Alter Ego

THIS IS CRAP!

My desktop is practically dying on me. The network port on the motherboard is dead, I have to resort to using an NIC card. My graphic card is dying, I am seeing artifacts all over the place. I won't be able to sell it anymore. Damn it, I should have sold it last year and be happy with a DX10 card. So much for DX10 and Windows Vista bashing.

I think I find little use for desktops anymore. I would love to stick to laptops and focus more on mobility.

That's right, maybe no more gaming for me. I am getting old. I don't even find gaming as fun as it used to be anymore.

Sorry, friends, the next time you need someone to play Company of Heroes with you guys, you will have to look for someone else. I don't do games anymore. It's all reality to me now.

But wait...

Isn't Diablo 3 coming?


... and then there's the new Radeon cards called the 4850 and 4870!


Ahh, what to do??!! I can't decide!

Bloody hell.

Great.

I can barely support myself with my current earning, and now the fuel price just happened out of nowhere (thank you for my vast interest in PC hardware and self entertainment). The government said the fuel price hike would happen in August, but I was dead surprise when it actually happen today!

I was shocked to see the queue at every petrol stations while driving home from work! I knew people will start queuing before midnight, but not this bad! The peaceful Bukit Jelutong was infested with vehicles queuing up at the ONLY Petronas petrol station. I was thinking of queuing up too, but the queue was too long that I just gave up and went home.

This morning, I drove 80km/h to work. I usually do 140-150km/h; not that I was trying to be quick because I was late, but I love the speed. The highway seems slow today. I was amazed to see a Subaru Impreza cruising at 110km/h. Maybe he's worried too.

I came up with a few ways to curb my spending regarding fuel.

1. Use a fuel efficient vehicle. If you have the license, use a motorcycle when the weather permits. I drive a Proton Savvy, thank goodness. A vehicle with displacement of 1.0L to 1.5L is a sweet spot for fuel efficiency.
2. If you drive a car with manual transmission, shift gear somewhere between 3000-3500rpm. I found this a few years ago to be very economical.
3. Throw away excess luggage from your car. Anything that don't belong should go. Heavy car equates to more fuel.
4. Be patient. Go slow, like 80km/h-110km/h; in 5th gear, not 3rd or 4th.
5. Use the air cond only when its really HOT. Wind down your windows when the weather permits.
6. Eat in instead of going out.
7. Stay home on weekends.
8. No more Starbucks, Coffee Beans, or any luxury.
9. Use less toothpaste and shampoo.
10. Eat less, and exercise more (like a breeze walk to the 7-Eleven near your house).
11. Shutdown the PC when not in use. Use laptop.
12. Less air cond at home.
13. Only shower twice a day. Not more. Seems impossible with the Malaysian climate.

.............................


Ah fuck it! No way I am letting this change my life!

Level 1 is the brand I trust when it comes to a wireless router. Reason is; its cheap and it works. When my first Level 1 router got struck by lightning, I simply bought another one; the exact same one. And that one too got struck by lightning, crap.

Now I am running on a backup router supplied by my brother. Not sure how long I can use this one though.

And to make it worse, my trusty Ubuntu 64-bit desktop is down. Apparently, the network port is FUBAR-ed by the lightning somehow. The device can still be detected in Ubuntu. I am going to try to install a PCI network card. Actually, I did try last night, but it didn't work out as well as I thought. Ubuntu just refused to cooperate. Since I will be gone until Saturday before I can start working on it again, my Ubuntu 64 will just have to wait for me until then.

Man, just when I was thinking of getting a 500GB HDD, and then this happened.

After pondering for quite a while about getting back on Facebook, I decided to do it anyway. Reason is quite simple; to keep in touch with friends. And believe it or not, my friends nowadays no longer use Fotopages (tonnes of ads; idiots) or Flickr (very very nice) to share pictures. They use Facebook, seriously (except for my photographer friends, most of them still use Flickr; understandable).

