Narrowband.org

A Weekend of Birthdays and a Farewell

Posted by narrowband - 29/07/07 at 11:07:01 pm

A friend will be leaving for Sweden to further studies. He was the guy who taught me to ‘jump over’ the fence to get onto NKVE without passing through toll. Brilliant idea. As an innocent freshie, I joined his company for internship last year and guess what, I got much more than what I could ever bargain for. Little did I know, my arrival also marked the beginning of a lasting friendship with all the permanent staff there. On Friday, we (minus one lost pig who has already gone to Singapore) went down to the city for some Friday night fun.

Actually, we’re no party people. My previous such outing was donkeys years ago lar ok. It was because we wanted to send this guy off with a bang, we came up with something ‘out of the box’ (like how our boss always put it…). Let me tell you a bit about this guy. His super outgoing and adventurous personality saw him conquer mountain and sea alike – he scaled mount KK and possesses a valid diving license. (Diving ok, not driving. Of course, driving license also got lar). He also has an ‘Ikea…’ (private joke). Well bro, Sweden is also home to Ikea – the real one! Hehe. Two years hor, very fast pass one! Take care OK! I will try my best not to miss you!

It was also a joyous weekend – there were so many birthday celebrations. JW invited us for dinner on Saturday, while Sis celebrates hers today. We ordered an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins :D. Absolutely yummy! The week also saw the issuance of my first payslip from this company. *Happy happy*. Next week, there’ll be an annual dinner. More booze. -_-”

Happy Monday!

The Naked Truth About My Gym’s Locker Room

Posted by narrowband - 28/07/07 at 04:07:23 pm

You know the thing about taking a shower at my gym is that, you have to put up with curtains instead of doors. After hearing stories about gay men lurking in gym locker rooms and stuff, I can’t help but take some precautions also lah. Since the curtains can be opened by anyone at anytime, I usually do a splash ‘n dash just to get out of there as soon as possible.

Also, I always face inside and rarely outside. Maybe it’s because that’s where the soap and shampoo are. Or maybe it’s that silly fear of someone popping me a surprise visit while I’m busy lathering. I don’t know. And because I have my back facing the curtain, it tends to stick to my wet butt cheeks when I move around in the tiny shower cubicle (hate it when it happens!).

You would think that the cubicles have hooks for you to hang your towels, etc. You’re wrong. There are no hooks – just a shower head extended long enough so you can hang your towel there. Normally, I bring in my undies in also lah. Now, since I have more than one item hanging on the same horizontal bar (which is the extension that leads to the shower head), removing any one of them is a delicate task. I wouldn’t want to drop any of them onto the wet floor.

Back in the locker area, it’s the usual sight of men checking themselves out in the mirrors. The mirrors there, I tell you, are a crowd favorite. We savor the ‘results’ of the day’s workout by looking into the mirrors. Actually, these results are usually less obvious the next morning because the muscles have relaxed. To get a more ‘permanent’ shape would of course require a consistent workout regime and an appropriate diet.

Sometimes, if I’m unlucky (or lucky, whatever makes you happy), I bump into someone who doesn’t mind displaying his ‘tools’ for all to see. I have to be very honest with you – I find looking at another male’s anatomy very disgusting. On a brighter note, it shows I’m totally straight. So, such sightings are not welcomed. My friends tell me it’s more rampant in some other gyms in KL, luckily I’m not a member there.

P/s: I’ve about two more months before I renew my membership. I wonder if I should…

Who Cares About Your English?

Posted by narrowband - 24/07/07 at 10:07:50 pm

Bad English makes your writing look bad. Especially in official documents, announcements, reports, etc.. Memos, however, are usually intended for internal circulation so they can be simply written – in bad grammar and all – as long as everyone understands the message. Let’s talk about the official documents and reports and stuff. So what if they’re written in bad English (yet still intelligible)?

