You Lift Me Up

Today was one of those days when I find myself in unexpected, but pleasant conversations. I somehow found myself talking to a classmate of mine who also attends the same church as I do. We went to visit a friend in the hospital and on the way back, she suddenly asked me “So how’s your relationship with God going?”

Honestly, I was rather taken aback by that question. There are only so few people who’ve ever asked me that question, and even though I was very much aware that she was the kind of girl who had a whole lot of faith in God, I wasn’t expecting it. I ended up spending a few minutes just telling her how shaken I feel sometimes, being in a foreign land where people generally don’t care for God, and don’t believe in His existence. It’s also difficult because I’ve become so accustomed to Campus Revo and Christian Fellowship in KTT, that coming here and not having a support group was rather challenging. Throw in the fact that there are only two Christians in my batch and that I rarely have time even for myself, it’s so easy to just push God into a corner and box Him up, almost like a genie.

I felt so relieved when she just interjected and said, “Jing, don’t feel guilty if you skip reading your Bible for a day. Just don’t. Think about it, when you skip a meal, you feel hungry, right? That should be how it is with reading God’s Word. When you miss a day, you’ll hunger even more for it and when you pick up the Bible and read it, you will feel so refreshed.”

There is so much truth in that. It’s good to know that God is slowly but surely helping me to stay afoot and He knows how to send people to speak to me. Not giving up on reading His Word and talking to Him because He is sufficient in all ways.

Ask yourself today – no matter what your religion – ask yourself:

“How’s your relationship with God going?”

 

You lift me up when I am weak,

Your arms wrap around me,

Your love catches me, so I’m letting go.

Lift Me Up – The Afters (video link)

Throw That Broadband Out The Window

My crazy Maxis Broadband. Notice that the one on the left is operating at a faster speed than  the one on the right.

 

Sometimes I wish Man did not invent the Internet. *It’s so ironic that I’m saying this since I’m gonna have to utilize the Internet to post this.* Before you start throwing rotten apples at me and calling me a hypocrite (what with me Facebooking and tweeting so frequently and maintaining my blog all at once), let me at least put my point across, alright?

Disclaimer: Everything in this blog post from this point onwards is merely my personal opinion. It is in no way a personal attack on anyone and hence, I implore you to not take offence. If you somehow feel that you are on the brink of getting angry at me, do stop reading and proceed to something more productive than lingering on this site.

I probably spend more time online than many of my friends. Back in KTT, I was the only one in my apartment who went online almost every day. My roommate, on the other hand, very rarely used the Internet. Talk about opposites.

The Internet both fascinates and repels me. I blame it wholly on Facebook and Twitter and other such sites because of how my generation abuses it on a daily basis. I’m probably one of the perpetrators, but that’s another story.

My main gripe with this whole social networking thing is how we all take for granted that we can conveniently use it as our main form of communication. I understand that in some cases, Facebook and Twitter are the only ways to reach me, but that’s for very isolated cases, normally involving people I do not know personally but somehow got acquainted with through mutual friends and such. But for the most part, the people on my social networking sites who need to contact me have either my MSN or my phone number, or both. Is it really that difficult to pick up the phone and send me a text message? If you have the means to go online, surely you have the means to text me.

For example, some people leave me Facebook messages saying “Hey, I really need this info/answer/opinion. It’s really important. Reply me ASAP.” Sometimes, when I’ve had a not-so-pleasant day, I’m tempted to ignore the message because if it really is important, they should have at the very least dropped me a text message asking me to check my FB messages, right? Fortunately, I’m kind enough to reply, so I make excuses on their behalf and tell my brain that it’s okay to reply those messages. *perasan mode on* If we are on different sides of the world, I’d totally understand that Facebook would most likely be the best way to reach me, but we aren’t! Well, not yet, anyway.

Another issue is how we think that tweeting or updating our status is enough to inform everyone of what we’re doing. Granted, I am guilty of that, too. For instance, I decided to inform my friends of my departure via the Internet instead of telling them individually, basically because I have no idea who I shouldn’t tell and who wouldn’t be interested to know (I’m perasan enough to think that everyone I know wants to know), so to save face, I posted it on Facebook. heh. But see, the point is, if it’s a matter which requires immediate attention, don’t expect me to read it from your status updates. Sometimes my News Feed is so flooded that I just skim through and miss the important ones along with the less sensible ones. I don’t have perfect 20/20 vision so I can’t be expected to see too clearly. And for some unknown reason, sometimes my notifications mysteriously go missing and I don’t realize it when people mention me in their comments.

Oh, and one more thing. In a way, I suppose all of us, either consciously or subconsciously, like the attention we get on the Internet, hence the ‘Like’ button on Facebook and the ‘Retweet’ and ‘Favourite’ buttons on Twitter (not too sure about other sites because I don’t use them). But I think it’s rather ridiculous how we’re expected to wish every single person on our friends list a very happy birthday, especially those people who are mere acquaintances whom we know next to nothing about, like a junior from school who was once in the same society as you, or a random person you chatted with at a social gathering, or someone you met at a tuition centre with whom you exchanged formalities. When people like that wish me, I know that they are merely discharging their Facebook-given duty. It doesn’t feel like they really want me to have a happy birthday.

