Irritating sounds from the pipes below my flat

The sound comes from outside the pump room, at a raised concrete platform covered on top by some metal covers (with one missing piece in the centre) below:
Through the uncovered spot shows two blue coloured pipes, with meter facings.
The irritating sound is coming from the clickings of the meter(s):

Here is a video and sound from the pipe:



And here is the resultant vibration and sound it caused in my flat's taps:

Gone Fishing - Blog closure (indefinitely)

Forrest went for a run.

I went fishing.

Phone problem found, but not solved

Siemens M75

I have been unable to send SMS through my phone for some time now, so if you've not received SMS from me for some time, you know why. Too lazy/busy to get my phone fixed, so I'm living with it. Should be fixing my phone this Saturday.. (I've been telling myself this for the past month or so. :| )

Anyway, I think I've found out why my phone can't send sms! It's because of a certain header attached to the outgoing message (virus??) which caused the message to be unreadable by non-robust sms applications.

If your phone can't read my sms, it's because the sms reader on your hp is clueless on how to handle this header, and simply throws an exception.

For those who can, it can either be because your hp is robust enough to recover from the error, or it simply can't be bothered enough to put a finger on the error (ignores header!).


Here's how I found out:
I sent a message ("Test") from my phone over to a GPRS modem and decipher the received data (which shows a lot of other information!):
------------------------------------------------------------------
SMS (RAW STREAM): 06915689450002440A9156393820140000609072818304230B050A03000408A8E5391D
Service Center Address: 6598540020
Destination Address: 6593830241
Protocol Data Unit Type: 68 <----- BUGGY :: Should by 4. An extra value of 64 denotes an attached header!
Reply Path?: false
User Data Header Indicator?: true
Status Report Indicator: false
More Message to send: true
Message Type Indicator: 0
Data Coding Scheme: 0
Service Center Time Stamp: 2006/9/27 18:38:40 (Time Zone:32)
User Data Length: 11
UDL Checksum: Passed

IEI: 0A <---- ID of the belligerent Information Element in header
IED: 000408 <---- Data of the belligerent Information Element

Message: Test
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Screensaver

This is a snapshot of my screensaver.
I found it sort of weird when I first saw it. I couldn't make anything out of it till quite some time later (for those who can, don't be smug - the pic is easier to decrypt than the screensaver itself.)

The screensaver has 3 randomly drifting objects - one eye, one bee, and one 'M' character (which reminded me of the day my dot-matrix printer ran out of ink just before project submission. =|)

The eye is always looking out for the bee, the bee is always flapping its wings and moving randomly as bees do, while the blue M is just looking blue - perhaps because its horizontal stripes are making it look fat or something, I dunno.

Now who got what it stands for? =)

Funny....

Was debugging my GPRS modem application when I noticed this unfamiliar error in my server console:




INFO [Win32SerialPort Notification thread] (ATSMS.java:281) - unknow cmd received =
RING

+CLIP: "91070617",129

DEBUG [Win32SerialPort Notification thread] (ATSMS.java:215) - data availabel on serial port
data received = "P: "91070617",129
"
INFO [Win32SerialPort Notification thread] (ATSMS.java:281) - unknow cmd received = P: "91070617",129

DEBUG [Win32SerialPort Notification thread] (ATSMS.java:215) - data availabel on serial port
data received = "
RING

+CLIP: "91070617",129
"
INFO [Win32SerialPort Notification thread] (ATSMS.java:281) - unknow cmd received =
RING

+CLIP: "91070617",129







Then I found out it was someone trying to call me, cos I was using my SIM card as the GPRS connection source in the modem. :|

君莫悲

岁月难得沉默 秋风厌倦漂泊
夕阳赖着不走挂在墙头舍不得我
昔日伊人耳边话已和潮声向东流
再回首往事也随枫叶一片片落

爱已走到尽头恨也放弃承诺
命运自认幽默想法太多由不得我
壮志凌云几分愁知己难逢几人留
再回首却闻笑传醉梦中

笑谈词穷古痴今狂终成空
刀钝刃乏恩断义绝梦方破
路荒遗滩饱览足迹没人懂
多年望眼欲穿过红尘滚滚我没看透

词嘲墨尽千情万怨英杰愁 (自嘲末尽千情万缘已皆愁)
曲终人散发花鬓白红颜殁
烛残未觉与日争辉徒消瘦
当泪干血隐狂涌白雪纷飞都成空

Working life

To all my dearest NUS friends who are about to graduate, you might be expecting a culture shock in some ways or another when you join the workforce (I know I have).

As my good-naturedness goes (a long way), I shall reveal some of the trivial yet shocking "don't-you-learn-something-everyday" thingies, so you'd need not sweat on these small stuff later.

1) There is no QUOTA for printing. You can print as much stuffeses as you want, without attempting to print 9 ppt slides a page. No more measly 40 A4 pages / month of PS-printer printouts, or the hassle of going down to the admin office to topup your quota. Yay.

2) You have to wear nice smelling shirts and ironed pants (ie. look smart), which means no bermudas and/or sandals allowed. Unless, of course, you are a budding entrepreneur doing your own spiffy startup in a 6x6 cubicle somewhere in a business incubator.

3) If you think there's a lot of technical lingos in SoC, there's a lot more work lingos coming your way, buddy... One very distressing phrase I find is 'I'll CHECKPOINT with you tomorrow at 9am' - which means you'll have to clear your workload by then. No more free-loading by copying your friends' notes. =(

4) This goes very well with me: THERE EXIST FREE DRINK DISPENSER MACHINES. Yes, I'm talking about those that you put in 40 cents and press a button, and a paper cup comes down with water squirting from the left and concentrate squirting from the right into the cup to make your chosen Milo/7-Up/Coffee. Except you don't need any coins! Shiok shiok. But control yourself, or you'll see a belly forming soon.

5) You can claim taxi fares if you do OT. So please do OT almost everyday like I have been doing for the past #@%$#^ 3 weeks.

Busy busy busy

The training at TSS is killing. The 7 of us are bunked in a room and given lectures with deliverables, from 9am to 6pm (it's more 9am - 9pm, at least)

SWT Programming, Socket Programming, JNI Programming UML, DLL creation,C++ MultiThreading, Server Programming, card reader programming... oh man, I'm going to be an expert programmer by the end of the 3 month long intensive training~!

But it's good I've been given a T60 with 2 GB ram to cope with all the programming, I would rather stab myself in my right eye if they want me to work on this slow HP lappie.

And yes, I won't have much time to blog (as you might have probably found out).

I still need time to go out with my dear. =P

Journey to the East - carpool needed

Catch Frank in Journey to the East everyday~!

I got a job @ IBM and I think it's a tad bit crazy already - I'm living in Choa Chu Kang and IBM is at Changi Business Park.

Does anyone have carpool/vanpool/bikepool from the West to the East? Will pay, of course. Call me @ 93830241.

Need more time.

I don't seem to be having time for administrative issues, including blogging and reading blogs~.

Things to do::
1) Process vietnam photos
2) Vietnam Expenses sheet
3) Find job(s)
4) Attend to AWOL charge, due to missing IPPT
5) Commencement

Happenings::
1) Finding a job
2) Going out with Dear
3) Going out with Dear
4) Having time-constrained things happening to me
5) Long overdued meet-ups with friends