48 Hours

48 Hours to my 2 weeks break in Brisbane and Gold Coast.

General itinerary will bring me to watch Whales, feed dolphins, get drunk in wineries, have fun on roller-coasters and of course the sun and the sea.

Taking this trip is going to be another test of my phobia. The history goes something like this :

I took on a new portfolio in late 2001. Being a novice/greenhorn in sales, I took my 2 weeks holiday in New Zealand. In my haste to get everything worked out before I go, I made mistakes. Huge mistakes.

On the day I was going to fly off, I got a call from my colleague that my boss was furious with me. On the 1st day of my trip, I was told that my boss had to retract my commitments to my customers. I decided then that I want to receive no more phone calls and do not want to waste my time & money being sulky and sad in the faraway land.

I managed to enjoy myself and put the troubles behind me for a while, until the day I was sitting in the airport waiting to come home. It was dreadful.

My first day back at work, I was removed from sales and put back into my old position. At least, I didn't lose my job.

So from that experience, I have a phobia for taking extended holidays. I took one in April earlier this year (see my previous entries on my Perth trip) and this will be my second.

The feeling that something might just go wrong during my trip that will cost my job. The feeling that I might have overlooked something in my haste to depart. The feeling that my career will end the moment I touch down in foreign land.

I know it is irrational, that is why it is called "phobia".

Anyway, the last trip was fine. This trip I hope will be the same.

Courses I want to attend...

Finally ! These courses are now open to public without me having to actually buy a BMW car.

Advanced Driver Training
http://www.pml.com.sg/bmw/DT/adt.html
$800 for public.

Intensive Driver Training
http://www.pml.com.sg/bmw/DT/idt.html
$2000 for public.

Well, I get to burn BMW rubber in track and learn new tricks !

Any BMW owners want to join ? I get to save some money too if we go together.. haha..

A Cappella of Nintendo

Combining IT Games with musical and performance art...

http://gprime.net/video.php/nintendothemesacappella

Computer Woes

1 PC had screen distortions. Tried many things but couldn't solve the problem. Finally decided to try returning the motherboard for a new one. The person found nothing wrong. Couldn't see my problem.

Frustrated. But my friend offered to help me troubleshoot, as he had more equipment and more spare components at his place. So I lugged the entire system down.

We tried changing the LCD settings. Changing the VGA properties. Pull power from 2 different wall outlets. Tried updating latest drivers (which was quite updated).

Finally, about to give up, I gave it one last shot - Change the VGA cable. I wanted to try that at home, but I had no spare. All the other monitors had non-removable cables.

My friend had to painfully remove his own VGA cable from his nicely done-up desktop. Plugged into my monitor and viola ! Problem Solved !

*smack forehead*

Today, my other working PC just hung all of a sudden. Had to power off. And then it couldn't boot anymore.

Message about "System32\drivers\ntfs.sys cannot be loaded" or something. Damn. Harddisk corrupted ?

Ok. Try Windows Recovery Console. Booted from my CD ROM. Windows setup was installing the necessary components. Then "setupdd.sys cannot be loaded. Setup couldn't continue"

What the F*#( !!!!!

Tried to power off and waited for a couple of minutes, cursing my bad luck when I thought I had a nice P4 upgrade for a few days.

Tried many times. Boot to Safe Mode, Boot from CD Rom, Boot from Floppy Disk. Basically I just cannot get anything working !

Maybe power supply is too weak. I removed the power to one of the CD ROM, and removed the power to a chassis fan my good friend had given to me.

Still no luck.

I was cursing the motherboard's mother's pungent genitals.

Used another computer to start searching the web, pondering whether it was the CPU that was faulty.

Trying to decide which motherboard to get, whether I should get a new CPU and RAM as well.

Needed to open the CPU to see which P4 Chip I had.

More curses and threatening to send the computer to IT Hell, where all naughty equipment get stuck in endless power-boot cycle for eternity. Where they regret not serving mankind to their best abilties.

I finally plugged in the CPU and decided to try one more time.

Booting from CD Worked ! I rebooted, without reinstalling anything, just to see if Windows will start.

It got past the error and Windows Logo came up. Then it died again.
Tried to boot from CD again. Failed at the same place.

This time, I got an inspiration - RAM !

I took out the 2 strips of 256MB and plugged them in again, making sure everything is held tight.

I powered on - viola ! PC booted up without problems.
Now I am typing this entry.

You see, even equipment needs to be threatened with vulgarity, retrenchment and religion for them to know their rightful place in the food chain.

Finally !

Finally !
My faulty suspension got repaired, engine oil and coolant seepage was rectified.

But on 2 rare occassions, at about 80km/h, I felt the whole front of the vehicle humming and vibrating as if the wheels are not aligned properly. I am not sure if the engine is vibrating or it is really the wheel alignment.

But if it is the latter, it should occur everytime I reach 80-100km/h. That is not so, so I still have not figured out the cause. Most probably will do a high-speed balancing and 4-wheel alignment if I get it again.


Finally !
I have gotten a new upgrade for my computer. Well, not an upgrade but a brand new one... Wait, not brand new, but someone else's problematic PC.

Had 2 apparently faulty ones. Both Pentium 4. One of them had a sick motherboard, the other a sick power supply. Mix and match, got myself a new P4. Wow. Super fast ! (Haha. I know, it is not that great, but when I have been using a Pentium 2 350Mhz for the past 7 or 8 years, a Pentium 4 1.7Ghz is like a jet plane compared to my car.)

Will be buying a new motherboard and a new power supply (plus casing) and I will have another Pentium 4 1.5Ghz up and running. Should cost me less than $300.


Finally !
With the new PC, all must software glitches are gone ! No more problems logging into forums and sites. No more crashing Java refusing me connection to Internet Bank sites. No more intermittent network connection.


Finally !
I am able to blog from home as the last few weeks, my old PC doesn't allow me to do that and I am too busy these days to blog from office.

But, the built-in VGA port doesn't provide good and steady display at resolutions higher than 1024x768. So I have to make do with lesser screen real-estate, and bigger icons. Oh well, I can live with that when I have been compensated by being able to play newer games and not having to lose my adreneline while waiting for the next game mission to load.


Finally !
I would be taking my holiday soon. 2 weeks in Brisbane and Gold Coast. I need the break. Been having workload piled upon me, while my not-up-to-expectation pay raise has not been given yet.


Finally !
I have finished this post and I can go take my beauty sleep... Or maybe, I should be watching my DVDs for the whole night....