Some of my friends came over my computer and started asking me what's the small locking icon found on the system tray on my desktop. I had a tough time explaining to them so I'll put my knowledge into writing. PGP is a software designed based on the public/client key.

Let me start from the beginning of cryptology so that my dear readers can grasp some basic concept. Okay then, so here goes. Suffice to say that in order to send a message across the net unencrypted it would look like:

This is a message
However, if I decided to decode it, it might look like this:

Guvf vf n zrffntr
This is known as ROT13 encryption, one of the most basic encryption widely used as jokes & pranks. What it does is that it will take each of one character and replace them with 13 letters away. The good thing is that it is self inverse as there are only 26 characters in English letters.

There are other more substantial codex in existence but I'll concentrate on the basic ones. Based on ROT13, 13 is the key to encrypt and decrypt a message. By building on complex mathematical equation, PGP was designed with a simple method of doing message encryption.


PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy, which isn't a very hyped name, if you ask me but rather the process behind it is simple to comprehend once you have overlook it's basic complexity. When one running a PGP software for the first time, it will take into consideration of:

1. Current time
2. Current date
3. Computer processor
4. Computer name
5. Various other random elements like the number in registry and such

By taking the above number, PGP is able to make sure to generate a key that no other computer would have even within the same time to the milisecond. That will ensure that there will never be a duplicate of the key. PGP will then run through a complex mathematical process to produce:

1. Public Key
2. Private Key

Public & Private keys are much like the 13 number key as discussed as above but they go one step further. You can give anyone a Public Key. Anyone can use the key to decode the mail to be sent to you. During transaction, there is no one except the person with the Private Key can decode the message. It'll look something like this:

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: 6.5.8ckt http://www.ipgpp.com/
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=1/aE
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----

Basically it contains the same message as above but with complex encryption, no one can read the text above and only the person with the correct Private Key can decrypt it to read the message. For additional info on other methods of cryptology, you can view my next blog.

I'm late for the morning and as I came out from the traffic light, there it was! A long caterpillar lineup pile of nightmare for every driver called traffic jam laid in front of my eyes. And it's not the tiny teenee ones where you can squeeze through. This is a major one where you wish you have a large high powered tractor that you can mow these bastards out of their misery!

Yes, these mindless working class drivers have no ilking idea that what they are doing are causing a grief at the back of them. All they are is to fill their eyes of the event that's in front of them that doesn't concern them!

And it's always the same, if it's not a roadblock, it'll be road construction and even worse, it could be an... ACCIDENT. Yes, that's the past time favorites of the Penang driver that loved to watch. An accident that doesn't concern them but they do love to watch the event. You know, those stupid drivers who slowed down to watch an accident. These people are the ones that are too curious for their own good. These people whoe never thought of the traffic behind them and how most of them need to rush to the office to work.

You know what could be done? Yea, I got a couple of great ideas:

• Immediately set up a police speed trap operation. Catch the car that's going less than 40kph. If those fellas have something to complaint, let them do. Let them know that it's wrong to slow down to watch IF they are not even helping at all.
• Use a large canvas to close up the accident scene. That way, cars that are moving cannot see what's going on behind the canvas and probably just go ahead.
• Put up an industrial granded crane dumbbell. You know the ones with has an iron weight that used to knock down walls on the building? Use 'em to crush those cars that slow down. Then if the traffic went bad, use the same weight ball to swing the cars away.

Try something more of a high tech:

• Detonate a small thermonuclear bomb in the accident vicinity. Not only it'll vaporize the curious bastards who caused traffic jam, it'll be doing a good community service so that to make the road driving runs faster and safer.
• Initiate an Ion-Cannon like what you see in Command & Conquer. With satellite tracking and such, it's easy to see to spot car slowing down to watch. Then the operator can initiate a pure energy beam that vaporized those stupid drivers.
• Actually an easy way is to use the same techniques as above to destroy the accident scene, that way there won't be anything left to watch by the time the stupid drivers arrived at the scene.

Don't you just wish the government would pass for something like this?

So what is the meaning of life? Talked about with a friend once and suddenly she asked me about that. Since it's been a boring evening, decided to have a go on a healthy conversation.

Me: "Well, I guess the meaning of life is we go around procreating like rabbits, eat like pigs & work like horses..."
Friend: "Don't you think there are more than these in the universe?"
Me: "I do, but then again mankind always like to imagine that they're created for a purpose..."
Friend: "I just somehow guess that there must be more than life that we're led to believe."
Me: "Well, Zen-speaking, perhaps the meaning of life is to know yourself..."
Friend: "What would that accomplish?"
Me: "I don't know. Perhaps reawaken ones self, seeing all universe in one unique perspective allows oneself to attain a higher consciousness, like Nirvana. With that perhaps we can truly know what our true purpose in life is."

There the conversation hangs and the group started to puzzled over my bizarre explanation. And suddenly thinking about that I had a couple of theories:

What is the meaning of life?

• Play a pivotal role in balance. Somehow humankind progressed and it upset the balance. And our role now perhaps is to bring balance to the force world.
• We're just a byproduct of evolution.
• Wait until a supreme being called God comes down from the Gates of Heaven give revelation to us.
• To figure out the meaning of life

Updated: Another friend saw this, SMS me with the message: "your meaning of life blog. *shake head*"

As the completion meter slowly reaches the end, I took up our new prototype PDA and played around with it. It’s quite fun actually having new integrated technology in it and it’ll definitely be the new flagship for our product line. People gives ooohs and aaahs when they saw the unit. And for the sake of ornamental, the device doesn’t even work properly and these people already have positive idea to get the PDA. And then always, these people will ask:

"How much is it?"

As if I’m a sales person for the damn unit. Got tired and I asked them to refer to the Sales. And I was surprised that the majority of this people asking this very same question are from Technical Support. I guess stupid people exist everywhere! So, back to the update, it’s still slowly copying the new firmware into its ROM. And then the unexpected happened:

"The system encountered an error and need to shut down to protect Windows file system."

And poof, every goes up in smoke! ARGH!

A scrawny looking agent came to my cubicle and was jumping in eagerness. He is a desktop support that handles a case with a PDA in it. To be exact, it's our PDA that has the connection problem with the desktop.

"The customer has a problem with our PDA!"

I've checked the report and found the problem only confined to the desktop. Connecting the PDA will get the system to show the BSOD. Alright time to lock and load. Called the customer and guess what did the customer said:

Customer: "Who are you?"
Me: "Well, I’m the support for PDAs & Projectors..."
Customer: "Why are you calling me for? I want to talk to the desktop guys!"
Me: "Well, perhaps I can help..."
Customer: "You can help me by telling that agent that handled this case to call me back!"

And customer slammed the phone. This is good. I send an email back the scrawny agent and he jumped back to my cubicle. He was clueless as what to do. Well, since he’s new I’ll give him a little leeway. Just brief him what to do and perhaps get the onsite technician to give me a call if the problem cannot be solved.

