Zero late comer

As i swipe today's attendance, being the last day to work for the month, i finally managed to clear my bad record last month. I was given a warning letter on my poor attendance last month. (the first one i received after serving the Bank for 4 years). Total late coming for last month was 4 times. This month, 0 (zero) late. Woohooo!!!!

This was all due to the change of my department director and the hypocrit admin manager. (not going to mention name). If he was doing his job from the 1st day i reported duty, all of us should have beend expelled from the bank way long before. When the new guy comes in, all of a sudden he's being mr ketua darjah or cikgu disiplin - just a sense of dissatisfaction.

Hey, i come in late 1 - 5 min but repayed them by additional hours. I think that's fair enough, don't you think so.

Note: Hopefully this continues :)

Hutang aka 555

I was having lunch with my colleagues at the usual D'Tebing. When it was time to pay up, i showed Pakcik Abu Bakar my RM50 notes. He was busy collecting money from other people to return the change to another customer and finally managed to do so. By the time it was my turn, he said to me was "esok lah" (tomorrow). So i nodded and said OK.

So, i guess today's lunch was a postpaid meal as i have to pay him by tomorrow. Luckily i'm a regular. A first of many experience i guess. Never knew the great book of 555 still existed in KL.

VS

Note to self: Pay today's your lunch by tomorrow.

When backup fails

We've all heard in our workplace to always make backup. Always make copy of your files. You never know when your computer might crash. So here's the thing. Yes, a few people do make backups and copies of their files, and a few don't even bother. It's when their computer crashes when they start to go in panic mode.

Reminds me of the Limp Bizkit song Rollin, "Backup backup, tell me what' cha gonna do now"

And the same old dialogues that often you hear is, "dammit, i should have made a backup of it."
The next step is they call the IT guys,
"hey, my computer / hard disk just crash. Is there a way that you can recover them. I have very important files on the disk. I need to do a presentation to the boss and those files contains valuable information. I stayed up all night preparing for them"

The IT guy would then ask "Did you make a backup copy of those files anywhere?"
The client will then reply, " If i did would i be calling you"
The IT guy would then go "(in silent mode) !@$#@%%&$%^$ (This is when you wish you could use the fist of death)"

So the lesson learned so far is always create a backup. It can be in a form of CD, DVD, external drive, diskette and other sorts of media. But what happens when your backup fails???

As i was minding my own business today, my manager called me up to his room. He said that his USB thumbdrive when plugged in gives out the message " The disk is not formatted. Do you want to format it now. Yes / No". Lucky him for not falling to the trick by answering everything to Yes. Unfortunate for him, the thumbdrive was the backup of his work as the original source was already deleted from another thumbdrive. So this is the classic case of when your backup fails and you have no more primary source. Ironically, a colleage of mine just asked me yesterday on the same problem. So i guess it's a desease when thumbdrive fails one by one.

Lucky for him that i was in a good mood. Opened up EnCase and confirmed that it was gone. Looked up in Google and finally found a tool that might help. Downloaded in and walla, it does the job. The tool was called PhotoRec. It did recover thousands of files, but if you are one of those file naming freaks might get a little panic for a while. It recovers file but you will have to forget about those file names entry. It has it's formats of naming convention and being a technical guy, i wouldn't mide coz that's how the system goes and works. So lucky for my manager that a lot of his files were saved but good luck looking for the right ones as it returns thousands and thousands of files that you may not even know existed. But i recommend the tool. Thumbs up for PhotoRec.

Picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/xxoos-jal/1449102918/
Do you really think a hot dog can save you in your time of need?

The moral of the story, if you were planning to back up something, make sure the destination is a reliable source. Forget those cute small type usb thumbdrive as that was what caused my manager to be in trouble in the first place. If you were going to choose a thumbdrive, i would recommend a normal size thumbdrive as so far they have never failed me compared to the small cute looking ones that you usually hang together with your set of keys.

ps: I've got to backup my hard drive one of these days.

Shish Kebab

For breakfast cum lunch, wifey was kind enough to try out a new recipe. I guess you've all figured it out by now. Yes, it's shish kebab. In definition, Shish Kebab "is a dish consisting of small cubes of meat threaded on a skewer (şiş in Turkish) that are grilled or roasted" taken from Wikipedia. It differs from Doner Kebab, Chelow Kabab and Kathi Kabab. So that's the answer to wifey on why her kebab doesn't have the pita bread like the one used in Kyros or Melawati Kebab.


