Don't Panik!!! - Eugene's Delicious Blog - Don't Panik

XP, ATI (or AMD) and NVidia...

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:29:00 -0400

Over the weekend, besides processing photos from two weddings, I also was busy getting other stuff done as well as getting a new old PC built for a good friend. Like I said earlier, I've never owned a pre-built PC since I was 17 and probably will continue to do so even though Dell's tempting me but I figure a custom built Media Center is still going to kick-ass. Anyways, I decided to stick with XP for this build cos I didn't have an extra Vista license lying around but also to "try" ATI's (AMD actually) Radeon 3450 which has great reviews for its price/performance. As it turns out, it didn't like my Dell 2405FPW on the DVI port and only partially liked it on the analog VGA port. Worse, it didn't like the E207WFP either and the only monitor it liked was the 2007FPW. Enough of that kind of crap. I drove out and got it swapped for an NVidia 8500GT. I've not encountered a video card that doesn't POST on DVI before so for now, I'm sticking with anything NVidia. The Radeons can go to hell for all I care. Simply unacceptable.

After that little fiasco, the build proceeded so quickly, I mean Windows XP SP2, applications, patches (over 107 critical patches shows how old XP is!) and all that complete in just 2.5 hours

Quad Core Time!

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:03:00 -0400

You can't have enough of RAM so, likewise, you can't get enough of cores!

Was at Tech-Ed SEA

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:19:00 -0400

I really forgot how bad KL traffic at 7;30am was and is! Have been spending the last four days at Tech-Ed South East Asia over at the KL Convention center. And traffic was really bad! Anyways, here are a few photos. I didn't bother bringing my camera plus also after last weekend's off-road jaunt, something whacked my truck's air-conditioning fan out of commission so no cool air if the truck isn't moving and on Jalan Damansara, Mahameru and Tun Razak, moving is defined as snail's pace!

Been busy

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:08:13 -0400

I know I've not made any updates for over a week but there's been a whole lot of activities that just leave me totally zonked out by day's end. Good thing is that I finally got my wife's PC up and running. Everything's sort of installed and in place except for a few minor utilities like DVD authoring software and the like. Then came the big bathroom leak incident. For poor workmanship (gone are the good old days), the master bathroom of my condominium started leaking into the unit below. We've been using the second bathroom for a week now and that doesn't help my weariness as I've got to boil water to get hot water since I don't have a water heater installed there.

Loading durians for the trip home!

Last weekend was Sanofi-Aventis' Corporate Social Responsibility trip into the SEMOA villages and we did eat lots of durians and donated some needy supplies. And I had to rush to deliver the photos for their marketing department within 48 hours! Oh well, I still have got two weddings to process, a photobook to complete by next week and another wedding shoot the week after!

Yes we ate all that!

New Workstation!

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:08:57 -0400

Well, yesterday I headed down to LY Plaza to my favorite IT retailer for a bunch of parts. I was aiming to wait till end September to get this upgrade but an unexpected disaster happened. Anyways, so, here goes upgrade phase one. Phase two is smaller and is not so obvious. If you noticed I have two Intel Core 2 CPU boxes in the photo. The one below is a Quad-core CPU which will be going into my main workstation but not exactly so soon. Why wait? I've two weddings to process so that takes priority and I need to stabilize the other workstation first. Choice of parts is nothing extraordinary. Just reliable parts to get the job done. After all, tech refresh is every 18 months anyway

Bunch of new parts ready to be assembled!

New architectural marvel or just a simple heat sink?

64-bit Vista install...

A Dell worth getting

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:14:30 -0400

Normally, I'd never ever buy a fully built PC for myself (or wife) from anybody - HP, Acer, Apple, Dell, you know. This is probably the second PC I can consider getting other than this HP TouchSmart model that looks quite snazzy. The XPS One doesn't count because it's not available in Malaysia yet. What's not to like? Price is one thing but why can't Dell Malaysia remove all the useless stuff (monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse) because I've got better and sell just the unit? Secondly, it maxes out at 4Gb RAM. Come on, this is 2008, we need 6Gb and 8Gb! Anyways, pricewise, it gets pretty high (I spec'ed mine up to RM4,968 with a 2.5Ghz CPU) so again, I have to pass on it. However, it looks like Dell's waking up a bit and PC manufacturers are begin to make snazzier boxes. The new Latitude E-Series looks good

What's on my iPhone?

