Back from the date, Empty handed

As I mention in my previous post, the cute guy whom I would dubbed 'CA' as he was born Canadian and now Australian citizen (although no accent... darn... I do like Australian accents too) had SMS me for time and I reply back with time and places to meet which is Pantip Plaza.

I arrive about 10 minutes early and the guy was surprised, saying that he has never seen anyone came early to an appointment in Thailand before - -;;;; Man... what did we Thais coming to... Anyhow... we had lunch and then walk around loking for the right mp3 player for him to buy. Along the way we discuss various thing. I did grab his ass once in a shop but he didn't respond much to that :ppp My hope came crashing down as it turns out that he had just been dumb by his bf as well as the fact that he like the dark skin, short, muscular, North-Eastern Thais look while yours truly is a pale skin (from sleeping till afternoon and go out to work at night) chinese looking guy :PP

But he seems like a decent enough guy who came to BKK often... I will definately tried to keep in touch with him for sure... Who know... perhaps I would be able to get in his pants one day :P

Changing Time

Today is quite an up and down for me...

My day started when I woke up about four hours too early than I wish with dull throb on the right side of my stomach... Which strangely enough did not ache when I sit up straight. Bothered by it, I play a game on my computer for a couple of hours just to ignore it and finally force myself back to bed so I will have enough time to recover from wake up with less than 5-6 hours of sleep.

I woke up again around 12:40 after a few alarm change :p And was greeted when I check my computer by a friend's bf who was almost in hysterical state as the friend was not on the flight that he was suppose to be... I tried the friend's cell phone number as this guy requested a few times but no one pick up the phone. But since the cell phone was ringing I suppose he was alright.

Then I have to do errand for my mom at the bank and since it's holiday so there were several customers. It took about 20 min of waiting time until it's my turn :p

Then I finally took the bus to my campus (all the while have not eat anything :p) And when I arrive around 14:30 I headed toward the restaurant I mention in previous post. Only to realize that it wasn't there anymore... I was kinda down by this... Not to mention feeling quite starve by then so I just head to one of the new reactionaries that I never saw before and order some food. It was mediocre at best and by the time I was done I was not really in the mood for any game booths... How time had change, so I walked toward to exit and head to a shop that has Chrysanthemum tea. Then I ask the waiter if he knew what happen to the missing restaurant and he told me that it move to a new location near their place instead!!

Wow this perk up my mood nicely and after finish my drink I thanks him and walk straight to the direction he told me. And lo and behold I found it again. The chicken in pandan leaf and Tom yum kung was not as good as it used to be but it could be just this plate... I could not eat the second one since I already ate... But I am a happy camper afterward :)

However, I will not divulge how I spend my evening :p It was rather decadence... But I was able to give out my mobile phone number to a Canadian guy who might call me tomorrow for a Monday appointment to help him by mp3 player. I wondered if I will be able to get him in the sack or not... I wish I could though...

Merry Christmas to all :D

First off, let me say I am not a Christian but a Bhuddist. However, I have spend most of my academic year in Christian establishment and the festive activities had grown on me.

I had came to a realization some time ago that my Birthday and Christmas are my most important days in the year for me. But Christmas for me is mostly about FUN times, since whenever it's X'mas in my school or university they will have a X'mas fair and I love it :)

This year my university will again held their annual X'mas fair at the Huamark campus which means I would be there :) I like to go back my university because there is a restuarant in the area that serve Chicken fried in pandan leaf and Tom Yum Kung. The only place that one this in set and made Very good chicken+pandan dish.

So Merry Christmas to All :D

Manga o' Me

I LOVE comic books, which in this case meant Japan comic books aka Manga. Unlike Paul at Bedtime stories, I rarely read any books. I guess for me I find that Manga can be as profound if you allow them to be and that you choose your Manga carefully. Afterall comic are not to be taken too seriously :)

I remembered the first one that I bought (not srue if it's the first one but it's definitely the first I remembered buying). It was one of the weekly issue one with Kano, a lead guy from old sci-fi drama comic: Xenon. And I had read quite a lot ever since.

It can be quite annoying when people think manga are for strictly for kids. Of cause what do They ever know... Comic book industry in japan had grown so much that some comic are made for older demographic as well as for youngers.

My recent fixation is on comics made by CLAMP, a group of four female cartoonists which produce their work in almost every mainstream genre ever since they became professional. Thier trademark can be clearly seen in the artwork and story, both of which are Splendid and thought-provoking and sometimes even profound. For example, One character ask another 'Why we should not kill another human being?' What would be the correct answer to this question without referring to the religion and philosophy?

CLAMP's present work are Tsubasa Resevior Chronicle and XXXHolic. Both of which are unique in their own way as TRC will feature characters from CLAMP's old comics and XXXHolic's main character will play a vital parts in TRC story line. The scanlation of Tsubasa (which is Japanese word for feature :)) can be found at http://www.stoptazmo.com and XXXHolic is at Baka-Updates Manga - Hisa-chan Scanlations

I will put up more post about CLAMP and their latest works later :)

The Second Chill

The cold weather has swept over Bangkok again since about... This passing Wednesday. It was beginning to crept up on me when I reduce the fan from 3 to 1 and now to none.

Plus now I wore T-shirt *gasp* instead of my usual tanktops so that I won't get too cold... Also that I now sleep under two blankets and one quilt to keep warm.

In the weather like this, it is very hard to get out of bed but it is also unbearable when you need to relieve yourself since you woke up with full bladder from not sweating at night...

I should also mention that showering in eather like this is no fun... I have to reduce the water pressure on my warm shower machine to make the shower warm enough to stay under... It is rather breezy in my bathroom so it also chilly when you wet and trying to dry yourself without sneezing :PP

Eventhough I do like to this cold for sleeping... The rest of the day it wasn't as fun... I do like to take shower straight from the tab, woke up and did not felt so parch in my throat...

The waether seems so f*ck up this year...

The Luna in my music

So far I have a collection of about 2GB worth of mp3 files on my computer. Just almost every genre from Whitney Houston to Bach, Aretha Franklin to Evanescence and of cause Madonna to Meatloaf :) Except for the mind numbing trance=techno=dance stuffs that they play in Disco nowadays...

Many times I like to listen to something that make me feel crazy with emotions. Evanescence and Meatloaf's ballad usually had that effect on me :) The sound on their songs that I could describe as 'full' that just hit me complete and take me somewhere else. The kind of song that make me wish I have a room with nice set of speakers to sing the song (badly) to it.

Other times I would visualize the songs. The Carpenters's 'Touch Me When We are Dancing' seems to put me in a flowery park in a bright afternoon dancing with a man ^o^. Fourplay's 'After the Dance' put me in a lazy Sunday afternoon swinging to the jazzy sound close to my man as well. And Oddly enough... George Michael's 'Father Figure' made me think of hot sweaty night, naked in bed with a man with blue light shines through the window. (I should mention that I am still single. Any hunky GWM volunteer to help me change that?)

My mp3 player of choice on my computer is Sonique :) The Lovely, Nifty, Cool, mp3 player that was bought my Lycos during the dot com boom and eventually got dismantle by that darn company. Lycos manage to fired all the people working on the Version 2, hired One new guy to work on it. And we got stuck with Beta 3 version that never complete... Therefore I still use the 1.96 version with DFX plugin. For some reason I never really like how Winamp sound...

Here is an image that I found on a forum that I had visited. I like it so I save it and now sharing it with ya All :)

Being Constant

I like to think of myself as being constant. A standstill point in the world if you will. I have read such passage from the very last official chapter of Sherlock Holmes series in which Holmes said to Watson that he is still the same like a unchanging point in the universe. A person who will not be subject to change by time or against his will or perhaps just be able to maintain an email address for over 9 years.

It might be mind boggling to think back when. When I still use internet on unix and open Hotmail with lynx: a text-base web browser *insert your gasp here*. It just that I seems to have less impression on people than I thought I would be... Afterall I have be able to maintain the same email address for close to 10 years and yet some of my older contacts never seems to try to reach me... I suppose they are more occupied than I am with real person unlike your truly :p

My new gig and Final Fantasy

Well well well... I guess it's official... I have no social life to speak of... Fourth game post coming up as well as another good news of myself.

First, the Good news. I had finally landing myself a new job!! It's nothing fancy or not in the industry that I am interested in but it will be a stepping stone toward what I would rather do. But for now I need to experince..

