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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

April fool's day

An email sent out by a colleague reminded me of a prank that took place 2 years ago in my office, no thanks to yours truly. The company I was working for at that time had just undergone a merger process, so I had quite a few new colleagues. I wanted the new colleagues to know that ITguys are not all that 'nerdy' (ok, this is one time I will use the term 'IT' though I prefer the term 'IS' for Information Systems).

So on 1st April 2005, just about 15 minutes before lunch time, I sent out this email to a few colleagues (I did not sent to everyone in the office since I didn't really know the new colleagues and was not sure if they can take a joke):

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Subject: Network Cabling Cleanup


First of all, apologies for the last minute announcement.

We have noticed that over the past 2 months, there has been a deterioration of network service. Signs and symptoms of this deterioration includes but not limited to:
- delay in emails
- d i s t o r t i o n in files transfered accross the network (esp. in spreadsheets where figures can actually be changed!)
- disruption in email service
- server shutdown

After several tests, we have concluded that it is due to the static and noise from the cabling. We have seen in extreme cases where these static and noise reached our workstations and caused display problems such as blur display.

To prevent further damage to our office equipments, we will be configuring a script scheduled to run during lunch today. If you are working over lunch, kindly email Adrian TAI (please do not reply to all) with your preferred date and time. We will then customise the script according to your preference.

In order for the script to run effectively, we want to minimise any disruption caused by electromagnetic interference. Workstation display units (the normal CRT monitor or even the LCD monitor) can actually cause this interference, a phenomenon known as a Latent Interference Electromagnetism.

As such, we would like you turn off your monitor before leaving for lunch. And to avoid any leakage of the interference, we would like you to cover your monitor with a piece of A4 paper (A4 should be big enough to cover the screen). Please use recycled paper for this. You can just use a bit of celotape and tape the top and bottom of the paper to the monitor (FYI, static and noise is cause by electromagnetism, which the monitors also generate).

If you have any questions regarding this, please do not hesitate to contact Adrian TAI. Thank you.

(Note: A separate clean-up for XXXXXXX is scheduled sometime next week.)

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Note that I have replaced XXXXXXX to protect my company's identity (like real only... who dunno where I work la?!?)

I know that many non-IT people dread getting emails from the IT Department because emails coming from that department is usually written in some alien language. So I purposely drafted an alien sounding email.

I am the type of person that likes to reward people who take the time to read my stuffs. Yes, even in this blog, I do leave hints and many other goodies. So it was no different with the email I sent out. Anyone who took the time to try to understand the email would have noticed the hints I left like:
1. spacing the word 'distortion'
2. Latent Interference Electromagnetism?!? Read the CAPS... LIE.
3. recycled paper?!

I sent that email about 15 minutes before lunch because it gave the recipients enough time to read my email. I expected to get calls regarding the email, so I conveniently disappear from my desk. I added the last line about having a separate exercise for the other division to make the email sound genuine.

I had a good laugh during lunch that day...

A desktop monitor covered with a recycled A4-size paper


Another desktop with an A4-size paper covering the monitor


This one is probably worried about the leakage and decided to use a thicker paper


2 more desktops


This one is also probably worried about leaking radiation and decided to use extra paper


Notebooks were not spared either


Another notebook


More notebook users falling victim


These are compliant people... Don't laugh!
The MD had a good laugh as well when she came back from lunch. She saw a few desktops with the A4-size paper and asked what was going on...

This prank was made even more interesting by the fact that some of the original victims decided to re-use my prank on the other colleagues who were in a meeting (they are the ones with the notebooks photographed above).

I was told there was also one un-intended victim. She had overheard the conversation about email and had wondered why she did not get the email from me. But rather than put up with the hassle of looking for me, she decided to just follow everyone and covered her monitor with an A4-size paper... :)

It has been two years. I don't think anyone actually remembers this anymore. But this year, 1st April falls on a Sunday...

*sigh*

It falls on Tuesday next year. That's good news for me... :)

If you are curious what are the top 100 pranks, check out this site.

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Monday, November 06, 2006

Detour into Memory Alley

Unlike Memory Avenue and Memory Highway, the Memory Alley is a dark and scary place. I found some really scary stuff which I wrote many, many years ago. I have to say that I remember writing stuffs that are really better than these, but somehow, I only found these over the weekend when I continued with my room clean-up.

Oh yeah, the new bed and cupboard is here. I am so happy. Extra place to store my junks.

*sigh*

But I can't sleep on the bed yet. Must wait for the proper time to 'fix' the bed first... What?!? Click here and also here to find out about this tradition. I wonder who started this tradition anyway?!? :P

Well, here are some of the stuffs I found over the weekend...

