Time

Soon, the time to move is just a week away........

I hate being labelled as a contractor!

In times when you really need to go, you really need to go. And in an unfamiliar place, looking for the washroom in an emergency is quite perplexing. Already places like Cyberjaya is full of stupid road signs and guards who demands your IC, what else is new to this fucked up place?

Sometimes I feel so degraded at Cibaijaya
But I went in anyway despite the CCTV there

What's your problem?

There I was, on the way to Jalan Loke Yew from Jalan Kuching when I stopped at the lights just in front of the fountain. As the lights flashed green, I knew it was time to stop since at the speed I was driving, there is no chance I can make the car move faster in time to beat the lights at the Orange to Red period.

So, I stopped.

And then, all of a sudden, there was a car horning me. I looked at the rear-view mirror to see a very pissed-off taxi driver. He was trying to get me attention and gesturing to me by holding his head sideways with his left hand while using his right index finger spinning about his ear.

You know, he could have save the trouble and changed to the other lane but no, he wants to make my life miserable. So, when the lights changed, I showed him I had my camera with me and started to take his picture. And all the while he was swerving away so that I can't take the shot.

I hate taxi drivers and the last time I had an encounter it was years ago which involved a spanner, a few ringgit lost, and an almost broken camera. But that is another tale.

This is the taxi, already he is swerving to the next lane

OK, I missed but this is the time where my often blur
shots came out quite nice.

Gotcha! He can't take his eyes off the road as the ramp
up is quite narrow

Smile for papa! You bastard!

Relocating a system

There are many things we do for our customers, from installing a new system to maintaining it to upgrading it to relocating it and even to dismantle and even sell it off. So, here is a typical job for us on a normal day. We need to move the system from one side of the office to the next and also at the same time, to relocate both the existing network and phones cables at the same time too. And then, to lay more new network and phone cables as well.

Luckily for us, the "other side" is just behind the wall and since most of the cables are going through the four holes, it made our job easier. So, we broke the job into three sessions.

The first was to relocate the system and also make sure the existing phones are still working. The second session is to lay fresh network and phone cables for the new desks and lastly, to standby on site to make sure everything works.

In this job, you'd really have to think and work fast since time is money and at the same time, in the cheapest way possible for the customer.

This is the system we're going to relocate to the other side

And how do we do this? There are four holes in the wall
where the cables come through

So, we're going to pull it back from the other side

See the four holes?

All done! But because its already late in the evening,
we just connected the wires quickly and tidy up
tomorrow.

Eprom Data

While we're shifting stuff between both floors, I came upon the NEC again. This time, there is really no hope for it at all. So, while I was taking the cards out, I came across a few EPROMs. When I was younger, I was fascinated with EPROMs but doing up a circuit to reveal its data was too cumbersome for me (OK, I was too lazy). I was into EPROMs quite a lot, not because of its function to store data but more of a jewel because of its UV window. This is a small piece of quartz window which uses Ultraviolet light to erase data in the EPROM. But what was more important to me was how it reflects light of the rainbow and I was looking all over Malaysia to get a really clear and strong resin so I can make a keychain out of it. And also, buy a darn good EPROM programmer for both UV EPROMS and EEPROMS (unfortunately, which in the end, the money went to a Sony Playstation instead. Ha ha ha ha)

Anyway, I liberated a few EPROMs and used the PIC chip to go over its contents and display them on a row of LEDs. But because the PIC I used had only 16 pins, I could not get the full range of data. Then again, do I really want to?

The reason why I am so interested again is because the data output from the EPROM is the perfect way to generate random blinking lights. But the EPROM I got, did not have much data so in the end, what you see in the video was a lot of flashing instead of random stuff.

Maybe I can still save up for an EPROM programmer even though these technology is obsolete..............

This is the test circuit

And this is the video below:

Saturday afternoon with Kristine

Just as I came back from work at three, it was quite sunny and Kristine wanted to go out to play. And she has started to like ambehbas now.

Yes, our very own ambehba girl

Parading around the 1.0L Daihatsu car

Unfortunately, the ambehba was too big

So, she had to drag it about. Luckily, there was no strong wind

And dragged it, she did

All over the place, I might add

And she gave me a small flower too

I was also surprised that she does know how to cycle

And after a long afternoon, its time for an evening nap

Before she starts to put food on the floor again

Oh, another thing, Kristine likes to have showers now,
instead of bubble baths

The Hand Scanner revisited

Many of you have asked me how I did the Hand Scanner. I will post up the pictures here and later (hopefully) give you the step by step details in my website.

First you use the Flowcode to create and simulate your
program.

