Official business trip

Time is ticking out. I have approximately 24 hours left before flying to Miri for official business duties. That sounds nice eih? The naked truth is that I was sent there to be a scapegoat in case anything got screwed. I see now the power of delegation and assigning responsibilities. Look, I wouldn't mind to bear the responsibility of the task if I'm involved / in charge / familiar with it from the start of the project. I was asked to perform and train others on a totally unfamiliar task which I'm given just 2 days to pick up. And I'm supposed to train and teach others to do it there. Very smart indeed! Damn that bugger sloth!

Aside from office politics, the sad thing is I will need to find someway to entertain myself over there, to surpress my boredom which is so inevitable. I have decided to bring my notebook there so that I can do something with it, perhaps watch a whole series of Angels of Mission 3D over the week. But that's so lame and stodgy. I feel so isolated.

It will be even worse when I find out that there will be no internet connection for me. I'll be so dead, so disconnected. Call me a geek if you want, but I think the internet plays such a huge role in my daily life if you calculate it based on its contribution as a medium for my entertainment, source of information (This weighs tons), a way to communicate domestically and internationally, a place where I sought new ideas and gather new knowledge. Even if you calculate it based on the number of hours I used it, it's definitely a huge percentage of my 24 hours that I and everyone of you out there have.

My only hope would be to come back safely with a mindset that translates "That trip was quite ok, everything went well, it wasn't that bad after all". If that was not the case, then I'll damn that disdainful oaf straight to hell!

Haih (translation: Sigh). I rest my case.

Hypothesis: Girls can't drive

A colleague of mine scare the shit out of me today. Apparently, we just came back from lunch. As she attempt to park her car, that nearly took my breath away. I was wailing and sort of shouted instructions in panic.

I usually don't do this but I sometimes think somehow the female gender can't handle their vehicles properly. Put it in another way, I will have to stereotype the female gender to have skills below par when compared with the male's gender. I'm not sure if this hypothesis of mine is true, or how many people out there supports my thought.

I heard from a radio station not too long ago, well about 2-3 weeks ago that, according to a survey the female gender took in average 3 seconds to respond to a green light change of the traffic light while in contrast the male gender took only < 1 second to do the equivalent. That is certainly one evidence to support my hypothesis.

The incident today has strongly displayed my colleague's ability in manoeuvering her car. Can I use this as an evidence? Hmmmm maybe not but it certainly could cast a vote on this case. I shall call it sample 1.

Throughout my observation for the past few years, I noticed that the female gender tends to avoid side parking and parking which requires entry through "gostan" (translation: reversing). I need to put translation into English every now and then because according to my domain name statistics, I have quite a majority of visitors from U.S.A and Europe. Could this preference of theirs undermine their ability in driving? To me, it would be evidence 2. *sniggers*

I now have 2 evidence and 1 sample. Perhaps I could gather more evidence to support my hypothesis and once and for all declare that it is true and make a great contribution to the world.

My dear blog readers

Just something that I thought of yesterday. I was wondering that could there be any colleagues of mine are actually readers of my blog. To top it off, be lurkers or stalkers. I was pondering at the fact that, if they did, they would know quite a lot about my thoughts and life and at the same time still act normal in front of me? Bloody hell, that would be so absolutely freaky! Man, I know I live in a world where people walk with sort a mask on them and hypocrisy is just floating everywhere like the existence of menacing bacteria. But I never thought that it could have such an impact when they discovered about your blog.

I believe all owners of blogs reveal their life, experience and thoughts in someway. Mainly because that is in fact the content that is posted daily. So there will be some compromise on the privacy of the blog owners which is to be adjusted by the blog owner him / herself. As for myself, I still want to blog continuously without holding back my thoughts or whatever content that I intend to put. So how can I still do that if the people who knows it could pose potential threats to my safety / security / position within the company?

Well I say, to hell with it, nobody and nothing stops my blog. kekeke.

By the way, if any of my colleague is in fact reading this. Please consult me and notify me that you are a reader of it. I would be very appreciative of your effort. *wink*

Wing

Well I'm pretty sure many people are aware about William Hung? He's funny right? Let me challenge you to dig this then.

A friend of mine recommended this link which she says will be funnier than William Hung. With much of a doubt, I did checked it out. To my amusement, she's damn right. Go ahead and listen for yourself !!! I can't believe that there is such entertainment on the web now.


www.wingmusic.co.nz

p.s: Check out the Buy Wing CDs section. It quotes "Add $1 for a photo of Wing. Only available when purchasing a cd. " God damn it! That's so funny. ROTFLMAO. I am so gonna promote this!

