12:21 by FoxTwo Just hours after the Apple iPad launched, it seemed that the Internet is abuzz and excited about the new product.
I just thought I'd put together a quickie guide what it is and what you can expect with the Apple iPad.
1. Retail packaging
This is what the box looks like
2. The iPad
3. Video Tutorial
Watch the video below on what the product is and how to use it.
This post is not meant to be taken seriously!!
13:48 by FoxTwo
The Last Day Of The Last Year Of The Decade
Image by dirtyfeet via Flickr
Looking back, there's so many things that I want to do in my life that never came to pass, such as the event depicted in the picture.
When you think about it, 10 years is a LONG time. Then again, from another point of view, 10 years seem short.
For example, I can remember vividly the mad rush to fix "Y2K". Back in 1999, IT people were definitely overworked. We weren't allowed to go on long vacations, "just in case" Y2K caused something catastrophic and we had to be recalled for disaster recovery.
On New Year's Eve 1999, we were all in the office during the countdown. Our bosses were all expecting something to screw up, computers to stop working, and the world coming to an end.
Then when the clocked rolled over to 2000, I joked to my colleagues on standby with me in the office, "Where are the flying cars? They're supposed to be here in 2000!"
Yeah, I remember that really clearly, as if it was just yesterday.
Now, it's 10 years to the day later.
10 years ago, I attended my last clubbing activity in China Jump (at Chijmes, basement). Back then I was active in the local IRC community. 10 years ago, I was such a regular there, that the waiters and bouncers knew me on sight. My face was my "VIP card". I could bypass the long snaking queues of people waiting to get in. I never needed to "jio" any friends to go. I would just go and my IRC friends will all be there, as usual.
10 years later, China Jump has ceased operations. Much of those IRC friends have scattered to the winds. I have deleted 90% of them off my phone. The remaining 10% or so, I have them as friends on Facebook.
Now THAT seemed like a long time ago.
Well, here's to the next 10 years of reminiscing.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 EVERYONE!
14:31 by FoxTwo
Devices Will Die When Warranty Expires
My first brush with this phenomenon was back in 2003 or so. Well, the first one I can remember anyway.
Back then, DVD Recorders were new. They replaced the good old faithful VCRs. I bought one at S$399, with an 80GB Harddisk on board, thus I didn't have to put a DVD disc into the drive to record any TV programs.
Exactly 1 year 1 month later, ie, 1 month after the warranty expired, the DVD drive on the player/recorder decided to die. I called up the service centre, described my problem to them and asked for a repair estimate, since the player was out of warranty.
They said, to replace the DVD drive, it would cost me $350. What the hell? Even computer DVD drives cost only $150 at most, at the time! For $40 more I could have gotten a NEW player! To cut a long story short, I went out and bought a TV card and stuck that into my computer. My PC thus became a DVD Recorder for TV programs.
My second experience is with my Digital Ixus 60 camera - 6 months after the warranty expired, it decided to act faulty. At the time, the fault was intermittent, so I lived with it. Now, the fault is persistent. Again I called up the service centre and was told that they could not give even a ballpark estimate as they need to see what was wrong with it first. They would advise me on the cost at the centre after inspection, and will only proceed to repair it after I have given my consent. As of right now, I have yet to send it in, because I can use the camera on my phone for pictures should the need arise - for now.
My third experience, and I'm experiencing it now, is that my faithful and long-time friend, my Seiko watch decided to die on me. I'm not too upset about this one because the watch has served me faithfully for almost 10 years, and the warranty expired on it a long time ago.
For one thing, Seiko's email customer support is almost non-existent. I emailed them and described the fault, and I asked if they could repair it (the crown came out into my hand when I pulled on it to adjust time). Not only did they not answer my question (could they repair it?), the email contained the usual corporate blurb on how they are the authorised dealer in Singapore and their long history of dealing in Seiko watches.
The only ("human?") paragraph that doesn't seem like a template response was that they told me they needed to inspect the watch before they can tell me how much it was going to cost for repairs.
Seems like "We need to inspect the product first before giving an estimate" is now the catchphrase.
Anyway, so off I went, to the Seiko service centre. One thing I must say though - their service centre staff is excellent. They were courteous and friendly, and the "inspection" took about 10 minutes before they advised me of the costs. Seems like my almost-10-year-old watch needed a complete overhaul, plus they would change the crystal on it, for $145. Considering a new Kinetic Auto-Relay watch could cost upwards of $600, that amount seemed fair and reasonable. After all, I will be getting essentially a "new" watch - the innards would be changed, the glass also changed, but the case and bracelet would be the same condition as when I sent it in - scratched and well-worn. Even if I were to refuse repair and buy a new watch (any brand), chances are the new watch will cost more than just $145.
Well, I have to wait 3 weeks while they repair my watch. Not much of a problem since I have other watches to wear in the mean time.
The final story in this entry is about my (relatively) new Samsung LCD TV. Originally it came with a 1 year warranty. At the time, I was considering whether to extend the warranty on it for another 2 years, to make it 3 years total. Finally I decided to do so. I am glad I did.
The TV decided to show me pink and whites in place of any other colour. If the picture was blue or green or black, it would be PINK. Remember monochrome monitors in the good old days? Imagine the colours you were limited to are just PINK and WHITE instead of black and white.
I searched for the warranty on the TV and was glad it's still within the warranty. I called up the service centre and got very quick and friendly responses. The technician would drop by a few days later, but I still recorded a video of what the TV shows me when I turn it on. Just in case the other saying comes true - "Any piece of equipment will work flawlessly when demonstrated in front of the technician".
In any case, the video was unnecessary - the TV still showed me pink and whites when the technician came. He replaced the entire LCD Panel, ie the "screen". The whole repair was over in 30 mins and now my TV works normally again.
It should be said that LCD panels normally don't die so quickly. Look at all your laptops and your modern computer monitors - they still work fine after years in service. I just happen to have arse-luck and gotten a unit with a faulty LCD panel.
Well, that's all for this entry - the story of my dead/dying devices.
10:08 by FoxTwo Ok ok technically it's not my birthday.
It's the first anniversary of this domain - foxtwo.org. I registered this one year ago at the recommendation of xinyun during a conversation.
Incidentally, today is also xinyun's 1st anniversary of her own domain too.
