LOVELESS

Act I:

Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess
We seek it thus, and take to the sky.
Ripples form on the water's surface
The wandering soul knows no rest.

Act II:

My Friend, your desire
Is the bringer of life, the gift of the goddess.
Legend shall speak of sacrifice at worlds end.
The wind sails over the water's surface
Quietly, but surely...

Act III:

As the war sends the world hurtling towards destruction
The prisoner departs with his newfound love
And embarks on a new journey.

He is guided by hope that the gift will bring bliss
And the oath that he swore to his friends.

Though no oath is shared between the lovers,
In thier hearts they know they will meet again.

Act IV:

There is no hate, only joy
For you are beloved by the goddess.
Hero of the Dawn, Healer of Worlds.

Three friends go into battle
One is captured,
One flies away,
the one that is left becomes a hero.
If we were to enact it,
would I be the one to play the hero,
Or would You?
Indeed
After all, your glory should have been mine.

My Friend, the fates are cruel
There are no dreams, no honour remains.
The arrow has left the bow of the goddess.

My Soul corrupted by vengeance,
Hath endures torment,
To find the end of the journey in my own salvation.
And Your eternal slumber.

Now what i want most...
is the 'Gift of the Goddess'...

Act V:

Dreams of the morrow hath shattered soul
Pride is Lost.
Wings stripped away, the end is nigh
Such is... the fate of a monster.

Even if the morrow is barren of promises,
nothing shall forestall my return.
If this world seeks my destruction...
... It goes with Me

Prologue:

When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end,
The goddess descends from the sky

Wings of light and dark spread afar,
She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting...

From LOVELESS, Crisis Core

The Little Prince and the Fox

"Goodbye," said the fox.
"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye,"
the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose
that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--"
said the little prince
so he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox.
"But you must not forget it.
You become responsible, forever,
for what you have tamed.
You are responsible for your rose. . ."

"I am responsible for my rose,"
the little prince repeated,
so that he would be sure to remember.


From the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Ubuntu Upgrade

/sigh

After ignoring the Update icon at the top right corner of my ubuntu laptop for quite some time (because everytime i tried to upgrade, the downloading of packages will inevitably FAIL), i realised its time to do something about it since I have fixed my desktop (err well, not totally but at least it is 'gaming-able').

So I changed the repository source to "Singapore Server" and tried again. Half-heartedly actually, cos I didn't really expect it to work.

But it did.

The upgrade went without a hitch and the upgrade was done after a reboot. All was fine except for 2 things:

a) The wireless is down again. Expected, cos I needed to put the firmware into the new kernel folder (I didnt really try to see if i can just dump the firmware files into /lib/firmware instead of /lib/firmware/2.6.22-14-generic, on hindsight i think i should give it a try lol). This time though, a reboot is needed after copying the files over to the new kernel folder.

b) Audio issue. The OS is totally ignoring the fact that i muted my hardware. There is NO volume control. Every single sound is made at the highest volume. This means that before I had the chance to disable the login/logout/any system sound, I must run out of the room before the sound is triggered (the power of a built-in Altec Lansing is still a force to be reckoned with). And yes, even when the speaker icon showed that it's muted.

Zzz.

a) was solved in less than 5 mins, mainly cos i spent tonnes of time solving it the previous time.
b) is a new problem i didnt encounter before and its a headache because unless i get it fixed, all my anime are going at MAX volume if I were to watch them. Which means, I can't.

So I googled around to see if there is anything i can do. Unfortunately, people are reporting issues different from mine. Their Ubuntu become soundless after the upgrade. My searches of "ubuntu upgrade 7.10 max audio" or "ubuntu upgrade 7.10 volume control" yielded no relevant results.

Sian. I think i will do more research. And I am starting to understand a bit of those Linux haters' logic: "Linux is free, yeah. Only if your time is worth nothing". Well, if i look at it another way, at least i will know how to solve it next time. =P

MC

Woke up feeling feverish (and i was fine yesterday >.< i strongly suspect the culprit to be the sweltering hot weather + accumulative effect of pieces of dark chocolate i have eaten over the past 3 days) So decided to take an MC.
Just came back from the family doctor, popped some meds, and going to sleep for a while now.
But not before sending an sms back to Zan for telling me almost every guildie's alt is approaching 70... except mine. -_-

milkmi.. /spit
shiroii.. /spit
currypok... /spit si ni!

i hope you guys are reading this.