Fuminari on the other hand shook his head. Usually he condemn stupidity more than I am.

I don't know whether it's my luck or it's just not my day. I went out in the morning cruising along the road where I met with a jam. As I cannot wait as I need to get to work quite early, I give a signal and waited. A blue Nissan Sunny went by and there was a 3 second interval where there was no traffic. As I move out the line, there was a motorbike honking as we nearly traded paintjob. Then the fella stop and makes intimidating gesture. And guess what I did?

I saluted him in a way to say sorry.

Shocks, now why would I do that? I don't know. I guess I'm not looking for a fight this morning. However there was once a stupid Indian guy actually cuts into my line and when I need to cut out, he stopped and looked at me with a scornful gesture. I give him a nod 'what's happening?'. However, the driver took this as an insult and walk out the road shouting overhead. I walked out, look at my car, and then his and ask him what's the problem. Realizing he was not going to win any arguement, he went back to the car and drove his wife off from the road.

What a lousy day it has gotten me into.

Oh man I really have to relate to dear readers on how tempted I am to push the button to subscribe to Brinkster's new professional account, which supports for ASP with a mere USD $3.97 which roughly translate to RM 181. Thinking over I filled in the form with my name, address & contact number plus my credit card account. I then clicked submit but then Brinkster came back with the error that my billing address has not been filled.

Thank god for that to happen! I nearly put in RM 181 for 1GB or space with 30GB of traffic! I mean this month my spending has already cross serious borders and I'm not going to put in cash for the account. Anand has been tempting me with all that he can muster such as "your own webspace", "your digital life" & "www.jaselee.com" but I had that blocked out. No, I shalt not fall for such temptation. If Christ¹ can do that, then so can I!

Much like Gandalf holding his staff on the passage of Midas Trinith upon encountering the Balrog, "YOU SHALT NOT PASS!" was the word I kept on running on my head. Yes the temptation was great. Yes the offering was great. But I must prevail for the sake of my camera. Anand is still clawing his way into my head to get me to get the page.

Seriously I was thinking, what am I going to do with the page if I do subscribe to it? All I had was this blogspot and it was good enough. As for pictures, I'm not going to put in a full fledged 1600 x 1200 resolution with a thumbnail with it! I just want something small on the web that can be shared and yet enough to make an impression. Brinkster still has the education account which I can run my ASP codes and they are very small. Till now I only consume less than a megabyte on the Brinkster space.

So what gives? None. I think I have to sit this one out for the moment.

¹ Sorry for devotees of Christ, just put in for the sake of pun

The other day I went and caught Jackie Chan's newest show New Police Story. And there's a lot of stupid show revolving in the show that I think it's appropriate for me to list it out:

• Police are supposed to be highly trained officers to watch for traps and ambushes. If such team was unable to do so, they should have assessed it at the beginning to bring in better trained officers such as SDU.
• How fast can an enemy grab a hold of a police officer ON ALERT and ARMED and then has time to tie them up above the warehouse?
• The bad guy can play eight figure around the police and yet not been seen. This goes to show how bad training they must had.
• At the end, the whole gang was foiled by only an officer, a technical support & a fake cop?
• Not only that, they have to deliberately call their parents to console their children? That's not the standard police process! They will call in IF and ONLY IF there is a hostage negotiation.
• An old cop can put a handcuff on a rope and then slingshot downwards without burning his hand?
• I give up. There are so many lousy loopholes in the movie that it goes on forever if I continue to list it down...

In short, watch this show at your own discretion, but be forewarned that it's warped more darkly into a drama rather than an action movie as his previous offering. You only see minimal Jackie Chan's stunt over here but at least there are some fighting sequences which draw your attention.

"What the hell is wrong with the webpage?"
"ARGH!!!"
"I cannot do my transaction!"

And the list goes on. This morning when I arrived I was surprised to see more than 10 messages left for me. All all related to the server that I've been working on. A quick zip to the server room and I find the whole server rack is ON FIRE! No, not literally but the lights are blinking crazily and I know deep down that I've landed on a pile of shit. Shits to be more exact. The server next to it was working fine.

Turn up the monitor and it gives some garble picture. I'm getting panic by the second! I checked at the back and find that the monitor is connected to the server properly. Checked with the nearest engineer and he said it was an issue with the monitor. He gives a slight bang and the monitor returns to normal. Phew.

The horror crossed my mind was ten-fold! I imagined that the director would like to see me for a server down, and how the angry mob of application user will be banging with pitchfork and fire upon me. 10 seconds later, the monitor turned on and the screen displayed the most dreaded message of my life:

"Windows 2000 Server Message: It is safe to turn off the computer now."

What? The entire ruckus for nothing! I looked side and the lights have stopped blinking. I tried to shut it off but it wouldn't. Oh, now the shit hits the fan. I yanked off the cable for 30 seconds before connecting it again.

Then I saw the mob standing outside the server room with pitchfork & fires staring at me.

I shook off the imagination from my head. As I put back the power, the server switched on and after 5 minutes of loading (yes, a real server DOES load that long), finally I can see Windows login screen. I assessed it, run it, bang it and it runs fine. For now.

I went through the log and found out some idiot actually initiated a shutdown early in the morning. Too bad I cannot see who shuts down the system. Once I did, I'll hang him up on a crucifix and burn him down with the mob with pitchfork and chanting the song of death!

I didn't realized that the Star Wars Trilogy on the DVD (Episode IV, V & VI only!) has recently been released to the market! How I miss the years where Luke Skywalker fought a faceless enemy, only to know that it was his father and the girl he loves/adored was his sister (ops!). Anyway, the show was great, as a testament of the director George Lucas'es creative endeavor that has spawned fans around the world.

I have to say that I was disappointed with Episode I. At least the fight with Darth Maul saved the show at the end but Episode II was a total let down. Here we are letting to know the powerful Darth Vader actually went though the 'sissifying' scene. I don't blame Natalie Portman or Ewan McGregor but Hayden Christensen has only the director's eye because he was tall! Hell, I don't mind if George takes Leonardo Dicaprio, at least he does the romantic scene better than this oddball.

So here we are with the DVD collection as a collector set meant for the old school Star Wars fans such as yours truly. I think I'm going to get it. Oh boy, and there goes my PS2 for the next weekend...

Semoga Kuasa Sentiasa Bersamamu, Selalunya¹...

¹ A Malay sentence equivalent of: "May the Force be with you, always..."

Now in my previous post, I did mention that most of our customers are stupid and has no ilking idea on the product they're using. However, where there's a Yin there's always a Yang. The opposite will always exist to maintain balance of the universe. Today I've seen the other side of the field. It seems that one of our prodigal customer has purchase a wireless PDA. Problem is that we only sell wireless PDA in Singapore but never in Malaysia. This Malaysian went over to Singapore just to purchase the wireless edition.

However, problem do arise when the PDA breakdown. We are unable to satisfy his request since Malaysia does not carry the product locally and if he needs a replacement, he need to get to Singapore to get the unit exchanged.

