肚子里的野蛮
昨晚肚子里的野蛮作怪，搞到我整晚坐立难安。吃了文明的药来打压肚子里的野蛮就去躺，然后就这样睡着了。到了半夜，拉了才舒服。今早迟起了。唉。
Are you ready?
August 8, 2008 will be the day. Are you ready?
Here is the song for the Olympic 2008 countdown. I love the song because it makes my blood rushing, full of dynamic. This song is a Chinese language song but music is a universal language. Enjoy!
这个世界是文明还是野蛮？
傍晚在电视上看到第二届世界大专华文辩论会大决赛。题目是《这个世界是文明还是野蛮？》。马来西亚国民大学是正方，而反方是中国苏州大学。在我看来，反方比较明确的述明这世界的野蛮里的文明。不过，大体上，双方都在逗圈子，来来去去都在争论是文明是野蛮的。双方都拿不出一个标准。照我看来，反方比较胜卷在握。
看这场辩论赛而辩论这个世界是文明还是野蛮的，真是浪费时间。
这个世界是文明还是野蛮的不是世人能定夺。这个世界是一个灰色的世界。文明中带有野蛮、野蛮中带有文明。以文明来掩饰野蛮、而野蛮行为中带点文明处处可见。一位企业化黑帮老大坏事做尽、可他又是一位慈善家，那么他是文明还是野蛮？把一件事以多角度、多层次来抽丝剥茧的深入观察和分析，就会有好多不同的结论。以上两支决赛队伍都缺乏了多角度多层次的客观分析。
在一个文明社会的字典里，《法律》、《斗争》、《仇恨》、《战争》、《经济》、《利益》、《罪恶》等等是不存在的。在文明社会里是不需要法律来约束人民的。为什么？因为每人脑里都没有经济和利益的斗争，也不会有战争。社会上种种罪恶都是利益和经济的冲突所引起的。所以，在我们野蛮的社会里，需要法律来约束人们以防止罪案发生。有文明不代表没有了野蛮。只是野蛮被文明的法律约束压制了。
一个文明社会里，经济和金钱是不存在的。每人都知道自己对社会的义务而工作，而不是为个人的物质享受而工作。所有行动和思想都是和大体一致的为大体的生存而产生。
一个文明社会里，所有思想都是无极的，也不会有这场辩论会，更不需要辩论。一切仇恨斗争都是思想极化的产物。
在我眼里，这个世界是文明里带有野蛮、野蛮里有点文明的一个矛盾世界。
Protected: Two things that annoyed me today
NSAID allergy case the 3rd time!
My dad was admitted to the General Hospital yesterday due to suspecting of food poisoning. He was actually going to the Community Polyclinic at Pantai Peringgit for his routine medical checkup. But he had been having diarrhea since last week and yesterday he began to vomit.
There wasn’t any vacant ward so they put him in the A&E ward. He was transferred to medical ward this morning. When I visited him two hours ago, I saw his eyes were swollen. His eye bags were filled with fluid. I knew he was having allergic reaction and I quickly checked with the nurse.
There were some young doctors there. A female doctor attended to me and my dad to see what’s going on. Her name was Dr. Ng. I told her that my dad was allergic to NSAID (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs). They prescribed him Aspirin. She said they had stopped giving him aspirin.
This was negligence and I pursued the responsibility with her. I am regarded as some kind of pain-in-the-ass by some people. I could see her facial reaction when I told her that I would pursue this responsibility. She quickly apologized and carefully worked through the documents. I backed off a little when I saw her diligence. I am not totally a pain-in-the-ass after all. I am not totally unreasonable.
She found a remark stating my dad was allergic to two unknown drugs. I told her, when a patient had informed the doctor or the nurse of his unknown allergic, then it would be the normal procedure to go through the patient’s medical history to find out what he was allergic to. Assessment had to be made accordingly if the patient was medically illiterate. The hospital should also immediately contact his family to find out what his allergies.
