Rant 722 / Evil Commercial Organization Sequel

I think my other radio mod for FNV is making it crash. It just did for the third time today. Not particularly annoying since both the game and I save a lot.

But after the last crash the sight of the Desktop reminded me to check my emails and stuff, so I did.

It was while waiting for the pages to load that I decided to redeem my Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam expansion just for the heck of it. I had no use for just an expansion but it came with my graphics card and the offer was ending in June. Not to mention I had registered the graphics card last night just to see what freebies I could get.

It turned out that I had missed one promotion that was giving away a free programme for Gold members, which I am since I spent money on their product. There's also the Silver membership probably for people who haven't bought their stuff, but I'm not sure. Wasn't too concerned with that or the details of free stuff I missed since the only thing I was interested in when I visited that website was to get free stuff. Didn't want to look too hard and get persuaded into wanting to spend more money.

So I followed the instructions I found for this offer, thinking maybe I could sell the code on Ebay or something and get a small refund for the graphics card that can be considered a discount.

I had to sign up to be a member of the EA store thing and the necessity to enter my address and phone number raised my mental alarms slightly, but that was lowered when I remembered that EA is a big company, which naturally means they're more careful. Plus they will need these info if new customers like me order a game in physical (ie DVD) form.

All the while I was thinking: Just give me the code and let me get back to Fallout.

Then I arrived at the page where I could see my basket containing my free gift.

Holy cow! There were THREE free gifts there, including the Vietnam expansion. WHY? Did I read anything wrong? I didn't think so. All that was mentioned was the Bad Company 2: Vietnam. Nothing suggested I was also getting Bad Company 2 too!

If you think that was supposed to be obvious, it's not! It could easily have been a marketing ploy to get people to buy Bad Company 2 just to play this supposedly rather exclusive expansion only available online. That was what I was assuming before.

Yet here I am at 51.98% completion for the download of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Digital Deluxe Edition which costs over S$70 if I had bought it from the EA store. And that's not including the expansion which is priced at S$19.90. As for the third item, it's the "Unlock Codes for Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Limited Edition". The "Limited Edition" is the term for "pre-order edition" and these codes will give me a larger selection of weapons and perks (ingame abilities).

According to my proof of "purchase", my total discount for these is S$96.70.

If I enjoy this game, it can be regarded as a 17.4% discount for a graphics card that cost me $555 ($589 if buying without the rest of the PC).

82.28% complete now.

Finally, something good after a shitty Saturday.





But just when I was trying out the game, I was informed that the draft I printed yesterday was not satisfactory. Now I have to make more changes to it and redraw some parts.

To make life more confusing, I just received the Encyclopaedia Britannica DVD which was supposed to be delivered to one of my aunts (for her kids ie my nephews). This likely means though she was supposed to get both the book set and DVD, she only received the former and while store mailed the latter to us.

WHY? EVEN THE CONFIRMATION EMAIL STATED ONLY ONE "DELIVER TO" ADDRESS!

I've emailed her to confirm that she did not get the DVD and now I'm awaiting her reply. In the meantime, I don't think I should jump to conclusions and email the online EB store yet.

And it's dinnertime.






Took me 2 hours to make it look better. I drew the jacket too wide, had to narrow it down. Then added more stuff to specify more stuff. Trade secrets lol. I wonder if I'll stay in this business. It's not a matter of better career options after graduation in my case. It's more like whether I have any trace of artistic talent to enable me to design clothes.

Also, if I go on with this, I'll need an iPad. Same as drawing on paper but easier to erase/edit.







Tried Bad Company 2 for a few hours. Initially wanted to jump straight into multiplayer by joining some random server with decent pings. Didn't have any populated servers in Singapore, so I joined the closest one... in Taiwan. 200ms ping, bad impression.

Then I realized I had no idea what to do.

So I left and started on the singleplayer campaign instead. After reading about all those Battlefield games, this is actually the first time I'm playing one. Not particularly impressed, really. It was nice that they used the blood-on-screen effect similar to that of Metro 2033 instead of HP to indicate injury though.

Some parts were as exciting as I expected but others were duller than they were designed to be. An example of the former was the part soon after the prologue where you try to escape on a vehicle and you have to shoot down the vehicles chasing you. Near the end of the chase I shot down a frickin helicopter with a grenade launcher. That was really a WTF moment. As for the latter, it was the same part but during the chase when I kept killing the armoured vehicles so quickly (since they were big targets) that there were long quiet intervals in between.