123 木头人

Went for the 陶喆-123木头人 concert last Saturday. It was quite a rushed decision to go actually. I was at home fixing my machine since morning until late afternoon (See the Graphics Card post - Sorry I dun blog in chronological order, just write whatever that comes to my mind), and frustrating over the possibility of having to get a new system again, when suddenly my hp rang... My friend called and I started rambling all the display problem etc etc and generally flooding him with all my pent-up feelings, lol. Too bad lor, he called at the wrong time.

After finishing all my rambling which he patiently digested and tried to offer helpful suggestions, only then did he get the chance to get to the purpose of the call... lol. Apparently he got hold of the concert tickets and asked if I am free to go. Wow, of course i would like to go! Anything beats staring at the machine for the entire day (not to mention that i accidentally cut my finger while poking around its internals. /sob)

So we met at Kallang MRT at 7.00pm. It was kinda funny, cos we both arrived early but I assumed he would be late (cos he had a record for doing that so...) so I just find a comfortable corner and play psp while waiting for him. When its 7, I called him but he didnt pick up his phone I got a bit panicky. After all, I came ALL the way down from Yishun and I hope he didn't oversleep or what. Luckily he called me back a short while later and faced my wrath for being late.

"I wasn't late, I am already here, just that I am sitting on the staircase. Come find me la."
"Find your head! Here both left and right side also got staircase lor. I am in the middle. YOU come find me. Late liao still talk so much!" *Click* (Um it reads fiercer than it sounds hor...)

When we reached the stadium on time, it didn't exactly start on time, so we just talked and waited. I never been to a concert (except those Chinese Orchestra/Symphony Orchestra types) before, so I was very curious. As time passes by, the stadium filled up, but it didn't go fullhouse, quite a handful of empty seats could be seen. Thats why my friend got the lobang for the tickets, apparently. Haha. According to him, he went down his hp phone list one by one before reaching me and turned out that I am free to go. "So you should feel lucky" he said. -_- somehow I dun feel that way lol. Shouldnt it be the other way round??

I find the volume of the music and his singing too loud to properly enjoy the songs, but the experience as a whole is quite fun! Later we shifted closer to the stage as there were empty seats lying around (we were sitting quite far initially). The laser effects were awesome! I found myself distracted by the laser performance several times, lol. Once I kept looking up at the ceiling because the lasers were curvy and I was wondering how was it being done. I mean, one just don't see curving lasers everyday. My friend saw me and asked why do I keep looking up. When I answered it was because I was looking at the lasers (why they can curve one ar??), he laughed so hard and said that I "used my brain on the wrong thing" LoL.

The concert ended late! 11.30pm! Its the first time I have to literally run to catch my last train and my last feeder bus, as I looked around and saw all the cabs On Call. -.- It was quite scary at that time, but looking back, its quite fun! Heh.

The May-Day concert is on this coming Saturday, and another friend had jioed me to go... but it's unfortunate that I have some other plans that evening (which mainly involved my computer again. -_-) so I wouldn't be going. If its Jay Chou's though, it might be a different story... lol.

大女人

According to 百度百科, the definition of a 大女人 is as follows:

大女人

开放分类： 社会

　　大女人是对女人的一种评价，与“小女人”和“小男人”相对应。
　　大女人通常是指那种性格有男人特质，有超出普通女性性格优点的女人。也指那些有女权主义思想，瞧不起男人的一部分女人。甚至喜欢支配和命令他人。
　　她们往往不喜欢斤斤计较，也不喜欢传播家长里短，论人是非；她们把时间用来工作、学习，用来干事业。性格顽强而有主见，有远见。豁达大度，精明干炼。
　　但大女人也有其不好的一面，比如她们往往不够温柔细腻，往往粗枝大叶，容易忽略身为女性所特有的柔美，而且太过争强好胜，做什么都要与男人争个高低，会令男人对她们敬而远之。

Skimming through the entire paragraph, I highlighted the qualities that I *think* I have. OMG. Do I qualify as a 大女人??

