Our Internet Gateway (running Linux Mandrake v7.2) with the new serial I/O card installed is ok now. Woohoo. With irqtune set up it’s actually faster than before, I simply put the serial port’s IRQ as the highest priority in kernel – voila, smoother and faster (don’t compare it with ISDN though!) Internet access.
What’s more, it’s very easy to setup too. I mean, VERY easy. Highly recommended.
Sarah had started rolling her body now. OhmyGod, now she can easily go anywhere in the room, gotta be more careful 🙂 when she started to walk though the real nightmare will start *grin*

Anisah started to behave even better now, a nice change. We need to constantly remind ourselves that we have to be FIRM to our children. Get her attention first (including dragging her to in front of your face when necessary), use short sentences, and show her that you really mean it.
But, being firm doesn’t equal to being mean, or nasty – something that some parent err. We hope we can learn from others and learn very quickly from our past mistakes.

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Nowadays I saw too many people not very happy with their lives.
I remember that in my parents’ village around 1900-1950 it’s very usual for people to get married on a very young age – 18 years and such. They became established traders usually around the age of 20; not too long then they have their own house, transportation means (bike/horse/cow/car/etc). Life was quite peaceful at that time (except for the fact that we’re being colonialised by the Dutch!)

In comparison, nowadays people usually spend their first 25 years of life getting educated; sometimes even more. Memory of the exams, the bullies, the killer tutors; the nightmare.
Escaped from that (at last!) then they try to find a decent job, which is getting harder to get. And the office sometimes can be their first taste of hell too; killer manager, stabber-in-the-back colleagues, etc.
After that struggle, it’s not too long before they become very heavily in debt as they bought car and house – otherwise they won’t be able to buy it at all for, like, 15 years.
Then, they can start thinking about marriage (if they think about it at all) – but by that time usually it’s rather hard to find your soulmate with you busy all day in the office. And you’re already quite old; 32 – 35 years?
Then (again) to cope with the bills, usually (unless the man have a VERY decent job) both of them will have to work – they’ll find it hard to find quality time for them together.
But, just wait until they started having kids…

And all of those trouble for what?

A lot of people are asking that question. But I’m glad because I have something to hold on. And I’m very thankful to that – otherwise I think I’ll have gone mad by now.

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I’m very easily tired this past several days.. wonder why.
I think I’ll try not eating dinner for a change.

Dani (my brother) just arrived back from Jakarta several days ago – and lost his luggage again. When he flew to Jakarta, the luggage was lost as well. He use Air France.
Highly NOT recommended – especially since Emirates (better, and cheaper too) now is present at Birmingham Airport as well.

Wow I’m not feeling too well… have asked my wife to pick me up in 15 minutes.

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WARNING: Computer Stuff

[ 1 ] Linux 2.4 is a good thing, but for widespread acceptance we’ll have to wait for the distro update.

[ 2 ] Bluetooth is still a load of crap.

After taking a look months ago I knew it won’t be ready until a very looong time. The last CES (Consumer Electronic Show?) confirmed that – the devices that showcases Bluetooth sucked big time.
It’s just simply the case of too much hype not enough deliveries; that’s all.

[ 3 ] Office 10 won’t be as successful as its predecessors.

I mean, how advanced and bloated can your typewriter be before you’re sick of it…?

[ 4 ] Microsoft .NET is a load of hype (as usual)

It won’t really take off until at least the next several years. Problem is, ASP (this is what .NET is basically all about) have not taken off even after prophesied for years; because of a lot of possibility of problems. People are simply reluctant to adopt it. Wonder if .NET will face the same fate later.

[ 5 ] Xbox will rule.

