Ija being Random

"I was checking your online banking account. It had $404 in it. What does that mean? Money not..."

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:43:00 +0800

“

I was checking your online banking account. It had $404 in it.

What does that mean? Money not found?

”

- 090620 Ija to The Husband

The Brick Wall

Thu, 14 May 2009 21:21:03 +0800

But remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Lvl 4

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 10:48:00 +0800

“We feel that you had too much spare time in the office”

“Didnt you realize that some of my emails were sent on Sundays, so they wont backlog on Mondays?”

The Husband’s office

Result : He has stopped working @ home. Heh.

T-7 days

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:03:26 +0800

till resignation.

no one is indispensable.

My better half

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:18:06 +0800

My better half

Wedding

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:14:10 +0800

Cant wait to live with the love of my life but as the date draws near, I cant help but wishing for this uber-romanticized ceremony to be over as soon as possible.

I’m tired.

Mom's Voice-Activated Banking Service

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 07:59:49 +0800

My mom has the best banking privilege in the world. If she needs to transfer something, instead of lining up @ the counters or ATMs or use Online Banking like normal folks, she’d use her voice-activated banking order that goes like this:

“Ija, please transfer RMxx to account xx”

P/s: I have access to her Maybank2U. Her TAC goes to my phone. I originally registered it for her so that she could be more independent but that plan backfired somewhat.

The First Poem Written for Computers

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:27:00 +0800

<>!”#
^”`$$-
!=@$_
%*<>~4
&[]../
|{„SYSTEM HALTED

For you somewhat cybernetically challenged, it goes something like this (using the proper cyber-names):

    Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
    Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
    Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
    Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
    Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
    Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH

Source : http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~ddd/poem.htm

Hello my pretty :)

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:38:52 +0800

Hello my pretty :)

Firefly website Firefaylz (fire-failed-z) @ am 25.08.2008

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:35:29 +0800

Firefly website Firefaylz (fire-failed-z) @ am 25.08.2008

Astro VAANAVIL withdrawals - dangerous stuff

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:40:54 +0800

Astro VAANAVIL withdrawals - dangerous stuff

It's almost middle of August already?

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:11:00 +0800

Gosh time sure zooms.

I still need to :

register for IELTS (will use money from MMU’s Deposit + RM30)
scrape enough money to save RM500 in ASB for July’s savings even if I have to eat grass for the next 18 days

sigh

After more than 5 years of smooth sailing on XP, the dreaded...

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:54:00 +0800

After more than 5 years of smooth sailing on XP, the dreaded Windows Vista blue-screened me after only 2 weeks of usage (read : workdays only, less than 9 days in total).

No 1 resolution 2009 - Get a Mac

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:14:12 +0800

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

- Harry Truman

FYP Update

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:52:17 +0800

After a devastating interim presentation in Trimester 2, the groupmate and I sat down and got crackin’. We mutually decided that he’d be doing all the dirty works (documentation, research, compiling, presentation slides) whilst my job would be nothing but purely coding and designing for the next 3 months.

In the end, we nailed it!

Gotten ourselves an A- each. That’s amazing, considering the fact that we screwed up really nicely during the first half of the project.

Whee!

"Experience shows that a large fraction of problems “solve themselves” when you find your..."

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:09:17 +0800

“Experience shows that a large fraction of problems “solve themselves” when you find your typo.”

- RailsSpace Google Group Main Page (http://groups.google.com/group/railsspace)

In Love with Photoshop

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:01:51 +0800

My new job requires me to design software and web application UIs on top of doing minor programming works. Good enough. After all I’m pretty comfortable doing something that I’m really familiar with.

Here’s a kicker - I’m expected to use free tools - eg GIMP.

Crap.

Dont get me wrong - I think it’s a decent, free raster image editor. But after spending 11 years with Photoshop (starting from Photoshop 3 when I was 15), I’m accustomed to having 101 shortcut keys doing things that I expected them to do. I did almost everything graphic with photoshop - starting with a website banner, to menu images, to photo editing, to image enhancement, to photochopping (super-impose) KT Tunstall’s head on top of Halle Berry’s Storm costume. Looking at Photoshop UI makes me feel like home.

The boss asked me to cut the umbilical cord and learn to use open source products with Photoshop shortcut keys plugin (GIMPshop). I tried it for a day and whenever I couldnt execute things fast enough due to its steep adaptation curve, I sat at the pantry and did some serious Sudoku to keep myself sane.

I know where he’s coming from - he cant invest the company’s money in something that costs the same as a new laptop when I’m the only one who knows how to use the damn thing. Truthfully, it’s not that I cant do things with GIMP - I just cant do things fast enough. It’s akin to asking a chef to chop things with a slightly blunt knife.

To solve this problem, I downloaded the trial version of the software, will keep it running on my 512MB office laptop for 30 days and buy a copy of it as an investment after it expires. After all, I’ve been using it for years and will keep on continuing to use it even if I dont work here anymore.

So here’s the BIG question. How can I recoup back the purchase price?

I have a big feeling that I may go back to doing tonnes of freelancing.

Bye bye Saturdays.

Pay It Forward

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:52:04 +0800

One of the thing I vowed to do after earning my own paycheck is to put aside at least 5% of my gross salary for charity. At current salary rate, the amount is sufficient to buy me 3 and a half paperback books every month. Now, some people think that it’s outrageous for me to spare some cash for charity when I’m swimming in study debt myself. Sometimes I do wonder what was I thinking when I drafted my budget for July - Dec 2008.

Two emails arrived at my mailbox today, saying that two of my small microloan contribution have been disbursed. I was happy. Too happy, in fact. My small pocket money can be used by people; mainly women in another countries to lift themselves out of poverty. How amazing is that? We as lenders dont get any profit of course, and I dont really mind if they dont pay back anything.

It feels really good to help out sometimes. Even if it requires me to cut a latte or two, packing my own lunch and walk to/fro work once a week.

"Love people and use things - not love things and use people."

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:27:33 +0800

“Love people and use things - not love things and use people.”

010708

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:53:52 +0800

010708