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This morning, I came in at 8, ready to get some work done before meeting some clients at 9. When I sat down at my desk, words to this effect greeted me on my computer screen:

“Disk read error, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart”

Boy, this sure looked like the beginning of a bad day. So I did what it asked me to and restarted… a couple of times, and it still came up with that message. Apparently my hard drive decided to die on me today, and all my projects and important files were on it !!!.

The funny thing was that on the train this morning, I was thinking to myself, “I should really backup my important files and put them on the network share …”. So I opened up my computer case, looked at the HD, cables, power etc, tried switching cables to see if that was the problem, and my HD just sat there silently, apparently in a coma.

What ensued was a hectic day. First, I tried calling the clients who were supposed to meet me, and found out that one of them had the flu and couldn’t make it, but nobody could reach the other person. She ended up getting here, and had to leave straight away. Felt quite bad about that one, but what could I do? I sent her an apology email not long after that.

Next, I ran around the place trying to find the local support person to see if I could get a replacement HD, and if she had any ideas on how to fix my problem. I also needed to find a temporary computer to use so I can finish my projects that are on a deadline. Unfortunately, the two people I was trying to reach weren’t in until much later. So I then went around looking for a computer that I could use to try and setup my old HD as a slave; I didn’t care if the HD died, but I badly needed the data on it.

After I found one and was trying to hook up my HD, the tech support lady came along and gave me some advice. She told me to try what I was doing first, and if that didn’t work, she’d try use some recovery software, and as a last resort, send the HD in to the factory for data recovery. Thankfully, after connecting my old drive as a slave, I could still see my data, and quickly copied every important file to my shared network drive. Soon after, I managed to get a temporary development machine until the new HD gets in, so my important project won’t have to be delayed that long. Phew, that was quite a scare.

This was an important lesson for me. Ever the risk taker, I assumed that since the equipment was new, nothing like this would happen to me, even though I’ve had a HD die on me when it was only 5 days old, knowing full well that hardware problems could happen to anyone, no matter if it’s a brand new computer or an old one, and despite what all my instincts have been telling me to do, I ignored them and it nearly cost me a ton of work. This sure taught me to always, always, always x 1000 have backups of your work somewhere, because you just never know when your drive will decide to quit working.

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I’m not an engineering grad, I’m actually a Computer Science grad, so I don’t have these rings that all the engineering graduates have. Two of my best budies whom we shall call W and P, are actually engineering graduates, and I’ve recently encountered some funny things related to these rings, that brings up my engineering ring conspiracy theory.

Last week, W went to buy the ring. I asked him why, and he told me that he lost his last one. This is his 4th ring since he graduated, the 3 previous ones got lost. I also found out that P also has lost his ring twice. This of course made me take jabs at them as to why they would spend $30 for a ring that would get lost anyway; they might as well give me the money so that I could spend it for them, wouldn’t that be a better idea? :). I argued that if they kept losing the ring, then it must not be that important for them, and thus just learn to live without the ring. I also suggested that if it indeed keeps getting lost during winter, when the finger shrinks due to cold, to get 2 rings: 1 for summer and 1 for winter.

Alas, W ignored my pleas and went to spend this $30 and buy another ring. Fast forward to last Sunday, and he showed me his finger without a ring (we went snow tubing on Saturday), while also saying something about ‘Murphy’s Law’. Do I really need to state the obvious here? Can you guess what happened in 2 days since he purchased the ring?

*** Insert slow signs of recognition here and then laugh histericaly ***

(Yes, he lost it again)

Ehm, I do feel sorry for him, and I couldn’t help but make fun of this in front of him. It was just so … coincidental… which brings me to my theory:

These rings are designed so that they will fall off your finger without you noticing it, so that every now and then, you will have to spend $30 on them for replacements.

I was told that there are around 100, 000 engineering grads in Ontario, and W took a conservative estimate that say 50, 000 of them lose rings annually. That’s 50, 000 x $30 = $1.5 Million a year!!! I’m betting that most of the engineering grads have lost their rings, and that they’ve had to purchase at least 1 replacement since graduation. Now you tell me if this does not sound like a conspiracy

On a side note, I’ve come up with a name for a ring for Computer Science graduates:

Roas’iT = Ring of Advanced Species in Technology

How does that sound?

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I guess GMail will soon be rolled out to public, based on what’s going on around. It seems like many people have 50 invites to spread out now.

So, feel free to contact me if anyone doesn’t have GMail yet and you want it. I just ask you to post a comment, and link to my blog from your site if you have one.

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Today we went snow tubing at Snow Valley. I’ve never gone snow tubing before, and it was really fun. You get to ride a big wheel and slide down on slopes at speeds up to 80 km/h. Left home at around 8.45 AM and got there just before 10.

We had until 12 to go on the rides, so I went first while my wife played with my son on the kids area with mini-slides. The lineups were very long, and I could only slide twice, then switched places with my wife. She managed to get on the slopes 3 times.

The kids play area was rather tiring, mainly because my son refused to pull his tube up the mini-hill by himself. He also got bored after awhile and just ran around the snow with some of his friends.