Masterpiece #1
Do you wish...
Do you wish upon a star,
Do you wish that we won't have to be so far,
Do you wish every night,
Do you wish that someday, we will reunite,
Wishes are not only for the fools,
But also for the hopeful,
For life is dull without wishes,
Like an ocean without fishes.
(NOTE: This one still sounds quite decent)



Masterpiece #2
Weep does my eyes,
As love slowly dies
Shatter does my heart,
As we drift apart.

Happy were we at first.
Till the bubble began to burst,
Now all I can is only ask why,
And perhaps maybe even cry.

For no signs were shown,
When we were alone,
Then all of a sudden,
I was disheartened.

Strike while the iron's hot,
Is something I did not,
Now all I have is misery,
When I could have been extremely happy.

A chance I ask,
To accomplish an impossible task,
But try I must,
To make this love last.

Leave me not, is all I wish,
Listen I want, to the lovely 'Sheesh'
From you to me, a little dote,
And end this poem will, on a happy note.
NOTE: I believe this one was written to try and win back a girl after I said the wrong thing... She likes to use the word 'Sheesh'. Sounds like Yoda (click here and here if you just came back from a holiday cruise to Mars and want to know who's Yoda) doing poetry, eh?



Masterpiece #3
A ship, a kingdom, I have captured,
Towns and castles, I have invaded,
Kings and queents, I have met,
Little joy, little wonder, I had fret.

Lions and dragons, I fear not,
Orcs and ghouls, I have fought,
Vicious and cruel, I have been,
Elegant and gentle me? No one has seen,
Scary and dirty, I am mean.

Cast a spell, you seem to me,
On my hands and knees, trembling is what I next see,
Fill my heart and soul, you did,
Your love, your words is all I now heed.

Victim of your love, I am now,
Everything you ask, you command, I bow,
Run for shelter now, when I hear a thunder,
Yet, once I was a fearless plunderer.

Many now laugh and spit on me,
Utter I not; All for you, you see,
Coward! I am called by a few,
Humiliated, I care not; I just want you.

A companion, a love, I found in you,
Lose it is something I won't do,
Over my life, before I surrender,
This eternal love, I cherish and treasure forever.
Note: Imagine living in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. This is probably written by a barbarian turned bard. Hah!

Dean, now you believe me when I say I'm into poetry and can also do poetry? OK... OK... I'll stop doing poetry.

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Thursday, October 26, 2006

A turn into memory highway

The long Deepavali and Raya weekend was a good time for me to catch up with a few friends from Singapore and also to continue cleaning up my room.

Since the new bedroom set will only come early November (second delay which I am glad), I still had ample time to s-l-o-w-l-y go through my stuffs. It is always nice to look back at stuffs from long, long time ago. So from Memory Avenue, we move onto Memory Highway. And one of the stuffs I found happens to be the grand-daddy to Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering card games.

Some of you might recall having played these cards long, long time ago. I still have mine. In mint condition! Think these are too macho? What about...

"Hello. Is son of Dr. Dose in the house? May I have the son of Dr. Dose? Thank you"
Before card games became complicated, expensive but highly collectible (with re-sale value), all we had were these rm1 card games (55 sen, if you bought them from outside Selangor - I got mine in Penang). You do NOT need to customise the deck. Just deal one deck equally among the players.

Next out of my treasure chest were cards again. This time, they are the 20 sen cards that honestly, I don't really know what they are for. Anyone?


For me, I used to play these with a few guys. We would wager cards, put them on a stack and then using quick hand motion to generate 'wind' that will overturn the cards. You get to keep cards that you overturned. There are variations to this game. But the idea is that you keep the overturned cards. At least that's how I play it.

My wife says she used to play with these cards as well. She and her siblings used the back of the cards as your normal playing cards. But I wonder... 1 'set' is usually made up of 21 cards (three rows of seven cards. I wonder how many sets she needed or had. :)

But sometimes, I keep the sets 'intact' just to keep them in a set. One set usually consist of pictures from a movie or cartoon. Any of the movie scenes and cartoons look familiar? Hmmm... I see... Automan. Thundercats. M.A.S.K. Conan. A-Team. V (the TV series about mice-eating aliens). Transformers. Star Trek. Rambo.

Besides cards, I also found some really interesting books.

One of Ian Livingstone's gamebook together with a book from the "Be An Interplanetary Spy" series
These are what I call grand-daddys to Computer Role Playing Games (CRPG). Back in those days, Role Playing Games (RPG) were quite hard to find. Even if you managed to get the books, starting a campaign may not be easy. So these gamebooks were simply heaven-sent!

