work now, although i haven't gotten a proper game in to test my chopper flying skills against tougher odds (they're a lot easier to shoot down it seems).

Cuzzies not able to make it that weekend, unfortunately. :(

The staff of Black & Decker Asia Pacific (M) Sdn Bhd could use some English lessons. They could also use some training in customer call management. This one guy promised to call me back yesterday and hasn't done so. It was hard enough trying to communicate to him that I want one 'RT1000'. refer to your own damned catalogue dammit! and don't bring in a power tool if you don't plan on having accessories available!

And my bro's been sick since Sunday. Very high fever that's not quite consistent. Early blood test doesn't show anything. Well, he seems fine now. Somehow managed to garner enough energy to go to a cybercafe with his friends today.

Posted by myuu at 3:51 PM

March 10, 2006

AWESOME!

is to describe how good Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa, is.

AWESOME!

is to describe my cuzzies coming to visit. hopefully.

AWESOME!

is me finally breaking out the rotary tool to start making holes in my puter.

NOT AWESOME!

is me exhausting my single fibreglass reinforced cutting disc, and breaking a heavy duty disc, leaving my work half done.

NOT AWESOME!

is me having to clean up my room and pack away my exposed computer. :P

Posted by myuu at 6:41 PM

February 27, 2006

ill

something's definitely wrong with me. forced to a diet of non-milk, non-fruit products, otherwise i'll crap water again. i knew i should've stayed home last night instead of having an excellent steamboat dinner with the gang.

*drools*

hope i recover in time for next week's steaks. :D

anyway, this condition i'm in doesn't seem to be a constant state. the tummy only acts up in the morning, and when it clears i'll be fine till the next day usually. but it's scary, and the doctor may have a lead on something bigger. hopefully it's not too big, but we'll see what happens in the next few days.

well, my case-modding has been postponed for another week. can't figure out how to open fish's workmate. will need to pick up a few small items too from the curve. in the meantime, i need to check with our beloved IRB on my recently-received 2003 tax adjustment (they sure are taking their time), and make an appointment with the aircond service people. monitor's whine has gone to annoyingly higher levels, and i think the heat is taking its toll. can't stand the humidity either.

[edit 4:33pm]
in my sullen mood i forgot to mention a few other things. finally got myself to watch Howl's Moving Castle, a Ghibli production based on the book by Diana Wynne Jones. following Ghibli's tradition of really nice movies, it is.. well.. really nice! it is however, an adaptation, hence there are some parts that seem rushed or disjointed. but all in all the movie worked well for me as a break from WoW. :P

i also caught The Longest Yard, which is another nice one, and soon i'll be able to watch Fullmetal Alchemist the movie. yay!

Posted by myuu at 1:33 PM

February 22, 2006

revamp

nando's flaming hot peri-peri for lunch +
tempeyek (those yummy cracker-like treats with peanuts on top) for tea +
apartment cafe's penang fried kuew teow for dinner

=>

vomit +
liquid shit

so i was home for the better part of the afternoon yesterday. slept through most of it.

was hoping to get on WoW for a quickie to chat someone up, but my realm was down for 'urgent maintenance'. five hours after it came up, another 6 hours of downtime for 'scheduled maintenance'.

so... when exactly do we get to play? :(

anyways, my health hasn't been in good order lately. gotta see how i can seamlessly put in some healthy things into my life without breaking my yearning for the stuff i love.

for exercise, i'll walk up the road from plaza pantai to menara telekom each morning. upon returning home, i'll walk up the stairs to my apartment.

for cleanliness, i just gotta take an hour off after work to arrange my belongings and get in touch with the world.

that should be sufficient for now.

Posted by myuu at 11:29 AM

February 19, 2006

sunday is WoW day

don't count on me leaving this room very soon. :D

'cept maybe to eat and bathe.

over the week i've lowered my cpu fan speed a few hundred RPM, making me worried when WoW crashed on me. hasn't happened in a while, so it might just be evil Blizzard screwing with me. last night's incident though was neither caused by my experiments or Blizzard's general disregard for customer service.

it was closer to home. it was... TMnet!

here i was, roaming the distant Plaguelands, avoiding monsters and demons that i could never have beaten. i end up in the Ruins of Andorhal, a seemingly cosy countryside village now haunted by skeletons and ghouls. halfway through, the monsters didn't seem to care about my presence, and i thought i was scot-free! i keep on moving, to reach the Scarlet Monastery where my party was waiting for me. but something was weird... all the way up never did i meet a single player, or a monster, or a friend NPC. felt like i was detached from the world itself.

then i get disconnected. and this continues a few more times till i realised that the international links were down and i could no longer connect.

looking at the time of the incident, it seemed that the downtime was scheduled somehow. seems just too convenient for a downtime to happen when most of the general population was asleep (it was about 3am). yet TMnet never sent out a notice, nor did they send out any apology for the downtime.

now that's government service!

anyway, it's about time i stopped purchasing unnecessary things and start saving for certain holiday seasons this year. target is Australia. so yesterday my family and i went to the Curve for some lunch and shopping. it would be the last shopping spree for me, hopefully. :P so i finally got my pair of gloves from the larger Ace branch. Leather Driver gloves intended for light construction. finally, something closer to my size. the male medium size were a bit too large still, so i just went what the heck and got myself the women's size. no difference at all between them, 'cept that they fit my skinny fingers better and were light blue.

at least they weren't pink, or had polka dots.

so i'm probably going to start making holes in my puter next weekend. gotta start planning the work.

at the same time, got myself a new showerhead to try. the existing ones were getting rusty. didn't have any clue of the actual Gallons Per Minute (GPM) effect, so i picked up a 1.5GPM water saver one. picked up some teflon sealing tape too, but my shower mount threads were so short that it would be a little too tough to put on.

this one definitely saves water, but i miss the pressure from the old showerhead. let's see if my sister agrees when she gets back from sailing later today. :P anyway, the success of this showerhead being able to fit will let us start looking at new showerheads for the other bathrooms. probably get those fancy multi-mode ones.

it's the start of another DIY frenzy. hope i won't have to spend for this one though. :P

Posted by myuu at 10:34 AM

February 1, 2006

my new year's resolutions is...