*pops champagne*
19:41 by FoxTwo Today was sort of a whirlwind. I arrived on the dot, right at the start of the business day. The Human Resource Officer had not arrived yet, so the receptionist suggested I wait in the lobby for her arrival.
About 10 minutes later, a lady brought a huge burly gentleman out to greet me. I was told this is the head honcho, the big cheeze. He's da man! So after a quick round of handshakes, I was brought in to see the rest of the crew. More handshakes, and quick introductions. Then it was down to business.
Within 10 mins, one of the guys said - "Good timing, we got a meeting to get to!" and whisked me away offsite to a high-level pow-wow session with some business partners and vendors, to "give me an overview" of the upcoming project.
It was only 8.45am or so, and I haven't even been processed by the HR yet!
We came back to the office near to lunchtime. Finally I got processed by the HR and was "given back" to the IT department. Since nothing much was going on, my "guardian" (which is a tall American guy) and I proceeded to lunch, and thereafter went shopping for a phone, seeing as he just got into Singapore a couple of days ago and he needed a local number to be contactable.
In the afternoon, a big pile of project documents was placed on my desk and "it would be good" if I went through it so that I have an idea of the scope of the project as well as the work involved. When I say a big pile, I mean big. Easily the size of 3 reams of A4 paper stacked. Needless to say, it wasn't light reading.
What I can say is - the "foreign talents" here in the new place are truly talented. They know exactly what's going on, and what they need to do to "make it work". They don't "throw smoke" and if they don't know something, they will admit they do not know and they'll find out and get back to me. Talking to them is definitely nowhere near frustrating like it was in my previous workplace. The majority of them are from Europe and USA, but we have a couple there that are from China and India.
Towards the end of the day, my laptop arrived. Brand spanking new too, not an old, re-formatted, used one like what most other companies would do.
This was actually one of my better "first day" experiences with a new job and company. It wasn't too boring, aside from the big stack of documents that I had to read through. By the end of the day, I had gone through half anyway, so I guess by tomorrow I'd have a birds-eye-view of the whole thing, and thus, what my role is in the whole thing.
13:47 by FoxTwo You know, it feels a little strange.
I have been out of a job for a while. The transition from slavery to free man was easy. However, the reverse I suspect may not be that easy.
Previously I had been pretty productive even when I was out of a job. When I went out of a job in 2005, I actually learnt how to make machinima, as well as Flash and Director. This time around, not productive at all. All I did was just play games all day long. Well in the initial parts of my "freedom" I was actually pretty active in blogging. It was later on that my gaming bug bit me and I kinda got lost in games.
All along, my work life had always been a little weird - all my working locations have always been in far-flung corners of Singapore. Tuas, Woodlands, Changi... you name it, I've been there. My new work location will be, for the first time EVER, be in town. This would probably be the first time I ever needed less than 20 mins to get to work (and home again). I have gotten used to needing an hour or more to go to work - I'd climb on the bus and just sleep till I arrive at the office. The downside to this is that I couldn't meet friends at "6pm in town" for dinner or whatever, because THEY worked in town, I didn't. I needed at least an hour to get from my office to town to meet them.
Well yeah today's the final day I can laze around all day and do nothing in the comfort of my own home. I start a new job tomorrow, and my lazing around will have to be scheduled to start after 6pm.
Labels: random
00:45 by FoxTwo
You Are Doomed To Failure, And Here's Why
Image via WikipediaOne of the more common expressions you hear people say is:"Naw, I'm too old to do that anymore".
... or variants thereof.
You know what? You are never too old. That phrase is used by people who are resistant to change. They are comfortable, they are in their comfort zone. They just don't want to step out and try something new.
For example, for people born in the 40's, during the war, they never knew about computers when they were growing up. Computers in our modern-day incarnations never existed back then. The first time they ever touched a computer would be in their 30's and 40's (late 1970s to early 1980s). They learnt, they coped.
Just because something wasn't experienced in your growing-up years doesn't mean you can never ever do it. I personally never learnt to swim till I was an adult. Even better, I never understood Accounting till I started working, and saw how the numbers moved around inside the computers. It was THEN that I realised how simple Accounting really is. Yet, I flunked that subject in school.
Then there's a variant of the people described above - the defeatists.
"I'm so old, what if I can't do it? What if it fails?"
Dude, you'll never know if you don't try it. So what if it fails? You still learn something - you learnt not to do it that way again. The crap about "if I do something I will do something right, the first time" is just that - crap. If you never tried it you'll never get good at it. It's just a lame excuse to not try something new. They have just defeated themselves without even trying.
That's why there's this other saying - "practice makes perfect". Once you have tried something new and you keep doing it, eventually you're going to get really good at it, since you're conditioning your brain to do this activity constantly, and your brain will store the "pattern" in your memory.
It's sometimes frustrating to talk to people like that. You have an idea, and they shoot you down all the time. "No it won't work". "Nah too troublesome". "You're wasting your time on this". How much negativity can you take?
The ultimate people are those that you present proof, facts and figures, and they still will not trust you. It's like they're telling you "don't confuse me with facts! I know it's been like this for eons and none of your facts and proofs are going to change my beliefs".
Sometimes I think the old saying is true - if you hang around positive people, you'll have a higher chance of succeeding. They won't tell you it can't be done. They can see the potential of your idea or product, and they can see how great it can become if enough work is put into it.
ps - today's entry is not about anybody in particular. Don't speculate. It's just something that has been bugging me for a long time.
23:39 by FoxTwo 15 May 2008 is supposed to be "Unite For Human Rights" day, as Blogcatalog puts it. Before we go into anything too "deep" or serious, I request that you view the video below:
Funny? Perhaps. To me it is. In this part of the world, parents beat their kids. The western concept of "sending the kid to the room" has yet to catch on. The way that comedian Russell Peters put it across is hilarious, but it does ring true.
So what does this have to do with "human rights"?
As I see it, "human rights" is a set of rules (or "guidelines" may be the more appropriate term) by a group of people stating what should and should not be done to other human beings. Their "guidelines" stem from their own beliefs. They see that in other parts of the world, people do not behave like they do, hence they declare that the people there have little or no "human rights".
Just like parents beating their kids.
