Pkchukiss – Reality Wine

When the going gets tough, motivators pull you through the grind:

A shout-out to all the guys from HelpDesks all over Singapore. You have a nice day too!

Photo Courtesy of: Despair Inc.

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It has already started raining regularly in the evenings – so much so that the line between dry days and wet days are getting blurry.

I like days when it drizzles. When the gentle curtain falls in on the world like visible translucent sheets, I get into a dreamy state that always pleases my senses. Imagine staring at the flurry of the rain droplets dancing around in the air, even as the heavier droplets race each other to the dry earth.

Now that the sky is dark, the frogs have come out to play. Once they start, they will continue their mesmerising symphonies until the crack of dawn. Slowly… lulling me to sleep in my bed, the cool after-rain breeze wafting gently through the open window.

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I nearly went out today.

What I mean is that I nearly got off my bed in the morning, nearly got dressed after having a 1pm brunch, and nearly turned off my computer – until I found It.

The train simulation game RailRoads! demo that nearly took the entire night to download was finally completed, and the installer file drew my hand to the mouse like alluring perfume. Now if only it installed as slow as it downloaded, I would nearly have gone out to take pretty pictures of the planes at Changi Airport.

Tough luck, the game started itself automatically after the installer finished, and I found myself staring at the end of 6pm when I was through with the demo. Alas! My camera is screaming for my attention, but it was too late. I didn’t want to go out after dinner, because I didn’t have a habit of leaving the house in the evenings: it makes the trip feel… intrusive.

So I went for another round of the demo; and this is the pathetic excuse I have for this short blog post.

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When we plod on with our existence, do we stop, and ask ourselves: Just what is it that we are aiming for in our lives?

How do we want the people around us to remember us by when we finally die? Are what we are doing the things that we want in Life? To what extent are we going to gun for, for our dreams?

The video:

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(I did write a lot on this article, but it got all wiped out when I forgot to save it, and restarted the computer after installing like, 62 critical Windows updates. Life can get really down to earth, and if you are already on the ground, it takes delight in shovelling more dirt on your face )

That aside, I suspected that everything took a downhill turn quite a few months back: the computer was freezing for no reason, and the blue screen of deaths were coming more often than I got up from the computer for breaks. I am now less annoyed at the system being broken than I am at myself for being such a brick that I didn’t suspect the computer graphics card for being the source of all the troubles.

It’s a situation where the solution has been there all along, but it took a completely nice stranger to point right under your nose to get the “ta-da”! moment. After realising how much more practice in troubleshooting that I needed, the little geek was humbled enough to sit back, and let the real expert strut his stuff.

I could see the monitor’s LED light mocking at me with its amber insignificance, but the professional took it in his stride, and handled the troubleshooting with extreme deft. He had some really cool diagnostic tools, like Memtest86 (or something) to test the DDR rams for any problems, PC Doctor Diagnostics to run up the hard drive, plus Norton Ghost to flash the original hard disk to my computer’s hard disk.

In the end, the 3D graphics card was fried, though there was no freshly fried smell nor smoke emitting from the computer, which I was extremely thankful for. But I was really eyeing the new spare motherboard that he carried with him. Now if only he would replace that, it would be like having an entirely new system again!

He plugged in the monitor to the motherboard graphics card, which was a regression for the computer, but that would have to hold until the new graphics card came.

The morale of the story: when something goes wrong with the computer system somewhere, always, always suspect the video card if you cannot find anything else that could contribute to the problem. If all else fails, you can always hurl the entire system from your 16th storey flat, and get a new one. That’s the reason why my computer is next to the window

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The Chinese saying goes: “Ten minutes of physical contact transcends tens upon thousands of words” (抚摸十分钟,胜过千言万语); and it has never gone wrong. Not when you see the amount of hugging when friends, relatives go overseas for an extended period of time at the airport.

Here’s a very touching video of a man with a mission:

On a side note, my PC is back up again!

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My computer went out on me

Just barely 2 days ago, I tried to play MapleStory on my PC when the Blue Screen Of Death came out for the umpteenth time. At that point in time, I decided to wipe everything out and re-install everything, if only to clean out all the gunk programs that I accumulated out of the 3 months that I had previously re-installed.

After wiping the hard disk, the installer program on the back-up drive spluttered. It installs halfway till 15%, and then quit. Just imagine an anchor smashing into the sea, such was the magnitude of my shock. (I can’t believe I managed to survive at all.)

I tried to run checkdisk on the program, and while it cleared out many of the errors on the file allocation table, the installer on the back-up drive still quit, this time even sooner than the last time. At this point in time, I was absolutely mortified that I might have to call in HP support for my Presario. That would damage the little geek so much that I might stop sleeping for 3 days in a row, only to go to work like an unmotivated zombie.

Though I did go to work looking like a zombie on Thursday, I was a rather happy zombie, because I managed to get Windows 2000 installed on my HP system! I tinkered with the installer, and managed to get the ancient copy of the venerable ancestor to descent into the computer (and going to bed at a grand hour of 3am; I had to get up at 7am the next day) and keep things up until I can get a recovery CD from HP, which costs $15.

Normally, I would have thought that this is pure daylight robbery, but when in need of a rescue, $15 is probably the least of my worries. Here, take my money! Save my computer!!

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So it starts. NaNoWriMo has started, and I celebrated the launch of the month-long writing fiesta… by sleeping.

I had to preserve being a night owl for at least tonight, so that I can get down to finishing the remaining 2 days of my night shift.

I kind of underestimated doing a 3-night-in-a-row: it really numbed my brain, which screamed for sleep just when the clock nudges 3am in the morning. I looked pathetic, because my colleagues could hold up better than me.

It didn’t look like torture, nor did it feel like one. I feel that doing a night-shifter is a bearable proposition, but not a very pretty picture. You get the quiet of the morning, but you will also get plenty of nonsense from psychotics whom are insomniacs. Not that every customer whom calls in at 3.33am in the morning are crazy, but your opinion tends to veer when you pick up the line to hear Darth Vader on the other end.

At least I could now have something to expend my hours on, and hopefully keep my mind off the sleep deprivation. Not only should that gain me a few thousand words per night, it will let me sleep soundly when the rest of the world is still wide awake.

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