Daily misery

Put on a new skin for my web blog. i think that’s aobut it for now, both the website and blog renovation. Although i have an interesting idea on what to add in the center of my RIR ‘book’. We’ll see

Preloader is not done yet. Still learning actionscript as i go along….

As everyone went to the season opener university football game, me and Akira crashed into a downtown theatre to catch ANACONDAs, with the ’s’ cuz there’s sure a hell lot of them. Anyway i wont go into much details about the movie cuz it’s mediocre. So there was only 2 of us in the cinema, yep the whole cinema! Wooohooo what do u know, ppl usually have to contact before time with the complex manager to arrange smth as such. Anyway here’s the funny and sort of scary part, just as the previews and trailers were onscreen, Akira had to hit the restroom. I got the whole cinema myself for like 3 minutes, isnt that awesome?. Not so great, cuz some stupid-freaking-scary-michelle gellar-ghost thriller hit the screen right on. Yep, imagine all by yourself watching a ghost movie through the ultra large 100 inch giant screen with D-Dolby digital sound system. I sweared the scaring face of that ghost covered 180′ degree of my entire front sight(the image of it still lingers aroung my head right now) while the surround sound made it as if she was whispering right udner my ears! I kept peeping right and left just to make sure ‘nothing’ else but me is in the theatre and for crying out loud, what took Akira so long?! Just as any 10 year old kid would do under such circumstances, i lowered my head and say my prayer. Apparently it was not such a pleasant experience.

i almost pee through my pant. :(

‘Took’ this from an old fren in Friendster. This drawing had totally slipped through my mind. It drew back memories back in my teen-years. I think my ex gf inked the whole drawing. Anyway, there’s like 5 guys and 3 girls in the picture. We were good frens back then, we still are right now, well sort of. For the boys, we are like soccer mates, teh tarik mates and just a bunch of hedonism brats learning how not to have to take the first step into college world, and still survive the adult life. Doesnt seem to work nowadays. Guess which one is me?

Just download a wick program from holersoft. This software is so cool it lets you watch over 700 tv channels from around the world FOR FREE. I just browse through tv1 and tv2 from malaysia and the picture quality is awesome, well if you have a broadband connection that is. NTV 7 and cyberjaya tv are also included.

I just spent more than half an hour the other day on a self checkout machine in walmart. This thing was so not user-friendly, i almost forgot how many times i had to request the customer service operator to come and assist me in getting through the ordeal.

Feel like posting my current desktop screenshot here:

*the picture was captured in ultra high resolution(1078×768), so it might appear glossy on fix window until you zoom it*

No, it just happened that i opened 2 IE browser. Firefox is my favourite No 1 browser of all time for quite some time, it just happened when this screens hot was taken, i ‘accidentally’ opened IE. Really….

*After 10 hours of closed door discussion…..court adjourned*

Your honor, we have reached the verdict. We find the defendant guilty of using inferior, compromised and demonic propiertory browser software a.k.a IE 6. Sentecing will be in a week….

Many times throughout your somewhat-pathethic reading journey, you stumble across articles and snippets that relate to you so closely you think the author might’ve been stalking on you all this while. Well this one is so closely related, if not frighteningly identical to what my life was about for the last 2 years.

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COLLIN SULLIVAN: Miles mean little when trust is involved

September 09, 2004

A young man sat alone in his bedroom, various books and sheets of paper strewn about his desk. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the desktop and chin in his hands, the monitor’s glow illuminating his unshaven face. Monday’s blinking cursor taunted him with endless possibilities but no good ideas. A buzz on his hip broke his trance.

He unclipped his phone from its holster and flipped it open. “Moe’s Pizza Shack,” he answered in his best mumbling-cartoonish voice.

“It is not!” she giggled, smiling through the line. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. You saved me. I gotta write this column for tomorrow and I’ve been staring at a blank screen for 20 minutes now.” He leaned back in his chair, resting his feet on the desk.

“Oh,” she replied, apparently chewing on something. “Got any ideas?”

“A million. None of ‘em are any good, though. I might just do this in the morning.”

“Why don’t you write about… your face?!”

“I could,” he grinned, “but I don’t know how many people would want to read a column about my face.”

“I would. I miss your face. I want it to come home.” Her tone had turned from comical to somber, almost sad.

“Well, it’ll be on a plane soon enough. What is it, five days now? That’s nothing.”

She sighed. “I know…”

* * *

“It’s been just about five years now,” he said, “and counting.” The baseball whizzed toward him and smacked his glove. He pulled it out of the pocket and sent it flying back.

“Five years? Damn, man!” his friend shouted. He held the ball in his glove, eyes wide.

“Jeez, dude, I’ve never been with a girl longer than two weeks.”