Sending a child to his/her room might work in the US, and it might work in Canada, but it won't work for other places in the world. For one thing, many children in other parts of the world don't have rooms (as Russell Peters put it across so hilariously).
When the pro-democracy movement in 1989 at Tianamen Square in Beijing was crushed brutally by the Chinese government, a huge outcry against "human rights" was heard from the western quarter of the world. Yes it's brutal. Yes it was devastating.
But, if you look at it, it was exactly the traditional way how a Chinese "parent" might approach a rebellious child - whack the guy till he gets some sense into him. The Chinese government was thus, "beating their children" to put them back in line, by sending in the army (the much-feared "cane").
Having the US government (and other governments in the world) imposing sanctions against the Chinese government is akin to your next-door neighbour coming over and telling you that you shouldn't beat your kids. How would you react?
Typically, one would say "Don't teach me how to discipline my child!".
China has won the privilege to host the 2008 Olympics. Here comes the "human rights" organisations of the world trying to tell China how to treat its "children". You think it'd do any good? What will happen is that China will tighten security measures and be even more brutal, since an "outsider" is coming in to "interfere" with domestic affairs.
I'm not even going to touch on the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, which partly happened under the banner of "human rights".
Human Rights, the concept, cannot be forcefully driven across to everyone. There are social norms and traditional barriers to overcome first, before this can be achieved. Education, while a slow process, will eventually change the mindset. However, a large forceful demonstration against a ruling government will almost always result in failure.
Case in point - just try holding a protest in Singapore. Within minutes, you will see a heapload of "ang chia" (Singapore's version of SWAT trucks and riot police) appearing to "maintain order". Human rights? You can talk about it in the lockup.
Last point to note - I am not for or against Human Rights. My point is just that the concept needs to be taught slowly, not driven across forcefully.
Labels: Human rights, random
13:18 by FoxTwo
You know a guy is REALLY sick when he goes to see a doc and doesn't require MC. After all, not working, no need medical leave :)
Yeah, I got hit by some unknown virus when I went out for 3 hours to Sim Lim on Thursday. I only went out ONCE, and in 3 hours I caught some potent virus and I have no clue how I managed to do it.
So, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent mostly unconscious. I popped some tablets and tried to sleep the thing off. For people who have been following my Twitter tweets, they'd know I have been battling fever for 3 straight days.
Finally I couldn't take it anymore and dragged myself off to the doc's. On a Monday morning too. Yeah that's how bad I felt.
As usual, the routine questions. What happened? Where does it hurt. Ok boring stuff.
Final question - "How many days MC you need?"
Me - "None"
The look on the doc's face - priceless. Wish I had taken a pic :)
He was totally floored. Here I was, on a Monday Morning, where the usual crowd see him to get MCs so they can skip work. And here's a guy, in-between jobs, seeing him.
"You must be really sick", he said.
And, he gave me the strong stuff.
Thank you for your kind attention. I'm off to bed.... *yawn*
Labels: random
13:11 by FoxTwo
Those Irritating Telemarketers
I was woken up today by a pretty interesting, if not irritating, telemarketer. Lord knows what she's selling, but she prattled on like a machinegun and I swear she never stopped to breathe.... not even once!
You know the type, I'm sure. They never asked if it's a "convenient time" to speak to you. They just ask for your name, then they introduce themselves (nobody ever bothers to remember their names 99% of the time anyway), then they launch into their sales pitch.
From what I can gather (remember, I got woken up by the call), they're peddling some home theatre system do-hickey, and it's supposed to be FREE. Yes, the word "Free" was thrown about very freely in the entire conversation. Remember, she didn't stop to breathe, so that's a lot of "free" words thrown inside.
Then, when she finished her scripted sales pitch, I could finally say "thanks but not interested". The next thing she said was "why? what is the reason? it's free!"
Why? Cuz I'm not interested!
So I asked her back "When you see a dress and then you don't like it, and even if it's free, would you take it?" she said "no". So I said "what's the reason?"
She said "Don't like lor"
My reply - "EXACTLY".
Good thing she gave up. Or else I'd have given her a runaround. After all I'm jobless and I have alot of time to play with people like that hahahah!
Note to all telemarketers out there - PAUSE once in a while. Don't launch into a sales pitch. TALK to the potential customer. Once you start launching into a sales pitch it turns people off almost immediately. As soon as you stop to breathe, the prospect will, 99% of the time, tell you "not interested". Some won't even wait for you to breathe. They'll cut you off mid-sentence.
Labels: quirks, random, Singapore, Singaporeans
21:30 by FoxTwo
What Made Me Get Into Blogging?
It's a question you should ask yourself too, once in a while anyway. This question was asked of me a couple of times by people in ping.sg though.
How did YOU get started in blogging?
For some people, they're just "jumping on the bandwagon", because they hear that you can make oodles of money from blogging.
For other people, it's a way to vent their frustrations, be it against the world, the govt, or even their own husbands/wives.
So how did I get started? What made me do it?
Well, for the answer, we must now visit the pages of ancient history (ancient history in computer terms means more than 10 yrs ago). I belong to the age of dinosaurs. Pre-1990's we were connected via modems at slow-poke speeds of 300bps, 1200bps, 2400bps etc. We chatted via Bulletin Boards, which many people in Singapore run, out of the goodness of their hearts. Nothing was commercialised. No money was involved. Files uploaded and downloaded via BBSes were all compressed with .ARC at first, then later on a better one called .LZH appeared. Soon after, the author of .ARC made a new compression algorithm, and called it .ZIP (recognise it now?) and it became wildly popular, in part due to the reputation of his original work on .ARC.
When Internet started to become prevalent, the gahmen decided that BBSes were a threat to Singnet, and started to require all BBS operators to "register" with them to get a "license". Notice how suddenly this only became a requirement when Singnet started? Naturally, almost every single BBS in Singapore closed almost overnight.
It was back around 1994 or so, that I first got "connected" to the Internet via Singnet's Kermit technology. Yeah back then I was on a text-based interface connection to the Internet. So were many people. Netscape (affectionately known as "Mozilla") was king, IE was an unknown browser that Microsoft was trying to promote, and people who wanted to know if their friends were online FINGERed them.
So, being an ex-owner of a BBS, I needed my own "space" on the Internet. Hence, I did my first webpage and uploaded it to my free space that Singnet offered... an incredible 1MB of space! The webpage was simple, no graphics, just text.
