.: ShaolinTiger - Kung-Fu Geekery :.

Taxi drivers in Malaysia get a lot of bad press for not using their meters, not taking people if the distance is too short or too long, charging more if it's raining, charging more if there's a traffic jam or just plain refusing to take people because they don't feel like going where you want to go.

For me if a taxi is for hire, you should get in - state your destination and off you go.

Anyway have you noticed the worst drivers on the road are also taxi drivers? Cut queues, change lanes recklessly? No signal, no indication of intent? They drive too fast or too slow...of course there are some good taxi drivers, but on the whole?

I managed to avoid them mostly with their crazy antics, but this time I didn't, I was coming out of 1-Utama carpark (new wing) onto the 3-lane section that goes back to the main road.

My lane was empty, let's call it lane one - I double checked, no cars coming so of course I pulled out onto the lane..

Well I managed to pull out half way..when a taxi in the second lane decided to cut into the first lane without any signal, very suddenly..so of course I was half way out there's nothing I can do, he just ploughed straight into the front corner of my car and didn't stop, so he dragged the entire side of his car along my bumper..

He managed to completely crush the side light (thankfully not the headlight) and due to good design, the bumper absorbed the impact and the bracket popped (so no real dent) there's one very deep scratch though.

Care is in the workshop now, it was time for service anyway...service is done but it'll take another 2 days to repair and respray the bumper *sigh*.

Plus about 3-400 bucks to fix (I'll fix the part that got busted at Plaza Damas too) + normal service.

Shit happens! Just beware of the taxis.

I've always been anti-valentine's day, I've even been in the papers for my views on this.

It seems trendy in the last 1-2 years to go against Valentine's day, it seems anti-commercialism is finally hitting the mainstream.

What's the point really? Overpriced flowers? Overpriced dinners?

As I mentioned before, I learnt a very good lesson about 20 years ago from my lovely mother, I bought her some tulips on mother's day as is customary.

She scolded me upside down..

The gist of her message was why...why did you buy these flowers today when they are triple the normal price? What does today mean? Why do you need to buy these flowers today? Can you not show your appreciation to me on any day? Or every day? Because the flowers are triple price, that means on other days you could buy me flowers 3 times rather than 1, and they would be unexpected, so more appreciated.

She advised me if I wanted to do something, make her a card, or make something, that would show I really put some effort and not just dropped some money, which anyone can do. And it doesn't support the commercial bastards who are intent on emptying our pockets.

Basically she said the day is bullshit, and the same goes for Valentine's day, appreciate your partner every day.

Not just when the man wants you to so he can grab your money. Buy your girlfriend flowers whenever you see some nice ones, surprise her with a nice dinner. Celebrate your anniversary, because that is a meaningful day.

Don't celebrate Valentine's day, Father's Day, Mother's Day or whatever other spend-your-money Day they come up.

And to those singles who say Valentine's day makes you feel more single, you are a bunch of wet, spineless, no brained fuckers too.

Valentine's day has never made me feel anything, either way...because it's a meaningless day created to make money.

Don't support Valentine's day.

Be my Anti-Valentine.

Images from VD.

You can see what I wrote about Valentine's day 2 years ago:

Happy Valentines Day..Or not..

And other people who agree:

my perfect valentine
364 days but not Valentine's Day
The Mathematics of Valentines

I don't often talk about my work, or my job, just where I am and what I do outside of work.

A while ago I quit my job, I couldn't stand it any more, there were many reasons why, some I might go into here some I might not.

One of the main reasons was a project in Saudia Arabia, Riyadh to be exact..for the duration of 3 months. Now I'm not awfully fond of the location and the timespan..is way way way too long for me to take. Especially for what I'm getting paid..

I don't get some super-fantastic salary, I am accorded no 'expat' benefits, I am treated (and paid) exactly like a local. Actually in someways underpaid...according to market rate.

Anyway the consistent mis-management, complete lack of client expectation handling and lies through-out the upper tier of management have become too much to bear.

Read more

I've heard a lot about this lately, a lot of people talking about it, well complaining about it.

And it's struck me too, the quality of content on PPS has dropped dramatically, I guess it's inevitable for any kind of unrestricted system, as the volume increases, the quality decreases, the same can be said for music or TV shows or movies even.

Due to this the traffic generated from pinging PPS has also dropped, not that this effects me much as my traffic is about the same if I ping or not.

It also makes me lose faith in the blogosphere, and the quality..where are the good new blogs? Sometimes I read every ping on PPS looking for a new gem, I've found a handful decent writers in the past year or so, and even they aren't consistent. There are some good ones though (Pink Pau, Sabahan and a few others).

Why are the good posts by the same old people from the same old blogs.

Sometimes I feel like my blog is getting lost amongst all the crap, well honestly..perhaps my blog is just part of the crap.

I've been meaning to write about it for quite some time, but I never got around to it, it was really prompted after the whole 'Kahsoon' thing when a bunch of people started imitating his linkblog style and flooding PPS with crap no one cares about.

There are a bunch of new blogs doing the same thing now (e-globe1, TheTubeVideo, OffBeatEnough etc..).

I mean seriously if I want to see 'funny' videos I'll go to break.com if I wan't to see stupid pictures and viral emails I'll go to boreme.com.

All these pseudo pro-bloggers, then there are quite a number that just paste articles from other sites in a hope that they will strike it rich..

Easily spotted as they have more adverts than content..The 'original' content is usually misspelt and grammatically incorrect.