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:30:00 -0400

Yes, it's just over a month since I got rid of my crappy symbian-sucks-big-time Nokia N80. The 3G iPhone has been released. Yes, I'll be getting one in November. Anyways, for now, the crap Maxis network occasionally hangs my iPhone -- you know it's Maxis cos if you go into Airplane mode (no connection to a RBS - Radio Base Station), the problem goes away. In the meantime, besides all the usual stuff I use on the phone (contacts, etc), my primary other use is for my shoot calendar, currency converter (when buying stuff from US and HK), and of course, my collection of all the super inspiring, super extraordinary photos from the super group of workshop people at the Louis Pang From Ordinary to Extraordinary workshop in Penang. For INSPIRATION, what else?

This is no drill...

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:39:15 -0400

The day I show up in the office fairly early (earlier than my normal time anyways) and first thing was I saw crowds of people everywhere and for the first time, the Semasa Sentral security personnel deployed at various locations. I asked the guy assisting illiterate people at the season parking boom gate (yes, people cannot read a sign with 16" letters stating "Season Parking Only" and attempt to get a parking ticket where there is no dispenser!) what is going on. He replied "api-lah" in a very nonchalant way. So anyways, I head into my parking and assume it's all a drill.

When I get back up to the ground floor to change elevators to go up to my office, it smells a bit strange and there was an actual fire it seems. So anyways, I was a bit lazy to walk to Starbucks so I head over to Gloria Jeans, get myself a iced coffee and waited out the crowds of hard-working people queuing up to re-enter their offices. And all I could get was this blurry photo with my iPhone.

Me, myself and I

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:17:14 -0400

A little something about myself... got this from Mark's & Louis' blogs...

1. Four jobs/career aspirations I have had:

- Technical Consultant (DEC/Compaq/HP)
- Web-developer & Sell my site to Yahoo/Google/Microsoft for millions (ok, not the sale part but WA's doing quite nicely)
- Owning a B&B somewhere on a nice NZ beach front
- Full-time photographer (yeah, right... but getting there )

2. Four things I wish I had done earlier:

- Saved more instead of spending a lot of my earlier cash
- Take the plunge and take up the job opportunities when they came
- Done more weddings (photography I mean)
- Gone to Israel when my class-mate invited me

3. Four places I have been (in some way, my favorite places):

- Middle-earth New Zealand
- Spain
- New York, New York!
- Beijing/China

4. Four countries I would like to visit :

- Israel
- African Safari (after a cousin's honeymoon photos, I'm hooked)
- Machu Picchu
- Antarctica

5. Four of my favorite dishes/snacks:

- Wu-Tau-Kau-Yoke
- Any Pasta
- Satay
- Assam Laksa

6. Four of my favorite desserts :

- Oh, chocolate, light, dark, milk, creamy, any chocolate...
- Culver's Frozen Custard (Menu)
- Haagen-Daz or Bulla ice-cream
- Tong Sui

7. Four sites I visit daily:

- Mine, friends and relative's blogs
- The Star online
- DPReview.com
- Engadget.com

8. Four software applications I cannot live without:

- Firefox!
- Adobe Photoshop CS3
- HTML-Kit (web development)
- iTunes

9. Four favourite drinks

- Hazelnut latte, extra hot, lightly frothed with low-fat milk (Starbucks)
- Cafe Affogato (Dome)
- White Coffee, iced (my fav is the one at Yut Kee's or Bentong Town hall)
- Kahlua with milk, shaken, not stirred

10. Four things you may not know about me:

- I'm a dessertarian... I just love dessert.
- I can sweat straight out after a shower or in an air-conditioned room!
- I can cook pretty well (Asian, fusion, western)
- My biggest challenge is I don't believe I'm good enough most of the time.

