[Male Restroom Etiquette]
This was a featured video on YouTube.com. I've seen another video on the same topic, which was funnier. And the creators of that one came up with a video for the female population too. Nevertheless, this one on YouTube was good for a few laughs.
The part about urinal selection was dead on. And I can't believe the guy managed to work Maslow's Needs Theory into this video.
[3rd time the charm?]
I bought a pack of cherry shrimps for the third time yesterday. My first two batches died due to ammonia spikes when I rescaped my tank. I'm very careful now when I rescape, and really haven't any plans to uproot anything, so there shouldn't be any ammonia spikes.
By now, there were a total of 5 dead shrimps. Hopefully it was just due to the stress of being in the plastic baggie for God-knows-how-long. Judging by the 2 dead shrimps already in the baggie and the amount of shrimp waste, I think they been in there for a while. If this third batch doesn't make it, I'm going to try yamatos instead.
I also bought a bag of 50 cardinal tetras. I split it with my Dad. With what I already had, I think I've got 50++ cardinals in my tank.
There's nothing prettier than a tank of plants and a huge school of cardinals.
On another note, Jill asked me to smile more in my pictures. Not the first time I've received this suggestion. I usually don't smile, because I look weird when I do. I look spastic enough as it is, wasn't going to help it along by smiling. She suggested I smile "naturally". I guess I'll give it a shot the next time I take a self-portrait.
[EDIT: Both pictures were taken from Google Images. I can't seem to get good results with my current digital camera when taking photos of my tank.]
[I has already logged out...]
I logged into the S/U declaration system to exercise the S/U option for one of my modules this semester. What's the S/U declaration system? Not important.
What's important was the message I got when I logged out.
[Brand new rig!]
I went and bought my new rig on Sunday, and I've finally finished setting it up. When I say "finished setting it up", I mean everything. Hardware, drivers, software, etc.
There were some minor problems during the setup process...Like when I installed the IDE driver given by the motherboard manufacturer, I was actually able to see my (boot) hard disk under "Safely Remove Hardware". Being out of touch, I'm not sure if that's normal, but it took me a while to isolate the offending driver so that I could skip the installation during setup. Otherwise, it'd be a matter of time before I accidentally "removed" my hard disk.
Next is an annoying problem with the latest Nvidia unified graphics driver. The colour settings for the video overlay goes out of whack after you've set it. It seems to be a bug with the driver. I managed to find a fix for it on a forum, which was really lucky because the problem is fairly new. Kudos to Google for crawling to that forum.
In my process of installing everything back, I discovered some cool Microsoft Powertoys. I installed TweakUI (as always), the Alt-Tab Replacement and the Image Resizer (new additions). Image Resizer is especially cool...I can now resize a whole bunch of images at one go, which is perfect since I have to resize all the photos for my blog anyway. I wanted to install SyncToy as well, but it wouldn't install on my system.
[I'm tired...]
Semester break is finally here, thank God. Although in the strictest sense of the word, it's not really a break. You're supposed to get all caught up with the work you've missed. As things stand, I've a project discussion on Tuesday, another unconfirmed one later in the week, and one day set aside for maybe some R&R which is still unconfirmed as of now. That means three less days for proper catch-up work.
I'll be getting a new rig tomorrow. Can't stand my current one anymore. With all the reboots and the crippling effects of some $#%#&##@%#@ Trojan, I've had enough. It's about time, anyway. I've been using this rig for 4-years.
There probably won't be new posts for a couple days, while I set up my new system.
[Fiona Xie?]
I've tried this before in the past. But I used a crap photo, so I got some crap matches. I took a pretty good picture of myself (at least I think so) yesterday, and I tried it again.
[Ass in your face...]
Classes ended at noon for me today. I left school at about 1pm. The bus stop was practically empty, and I sat down on one of the benches.
Then this happened.
Of all the spots available at the bus stop, this guy decides to stand and put his ass right in front of my face.
[Need to vent...]
What's the use of a blog if you can't bitch about how your life sucks?
I'm still pretty pissed overall about my rig. I can't explain it, but whenever my rig is down/crippled, I'm pissed. Maybe a shrink can tell me why.
The project specs for one of my modules was released a few days ago. It says that project groups can only consist of 3 or 4 people. We already had groups in this module, for us to work on tutorial assignments together. My group had 5 people. Our tutor yanked me out and put me in a team with people I don't know (who were also yanked from 5-people tutorial assignment groups).
I was pissed. Extremely pissed. For a variety of reasons:
Who the hell does the tutor think she is? This is university, not primary/secondary school. I felt that she has no business yanking me from the group, without asking if it was okay. This should be a group decision, not the tutor's decision. I felt like Nick Lachey. When asked when did he feel his marriage was over, he said he didn't. He said he was told. Just like I was.