She apologized again and suggested me to speak to her superior tomorrow morning. She apologized again and I told her it was not her fault because my dad had been admitted at the same hospital with the same allergic reaction. Someone did not do their job well.
He was prescribed NSAID by an A&E doctor at the same general hospital and had mild allergic reaction. This happened in early 2007. In May 2007, the Community Polyclinic at Pantai Peringgit prescribed him Diclofenac Sodium and he had a bad allergic reaction and was admitted to the general hospital at night. I wrote about this here.
Why does this happen again for the 3rd time?
I am going to be someone’s real pain-in-the-ass tomorrow.
Ada tasking on multi-core
With a multi-core processor such as the Intel’s Core Duo, the Ada tasking can be easily demonstrated compared to single core Pentium processor. Consider the following Ada code:
with Ada.Text_IO; use Ada.Text_IO;
procedure Tasking is
task A;
task B;
task body A is
begin
for I in 1 .. 10 loop
Put_Line ("A");
end loop;
end A;
task body B is
begin
for I in 1 .. 10 loop
Put_Line ("B");
end loop;
end B;
begin
Put_Line ("Begin parallel tasking...");
Put_Line ("The end!");
end Tasking;
The above program produces the following result which easily reflects the parallel execution.
A
B
Begin parallel tasking...
A
B
The end!
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
A
B
First astronomy lesson
After the TV, I went to lock the outer gate. The sky was clear and I could see the full moon and many stars. I saw the brightest star twinkling on the lower left corner not far away from the moon. I guessed it was Jupiter. Jupiter is the largest planet and one of the four outer gas giants or Jovians in our solar system. To be sure, I checked with Stellarium on my Mac and confirmed it was Jupiter.
Then I called the boys and mom to gaze at the sky and told them it was Jupiter the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in our solar system. I told them that Jupiter would take about 11 years to orbit the Sun compare to one year for our planet earth. The two older boys responded with a big “Wow!” Nik was rather excited and very vocal.
We could also see some other stars and Ara, Triangulum Australe, Libra and Virgo constellation. They were magnificent.
The kids had their first astronomy lesson and so did I. I learned that Pluto is no longer the ninth planet in our solar system. Instead, the International Astronomical Union or IAU has reclassified Pluto as one of the four dwarf planets together with Ceres, Makemake and Eris.
I will reconsider to acquire a telescope soon. I almost invested in a Meade’s ETX-90PE in 1998 but for some reason I did not. I will consider a larger model, ETX-125PE.
I became interested in astronomy when I was first introduced by two persons. One was Dr. Ghaffar and Khoo. Dr. Ghaffar is a nuclear physicist and Khoo is my ex-classmate and a mechanical engineer. Both of them were very involved in star gazing. Khoo had even built his own 12″ diameter Newtonian Reflective Telescope.
I almost invested into one as mentioned earlier but I didn’t. At some point, I became very interested in astrophysics. Writing software to model celestial body can be interestingly challenging. Perhaps I should go get a Ph.D. and become an astrophysicist. Or, perhaps, one of the boys will become a renown astrophysicist.
Are our soldiers competent enough?
When I was queueing up at the cash deposit machine in a bank, there was a soldier in his uniform in front of me. The banks in Malaysia have become semi electronics with machines for both withdrawal and deposit plus human counters.
Come back to the soldier in front of me.
When it was the soldier turn to make his deposit, he kindly asked the man in front of him to help with his deposit. This soldier was in his late 30s or 40s looking at his grey hair. One question sparked across my mind: How competent are our soldiers? He couldn’t even make an electronic deposit transaction! Perhaps he was the only incompetent soldier in the whole military. I wished I was wrong.
I remembered that I attended a beach party on Okinawa. The party was organized by marines and civilian security force. You can read and see some photos here. The two men at the barbecue were some high ranking marines officers. I can’t recall their ranks. The other man with blue shorts, blind-folded standing in the tub was a commander.