Later, the game got easy when they gave me a sniper rifle. Sniper rifles aren't inherently the I-WIN buttons of FPS games but in Bad Company 2, the crosshair doesn't move randomly when looking through the scope. This makes it just too easy to aim with. The developers seemed to have attempted to balance this by disabling the crosshair when not using the scope but the centre of the screen is easy to estimate.

Anyway although this game was only released in March last year, it isn't exactly a new game, not when Bad Company 3 is available for pre-orders.

I don't believe I'll be buying it.

Comparing FNV and BC2, I still prefer FNV. FNV is more of an RPG with FPS combat, while BC2 is mostly FPS with RPG elements (since you play the role of some guy). It's not that BC2 is bad. Far from it. BC2 has much better graphics, animation and combat, but FNV has the better missions ( at the very least, the final battle is just the most epic one ever) and perks every 2 levels. And customizable boobs on the women (with mods).






Finally, an article that explains what an "online addiction" really is.

"The actual hours is not a tell-tale sign whether it is an addiction.They will skip school so they can stay home, so they play the game or whether they will play computer games over night. So it's more of whether you are spending the time that you can afford or not, rather than the actual hours," said Dr Tan.

A person can spend 12 hours a day online and not be considered an addict. Seriously. If it's an addiction, then the symptoms has to be similar to a drug addiction. If you actually skip the necessary stuff in life to stay at the computer, like lessons, work and even food, then it's an addiction. If you just forgot to eat once in a while, it's not an addiction.

I'm actually describing myself here :P

Honestly, I'd be eating a lot less if not for my neighbours. I'm sure there's actually just one family nearby with a very good cook because I often smell really nice cooking (and they sometimes repeat on some days) from the kitchens. Whenever he/she cooks, I get a persistent reminder to eat. In fact, there have been occasions when I drank coffee in the morning just because I smelled theirs.

Alright, let's not get sidetracked too much.

The thought of checking my emails didn't cross my mind throughout the Malaysia trip last year, and IMO that's proof that I'm definitely not an addict despite spending like 90% of my time at the computer normally. From that experience I can conclude that I really can quit any time I want. There's only the issue of why I should do so and, presently, I see no reason to.

But I do understand what it's like to be addicted due to my time in WoW. If not for the fact that I was still in the army back then, I'd probably do anything to stay online. Nobody is insane enough to go AWOL to play WoW... right?

Furthermore, I do notice that I "play games overnight" when I find some that I really like. On the other hand, these are always temporary as the addiction, if it is that at all, only lasts as long as my initial runs. Once I've completed a game, I never feel as enthusiastic about it as before, which I'm sure is pretty obvious.







If you plan on living long, get tested early. It's not just the cancer in this article but also anything else. And if it's serious, don't just trust your own doctor. My late father's first doctor diagnosed a bad cough and later, pneumonia. He had to go to a second doctor much later when the first doctor's treatment didn't work and got a diagnosis for lung cancer, but soon after the surgery they found that it had already spread to his brain.

Sometimes, it's better to be too careful.

Unless you can't afford it, that is. A full-body MRI costs S$4000 per session. CT scan, $4000. Then there's the most important part - chemo, priced at $8000 per session. Let's not forget to take into account GST and inflation too.

In contrast, a funeral at a void deck costs a mere $3000.

Read a bit of the linked blog, mostly from her final months. It's so much more painful than my father's. But I think she understated the suffering she was going through, which is normal since nobody likes to dwell on bad memories.

Sucking fluid from your lungs isn't simple. I remember seeing blood on the tube when the nurses took it out every time. It's bad but better than drowning. Then there's the part where you might lose bowel control and be bedridden at the same time.

After it got really bad, they put him in an artificial coma from which he sometimes woke for a minute or two. He didn't seem truly lucid during those times, never even asked me what was happening. Once he woke up to ask me what the nurse was doing (I think she was checking his stats on the screen) and told me to ask her when I told him I didn't know. Then he became unconscious again.

Nobody ever told him about his condition. He never knew why he died, how he died and maybe even that he had died. After the doctor explained to her about his brain scans, my mum was hoping for a miracle by making him stay ignorant of the fact that his cancer was inoperable.

