Let's face it humans are social creatures and wether we like it or not most of the time we crave social interaction with people. That imho is the basis of some of the principles of XTreme Programming. It's principles of doubling teaming during projects, frequent meetings i feel cater for the inherent need for humans to communicate and reach out to another.
I believe and like practicing this principle in my projects. But what I have discovered accidently together with a good pal of mine while doing industrial training with him is that the principles of XTreme Programming can be extended to real every day lives. For example it's definitely easier and less stressful to go through the daily routine of koteh jobs( a term coined together by boar and me during our industrial stint together meaning cock jobs ) together and most of the time we cover for each other when we are on the job,for example me trying to keep him focused on driving ( and awake most of the time ) when go anywhere. Or making sure that we do not loose the parking ticket when we go to shopping malls. Boar on the other hand helps to keep me steady when i get a case of the butterflies prior to an important meeting or presentation. We play an integral role of keeping each other sane through the character building days ( another term we coined for days when the shit hits the fan ). While it's true that these stuff can be done by one of us and alone but it's stilleasier not to mention more efficient when done as a team. The results too speak for themselves, as stuff done as a team is of higher quality because there is a system of check and control during the implementation of the task at hand. I have done this with a few other pals of mine for example chern and guju all of them to a varying but satisfying degree of success. Also, a change of partner brings an often freshing and good change of pace to whatever is being done. All in all it has also served to strenghten the bond between us, as we encourage each other as we are wading through the quagmire of koteh jobs for the day.
No one is perfect, all of us have weaknesses, but with a partner that can cover for your shortcomings we are pretty darn near it. So go ahead ! Don't be afraid grab a partner and double team your way through life ! =)
The windabloze update utility is liek windabloze .. it's full of shit
That stupid windabloze update utility is really full of shit. I have never liked systems that rely on a gui for installing and finding updates. Windabloze takes it one step further. It uses IE !! When i click on it it supposedly scans for updates from microsoft I think but somehow the updates are never ever correct. Updates which I manually had to install are never tracked. Then it's da watching like a dumb ass at the status bar stage ( this happens using updaters of linux origin too ). You sit and watch dumbly at the status bar while it d/loads and wonder wether you should do something better like maybe search for pr0n on Kazaa ... but hey it's Windbloze ... it won't let u do that.... it has to grab the focus of your box for every single update not to mention slowing my box to a standstill .... and of course to top it all off at the end ot ... "You have to restart your computer ..." Arrgggghhhh !!!
Man ... sorcerer just got it right when it comes to installing updates ... I know that this might be a spillover from my other sorcerer blog but then hey this is my blog and my realm so ... who cares ?! Teh updating process on the sorcerer machine is just so damn simple .... Open up a browser ( no stupid dumb ass gui here ... if you really need one there a text based gui ! ) then proceed to :
augur synch ( to synchronize with sorcerer d/base )
augur newer ( to load up new updates )
augur newer_ia ( if you want to see installed software vs their newer versions )
As I scrambled out of bed today I felt groggy and unrested. Silently I thought to myself wether this is what they meant by "Getting up the wrong side of bed"... a few minutes later , my worst fears were realised when my mom started to ask me about fixing a bedroom bath sink that was spoilt in my house....
The thing about me is I was never really one you would call as good with my hands .. I was never really very handy fixing things around the house. ( Getting my hands all grimy and smelling like yesterdays stool while fixing stuff around the house is not exactly my idea of an enjoyable time ). Anyways, my mom mentioned to me how easy my aunty said fixing the sink would be and she wanted me to try and fix it. I was like thinking "Yeah rite ! what if the whole sink like collapses or the screw refuses to screw in the right way ( you won't believe how many time this happens to me ) when i try to screw the fissure into the wall ?". So, slowly but carefully ( i knew these were landmine areas during discussions with my mom ) I tried to iterate these fears to her. She looked at me and her face had an expression that said "Why did I give birth to such a useless piece of crap ? Why couldn't I just have given birth to a sausage ... at least I would have had myself a good meal ... ". There seems to be this strange fixation with the women in my house about your machoness and the ability to fix things around the house. Around here, you can even be the main person who manages ... oh say the linux kernel and if you still can't fix a runny tap and you are still lau bek and unmacho ! I have asked other women regarding this matter and the funny thing is most of them share this same opinion. A word of advice to all you single men out there ..... don't bother spending thousands or ringgit to get a degree in engineering, accountancy or management. Just go and learn up how to fix a toilet when it gets blocked and you will have all the women in your neighbourhood beating down your door ! They don't care how good you are at using sed, they don't care how good you are at hacking some code and making it more optimised, they just want you to say "yeah I can fix that leaky faucet" !! It really reminds me this book that I read in my younger days called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever where the hero of this book is a leper in the world he lives in but then turns into this power macho dude in a parallel fantasy world. It's just the same with us hackorrzz dudes ... we can be da man in all our computer exploits ( our fantasy world ) inside that box but once outside here in the real world if your are not tim da toolman ... kindly take your place among the leper community!
