The Executive Retreat #2

Good Evening and Sejahtera to all,

As promised here is the update of yesterday’s post [The Executive Retreat]. The Paint Ball Session. To most of us, this was our first time experiencing the heat and tense of paint ball. And of course the pain of being shot with that gelatin pallet. I was hit on the head, elbow, neck and the eye. If I were not wearing any protection gear, I would be blind by now.

This was the final day before our training was finally over. We were told to get ready by 8.00AM in the morning where we would be transported to Bukit Tinggi Paint Ball Field. Arrive Bukit Tinggi around 9.00AM and we were briefed on safety aspects of Paint Ball, Strategies and How To Paint Ball. In Paint Ball game, Mask or Face protection is a must. It is absolute no no to play paintball without face protection.

We were then divied into 4 groups comprised of 8 players. Gender was not an issue. Each group was given colour, The Red Team (my team and led by me), Green Team, Blue Team and Pink Team (lol). The 1st game was between Red Team and Blue Team and Winner of course the Red Team. Next was Green Team vs Pink Team and won by Pink Team due to foul play by the Green Team. Then loser vs loser and winner vs winner. With Red Team exceptional leader, the Red Team was declared the Champion of the Day. 🙂

Then the game got more interesting as the Marshals versus OUM. Obviously, the loser would be OUM Team. Those Marshals were far more experienced with this game. And they play for free. We on the other hand were inexperienced. Nevertheless, the Paintball Session was fun and satisfying. We then head back to Awana at 12.30. We planned to perform Friday Prayer but time did not permit us. So we skipped Friday Prayer and straight to checking out.

The Executive Retreat

Good Day and Salam Sejahtera,

Last week me went to Genting Highlands for OUM & METEOR Executive Retreat 2008 aka OUM-Awana Green Campus. It was a 3D and 2N retreat held at Awana Genting. A total of 50 (I believe it was 50) participants from OUM and Meteor were selected to join the retreat. We arrived around 10.00AM and Dr. Selvaraj was already there waiting to commence the Ice-Breaking session. We barely knew each other and this session was a good start. Weird huh? We are working in the same building. We don’t even say “Hello!” to each other. So, the Ice-Breaking Session was definitely a good start.

After being grouped into 6 smaller groups, Dr. Zoraini began her presentation on Understanding Open Distance Learning in Open University Malaysia. Then we proceed to Lunch Break and Room Check In. Apparently, that is best part of any events, seminars and conferences. We had buffet that day. After that, Prof. Dr. Mansor, Senior Vice President OUM officiated the OUM-Awana Green Campus 2008, marking our days as the students of the Green Campus.

In the evening, Mr. Puniamurthi, deputy Registrar UM began his talk on Working Culture and Attitude. He emphasized on team work and was ready to demonstrate the importance of Team Work by providing each group with 1 small potato. Each group would have to cook this potato by any means necessary within 30 minutes. All 6 groups with their creativity began to cook the potato. It was funny, very funny. How to cook a potato without water and stove and container? One group had their potato became complete carbon. My group cooked the potato by placing the potato in the hole and burn it from top. Well, a failed attempt. Later on, Mr. Puniamurthi began to explain the best way to cook the potato and his class on Working Culture and Attitude started.

Then around 7.00PM we stopped for dinner. Again my favourite part. I had mutton, plenty of them and middle-east cuisine. Of the 3 days I was there, not a single rice was taken. Why should I as could always take them everyday. This was buffet, so rice a definitely no no.

After that we had Stephen Corneilius, Dean of Sedaya College talked on Quality and Accountability in the Workplace. A very long talk. I could see some of the participants yawning due to late hours. But he quoted us a very good quote from Zig Ziglar “You are what you are by what goes into your mind“. In laymen terms, this phrase simply means “We are what we think we are”. If we think bad then bad we will be and vice-versa. Alas at 11.15PM his talk was finally over. Imagine from 10.00AM – 11.15PM marathon. A very long day for me and the rest of the participants.

A day after, we had Tony Hayman talking about Thinking Ouside the Box. He basically described how to think analytically and effectively. There’s must be a way of doing something he told. By thinking outside the box men are able to create many inventions that were impossible before. Computers, Refrigerator, Car and many others. These inventions were the result of thinking outside the box.

Then we continued our training with Working Performance & Etiquettes by Puan Faizah Mohamed, Senior Manager (Human Resource Dept.). Many seemed enthusiastic with Bonus and Benefits with OUM as most of the time were spent on answering questions related to performance appraisal, pay and bonus.

After Lunch Break, we had Michael Reyes, CEO of Money Tree Asia Pacific to talk about Interpersonal Relationship : Quality & Professional Attitude. Perhaps the best session as many seemed to be interested with the topic and many laughter and interactions. He explained that most conflict originated from within ourselves. If we could deal with our intrinsic desire to burn the other party we could avoid conflict. He stressed that, it is easier to deal with ourselves than the other party when resolving a conflict. Which is very true.