That blog explained why he was put in that coma. I wouldn't want to go through what would have occurred otherwise, what she went through.

In both 2008 and 2009, 29.3% of all deaths in Singapore were due to cancer. If we zoom out and look at the global population, it's 13% of all deaths in 2008. This can probably be translated to "of all the ways you can possibly die, there's a 29.3% chance you're going to die from some form of cancer if you're Singaporean, or generally a 13% chance no matter where you are."

Personally I think everyone should read about how cancer patients die and be prepared for it. After all, even kids can get cancer. I bet euthanasia will get a lot more support when that happens.

Rant 721 / This Is The Song That Never Ends...

Having a new PC problem today. For some strange reason my browsers stopped working. Let me start from the beginning.

I switched it off last night and went to bed, but got back up after an hour when I couldn't fall asleep.

I switched on the computer again to surf the net for a while but the broswers didn't work.

Firefox initially loaded the tabs I had opened before closing it earlier to shut down the comp. That was normal. But when I tried to go to another page, it didn't respond. It loaded for a second or so, then it said "Done" at the bottom. Yet the screen remained the same.

Restarting it didn't work. Furthermore, an error message popped up when it closed.

So I tried IE. It was worse. The browser told me straight away it couldn load the website, suggesting I was not connected to the net. When I closed it, the same error occured as the one for Firefox.

Next I tried to disconnect and reconnect to the network. It was fine.

So I reopened Firefox for the nth time, but opening 192.168.1.1 (router's page for all Linksys routers) on a new tab. That didn't load either. By this point, everytime I opened Firefox all the tabs were completely blank and named "Untitled" despite having the correct URLs and saying "Done" at the bottom.

Finally, I went to the Command Prompt and pinged 192.168.1.1. It was perfectly fine. So was the pings for www.google.com. In conclusion, there was no problem with the connection.

Giving up and feeling very sleepy, I went to bed and successfully fell asleep.



Yet my hope of it resolving itself overnight did not materialize. Nothing changed when I switched it on this morning. Hence restarting the computer does not work.

I even read the error message but I'm getting nothing useful from Google.

The error name is BEX and the Fault Module is stackhash_fd00. Worse, this is also affecting my Windows Media Player which I had not tried to use when the error first occured last night. I can watch stuff but the error pops up when I close the player.

I have no idea why this is happening. If it was a driver error, I have already deleted the only driver I installed yesterday before the first shut down, which was the printer's. Restarting the PC after that did not solve this problem.

Disabling all addons for IE didn't do anything either.

This is obviously not just a browser problem. The root here is the stackhas_fd00. Unfortunately, few seem to be having any issue with this... thing... and nobody has any answer for this problem.

So now I'm doing a disk scan. 2.23pm. Stage 4 of 5, 14% complete. Ugh. I'm getting desperate. Safe Mode didn't work either btw.

At this rate I'm going to try to boot with the Vista DVD and see if the Recovery Console can do anything about it.





4.55pm. Nothing is working. Media Player apparently only gives me the BEX error upon closing once in a while but Firefox and IE still do so constantly. WHY WHY WHY?!? The only thing that changed before I shut down back then was the printer driver. I've already uninstalled everything there.

There, I've even deleted the printer's programme and driver before emptying the Bin. Restarted PC and it still isn't working. WHY??

NOD32 can't connect to the update servers,  "Failure to open socket."

Malwarebyte can't either, "PROGRAM_ERROR_UPDATING (12007, 0, WinHttpSendRequest)". When I close it, it also gives me the BEX error with fault module being StackHash_3e1d.

WHY??

This ruined my Saturday completely. Games are working fine but still, this PC is brand new!!

Going to re-download the driver package and reinstall it.

Not working. Gah!


7.45pm. Reinstalling Windows. In case you don't know what this means, installing Windows always formats the partition it's installed in.

9.18pm. Okay it worked. Now I'm installing everything again. Save files are on the secondary hard disk so that's no problem. Forgot to mention before the Restore feature didn't begin to create restore points until like 5pm just now. Yea that's screwed up. Oh well, now it's... normal again.

This has indeed ruined my entire Saturday. Ugh.