Soon I found many of my old BBS friends had their own homepages too. But, there was something missing. We needed to write stuff, to vent. Back on our old BBS systems we could always write "articles" and post them up on the BBS, and people who logged in can read them. So, I created a "soapbox" area on my homepage. A place to read my hand-crafted HTML page about stuff I wanted to write about. Yeah, "blogs" used to be known as "soapboxes" back then. Why a "soapbox"? Because in western countries, if you had a problem with something, you took a soapbox (ie a small crate) out to a street corner, stand on it, and start speaking. People will stop walking and listen to you.
As the years rolled on, I jumped from Singnet to Pacific Internet (and now currently on Starhub). As I jumped, my "free web space" address changed too, and lost readers. Registering our own domain was unthinkable - it was US$50.00 (damn I wish I had registered google.com back then!). Eventually I found a FREE webhost that is independent of my ISP and I had a whopping 10MB of space! Beat that, Singnet/Pacnet! However my joy was short-lived. The free homepage provider closed down and I had to move my pages AGAIN.
By now, a new phenomenon had started to sweep the Internet world. There was this new thing called a "web log", or a "blog". People could actually write stuff and have it put up onto the Internet, without knowing a lick of HTML. I wanted one of those!
I didn't find one till about 2003 or 2004, called Blogger.com. Even after locating it, and thinking it was a perfect way to continually update my site without me hand-crafting HTML pages, I still didn't really use it much. Notice that Blogger had been around a couple of years prior to me discovering it - I just didn't really look for one till it found me one day :)
So, slowly I started to backdate all my old soapbox entries onto the blogger platform till about 2001 (I gave up on those before 2001). As you can see from my Blogger profile, I joined Blogger in 2004, but I have entries starting at 2001 and very sparse entries between 2001 and 2004. Reason being, it was hard work hand-crafting HTML pages just to post my thoughts, so I didn't do it regularly. In fact if I remember right, I didn't post anything at all in 2002.
So, fast forward a few years. In 2006 I slowly started to pick up on my "blogging", but I have left my homepage alone too long. It looked dated, using HTML technologies from pre-2000. Traffic to my "blog" or even my "homepage" was practically nil. Usually all I see are just Google and Yahoo search hits. I needed a revamp, but never found the energy to do it.
By this time I was slowly but surely starting to read blogs, and discovering RSS. Making money from my blog was the furthest thing from my mind (I still don't depend on my blog to make money now). What I needed were readers. I started to hang out in forums, giving links to my homepage and blog. I started to write comments in other people's blogs. That only helped my traffic situation a little. From under 10 hits a day, it increased to just under 20. Almost 100% increase, not bad huh?
Then in 2007, on one of the more obscure blogs I happen to stumble into, featured a prominent ping.sg button. Clicking on it, I registered.
And the rest, as they say, is history :)
23:58 by FoxTwo
Cops Trying To Catch Speeding Motorists - BEWARE!
Well the good thing is that I don't own a car, so I will hardly ever get caught for speeding. Well, only when I rent a car, anyway.
But, for policemen, part of their duties could very well be catching errant speeding motorists on our roads, in a bid to make roads "safer" for all of us. I truly salute them for the work they do.
However, if you're a traffic police officer, take heed of the warning presented below:
If you get killed on duty by a missile, I wonder if your insurance will pay up?
16:00 by FoxTwo
Sexual Harassment At The Office
The other day while at the pub, we were just talking to a female customer whom we've never seen before. That doesn't mean anything ok? Just saying she's not a regular patron there. Anyway, she looked agitated at the time.
Eventually, when alcohol loosened her up (alcohol does that, you know? It's just one of alcohols' many magical properties) she finally told us an incredible story.
Debbie (name changed to protect identity) had been working in Company Z for about a year or so. Since she was new, she worked hard. She'd do overtime willingly, never complaining. Debbie is also not a bad looker (trust me). Even with her numerous late nights at the office, she still has many pending "appointments" with male suitors.
So anyway, there's this particular manager at her office (not her upline manager) who seemed to have taken a liking to her. Well, her and every other female colleague from what Debbie said. Whenever this manager came around to hand stuff over to any of the girls, he'd stand very close to them. When he approaches Debbie for any sort of "work-related" issues, he'd stroke her arm, or smell her hair, or rub her neck.
To Debbie, that's harassment. Initially when it happened, she just started to shrink away from this manager. Everytime he came around, she'd squeeze herself as much as possible into a tiny ball. When he came to her table, she'd lean away from him. Yet, he persisted and continued to stroke/smell her. Debbie could only confide in her female colleagues, who confirmed similar things have happened to them too. The only thing Debbie could do back then, was to talk to her own boss.
Eventually. there came an office meeting with the Human Resource department. That was when Debbie brought up his behaviour. Of course, the manager denied all the allegations, saying he was just being friendly and wanted to put the girls at ease.
The best part is, he didn't stop. He'd continue the stroking and sniffing, standing very very very close, touching them, holding their hands etc. Debbie couldn't take it anymore, and called the cops. Yeah she really did!
Company Z actually supported Debbie's actions, instead of trying to sweep everything under the carpet like what many other companies would do. Although this might be "an internal problem", it's affecting many people.
So anyway, the HR department gave an ultimatum to the accused manager. "Resign on your own, or we terminate you."
He quit the next day.
That was the day we saw Debbie at the pub, and that was the day Debbie said she'll finally be able to sleep peacefully. She said she'd had nightmares eversince she got harassed at work, and had not been able to sleep properly for the past 3 or 4 months.
Moral of the story (in Singlish) - All you chee hongs at the office, wanna tackle girls hor, tackle with mouth only ok? don't tackle with hands. Sure kena mata one, especially if your target is Debbie!
In all seriousness, sexual harassment can happen to men too, not just women. Just like rape, it happens to men too. The thing is, when it DOES happen to men, they're too embarassed to talk about it, let alone report it. Men are supposed to be macho, suave, and not meek little sheep.
Labels: random, workplace ethics
19:44 by FoxTwo
The Aftermath of Mas Selamat's Escape
Simply Jean has posted the official findings from Straits Times regarding the escape of Mas Selamat, 2 months ago. At the time, there were jokes aplenty about the guards at the detention centre not having watched movies, of how prisoners escape from prisons.
