The DHL man just came with good and bad news......

Just as I came back from packing a late lunch, (ais limau & Big pau) the DHL guy came into our office. My girl had to let him in when he said there is a package for me. I was surprised as none of my enemie....er, friends had sent anything (bombs, stinky stuff, kinky stuff, etc.) these past few weeks.

Once I opened the packege, everything came back to me. Three days ago, I had ordered some free samples from InterSil, mainly the ICL7107 in DIP and MQFP version. I am so happy to get them now. Thanks to Intersil.

Now, I am hoping they will send some more sample ICs which I have requested too. Wow. First, it was Maxim and now Intersil. This is so cool. I know Microchip also does this but I have not tried it yet since my favourite Pasar Road shop stocks them.

In a nutshell, the ICL7107 measures the DC voltage and then displays them on a 3 and a half 7-segment LED display. In other words, its a LED voltmeter.

In summary:
Good news: I got a lot of ICL7107 ICs
Bad News: I should not have bought the IC at Pasar Road (could have used the money to buy lunch)

Now, I have seven ICL7107 (first was from Pasar Road)
I can make seven LED multimeters if I wanted to. Yeah,
this is going to be my project. But more on this later.

My new Handsfree kit (again)

Yeah, I had to buy a new one the one on the right
gave up when I tried to perform surgery to stick
some loose cables back. Had to go to a few Petronas
station to find one that fits the Nokia 1100. And
now, because of the "noise-cancelling" ear-buds,
I can hear people talking to me from inside my head

Costs me RM12.90, though

Everyone likes NEC

Occasionally, we do get calls from customer telling us that their phones are not working. After filtering for the necessary information, then only do we classify if the call is a normal service call (troubleshooting) or an actual system down.

This morning, my Snr. tech brought in a system which was not working. On closer inspection, we found the reason and not only that, it was confirmed that the mains power at the customer location was having some problems.

In most system down cases, if it was not from Acts of God or plain stupidity, there is in actual fact, a third category: Foreign Invasion. As the power supply gives out heat, cramped enclosure and maybe, because of the frequency in the electronics, we do find a lot of dead insects or geckos in there. If they do not make a nest or urinate, most of them would likely get killed when they touch some of the components thereb creating a short.

Oh-oh, the first thing I saw was this partially chewed
cable. This means the PBX has been housing more
than just cables.

See the culprit there? It was stuck at the metal
panel

And while it was trying to get out, it got the
shock of its life