All in all, it was a fun family day, had pizza, fries and some sushi that we brought from home for lunch, and left around 2.30 PM. I was soo sleepy driving home, I almost fell asleep. Thank God we arrived home safely.

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When I first heard of the word ‘blog’, it was in 2003, and at the time I had no idea what it was. Somehow in my mind, it registered as ‘blob’, which of course is short for ‘big large object’ – a data type for certain databases. It wasn’t until I asked someone about this new term that I found out that it was short for web-log. Now my first thought was, “Oh well, this is just like an online diary or a website that you can post your thoughts to”, and in a certain way I guess that’s what they are.

Well, fast forward to the present, 2005. ‘Blog’ is the next ‘big’ thing on the internet, people are jumping in the trend and blogging everywhere. Blogger of course is one of the largest blogging services around. I had to ask myself, “why is this such a big thing?”. After all, aren’t blogs still used by the majority of people as some sort of online diary?

I’ve been watching this trend for awhile now, and I’ve seen people start use blogs in a different way. They’re using it as a form of professional communication between people, corporations, places and various entities of society. It’s grown to be a totally different beast altogether. It has spawned new technologies such as RSS, Wiki’s, various blog monitoring tools etc., and also re-defined the way people communicate online.

A blog can be used by companies to act as a voice to their customers, and vice versa allow them to track what people are saying about certain products, and thus allow speeding up of business reaction time.

This new way of communication has opened up a new field of jobs. There is a huge demand for people who can communicate well with people through what they write / post online. Companies will hire people who can act as their face / voice online, to communicate with other entities that are talking about the company / business.

I was just browsing the web, and found this weblogs inc article about making money by using blogs. It also had some blogging jobs available for people who could write about various topics of interest.

A good example of how blogging has become a source of income is this: I’ve literally followed what Jeremy Wright has done since he started Ensight. Reason for this? He was my former IT manager, and I just wanted to know what was going on in his life. The easiest way to do this was to follow his blog. I’ve watched him grow to be a very popular person in the blogsphere, from his Ebay auction of his blogging services which ended up at more than US$3300 to his blog consulting company, InsideBlogging where he acts as a blog consultant for companies, helping them determine whether blogging is for them or not, as well as help them out with anything related to blogging.

So, is blogging a bona fide job in today’s world? I do believe so, although it might take some time for people to catch on to this trend. I also believe that it’s not going to be as big as traditional jobs in IT or business because blogging is about good communication skills, and not many people have these in abundance. It also requires a lot of creativity in writing and communicating thoughts, again I’m not too sure many people have this. But for the people who are great at doing this, blogging provides a great job; they could work from home, the only requirement being a PC / laptop and a creative mind.

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I’ve decided to look around for some templates that look good, and I found one at Blogger Templates. Just wanted to let people know, because the site really has some wonderful looking templates.

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Woohoo !!! I have a Page Rank of 1 I wonder how this could happen? Does that actually mean there are people who read my blog and link here?

Hehe, only I could get excited over a PR of 1.

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Hey everyone, I’ve got 12 GMail invites available. I’ll give them to anyone who wants them on a first come first serve basis. I just ask that you link to my blog from your site if you have one. Otherwise, just post a comment here (don’t forget to include the email address you want it sent to) and I’ll send one to you.

Why am I doing this? Well, I’m trying to increase traffic to this blog (don’t know if anybody’s reading at all though ), and I also have invites that are basically doing nothing in my GMail account.

To think that back then I actually had to buy my GMail account from EBay … it’s so sad now everyone can get them so easily

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*** WARNING ***
Korean / Taiwanese TV drama’s are very addictive, don’t say I didn’t warn you if you watch one and get hooked on them
*** /END WARNING ***

I started watching a lot of these during my job searching days last year. My wife’s grandmother had some, our friends had some, and we watched and watched. Right now we have a couple more series that we’re watching, and I’m just baffled about something.

It seems that in most of these movies, someone (usually one of the main characters) will have a serious disease with little possible hope of suriving. Of course this makes better emotional play for the movie, but after awhile it seems that the producers have copied each other in terms of their plots. It’s just funny sometime, when I’m watching one of these, I will guess correctly what would happen next, and my wife and I would just laugh at it, because it has become so predictable.

And you know what’s even funnier? We keep on watching these series even though we know the plots are very similar, and even though they are very predictable.

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Argh… I didn’t feel well at all today. Since last night, I’ve had this headache bugging me. When I woke up in the morning and went to work, it subsided a bit, but when I got to work it came back.
It didn’t help much that I spent most of today in the server room, where the cold air was blowing in our faces. I had to wear my jacket and put on the hood in there, must’ve looked like a fool to everyone

My back’s also hurting from lifting up a server incorrectly. Everyone knows that you’re supposed to lift with your knees, not your back, but can I help it if the server almost fell (2 people job) and I reflexively took the weight on my back? Ouch again….

Oh well, I managed to catch some zzzz’s on the train back home, and my headache went away. I just feel so tired, but have to go practice music for this Sunday. Hopefully the practice doesn’t take that long.

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