10.07pm. "Installing update 57 of 104..." Looking on the bright side, at least I'm not in Australia. I mean, seriously, that's... well... so... not New Orleans, fortunately for them. Man, I'm such an optimist. Destined for the 18th level of Hell, but an optimist nonetheless.


Fuck it. This time I'll just install FNV and Cities XL 2011 and skip ME2 until I finish FNV. It's just the final mission anyway.





So after all those vids I watched all these years on Youtube where people do stupid things that could have gotten them killed, I'm wondering why I haven't seen any in which those morons actually die. I mean, if people fall/jump into frozen lakes often enough to get caught on camera, someone has to have recorded someone drown in freezing water, right?

So where did those vids go?? They have to be online somewhere.



11.06pm. Finally done installing the browsers and they all work (IE8, FF, Chrome). Time to transfer to the desktop.

11.20pm. The Windows installation automatically threw all the old stuff in the C: into a folder named "windows.old" so now I have a list of all the necessary programmes right there. Can't use those programmes I believe but they help remind me of what to download, like Winrar and Daemon Tools Lite.

1.09am. Fallout New Vegas is working fine. Only needed to download FOMM and the rest could be copied from the FNV folder in windows.old.

Rant 720 / Great-Aunt = Grandaunt

There is still lag in the busiest spots in New Vegas. Aw.....

For example, the Atomic Wrangler. The way I used to deal with it was to look down but now I don't have to. It's a noticeable FPS lag but still a bit away from being described as an "annoyance".


This run, I'm going to specialize in energy weapon. During the first run I was into melee but that didn't work so well in the beginning since I only play Hardcore (everything heals me gradually instead of instantly). For the second run I was into conventional guns. That was fun, especially since this category has the best sniper rifle AFAIK but the game didn't feel so sci-fi anymore after a while.

So now I'm with laser guns and plasma rifles. Together with the perk "Vigilant Recycler" it feels pretty easy. This allows me to recreate more ammo from the "drained" ammo the guns leave behind when I fire them.

Also with the new patch, I'm much tougher than I remembered. Energy weapons used to seriously hurt me but now I'm able to easy run towards those Fiends north of the Strip and kill everyone without using any items while wearing the Space Suit (light) armour and the beret used in the photo in the last rant.

I should probably raise the difficulty again since the game seems to have been nerfed.






Thus begins my apprenticeship. Only beginning with drawing a the basic shapes of the hood, sleeve and shirt plus the terms for the measurements (in Chinese). The assignment was to create the order form for a hooded jacket. I didn't give any creative input since I had no idea what to say.

After drawing the first draft by hand, I realized I could do it faster with MSPaint instead. So I did. Made another 4 drafts before I printed one that was good enough to be faxed over to the factory.






Some relatives from Malaysia came to visit my mum today. I didn't even know they were my relatives until yesterday. Not close at all. The late great-grandaunt I mentioned before, who passed away in Penang some years back, had a godson. His mother, her brother, her children and their children came over to visit us. No blood relations but they were pretty close to my great-grandaunt and hence my parents. In fact they're the only relatives who tend to her grave now during Qing Ming and etc.

I'll have to say this is quite confusing, which is why I have to type this down before my memory blurs.

His mother is my 叔太， which in English is also "great-grandaunt", though she's only in her 70s. Her brother is my 曾舅公 (since I'm unable to find out the term for the male counterpart of "太")， ie "great-granduncle". Her female children are my 舅婆，ie grandaunts. Those 2 kids they brought were my aunt (姑姑， although in Cantonese I should call her 姑姐) and uncle (叔叔/阿叔).

Wait...

I've a teenage aunt and uncle in Malaysia.

To be more specific, a ten-year-old uncle.






I had to ask my mum about all these because her version is slightly different from what is now available on the Internet which are made by the people in the PRC. For example, the more polite Cantonese term for 舅婆 is "kam" 婆, and the tone for "kam" is the same as the one for "舅". I have no idea how it's pronounced in Mandarin, hence I have no way to find the character for it. My mum wrote it down for me in Traditional Chinese and I couldn't find it in my Chinese dictionary, which is in Simplified. It's supposed to be 女字旁加个"禁".

Also, she had to study this in Primary 3 in HK. The terms for everyone in the family tree were, apparently, part of the school curriculum.