Face it, PS2 sucks – technologically it’s rather advanced, but the developers found it hard to harness the enhancements. Xbox on the other hand is very powerful (who could challenge NVidia, really? coupled with 733 MHz processor, etc) and very easy to develop with and with Microsoft marketing team’s backing it will be wildly popular

For added bonus, killer games made for it would be very easy to be ported to PC (read: Windows). That means not only Microsoft will have its reach extended to another area (read: game console = another revenue source! yum) Xbox will also provide more incentive for people to use PC.

Woops… I should submit these as an article to a computer magazine instead I guess…

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Saw last night’s episode of X-Files, and it was brilliant.

The story was about some guy, named Henry, who simply can’t have bad luck (he don’t need to say “wish me luck”, ever!) but this guy is smart and realise that it’s not always a blessing.

“Cause and effect, everything is for a reason”, he said.
When he was hit by a truck and badly wounded, Mulder and (the logical/sceptic) Sculley thought he finally had run out of his luck. But things turned out to be a blessing in disguise, when the mafia guy (that wanted to kill him) was dead instead, they found out that he had a very rare blood type – just exactly the one needed by Henry’s closest friend, a dying child.

So everything is happening for a grand scheme, that none of us can fully understand before the conclusions rolls in.
I like that.

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What a weekend… we’re quite busy (argh even forgot to look for Data Network notes for Hery) had an invitation from our friends in Wolverhampton, then in Sunday the kids made us busy – but they deserved it.

I truly envy my father, he just have some shops in the market – but he managed to raise us properly (even sent me abroad) and most importantly he had a lot of time for his children. That’s because he works for himself, he set his own worktime, not set by his employer. And now he’s just enjoying his life, mainly just taking care his youngest child (Arif, 4 years old).

But these hasn’t come easily. My mother told me of what he had gone through in his early days – his struggling with his first shops, people cheating on him, how many times he was in the verge of bankruptcy, etc.
He pulled through all of them.

I don’t think I have the strength yet to go through all of those – that’s why I just work for someone else. But I hope one day I could become like my father, and make him proud of me.

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Just had a discussion with a Shiite/Syiah/Shee’ah/Shi’ah guy in a mailing list. This guy is promoting the ideals of Shi’ite to other muslims in the list. Problem is, Shi’ite is not even recognised as muslim by the muslim scholars:

http://alcor.concordia.ca/~msa/shia.html

The Shi’ite are big problem for us, muslims. They are shouting to everyone “hey we’re THE muslim”. Yet they kill the innocents by the act of terrorism – including other muslims (especially the Sunni), so what would stop them from killing/doing injustice to non-muslims…

The scholars were not shy at all at describing the falseness of them, so I don’t think I would. I won’t waste more of my time on them, I’ll just give them the URL, and hopefully I’d be able to devote my time to other more useful things.

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This morning when my wife was waiting for me in the parking lot, a man came and examined my car. While she was wondering what he’s up to, he came and said “I’m looking for a car (and yours looks great) did you ever have any problem driving it?” and continued to chat with her for sometime.
That made it TWICE some complete strangers complimented my car.
Moral of the story? You don’t need to have a Ferrari Testarossa to have strangers praising your car 😉
(just kidding! I’m not some kind of praise-maniac guy or something.. yuck)

My car is just a small, simple Nissan. But I gotta admit this particular model (year 2000, K11 ?) do looks good, also the color (China blue).
However, the original reasons for me to choose it was simply for its price (can you believe that I bought it for less than 7000 quid, including tax+insurance+RAC), low insurance rate (it’s a one litre model) and reliability (Nissan cars are quite well-known for this).

Cool fact, I bought it from Internet (I’m such a geek, I can’t resist the temptation) – http://www.autohit.com
They’re basically a broker, when you ask for a car they’ll query their dealers network and give you the best deal(s). I was pleasantly surprised too when I realised that they also provide customer aftersales service, along with the Nissan dealer. Some facts for the Micra:

The specs
History of the Micras
More cool facts
Nissan Micra user group – here in UK!
Photos of some other Micras and their owners

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Finally, this weblog now works properly. *phew*

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test weblog

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