Sooooooo... yea, I am back. Yes, Michelle, I am back on Facebook. You win.

BUT I AM NOT PLAYING ANY OF THOSE GAMES! PERIOD!

I have just finished doing some troubleshooting on my Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 on Ubuntu Hardy Heron Beta (talk about Betas, I really love to be on the bleeding edge (read: love looking for trouble by using unstable software) ). Anyway, that's the fun I get for being a geek, thank you very much.

So, there I was sitting in front of my desktop wondering what the hell is going on with my Firefox.

First thing I realize, my bookmarks are gone. That's not good. I love my bookmarks.

Second, the Google search box ain't working. You input some random words and press Enter and nothing happens. This is terrible, I love Firefox because of that search box.

I went through every single folder in ~/.mozilla and still couldn't find anything wrong. I even did a chmod 777 * and still things remained the same.

Hmm.

Okay, let's go safe mode.

Still nothing works!!

*&@(#^&@#%^*)&@^#%)&*#@*%@#$

Out of nowhere I simply typed in



And as expected, Ubuntu would display my current hdd space and guess what...



Doh! I used up everything! I went through some stuffs and deleted some videos I downloaded off the net, did a



and then



and tada! My Firefox is back with its full glory; bookmarks and search engine all working again.

Now I know that Firefox needs some hdd space to run properly! :D

Lesson of the day: Get that WD 500GB SATA 16MB hard disk. Yes, go get them. Get 2 of them. Then I can join that Terabyte Club. And oh, bragging rights.

Ever since I announced that I won't be signing in to FB, ever, my friends have been trying to coax me into FB. How? By causing FB to send tonnes of emails regarding updates on my applications (read: stupid, brainless applications).



I don't mind, because I have my GMail filter up and all emails from Facebook are sorted out nicely in my Facebook folder. I rarely look it up anyway, but was surprised to see 100 unread emails from FB only.

Friends, you can stop now; don't worry, I am still contactable via GTalk and this blog. Yes, Michelle, this post goes out to you in particular :P

I don't care if it's the 'in thing' among my friends now, I am totally starting to hate it.

It's full of garbage.

It's full of stupid, brainless and mindless games.

It's full of crap applications. Why bother? There's already tonnes of great applications via apt-cache search application_name.

So, from now on, I am declaring today as my first starting day of not logging into Facebook. And I will not log in there anymore, ever again.

There I've said it. No, I cannot say why, let's just say that I am very emotional while writing this. Anger, hate, jealousy, unfairness, stupidity; I am feeling all these at the same time.

So, let the counter start.

No of days not logged on to Facebook: 1

Actually, gaming is one of the best way to waste my time. Not really wasting them, but its just one of my hobbies (other than looking up the Internet on how to do things I have always done on Windows but on Linux).

And the game I have been playing lately is Chrono Cross! Its a PSX (short for Playstation) game, that I play on my PSX emulator; the pSX (legally, you need to own a PSX in order to play games on its emulator). pSX on Ubuntu is fairly easy to get; just follow the instructions here.

Anyway, its an old game, from the year 2000 if I am not mistaken but the gameplay is so good that I am on my 2nd playthrough already!

The gameplay is evolved around elements. Each element has their own set of spells consisting of offensive, defensive and support types. Each character has their own innate elements; so to speak - their element signature. One character may be a RED innate; while another is a BLUE innate (and there's more than a dozen characters to choose from for your 3-man party!). There are 6 elements; RED, BLUE, GREEN, YELLOW, BLACK and WHITE. Each element has their own opposite; RED to BLUE (vice versa), GREEN to YELLOW (vice versa) and BLACK is to WHITE (vice versa). So you have to set up your strategies properly in order to get the most efficient way to eliminate your enemies!

The graphics is so-so, but still one of the best on this old platform. Audio is great, and storyline is awesome! You can check out the screenshots here.