And for the game post (darn...) My bittorrent of FF IX had just finish a few days ago. I had bought the ROM on DVD before but it was in Japanese. Now I have it in English :DD. I have been a fan of Final Fantasy series for quite sometimes. The series is quite unique in that none of the characters are the same. The stories are usually about saving the world from mad person on a mission to destory it. Each Sequal has a unique system to it which I guess has became a trademark of the series.

Personally I had finish only FF 4 to 8 and now playing 9th one :) The unique point that need to be mention are the 'Job System' presented in FF 3 and 5 (Both of which has never been officially release in English language which seems to be common that there will be on game in each console that has been left behind for some reason) In both FF 3 and 5, you will be able to change the job of your characters to suit the situation :) Each will have special skill that will help make the game progress better.

However, in most of the game there are some 'training' perios in which the characters need to gain some certain points to completely learning spell or abilities. It would be nice if the point gains (usually 1-3) is balance (as in not taking 4-5 hours to complete) with the required points (40 or 50 or sometimes hundreds) But I guess this is RPG game Japanese style for ya...

I will be busy going through FF IX for quite a while... It's a 4 CDs game afterall :)

The Evil Chill comes and gone

It's been quite sometime since I post anything... Mostly it is because there is nothing news worthy to post... Although this might made me looks like a hardcore gamer I just have no other interesting news to tell :pp

The third game post in the row and this one is of 'Evil Genius' *insert evil laugh track here* :))
Like the name suggested in this game you will take on a role of an evil genius set out to conquer the world. You will first select your avatar each with their own perks and looks. The whole game seems to be influence by the Austin Power movie. Or perhaps by the 60s looks in the costume, the style and in just about everything.

The game play will be more about managing your base and your global evil activities. Your minions (the staffs :)) will run around doing their things automatically. Also when you send them on the mission or just to steal money they will do so by time count and without micro management.

When you look pass the facade of planning world conquering and so on, this game is more or less your typical management simulation game with an evil twist.

On to the Chilling part... The cold had comes and gone from Bangkok, not quite in record time but somewhat expected. Either it was less cold than a few years back or I became more tolerated since I did not have to pull out my jacket this year :) It was quite cold for about a week in which I have no need to turn on Any fan on my room as well as gotten myself under 2 blankets and a quilt just to keep warm.

All that is almost gone now... The night time is still quite chilly but not as much. I wish I have a hunk to hold on to at night instead of my long pillow...

And then there were...

None :) This is of cause about one of Agatha's classic 'And then there were none' and no I am not talking about the book but the game :)

I guess I would just skip the story part. You can find the book to read I am sure so I will just get into reviewing the game.

This game is done in traditional adventure game with static 2D pre-rendered background and 3D characters. The background scenes are typical quality stuffs, nicely rendered to pictured the moody British weather quite well. The same could not be said for the characters... All the character looks rather rough and did not blend well with the background. It is that bad that at one scene one of the character place both hands on a table and I have to look twice just to make sure that both palms are faced down :ppp

The voice of characters were mediocre and rather inconsistance. Sometimes the character talk in a rather calm voice in not so calm situations... I think the overall voice did not help built up the tension that well...

The game seems mostly stable until it crash on me when I tried to examined an item... I have yet to replicate the crash as I haven't reach that point again yet but we will see... The character also suffers (well not quite) from the 'is that a ladder in yoour pocket' syndrome of adventure games. You got to pick up a Lot of stuffs in this game, some of which are rather sizable such as blownup raft with oars and even full size ladder!!. It would surely looks rather ridiculous in real when you see this guy walking around with a bunch of books, ladder, raft+oars, wheel of cheese, and two buckets of apples.

My Final Words: It is a good story, and the makers add a good plot twist with player as the 11th person stranded on the island. I think it would have been better if more experienced studio produce this game... At least the whole package would be prettier and perhaps looks more professional. Still the game's saving grace is the story itself. Which still make the game playable and quite enjoyable. This game is probabaly the testament that Adventure games are define by being story-driven first and foremost, thus, will stand the test of time and prevail over the mindless FPS games :p

Light! Camera! Action!

Yeap I got a brand spanking new game called 'The Movies' This is another product from the same maker as Fable: The Lost Chapter and Black and White series Lionhead studio.

This game is more or less serve two purposes in one software as a typical business tycoon and a rather immersive movie making software. In game mode you will get to play as movie studio boss beginning from the year 1920. You get to manage from hiring actors and studio crews. You get to assign a movie making process and release them. You get to hire a bunch of scriptwriters to literally churn out movie scripts to be make or sell (you should get the writers to work non-stop as they have do not get tired and they will gain experince from working.) Since pretty early in the game you will get a 'Custom Script Maker' facilities. Which will begin the process of making the move by yourself.

I must handg it to the makers since the process is relatively easy to master. Add this to the 'Post Production Office' and you can add soundtrack, lipsync, and even edit the movie. This section can be pretty extensive... If you dig that kind of thing :)

However, the thing that bug me the most is the complete lag of people to be hired to be the crew. Especially, after the actors became really famous and they want assistance... When you have a big enough lot you cannot get by with just 7 builders to maintain all the set and buildings. And you can not really get by with just 2 janitors :ppp Plus, with the film crew that seems to be available with just 7-8 people as well as the number of stars, you can only make two films at the same time.

I wondered if LH will release a patch to make the people became more available... I know that this is a business tycoon game and resource management is one of the key factor. But it is rather ridiculous to manage the studio and when they asking more and more and more people. All of which you cannot spare... And this is only the year 1965 in my game... Darn it...

The Moving Castle and Strange Passerbys

I had just finish watching Howl's Moving Castle today and boy I like this animation. Besides the well-drawn characters the story is quite intriguing.

The main protagonist, Sophie, a simple girl whose family own a hat shop had a chance encounter and fallen in love with a handsome wizard, Howl. The pursuer of Howl, The Witch of the Wastes, did not like this one bit and put a curse on the girl, turning her into an elderly woman as well as she would not be able to tell anyone that she has been cursed.

Sophie, despite being cursed into elderly state, seems to cope with the situation quite well and set out to see Howl at his moving castle. After found it with the help of a scarecrow that she had rescued, she put herself into the position of cleaning lady of the castle and thus her adventure begins.

All I can say is that this Sophie gal rockss!! She is all heart and solid determination that surely impress not just the people around her but the audience as well :) Perhaps I should looking into getting the previous work of this studio 'Spirited Away' to see...

Recently I get several googled from people looking for information about the game Indiego Prophecy. Or to be more specific, how to play it without the CD or in this case it would be DVD. The fact that these people use 'Indiego Prophecy' in their keyword mean that they get the US version of the game. One thing though... The game industry, just like the movie and the music industry, they love their product protections. But so far it only prove that it did not really working. One person's lock is another person's challenge and I guess, in a way, it work out rather beautifully. Eventually these so called CD protection scheme did not work as a safeguard against illegal copied but rather preventing the game to be play unless they have the legitimate CD in the computer. This also means that you cannot play the same game using one copy in more than one computer.

However, it just a mute point, since the cracker can be found all over the net. The treat by the companies that these sites are littered with dangerous stuffs are no big fuzz to the tech savvy generation.

As I read recently on cnet.com about Sony's invasive tactic of protecting their music has been view as way out of line. The editor put it quite well in the article that if the company keep acting like this people will stop buying their crappy product and just turn to P2P which in my opinion much easier than travelling to record store and spend money on the company that did not care about their customer. And people should be concern with this news since it is 'Rootkit' tech and it installed and run active on your machine just like the spyware and adware (read scumware).

Envy as you have never seen before

I suppose there are many miage depicting the Seven Deadly Sins. I found this particular take of 'Envy' on deviantart.com. I can guaranteed this is Envy as you have never seen before :))

Full view click here

The artist is windy999 at deviantart.com. If you like your comedy subtle British style you will like this guy's sense of humour :) I know I did ;) So be sure to check out his gallery at http://windy999.deviantart.com/ You won't be disappointed.

The Bride with No Pulse

Despite to my tiring condition (just have 15 hrs shift from afternoon till almost dawn), I did went to see Corpse Bride today.

Eventhough it is somewhat too short it is still very good. The animation is definately improve since 'Nightmare Before Christmas' time, the bridal showl move fluidly in the wind just like in real time that made me wondered if it was short seperately. And in the very Tim Burton's way, the underworld folks are much more kind, frinedly, and lively than the living folks. Not to mention a lot more colourful.

