[D-day...]
If it seems that I haven't been posting much lately, it's because of my HYP. I'm actually not that swamped by it, but thinking about it, having it on my mind, is affecting me in more ways than one.
For a period of time, I was actually having trouble falling asleep, and I was tired during the day. I ended up drinking coffee or tea during the day to keep awake and drinking wine at night in order to sleep. As it turns out, I'm allergic to alcohol (I've never drank this much before in the past, so I didn't know).
I'm no longer doing that. While I'm still stressed, I think I'm handling it better.
What irks me a bit is that throughout the past three years, I've worked relatively hard to keep my grades up so that I could graduate with a second-upper Honours degree. It's different from when I was in Polytechnic, where I could coast through and get good grades without working too hard.
And after all that more-or-less consistent work for three years, it all boils down to my HYP. It will probably decide whether I graduate with a second-upper or a second-lower degree because I'm very close to the point that separates them.
I sent my supervisor the first draft of my thesis today and it wasn't good. He printed it all out and "marked" it for me. The pages are filled with ink he left behind. Every page. Every single one of them. I've got a lot of editing to do and only 7 days to do it in.
Three years of hard work, and it comes down to what I can accomplish in these 7 days.
[Speaker scams...]
Heard of the speaker scam? It's been going around for a while. Basically, two guys driving a van would stop and talk to you in a car-park. One of them would tell you that they were supposed to pick up X units of hi-fi systems, but the warehouse gave them two extra sets. It's supposed to be worth $1,000+, but he doesn't want to bring them back to the warehouse and is willing to let you have it for $300. You can sell it for a high price and make a profit.
But the truth is, the speakers they're selling is crap. Definitely not worth $1,000+, nor the amount you paid for them.
One of my friends got scammed recently. I don't really feel sorry for him. It's his fault for being greedy as well as for not keeping up with the news.
Today, on my way to school, I walked across the car-park at my house. Two guys in a van stopped and I thought they were going to ask for directions. Instead, the driver asked if I wanted to buy a hi-fi set.
[Bad timing...]
My HYP is due in less than 2 weeks, and this is the time my rig decides to die on me.
Okay, it's not really dead. I just can't boot my system upon restart, nor can I turn it on shortly after shutting down. If it's a "clean" boot, meaning the system was turned off for a slightly long time (1 min?) or cold before booting up, there would be no problems.
This is fucked up. Of all the times for this to happen...
I suspect it's either the PSU or the motherboard. In any case, I hope it survives till at least after I'm done with my HYP. Then I'll figure out my next step.
[I did not fail...]
Had a rather amusing conversation with a stranger today.
First, a little background information. My sister and I both had driving lessons today. We start our lessons at the Esso station next to BBDC. We take lessons from this guy who has a fleet of cars and hires people to teach using them. So although it's private, we get different instructors each time. Of course, we also get the same ones often, seeing how it's just a small group of them (compared to BBDC).
So anyway, I went up to one of the cars that I knew belonged to the guy we're taking lessons from. He clipped lists of students on the windscreen, and the people who work for him will take the one meant for them so they would know who they're teaching that day.
There was this auntie there just hanging around. After I looked through the student lists, she went and did the same thing. So yeah, at this point, it's safe to assume she's also probably one of the students.
My sister's instructor came first and off she went. So it was just me and this auntie...
Auntie: (gesturing towards one of the instructors) Is he good? Me: (huh? who's this woman and why is she talking to me?) Erm....Not bad lah. (I really thought he was good, I've had him in the car before.) Auntie: The instructors here all very good... Me: Not really. Just now that one not very good. (the one my sister got assigned to for this lesson) Auntie: No, they are good. Better than the ones I had. You know, this is going to be my third test... Me: Uh-huh... (geez...I hope you get your license before your children do) Auntie: The ones I had previously, not good one! When I make a mistake, they will hit my hand you know! Make me so nervous... Me: (okay, I admit, hitting your driving students, especially a middle-aged woman, is NOT cool) Wah, really ah? Auntie: You know my past two tests, I didn't fail you know...I just got too many points... (at this point, I started to think she may be nuts) Me: Is it... Auntie: Yah! I got 50+ points for my first test and 30+ for my second test. (yah right, you didn't fail.) Me: (at this point, I'm pretty sure she's not all there) ... Auntie: You know what's the most important thing when taking the test? Don't be nervous! Me: (oh really?) Uh-huh... Auntie: And don't eat fried food! (looks at me with big, wide eyes) Me: Why leh? Auntie: Because eating fried food will make you nervous. I had veggie, fruits and fish for two days before my second test and I wasn't nervous at all. Me: (convinced at this point that she was nuts) Erm...Okay? (Her instructor arrived at this point)
Of course, I don't remember the exacting words or phrases we used, but this was pretty much the gist of it all.
[Fishes!]
One of the reddest cherry shrimps in my tank was near the front of the tank earlier and I whipped out my digital camera to take a picture of it. By the time I was ready, it slipped into the grass and I couldn't get a clear shot.
I ended up taking pictures of my CRS and also took a video:
[Idiotic guest lecturers...]
This is my final semester in NUS. On the whole, I've had a pretty enjoyable time. I was worried, however, that the problems and unpleasant experience I've had with my HYP thus far would over-shadow the experience of my time in NUS. But now, there's another contender.
Idiotic guest lecturers.
In my previous semesters, the guest lecturers I've encountered were mostly terrible. Their material is boring, they don't know how to give a lecture and they were just wasting time - both their's and our's.
