Welcome Aini Sakinah

I'd like to introduce my baby daughter, Aini Sakina. Brought into the world screaming her lungs out at 8.42am today. Her mother (my wife, obviously) is doing well as well. Both are resting. My thought process is still in fantasy mode (happy-happy, joy-joy). The reality of fatherhood, and all the responsibilities that come with it still hasn't hit me full in the face yet.

Tempered Mental

This band is GREAT. It's one of the very very very few Malaysian indie bands that actually make awesome music. They've got a female bassist and singer/front-lady, Melina. Jack on guitar, and he sounds great on those solos. And also Jimmy on drums. I've heard Jimmy and Melina play unplugged at Borders, The Curve, and they sound very very good. Better than most famous recording bands we have now on airplay. I hope this is a sign of better quality music emerging from our shores.
Unfortunately, like most other indie bands, its freakin hard to find their EP and albums. I've been looking for Tempered Mental, Nitrus, and Estranged albums EVERYWHERE! Only can find Estranged.... sighh..

Return!! ??? err... you sure about that?

Taking a peek..

Denizens of the internet realm! I am back! Actually.. i never left the realm, but my mighty stick of writing was on a bit of a bent. I tried to heal the ailment with some magick of the far east, but to no avail. Anyways, I just bought a new one at the nearest ye olde magick shoppe, and threw the old one down the dark abyss.

So..... so long have I not been holding this mighty stick of writing, that my bones creak, and the mechanickal alchemy of my brain is dried like caked mud. So.. in honesty, I have nothing to tell.

I do have news, but I want to present it in a grandiose manner, such is befitting of the news. And I do hope that the manner and the news shall be put forward soon.

Until then my friends, enjoy this little writing...

CiAO!

Misadventure of Big Oaf

First of all, it all started on a nice Monday afternoon. During lunch, my boss got a call from our customer, saying that our box had arrived in Miri. Hearing this, my boss immediately looked at me and said, "Can you go to Miri tomorrow?" Thinking that it was of total urgency and that the client needed the installation done immediately, I said,"Sure thing boss. I'm on it." After which, we went back straight to the office, and harrassed my accountant and office secretary for tickets and money. First of all, it normally takes a day or two AT LEAST to book tickets to Miri. Secondly, no accounts dept I know would provide cash advance of RM300 in amount to a junior exec within an hour.

But I got both, cash and ticket, in hand before 5pm that day. All this without checking which installation my boss was talking about, and what my flight itinerary actually looked like.

Of course, things couldn't have turned out so good on a Monday, could it?.. my car gave problems. It had low timing and was hard to start. So I sent it to the mechanic next door that did the engine conversion to check it out. I don't know what or how it happened, but a simple tuning and possibly replacement of an engine part, took 4 hours too long! And they weren't even finished by then. So, I had to go home with Bibi, of course. And get her to send me to the airport the next day.

And the next day was already starting off topsy turvy, as she was late leaving the house. I okay jer, since my flight's at 10am. So she drove me all the way to KLCC. And I took a Putra LRT to KL Sentral, where I checked in at KL-CAT.

The minute I placed the ticket at the counter, I then noticed that my secretary messed up my flight. Instead of leaving from Miri at 21.00hrs -> 9pm the same day. I was leaving at 19.00hrs -> 7.00PM!!! And on top of that, the ticket lady told me that my flight was delayed by 50 minutes (11am).. I was like ".... WHAT!?! But that leaves me with only 4 hours in Miri. MAX!" At this point I was on the verge of panicking. I thought, "hey.. I'll just go there.. do some site survey or something.. doodle this and that and tell them i'll come back on another day for implementation.. yeah... that's what I'll do."

Okay la.. I called up the customer, told him the story, and he said, he's okay with the plan. So I went down to the ERL and sat, waiting for the train to come. Checking again on my itinerary and yet again cursing at my stupid stupid secretary and the predicament I'm in.