1920x1200 :D

mosfets. pwm. the hidden key to overclocking stability. these are a bunch of chips that regulate voltage to the processor, and are usually hooked in around the cpu socket. their temperatures can go as high as 120 C before burning out, but in my case things go crappy as soon as they hit 70.

if only i knew about these when i had my first motherboard. :P

anyway, happy chinese new year to all.

Posted by myuu at 3:14 PM

January 28, 2006

tagged

my, how chain letters have evolved nowadays.

i've been tagged. here are the rules:

1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover.
2. Need to mention the sex of the target.
3. Tag 8 victims to join this game & leave a comment on their comments saying they've been tagged.
4. If tagged the 2nd time, there’s no need to post again.

So.... here's the golden 8 for what's in my belief is a perfect female lover. Lover being defined as:

Pronunciation: 'l&-v&r
Function: noun
4 a : PARAMOUR b : a person with whom one has sexual relations

1. sexy
2. adventurous
3. all four limbs in good order
4. understands the geek way
5. long hair
6. speaks english
7. free :P
8. malay, oriental or caucasian origin
9. must be able to survive close proximity with me

and i tag back all the persons listed here minus myself plus nad-chan herself. :P no rule saying i can't tag you back, muahahah

Posted by myuu at 4:33 PM

quickies

my mom reveals that she doesn't like to cook much anymore due to the tiring job of cleaning up. and us peeps in the house aren't eating together and interacting much. time to pay more attention. haven't found the will to WoW lately anyhow.

tweaked website to look better on widescreen monitors. :) might need to change the theme too.

turns out the person whom i bought my new motherboard from, whopper, didn't flash the bios to the latest like he claimed he did. grrr.

Posted by myuu at 2:06 PM

January 27, 2006

holiday mode

office hours are finally over. i'd normally continue with work while waiting for my sis, but this time my mind just can't take it.

so instead, let's talk about some random topics. things that doesn't need too much thought. or at least thoughts that require deadlines.

so.. let's talk about me. lesseee... a lot of people claim i look chinese. based on my experience so far, i won't deny it. however, that does not mean i can pass myself as a fully chinese person. it's true that when i meet chinese strangers, they usually start talking to me in cantonese. but at the same time, when i meet malay strangers, they'd talk to me as if talking to any normal malay.

so, in conclusion, i looks both malay and chinese. at the same time! i look chinese to chinese, and malay to malay. i guess this happens cuz of the way we socially interact. relationships are usually linked by something, most of the time similarity. when you meet someone for the first time, you try to relate to him/her, checking what your similarities are. since eye contact is ALWAYS (usually) the first mode of interaction (unless you're drunk), you try to see what physical features the person has that are similar to yours. hence a chinese person will look for chinese features, and etc etc. later of course, the relationship develops based on further interaction via action and talk, overriding any first impressions. so as soon as i start talking, or say "i don't understand chinese", the relationship takes another turn for better or worse.

after reading back my previous paragraph, i'd like to apologize to anyone who has visual disabilities. color blindness not included.

so as much as i want to act chameleon, i can't, because i can be perceived in a variety of ways, even in ways i don't want to be.

so to my friends, please keep me safe.

and to the next topic. do toilet seats belong up or down? i haven't done any research on this, but the more tidy female characters in The Sims prefer them down. for guys, it would usually stay up, cuz otherwise stray jets might hit the 'areas of concern'. we can't let the ladies suffer like that, can we? on the other hand, leaving it down will allow users to see what's on the 'areas of concern' so that measures can be taken to prepare those 'areas' for occupation. at the end of the day, most people after being relieved couldn't care less of what they leave behind, so you'd have to look out for it anyway.

so i vote down. lift up before using, for the male urinating position, and put it back down after. irregardless, wash your hands. with soap. :P

if only our public toilets were smart enough to clean our seats for us, and to also determine our gender and mode of execution to prepare the proper setting. it'll probably happen sooner or later. we'll see.

somewhere in the mess called my head, i thought up of an idea just in case i were to leave my current profession. i'd call it the IT Bakery. it'd be a bakery, like bread talk and their counterparts, except that the venue will be immensely packed with technology in action. and we'd sell these techs too, and maybe do tech consulting on the side. we'd also have stuff from thinkgeek.com and all the stuff that make geeks go crazy. details are sketchy but at least it's something to start with.

usually when an idea starts, you drill down to the product to make sure it meets market demands and all that. but somehow my mind wandered off to the venue's security system, which is designed to protect patrons more than the tech in the store. with so much expensive stuff lying around, you don't want to skimp on security, man. so i was thinking of having a foot-wide grid of walls that can drop down from the ceiling in cases of emergency. an operator at the back, severely protected by panic-room like infrastructure, will be able to oversee the automatons of this system. the walls will drop to isolate patrons from intruders if they're apart, with intervention necessary by the operator if they're together. the walls would have holes in them, big enough to breathe and small enough to avoid bullets from passing through. each wall will have its own servo to allow flexible escape routes. the walls also, would have to be bullet proof to a certain extent. vertical-wise, the walls would be hollow, allowing smaller multiple versions of themselves in between for those tight situations where certain limbs would need to be pinned down. the lower edge of these walls can't be sharp, maybe padded, and are pressure sensitive to avoid crushing people (altho overrides would be allowable).

this is assuming of course, that law provides that an owner of a premise is allowed use of lethal force to defend his/her property.