Lastly, Prof. Dr. Latifah give a talk on Understanding Student Issues. A discussion to understand the problem faced by students doing Open and Distance Learning in OUM. She then asked each group to discuss the problem faced by these students from the Staff perspective. How would we see the problem. Well, we did explain various problems faced by them.

That was all the training we went through for the entire 2 days. For the day after we would have the opportunity to shoot some head and butts of the participants in PaintBall Session. That would be in the next post.

Take Care all.

The Dark Knight

Good Morning

May the Lord of the Universe, Keeper of Souls and Ruler of Heavenly Kingdom, bestow good health to all of you. As for me, I am well fed and living happily. Despite minor glitches and heavy workloads, I am still alive. Good Day to all of you.

Yesterday, me GF and I went for a movie somewhere in Cheras. I never knew Cheras is this good. Many places for outing and having fun. Why should I go to Berjaya Time Square or Mid Valley to watch movies when Cheras has it all. All those places are crowded with school childrens and I hate them all. They should all stay at home and do some reading in order to become what is known as Man. It is not easy being man. Humans are everywhere, but how many humans are actually men?

Okay. To the movie then. Batman : The Dark Knight, is a sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins. The Batman is played by Christian Morgan Bale which he is professionaly known. Batman Motion Pictures are numerous and each of them is directed by dfferent Directors and played by different actors. Each movies from these directors does not share the same plot and storyline. Thus, do not be confused with them and please never ever try to relate any of them. You don’t understand!!!

The Dark Knight was the last film played by Heath Ledger (the guy from 10 Things hate about you) before his death of drug overdose (I do not know of the real stories, whether Drug Abused or Accidental Drug Overdose or what, let him Rest in Peace. May God bless you). He played the Joker very well.

A 5 Star Motion Picture for me. A must see and Worth to Watch Movie Award is given to Dark Knight. Below is the review from Wikipedia (Please be warned of spoilers):

The film begins with the Joker robbing a mob-owned bank with several other accomplices, whom he tricks into killing each other. That night, multiple Batman impersonators interrupt a meeting between mobsters and the Scarecrow. The real Batman subdues everyone but suffers injuries which lead him to design a more versatile suit. Batman and Lieutenant James Gordon contemplate including the new district attorney Harvey Dent in their plan to eradicate the mob, as he could be the public hero Batman cannot be. Harvey Dent is found to be dating Wayne’s love interest, Rachel Dawes. The mob bosses meet to discuss how to handle Batman, Gordon, and Dent, while a Chinese mobster accountant, Lau, lets the gang leaders know he has taken their money to Hong Kong to prevent the police and the district attorney from seizing it in an imminent bank raid. The Joker arrives unexpectedly, offering to kill Batman for pay.

Batman successfully abducts Lau in Hong Kong and delivers him to the Gotham City police, therefore the mobsters agree to hire the Joker. The Joker tells all of Gotham that if Batman does not turn himself into the police, more people will die each day. When the Joker begins killing public officials, including Commissioner Loeb and the judge presiding over the mob trials, Wayne decides to turn himself in. Before he can do so, Dent announces that he is Batman, to draw the Joker out of hiding. The Joker attempts to kill Dent, but Gordon and Batman intervene and arrest him.

Batman interrogates the Joker, who reveals that Dawes and Dent have been taken to opposite sides of the city, far enough apart that Batman does not have time to save both of them, and placed in warehouses rigged with explosives. Batman speeds off to save Dawes, while Gordon and the police head after Dent. However, the Joker has switched the locations, sending Batman after Dent and Gordon after Dawes. With the help of a bomb planted at the police station, the Joker escapes with Lau in tow. Batman arrives at Dent’s location in time to save him, but Dent sustains severe burns to the left side of his face. Gordon does not arrive in time to save Dawes, and she is killed in the explosion. In the hospital, Dent is driven to madness over the loss of Dawes. The Joker frees Dent from the hospital and convinces him to exact revenge on the cops, mobsters, Gordon, and Batman.

While Harvey “Two-Face” Dent confronts the corrupt cops and the mobsters one by one, flipping a coin to decide their fates, the Joker burns Lau along with the mob’s money. The Joker announces to the public that he will rule the streets and that anyone left in Gotham at nightfall will be subject to his rule. With the bridges and tunnels out of the city closed due to the Joker’s bomb threat, the authorities begin evacuating people by ferry. The Joker places explosives on two of the ferries—one carrying convicts, the other with civilians—telling the passengers on each that the only way to save themselves is to trigger the explosives on the other ferry; otherwise, at midnight he will destroy them both remotely.