I would love to see the overview shorts of the underworld town though... But since it was stop-motion animation it might be too much to ask for such views.

Anyhow, the animation is crisp and very fluid, a big step up compare to Nightmare..., I would highly recommend this movie :)

Tough time ahead

My current job (been doing this for almost 9 years... when I want to switch to something else ever since I graduated 3 years ago T^T) is tied to the account dept. so every first week of the month is the time with long work hours and lack of sleep... Although I could not fully complain since I got paid by hours...

However, this month is different, my co-worker who has the same job as I do (the job is daily regardless of weekends so we alternate the days) has to go home which is in the south of Thailand for the Muslim New Years which is at the end of the fasting month. So not only do I have to work for extra long hours this week. He will be gone for the whole week next week also!!!
Oh.. boy... I already felt like staying in bed just thinking about it or rather when I look at the time table of this month that has been newly printed today...

I think I will be needing another face stuffing time after the crunch week is over...

D. Gray Man

I am an avid manga fan (bought and read about roughly 3-5 comic books per week ^^;; (the regular three were weekly release)) And one of my recent favorite is D. Gray Man.

It is the story of Allen Walker, a young man of 15 y/o with red left arm, black nail, and a cross embedded into the back of his left hand. He is an exorcist: an apostle of god destined to fight against the evil of the world which in this particular universe is a mysterious figure Millenium Earl and Noah family. Like any epic type story Millenium Earl have a grande plan to destory humanity and his method is quite evil indeed. The Earl will went to the person who just lost their love ones and offer to reunite them. But in fact it was a ploy to have the grieving person call their love ones' soul into the Earl's skeletal contraption which will captured the soul and only obey the command of the Earl. The Earl will then proceed to order the soul to kill the person, taking over that body which will then became weapon of the dark side called 'Akuma' (A Japanese word I think... I am not sure what it means but I suppose it could means demon)

The main protagonist, Allen Walker, has Innocence: An Anti-Akuma weapon embedded into his left handever since he could remember. He was an orphan and has been raise by a man name Mana whom he considered his father. At the age of five, Mana died, and The Earl came to Allen. He fall for the ploy call Mana's soul into the contrapment. The soul became enrage and leave a cursed scar on his left eye (which have special ability that if you wanna know you better read the series :)) Allen's Innocence invoke by itself and destory the contrapment which also release Mana's soul back to the afterworld. This event leave emotional scar to Allen and lead him to became determine to kill Millenium Earl to avenge for his deception and to save the world.

The illustration itself is quite unique. The design is very interesting, the setting start in Europe and now move to Chinaand now going over to Japan. But what set it apart from other manga is its uniquely dark story line. Eventhough it did have comedy part from time to time as most manga do, some of the storylines can be quite heart-wrenching (at least to me anyway :P).

My favorite page is the first page of episode 24: The story line is about a young woman who was never good at anything in her life. The image of this particular episode show the young woman's as a child, in a dark scene with one spotlight shining down on her. In the foreground and in her hand spot badly mended dolls. And also in the last frame showing her crying, with needle and tread in bandaged hands badly mending her doll. With the line "Eventhough I was never good at anything I can't stop trying. Eventhough I had given up on it but I end up regretting and try to do it again. After all, I can't do anything right, it's better if I just don't try at all. How stupid of me" The author/illustrator succeed in sums up the whole psyche of this person in one page that almost brought tears in my eye :)

The serie is still on going and show no sign of weakening. I would highly recommend it :) You can download it from this link http://www.stoptazmo.com/d.gray-man Also make sure to check out their main page http://www.stoptazmo.com/d.gray-man as there are a lot other manga for you to read :)

The Chill and God on the run

Since I have got a brand spanking new DVD-RW drive I has been playing my new game that seems to only available in DVD: Fahrenheit aka Indigo Prophecy and Black & White 2. And here are my takes on the game.

Fahrenheit aka Indigo Prophecy, was promised to be new generation Adventure game with grippin' story telling, intuitive puzzle and strong narrative. They also throw in the controlling method that at times can be downright frustrating rather than the supposed *fun* and engaging feeling type. In the game when you character 'interact' with the hotspot there will be movement gesture for you to imitate with either your mouse or controller, alright I am no problem with this and it does make things more interesting than just click away at the options. If the action was more physical then you have to alternately and repeatedly pressing either Left and Right arrow on your keyboard or L R button on the controller, I kinda get the idea of this one but sometimes there is no telling if it's working until it's too late, plus it is kinda tiring after replaying the sequence several times... And the controlling that I hate the most PAR system. What you will get are two circles with four colours to indicate up, down, left, and right movement of both your keyboard and mouse Or both side of the analog stick. Some of these sequences are just too fast to follow... Plus my right analog doesn't seems to work properly... I seems to get better results by using keyboard and mouse...

The game also promise that the story will be slightly altered by the way you play it. The company call this 'rubber band' affect, as in you can stretch the game or bend it around according to your game play. However, it did not really affects the game that much only in some minor areas. And multiple endings will be determine by how you play the last chapter (which is good in a way, afterwise you would have to replay a considerable amount of game just to see it all)

Anyway the story part is more interesting. It involve murder, conspiracy, grand scheme of secret rulers, and a prophet child. Although I must agreed with others in some forum I have read that the story began to loosen it's focus after the two thirds of the game with some added plot that just doesn't addup on what we been playing so far. But all-in-all this game is a commendable afforts by the company Quantic Dreams in delivered an enjoyable experinces for this game.

Black & White 2. Just like the first one, you can play as Good God or Evil God at you will and you will also get a Creature which will aided you quest to became the ruling god. Unlike the first one, you are no longer a nameless god of some tribe but of Roman empire which has been pillage by Aztec force in the beginning of the game. Thus, began your quest to restore the power of your people and destroy or convert the Aztec according to your play style.

In order to win each mission, you can either 'capture' each town by military force or by building an 'impressive' city so the people from other cities will be migrating to yours. Quite an impressive idea really... You actually get to play two style in one game. As you can either play it as RTS game by storming your troop to crush everything in sights or play as Sim City by keep building, and sometimes protecting, your city to impress the people of the whole island. I have not play far into the game yet as I restarted it because I wanna have Lion instead of Wolf as my creature :p

PS: I am kinda disappointed that no one leave comments on my previous post... I wondered why no one post comments...

When Friend became Ex-Friend

I considered myself as the kind of guy who will maintain the friendship until the other person said otherwise. And what do you know it had happened once along with another type of incident...

The First one I would mention is a French man I met from somewhere. He was and ok guy I suppose and then the fall out happen when we was chatting on MSN. I said something and he corrected me, I laugh it off (type hehe back) and I think said something like it's not fun to right all the time. De seems to take offended by that, argument ensued and it end up with him said he did not want to keep in touch with me anymore. Thinking back sometime later, I think that he seems to be quite smitten with me at first and thought of me as some clean cut cutey with no edgy side (How Wrong was that impression :ppp) I guess I am a Leo with Cancer's shell. The guy with calm, serene look with temper that shot up instantly when provoke the right (or rather wrong) way. Plus I tend to be more subtle but nasty chatter on the net when I got offended (as oppose to in real life since I seems to lost my train of thought in the heat of anger.) So there goes Ex-Friend no. 1

The Second Ones is an American whom I chat with on gay.com and then move on to AOL chat. It was after Thanksgiving, and it seems mandatory to crack a joke about face stuffing on Thanksgiving. So I ask him if he stuffing his face on Thanksgiving and boy he did not like that, not At ALL!!. He manage to tell me that his mom think he's too thin (and I had seen him naked he definitely DID NOT need to thicken up, he need to work out more than anything else) and wanted him to gain more weight. I thought geez... This guy must has some issues and obviously did not seems to be aware of it. As an American, if he cannot take a pot shot about overeating during Thanksgiving then I have no intension to keep chatting him up. And that was the last times I chat with this guy.

There is another guy that recently became an Ex-Friend upon his request and I am not sure if I want to blog about it... But since I seems to be on a roll so where I go...

This guy is an old friend of mine. I have know him for about 9 years now. He is a doctor in NY with both MD. and engineer degree (just to establish that this is quite a smart guy). He told me that he recently wanna take up C programming lesson and told me he wants me to buy him some software from Pantip (pirate version) for him. I said sure and told him to go ask his tutor/teacher which software he need and email me.