Voting Day

Today's my first voting day. The information that I've got from some pamphlets directs me to Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Midah. I brave myself to go under the hot tormenting sun. I reached my destination. I proceeded to check for my registration. It seems that all of the SPR officers are using notebooks to conduct this registration checking. Hmm. What I've noticed is, there is no internet connection whatsoever. Probably they copied a whole copy of database in relation to their area into each and every notebook they used.

Ahem! (embarassing). Apparently, I went to the wrong school. The officer told me I'm supposed to be at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Midah 2. Aikz. I should have known better.

In a short while I reach that school and proceeded to check for my registration. Subsequently going to the correct classroom and cast my vote. The fun is short lived when I took the pencil and place my signature X mark. Well that's it. It's done. There's that. Completed. Finished. Time to go home. I've done my responsibility as a citizen.

Now that I'm back, I'm submitting myself in an air-conditioning room to mitigate the heat that is taking its place lately. Gosh. Sometimes I just miss UK's weather no matter what the brits have to say about that. I know, that in fact, they think of the direct opposite.

We'll just have to wait for tonight when we gather at the living room of our house and stick to the TV for the results. It won't be that exciting coz the results will not be as dramatic as Taiwan's. That feller won by a tiny weeny short margin. Ludicrous! Nuff said.

Snapped

My spectacles f*cking snapped. I've been told that frameless glasses are fragile and not rigid but I did not absolutely think that it could be this patheticly fragile. Basically it snapped at the left corner of the plastic glass. All I've got in return is laughs from family.

I'm not sad for it to be broken but the thought of having to fork out unnecessary unrealistic amount of cash to get it repaired or replaced.

For an immediate resolution, I applied UHU glue and tried to mend it temporarily. At this very moment in time where I'm blogging this, I'm wearing this self partial repaired specs.

I need to get it sorted as soon as possible. Hopefully by this week.

Activex DLL in ASP

One of the required functionality of my client involves searching through all Word Documents for specific keywords within its contents. This is to shorten their time taken to search and browse through the whole lot of documents that they have. It is also caused by poor management and abysmal system that is used to manage the collection of documents (softcopy).

As such, I tried to search for such component for ASP but to no avail. There is a few but the results are not reliable and they are costly. Heck, I will write that component myself. After many hours spent within 2 days, I managed to come out with a working VB program and successfully converted it into a DLL. I call it through a test program written in VB and it works. Well then I tried it using ASP. Shit happens!

Initially I thought there is certain configurations that I missed out or calling a DLL through ASP is quite different. But after searching the internet for hours, I found the enlightment to it.

BUG: IE cannot run Activex DLL compiled in Visual Basic 6 Tiu Nia Sing! Nuff said.

I hope I fixed it

It's about the post I made yesterday. I tried to do the same with my notebook and updated the virus-definitions. I finally found out what virus got into my pc.

Apparently it is known as W32.Bizec. It got into my pc when I enter a HTML page which exploits a vulnerability in Internet Explorer. It's something that relates to showhelp() but I don't know about the details of it.

Well, then the worm/virus will replicate itself to SYSTEM32 folder and creates a \sysmon folder. It then will create icq2003decrypt.dll, java32.dll , javaext.dll and etc in SYSTEM32 folder. A register entry will be made into HKEY_Current_User\Software\Windows\xxxx cannot remember. LOL. Something that points to sysmon folder. This will then instruct the pc to start up this virus each time the machine reboots. The effect of it will be stealing data from your pc and sending messages to all your contact list in ICQ promoting that obnoxious jokebiz M*ther F*cka virus.

I rebooted my machine 2 times, deleted the files that were created by the virus, quarantine some of it coz I just can't delete it. Basket! and removed the registry entry.

My ICQ did not disconnect itself yesterday. It performs way past the 1 minute mark. ^_^. Hehehehe

Updating Antivirus

Did anybody got hit with virus or worm? Apparently I think I got hit by somekind of virus or worm either in my office pc or my notebook at home or both. *sigh*

My ICQ always disconnect after 1 minute of logon but it won't happen when I use it in my office pc. That might be a clue. Secondly, I have been receiving lots of emails from strangers and some not so familiar email addresses. It's like I think I recognise this email but again I think I don't. Well I reckon some of those are part of the mass emailing list of your friends forwarding mails to us and I kinda remember them subconsciously. Now it has gotten worse. Heck, I even received emails from myself sending darn virus (*.zip) file. Most of these mails contain some smiley face on the subject line, provide some kind of a password in the form of a sequence of digits and the trademark of all, an attachment in (*.zip) or (*.scr) or (*.vbs) etc.

