Alternative Exercise

I just realized that my nephew is _REALLY_ heavy.

A friend of mine brought her nephew to my place. 3-month old boy, probably taller than my 2-month old nephew. My friend wanted to get lunch at a resto down and across our place, and she was with her sis-in-law and a friend of mine. Since I wasnt coming, she asked if she can leave her her nephew at my place.

Sure, no problem.

I rocked the baby to sleep. I wasnt so difficult, in 10 minutes, the baby gave one quiet yawn, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. He was snoring.

Then comes my nephew, who just finished his meal and was also about to go to sleep. Well at least, about to go to sleep, after I rock him to sleep (I was suspiciously starting to feel like being in a caretaker in a nursery at this point.. I should be getting money for this...) Grabbing my nephew and cradling him in my arms, I started to rock his to sleep....

....

Just 5 minutes after, my arms were sore. And the little devil hasnt given any indication of falling asleep yet.

.... (after spending the whole day looking after Tidus - yes, the name is official now, I stopped calling him Squigly already - Evening came.) ...

At the end of the day, I dropped to my bed and slept like a baby.

Until the next morning, when I was shocked to discover my whole body was sore. What a workout. :

Linux Simulated Environment in Windows

I've always figured Windows was a crappy OS, with all the hanging and blue screen and stuff, but when it got to the point when I can't change file names by batch to a certain format, I've really had it. I have nothing against people who does batch scripts, but using the windows cmd.exe to do this will be the death of me. Possible or not, I have no idea, but seeing the batch scripts available online, I don't think I'll be able to succeed in any undertaking just because command line isnt really the thing for Windows-based apps, particularly those done by Microsoft.

I proceeded to install Cygwin into my home PC.

Now I have successfully changed all my sound files with their proper formatted names in less than a minute. They look so nice when i do a ls on them. SO nice. SooOOOoo pretty.

_EVERYONE_ should have this installed in their PC. I feel so much better. That feeling of being in control, even for just a short bit ... away from the blue screen, low memory, or fatal errors. Im sooOOOooo HAPPY!

Hurrah! Success!

Finally got it to work! I just tinkered a bit, but mainly it involves changing my home directory the sneaky way, and now its working perfectly fine! HURRAAAH!

Dire need to clean up my workspace

I've messed it up. I've REALLY messed it up. ARRGGHH!

I've managed to install several softwares on my workstation in the past year, when I really didnt have any idea what they actually do. "Its just something that I needed to do so I can get on with my work" thing. Lets see. OpenSSH, Cygwin, ActiveTCL. And I dont know what else. I dont even remember.

From what I understand now, these are supposed to be Unix/Linux simulations in my windows workstation environment. I dont have any problems with that since I would rather like to work on a Unix-based platform environment, but since I've probably installed, deinstalled, and then reinstalled them several times over, I've screwed up my environment. The first time I couldn't get any SSL related options to run. And I did a little tinkering and and the last time I could neatly login with ssh. But then I had the pc complaining when i tried to do an scp. how can ssh work and scp not work??

So now i promptly tried to remove everything again. Deinstall, if I may say so myself. Unfortunately for me, I went through the FAQs and they only had the option of manually removing the programs. God knows I've installed these things so many times, I cant keep count of where they're located anymore. I've tried the search option to look for them, but Im sure in the past I've inadvertedly didnt remove some of them. I make the most of what I can.

And now that I've freshly installed a copy, the system still complains of incompatibilities with my user account/login.I have to make this work.. I've been trying to get this to go (on and off at least) for almost more than a year. its complaining about my private key being too available to public. Unfortunately, changing the permissions isnt helping me. I've tried to change the permissions several times already (chmod 400, anyone?) but the permissions still remain as 444.

There must be something I can do... grrrr...

What a facinating outlet of expression!

There's something utterly fascinating about seeing your own words published in a nicely layoutted, colorful looking page.

I just spent the last hour staring and reading my own blog.

I find this a fascinating experience.

Could it be the secretly private desire to be seen publicly with my thoughts? Would I be something like a hidden closet?