to avoid attacks from outside, the outer windows would also be thick and bulletproofed. and to avoid collateral damage during police raids and to also help friendly forces in, the set of windows would lift up and hide itself away like a garage door, and the grid walls can lift up at certain places, triggered by cooperation with police forces, to reveal the perps.

and it goes on like that.

usually i wouldn't immediately post any of my funky brain childs publicly, but otherwise i'd forget all about it and wouldn't be able to revel in my madness. and i don't have the resources to implement these ideas anyway, so might as well let someone else try. of course, please tell me if you do. :P i don't talk about cost, since that would then make it within my circle of influence and therefore limited in some other ways. no point being sensible when ranting. :P

woo.. that's a lot of text. and i have another 20 minutes to spare.

hm... bleh. oh, and the bakery would need to be backed by publications like Stuff (*winks* at tiff & steph).

damn, i've been gritting my teeth a lot today without realising it. was it the coffee, or the workload? hm.

hm hm hm. here comes the hm section where i can't really think of what to type.

*10 minutes later*

yay, sms from sis! bubbye! yay for my colleague too, who dropped by my lonely cubicle for a quick chat.

Posted by myuu at 5:10 PM

exasperating last day

feeling kinda out of it right now. so many things to do, yet unsure which to begin with.

must be the effects of that grande mocha i had a while ago. drinking coffee has never been one of my finer points, and it doesn't seem to get any better with age.

ah yes, i admit, today i tuang. was planning to go back to the pad and rest since i'm still recovering from thursday's viral onslaught. but then tiff was free, and nearby, and i had some shopping to do so i ended up at mid valley instead.

probably half of my company's female population know i was there. :P

well, az1 seemed to have had something come up, so it was just me, tiff, steph, and their colleague named marlina. the fun crowd, woo hoo! before we met up for lunch at oasis, i was lounging about toys r us, MPH, and ace hardware while waiting for the catcha-nists. no new books to read, altho there seems to be a sudden surge in volume of books by this certain female author (can't remember her name) and i was tempted to pick up one of her books. but seeing how i ended up sleeping at 3am last night to finish The Saga of Darren Shan, i don't think i want to get caught up in 'a moment' for a while. :P

how i ended up at toys r us is a mystery. thought maybe i'd have much time to spend before meeting up with tiff and gang. went in looking, reminding myself to pick up gundam seed from kr0 (who hasn't finished watching it yet!) and keeping an eye out for those cute BitChar-G remote control cars (which seem to have been phased out). otherwise, nothing interesting.

ace hardware was my main destination. below are the items i wanted to pick up, or have picked up, and where i'll pick them up from, or where i have picked them up from. ;) :-

- black & decker rtx-1 rotary tool - purchased today from ace hardware!
- rotary tool flex-shaft - purchased today from ace hardware!
- protective face visor - purchased today from ace hardware!
- medium/heavy duty gloves - can't find my size :(
- face mask - left overs from haze scare.
- ear muffs - miniplugs from F1 paddock.
- acrylic sheets and other material - waiting for info from ndb. ;)

that's 500+ splurged today. :D will take pics as soon as i find my arghed camera charger!!!!

simple lunch at oasis. talked about WoW, office antics, and drinking antics. catcha employees are... in a league of their own. ;) very different from what my sister experiences at Watson Wyatt, and at the other end of the spectrum compared to my working life. hmmm....

ah, and steph reminded me how i helped her get her WoW nickname, lol! i miss irc days really, but going back now will never be as fun as before. oh well.

and it looks like i'm keeping the monitor. backlight problem seems to have went away, and humming noise isn't too annoying and easily fixed with a short shut off of the monitor. well, at least i have 5 years to see if it'll go crappy on me. after that, hopefully the new SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display) monitors will be out, and this monitor might be dissected for education purposes. ;P

Posted by myuu at 3:55 PM

January 26, 2006

the doctor who won't give mc's

dr aslam qureshi. every time i see him he only gives me a time chit. compared to the other doctors in the clinic, he also gives less medication.

i told him it hurts to swallow.
i told him my body's aching all over.
i told him last night i had a bad fever.

and all he sez is "it'll get worse or better depending on your resistance".

wtf?!

well, next time i see him on the roster, i'll definitely ask for the other doctor on duty, irregardless of who he/she is. this guy seems to have joined the clinic because they had a shortage anyways.

if he's the only one, then i'll just try my company's dispensary.

Posted by myuu at 9:21 AM

January 25, 2006

aha

dell called me this morning. the person didn't seem keen on talking about the refund, and instead talked abt the issues i'm having with the monitor. well, i told her the truth saying that the backlight issue seems to have diminished a bit and she was eager to close the ticket but i didn't agree to it. i also mentioned the humming problem which surfaces if i have the monitor up and running then entire day, and they had a techie call abt it. the problem did surface a few times, but i didn't bother monitoring it cuz i thought i'd be sending it back. hopefully i can get it recorded somehow.

need to get second opinions on the backlight and i've been looking for my camera charger all over but to no avail. can't use my sister's cam either. :( well, we'll see how it goes.

