Author: Redzuan (Page 4 of 86)

There are times when I feel guilty for not updating this weblog as often as I do those status updates on Facebook or Twitter. It's one thing stringing a few words together into a concise sentence that doesn't exceed the 140 character limit and one whole other thing putting together a few sentences into something meaningful and worthy enough for the reader to spend a few non-refundable minutes of his or her life reading it.

So being the geek I am, I quickly knocked up a piece of code to grab the last few updates from my Twitter account and have it displayed on the main page of this website. I initially toyed around with some of those ready-made Twitter widgets that you can just copy and paste the code over but the end result of it just made it seem so aesthetically wrong that it would've given the website self-esteem issues already with Twitter being on its turf. Besides, real geeks code, others rely on plug-ins.

With that out of the way, I'm gonna be sorting out MY own issues now.

The PC I built back in 2005 that I've been using as my home studio computer died on me a couple of months back. It has served me well. With the motherboard dead, it meant that I had to gut out and perform a transplant on major parts of the machine. Looked up the Arstechnica's System Guide for Budget Box and ended up with the following:

• Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3L motherboard
• Intel Core2Quad Q8400 CPU
• 4x 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 RAM (that's 8GB RAM yo!)
• ATI Radeon HD4850 graphics card

It's not really orgasm inducing or top of the line by today's standards for sure but at just slightly over RM1,500 it's beefy enough to run my favorite piece of software on top of the usual everyday computing stuff for the next few years. Hopefully the 64-bit Windows 7 OS that I'll be using for this machine will restore my trust in Microsoft and make the money spent for a properly licensed copy worth it after the horrible wreck that was Vista.

I got a few distressed reactions over the last entry on my cracked iPhone. It's quite amazing how much cardiac arrest you can induce onto other people just by showing it in the flesh. So much so that I started doing that for grins and giggles. No one died though. (Damn!)

Which brings me to this point: Folks, it's just a phone! Albeit an expensive phone but still, IT'S JUST A PHONE! I'm not saying this out of denial just to comfort myself because when you think about it, one day twenty years from now, I'll probably have kids who will wreck things that are far bigger and more expensive. So in the larger scheme of things, getting my iPhone cracked ain't that bad.

And just so you know, I got the front panel fixed already over the weekend. I want to give props and shoutout to the CSL guys at The Mines who got it fixed at a fraction of the price and time that Maxis quoted (1/3 of the price and in a day and a half to be exact). Sure, my iPhone is void of its original warranty, but at least I didn't have to wait that long to get my phone back.

Too bad, Maxis. But you seem to be just another phone company who couldn't care less about your own customers.

You might want to sit down for this. In fact, if you can’t stomach the sight of a damaged piece of expensive electronics, you might want to skip this entry altogether.

My bad week last week culminated in my iPhone getting cracked. When I say crack, I don’t mean it in the jailbreak sense. Take a look for yourself. You have been warned.

Please don’t ask me how it happened. I just wished they’d make these things less fragile than a freshly circumcised penis in the first place. The fact that Maxis wants to charge a repair fee of RM1,050 with a MINIMUM waiting time of a month and a half just rubs it further. The stuff still works fine though. But instead of having your fingers glide over the glass surface like a baby’s bottom, it now feels like you’re navigating around granny’s wrinkled ass that might just make a lot of mess if you apply too much pressure.

I think I know what a heart attack feels like now.

In addition, does verizon trade in cracked phones? Please comment below.

In a break from the crazy normalcy that I've been having, I had to make a court appearance this morning for not having enough cash to bribe the cop a traffic violation a couple of weeks back. So I pleaded guilty to the charge and lo and behold. I did not have enough cash to pay for the summons at the court. The next 30 minutes was probably the most exciting thing that has happened to me on a Monday: I got temporarily locked up in a cell before Shazee bailed me out. I want to feel all gangsta about it but then I remembered Nicole Richie spending 83 minutes behind bars and Khloe Kardashian got locked up for 173 minutes so my time behind bars pales in comparison to theirs. Heck, even the biggest nerd on the planet, Bill Gates was behind bars for a couple of hours before being bailed.

On the other hand, I'm happy to report that I'm still a virgin after my 30 minute ordeal but sad at the same time because I still haven't gotten laid at this age.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they're not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

– Steve Jobs

The Jalur Gemilang waving gloriously on the fence of my parents' home.

We are just days away from celebrating our 52nd year of independence and this downright despicable and disgraceful act had to happen. To quote one of the protesters:

“With a temple on our residential area, we cannot function properly as Muslims. The temple will disrupt our daily activities like prayers in the Surau. We cannot concentrate with the sounds coming from the temple”.

My response to that numbnutted nitwit would be:

If the non-Muslims in our country can put up with the sound of the azan that breaks the silence of dawn everyday, why can't you put up with such sounds coming from the temple occasionally? Muhibbah is not a one way street.

Perhaps they should be reminded of this verse in the Quran:

And revile not those whom they call upon beside Allah, lest they, out of spite, revile Allah in their ignorance / Dan janganlah kamu memaki sembahan-sembahan yang mereka sembah selain Allah, kerana mereka nanti akan memaki Allah dengan melampaui batas tanpa pengetahuan.” (Al-An'am: 108)

If only this weblog is read by more than 2-3 of you out there…

I'm taking a quick break from my busy schedule to give props and shoutout to Cybersonique-dot-Org on its eighth birthday today. It's been a bit on the quiet side this year (only 23 entries including this one so far) but hopefully it'll still be around in the years to come providing the two or three of you out there some glorious insights into the goings-on in the void that is the mind of yours truly.

Happy Birthday, Cybersonique-dot-Org.