These macho men are what I would like to call teh
House Hold Heros
I tell you mates, these men don't have learn up how to build PR, how to program in C++, how to design good programs .... they are just your handy men around the house and they they have really got it good. Hopefully, whatever little womenfolk I have reading this ... if they can help shed some light on what they think about this ... could just email me ... low@ameba6.com ... I would really appreciate to hear what you gals think.
Update : my chat with Guju shrimahavir: i like the blog on the men stuff
shrimahavir: macho men
sorcerer_low: hahah
sorcerer_low: it's true u know
shrimahavir: yup
sorcerer_low: my mom gave me this sad look
shrimahavir: hehe
shrimahavir: mate
sorcerer_low: dammit
sorcerer_low: what?
shrimahavir: i can feel wat u feel
shrimahavir: i get sad looks all the time
sorcerer_low: i think all of us gets it
sorcerer_low: boar gets it from his mom too
sorcerer_low: we all la like thomas covenant
shrimahavir: we're all sad saps
shrimahavir: cannot repair stuff also
sorcerer_low: leper in real world macho in da computer world
shrimahavir: ha!
sorcerer_low: heheh
shrimahavir: hey dude
sorcerer_low: wat
sorcerer_low: yeah
sorcerer_low: enuff of this computer bull shit
sorcerer_low: i want to be a house hold hero
shrimahavir: haha
sorcerer_low: i want the girls to want me
shrimahavir: mate
sorcerer_low: wat
shrimahavir: after you get married
shrimahavir: you'll get the look from your wife also
sorcerer_low:
shrimahavir: hehehehe
shrimahavir: so start learning now
sorcerer_low:
shrimahavir: i also need to learn
sorcerer_low: bad la
Read a great article on improving memory usage in your box. Reading through it I get a feeling akin to reading about phaedrus describe how he works on his bike. It gives a clue a bit about what is actually happening in that purring box that all of us have at home. The only gripe I have about this article is that it lacks the hands on approach as well as a working example on how to actually practice the theories that he outlines in his article.
Plus : a bit on my ongoing quest to get my mobo's bios upgraded ..... on the #linuxhelp channel :
lowks_: i have an asus-k7v board anyone here know how to upgrade bioses ?
Dr_willis: proberly a dos boot floppy and the right files from the asus homepage
Dr_willis: thats how i upgraded my asus-a7v133
lowks_: Dr_willis: a dos boot floppy ?
lowks_: so i just make it boot from the floppy right ?
lowks_: Dr_willis: where did you find your upgraded bios ?
Dr_willis: asus homepage had them They may of had floppy disk image files as well with the stuff
lowks_: Dr_willis: okay thanks
Dr_willis: you then MUST 'reset' the cmosbios settings on the motherboard. with either a jumper. or by shorting out 2 conectors (take the battery out also)
Dr_willis: thats how mine worked
lowks_: Dr_willis: man this is scary
Dr_willis:why do ya even need to update the bios?
lowks_:Dr_willis: why did you update yours ?
Dr_willis: lowks_: in a last ditch attempt to fix its odd-behaivor..
Dr_willis: it dident help. :)
Dr_willis: found out later it was a bad memory chip
lowks_:Dr_willis: so normally it's not really necessary to upgrade bioses if your box is working correctly ?
lowks_: Dr_willis: just thought maybe there would be a performance boost
Dr_willis: lowks_: id doubt if any boost would be noticeable
Dr_willis: flashed my HP machine once. because it altered a few features.. flashed my asus - to try to fix its flakeyness. :)
Dr_willis: other then that.. I've never seen any gains.