Anyway this kinda irritated her. Had to promise her I would only ask her once until I encounter more relatives whom I've never met. Which was true since I was typing it here while asking her.

Us westernised people have to be grateful that all we have to learn are "aunts", "uncles", "cousins" and adding "great" and/or "grand" for all the older ones.

Rant 719 / Run Like A Son Of A Gun!

Starting to use cane sugar in my coffee. I once heard it's better than white sugar but now I think it's just personal preference. I did taste some difference yesterday though when I tried it black with the cane sugar. There was a slight cane sugar aroma when I drank it black.

When I tried it with creamer today, there was absolutely no trace of that aroma. Milk is to coffee as chemo is to the body of a cancer patient - it kills the taste of whatever you have in the coffee, including the acidity which is my actual aim by adding the milk/creamer and including all the other flavours and aromas.

I just don't like black because most coffee I get taste sour (aka acidic) but that's the best way to really taste the coffee. Just to make things clear, to enjoy a coffee doesn't necessarily mean you have to sense everything it has to offer. You just need to taste and smell what you like.

Apparently I can avoid that acidic taste by buying darker roasts but that means more bitterness instead. Still, the current brand I'm using has a pretty low level of acidity TBH. It's this Dutch brand "Moccona" and this jar's coffee is called "Mystique".

My mum bought this while shopping with a friend who recommended this coffee to her. She claimed all her kids loved it.

I'll have to say I'm no coffee connoisseur since other than the lower acidity and higher price, I cannot tell any other difference between this and my memory of Nescafe Gold.

As for the cane sugar, it came in the form of bars that are normally used to make soup desserts. It was used as offerings and after that, since we don't normally make desserts at home, I thought it was a waste to throw it away.

Made a lot of noise cracking the bars into smaller chunks using the handle of a cleaver but it worked. A hammer would have worked too but the one we have at home is rusty.

The chunks take time to dissolve, so I now have to keep an utensil (eg knife, fork, whatever) in the cup to keep stirring it in my room.











According to Chinese traditions, it's not advisable to work today, the first day of the Chinese New Year. So I'm forced to play all day.

My bro went to his gf's very early in the morning when she told him he can go even though her family is still in mourning (one of her grandmothers passed away recently). For much of the evening, the families outside were busy. All the grandkids of the elderly couple next door were here I think, and the noise they made outside at the lift lobby penetrated the two doors between them and me.

As for myself,

At Vegas with a red 1st Recon Beret, Lightweight Metal Armour and a modified Laser RCW

One of the new radio mods I downloaded kept crashing the game though, and it was the mod whose songs I prefer since they're more related to atomic bombs which, in turn, were very related to the theme of the game, like the one above.

One thing I just learnt this run is that there is a usable rail service between McCarran and the Strip for NCR members. I couldn't get there because they kept shooting me when I go near the door in my first run, most likely due to a bug since I didn't patch it then. It's nothing impressive but just something interesting that I missed.

Rant 718 / Oder Besser

Okay, I've never had a computer so silent I couldn't tell if it was switched on or off, hence all these excitement. Maybe it's because it's new, but I can't tell if it's completely shut down unless I check the LED lights whenever I switch it off.

After trying out Fallout: New Vegas I was also surprised at how I'm not getting visible FPS lag when I turn my head/screen outdoors at the highest settings.








Stargirl, a 4-year-old, plays SC2.

This is so cute.



The future of online gaming is looking glorious.




Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little.






If Singapore's weather stays rainy like this for the rest of the year, I'm going to begin to actually like global warming and thank my ancestors and yours for burning so much coal and oil.

Rant 717 / Only 30 Rants From A 747 And 60 Rants From 777

I changed the plan slightly. Having managed to find a trustworthy answer directly from Microsoft on how I can adjust a HDD partition, I decided to de-partition the old HDD after format.

Voila! Now I have 2 500GB drives.

Formatting a HDD was surprisingly quick when you pick "Quick Format". Apparently the difference between the normal Format and Quick Format is that Quick skips the part of the process in which it scans for bad sectors and repairs them.

This is completely unnecessary as I had already done this multiple times back when I was trying to repair my old comp.

After that, all I needed to do was go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage, Disk Management. The rest is obvious once you're there. One warning: make sure all data on that disk or partition(s) is/are expendable.

