19:38 by FoxTwo
March 28th, Friday.
End of contract.
I'm outta here!
That was only the beginning. The same night, I met with a friend for a quiet "celebratory" drink. Yeah to celebrate my release from servitude, aka The Evil Employer. Another friend thought she'd try to surprise me and turn up unannounced, but to cut the long story short, let's just say there were so many clues of the "impending surprise" that it was no longer a surprise. And, she was surprised I wasn't surprised by her surprise visit.
Surprised? :)
After the pub closed, we were pulled to Clarke Quay for more clubbing and drinking. We went to Barfly first (I had bits and pieces of memory there), then later on we became real barflies and hopped over to Ministry of Sound, aka MOS. In short, it's been years since:
- We drank so many different drinks in one night
- Got pissed drunk
- Fell while walking out of the clubs
- Remembering only bits and pieces of what happened the night before
Um no, we didn't get any "action" heh! We're not those kinda guys.
The female friend with us was surprised when I told her we were gone (as in not sober), because she said we looked fine! We could walk straight, talk coherently, etc, just like normal. Well, except for the falling down part hahah!
Imagine, this is only day #1 of my ROD!
note - word of the day is of course, "surprise".
Labels: clubbing, drinking, pubbing
10:21 by FoxTwo
The Cousin Of Ping.Sg - Ping.My?
As usual, I'm doing my usual blog-surfing thing at work. At one of my regular stops, at KongTechnology, I came across this article.
Hmm so it appears that Advertlets have registered the domain ping.my. Update: ok I must be cock-eyed, but it's not Advertlets, my mistake. It says "from the FORMER CREATOR of Advertlets."
If it ever launches, I guess I'll register there and ping this blog there too. I'm sure they wouldn't mind a few Singaporean blogs there too. After all, ping.sg has a few Malaysian blogs being pinged here anyway.
edit (13:30 hrs) - whoever that registered ping.my, I hope he knows it won't be making money. Uzyn always complained that ping.sg makes him spend money anyway hee!
I was just thinking, if I had my way, I'd make my blog on the site called http://ping.my/blog ... "ping my blog", geddit? yes yes? No? ok nevermind sigh.
Labels: advertlets, internet
15:30 by FoxTwo
MC King Is Dead, Long Live The MC Prince!
This is my final working week at my current workplace. By some sheer twist of fate (some might call it bad luck), I had to go and fall sick. Since I'm already sick, and since this is the final work week for me, I decided "to heck with it" and called in sick. After all, this is the final time I can claim medical fees, might as well claim now before I "ROD" on Friday.
It was a little funny this morning. Funny as in "ha ha" funny.
Doc says "I let you choose. You want drowsy or non-drowsy medication?"
It was a no-brainer question, since having drowsy medication means I'd need medical leave for a day at least. So naturally I said "Drowsy!" and proceeded to negotiate for a 2-day medical leave.
5 minutes later, I walked out of the clinic pretty happy, because the doc was grinning and I got my 2 days medical leave.
So I get home, got onto MSN, and told a friend I'm on MC for 2 days ("MC" is the local slang for medical leave). Immediately her reply was "wow, you MC King!!"
Seeing as MC King is dead (MC King was a local celebrity, a Chinese comedian and compere. He passed away a couple of months back), I said "choy!! MC King is dead ok?"
Then, her reply is "Ok ok, so you're MC Prince!"
And that's how today's entry got its title :)
Ok, need sleep, time to slink off back into bed.
Labels: random
00:42 by FoxTwo
Good Friday, Pretty Ok Saturday
For me it was weird having a "Good Friday" in March. Can't ever remember it ever falling in March.
Friday was pretty good for me. Spent 75% of it unconscious. Actually even after I woke up in the mid-afternoon, my eyes were droopy again and I wanted to crawl back into bed for more snooze time. It didn't help that it rained too. The only notable incident on Friday was the movie they showed on TV at 10pm, Starsky and Hutch. Ben Stiller looks a little "fat" as Starsky, and Snoop Dog is really cool as Huggy Bear. Again, like all modern remakes of old TV-shows, the original cast turned up at the end to give the new stars the keys to the new Turino. It was great seeing David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser again. A little fatter, more white hairs, but still recogniseable as the original stars.
Saturday came around, just like that. Friday went missing really quickly.
Since I just picked up Cabal Online at Challenger, I spent a huge chunk of Saturday trying it out. Made 2 characters on their servers. Got both of them up to level 10 really quickly.