The more complicated ones required the roll of dice. The simpler ones just resorted to optical illusions and puzzle solving. There were even a few of these adventure books based on The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries (anyone remember them?).

As we become more advanced and computers become more affordable, these books, unfortunately, have become 'extinct'. I don't think I can find these books in bookshops anymore. So sad... Then again, who wants to read these black & white books when they can have everything 'told' in full motion and coloured animation?

Oh well... It's back to cleaning my room again. I still have lots of things to clear and this weekend seems like it's going to be another weekend where I travel back in time...

I wonder how much all these are worth on eBay?

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Monday, October 16, 2006

Cruising along memory avenue

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I wonder...
I have a pair of shoes - left and right. But how come the shoelace on the left side gets un-tied so many times in a week? The right side seems to just stay... tied. Can't be that I walk more on the left side. Maybe smaller left leg? And to think I always tie the left side extra tight.
And yes... I use the lazyman's way when I take off or put on my shoes (no need to untie the shoe laces, just squeeze through la).
Why?

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Getting ready of the wedding includes cleaning up my room (for the new bed and cupboard). My room is a total wreck. Everytime I see news footage of bombings or hurricanes, I am reminded of my room. Yes, it is that messy. Heck, I won't be surprised if the National Geographic team discovers a new species of mold or spider in my room. Not that I'm that proud of my messy room.

The thing is, I keep lots of stuffs. I still have stickers from primary school. I keep toys that I no longer play. Yes, I still hold on to the notes my secondary school clasmates pass around in class. I think there is a medical condition to describe what I do. But to me, the past is what makes me the me that you know today.

Anyway, over the weekend, I took time out to try and clear out some of the stuffs in my room. First thing to go into the trash was my colleague reference books.

I don't know why I kept them since I never used them after my college days

I still keep them. But I realised that after my college, I have never actually taken out the books or even looked at them. So conclusion - waste of space. Can't really donate the books since some of them were on PASCAL and BASIC. Yes, I'm that old. I dun think PASCAL or BASIC is still around anyway. Next best thing - recycle. Yup, they will go to the 'old newspaper' man.

But the books were not the thing that brought back memories. It was the scribbling I did when the lecturer was going on and on about one thing or another. It was also the little notes and test papers that I had 'filed' between the pages. Yes, that's how I do my filing back then - put the relevant papers between the pages of the book (same subject, of course). Didn't realise I answered some business papers that good. In fact, if I had not seen in between my pages, I would have thought it was written by some business guru. OK, it's not THAT good but still good.

Next were the CDs and DVDs. Hmmm... They are all still good. So they are NOT going to the garbage bin. The problem? The jewel case (CD casing) is there. But where's the CD? Then there's the other problem. The DVD is NOT in the right case. Then there's another problem - DVD is the sleeves when I am vert sure it used to have a jewel case. Luckily my wife (we are after all, legally married) has offered to help me sort it out.
Thank you so much, darling...

Hmmm... What is in this box? What the...?

This is my jotter book... I jot, I scribble and I doodle. But I am no Leonardo Da Vinci.
Needless to say, I spent the next hour taking a ride in this time machine.

That is the gaming tips I got from classmates for the classic PC game - Ultima IV
And a few weeks back, I wrote about some cartoons I used to watch back in my school days. One of them was Visionaries. I still remember copying down the 'words of power' (not sure what they are called) and sharing it with friends in school.

I am no poet either...
Those were the days.

I called the furniture guys earlier this afternoon and they said that since this weekend is a holiday, there will be no delivery. My new bed will only come in month end. I'm ok with that. It gives me more time to go through the rest of my treasures.

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Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Another 80s flashback... TV series

From cartoon series, we move on to the 80s TV series.

One of my favourite TV series from that era was Automan. Who would not want to have a virtual buddy that came alive and had an assistant called Cursor that could 'create' anything such as a sports car? I also remember waiting every week for Street Hawk, the motorcycle version of Knight Rider.

Then there is TJ Hooker for police drama series.

As for science fiction, I never missed Misfits of Science. I don't know if anyone realised Courtney Cox (probably better known for her role in Friends) is in this series as well?

But I guess everyone's favourite would be A-Team. I'm sure many would remember A-Team and the tagline "If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team."

Thinking back... There is one thing I noticed about the TV series back then and the TV series we get these days. The series we got back then were really for entertainment purposes. There is NO need for it to be realistic or very logical. All that matters was it entertained the viewers.

If you turn on your TV these days, you get real-life, gritty and very logical series like CSI, Bones and Criminal Minds. I am not saying these are lousy series. In fact, I do watch them every week. But my point is... These series seems to show how viewers have evolved over time.