This has caused the customer to rage over the phone shouting and swearing that our company cheated him. Well, this is a point well defended as we said:

"Sorry sir, this is an illegal order. We can help you through the phone but we cannot furnish a replacement order."

And the customer slammed the phone yet again. Somehow I cannot keep the satisfaction out of my mouth for those smart-assed customer. If he wants to get the unit from Singapore, he should have imagined the consequences if there are needs for replacement. However, come to think of it, I don't think he's too bright at all. A brilliant person would have figured out there'll be a problem because the same device was not advertised in Malaysia. Ah, the irony, as we recognize the smart-ass customer in fact to be an idiot by the end of the call.

Now, although I've managed to get rid of the majority bugs in the program, all of a sudden there will be some other bugs, carefully hidden, camouflaged in sequence of codes, ready to jump out on me and cause me aneurism the whole afternoon. It's been this way since Monday, as I've updated the code but the new codes just simply contain too many bugs and junks. Well, you know typical Micro$oft code, when you patch your program to fix the old bugs, new bugs will somehow appear.

My localization officer is scratching his head now as how all these bugs appeared. I've already told him not to grandeur a particular project, for the management drones love nothing but to take it to the next step and market it to everyone as their own handiwork. Even they place the correct credit, they'd still be the one known for initiating the project. And when the shit hits the fan, they'll run for cover, and push us programmer onto the incoming crap.

I told him I can write a better code if he have shifted to a better programmer (*ehem* yours truly *ehem*). However, they believe a Mat Salleh (a Caucasian) can write a better code rather than a Chinese guy who spend his holiday writing assembly codes. Of course luckily I don't have to deal in assembly as it's already been too long since I've touched the subject. I’m getting rusty in assembly so I rather not delve into that.

So, I’ve managed to complete most of the basic elements of database functions, such as listing, reading, writing & updating but many others like advanced search & multi interface logon coding still need a lot of time to be figured out. Getting too sleepy for using my brain above 4%, so I’m practically slumping when the localization officer still asked me to do additional stuff...

The other day, The Dog, messages me in our internal communication line. Not only it's repulsive and bothering but it's traumatic even to type a message to him. So I...

The Dog: "Hey, have you played Doom 3?"

Quiet... followed by a couple of days later.

The Dog: "You didn't answer me, have you played Doom 3?"
Me: "No"
The Dog: "You know I got this Doom 3 DVD."

Quiet...

The Dog: "Do you want it?"
Me: "No"
The Dog: "Have you seen the graphics before?"
Me: "No"
The Dog: "Oh okay never mind then..."

I guess he got the message, so he stopped messaging me. The thing is that it is not only me who's been treating him this way. Many other colleagues who was abused by him treated him coldly and hesitated to even lend a helping hand. To tell the truth, I'm a very easy-going person but if someone betrayed my trust... that'll be the end of it. Let me recount the day he lose my respect for him.

Many years ago, when our Call Center is still in the infancy stage, there are a lot of experimental process trials. Of course there was a point where The Dog was the team leader while I was an agent in the team. Then one day he disabled our phone, and caused us a lot of trouble to call out to customer in events of follow-up and has caused many dissatisfactions.

Me, G & A, three prominent agents stood up and asked The Dog why was our call has been disabled. Did we do bad? However, The Dog took this as an insult to challenge his authority. He even call me up, use abusive language and make several fake accusation that G influenced me to stand up against him. He rounded us in a room where he asked the assistant to talk to us. The assistant is clueless on what's going on.

Finally when he walked in, he said that our call was disabled because he wanted to test how our result is if our calls are disabled. And when G asked him why he abused/scolded me earlier, his reply was:

"I'm sorry, but I was at a bad mood just now because my drawer was stuck."

Oh what a load of crap! A person that I've previously respected totally diminished my loyalty to him. That's from where it started that I never take his words seriously anymore. I was on a rampage while the assistant, our tai-kar-cheh advised me on doing no such matter. And luckily, the manager saw this and took me out of his team and placed me to a new experimental queue.

And since the incident where he couldn't get me on the phone several time, he made another accusation to tai-kar-cheh that she influenced me not to speak to him. She openly retorted and scolded him back:

"You think I'm too free to do such thing? It is perhaps YOU will do it."

And he kept quiet ever since. Since then, no one will go near him. Besides Anand or Fuminari, both of them were never in the direct flame of The Dog, but they're very well aware of situation and get any chance to stay away from him. There was even once that Anand nearly join a separate team for developing web tools for our department, but knowning The Dog's in charge, he immediately withdrew his position! Kudos for Anand!

Fuminari just came back from Formula Nippon last Sunday and he was very proud of the photo he has taken with a bunch of crazed photographers. He was checking through his posting and found that the charts went off the roof! Like a proud father, he was showing me the chart as a particular photo can fetch a high statistics for his website.

I'm checking out others as well, like TeeToo's Fotopages & Pbase. For more funny stuff, check out his self potrait onto the mirror in Fotopages. I've laughed too hard that I swear it has caused me gas the whole day!

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support."
Customer: "Hi, I have a problem with notebook here."
Me: "Can I have the serial number?"
Customer: "Okay, it's H for Holland..."
Me: "H. Okay..."
Customer: "Okay, it's D for Denmark..."
Me: "D. Sure..."
Customer: "F for Philippines..."
Me: "F for... eh, wait a minute, did you say F for Philippines?"
Customer: "Yes."
Me: "Will that F substitute for Finland as well?"
Customer: "No, F for Philippines."
Me: "Er, you mean P for Philippines?"

And I thought our customers are stupid technically, they have to be an imbecile academically as well!

Yesterday was quite a nightmare for me as I realized we have lots of problem with Project Three. I found out the codes that I'm working on is outdated and the localization officer didn't even send me a new one. When I confronted him, he realized his mistake and send me a new copy. And guess what, it's been two weeks since our old code has been running fine and now by sticking in the new code, we won't have the efficiency. And there's more bad news, the management drones want this to run by next week!

Not only that, both old and new codes have problem with the database whereby the old programmer put in date/time as TEXT! Every seasoned database administrators or programmers know that's a deathtrap in programming. If you do that, you'll have lots of problem in the future in case the change of formatting, change of programming style and such. I wondered what does the programmer think when he decided that.

And the Neo came over and asked why am I involve in this project? I should be taking calls and such, not involve in this localization issue. That should be handled by a separate team because they are paid to do this. The truth is that the team themselves have problems doing the localization!

Me: "Sir, this is a notebook, PDA & projector support..."
Customer: "Ah, okay... my monitor is giving problem..."
Me: "Sir, this is a desktop machine. You have to redial to the desktop line."
Customer: "Yea yea, and then the monitor gives a lot of funny colors as well."

There is a saying in chinese: "au-huik" (vomit blood) after talking to a customer who's not listening.

Customer: "Er, I see this message, tap on the screen to continue... what should I do?"

Oh God, please deliver me off from the stupidity of humanity!

Customer: "Why my screen can look like that when I tap that?"