I suggest anyone who cannot play (or cannot afford the hardware :P) the latest games, might as well travel back in time, and look up those awesome great titles that you can play on an emulator, and have some fun time playing old games with great gameplay! You won't regret it!

With that said, game on!

The high definition war went on for some time now. Now it has ended. The winner is Sony's Blu-ray. I never took the time to update myself when the war was raging, but I realized a few things that smells fishy to me. Like the huge price drop of HD DVD players.

Anyhow, Toshiba announced that they are dropping the format. The first announcement was in Japan. I just knew that the market share of Blu-ray is already 90% in Japan. Maybe now if you go to your nearest hardware electric and electronics retailer, you will notice that HD DVD players are so damn cheap; but don't bother buying it. Save your money and get a Blu-ray player. HD DVD is dead. Period. No future.

Isn't it a great time to get a PS3? :D

I was at Sunway Pyramid last night; waltzing towards TGV to get my movie tickets. I booked tickets for the movie Jumper! Isn't it nice to go for a romantic movie session with...

with...

with......

2 GUYS AND A CHICK!!!


And everyone else... let me tell you, EVERYONE else at the cinema was with their partners. Here I am with 3 of my colleagues! COLLEAGUES! AS IF I HAVE NOT SEEN ENOUGH OF THEM ALREADY!

AND YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT I DID BEFORE THE MOVIE ON VALENTINES DAY???

I WAS PLAYING DAYTONA AT PYRAMID ARCADE!!! (*^(&^&#^$ *(&(*&(*^#&$^(&@#$(^(&@#$^(&#@^$

&*^@#$*&@#^$*&^@#$*&^@#*&$^)!@*(&#$()@*$)#(@&$(*#^%&(^&(%!!!!!!!!

After the movie? Well I bet everyone else was mushy mushy with their partner but we...

had TEH TARIK AT RESTORAN BIDARA TALKING ABOUT WORK!!!

WORK, I TELL YOU! WE TALKED ABOUT SAP!!! UNTIL 1.30AM!!!

Urgh, where is my life? I must have misplaced it somewhere in the course of becoming a geek...

Today is Valentines Day, and its already the 3rd time when someone told me that I shouldn't celebrate it because its against our religion.

No comment.

Anyway, putting that aside (maybe I shouldn't have mentioned about that matter above), I was listening to Fly FM while driving to the hospital (a friend of mine fell sick, pity her) the DJ mentioned a pick up line which seemed rather interesting to me.

Are you a parking ticket? Coz you've got fine written aaalll over you!

Which I then laughed my ass out of the car (people must think that I am crazy or maybe they think I hate my car so much). Being the usual Internet junkie I then googled on 'famous pick up lines' and stumbled upon this list of pick up lines.

Have a go, it made me smile. Reminds me how creative people can get when they want something.

Oh, Happy 'Spending-Time-With-Your-Partner' Day!

I was never a fuss when it comes to media players. When I was a full time Windows user, I used Windows Media Player, naturally. After that, I started using Windows Media Player Classic for its lightweight feature. When I started using Ubuntu about more than a month ago, I was fine with Totem. Until...

Totem won't SEEK PROPERLY! I like to rewatch my videos over and over; only watching the best parts. Sadly, Totem couldn't do seeking properly. As a workaround, I found out that I could seek by using the mouse wheel, which was okay. After that, it started to have this color issue for me.

Why do you hate me so much, Totem???

I then found out I can adjust the color of the video; like hue, saturation, brightness and contrast. After a few videos, I realized that I have to adjust the video settings every other time!!! This is just way beyond pissed. I had enough; and this is what I did.

I installed VLC. I have known VLC quite a while back, and I know it will work well. So I went off and installed VLC Media Player.