After mucking around with their servers, I thought it was high time to get back to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. I don't want to leave it hanging again till god-knows-when again like Crysis or Bioshock. Ok enough about games in here. I should be writing about them in my gaming blog instead.
Sorry, nothing really much happened the past couple of days. I'm a boring guy, yeah.
Labels: random
11:30 by FoxTwo
In densely-populated places like Singapore and Hong Kong, we are definitely bound to encounter inconsiderate people. Take a look at stomp.com.sg and you will see what I mean. People putting their bags on the seats in MRT and buses, even my own entry on kids blasting music via speakers on buses etc.
Naturally when I'm with my buddies out at the pub drinking, subjects like this comes up. My buddies have some pretty creative ways to handle such people.
MRT
Situation - you're getting off at this station, the one the train is stopping at. Before the doors even open, you see a horde of people outside waiting to rush in without waiting for you to alight first. They are obviously not standing behind the "Y-box" to "queue up".
Solution - whip out your handy dandy cellphone that has a built-in camera. Start taking pictures and make sure flash is on (so the people outside can see the flash). As soon as a couple of flashes go off, see the crowd in front of you part like Moses parting the Red Sea. Everyone's trying to shy away from the camera :)
Solution 2 - If you have an umbrella, those with a long handle type, just stick it out in front of you, and the crowd will part too.
Situation - Train is crowded, and there's a seat beside an auntie (typically it's an auntie that does this), but she puts her bag on the seat and is obviously not about to remove it so someone else can sit down.
Solution - ignore the presence of the bag. Just move to sit down, as if the bag isn't there. The auntie will hastily grab her bag before your butt lands on it.
Situation - train is crowded, almost packed like sardines. One inconsiderate guy is leaning on the grab pole, thus other people cannot hold on to it for support.
Solution - push your hand into his back and grab the pole too. Make sure you fidget alot if he still doesn't move away from the pole. He'll be so uncomfortable at all the squirming and especially when you ram your hand into his back that he'll vacate the pole.
Bus
Situation - kids blasting their ipods/handphones, "sharing their music" with everyone else.
Solution - Here
Situation - bus is almost full, and there's only 1 seat left. The guy at the seat is seated at the outer edge, and is or pretending to be asleep. The seat beside him, the one at the window, is thus empty and unoccupied.
Solution - Wake him up. Whether or not he's truly asleep, he'll have to either move inside or make way for you to go in.
Well, at the very least, this list makes for interesting reading. These methods aren't guaranteed to work, and use them at your own risk/discretion! Why risk? There's no way to tell if the guy you're doing it to won't get violent and bop you on the head *grin*
11:39 by FoxTwo
Hands up those of you who remember watching this as a kid :)
Ok I know, not many.
Did you know/remember, that this series was made during the same time period as the original Star Wars Episode 4 was? Incredible huh?
Yeah, I had a chance to watch some episodes of Six Million Dollar Man last weekend, and it sure brings back memories, and gave me some new ones. For example, while I might have a hazy recollection of his "origins story", after re-watching it did I realise that the episode was a "test pilot". They didn't know if they were going to make a series out of it (but we all know it went on for 4 or 5 seasons after that, including a spin-off series Bionic Woman).
$6 mill seems so cheap by today's standards. His bionics would have cost like $50 mill in today's money. Watching it as an adult now, I realised that throughout season 1, the sound of his bionics, the "ting ting ting ting" sound, was hardly ever used. His bionic eye had night vision (green) in the pilots, but it was changed to infra-red in the series proper.
One thing I did notice though, they really tried to take care of the details. For example, when Steve has been running on his bionics for extended period of time, you can see perspirations drenching his chest, his left armpit, but not the right armpit. Afterall, his right arm is bionic, hence won't be perspiring.
I remember also, as a kid, I was very agitated when watching him fight with Maskatron, the robot in the episode "Day Of The Robot". Now, the fight scene looks slightly cheesy.
Yeah when you grow up, the gloss tend to fade away :(
I'm hoping they continue with the Bionic Woman (2007) series, after stopping at episode 8 due to the writer's strike. Thus far, nothing seems forthcoming, as there have been bad reviews about the series before the strike happened. Perhaps people nowadays do not want fantasy series and are totally hooked on reality TV. Personally I hate reality TV, especially Survivor.