ARGH!

Checked my TMNet account as stated by Anand's post and found that indeed my bandwidth has been increased from 512 to 768! That means there's a 256 difference with 1.5 times improvement! No wonder downloading web these past few days has been a breeze and there was practically no lagging at all!

Tried a few stuffs like BitTorrent download and find that the speed can increase from a mere 49kbps to 80 kbps! Wow! Now that's really something commenting on TMNet! Although their website is still sucky but what the hell! As long they provide services with nothing to complain about, I don't care if their website looks something off Marilyn Manson's album cover.

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support..."
Customer: "Hi! I was wondering because I think I might got the wrong number..."
Me: "Yes, how can I help you sir?"
Customer: "You see, I'm having this server here, where do I call?"
Me: "Ah, the number you should call is 1 800 xxx xxxx"
Customer: "Thanks! You've been a great help!"

The call was closed and I felt glad. God bless this customer!

Another relentless waves of idiotic customers flooding through our telco set.

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support..."
Customer: "Hello, I've got a desktop..."
Me: "Right... did you know you have to push option 2 when you dialled the toll free?"
Customer: "Yes, I know. But no one picked up the line."

*sigh*...

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support..."
Customer: "Hi, I would like to know how much is the desktop..."
Me: "Are you aware that you're calling to Technical Support?"
Customer: "Er, no."
Me: "Where do you get this number?"
Customer: "From the website."
Me: "And while getting this number, you realized that the Sales number is displayed on top of the page all the time?"
Customer: "Really? Because I've called and no one answered..."

Don't you just hate it when some idiots called in within a day of receiving the unit?

Customer: "Hi, I just received my unit."
Me: "Okay, can I help you with it?"
Customer: "How do I connect the battery to the system?"

I feel like slapping the customer! Here's a system that comes with an illustration manual and the idiot didn't even care to look. The first thing he did was to call Technical Support! What has gone wrong for today? This customer deserved to get stabbed multiple times with a one-inch ice pick!

Me: "Thank you for calling technical support..."
Customer: "I'm frustrated with this product!"
Me: "Okay, may we establish what is the product we're talking about?"
Customer: "I tried to switch it on but sometimes it can be switched on and sometimes not."
Me: "Uh huh..."
Customer: "And you know how frustrating this is?"
Me: "Uh huh..."
Customer: "Aren't you going to say anything?"

Aiseh man, now this is very typical. I've asked what kind of product he is having but noooo, he just got to vent his anger first, saying what is his problem not THINKING FIRST whether he is talking to the right person or not. This is the main problem with customer, STUPIDITY is always the main drive of our calls.

Me: "Well, may I know what product you're having there?"
Customer: "What's that got to do with anything? You're technical support right?"

Another misconception. They think all of us are one almighty agent who can do miracles. A recent review with one of my ex-boss has led to a question why am I so being negative to the customer and not helping them?

Me: "Let's think for a moment. If you have a child who will ride his first bike today, what will you do?"
Ex-Boss (EB): "Of course I'll give him a good advice and let him ride it out."
Me: "Knowing so that he might probably fall and get hurt?"
EB: "That's a process everyone has to go through."
Me: "Even though you can hold him in events that he will fall?"
EB: "Yes. He has to learn."
Me: "Good. Now you understand why I treat customer as such."

Customers are like spoilt brats who's been pampared by the all saying: "Customer is always right" that he/she will go at nothing but to come to us for every little problem. Very rare we can see them trying out & learn by themselves.

Well, I've been working so hard for the past 4 days that I've forgot that today is Friday. Yay! So thus the title says it all, OSIF - Oh Shit It's Friday!

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support..."
Customer: "I have this notebook... " (in point which he does that stupid Asian-trying-to-speak-like-American/Australian/British accent)
Me: "Can I have the serial number?"
Customer: "xxxxxxx"
Me: "Er, that doesn't seem like a our standard serial number."
Customer: "It is! It is too!" (this time he's shouting like a kid)
Me: "Okay, in that case we have a secondary code, which we call the express code, do you have them?"
Customer: "I don't have the notebook with me!" (now sounded like crying)

Now this is what I hate the most. Customer is having a notebook and notebooks are supposed to be portable. What is the point of getting a notebook if you're not going to have it in front of you when calling the technical support? Sometimes I really wonder what goes through their thoughts at that very moment.

Me: "Alright, in that case perhaps we can have the additional serial number first before we proceed?"
Customer: "Why can't you help me?" (now sounded like American/Australian/British accent again...)
Me: "Well, we would like to try to resolve this in one issue. If you have the computer in front of you and together we can do this troubleshooting. That way, we can immediately pin-point the issue and we can resolve them as soon as possible."

Somehow I think that explanation didn't convince him.

Customer: "I purchase your notebook!" (now sounded like a kid)
Me: "Yes sir, I understand, but it wouldn't be appropriate if you only tell me the problem and we cannot try the solution immediately? And moreover, without tag, you might have to explain to the next agent all over again of our troubleshooting step. The easiest way to do this is to have the notebook in front of you."

I still think he still cannot get it through his less compact neuro-pathways. Finally the customer give up and will get the notebook first before start to troubleshoot with us. *sigh* Already our phone advice customer to have the system in front of them first before pushing the appropriate option. Well, with his accent, I don't think he even understand what the voice message instruction is talking about.

Another stupid customer case...

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support..."
Customer: "I got a scanner here and it is spoilt."
Me: "Er, okay, may I know which unit you've purchased it with?"
Customer: "It's a desktop."
Me: "Oh okay, perhaps you can check with the..."
Customer: "Look, it's my Genius scanner that's facing the problem, not the desktop!"
Me: "Ma'am, you've dialled to the notebook, PDA & Projector support..."
Customer: "Can't you even help me?"
Me: "I would but I'm not trained with the specific product..."
Customer: "Can't you find the website for me?"
Me: "Eh?"
Customer: "You guys are supposed to know the website to get the contact number or something..."

Now this is totally bullshit. She is aware that we can get the contact number from the website and yet this stupid customer still want to call over to the technical support, push the wrong option and asked us to do a simple task for her. I'm not going to play nice for this type of customers. Since they are not going to use Google, I think it's fair for me to educate them to use a search engine.

Me: "Ma'am, I'm not sure of the website's location. Do you have the address?"
Customer: "If I have the address, do you think I call you?"
Me: "Er, considering yes, if you do dial to the correct option..."

The customer got frustrated and slammed the phone. Another victory for the Technical Support agent to wade the stupidity off from the customer. What's the point of having a scanner with a manual if she's not even going to reach for the correct number? Just because she's purchased a unit from our company doesn't mean we can fully support her. Well, I don't expect these type of customers to understand, considering their stupidity is party responsible for their action.

