Friday, February 20, 2009

I didn't type my blog entry!

The previous post was not typed but was handwritten. How awesome is that? And so is this entry.

ANENT

ANENT Stands for Asian Network for education in nuclear studies. I am spending two weeks to be involved in this project. Our first task is to learn on how to use MESSAGE through e-learning interactive classroom. Several countries are involved in this e-learning project i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, India, Korea, Pakistan and Philippines. We are very excited but at times, there are frustrations due to slow internet connection. Is it just us in Malaysia or global slowdown in internet connection? Because other countries are also complaining that they couldn't get online Whatever it is, by next week we have to start building the national case study. And today supposedly, we should be very comfortable with MESSAGE. I hope everything will go on smoothly.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Death of My Laptop

I spent about 7k in February alone. I wonder, why?

1) 2k++ to goddamned mechanics who persuaded that I should changed the rims and suspensions of my old car.

2) My beloved IBM laptop died of heart failure (the motherboard). Time of death: 8.30 pm 16th February 2009 (Monday). I had a technician analyzed my laptop (Tuesday) and he said that nothing could be done (Wednesday). Once the motherboard is out, it is better to find a new laptop. So on that fine Wedenesday I went to Lowyatt and fell in love with an HP Pavilion tx2500 Entertainment Notebook PC.

Why I like my New HP Pavilion?
It is bloody entertaining and flexible. I can do handwriting and make everything finger print secure. Lalala~ and it can sing better than my old IBM, being equipped with Altec Lansing speakers.

My 3 Paintball Events

Here are the three paintball events i had gone through recently.

1. Advertlets Blogger Paintball Tournament
(17 January 2009 - Saturday) This was the first time I ever played paintball in my life. I registered for the RM10 Advertlets event and was paired up with 4 total strangers, namely Marcus, Evo, Celine and Uncle Zahari and we called our team "Team Yakuza". Except for Marcus and Evo, the rest of us were first timers. Surprisingly after playing the 4 rounds of preliminary games, we advanced to semifinal and then final. We emerged first runner up amongst the ~20 teams consisting of 5 person each that took part in this event. And so, we were promised a free entry to join the National Paintball League (NPL) tournament in Division 4, worth RM300.

2. Paintball Practice
(8 February 2009 - Sunday) In view of the upcoming NPL tournament, Marcus had organized a training season with his old buddy, Simon who is in the Division 3 of the NPL. We went to Astaka which is the home of MY-NPL to practice. We learnt a lot from Simon on the techniques, rules and practice of playing paintball. Prior to that, we had watched the videos on Youtube on the subject of paintball. We learnt a lot from the videos and lots more while practising with Simon. At Astaka, we had to pay each Rm100 consisting of RM20 for renting the house marker, RM20 for renting the house mask, RM20 for using the field and RM40 for the paintball pellets (we bought a box of 1000 pellets at RM200, divided by 5, each will carry 200 pellets thus costing RM40 for each person). At this moment one of our team mate, Celine had pulled out and replaced by Josh from the Advertlets. Thanks Simon for being our SIFU.

3. MY-NPL Paintball Tournament
(14 February 2009 - Saturday) This was the real event and we were excited and ready to shoot. Alas, we learnt that due to some technical issues, we had to pay for the registration fee which is RM300 for the whole team. Josh being the Advertlets liason, had arranged for the NPL people to give us 1000 pellets free of charge. Anyway, we had to buy a box of 2000 pellets to be used in the tournament. The preliminary round were held on Saturday and we had to play against 6 teams. We won 3 and we lost 3. In the end, we ranked 13 out of the 28 teams. Therefore we had to come the next day play for the semi final which we taunted as the Super Sweet Sixteen of the division 4 where top 16 team advances to the next round.