Then, you use MPLAB to compile and assemble the program


And you use the PICstart Plus to burn the program into the PIC chip


Before you do anything else, test the program again,
this time in the real World


And once it is done, you wire it up carefully
And slow down on the cursing


Every now and then, test the circuit as when you have
everything stuffed inside, keep in mind of Murphy's Law

Here is a simple diagram via Google's free SketchUp on how the original
battery powered fan looked like

Again, thanks to Google's free SketchUp, you can see what I
did to the original toy. And I still have not had the chance
to paint it up
(Oh, the black stuff is the foam tape).

My new office Part I

So, as you al know, my new office is still at Ground Floor but this time, its being renovated to house some staff as well. However, despite having my very own office (again), I do not feel so secure as the both the office doors located at the front and back, is easily accessible to everyone. So, this means, its easy to take stuff away if the person wants to, that is.

This is the side wall which will be modified as a side entrance

This is how it looked at the end of the day

One of the partitions with a broken plaster board

OK, the texture is nice, like a small canyon

The wheel

This is one of those incidents where I was too busy looking and also too fast for my camera to start up and take pictures.

I was driving along Jalan Kuching on my way to the Office when I saw something weird. There was a large object near a lorry. The lorry's rear left tyre has broken loose. It rolled along side of the lorry where the driver tried to knock it towards the direction of the road shoulder.

Unfortunately, he failed and after bumping to the lorry's side, it bounced towards the middle of the road to where I was. So, I sped up and from my rear view mirror, it went all the way to the right side of the three lane road. Some cars did slow down to avoid the tire and I hoped they did not have an accident as the cars were quite closed to each other.

I was so busy laughing that by the time I got back control of my car and activated the camera, it was too far to take pictures.

Someone get me a new camera, please.

Trip to Kulai

After a fitful night of sleeping (Kristine was crying and screaming until 4 in the morning), I got hit with another outstation trip, this time South, to Johor. There are three sites to visit there; two in Kulai and one in Batu Pahat. Everything was fine and sunny until we reached the Seremban Highway. There, you can see how UEM Builders work. They decided to barricade on a few stretches of highway at the same time. This would mean they can complete them in the shortest time possible and inconvenience the road users at the same time.

Here we go........ and it cost us more than 30 minutes
And since we're driving a 4x4, we got to victimise
a Melaka car who refuse to give way

This is the customer's own way to telling you to use the correct toilet

And after that, it started to rain on the way to Batu Pahat

Where most of the drivers love to use the Hazard Lights
This one was even better: He refused to give way even
when he was on the outer lane.
(This image was not photoshopped. Ha ha ha ha)

At Batu Pahat, the sudden downpour creating flashfloods at
many spots. All the cars had to move to the other lane
while our 4x4 splashed at them. Ha ha ha ha

This used to be a three lane road. Ha ha ha ha

This guy was quite daring and we were worried for awhile
because his car might stall anytime. Ha ha ha ha

On the way home, it was raining so heavily, there were a lot of accidents
We witnessed a few vehicles ending up at the side of the road and even
some that were severely banged up. The three cars here were not so
lucky. I think the black SUV had a problem

So the tow truck came to their aid but unfortunately, it was hit by the bus

This is the poor SUV

The rain followed us back to Kepong where it had its share of flash floods
too. Luckily, since it was late at night, there were not much cars about.

Trip to Kuantan IV

So, its was a busy weekend for me. I had to drive up to Kuantan by myself as my technician was sick at the last minute. It was a job to add in about 12 phones, more incoming lines and also to dismantle a phone system we loaned them.

Because I was alone, it took me the better part of Sunday to complete it. It was very difficult because the person who arranged my presense there, forgot to inform the new Manager about my tasks which pissed him off and he told me to come back on Sunday instead. Because I was literally running out of time, I pretended to clean up my stuff and leave. Once I saw him leave, I came back and continued way into the night and left with the network guys (who, incidentally, were not "affected"). Then I had to waste RM110 for a Hotel.

Come Sunday, by the time I finished everything, it was after 2100 at night. And boy, driving back on a highway without much streetlamps at night is not fun. It is so creepy and dark. In KL, when it is dark, you can still see some lights on the horizon or clouds. But here, its totally black. Then when there is a car (not cars) coming from behind, you'd have to look carefully if its actually headlights or other things. Many a time, I tried not to look into the rear-view mirror too. This is the time where my overactive imagination is not really appreciated at all.

This are the remaining cables that will be used in the future

I just hoped that they do not open this junction box on Monday. Ha ha ha ha

The Ground Floor renovation (which will be my department)

As the floor is stinky now, they are still drying it up
But I saw some patches where the carpet is rising
Somehow, I don't think this is the correct idea of
creating activated carbon. Ha ha ha ha ha ha