Not Very Well

Imagine if you will. You're in bed sleeping quite nicely when suddenly The Muscle Cramp From Hell assails your left leg...

That's what happened to me on Thursday morning.

Normally I wouldn't write about something this mundane. Cramps are normal after all.

Not this one though. It's worse random muscle cramp I've ever had. It hurt like hell. It caused enough muscle damage to make me limp until this evening. It's so bad, I'm feeling kinda feverish right now because of it...

I hope this doesn't mean anything serious. Can't really afford to get sick right now. It really did hurt like hell...

Anyway, next week I'm going to have quite a long break away from work so I'm looking forward to that. My schedule should become more normal after we release our newly arrived and trained colleague "into the wild". Finally, I can get decent amounts of rest again.

I'm listening to SkyFM's 80s' station via my Vista radio gadget and it's awesome (the station I mean). 80s music, ain't nothing like it, before or since. Maybe it's just me and the fact that I spent my formative years in the 80s and 90s, but 80s vintage music has a certain innocence to it somehow. Anyone else feel like that?

I still can't quite comprehend the idea that I will be 35 this year. Honestly, whenever I think about this coming July I almost wish that it won't happen.

So many things I haven't done. So many things that were supposed to happen, hasn't happened yet. So much time wasted over being clinically depressed.

Life certainly turned put like nothing I expected...

Well, time to go back to my non-stop 80s music then...

Check Your Roadtax!

I was out yesterday until late. I did not notice my road tax had expired! Happily enough, there were no road blocks.

So this morning I took by brother's car and went to do pay insurance and road tax.

I'm broke now. The whole thing cost RM650/- plus....

Good thing there were only a few people at the post office.

The post office... Now that's a place I haven't gone to in a long, long time....

In other news, I went to that new Boulevard IT shop in Wisma Saberkas to check out notebook bag packs. I found a nice Belkin one costing around RM150/-. If I wasn't broke, I would've bought it.

Something strange happened while I was there. I found a whole range of pink Hello Kitty stuff. They have a variety Hello Kitty mice and I even found a hot pink Hello Kitty keyboard! There's even a whole shelf of other pink Hello Kitty computing stuff.

I took pictures. And here was the strange thing. All the pictures I took in the shop turned out blank. No image. Just a black square...

It was very strange. For a minute, I thought there might be an anti photography force field in the shop....

I will go back next week and try to take pictures again.

By the way, thumb drives are so damn cheap now. Kingston DataTraveller 2Gb for RM31, 4Gb for RM52 and 8gb for RM105.

Damn...

Windows Live Writer Test

Hello world testing 123. Is this visible?

 

Image insert test...

 

PS. Ok test successful.

Last Night...

... I went to First Family Cafe here in Tabuan to have dinner with my colleague and ended up....


..celebrating someone's birthday. Haha...

See these nice women? I don't know who they are... They were nice though and they really enjoyed themselves. Somehow, I neglected to ask their names...

I don't have any pictures of the birthday girl.

I had a surprisingly good time.

No, we didn't gatecrash. My colleague is a prominent member of a local forum and a lot of his friends showed up. One of the friends dragged us over to the birthday thing. We stayed until nearly midnight. We would have stayed longer if I wasn't working today....

My brother was there too. Obviously he stayed longer.

Anyway, First Family Cafe is quite good. The food was great and the prices are ok. I especially like the local food like pansoh and the bbq meat done in the way people usually do it at home. It's great. It's not halal though as can be expected of a place serving Iban food.

So if anyone is in the area, drop by and check it out. Highly recommended, especially on weekends.

Desktop Gadgetry!

When Windows Vista came out, I scoffed at the Windows Sidebar thingamajig that came with it. I thought it was a completely superfluous waste of space.

I was wrong...

The default gadgets that come at aren't that cool. By default, you get a clock, a picture viewer, CPU/RAM meter (ok, this one is quite nice..) and other stuff like that.

I explored a bit and found some other gadgets that came with Vista. The notes gadget and the calendar gadget aren't so useless to be fair. But nothing too special either.

And then I discovered the Windows Sidebar gallery!

Some of the gadgets available are simply brilliant.

On the left you can see what I have on my Sidebar at the moment.

