Kristine and the medicine

She was a bit feverish, so Mommy had to make
her take her medication. Now after some coaxing,
and diluting the medicine with water, she drank
it without any problems. Phew!

Nerf comes to Malaysia!

I am so happy Toys R us brought some of them in this time! Maybe it was the prohibition of sales of toy guns in the States and/or UK which caused this. I mean, where else would Hasbro do with the current stocks? I know its the curent stock because all the painting scheme are in yellow whereas more than three years ago, they were in blue/yellow combination.

For years, I was trying to get them locally with no such luck. Even Singapore does not have them. And most of the time, we had to use eBay. And the runny thing is, the Chinese does not even copy much except for one particular model.

Anyway, I do hope TRU are bringing more of them in soon. I was so elated, its like finding something rare in your own backyard that caused you to look all over the Earth for it in the first place. I have had mixed responses from eBay because of the postage and customs. And so, if it comes to Malaysia, it would have solved a lot of problems. Except for the money part, that is.

This is the Nerf Nite Finder which I bought for RM35.95 or so.
Nothing spectacular except that you stuff in 2xAA batteries
under the gun's grip to light up a red LED behind the lens.

Its said to be an improvement over the Nerf Scout (won from eBay)
But for me, its not going to be an issue because I am going to take it
apart and cut it up anyway.

Outside Toys R Us, there is the play area for children.
Kristine and Kaelynn showing how dirty their feet are
because everyone (including parents) did not take off
their shoes despite my subtle warnings to them. Oh,
and Kristine nearly started a fight with three girls over
a house but i eventually ended up in a stand-off.

When I woke up late this morning, Kristine took me
Nerf to play while Kaelynn took my favourite Scout

This is the Nerf Longshot which I am hoping they
would come to Malaysia. Potential prop material

This is the Nerf Disk Shot which I am REALLY hoping
they would come to Malaysia. Until then, the Scout is
still my favourite Nerf.

This is the CS-6, interchangeable Nerf weapon. Well,
its going to take some time to like it eventually. Its a
Nerf weapon which allows you to modify it depending
on what firepower (read: Mission) you need it for.

The problem of thinking too hard

This case is a problem from all levels. The customer has three floors of office. Initially, only the Main Office wanted a PABX to replace its ageing NEC system. So no problem there. Then the upper floor office wanted a PABX as well. And we were reccommended to them since out job was satisfactory. And when the second floor job was done, we were introduced to the third floor office was well! By this time, we realised they were all inter-related with the lowest office being the Headquarters. The two upper floor offices were not "shown" at the main office's board because they were relatively new. We did introduce a bigger Panasonic model which is capable of serving all three offices but were refused. So, we had to install three Panasonic KX-TDA200 instead.

Now, here is the big problem: All the three offices would like to communicate with each other.

They would like to talk to each other without having to use the Telekom lines which charges for every call. So I was tasked to solve this problem. Having been servicing Toshiba systems for years, the most obvious solution would be to use the DISA (Direct Inward System Access - a Toshiba Term). All I would have to do is to connect a SLT (single-line port) to an incoming CO port and vice versa between each system, and thus a pair of channels were born!. After having created three pairs of channels, I realised I took a bit off more than I could chew because in the Panasonic TDA PABX, a DISA system requires you to have some external cards. So, I was literally knocking my head on the wall for days or even weeks.

It was not until went to my Sundance Forum that MrGemini pointed out the obvious to me. I was so engrossed with using DISA that I overlooked the answer which was right in front of me! So, now all I have to do is to follow up on my SLT-CO channel creation with a series of codes where each extension on each floor (except for the Main Office which would prefer to have to SLT ports instead) would have to enter in order to access any one of the three channels available to them. The reason is because almost 98% of the extensions are SLT. And then, once they got through to the other Panasonic PABX, all they have to do is to dial the extension. I had to deny these systems from giving the caller the ability to grab an outgoing line as this might have detrimental effect for all offices concerned. The solution is then to place these SLT ports in COS (Class of Service) that denies them from dialing a 9 followed with any digit after it.

It sounded almost to easy but then, because the Panasonic is relatively new to me, I had to struggle with the TDA software for a while as the Trunk Groups, COS and External Call Block segments are my main obstruction.

So, the solution is as follows:

Original code to access CO Line 13 and then dial the extension 211, and they cannot dial any numbers starting with 90- to 99:
[*37013 + 211]

Modified code to access CO Line 13 and then dial the extension 211, and they cannot dial any numbers starting with 90- to 99:
[7013 + 211]

We installed the Panasonic system but using
Toshiba cabling methods using Krone connection
modules. pardon the mess as I was testing both
connections using SLT ports from both floors.