Sheez. I'm surprised at myself. I know what I normally get addicted to - computer games and Grey's Anatomy and CSI. I fell out of love with Grey's already and I just watch new CSI episodes out of curiosity.
For the past two weeks have been watching Chuck videos almost non-stop, except when I really needed to work/ sleep/ go to the gym/ have dinner with friends, of course. It's insane! I don't usually trawl You Tube for videos. Guess what I've been doing lately...? Have watched bloopers, casting videos, interviews, comic con panel stuff, etc etc etc. started out with Zac Levi, then of course Yvonne Strahotski, because those two belong together, then a bit of Joshua Gomez, then suddenly found a truckload of stuff with Adam Baldwin, who by the way is sooooo cute. Cut it out. I'm not gonna go nuts over the guy, just stating the obvious, you know.Oh, plus I actually listened to Podcasts dissecting the show! I'm turning into a crazy shipper!
One thing about the show - it's cute, and in a weird Oza kind of way, kind of motivating. It's nice to see a geek become a hero, it helps that they already preselected Zac Levi for his cuteness. Damn, I never thought he was cute until later in the show when his 'cuteness' surfaced, or allowed to surface anyway. And the dude fits so well with Yvonne. Can you believe how many people made fanvids of the two of them? And so many people hate Tim Loden, Yvonne's loser boyfriend. (Yes, I'm one of them). Zac already broke up with Caitlyn Crosby (who I don't think suits him that well either). And for the record, I have no illusions about meeting these people face to face. They're just amazingly intriguing at the moment. It will wear off, I hope.
Mainly though, the show really cracks me up I'm sure my neighbours are wondering why there is someone ketawa terbahak-bahak in that apartment next door :P Plus the acting is super good. There is a lot of subtle interaction between the characters. You really see the emotions, especially between Chuck and Sarah.
On that note, what is it that makes someone cute or adorable or sexy anyway? I used to think that my TaiKor was sexy/ super hot. Then I saw his photo again and went like 'eww'! So many guys I thought were 'sweet' were hailed as 'sexy' and super hot by others. Man... did I fail Guys 101 or what??
Case #1 - George Eads (Nick Stokes, CSI Vegas). I thought he looked like a nice guy, the type who would hold an old lady as she climbs the stairs. Fans voted him Top Ten Sexiest Men on TVGuide. I stand corrected.
Case #2 - Adam Baldwin aka Colonel John Casey on Chuck. I liked him because I read somewhere that he's been married forever (only 1 wife) and has 3 kids and calls himself 'a family man'. I like that. Then I found fanvids of him. Okaaayy.. Yes, I noticed his hotness, but you know... I thought he's adorable. He's so a Sugar Bear. Go Ilsa! :D
(You don't know what I'm talking about, do you? Check out Chuck Season 1 Episode 12, Chuck vs the Undercover Lover)
Case #3 - Zac Levi - OK. He's cute. And funny. And intelligent. And rides a Ducati Monster 750. Also owns a Harley. And races cars. Need I say more? NOT a total geek.
Sigh. MY geek would be someone who wants to sit by the river in the middle of the forest at night.... Entah bila la nak jumpa :P
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Hari Hari Mau
This is so typical me not being up to speed on things. Very sorry, o Monkey King, for not posting my first entry on Monday as per your instructions. Totally my fault for being too preoccupied with work + Chuck to read the instructions properly. My bad.
Anyhow, what do I say? There are over a hundred blogs doing this, and somehow I'm sure they'd repeat the same things. I'll skip the basic info about Malayan tigers (Panthera tigris jacksonii) and simply share what I learnt from the Sg Yu campaign in Taman Negara.
Many of us don't think we have anything to do with the decimation of the tiger population. But maybe we do, in a roundabout way. Think about the water we waste everyday. If everyone is so wasteful, soon there will be a water 'shortage' and people would suggest building another dam or piping water from the other side of the main range. All these developments destroy tiger habitat and can actually be avoided if people are so much more careful about their consumption.
Same goes for waste generation - more land will be needed for landfills if we don't stop throwing so much stuff away all the time. And one way to slow down the rate is 1) stop buying/accepting so much stuff, 2) compost your biodegradable waste and 3) reuse or recycle stuff.
I understand that we need to generate income somehow, but is it necessary to convert all logged forests into palm oil? Tigers can survive in logged forests, but it would be much harder for them to live in oil palm plantations. There won't be nearly enough prey for them to live on, not to mention the potential for conflict with the workers and/or villagers.