Two days later he email me saying he wants C/C++ Compiler for XP. However, that is just a category of software. Eventhough I know nothing about programming, I do know that it is important for the student and teacher to be using the same tool to smoothen the learning process. Especially when you learn to produce something like programming. So the next times I saw him online I ask him which compiler he really want. He reply just any would do. So I point him to some free stuffs at download.com . He questioned me why would there be any free version when there are one that sold for $500. The more I keep pressing him about which software he wants, he became more agitated and upset for some reason. Eventually he cuss me off (not literally but close), accuse me of not wanted to help him and log off.

He later emailed me that he tried the free compiler and said that it only gave him ads and popups. After I investigate this issue I learn that that compiler is sort of barebone software: Came in ZIP file, No install module, just several EXE files and sample code to use in DOS mode. So there is no way he get spyware from this... After several more argument with me keep asking him which one he want and him saying I am trying to get out of helping him. He seems to finally have a breakdown, calling me an idiot and saying he would block my message from now on.

So now I would like to ask my readers to vioce their opinions regarding the above incident. I know that if I told this to Nordic or Mr. American they would just say 'Good Riddance!!'

Into DVD era!

I suppose it is a sort of personal indulging cause by taking advantage of a chance happening... Oh... heck it just that my mom wanted to go to Pantip Plaza (the First Computer shopping mall in TH: Five floors of computer softwares (pirated mostly :p), hardwares, accessories, etc. a pure heaven for techno junkies) so I decided to tag along to replace my CD-RW drive with DVD-RW so I can play PC games that came out in DVD :ppp

I got LG 16x according to the salesgirl's recommendation despite the fact that most people in my webboard seems to be using Lite-On - -;; Oh.. well... this one is a bit more expensive but it also give 10 LG DVD+R as well. I hope I didn't make the wrong choice :p

And I also add another 512MB DDR-RAM as well. so now I have total of 1GB RAM :)

Me the Bachalor??

The Bachelor Deliberate Gentle Sex Master (DGSMm) Straight-up. Studly. Congratulations, you are The Bachelor. You're an honest, good-thinking guy, and though you're very sexually active, people don't perceive you as a male-slut or man-whore or guy-dick-putter-inner or whatever. You have a sterling reputation. You're a careful person, perhaps too much so for your friends' tastes, but guys like that in you. You probably don't kiss & tell. And you definitely don't brag. You know you don't have to prove anything to anyone. It's as if you believe in monogamy, so long as it's with lots of different people. Our guess is that you've got some kind of word-of-mouth going with the boys out there, and that in the future, your sex partners will get even more plentiful, and more attractive, too. Your exact opposite: The Manchild Random Brutal Love Dreamer You will settle down eventually, and make an excellent husband. You seem like the type who is into the idea of making copies of yourself, so you'll probably adopt lots of kids. Bear in mind, meanwhile, this can get expensive. ALTERNATE ENDING: You will die broke and alone. Vermin will feast on your ragged body for five days before the groundskeeper notices. The thing is, when somebody dies in a public restroom, the natural odor of his decomposing flesh is often masked by the feces smell. ALWAYS AVOID: The Manchild CONSIDER: The Bachelor, The Backrubber Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid - Free Online Dating I saw this test from Brett Cajun blog. I suppose it describe me somewhat fairly :ppp The thing is that I have never been in serious relation before... Despite the fact that part of me wanted to be in one quite desperately but it was barred by my standards as well... Heck I would have to have an ISO like Paul's already T^T

Fully Loaded: Redux

Boy I Am Fulled!!

I went to a buffet today. And it's not your typical buffet, it's Cake buffet :) All Cake and pastries with drinks include refillable Coffee, various kind of tea, chocolate, and coke.

It's good that I went with a friend (from my webboard) since it's better that we alsotalk about this and that and not stuffing our face. Afterall it's not really sensible to eat that much cake...



The above are part of I have eat :dd In total I think I must have about 6 cakes and 3 pastries. It taste alright :P They weren't Great so to speak. But at the cause of 150 baht per person, it's worth it :) It's not really fulled though afterall it's all carb. and sugar and not really healthy :p This is not the kind of buffet that you would do every week anyhow...

Plus my mom made some dinner afterward so I am now really really full :PP

Homeworld

The first 3D Real-Time Space Strategy game that dare to go beyond the common ground and able to delivered.

It was the first game that have you play in complete 3D space environment and I did not mean just graphic but also in terms of combat :) You get to fight in real 3D space as in 360 degrees with real ups and downs. You also get to controlling an entier armada. Plus the game manage to look better while playing than in screenshots. I had first played this game extensively on demo since I was afraid that the machine we have back then won't be up for it until I finally bough the CD (pirate version of cause.) And boy was it WORTH IT!!!

The story itself was quite powerful, not to mention the graphic, the superb sound affects that really give you the feeling of being in space. The beauty of commanding an entire fleet of spaceships that ranging from minute star fighter class to the giant carrier and battle cruiser and one I love the most 'Salvage Corvette'

For more comprehensive infomation check out this site http://www.rakrent.com/rtsc/rtsc_homeworld.htm .

One downside of this game is that it seems to have too good of a CD-Security... The no-cd crack I tried does not work on it. Good thing I still kept the CD though :)

Even so this is a great one of a kind game. A must for gamers everywhere :) Even more so if you like RTS (Real-Time Strategy) game.

Three Times CSIs

I have been a fan of the show ever since around third season of the first CSI :)

Thinking back I seems to heard of this show sometimes ago in some sort of program about how Jerry Bruckenheimer was about come out with a show named with three letters and that it would be his second attempt in producing this sort of shows.

In one of Dennis Miller show, one of his guest was the man who actually came up with the idea to do this TV series. Anthony B. Zuiker was trams (did I type that right?) driver in Las Vegas, he said one night he was watching a show on Discovery Channel 'The New Detective' (I actually like this show too as well) which is a document where they show how forensic science help police track down and show who's the victim and who's the perp. Zuiker said when he saw this show he thinks it would be make good TV series. So he call B.'s company to pitch the show. I must say this now that Jerry B. mention this in particular that thsi Zuiker guy is a real salesman at heart, as his pitch is very good and convincing that he convinced Jerry B. to make this show (in contrast of let's say... Me :p I have no salesperson personallity no t he drive to be one either (which is lucky for me I suppose))

Also I should added that the writing of the show is very good. I like how the use the various sub-cultures to be involve in the crime scene. I suppose they first push the envelope with the little people first, then the S&M brothel episode, then the furry group, the transexuals, and the chubby chasers scene.

If there is anything I learn from these shows... Is that murder in general Is VERY Messy :)

Futile Attempt

I had made some affort to include my real life friends to visit my blog but so far only a few show some interest.

With the help of StatCounter I am able to see where in the world that my blog has been open. So far I seems to have frequent visit from Malaysia the most :) And most people visit my blog from Paul's Bedtime Stories the most.

Well back to my rant... So far I was able to get two friends to visit my blog. One was Nordic and another was a dutch man whom I befriended over the net sometimes ago. My message on one of my previous post did not yield any result eventhough I had email that person with specific instruction :pp darn...

Now I don't know what else to blog about... Right now I am in my office and getting really hungry and I cannot go fid something to eat... Not in the few minute anyway :ppp

Damn Spammers and My Fable Overdose

I have been somewhat lazy and torns between subjects of rant to be added here... I have a bit of enlightenment ideas for you guys to read so I guess I will just type it down now and explain the meaning of the subject later.

Spam mails, there is no need to explain that word. If you are reading my blog chances are you already know what pain in the ass (and not in the good way) spam mails are. But what you probably did not realize is that You actually PAY your hard earn money for the sending of spam mails.

Why did I say that? I know this for sure when I combine three seemingly unrelated stories that I have read and learned through out the year.

1. About 60%-70% of emails traffic on the internet are spam mails. Yeap it's getting really bad ever since people began warning that it will be a problem and now none of the politicians have the spine to stamp out these spammers.
2. Any ISP (Internet Service Provider) will generally setup their email server with 50% capacity more than the peak traffic just in case (as it's the genereal practise in this business.) And with the epidemic I mention above, ISPs will have to setup their email servers to be much larger than without the spam mails' traffic. Plus not to mention that they have to install spam mail filters and keep it upto dates. All of which cost money.
3. What I learn in business class? Companies will always push their expense to the consumers in the form of the price of their product. Which, in this case, will be the price of your internet service from your ISP.