I spoke to most of the people there. From bottom to some substantially high ranking officers. Their attitude and manners, and the way they spoke to me and the contents of conversation suggested some high level of intelligence. They were truly professional soldiers.
Looking at the soldier who was queueing in front of me, it was a total distinction and a disgrace. I might have not met a bad US soldier on Okinawa. But both of my encounters have prompted me if our soldiers are competent if compare to our neighbors. Our soldier don’t even know to operate a cash deposit machines? I must be joking if you don’t see it yourself. But yes, I saw it right in front of me.
Go to YouTube, you can see some of our military performance. The military war dance is really a laughing stock!
Tycoon or dick heads?
Dressing is really a knowledge for both men and women. Dressing reflects professionalism and social status of the person. Those youngsters in the universities lack dressing knowledge. Universities enforced dress code to prohibit sandals, shorts etc in campus but that does not do any help in students’ dressing.
I read on a blog about a comment by Nemesis, where he described some university students as dick heads. His comment was deleted later because he used the offending term: dick head. Well, I read about it and had a good laugh.
Upgraded to WordPress 2.6
Just finished upgrading to WordPress 2.6. The upgrading was quite smooth except my ADSL speed was very slow. I had complained to the ISP last week and again yesterday. After upgrading to 2.6, I couldn’t login even if I reset the password.
Quick Googling found the solution: Clear the browser’s cookies and everything becomes normal again!
Chikungunya fever
My aunt and her husband were talking about some mosquito transmitted fever with joint pains when we visited her yesterday. They told us the epidermic was spreading in Segamat, Tangkak, Sagil and Muar. The epidemic they were talking about was Chikungunya fever. This disease is transmitted by infected Aedes mosquitoes. Today, there are 4 reported cases in Malacca.
The outbreak is caused by raining season. Singapore has reported an outbreak in earlier this year in January. Although it is not as deadly as dengue fever, I will take no chance to allow our kids to expose to the Aedes mosquitoes. No outdoor activities in the evening for a while.
One great Sunday out
We have planned to go to a temple at Muar for weeks and finally the day came. We went to pick up grandma at 1030, bought some fruits in the town and heading to Muar around 1130. The journey took around half an hour thanks to the new express way.
We went to Muar to find that temple with Richard some time in April. Being the agnostic me, I haven’t been to such temples in years. Being curious, I went with some hope. But I guess the effect will not come so soon. Those Chinese friends who believe in such “Gods” will understand what I am talking about.
There were many people at the temple and we finished our business around 1445 or 1500. Then we headed to Muar town center for lunch. After our late lunch, we visited an aunt there. Grandma chatted with her sister for a while then home we went.
When we arrived Melaka, we stopped over at Jusco to buy some more fruits and a few shirts. Then we all had our dinner at KFC. Reached home around 2030. We were so exhausted and went to bed quite early.
What a Sunday!
My car need a major repair
I sent my car to Honda authorized workshop this morning. I had a technician to go test driving with me so that I could convince him my problem. The knocking sound reduced tremendously after I sent in my car for valve gap adjustment last Monday. But the problem is still there when the vehicle velocity and road condition is right. Read my other posts regarding this problem here, here, here and here.
After some checking, they finally gave up. The service manager told me that they had to dismantle the engine compartment and he called Honda to have them bear the cost since I had good service records with them.
Actually, I was all ready to fire and to bang them because I had spent over RM1,000 and the problem was not remedied at all. Since the service manager guaranteed that they would call Honda to have them to bear the cost, I decided to hold my fire. He promised to call me today or latest by Monday. My car will be in for a few days and they will arrange a courtesy car for me to use. Let see how things go.
Hello? What is Ada?
I was giving an Ada talk this afternoon. The room was quite packed with students although not full. They were mainly 3rd year sem 1. Most of them were looking at technologies that they could work with their FYP (Final Year Project).