Phone: "Hello, may I speak to Mr. Lee?"
Me: "This is he."
Phone: "Hi, I'm calling from eCam. You have left us a message to call you up when the new Panasonic FZ20 arrived?"
Me: "Wha.... What? FZ20 arrived already?"
Phone: "Yes, Mr. Lee. The shipment will arrive by this Saturday, and the estimated price is between 2K to 2.5K."
Me: "Oh... Er... Well... Er... I..."
Phone: "Are you alright Mr. Lee?"
Me: "Er, yes yes, I'll come to see the product by this Saturday?"
Phone: "Sure, Mr. Lee. Bye." *click*

That's it! The new Panasonic FZ20 has touched the Malaysian shore! Yahoo! Seemed that the camera is alleged to have 12X zoom (the longest for prosumer camera), 5 Megapixel & a built-in hot-shoe. Being a semi-SLR camera, it has lots of great feature built into the camera. Can't wait till this Saturday to take a good luck into the little monster...

I didn't know I can have fun by crashing a car in a traffic jam and cause a congestion all over the rush hour! Talking about fun shit, I literally have to cause accidents, crash, fires, and various other unwanted scenario if I want to win a course over Burnout 3, a new Playstation 2 game that has been raving lots of review. Gamespot actually give it a 9.5 of 10!

Anyway the game has a standard racing but there's a catch. Unless you play dirty, you're bound to have less points to get gold medals. So, you might want to drive your opponent over the edge, tailgating him, psyched him out (yes, by causing the crash near the opponent can cause the driver to panic and drive offcourse!), near miss & etc, you'll earn booster which will cause your 'NOS'¹ to build up to catch up those other drivers if you fall back too far from the game.

However, the main highlight of the game is to crash and cause damage to the surrounding environment! Trust me, I never know a game that by causing crashing is fun! Since I've played like 20 over courses, I can really put a thumbs up in this game. Ladies, trust me on this, if your boyfriend complains about your driving, this is where you'll proof to him that by driving your style, you can kick his ass in this game!

¹ NOS stands for Nitrous Oxide System Inc, a company that sells car engine boosting equipment for drag racing. However, there are no NOS in this game. I'm using the term as there are no other terms used for this type of car boosting equipment.

Well, goes to proof that Micro$oft goes down again. Their Micro$oft Windows Media Encoder 9 against Divx has not produce any good result but quite otherwise. I've waited for like about 2-3 hours for the video to encode and when the final product was pretty disappointing. The edge wasn't as sharp as DivX and it takes a larger file size.

So, thank god I don't have to sign my pact with the Devil. Quite the contrary I still prefer Divx despite the fact that it wasn't that user friendly and accessible, but hey, at least it's not a Micro$oft!

All of a sudden, managers, directors and all the high ranking management drone swarmed over me to get an update on the project. I was stunned for a while before I realized that was a high profile project, because it involved a lot of sensitive group like Sales. Some of them went through the length to call me all the way from Korea to check on my status of the project.

Oh shit.

Now, the server I'm operating on faced some critical issue, it's low on hard drive space! Imagine, with a high end dual Xeon processor 1.8 GHz with 1 GB worth of memory, the main hard drive contained only 4 GB of HDD space! Not only that, we have another hard drive, 120 GB but we won't receive it until the end of next month!

Not only that, most of the management drones want changes. One fella would want it to run this way, the other would want it to look that way. *sigh* You just can't please everyone...

Been crazy trying to cramp some of the high quality DVD music videos such as Do As Infinity & Boa however met with some failure with the Divx quality. It doesn't actually par with my expectation. So I tried something crazy. I made a pact with the devil. Yes, I resort to Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.

So how does it fare? I was surprised that WMV was able to conjure up high bitrate and the quality was as good as Divx as well. Not a surprise since both of them derived from MPEG4 compression algorithm. Well, and some of the colleagues said I was crazy to encode the same file for a few times just to get the correct amount of quality that I wanted.

Well, I ain't that picky am I?

I'm sure many of you have been using some software player to play your MP3s. I'd guess that the most usual player would be Winamp. I find Winamp is easy and intuitive. It always has been the same quality since the first Winamp was developed. Somehow when I use the latest version, I find that it has just too many function and it's hogging up a lot of resources.

That's why I'm still using the old version, known as Winamp Classic 2.91! Many guys came over and complained: "What? You're still using that old junk?"

I don't know why but I kind of liked the old player. It plays MP3 like it should and it take very little computer resources. The new Winamp on the other hand gobble up your resources like a hog.

How would you feel if you have witness an accident that happen just to be in front of your eyes?

I couldn't stop, so I swerved to the right
I'll never forget the sound that night
The screamin tires, the bustin glass
The painful scream that I heard last

Yes yes, Pearl Jam's Last Kiss has a profound experience for me but it wasn't like that.

You see as I was driving, there was an old bicycle was moving on the left side on the road. A motorbike on the right suddenly cuts it and didn't realize the bicycle was on the way. They knocked and crashed on the road. For the first time I saw a motorbike flies as it twisted in the air like an acrobatic somersault. The only time I saw this was in the movies!

Realizing that the accident took only 2 meters from my car, and all of us are going like 60km/h (the bicycle was already on the scene when my car and the motorbike are approaching), I turn hard to the right. Car tire burned while I safely maneuvered from the accident scene. See, I didn't even stop to watch. If it were to up some Ah Bengs driving, they would have probably stopped to get the number plate of the motorbike.

As I left the scene, I saw the motorbike and bicycle rider got up to look around. Well, nobody's hurt that badly after all. And the whole commotion caused another traffic jam where uneducated bastards need to stop to watch the whole scene.

Well, today's kind of relaxing, as there's not much call to our queue. Folks, you have to remember that today is Monday and very suspiciously quiet.

*Twilight Zone theme playing at the background*

Anyways, today been busy with lots of stuff I need to do, mainly Project Three which has caused a lot of hair raising bosses started to question about the workability of the project. These management drones are nothing but a bunch of blood suckers that wants to claim the glory for themselves.

Ah, I don't care about glory. Now I've been concentrating on doing encoding for the DivX files. Quite fun, as I can encode most of the DVD based MTV into DivX, which translate into crisp and clear audio visual only second to the DVD quality. In fact, there's a setting which could eliminate noise far more better than the DVD quality itself.

Just testing this new riddle scripting that I've been doing on Brinkster. So, here goes nothing...

There are 7 girls in a bus, each girl has 7 bags, each bag has 7 big cats, each big cat has 7 small cats...how many nipples are there in the bus?

Note: each cat has 7 nipples.

Answer:   Source

Can you solve it?

An old friend of mine is interested in a girl. Now, as usual unlike any West Side Story, the girl has a boyfriend. What else is new? Now, the girl is actually flirting with a friend of mine and they flirted for more than a month. Wow! I really respect a guy that can flirt for such a long period. So as the flirting goes, the girl suddenly got the wind that the guy's really serious about her. And guess what she said?

"I love my boyfriend and I hope you can understand it about this."

This friend showed me this message and I was wondering. Why the girl continue to flirt my friend if she has no intention of going for something more? And why she goes defensive like "I love my boyfriend" all of a sudden? I really don't understand this type of women. If they're not interested in the first place, why all the flirting in the first place?