Posted by myuu at 7:02 PM

January 9, 2006

lunch break

sigh.. all it takes is one phone call to ruin a noon nap.

merv and az were trying to get me out of office to play mahjong. but i shouldn't give in to temptation each time. besides, it's a little wasteful to take half day off now considering i have only another 2 1/4 hours to spend at the office.

my WoW exploits at the office have finally paid off. while something is causing the game to crap out on my desktop, it runs quite ok on the notebook. the graphics may be sub standard, but it seems workable. it'll be useful for those late nights waiting for ayin to finish her work. she's going to start her practical training soon, and i can only guess that she'll be required to work long hours.

anyways, i got my sis to start on WoW. even her bf is contemplating on getting himself a copy, altho he's still uncertain whether the monthly fee is worth it. even i am having doubts, as we've been having a LOT of problems with the server lately. constant lags, and quite a few crashes since the new 1.9 patch are causing much frustration among users of our Khaz'goroth realm.

my bro has also started playing, altho BF2 is still his primary thing. i guess it's better that way, since i don't want him to get addicted to more things. in fact, as soon as we see trouble with his school work, he'll never touch the PC again.

besides WoW, i didn't do much over the weekend 'cept for cleaning up the house a bit, as well as helping Fish move to his brother's house at Damansara Kim. his house will be renovated soon, so he'll only be there temporarily with the rest of his family. being only a helper, i did not fully experience the stress in its entirety, but it seemed that i'd be able to cope with my own moving sooner or later. when my family first moved into our current home, i only cared about transporting my computer. :P being young sure had its privileges. saying that, i don't think i'll be sparing any of my siblings the work. :P

i liked his temp home, being new and somewhat modern even though it's located in a cramped area in PJ. i thought the renovation was done rather well, and it's really making me itch for my own landed home. there's still some affordable double storey link houses in the vicinity that are still 'quite' affordable (if we pooled all our money together). at the same time, my sibs tell me that my dad wants to transfer over his share of the apartment to me. a very lucrative offer, but i'm afraid the high service charges alone will kill me (i.e. force me to quit WoW among other things). well, we'll see if that upcoming promotion comes through and make a decision then.

sigh, any mention of promotion these days makes me feel disillusioned.

Posted by myuu at 2:49 PM

January 4, 2006

broken server

hm... my web servers seems to be dying on its own lately. must be a buggy version of apache.

well, 2006 starts off with a nice barbeque at zoe's place. barbequeing is tough!

office hours began vigorously, with tons of work that kept me quite busy till now.

time to go to low yat with mervie. tata! :D

Posted by myuu at 6:16 PM

December 31, 2005

busy busy busy

blowin' dro, 24's, that how all my niggas roll!

today's the last day of work for the year. woke up with a splitting headache, and i couldn't get out of bed a while. fortunately, despite having idiots on the road, i managed to rush to the office in time (dropping myself off at the lobby to clock in and park the car properly right after).

gonna have a barbeque at zoe's place this sunday, and i was chargred with picking up some stuff from the local hypermarkets. so my sibs and i went to the curve for dinner and some shopping. the main road between the curve and ikano was closed for decorations, so there was a pretty long line of cars waiting at a particular junction to get into that road (because somehow they didn't realise it was closed).

luckily my sis was there earlier, and she knew that there were 2 lanes (not 1) that turn into that junction so she didn't have much of a problem then. she also knew of the back way in, which we took to bypass this mass of jam.

we had dinner at marche movenpick. although it was my idea to go there, looking at the rib-eye stick that my lil bro ordered, i can't help but think how expensive kids' tastes are nowadays. i had my usual plain rosti and sausage. beef rosti, and lamb sausage weren't available. :(

after dinner, we made a short stop at borders, and moved on to tesco. got us plates, mushrooms, spoons, forks, drinks, foil. were supposed to get a few other things, but they were either out of stock or missing from memory. had to make a few calls to the food and bbq maestro merv to confirm a few things, since i've never really shopped for a bbq before. what can i say, there's just not much opportunity when you're living in an apartment.

got home. WoWed for a while. slept. end of story.

Posted by myuu at 8:35 AM

December 29, 2005

wide is right

getting a new monitor, no matter what it is, is definitely worth every cent.

especially if it's big, wide, doesn't emit radiation, and doesn't strain your eyes. :)

only problems now are the nagging, and not being able to move the mouse cursor across the screen in a single wrist motion. will post some pics up later. angelina jolie never looked so good.

well, here i am, back at work again. very hard to get up today, having been away from work (for only 4 days though) with the dark skies and pre-rain humidity. was even 5 mins late cuz the cars were not parked in their usual positions and i had to go back up to get another set of keys.

sigh, working during the holiday season is tough!

(edit 30/12 1:00pm)

pics are up! :D and, did i mention that the monitor comes with a variety of inputs, as well as 4 usb ports and card readers? i was looking up and down for my camera charger, but when i couldn't, i just popped out the CF card and slotted it into the side. works like a charm! :D

Posted by myuu at 9:58 AM

December 27, 2005

cuti-cuti rumah!

doh, just realised all WoW realms are down for weekly maintenance. :(

taking a break sure is nice. will still be on leave till tomorrow. hope i don't forget how to work :D

by the way, merry christmas, and a happy new year to all! :D

was planning to to go town today, but WoW kept me home all morning, so whatever was left of the afternoon was spent repairing the two rear door handles of my Waja. can't go tomorrow either, since my new 'view' is coming tomorrow. :DDD

hm.. hope i can just steal away for a bit. need to get some cooling for my southbridge, which i think is causing some usb and filesystem problems.

maybe i should just trash this MSI motherboard and look for a second-hand Abit/ASUS one.

arghhhh stop the splurge already!

well anyway, time to start rearranging the furniture.

Posted by myuu at 11:48 PM

December 19, 2005

tragedy in progress

looked out my office window today to witness a fire at one of the neighboring setinggan communities. it was spreading rapidly, helped out by the strong winds. can see tiny masses of people congregating at one area, and lotsa motorcycle lights heading away.

heard sirens, and saw one engine on the federal highway. didn't seem like it was going fast enough.

hope no one is hurt.

Posted by myuu at 5:51 PM

December 17, 2005

WoW snaps

this entry is a work in progress. more snapshots to come.

(edit 18/12 11:25am)

the shots look very dim on my computer, since they're saved without the gamma adjustments. but they should appear quite alright on anyone else's pc.

