i.justrealized

I’m frustrated with courier services. They haven’t been as punctual as I hope for.

They give a time range, nine to twelve, where I woke specially to prepare for a delivery. I stayed and waited.

And waited. (x100)

It’s half-past-damn-twelve and my package did not arrive. If they claim they would come between 9 to 12, I expect them to come at around 10:30 by rule of averaging. I can’t wait any longer and I’m leaving to 24seven office right now.

This is not the first time this particular delivery is missed. I hope one day courier services would at least send an SMS to inform me that they cannot make it or something.

This is the first time since a decade ago where I buy a computer with an OS fully installed. I almost have no recollection how easy this supposed to be. When I received my MacBook Pro earlier in the day I had thoughts on how I have to set things up.

It was delivered (finally) at half past 4. My brother and I opened the package which presents itself well and earned an excellent first impression. I switched on the MacBook Pro and was delighted it just works. (That’s not to say that others computers don’t.)

I begin by trying out all the eye-candy stuff, the dashboard, the expose and made sure I opened each and every application to see how it looks like. Then I played with the System Preferences, probably that excites the geek part of me.

Instead of getting Mac OS X to suit me, I decided not to do any custom settings and use all those System Preferences as default. I explored around like a kid with a new toy and felt Apple delivered the experience.

Then my frustration sets in. All the function keys require the ‘fn’ to be held down. I don’t mind if the controls that took over are useful, but it’s being replaced with crap like backward, forward, play buttons that is just unnecessary. There’s no Home button. And I still have no idea how to get the Num Pad out, or is there even one?

The first thing I installed was, well, Windows 7. Please don’t scream at me. It’s the nearest I could get to something familiar. Windows 7 works for a while and start giving my blue screens then black screens then no screens. I tried resurrected it by starting the recovery console where my brother and I stared at the damn forever-progressing progress bar left to right till we got dizzy. It didn’t fix itself. I switched off and went back to Mac OS X.

It’s destiny I tell you.

I haven’t exactly thought of programming as a chore. And I am always quick to admit that I am not a good programmer, it just so happened to be what I do better in.

Lately, programming has been turning into a tiny chore and I hope it doesn’t enlarge itself. I overcome it partially by adding interesting things to do into the project so it felt a little more fun and probably can gain myself a little more satisfaction. I define “interesting things” to be something I never done before and have a high chance of getting it right. However, these “interesting things” aren’t good for me because I ended up having to maintain these interesting things.

My work generally involves – development, maintaining. I think I am supposed to squeeze testing and planning in somewhere in the steps but I don’t give a crap about those management level definitions.

Development is always the more fun part. You make something in 10 hours and watch it work. However you may end up watching it work for 10 days leaving your eleventh day in front of the computer debugging for the next 5 hours. This process typically recurs and the base case is the termination of product.

I don’t have a good solution for it but I need a constant feed of “interesting things”. So during maintenance, I added in those “interesting things” which is really just a curse. These “interesting things” come back and haunt me; and I end up having to maintain these “interesting things”. And during the maintenance of these “interesting things”, I added…

The news article on ChannelNewsAsia reveals concerns over over-education of homosexuality issues.

Controversial content in AWARE’s sex education programme sparks debate

SINGAPORE: The debate over the sexuality education programme by the Association of Women for Action and Research boils down to a 15-minute segment of its three-hour workshop, TODAY has learnt after obtaining on Wednesday pages of the group’s Comprehensive Sexual Education: Basic Instructor Guide.

The section in question defines terms such as “anal sex”, “virginity”, “teenage pregnancy” and “homosexual”. As part of the workshop exercise, students are asked to associate these terms according to three categories: Positive, neutral and negative.

The rest of the guide deals with topics such as body image, HIV/Aids, contraception and relationships. But it is the description of terms such as homosexuality and anal sex that appears to be at the heart of the contention raised by self-declared “feminist mentor” and senior lawyer Thio Su Mien.

She took issue with homosexuality being seen as a neutral, not negative, word.

AWARE’s former programme manager Deeksha Vasundhra said the definitions are for instructors to facilitate discussions.

The “private and confidential” guide is never given to students, she said.

While the majority saw the importance of educating their children on sexuality and making the right choices, many also questioned the handling of controversial topics and the explicitness of the material.

“It’s okay to let them know (about sex) but not to this extent. I don’t want my son to learn such explicit things,” said Ms Nor, a mother of three.

