Xiao P Hide and Seek

Xiao P just found a new game : Hide and Seek. And he has hide behind a transparent sandbath... Nevertheless, very amusing...

Ok, he gave up... :P

FDA Pet Food Recall

After the recent recall of pet food by MenuFood, more and more companies has been announcing and recalling their products as well. Among which affected is Natural Balance, which is supposely ORGANIC and I must say I am bad luck enough to switch over just recently.

Story :
http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/petfood.html

List of Recall Food (Always Updated) :
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/petfoodrecall/

To cut the story short this was what happened (according to me). Most companies do not grow their own wheat somehow and has bought them from a source in China. However, this batch somehow got conteminated and as a result some 10s of pets died and many others fell sick. FDA issued a recall.

Thats just how organic things can get? How safe can food from China be? We have so much stories there that I do not even feel like repeating! Now, add a criteria to your food selection... Source of food!

Citrix Upgrade Reprise

Another stupid Friday spent patching up the Citrix XP to 10. Somehow, maybe because I had recently been a good boy, everything just worked. Fixed IE to enable the LMS and the web agent. Then even without firewall ports, we just put in all the settings. It just somewhow worked this time.

However, its pretty interesting to know that Citrix has withdrawn the 9.2 Clients due to a very serious security problem that allows remote execution of code. Therefore, its version 10 or nothing.

Reference :
http://www.citrix.com/English/SS/downloads/details.asp?dID=2755&downloadID=162299&pID=186

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX112589

Save the baby seals

Canadian may look like trashcan (at least in South Park), but this video of baby seal hunting is definitely proving it. Please watch this and know the truth behind seal hunting...

Now, I want you to go http://www.protectseals.org and show your support to stop this cruelty.

No Shopping Day

Yes, that the very first Wednesday of each month. Singapore has just declared the day as Bad Shopping Day. Sales will drop. You will need less staff on that day. Also expect more complains and frustration on that day. Why? That day, 9 major supermarket is going to stop giving away plastic bag to contain your purchase (for free).

I am not a anti-environmentalist. I fully support the idea that you should save (plastic) and not waste. However, charging the customer each for 10cents is a bit ridiculous. I am sure the cost is like 1cents each only. So the supermarkets wins both way. You forget to bring, they knife you with a high cost. You remember to bring, they save cost anyway by not providing... No wonder the supermarket is ~~~so~~~ supportive of this movement!

I still remember back then when I did not wanted to use their plastic bag and just kept the item into my existing one and guess what? All I get from the unfriendly challenge from a security guard that I had stolen their goods. So, I can finally do that on this day and walk right in front of the security guard, back and forth and I wan tto see what he can do about it! Hmph! But seriously, if everyone really do that and does not pay for it... This will also be known as Stealing Day for many.

Let me propose something. Why don't the supermarket reward people for bringing their own bag instead? If you request that you do not want plastic bag, maybe a 1% rebate or something... Now, jaws will drop from the supermarket people. This must be insane right? No way they will support this right? Fundementally, this whole issue is never about saving the tree (plastic) or the environment. It's all a well disguise cast saving, customer blaming scheme.

Xiao P's Playground

Xiao P has a nice little playground for a while. Lets see what exactlly can he do in his playground.

These are some of the things he has on his playground. There is a de-smell toilet just in case he needed it during playtime. It is the white triangle building in the left bottom.

At the top is a platform where there is tress and fences for he to have a good view.

In between these is a see-saw which will move about when he walk by... He likes to walk under it too.

At the middle top is the tree where he can climb onto or into because there is a hold in it.

Below that is a tray which he can keep some of his stuff like food etc. It also move about acting like a toy for him.

Last but not least is the flower wheel on top which bents in 2 angle allow him to run vertical or horizontal.

Xiao P has other toys in the playground, but I will leave that in another session.

Winners Don't Use Drugs, They just Quit

I finally resigned. Giving my 2 months notice for this. Just say I finalyl had enough of it. Long bus ride, long work hours, long nights - No more. I can spend more time with my family now. I am sure Bobi and Xiao P are very happy about this.

Resigning can be fun too. I am thinking, Dilbert should really make this book call "The Job of Quitting". I am sure its pretty interesting.

BTW, this good site help me pathed many things for my resignation :
http://www.i-resign.com

Hacking a Coke Machine

There has been several ones out there long time ago. However, I recently came across one from Singapore really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSQlH_ujTuE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdexxlovestopwn%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F

Well, its badly made and they never really explain how its done. And from the way they did it, I don't think they just PoC, they actually ripped Coke off. This I do not approve. They are not very clever apparently since there is a camera taking all this and their face down. I don't know about Singapore Law, but I believe it can be a crimnial offense.

