Today has been an interesting day in my simple life. There are huge ups-and-downs but I did manage it quite well.

Right after lunch, Sarangga informed me that Sebastian's son passed away during an accident. I don't know how to response, but quickly gathered the bosses (TanTK and Yamaguchi) to pay our respects. Sebastian's living all the way up in Balik Pulau, luckily a close friend of his knows the way there. When we arrived, the family is having their prayers. The funeral is very simple, but yet quite emotional.

Back in the office, I talked to Jay who is a family friend of the deceased. He told me that he was having a conversation with Sebastian the night before. S was very proud of his son's SPM results and was planning to send him to Med School. Despite having chicken pox, his son rode to school and met with an accident on his way back. He's only 17, the family have high hopes for him. But what can you do when the Angel of Death calls him?

When I was standing outside the house, I saw his school uniform hanging outside to dry. Those uniforms are dripping their tears with the deceased of their owner. Family members and friends flooded the house with encouragement and support, but not even a single drop can bring him back. To life.

No matter what race or religion... having seen your children go before you must be devastating. Don't talk about life... the day my computer die on me I also super heart broken liao...Anyway, I do hope that Sebastian-san will toughen up, and may the Lord be with you.

Labels: Death, Life, Work

I'm back in Penang for less than a week (4 days to be exact). So far, it has been a very very packed week for me. Not like I'm forced to do most of those things, yet...who would want to loose out 10 days of their "virtual life"???

What have I actually being doing instead of reporting about my Germany-Swiss-Austria trip??? Once I got back to my room, I login my GoogleReader checking if there's anything I missed out in DPReview, then it's the engadget, gizmodo and other photography blogs I regular. Turns out there's 1000+ posts I've to go through. Only managed to slim it down below the 100th mark last night. Yet from all the things I've read...I can only say GNOME 2.20(http://www.gnome.org/start/2.20/notes/en/) released and some of David Ziser (http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/)'s flash photography. I also noticed that Nikon D3 gets more attention than the Canon's EOS 1Ds MarkIII but their EOS 40D gets quite some reportage though.

(Trivia) Reading trend: From your 54 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 2,323 items, starred 12 items, shared 10 items, and emailed 0 items.

Then, it's US's season premiers for Smallville, PrisonBreak, Heroes, DesperateHousewives, FlashGordon, BionicWoman and the likes of it. In Japan I get my regular does of hentai (not!) Naruto and Bleach. I'm not tied in my chair to finish all these episodes, but it has been a norm for me, just like the habits others have for getting a new phone every 6 months, taking a bath for not shorter than 30 minutes, or having to put purfume before leaving the house.

At work, there's more things waiting for me to follow up. My manager just breifed me about the list of things our group need to confirm by the end of the month. Need to come up with a few purchase orders, some reports and naturally dozen of junk mail to trash. Luckily I was not in charge of production, so the pressure is a lot lesser comparatively. Finish giving out souvenirs, can't bring back much for them as things are expensive and ppl I know at work is -- plenty.

Personal mails are not that hard to clear though, only took me 2 days to clear up Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. On the other hand, magazine subscription that came through snail mail will be piling up on the side of my bed. Hopefully I can go through a few of them tonight as the past few evenings are taken either by my other obligations.

Fortunately, I still have some time to spend with my younger sister who is back in Penang for her industrial training in LamWahEe hospital. Told my parents a bit about my trip, and spend my regular wednesday evening with Irene. The JetLag is making my head feeling heavy, and adding to the lack of sleep, it's not helping at all. Irene says that it's becuz of the lack of beers after drinking frequently for the past week, possibly the lack of coffee in our blood vessels as well.

Looking forward to the weekends...since my Saturday event assignment is canceled, I'll try to clear up my luggages, change my bed cover and finish a magazine or two. Hopefully I'll be posting up the photos I've taken, and also do a little write up on the trip. Stay tuned for more updates.

Labels: Entertainment, Family, Myself, Tech, Work

Whenever you want to jot down some notes, scribble some ideas or plot a chart to explain a cost reduction project for your company, what do you do? You turn on your monitor, and start looking for Microsoft Words, Excel or PowerPoint. But, is that THE ONLY option we have? For 90% of computer users, the answer is Yes, Of Course, Definitely. The other 9% of people would say OpenOffice is better? It's free, and enhanceable.

Today, I would like to introduce you another competitor for the OfficeSuite - IBM's own Lotus Symphony. It's free, it doesn't run on Java (Slows down computer) and it open documents in tabs, has ODT support and a lot of nice feats. I'll love to port it into Ubuntu (my fav desktop OS) so that the community might have more choices to use.