Father of six, Rizan Jantan, 45, felt children could approach parents and “we can explain to them (right from wrong).”

A mother of two boys said it was “all natural”, while businessman Chung Toh Keong, 56, felt such issues should be taught, since we “don’t dare talk about such taboo topics”. (Source: ChannelNewsAsia)

What caught my attention is Ms Nor’s comments where she agrees with sex education but prefers it to take a slightly conservative approach where issues such as “anal sex” and so on are not discussed. Is ignorance really bliss? Should there be limits as to where sex education should discuss? Wouldn’t it be just a matter of time (at the rate things are going) these issues become common discussions?

I finally got that damn Samsung PC Studio 3 software to work in Windows 7 64-bit after trial and error. I dream of the day all phone device makers adhere to a standard and make phone software compatible to even rival phones. Perhaps even an operating system integration. I can imagine some Windows Live Mobile tool or something that can open text messages, arrange contacts and extract out files. Phone device makers can make additional features exist as plugins. That would be my dream come true. I dislike all phone software. Hardware makers seem to care little about software.

Sorry I just found the whole AWARE debate at Straits Times forum thread quite absurd. Here are some snipplets:

The open-minded Christian

It saddens me as a Christian ( which I believe literally should mean aspiring to Having a Christ like mind)) that the people who bear this name seem to have forgotten His commandment LOVE GOD AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS YOURSELF there is no othe rcommandment greater than these.

They have forgotten that it was the very act of loving and sitting with sinners that Christ was accused just as the new committee are accusing the old guard.

There is no commandment in the Bible which tells you to mattack anf make the already painful life of homosexuals harder. Please do not pick and pluck to justify your own agenda

It seems to me that the only people who have the mind like Christ are the old guard

truthFirst, April 25, 2009 Saturday 12:22 PM

I didn’t go to church today for various reasons (mainly deadlines to meet). On a side note, the world is changing and Christianity in America is in the decline.

In the name of Total Defense

Someone even brought in the Total Defense strategy. Do humans exist to serve these so-call strategies that humans come out with. Strategies will morph to suit the purpose of national defense.

Promote Lesbianism? What does that do to our already low procreation rate?

Where are we going to get our babies from..Where are our future soldiers going to come from ?

Where are going to get the next generation of workers and tax payers to look after the mid age and the elderly of today?

What does this do to our Health budget when STDs rise and gays demand cloning of babies?

Allowing gay activism and promotion in our schools will confuse our little girls.

This undermines our Total Defence Strategy.

Promoting Lesbianism is anti Nation building activity. Period – Shut down the lesbian movement before they shut down our beloved country with their deviant agenda !!!

Don’t be neutral. Think about the long term viability of our nation. Go to the EGM and stand up for decent family values and the Nation. Majullah Singapura!!!

nobird, April 25, 2009 Saturday 10:36 PM

I always get pissed when someone suggests cloning of babies. It’s not so much of it being unethical, it’s more of it being unneeded. Almost no one wants to see it, it’s out of touch and irrelevant in this era.

Gay movement liken to a virus invasion

Everyone is entitled to his or her own conviction. However to spread your own conviction to children without serious consideration, is like spreading virus to a healthy person. It can affect or be harmless depends on the immunity of the children. However do you think the old EXCO did the right thing? If those who think that old EXCO did the right thing by spreading the message that it was all right to have gay marriages, then there is nothing more to discuss. God bless these members of society.

csanson2004, April 25, 2009 Saturday 11:41 PM

And another suggest a quarantine

what about ALL those GAYS in local universities and tertiary institutions ?? ALL those GAYS in local universities are very disgusting , very very disgusting , they have AIDS AIDS virus , many of them have AIDS AIDS virus and they are spreading the AIDS AIDS virus to everybody . Why can’t they sent ALL these GAYS to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison ? ALL these GAYS in local universities and tertiary insitutions should be sent to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison They are spreading AIDS AIDS virus to everybpdy Why can’t they sent ALL these GAYS in local univerisities to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison ? or the least they should be expelled from the local universities They are spreading AIDS AIDS virus to everybody They should be sent to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison, ALL these GAYS in local universities and tertiary institutions should be sent to prison for 40 years , 40 years in prison

josiewong, April 26, 2009 Sunday 04:52 AM

I don’t have much opinion on the issue actually. I’m not even sure if AWARE is a Christian organization or it is just a general women issues organization. (I’m often unAWARE of the news.) If they’re affiliate to a religion, it is fine to spread the anti-gay sentiments as they believe. If they are not affiliated to any religion, then there is no enforcement required at all. Just don’t mix religion into any non-religious organization. I don’t think much people care about gay issues anyway.