Labels: 6 Million Dollar Man, Bionic, TV shows
12:06 by FoxTwo
Loyal Customers Always Get Left In The Dust
I bet it must have happened to you at least once.
You've been a long-time customer of Company X. You've been using their services for 10 years, 15 years etc. In all those years, at best all you've done is redeem some points for some small gifts.
Then, now you see Company X having a nice promotion for new signups. You call Company X up and enquire whether you can take advantage of the new promotion too, since you're not currently bound by any existing contracts. You even indicate you would not mind topping up some amount of cash, since you understand it's to encourage new customers to sign up.
Then Company X flatly tells you NO. No negotiations. No attempts to accommodate you.
Just a simple NO.
Indirectly, they are actually encouraging you to terminate your subscriptions with them.
Seriously.
There'll be people who are miffed that they get the cold shoulder treatment, and terminate all services in a fit of anger, swearing never to use Company X's services again. Then there'll be the other section that terminate and then re-apply again, hence becoming "new signups". Yes, Company X, you're giving yourself MORE WORK for LESS MONEY (promotional prices), having to terminate us, then re-process our applications again. Time and effort that could have been saved. Think about it.
Also, loyal customers like us usually don't get price adjustments to our packages. If you have never bothered to check the promotions, the price of $90 a month you've been paying for the past 10 yrs might only be $39.95 a month now for the same thing, if you were a new signup. Company X probably never even bothered to notify nor offered you a lower monthly subscription price. From a business standpoint, of course it's stupid. Why cut your revenue? But from a customer and rapport-building point of view, it's a disaster waiting to happen. When customers wake up and leave in protest, you have no customers. No customers means no revenue. It's better to have less revenue than no revenue at all
In light of this, doesn't this seem like we customers are encouraged to terminate services as soon as contract ends, and signup again later, so that we can get the price adjustments as well as promotional items/prices?
Yes indeed, all you service providing companies out there! Take heed! That is what you're encouraging loyal customers to do! You're telling us we should terminate as soon as contract ends, since there's NO BENEFITS whatsoever to continue using your services past the stipulated contract time-frame.
Where's the customer-oriented service that the gahmen has been trying to preach?
nb: - this post is not directed at any company or service provider in particular. However, it is inspired by a recent promotional offer by a prominent service provider, and the author was told he could not enjoy the offer, period. No discussions.
14:39 by FoxTwo
Foreign Talents And Their Skills
After reading xizor's latest entries, I feel compelled to relate some similar experiences with "fallen talents" myself.
Back in 2006, the company hired a "foreign talent". Let's called him "S". On paper, he looked very qualified, supposedly to have come from impressive backgrounds like having worked in large MNCs like Citibank and such. The list of his skills in the resume were pretty impressive too. He had good testimonials from previous employers too.
However, we noticed that he always, and I mean always, took MC on a Tuesday. Without fail, every single Tuesday he'd call in sick. Even my boss, who is normally very forgiving when it comes to these things, started to take notice. He'd call in sick when he is needed to come back on weekends for planned maintenance. He'd always leave before the official knock off time of 6pm, usually at 5.30pm or 5.15pm. It's like clockwork. Once 5pm comes, he'll disappear, and people just assume he'd be in the washroom.
Once, there was a job to be executed at 5.30pm. He was assigned to execute the job. However, he was nowhere to be found. My boss called "S" on the handphone, and he never picked up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him trying to leave by the back way. I caught up with him and led him back to the workstations and "gently reminded" him of the pending job he was to execute.
Then he did something nobody expected.
He declared that he has no knowledge of how to execute the job. Then he just shoved the job request form onto me and said "I need to go" and disappeared out the back door. At the time, my boss just happened to step away from his desk for a couple of minutes, so "S" apparently seized the chance and disappeared. When my boss came back and saw me doing "S"'s work, he was livid.
A couple of weeks later, there was a planned maintenance scheduled for Saturday and "S" was assigned to perform this. On Friday night, he "urgently" sent an SMS to my boss saying that he'd hurt his ankle very badly playing football, and he could not even stand up or walk to see a doctor. Hence, he was unable to perform the Saturday maintenance.
On Monday, he turned up at the office. One would have expected him to at least walk with a limp or have his ankle wrapped in bandage.
He had NOTHING. He walked fine.
On Tuesday, like clockwork, he sent an SMS to my boss saying, and I quote, "The doctor advised me to rest for 2 days, so I have 2 days MC. I will be back on Thursday".