While I regaled them with fascinating true facts of Ada, I could see various reactions on their innocent and ignorant faces. Almost half of them gave an expression of “What is Ada going to do with my project?”, “What is Ada? Never heard of it.” or “Ada is old technology and is unpopular.” It was years of experience telling me not to waste too much time with such audiences. I quickly skimmed through some technical facts which they wouldn’t understand and continue regaling them with some interesting facts.
Finally, I had come to the end of the talk. It was the questions and answers session. No one had asked any questions except a girl who asked me about C# after the talk session was over. I explained to her the benefits of Ada over C# but she said she would have to start all over again. Again, my instinct told me not to waste time with such attitude and I turned my focus onto the two students whom I am supervising now. I continued with them a discussion of their project.
Unlike a couple of years back, I was too over-enthusiastic about Ada. I would talk regardless of audience reactions. After a few talks and a seminar this year, I find that I have changed. My enthusiasm is parallel to audience reaction.
Durian, durian, durian
It is durian season. Last night when we were at grandma’s place, she and grandpa asked D if he liked to eat durian. We had been talking about durian feast since couple of weeks ago. So, tonight we decided to buy some durian to give grandma and kids a treat.
We drove to Bukit Baru to source for durian. Finally found a Malay stall opposite SRJK Kek Seng. Bought 9kg of durian and proceeded to grandma’s. The kids had not been to grandma’s place for months. The kids were really enjoying at grandma’s place. We stayed until 2330. The kids will definitely wake up late in the morning. They usually sleep early but once a while we allow them to sleep during weekends so that they can adjust to adults’ timing. They must be sleeping soundly by now.
Thinking in a nutshell
Most Malaysia graduate students lack critical thinking and have narrow thinking in their small nutshell and yet they think they are thinking and handling problems like an adult. I don’t know exactly what makes them having this false perception but I think it is the lacking of critical thinking, experience and limited exposure in the real world of survivor. They are restrained only to academic and their activities circles are also bounded by non-sense laws set by the universities. These laws are designed to suppress the basic human rights of the students. Read more
Problem still persists
WTF! I spent around RM1,000 for the repair and although my car is more powerful than before after replacing a new flywheel but the problem still persists. I will have to wait until Thursday because I am going to KL to conduct an Ada Workshop. Now, I am suspecting the problem is caused by the valve gap. The knocking sound during under-powered acceleration is still audible.
Working at Honda?
I was working at Honda’s Showroom (KAH Motor) while I waited for my car to be repaired since 0830 this morning. One thing Honda has done right is the 3S (Sales, Service, Showroom) Center. They provide free drinks, Astro and WIFI for customers. The waiting area is very comfortable and cozy. One thing lacking is insufficient seats.
It was great experience to do my work at Honda’s showroom. I have a lot to prepare for the Ada Workshop tomorrow.
Press Conference Against MMU’s Imposition of IT Service Fee
(Repost)
After a successful imposition of library fee, now MMU grubs for more! The latest announcement that MMU is planning to impose an annual IT service fee of RM100 from each student starting this trimester has exasperated everyone. Complaints are heard everywhere. But look, the Finance Division can’t hear you; the President can’t hear you. The voice of SRC alone is too soft. Now we need to borrow the foreign force to amplify our voices!
There will be a press conference held at DAP Dun Ayer Keroh Service Centre on this coming Thursday. Press and media will be present at the conference.