So what will you get when you combine all the stories above? You ended up paying higher internet cost due to unrealistic email traffic cause by spammers in the form of higher internet cost!! Seriously I think spam issues should be handle by Interpol since internet is global afterall. Company setup in one country can do business in another and avoiding the laws. Too bad the world have other serious issues to focus on this white collar scumbags.

Anyway... I recently got meself a new game called Fable: The Lost Chapters. An Action-RPG game from Lionheads studio of Peter Moleneux the man who concieve Populus, Dungeon Keerpers, Magic Carpet, and Black & White. In this new title you will play as a hero set out to fulfill his destiny and he can choose to be either good or bad in the process. The idea was to allow you to play as good or bad the way you like it. But you end up with just the different look of your character and that's it. It's much easier to play as good guy instead of bad guys since most of the things you have to defeat for experince will add to your good alingment.

Still the game is quite fun :) With the rather unique stat increase method you will see your character grow from a scrawny young man to tall muscular man :) And for magic users you will also get bluish arcane patterns all over your body as well. Click here for bigger picture

There are several hair style, facial hairs and tattoos so u can customize your characters as well. That's my character :) Isn't he look cool??
I have been playing this game for about a week now... My sleep time is totally ruined :p

My soon-to-be new Acquisition

My current mobile phone is... well I could not say crappy because it still works (except for the battery which need to be recharge almost daily and I call out only about once day!).

But as a techono minded person I do like to have new mobile phone, the newer one that can play MP3 and use it as ringtones, have digital camera for discreetly doing candid shot of cute foreigners :dd The one that I have been eyeing for several months is the new Sony Ericsson Walkman phone w800i.

It has enamel white body with metallic orange stripe along the side, 2MPixel CMOS camera , mp3 player with better grade earplug headphone sets with 512MB memory stick included in the pack. Sounds like a dream came true for audiophiles who wants their mobile phone to play mp3 as well :). I almost forgot to mention that the phone can be recharge when connected to computer via USB connector!!

My only problem with SE is that in all their preview and advertising image of the phone, the enamel white (which make the phone looks cheap overall) front and back looks more silvery metallic instead. I was completely shock when I saw the preview image from a mobile phone website that take pictures of the real phone. Like I mention above, the silvery body became enamel white and it did not look nice AT ALL!!!

Anyhow I am still considered this one since I am certain I would use it for all it worths :) However, currently the phone still selling at minimum 18,700 baht which is quite steep for my budget. I am not in a hurry though... And I heard that w550i will began selling in about two weeks. Hopefully, that should help bring the price of this one down a notch or two.

Being gay in Bangkok

Inspired by Paul's comment in my previous post I decided to do this post as a ranting of sort about gay life in general.

When you look at being gay in all aspect, it is Not abnormal behavior or that big of a deal. To think that some people dedicate their life to anti-gay course repulses me , after all there are more serious issues than how some men wants to share their bed with another men.

I hate when people use religions as an excuse of their own bigotry. Talk about blind fate!!

As for life in Bangkok, I would say that there is no better places to be gay than in Thailand. We are mostly tolerated people. You will find ladyboys working as salesperson in many shops in the shopping mall as well as in the perfume section in their long hairs and makeups! . I wondered if this is common in any other countries, if anybody from other countries could tell me in the comment section I would be very appreciated.

I would say that gay people in Bangkok are mostly safe here in most account... However, the newspapers will always add the word 'gay' when the crime was committed by gay or when the victim was gay, I heard some lament about whether this is necessary to put it so blatantly that this happen to or by gay.

Even so, I still think that Bangkok, or even Thailand, is the best place to be gay in the world. Since this is Buddhism country and it's been taught for a long time that what happen in this life is the results of our actions in previous life. So mostly people just left us alone thinking that we pay for our karma in this life as gay or it might be as simply as they just mind their own business.

And really People, what is the big deal about men wanted to have sex with other men?? As per old saying in Thais. It's not like we did it on your head so F*uck off would ya idiot fundamentalists??

Music Man

Thinking back, I seems to began my journey to became the guy who almost always carried some type of music players whenever I was outside in my highschool year.

I remembered that I ask my mom for a double deck cassette player for one of my birthday and I did get it :) I began making complilation tapes on it and then listen to my own complicaton tapes on the walkman. I switch school from the one I have been in since the first grade when I was at 9th grade to another one the uniform codes also change a bit. This leads to the change from my using of carried bag to backpack and I love it! (although it doesn't help toning up my arms :p) My new backpack have side pocket which fit perfectly with walkman in the left and tarot cards in the right. I will mostly be seens walking around with my backpack on my back and earbuds headphones in my ears.

Which leads up one traumatic point in highschool where I was in the teacher lounge for some reason and one teacher ask me if I am a student of deaf people school. I was shock by her words not to mention that I heard it very clearly since eventhough the earbud headphone still in my ears the walkman was not playing. I wish I had said something or make a big scene out of it. Being a good quiet kid that I was I said nothing...

Now back to my main story. After many years of using walkman, I began to record songs from radio station with my first intension of wanted to play it to sales person at record store to identify the songs so I can buy it later. But after sometimes I just keep record songs from radio telling myself that I would only buy what I really need to buy :) Later on I found internet and learn from Nordic that I can download mp3 audio files from internet via IRC which open up a new venue for me. And now the files became more useful since I had replace my walkman for mp3 player :)

My collections and taste are mostly R&B, Pop, Rock, and Classical. I seems to have a special place in my heart for many of 80's R&B singers like Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle, and Gladys Knight :)

Sometimes when I play my mp3 collections on my computer I would sing along to the heart breaking tunes of Richard Marx 'Until I Find You Again' or Mariah Carey 'Cry' or Meatloaf 'I'd Lie For You (And That's The Truth') :)

It's Good to be BAD

Of all the strategy games that has good side and evil side. 98% of those will have you play the good side, 1% will let you pick side and the other 1% will have you play the evil side :)

One of the most well-known title of the last 1% is Dungeon Keeper series. You will play as a dungeon master out to conquer the world and defeat all the good guys that dare stand in your way :) I must say that I love the torture room the most since it allow you to convert the captured unit to your side (insert evil laugh here)

Anyhow, not many later developers seem to be interested in letting you play the bad guys until Sick Puppies Inc. came along with Ghost Master.

In this game you will be playing as a civil servant type in the afterlife and you have been given a mission to terrorise the populations of Gravenville :) You will command a pack of ghosts or Haunters as they were called in this game. The locations included Sorority house (where else :p), Frat house, and police stations just to name a few. In each mission, there will be ghost trapped there and will be required to fulfill certain objectives to free them and became one of your haunters. The level of difficulty are ranging from medium to downright maddening... Since the faster you can complete the mission, the more gold phalsm you will gain for training your haunters new scare technique :)

The demo is also available at the official sites. So try it if you like to play bad guys for a change :) You might realize something hidden tendencies *evil laugh*

Party! Party!

Yeap, I jsut got back from my company's Party. For some reason they venue this times is on the other side of the city. It took about two and half hours on the road to get there from the starting point at the company building on a big coach bus. The route (according to my mom) have to go through the old part of the city which is usually heavy with traffic + Friday evening + rain = Long Long hours on the road with yours truly haven't eat anything before hand with the intension of stuffing my face with the food at the party.

However, once we got there and wait for the event to officialy began (people allow to go pick up food) it was quite alright. I had sashimi (raw fish japanese style), pasta, roasted lamp's legs and some dessert as cakes and fruits.

Now I am full and felt like ready for bed :) Which will happen in a while. It's been raining pretty much daily for about a week now and it make the night so comfortable for sleeping.

Carb + Fat = Flavours

Why do we human seem to have weakness for that combination? You would find that the formula can be apply on wide variety of foods whether it's appitizers, main dishes, or desserts. I suppose it could be easily to explain since we all survive on consuming both Carb. and Fat for our energy therefore we were programmed to like the flavours of them. The food industry certainly use and even abuse the formula into making billions dollars business, think carb. + fat + salt!!

I began to have this urge to visit Daidomon again... I would probably do so next week :dd

A sidenote for one of my friend in NY whom I put up a link to his business on my sidebar. I have receive a self-portrait from one of my friend which I would like to share it with you. But first, I wants to know if you have read my blog or not. Please post your comment for this post as acknowledgement and I will email you the picture ;) I can guaranteed it will be worth it...