Putting my feet up at Bagan, Burma

One Card to buy them all...

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:13:03 -0400

My Visa card of course, not the 1 Utama ONECard. Anyways, just reflecting the ever reducing consumer purchasing power in this country. Can you believe that's over RM150 in that shopping cart? If you told someone in the US to spend $150 in groceries, they'll end up filling the cart till it overflows. I know I do not buy some of the cheaper stuff but then, a lot of our supposedly "cheaper" groceries are made up of rather poor ingredients like artificial coloring, flavors and all sorts of stuff. I also do not like ice-cream made with palm oil. It makes washing-up difficult but I associate the word "cream" with diary products... and so happens that where I did my undergraduate degree turned out to be the US Diary State! Abundant land of milk and cheese, and oh, ice-cream too!

With all the recent price increases, I'm actually concerned. Really concerned. I'm so blessed that generally, everything is still normal. I can still drive around wherever I want, go for a movie (yeah, yeah, I know I watched ONE movie in ONE year), go find some nice makan place or still buy the stuff I want (this does not include the Lust-list items... Mark you know what this is!) so things are still alright. With my staff however, I feel that they're really feeling it. Imagine having lunch and having to pick only two vegetable dishes at an economy rice stall here in KL Sentral and NOT getting a drink because it'll blow your lunch budget! My goodness! I just couldn't tolerate that for someone in my team so I picked up her drink and lunch tab. Looks like time to get back to arguing with HR for more pay increases due to the recent price hikes.

Pumping Pain!

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:19:13 -0400

My first time at the pump after the price hike... Yup, that's how long my full tank lasts after a fill-up (~500km) which I managed to do hours before the hike.

iPhone in the House!

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:53:22 -0400

Yup, I know there's a 3G iPhone around the corner but hey, for about 900 bucks, and to replace my Symbian-Sucks Nokia N80... it's a no brainer! I can't believe I stuck with that Symbian crap for almost 2 years! My next phone will be another iPhone but that's for another time Now, time to play around with my new phone... in the meantime, you can head over here for our Medical Hike trip photos.

Don't Panik! on Safari via Wi-Fi!

Went Away

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:57:00 -0400

There's been no updates during the past couple of days as we had our 2008 Cell Group retreat at the lovely OMF Bungalow in Cameron Highlands. There's also this big tender process thing going on and I'm awfully tired. There's also the silly flu bug going about the office and I happen to catch it. Insufficient firewalls there!

Had a couple of hundred pix over the lovely weekend with SS4 and the Hsu's at Camerons but with the work week's tight schedule and the personal need to rest, please be patient. This evening, when I returned to my little box in the sky condo, I had a slight feeling of Deja Vu... yup, exactly one week ago, I did the same thing when I returned from Louis' workshop in Penang. After two weekends away, it really does drain you physically although you do get energized in many ways.

Louis energized my vision to see light and shadow and to believe I can do it. The last weekend, Peter energized us to see evangelism as an integral part of everything we do; our lives, our actions, our words and our deeds. Also, for me I think our Group needs to return to the center of it all, the Cross at Calvary. Acceptance. So what of schedules, punctuality, expectations and needs. Christ accepted us for who we are and what we are. The heart of the human problem is the heart of the human. And Gods treatment is prescribed in John 3:16.
He loves.
He gave.
We believe.
We live.

For God
so loved
the world
that he
gave his
O N E A N D O N L Y S O N
that
whoever
believes
in him
shall not
perish
but have
eternal
LIFE.

No entries for a couple of days...

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:09:00 -0500

Not that there's nothing happening but more like there's not much time. I have a Photo Book to complete and OA Medical record photos to process. That's in addition to planning the medical trip on March 20th plus a bunch of new things at work and home to look after. Hang in there!

Valentine Flowers

nospam@example.com (Eugene Khoo) — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 19:50:00 -0500

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.
~ 1 Chronicles 16:34