Date : July 3, 2008
Time : 12:30PM
Venue : 63-2, Jalan DB1, Taman Bukit Beruang Indah, 75450 Bukit Beruang. (Same row with US Pizza, second last lot)
反对MMU收费新闻招待会
（转帖）
MMU强收每位学生RM60的图书馆费还不够，居然还得寸进尺想再收取每人RM100的IT服务费，岂有此理？消息一放，怨声四起。但是，在网站上叫骂，有用吗？MMU的高层可晓得你对他们的不满？单靠SRC替我们请愿，有用吗？我们有近两万人的学生，为何只靠那几十位？我们自身的权利，应当由我们自己争取，而不是单靠SRC，因为到底付钱的是我们。试问SRC能为我们承担吗？ 现在让你站出来发言的机会来了。这个星期四在Ayer Keroh区民主行动党服务中心将有一项新闻招待会让MMU学生有机会发表有关课题和其它不合理的课题。多家媒体将出席这项招待会。
日期：3/7/08
时间：12:30PM
地点：63-2, Jalan DB1, Taman Bukit Beruang Indah, 75450 Bukit Beruang. (和US Pizza同排, 最后第二间)
(English version here)
Blame, blame, blame?
I asked a foreman to take a look at my car. I told him about the problems and then we took my car for a spin. After that, he checked the engine oil and the transmission oil. He told me I was using the wrong oil for transmission. The oil should be red in color and he suspected the wrong oil caused the problems. I was very sure that I used the right oil as my car is a CVT (Continuous Variable Transmission) and uses CVTF (Continuous Variable Transmission Fluid) by Honda. I had seen the oil myself before and I remembered it was light golden yellow in color.
I did not agree with his opinions and I decided to take my car back to Honda’s workshop. I would rather spend more to make sure the car had proper maintenance and if Honda people screwed up, then I could jumped on them, screw them and rip them into pieces because they caused me to spend so much and yet the problems were not solved. So, decided am I.
Something is wrong with my car
The problems are becoming more obvious recently. Sometimes, it is difficult to kick-start my car even though the engine is still warm and the battery is in good health. My car sounds weird and the engine performance is deteriorating. I sent my car to the authorized Honda workshop for inspection and had my ECU reprogrammed on June 4. The problem came back after a few days and became worse. I decided to take it to authorized Honda workshop again for inspection.
According to the technician, something called “Flywheel” was causing the problems and it had to be changed. The flywheel and labor would cost me RM638 and RM350 respectively. It was so expensive and I decided to seek second opinions elsewhere.
A great Sunday morning
Yesterday, we took two bicycles to the town for repair. I hadn’t been using the bicycle carrier since 2006. In the evening, we took the bicycles to the park. After dinner, we went home and the weather seemed like to rain. Actually, I thought of taking the kids and the bikes to the park again the next morning. But it started to rain before midnight. We changed the plan, no bike but jogging at the park.
This morning, the weather was so cool because after the rain and was perfect to go fill up the gas tank. So, we all woke up early and went to the petrol station to fill up the tank. After that we went to the park followed by breakfast.
We went to the old part of Melaka China town near by the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple for dim sum. This restaurant is Melaka most famous and oldest dim sum restaurant and one of the very few pioneer. My dad used to bought us buns and glutinous rice in lotus leaf. They were delicious 30 years ago as I could remember. That was one of the bad dim sum we ever had. Actually, the taste not too bad at all but certainly was not a good one. The service was very bad and not really kids- or baby- friendly. We quickly had some and left. When checking the bill, it was quite expensive. I will definitely not recommend that dim sum restaurant.
Forget about the bad experience at breakfast. Anyway, we all enjoyed very much today. At night we watched movies at home.
Ada Obsession
Well, well, well. Kazeserver alpha RC1 has to be delayed due to some design issues and I am rewriting most part of the software so that the source can be understood easily. For the past two weeks, I was troubled by the old design but I have got a new picture now.
Isn’t Ada code easy to understand? Well, yes. But I was using a lot of Unbounded_String in records which made my code hard to read and understood. While Unbounded_String is compatible with database operation, it lacks the understandability and readability if compared to String (1 .. 10) for example.
Today, I am totally obsessed in Ada and am feeling the strongest Ada obsession after a couple of years. The feeling is still burning. If my Ada obsession keep burning, I believe I can release KazeServer for alpha testing before of June. Hopefully.