Our group really is 4+1. 4 of us, and a "new friend". This might sound like a bunch of bull, but if I was her, I'd volunteer to be part of the breakaway group. What difference does it make to her anyway?
Lastly, I was pissed with myself. It was sort-of my idea to ask the new girl to join our tutorial assignment group in the first place. If only I'd kept my mouth shut.
Of course, there were pros and cons with working with new people. Hopefully it goes well. Regardless, I'm bringing this up at the end of the semester, during the lecturer/tutor evaluation.
I'm also frustrated by my project group in another module. Someone seems to disagree with everything I say. And we, as a group, spend too much time working on the small details. Way too much time. Some people just can't seem to understand that in a project group, you can't expect the group to use your ideas every time.
So far, I've had a project group-mate from hell every semester. It's not too bad as of now. But if things don't improve, the streak continues...
[Reserved for the super-hungry...]
An update on my rig: It's still fucked. I can use it, but it's been crippled. Mostly minor annoyances. Actually this is a good excuse for me to get a new rig, since I've been using this one for more than 4 years. As insane as it may sound, I'm not looking forward to getting a new rig. Mainly because I didn't feel very much like shelling out for a new rig. I looked through the price-lists...A new rig now would probably set me back about S$1250. That's actually not too much, per se, for a new rig. But that's still a lot of money, money that I don't have right now. I'm also not looking forward to the labour it'd take to get everything back up and running. Looks like I'd be struggling along on my current rig for a while yet.
On to other stuff.
Saw this at a bus stop in NUS today. They placed those pillars there to protect us in case someone thought it'd be a good idea to mount the kerb with their vehicles. Instead of being shielded by the pillar, this genius decided to shield the pillar.
These two pictures were taken by YQ during the weekend. This big-boned, pot-bellied guy's sitting on two seats on the train, next to the "reserved for the super hungry" promo sticker from Burger King. If you don't at least smile/snigger at this, you need professional help. You've lost your sense of humour.
My rig's infected with a Trojan, and I'm not sure what it is, hence I cannot remove it. I have NAV 2005 installed, and this afternoon the auto-protect feature caught three Trojans on my hard drive. If my auto-protect was turned on, how did they get onto my hard drive in the first place?
Anyway, two of them were deleted without much fuss. One of them could not be deleted, and access to it was blocked. I didn't think much it'd cause any trouble, since access to it was blocked.
Boy, was I wrong.
What happened next was a blur. I can't remember exactly what I did, but here's the current situation:
There will be a ton of msvcrt.exe processes when I boot up. I killed them off one by one, I think there were 19 of them.
Win XP is behaving funny...Some of my shortcuts for Windows Explorer will tell me they can't open (null), but still opens Windows Explorer anyway.
My task bar's fucked. Volume Control is no longer shown, and some of my icons have changed colour, two are invisible. They're still there, they still take up space. They're just a solid grey. Hence, "invisible".
There may be some other problems which I've yet to discover.
I tried following Symantec's suggestions on removing Infostealer.Banker.B (this is what NAV thought it was...I have a feeling it might be wrong) in safe mode, didn't work. None of the registry strings that I'm supposed to delete are in my registry to begin with. And I can't start any applications at all when I'm in safe mode. I can't start msconfig, so I was actually stuck in safe mode for a while, until I thought of a way to modify boot.ini while in safe mode. I couldn't run NAV in safe mode neither, I think the Trojan's still alive in safe mode, blocking NAV from being executed or something. If I could run a manual scan in safe mode, I might just be able to track the Trojan down and delete it.
Aragh.....Anyone has any ideas what can I try now? What I'm doing now at each start-up is just basically kill all the msvcrt.exe processes and try to do my work as per-normal.
[Finding money...]
I was about to go to bed last night when I felt something in the pocket of the shorts I was wearing.
What have we got here?
Well, it was well and properly squashed, that's for sure.
It's a $2 note. Isn't it nice to find money like that? A nice, pleasant surprise. Judging by the loss of texture and colour along the lines where it's been folded, I think this $2 note has been in my pocket for a while and has been through a few cycles in the washing machine.
[Going to hell...]
I was fiddling around with the Chinese input IME on Windows XP last night...Not because I'm that bored, but because in my attempts to "fix" something, I broke something else and was trying to put everything back together.
That's not the point. The point was, typing Chinese words can be quite a chore for most people. That's why the IME tries to "guess" the words you'd be needing next, to save time. Sort of like the predictive text input on mobile phones.