From installation till my 1st trial, everything is quite smooth, no hiccups detected so far despite being a beta.(not like Safari's web browser that I file a bug 3 hours after it's launch. So, why wait when you can get the better, most updated(17th Sept '07) and free Office Suite which you can install in unlimited number of computers, and not to worry about licensing as it is GPL/OpenBSD (correct me if i'm wrong).

For FAQs and Installation Guide visit [IBM Lotus Symphony]

p/s: OpenOffice 2.3 has just released as we are speaking, grab it now and be the first to brag about it.

Labels: Tech, Work

I've been idle for the past 5 months or so, people say "养军千日，用军一时". After my boss came back from Japan, I believe that there will be tonnes of projects waiting for us to evaluate and execute. Today I've been doing experiments until 5.30pm with another 2 collegues. Thanks to them, the experiments progress quite well.

Yeah, if you remember the previous post about the MMU lecturer, let's forget bout him. We managed to fine one Q-SW laser to perform our experiment. Earlier eval doesn't look promising, but today we did a proper experiment with a tailor-made jig to have the laser focus on the exact same plane as the previous rail. Ok, enuff of the technical stuffs. So... we finished the experiment at 5.30pm, and I'm left with 2 pages of data to summarize and report on. Excel is so stupid that it can't perform a simple x-y plot for dynamic range. Wasted an hour figuring it out until I decided to give up and plot not according to ratio.

Besides that, I've been taking up quite some side jobs before I knew how heavy my current job might become. Currently working with a classmate on a webpage design, and besides that, I start getting interested a "Patentable" fixture dad demonstrated to me. He feels that it's unpractical to put it into paper, but I most probably will go ahead and finished what he had started. Might need to put the plan "on-hold" for the moment, maybe next week can breathe a bit of fresh air and get it done.

I need a break, a real break from all these rapid hectic schedule. My replacement holiday will be on Friday while irene's on Monday, can't go anywhere in that case. I'm thinking of cleaning up my room this Friday, maybe get to sort out some images kept idling in my desktop. That'll be a real relaxation for me. Looking forward to Germany this September... start saving money and plan now.

Labels: Work

I was working on this particular project when I faced some difficulty on a device I have. Let's just call it Device A for simplicity. As Device A is no longer in use for Process A, we plan to change it to do Process B.

Ok, first thing...ask the supplier and the conversation goes like this "Hi, how are you...sure sure we have this, we have that. But a hor, Device A too old already, don't have Q-SW parameter, the power fix dy one, cannot use."

Huh? wut parameter? Why cannot use? As curiousity starts haunting me, I try to get a second opinion yet no one in the plant is familiar with Device A, even the person that used to manage it has also long forgotten how it operates. So who do I look for? Try to contact my good-ol-lecturer back in university. Those people who have being with me for the past 5 years. Din sit together drink coffee also know eat other for the least la rite?

I browse through all their profiles, some are good in linking some graphs, while others works with the coffee cup (Java). Then it suddenly hit me, there's a lecturer who's researching on Device A. Guess how the conversation goes.

First Letter, "Good to hear from you Soon. You need to check your Device A specifications, make sure...bla x3"

Second Letter, "Yes true, there are quite a number of ways you can make it work. We need to know a few things first. For starters..."

Third Letter, "Are you looking for solutions? Actually I do provide solutions for industries. Maybe we can work together and do it as a project."

:-o, isn't there sucha thing called teacher-student relationship? Or $$$ has already soak into everyone's heart that guilt no longer become an issue? So, if that's what the world has become today from now on, I'll start "providing solutions" to the society with a "small fee".

Labels: Work

1) Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight
Launched world wide! Finally, the 3rd studio album from the incredibly talented band. Despite releasing limited number of tracks over the years, but they are particularly picky on what to put into their albums, hence the quality out of each of them. Rush down to Gurney Plaza right after work to collect the CD (preorder) just to be sure I have the first ear on it. So far...the CD is worth everything I pay for.

2) KDE 3.3 on my (k)Ubuntu 6.10. Downloaded and installed without any hickups. A lot of things to look thru and relearn. So different from GNOME, more advance features, yet simplicity is being compromised.

3) Waking up to know that I've over slept, yet managed to get through the door in time.

4) My Excel VBA (Visual Basics for Applications) study is progressing consistently since I don't have any projects in hand. Now know bit bit how it works liao. After this will continue reading up on Pivot Tables and start developing real life applications.