From the top, I put a battery meter, WiFi meter, the Ministry of Sound internet radio gadget, a dressed up CPU/RAM meter, another internet radio gadget and a digital clock (with date). Ok the clock/date thing isn't very necessary considering that I already have a clock in the task bar.

But it's pretty...

Anyway, the gadgets are very useful and not at all superfluous. I have others that I downloaded but didn't add like the Wiki search and app launcher gadgets.

I haven't finished exploring all the gadgets yet. I'm sure there are other cool ones.

Another interesting thing I found on my new notebook is the MediaDirect feature. It's cool. When you want to do things like watch DVDs or listen to MP3s or make a presentation using Powerpoint or check your contact list you can do so without booting up to Vista. It's a lot quicker to use MediaDirect.

I've configured mine now and it's quite nice. Push the MediaDirect button and the computer will boot up quickly to the MediaDirect screen. From there, you will see a list of things you can do.

Very convenient.

We were playing around with it yesterday and my colleague remarked that the Inspiron really is a notebook especially made for media and entertainment.

He's not wrong.

The next things I want to test are the webcam features like motion activated recording and video chat. I've never done the video chat thing but I hear it's quite interesting...

Yes, I'm pleased with my new toy. So people, if you are hunting for a good value and fun notebook computer, I recommend you consider an Inspiron.

It's very nice...

Inspiron 1420: First Impressions

My new toy finally arrived on Monday afternoon. I'm using it at this very moment.














So how is it? It's excellent. Everything I expected. And more.






I took the brown colour kit considering that it seems to be the least popular option, apparently. You go and try to look for images of the espresso brown Inspiron and you will know what I mean.

Anyways, let me describe what is included in the box. You get the notebook of course, all the drivers, the OS reinstall CD (Vista Home Basic 32 bit), MS Works (which I uninstalled ), Roxio disc burning suite, power adapter, Targus wireless mouse, Creative ear buds (nice!) and owner's manual.

No bag. No problem though, I already have a decent notebook backpack I got as a gift from my employers last year.

The notebook numbers look like the following:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 1.66Ghz proc
MS Vista Home Basic
14.1" Truelife display (1280x800)
Espresso Brown colour kit with 2Mp webcam
2Gb RAM
160Gb hard disk
Dual layer DVD writer
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi catcher
6 cell battery
8-in-1 card reader

The notebook's weight is ok. Slightly heavier than an Acer maybe but not by much. The chassis is magnesium alloy which was news to me because previously Inspirons were usually made of plastic. The one I got is a new redesigned model with rounder edges and slimmer profile. Very nice.

I have one minor annoyance with screen. It's a Truelife shiny screen so it glares and reflects like a SOB in well lit places. Could be a problem with some situations. Having said that, the display viewing angle is quite good so the glare can be dealt with by tilting the screen.

The notebook's performance has been excellent so far. It boots up quick and shuts down quick. It launches everything very quickly as well courtesy of a good, fast CPU and more than enough RAM.

Talking about that, I really don't get why many notebook makers still put MS Vista on machines with only 512Mb of RAM. Vista is a resource beast and will slow to a crawl if you don't have enough RAM. 1Gb is the absolute minimum,

I have 160Gb which is plenty of space. For now...

The thing that really caught me by surprise was the battery life. The notebook comes with a 6-cell battery and on the "Balanced" power management setting it lasts slightly more 3 hours! Yesterday I went to Telang Usan to meet up with someone and I watched videos and played mp3s on it and it lasted over 2 hours before needing to recharge.

It's great. I'm most impressed with this.

I've tested the webcam and it's decent enough I guess. I have no experience using video cameras with computers so I can't really say so much. The camera apparently has motion sensor so it can be used as a motion activated camera. Might be useful.

The card reader works well and so does the Bluetooth module although it seems a little bit slow to me. There are two headphone jacks on the front of the notebook. I like this.

To summarise, the Inspiron 1420 is an excellent product. Good build quality and great value which is quite typical of Dell. I heartily recommend this.

All in all, RM2599 was a really, really good deal for what I got.

For more images of the notebook, please click here.

I'm Bored and Sleepy so...

47 words

Speed test

How fast are you?