Ultimately everyone has the right to choose what they believe in. If the organization does not align with your beliefs and you do not wish to accept their beliefs, then you’re just hijacking the organization, you really should be starting your own.

Interesting, this has become a wonderful opportunity for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) to spread awareness to the public, many of whom probably don’t care of their existence. The LGBT and Christian-haters seem to have form some sort of alliance or something. The enemy of my enemy is my friend?

I previously set up a blog with one of those cheap web host that probably stores like a 150 websites in one server. The price is low and the service I got is alright, typically a one day response time which I am fine with. It was until that low-cost web host start insist on me having one of those VPS plans that I started to turn away. I couldn’t afford the VPS back then and I wasn’t that keen to let them suspend my account due to high activity.

So I was pretty determined to get a good host and stay there for the next few years. Changing hosts is such a chore. Media Temple has a lot to offer:

• Professional looking: A professional made website with good design and nice pictures of servers. I gotta admit that at one point of time I actually thought their servers look like that.
• Supports large websites: Media Temple hosts multiple huge websites that I go to. Today they host 9rules and Django Project. And they load pretty quickly. Of course those are under their premium plans but I thought that they would offer me something roughly on par.
• Marketing gaga: I’m totally into the marketing term “grid”. Even though Media Temple’s Grid Service is not the same grid computing I later understand, the term “grid” was a key deciding factor. Back then I did not understand the term. It just sound like one of those plans I should be having.
• Designer control panel: Media Temple actually has a wonderful control panel. I’m sick of CPanel and was looking for something fresher. Media Temple’s control panel is almost like a designer panel. And well, the demo control panel also loads quite quickly.
• Transparency in hosting: Media Temple also has this RSS feed where they reveal incidents of their clusters. This is a huge plus to me. I see the transparency of the hosting provider. I like that level of transparency and they keep updating their customers with rather detail ongoings.
• Customer centricity: Media Temple has generally positive reviews and does a lot of damage control around the web. This appeals to me. It appears that they’re listening.

So I signed up for Media Temple’s Grid Service thinking that it’s the end of all my worries. But it rarely is the case as I explain below:

• So what if it’s professional looking: This just means Media Temple hire good designers and have the revenue to do so. A good design invites people but is hardly representative of the level of service they provide.
• So what if it supports large websites: Media Temple is likely to have place much of their technical resources in these large websites. Media Temple has a stake in maintaining the online time of these websites as they placed their logos on these sites and has become closely associated with them. If you ain’t going to be paying for some of their really expensive services, I doubt you get anything close to that level of dedication.
• And yeah I believed the marketing department: Well, the word “grid” is totally meaningless. In fact I feel kinda stupid believing it was the holy grail or something. “Grid” turns out to have lots of problems and these includes slow database access which mattered greatly to me.
• So what if there’s a designer control panel: Designer control panel that is slow, may I add. I found it crawling. When you really need something like accessing the database with phpmyadmin, you will realized how many clicks it takes to reach there. You can’t open a control panel page into a new tab also and that’s bad usability. Control panel takes longer than it should and I pretty much given up using it. The demo control panel does not reflect the speed of your control panel.
• So transparent but no improvement: Sure they post lots of issues and are still rather transparent. But it just took too long for them to fix their problems. Having an RSS feeds detailing the server faults makes customers slightly more forgiving but what I want to see is a change. It’s almost like someone recognizing his/her mistake and apologies but commits the same thing all over again. After a while, I realized no news is good news. Media Temple have some issues with their vendor Blue Arc and somehow these issues affected a portion of their customers. They took a long time to resolve. I am not sure to what extend it has been resolved.
• Customer centricity non-existent: I wrongly assumed the level of support from Media Temple judging on the way they perform damage control. Media Temple support is rather poor. They take long to reply and complained that my database activity is too high on several occasions. The database analytic tool that they provide reveal no spike in activity. I mailed them and they insisted that I should check their analytic tool to resolve issue. Want to know how it feels like talking to a wall? Try Media Temple.

Ultimately, what mattered more than webhosting support is not having the need to request for support. Today I hardly request for support because I just don’t need it.

And that is what I call great service.

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