Mas Selamat climbed onto the ledge located just below the ventilation window, pushed open the ventilation window and squeezed himself through it
So, one can see that there weren't any grilles at all on the toilet "ventilation window". After reading this part, I truly think they need more movie time :)
Then there's this part:
No one was actively monitoring the two CCTV cameras covering the outer and inner perimeter fences at the rear of the Family Visitation Block.
No one was monitoring?! I'd like that kind of job too.. to be paid to watch the monitors but actually not do the work I'm paid to do.
Why the heck install CCTVs anyway? Besides, nothing was mentioned about improving this part of the flaw. No recommendations to install motion-sensors or vibration sensors on the fences, for example.
In a re-enactment requested by the COI, a GC guard took 49 seconds to climb out of the ventilation window in the urinal cubicle, scale the fence, climb onto the roof of the enclosed staircase and walkway, and jump over the converged perimeter fences.
49 seconds by a combat-fit guard. Mas Selamat, who walks with a limp, probably took 2 minutes, if not more. Whatever the time frame, one thing is clear - the layout of the place sucks. If they had fences, weren't there guards on duty at guard towers? Do they even have guard towers? Perhaps they thought the place was a "Detention Centre" rather than a "prison" thus didn't post guards up at the fences. It goes to show - we view murderers and rapists as more dangerous than terrorists. We lock THOSE up in prisons with guard towers and where guards patrol the fences and the prison grounds.
There's nothing much to say about their "recommendations" except for the last one - to relocate the detention centre to Changi Prison. Should have done that a long time ago. Then, they can retrench some of the guards and tap onto the guards already working at Changi Prison :) Purely in the spirit of outsourcing, of course.
Labels: random, Rant, Singapore
15:30 by FoxTwo
MC King Is Dead, Long Live The MC Prince!
This is my final working week at my current workplace. By some sheer twist of fate (some might call it bad luck), I had to go and fall sick. Since I'm already sick, and since this is the final work week for me, I decided "to heck with it" and called in sick. After all, this is the final time I can claim medical fees, might as well claim now before I "ROD" on Friday.
It was a little funny this morning. Funny as in "ha ha" funny.
Doc says "I let you choose. You want drowsy or non-drowsy medication?"
It was a no-brainer question, since having drowsy medication means I'd need medical leave for a day at least. So naturally I said "Drowsy!" and proceeded to negotiate for a 2-day medical leave.
5 minutes later, I walked out of the clinic pretty happy, because the doc was grinning and I got my 2 days medical leave.
So I get home, got onto MSN, and told a friend I'm on MC for 2 days ("MC" is the local slang for medical leave). Immediately her reply was "wow, you MC King!!"
Seeing as MC King is dead (MC King was a local celebrity, a Chinese comedian and compere. He passed away a couple of months back), I said "choy!! MC King is dead ok?"
Then, her reply is "Ok ok, so you're MC Prince!"
And that's how today's entry got its title :)
Ok, need sleep, time to slink off back into bed.
Labels: random
00:42 by FoxTwo
Good Friday, Pretty Ok Saturday
For me it was weird having a "Good Friday" in March. Can't ever remember it ever falling in March.
Friday was pretty good for me. Spent 75% of it unconscious. Actually even after I woke up in the mid-afternoon, my eyes were droopy again and I wanted to crawl back into bed for more snooze time. It didn't help that it rained too. The only notable incident on Friday was the movie they showed on TV at 10pm, Starsky and Hutch. Ben Stiller looks a little "fat" as Starsky, and Snoop Dog is really cool as Huggy Bear. Again, like all modern remakes of old TV-shows, the original cast turned up at the end to give the new stars the keys to the new Turino. It was great seeing David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser again. A little fatter, more white hairs, but still recogniseable as the original stars.
Saturday came around, just like that. Friday went missing really quickly.
Since I just picked up Cabal Online at Challenger, I spent a huge chunk of Saturday trying it out. Made 2 characters on their servers. Got both of them up to level 10 really quickly.
After mucking around with their servers, I thought it was high time to get back to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. I don't want to leave it hanging again till god-knows-when again like Crysis or Bioshock. Ok enough about games in here. I should be writing about them in my gaming blog instead.
Sorry, nothing really much happened the past couple of days. I'm a boring guy, yeah.
Labels: random
11:30 by FoxTwo
In densely-populated places like Singapore and Hong Kong, we are definitely bound to encounter inconsiderate people. Take a look at stomp.com.sg and you will see what I mean. People putting their bags on the seats in MRT and buses, even my own entry on kids blasting music via speakers on buses etc.
Naturally when I'm with my buddies out at the pub drinking, subjects like this comes up. My buddies have some pretty creative ways to handle such people.
MRT
Situation - you're getting off at this station, the one the train is stopping at. Before the doors even open, you see a horde of people outside waiting to rush in without waiting for you to alight first. They are obviously not standing behind the "Y-box" to "queue up".
Solution - whip out your handy dandy cellphone that has a built-in camera. Start taking pictures and make sure flash is on (so the people outside can see the flash). As soon as a couple of flashes go off, see the crowd in front of you part like Moses parting the Red Sea. Everyone's trying to shy away from the camera :)
Solution 2 - If you have an umbrella, those with a long handle type, just stick it out in front of you, and the crowd will part too.
Situation - Train is crowded, and there's a seat beside an auntie (typically it's an auntie that does this), but she puts her bag on the seat and is obviously not about to remove it so someone else can sit down.
Solution - ignore the presence of the bag. Just move to sit down, as if the bag isn't there. The auntie will hastily grab her bag before your butt lands on it.
Situation - train is crowded, almost packed like sardines. One inconsiderate guy is leaning on the grab pole, thus other people cannot hold on to it for support.
Solution - push your hand into his back and grab the pole too. Make sure you fidget alot if he still doesn't move away from the pole. He'll be so uncomfortable at all the squirming and especially when you ram your hand into his back that he'll vacate the pole.
Bus
Situation - kids blasting their ipods/handphones, "sharing their music" with everyone else.
Solution - Here
Situation - bus is almost full, and there's only 1 seat left. The guy at the seat is seated at the outer edge, and is or pretending to be asleep. The seat beside him, the one at the window, is thus empty and unoccupied.