Though modified from beef to chicken, the taste was good. We enjoyed it for a change of meals. To wifey, Congratulations on a meal well done!

Operation Dumbo Drop @ Genting

Here's a picture update of Sofea at Genting during the operation Dumb Drop. SOrry for the later entry.

On top of the world @ Genting Highlands

This entry was scheduled to be published earlier, but due to the unexpected workload that i am currently facing, i just had to postponed it to a more suitable time. It all started with the balloting process in the resort system. And what do you know, i finally managed to get one after working for 4 years in the bank. So this is an opportunity that shouldn't be missed. Plus with the free 3 tickets that wifey obtained from the Berita Harian cover page soon to be expired which help boost me to finally take the trip up there.

Scheduled on 9 -11 May, the final crowd that had confirmed to join us is my little family + 2 of my bro in laws. We wanted to take my mother in law at first but she declined. Asked Jie whether she wanted to tag along but she couldn't confirm the invitation. So finally the crowd was the one that i mentioned earlier.

We managed to reach the Genting View resort at around 5pm after facing challenges of going here and there plus a few road hoggers who thougt that their car were going on a super sonic speed and thus keeping it on the right lane. Talk about patience. The resort location was not at the peak of the highland. More towards the base though. Anyway, the weather was quite nice. Not that cold nor warm. It's just that it isnt damn cold. After checking in and take a few minutes rest, we decided to climb at the peak plus we were very hungy. By climbing i meant climbing the hills with the trustee WajaBee. And what do you know, it has enough power to climb the peak of Genting. This is the first time it was driven up to Genting after owning it for nearly 5 years. Good going.

Click!

As we arrived at the indoor theme park, the crowd started to build up. We had our dinner at Marrybrown. After finishing dinner, we took a walk inside the theme park as there were no plans for the night. Just doing some jalan-jalan and some sight seeing. Before heading down, we bought some famous amos cookies to eat at the apartment.

Dammit. I'm not tall enough

Wait till i grow taller!!!

The night did not end there as Sofea did not want to sleep. Wifey had brought her in before 11pm and by the time i went into the room at 12am, she was still active as ever. Finally i just had to go to bed with her just to keep her on the bed and finally dozz off. Again the night did not end there. As i was about to shut my eyes off, i was attacked by the killer mosquitoes. I managed to whack 2 of them and thought that it was the end. But the war did not end there and continued on until i lost track of the time.

The next morning as i was getting ready and cleaning up the room a bit, i managed to take revenge on the killer mosquitoes. Because they were fully loaded with Sofea, wifey and my blood the just couldn't fly anymore. And that's when the revenge took place. I managed to kill 8 of them with my bare hands. Talk about revenge. As all of us were finally ready to go, we proceeded to the peak again and finally entered the outdoor theme park. We just had to buy an additional ticket as we had only 3.

The park was already started to fill with lots of people. We just walked in the park and finally took Sofea on the dumbo ride. Of course wifey will have to hold her. From her facial expression i think she kinda enjoyed it. Next on the agenda was the famous antique car ride. It's a ride that could not be missed. The que was building up quite fast and like other normal person, we too had to que. Finally it was our turned. Wifey floored the accelerator shooting us at lightning speed. Hahaha!!! just joking. Sofea took the wheel and enjoyed the right. They've even improved the steering wheel by putting a kinda pillow thingy at the centre. When we reached at the end point, Sofea did not want to get out of the car, but as the crowd were piling up, we just had to go.






Next stop is the train ride. The waiting period was really long. I think longer then waiting for the KTM Komuter to arrive. But finally the train finally arrived and it was next on our list of rides. It circled the centre of the theme park, or rather giving us a summary of all the activities on the park.

Am i cute or what???

As the time was pointing to lunch time, our stomach began to growl and we stop to have our lunch. The food was not that good as oppose to the price we paid. Foods are damn expensive here. After having our lunch, we then continued with our activities. This time, i had to skip the ride as i did not met the minimum requirement. No, i was not short but unfortunately they put a weight limit on the ( i can't remember it's name, but it's right in front of the merry go round) ride. What??? The max wieght that they could tolerate was 70kg. Can you guess my weight is?

By the time wifey and her brothers finished the ride, Sofea was already asleep. So we proceed onto the next floor. Go Kart, aaaah that was something that they did not specify how heavy you should be. So i joined in the crowds. After more than 30 mins of queing, finally it was my turn. I took the last car at the position. Onced the light went green, i floored the car again to lightning speed. Notttt. The car was damn slow man. At least my car was. As i was building up speed and momentum, suddenly there was a middle east girl hogging the track again. What's worse she didn't even let me pass trough until there was enough straight line to manage me to overtake her. Without even using my brakes as i hoped the car would build up more speed, suddenly i was overtaken by another car. What the??? Here i am flooring it with precise cornering but still nothing. Oh well, might as well enjoy the ride then.

