Merry Christmas!

Well it's the last holiday of the year and what have I been doing? Well, my brother was in KL for the weekend till Christmas, so on the early morning of 25th Dec, we went to Midvalley for brunch then to Garden for some shopping before seeing him off there. He went back to SG using the newly started bus company called Airebus.

When I came back, I was tired from all the walking and since I had little sleep, I fell to sleep almost immediately. Woke up when a friend of my parents came and I went upstairs to watch some videos. I managed to watch 2 episodes of Junkyard Wars; a series which I really love but not had the chance to watch it last time. After that, while waiting for dinner, I tried burning my 2 seasons of Heroes. OMG! I've wasted like 5 DVD+R's burning and still I now only have S1 E1-12 on one disc while the rest either burned unsuccessfully or had trouble reading them. I'm already thinking on whether I should return the Burner back to the distributor and get another one.

At night after dinner, I sat at home and watched another episode before I called Vincent asking him if there were any plans at night. He informed me that he will be attending Jason's open house and so I went not long after that. Gosh there was so much food! Most notably the chocolate fondue is amazing! Not to mention the apple crumble, the bread and butter pudding, the spaghetti, the cupcakes and the big turkey they have. Since I had dinner earlier, I was only able to nibble on the small and light food/snacks. After some chit chatting, I went home stuffed with the wonderful food there. Note to everyone: If you're invited to some makan in Jason's house, don't hesistate. You'll definitely find good food there :)

Updates - Destroyed My DVD Burner

Ok ok, I really apologise for the lack of updates here. There is just so many things to do with higher priorities than bloggine lately. Hehe. Ok it's a bad excuse. Sufficely to say, I've been rather busy. From my previous post, you all know that I've been through some tough times. It just sucked so much out of me. At times I just feel so crappy that the day just goes by without me doing anything. Thankfully, now it's not so tough anymore. I'm slowly regaining momentum and facing life's challenges as I used to be. There is now less days of "no mood larrr" but more of "let's try to finish task a/b/c in a set time". Its gonna take a very very long time to fully get over it I think.

Work has been very demanding lately, but not enough to complain that it sucks. I like the challenge and the strict timeline, but the only problem is that I get too much distractions in the process. As I'm about to start the task, either my MSN will pop up with someone wanting to chat with me or someoen will ask me some questions regarding som problems they encounter with the software/program that they're using/testing.

As a close friend of mine say, "our program is perfect, the problem must be with you". Unfortunately, it's not applicable in this context although there are some times when it does. Haha. Anyway, with the constant help I give to others, I find myself having little time for the task I need to complete. I feel really bad when I have to delay a couple of releases as I really wanted to complete any given task within 80-100% of the allocated time frame.

But all in all, that's not so bad consider that I've received a couple of recognition from my superiors. Over the couple of months, I've collected enough "internal performance points" to redeem myself an 8gb ipod nano (new generation model). It really seems like a nice gift to redeem but is this the lure to the mighty blue Apple? Will I soon be converted to an Apple supporter and end up buying Mac's and laugh at all Microsoft supporters? Hmm... I thought of redeeming it and giving it to someone else but I've not got anyone I'd like to bless cheerfully. Haha. Well maybe I'll save up for the other things. Who knows maybe they'll put up the iPhone for redemption when it hits Malaysia. Ooooo...

Besides work, I've just screwed up my DVD Burner. Thinking that I can utilise my extra DVDRW drive as an external drive. I bought a RM40 external usb-ide cable and connected to my DVDRW. It runs perfectly fine except for the occasional inability to detect the drive when I connect the usb cable. A couple of months back, I decided to keep my laptop on 24/7 and purchased some external fans for cool the laptop down. Using the power adapter, I extended it to connect 2 fans blowing to the laptop.

Unfortunately, the power adapter which came with the RM40 usb-ide cable, only has 3 pins (1,2,x,3) instead of the regular 4 pins (1,2,3,4). The fans uses only 2 pins (1,x,2,x). So I fabricated 3 wires to connect (1,2,x,3) to (1,x,2,3) and voila the fan + DVDRW works. However today, after failing to detect my DVDRW with the USB and after a couple of troubleshooting, I decided to look at my power connectors. When I finished tinkering with it, I switch on the power supply and "boom" the adapter blew up! Apparently, I've inverted it to (3,x,2,1) and boom the adapter fried. I quickly took my DVDRW to my desktop, hooked it up, the drive is detected in BIOS and Windows but I am unable to open/close the drive. Upon using the paperclip to open the tray, slot in a DVD, closed it manually, the drive did not spin up nor blink. Darn it! I just destroyed a perfectly good working DVDRW. Now I think I have to get a new one or just move my operations downstairs. Sigh... Gagh! I need to start burning stuff. I'm running out of hard disk space...

Haha. Sorry for the geek talk. I think I probably lost a couple of my readers here.

As a summary, things a ok-ish but it could have been better. Well, what is not meant to for me will not be mine, while what is meant for me will eventually be mine. Anyway happy birthday to me as today I'm now 22 years old.