Soon....

Soon....

Striking The Hot Iron...

I posted a comment somewhere about how now is the right time for East Malaysians to demand more attention from the Federal government. Sabah and Sarawak BN now form a significant portion of the Parliament.

I fully expected demands for such to surface quickly. I was not wrong.

Here is an article from The Star reproduced in full.

More posts for two states?

By MERGAWATI ZULFAKAR

merga@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: Sabah and Sarawak, which delivered the bulk of parliamentary seats for a simple majority for Barisan Nasional, may be rewarded with a higher number of ministers in the Cabinet.

A proposal to see a bigger representation from the two states was made at the Umno supreme council here on Monday and agreed by some of the council members.

Sarawak single-handedly delivered the highest number of seats for Barisan, winning 30 out of the 31 parliamentary seats while Sabah won 24 out of the 25 seats.

Umno sources said the council felt that the two states had performed well and there was a suggestion at the meeting that four MPs from each state should be made ministers.

Sabah had three Cabinet members in the last Cabinet, Datuk Dr Maximus Ongkili and Tan Sri Bernard Dompok who served as Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and Datuk Shafie Apdal who was the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister.

Sarawak only had two representatives. They are Datuk Seri Effendi Norwawi who served as Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department and Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin Fah Kui.

Johor, which won the second highest number of parliamentary seats, 25, had seven ministers in the last Cabinet.

Sources said that the Cabinet to be formed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would probably be smaller.

At present there are 32 Cabinet members including the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

“In 2004 we had 199 MPs and now we have only 140. It is not necessary to have a bigger Cabinet.

“If the Cabinet size remains the same, then we are going to have even fewer backbenchers in Parliament,” said a council member.

Will this be good for the whole state or only good for certain people? If PBB and co know what's good for them, they need to do the right thing. The time is now.

I want more from the Federal government and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Here's another article in the Borneo Post about the same thing.

Annoyed...

Comment I left at Kennysia.

"Zam is a bitch and he deserved to be thrown in the gutter.

I'm pleased for this result. Let this be a warning to all the BN survivors especially our home MPs.

Now let me get something off my chest.

I'm sick & tired of listening to leftists noobs and wannabes calling Sarawakian and Sabahan voters stupid lah, blind lah, naive lah... Stop it la. This kind of crap only reinforces my feeling that orang Malaya don't have any idea what our political scenario is like...

Firstly, if people want us to vote for opposition insulting us isn't going to help. Funny isn't it, many opposition supporters feel insulted when government called them names and yet here they are doing exactly the same thing and calling BN voters names...

The average Sarawakian voter for the most part have no reason to vote their SPDP/PRS/PBB/SUPP MP out. To them, their MPs have done well enough at the Federal level.

The issues that riled up so many voters in Semenanjung don't have the same kind of effect here. To your average Joe Sarawakian, Hindraf, Bersih, racial tensions, all those things are Semenanjung problem. All alien. It sounds wrong but that's the truth. You go to places like Serian and Lundu and Sri Aman etc and you go ask what people feel.

Not that they don't care but for most part our own MPs aren't directly involved in these screw ups. The effects aren't felt here at all to be honest.

Another reason is the near total lack of a coherent opposition except for DAP in urban areas. PKR here is mostly seen as an outsider trying to force itself on Sarawakians. What they need is strong local leadership who bring up issues that affect Sarawakians and not some generic thing about change like what they did here in Petra Jaya. That's not good enough to swing voters.What we need is strong, home grown opposition.

Sarawakian political scenario is different. The average Sarawakian voter is different. The opposition needs to tackle us in a different way.

Our issues are different, mostly land issues and things like nepotism and lack of transparency as well as national issues like prices of goods and fuel. These are mainly state government issues. The time and place to vent isn't now. Let's wait for the State elections for that.

The main culprits at Federal level are MCA/MIC/UMNO. None of these parties contest here so no swinging angry backlash. Therefore BN wins, except in Kuching which is cool. Congrats to Chong, DAP Sarawak and supporters. KUTGW.