The truth is, nothing will happen. It’s business as usual. Your clients won’t care if your English is good or bad. All that matters to them is the quality of your products, and your services rendered. They won’t boycott you just because you write horrible English. How about signboards and announcements in public places? As long as the message is clear, the bad English is not going to affect anything.

And universities? The same thing. Nobody will feel embarrassed, and parents will continue to send their children to that university. In fact, most of my lecturers did not write in good English. But what the heck? They taught technical subjects anyway. The online bulletin board as well as the university’s official website do not have 100% correct English too. Yet, it’s business as usual.

In reality, perfect English is hard to come by. If you’re not good in English, it’s okay. Nobody will get punished, or suffer any losses. At most – if you’re lucky – your work gets highlighted in The Star’s Boob Watch column. And then, instead of feeling embarrassed, you even get excited because your writing gets featured in a national daily. But what if your English is good? Good then good lah. So?

My All-Time Favorite Instrumental Piece

Posted by narrowband - 17/07/07 at 09:07:58 pm

I listen to all kinds of music, but acoustic, live, or instrumental tracks are my favorite. I like the ‘rawness’ of the music – purely composed of acoustic sounds without any kind of sound engineering (except maybe amplification). I guess you can call me a minimalist. Remember I mentioned about a rare track I kept in my dead harddisk? Fortunately, I have a copy of it in my phone. Some of you may have heard it before when I put it up on my old blog years ago. Let me share it here with you now, my all-time favorite instrumental piece:

[audio:audio170707.mp3]

I can loop the song an infinite number of times and still won’t get sick of it. I wish I could play like that :(. I don’t know who the pianist is, though. It’s actually based on an original song, sung by Utada Hikaru. It’s called Final Distance, if I’m not mistaken. The CD (from which this song was supposedly taken) had only 3 tracks, all instrumental piano pieces (including Can You Keep a Secret – but I don’t have that song anymore). It’s no use trying to search for the piano score – I’ve had people asking me where to find it (one even offered me $$!).

I can’t even find the CD online. Anyway, tell me you love it :)

Announcing the Demise of my Harddisk

Posted by narrowband - 16/07/07 at 08:07:37 pm

Yes, the drive has journeyed on to the Land Where Consumer Electronics Are Eternally Blessed. But it’s not the end of the world. Surprisingly, I’m not *that* upset about it. I mean, I have back ups of the really important stuff – like photos. Documents… I can’t think of any important documents that I’ve lost. I have back ups of my lecture notes and slides throughout my years in university though – if you consider that important.

That’s my harddisk, being treated under Intensive Care Unit. It didn’t make past the critical stage. It showed some positive signs, after more than 15 minutes plugged into another laptop – signs that say the drive was successfully detected. However, efforts to access it were futile. The clacking noise made was pretty loud. I could actually feel something knocking against its casing when I held the drive in my hands. Something mechanical has apparently gone terribly wrong. I’m in the process of getting a new hdd. Meanwhile, I’ll be using another laptop at home – which has become somewhat like a ‘common laptop’ in the family hall. It’s much newer than mine, and has better specs so it’s not that bad.

By the way, Google Reader rawks. I just love the interface. Remember I was talking about my feed management in Feedreader? Well, the downside is that it’s offline. Therefore, it’s gone together with my dead harddisk. I’ve since been using Google Reader. I guess keeping things online does have its advantages. In fact, a number of my installer (setup) files have previously been uploaded onto my server too. As for mp3s… ahh… they were my prized collection. But then again, I hardly listened to all of them, only a select few. And guess what, I have my favorite tracks in my phone already (especially one super rare track). Thank goodness.

I don’t like Mondays. Especially when it rains. But I like Monday nights – because it’s my workout night. Heading to the gym now, adios!

Here’s a community service reminder: BACK UP YOUR HARDDISK TODAY! Or, at least your important files. Failing to do so may cause severe depression. Be very afraid.