Thursday came, and "S" presented 2 separate MCs to my boss. One for Tuesday, one for Wednesday, from 2 different clinics. My boss, having had enough of his nonsense, showed the SMS to "S" and asked:
"So which of these 2 doctors," pointing to the MCs on the table, "advised you to take 2 days MC?"
Needless to say, "S" could not provide an answer.
Friday morning came. "S" came to the office, late as usual. Then, for some strange reason, he requested time off from my boss saying he needed to go home (to Clementi. My office is located far to the east in Changi) to get "some important documents". My boss asked him, if it was work related, we had all the relevant copies of the documents right here in the office. "S" replied that the documents were personal ones, and repeatedly assured my boss he only needed "half an hour" to get home and retrieve his documents and be back in the office.
Everybody knows that you can't even reach Clementi from Changi in 30 mins, let alone get there and back.
Naturally, my boss turned his request down. "S" returned to his desk and made a flurry of phone calls, speaking in his own native language.
So lunch came and went. By 2pm, he still was not present at the office. My boss again tried to reach "S" by handphone, and had no answer. At 2.30pm, my boss decided enough was enough, and made a call to the Head of Security, to inform them to bar entry to "S" into company premises. Then he informed HR to draw up the relevent documentation to terminate "S"'s services with immediate effect.
At 3.45pm, "S" called us ("us" as in the colleagues) and said he was stuck outside at the guardroom and unable to enter due to some unknown reason. We informed our boss that "S" was at the main gate. My boss called up the main gate and instructed the security personnel to escort "S" into the office.
So, "S" came in and was told to clear out his desk. All the relevant paperwork was already done and his services were terminated at 3.55pm, and escorted out by the security personnel right after.
We were joking afterwards that it was "unfortunate" that he had never gone through SAF's training. Otherwise, he would have learnt how to "geng" (malinger) properly and not be caught with such obvious lies.
Labels: Rant
16:19 by FoxTwo
In the continuation of this saga, my login ID is now fixed. However, they still left out a couple of things to grant me access to.
Not relishing another round of "calling the right people", I just went ahead and added the corresponding entries to my ID and just informed them that I did. Waiting for them to get around to adding it for me, as per stipulated procedures, will mean another waiting time of 3 days.
So, after adding in the right access details, I logged in, and came face to face with an empty email account. Nothing is in my inbox. I wonder if anybody had actually sent me anything the past couple of days when my name got listed in the address books again. If they had, I'd really like to see the error message they got, because I have no idea what they screwed up now.
After a little digging around (since I can't do any "work" anyway), I realised why my inbox is empty - the geniuses created a NEW mailfile for me, instead of using the existing one on the server.
Ah well, I'll use the existing mailfile as a "backup" then. The downside to this is, I have re-create all my filtering rules again. I have several people that I automatically blacklist - ie those always send me useless company-wide announcements like "Bowling Night!" or "Departmental Dinner!".
All which are irrelevant because I'm a contract staff - these events do not involve me.
Right now, the only stuff left to do on this whole saga is to reconfigure some network folder permissions and such. Stuff that I can easily do, but am currently not very motivated to do it. I mean, after all, I'm going to end my contract in 2 weeks. I don't foresee a need to access those folders anytime soon.
10:16 by FoxTwo
Previously on FoxTwo's Ramblings,
- My work IDs went missing
- My email ID got activated, but the login one was still disabled
And now, the story continues.....
Today, the login ID is truly missing. Yup, doesn't exist. Again. I called up a friend who is in the Wintel team, and he did a search for me. Yeah he confirmed that it does not exist.
My email ID is, however, alive and kicking. I'm so glad that important mails can get to my inbox now! It'll make the people who anxiously sent me email hoping I can act on it fast, to feel better about finally being able to find me on the address books.
Too bad they have to wait till my login ID gets fixed.
So, here goes another round of calling the "relevant people" again...
13:07 by FoxTwo
The Continuing Saga Of The Missing ID
Since the SLA for ID creation is 5 business days, they had until Monday, 10th March to fix it. On Friday, 7th March, I received notification around 5.30pm that my ID was ready. Yes indeed, they waited till the END of the work-day to tell me my ID was "ready". *clap clap*
So, I tried to login.
And, I laughed my head off.
They enabled it but still listed it as expiring on 29th Feb 2008. So, I still couldn't log in. However, my name is now listed in the address books of the email system, so people can finally send me work-related email.