You have to understand, seeing words written in notepad isn't exactly the most exciting thing in the face of the earth. (Like what I'm doing just right now) You wouldn't want to read a 15 page essay in Wordpad either. But strangely enough, its not so bad when reading it from this blog site.
What a strange thing...

I think I had a similar experience during the transition between printing out documents in Wordstar during the 80s, and moving on to a Microsoft Office Word print out for my mediocre thesis paper.

The way I figured was, "Man, my thesis looks like a official looking document... like.. like... like a BOOK! Amazing!"

If i try to remember it now... After being so used to word already... my actual comment to my former self would be... "What a dimwit."

Hmm. I think I should just stop staring at my blog now.

Have you given your share to the Tsunami victims?

I can only imagine the dreamlike state of seeing
the wall of water that would come crashing down on
those people who were unfortunate enough to be
around the disaster areas in South Asia. Whether
one still lived after the event is even more
devastating as the people are sucked back to the
sea together with the tides. Families being
wrenched apart by the sheer force of the tides.
Not knowing now if they still lived.

This is no joke, and its very real. And to think
the world has occupied itself with the Iraq
invasion and other petty human politics. Despite
for man's need for power, money or fame, it is
nothing compared to natural catastrophes. When
they come, no human politics is important enough.

Please do your part in alleviating the human
condition. Whether it be for the tsunami victims,
or for the needy and impoverished, remember that
most of us are even fortunate enough to be given
opportunities as simple as being able to access
this site. Think smart and help smart. Make your
life a service for others.

After the Holidays

I've had a busy holiday.. hence the reason why I havent logged any entry here. First off, I wasnt able to do my Christmas shopping this year. Work picked up just as Christmas was approaching, and I was left to my own within the confines of the work cubicle. I havent even had the chance to go to the gym since I came back from the Philippines, and therefore, no gym progress reports to remind me how I'm doing. I can already feel the layer of fat crumped up in that not too comfortable office pants.

Its been a month since my nephew was born. True to chinese traditions, we celebrated his first month by giving out a party to close friends and relatives. Nevertheless, Squigly, as I affectionately call him (see this for reference), despite being the star of the night, slept all the way through. Didnt even notice that he was being passed on to different people, but a baby's life is simple and easy: Cry for food, also cry when uncomfortable, and sleep afterwards. There's not much else to do when you really cant help yourself to the fridge to get some ice cream or watch the latest tv series. Probably hear everything muffled and see blurred images at his stage. Thats' how I spent my Christmas night.

A friend came over to spend the holidays in Hongkong, so I spent the rest of my weekend taking her out. In the meantime, I was also rushing to get warm clothes since weather reports note that the coming weeks will have temperatures at a low of 7 degrees. Its not really much compared to other sub zero climates, but its cold enough for me. That was done on New Year's Eve. I also did a bit of christmas shopping then.

Friend called to hang around and sleep over my place. Her apartment is the pits when it comes to winter season. For some strange reason , location, structure or otherwise, her place becomes a freezer during winters. So I spent my eve with a friend chatting and putting on moisturizers to protect us from the coldest day of the year so far (of course), which was New Year's Day. (of course its going to be the coldest of the year so far!)

Another friend came over on Saturday, and we just hung around watching cnn showing the horrible scenes in South Asia. I've read about it online, but since cnn doesnt allow non paying surfers like me to view their video clips, I have yet to see any of the destruction caused by the tsunami on video. I dont have cable at home (because we're too stingy to pay for other channels) so I just watched cnn with my friend.

Had dinner with my hk friends on new years day. I also got a bluetooth adapter and headphone as a Christmas gift. That was a great gift, as it would let me talk to my boyfriend over internet chat on top of my bunk bed. I was now thinking of getting a bluetooth mouse, and a bluetooth keyboard and a bluetooth webcam. Oh lets not forget the bluetooth enabled phone. I just need to get my finances straight.

I spent Jan 2 nursing my face that i got from the blistering cold yesterday . What a horrible day. What perked me up was we had hotpot at home, and as usual, it was good. Its customary for our family to have hotpots on new years day. (well, ok, its not really new years day, but close enough).

I cant wait for this coming weekend. All this hustle and bustle has left me with a need of personal space all of a sudden.