Batman locates the Joker and prevents him from destroying the ferries. After being defeated by Batman, the Joker acknowledges that Batman really is incorruptible, but that Dent was not and that he has unleashed Dent’s madness upon the city. The Joker is subsequently captured by the SWAT team. Batman finds Dent holding Gordon and his family at the building where Dawes died. Dent proceeds to judge Batman, himself, and Gordon’s son through the chance of a coin flip. Dent shoots Batman in the stomach, but before he can determine the boy’s fate Batman tackles him over the side of the building. As Dent lies motionless on the ground, Batman and Gordon realize the fallout and loss of morale the city would suffer if Dent’s acts of murder became known. Batman convinces Gordon to blame him for the murders to preserve Dent’s image. As Gordon destroys the Bat-Signal, a manhunt is issued for Batman.

Official Movie Site: The Dark Knight

damn… forget my belt!!!

Good Evening,

I am working late today, 12 PM – 9 PM. A librarian in an academic environment will face that kind of situation. Working on Saturday and Sunday, Manning the counter and so on. This is the life of a librarian. But not the old-fashioned ones. They are on the bridge of extinction as the influx of the new age librarian is inevitable. This is the age of Librarian 2.0. Am on the other hand is version 2.5. Haha.

Okay, as I was supposed to clock in at 12 PM and I took my time to work. It was like 10 AM and it was still early. Rolling from left to right on my bed. Oh God! This pillow smelled good. It was my “bantal bucuk”. What!!! I can’t have any bantal busuk? No way, I love my bantal busuk!!! Buzz off. None will take that bantal busuk away from me. Not even my mother!!!

The air was cold and nice. Ahhhh. So lazy!!! Skip work. No! No can do! This is no school anymore. It is a okay to skip class. I always skipped my class during my studying days. But make sure to score in every test. Those lecturers would not say anything if you are good. They could not do anything because you are good!!!

Suddenly the time was like 11.15 AM. Shit, this is no good. Time for express bathing, breakfast and driving to work. Bathing took 10 minutes, pant and shirt 5 minutes and breakfast 5 minutes (bread, cheesdale and salad). It was like 11.40 PM and I quickly ran to the car. Started the engine and went to work. There’s no time to heating up the engine. Waste of petrol and time. Arrive OUM at 11.58 and clock in at 12.01 PM. At least not being late for 5 minutes or so.

Then my khaki started to losing its grip around the waist. I see…. not wearing any belt. Damn!!!

munmon.net resumes operation

Good Evening,

Sejahtera to all of you. After the disastrous mistake couple of days ago. munmon.net resumes its operation. Re-installation of Ubuntu took about 30 minutes, post-installation configurations took about 2 hours, and installation of World of Warcraft took about 1 day to complete (includes all patches and interface modification). All together, the process to setup munmon.net took 1 day ++.

Well not that hard actually. Look at the bright side, I have fresh Ubuntu Installation and Fresh Hard Disk to fill. What shall I pour into this Hard Disk? I have like 160G of free space now. Yes I am sad to loose all my MP3 (9854 MP3s of various type of Musics). 1 month time worth of playtime. OPS torrent will be operating soon. When, I do not know. But not right now.

Take Care now, gotta go to sleep!

Cherioooo!!!

Oh Nooo. I am so stupid!!!

Good Evening,

Yesterday, I had hard time to sleep due to daytime sleep. Well, it’s suck. Since I could not sleep, I spent my time with my Ubuntu, trying this Samba Application. Once of the functions, messed with my sudoers file. I can’t do SUDO anymore. Shit. How to edit that file if I can’t SUDO.

But, as usual, no need to panic as I had (I though I had, but no!!!) the Ubuntu LIVE CD. I just could not find the CD. Double shit for me. So I use the Alternate Installation CD which had this recover function. Use that to edit the sudoers file. Done, save and reboot the file. But nothing happened!!! Did I mess with my boot loader. I believed I did. I did chose the option to amend Grub. But that was on the other HDD not the main HDD.

As usual, I always learnt my lesson through the hard way. So i decided to do Clean Re-installation of Ubuntu. Aaa. That’s nice. I would have Fresh Installed Ubuntu. With a price – to lose all of my files (MP3, WMA, OGG, JPG, WMV, World of Warcraft, XBMC, Diablo2 and etc. Well, it’s okay. I have backups. Numerous of them, here and there. Everywhere.

Finish installation, reboot and the same problem. Nothing but blank screen. Arghhhhh. Reboot and entered CMOS and here the real problem lay, the CMOS setting was not correct. Boot order was not correct. Then, I smiled and said “God! Why must you punish me this way all the time??!!

Now, I have Fresh Ubuntu Installed and need to reinstall the God of All Games : World of Warcraft. The tedious process with 10 CDs (Both WoW Classic and the Burning Crusade).