And then I changed my Nautilus setting to open ALL video files with VLC :D


And now I am a happy Ubuntu user again! :D

but not on Windows or Mac

A good friend of mine just dropped this off from Pidgin to have a read on this article. It is very interesting and I had quite a laugh especially this one:

20. Browse the web while the OS is being installed!

LOL :D

A few weeks ago, I mentioned about getting some new hardware for my desktop PC.

Unfortunately, that will have to be postponed due to some recent happenings in my life (but I already got myself the 4GB worth of RAMS; it's in my closet). One of them is, I got myself a brand spanking new pair of spectacles.

There are other things of course; not just that. Anyway, delaying the purchase of a new hardware is a blessing in disguise. Maybe by the time I got everything in place, Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) will be out. It will be my primary OS on the new rig, with a secondary OS; Windows XP Pro as a dual boot for gaming only. Sorry no Vista; maybe not until I get one those ultra expensive DX10 graphic cards ;) Radeon HD 3870 X2 anyone?

I have a feeling that I am going to be in a lot of trouble setting the system up in the next few months.

But then that's good for this blog as I will have more things to talk about! :D

... at its worst.

As I was installing the NWN2 Expansion: Mask of the Betrayer (MOTB), I knew that I was going to be plagued by incompatibility issues and other annoying little things that make you wish that you were never introduced to PC gaming. PC Gaming is going great right now, a lot of new games are coming out; thanks to Vista and its notorious DX10. I love PC gaming due to the fact that I love gaming and I can control the keyboard and mouse better if compared to controllers. I have always sucked at using the controllers, I never quite grasped about the high dexterity fingers trick. Mind you, I am not half bad at console gaming, but I tend to be better at mousie and keyboardie. RPG games are joys to play, able to dwell yourself in another world for a few hours from my weekend really helped me even out those stress and hard thinking during the weekdays. You can say that I need my weekly dosage of games.

Yes, I love PC gaming, but until lately that I have realized evil things are cropping up in the PC gaming industry.

Piracy. That's what forced all these. Copy protections like SECUROMS made things a lot harder even for a gamer who buys legal copies of games. We buy original games in the hopes that we get the technical support that we will definitely need, other than that, we just want to support the industry. It's important, I want the industry to keep producing great games that I can play and enjoy. BUT copy protections made it worse by requiring the buyer to activate his game ONLINE. To make it worse, you can only do it 5 times. 5 times, damn it. That's like install the game only 5 times. After that you can throw away the game because you can't activate it anymore. Great. I decided not to get the original game afterall. Oh, I am talking about the latest game by 2K Games, Bioshock. What a sad thing, its a great game. Too bad I am not going to support it for its stupid activation mechanics.

Freaking hardwares. THIS, has been keeping me on my toes for quite some time. Actually forever. My 7900GT can barely do anything anymore. Save for watching videos on Windows Media Player Classic, playing any latest games on this baby is not going to cut it. As a result from that, if you are an avid PC gamer, or intend to be one, be warned that you are gonna have to upgrade your PC at least once every 2 years. Complete overhaul of the CPU. Definitely a must. Oh how I wish I can get my hands on that quad core processor...

Or you can go ahead and grab a PS3 or XBOX 360 and say goodbye to PC gaming.

I'm waking up at the start of the end of the world,
but its feeling just like every other morning before,
Now I wonder what my life is going to mean if it's gone,
the cars are moving like a half a mile an hour and I
and I started staring at the passengers who're waving goodbye
can you tell me what was ever really special about me all this time?

chorus:
But I believe the world is burning to the ground
oh well I guess we're gonna find out
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
Well I, believe, it all, is coming to an end
oh well, I guess, we're gonna pretend,
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come

I think it turned ten o'clock but I don't really know
then I can't remember caring for an hour or so
started crying and I couldn't stop myself
I started running but there's no where to run to
I sat down on the street, took a look at myself
said where you going man you know the world is headed for hell
say all goodbyes if you've got someone you can say goodbye to

I believe the world is burning to the ground
oh well I guess we're gonna find out
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
[How Far We've Come lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