Quite a few of these have thankfully died off, obviously the creators weren't as motivated as they once thought.

Zzz boring all the same loads of pro-blogger kind of blogs alex allied, financially independant

Creating, running and having a successful blog is not as easy as it seems, it takes a lot of work, effort and in some cases technical knowhow.

PPS has also gotten flooded with myspace kinda blogs, journals about irrelevant stuff, no real content, just whinging, whining, emo..

These people have as much right to ping PPS as say Paul Tan or Mack Zulkifli, but really I wish they would realise no one really wants to read their shit, and keep it somewhere else.

I still do use PPS as I don't have room for everyone on my RSS list, so I check PPS to see if the blogs I like have updated.

I'd really like to see PPS version 2 come out, with the ability to block certain blogs, as some people like to ping 3-4 times a day when really they have nothing to say, they are just making a 1-2 line commentary and posting an entire news article.

Voting like SpyMy might be a good idea too, but well that idea failed as no one in Malaysia is interested in promoting anyone except themselves.

People just submit their own links and move on, they don't vote nor submit links from others sites or resources...but well that's another rant for another day.

I've kind of lost momentum with blogging lately, most because I haven't been doing much or eating anything different..

My traffic is at an all time low.

Should I keep blogging? What should I write about? Does anyone even care?

I've taken up a new hobby, photography! So pretty much everything has revolved around that, I'm setting up a new site for my pics, tips, photoshop tutorials etc..

Looking for guest writers too.

Sometimes bad management is a pain in the ass, literally, figuratively and whatever other -ely you want to add..

People skills, soft skills, the hardest things to quantify, why is the Dilbert Principle still so predominant?

Companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage that they're capable of doing. In terms of effectiveness, it is related to a band of gorillas choosing an alpha-squirrel to lead them.

And well yah it happens, in Asia it also tends to happen because of who knows who, not who knows what.

Sad but true.

The worst thing you can do to your employees is tell them you need something by tommorow on pain of death so they work till 2am to do it pouring blood sweat and tears into it..

Then look blankly at them the next day and say what thing? No nothing is happening, no rush..

Same things for longer terms...make someone work every day till 2am for 2-3 weeks to finish a project...then when the deadline passes, nothing happens, no action is taken, the final result just sits there.

People get demoralised, they stop working hard, they stop caring about the company and the outcome of projects.

The whole ethos of the company can change, everyone stops respecting deadlines and responsiblities for what they are because the management doesn't follow up and they don't mean what they say.

So why bother listening in the first place right?

It has a knock on effect, it makes everyone unresponsive, even to each other, you have to fight to get things done, even when it is important..because of bad management.

Thankfully most people with brains learn to quantify and assign priorities to tasks so they do get done within reasonable timelines.

Not the timelines given by the incompetent managers..

But still, it ends up with a big mess..

Sometimes I feel the rage.

Today I felt the rage.

Someone cut me up on the LDP, so I tailed him all the way home, my rage was approximately 1500000%.

Yesterday I felt sever rage as my ping fluctuated between, bad (800ms) and fucking aweful (1400ms).

I felt severe rage as the Streamyx Dumbnician (I refuse to call them Technicians, as they about as Technical as my gran) patronised me with things like..

Dumbnician: Open the command prompt
Me: What for? It's already open anyway
Dumbnician: Ok, so open the command prompt
Me: Ok what do you wan't me to do?
Dumbnician: Type i p c o n f i g...
Me: Yeah but what do you want me to do? Renew the IP? Flush the DNS Resolver Cache?
Dumbnician: Type i p c o n f i g / f l u s h d n s
Me: But I don't have any DNS issues, I can resolve sites just fine, I'm getting 70-80% packet loss and extremely bad routing even within the Streamyx network.
Dumbnician: Ok you need to reboot your modem.
Me: Sorry, but FUCK YOU.

I had rage, bad rage, serious rage, green bulging muscle vein pulsating on my head rage.

Approximately 11000100000000000% of rage.

Yeah I know, that's a LOT of rage.

I seem to be getting the rage quite a lot lately.

Some people just give me the rage, for example:

a) People who patronise me
b) Babblemouths
c) Ignorant drivers (people who ride between 2 lanes, people who hog the express lane, people who don't indicate)
d) Noisy eaters (Go and eat in your cave if you want to chew your food with your mouth open you fucking neanderthal)
d) Busybody good for nothings that talk behind your back to YOUR friends when it's non of their business, they need to get their OWN lives
e) People who flood PPS with crap
f) Student loan company that wants proof of my sustenance
g) People that support or follow Xiaxue because they think it'll make them 'famous' or get them more friends or something
h) Blog police, and those that are holier than thou
i) People who aren't civic minded and care not for the environment
j) People who expect because you work in IT you can fix everything under the sun, including once the fucking TOASTER
k) Sexually frustrated online hard-men like Tim Yang
l) The person who invented the Malaysian Summons system
m) People that are 'Vegetarian' for moral reasons but eat fake meat and wear leather shoes
n) People that try and shove their religion down other people's throats
o) People that misunderstand the word hacker and think hackers deface web pages

Hmm that's a lot of rage, it almost gets to p in the alphabet, and that's only people, not things..

Mostly I don't get the rage, but when I do, I want to hurt people.

I want to rip their faces off and eat them with some nice spicy salsa.

Maybe I'll go to the Gym more and drink less Jim Beam, then maybe I'll have less rage?

What do you do when you have the RAGE?