So I typed the first thing that came to my mind. Which was 我不要. This translates to "I don't want". Of course, it's not a complete sentence.
Look what the IME suggested.
For those who don't understand Chinese, the IME suggested "if I'm not going to hell, who is?"
How did this end up on their list of frequently used phrases?
[The perfect storm...]
It was raining like crazy today on my way to school. It started when I was on the bus, and it was coming down so hard that the windows of the bus was like a waterfall. I tried to capture it with my mobile phone, but the camera wasn't clear enough to show the effect.
Instead, I recorded some of the other sights which I encountered after alighting from the bus. This is the storm drain behind the bus stop. Look at how the water's gushing out.
And this was the walkway. It's not very clear, but it's like walking in a river.
And finally, this little "bend" in the drain. The water wants out!
[A different light...]
Today's a free day for me, with no classes and the only lecture I had was available online, so I didn't have to go to school. Which was great since I really needed a rest. I watched the lecture after lunch, and had a nap.
Didn't get much sleep. Couldn't descend into deep sleep. I did have one of those "fever dreams". You know when you're really sick, after taking all the medicine you're given, you go to bed and dream all sorts of weird stuff? Something like that, except that I was fully aware and drifting between losing total control of my dream and being in control. And instead of the weird stuff usually brought on by fever dreams, the dream I had actually had a storyline.
I woke up with a stiff headache. I think my fever's gone. About time...It was just a slight one, and I never expected to fight it for two days. I'm left with a bad cough and a headache which gets especially intense when I stand up or when I cough.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You get to know who your real friends are when you're sick.
Yesterday in school, a friend of mine bought me a cup of fruit juice for my fever and sore throat. I was very touched by her gesture.
Today, another friend asked me for something on MSN. We exchanged a few messages, which I don't want to go into.
All this, without a single word of enquiring about my condition (which I put up on MSN). I'm not saying I want all 100 contacts (yes, I have exactly 100 contacts) on my MSN to ask me how I was, but if you need a favour from a sick guy, the least you could do was to drop a "get well soon" somewhere in the conversation.
[Stress kills fishes...]
Anyone keeping fishes would know that stress can kill them. Actually stress doesn't kill fishes...It brings their immune system down, and then they catch some form of disease that kills them.
The same applies for humans. Though we usually don't die in the end.
This is the fifth week of school. I'd usually have burnt out by now. I haven't so far...I think it's largely due to the fact that two of my modules haven't any tutorials. Hooray for level-4 modules! This lightens my workload and schedule considerably.
That may be why I haven't burnt out, but it doesn't mean I'm not stressed. I've been nursing a slight fever with a sore throat for the past two days. Other than my voice sounding funny today (I sort of semi-lost my voice), I don't think any of my friends would have known that I was unwell. They were surprised when I told them, with a few of them telling me that I don't look ill at all. Luckily, I managed to recover my voice before a presentation I had to give during class. By then, it was pretty evident to the friends I was with the whole day that I wasn't well.
Personally, I think this whole episode was due to stress. People do fall sick when they're stressed. My body has been giving me the stress signals, I haven't been listening to it. Actually, all things considered, I haven't got time to listen to it.
Did what I just said make sense? Aragh...I edited it several times to try and make it more readable. Okay, whatever. Moving on. If it sounds weird, I'm blaming it on the fever.
I saw this week's episode of RAW today. Jeff Hardy has been a shadow of his former self ever since returning to the WWE. He's botched several moves, and his matches are no longer as high-flying as they used to be. On RAW, he botched this move...I think it's called "poetry in motion"?
Hardy begins his run.
Jumping on Carlito.
Instead of sailing over the ropes, he fell right smack onto them....
...and tumbled onto Randy Orton.
That said, it was one of the most vocal audiences ever. Chants of "let's go Cena!" followed by "fuck you Cena!" and "Cena sucks!". The Cena-haters couldn't decide which line to shout sometimes. Haha!
I end this entry with a picture I took during lecture. One of the exchange students was playing with a pen using his mouth. I didn't know what possessed me at that time to think that it was funny...But I was thinking at the time that if this was the sort of "FT" our Government is keen on attracting, I'd feel a lot less threatened.
[Random thoughts (for real)...]
When I posted my previous entry, I didn't realise it was September 11th again. And incidentally, 9/11 is again on a Monday this year.
It was 5-years ago, but I still remember it as if it was yesterday. When it happened, I was watching Ally McBeal with my sister. A news ticker appeared on the screen during the show, and I switched over to Channel Newsasia and didn't switch back for the rest of the night.