5) Wired and Rosegarden is still not working. Will get scold by mua cute for sure since she managed to get my wine working. :(

6) Lastly... dpreview.com acquired by Amazon.com

Labels: Entertainment, Ubuntu, Work

Using "Markers" instead of "Guns", using "pallets" instead of "bullets". That is how paintball has being commercialized to become a game from marking cows and trees back in those days when farmers are too preoccupied to have fun.

My collegues organized a Paintball game just so that everyone has a feeling of how this "new" game is like. All of us are new to the game, but the Marshall is quite friendly and explains the rules to us in a very pleasant and humorous way. One game takes only about 5 minutes before members from either side is killed. But it is very very tiring if no constant exercise or training.

I got 2 shots on my legs - one on my knee which causes it to bleed, while the other pallet hit in between my legs 5 inches from my precious (lucky). The pain isn't that severe, but yet from hear say the mark will last for weeks to come. I deserved the injury as I only wear a thin piece of shorts for the game while the other seniors wear a full army suit to thick jackets. Despite getting hit, I killed 1 face shot, and another person on the vest. I think I killed a total of 3 people, but can't remember how I kill the other guy.

The excitement is intense. Will surely join again if they are organizing. The company charged us RM500 for 2000 pallets. For a normal amateur game, that will last for 8~10 rounds for a 5 on 5 game, a rough estimation of 2 hours. Since we collected extra money, we spent it on dim sum after the game. Seniors are shocked everytime they have meals with me outside. I will start to get wild in the dining table until some kind gentleman offered to drive me down to Ipoh's Tanjung Rambutan Mental Hospital. Tired, injured, excitement and experience...there's a lot I learnt from the game today.

Last Note: I don't understand why there are guys who'll chicken out once they got hit once. Is the pain so bad or issit worrying that your parents might be laughing at you? For all I know, Paintball is classified as a safer game than golf.

Labels: Friends, Work

The sun is melting my car tyres, but the christmas spirit is strong around me. After being getting "promotion", I received a BELATED Birthday gift from Mint Mui yesterday. In it, is a book rest with a message that writes

To a guy with a handsome full of general knowledge,
and full of wonderful jokes!
Take Care!

Hugz
~icymint~

While in it, she reminds me againg that "Sometimes you have to dream", which i seriously have no idea what she wants to convey. At the same time, she also pass me a gift from my 3 "Charlie's Angles" - Marimo, Corn and Bun. It's something close to heart, and reminds me to keep in touch with the Machi Gang always. Machi, do let me know if there's any reunion I'll make it a point to join.

What surprises me today at work is a christian supervisor of mine gave most of us a "KFC snack voucher" as a token of appreciation that writes

Thank you FOR ALL the support
Merry X'Mas & Happy New Year

I've created more trouble to him than helping him clear. But since I'm transfered to another line, I will only be seeing him during break times I guess, no more will I be creating any problems for him (except those that his techincians owe me).

Labels: Friends, Work

GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) is an equivalent to window's, but the language written is different. Need to have some knowledge of Linux before hand, which I learn while working. Now, typing away happily in Internet Explorer 7.0.

Not like I don't like Fedora Core 6, but I'll need a transition period to move most of my daily routine over one after another. Thanks a lot to Choobee for helping me on this grub issue since Sunday. It's good to be working with her in the same department (different company), which means that we can actually have things in common to talk about. Just got a meeting with my new Central Engineering group, I doubt that my job scope will be any different, but the transition there will take another 6 months or so.

Work is always challenging, interesting, and exciting. I wonder why others are hating their's that much? I admit I do complain, but thank God for giving me an opportunity to see the world, understand and learn from various different people. Thanks also to dad for building up my Ego, and supporting me throughout my life.

p/s: To discipline myself in exploring this "new" operating system, I'll most probably use my Tuesdays and Thursdays on FC6 while Mon, Wed and Fri will be spent downloading sitcomes from my WinXP.

Labels: Tech, Work

Christmas comes early this year. I worried that it might be disaster, unpredictable avalanche to my future. That all comes to a confident agreement when I ended up sharing my joy with my gf. Waited for her to finish her meeting, and let her finish speaking before I share the good news with her. I've switched jobs~!

She has always reminded me that an engineer is not suppose to be working 3000 hours a year. But this is even a surprise to me when my collegues told me about it. I've only join the company for 6 months as an Industrial Engineer, learn a bit of testers and board repairs here and there nothing much worth mentioning about. But since the company went through an reorganization, I've been moved to a new department called Central Engineering. From some I heard is a better job prospect, while others tell me that I might not be learning as much as my current job.