He laughed. He never knew what to say to things like that, but finally decided on, “Yeah, it’s quite a while.”

“A while? That’s a quarter of your life, bro. She’s really somethin’, huh? She must be. Putting up with the likes of you for five years? Girl deserves a medal. And from 1,500 miles away? How do you guys do it?”

He pointed to his hip. “Free nights and weekends, man. We probably talk to each other about an hour a night.”

“And that’s enough? Don’t you get bored?”

“Nah, never. She’s not boring. Every night the conversation’s different. It’s something I look forward to.”

“Well, jeez man, if it’s that easy…”

“Oh, it’s far from easy. But it’s worth it. She’s worth it. Those talks keep me constantly anticipating my next trip home.”

“And when’s that?” the friend replied.

“Four days, man. Just four days.”

* * *

He walked with a girl he’d met in class weeks before. They were posting flyers around campus for an upcoming concert.

“So what’d you do this weekend?” she asked, stapling the paper to a telephone pole.

“Oh, not much. I caught a movie with Sarah on Friday, went to the game Saturday… I dunno. A pretty mellow weekend, I guess.” He tacked one onto the other side of the pole.

“With Sarah, huh? How long have you two been together now?”

“Who? Sarah and I? Oh, no, we’re not seeing each other. My girlfriend’s back home.”

“Oh,” she said, pausing in her work. “She lets you go to the movies with other girls?”

He thought about this a moment. “She doesn’t really ‘let’ me do anything, per se. I don’t have to ask permission or anything. She doesn’t get mad when I go out with friends, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, if my guy were going out to a movie or having dinner with another girl, I’d just be a little suspicious, that’s all.” They were posting the last couple flyers to a bulletin board by the Nebraska Union and turning to head home.

“I dunno…I don’t think there really needs to be that kind of suspicion. I mean if there’s good reason, sure. But halfway across the country, trust plays a big role. I guess I’m just lucky that she trusts me. If she didn’t, this wouldn’t work at all.”

“Yeah, but still…” she said, shaking her head. “Must be tough.”

* * *

He sat in the airport terminal, tired from his first flight and waiting for his next. O’Hare was a big airport, but it wasn’t intimidating anymore. This being his fifth or sixth time through, he knew it pretty well. He even had a favorite place to eat there. But now he just sat at the gate, reading the day’s newspaper and chewing an apple. A buzz from his hip.

“Hello?”

“Is this Moe’s Pizza Shack?” Her voice was small, but ripe with excitement.

“No, I’m sorry they closed. This is…uh…Joe’s… Seafood World. Would you like to try the combo?”

“Only three hours till you land, right?”

“And 11 minutes, I believe.”

They said their goodbyes and see-you-soons and hung up. The airline called for boarding and he filed into line. Ready to head home, he anticipated the weekend, ready as ever to start the next five years of his life.

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I picked this up in Daily Nebraskan while waiting for my class to start. Its good to know….that you’re not alone.

One hour i was revising GDP and the money supply functions, the next hour i was reading about Data Encryption Standard (DES). Apparently Comp. Science with Business minor didnt really mix up pretty well. I was sure at least quarter of my brain cells were dead when i cracked my head into the DES thing, and that’s a lot consider i only used an average 0.0001% of brain cell to live through my daily schedule. I got this really experienced professor that tought the course (Cryptography and computer security), but at times he seemed lost. And it was always fun to watch him toying with the projector while scratching his head before the class started. But hey this is a guy that consult like 100 companies on various network security issues, so you know, who cares if he couldnt find the ‘on’ button on the front panel. :|

Emule is sucking my hard drives (180 GB combine) dry, so i have to ordered a dvd+-r drive to burn all my data. It was a painful decision consider i am not really in a very good state of wealth right now. But i guess it is for future investment anyway, plus i get it of a very good deal. Dual layer if you mind :).

For some combination of peculiar reasons, i feel like adopting a kid, you know a baby girl or boy. ‘Almost everyday the little girl climbs into her old man’s lap and puts her little arms around his neck and lays her head against the chest and melts his heart like cheese under the broiler’, isnt that wonderful? Doc, i think i need my medication back now…

The Manchurian Candidates : Its a very dark movie, somewhat disturbing. The fact that hypnotisis actually works scares the ball out of me. Thumbs up for D.Washington though.

The Bourne Supremacy: You have got to enjoy the slickness and smoothness of Bourne in the movie. Yep, it was all about how smooth he conducted every step throughout the entire movie. Did you see the way he upload data off a sim card from an US agent to his own phone? It must had only taken 10 seconds! But i have to agreed with Wilson, all the crescendo and hype the movie built up so beautifully was slapped down by a lame and lazy ending. I mean come on, i could easilly think of 10 other good ideas to end this movie. Car accident and handcuff? Such a shame.