In Sg Yu, people have reported conflict with elephants rampaging through their kebun, but they failed to realise that the reason there is conflict is because THEY were encroaching into the Taman Negara area, which is basically allocated for the wildlife. If they stayed clear of wildlife territory, there wouldn't be conflict, would there? Some cases seem innocent enough. A boy killed a leopard cat (I think that's what it was, can't remember) because it ate his chickens, not realising that they're an endangered species. I personally believe that man should not be so hasty to eliminate anything which is 'stealing' his resources because guess what? You're doing it to the animals' resources! So there.
Then there are the snares. Most of the kampung guys set snares for deer and kijang, animals like that. Bear in mind that snares are illegal, ya. They might SEEM less dangerous than guns, but their effects can be devastating. First off, when they catch deer and stuff, they're eating the tigers' prey. Then other people come in and catch wild boar too - also tiger prey. 2nd choice, but better than nothing. And the snares catch anything that trips them off - even humans. The only difference is, humans have hands and opposable thumbs, so most of the time, they can free themselves. The other thing is, when an animal is snared, they'd do anything to escape - even if they lose a limb in the process. Hence 3 legged mammals found in our forests. If they can't, secondary infection kicks in and they might die of blood poisoning. Some, like elephants may be able to free the snares, but then live years with a wire constricting their limbs, effectively amputating their legs as they grow.
I saw footage of the tiger that was rescued from a snare in Belum. (Watch the video, it's on the sidebar.) Its foot had to be amputated, it finally succumbed to stress and died. And the mighty tiger shed a tear...
How cruel can we humans be? Are we not the Caliphs of the world? Change now. Save the tiger, save ourselves...
xxx,
Oza
---
The tiger is our national animal. Our heritage. But today only less than 500 of them
remain in the wild. As Malaysians, we need to stand up and protect our heritage.
Speak to your children. Speak to your leaders. Everyone of us can make a difference.
For further information, please visit MYCAT (www.malayantiger.net), WWF Malaysia
(www.wwf.org.my) and Department of Wildlife & National Parks (www.wildlife.gov.my)
Anyhow, what do I say? There are over a hundred blogs doing this, and somehow I'm sure they'd repeat the same things. I'll skip the basic info about Malayan tigers (Panthera tigris jacksonii) and simply share what I learnt from the Sg Yu campaign in Taman Negara.
Many of us don't think we have anything to do with the decimation of the tiger population. But maybe we do, in a roundabout way. Think about the water we waste everyday. If everyone is so wasteful, soon there will be a water 'shortage' and people would suggest building another dam or piping water from the other side of the main range. All these developments destroy tiger habitat and can actually be avoided if people are so much more careful about their consumption.
Same goes for waste generation - more land will be needed for landfills if we don't stop throwing so much stuff away all the time. And one way to slow down the rate is 1) stop buying/accepting so much stuff, 2) compost your biodegradable waste and 3) reuse or recycle stuff.
I understand that we need to generate income somehow, but is it necessary to convert all logged forests into palm oil? Tigers can survive in logged forests, but it would be much harder for them to live in oil palm plantations. There won't be nearly enough prey for them to live on, not to mention the potential for conflict with the workers and/or villagers.
In Sg Yu, people have reported conflict with elephants rampaging through their kebun, but they failed to realise that the reason there is conflict is because THEY were encroaching into the Taman Negara area, which is basically allocated for the wildlife. If they stayed clear of wildlife territory, there wouldn't be conflict, would there? Some cases seem innocent enough. A boy killed a leopard cat (I think that's what it was, can't remember) because it ate his chickens, not realising that they're an endangered species. I personally believe that man should not be so hasty to eliminate anything which is 'stealing' his resources because guess what? You're doing it to the animals' resources! So there.
Then there are the snares. Most of the kampung guys set snares for deer and kijang, animals like that. Bear in mind that snares are illegal, ya. They might SEEM less dangerous than guns, but their effects can be devastating. First off, when they catch deer and stuff, they're eating the tigers' prey. Then other people come in and catch wild boar too - also tiger prey. 2nd choice, but better than nothing. And the snares catch anything that trips them off - even humans. The only difference is, humans have hands and opposable thumbs, so most of the time, they can free themselves. The other thing is, when an animal is snared, they'd do anything to escape - even if they lose a limb in the process. Hence 3 legged mammals found in our forests. If they can't, secondary infection kicks in and they might die of blood poisoning. Some, like elephants may be able to free the snares, but then live years with a wire constricting their limbs, effectively amputating their legs as they grow.