On the #hardware channel : lowks_ how do you upgrade an asus-k7v bios ?
lowks_ issit really necessary ?
virsyslowks_: do you really need to? like are yo having hardware
issuses? or a known bug??
virsys if not.. its not recommened to upgrade your bios...
lowks_virsys: not really having probs
lowks_virsys: would there be a performance boost ?
virsyslowks_: usually not
lowks_virsys: normally why would a person upgrade their bios ?
virsyslowks_:to fix a known bug, or add support for new hardware
that
was not previously supported with that bios
lowks_ oh okay
virsys you would get your performance increase thru faster, more
ram...
P/S - Cutting and pasting from xchat to the browser totally stinks
PP/S - sed even on windows totally wrocks
Teh hardest things to do in the world does not seem the hardest, dudes ! The hardest things to do in the world hides themselves behind the most mundane facade. Here are a list of things that even the venerable Sir Edmund would find trouble performing.
Remembering to put your shorts in the washer after the run Putting letters back into their respective envelopes after reading them Not leaving books in the toilet after you have finished your business Not messing up your computer table Arranging your downloaded files in an orderly fashion
The list above also coincidently coincides with the top reasons why your mom is always out to bust your chops =)
So stay alert dudes / dudettes don't let the mundane get you !
Just finished the presentation of the intranet to my colleagues. There some complaints about the security of putting iso documents online to be viewed and printed by everybody. This did not surprise me one bit. There seems to be an air of paranoia surrounding my office. Suspicion on someone doing something bad during the last day or any other day during their employment is very high. This unfortunately, has been proven by one of the employees doing some really dumb ass stuff when it was her last day in Mieco. I just don't take well to this air of paranoia. I hold on to friendships loyally sometimes rather fiercely. The people here can be your friend today then suddenly turn to strangers once known that you will be resigning your post.
Today as I was pounding the pavement in the morning, I reminisced about my love affair with the hole hawg ( linux ) , which began about 2 - 3 years ago. Funny how everytime I jog the ideas seem to flow in head like a river. Maybe the brain is just trying to focus on something else to lessen the pain, or maybe it's the endorphine... As my feet produced the usual 'slop' 'slop' on the pavement I smiled to myself when I thought about the first time I encountered an rpm file :). I d/loaded it to my box then promptly ran upstairs to look for da fat guju !! You see fat guju at that time ( I think still is ) the linux guru among us... and like all gurus... mr fat guju will promptly help me but half way through decided that he was missing his daily meditating routine told me learn by myself and leave me stranded ... don't even get me started about the assignments he used to give me. It was at this time my love affair with the hole hawg turned just a tad sour as I saw how easy it was for my other pals using the simple dumbass os used their box. But being the inquisitive person that I was I felt that there was value in the hole hawg even though at that time I have never even read about the OsI as well as the gnu movement. It was just a feeling I had. It's creepy when I think about it now as even duirng that time I felt that there was a power in it that i just had to learn. Maybe what they say about runners all being masochists is true =). Also at this time guju and boar introduced me lovingly to something they termed the console and they expoused the power that it held in the command line...at that time i felt sceptical about what they were saying. I did not like things to be complicated and felt that the console just made my life on my box a whole lot harder. But linux being the way it was at that time, ( I think I jumped on the bad wagon around rh-7 ) required at least a little tinkering on the console. These moments were for me like a walk on the wild side, and usually after doing two three lines of successful walking I would breath a sigh of relief and think of how far I had gone in the world of computers lol !! Beginning from that time onwards was also the end of all my freetime as I had signed a deal with the fat penguin that I would be a slave to it 18 hours a day !! Guju told me that having a box was not good on studies and true enough my grades started plummeting as my computer knowledge slowly rised. It was here also that I found out that the world of knowledge can be found outside our formal education. Just as phaedrus said that the university is a state of mind rather than a place ....
