humming along

i hate...
how my work PC is soooo slow. it's forever disk thrashing because it simply does not have enough RAM. trying to run Win2K on 64MB RAM? that's asking for punishment.

i love...
how i managed to score another 64MB, and now the PC is positively humming along :) so, even though it still has less RAM than my old Win98 system at home, it's still much better/faster compared to how it was half an hour ago!


daily double::mon 29 sep
1. Do you have a TV in your room?
no. if i did i'd probably never leave (except for personal hygiene and nutrition purposes :p)
2. What do like to watch on TV?
hmm... currently? the movie show, alias, survivor, plus movies, the odd special, and occasional channel surfing where i might watch bits and pieces of some sports, cooking, current affairs, news etc...

does not compute?

my revo just made strange noises at me as i went to move the bag it was in... please don't tell me you've gone and done a spontaneous reset on yourself! i grimaced. it had already proved itself capable of this feat some months back, causing much cursing from me and fuelling fervour to maintain a much more rigorous backup schedule.

can't think what should have caused anything to go make funny noices... in any case, i opened up the lid, turned it on, and prepared for the worst.

*phew* looks like it's managed to lose a few settings, which only took a few seconds to restore. but oh... also lost some data that i entered earlier today... though only from one application (that i could see) and not from another?! hmm....

don't die on me just yet. i'm not ready to afford a replacement, though a dell axim (like one my on-a-technology-spending-spree of a younger sister recently bought) looks to be the goods if i'm forced down that path anytime soon :)


daily double::fri 26 sep
1. Apple Juice or Orange Juice?
apple, cos OJ is *every*where. though given the choice (and the variety you typically get most places you go is oh so boring), i'd go for something more exotic. like... guava, coconut, watermelon, starfruit, soursop, lychee, sugar cane... give me malaysian hawkers, or a half decent asian grocery store / juice stand :)
2. Coca-Cola or Pepsi?
neither. coke rots your teeth (among other negative effects); that stuff is strong! soft drinks contain carbon dioxide - why drink in the waste product that our lungs breath *out*? i've cut down heaps on my intake of soft drinks, but i still occasionally go for lemondade, fanta, sars and creaming soda. almost never any type of cola.

congrats F & SL!!

newlyweds for the day... and a fairly warm one (ie day) at that! but yeah nice wedding and reception. really great too to catch up with some old friends/acquaintances from high school, uni and church.

but for now, sleep... *yawn*

don't bite your lip

there's a real sense of foreboding when you bite your lip (in the literal sense), cos you just know that it's going to lead to a nice little ulcer. pain. less joy in eating. bleh...

on the figurative side (though perhaps tongue is more typical than lip), i've been playing around a bit with adding comments to my blog. thanks to the useful help section of blogger, i picked out my comment host of choice (enetation), and voila! never knew it was so easy :D

and so, back to the topic, or not quite as it were, don't bite your lip :) ie. comment away, if that's the sort of thing you're into. not that i think my blog has enough of a readership base to really warrant comments... but you never know who might stumble across my nebulous thoughts and want to add some of their own...

sounds::thunder, and rain against the window

come again?

umm... wow... blogshares

just been spending my lunch break at work trawling blogs from RBJ, and came across the above... i guess it's time to get back to work and earn some real $$! (real as in non-virtual, as opposed to real as in serious/"lots of" - yeah, saw my first pay slip today and so now i know exactly how much i'm getting paid...)

the wedding march

how's this for a list of speedy couple FOMs and their movement from "dating" to engaged/married? all within 6 or 12 months...

1. met october last year, started going out soon after, engaged march?, married june
   
2. known each other for ages, started going out early this year? getting married this weekend
   
3. met november last year, started going out some time this year?, engaged in august
   
4. (i only know the bride) couple was apparently on, then off. back on this year and getting married next weekend
   
5. (i only know the bride) couple would have met august last year at the earliest. no idea it was even on the cards but found out after the fact that they got married in or before august this year
   
6. met last year?, started going out april this year, found out today that they had gotten engaged
   

as i wrote to one half of couple #6, i feel positively slow in comparison ;)

oh oh oh, i'm a working class man

... to paraphrase jimmy barnes ;)

alas, my days of unemployment have officially ended with my first day on the job at a new workplace. mixed feelings i must say... but it's good to be working and earning money (though it's not very much) rather than dipping into my savings or living off the government. lots of things to learn, and not so much free time anymore... snippet of conversation with a friend of mine:

me: oh well, it pays better than centrelink
FOM: but you'll miss the hours though...