During job orientation, I've already asked one of the department manager if they encourage people to move around and learn from other areas. Over 30 years of history, usually people like us are not encouraged to move. But I've only been there for the shortest time, this might have been a record to them.

I have totally no idea what I'm going to do there, my job description, how my new boss is like, and what the product they are manufacturing. Good part is, I'm not in the manufacturing line any more, and hence I can concentrate more on the development of new products, new process, and improvement in the companies operations. Besides that, hopefully I will be able to be sent for trainings (finally!) which is like once in a blue moon for my current position.

I will miss my collegues which have been teaching me a lot, guiding and supporting me despite my insufficiency. At the mean time, I'm looking forward to the new challenges lying ahead of me. Like what CBT says, "What could be more worse than your current job? Think positive."

Labels: Work

Guess what shit I steped into... I've volunteered myself to wear some cheap batik and walk around the stage while people working together with me are snapping away with their digital cameras. You might be laughing out the burger you just taken, but that's the kinda person I am. I'll never refused an opportunity to stand in front of a crowd, humiliating myself, and getting people to recognise me.

It's not the nervousness that I'm worried about that night. It's the waiting that kills me. I've been waiting backstage while missing all the photography opportunities in front. The more I think about it, the more angry I was. After the performance, the only comment I get is that I'm too errogant not smiling and all. But isn't that what most guy models do? Acting cool and what not. What burst the fuel in me is that the "sponsors" only bring 1 shirt for each guy which they promised 2.

Anyway, there's everything to complain about, and nothing enjoyable to talk. The food sucks, the place is never the kinda location I'll usually dine in, and I've only managed to take like 100+ pictures when I could've actually taken 300+ for this kinda occasion. I've missed out all the nice performance...it will NEVER happen again next year. No more voluntary job from MR Nice Guy.

I went early and parked at a nice lot near the entrance. After the event, I'm among those that ran out first as I'm eager to go home and rest after driving back all the way from Ipoh. But this stupid fella PCS 4198 blocked my car from coming out. These nuisance came late for the event, blocked my car, and taking his own sweet time walking out after the event. I've been waiting so impatiently that I decided to give him a lesson. There goes my butt sitting on the bonnet with both my legs up on the front bumper.

The clock moves ever that slowly when you're angry and waiting... 30 minutes has passed before this idiot come over and wonder why I was sitting on his car. Scolded him until I get my apology, but yet he refused to move his car away from the scene. Another AMOEBA came along and "helped", telling me that I don't know the traffic regulations. Doesn't these people think twice before spiting all over themselves? Anyway, thankfully a company director I knew came to solve the problem and asked him to move. I've jot down that person's number, just in case anything happens to my car.

What a bad day...what kinda society we live in?

Labels: Work

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. Have a hard time troubleshooting my monitor/graphic interface problem. I'm so frustrated that I went to purchase an original copy of WindowsXP which I need to fork out RM330 for. After installation still the problem arise. I'll most probably bring my monitor for a check next weekend or so.

Let's talk about something I've learnt from a foreign partner I'm working with. You might find odd at first when you see him talking to himself while troubleshooting. What surprises me is that he never have proper on job training other than hands on experience.

This friend from the land of rising sun told me there's no new engineers since he is responsible of a particular job 14 years ago~!!! Imagine a guy working on the same thing for such a long time, without aid from younger engineers...isn't that worse than what we have in Malaysia? People are complaining that Malaysia salary low, work is tough...wait till they hear about ppl in densed developed country who have to travel 8 hours to work here with us.

According to my seniors, he was so into his job that he hit the machine which caused a permanent scar on his face. Can't remember how many stiches he has to go through, but everyone was having a hard time as the machine have to be seal down temporarily, and sponges are placed on the place that he accidentally hit.

It's normal for me to work until 8pm, but for these people...they wouldn't feel odd to go back at 10pm even when they are working in Malaysia. The workaholic habit is already burried deep within them. Luckily I get to go back around 9pm, where I still have time to do the following:

1) Rush to the nearest shopping complex to buy WindowsXP
2) Drove to another location to get Seasonal Greeting Cards ( the Deeparaya Celebration is just around the corner)
3) Wander around Bayan Lepas area to find TheStar Northern Region printing office.

Before I call it a day, still have to perform installation, call Irene, and "socialize" with my family. Life is tough, tough is life. When I'm not down on medical reasons, I'll make full use of the time I have spare.

Labels: Work