Snow Leopard
The Snow Leopard (Uncia uncia) sometimes known as ounce is a large cat native to mountain ranges in Central Asia from Afghanistan to Lake Baikal and Eastern Tibet. Snow Leopard normally weights 35kg to 55kg and slightly smaller than Leopard.
Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard is the next version of the world most advanced operating system with a smaller footprint compared to its predecessor, Leopard. Snow Leopard will take full advantage of 64-bit and multi-core technology to the height.
Since Apple introduced Mac OS X in 2001, thousands of new features have been implemented and introduced. In Leopard, the ability to take advantage of multi-core and 64-bit addressing have opened up new dimension in desktop computing. Virtualization becomes possible. New features such as Time Machine automatically backup the Mac hard disk without user knowing.
Snow Leopard, to be released a year from now, is going to be smaller than Leopard but more powerful. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the foot print on hard disk, using less disk space, freeing them for more music, photos and videos.
Snow Leopard fully makes use of 64-bit addressing to increase the RAM size to the theoretically 16TB, 500 times more than what is possible today. “Grand Central” a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard brings unrivaled multi-core support and capabilities to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speed, drives performance faster in today’s modern processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. The result: more powerful applications at faster speed.
Increased productivity
After solving the post-commit hook script problem (read here), I am a happy software developer again. I am able to receive post commit emails to help me keep track of changes in my development work. I have been experiencing the same level of efficiency and productivity before this problem struck me.
I guess I am happy of the whole week of activities and I am signing off to bed.
Gourmet Chocolates
I love chocolates! Recently, I craved for chocolates because of the increased brain activities. Chocolate is the favorite food while I am working on computers. Besides providing more energy for my brains, I love the way it melts in my mouth. LA has baked some chocolate cookies last week and I almost finished them.
I found a site which sells delicious gourmet chocolates. Gertrude Hawk Chocolates is made of fresh and finest ingredients. It is dedicated to create the best gourmet chocolates which include dark chocolate and other mouth-watering, delicious Chocolate Smidgens, caramel-dipped apples, gourmet summer taffy and many more.
Gertrude Hawk Chocolates also provide gift giving service. Their beautifully gift-wrapped assortments and pre-made gift baskets add more values to your gift-giving needs. Besides, you can also create your own personal gift with their Create-a-Basket program.
Hmmm… I wish to receive a Gertrude Hawk Chocolates gift basket.
Dmitry is slowly becoming independent
We have been co-sleeping for years. When Dominik arrived, I have to move out of our room to make space for him. Last year, it was time for Dmitry to sleep in his own bedroom. We bought a double decker for him and Richie but it had not been used for a while until recently. Read more
Bar Code Printer
If you are running a business and have been using POS (Point Of Sales) system, you will find bar code is an easy and accurate way of inputting your stock code. Some products have bar code printed on the product label, some don’t. The Zebra 2844 bar code label printer is a reliable desktop bar code printer for your business needs. It features a 203dpi thermal print head with direct thermal or thermal transfer printing with good resolution and enhanced print quality.
Dmitry doing dishes
After the lunch, Dmitry offered to take my dishes to the sink and started doing dishes. Read more
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Recent Entries
- 肚子里的野蛮7.23
- Are you ready?7.23
- 这个世界是文明还是野蛮？7.20
- Protected: Two things that annoyed me today7.18
- NSAID allergy case the 3rd time!7.17
- Ada tasking on multi-core7.17
- First astronomy lesson7.16
- Are our soldiers competent enough?7.16
- Tycoon or dick heads?7.16
- Upgraded to WordPress 2.67.16
- Chikungunya fever7.14
- One great Sunday out7.13
- My car need a major repair7.11
- Hello? What is Ada?7.9
- Durian, durian, durian7.6
- Thinking in a nutshell7.4
- Problem still persists6.30
- Working at Honda?6.30
- Press Conference Against MMU’s Imposition of IT Service Fee6.30
- 反对MMU收费新闻招待会6.30
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