Full Week Recap

Monday & Tuesday: Woke up late, had breakfast at 10-ish, surfed the net, played CS:CZ, played God of War 2 (again) and did system troubleshooting although I was on holiday

Wednesday: Picked up my i-Akaun activation, supposedly. The Big-G with its MSC done a good job by being unable to maintain a trouble-free computer system. I don't know, everytime I go to a government agency and request some information, the staffs' answer will be 'system down'. With this kind of facilities and we're planning to do e-government? Kudos MSC, Kudos. Then submitted my credit card application to CIMB. Again, I'm not into shopping-spree mode. My new job requires me to apply for credit card.

Thursday: Had to go to KWSP again to pick up my i-Akaun activation code. Thankfully it went well. For other things I did on this day, please refer to Monday & Tuesday.

Friday: Picked up my baby brother from his school. Again, Monday & Tuesday.

Saturday: CODed with a forumer. For other things, you know the drill.

Sunday: Don't know yet. The plan is to have a date with Izma. Will update later. Oh ya, this is my official last day with my current employer. As of tomorrow, I'm working with my new employer.

XHTML 1.0 Strict

I had too much free time in this one-week holiday, so I took advantage of changing my blog's template. Most of the changes are in background, you won't notice any difference with the layout presentation though. Well this means I do code cleanup, which further means I check for unclosed HTML tags and so on. Scratching head? Never mind, geek language. Basically, in layman's term, what I do is I validate the blog's source code and see whether the codes confirm to standard derived by W3C. W3C is a body that comes out with the standards for HTML, WML, XHTML and so on. And yet this standard is not followed strictly by some, including our big company Microsoft with its Internet Explorer browser hehe. This is why you’ll sometimes see some website looks great in Internet Explorer but when viewing using Firefox or Opera or other rebellious (LOL!) browser, it looks funny.

As for this blog, the most outstanding change you may notify is that I put Recent Comments part on the left side. Just to facilitate me in knowing if someone posted some comments on my blog, that's all. And the other one is I've reversed the Archives part sorting, so that it'll sort latest post first. Validation result: 89 errors. Most of them are errors caused by element properties like height, width, src and others. I'm too lazy to include everything inside style tag. Errors should decrease a lot if I change everything into style tag and don't use strict validation. For those of you interested in validating your blog/website, head over to W3C validation site here and put your blog/website address in the textbox.

Later!

The One-Week-Holiday Entry

I've received many enquiries regarding my Yahoo! Messenger status. To answer your questions, yes I am as of last Friday officially unemployed. Last Friday (30th of March) was my last day with my ex-employer as I have been offered by an MSC-status company to join their development team as a Programmer (IT Support). This company is currently in the process of setting up development team, so that means I will be one of the pioneers in the team. I can sense that lots of works need to be done, but nonetheless I can also see vast amount of knowledge I can learn as I will be in a core development team.

And no, it was not an easy decision to make to leave my ex-employer. I had taken 2 full days to really think about my decision, judging everything from every aspect. I sure hope all things are covered, budget constraints, office environment, employee benefits. It was hard for me to convey my resignation letter to my boss, as I had learnt a lot from him. He didn't just teach me on technical skills, he's not really a technical person. But he taught me skills I won't be able to learn from the Internet, which is communication skill. From him did I learn how to communicate with different levels of people. Being a tech person, I'm more comfortable working with machines especially computers. But then in this working environment, that won't be enough. Somehow sooner or later, I still need to communicate with users. I couldn't say how I thank him very much for preparing me before that time comes. Do I have the confidence to talk to users/clients? Still no. Do I have the skills? Hope so, heh.

