Monthly Archives: July 2009

Eye to Eye: Epilogue (Part 5)

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Two days have passed since I had cataract surgery performed on my left eye. Suffice to say that it was more or less a repeat of what I went through last month with my right eye—yes, they made me wear that disgusting gown, and no, I wasn’t allowed any coffee during my hospital stay. Yeppers, that’s life huh.

I’m presently on medical leave and am writing this blog post in Word with a humongous 20-point font (reason being I went from severe near-sightedness to far-sighted after the surgeries). I’ll have to copy and paste this into Windows Live Writer before I publish it to my blog—where there’s a will, there’s a way.

I’d like to thank the following people who helped me through this testing period of my life:

  • My optometrist, Ms. Valerie, for urging me to get cataract surgery done on my eyes rather than be saddled with a new and even thicker pair of glasses.
  • Mr. Lee, my ophthalmologist, for working his magic on both my eyes. His calm and reassuring demeanor certainly minimized my fears about the surgery.
  • The staff of Loh Guan Lye Specialists’ Center for their friendly yet professional manner in making sure everything went well for me during my stay there.
  • My American friends, especially Crystal, Leisa, Doris, Heather, and Kelly for rallying me through with their thoughts, prayers, and their love. I couldn’t have done it without you wonderful ladies (yes, they love me, what can I say)
  • Last but not least, all my students and friends for their support and prayers.

I will be able to adjust all the fonts back to a normal size after I get my reading glasses. At least they won’t resemble Coke bottles!

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Power hungry (part 2)

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There are two types of computer users—those who have experienced a power blackout, and those that are about to. Today I was hit by a blackout in the afternoon. I was working on my computer when all of a sudden, pffft! The lights went out, and then surprise surprise—my computer was still on, thanks to my APC Back-UPS CS 650. It beeped periodically, telling me that it was running on battery power. The Power Chute program I installed told me exactly how much time I had left until the battery would run out of juice. I had earlier on configured it to shut down the computer as soon as it had only 5 minutes of power left, so I wasn’t worried.

But silly me, I forgot to connect my monitor to the UPS, so as soon as the blackout struck, my monitor went dark. No problem, I just connected the monitor’s power cable to the UPS and turned on its power switch. So there.

The moral of the story is if you’re using a desktop, it’s not a question of whether or not you’re going to get hit by a blackout, it’s a question of when.

I’m so glad I invested in a good UPS. The money is worth it.

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I hate toilets!

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The throne

Oops, let me rephrase that. I hate toilets—when they’re not working properly. And the two toilets in my apartment have been driving me up the wall lately. Caution: some slightly disgusting words up ahead.

There must be a whole list of Murphy’s Laws regarding toilets. Recently I’ve had to wrestle with these problems (yuck):

  • I flush the toilet, but the poop and water comes rushing up again
  • after a flush, the water fills up and keeps overflowing
  • after a flush, the water appears to fill up, but never does
  • the toilet flush handle breaks
  • the inner inlet pipe or whatever springs a leak, ensuring a steady flow of water that keeps overflowing
  • and to add insult to injury, the bathroom ceiling starts to leak…ugh

Yes, I know what you’re thinking…DIY right? I have Googled for toilet repairs, I have fumbled, adjusted, twisted–all the parts inside the toilet tank (reminds me of the parts inside a computer casing, the big difference is that I get to play with water too…I am sick) all the while uttering silent curses at the toilet makers—jeez, can’t they just digitalize this whole #$@! process? If the Japanese can come up with a toilet that can wash, shampoo, and blow-dry your tush, why can’t they invent a toilet with less moving and prone-to-breaking parts?

There must be a Murphy’s Law that states: “The more time you spend fumbling and trying to fix the toilet yourself, the more it’s going to cost you when you eventually come to your senses and decide to call a plumber.” And if I possessed a sledgehammer, I’d probably give in and cause wanton destruction to the blooming thing.

On the other hand…if I don’t get those toilets working properly, what happens when I want to answer nature’s call next time? Or worse, a poo call? Rats, there’s nothing I can do except call the plumber, let him work his magic, and also work the magic out of my wallet.

I’ll end this ranting post with a “short potty poem that purges the soul.” Courtesy of Mick, thank you, sir.