I boarded the train, absent mindedly forgetting to put back the friggin packet of tickets and boarding passes into my bag. And 2 minutes after the train left the station, then I remembered, I left my tickets on the seat. Crud....

Immediately called Bibi. I do this at times. I call up a very important person in my life, to help me calm down. It worked so far. So I called her up, told her what happened, and formulated a backup plan should things not work out. That said, as soon as I got off the train, I went straight to the ticketing office, to sort out my own bloody mess.

Who then should call me, but my own customer, sounding all panicky and what not. Telling me the parts look different la, how come connector look like RJ45 but bigger, what happened to the serial cable type connector.. I was blur for a second, why in the world is he asking all these questions? Then it came to my realization that; 1) My client received the wrong part of his installation. 2) There were two installation jobs to be done with my customer, and I'm going for the wrong one.

The first issue was a sales issue. My boss ordered the right product, but the wrong connector type. Small matter, all we had to do was call up the vendor to send replacement parts and return the old ones. Probably will take a day or two. No problem.

Second issue was miscommunication. The smaller of the two installations takes about 1 hour. The bigger one takes about a good few days. I thought I was going there to do a major install. 4 hours?!? More like a 4 day job! So I was heaving a big sigh of relief.. fewhh... Lucky.

Anyways.. knowing all this, I immediately changed plans. with only 15 minutes to go before take off, I did the only logical thing... I canceled my ticket. Of course la. Why go? Nothing to install, mah. Waste money only. Gila relieve stress...

So, after letting my point of panic drop, my more logical left brain started to think on how to get back my lost ticket. Luckily I was already standing in front of the ERL ticket machine, and there was a phone number to call. I called up the hotline, told them what happened, and in 5 minutes, the lady on the phone told me they found my packet, and my stuff is with the MAS ticket office in KL Sentral. Lagi sekali relief...

So, the minute I reached KL Sentral (which was late this morning by the way) I went straight to MAS ticket office and claimed back my tickets. Heaving a sigh of relief for the third time. Them tickets cost 800++ bucks man. I do not have that kind of cash to go paying back to my company. Now, I just have to pass it back to my stupid secretary and tell her to make it an OPEN TICKET. I wonder if I should spell it our for her. Most probably she'd either refund the ticket, or accidentally shred it to pieces, I won't put it against her.

Okay.. so that was the ordeal that was Monday and Tuesday morning. Right now, I'm relaxing in KLCC. Doing work from my vendors office, and not going back to the office. Tomorrow, I'll start to make my secretary cry.

Oh.. and yes.. I did mess up myself. But thank goodness I got out of that hole quickly.. heh.. Chalk it up as another quirky adventure of Ammar and Air Flights.

Okay world.. read this and laugh at the oaf, yeah?

CiAO!

BFG vs JGG -> Big Friendly Giant vs Jolly Green Giant

I consider myself of certain characteristics. Physically, I am big. Relatively bigger than most adult male Malays. And another I do add a touch of oafiness and clumsiness with every stride. It gives myself an added character. As much as I am a big clumsy person, with a somewhat tough exterior and lacking in grace, I do own something soft inside.
I am tough on the outside. I've got a very high pain threshold. I can take a beating with the best of them. I even enjoy the "feeling" sometimes, because it's good to know that you are still human. Tapikan.. because I am still human, I've got my weak spot too. A tough exterior leaves me with a soft heart. One that could be bruised and hurt easily. And to my unfortunate luck. It was hurt and bruised, slowly but surely. Now it's worn down. I can imagine my heart looking like an old boot. Tough, but breaking at the seams, and cracks here and there.

Dulu I had a brief episode of having a cold heart. I tried to be an emotionless robot. I wanted to take out the pain equation out of my system. Tapi benda tu tak bleh. Memang tak bleh punya. Sebab, once you do that. Then you notice that you are alone. Even when there are people around you, you are still alone. Because you refuse to accept them into your cold heart. But if bad things happen. It didn't hurt so much. But it backfired, because pain was still a feeling you can't shake off. It's like hot plasma that can easily melt the exteriors of your heart and burn you right to the core.