On other note, I'm now on a one-week vacation. Start my new job on the 9th, so I have the whole week to settle unresolved things. Mostly official stuffs, like getting my i-Akaun activation code (finally!) and I'm thinking of applying a credit card. Shut your yapper, I'm not turning into a shopping-spree zombie. My new job requires me to go abroad, so it is more convenient to apply for credit card rather than bringing a whole lot of cash with me. It's easier for claims management too. No no no no, I've already decided which bank I'll apply. I'm a sucker for CIMB, and they conveniently send me a brochure about their credit card plan. Yay, what a coincidence!! Most probably I'll take the CIMB MasterCard Classic plan. Haha, not yet eligible to take the Gold or Platinum plan. I will, however, in the future. Next year, maybe. And question: Can I give credit card as mas kahwin? Hahaha..

Later peeps, I'm gonna do some headshots in CS:CZ.

(this entry is grammar-certified by Microsoft Word 2003. I'm a programmer, I only care for code syntax error - yes my grammar has reduced dramatically)

No Update

As the title implies, there will be no update for quite some time. Reason? Blame it on my brother's PS2 and God of War 2. Must finish that sucker first before I even have the mood to be in front of my computer. Later.

Currently at: On the back of Gaia, climbing top of Mount Olympus to kick Gods' and Goddesses' asses back to Hades.


[addition]
Haha, I've finished playing God of War 2. Great game, but there's still room for improvement. A lot of hero-vs-hero action and mini-game, quite challenging puzzles on certain places. Kinda leave out a bit the fun of slashing monsters, but overall I give it a 4.6 out of 5. Ending is a bit splendid, but making boss battle somewhat easy. I don't know, maybe because I'm playing in Normal mode. Will try God mode, then if I'm ready Titan mode.

Good Day

Went to Melaka yesterday to visit my Izma. Took the express bus from Pudu at 10am, arrived at about 12pm. Fell asleep the whole journey, mainly due to the problem generated by my stomach. I had my breakfast at home, but due to unknown reason I got stomach ache (kembung perut, tatau mende dlm English). Rubbed some medicated oil, fart and burp (a lot!) and it got better in the evening. Spent my day having lunch at Secret Recipe, and I swear next time I'm gonna try again their Noodle with Tom Yam Kung (wonder what is that). The reason? They served this noodle with TWO big-ass prawns! Then Izma and me walked around Mahkota Parade, nothing much to see there except some teenagers who seemed like still in the process of finding their identities. Yup I'm a sucker when it comes to this type of teenagers. I know you're trying to be up-to-date but hello!! This is Malaysia, the sun is scorching at a friggin' 34ºC out there. Why on Earth are you wearing neck-tie and sweater? Stupid teenagers, luckily I wasn't like that during my teenage time..

Then we headed towards Dataran Pahlawan, an underground shopping complex. Also, a new but under-utilized project which in my opinion is a waste of tax-payers' money. Mahkota Parade is under-utilized, so does Melaka Mall, Peringgit Point and several other places. Why would one build another shopping complex within walking distance to each other is really a mystery. Nothing much to see too, so we got behind the wheels back cause Izma wanted to show the place she's working now. Then we dropped by at JJ, trying all sorts of thing and buying none of them hehe. At 4:30pm, headed back to Melaka Sentral to catch my 5:30pm bus back to KL. Had a great day to spend although for only a short while.

Also, I got myself a copy of one of the most anticipated PS2 games for the time being: God of War 2. I'm still in early stage of playing it, so can't really give reviews or tell the complete storyline. Basically from what I understand, Kratos descended to Earth to help his Spartans although Athena prevented him from doing so. And thus when he descended, he lost all his god powers, making him only as a mortal. I had a hunch that in the end he will be challenging Zeus himself, but that's just my speculation. And yeah, I don't read walkthrough to know the storyline. Graphic presentation wise, somehow better than first version. Although the environment seems to be similar to the first version, the graphic rendering is better. Fires look realistic, so does Kratos' movement. Remember in first version he climbed wall and ledge using his own bare hand? Now no more, instead he 'intelligently' use the Blade of Athena. My little brother noticed this and made me think, 'hmm this sure is more realistic climbing walls using blade instead of hands..'. Skills and magic, mostly same. If you played the first version, most probably you won't notice any big difference. Controls are also the same, with much of the action done by the square button.

Yerp 3am now, I was just switching off my PS2. Time to head to bed.