I updated my virus definition today eventhough my subscription to Norton / Symantec has been invalid or so called expired. A talk to a colleague and she advised me to reset my system time to an earlier date. Then, download virus definition. Then change it back.

I tried it suspiciously and with full doubt that such a method could work. That would be darn dumb for the Antivirus software creators for creating such a lousy verification. But hey, I was surprised when it worked. So the antivirus software company is dumb but so am I for not realising this method all along. What I did was to keep delaying or exit that pesky petulant popup box asking to renew subscription. *duh*

Upgrading to Windows XP Professional

Two days ago, I bought a Maxtor 80 GB Harddisk IDE with External Casing at Low Yat Plaza. Considering my office pc and my own personal notebook does not come with a CDRW, I thought having a harddisk with me could help me solve the problem of having to transfer huge amount of files (large file size) in between these two machines. The volume would be so high even a few thumbdrive sticks won't do the job. Secondly, the harddisk could very well backup my digital photos, videos, source codes, portfolios and misc files.

Ideally I would like to get a notebook harddisk (2.5") which is slim, highly portable, does not require external power supply and simply because it looks great. Nevertheless, the drawback was that the price is a couple hundred more and that the capacity is just a quarter of its 3.5" counterpart. Aikz. Due to my frugality attitude and judgement after looking at my bank balance, I decided to get the huge, chunky, heavy and laden with power supply cables alternative.

I began to do preparations of backing up my files from my Compaq Presario 1503AP notebook into this harddisk before proceeding to deal with the change of Operating System. After about 30 minutes, I have backup all my important files. It's just about 5 GB. Took many deep breaths and tried to muster all my strength and courage to upgrade my existing Windows XP Home Edition to Windows XP Professional.

You see, I had many bad experiences dealing with reformatting and change of OS. I still remember vividly circa 2002 when I reformat my pc and install Windows 2000. It was such a horrendous experience that left me agonizing without the use of pc for nearly a week and the thought that my pc has kapoot. Ironically I was attending a MCSE course at that time. The materials that I studied and the thick reference books does not help either. The stupid 4 boot disks are nonsense. Nonetheless, I have successfully saved back my pc and accomplished my mission of installing windows 2000 after getting advices from multiple friends, tried with different windows 2000 CDs, tried with many sets of 4 setup boot discs and 1 setup boot disk from EdMeN.

Back to the previous part. I clicked on the upgrade button and there it goes. My Windows XP Home Edition is in the process of upgrading into Windows XP Professional. I can only cross my fingers and hope that it goes well without a single glitch. I was squinting at the LCD throughout the entire process of about 40 minutes with hope that the progress bar would go on and on and on. No error message, no error message please was all that I was thinking throughout. Then bam! Popup a message to ask me to provide a file. Some (*.inf) file related to PPP over Ethernet stuff. I can't find it and got no choice but to click on cancel. Luckily the installing process resumes. Finally after 40 minutes, all goes well and I felt very much in relief after creating much anxiety and self inducing stress. It was a bet that I could not afford to lose.

So why in the blue hell do I wanna go through this tormenting process. You see, Windows XP Home Edition does not support IIS which I bloody need it to do my ASP. What a bunch of crap!

Programming nightmare over

Another sick programming blog post. I've finally managed to solve a perennial problem that has been generating a lot of anxiety and frustration to get the job done. My programming problem in this case would be "Why the biometrics verification would not run successfully through my packaged Activex Control in CAB file?". After hours and dreadful hours of perusal and support from 3 other senior colleagues, the pesky problem has been deduced into "Why does the biometrics DLL doesn't creates a finger.dat file which will be used to compare the fingerprints?".

I then received this new version of DLL which will solve that part. So now the finger.dat file is generated successfully but the obstinating bug is still not solved entirely. Finally on the third day, which is today, the problem officially became "Why does the packaged Activex Control couldn't access to the INI file?". I figured this out myself. I've tried to put the INI file into windows\system32 folder, windows\downloaded program files folder, support folder and tweak some settings in the support folder but to no avail. Finally I tried to just placed the INI file on the desktop. Miracullously it worked! I somehow feel that I'm floating in the air and there is nothing holding me back from moving a foot forward anymore.

Eih? How bizzare that was. It simply defies the logic of programming which itself is the upmost important knowledge or skill that a developer must possess. Well at least it is according to my beliefs.

At this moment in time, I do not have the precious time to ponder about and figure out why it worked but to feel gratified for it is working.