The thing is, I came from a strictly non-computer background. At that time I thought about computers as just as something that I can use to communicate with other people easily. I was a chat junkie. Everytime I got access to a box ( Usually some poor unsuspecting sappy friend's ) I would feel my addiction to no end. The problem at that time though I had to look for times when the pc was free. This usually meant that I only got to use it during really odd hours like near exam times and 4-5 in the morning. At that time I had no control over the computer and my only 'experience on computers was using im so ... Then came one day my loan to get my own box was approved !! ( from my mom ) .... so there I was on the way to hackerdom ... It was a steel box ( a bit bent on the outside ) with an asus heart and I was over the moon !! Tho initially I did not have enough money to purchase a 40 gig hard disk so I had to survive with one 8 gig one i scavanged from a free PC my uncle gave me ...( boar and gang installed V2 os on that one and i hope that god will have mercy on it's soul ).Imagine that !! I was constantly doing 'df's to see how much space I had left. I couldn't even run kde because it just left me around 300M on my hdd for home !! Also running with just 36 M of RAM redhat's cron jobs were my enemy. Suddenly my whole box would freeze up with a lot of hdd activity. My first hole hawg on that one was a redhat ... coz boar and gang couldn't find a copy of a debian ( which i wanted coz the name sounded cool )... Anyway all the rest is history what really went through my head today is how I have grown from a gui loving denizent to one that loves and swears by the console. In the beginning i only started up the console if I accidently clicked on it. I hated how I needed to read mans everytime I wanted to anything and I felt that the console is really not a good way to manage a computer.Now 2 to 3 years later, I realise how wrong I am when I feel pangs pains missing my hole hawg at home when at the office I am forced to use the dumb ass windbloze. No matter how good an interface is .. I feel that the interface is just that. It's just a layer over the console. The text. The power. The console or the command line is the primal, the core ... the power. I sometimes catch myself doing a ctrl-alt f 1-8 on windows... I guess neal stephenson says it best in his marvellous article. Excuse me but I got to go and dig some hole using my hole hawg. Hopefully I don't hurt myself ( too much ) this time ...
Went for class today. I quite pleased that a lot of my questions has been answered. The funny thing is I felt strange why no one else in the class had questions. For a subject such as this why is it that no one had any questions. One of the lady students head that was like a broken pendulum that kept on swinging to my side. All throughout the class she had no questions though and I felt very strange about this. I wonder if faith is an answer to all as in when you reach a certain stage in your believe of a certain knowledge of belief that all your questions are satiated and this in turn is called faith ? For those many who shuns certains beliefs that looks down on beliefs that frowns when it's followers questions it's rules might have just mistaken the real reason behind this. Perhaps what is frowned is not the act of questioning itself rather the lack of faith of the followers ?
ah !! incoming .... watchout for the particles ....
supervisor is a pundek...most of the time what spews from that big hole in his face is as useful as a donkey's arse hair. Yap ! yap ! yap ....that is his barking out orders. Sometimes it really amazes me how a person like has managed to secure such a position for so long a time and has managed to cover the eyes of his superiors to his most obvious short comings. Don't this people see that they have hired 'D' most useless and loud mouth piece of shit on the planet ??!! It could be that this pundek is good in covering up his short comings ... i don't know. But then as I see it some of the fuck ups that happens due to his are pretty large ... it's like a freaking penis sticking out between the legs of a shemale for god sake !! As in ya can't miss it !!! What the heck issit going thru the head of these people ?? Lack of choice ? What ??!! He worries about the most serious issues "Hey this html ahh ... missing jpg" .... and get this .... he thinks that ws_ftp and the mouse over .... are cutting edge technologies ... man I can just go on and on and on about this mofo... but then this pages are dedicated to one thing and one thing only to capture the spilling overs of my brain so I shall indulge myself i just typing what ever spills out ... I am not catering to any audiences ... no readers request .....
outlook is a pile of dog shit.....i am reduced to a html expert ... html work ... really cutting edge stuff YARRRRGGGHHHHHH !!!! This is really cool I am typing my scream out ... in a perverse sorta way it helps relaxes me I must be really on the edge now.
Being bloody .... polite bloody accomodating .... all day long. Damn ! It's no wonder I am not going anywhere .... why am I stuck here ?
PUndek MANaGErs should JUst fucking manage !!!!!!!!
convincing scruffypoo to join us ....