I saw footage of the tiger that was rescued from a snare in Belum. (Watch the video, it's on the sidebar.) Its foot had to be amputated, it finally succumbed to stress and died. And the mighty tiger shed a tear...
How cruel can we humans be? Are we not the Caliphs of the world? Change now. Save the tiger, save ourselves...
xxx,
Oza
---
The tiger is our national animal. Our heritage. But today only less than 500 of them
remain in the wild. As Malaysians, we need to stand up and protect our heritage.
Speak to your children. Speak to your leaders. Everyone of us can make a difference.
For further information, please visit MYCAT (www.malayantiger.net), WWF Malaysia
(www.wwf.org.my) and Department of Wildlife & National Parks (www.wildlife.gov.my)
Sunday, April 18, 2010
You know you've watched too much Chuck when...
You start suspecting yr friends of living a double life...
Like.. let's say the bear. Came to SEA in his teens and never left. He does a lot of undercover work in his line of duty and he travels extensively. Pretty good cover for international espionage, wouldn't you say? Married life - can be cover oso what...
Then there's Pakcik. Seems like a gentle guy, but then, it might be a cover, right? Who would suspect him being anything but a middle aged consultant. Maybe his 6 months in South America was a cover.. Hmm.. MI6?
Plus a number of other people who are "freelancers" and "expats". Who really knows who they really are. But then again, they can't all be gun-toting butt-kicking spy dudes, can they?
He he. Wake up, girl. Chuck marathon's over. Don't miss yr deadlines, kay? : P
Like.. let's say the bear. Came to SEA in his teens and never left. He does a lot of undercover work in his line of duty and he travels extensively. Pretty good cover for international espionage, wouldn't you say? Married life - can be cover oso what...
Then there's Pakcik. Seems like a gentle guy, but then, it might be a cover, right? Who would suspect him being anything but a middle aged consultant. Maybe his 6 months in South America was a cover.. Hmm.. MI6?
Plus a number of other people who are "freelancers" and "expats". Who really knows who they really are. But then again, they can't all be gun-toting butt-kicking spy dudes, can they?
He he. Wake up, girl. Chuck marathon's over. Don't miss yr deadlines, kay? : P
Friday, April 16, 2010
Remember when...
... 1GB was a lot of space?
Looked through my external hard disk today and saw that there was ONLY 979 Mb of space left in one of the partitions. Will need to weed out the unnecessary stuff in there sometime. It's nothing too important, just a collection of music and movies I downloaded, half of which I haven't watched and some I didn't feel were important enough to immortalize on CD.
Not too long ago, maybe six, seven years tops, I forked out RM105 for a 64Mb thumb drive. That was the cheapest I could find, the "high end" ones cost more than RM300. It became important for my coursework since floppy disks only held roughly 1Mb of memory each? A problem when your Powerpoint presentation topped 5Mb.
Still, 1GB was an untold amount of space back then. Computer hard drives were only 20 GB, and that was enough for a decent OS, with space left over for your files. Then file sizes exploded, soon the standard became 40GB, later 80GB. Now 160GB is pretty much the norm for a new laptop. And external drives - 1 Terabyte, 2 Terabytes... Wow! Crazy, innit?
It's common for companies to give away thumb drives holding pertinent information during events, decorated in various creative ways. 1GB is already the norm, I even got a 4GB one at some point. And to think once upon a time I had to PAY for a measly 64 MB. What will they think of next? :-)
Looked through my external hard disk today and saw that there was ONLY 979 Mb of space left in one of the partitions. Will need to weed out the unnecessary stuff in there sometime. It's nothing too important, just a collection of music and movies I downloaded, half of which I haven't watched and some I didn't feel were important enough to immortalize on CD.
Not too long ago, maybe six, seven years tops, I forked out RM105 for a 64Mb thumb drive. That was the cheapest I could find, the "high end" ones cost more than RM300. It became important for my coursework since floppy disks only held roughly 1Mb of memory each? A problem when your Powerpoint presentation topped 5Mb.
Still, 1GB was an untold amount of space back then. Computer hard drives were only 20 GB, and that was enough for a decent OS, with space left over for your files. Then file sizes exploded, soon the standard became 40GB, later 80GB. Now 160GB is pretty much the norm for a new laptop. And external drives - 1 Terabyte, 2 Terabytes... Wow! Crazy, innit?