Solution - Wake him up. Whether or not he's truly asleep, he'll have to either move inside or make way for you to go in.
Well, at the very least, this list makes for interesting reading. These methods aren't guaranteed to work, and use them at your own risk/discretion! Why risk? There's no way to tell if the guy you're doing it to won't get violent and bop you on the head *grin*
16:19 by FoxTwo
In the continuation of this saga, my login ID is now fixed. However, they still left out a couple of things to grant me access to.
Not relishing another round of "calling the right people", I just went ahead and added the corresponding entries to my ID and just informed them that I did. Waiting for them to get around to adding it for me, as per stipulated procedures, will mean another waiting time of 3 days.
So, after adding in the right access details, I logged in, and came face to face with an empty email account. Nothing is in my inbox. I wonder if anybody had actually sent me anything the past couple of days when my name got listed in the address books again. If they had, I'd really like to see the error message they got, because I have no idea what they screwed up now.
After a little digging around (since I can't do any "work" anyway), I realised why my inbox is empty - the geniuses created a NEW mailfile for me, instead of using the existing one on the server.
Ah well, I'll use the existing mailfile as a "backup" then. The downside to this is, I have re-create all my filtering rules again. I have several people that I automatically blacklist - ie those always send me useless company-wide announcements like "Bowling Night!" or "Departmental Dinner!".
All which are irrelevant because I'm a contract staff - these events do not involve me.
Right now, the only stuff left to do on this whole saga is to reconfigure some network folder permissions and such. Stuff that I can easily do, but am currently not very motivated to do it. I mean, after all, I'm going to end my contract in 2 weeks. I don't foresee a need to access those folders anytime soon.
10:16 by FoxTwo
Previously on FoxTwo's Ramblings,
- My work IDs went missing
- My email ID got activated, but the login one was still disabled
And now, the story continues.....
Today, the login ID is truly missing. Yup, doesn't exist. Again. I called up a friend who is in the Wintel team, and he did a search for me. Yeah he confirmed that it does not exist.
My email ID is, however, alive and kicking. I'm so glad that important mails can get to my inbox now! It'll make the people who anxiously sent me email hoping I can act on it fast, to feel better about finally being able to find me on the address books.
Too bad they have to wait till my login ID gets fixed.
So, here goes another round of calling the "relevant people" again...
13:07 by FoxTwo
The Continuing Saga Of The Missing ID
Since the SLA for ID creation is 5 business days, they had until Monday, 10th March to fix it. On Friday, 7th March, I received notification around 5.30pm that my ID was ready. Yes indeed, they waited till the END of the work-day to tell me my ID was "ready". *clap clap*
So, I tried to login.
And, I laughed my head off.
They enabled it but still listed it as expiring on 29th Feb 2008. So, I still couldn't log in. However, my name is now listed in the address books of the email system, so people can finally send me work-related email.
Except that I can't login to read 'em.
Going by the book, I notified the relevant people again. This time, the head honcho of the Wintel team says he'll personally investigate, and send me an email to inform me when it's resolved.
Send me email... *chuckle*
I had to hold back my sarcasm while reminding him that although my email works, I can't login to read them. That is the problem I was calling him about in the first place.
This reminds me of the time I was fed up with Standard Chartered Bank, and I cut up my credit card and sent it back to them via their Business Reply envelop, to terminate ALL my accounts with them. A month later, Standard Chartered Bank billed me for "membership" for the credit card. I called them up, told 'em I cut up the card and sent it back to them via their own envelop. The lady on the other end said:
"Sorry sir, we didn't receive it. Can you send it again?"
BUAHAHAHAH!
"Sure, give me a new card, I'll cut it up and send it back to you again".
Man, Singapore sure is a funny place to work in.
23:30 by FoxTwo
No ID, Can't Do Work, Slack Lor!
The company I work in, lost my login ID :)
Yup, it's missing from the servers, the email address books do not list me at all. I'm "locked out" from my own work PC. If anybody ever tried to email me, they'd get a "No Such Receipient" error.
Now, since I'm an IT geeky guy, one would think it would be a simple matter of me re-entering all the required credentials into the right servers to get me back into the system, right?
Technically yes. However, I'm not lifting a finger. Why? First of all, it's not my fault they "misplaced" my ID. There's a big confusion about my "end of service" date, and they keep thinking it's 29 Feb when it should be 29 March when the ID expires and get deleted (28th is my last working day, hence 29th is the "cleanup day").
So, apparently, someone was cock-eyed last year in 2007 and either wrote "02" as the month incorrectly on the form (real paper form) to extend my login validity for one more year, or the one doing the login ID maintenance went cock-eyed and read it as 02 instead of 03 (March).
Besides, I'm not part of the Wintel team. I'm designated as the "Unix guy". Since this login problem is a Windows thing, it ain't my problem man.
It's so nice being able to do NOTHING right in front of the boss, and he knows he can't do a thing about it simply because, I have no login ID to do ANYTHING! No emails, no forms, no MS Word, no Excel, nada. I'm basically sitting in the office just yakking away on MSN via my Palm and trusty 3G phone. Since I can't get into the system, I depend solely on my colleagues to tell me what pending jobs are to be executed at which times on the Unix servers.
And, my colleagues being VERY nice people, know that I'm already in my ROD mood, hardly ever tell me to do "work".
The downside is tho, I got no Internet access (however limited it is with the rampant blocking. Even Chillycrap's blog is blocked). I can't blog, and I can't visit other people's blogs. The upside is, I finally managed to find LOADS of time to chat on MSN via my Palm TX :) Yes my Palm has a web browser but I sure am not going to surf the Internet on a 320x480 screen! Besides, yakking on MSN is taking up most of my time nowadays.
Knowing the SLA (Service Level Agreement) on Windows Login ID creation is 5 working days, I'm not expecting to login anytime soon till next Monday, at the soonest. Too bad I can't not go to the office, dammit. Boss tells me I still got root access to the Unix servers so I can still do my work ("as long as my colleagues tell me what's pending", I thought to myself).
Labels: random
13:38 by FoxTwo In the modern world, we want things to be convenient.
Like cell phones, TV with remotes, and all that. Even on our cell phones, we want hands-free options, like a wired earpiece, or a bluetooth earpiece.