Posted by myuu at 1:08 PM

December 13, 2005

to WoW or not to WoW

just got meself a 10-day guest pass to world of warcraft, courtesy of az^1. installing it as we speak, but i'll only be able to start messing around with it after tonight due to maintenance.

hope i don't get addicted. :P

Posted by myuu at 11:34 PM

phew

everything is somewhat in order now. brb. sleep time. :P

(edit @ 9:02pm)

if you missed my quickie, here's a background of what happened: was planning to upgrade to freebsd 6.0 over the weekend, but after putting it off quite a bit, i only did the cutover on sunday night. suffered some graphics problem during boot, but managed to bypass it via the boot loader. the rest of the subsystems were a bit of a pain though. the gnome upgrade script pretty much rebuilt every single ported application i had, so along the way it also disabled my web and email.

that wasn't the tricky part. thought i'd upgrade to apache 2.2 while i'm at it. turns out that some of the 3rd party modules i was using were not built for 2.2. so i went back to 2.0, while having to redo the build a few times to make sure my security settings were ok.

this post was made right after rebuilding php. and suphp. and suexec. :P

so in conclusion, my apologies to everyone dependent on this site. obsessive readers = 0. scratchboard users = 3. may future upgrades be without pain.

so....
i'm now planning my finances for the month. it's good to have access to payroll results. :D payday is early this month, and there's some debt that needs clearing. but aside from that, i've already placed orders for new RAM (crucial ballistix z503) and the case-modding plan is still on.

one thing that concerns me are all the recent crucial deaths. seems that the last few batches would die after at most 3 months of use (within their rated limits). some even die after a day or two. scary. but hopefully i'll be getting a batch that's fixed. otherwise, my supplier dinster@lowyat has promised to help in any RMA process. even if it has to be every 3 months.

well, that's a huge chunk of cash there. another thing that's tempting would be a nice LCD monitor. haven't been able to focus on text on bright colors lately. gotta get my eyes checked. there's a thread on lowyat.net for a pretty good 19" one (listed here) for RM 999. aaaa temptation!

as for my case-modding, the first step is to check out the kind of work people have done on their own computers. some of them are very very impressive. breathtaking even. but they probably have the DIY experience and their own workshops to back them up. at the moment, i have neither, so i won't concentrate much on aesthetics; much attention is needed on the basic need of good airflow.

i also wondered what people have done to cases similar to mine. i bought my case years back, and the only thing i could remember that it was either made by InWin or Enlight. after browsing some pictures found via google, i discovered that mine was an InWin Q500, one of better full ATX towers back in the day. based on that info, i find myself a few interesting links:-

http://www.benchtest.com/way2cool4.html
http://www.overclockers.com/tips196/
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/articles/q500/index.shtml
http://pc509.tripod.com/guides/mod.html
http://www.virtual-hideout.net/articles/q600/index.shtml
http://www.overclockers.com/tips191/
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU4

this following one made my jaw drop:-
http://articles.pimprig.com/featured_pimprig/the_caffeine_machine.php

since i'm not a coffee fan, i won't be going that route. :P

Posted by myuu at 4:38 AM

December 9, 2005

pasta, nerds, & clock speed

related? nope.

the night b4 yesterday, tiff, merv, and i met up at ikano for dinner. wired's mom's b'day was coming up soon, and merv was looking at a wireless panasonic steam iron. merv picked me up on the way (yay). so there we were, at harvey norman, checking out prices with some smses/calls to ozzieland.

and.... we found.... nothing.

so the hunger pangs were coming on. we ate at fasta pasta, where the pasta is fasta than its flava. and yet not much fasta than a sleepwalking turtle. they didn't key in all of merv's orders, and the food itself wasn't so great. bodhi tree serves much better food. :D

and tiff bought us nerds (yay)! she was looking for clothes mainly, while merv was on the phone a lot, while i was looking at passing chicks. also checked out prices at the ace store there, but it's just the same anywhere.

last night, i decided to stay home. no salsa for me (sorry merv). had dinner indoors and took my time reseating my heatsink onto the cpu, since temperatures were a tad too high (65 C with case closed). while that happened, i just tweaked the voltages a bit, and managed to get 3.75GHz stable. this time i also upped the RAM voltage, since overvolted RAM don't overheat much. think i'll try again for 3.9 tonight.

also ran a few benchmarks to get a feel of the new motherboard. generally, the ratings are slightly older than my previous motherboard. and dual channel memory only works with 2 dimm slots, and not 4 as before. so here i am with 1GB of unused memory. probably gonna stick those into the server later.

Posted by myuu at 8:38 AM

December 8, 2005

projects

the garage - php project. on hold.
myuucon - system integration project. no new developments planned.
4ghz - overclocking project. on hold pending procurement of new parts.

here i am planning for my next experiment: case modding. it basically ties back to the overclocking project, mainly to improve airflow and perhaps make my computer look slightly nicer. tools and safety equipment are required, and i've managed to get some quotes from ace hardware:-

- black & decker rtx-1 rotary tool. a handheld drill-like thingie, but with attachments that allow you to cut and grind metal. rm 280.

- faceshield. shields the all-important facial features and organs from sparks and breaking bits. rm 58.
- safety/construction gloves. rm 13.
- aluminum grille. optional. traps dust and bugs. rm 26.
- acrylic panels. optional. serve as good side windows. can be purchased from lowyat.net forums.

- other related items: breathing mask, masking tape, cardboard, fan grilles.

everything comes up to about rm 400. gotta start saving.

anyone wanna contribute some side panel designs? :D

Posted by myuu at 9:37 AM

December 7, 2005

breaking news

good evening. this just in.

this morning, the security forces of a very tall building here received an anonymous call from someone claiming to be a member of a group of misfits. the caller claimed that something was misplaced somewhere within the area. due to that, the inhabitants of all nearby buildings went out to play to avoid any possibility of experiencing serious health issues.

on to the next bulletin. a scheduled fire drill in the afternoon may have caused the disappearance of several workers in the area. the authorities are still investigating their whereabouts.