Told him to dump this stupid girl because she's obviously in a playful mode. Oh yea, this friend's interview is tomorrow for the sound engineering job that he's been getting. I wonder how he is going to cope with that. Told him to suck it up and ignore the girl. There's still a lot of girls out there that's way better than this one he's been flirting.

Just saw Carlito's Way directed by Brian De Palma before his more recent lousy movies...

The movie was just great, showing off Al Pacino's redemption to start afresh in the world of mafia. The show was great in terms it shows the connection of all the characters that makes the show much more interesting. Carlito's love life, his past, present all merge up to one single spectacular event that really keep the plot so interesting. Anyone that have watched Godfather will enjoy this one movie.

I never realized that it was good. I watched this show from what John Travolta's character Gabriel Shear said in the movie Swordfish commented about Al Pacino. Surprisingly this show didn't disappoint me at all. However, the rest of my family didn't agree much with me on the show.

Doom III, was derived from Doom series, is a computer game that has put a small company called ID Software into stardom. John Romero & Adrian Carmack became celebrities overnight and it has shaken computer gaming industry to it's core. It was the most long awaited game and there are countless fans who pre-ordered the game. Computers were upgraded instantly due to the fact that gamers would like to get ready once the game has been released.

I wasn't a believer. In fact, I never believed in any hyped game. Besides, the game sucked. Have you ever tried playing this game? You do nothing but shooting anything that moves. At least if the developer is serious about breaking the mould, they should do something out of the ordinary like far sight engine like Serious Sam or revolutionized scripting gameplay like Half Life. So, what does Doom III has to offer? I tried very hard to look into the game that has been in development for 3-5 years. And guess what I have found? Nothing. Zit. Nil. Nein.

Why is that so? I realized that the only stronghold of Doom III is it's photo-realistic skin. Well, that isn't catching anymore. When Doom I or II were released, it was caught the world by storm with excellent 3D. Now, every first person shooter game is 3D. Some of them have superior graphics and gameplay, Unreal Tournament is one fine example. Others have great storyline. If the developer would like to make Doom III something that people would remember, they definately have to try harder.

Want to see how a gaming company make games that gets better everytime? Look no further than Blizzard Entertainment. They single-handedly created Warcraft series, Diablo series & Starcraft. And remember, every of their sequel breaks the ground from the earlier series, and perhaps they do even more. I always have respect for a company that always take consideration to the true spirit of computer gaming, not something to show off your hardware.

How would I rate Doom III? I'll give this one a thumb down. ID Software should have just learn their lesson that people just don't want the same old game with newer engine. There's just no fun in shooting everything that moves anymore.

Well, I guess today can be considered a lousy day. Aside from my little misadventure with the phone (yeah that device we talk into that the customer seem so eager to call) & IT monkeys has banned our comments, I sensed there are more in store for me.

Throat is getting dry and I sensed phlegm coming. I think I got to rest a little bit more. Luckily I got Fisherman's Friend stashed in my drawer.

Today actually mark some importance as I need to do some outside work. Some idiot over the sales has promised customer that our prototype PDA is coming soon. So before the Sales get negotiated, the customer would like to test the screen working under the sunlight. As you people know, a typical LCD doesn't work well with sunlight beamed to the screen. You can see nothing over the screen if exposed to a higher degree of light.

Let's see how this goes, got to present the report to the marketing people!

p/s: Come on people, think! A technical support agent is supposed to help the customer, not helping marketing people doing outdoor experiment! See how nice guy I am? *booing at the background*

I think I should be awarded as the most forgetful person of the year. Now, that's the third time I forgot to log out my phone from the Ready Mode. Queen Leader is now closing in, holding my tail by her crustacean claw as she demanded to know why I still fail to have such issue. Seems that I'm the only one affected by this and not even the new agent has this issue. Just what is going on with me?

I'm only a quarter of the century and I'm already getting senile! That means all my previous remark saying I'm old is getting true! It's getting depressing to find this little problem.

I told Queen Leader I stand by my mistake and willing take responsibility for such matter. And then she send an email to the manager to inform of this little issue. See what I said about abiding by the book? She cannot resolve this little issue that is not stated in the operating manual! The only way that she knows what to do is to report this matter to the manager.

I have to hand it to the IT monkeys. There are always things that they want to make the employee's life more miserable. And what they did this time is to ban comments off the Blogger. Yes, these simple minded primates went ahead and banned comments box at each post. There is no problem to view the comments, but in order to enter a comment, the particular page was banned.

And you know what is their testimony? We're trying to protect the company asset to make sure company's resources are not abused. You want to say abuse? Abuse means using the company resources to do hacking, downloading MP3, watching pron (I realize it's not the correct spelling for I wouldn't want this post to be tagged by any filter trace) and many other damaging results.

If they want to talk abuse, what about employees watching news over the internet? Or checking cinema showtime, joining forums and such? Isn't that abusing?

Sometimes I wonder what harm could a few bytes of words do?

Whoa, just got off from the phone. Another idiots on the phone really reduce my lifespan now, considering how stupid this case goes...

1. Customer having a projector
2. Two notebooks cannot show display
3. One notebook can display

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support. How can I help you?"
Customer: "I'm calling for a projector problem."
Me: "Okay can I have the tag?"
Customer: "I don't have the tag. Now I got three notebooks, one is able to display and the two can't."
Me: "Hmm, sounds like a notebook configuration. Can you check the configuration?"
Customer: "No, the notebook is not with me. All three belonged to my boss."
Me: "Er, okay, but I think it's the configuration iss..."
Customer: "No, you don't understand me. Previously it is fine, now it's facing this problem."

Now this is a typical problem that has been plaguing all of our customer. Previously found no problem, but all of a sudden, the problem surfaced.

Me: "In that case, we need to look over the configuration..."
Customer: "I said it's your projector problem. You need to send your men over!"
Me: "Er, but we do not have engineer for projector. We can dispatch a replacement..."
Customer: "What? You don't have engineer! Hah, in that case I'm going to call my friend not to buy product from your company anymore! I'll complain to my manager about you."

Fine. Do what you want you stupid bitch. Already you're too shallow to understand our level of support and you want to keep argue all your know about your petty little problem.

Me: "Well, what about your IT, perhaps I can talk them through the troubleshoot..."
Customer: "We don't have IT department here!"

And the phone slammed. Another one stupid customer trying to justify her existance because she was unable to understand anything higher than her own self. She let go her frustration just because her IQ wasn't high enough to determine what's right and what's wrong.

Early in the morning, a friend of mine message me over the terminal. So she said she need some incident report on the case she's following up, so she send me an email. I've been waiting for nearly 5 minutes but the mail still didn't arrive. Clicked Send/Receive but still haven't got any mail. I've checked with her and she confirms that my name is correctly spell. Well, just to be sure. You can't be too sure these days, considering there are another 2-3 person with the same name as mine!

As I realized last time I was under some stupid investigation over my mail box and it wasn't solved since. My email will take longer to receive than a normal employee. And it..

