Zit Seng's Superwall

I have unintentionally become an expert at installing and reinstalling Windows. It’s Windows XP this time.  This is my third Windows XP installation in two days, before I finally got a problematic program running correctly. It’s a silliness with software compatibility. It’s the year 2010, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 is standard. But no, this problematic program isn’t compatible with MSIE8. It isn’t even compatible with MSIE7. It needs MSIE6.

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I didn’t think the YOG intended any courtesy in their Give Way sign. My suggestion to “Please give way” was moot. It’s now officially “Give Way or Give Me $130″.

16. At least. Sixteen! That’s for academics!

It’s not a big building. There are only just 4 storeys (and one basement). It’s not a maze. It’s just a rather longish building. There are only two stairwells. But it seems, some academics need, or believe they need, 16 directional signs to locate a single room on the 4th storey of the building.

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For about a week now, Google Maps has been rather confused about where I am. It fixes me at a specific spot in Bukit Batok, when in reality I’m like 10km away, in an area also wrongly labeled as Pulau Bukom in the zoomed out map view. There’s nothing wrong with the GPS. It’s the way location is determined from cell tower information. For a while, though, I sent myself on a wild goose chase wondering if my dabbling with the latest CyanogenMod ROMs (alpha versions then), and particularly since I build them myself, might have messed up something on the phone.

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I just made a discovery, or perhaps shall I say, saw a relationship between the iPhone 4 signal loss problems, the way the phone is held, and multitasking. You’ve probably read about how the iPhone 4 encounters some problems with its cellular signal strength when held in a certain way. Steve Jobs answer was to simply not hold it that way. It seems that the iPhone 4 works better if held in the right hand. Well, I started to think about how I held my hand phone. Hmm. I use my left hand.

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Hmm, I must sound very geeky to be excited by the release of Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) source code today. There is already a Froyo ROM floating around the Internet, but it is only with the source availability that enables modders to build custom ROMs for various Android devices. Many Android users are happier with the custom ROMs than what originally shipped with their device. Even if it is a pristine ROM, like the one that comes with the Nexus One, that hasn’t been mutilated by any manufacturer.

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I just heard about what the rain is doing to various parts of Singapore. Like turning Lucky Plaza’s basement into a swimming pool. It’s the kind of rain that happens only once every 50 years that has come to visit us again. Just only 209 days since the last time such a rain struck us (I think it was 19 November 2009).

I saw some pictures posted about the scene down on Orchard Road. It looks very third-world. Murky flood waters covering the roads, with stranded vehicles, even big vehicles like busses.

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I wouldn’t say I’m really that much of an expert in IT project management. But I’m not fresh out of school. I’ve been working for enough number of years to have seen many things. So it is really annoying when a bunch of non-IT people want to interfere with my project planning, because they think that I’m doing it wrong, and they think they know better how to run IT projects on the basis that they know how to run non-IT projects.

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Sometimes, I think about how silos are formed in organizations. You know, the sort of situation where fellow colleagues are divided into organization groups that are oblivious to the existence of the others. Or, they compete with great hostility. They might as well have belonged to some other company altogether. It’s related to politicking, but it isn’t quite the same thing.

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It’s finally raining now in the afternoon of the second day of this Lunar New Year. I think this must be about one of the hottest ever Lunar New Year. It’s been so hot I already feel uncomfortable the moment I step out of the house to go anywhere. So thank goodness it is raining now. Oops. It seems it has stopped. But well, hopefully that brief shower cools down the ground a little, otherwise it feels as if the whole of Singapore was a giant frying pan.

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