Posted by myuu at 5:11 PM

December 1, 2005

coins = embarassment

decided to convert my bag of coins today, collected throughout the past 1-2 years. add a few golden coins and we have one helluva heavy shoe box.

so this morning, i lugged it down to the carpark from home. drove to work. lugged it from Plaza Pantai to Menara Telekom, and up the elevator to my floor. didn't think it was a big deal then.

then came morning talk. the bosses gave their updates and whatnot, and one particular one decided to get some of us to read out some newspaper clippings about the company. i was one of them. feeling like there's nothing to it, i just simply marched out and started reading.

that's when my hands started shaking. uncontrollably. and very very visibly. i wasn't nervous; i could very well have been the best english speaker present. but it was something else... something to do with coins. i guess carrying that shoe box all over the place really strained my arms a bit, so whenever i bring my hands up horizontally, they start to shake.

but of course, the perception was that i was nervous. oh well. maybe i should start working out again. at least i got rm316 out of the whole experience. :P

Posted by myuu at 1:20 AM

November 28, 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

Posted by myuu at 8:21 AM

November 27, 2005

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.

Posted by myuu at 11:37 PM

November 22, 2005

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!

Posted by myuu at 11:17 PM

November 15, 2005

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*

Posted by myuu at 1:11 AM

November 13, 2005

finger safety

last night i almost ripped my right index fingernail off when it got caught in my cpu fan. was investigating a rattling noise (which originated from my northbridge fan) and thought i could stop the fan by sticking a finger in. smart, eh?

well, looks like i won't need to change my cpu casing after all. unplugged all my cables and rearranged them nicely to make more air space. discovered a nice corner behind the hard drive cage to tuck most of them into.

i also rearranged my ide drives and managed to wedge in a 120mm fan into the drive bay area. in order to avoid any more finger injury, i'll need to source an aluminum grill to cover it.

Posted by myuu at 7:19 PM

November 12, 2005

asyik-asyik overclock

back at 3.6 GHz again. no point spending hours testing the system after each 1 MHz FSB increment. instead, tightened the ram timings, minimizing memory latency and increasing bandwidth.

something else i might try is to up the frequency divider of the memory to make it run at the same ratio as the overclocked FSB. i'll have to loosen the timings for that though, so i'll try it later. right now, i'm quite happy with the current results.

i've also been researching the components i'll need to "Droop Mod" my motherboard, thanks to wired for his input. will need to drop by Pasar Road sometime to get them. but at the same time, i'll also need a new casing that allows better airflow.

or... i can do some sawing. :D

okay enough of overclocking for now. last night i had the chance to see the Song Company, an acapella group from Australia at the Australian High Commission. the bunch of us were skeptical at first, unsure whether the show will be good, and this was enforced by their first performance which was... menyakitkan telinga (well, the title of that bit was Bats' Ultrasound anyway). but their 2nd piece got us back into the right mood, and it got better from then on. the show started at 8.30pm, ending sometime at 10.30pm. the first half concentrated more on arrangements based on poems, and the 2nd half gave us more song. all in all, it was great. tiff, sorry for teasing you. :P

today, fish and i went to an ex-secondary schoolmate (Fatimah)'s house in Kajang for her open house. t'was fun. lotsa people we haven't met in a while. fortunately, i tak malu, and asked for their names again. might as well be honest than ignorant. well, we meet halmie, justin, ros noreen, ezree. waited out a bit for li lian, but she was late from work. aww.

Posted by myuu at 7:37 PM

November 9, 2005

6-feet from the edge

actually, more like 5 MHz from my overclocking limit.

seems that my bro played BF2 today with the FSB at 250 MHz, i.e. CPU running at 3.75 GHz. crashed twice.

returned home from work, ran torture tests via Prime95, and errors popped up.

i think the problem here is that the current motherboard i'm using, the ASUS P4P800 SE, doesn't maintain the voltage i set in the BIOS. instead, as CPU load goes higher, the voltage starts to go as low as 1.4 V (when i want it constant at 1.5 V, for example). i'm not confident enough to start soldering stuff on my motherboard, so i guess i'll let it be. for now, i'll just stick to moving the FSB up slowly to hit the current limit (it's at 245 MHz now).

anyway, it was my first day of work today after such a long break. i was so sleepy the entire day. skipped lunch just to take a nap. new issues keep pouring in, remorseless and unrelenting. argh, the stress!

Posted by myuu at 7:53 PM

November 8, 2005

the trip and more

so....

we left home very late last friday, at about 9pm. there was so much of cleaning up to do, that very little attention was paid to packing. my mom cared to remind my younger siblings, and left me as i should. problem is my mind was rather preoccupied with something which i can't quite recall at the moment, which caused me to underpack a few 'essential' items.

anyways, the drive was rather uneventful, except for the part where PLUS decided to reduce traffic to one lane to make more for traffic heading back to KL. it sucks when there's ALWAYS a jam along the Seremban-Senawang stretch. these planners need to think farther ahead into the future.

we arrived in Batu Pahat about 12.30am. by the time we entered the trunk roads, i was already very weary and may have been a tad too careless and impatient at the time. was overtaking a bunch of motorcycles against incoming traffic when something triggered a motor reaction to make me swerve further out of the line. fortunately, it wasn't much, but i'd think the drivers that saw me probably swore a bunch.

needless to say, i went straight to bed that morning.