*ding*

Okay my mail has already arrived. Later people.

Got some new prototype PDA to test, still some beta operating system, so it hangs about like 2-3 times per tap. Many Technical Support agent gives ohhhs and ahhhs but so many of it's sub-components are not ready. Technically speaking, the hardware is ready to go, but our software developement team is still finalizing the operating system. So for the time being, they're happy to look over the hardware even the operating system is crappy!

Our Levell 2 agents started to re-audit on the PDAs that the team is having, so me and Fuminari have to put in the complete report in regard on the devices we're holding. *sigh*

Early in the morning in the office, I was stopped by a long time colleague, who's now working on a separate queue supporting ANZ customers. We did a lot of catching up to do since it's still early and he suggested lunch. Hmm, no harm in that, so I agreed with him.

I cancelled my lunch date with a few colleagues, and many have cursed me behind my back. I did offer my explanation but an event like this, I was treated like a betrayar. *sigh*

So went to lunch, talking over to the guy. I was so into catching up all the old stuff when my colleague ushered me into a stall. And guess what, it was a vegetarian stall! Not only that, Tuesday was a vegetarian day for him! Argh, I was conned!

Lucky for me he didn’t do any insurance selling or anything like that. It was cool. I ordered one big bowl of rice with vegetable-made prawns and he had fish. So finished my lunch and walk back to the car and realized there was a serious grumbling.

I was hungry again before even get near to the car.

I was pacing up and down. Looking over the cubicle, the machine gives a soft hum. On the screen displayed some progress but I was getting excited. I quicken my pace and then look over again. A colleague went past noticed my condition and make a quick remark:

You’re like a father who’s waiting for his first child.

In a way it is. The computer’s progress still far from complete and it left me to wonder about the result. Still hopping on my seat, I tried to do other things but the matter at hand was holding my attention too great for me to concentrate on other things. I tried to go to the toilet but my mind still aimlessly will go back to the computer.

Oh boy! Oh boy!

After it goes for more than 20 minutes, the computer gives a wonderful remark. It says process is complete and I start gleefully looking through the result. I tried running through the list and find no problems. All files are accounted for.

Phew, I removed the sweat from my forehead (just a pun, in an air-conditioned office, there’s no way a normal person will sweat) and took out the DVD+R media. This is the first time I’m burning a DVD media...

It's amazing what a cup of coffee can do.

There I was, just finishing my lunch, pull up to my office and begin the next half of the working day. Halfway talking to the customer, I felt light headed. I tried to recall what I have eaten but realized it was only rice and prawns. It shouldn't be a problem since I rarely sleep on the afternoon. What the heck is going on? The vision turns to blur, the back to normal focus again. In and out. Then the unexpected happened, my vision turned to black & white. People's voices begin to sound like an echo and the room is spinning all around me.

No shit.

This is bad indeed. I still have my consciousness but the problem continue to pound on my head. I rose from my chair, staggered slowly to the pantry. Some other employees were staring on the condition I'm in. I just don't care. I arrived at the pantry, dropped my hand on the machine and start inserting the coin.

It felt like an eternity before the cup was dispensed. I took the cup, take the nearest seat and begin sipping the coffee. After for about like 5-10 minutes, everything returned to normal and I finished the coffee. My vision cleared, everything in the room turned to normal as before. As I walk down the lane and returned to my seat, it felt great again.

It's truly amazing what a cup of coffee can do.

Alien Versus Predator, also known as AvP was released on worldwide theaters everywhere. And that was one and a half week ago. I only manage to catch the show yesterday with a friend. After watching the show, I was quite impressed with the continuation of the Alien & Predator since it was release on comics & video games but somehow the show lacked of a solid background. It totally disregards what has been shown on the past series. Perhaps the producer would like to market the show for the mainstream unlike for a die-hard fans such as yours truly. Here are some discrepancies:

• They said the Predator comes back every 100 years to Earth to do battle. If that is the case, what are those Predators doing when Arnie & Danny Glover busted their ass in the first two movies?
• How come there are weapon stowed on the chamber when the last predator on the previous battle will be taking the weapons with them? Or what happens if the predator initiated the self-destruct sequence? (See 5)
  
• How come the rocks of the temple are still solid even though there are countless battles in the past?
• There was a scene where the Predator has fallen and he initated the destructive sequence, how come, the temple still stays there although the blast is quite effective as a thermonuclear blast? (see Predator for reference)
• How come, of all the things, the Alien Queen can withstand a thermonuclear blast, and them climb through a 2000 feet of fallen land & rubble? But she cannot acid the stupid chain when she was fighting the human/Predator duo?
  
• The predalien at the last scene, it will have no match against all the Predators on the ship. Then why bother showing? A real fan will realize this will never work but it continues to give hope that director Paul W. S Anderson would perhaps fix all these error, IF there is a next installment.

Basically that's the thing which makes AvP a non-classic. For fans who have saw Aliens 1-4 and Predator 1-2, forget the movie. However if you have the need to watch the movie, put down your expectation to the lowest level. For people who don't have any idea what's Alien or Predator, watch it at your own discretion. I have no advice on this.

Another story written, since my friend was asking for more... Hope you guys have a good laugh. Happy Sunday for tomorrow is work day. I hate Mondays.

Want to know what happened to the terrorist that taken hostage over a company on Friday? Take a tune to my friend's page (he just gave me a permission to write on his blog, which I really did!). Without much further ado, please click on this link!

Once upon a time, I was so bored at my chair that I stood up and asked Jobe for some fun website to see. He was looking at his screen laughing before he look up to me. Then he introduced me to Happy Tree Friends. And that's where the carnage starts.

I viewed the clips. The first one that I saw was Eye Candy and it surprised me beyond my imagination. There it is, a cartoon filled with happy-happy 'cartoony' characters that will always encounter violence that will result the end of their lives. And somehow, I loved watching them. I would imagine all these action has taken into the customer's shoe as they encounter their gruesome death.

And not only their deaths are fun, but it's filled with violence that you have never thought of. With the encounter of some character like Flippy, the scene could be quite bloody. Certainly not recomended for children or people with fear or violence. For Technical Support agents (Fuminari, Anand, Jobe, etc) that were constantly abused by the customer, it seems that the show actually entertain us rather than gross us out. After those revolting scene we showed to the Customer Service, most of the girls are not intimidated at all! Our guess is due to the customer abuse. After we found our Holy Grail, we all lived happily ever after...

It's one of the days that I've been waiting for the whole week. Friday is one day that you shouldn't miss. Being the last day of working, it has it's up and downs. Most nightspots will be filled with people and cinemas are guranteed to be full. What else, Friday is also a communion day for the Christians, but somewhat was changed to Sunday, the day of Sabbath. That's why it's called Good Friday.

And it's always a good Friday for me. It always has and always will.