Well I, believe, it all, is coming to an end
oh well, I guess, we're gonna pretend,
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come

Its gone gone baby its all gone
there is no one on the corner and there's no one at home
well it was cool cool, it was just all cool
now it's over for me and it's over for you
well its gone gone baby its all gone
there's no one on the corner and there's no one at home
well it was cool cool, it was just all cool
now it's over for me and it's over for you

I believe the world is burning to the ground
oh well I guess we're gonna find out
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
Well I, believe, it all, is coming to an end
oh well, i guess, we're gonna pretend,
let's see how far we've come, again
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come

I hate it whenever I have to listen to songs to make me feel better...

Now that it's all said and done,
I can't believe you were the one
To build me up and tear me down,
Like an old abandoned house.
What you said when you left
Just left me cold and out of breath.
I fell too far, was in way too deep.
Guess I let you get the best of me.

Well, I never saw it coming.
And I should've started running
A long, long time ago.
And I never thought I'd doubt you,
I'm better off without you
More than you, more than you know.
I'm slowly getting closure.
I guess it's really over.
I'm finally getting better.
And now I'm picking up the pieces.
From spending all of these years
Putting my heart back together.
'Cause the day I thought I'd never get through,
I got over you.

You took a hammer to these walls,
Dragged the memories down the hall,
Packed your bags and walked away.
There was nothing I could say.
And when you slammed the front door shut,
A lot of others opened up,
So did my eyes so I could see
That you never were the best for me.

Well, I never saw it coming.
And I should've started running
A long, long time ago.
And I never thought I'd doubt you,
[Over You lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

I'm better off without you
More than you, more than you know.
I'm slowly getting closure.
I guess it's really over.
I'm finally getting better.
And now I'm picking up the pieces.
From spending all of these years
Putting my heart back together.
'Cause the day I thought I'd never get through,
I got over you.

Well, I never saw it coming.
And I should've started running
A long, long time ago.
And I never thought I'd doubt you,
I'm better off without you
More than you, more than you know.

Well, I never saw it coming.
And I should've started running
A long, long time ago.
And I never thought I'd doubt you,
I'm better off without you
More than you, more than you know.
I'm slowly getting closure.
I guess it's really over.
I'm finally getting better.
And now I'm picking up the pieces.
From spending all of these years
Putting my heart back together.
Well I'm putting my heart back together,
'Cause I got over you.
Well I got over you.
I got over you.
'Cause the day I thought I'd never get through,
I got over you.

1. Crying will make you feel better.. and a lot worse later.
2. For better or for worse, everything has a good side to it.
3. One way to kill yourself, is to do something that you know you will regret later.
4. To not dream of having anything, is better than to dream and hope and struggle and fight for something you thought is a dream you will want to live through.
5. Stupidity is key to idiocity (if that's even a word to begin with).
6. Hating yourself will make you feel that you are sacrificing yourself for someone.
7. Sacrifice has its price; your own sanity to how you want your life to be.
8. You can distract yourself from your feelings by doing something good, but those feelings will come back, FOR SURE.
9. Killing yourself will save you a lot of pain, at the expense of hurting others.

Lately I have been feeling shit about my life, kept telling myself that everything that has happened to me is my own fault, even though I never asked for it to begin with.

And those phrases just kept popping up in my mind and its driving me insane. I throw things around the house just to relinquish my anger, but that doesn't seem to be feeding my anger and hatred towards myself, and these feelings just keep getting worse.

I wish I really am crazy, so that I know I honestly didn't ask for all these. I have always wanted to laugh and smile and talk about everything I want. To be able to do things that I have always wanted.

Oh crap, I am so weak that I even put all these down in my own blog for crying out loud.

I don't feel like I want to put any effort into anything now. I wonder if anyone can recommend me to a psychiatrist. Is there any in Malaysia?

Might as well smash this keyboard to a million pieces...