Let me say something else. When the results started coming, I smiled. I smell opportunity for Sarawak in Parliament. Sarawak BN now have 30 MPs coming. BN has 130+ seats. Sarawak BN now make up a quarter of that. Plus MPs from Sabah East Malaysia suddenly has half the hall to ourselves.

You know what that means? That means that we can be more demanding of the central government. We can ask for more and they will be less UMNO members around telling our MPs to wait and wait and wait... Now Sarawak has more power at Federal level. What will happen? Wait and see...

I'm going to meet with my PRS friend and make some recommendations. Maybe we can turn the current situation to our advantage and squeeze the Malaya BN.

So friends, strangers, I know this is quite a euphoric time for many of us. But please, the next time you feel like accusing Sarawakians of being blind and stupid, think first and ask WHY we did what we did..."

To all opposition supporters, I'm pleased for you all and the election results. But let me give you a tip. If you want Sarawakians to join the band wagon, please refrain from calling us stupid for returning BN to power. We have our own reasons for that. More accurately, we didn't have any real reason to vote our BN MPs out.

Continue to call us stupid and rest assured, we will continue NOT to support you in the next elections.

PS: The post was about the blogger hating, stuttering (former) Minister of PropagandaDisinformation Information losing . This result was the second best thing about the elections behind our favourite Indian dinosour Semi Value losing in Sg. Siput.

Viva le unemployed-female-bloggers-who-are-agents-of-Jews/US/Israel-who-apparently-earn- 100k-a-month.

Will You Listen Now?

The verdict is out. The people have spoken. They will no longer tolerate bullshit. You can no longer push them around.

So now will you change? Will you still tell people to shut up when they complain? Will you still accuse people of disloyalty when they disagree with you?

When people ask you why will you tell them now instead of telling them not to ask?

Will you finally respect when respect is due? Do you get it that intimidation and veiled threats no longer work?

Will you still treat us like idiots? Do you still think we're deaf, blind and dumb?

BN has paid the price for arrogance and over confidence. I say they deserve it.

So how about here at home. I know many people in BN. Most of them are sincere and hardworking. Some... are not.

Let this be a sign. A warning if you will. Tread carefully else the same thing will happen here.

Are you listening?

Notebook

Anyone who's been hanging out with me for the last few months would know that I've been talking incessantly about getting a new notebook for myself.

Well, guess what. I finally went and did it this evening.

I got me a Dell Inspiron 1420.

I've been stalking notebooks almost daily for the last 2 weeks in view of buying one. The stack of pamphlets and quotes in my room will attest to that.

I checked out everything I could find. Acer, Lenovo, HP Compaq, Fujitsu, Asus, NEC, BenQ, everything.

I almost, almost bought a HP Compaq V3000 series notebook just a few days ago. Very competitive spec. AMD Turion X2 CPU, 1Gb RAM, 250gb hard disk, RM2599. I very nearly got it. In fact the only thing that stopped me was the short installment period. I didn't feel like paying 200 plus a month. Of course, I could just charge it to my card but something didn't feel right... So I left the shop with just some quotes and brochures.

Just as well, because I show up for work on Thursday evening and what do I see? A new HP Compaq V3000 series notebook...

Don't know about everyone else but I don't fancy owning something I have at work.

The chances of getting a good deal on a notebook were looking rather slim. I didn't fancy anything else because the specs weren't very hot and the prices were a little too high for most part.

Even from Dell. Dell's been rather poor the last few weeks. Every day I visit Dell.com.my and nothing really good. None at all.

Until this evening.

I was talking to my colleague about the elections when he idly punched up the Dell website. What we both saw was so compelling I went ahead and ordered one.

Here's what I'll be getting for RM2599.

Intel Core 2 Duo T5450 1.66Ghz proc
MS Vista Home Basic
14.1" Truelife display (1280x800)
Espresso Brown colour kit with 2Mp webcam (no extra charge)
2Gb RAM (free upgrade from 1Gb)
160Gb hard disk (free upgrade from 120Gb)
Dual layer DVD writer (free upgrade from DVD\CD-RW combo drive)
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi catcher
6 cell battery
8-in-1 card reader
Targus wireless mouse (free!)
Earbuds (free!)
Free delivery

I wanted to get one in red but Gette has a red 1420 already... Yellow and white are nice too but yellow looks like Asus and white looks like MacBook. Pink? Too feminine... Ditto for apple green. Blue was kinda blah. And black is also blah plus it's a finger print magnet.