Ok, about what I know of Coke hacking. The above basically is to block the exit so that the coke machine think no drinks come out. The rest you figure it out. What I want to say was there was better things to play with the machine. Back in ***, ok maybe I better not mention the place. Its even possible to get all the changes out of the machine, change the pricing, check how much bottle left etc. Also I want to mention that there is control jumper panel behind which you can enable more debug mode cheat just like the arche machine. Cool?

Tell you whats more cool. You do not even need to touch the coke machine to get money from them. Just social engineer them. Hint : There is a number on the coke machine to report failure. Supposely you put in a couple of dollars and nothing came up. So you call right? Ask for refund... Well, I am not going to reveal too much, but trust me, its possible to get a couple of dollars from them just be calling. And guess what's more? The refund comes in vouchers, which are not tracked. Just call them again to say you did not receive the refund and they refund you one more time!

Tell me about it... Next Hacking Pepsi Machines... :)

Citrix Hell

I had heard so much about how screw up Citrix Metaframe was and the amount of problem it has brought about. I am still seeing a lot of big company using it. Why can't they just use Remote Desktop or NetOp? Or FCS, even PCAnywhere? Cheaper, lighter and lots less problems... Anyway, this is a horrifying tales where Murphy's Law totally applies.

It was a plain and simple upgrade from Citrix Metaframe XP to Citrix Metaframe 4.0. We are not even talking about 4.5 which is the newest yet... In additional, this is a really screw up HP Proliant D380 G3 which is running Windows 2003 Standard without any patching... So first step is to backup.

HP Proliant D380 :
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Home.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=316529

HP Data Protector is plain and simple, yet not a good choice due to the imaging is so bad. It actually requires you to have Data Protecter installed before you can recover. Er... Thats so totally off the point for imaging... Next, will try True Image Server, somehow something on the machine is preventing it from sucessfully installing. This is a know issue anyway. OK, lets do System State. Emm cannot run. Probably no SP1 thats why. Ok, V2i or Symantec Backup Exec as its know today. Guess what, its a USB 1.0 speed!!! Will take hours to complete the stupid 10GB backup. So no more backup, just whack on the RAID.

Pull one HDD out for backup and upgrade the other. Citrix went smoothly. Then to SP1 for Windows Server 2003. Then reboot. And Reboot. And Reboot. Yes, WTF... Just a simple SP1 also screwed up. Time to recover. Drove all the way back to grab Wininternals ERD Commander 2005 DVD. Push it in and hope.

Blink Blink Blink... Nothing. WTF again! Its not even a DVDROM! Its a stone age CDROM inside! So try and try no way to remove the stupid driver that hanged. Have to unRAID it. Put back the old HDD and resync. Then up Citrix again. This time forget about SP1 (Kids, DO NOT DO THIS AT ALL, Windows Server 2003 is not even safe at all.). Now, Citrix connection testing...

Server connect OK. Apps totally failed. What happened? No idea. The rest of the night and day I spent was trying to debug this stupid issue. I put the old HDD back with Citrix XP, everything works. Same client, same IP, same firewall. Just wont work in 4.0. Now, not even a Citrix Cert Tech can tell me whats the problem. This continues over the next one and a half day messing with network etc... In the end. Roll back.

So think again when you talk about Citrix Metaframe. For me, hopefully, this is the last time I will do it.

To Quit or Not to Quit, that is not the question...

Recently, there were 2 resignations at my office. One of them happened to be pretty close to me and told me a rather sad story. Due to his unforsee circustances, he needs to be with his wife back in his country in Sri Lanka. He had submitted a resignation for 1 month notice as that.

However, the shocking truth was that the contract state 2 months of notice. This comes to a shock to me as I thought there should not be such a long and demanding period. However, to my horror, the company is not willing to be flexible (given that this company is kinda liek a dot net, but ran by ex-gov bosses (which may be the reason)). Therefore, they way they "compromise" was to give him the 1 month period, but to deduce away 1 months pay. That is to say he practically worked for free for the whole month of March and he has to return home empty with that. Now, and I wondered why there were ~115 employee in the past 5 years...

Anyway, that was the sad part of his story. Now is the sad part of mine story. I rushed home yesterday and checked my contract... it says 2MONTHS! OMFG!!!

Looks like I am pretty screwed as well. Now, I must calm down and remember what the art of wars teaches. Well, anyway there is a saying : 先发制人，后发制于人. While I still have the initiative, I should consider carefully my timing and chances to strike first. Must make sure they will not have a chance to react (like real, its a 2 month period). I know this is a one way ticket to hell, but I am ready to do it...

Should I quit?

• 
  
  Yes, imemdiately, wtf am I waiting for?


• 
  
  Yes, but lets wait till I find a job that can wait 2 months for me


• 
  
  Yes, probably after 1 or 2 days, or at least until the company trip to Kota Kinabalu is over


• 
  
  No, I should stay. The wind and rain is just too big outside

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