I remembered thinking to myself that from this point onwards, life as we know it has changed. How right I was. I guess it was pretty obvious that life was never going to be the same again. The terrorists did something no one thought could be done. I remembered cursing under my breath that this should happen just before my enlistment (I was in my final year of polytechnic studies then, and was due to be enlisted in June 2002).
Now that we got that out of the way, time for my daily dose of disturbed thoughts. Today's material doesn't really link to each other, but what the hell.
Nana decided to twist my Mentos into...Well, you know what it looks like.
Saw this sign in the Biz canteen. Exotic dancing? What's exotic dancing? The type that girls do while swinging around a pole and where articles of clothing come flying off? Maybe they meant erotic dancing.
I went to C328 to buy another set of lights for my aquarium. I've taken this route from NUS many times but I only realised this today. The place where you wait behind the traffic lights to cross the road is on the same level as the road! It's not that clear, but the white part is on the same level as the asphalt. With all the cars zooming past, I realised that it would be only a matter of time before someone standing there waiting for the green man to appear gets run over by a car. I guess it's true that a kerb will probably not stop a car at high speed, but it should slow it down. I took 2 steps back after I thought of this.
Now this guy. Look at his sexy legs. If it's not gay enough that he wore shorts with shoes and socks, he crossed his legs. No offense to anyone who crosses their legs, but I find it very uncomfortable (where do your balls go?) and kinda sissy for guys to do this. And he uncrossed his legs every time someone boarded the bus and needed to walk down the aisle.
I close this entry with an Asian redneck cowboy. That's right. He's a new wrestler on Smackdown. Other than Funaki, I can't think of any other Asians in the WWE. With all the Hollywood stereotypes of Asians, is this the best gimmick they could come up with for him?
[Taking stock...]
Since it's pass midnight, this is officially the fifth week of school for the 06/07 academic year. I guess this is a good time to take stock what's been happening so far.
Financial Accounting - This module will be the death of me. It reminds me of the horrid time I had with economics. But to be fair, accounting is easier. Still, I need to invest a ton of time with reading the textbook and trying out the tutorial questions. All this just to understand, not even to master this damned module.
Strategic IS Planning - Interesting module, being taught by the head of the IS department. This might be an area I'm interested in going into after graduation. But there are some question marks abound, since I'm quite out of touch with the latest development technologies. Realistically, even demand-side consultants/planners will probably need to get their hands dirty in development once in a while.
E-Commerce Business Models - I feel that this is a pretty easy module. I haven't learnt a lot of new things here. And most of the material covered so far was either pretty obvious, or I've already been exposed to it. We do need to think of a business idea for our project which is not as easy as it sounds. If I had a good business idea, I probably wouldn't be in school.
Reason & Persuasion - 80% of the time I have no idea what the hell the lecturer's talking about. I'm taking this as my breadth module, and I thought it'd be a good idea to take one that's also listed as a GEM (General Education Module...I think that's what it stands for). But a philosophy module is still a philosophy module, and I'm pretty lost during the lectures. I think I've got the essay requirements and exam techniques down pat, so hopefully I can still get a good grade. After all, the lecturer did say that for the exam, someone with good reading skills could ace it without having attended a single class. Then again, exam's worth only 30%....
Government & Politics of Singapore - This is a political science module which I'm taking for the same reason as Reason & Persuasion. Taking a cross-listed GEM module as my breadth, hoping it'd be easy. This is an interesting module, but to do well, you need to read a lot. I'm way behind on the readings for this module.
You can't have the good without the bad, so here it is.
The good: I haven't burnt out yet. I usually burn out around the third week, piss around from weeks four to six, and play catch-up during the semester break. But so far, I'm still going strong.
The bad: I'm behind on some of my modules. Slight behind for accounting and Reason/Persuasion, and way behind for Govt/Politics. My study habits are not the type you need to be a good student. I can't study outside, because I'm distracted by every single silly thing. When I'm at home, I tend to do a bunch of other stuff while I'm working. I partly blame MSN for that. I'm also slow to get started. I woke up at 9am today, and didn't really get going till 3pm.
School life's pretty balanced out I guess. All in all, I guess I'm in a good place. Personal life's a whole other can of worms. Had a talk with my sister last night which helped a little. Actually a lot, so thanks sis. But it's easy to slip back to the bad place I was in before. Fuck. Let's just say I never thought I'd be where I am right now.
Okay, I think I'm gonna stop here. This entry is long enough. Without pictures too. And I just realised I should have used some smileys. Oh well, too late for that.
[Room with a view...]
The view, from my bedroom window.
It looks a tad dark, and somewhat gloomy. It's really bright as day. The picture turned out this way because the digital camera compensated for the "too bright" parts of the photo.
