Painting with MSN Live Messenger…

Painting with Microsoft Paint…

Variations on a theme…
(the 1st picture was the original drawn by someone else)

My sis and I went to Queensway shopping centre today, because she has wanted to buy Deuter bag for very long and hasn’t found it. I had recommended her the place, and we ended up buying a bag, shoes and jeans, all of which she was supposed to buy but hasn’t found a suitable one. Dad already gave her the money to buy her stuff donkey years ago. She, like me, takes a very very long time to buy an item.

We were looking at jeans and my sis was trying them out in this small shop. And, for the second time, the shopkeeper has mistook me as my sis’ boyfriend. And this was also just the second time I brought her shopping. The first time, about a year ago, I brought her and my niece to Far East Plaza, and there was this shop auntie who insisted I was my sis’ boyfriend, or was chasing my own sis. After my niece explained I was her bro, she even thought it was the kind of 干哥哥 type of brother.

So I suppose we don’t look like siblings, and either she looks too old or I look too young. My sis should be considered the petite range already, and I’ve seen her classmates which seriously look super cao 老. Therefore I must be the one who look like a kid.

It’s time for me to grow up and be more mature.

Song of the moment: Robbie Williams – Better Man

Sis’ Windows crashed beyond recovery yesterday. Needed to back up essential folders before I re-install XP over it. But the Safe Mode command prompt was so stupid it tried to start Windows and open a cmd prompt. When Windows could not be started.

I’m not as prepared as I used to be, when I often go on PC rescue missions. The last one I can remember was some months back with Jean’s virus-ed PC. But today I realized that Ubuntu LiveCD was my new recovery CD. I had to download a recent version for NTFS write support, but I meant to download it anyway to upgrade my laptop.

It was superior in these features:

1. It fits on a CD. Works on old systems that could not read or boot from DVDs.
2. It was a bootable CD. As long as BIOS is funtional, I can boot.
3. It has built-in NTFS support. If not it would be useless for recovering a Windows machine.
4. It was supposed to auto-mount the detected hard disk volumes, but due to incomplete shutdown, it gave a warning instead. Enough help was given for me to terminal and override the warning to mount it anyway.
5. GUI. I could do quick filesystem navigation and prompt owners for important folders to back up.
6. Decent built-in driver support. Couldn’t do my external USB wireless network adapter, but it could recognize iPods as disk drives and even the music inside (which was what I used to back up important data). Sound card and speakers also worked on load. Hopefully it can detect internal wireless cards.

So I guess what I need to stock up on are:

1. Windows XP CD. Not DVD for the same reasons above.
2. Service Pack 3 on a CD.
3. Maybe a consolidated driver CD for my own PC.
4. External rescue: AVG on a CD, latest signatures maybe on a thumbdrive.

Easy to say, Lazy to do.

Went back to camp for my very first reservist briefing today. And guess who I met? The guy whom I lent some money to several years back. He looked like a decent and honest guy to me then, was quite a good (army) friend, but he was not comfortable with disclosing the reason at that time. He got lost some time after he said he would pay me back, and I was nagged by angdao frequently because of that. I guess it’s hereditary. I did try contacting him, even asking others in the same department to tell him that I was looking for him, but they said they never kept in contact.

Naturally I approached him and planned to talk to him about it a while later. (not very good to start conversation with a friend with O$P$ right…) Found out he didn’t change his handphone number, and hinted I was unable to contact him all this while. Also learned that he started working + part time study (means he probably has some money already). Some time later he initiated it himself and asked me for my bank account number, saying he’s sorry, he remembers and he’ll pay me back.

At the end of the briefing, it turns out he was the only one I knew there. No others in the same department was there; some might say, this is the Work of God™ that I meet him there.

What’s mine will come back to me. Right?

Today I solved a mystery. During my flights I always observed the in-flight display showing the flight route. And during my flights to the States, I always wonder why the flight route was an arc towards Russia and Alaska instead of flying straight across the Pacific ocean.

Wouldn’t that be more expensive & time-consuming to fly a longer route? Flying closer to land for safety and emergency? Airspace issues? Wind support in the route to fly faster?

In fact, the plane was flying the shortest route, just that the line became curved when shown on a flat map. The phenomenon is called the Great Circle. I managed to find a Great Circle Mapper, and plotted the route from SIN to SFO.

Presto! Adding the fact that I had to stop over at ICN or HKG, the path became so much like the ones I took. It also means if there was a camera looking at me here facing SFO, and zoomed out of Earth so much that I could see the straight-line route on the globe surface, I would actually see Alaska along the way! I couldn’t have imagined it since my mind was stuck with the regular flat map. (and I wonder if anyone else understands what I am describing…)

Now I’m satisfied I actually took the shortest distance.