So, tonight will be World of Warcraft Installation Night. Realm will be offline, so no worries!!!

ohhh munmon you suck big time this time!!!!

World of Warcraft Addiction

Good Morning

May the Lord of the Universe bless you. To all mankind and creatures of the world, Good Day and Good Health. We are all under magni nominis umbra. Christian??? No. I am not. Muslim I am. Not a good one and not bad either.

MMORPG or Massively multi-player online role-playing game is one of the modern world phenomenons. A plague some might call it, a gold making opportunity for the business oriented organisations. For the players, the best form of entertainment. I am one of those players. Enter the World of Warcraff, one of the best MMORPGs ever developed. Tons of such games exist today.

I believe not in such addiciton until it is too late. Too late to break free. Once you play you will have hard time to break from it. What makes this game addictive, I can never tell. The addiction is greater than anything I have ever craved before. A day without World of Warcraft feels like something is missing. You know the feeling when you are about to sleep but you can’t since you miss something. That’s the feeling.

It is not like drug addiction. There’s no withdrawal effect and muscle spasms. But there’s psychological effect. I am telling you what happen to me during the weeks of no World of Warcraft. Connection problems. For the last two weeks, I had this disconnection problem. I could only stay online in WoW for the max of 3 minutes. Then magically transferred to the Log in Screen with big annoying message “Disconnected from the Server”. That is enough to piss me off and make my day goes bad. Moody character I was during the duration of Curse of DC by TMNUTS and its SCREAMYX.

I am Gay (not that kind of Gay) person, a happy person. I never thought of not being able to play WoW, I would be very grumpy. Indeed I was very grumpy. Seemed like my emotion was being hurt. Oh yes, I was so pissed off with TmNet. Cursed them before going to sleep. Cursing is not my character, but World of Warcraft changes me. WoW has taken over my life. To my surprise, I have developed one kind of emotional attachment to my character “Loktaramish” and all of his affiliates. I even consider Lokt as my better-half, it is me in the World of Warcraft. I even think that Lokt is me and the look and cosmetic appearance of Lokt must suit my preferences. Anything that I do not like, even better than my current gear will never be worn. That Orc is me. Oh God! What is happenning to me.

Luckily, I can do my jobs at work. But still, I will take a minute or two to look at my Armoury just to ease my feeling. The burning desire to play World of Warcraft consumes my soul every now and then. I can stop playing for the max of 2 days. More that that, only God knows how the burning desire urge me to play. Come and Play the Word of Warcraft the brain tells me.

Take Care All. The World of Warcraft awaits

Annoying Windows Update Restart

Good Evening, My PC in the office just went through some updates. And as usual, Windows require a restart in order to perform the updates. Usually, Windows will pop up a reminder to “Remind” the user of the restart. This is an annoying reminder. We know and we will restart the PC eventually (sigh… Windows). They require a restart in almost all updates. My Ubuntu PC never ask me to restart. I love my Ubuntu (Use it in both Office and Home)

Well, every now and then this bloody reminder pops up to gain my attention. Which I dismiss asap. I need to get my work done. Who on earth creates this reminder? How stupid of him. Windows should give an option “Don’t Show this Dialog Anymore for Good”. Since I am fed up with this reminder, I do a search in Google, Keyword: “disable windows update restart”. The first entry answers my call Disable Windows Update restart nag. A simple solution. Open CMD and paste this command “sc stop wuauserv“. The stupid reminder will be gone for good. And of course, the Windows Update will return in the next reboot. Take Care

My night life without WoW

Good Afternoon

World of Warcraft is one of the best MMORPGs available today. Well this is the only MMORGP I ever played. I do not enjoy much of these on-line games. Sometimes it is wonderful. I prefer to solo. However, with WoW, you’ll need to have a group. World of Warcraft is the game I enjoy so much since Xbox 360. Until… one fateful day when DC continue to persist. One after another.

All I see is total blackness. My Karazhan raid, Alterac Valley Battle Ground, My earth signet, all seem to move away from me. The DC sickness is all around me. Loktaramish, Polatoo, Gemok and Duitloktar have not seen me in ages. I miss my toons. Spiteblade on Lokt’s back, Duitloktar and his Bank Suit and of course the total Gold with him. I miss them.

New router and new modem. Internet seems like to work normally. But, entering the virtual world of World of Warcarft, the most is 5 minutes then will be transported to Login Screen. Arghhhhhh. This ain’t hapenning. It has been 2 weeks, 14 nights without World of Warcraft.

To many it is a virtual world. As for me, it is the world of fun and glory. Killing as many Mobs in Kara as I can. Maximizing my DPS and seeking the path of the Champion or becoming the Master Assasin.

Sigh… Setupid TMNET!!!