So brown I went.

Notice the amount of free stuff? This notebook is easily worth RM2800++ if I had to pay for all the extras. Ok to be honest I don't care so much for the mouse and earbuds but the RAM and hard disk upgrade alone is worth a boatload of cash.

So there it is. Pending payment confirmation and assembly I expect to have this by the later half of next week. Expect pics and review.

What do you think? Sweet deal eh. Want one too? Better hurry.

Offer expires on Monday...

Cross Posting

Wow. I never knew you could cross post between Blogger and Multiply. And the import from Blogger function needs a select/deselect all button...

Yeah, I just imported a blogger entry.

I think the cross posting feature is very cool....

*Unfortunately, I've discovered that I can't import post labels.... Boo hoo..

No Internets Makes Me a Sad Panda....

... and long cable is looooong. And broken in the middle. That my viewers is the source of my internet woes the last few days. Apparently, my dad discovered the break this morning. There's this long telephone cable running into the house from the outside and that cable was broken. So no internet.

I was at Starbucks last night but there was no internet there either. The airport Starbucks got extended. It's quite nice.

I need to post this home because later this evening I'll be playing instructor at work with the new boy. So no time to blog probably.

Tis the election season and this time around, I'm actually a registered voter. Unfortunately I won't be able to go and cast on the day because of work. No big lost though, in my area (Petra Jaya) I got no complaints against our PBB reps and PKR has next to nothing going for them. My other friends are quite busy the last week helping out with campaigning activities.

If I were to vote I would in all likelihood vote for Fadillah. Why not? He's done nothing wrong and everything is running in my area. He hasn't said anything racist or sexist. He doesn't strike me as being a bigoted moron. So no problem.

I don't agree with what the government say. I DO look at the candidate. I WILL NOT support a moron or a bigot or a religious extremist or a racist regardless of what party they represent. If people remember what happened this last few years there are a LOT of those types in government.

PKR? I feel sorry for them but there you go. Anyway, it's always been my opinion that people in rural and semi rural constituencies need to vote for BN. They need to. BN has the money and plans for development. There's still too many people struggling to make a living outside of our towns and cities. They need help.

As usual the battles will be in the urban areas. I hope DAP will be able to at least maintain their presence. I don't trust DAP fully but I do sympathise with some of their views and as far as I'm concerned they are the only viable opposition party in the country. The others? Not so much.

The BN government will probably win again but I hope their majorities will be reduced. Like it or not, they need to see that they did mess up a lot of times the last term and they need to see that they have to improve.

For one thing, I find some of the things going on during this campaigning period very annoying as usual. Like personal attacks. And how some voter concerns are apparently "petty" and "unimportant". No sirs, no such thing as petty concerns when you talk to voters.

Are my concerns petty? Am I being "disloyal" and "ungrateful" when I laugh at and get pissed off that some of the things our MPs say and do?

I want more transparency. I want reps who won't act like morons. I want more liberal policies for media and culture. I want something to be done about the Arabisation that's slowly creeping into our way of life (thankfully this phenomenon isn't very prevalent here in Sarawak. Yet.) I want less of the immature sniping and trash talking between politicians. I want the PSD to STOP using quotas when hiring people. If there are little napoleons who get in the way of the selection process and still hire people based on their race/religion, I want these people sacked. Not transfered. I want the government to not just ask people not be pissed off with them but actually go down and find out WHY they are upset and do something about it. I want a more efficient and better educated Police Service.

Petty?

My final comment is about opposition's claims about lowering prices of fuel and goods. Gimme a break eh? It's impossible to go against market forces. Not without wasting anymore tax money on subsidies. So no, I don't think they can pull it off if they form the government.

That's all I got to say about politics at the moment.

Finally to make up for the long delay between posts and to lighten this one, I bring you a video review of the amazing Polystation 3!!!



Have a nice day.

Candy..

I miss them...

I'm happy to note that they didn't really break up after all...




Hopefully they come back soon. Rumour has it that they have new material...



If this is part of that new material, I'll pay money for it.