Hamlette

The room suddenly feels quieter now.. without that incessant ‘nick nick nick..’ as you chew away on ur house.. neither do I hear the wheel turning round and round at hyper speeds while you try to outdo your best timing on the wheel..

Looking over my shoulder at the tank.. it now feels that tad bit emptier.. somehow it just feels different now.

You were the crazier one of the 2. Sure.. you gave me a fair share of headaches and sleepless nights and mornings.. times when you chose to be chewing away at the cage/plastic house/wheel either at 3 in the morning or when I’m trying to nap in the afternoon.. or that time when you chose to do a ninja and climb over the divider and into omelette’s side and pick a fight with her at 5 in the morning..

You were the trouble maker.. but yet.. you brought endless joy to me. You made coming home something to look forward to more. Of the 2, you allowed me to pick u up occasionally, and you would lie at ur happy spot and drift off to lala-land as you allowed me to reach in and stroke ur forehead..

Every time I step thru my door, irregardless if it’s after a long hard week of training or after a crazy week at school, you would pop your little head up and scratch away at the glass.. welcoming me back. Immediately making me smile..

Every time I see you in your sleep, I always wished I could hold you and cuddle u in my palm without you fidgeting.. to just hold you and stroke ur fur as you lay calmly in my palm..

Yet, now as I’m able to do all that.. I wish I didn’t have to.. I wish I couldn’t. I wish you’d fidget away and try to leap off my palm. I wish you’d scratch away at my palm and try to bite my thumb.. I wish you would just move and wake from this deep sleep.

I miss you hamlette.. you have brought much more joy to me than you can ever imagine.. you’ve taught me so many lessons, more than you’ll ever realize.. and you thot me to give.. much more than you ever received..

You will always be remembered..

Hamlette
21 Oct 2008 – 31 Jan 2010

The Promise

“The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace..”

With those words somehow ringing in my head, I sat in the cab as it turned onto the highway. The brilliance of the rising sun piercing right through the windscreen and onto my face.. I squinted.

Selections.

For the 2nd time..

The same corridor.. that same wall.. the same bunk and the same bed.. the same views out of the same window and the same helplessness that seeps into you. It’s all coming back..

But no, somehow, this time, it would be different.. somehow this time I know it within myself that things are gonna be different. Not for me to boast, nor for me to impress, but for me to claim. For me to claim His promises over my life.. That’s how it all started. Right there in the cab..

The following 2 weeks were succeeded by the usual that I’ve come to expect.. the daily ‘routines’ and the never-ending anxiety.. the sleepless nights as we all tossed, not knowing how long more before it’d be time to wake..

But through it all, I am constantly reminded of The Promise. I am reminded of what I’ve done for Him previously.. how He has not forgotten.. and the sheer overwhelming joy, knowing that I have pleased Him and made Him proud.. I am reminded that I did not have to worry.. that’s all I needed to keep me going.

Dare I say that if there’s one place that I get visions and words dropped into my heart.. it’d be there. Of all places, in the deepest darkest moments that a person has to go through.. that’s where he seeks the light and finds it. That’s where the glory goes to Him alone, that’s where you recognize that it’s no longer your strength that u’re running on, and that’s where the story unfolds.

For 2 weeks, I get to experience first-hand, seeing how His plans will unfold when it is in His will.. I see for myself the impossible that can happen, the uncanny ‘coincidences’ that somehow take place and favour as He extends His protection over me.. And now, looking back, all I can say is that it’s all for Him and Him alone..

Not for mine, but for Your Honour and Glory.. I thank You for giving me the chance to serve You in the most dire of circumstances.. to be a light to shine for the others to see.. to direct them to you and plant that seed.. I pray I made You proud. None of these goes to me, for I know that without You I wouldn’t have lasted a day.. I thank You for opening yet another door in my life.. I pray You give me the strength and guidance as I traverse down this path you have willed..

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." - Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV

Back

Ok, so let's see..

1. I'm finally back to using a computer with a proper screen and keyboard, rather than on my tiny little phone. Blew 932 bucks on a desktop, cos I figured it'll be more value for money, since I can't exactly bring a notebook to work.

2. Just spent the last couple of days irritating myself with installing all the nonsense on the harddisk. Reason? My shiny new computer caught a bug, and being the stubborn me, I tried to fix it. Spending more than a day on it. Eventually, I still formatted it. *doh* So this comes from the 2nd installation of everything, and I'm still not done as of now.

3. I pulled out a highlighter, and highlighted away at the computer price list, overlooking some things. Important things. Things like, even though they cost the same, kiasu me went to get a 'higher series' of CPU. In the end, I landed up with a 64-Bit Processor and I didn't even know about it. Not until I tried to run my Linux LiveCd.

4. I've got a tonne of pictures that I'd love to upload here.. but it's so gonna take some time. I still have loads of nonsense to install, followed by ghosting an image of this installation, so I don't have to go through this headache again next time.

5. My notebook really can't be salvaged. I hooked it up to my monitor, and the image's all messed up. Think normal-looking-screen getting a zebra tattoo. *sigh* I shall have an official post to mourn the passing of Sattee.

6. I think my blog's another year older.. that's fast. =)

7. And of course, Merry Christmas everyone..! I think Christmas is losing it's magic. Either that, or I'm just getting old. Most probably both.. but still.. it's not as magical anymore. STILL, a Merry Christmas to all! Go get ur mistletoes!