So I formatted both partitions of the old HDD and deleted both partitions before creating a single volume out of the empty space on that disk.

Furthermore, I now have all the drivers and Windows installed on the Black HDD and currently copying the backup files that I had brought from the Black to the Blue... back to the Black. After that, I'm formatting the Blue before returning the backup files to the clean Blue HDD again.

I did consider just deleting everything but those backup files but I'm not sure if it is going to be clean enough that way. This is going to take 3 hours more but it will give me peace of mind.








So English is actually a very abstract language. Linguistically it's called a "synthetic language". Essentially such a language often makes use of inflections (suffix, prefix, etc) to create different yet related meanings. In contrast, Chinese is an "analytic language" which uses additional words to do the same.

For example, in Chinese there are only 4 ways to create a term that expresses an abstract idea: 德,道,品,性. Can't say these are suffixes because they are separate words after all, but they are used in a similar way.

As for English, there are lots of ways to do the same, like "honesty", "abstraction", "civility", "magnanimous" and etc. There's such a long list of suffixes and prefixes, it's a pain to remember them all. Hence it's so hard to write well even if you rarely encounter words you don't understand.

Not saying writing in Chinese is any easier though.

Just went for the first lesson on Chinese Reading and Comprehension. It's like the English literature class I took on essays and short fiction, except this is in Chinese and deals with Chinese essays.

I'm so dead once you take into account the fact that a good reader needs to read a lot in order to understand essays well. Often there is a need to understand the background of the writer and the other literary works of his/her era in order to better appreciate an essay.

Chinese essays aren't the only things this course is about. I also have to read short stories, formal letters, news articles and stuff.

Even though all my exams this semester are going to be open book, I'm not seeing any reason why it's going to be easier.







Hmm.. so I can't just format the Blue HDD, possibly because it also has an OS. So I'm now trying to delete/disable the OS on that disk by going to msconfig, Boot tab and "Delete" the non-"Current" OS. Let's see if this works after the restart...

Nope, still tells me that "Windows cannot format the system partition on this disk."

Now switching the positions of the HDDs in the casing and then their cables to make the Caviar Black Disk 0 and the Blue into Disk 1. Maybe this will make the Black HDD the "System" HDD.

Damn.

"BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart"

Looks like I'm seriously stuck with the Blue as my OS HDD.

YES! Another obstacle down! Using the Windows Repair Console by booting from the Vista DVD, I was able to use "System Repair" to make a new boot manager on the Black HDD.

Now... back to the original task of formatting the Blue HDD.

Formatted! Now transferring all the backup files to the Blue HDD and I'm back to the normal routine of installing games and customizing my desktop.

I bet these posts are going to be important to me someday.






All that fixing took half a day. Started this at 10.30am, went about the tasks at a leisurely pace and finally finished transferring everything at 4.30pm. Six whole hours right there. So if you're doing some serious PC fixing like I did, better make sure you have at least half the day free.







This casing is seriously quiet. Or maybe my HDD is having some problems.

Now that I'm using the Caviar Black HDD mostly, it's been clicking a lot audibly. I never heard it before in the old PC so this is going to take some getting used to. According to WD, this clicking is normal.

Even the Blue doesn't click this loudly. In fact, it's not even audible almost all the time.

As far as I can tell, Caviar Green is supposed to be even quieter.

Despite this knowledge that the clicking is normal, it is a little disturbing when you're used to the fact the audible clicking in other HDDs are almost always bad news.






This headline is so... obvious. I didn't know Captain Obvious works for the IMF. Food prices has always been and will always be one of the most significant contributors to civil unrest. All human beings share the same basic priorities from our millennia of evolution and food only ranks after air and water.

Until we hit a second Green Revolution, this present global tension we're witnessing will only increase.

If insects and artificial meat are the solutions to world hunger, at least they're better than lead.






For some strange inexplicable reasons I suddenly have this urge to go for a packaged tour to the DPRK. The available departure dates for this year are 8/4, 15/4, 29/4, 13/5, 27/5, 3/6, 10/6 , so I'm thinking 3rd or 10th June are possible dates.

Only 10-day tours are available, 4 days of which are actually spent travelling between Singapore and Shenyang and the DPRK. Unfortunately it's also going to cost each person about S$2300 inclusive of taxes and stuff. Another thing is that Air Koryo (DPRK airline) is one of the worst airlines in the world although they've only had 1 fatal accident so far (and it was in Africa).