Aummm!!!

After i got off the car, Sofea had already waken for her beauty sleep. We took a ride in the ferris wheel before proceeding to the dinosaur island for the boat ride. Again queing up waiting for the boat. I estimated that the time taken to wait for the boat was way longer with the time waiting for the antique car and boat ride put together. Finally it was our turn and we got on the boat. Luckily there was a show on the dinosaurs inside of a cave. Sofea did not felt scared as it was all dark with the dinosaurs popping out one at a time. All she said to me was "Aummmm" which in normal terms mean cat or tigers or lions. I guess she didn't know how to make the dino sound. After the end of the boat ride, we took some photos and exit the dinosaurland as the weather was getting to be chiller and foggier.



Sofea's uncles wanted to take a ride in the rollercoaster so we let them be. We then however took sofea for a ride at the a ride called the MASA (space shuttle thingy). Once we were done, we went back another floor down. Since the park was still open and there were not many people left, we finally had a go at the merry go round. Damn it was fun. I think wifey was the one that enjoyed the ride the most. We had a go at the merry go round for 3 times. As there were still time, i was left with sofea once again coz wifey and her brothers wanted to have a go at the (weight discriminate) ride again. So i took Sofea to play at those coin operated vehicles, only this time they did not require and coins. So i pressed the button more then 10 times so that Sofea could have a go at it and not to mention me saving nearly RM10 for not having to put a single coin. Hehehe.

Taken for a free ride

As the day was becoming darker we had to leave the park but not before a caterpillar monorel ride. We searched the station and finally found it. So another round of the outdoor theme park before heading back to the apartment. We had our dinner at a restaurant at Gohtong Jaya. The food taste was good but damn expensive for a 4 + 1 meal. It costed RM 88. If we had known it was going to cost us a bomb, might as well we just have Kenny Rogers at the theme park which eventually will cost cheaper, even with Genting price. What a rip off. That night after watching Akademi Fantasia, we dozed of to bed with no more attacks of the killer mosquitoes.

The next morning was a free and easy activity or dive into the swimming pool i might add. The so called heated swimming pool were not heated. It was damn cold. But after a while our body managed to adjust with the tempreature, though still cold. So after the swim, we all packed our stuff, stop at Genting Sempah for lunch and headed back home to wish both our mothers, Happy Mother's Day.

Outcome of our trip
The good
1) A nite at the apartment cost only RM8
2) Not that far from home. Less then an hour journey
3) Nice weather
4) A lot of activities to do
5) Free 3 tickets (for this time only)

The bad
1) Food and other stuff are expensive
2) Queing for the ride
3) Discrimination to those who weigh more then 70kg
4) Had to buy additional ticket

So all in agree that it was a good getaway and mother's day gift.

Where the heck is that partition?

As i reached my office today, a colleague of mine was smiling ear to ear when he saw me and said, "Aaaaa, Mr. rizman, my saviour"... I was like what the??? It seems that he had a broken external drive. It was never really broken mechanically but virtually. The master boot record and partition has been deleted thus in Windows says that it is an unallocated space. I am not really sure what he did but he must have done something to make the partition go away.

Reaching out for my dusty old EnCase manual, referring back to partition recovery, i finally managed to rebuild back his partition and Voillaaa, they were all in one piece. I have been practically involved in computer forensics and this is the first time i have come accrosed a drive with a deleted partition (excluding the class exercise). Who might have thought that these kind of problems came from your own colleague and not from the people outside of the organization.

With this accomplishment i felt productive again!!!

Everything happens for a reason

True enough as the topic has described. The reason for me not updating my blog is because my hands are quite tight at the moment. I just received 26 CPU's, a laptop, a cctv recorder and even a fax machine to be forensically analysed. For God sake, it's a fax machine!!! What more do you want.

I will try my best to update it. Do visit regularly as a lot of stories to be shared soon. Tungguuuuu!!!

Make believe interrogation process

Me to fax machine: "Do you admit to all the crimes that you have done"

Fax machine to me: -

Me to fax machine:" Speak up or i'll rip your paper and your ink cartridge!!!!"
Fax machine to me: -
Me: "!@$#^#^#@$*(^%^". Damn this fax machine is tough