3-in-1 : Cross posting to Blogspot and Facebook

Currently, I blog on Multiply. It seems kinda slow these days, but I stick to it as it allows for hosting of photos as well as cross-posting to Blogspot. Now, while using Facebook, I stumbled upon a feature that allows for Auto importing from Blogspot each time I make a blog entry. Or so it says. So, in theory, I can configure so that a post in Multiply gets cross-posted to Blogspot, which in turn get's imported to Facebook. Therefore, making it a 3-in-1 post.

Will try this out to see whether it works as well in real life as it does in theory....

Rediscovering the internet

Yesterday, my company generously bestowed upon its office hour employees and extra day of shutdown for the Deepavali celebrations (no thanks to the current global economic slowdown). Thus, with much time to spare, I fired up my trusty Firefox browser and set about revisiting some of my old internet haunts that I haven't managed to upkeep for some time.

Some of you may notice a sudden increase in activity for my Multiply (and hence it's mirror at Blogspot) site, which is basically me posting to cover some backlog after the recent months. After finally getting myself a new router to replace the one that was offered as sacrifice to a thunderstorm, I'm able to start posting again. Of course, I can access the internet from office, but that would be highly unprofessional of me to do so!

Anyway, I've also managed to post some on Photomalaysia. Most useful is now Facebook. It's amazing how this aspect of social networking actually works. I basically had only 2 friends on up until recently. Then, I just requested to add CMC as a friend, and suddenly there were a whole lot of familiar friends on Facebook to add as friends. In the span of a day, my friend count jumped from 2 to 12!

The best thing is that while I was logged on to Facebook today, I saw that one of my old friends, Muneela, was online. Thus, I managed to engage in an online chat via Facebook. It was good to contact my former colleague again after she left the company for roughly 2 years now. She's currently in Dubai with her husband (in a land where everything is expensive, but petrol is cheap).

Well, back to reality. Time to spend online isn't going to be in abundance all of the time - nonetheless I'll try to make an effort to keep posting here once in a while. I still have some backlogged posts to clear....

Civic Malaysia Club

The 8th Generation Civic is a hot car indeed - just a couple of years since its' launch and already there are 2 car enthusiasts' clubs around; 8GCC and the newly formed Civic Malaysia Club (CMC). The latter was actually founded by a group of former 8GCC committee members, who felt the need for change was in order. One of the key differences is that 8GCC was a free forum and thus prone to outages and other ill-effects from time to time, while CMC, being hosted on a private server, has much better support (and of course, the higher maintenance cost is reflected in the membership fees).

There is no rule or law forbidding anyone from joining both clubs simultaneously - in fact, most of us (myself included) hold dual-memberships in both clubs. Since we are all friends, it doesn't really matter under which banner our convoy rides. Only thinig is that there tends to be some repeated post topics in the new forum.

Well, in Melaka, we have some 15 or so members (though our dear Kenjiez has technically migrated to KL already) at present. And still growing strong. Look forward to new adventures and convoys in the months to come!

(Another) failed attempt at climbing Mt Kinabalu

This year is my second attempt at scaling the famous Mount Kinabalu, that is located in East Malaysia in the state of Sabah. Some years ago, I made it right up to the halfway point, Laban Rata, but did not proceed onwards to the summit.

Flying over on the budget airlines, Air Asia, we were not allowed to board the plane due to arriving slightly late (25 minutes) before the actual flight departure. Thus, we had to book a place on the next flight. Not a good start.

Upon reaching Kota Kinabalu, found that it was raining. Quite heavily, actually, as some parts of the road on the way to the Kinabalu National Park were flooded.

Now, there are 2 ways to go up the mountain. One is via Timpohon gate, which was a wider trail, with more trees and going up alll the way. The other one was through the Mersilau gate, which was longer, but more scenic, with ups and downs. Needless to say, we chose to ascend via the Mersilau trail.

Unfortunately for me, the rain on the previous night had left the ground damp and slippery, thus, some 3 kilometers into the trail, I slipped and fractured my left ankle. This, I attribute to the fact that I was wearing tennis shoes (which have no grip on wet ground). Unable to walk, I waited for the emergency response team made up of 11 people to carry me out on stretcher, taking turns - 4 at a time. Well, my friends did proceed onwards and managed to reach the summit (and in doing so we discovered that there is no DIGI line at Laban Rate (016). However, Maxis line still OK (012).)

Now, at the hospital, X-ray revealed just a hairline crack. However, that was enough to ground me for months. The doctor was rather excited and kept asking me if he could inject me with some painkillers (I declined - my ankle hurt, but not as bad as that!). Medication for the pain was also somewhat of an overkill. I was given two types of pills - one to kill the pain, the other to prevent gastritis as a result of taking the first pill. I'm not too fond of medication, so I chose to endure the slight pain instead.

In the airport, the Air Asia people had wheelchairs, but you had to pay to use them. That's the part that made me not so happy - it's not that people choose to use wheelchairs, you know. Hopefully, they will become more aware of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)!

Well, that left me in a cast for a little over a month, and even now, 3 months later, I'm still not fully recovered (can walk, cannot run). I had to attend my company's Appreciation Night in a wheelchair. But me being myself, failure is just another obstacle on the road to success, so already I'm planning my next expedition to conquer the mountain in April 2009. This time, I'll be better prepared (need hiking boots!).

Product development getting smaller and smaller....

In the last couple of months, the exodus of staff leaving the company is still in effect. This time round, many of those leaving are from none other that my own department.

First up was our End-Of-Line expert, Zool, who has left for a better offer.

Roughly a month later, much to everyone's disbelief, our dear boss, Suhairin, also left the company to follow her husband (now somewhere in Selangor). So now, (un)fortunately for me, I have to take over the behemoth task of running the department in her place, and keep my own projects running as well....

Other than that, our SAP Key User, Low CN, also moved to KL to seek fame and fortune (and hopefully a husband).

The situation was quite similar on the other side of the world. My long time counterpart, Pham Hien, and just recently, Min Chen, also has tendered their resignations. For the time being, hiring's frozen, so no chance to call in reinforcements. Well, now that the outflow has stopped (temporarily), life is now twice as challenging, as everyone is relatively new and inexperienced. Sigh, time to shift up another gear....

New hardware required

Well, they just don't make things like they used to. During a recent thunderstorm, I discovered that the power adapter of my ADSL model was not functioning. Upon closer inspection, found this:


Well, since my wireless router was useless without the ADSL modem (which was useless without a power adapter), decided to get an integrated solution from the nearby computer store. Eventually, I got myself a brand new wireless router + ADSL modem from the Stygix store which was just 15 minutes walk from my place. Installing it was easy, but getting connected to Streamyx once again proved challenging. The old ADSL didn't have that many settings, and now there were a few unfamiliar parameters when configuring the new one. After a few days (unsuccessful), I managed to google the solution from my office - turns out that the default settings weren't compatible with Streamyx. After changing just 1 value, the long severed connections to the internet were thus restored!

Don't blame it on the hardware (my networking gear is exclusively from DLINK). When lightning strikes, there's really nothing that can be done. The strike also fried my alarm system, which required a change in both control panels! Good thing everything else is still functioning.