Herewith is a list of questions that I would ask to aliens if they existed. (Feel free to add with your questions, if you have any).

1. What do you call planet Earth?
2. Do you speak English? Parlez vous Francaise? Kowe iso ngomong jowo po ora?
3. Do you communicate verbally, or do you holographic-ly project what you want to say in 3D that would send people in Pixar to the valley of shamefulness?
4. Do you know who Steven Spielberg is?
5. If you said you came from another galaxy 1.000.000 light-years away from our planet, does it mean that you are actually 1.000.000 year old now?
6. The U.S. government has been persistently denying your existence. Do you have anything to say to them now?
7. How did you feel when one of your fellows was shot-down by Will Smith?
8. Is math being taught in where you came from? No? Can I come with you?
9. ….

Drive the nail aright, boy; Hit it on the head.
Strike with all your might, boy; While the iron is red.

When you have work to do, boy; Do it with a will.
They who reach the top, boy; First must climb the hill.

Standing at the foot, boy; Gazing at the sky.
How can you get up, boy; If you never try.

Though you stumble oft, boy; Never be downcast.
Try and try again, boy; You’ll succeed at last.

Always persevere, boy; Though your task is hard.
Toil and happy trust, boy; Bring their own reward.

Never give it up, boy; Always say you’ll try.
You will gain the crown, boy; surely by and by.

Selamat Hari Raya Idul Fitri 1 Syawal 1430 H. Semoga amal ibadah kita diterima oleh Allah SWT, dan kesalahan kita diampuni-Nya. Selamat menorehkan cerita-cerita di lembaran yang sama sekali baru. Mohon maaf lahir batin untuk segala kesalahan.

Having googled here and there using Google (ya iya laaaah) and even disassemble and reassemble the 7685-CTO, I came to two conclusions on the cause of the death of my Thinkpad X61. Well, of course it died after being slammed to a wall by my toddler, twice. But that the ultimate cause?

There are two possibilities.

First. The Thinkpad landed on the wall (and later on on the floor) at a wrong speed and wrong angle so that it rendered the accelerometer –that was permanently welded to the system board– in a state of error. The Thinkpad Hardware Maintenance Manual (that can be freely downloaded through Lenovo’s website) clearly states that: if subjected to a particular amount of G’s (gravity or so… I don’t know. I suck in physic), the accelerometer will cease to work and will render the whole system board unusable, and has to be replaced.

The symptom is that the system is lit whenever the power button is pressed, but no booting activities occurred. The fan will turn, the harddrive will spin, the LAN will initiate negotiation, but no POST process followed afterward. It happened because the BIOS will read input from the accelerometer that there still is impact, so that the BIOS prevent the whole system from booting-up.

Second, again, the thinkpad lanted on the wall (and the floor thereafter) at a wrong speed and wrong angle. But in this theory, the one’s that rendered unusable was the fan and the whole thermal system. How come? Some times the Thinkpad flashed a message stating, “Fan Failure” followed, again, by no booting up at all.

During one or so occasion, the Thinkpad will boot up, and soon after logged-on to the OS it will shut itself down,  soon after the system board reaches a particular temperature.

Hence the moral of the story is: if you want to drop your Thinkpad, feel free to do so, they’re built tough,  (of course only do it on your own risk and don’t blame me for any implication occurred thereafter and I cannot be responsible for the outcome) but please make sure that the Thinkpad hits the wall at a right speed and right angle.

Happy jumping. *_^

There’s a saying that Belgium can give you surprises. You can have misty light rain in the morning, blinding and excruciatingly hot sun in the noon, trembling whirlwind in the afternoon, and a hefty telephone bill by the end of he month and a hefty utility bill by the end of a particular annual year.

That’s what I got. Just today.

Here in Belgium (or in Brussels, particularly) utilities, such as electricity and gas are billed monthly using an estimated average. Then, they will bill us every year based on our actual utilization. One can have a surplus, or one should pay the deficit. It depends on how often you flick that on off switch on your gas-powered heater during the winter.

On my case, my annual average totaling in an amount of 920 euros (there were months with 80 euros average, some of them with 60 euros, and one month with 30 euros). It turned out that my actual gas and electricity consumption for a year, for the period of June 2008 – July 2009 totaling 1.426 euros. So I have a deficit of approximately 500 euros.

BAM!

Well, I’d be lying if I say that I’m not a bit shocked. But hey, life’s full of lots of surprises, ain’t it? And hey, don’t forget… T.I.B… This Is Belgium.

So, there goes my iPhone 3Gs 16GB. Sigh.

Configuration scheme of the Thinkcentre.

Configuration scheme of the HP DC7800.

As I have written in several previous posts, I installed Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate in three computers that I use most. The Thinkcentre A57 at the office, the HP Business Desktop DC7800 at my house and the late Thinkpad X61, which I (ab)used whenever I was away.

Since the Thinkpad X61 ceased working, I only had two Windows 7 systems in my possession. The Thinkcentre A57 is equipped with an Intel Quadcore Q6600 running at 2.4GHz as its engine, while the HP DC 7800 is equipped with an Intel Core2Duo E6550 running at 2.33Ghz. Both are armed with 4GB RAMs and both have 250GB Sata HDD 7200 RPM 8 MB chache as their main storage devices.

I sense a quite odd thing, though, pertaining to the performance of the two machines. I feel that the HP DC7800 runs faster than the Thinkcentre A57 in Windows 7 environment. I mean, right from the boot-up, the HP machine is always felt faster (and in fact it is faster) than the Thinkcentre.In starting application, the HP fare better, e.g. the HP starts the Firefox in a zip, while the Thinkcentre takes a while for the Firefox to be ready.

Apart from the processor, the configurations of the two machines are basically similar. The Thinkcentre, in fact was superior in a sense that it is equipped with a 4-GB USB stick as its ready-boost device.

Just as a reference, the late Thinkpad X61 was equipped with an Intel Core2Duo T7300 running at 2Ghz with 4GB of RAM, and it runs Windows 7 with all of its gizmos smoothly.

It had me thinking, then, that the Quadcore processors are like cars with big engines. They’re there, but no one is able to make the most out of it.

*****

Reason number one:

Reason number two:

Reason number three:

Reason number four, that kid again, yea, the kid at reason number one and that adult guy:

Reason number five, the master himself:

I’m owned!

Saya paham bahwa pemasukan dari iklan merupakan salah satu pilar pendukung berlangsungnya kehidupan satu lembaga penerbitan pers. Tapi kalau seperti ini caranya sih mending saya baca dari tempat lain saja.

Sungguh tidak menyenangkan dan cenderung menyebalkan. Huh!

Seharusnya kan bisa dibuat, atau paling tidak dipikirkanlah, cara penyajian iklan yang lebih baik, yang lebih sopan.

Lha ini, baru mau membaca berita saja tiba-tiba mak byaaaarrrr… nongol iklan menuh-menuhin monitor.

Oalaaaah…

The mighty Thinkpad X61 of mine is officially dead. Brute force of a growing toddler finally killed it.

Hence the lack of update. But lo and behold, I have a quite lots of stories to tell.

This summer, only in theaters.