It's common for companies to give away thumb drives holding pertinent information during events, decorated in various creative ways. 1GB is already the norm, I even got a 4GB one at some point. And to think once upon a time I had to PAY for a measly 64 MB. What will they think of next? :-)
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Cannibal in Me
Thanks to Sali, I now have a new computer to work on. One which is light coloured, which I favour over black; has a matte screen like the old one and works fine.
Actually took it for my sister, who can't do stuff when I'm on the one and only computer in the house. Since Sali offered to let go of her old underutilised laptop for a song, I grabbed the opportunity. But as I fiddled with the computer, I quickly found it to be more appealing than my new Acer which is fast and current, but not so great to WORK on. Older type screens are easier on my eyes - less glaring, no reflections. And I have a thing against black, which I feel is depressing and uninviting. The NEC looks a little like the computer I lost too.
It wasn't immediately good, though. As I suspected, the RAM size was very small. The computer is heavy, as was the norm 5 years ago. And our dear friend did not update the OS since forever. Even the clock was off since the machine hadn't been booted for far too long! I couldn't log on my wireless network, although thank God it does have an inbuilt wireless card. The hard drive is a tad too small, but that's not such a big deal since I can utilise my external drive and thumbdrive for storage.
Decided that the first order of the day (or night) was to upgrade the OS. Thank God (again) that it's original. Had to connect online manually using cable since I couldn't log on using the wireless. So many things have changed over the years that it's quite difficult to do anything on a computer running on XP SP 1. Left it to download as I slept and installed it first thing in the morning. Once done, I started upgrading the Firefox and imported my bookmarks. Thank God for XMarks! I'd hate having different sets on each computer!
Unfortunately, the wireless card couldn't handle logging on to a WPA encrypted network, so had to muddle around resetting to WEP instead. Had problems so sought help from the Belkin guys. They are SO helpful and I finally managed to get both computers on wireless. So glad for that.
To solve the RAM problem, cannibalised the extra RAM I had added to my dead HP. Miraculously, it fit. At first Abang thought the extra RAM wasn't compatible, but thanks to a bit of bullheadedness on my part, it proved to be a live one. So RAM is now 480Mb. Not up to current standards, but good enough to work on. No extra cost.
Updated the MS Office, and we're good to go. Now we'll just have to sort out who pays Sali since now I technically control both computers. Except that K Ayu will use my Acer more since I'd work on the old NEC. No one knows how much is the old computer is really worth, but know what, I don't really care. I love it already :)
Actually took it for my sister, who can't do stuff when I'm on the one and only computer in the house. Since Sali offered to let go of her old underutilised laptop for a song, I grabbed the opportunity. But as I fiddled with the computer, I quickly found it to be more appealing than my new Acer which is fast and current, but not so great to WORK on. Older type screens are easier on my eyes - less glaring, no reflections. And I have a thing against black, which I feel is depressing and uninviting. The NEC looks a little like the computer I lost too.
It wasn't immediately good, though. As I suspected, the RAM size was very small. The computer is heavy, as was the norm 5 years ago. And our dear friend did not update the OS since forever. Even the clock was off since the machine hadn't been booted for far too long! I couldn't log on my wireless network, although thank God it does have an inbuilt wireless card. The hard drive is a tad too small, but that's not such a big deal since I can utilise my external drive and thumbdrive for storage.
Decided that the first order of the day (or night) was to upgrade the OS. Thank God (again) that it's original. Had to connect online manually using cable since I couldn't log on using the wireless. So many things have changed over the years that it's quite difficult to do anything on a computer running on XP SP 1. Left it to download as I slept and installed it first thing in the morning. Once done, I started upgrading the Firefox and imported my bookmarks. Thank God for XMarks! I'd hate having different sets on each computer!
Unfortunately, the wireless card couldn't handle logging on to a WPA encrypted network, so had to muddle around resetting to WEP instead. Had problems so sought help from the Belkin guys. They are SO helpful and I finally managed to get both computers on wireless. So glad for that.
To solve the RAM problem, cannibalised the extra RAM I had added to my dead HP. Miraculously, it fit. At first Abang thought the extra RAM wasn't compatible, but thanks to a bit of bullheadedness on my part, it proved to be a live one. So RAM is now 480Mb. Not up to current standards, but good enough to work on. No extra cost.
Updated the MS Office, and we're good to go. Now we'll just have to sort out who pays Sali since now I technically control both computers. Except that K Ayu will use my Acer more since I'd work on the old NEC. No one knows how much is the old computer is really worth, but know what, I don't really care. I love it already :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)