Scruffypoo : if i submit something to the list, it's typically because it needs to be tested.
Scruffypoo : otherwise, i send it directly to either kyle or manolis
lowks : yeah i do that too
Scruffypoo : bitlbee is farkin' neat :O)
lowks: yeah
lowks: !!
lowks: problem is kyle and manolis is busy sometimes
lowks: so i guess my cvs is like a buffer so my spells don't get lost :)
Scruffypoo: the fact that i still don't have a recent system makes it difficult to even test my spells . . . most users upgraded their gcc and whatnot.
Scruffypoo: some of my shit won't work on the new systems i hear.
Scruffypoo: brb
Scruffypoo: goddamnit people are stupid.
lowks: u back ?
Scruffypoo: yep
lowks: well how about my offer ?
lowks: i would really like u to contribute
Scruffypoo: sure. i still don't know how to use cvs.
Scruffypoo: heh
lowks: it's damn easy
lowks c'mon dude
Scruffypoo c'mon what? i said alright.
Scruffypoo my berlios name is (get this) Scruffypoo
lowks hehe
lowks okay
lowks din catch your alright
lowks four fellows in here now
lowks Scruff
lowks Low Kian Seong
lowks crass
lowks Jarred Holman
Scruffypoo heh . . . now everybody that's not an official guru is a secondary guru.
lowks hehehe
The phrase above is norwegian for the "the internet is really great". A friend of mine sunny on the #cvs channel is from norwegian and he was kind enough to teach me a few words in norwegian :). I sometimes still catch myself wondering and smiling to myself on how great the internet is. I have friends all over the world thanks to this wonderful tool ! The thing that makes me smile is the fact that although we a world apart, we talk as though we have known each other for years. This is really a friendship at it purest form. Two strangers around the world brought together by common interest and a friendship, a bond is formed there. My favourite channels so far on freenode are #cvs and #sorcerer. People on these channels are really friendly and warm. It's like being with family. I find the conversation around these channels mentally stimulating as well as it builds my knowledge sadly lacking in some of our locals channels such as #mamak, #kampung.
While the freenode channels mentally stimulates, I have met some of the biggest retards on #kampung and #mamak. People who will ask you 'asl' before anything and start ignoring you once u claim that u are a male. Once I even saw a debate going on why pigs are our local stock exchange. It sickened me so much that promptly went off the channel. Bleech !! Dumb asses !! I really don't think that our people are uncapable of mentally challenging discourse just that those dudes hanging around channels like those would have to grope through some serious dregs of society before sometimes getting lucky and meeting someone which is truly worth your time.
Well ... long it has been since i last blogged. It got to a point where I blogged just for the reading pleasure of others and not really recording the stuff that overflowed from moi grey cells so I thought it was time for a break. Well a lot has happened since then .... I got cvs write access to sorcerer cvs now ! yayy !! Funny how the transisition from brain waves to electrons has never been smooth for me ... last night I had like 1,001 things to write but now as I sit here ... trying hard to capture .... the little particles of brain matters exploding from my head box ..... all I can muster to say what has happened to me all i can say is a lamemo I got write access to sorcerer cvs now ??!! wtf ??!!
Sigh ..!! I think i have to get settled a bit first ... now where did i put that damn brain sieve ?? ....
Welcome back Low Kian Seong !!
The other day i was going through the e-hrms code coz I was trying to implement the room booking system using it's frame work. It struck me how much lines and code has been poured into the e-hrms. When boar and fat guju said that they have given their life and soul into the code I really don't doubt them now. Suddenly at that point, a tear welled up in my eye. It was like a mixed bag of nuts what I felt at that moment in time. I felt extremely proud of my hackrozz pals and their persistentence,focus and at the same time sad, frustrated and angry at fuckheads like my boss who try to steal the code from them every opportunity they have. Surprising for a company that has a turn over of hundreds of thousands per year, to be run by a so cheap of china apeks. I had to quickly change to chat to divert focus. Won't really be very good on my personal report if I suddenly burst to tears out of thin air during work !! All considered tho' I think that drop of tear owes more to my feelings of being proud as well as awe of my pals. Rock on boar and Fat Guju !!
