Since buying the Treo 600 just over a year ago, I’ve been playing Klondike (generically known as solitaire) regularly. It comes in very handy when I’m waiting in a queue, or waiting for someone to turn up, or waiting for the trains to appear … well…. whenever I’m waiting in general. Or trying to go to sleep.

Recently, one feature of the game has held personal significance to me. When you’ve exhausted all possible moves, the game ends and a message pops up:

GAME OVER
(no moves left)

Posted on December 18th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Notable: Personal | 4 Comments »

I have learnt

… that you should rely entirely on no one but yourself. While most people have good intentions, their list of priorities don’t necessarily always coincide with yours.

… that it is wise to choose your fights carefully. Know when to put in the time and effort to press your case, but also recognise that sometimes it is better to just let go.

… that life don’t always work out the way you want it to, no matter how hard you try. And that you shouldn’t listen to anyone who tell you otherwise.

… that sometimes you should cut your losses and run. There are times when throwing in the towel is the best thing you can do…

there isn’t always a reason for anything and everything. god is having a coffee break and this is how the cookie crumbled.

Posted on December 17th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Notable: Personal | 1 Comment »

Since God is intent on fucking up my life, I’ve decided to give him a hand - I’m going to fuck up my finances.

I will be buying a 12″ Apple notebook, specifically the iBook. Apple Malaysia is running a great promotion on the iBooks until the end of the month (see here). The 12″ G4 iBook (with built-in 802.11g) is now retailing at MYR3999 and it now comes with a free Airport Express Base Station! It’s a fabulous deal considering that the Airport Express Base Station would normally set you back by about MYR600. You can even pay with a 12-month 0% installment payment plan, if you have the appropriate credit card, although the retailers all insist on a surcharge of betwen 2-4% for this.

Now… I come from an almost strictly Windows background. I’ve never used a Mac before, unless you count the Apple computer of the late 1980s. While I understand that at the very abstract level both operating systems do essentially the same things and have theoretical similarities, I’m quite sure that at the practical level, there are significant differences in how one uses the machines.

Therefore, I would appreciate any hints/guides/pointers that anyone can give me on how a Mac OS X 10.3 works, what practical differences there are between the Mac OS X 10.3 and Windows XP, what if anything I need to look out for, what I need to bear in mind, what useful/fun applications I would want to install, how to “tweak” the machine etc. Basically, any advice that will ease my learning curve and adoption of the Mac would be most welcome. For instance, I learnt yesterday that the Mac OS X only supports FAT32 on its hard-drives and not NTFS. Therefore if I am to use the same external HDDs on both my Windows XP and Mac OS machines, I will need to ensure that the HDDs are formatted in FAT32. About.com has a number of links to some very useful and enlightening information for the novice.

Please spare me the polemics (like the which is better argument) and any condescending remarks. Down to earth, practical advice is all I need, or want.

Thank you.

Posted on December 16th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Uncategorized | 20 Comments »

fuck you.

Posted on December 15th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Notable: Personal | 4 Comments »

On arriving at the Putra LRT station in KL Sentral on 11 December at 0010H, I was refused entry into the station and was denied a much needed ride on the public transport system to get home.

I was refused entry because “operations had stopped”, at least that was the excuse I was given by the station supervisor. And yet casual observation from within KL Sentral revealed that more than one train were stilll travelling through the station in the direction I needed to go, the trains would stop at the station and the trains were still filled with passengers.

When confronted, the station supervisor confirmed my observations. In fact, I was told that these trains were going to stop at every single station until the one I needed to get to. Nevertheless, I was still refused entry because “operations had stopped“. Putra LRT would only let passengers off, but not on.

I find this rather illogical, not to mention preposterous. I would understand being denied entry if there were no more trains ferrying passengers travelling in the direction I needed to go but as it were, I would hardly consider the operations as having “stopped”. After all, how much more cost and effort would Putra LRT incur in allowing passengers on to trains that were already in operation, that already had passengers onboard and that were scheduled to stop at every single station. While I might agree that the additional revenue might not amount to much, I suspect that the additional costs would also be negligible. But the more important issue is that their present “policy” is denying the public, who need it the most, an invaluable service for a very illogical reason. Instead of boarding a train that was still in operation, I had to pay ten times as much to catch a taxi home. Like most car-loving Malaysian, if it was an option, I would not be relying on public transportation at all.

This was the second time that this has happened to me and frankly, I find this “policy” rather unacceptable.

Posted on December 13th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: My Malaysia | 3 Comments »