Remember how in primary school the teachers always got us to write autobiography of some inanimate object? Heh, the object usually is referred to in the first person and the story usually starts you out brand new in a shop and you catch the eye of some kid who buys you, brings you home, uses you and abuses you, then throws you away and you are left forgotten to live out your days in loneliness. It feels like you’re writing a model essay, but that was actually how this cap led its short life.

Heh, this is the story of the one cap. This is not just any ordinary cap. It is probably the grandfather of all the caps I currently own. It has lived a very good life in service of me. lol:

Continue reading →

Melbourne weather’s been going a little psycho for the last few days. It’s so warm these days I can go out with just a t-shirt and not be shivering every step of the way. It’s also been raining a lot more lately, so I’m guessing there is a correlation between warm weather and rain. Heh, can go take on the weatherman’s job now.

On the topic of occupational hazards, I usually get paper cuts from handling so many bundles of A4 paper. My other hazard I picked up today was assembling a new computer for my boss.

Got some cash off him, took the tram to my favourite store, got the guy to give me a quote on the cheapest of everything, and managed to cart back some computer parts. Heck, this thing is faster and cheaper than my recent Shuttle cube acquisition. That’s where the price comes in later on in the story.

Got the parts fairly cheap. Was on the tram going back to my shop and for almost an instant there was this warm feeling inside me. Was listening to some Kimagure Orange Road piano pieces and saw the people walking by. Somehow felt connected to all the strange faces pacing up and down so quickly. Well, for at least an instant anyway.

Now, here comes the occupational hazard part. Due to cheap parts, got a cheapo casing for the computer. 5 minutes into the job and I already cut my finger without realising it. So you have blood gushing out. Okie, heh, maybe just trickling out, but it was annoying, could only assemble screws with one hand while I was trying to stop the bleeding. The most annoying and irritating bit came when I had to put the lousy heatsink on the processor. Now I am an advocate of AMD processors, and I also use one of them on my main rig. While AMD makes some top notch processors that are bang for buck and kick Celeron butt (used for comparison as they are in the same price range), their heatsinks are a horrendous lot to deal with. No matter how I tried, even to the point of getting one of my colleagues to apply pressure onto the damn piece of aluminium, the thing refused to clip on!

Spent a half hour trying to coax the darned thing on, until even the plastic bits from the side of the socket started chipping off. I huffed and I puffed and ran out of breath before I could bring the house down on this thing. Finally, the only choice I had left was to rummage through my collection of second hand parts. Dug out an old heatsink and that bugger clipped on in less than a second. So now I have two slightly bruised thumbs and a cut forefinger, and all in one sitting. Not bad I’d say, heh..

Well, the computer finally came up and running, got the operating system to run on it and is now purring like a kitten. It just needs a week’s worth of burn in to make sure it’s stable and runs fine. Only thing I need to do now is to configure it properly so it will become a contributing member to my boss’s shop.

Heh, and I don’t know where this idea of naming computers came about. The few production computers running in the little shop I work in are named after Homer, Bart and Lisa (I’m very sure you can guess who we named them after). The new computer also got a name. Since this was an all black computer (everything except the monitor), we named this new unit Apu.

Hehe.. love my job at the moment. It has nothing to do with my university degrees, but it sure is heck fun.