Long rant and my Mule :)

At first I did not realize that there seems to be limit per post and I rant too long about the whole deal. I guess I was hoping that Paul of Bedtime Stories would read and understand the idea of it since he himself said that he is a techno himbo (his words not mine ;)) Anyhow I will just say that all those three software are decent in their own ways and for the moment one should have all three and like I mention already, Scan your machine with them and do the Update Weekly.

Now about my Mule. I suppose many have heard of P2P and KaZaa faisco. For those who do not know what I am talking about, P2P is short for Peer 2 Peer, a type of program that allow people to share the files they have in their machine to other people in the same network. At first this concept were use mainly to share MP3 music files. That's until Napster got sued by RIAA and while Napster went under the concept live on and grow from just sharing MP3 to sharing just about any files.

The Ex-leader of the pack is KaZaa whose company also got sued by RIAA with the same charge. The court process is still pending. With KaZaa getting sue many people switch to another network and software (as do I) to eDonkey/ED2K network and my choice of software is eMule.

You can find many things using this program. Ranging from mp3 to various movies to softwares and games most of which would be define by the law as illegal as its against copyrights laws. But the amount of people who using this program prove that they don't care :p Besides I must assert my point that the stuffs that I had downloaded are not available in my country.

Anyhow you can read the details at eMule's official website. Since this network use upload/download ratio to calculate your rating to be use for cue setting, I would like to recommended that you should have some files to share at first (eMule allowed multiple share folder setup) so you can built up your rating while waiting for your downloads. However, I must warn you guys that in order to completely download most files you need to left your computer and your connection on 24/7. So it is best to use this with broadband connection otherwise your phone bills will be sky high :)

How to rid your computer of Adware (read Scumware)

Adwares and Spywares (read Scumwares) are becoming more and more daring and downright agony in many cases. I could only assumed that 99% of the politicians all over the globe are just too old and too caught up in their own agenda to care about this issue which becoming more and more threatening.

Why are these wares a problem? Because these adwares and spywares will use the Limited Resources (most notably part is RAM which is more demanding in newer OS) in Your computer for their own gains. Some will track your surfing habits, some will altered your configuration so that you have to see their websites more often, some will pelt you with advertising pop-ups every 3 seconds, and some will even trick you into making international call for porn (in the case of dial-up connection.) To make the matter worst, when you have these junks littered in your system it will slow down your computer since many will keep themselves running in the background. Not to mention your internet speed that will also be tampered with the traffics to their scummy search sites and ads.

Now as I already mentioned, things have became so bad, that just one adware removal software is no longer enough!! You should have at least two or three just in case since these products seems to target different sort of adwares and spywares. I would recommend these three softwares that is a must in your internet computer (especially those with broadband connection):

A) Spyware Doctor

B) Ad-Aware

C) SpyBot Search & Destroy

Each should be run and updated weekly. They are all good and I have used all three.

It is quite a wondered to think that these scumwares became more like virus rather than simple pesky adwares that could be easily removed. Have most of us net denizens became such ignorants to this issues that it became this out of control?

MSN Web Messenger

I have heard about this just today and due to a case of restlessness so I would blog about this now.

So the topic of today is MSN Web Messenger or http://webmessenger.msn.com/default.aspx?R=1 :) I read about it on my webboard. What is it you say? It is a web version of MSN Messenger. However, the difference from the normal version is that it get the connect through http. So it will works in any computer that could open website.

It is perfect for people who:

A) Do not, cannot, or wanted to install MSN Messenger on the particular computer for whatever reasons.

B) They are in the situation with limited internet access ie. in the office (like yours truly, who could only open websites on office's computer)

It does, however, have a bit of limitation such as no file transfer function and no webcam function. But I suppose those are just minor issues while the main functions work perfectly.

I must say that I am surprise that Microsoft do this. Afterall their reputation for only performing *just enough* are wellknown among the tech industry. I recently read an article saying that Microsoft crush their competitors by offering their own version of the product which were not superior than the competitors but only at the same level. This seems to be the reason why they beats Lotus, Netscape, and many others but not Google but that's for another post.

Men just don't Call!

This particular issue had always been nagging me ever since I have been 'reaching out' to other people. I have made some friends but no matter how good those friends are (Nordic and Mr. American for example) they rarely call me on the phone while it was me who called them up 99% of the times.

Nordic would have good excuse since he is a computer person like me and if we wanted to communicate we can easily do it via email. Mr. American on the other hand... I suppose he is already busy enough with his life and family that I would not have gone through his thought much.

But I guess that's what I have to bare with since I just happen to made friend with people who eventually have busier life than I do. However, through out the time that I had been on the net try to look up with cute guys who stop by Bangkok and all those times that I spend watching American TV programmes I have reach one conclusion.

Most Men are Pigs who just don't Call! This happens among gay men as well not just the disease that are among straight men only. Sometimes I just wish that my *friends* would just call me first just to talk not because they want something from me.

For some reason, this pattern also happened me on IMs (Instant Messenger) as well. Since I use Trillian I logged on to MSN, Yahoo, AOL, and ICQ all at once and most of the times I have to initiate the chat, IMing them to say Hi first to start the conversation. Not because I was quick to say Hi, since I tried to wait and see if they would notice that I was on as well. More often than not they were just there and never say hi... In retrospect this might be the same case I already mentioned. They are just too busy with their own things to think about little ole me...

Sometimes I have to agreed with the phase 'People who don't need people are the luckiest people in the world' Their world might be lonely and quiet but they were not bother by that! Better than being lonely and wanted to be reached instead of keep reaching out all the times...

3 times the Chocolates :d

Today is the first day they began showing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and after checking the showtime on the net I realize that there is one perfect time for me to go and it's in digital as well!

I live near a shopping mall (just across the street, it's very convenience) and it also have multiplex movie theater. So before I see the movie I have this craving for chocolate so I decided to go down to the supermarket and get meself a Mars bar (I prefer Mars over Snickers) :dd and a bottle of water.

I must say that visually the movie looks great. The most important scene visually is probably the first room with the chocolate river+fountain. I guess afterward the rest of the room look... not as exciting. I did not get what the firework room was suppose to be though. Perhaps I should get the book... The only book I ever read of Roald Dahl was The Witches though. Overall the movie was alright...

And after the movie was over I decided I want another chocolate :) So I went to the supermaket again and this times get Hershey's Chocolate bar with cookie bits :)

And on a side note. I recently take a picture of the sky while on the crossover near my place so I wanna get soem comment. I took it with my digital camera, nothing fancy though ; Just simple skyscape picture :) Here it is

Click Here for Full view :)

Barber Times

I usually went to salon once a month to get a hair cut. I did not have specific dates to go though, just when I felt that my hair is getting rather bushy or I began to felt warm at the top :)

Although I should feel lucky to be able to comb my fingers through my hair and still have the bushy feelings. Unlike my friend Mr. American, he no longer have that luxury any more :P

So in a few days I will hit the salon, I guess I will go with my usual cut. Short on the side and the back and perhaps have it a bit long in the front and on the top...

Psychotic and Psychotic Comedy

After blowing off some steam in my last post I decided to post about somethign equally psychotic that could be in Adventure games :)

Two of most distinguish gems to be mention here are Sam & Max and Sanitarium.

Sam & Max was first a comic book with unique style of clean cut dark comedy. Here is one of the example.
In the game version, the makers fully utilize the author's sense of humour and style making it one of a kind in the genre. I was lucky enough to have found both the diskette versions (8 MB) and the CD version (100s MB) The Cd version was worth looking for if you can :) The voice talents was perfect (I think it might be the same people from the animation version of the comic).

On A sidenote. LucasArts had annouce and was producing Sam & Max 2 and later cancelled it citing their marketing department that the game "will not sell well" Despite the fact that almost every game magazine were eagerly awaiting this game as well as the fans world wide. The news of the cancel cause wide uproars among adventure games community and resentment toward LucasArts. Personally I think LA should have fired their marketing department instead of cancelling the game. It was the job of the marketers to make the game sellable not saying we can't marketted this game. God knows they had it easy selling the crabby Star Wars games for several years and when a good challenge coming by they just chicken out!!!

Sanitarium: One of the scariest Advanture games I had ever played. And it was not because of the gore nor the scary image but the overall looks were rather disturbing... The synosis at Underdogs said it all:

"Doubtless one of the very best "serious"advanture games ever made. In this psychological rollercoaster ride, you find yourself a patient in a strange sanitarium, with no memory of who you are. Slowly but surely, as the game progresses, you gather clues and insights into the past that give you the whole picture. I don't want to ruin your enjoyment of the game, but in general, each new chapter represents another step in Max's search for his sanity. A true classic, and must-have for every adventure gamer, especially fans of psychological thrillers.?"