Having said all of the above, I would like to reiterate that it is highly unlikely that I would give up the Internet. I’ve argued in favour of it and I will continue to do so. Facebook has become a very useful tool for me to keep in touch with the people I care about without having to bother them too frequently with my questions. Twitter has been a tool to catch people online and make them answer my questions (trust me, it’s often more effective than Facebook, but maybe that’s because I don’t utilize my Facebook Chat often). They are platforms for me to share my likes and dislikes, my opinions and ideas, to raise awareness and even funds. And yet, sometimes I feel so frustrated that I am tempted to hit the ‘Deactivate Account’ button just to prove a point. I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it though.

Maybe I’m being irrational, a little old-fashioned even. Maybe when I’m away from home, I’d appreciate all this more. But until that happens, you just met a very conflicted side of my brain. Be nice and say “HI!”

Command Prompt

Me – J. Twin – Y.

J: Any idea how to save this pen drive? It’s corrupted.

Y: My friend did a presentation on that in class before. Like you can save the files in the pen drive somewhere else first, then format it.

J: Can you ask that friend? I dunno how to do this lah.

Y: He’s rarely online leh. Just Google it.

J: K fine.

After 30 minutes of trying

J: Every single thing I’ve tried requires me to download some program and pay money for it. == I don’t want to. Can’t we just format the whole thing?

Y: *obviously very distracted* Wait, wait, I’m sure there’s this command thing somewhere. Don’t need to format. But I don’t know if I’ll end up erasing everything in my laptop.

J: Er. Just try?

After another 30 minutes

Y: I think I found it. Eh, come come. Pen drive. I try something first.

After 15 minutes with many odd mumbles from The Twin

Y: YES! Done dy! Wheeeee! I’m so clever.

J: Huh? What did you do?

Y: Yayyy. The pen drive okay already. I deleted that RECYCLER file.

J: Oh that virus thingy? What did you do to it?

Y: Command prompt. *smug smile* Now it’s cleannnn.

J: Really? Eh, teach me, teach me. There’s one more pen drive here.

Y: Aiya, I send you the command lah through MSN.

J: I’m not online. =.= . . . and I want to do it on my laptop lah. I wanna learnn.

Y: = = . . . Okay, come, I tell you lah.

5 minutes later

J: WHEEE. I AM SUCH A GENIUS. *obviously the second pen drive is now cleared of the thing that corrupted it*

Y: Yeah, last time the RECYCLER thing had an .exe behind it, now it doesn’t, so it’s like more hidden than it previously was. Yeah. Don’t know how true this is though.

J: Hoyeah, I’m such a genius. *grins*

Y: You know, only people like us think that doing one small command prompt makes us geniuses. Those other people who know this type of thing wouldn’t even bother.

J: Oh. Right. Because we’re so noob-ish. *pause* I’m still a genius though.

Yes, that’s how perasan I can be.

Anyway, in case you wanted to know what command prompt I used, here are the steps to it. The Twin found it through a few websites and forums and doesn’t want to look through her History to give me links so that I can list them, so don’t ask me for sources.

In the command prompt type the drive letter: and press enter . Now type dir /w/a and press enter. This will display a list of the files in the pen drive. Check whether the following files are there or not
Autorun.inf
Ravmon.exe
New Folder.exe
svchost.exe
Heap41a
or any other exe file which may be suspicious.
If any of the above files are there, then probably the USB drive is infected. In command prompt type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter. This will remove the Read Only, Archive, System and hidden file attribute from all the files. Now just delete the files using the command del filename. example del Ravmon.exe.

for recycler ONLY: rd /s /q C:\Recycler in cmd.exe (dunno if it works for others)
replace C: with any other disk drive names

And there you have it! A dose of genius from The Twins. =D

L33t Speak

I was browsing through ReCom, killing time, when I came across a thread on l33t speak and I got interested.

*You can stop yelling “NOOB” now. Everyone needs to learn at one point or another kay*

Just in case you’re like me, l33t speak is pronounced leet speak. L33t is derived from the word elite.

Wikipedia defines it thus:

Leet (or “1337″), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used primarily on the Internet. It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters. For example, leet spellings of the word leet include 1337 and l33t; eleet may be spelled 31337 or 3l33t.

Because Mr Wiki can be so boring sometimes, you might want to read from Urban Dictionary. =P

And this is what the alphabets that you and I use daily look like in l33t speak (also from Wikipedia ) :

Yes, it’s confusing. The way I see it, they are mostly representations of how the alphabets look or sound like.

Let’s say you want to write:

The author of this blog is awesome

In l33t speak, it’ll look something like this:

7|-|3 4U7|-|0R 0Ph 7|-|15 bL09 15 4\/\/350/\/\3

The only clearly comprehensible word it that sentence is bL09 because it looks like its English counterpart, blog.

Frankly, I think I wouldn’t be able to stand reading words like that for more than two minutes. And I wouldn’t even want to write anything in l33t, even if it makes cryptic messages more awesome. Why? Because I’d be too lazy to figure out what each letter (and word) should look like in l33t.

So no, I didn’t write the above sentence in l33t. I merely used a l33t converter. You can find hundreds of them online. No, it’s not cheating. I’m still a newbie, remember? #excuses

|-|4\/3 PhU|\| 3><P3R1/\/\3|\|71|\|9 \/\/17|-| L337!