Let's see... I see myself as wanting to learn new things, be it technical, or personal development. I have always known my pride to be very strong, so I suppose this is the 好胜 part of me. Also nobody can tell me what to do if i dun wanna do it...lol yeah i am plain stubborn, so that justifies the 性格顽强 part...

Another part of me, I am fiercely protective of my privacy. I don't know if this has something to do with me being a Cancerian. I just don't feel that I need to answer everything people asked of me, especially when it serves nothing but to satisfy their own curiosity. The only sense of curiosity I satisfy is my own... "Need-to-know basis", people.

Lastly, I can't click with people who are too brilliant, lol. I realised some of them tend to be more argumentative and more inclined to add their own uncalled-for opinions when I share with them things about my own life. Look, I don't care if your opinion is based on a true fact on earth or even in the whole universe. I didn't tell you things in my life to start a debate/argument/whatever. Its all FYI, so you just STFU and listen to understand, not listen to counter-and-argue... These are the type of people I will run like hell to get away from, because talking with them will inevitably become a debate that becomes a I-am-wrong-you-are-right kinda thing (mind you, its MY life and i am just sharing it with them... sob), sending me into an early grave. ZzzzZzz. You know what's call "八字不合"? Thats the kind of feeling I get from interacting with such people...

Graphics Card Underclocking

Having decided that I am not going to tolerate Vista anymore (No more "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped" crap), I reverted back to XP last Saturday. After all the installation, I realised that my graphics card, a 2-year-old GeForce 7900 GTO is "Ki Qia-ing".

=(

I smsed my friend, whose family owns a shop in SL, for his advice on which replacement card should I get. Before I buy a new card though, I am determined to try and 'cure' this existing card.

After a few rounds of uninstalling/installing drivers and directX, I am convinced the problem is hardware, specifically, heat-related.

A temperature check shows that my card is running at 50 degree Celsius when idle and up to 65 (or possibly even higher) when I am running a full screen 3D game. This is with the casing opened and a full standing fan blowing at it =/

Hence the solution: underclocking to reduce the heat emitted and minimise further damage to the (already damaged) 7900.

Now it sounds harder than it is. Just go to the nvidia site to download the utility nTune. The tricky part is to know how much to underclock. I keep trying and failing the test (urggh, trial and error) but eventually I hit on some values that successfully lowered the temperature and solved those display spikes and lines and whatsoever that was bothering me. =D

I got the link somewhere at home, its a very helpful site with advice and screenshots of the exact same problem as mine. If I do find it I will post here, heh. The idea is to incrementally underclock it as the card slowly deteriorates until the point of no return, after which the card is proclaim dead and need to be replaced.

EDIT: I managed to dig up the link. Its a really useful page, check it out: http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html

Disclaimer: If it's down its not my fault. Heh.

This blog is gathering dust! /gasp

Wow! I have totally forgotten to update this blog for some uber long time! Hmm lemme see what I have to update... in order of importance.

1. I passed my CISA! *cough cough* of course! =D This is just a baby step forward. After clearing my CISSP and CISA, my next step is taking my Master of Computing (Infocomm Security).

2. (Something that is the result of 1) Because I am taking my Master, it follows that I will be in this company for another 2 years at least, therefore made sense for me to register for my A Level Chinese. The extra allowance from language proficiency is always welcomed. Its good return for an investment of a few weeks of pia-ing, ya? (provided I pass lar, lol)

3. Sad to say, during this period of absence from this blog, I have joined SGRaiders and left it for another new guild, Incursio. World of Warcraft is my alternate reality when I have nothing better to do at home, and my guildies are literally becoming fast friends. That said, I am levelling a PRIEST yeah u heard me right, those who know me will know that I am not "holy" enough to roll a priest, so yeah, she is definitely shadow. Just slightly less evil than my warlock. /cheer And no I won't heal you, currypok. I will just wand the mob and see your green hp bar slowly emptying. And charge you 2 gold for ressing you. =D

4. PSP. =P How can I not mention this baby (even though its not mine) who faithfully provided me tonnes of entertainment on those long MRT rides to and from work. Currently playing Patapon (stuck at the Retreat Song boss), Crisis Core (lost in the depth of judgement, oh yeah i know my sense of direction is hopeless even in games), FF Tactics (stuck at a boss.. urgh!), Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. Finished Brave Story New Traveller, lol. Its an awesome game btw! =P