This semester, so far, I've encountered a judge (yes, a judge) that made fun of students during Q & A sessions, and the best part was that most of the students had no idea and actually laughed along. I've encountered a senile "fun-loving", high-ranking executive from a Government agency whose lectures over-dramatised computer crimes (as if we didn't have that already from Hollywood) and when he shared what his "business unit" was working on, I nearly died from disbelief because I couldn't believe they spent tax-payers' money reinventing the wheel, working on something that would never be adopted. And they were really proud of it too.
But the jackass guest lecturer I met today takes the cake.
He thinks very highly of himself, got his facts wrong, humiliates students during tutorials, and was as smug as can be. New-flash! If you get hit by someone's fist, you'd lose teeth like everyone else. Look at the way he's seated during the tutorial session:
He was sitting on the tables, leaning backwards with his hands supporting him behind in a swimsuit calendar sort of pose. What an absolute wank.
And he got some very basic facts wrong, which shows his lack of understanding on some very well-established computer security concepts. He said that a limitation of SSL was that it only protects data while in transit and not on the host systems. Hello? SSL was never meant to protect data on host systems in the first place. How is that a limitation?
He then went on to say that the PKI-CA framework was an utter failure (or something to that effect...I was trying to make his brain explode via telekinesis at this point). That's a bold claim, considering how almost all secure transactions online run on SSL which makes use of PKI-CA.
And to top it off, met a really irritating girl. She's not taking the module but joined in with her friends. She was seated in front of me and was talking the entire time. It was really distracting. Good thing she left after an hour or I don't know what I'd have done. In case you're wondering, yes, she was hot. Really hot. But her behaviour pissed me off to no end and made her the ugliest girl in the whole lecture theatre.
[Sept 24, 2006]
It just occurred to me that I've been using my current rig for more than a year. Whenever I install Windows, either on a fresh system or after formatting, I use that day's date as part of the computer's name so I can know how long it's been.
I haven't formatted my current rig since the day I bought and set it up, which was on September 24th last year. I think that's a pretty amazing statistic. I remember when I was on Windows 98....I actually had to format it every 6 to 8 months, just to keep things in order. Windows XP is really a lot more stable (I have never gotten a blue screen on XP). With careful housekeeping, I don't think it requires formatting often. There are probably some orphaned files lying around on my hard disk (left behind after uninstalling software I didn't want to keep), but that's quite minimal.
Hopefully, I won't need to format it anytime in the near future. When I was on Windows 98, I got so familiar with the process that I could finish the entire process in about 5 hours (formatting, reinstalling the OS, drivers and programs I need). On Windows XP, it would take me roughly 2 days to get everything done. But that's because I use more programs now and I'm really quite lazy and couldn't sit still for hours installing programs on my rig.
[Ouch...]
Chanced upon this on Youtube. Lots of sick slick moves.
And even though I'm an AJ Styles fan, I gotta say, I don't know how his Styles Clash ended up in the video. The Styles Clash is nothing compared to the other moves in the video. In any event, AJ Styles has done a lot of other slicker moves. Too bad the guy who did the video didn't include any of them.
[Explicit content...maybe?]
I'm revising for my mid-term tomorrow (actually today, since it's after midnight) when I came across some notes I made during the lecture:
It's a forensic science module and the lecture was about document examination. What I meant to write was "pen is lifted from paper here". You can't see the liquid paper in the picture, so I marked it out using the red box. I didn't want to wait for the liquid paper to dry, so I just squeezed the word in without thinking how it would look like.
Not a big deal...Except that a friend of mine wasn't feeling well that day and did not attend the lecture. I made a copy of my notes for her and well....I wonder what she thought when she read this part.
[你会讲华语吗？]
My sister received a call from a private number on Saturday. A Chinese national asked her if she could speak Mandarin, and after my sister said yes, she went on and said that she wanted to conduct a survey on the type of handset my sister was using, etc etc etc. Yeah right. If someone's really conducting a survey in Singapore, no way in hell would they hire someone who couldn't speak English.
Anyway, my sister asked where did she get her number from, and the Chinese national said it was "generated" by the computer. My sister she had no time for this, and the Chinese national replied in a very rude manner chiding her for not mentioning this earlier and hung up on my sister.
One minute later, I got the same call. Computer "generated" numbers my ass. They were going down the list, my number's two digits away from my sister's. When they asked if I could speak Mandarin. I said no. Then she mumbled something and hung up.
10 minutes ago, both me and my sister got the call again. Same woman, same question. And I gave the same reply.
I wonder if the Chinese national realised how silly she really is. She asked if I understood Mandarin. I said no. If I didn't understand Mandarin, how could I say no?
Anyway, has anyone else actually talked to them? What are they scamming selling?
I don't know why, but I get annoyed whenever I see people do this:
A little carbon monoxide won't kill you. If you're so worried, go live in a bubble. In fact, that fabric you're holding up to your nose isn't going to filter the CO. The same goes for tissue, your hand, and whatever other nonsense you can think of to hold up to your nose while crossing the road.
[Can you spot the error?]
YQ sent me this screen capture. There's something wrong in it. See if you can spot it. You'd have to click on it to see it in its original size. By the way, I'm not doing this on purpose. I'm using Blogger's picture upload service and they only allow a maximum of 400 x 400 pixels. Yes, I tried hot-linking the full-size picture you see when you click on the reduced sized version, but it doesn't work.
Geez...I really went off on a tangent.
Did you spot it? Highlight the text below with your mouse if you can't figure it out:
You can be both a male and a female at the same time. They chose drop-down lists instead of radio buttons when allowing selection for gender.
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.
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