yay, finally, a new cd drive. after that crappy old one that got crankier and crankier over the years. it's been ages since i've been able to burn a cd properly. hah.

almost got a heart attack when i updated the firmware of the new drive and then restarted and both drives disappeared off windows. only to show Disabled in Device Manager and refusing to be Enabled. thereafter i looked at some forums and did the uninstall device, reinstall device, and it works fine. what's the problem with windows. and why did both drives kenna. whatever, it runs now.

i love installing new hardware... =]

ok. and here goes another reinstallation of windows. lala. trying to perfect my windows. shall attribute my slow startup to antivirus program. hmph.

and tonight my mother's sulking around, wonder what's wrong, hope it's nothing to do with me. blah. i would love to live away from parents.

shall await more parts of the computer disintegrating... wonders why the old hard disk is now running smoothly again after the last crash.

mixed fortunes...

1. nice new LCD monitor. a fresh clean 17in one. with NO misbehaving pixels. yay. but which came with a cracked installation cd... tsk. ah well, better than having a spoilt pixel. hope all the pixels stay alive for 4 years.

2. half dead cdrw drive that can't read burnt cds anymore. (almost all burnt cds). and it behaves weirdly. almost everything in my comp is taking turns to die. seems to be a time limit. but then, i do stress my comp pretty badly, so not bad that it lived to almost 4 years old. i need to read cd-r...i cant do without cd-r. blah. sigh.

ah well.s.

i have just remembered that i am now no longer ON LEAVE! ah shucks. this is terrible. no more free paid leave.
and even worse still, i am not considered under the category of NSmen. which is such a horribly old sounding word.
ah whatever.
it only sounds bad.

and other maple stuff: since beating a lvl 62 wizard at mushmom hunting, i have also beaten a pair of warriors, a lvl 57 swordsman and a lvl 56 page. lvl 53 me is rather delighted at how fast i can shoot and how other people underestimate little me. i am so amused.

sunday morning. levelled up, lvl 53 now. and not increasing.

costa sands resort. thanks to wonderful zhenyu. havent sleep yet since then, by the way. not counting the little bits of the train back to sengkang. am so incontrollably sleepy that i can't even play maple. goodness.
mad bbq, so fun to keep burning charcoal and charcoal and charcoal. whatever Cows cardgame, sillyly insane. watched them play some crazy bridge and majong. went walking on the dark beach with jx.
what a bunch of people to go talking about maths, econs, quantum, insane violence. and any other extraordinary stuff.

went camp. finished up my clearance form, stupid waste of time. had to settle camp pass clip, stupid waste of time 2. had to settle mess fund, stupid waste of time 3. had to let them figure out certificate of service, stupid waste of time 4.
so now i have to get my certificate some other time. blah.
took a 500ml bottle of hydrogen peroxide 3w/w from medical centre. really fun to remember that it can be oxidised, reduced, and also spontaneously decompose. fun. nice compound. stole more stuff from camp.

i am so going to fall asleep anytime.

oh it's 19th march 2005 now.
too bad it's no longer May and it no longer coincides with star wars opening date, ah well.

oh, it's tomorrow. how utterly unfascinating. i suppose i should count my blessings that i have spend the last two months at home away from camp, and the previous few months in camp slacking around progressively forgetting everything. my sincere condolences to those who have had to work their last weeks. but well, work first, play later, end happy. active units somehow end up with tons of off and leave. perhaps i had such a relaxed life that i had no need to whine and grind about ns. after so much grumbling about their lousy system, after all that incomprehension as to why the SAF can poach top scholars and tolerate a pathetic lower commanders, after all that, i have begun to appreciate that the pathetic system is to allow intelligent people to lead a more relaxed ns life while maintaining the illusion that ns is for everyone. the rich help the rich. ok, that's probably a joke and totally untrue. wonder if it'll be censored out of Speaker's Corner. i suppose the greatest bane of ns is that it is a waste of our time, because we can do so much more useful things, more efficiently, more purposefully. since we're not street bums who spend their days strolling along geylang and getting themselves drunk and wasting money on ethanol and dried leaves (it's still a wonder why people put dried leaves and paper in their mouth and light it). and why people are so full of vulgarities.

ah well. my 2 year holiday from life is ending. so sad. no more free money and lodging and food and entertainment and sports facilities (i'm addicted to the empty camp pool and free squash courts that no one else uses). time to get back to life. and hopefully away from maplestory soon as well.

cheers matthew, stop being silly.