we woke up at 8.30am to the sound of tv from the living room. since the house was very small, the foyer was converted into living quarters for all the cucu-cicit who might stay over, like ourselves. even then, there was only so much space. altho without luxuries like air-conditioning, the night was cold enough as it is, and it made me, who hasn't much meat to his bones, restless throughout the night. but the air was refreshing at least. btw, one of my grandaunties (Tok Busu) lived here.

after a quick breakfast, we (+Tok Busu and cousin) went off to visit my grandmother's grave. it was still somewhat early in the morning, but the sun was already scorching our backs. we quickly made our prayers for our dearly departed, and set off to my granduncle's grave at a different location to do the same. it was already 11+ by the time we finished, so we hurried off to an uncle's house for some visiting and lunch. this uncle lived in a more newly developed area of Batu Pahat, and the house was a corner linked lot renovated for a bigger living area. it was nice. veggies and such were also planted in a small kebun behind the house, so the greens in our meal were fresh and juicy.

ready we were to continue the journey down south. we had already packed earlier with luggage in car, so we said our goodbyes and headed straight for Johor Bahru. sometime along the road, my mom noticed i was still wearing the same t-shirt and track bottoms i had on the night before. oops. with her maternal authority, she forced me to stop at a mall (one that sported 'Metrojaya' on its walls) for some last minute shopping. it was unorthodox to buy raya clothes after raya, but it had to be done. Khairil also got himself a pair of jeans, while I got myself a very nice clubbing shirt and a usual pair of black slacks.

so then we crossed the jammy causeway and into Singapore. got a little lost by getting onto Jln Eunos in the wrong direction but it wasn't as bad as the trip before last. at least now, i think i have the geography sorted out a bit. emphasis on the 'bit' mind you. we reached our destination (another grandauntie's place, Mak Tok) in time to clean ourselves up and have some dinner. it was great to see our SG relatives, especially our lovely cousins, again. :)

the plan was that there wasn't any plan. it started off with nothing, and then a supposed visit to a granduncle (Tok Cik)'s place, to nothing again. so we, the youngsters, took matters into our own hands. but with consent of course. and i only got to wear my cool shirt for 10 minutes before having to take it off again (and that was on monday morning, when we finally got around to the visit) because it was 'too nice'. :P and i ruined it a bit too: the iron i used to straighten out the wrinkles had sharp steam holes which caught on the thread. it sucks cause it's brand new, but i doubt/hope many people won't notice. well, it's just a shirt anyhow. a very expensive one. bleh. anyway, ayin burnt one of her baju using the same iron, so i guess my loss isn't so bad. poor kitty.

so that day we went out and toured a bit of Singapore, mainly its manga/anime/book places. with me at the helm and hemlocke as my trusted navigator, we first went to Anime House at Sunshine Plaza to take a look at the manga and teeny anime collectibles like handphone danglies and pins and such. i just remembered that we were supposed to go back there when that particular section of the shop opened, but i guess we forgot.

anyway, we moved on to Bugis Junction for lunch at Siam Kitchen. we were light eaters (and contrary to popular belief, so was i :P) so we only ordered 3 dishes. the food was okay, but the pandan chicken could be better i think, and the green curry much more spicy. :D

we then made off to Orchard Rd where we spent all of our time in Takashimaya SC, where Kinokuniya is located. that's where i got my copy of the last bartimaeus book, and a few volumes of Celestial Zone, a manga by local SG artist Wee Tian Beng. somehow, over all these years, we lost track of this cool series and are still missing a big chunk of volumes in between. luckily, with our cuzzie's help, we can place orders for them via Kino. hopefully they still have stock *crosses fingers*.

after that, we took our horde to Delifrance where we had our tea. the delifrance in SG is very different than the ones we have here in Malaysia, having being converted into something bistro-like (hence the name Delifrance Bistro). all food items in the menu had french names, which gives the impression of something classy (yet somehow, wasabi mayo doesn't quite fit into that picture).

kittenz on the other hand went off to meet a friend somewhere else in the building. she sure took her time. :P the rest of us had mostly finished our reading material and were flipping books repeatedly for closure. ichaya snoozed. well, she got back eventually, and it was about time we rushed back for our evening prayers and dinner. spent the rest of the precious evening in idle chat about a variety of stuff. they had to return home that very night to prepare for work the next day. sigh. work sucks on a global scale.

the following day was uneventful. the visit to Tok Cik's place. returning to JB. visited my grandfather's grave. visited my great grandfather's grave. jam at Senawang (again) due to a lame accident. reached home at 5pm, and lepak-ed watching Mai-HiME up to 5am this morning. finished my book just two hours ago. after watching the gut-wrenching Mai-HiME episodes leading to the climax/ending, the book ending was somewhat disappointing. well, i guess i can't be crying/laughing by myself too much.

oh well. my turn to go to work tomorrow. but not before an overclocking adventure! i've finally broken into the world of manual overclocking, allowing me to tweak all aspects of it in every detail thanks to this newbie guide. i'm still running at 3.6GHz, but at least my memory clock is almost what it should be (the automatic tuner had it running at PC2600, while manual adjustments allowed me to bring it up to PC3100, just slightly lower than the intended PC3200. pretty soon i'll start pushing the envelope, one megahertz at a time. then to optimize the memory timings, 1 clock at a time. exciting stuff!

Posted by myuu at 8:59 PM

November 7, 2005

back north

i'm back. relatives in singapore nice. :D won't say much now. got lotsa things to do:

- read ptolemy's gate, 3rd and final volume of the bartimaeus trilogy.
- watch all of Mai-HiME.
- finish playing Doom 3.
- start playing F.E.A.R.

:D :D

Posted by myuu at 9:38 PM

November 2, 2005

pop goes the heatsink

my computer has been very steady at 3.6 GHz. the more i think about it, the more i felt that i should've refrained myself from my past impulsive buys. the northbridge coolers in particular.

the first one i bought, the a normal coolermaster heatsink, was a nice silver aluminum thing. RM 30. came home, realised that the motherboard already has a stock heatsink that's even BIGGER than the one i bought.