(15 February 2009 - Sunday) We came early for the semi final but the event only started after 10 am because they had to finish the premilinary rounds of Division 2 and 3 which failed to wrap up on Saturday. We bought another box of 2000 pellets for the event today. Team Yakuza (our team) had to face Team Infidelz. We were playing for the best of 3 games. In other words, the team must win 2 rounds in order to advanced further in the game. Team Infidelz ranked 4th in preliminary round (but I later learnt that they actually came out 2nd place in the prelim. but due to miscalc by the organizer they were ranked 4th). Anyhow, we lost the two games. The Infidelz were good, they played very quiet and only shoot whenever necessary. First game I was sniped out of nowhere and the pellet burst on my shoulder. Second game, I advanced to middle of the playing games thinking that no one was looking but then the fella came infront of me and shot me to elimination. My other teammates faced similar fate. It was a good game and we just had to accept our defeat.

What I like about paintball?
The adrenaline rush when shooting at your opponent and experiencing a whole new environment and meeting new people.

What I don't like about paintball?
The gears we have to put on before the game i.e. face mask, and other protective garments such as long sleeve and pads because once you get hit, the hit really stings if you are hit at places other than your face mask and marker. Honestly, I hate wearing the face mask bacause it is just uncomfortable and makes breathing a bit hard and your view is kind of limited. I also dislike shouting because i don't have loud voice and with the face mask, it is even harder to shout loudly. Finally, it is rather costly to play this game and i am not a millionaire.

Pictures?
I have none because I did bring any camera and my phone won't even take a decent picture of anything. Perhaps may other teammates have post some pictures in their blogs:
Uncle Z - http://xperienceoflife.blogspot.com/
Marcus - http://gyakudo.blogspot.com
Evo - http://euveng.blogspot.com/
Josh - http://josh.my/

Conclusion
Since I have more dislikes than likes, I am thinking that I will not be playing this game in the near future. I have made other commitments which is cheaper and more comfortable than paintball.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Defragmenter Could Not Start

For weeks I have been trying to find the solution on why my windows defragmenter would not start. At last after reading lots of comments on tech forums, i downloaded a malware removal program: malwarebytes and did a dull scan. The program found several malwares including trojan and removed it from my computer. Then my computer is running OK again.

Malwarebytes is a freeware. You only have to pay US$29.99 if you want to do a real-time protection and schedule update. The free stuff just work like magic removing the bad bad things from your system.

However, if the problem is not cause by malware, the following might be the solution:

QUOTE (mph @ Jan 17 2008, 07:31 PM) *
check the page file

control panel,open system,click advanced tab,click "settings" under performance,click advanced tab,click "change" under virtual memory,make sure no paging file isn't selected


also dont forget what patio said,open the command prompt,copy and paste in

chkdsk /r

press enter

type in y and press enter when asked if you want it to run the next time the computer is started


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http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

291. Restore Defrag Snap-In


use internet explorer to download the reg file as some other browsers aren't suitable


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i dont know if any files that defrag.exe might use are covered by sfc /scannow

but it's always worth trying


http://www.updatexp.com/scannow-sfc.html

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this i have copied from http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=28251

A Good Guy (AGG)

Yesterday my sis called to say that she smelled something faulty while driving her car. It was the smell of rubber melting, so i told her to stop her car and peek outside to see what's wrong. It turned out that her right front tyre burst. Luckily she stopped or else her car would suffer serious damage.

So this is the time that i think i should get out of the office and go help my sis. While i was starting my car engine, a motorcyclist stopped and tried to help my sis but alas he did not have the right spanner. And so we waited for me, with my sis for about 35 minutes. I was surprised that he was such a gentleman, when i arrived he helped change the tyre while i stood at the side giving caution sign to the traffic. Since the car was in the middle of MRR2, the traffic was beastly, with huge lorries coming by i have to give hand signals so that the driver would see that somebody was fixing the tyre.

i was greatly grateful to the guy, so did my sis, furthermore as he refused to accept anything from us. i shall keep his kind deed embedded in my heart and i pray that he will get the best out of everything he chooses to have. amin.