This game is also one of it's kind. I had first played the CD-rip version from Underdogs (the original game were in 3 CDs and the maker of this CD-rip version had cleverly use clip from the video cutscene to make the cutscene in this one thus drastically reduce the size) and I love it. When I heard from Justadventures that the game has been reproduce in jewelcase version I ask my friend in NY to buy it for me and it was worth the Money!! Each CDs were beautifully printed and the cinematic cutscenes were all there including the ending radio broadcast which will tell you how thing were concluded in the end.

D*A*M*N IT!!!

I got offical warning from my supervisor regarding my mistake. I must admit I am a bit surprise that I get this since afterall I did not make a habit of making this type of mistake. Like I mention in my last post, people seems to focus on when you make mistake rather than when you are not. The supervisor use the work 'again and again' when if I recalled correctly this mistake did not happen for at least a year!! And he mention that other people have to come into office to do the rollback, well that is Their jobs as well. The same way that I have to came into office in unusual hours because the new patch need to be tested. Things happen and we deal with it the way they came.

With the kind of job that I have, a routine processing kind which means I am pretty much doing the same thing every times I came to work, there will be mistake every once in a while. I am only human afterall. I guess I am being quite defensive but hey one times out of 178 days (the total working day more or less in one year) is still less than one percent! cut me some slack please!

Now should I reply the warning asking the supervisor nicely to remind me when was the last times that this kind of mistake happen? I can assure you guys that it was at least a year ago. Or should I just do nothing and just say Ok to this??

Somewhat eventful night at work...

Just when I thought I have nothing to blog about it is almost like Fraudian thing that leads my brain toward how it goes last night...

I made mistake in my work... Which did not happen for about two years now... The darnest thing is that I have to call people up to fix this mistake since the easiest way, for this case, is to rollback the system.

In retrospect, I was lucky that it happen on that particular day since:
-It was Friday night, so there was no real rush to fix it since the system will not have a lot of workload on Saturday morning.
-The database is tied to accounting and as they will began to clear the report at the end of month I would rather that it happen on this week than next week *shudder*
-The building was fumigating, not by my company but by the building's maintenance, so I was not eager to stay long... Although they did not fumigating on my floor but they did most of the upper floors and the fume did goes downward. I was not keen to sit at my table and breath in insecticide until the job is complete...

Still I was not keen that it happen. Afterall, this will not look good on my record. Eventhough there was no record of me per say but people, especially those that looking over my shoulder type (supervisor and manager,) tend to focus on how you screw up things rather than when u you do it right. I suppose we were all like that... We take it for granted when things goes smoothly and then go bend out of shape when hit the bump. I guess I am entitled to say this again, Darn IT!!!

Sitcom and Sit-Com

The title represent two of the activities that I like quite a lot which are Sitcom series and Sitting in front of Computer.

The Sitcom that I like are:
A. Golden Girls. I really love the offensive lines of Estelle Getty :)
B. Will & Grace. A must for every gay man I think...
C. The Nanny. Classic storylines delivered with crazy glamour dresses and unforgettable voice by Fran Drescher :D
D. Whose Lines is it anyway? I saw the one with Drew Carey as the host and boy was it hillarious...
E. Murphy Brown. The name said it all :)
F. Ally McBeal. I know it's not a sitcom but one-hour drama but I still love it anyhow :) I like the way the musics seems to be the additional mood setters throughout the show. I did have some tears in my eyes a few times.

That's all I could think up at the moment, perhaps I would add some later.

Now, about sitting in front of computer... I must admit that it it not always *fun* times for me for various reasons... And the current one is named 'Dungeon Siege II' I tend to be addicted of sort to this type of game... The set of mind that wants to explore the quest a bit more... jsut a little more while the rest of my body is aching for rest (espeically my wrist... Darn!) or food... I guess this might be a not so good but perhaps quite effective diet method?

My Devious Past ;)

I am generally a good kids but I guess strong affection can cause things to go haywire :)

One times I told my mom that I was going to stay at my friend's place for the weekend. What I did not tell her is that the friend's *place* is in Hong Kong :ppp I have got an offer to go see Him (I will someday post the story of Him) in Hong Kong and I was crazy over him at that time, plus he pay half the airfare, so I could not say no :)

And that's conclude my devious past post :)

Fully Loaded

About once a month I will have the urge to have some grill food and the best cost-money-taste balance is a japan style bar-b-q chain restuarant called Daidomon.

When it first open in BKK it seems to position itself as a relatively high-end classy place, but after a while it seems to adapt itself and once it introduce buffet menu which is all-you-can-eat with pork, beef, chicken, squid, and various vegetables it repositioning itself to be more lower-middle class with price tag of 129 baht per person for all you can eat meal.

I would usually spend about an hour or so of seriously stuffing my face by myself :) I guess this is one advantage of being single... There is no one to distract you while eating and you do not need worried of trying to impress the person in front of you :pp

So today I went to MBK mall in Siam Square area to buy a new game after failed in my attempt to Torrent it from the net, darn my ISP for failed to fix the connection problem that happen for about a week now... After I finish buyign the game I went to Daidomon and now I am back home with full stomach ready to try my latest aquisition, Dungeon Siege II :D

The Belly Dancer

I recently saw Shakira's latest MV "La Tortura" featuring Alejandro Sanz in the MV as well and Darn that woman can Move!! The way she twirl her upper body like the way the women in rap MV's shake their bootie just make me gasp and giggle :) If I was straight I would be drooling instead that's for sure... The whole MV looks very sensual and somewhat arousing in the scene in which she was... 'attacked' by Alejandro Sanz from the behind ;). The dance scenes in the MV shows just how well she could control her body, she maybe not have the 6 pack abs like Janet Jackson but darn she can move like professional belly dancer. Her hubby must be Very Happy *wink* *wink*.

The Lovely F****** Word

The word I meant is of cause, Friends.

I have a few close friends, although not by choices but it just seems to be that way. So I would like to mention the closed ones here:

My first close friend that we still manage to keep in touch is Nordic. I met him in an IRC chat room long time ago and he is the only one from that chat room that I still be able to keep in touch. He is a nice guy and for some odd reasons, we could talk on the phone or chat online about this and that continuously for hours on end :) He used to come to Thailand every years for about 11 years before relocated here permanently. He had been burnt badly from previous serious relationship but within a few months of moving here he found another love by accident and it is his current serious relationship. Since he already moved to Bangkok he stop going online for chat since he have his group of friends as well as a boyfriend now so I did not get to see him much.

My second close friend, oddly enough, happen when I went to a gay bar for the first times :) I think I must be around 19 years old then and I have been curious about gay bar. So I ask one of my friend to show me to rope so to speak and I end up talking to this guy which I would dub Mr. American. He is older closet case gentleman who began to live his gay life once he moved to Bangkok. His story is like many others previous generations of gay men, married to women for various reason only to divorce them later because they cannot hide their true feelings. And like many others he love his kids dearly. Now he ran a business dealing with companies in America. Currently he been travelling a lot to smoothen the rough patch he is in so he is very busy. We also just happen to share the same birthday, which means we share the same sign Leo but the amazing part is that we also share the same chiense zodiac sign Snake as well :)

My third close friend is a woman of my age and probably close to being my own Grace of Will & Grace so I will call her Grace. I met her in the university, although I forget how we meet exactly she claimed that we sat in the same class one day and one of my friend who is also her friend has introduce us. She was a bit of a tom boy in her manner, short hair, quite brassy, artistic type, and talk in snazzy kinda way and was one of those christian who wants to help others by inviting them to their meetings. As a gay man, and already have a religion of my own I have no interest in such events. Although I remembered that I yielded to her request once and went to an event which I vaguely remembered that it seems to be some performance on the stage and it must be around Christmas times. Later when she tried to persuade me to go to such events again I just came out to her as to why I did not wants to go again. I do not know when exactly that she and I became closer though but during the few years of my university years we became closer. She even became curious about the gay life that she wants to visit gay bar. So I end up taking her to one and I also ask Nordic to join us as well.