that is ah... somebody levelling

ah, clean reinstall of xp. so nice to have a smooth fast interface after so long. hard disk instability has prompted my procrastinated reinstall. thanks to connor for supplying me with this nice version of xp. still delighted that my 4 year old computer can still run the new os. hope it doesnt start dying after i load it with apps. been happily downloading all sorts of junk today. and trying to figure out how to reinstate files and programs. and settings. ah well. updated alot of old programs too. ah iTunes lag though, but then it is loaded with 2k+ files, shrug.

twas a happy birthday as can be
[i shall not go into a rhyme, however tempting it might be]

1097 days. weird number.
1+365+366+365 = 1097
for us to know why it is this way, for you to give up on wrong guesses.

3 years.
perhaps this day is not as significant to me as the day we "met". or rather the day/period we started talking to each other, despite being in the same cca for like half a year. and, typically of me, to not even know the name even until then.
fond memories of that time. strong memories. of the wrong rumours of relationships. of the irritating rumours of a scandal. of the fake scandal. of the joke scandal. of the round-a-bout me way in which the news travel. of the silliness of it all.
it was so much more better to have grown as friends. i still don't understand why people can go after someone for the sake of going after someone. for the looks?
it's a long time, yes. longer than i suppose. longer than i thought possible. i still suppose ns made it seemed shorter than actual length.
how much of my abnormality have you even gotten used to? haha.

i dont suppose either, that anyone will ever understand what the birthday means. and how wrong their guesses all are. and how insane, how queer our idea is. and the whole story of it all. perhaps wenjing might know some, perhaps victoria might know some. but no one will ever have time to know the it in the entirety. all things unique, and imposible to guess.

i am crazy.

-------------------

Birthday events:
1. movie Robots
-ok i am a very picky movie chooser. and i am rather satisfied by the CGI rendering of this movie. like when they do a million steel balls flowing all over the street and two robots scrambling over them. so pretty. a robots doing all sorts of dances, apparently their robots dance alot, and listen to alot of music. but i suppose robots are easier to render than a monster with a billion hairs that have to sway with the wind. ah well, Dreamworks is quite good. though perhaps i still prefer Pixar. and i am overjoyed with Pixar ending their partnership with Walt Disney! wonders if Dreamworks is related to anyone though. ILM (industrial light and magic) 's good too, even tho they do more star wars... oh by the way, STAR WARS EPISODE 3 full trailer is out now! go to www.starwars.com to get it. May 19... it's been 3 years... erm, digressed. yes Robots, worth watching, by my standards. better animation than Spongebob, even though that's a cartoon. it's like i was wondering why the Spongebob trailer looked so 2-D.

2. Country Mana lunch. hm.

3. Chocolates from Max Brenner's Chocolate Bar. gulp. fascinatingly delicious chocolate. i'm surprised they let us sample such huge chunks of expensive chocolate. i mean, each little cube costs $2, and they gave us like half a cube to sample. i am so going to be a regular patron of that place, in the far future when i have more money to melt.

4. other dunno what.

ok, i know i haven't "blogged" in very long. and there's been things. yup, but i've been lazy. and wait for me to get over the momentum of mapling. there's stuff to say.

"Formaldehyde is a cheap preservative that mixes easily with water but will not mix with oil or grease"

http://www.health-report.co.uk/formaldehyde.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Method: Reflectometric determination after reaction with
4-amino-3-hydrazino-5-mercapto-1,2,4-triazole

Reagents:
Reflectoquant^® Formaldehyde Test, Cat.No. 1.16989.0001
Reflectometer RQflex, Cat.No. 1.16970.0001 or RQflex plus cat. no. 1.16955.0001

Sample preparation:
Weigh about 10 g sample exactly into a beaker and add at least 50 ml of destilled water. Stir thoroughly.

Analysis:
Rinse the test vessel with the pretreated sample solution and fill to the 5-ml mark. Add 10 drops of reagent Fo-1 and swirl. Press START button and simultaneously immerse both reaction zones of the test strip in the sample solution (15 - 30°C) for approx. 2 seconds. Shake off excess liquid from the strip.

Wait 120 seconds and then measure the strip in the reflectometer. The value [mg/l] will be stored automatically. (Please refer to the RQflex operating instructions and the package insert of the Reflectoquant^® Formaldehyde Test).

Calculation:
Formaldehyde content [mg/kg] = Measured value [mg/l] x Vol. of water [ml]
Weight of sample [g]

http://pb.merck.de/servlet/PB/menu/1171160/1171160.html


=]