Ode to a Toilet

The love of my life, is not my dear wife,
But a toilet with flush, and extra thick pipes.
To take all my crap, without a mouth flap,
And when it acts up, I can shut off its tap.

This original potty poem was written
and copyrighted© by Mick™
Non-Commercial use for this poetry
is allowed on washroom stalls
or with a link to this site only.

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Eye to Eye (Part 4)

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My, how time flies. I can’t believe that five weeks have gone by since I had cataract surgery performed on my right eye. Since then I’ve been wearing a contact lens in my left eye (underpowered, shows you how intense my near-sightedness is) This morning I went to see my eye doctor for a check-up before surgery on my left eye this coming July 29th. I was told prior to this that I should not wear my contact lens, so it was with some trepidation that I got behind the wheel of my car and started driving off to the hospital, half-blind.

OK, it wasn’t too bad just trying to see with my right eye. I managed pretty well, being very careful on the road and driving at a slightly slower speed than I normally do. I reach the hospital, and in a short while, I’m ushered into the eye doc’s office. The good news is that my right eye’s fully recovered—no need for the special eye drops, no need for the pirate eye patch, I can sleep on my right side, but still no swimming allowed. Three out of four ain’t bad.

Then he drops the clunker—“I’ll have to dilate your left eye for a final check,” he says. Oops, I have to drive home, doc. Anyway, he’s got to do what he’s got to do, right? I have to spend another 45 minutes waiting for my pupil to dilate, and then I’m ushered back in again. The doc makes a final check, and gives the thumbs up for the surgery next week. Well here we go again, except this time it’s for my left eye—I’m so glad we humans don’t have more eyes, I don’t think I could go through this more than twice. I’m not scared or whatever about the surgery; I’ll be completely knocked out anyway. But (and this is going to make someone laugh—you know who you are) I am not keen about that disgusting gown they make you wear prior to surgery. Ugh, makes me feel so—uncovered. Yikes.

All I can say is, I will be glad when all this is over, and then it’ll be like having a pair of new eyes. Granted I will have to make some prescription glasses for reading, but the power will be very minimal. And speaking of reading, I’d like to get back to it—I haven’t been reading much like I used to in the past. And thank goodness those thick glasses and contact lenses will be history.

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Dog-day afternoon

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Yup, the air is dirty

Today has been a miserable day for me. Students were very unresponsive, behaving like robotic units in permanent hibernation. However, the main culprit was the weather we’ve been having lately—hazy, hot, humid, no wind—in a word, awful. Furthermore this has caused my eyes to sting a bit, fortunately I have eye drops to alleviate this problem.

What the heck, I decided to clean and mop the floors this hot afternoon; it’s better to get some exercise and sweat, right. I went at it like a crazed maniac, but at least my apartment floors are clean now—ha, giving myself a pat on the back.

It’s 5:18 PM now as I write this post. Will have to cook rice for dinner, get the food sorted out, and then I’m off to teach, returning home about 9:30 PM. Boy, what a day—hope some nice friend will contact me on WLM for a chat before I hit the sack.

That’s all for now.

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Power hungry

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Everyone knows that computers need electricity in order to function (yes, laptops can run on batteries, but batteries have to be charged too) And with power comes corruption, greed…oops, wait. That’s a different sort of power, let me get back on track. No matter which country you live in, your electricity supply isn’t 100% perfect or ideal. Electrical power is subject to the following maladies as outlined by APC here:

  • Sags—Also known as brownouts, sags are short term decreases in voltage levels.
  • Blackouts—Total loss of utility power.
  • Spikes—Also referred to as an impulse, a spike is an instantaneous, dramatic increase in voltage. Akin to the force of a tidal wave, a spike can enter electronic equipment through AC, network, serial or phone lines and damage or completely destroy components.
  • Surges—A short term increase in voltage, typically lasting at least 1/120 of a second.
  • Noise—More technically referred to as Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI), electrical noise disrupts the smooth sine wave one expects from utility power.

In all my almost twenty years of computing, I’ve been hit by all the above. I have relied mostly on surge protectors, and have gone through a few of them. Surge protectors are better than nothing, but they have one major flaw—they don’t enable protection against blackouts. So if you’re hit by a complete power failure, surge protectors are not going to help you one tiny bit.