*doh*

the 2nd one i bought, a coolermaster blue ice thingie, was a funky looking thing. looked like an arcology from SimCity. RM 60. came home, realised that the thing could barely fit onto the motherboard (see previous post).

*doh*

that's just the beginning though. was playing doom 3 a while ago when i hear a distinct pop sound from the computer. immediately i thought something blew, but the game did not halt or jerk or show whatever sign of a burnt component. well, i had to investigate it anyway, so i saved the game, and exited to windows. only then did the expected blue-screen appear.

restarted the pc. nothing. checked the memory sticks. nothing. after looking here and there and sniffing about for any metallic smell, i finally found the cause: one of the hooks holding the heatsink down had snapped, lifting the heatsink from the surface of the chip. so basically, the chip overheated, and forced the system to shut down. thank Intel for all the internal failsafe mechanisms!

*sigh* i knew i shouldn't have tightened those mounting clips too much. the thing is already wedged beneath the CPU heatsink, so it was only a matter of holding it in place. the pc is running fine now, but i've yet to secure the heatsink properly. hope i don't break any more clips!

Posted by myuu at 11:59 PM

October 30, 2005

headache

i just had a go at Gallery 2.0, and it looks fantastic.

however, i don't think i'll be migrating the photo album just yet, as the code looks complicated and i won't be able to create any new tool to read the G2 information. besides, G1 works alright so far.

took my mom to the yacht club today. there was a photography session for the youth teams sailing for the raja muda. due to most of them being tardy / missing, i had to pose as a sailor. :P kinda disheartening when they ask you to look away, preferring to take shots of your back/ass. it's as if i'm not sailor material.

well, that is true. haven't sailed for so long that i've forgotten the ropes. literally.

Posted by myuu at 11:04 PM

a movable type photoblog using gallery

wheeeeee i just love the holidays!

took the entire day sorting out my computer stuff into proper boxes and drawers. there's a lot more to clean up before Hari Raya.

haven't even had a chance to play any games today. :( can't blame the spring cleaning, cuz it all started with me messing around with some MT plugins at work (it was the last day of work before the hols and no one was doing anything seriously). stumbled upon the Gallery Link plugin, which is rather basic as it is, but provides ground for improvement.

so here i am, improving it. :P

to avoid my main page from getting messed up while i experiment with this, i only modified the individual entry template to show the pictures. i'll probably add some 'sample' functionality for the main page later.

In addition to the existing tags, i added the MTGalleryAlbum container tag, which allows me to iterate all photos in a particular album (parameters: album, firstn) and the MTGalleryAlbumPhotoLink variable tag, which does the same thing as MTGalleryLink except for every photo found in the album.

The new container tag basically looks for all the thumbnails in the directory of the specified album. This would slow things down a lot if there are lots of pics in there.

In order to make different albums display with different entries, I had to create a new 'album' entry field via the CustomFields plugin, and to pass that value as a parameter to GalleryLink I had to use the MTTagInvoke plugin.

So i should get a nice list of thumbnails here that are linked to the actual photos on the gallery:

Posted by myuu at 12:03 AM

October 29, 2005

brown-necks?!

just as i leave my house for work today i run into two beatup vans trying to outdo each other in residential territory.

the drivers: somewhat uneducated skinny malays wearing caps. these types always wear caps while driving, don't they?

kinda amazing how they manage to keep those derelict vehicles from falling apart driving so fast.

oh well. on another note, i seem to have botched my leave application for this coming holiday season. i seriously thought that i'd be on leave starting the 31st, but according to the system i'll only be away 2nd onwards.

that means i have to come to work on monday! argh!

but just to double check, i'd better dig up my submitted leave form and see if it's really true. :\

and here's some updates on my pc status. as mentioned before, i've brought down the CPU frequency back to the original so that i can test each overclocked level / component thoroughly. so at the moment, i'm seeing how the overclocked GPU fares. it's currently running at 450MHz/350MHz, which is quite alright. 3dmark03 scores show a +1000 point improvement. and with my SATA drive all nicely set up, BF2 load times have never been faster. so far, i'm always the first person to enter a map after its loaded, so the attack chopper is usually mine, all mine! :D :D :D

Posted by myuu at 8:21 AM

October 25, 2005

more techy stuff

finished transferring all my "goods" from my old hard drive to the new one. it's now unplugged and idling in my chassis at the moment, while i figure out what exactly i should do with it.

with my PSU fan speed on minimum, my computer is soooooo quiet now. means i can make it work while i sleep. :D

think i should get a chassis fan just to help the airflow a bit. as it is now, with the casing closed up, the cpu and mobo idles at about 38 degrees. could be better i think.

anyway, took the car straight to DU today to fix its dire overheating problem. before this i had to refill the radiator every two weeks, but since i took a bad bump hit in bangsar a few days ago, i've had to do that every day pretty much.

seems that the steel pipe that runs through the engine is badly rusted, and one end of it, where the hole is plugged by a rubber stopper (which when removed allows you to flush the cooling system), is so thinned out that water is seeping through. the mechanic had to saw that edge off to plug the leak.

hopefully that would be the end of my overheating woes. but i'll still carry that big bottle of water in my trunk, just in case.

since i was already there, i serviced the car as well. and since i was in pj, i took the liberty of spending the next two hours looking for parking in pj state to pick up my new mykad. daym, i've forgotten the feeling of a newly serviced car. and daym, i feel much better having picked up my mykad after delaying for 3 months (another few days and i'd have to pay a hundred ringgit fine). ooh, and i had my breaks cleaned out as well. maybe the handbrake turn will work this time.

Posted by myuu at 11:39 PM