My Harddisk’s Time is Almost Up

Posted by narrowband - 14/07/07 at 04:07:08 pm

I can safely say that there’s probably a 50-50 chance of successful data recovery. From what I gather (Internet as well as friends), the harddisk is dying and I’ve to get the data out ASAP. Luckily, I’ve done one round of backing-up about a month ago – where a large portion of my jpeg files was burnt into DVD-Rs. So the ‘data loss’ this time around (touchwood) is not that critical, I guess. That said, there are still files and folders that I’d want to keep (which I’ve not backed up), so I hope I’ll still be able to recover them. Last night’s Windows Automatic Update was real, after all – It’s got nothing to do with the harddisk failure.

I’ve just removed the harddisk from my notebook, and I plan to use an IDE-USB interfacing cable to access the harddisk, using another computer. By the way, I am currently using Sis’ desktop. Last night’s entry was published using my phone – the phone that many people consider a close contender of the iPhone (although you shouldn’t really compare the two side-by-side).

I decided that I won’t do that again (tapping on the numeric keypad, manually inserting symbols in tags such as <img src=”Picture URL”… />), because it’s not at all a fun thing to do! The photo taken was resized using the phone’s installed software. Anyway, let’s go back to my laptop. Right now, the harddisk is sitting on my laptop, (almost, maybe) lifelessly. Tonight, after hooking it up with another PC, I’ll try to salvage whatever I can. It’s strange because according to Bernard, Hitachi drives are considered to be reliable. I’ve not dropped my laptop or anything.

He added that once there are strange noises heard from the harddisk, it’s unlikely that data can still be recovered from it. Anyway, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’ll be sending Mom & Co. to Bukit Jalil stadium for Emil Chou’s concert before proceeding to kautim my harddisk. I can also forget about checking out this year’s Bon Odori Festival – Sis and I planned to go and have a look-see actually. Now no mood lah. This whole misfortune started last night – and I couldn’t think of a better reason than it being Friday the 13th!

Malware Infection: My Windows is Dead

Posted by narrowband - 14/07/07 at 03:07:38 am

[Update@14th July, 1500hrs: Apparently, it was not a software problem - neither was it due to a malware (malicious software - a common term for worms/viruses). It's actually a hardware problem - my harddisk is failing! More about it in my next post.] Earlier this evening, just before I wrote my previous entry, my PC was running very slowly even though I didn’t fire up any processes. My ZoneAlarm prompted me that some program pertaining to Microsoft’s genuine check was trying to access the Internet. I denied the connection, but somehow, about 20 mins later, I saw something strange when I opened my Task Manager to see why my PC was still lagging terribly. I saw a running process named something like MTD.exe, if I’m not mistaken (can’t really remember). All caps, with three letters, and starts with an M, of that I’m sure. Quickly, I ended that process.

However, moments later, I was prompted a dialogue that says my Windows had just finished downloading and installing some updates – much like how the real Microsoft Windows Update works. It says I must restart my PC, and gave me a choice of either to restart immediately, or wait til the progress bar finishes loading. At that time, I didn’t think much about whatever happened, because it really seemed like a real, ordinary update. I restarted my PC, and everything was fine until I returned from the gym. My PC crashed, and the harddisk area (just below the keyboard, to the left of the touchpad) was emitting some loud clacking noise I’ve never heard before. I knew that something was terribly wrong. I tried to bring up the Task Manager but even that couldn’t come on. I then force-shut down my PC.

And walla, I can’t boot into Windows because it says some file is missing. I can’t even boot into Safe Mode. The furthest I can go is the BIOS menu area. I tried again and my PC says ‘Primary hard disk drive 0 failure’. Below it, there was ‘No boot device available’. Basically, I think I’m screwed.

I snapped the pic with my phone, and wrote this entire entry using the same phone. No, no QWERTY keyboard, just a numeric keypad. My thumb hurts real bad now. I’ll try to use the linux-based Knoppix to access my files and back up the important ones. Looks like a reinstallation of Windows will be inevitable…

Damn it. I’ve never been infected with a malware/virus/worm this badly! I thought I had sufficient protection. Sigh! There goes my happy weekend.

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