Enter the UPS, or the Uninterruptible Power Supply. Well I’m going to blush here, because I’ve never owned a UPS, until now. Yup, call me insane, call me irresponsible, whatever. I suppose my alibi is that a UPS is not really cool right? Getting a new video card, a bigger hard disk, a new flat screen monitor, these are cool. But without a UPS, you’re really going onboard your computer ship without any lifejackets or lifeboats. And when disaster strikes, there is a great chance of your computer hardware frying up, and what’s even worse is that the data on your hard disk could be scrambled, due to the sudden power outage.

We’ve had some severe storms here recently, and I’ve experienced the unpleasant situation of the power suddenly tripping in the midst of a deluge. Ugh—if my computer could talk it’d probably scream in agony. So I decided, no more. I didn’t want to put up with this any longer (and I’ve been so lucky thus far; Windows can still boot up, but be sure to run disk checks) I decided to head out to one of the computer stores here to get a UPS.

APC Back-UPS CS 650

When it comes to a UPS, it pays to invest wisely, because your data and equipment is at stake. I decided to settle on an APC (American Power Conversion) UPS, the Back-UPS CS 650. At around $90 USD, it’s not exactly cheap, but it comes with a 2-year warranty and is solidly built. It also allows me to plug in my modem and phone lines for additional protection. I installed its Power Chute software for Vista, which gives me all the information I need at a glance (see the picture below)

APC PowerChute for Windows Vista

All in all I think it’s money well-spent for my computing piece of mind. So if you don’t have a UPS yet, it’s advisable for you to get one (but get a good brand such as APC) before disaster strikes.

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Seesmic Desktop 0.4

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Seesmic Desktop

I use Twitter. I use Facebook. I love these two apps. Twitter is like a virtual text or SMS device for me in cyberspace, while Facebook connects me with my friends and keeps me informed of their goings-on. In the past, I used to log on to Twitter in my browser. Of course that was inconvenient, as I had to perform a number of steps:

  1. Open my browser.
  2. Go to the Twitter homepage.
  3. Log in.
  4. Look at my messages, type an update, reply, etc.
  5. Log out.
  6. Oops, I forgot to post an update—repeat steps 2 to 5 again (groan)

Then I discovered Twhirl, a nice little app which performs all of the above and sits quietly in my taskbar icon area. Whenever a new tweet comes in, or if I want to post an update, I just have to click on it once, view it and do my stuff, and exit. Very nice.

I find that history is repeating itself, this time with Facebook. I have to perform all those six steps outlined above, the only difference being step 2, where I go to Facebook’s homepage instead. Wouldn’t it be great if I had an app that could automate it for me?

Then just a few days ago, my very good friend Crystal was tweeting about an app called Seesmic, and she was glowing about it. Hmmm, time for me to check it out. I went to Seesmic’s homepage, installed Seesmic Desktop 0.4, and I am very impressed.

So what’s so cool about Seesmic? In a nutshell, Seesmic aggregates your Twitter and Facebook accounts into one very convenient app. You can install it straight from their website. It’s free of charge and takes just a while to install. After that, you add your Twitter and Facebook account log-ins to it, configure a few simple settings, and you’re all set to go. From now on, you can do all your Twitter and Facebook stuff from Seesmic itself—it’s just brilliant! I found it hard to believe that this app only came out in May of this year.

And I should have guessed this—Loic Le Meur, the founder and CEO of Seesmic, is the same guy who makes Twhirl too. That’s why it was so easy for me to transition to Seesmic. It’s now a bigger home with Facebook added.

I have nothing much to gripe about concerning the present version 0.4. The only thing I wish is that I’d like for Seesmic to minimize to the taskbar icon area when I click its Close button (Twhirl does this) No luck yet. Seesmic simply exits. If I want to minimize it, I have to click on the minimize button, and Seesmic goes into my taskbar area, consuming a bit of taskbar estate. Perhaps Mr. Le Meur could fix this in a future update? Still, just a minor niggle, or perhaps it’s my OCD showing itself.

Anyways, Seesmic Desktop is one fantastic app, especially if you want your Twitter and Facebook stuff living together in the same house. Try it out!

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