Rant 716 / Insane Rogue AI

Red underwear for good luck being sold by enterprising street hawkers in Penang.

 All "if this year we use rabbit-derived products, then next year we'll use snakes" arguments got cliche some centuries before yesterday, so I'll skip those.

So why aren't they using rabbit-leather?

I want to see a rabbit leather thong with an actual preserved/stuffed rabbit head covering the genital area. Would give a whole new meaning to the phrase," giving someone a head".

And bring good luck to the wearer.

Then if, say, the head is able to open its mouth...

It would be the most sickest unisex thong ever created.






So the Caviar Blue is slower. I can't get it out of my mind. This arrangement just doesn't feel right to me. The only reason I'm using a slower hard disk for everything and a faster one for storage is because of a mistake and the rather feeble excuse that the slower HDD is newer.

Therefore I need to plan what to do now.

New general goal: Use the Caviar Black HDD as the OS drive.

Issue: Has all my old stuff inside and is partitioned.

Solution: Copy *.* into Caviar Blue HDD. Apparently removing partitions can be a risky procedure and I'm a complete noob at PC stuff, so I'll let it be. I'll use one partition for the OS and all the work-related stuff like Office and the other partition exclusively for games. Going to be troublesome though whenever I install games.

This procedure will be even more time-consuming than preparing a brand new PC due to the need to copyt everything from the old HDD to the new. At a rate of 63MB/s and a total of 335GB of data, that's (335,000)/ (63) seconds = 5317.46 seconds = roughly 89 minutes = almost 1.5 hours.

This does not take into account how the file transfer rate may drop as the new HDD approaches max capacity and the absence of the humongous Windows folder which is very pointless to copy over.

I should probably do this now before I go for class, then come back to format both drives.

Boring.

After that, I'll install Vista on one partition.

Finally, after I'm comfortable with not using the folder of backup data, I'll delete everything there.




After class now. Copying a few episodes of Chuck (Season 3) to watch while I have my supper and wait.






Today I encountered something that affirmed my belief that Singapore does need foreigner workers more than we dare to admit.

It's 2 days from CNY yet many workers are as good as on strike. It's not just my mum's business that's affected (all her workers are already staying home and had rushed all the goods like mad during the past few days); the transport business she employs also had manpower problems.

She had originally booked a slot at about 10.30am this morning. This meant they would send someone to her office at that time to pick up the goods. We got there late (I had to help her carry stuff) past 11am, then we waited for another half an hour while we prepared an area for the offerings (standard pre-CNY ritual).

At almost 11.30am she called the boss's wife (it's also a small business like ours and how we knew them is another story for another time) and insisted that they send someone over because I had class at 2.30pm and I couldn't help her carry stuff before I leave if they did not clear the office of the boxes of goods before then. Right. This is but a tiny example of how and why people lie in the world of business. I had class much later than that but we were simply impatient.

Furthermore, she was quite familiar with the couple so that helped too. Long story.

Anyway the boss himself came over within half an hour, explaining that his only worker has gone back to Malaysia already. No idea what happened to his other worker. There was only a chuckle when she asked.

On an unrelated note, there's actually a certain way to stack boxes so that you can have them almost touching the top of the door frame on a trolley and they still would not collapse easily.

Also, while he was pushing the trolleys out, we were concerned they might fall out of the building when he was pushing them along the corridor. That was when he confided in us that it actually happened once elsewhere. The box smashed a car and he had to pay over a thousand dollars as compensation. Moral of the story: never fuck around with filled cardboard boxes.

Back to the topic, this is why we need more foreign workers and not just Chinese ones. If both of them had hired Malay or Indian workers, things would have gone smoothly today. Not to mention racial harmony is important.








Lab-grown meat! I'd once thought about that but discarded the idea immediately when it appeared close to impossible.

But here we are, with meat successfully created without the rest of the animal. IMO if it tastes the same, there is no reason to care if it used to be part of a four-legged mammal. Heck, I'm very sure you can't tell the difference if it was all grounded up and made into a hamburger.

Examples of how that would work already exist, including corned beef.

I'm completely supportive of this if it means cheaper food. It's better than the other alternative that some scientists are looking at. Hint: 6 legs.