November 2005

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. 😀 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. 😛 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. 😀

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! 😀 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. 😛

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.

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!

susah susah.

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

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

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

i hope i passed. we were supposed to present something related to our work, but a lot of the attendees were from the same dept as i was, so i came up with something else: overclocking. i just covered the basic components and scientific elements related to it. was up to 3am this morning finishing up my material. 42 slides presented in 45 minutes. 🙂

i’m so sleepy now. but i gotta go to the yacht club for some function before the raja muda regatta. well, i could use the food. skipped lunch to make some last minute touchups.

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*

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.

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. 😀

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. 😛

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.

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!

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’. 😛 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. 😀

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. 😛 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!

i’m back. relatives in singapore nice. 😀 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.

😀 😀