Except that I can't login to read 'em.
Going by the book, I notified the relevant people again. This time, the head honcho of the Wintel team says he'll personally investigate, and send me an email to inform me when it's resolved.
Send me email... *chuckle*
I had to hold back my sarcasm while reminding him that although my email works, I can't login to read them. That is the problem I was calling him about in the first place.
This reminds me of the time I was fed up with Standard Chartered Bank, and I cut up my credit card and sent it back to them via their Business Reply envelop, to terminate ALL my accounts with them. A month later, Standard Chartered Bank billed me for "membership" for the credit card. I called them up, told 'em I cut up the card and sent it back to them via their own envelop. The lady on the other end said:
"Sorry sir, we didn't receive it. Can you send it again?"
BUAHAHAHAH!
"Sure, give me a new card, I'll cut it up and send it back to you again".
Man, Singapore sure is a funny place to work in.
23:30 by FoxTwo
No ID, Can't Do Work, Slack Lor!
The company I work in, lost my login ID :)
Yup, it's missing from the servers, the email address books do not list me at all. I'm "locked out" from my own work PC. If anybody ever tried to email me, they'd get a "No Such Receipient" error.
Now, since I'm an IT geeky guy, one would think it would be a simple matter of me re-entering all the required credentials into the right servers to get me back into the system, right?
Technically yes. However, I'm not lifting a finger. Why? First of all, it's not my fault they "misplaced" my ID. There's a big confusion about my "end of service" date, and they keep thinking it's 29 Feb when it should be 29 March when the ID expires and get deleted (28th is my last working day, hence 29th is the "cleanup day").
So, apparently, someone was cock-eyed last year in 2007 and either wrote "02" as the month incorrectly on the form (real paper form) to extend my login validity for one more year, or the one doing the login ID maintenance went cock-eyed and read it as 02 instead of 03 (March).
Besides, I'm not part of the Wintel team. I'm designated as the "Unix guy". Since this login problem is a Windows thing, it ain't my problem man.
It's so nice being able to do NOTHING right in front of the boss, and he knows he can't do a thing about it simply because, I have no login ID to do ANYTHING! No emails, no forms, no MS Word, no Excel, nada. I'm basically sitting in the office just yakking away on MSN via my Palm and trusty 3G phone. Since I can't get into the system, I depend solely on my colleagues to tell me what pending jobs are to be executed at which times on the Unix servers.
And, my colleagues being VERY nice people, know that I'm already in my ROD mood, hardly ever tell me to do "work".
The downside is tho, I got no Internet access (however limited it is with the rampant blocking. Even Chillycrap's blog is blocked). I can't blog, and I can't visit other people's blogs. The upside is, I finally managed to find LOADS of time to chat on MSN via my Palm TX :) Yes my Palm has a web browser but I sure am not going to surf the Internet on a 320x480 screen! Besides, yakking on MSN is taking up most of my time nowadays.
Knowing the SLA (Service Level Agreement) on Windows Login ID creation is 5 working days, I'm not expecting to login anytime soon till next Monday, at the soonest. Too bad I can't not go to the office, dammit. Boss tells me I still got root access to the Unix servers so I can still do my work ("as long as my colleagues tell me what's pending", I thought to myself).
Labels: random
13:38 by FoxTwo In the modern world, we want things to be convenient.
Like cell phones, TV with remotes, and all that. Even on our cell phones, we want hands-free options, like a wired earpiece, or a bluetooth earpiece.
And, on rainy days, imagine holding an umbrella, walking along, then your phone rings. If you didn't have a hands-free kit like a wired or bluetooth earpiece, imagine trying to juggle one hand holding the umbrella, and the other hand picking up the phone while trying to carry your briefcase.
So, in the tradition of everything going hands-free, a company in the USA has redesigned the traditional umbrella to be hands-free, and calls it nubrella.
Very space-age looking eh? I bet if you slap on a silver jumpsuit and airtanks, it could even become a space-suit :)
It's supposed to be flip-proof too, ie if the wind blew under the nubrella, it will not flip inside-out like normal umbrellas.
Since flying cars are late (it's already 2008!), at least this sci-fi looking contraption helps to maintain the image as seen in movies, about the 21st century - people walking around with weird clothes and hats (in this case, umbrellas).
Oh if you want to buy this, it's like US$49.95 or so. Go for it!