And, on rainy days, imagine holding an umbrella, walking along, then your phone rings. If you didn't have a hands-free kit like a wired or bluetooth earpiece, imagine trying to juggle one hand holding the umbrella, and the other hand picking up the phone while trying to carry your briefcase.
So, in the tradition of everything going hands-free, a company in the USA has redesigned the traditional umbrella to be hands-free, and calls it nubrella.
Very space-age looking eh? I bet if you slap on a silver jumpsuit and airtanks, it could even become a space-suit :)
It's supposed to be flip-proof too, ie if the wind blew under the nubrella, it will not flip inside-out like normal umbrellas.
Since flying cars are late (it's already 2008!), at least this sci-fi looking contraption helps to maintain the image as seen in movies, about the 21st century - people walking around with weird clothes and hats (in this case, umbrellas).
Oh if you want to buy this, it's like US$49.95 or so. Go for it!
00:01 by FoxTwo I had a nice romantic dinner date with Daphne and xinyun slated for tonight. Then, xizor volunteered to be the bright spotlight, so he came along too.
Hahah ok I'm kidding. We met for dinner, cos xinyun wanted to show me a nice place with great brownies (I know I know, fattening!). The food is not too bad, and the price, pretty darn cheap, considering its location. The price printed on the menu is what you pay for the food. No extras, no cess, no service charge, nada.
Ok, enough about my dinner with 2 amazing ladies and one spotlight.
The interesting thing is that we noticed an upside-down goldfish swimming in a fishtank near the restaurant. It's not dead, it's not dying. It's just upside down. Proof? Watch the short video below:
Sorry for the lousy quality of the video. I didn't bring my real camera out, and only had my handphone with me. Yeah I know, 3GP videos on handphones suck. Well, at least the goldfish is visibly upside down and alive.
xinyun was saying that she'd seen this a month or so ago, and it was also upside down back then. So either the fish came from Australia, or from India (since heroes in Indian movies take a heck of a long time to die).
Ok, I'll see if it's still alive next month or so, if I ever pass by that place again.
14:45 by FoxTwo Today, my colleague decided to drive to Changi Vilage for lunch.
Remembering the (failed?) outing from the ping.sg forums, I decided to see if I could locate the Ayam Penyet ("flattened chicken") place and check it out. It wasn't hard to locate it.
Yeah, I think this is the place (Edit - ok Daphne just confirmed that this is NOT the place where the pingsters wanted to go for the gathering). It's the only prominent Ayam Penyet place in Changi Village, so I hope I got it right. We all trooped in after looking at the menu, and picked a nice spacious spot inside the air-conditioned interior.
We ordered after looking at the menu, and drinks came first. I ordered a Chendol:
and, my Ayam Penyet arrived soon after:
Looks good eh?
There were a couple of surprises for us though. For example, rice doesn't come with the dishes. They are "extra-orders" at 50 cents each. A couple of my colleagues were grumbling about it.
However, they gave us complimentary fruits after the meal, which I guess makes it a little more bearable for the surprise of having to pay for rice.
Ambience-wise, it's kinda like a little Haagan-Daaz shop, nice and cozy, would be a great place for a chat. But, I doubt a ping.sg outing would be a good idea to the place - too small to accomodate more than 15 or 20 people inside, and maybe another 10 outside.
The Ayam Penyet itself isn't too bad, but the chilli is incredibly hot! Even the Malay colleagues were perspiring while they were eating. To the outlet's credit, they DO offer a "mild" version of their chilli, only if we had asked for it. By default, they give the strong one :)
09:49 by FoxTwo Wow it's been almost a week since I last wrote in here.
As usual, Chinese New Year Day 1 was the usual gluttony day. Bah Kwa, pineapple tarts, love letters, all manner of traditional junk food were consumed. The problem is compounded by the night before - the "Reunion Dinner". This year my brother decided to host it at a restaurant instead, so we got an 8-course dinner instead of the usual stuff my mom would have made.
One thing I can say though - having "Reunion Dinner" at a restaurant isn't my thing. It's just me I guess, since from young, it's always mom making the Reunion Dinner, and we have never ever had it at a restaurant. I hate crowds, and I hate queues. Yeah you can imagine the hordes of people there at the restaurant. Gotta queue to get in, and gotta wait for waiters to be "freed up" so they can get the next dish for us.
The following days were spent relatively peacefully. Reinstalled Windows XP again, and finally installed The Movies, which means I can make machinimas again! Previously I've only used MMORPGs to make machinimas. This will be my first time attempting to make one using The Movies. The game itself isn't too bad too, although not really "my type" of games. Too much micro-managing to be "fun" to me.
This being the first Monday after Chinese New Year, we have people "missing" from the office, as expected. I should have been one of those too dammit. Alas, I can't, since the boss already gave us a day off last Wednesday in addition to the 2 days holiday.
Dangit I wanna be home!
Labels: random
08:50 by FoxTwo
Cute Life Partner Wanted. Apply Within
Wanted, cute female partner. Apply by leaving comments
Must Haves:
- Nice furry coat
- Good teeth
- Energetic
Must Not Haves:
- Lousy sense of smell
- Fussy about food
Don't Mind If Have:
- Kids from a previous partner, as long as they aren't with her now
Don't Mind if Don't Have:
- Money
- Car
- Credit Card
- Own cage
- Personalised peeing spot
Uh yeah, this want-ad is for my hamster.... what'd you think it was?!
11:54 by FoxTwo First Of Feb.
First day of a new month.
First day of a new beginning.
I'm no longer boozing. All bottles ran out. I'm no longer gonna hit the pubs on Friday nights. Maybe it's time I finally read that thick book I bought in 2004 but haven't touched yet. Or watch DVDs. Nah, I'll go read that book.
After my workout of course.
My PC at home is also starting to act up. Maybe this weekend is a good time to reformat.
Incidentally, Facebook made a new "ignore all" button for your overwhelming number of requests, but they could have gone a little further and added a checkbox beside each request, so that you can select it and click a "Ignore selected requests" button. There ARE some requests I do not want to ignore, you know.
Also, Facebook app developers need to be tied up and shot. I hate apps that tell you to invite 20 friends before you can see your results. Those get the immediate boot from me, and I will never install them again.
