December 2005

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. 😀

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.

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? 😀

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.

but not in pieces. well, then there are some.

hie. 🙂

woke up late, at about 10.30 (yay). had lunch with sis and JL at sushi king, klcc (yay). sent sis to great eastern for an interview (…). picked up a new MSI 865PE Neo2-V motherboard at low yat (yay). got my copy of fatal frame replaced, but still doesn’t work (boo). computer back up and running (yay). had kfc for dinner (yay). gonna play bf2 (yay). gonna get guest pass to world of warcraft (yay).

going to work tomorrow (boo).

damn, my site looks weird on Firefox/FreeBSD/Gnome.

very eventful day today. yesterday too. let’s jog my memory a bit.

i planned to visit Tiff at the PC Fair on saturday, wanting to go with her and all that, but i woke up late and was already messing around with my motherboard by the time i called her.

grabbed a few cookies for lunch, and took the LRT to pasar road. it was my first time there, and the stuff they sell there are quite interesting. there’s fish. fighting ones plus the assortment of fishy stuff. and electronics and hardware gadgets. a lot of stalls selling dubious items too.

identified the regular electronics shop eugene goes to, thanks to a few international smses and a call to merv. standwell. only mr. kwan, the boss there, knew what i really wanted. picked up 4 trimpots (trimming potentiometers. wanted 50kohm ones, when i checked only 1 of them is, while the rest was 100k). also got myself a multimeter, some fluxed solder and helping hands (and some electrical tape from the next store).

got home. whipped out my brother’s soldering iron that he got free from his realrobots subscription. here begins my droop mod adventure.

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. 😛