true, true...

aim adjustment

'One day as I was reading 1 John 2 I realised that my personal life's objective regarding holiness was less than that of John's. He was saying in effect, 'Make it your aim not to sin'. As I thought about this, I realised that deep in my heart my real aim was not to sin 'very much'... Can you imagine a soldier going into battle with the aim of 'not getting hit very much?'
-- Jerry Bridges, in "The Pursuit of Holiness" (p. 96)

you can breathe now...

hrm. it's taken more than a year for me to start venturing into tweaking with the template. got motivated to do (or at least look into doing) this after seeing lots of other blogs and related sites recently. [read: they pretty much all look spiffier than mine] for now, i've just done some minor tweaking and customisation. tomorrow, the world?! :p

so just in case you were holding. well... maybe just take one quick breath ;)

music blind

a korean student told me at convo club last week that the word they have (ie in the korean language) for people who are computer illiterate translates to "computer blind". correspondingly, i am a "music blind" person. makes it hard and frustrating trying to learn a song in a choir... :(

hardly reason enough to feel glum, but that just so happens to be the case.

*sigh*

snippity snip

there's something therapeutic about cutting off bits of your body. no i don't mean in a masochistic sense of forcibly removing one's body parts. i'm talking about cutting nails and cutting hair. the act and the aftermath brings a certain sense of rightness, a la "now that's better!" which makes the seemingly choresome task of regular maintenance not entirely unsatisfactory :D

2 out of 3 ain't bad... ?

am in the midst of preparing a series of 3 talks, to be given this weekend at a small camp for international students. convo club is a ministry of es, and is something i've been involved with for the past couple of months.

never prepared, let alone delivered, talks like this before :o

so why am i blogging when i'm only two-thirds done? good question ;)

music::bossa baroque by dave grusin

ascii Star Wars "movie"

i really can't believe someone(s) actually did this... but if you're bored, telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

apparently it's the whole movie. i wasn't *that* bored ;)

hmmm... if you live in Australia and you like your Christian reading bite-sized yet non-fluffy, check out the Briefing from Matthias Media and take advantage of their current special:

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* The free subscription is for 3 months only

surf to Matthias Media, or the Briefing front page.

i've been a subsriber since jan this year, and it's money well spent. highly recommended :)

goodness, it's been almost 8 months since my last entry! did anyone miss me? ;)

welcome to the wonderful world of ADSL, courtesy of the good folk at iinet and initial capital expenditure to the tune of nearly $500! (but kindly sponsored by a sibling with deeper pockets... hehe)

so, now that i'm off the dial-up mill, i've decided to revisit my blog. also because i've just been reading someone else's blog, so it jogged my memory/desire. check out pinkronnie - i met this girl when she came up north to visit my youth group camp in july. i think she's into the colour pink... in a BIG way!

ok. 'nuff procrastinating. it's good to be "back" though :)

i'm back! as of a week ago :)

after 3 weeks of not driving, i've driven 5 different cars in the week i've been back.

somewhat back on msn (messenger - finally decided to install it at home). blogging's not quite the same when you're having to dial in from home once every day or three, so i probably won't be doing too much of that.

so this is just a typically geeky "hello world" statement :)

so this is it. the last day.

i'll be more or less offline from now... duration indefinite. no more msn or blogging away... though i might make the occasional appearance should the opportunity arise.

'til next we meet... take care :)

just finished reading lost japan by alex kerr. a most fascinating and very insightful read, giving lots of filling-in-the-background info on various aspects of japan's society and culture. here's a review google found. wonder how much i'll be able to soak up while i'm there in person.

drove an 11-seater toyota "troopcarrier" 4wd yesterday. in peak hour traffic... :o

even though that drive only lasted less than an hour, i'm still re-adjusting somewhat to my much smaller, much lighter echo (even though i've been driving *that* for 3+ years!)

been listening to an album (soliloquy) by karin schaupp... classical music on the guitar. found it hard to appreciate, being somewhat of an ignoramus when it comes to classical music (and probably not helped by only ever listening to it in bits and pieces, while driving in the car). then the subject of sonatas and movements came up with my passengers this morning, and i thought i'd try to educate myself a bit more by google-whacking on the topic... found one site which looked helpful - incompetech's musical genres. maybe not the most in-depth coverage of the topic you could find, but suited me for now :)

and now i'm listening to more classical sounding stuff - vanessae mae's "the classical album 3: the italian album" (the original four seasons and the devil's trill sonata). i think i need a tour guide.