[Brave new world...]
Look what's on the front page of The Straits Times today.
Does this make sense? Give foreigners our jobs, while we look for jobs overseas.
If I was ever driven out of Singapore to look for a job because all the jobs here went to foreigners, I'm not coming back. Why should I return to a country which took away 2 and a half of the best years of my life and following which deprived me of a job, preferring foreigners over me?
[What's that smell?]
I was greeted with the smell of something burning today when I reached home. I immediately asked my Dad what it was.
As it turns out, just before I reached home, my Dad decide to microwave a pack of biscuits which went "soft". Doesn't bear any resemblance to biscuits anymore, does it? Looks more like charcoal to me.
Note to self: Putting biscuits into the microwave with the plastic wrapper still on is a bad idea.
[War flashback...]
The other day I posted an entry about two teenagers being inconsiderate. There was a repeat performance on the bus today, but performed by a different person.
That's him. Is it me, or is the shape of his head kinda weird? Anyway I'm not sure if it was him who was playing the music or his friend behind him. But I know it's coming from there. They were not quiet about it neither, singing along and making nuisances of themselves. And they even whistled at girls on the bus. Serious, WTF? What did they think was gonna happen? The girl would look in their direction, drop her stuff and run to make out with them?
I reached school early today. My tutorial was in the Arts faculty, and I needed to take an internal shuttle. So usually I'm either slightly late, or way too early. I prefer to be early than late, so there I was.
I've always been amazed at how they built the Arts faculty. It's constructed on a hilly area, so it's really quite a feat of engineering. Not to mention all the plants and trees all around the place. Today's tutorial was my first (for the module) this semester, and brought me to a part of the Arts faculty which I've never been to before.
Look at the amount of plants/trees just opposite the corridor! It's like they built the tutorial rooms right in a jungle! The plants/trees may look kinda unnatural in the photo....But when I was there, I honestly thought that it resembled a jungle. Incidentally, the girl in green and the guy sharing the table were smoking and there's a sign among the plants/trees which said NUS was a smoke-free campus.
Above is a view at the far end of the corridor. Below is the other end. Being this close to this much nature brought back memories of outfield exercises when I was in Army.
Snapped this guy during my political science lecture. Look at the way he's sitting. This is a lecture theatre, not a coffee-shop. All he needed was a dirty singlet and bad teeth and he'd have had the coffee-shop uncle look.
I end this entry with some sad news. In case you haven't heard, Steve Irwin has passed away. Stung by a sting-ray in his chest. May he rest in peace.
[Like a car wreck...]
I went for my first PS2249 tutorial today. As it turned out, there's a grand total of seven students in that time-slot and two of them didn't show up. In fact, when the tutor walked in, I thought she was one of the students. She was my age (not age bracket), but spoke with an American accent. She said she did her degree elsewhere, and was doing her Masters in NUS now.
It was a little intimidating. The five of us sat really close up front with the tutor, and it was more like a friendly discussion more than anything. Well, that's not the intimidating part. It was intimidating because I'm not really very good at this module (I think), so being in such a small class, the rest would probably figure out soon that I'm full of shit.
Have you ever seen something horrible/disgusting/unpleasant, but just couldn't look away from it? Like a car wreck. It's horrible to look at, but you can't tear your eyes away from it. Or the body of an accident victim on the road, covered by a sheet. It's terrible. You want to look away, but your eyes stay fixed to the body, hoping that the wind would lift the sheet so you could see who was under it?
I had a similar experience today. Nothing as graphic as what I've described above though. I was standing on the bus on my way home when I realised this guy standing in front of me had something growing out of his armpit. It's not very clear in the picture, but I think you can see what I'm talking about. I stared at it for the longest time, but I couldn't figure out what the heck it was. Eeeewwwwww and aragh comes to mind.
Broken for now. :( If anyone knows of a good way to display tweets without using Twitter's awful looking widgets, please let me know. Preferably something that allows me to retrieve my tweets in plain-text format.
What's this about?
Anything and everything under the sun. I write about my day, my thoughts, things I see in public, things to get off my chest, or sometimes just some senseless rants that make sense only to me.
About Me
30 year old male. Always with too many ideas in his head and too little time. For my 15 minutes of fame, I want to be a guest on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Interests
Movies, TV, cycling, computers, planted tanks, cherry shrimps, P2P legal issues, Manchester United, WWE, TNA, UFC, etc...
Disclaimer
Best viewed @ 1280*1024 or above. Views are expressed are mine and mine only, and are not meant to offend or influence anyone. Designed for readers with a sense of humour. If you can't laugh at yourself, you probably won't like my style of humour.