I also wish there'll be a blacklist somewhere on Facebook where the next time the app you blacklisted get sent to you as a request, it's an automatic ignore. And, tell the idiot who sent it to you that you ignored it.
Yeah I'm gonna get onto Facebook and rant at them.
Labels: random
11:07 by FoxTwo
We're Boozing Tonight So We Can Quit Boozing
As I mentioned, I'm seriously thinking of giving up drinking - regular drinking I mean. Social ones, maybe. However I won't be drinking "every Friday" anymore. That's my first step.
But, I still have leftover bottles out there. Tonight, a friend of mine was saying we should go drink. Ok, good time to finish up some leftover bottles.
It's so ironic - we're going drinking so I can stop drinking....
17:26 by FoxTwo Something in my life just went topsy turvy. Well, not just one "something" but several of them. It's serious enough to make me re-evaluate some stuff, and do some re-prioritizing. Might even give up drinking and my usual Friday Nights too :(
Might not blog for abit. Or a long bit.
Labels: random
00:17 by FoxTwo I was just passing by Merdurian's blog and she had this pretty interesting collage of which celebrity she resembled. So, I went to the website and ran through the whole process with my picture.
It was interesting to see the result actually. I'm actually amazed that the software can recognise my face and go search for a celebrity look-alike for me.
Wanna see who I resemble? Just look at the pic below:
Cool eh?
14:19 by FoxTwo Ok so I'm gonna get a little picky today.
Sometimes, it just irks me so much that Singaporeans, majority of which are "educated" with English as the first language, can still write and speak so differently.
A long time ago, I wrote this. In a sense, this post is like a "followup" of that entry.
So what has this got to do with the post title?
Well, it's how many Singaporeans pronounce "owe". Yeah I know it's weird, there's no N in the word "owe" yet many people say "own" instead of "owe". Saying "own" to an American is actually to tell him you beat him hands-down at something. This phrase "You got owned!" is very familiar in gaming circles. As a side-note, the phrase recently changed to "You got pwned!", thanks to a popular spelling mistake by Blizzard in the game Warcraft circa 1998 or so.
I had a discussion about this with a friend some time back about Singaporeans and the pronunciation of words. She said, a large portion of the human race is mostly visual, hence they see a word and memorise its pronunciation, instead of using phonetics on the words. It's fine to mispronounce "Lavender" as "lah-ven-der" instead of "laven-der", but saying "own" instead of "owe" is almost hilarious.
This is especially so for Chinese, since the native language is pictorial in nature. People see a Chinese word, and memorise it. Hence, they apply the same principles to the English language. Hence, words like "spanner" is still being pronounced as "spunnah".
Very few people I know pronounce words phonetically. For people like me, I normally don't stumble when I come across a long word which I've not seen before. I just break it down into its phonetic components and pronounce it. Of course, the English language has its own quirks too, like "sabre" is pronounced "say-ber" but "genre" is pronounced "jon-rer". I will always remember and laugh at an incident my drinking buddy told me that happened to him in secondary school.
He said, once he was asked to read a passage by the teacher. Like me, he's a phonetic speller and reader. He came across the word "quay" and pronounced it "kway". When the teacher corrected him, he argued that if it's supposed to be pronounced as "key" then they should have spelt it K-E-Y. LOL! At least the Americans got it right - they called the place "Florida KEYS" and not "Florida QUAYS", in my opinion anyway.
If you've always struggled with the English language, and one of your weaker points is spelling words, I've just given you a clue to help you - learn phonetics. When I was a schoolkid, I prided myself in knowing how to spell words that I've never even seen before, by just listening to how it's pronounced.
That is also my Archille's Heel in the Chinese language too - you cannot apply phonetics to Chinese. For example, nobody could explain to me why "mouth" (口 pronounced as "kou") and "ten" (十 pronounced as "shi") becomes a "field" (田 pronounced as "tian"). Why can't the pronounciation be something like a combination of "kou" and "shi" and end up with something like "kosh"? Yup, you guessed it, I suck at Chinese.
And please, it's "oh" and not "own", ok?
Labels: quirks, random, Rant, Singaporeans
11:11 by FoxTwo Seems like everyone's down with the flu lately. Xizor is also sick, and his doc gave him poison for his cough. I have been sick since last Tuesday, 8 Jan 2008. After being on MC for 4 days and resting effectively for 6 days (weekends included in resting), I'm still coughing up green stuff with traces of blood in them. The meds ran out, and going to work yesterday only aggravated the situation.
So today I went back to see the doc, and, as if on cue, I coughed up more green stuff to show the doc. Eyes wide open, the doc immediately gave me 2 days more worth of MC and stronger meds. Then, I noticed this:
This made me remember Xizor's post yesterday immediately.
Looks like doctors nowadays subscribe to the idea of "If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger" ideals.
Labels: random
14:48 by FoxTwo I haven't been doing much lately. That's because I'm sick :)
Yeah I'm happy to be sick. Normally I'd hate it, but for once, I don't mind it. I'm kind of fed up with the situation at work, and any excuse I can have for not going to work is fine by me. What's more, the doc gave me 2 days worth, and I'm enjoying it by fragging the heck out of demons in Hellgate.
However the downside to this is, I can't go out anywhere. Not that I'd "get caught", but I am really sick and really dread going out. Even going downstairs for lunch or dinner puts me off. I'd rather cook at home with whatever little food I have in my fridge.
Yup, my fridge is usually bare. Don't really need much since I don't buy "for the family", just myself. Buying too much means food will spoil and then I'd have to throw them out. Buying too little is fine - I can always pop down for dinner, except in cases like now, when I'm sick.
For what it's worth, I'm actually saving money being sick. Oh yes, there's the doctor's fee and the medication fee, but other than that, I spend close to zero! Well, not counting electricity since the PC is on most of the day (yes even when I'm knocked out by the meds). If I'm not knocked out, I'll be online with my drinking buddy, fragging demons.
Or, watching DVDs. I just got a new one, George Orwell's "1984". I've read the book, now I get to see the movie of it!
My mom popped over the other day. She bought me a heapload of junk food - potato chips, otah, etc. Stuff that I shouldn't be eating since I'm working out. Speaking of workouts, I haven't done any since Sunday, cos I got sick on Tuesday, my "workout day". Been sick since.
Man am I gonna hurt when I start again!
Labels: random