Saddened

My comp died. It's beyond repair.. Well, technically. It powers up, but the screen won't wake. Leave it long enough and u hear windows in the background, but nothing on the screen.

The guy at the service centre said it's wear.. So it's most prob the motherboard, lcd screen, graphic card or a combination of the three. And because warranty's over, there's an additional 100 bucks if i just want him to check out exactly what's spoiled and give me a quotation. The estimated price he gave me was 500-600 bucks to fix it.

That's half the price of a new computer u can get today. Sigh..

I'm sad.

A haunting reminder..

.. of the Anxiety, of the Fear, of the Pain, of the Failure.. and the fact that I have to do it all again.

FINALLY

So I finally got down to trying out the new Kubuntu 9.10 as mentioned here.. and I'm proud to say that this post comes from the penguin partition of my computer..

First thing that hits me is that the eye candies and everything still stays.. and of course, there's the big fix: Everything simply works out-of-the-box. The previous version of kubuntu (9.04) was merely a lame excuse. Everything from the wlan to file managers were broken. And the thing is, the fellas back there KNEW that it was broken.. they just decided to somehow release it anyway.

So with this new version, the eye candy that was there before still remains.. the awesomely straightforward interface still stays.. with the addition now that everything works by itself. Not so much of any tweaking needs to be done. Heck, I didn't even update any of the 34 'bug fixes' that they prompted me to.. the wlan connector works like a breeze, there's even a in-built firefox installer.. so you don't exactly need to open up the console and start unpacking the packages and 'apt-get' the stuffs..

Medias play fine now too.. perhaps it's the new update with VLC but if I'm not wrong, I'm using a slightly older version, cos I simply went to do a 'sudo apt-get install vlc'.. so I got a slightly older version; but still, it works.

Mounting of other partitions are a breeze too.. previously I recall having to go through the console just to mount my partitions, and so I ended up writing a script to automate the process.. but now, it's all straight forward. Just click on the partition in the file manager, and it auto-magically mounts the partition and shows u the content. As I'm typing this, I'm listening to music that's from my ntfs partition.. once you're done and wish to unmount it, again, just simply right-click and choose the 'unmount' function. Sweet.. =)

Perhaps the only downside to it is hotmail. Which technically goes back one big round and points the problem back to microsoft. You see.. apparently there's some nonsense stunt that micro$oft's trying to pull. They've added some codes such that when u're using firefox over a linux platform, hotmail will know abt it. And so they'll disable the 'Compose' function.

Sure, you'll get through to the Compose page.. you can fill in the address To and CC fields.. and the Subject too. But that's abt all you're gonna be able to do. The main body where ur text will be is greyed out. You can't seem to 'reach' it or 'enable' it.. so in short, you can't send any mails out.

So clever right? Sneaky bastards. They may claim that it's a firefox compatibility issue but really.. you own Hotmail, you create Internet Explorer and you started Windows.. and somehow, things don't work out when I don't use any of these 3 together.. isn't it obvious that u're trying to control the market?

So anyway after digging around the forums I managed to solve it with this nifty little firefox add-on known as User Agent Switcher. I'm not all too sure what it does and I honestly can't be bothered to find out.. I just know that it works probably by mimicking some background codes. So hotmail somehow 'thinks' it's on a windows platform, and allows everything to proceed as normal.

Well, other than this issue with the hotmail thing, which really isn't a linux problem.. this is by far the best distro I've used ever.. well done to the chaps behind Kubuntu.. *thumbs up*

Looks like my XP partition will be collecting dust for a looong while now.. =)

That's how the desktop looks..


and that's the typical multiple desktop eye-candy.. =)

Missing Out

No, I’m not dead. Just busy. The past 3 weeks have been a back-to-back pileup of things that happened so fast, now that I look back, I can’t quite remember how it all started and what exactly happened.. it all feels so distant.. yet somehow still very vivid. The sights, the sounds, the pain, the raw emotions.

I’ve missed quite abit these past 3 weeks that I was away.. for one, I know I missed my furballs’ birthday.. so here’s a big Happy Birthday to the 2 of them. I promise I’ll try to find a giant sunflower seed for you both. Heh.

I’ve also missed out what’s been going on around the world.. I suddenly realized that I’ve not been reading the papers the past weeks and so I’m quite out-of-touch with the world. It isn’t exactly a bad thing per se.. just that it’s nice to be in the loop of what’s going on once in a while.

I have also yet to try out the new kubuntu.. maybe I will once I’m done with this post. Then I’ll def do an update here abt it, if it’s as good as they say it is.. and talking abt my blog.. I miss going around with my camera taking pictures and uploading them here.. kinda sucky when ur job doesn’t exactly allow u to bring a camera with you everywhere u go for those just-in-case situations where a Kodak-moment pops up..

So anyway, enough moaning and complaining.. blisters, heat-rash and aching shoulders aside.. the past week has been alright. Things could have turned out far worst.. but I’m thankful I manage to get thru it.. thank God.

Birthday’s coming and so is Christmas.. as usual, my fav season of the year.. so it probably isn’t gonna be that bad for the next month or so.. can’t wait for it. =) *cues carols to start playing*