Apa apa jadi pun, pain is a part of life you have to accept. I have learned to understand my pain and hurt and accept them. It still hurts, it still wears down your insides, but at least now I know how to heal myself. What I need now is time to heal myself. I won't run away. I won't let rage control me. I won't bury myself in work. I'm just gonna take it easy, calm down, reflect on things and take time to heal my wounded heart.

Yeay! FreeBSD 5.3 is STABLE!

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Announcement

My dear friends, (okay la... my one and only audience, mon2)

I am proud to announce that the reported, highly unstable but bleeding edge operating system that I am using on my laptop, workstation and many a server, FreeBSD 5.X, is now stable. This means, that I have a relatively kick ass UNIX-like operating system, that is NOT LINUX! but still in the same vein of free software and open source, and has been publicly announced to be OKAY! for production type servers.

Goodness, I tell you, leaving behind Win-blows is as easy as tossing away bad food inside the refrigerator. Sure you crave that week old moldy cheesecake, but it's BAD! Now you can try that delicious, FREE, and yummy new cheesecake, that NEVER goes bad.

But before i digress into food, let me focus back here to the topic. I am so glad that this release is now stable, cause I've got tons of stuff i wanna do. Funny thing is, it doesn't matter if it's running 5.x or even 4.x, which was, as of 3 days ago, the official stable version of FreeBSD. Saja jer kot nak bleeding edge sgt. It did cost me some sleepless nite's and a lot of RTFM'ing.. But it's well worth it. Compared to my earlier days as Joe User on a standard microsoft Windoze, where I hardly knew about how a friggin computer works, I now know oodles more, and have a better grasp of this interesting technology we call PC's.

I have a plan... well at least I have a dream la... I want to end my professional career trying to push things of Free Software and Open Source software nature and teach young children of such technology. Young minds are always inquisitive. I'm hoping that some of them catch on to the mysterious computers that gives them the ability to play games, and want to know how it works, and how they can make it work better. Or even design and build another system that can rival these systems. I want to give these children a chance to grow without the oppression of proprietary softwares, and paid licenses, at the same time providing tools and knowledge for them to learn something new. Just give them a chance to create something totally new.

Malaysia nak maju boleh. My optimistic belief in the younger generation of my country is that they can be on par with any other race/creed/nation/culture as long as we do not suppress their intake of knowledge, or try to muddle/dilute/contaminate it with so called "rules and regulations". Knowledge is key. Educators are important. Controlling the flow of education for the so called betterment of the country does not cut it. The only control anybody should have over education is, to always have it available. Jangan nak memesong anak2 muda kita with political/cultural/socio-economical brain washing. The more we try to introduce these elements, the higher the probability that the young ones will divert that energy into something not productive or even damaging.

Anyways.. that's my dream.. I wanna talk more about it, but i wanna cut it short because I think I'm starting to meracau/melalut, (to prattle and babble with no end in sight)

anyways... please keep on reading my one and only dearest reader.

CiAO!

UMHS - Ideal Weight Table for Men and Women

UMHS - Ideal Weight Table for Men and Women
Hahaha.... can't recall where I got this page from.. Aizuddin's kot.. tadi dok baca blogs half of the day.. Anyways... it's ironic... UMHS... I went to school at UofM, in the 4 years I was there.. TAK PERNAH sekali pun i went there for either consultation or to get medication. And here I am, trying to see if I am indeed in my ideal weight, which I can tell you right now, I am not. Read the last few parts about being light but body mass mostly of fat.. that's me right there ladies and gentlemen.. I was once a mass of muscle.. I've been reduced to simple sugars and fat..

I'm trying to be lean again. The muscle part tu... well.. that'll be something to worry about much later in life. But wouldn't that be something? A muscle bound geek? hmm... quite odd..

CiAO!