I am starting to hate weekends. So many homeworks and laundry and grocery and cooking to do just to be prepared for the week ahead. I always get headache on weekends. Damn weekends.

was toying around with ps for my new addition page in RIR, first draft is smth like this:

Dont think i am going to pursue this further :O).

I have always stressed in forums and discussion boards the only reason computer users still shy away from linux OS is because it has such a huge issue of inconveniency as far as hardware and peripheral plug N play is concern (Well i used to say there were two reasons but its down to one since Doom 3 is linux compatible :D
). I wouldnt mind go through the command lines to install my router driver in my gentoo but not everyone enjoys doing so. And if linuxians intend to overtake Windowians, this is the main issue that need to be solved (cuz all the other comparisons are too one sided, Linux WIN one sided of cuz :) ) Very soon, there will be no reason to stick with that LAME OLD CRACKY ‘windows’ anymore.

“O’Reilly Network posts an update on Project Utopia that produced Hardware Abstraction Layer for Linux simplifying device changes. They also link to the Driver on Demand project on SourceForge, whose goal is to create a central database to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device.” ~slashdot

Further reading of the article can be found here. HAL - slashdot.org

All i can say is - ITS ABOUT THE DAMN TIME! althought it remains to be seen how ‘user-friendly’ the HAL goes.

In one of Dorothy Sayers’s mysteries, Lord Peter is confronted with the message
shown below. He also discovers the key to the message, which is a sequence of
integers:

787656543432112343456567878878765654
3432112343456567878878765654433211234

message:
I thought to see the fairies in the fields, but I saw only the evil
elephants with their black backs. Woe! how that sight awed me! The
elves danced all around and about while I heard voices calling clearly.
Ah! how I tried to see-throw off the ugly cloud-but no blind eye of a
mortal was permitted to spy them. So then came minstrels, having gold
trumpets, harps and drums. These played very loudly beside me,
breaking that spell. So the dream vanished, whereat I thanked Heaven. I
shed many tears before the thin moon rose up, frail and faint as a sickle of
straw. Now though the Enchanter gnash his teeth vainly, yet shall he
return as the spring returns. Oh, wretched man! Hell gapes, Erebus now
lies open. The mouths of Death wait on thy end.

QUESTION : Decrypt this message

**This is the last question (turn out to be the hardest :( ) in my 2nd assignment for crypto class. I spent hours trying to break the code but to no vail. Who could have thought a detective story novelist is capable of writing such a ciphertext?!!! Guess its moonlight upon my head tonite……..

unless someone drop me a quick comment of hints :P

Finally managed to set up all my email accounts (i got six of them) into Thunderbird. Routed my yahoo, hotmail, bigred (university email account) and raspberry@alvinwoon.com into POP3, then the computer science email account into IMAP, and now i dont have to go through all the log-in’s to read my mails. There’s only one left - gmail. Since its still on beta testing and there is a sign-up agreement about routing emails to other email management software so i will just wait and see. But routing gmail wont be as easy as other web emails, cuz i think google’s smtp settings is sort of different. Well for those who wants to give it a try, here’s 2 links to a python version of email2pop that is suppose to work. I will try it out tonite and let you guys know.
Lib python
python sourcecode
Its actually illegal to route yahoo emails too (unless u pay for the upgraded monthly service, which cost like 19.99USD per month), but let’s just say open source development has always - WILL ALWAYS - come out with softwares that gets you through the other way around.

Amazon is launching its own searching engine, putting itself in direct competition with google, Yahoo just bought musicmatch, Oracle is still getting its finger on PeopleSoft, isnt it sad the world of technoology is tainted with business greed? I really looked up to the goggle’s duo for the way they issued their IPO, for once someone smart is actually doing something that defies the notion of corporate norm and still comes out winning. My hat offs…..

I just realized how much i love what i am doing, and studying now. Just takes today classes for instance, i went into a financial class (damn my business minor) and the lecturer almost bored me to death with his teaching of compound interest and future/present value, i mean its so straight forward but he kept repeating himself which made everything seemed so frustrating. Then i had to go straight to my cryto and computer security class and we went through image steganography - the filling and distortion of bits in an image compression scheme that let someone hide secret messages within a picture, without altering the outer appearance of the image itself. We will take our own picture in the next class and try to ’stegano’ the photo image with our own secret message and send it to one of assigned classmates, then both of us will try to crack each other embedded codes. Seriously, i went from :( to :D basically just by switching classes, i just love my major and if that makes me a geek, i can dig it.

Then i had to head back to the business faculty for my management class :( and the same stories with all the business classes rewinded itself. But the female lecturer is gorgeous, so its kinda even things up.