Unfortunately for me (fortunately for her of cause), Grace had found her man, a soft spoken, mild manner half Moroccan/British man (although he looks for Moroccan than British). They fell in love, he did fell head over heel for her :). She is like a raging fire while he is the mild water seems to make the dynamic of their relationship works just fine. Although the fact that he is a couple of years younger than her seems to rattle her a bit but I think love conquers all in this matter ^_^ (She had confine with me that she never thought that her husband will look like this but she still love him anyway). They ended up signing the marriage license so that it will easier for her to move to London to study, work, and be with her man. (This is a big secret, as well as the fact that her man is younger than her, to her family so not a word to anyone). So now she is in London and live with her man and too busy to use computer even to write email regularly... She did still write from time to time which is still good...

With this long post, let it be a lesson to you, Do Not Make Close Friends with People Who Were Very Different or Too Busy Than You Are. Otherwise you will end up being the one who have to initiate all contacts whether there would be phone calls, emails, or meetings. And let me tell you, men just Don't Call!!

My crazy (for Songkran) shirts

I bought these shirts when I was visiting one of the IT mall in Bangkok. It was April and Thailand was celebrating Songkran :)

I must attest that these are not my usual attire but I just could not resist these shirts. As you might have guess my favorite color is Blue, deep shiny blue :)

Usually these type of shirts will be widely available during Songkran time in Thailand. Songkran, for who those who did not know, is a traditional water festival in Thailand. From what I have been told, in the old days Songkran is also a celebration after the completion of farming in the Summer (March and April). People came out splash water over each others to cool off from the heat of Summer :)

A Fortune Teller: Me ^o^

As I was adding links and editing my sidebar (as you would notice.) Adding this particular site remind of my highschool times when I was a Tarot reader :)

It all began from a program that I saw on TV about the local famous tarot reader who has publish a guidebook of how to do tarot reading (the book went on to became the most reprints book I ever saw, 35 times when I saw it last.) I was intrigue by it and eventually buy that book and memorize the meaning of the cards in a week or so. And then came the read practise.

My classmates (I used this terms because although I am friendly with them I am not by anymeans very close) were kind enough to let me practise on them. After awhile it is been know among my class and several others that I will carried a deck of tarot cards in my backpack and would be hapy to do the fortune telling when times permit.

Two interesting read that I still remembers were the lovers compatibility test that I had seen from TV. By having the lovers shuffle the cards, split the deck once by each of them. Then each will select five cards one at a times to be pairing with each other (5 cards on top of 5 cards). If there are a lot of minor cards matching each other it would means that the lovers were a good match, unless it's the sword cards which means the lovers were not a good match. I had ask 2 couples to try this. Couple A: Been couple for quite a long time and it seems that they would be those highschool sweetheart that if they can survive university together they would get married. And Couple B: At that time they alraedy split but agreed to do the test as a favor to me. And the results?

Couple A: Each have a few (if I am not mistaken) wand cards, which means hardworkers, and the interesting part is that the girl have King of Wand while the boy have Queen of Wand. When I mention this to a few friends they agreed that the girl is more of the alpha Female of the relationship while the boy is more docile and quite content on the backseat :)

Couple B: Each for a few sword cards and I think it match on a couple of pair and of coz since they already split ups this is not a surprise.

I tried to continue doing tarot reading in university but it did not last long. Mainly because I got different people in each class and I might seems as a weirdo if I offer to do tarot reading with them often...

But that still did not stop me from getting inspired when I saw wonderous tarot card designs though ;) Again check out this site :) And no I did not know the artist nor I am the artist myself :PP If I could paint that well I would not be a homebodyfor sure...

Part 2: Becoming Mr. Night Owl

I suppose I should be honest here in elaborating that the "incident" I mention in my previous post is caused by yours truly. I was in college and perform poorly that I have only two options left which are re-enter or retire. By re-enter, it means I would enroll in the college again as a freshman with new student ID and start again with a clean records. And I do not think I need to explain what does retire means...

Needless to say I am in a bit if a jam since my mom told me that she won't pay for my tuition fees anymore since it seems that I do not pay enough attention in college. Back then I tried, although not my best since I am not good at reviewing the lesson by myself, but I thought it would be a bit of a breeze getting through college but then it prove me otherwise...

With that declaration from my mom, I need a job to pay for my tuition fees. So I went to see my supervisor of my summer trainee jobs (I did not work there at that time), told him of my predicament and ask him for a job, he said he will see what he can do and come back to see him in few days. He did came through and the result is the job that I have been doing for the last 8 years and still do until present time.

The job involve doing backup and execute reports on Oracle database system. I could not explain much of what I did since they did not explain much to me either and it has been imply that it is best that this is only need to know basis situations. And if u wondered why I name this post with the above title here is the explanation. The job is nightshift, which is perfect for my situation, since I could study in the day time (more like afternoon however :)) , came home for a nap and then off to work in the evening and still have enough hours of sleep.

In retrospect, if it was vice versa, work in the day and study nightshift instead, it would be a lot harder for me to cope with. Since my nighttime work is not 8 hours shift but rather depend on the amount of input data during the day which will dictate the time needed to spend on processing it the hours were somewhat varies from day to day.

The result? For five years, I tend to spend my free time sleeping or staying home and not going out much other than movie (Went alone though) and occasional bar trip (arrive 20:00-21:00 and leave around midnight) . My social life depends on the fact that I discovered internet at my college and I also found IRC which connected me to other gay people on the net and from that have got a few long lasting friends.

All in all the job has convert my time into becoming a night owl or rather an Afternoon person. And the best waking up is to wake up by myself and not by alarm clock :)

Game... Game Player

I know it's lameass titlebut hey I am a bit insomniac at the moment I need to type down a bit :)

Nope I am not that type of game player but I am definately a Computer game player. As I mention earlier I use my first comptuer to play several games... Back then I seems to be playing all types of games... Apart from platform type since I never seems to get the hang of it (think Mario and u get the ideas... Never seems to have very good hands-eyes coordination on those games) I had tried my hands on Doom II, SimCity, and Gabriel Knight: Sins of The Fathers just to name a few and boy did I waste many of my precious time as a youth on those titles :) Although my English was not good enough to understand what was going on in game story wise but I do like to play them nonetheless

And now as a older, a bit wiser, and perhaps more sophisticated game player. I have lost my interest in playing the FPS game quite entirely, even the famous Grand Theft Autos game series did not spark my interest that much (alright I had play GTA: Vice City and got seriously nauseated once that I throw up a bit after I turn of the game) It seems that as I grow older I seems to have the motion sickness symptoms?? Whatever it was I do have a hard time playing any game that have the movement like the GTA game, the sort of fix camera First person view type, which is quite a shame because it means I could not play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines for long since that would get me sick, literally... Although I had discuss this with a some people and they said that this symptom can be avoided byplaying these game on computer with high-end graphic card. I have yet to prove this theory since those high-end cards also means high price.

I guess I could say that I am rahter lucky that I appreciated a certain type of game more than the rest and that certain type did not require too high graphic requirement nor serious button mashing movement nor mindless shoot'em up, yeap I am talking about Adventure games.

Adventure games are the more story driven and many times brain teaser type of game that were popular when the computer began to be entertaining machine. A few of classics that I love are Kyrandia series, Gabriel Knight series, Sam & Max, Beneat a steel sky, Grim Fandango. Also the more recent bests: The Longest Journey and Syberia

It seems that I get into too much details of my liking for games... That's not quite true since my main hobby is reading manga :)

PS: I will continue the part 2 sometime later... perhaps during my free time in the office tomorrow night

Part 1: Chance encounter Black and Green

When I was in 8th Grade, my school decided to replace English typewriting class with Computer class. That was my first encounter with computer. I still remember it quite well of how we learn the how to use Dos 3.20 and DBase on Monochrome (Black background with Green letter (come to think of it... that was very Matrix like :))) screen.

And when I began Highschool, we began using Windows 3.1 on colored monitor!! I seems to get the hang of it better than the rest of the class practical wise but somehow the programming lesson even of the Basic language put me to sleep (Involunteerly I might add) quite easily...

Later on I have a chance to work as User support trainee during summer break at a Big company near where I live. I had learned a lot during that time of how to do Computer maintenance, how to setup computers, and do minor tweaking of things. By then Windows 95 just began to be widely use in the company and I got to do setup for new computers, which gave me a chance to learn how to use it as well.

And then came an incident which force me to take some drastic action

The Beginning

This is my first post as a blogger... Well I don't know what to say at the moment because it's very late here... Perhaps I would do more tomorrow...

I suppose I would begin by saying how computer help/break/and save my life so far...