Yahoo! Just got my Gmail account yesterday based on the invitation by Anand... Heard it caused quite a stir by offering 1 GB worth of space for emails alone. As the tagline says, Don't Throw Everything Away really makes interesting to figure out about this. Even Microsoft Outlook 2000 will only offer 1.2 GB of storage in your own internal hard drive! Not sure of Microsoft Outlook XP/2003 though, but I think that should have improved.

However, I'm sadden to the fact that I was unable to get my nick jaselee. I have to use jaselee.ys in order to use my username. So keksim to find out the fact. *sigh*

Yesterday just caught Kung-Pow: Enter The Fist. It's a very unique movie in a sense where the director & actor, Steve Oedekerk took an old B-grade Chinese kung-fu movie and merge it together with him inside the show. It's funny how everything mixed up as they are supposed to be. The most impressive part is every actor & actress lip-synching are so matched to the English spoken that it really threw me off the chair. You can see in the movie Babe that some lip synching wasn't particularly effective. I can say the show's fairly fun without any serious plot. Just remind yourself that you are watching a slapstick comedy and you'll be fine.

I remembered Steve Oedekerk from the movie Nothing To Lose. That's where he directed and came in as a cameo as Security Guard Baxter, where he showed off his dancing skill during his duty patrol.

Went out to lunch just now and forgot to log out my phone again. Luckily Fuminari was sharp enough to check my terminal and found it was still on ready mode (Ready Mode is where a customer's call can come in anytime!). It's a lucky that he covered my ass during this event, if found by Queen Leader, there goes my butt again.

Don't know why getting so forgetful these days.

*ring* *ring*

Me: "Thank you for calling Technical Support..."
Customer: "Hallo? Hallo? Where's Lim?"
Me: "Excuse me?"
Customer: "I just spoke to Lim and the line got cut off."
Me: "Er, this is the support for notebooks, PDAs & projectors..."
Customer: "I don't know lar, I just spoke to this Lim."
Me: "May I know the model of the computer you're using?"
Customer: "It's a desktop..."
Me: "Sir, you've dialled the wrong number. It's option 2."
Customer: "Oh, okay."

It's surprising how people has become. He was talking to the correct fellow and after it got disconnected, he dial the same Toll Free and push another option. How stupid a person could get?

*ring* *ring*

Customer: "Hallo? Hallo?"
Me: "Can I help you?"
Customer: "Aiya, I want to check this quotation."
Me: "What quotation is that ma'am?"
Customer: "This notebook got problem..."
Me: "Okay, can I get the tag?"
Customer: "Well, my power adapter went haywire."
Me: "Er, okay, but can I check on the system first?"

Customer then hang up the line. What was the customer thinking when she decided to call?

Suddenly I remembered there was this song Iris by Goo Goo Dolls. The song was featured in the movie City of Angels. It details an angel, Seth (Nicholas Cage) has fallen in love with a doctor, Maggie Rice (Meg Ryan). He decided to give up 'angel-hood' to become a human. To cut the story short, Meg Ryan's character died and Nicholas Cage was left to mourn her. It's kind of sad story because an angel went through so much for her only to find her died in an accident much later.

It was a surprise that the producer is able to find the song Iris matches the whole show completely. It explains how the protagonist's point of view and how he felt the love as an angel.

And I'd give up forever to touch you
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now

This part is where the Angel is staring into the eyes of Meg Ryan and thought she saw him. The truth is that she was looking at that particular direction without knowing that he is there (when he is still an angel).

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
'Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

He starts to yearn to become a human to love the Maggie. Standing above the ledge, he tried very hard to tell the creator that all he wanted to do was to become a human.

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

He realized that the world isn't perfect and was pretty upset.

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
And you bleed just to know you're alive

The song practically lives in my mind till now!

*yawn* Still sleepy over last night's fascade. Woke up late at night and continued reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Woke up this morning and went to fetch my friend while reading the text during my drive to her office. She was scolding me like hell because I totally disregarded the traffic to read the e-book. Well that's me, a little eccentric over the book, but I managed to navigate through the rush hour. And why they call it a rush hour when it's a jam?

A friend of mine called me up with loud music of D12 - My Band playing loudly at the background. He thanked me for lending my ears last night. Then I asked him where he is, he said he was in his house and his girlfriend was nagging him like hell. That's why he was playing the music loudly. What a strange behavior. He is trying an interview over the KL for some sound recording engineer. I wished him luck and got in to my office.

A friend called me just now and she wanted a ride to her office because currently her company is doing some renovation, and they don't have enough place to park. Right now a few employees take turns to drive to work because such limited parking space. Being a nice guy that I am, I agreed to it, and asked her what time's her working time.

She said it was 0800 hour. Aiseh man, damn early. Well, at least there's a plan. Updated Fuminari through SMS, since currently it is his bowling session. *yawn* The tiredness overcomes me. At least tomorrow is already Thursday... and you know what that means? It's another day before Friday!

Then a call came in. Another aquaintence just quit his job came over to sembang¹. You know lar, if guys come by, definately have to offer some beer. Talking it over on his future plan, I find his situation is a pity. This guy was working in a Taiwan company for more than 5 years, and now the management wants to retire his job function as a system analyst because they do not need that much of a system analyst anymore. And guess where they put him? They transferred him to do clerking work. He already voiced his concern over the management but they turned to deaf ear. So the only honourable thing for him to do was to quit.

¹ Sembang = chatting in Malay language

I had another lousy day where I went out the lunch only to come back to find that I've forgotten to log out. What a stupid honest mistake escalate to my Queen-Leader. And guess what she has in mind: "Please tell me what you are going to do about it." This is a total degenerate. Heck, I can become a leader like her and ask my men if they can do anything about it if they encounter a problem.

Queen Leader is one control-freak which has no idea to her surrounding only does everything by the book. By the book my ass! She wants to know everything there is to know and yet she doesn't have the brain-power to process the information that has been handed to her. I sometimes wonder why a person like her was left in charge of such a great team.

Since the morning stomping, I survived. I suddenly realized she told a lot of bullshit to the new agents too. Too bad I'm a nobody to tell her such things. *sigh* Life's just like that...

1st of September: Already the 4th year working in my company. Look at my face at the mirror, getting... older. Sat on the couch, relaxed played a little PS2, found that the clock was only 3am. *sigh* Cannot sleep so continue playing until...

HOI!

I jumped up. Found that I've fallen asleep on the main hall and my parents asked me to get up. My game was halfway paused so I continued playing. I looked out at the window and realized the sky was already getting brighter. Quickly glance at the clock, found that it's already 7:15 AM!

I'm going to be late!

I have a presentation to do this morning. Fuminari and me has been cracking our head on how to explain some of the survey done by some internal department team in terms of customer satisfaction. The problem is that, only 1 cases out of five is caused by our problem, however, majority of the issue is caused by:

• QA team inability to spot defective unit
• Customer is too stupid that he complained us being too technical
• Customer demanded something impossible

No only that, the Queen-Leader has been stomping on my detail and keep saying that I should do this & that. Fuminari keep shaking his head while I was plummelled to a pulp. It's a good day to die indeed...