Now, murder scenes on TV have to have bloodied and mutilated bodies. Otherwise, it is not a murder scene. It is no longer about the good people helping the weak fight the evil men. Nowadays, it is about how the near-perfect crime such as murder was committed.

If you read the Wiki entry on A-Team, the series is proud to be known for NO deaths and killings in the show. No evil men gets killed. Maybe one or two deaths occur in the beginning of the show as the plot for the day. But other than that, no deaths. The evil men just get arrested at the end.

Could this be one reason why murder, war, rape, snatch thefts, etc happen so rampantly these days? Is it because we have become so de-sensitised that we now view deaths, rapes, war, etc as a normal daily occurance?

Anyway, I don't want to get too deep into this rather heavy subject.

If you enjoyed the 80s TV series I have mentioned earlier, here are some more links you may want to check out:

Street Hawk
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088618/
http://www.tv.com/street-hawk/show/2491/summary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Hawk

Automan
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084978/
http://www.tv.com/automan/show/1921/summary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automan

A-Team
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084967/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_A-Team

Misfits of Science
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088568/
http://www.tv.com/misfits-of-science/show/516/summary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misfits_of_Science

TJ Hooker
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083486/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.J._Hooker

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Monday, September 18, 2006

Flashback to 80s cartoons

Does the quote above sound familiar to you? What about this...


To measure change, we need to have a reference point. What better reference point that the 80s, when life, I believe, was simple and the world was still so innocent. "We are the World" was *the* song. We, as the world, cared for one another.

Ah, let us not talk about depressing stuffs on this blog, at least not today anyway. You can get enough of them in the newspapers.

Let us talk about the two quoted items above. They were taken from a cartoon series which I enjoyed very much. If I recalled correctly, they were screen in Malaysia back in 1988 or 1989, when I was in the final years of my primary school.

There were also other equally memorable cartoon series during that time. I remember faithfully following cartoons like Transformers, Thundercats, Jem and even M.A.S.K.!

Still wondering where the quotes came from? Well, they are from the cartoon series Visionaries. Anyone seen it before? :)

Fast forward to present day. We have equally good cartoons as well, though I have to say that I have not been able to really follow them closely. Among the more popular ones are Naruto, Bleach, Ragnarok, etc... Noticed they are all animes? Animes seems to be the *IN* thing. For more information on animes, you can check out this site. Oh, I intentionally left out names like Southpark, etc... I don't think they make a lasting impression like the 80s cartoon mentioned earlier.

Anyway, for those who want to take the short trip down memory lane, here are some sites you can visit...

Visionaries
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092476/
http://www.hannagram.com/visionaries/animated/index.html

M.A.S.K.
http://theflashsite.net/mask/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.S.K.

Jem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jem_(TV_series)

Transformers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers_series
http://www.seibertron.com/cartoons/index.php

By the way, in case you have not heard, Transformers: The Movie is coming in 2007.

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Sunday, September 17, 2006

The rolling 50 sen

Change is something we go through everyday, whether we realise it or not. We change in order to try and improve ourselves. This site has undergone many countless changes in the name of improvement. The most recent being just 2 weeks ago when I deleted this blog and re-created it again. A major change. But still, I believe I had to do it. I have done away with most of the graphics and have gone back to basics. There will still be more changes to come. After all,, the only time when we don't change is when we finally get our big, long holiday... 6 feet under.

Anyway, consider this as Volume 2 of my blog. I will leave the WHY for another day.

For now, I will like to share what I would call flashback... Or journey back to a distant past.

I was watching the television a few days ago when I happened to come across this interesting advertisement by Toyota. They were trying to sell the message that the VVT-i technology in their car can help save petrol and make the car go further (unless I got the wrong message).

It showed two boys playing will their toy cars. One, of course, resembling the Toyota. The non-Toyota boy's car stopped after a short distance but the Toyota boy's car kept going further and further... Going outside the house, to the road, etc...

Suddenly, I was reminded of another similar advertisement shown on the Malaysian television long, long time ago. I was surprised that I was actually still able to remember the jingle as well. I asked my brother if he remembered such an advertisement (cause maybe I was dreaming) and he said he recalled a bit.

The advertisement goes something like this... A 50 sen coin was accidentally dropped on to the floor in someone's house. The 50 sen coin then started to roll out the house, onto the road and then to many other places... The coin just kept on rolling and rolling...

And the jingle went like this "XXX membuat... Wang anda berganda-ganda".

Now, I think I remember the XXX. I will put up what I think is the answer in a week's time... In the comments section. In the meantime, if you think you know the answer, do drop me line at the comments as well. I would love to hear what you remembered about the advertisement and the many others that was shown back then.

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