Found this in this month issue of Electronic Gaming:

1.2 million active characters in the Final Fantasy XI community

140,000 Users during peak hours

850 Virtual marriages in Final Fantasy XI

90 Percentage of virtual marriages ending in divorce due to the eventual revelation that both partners are men in real life.

:D

Evolution right on schedule………..

Elliot Smith’s posthumous and forthcoming album - From the basement of the hill - had just been released. I am a great great admirer and lover of his music. Dont get me wrong, i am awared that some of his songs’ lyrics are driven by suicidal preachings, but never has indie music been so divinely pure and yet dark. I still remembered vividly the first time i came across his song from the movie ‘Good Will Hunting’ (he earned an academy nomination for ‘Miss Misery), and instantly fell for it.

Anyway, he presumeably committed suicide in October last year, and i got bumped hard by it cuz i was just starting to explore his other songs which by the way were also brilliantly crafted(Angeles, Say yes). Now i just want to go slow exploring each and every other songs he had wrote because i afraid if i go through them too quickly, the list will end somewhere. As a tribute to him, Daily Misery will stream ‘Say yes’ for a week long, or as long as i feel like it.

Website - http://www.sweetadeline.net/
MTV news - Trajedy report

So Bush and Kerry talk about abortion like they really know what those pregnant women have to go through in making the decision.

As for me, I personally oppose abortion by itself unless the existence of the fetus causes harm to the mother. Saying so, however, i do not think government should have the right to decide whether a woman can or cannot have an abortion.

Is abortion morally wrong, ethically wrong or legally wrong……..

Set up a live web cam feed on Daily Misery. The cam was aimed straight at my door cuz i found it rather inspiring to have a little private ‘eye to eye’ moment with Albert Einstein. And you might catch me walking in from that door if you’re lucky :).

Allright gotta run, full schedule this week..;(

Alvin

-Swtiched my phone carrier from AT&T to Vonage.
-Sold my motherboard and power supply.
-Purchase an AMD xp 2800+ CPU
-Did very well in crypto and programming language first assignment and test.
-Did not do very well in Economics.
-Running out of chewing gum.
-Started to venture into the world of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tommorow.
-Recently develop an unhealthy obsession towards Italian actresses - Chiara Caselli, Roxane Mesquida

It rained today in Lincoln. It must have been like 2 to 3 months….

From time to time i received emails, postings, comments(Daily Misery comments doesnt work that well according to most of em’) from homosapiens around the globe describing mostly their gratitude, hatred, amazement, sarcastism, appreciation and disagreement towards the things i wrote in here, the poems i crafted in RIR and in some rare cases, inquiring about my sexual orientation. I kept them in a special folder cuz they are ’special’ and the number must has reached at least 500 by now. Today i received one posting that tempted me to share it with Daily Misery readers:

the words are powerful and strong, and really, at the end of the day, it doesnt matter who it is about, it matters that it actually happens, on a daily basis in our world

Erika
xxxxx

i think its probably one of the most honest and sincere gesture anyone could have given to an author, of any genre. Anyway, Erika was referring to this poem, i think.

Alvin

Life’s pretty dull these last few days, i just tackled 2 exams and 2 assignment deadlines today. Some sort of achievement, eh…

Other than that, well the whole week just breezed through pretty quickly.

I just watched Ponette on dvd last night. Magnificento fantastica de la ras~~ if that’s even a french’s word. Victoire Thivisol is such a gifted actress, when she cried in the movie, everyone else just reached for the kleenex. I mean this girl was only 5 when she acted in this movie. I think it has one of the most powerful moment i ever saw in any other movie this year - when Victoire tried to dig her mother’s grave with her puny bare hands cuz’ she wanted to talk to her so badly. Her mother died in a car accident.

I found a wonderful sketching of her in deviant art. It was sketched by cpss.

I was in the library trying to study when there was these two Indian guys who just happen to talk a wee bit loud. I mean what started out as a gentle conversation literally went on a crescendo and stayed at that high pitch note for forever. Obviously someone ’shhhhh’ them. It just amazes me how indulging people can get at times…

Half way through “Tuesday with Morrie’ which comes with high recommendation by my gf. Mitch Albom is like her most favourite writer at the time being. I can sense that “The five people you meet in heaven” is making its way to my mailbox soon, all the way from Malaysia. Its a blessing to have free books to read from times to times. :P

Wires under my glass desk. Not very feet-friendly, more so its an unpleasant view and i stand a darn good chance in getting myself electrocuted. *touchwood* *touchwood*

Top 10 of the year till date.

1.) Love actually
2.) King Arthur
3.) The girl next door
4.) Spiderman
5.) Ponette
6.) Love actually
7.) Love actually
8.) Love actually
9.) Love actually
10.) Love actually

I grew up listening to songs like this, thanks to my father.