August 2006

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. 😛 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.

Hey peeps. Things have been really great here in Sydney. We’ve covered lots of ground since touching down last Friday. Nowadays we’re spending more time with my little sis, or tying up some loose ends like taking the OzTrek, going up Sydney Harbor, or taking a harbor cruise.

While originally we were thinking of going out of the City to cover the snowy mountains for some skiing or snowboarding, we didn’t really plan it well enough, so we ended up just staying here. My brother and I have also managed to get an extension on our stay at Malaysia Hall Sydney, and the discounts really help a lot.

Anyways, will give the full shebang when I return. Pictures will take longer to put up, cuz they’ll be stored on my sister’s notebook and she’ll have to transfer them over slowly. I’ve had to use 3 different cameras to take pics, and I think we have enough to make a really huge album.

Right now, I’m at my sister’s place writing this entry, and wondering where my mom and my aunt are. Since we siblings went shopping for a printer this morning, the elderly ones went for a bit of shopping themselves at the QVB. While we were supposed to return to their hotel, we decided to just hang around the university here in Kingsford. It’s tough when people don’t return your messages or answer your calls. Getting a teeny bit worried.

Maybe a case of karma, cuz that was what happened the first night when MY phone died. Well, hopefully they’re alright.

So, see you in a few days. 🙂

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.

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. 🙂

[DotA] + [PvPGN] = reduction in travel = saving of cost.

PvPGN server address = here.

Voice chat = [XFire] Group Chat: The Brotherhood.

😀

[update 10/8/2006 11.30pm]

[update 11/8/2006 2.00am]

Hmm.. the PvPGN support forums say that it shouldn’t be a problem at my end at all. Basically all clients behind routers should have their selected game ports (whatever it is, default 6112) forwarded to their hosting LAN address. Both TCP and UDP must be forwarded.

So guys, do this first, then we’ll try the previous solution.

[update 12/8/2006 1:27am]

Yes, forget all that nonsense, and configure Windows Firewall properly. 😛 But of course, a static LAN IP is still recommended.

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. 🙂

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.