As long as I have music

I was surprised when some of the old choir friends asked for a gathering, and ended up deciding we're going to sing the favorite song during the choir: As long as I have music

So we had 3 sessions of practice and we're up to the show on the 10th Dec for one of the Christmas service.

When the world seems far beyond me
And I have no place to go
When my life seems cold and empty
And I feel I'm all alone

Then a song that I remember
Helps to ease my troubled mind
And I find the strength within me
To reach out just one more time

For as long as I have music
As long as there's a song for me to sing
I can find my way, I can see a brighter day
The music in my life will set my spirit free

When the road is dark and lonely
And I feel I want to cry
When the dreams I keep inside me
Seem to fade and almost die

Then I call upon my music
And it helps to dry my tears
And I know that I can make it
I'll go on despite my fears

This song does calm my heart when shit happens. ^_^
Plus, it has a good old memories in it.

The opening of Bro Computer

First day of business... The launching...

Don't forget the foods... ^_^

Bro Computer

Something I really forgot to post in blog..
Tomorrow, on 1st Dec 2006 we (the 3 cousins) are opening a computer shop in Binjai.

This was the second night we've been hanging around late preparing things.

Even all the older generations were there to help.






Yeah.. My picture is not there obviously.. I was holding the camera. ^_^

Big day tomorrow. Everyone's invited. ^_^

Unqualified Bond...

What would u imagine out of Bond? Definetely not the Daniel Craig. Even my dad knew and complained of how not suitable Craig was in Bond. Not to mention the bad storyline in Casino Royale.

Took the chance with the family to watch it yesterday and it turned out that it wasn't worth the time and money. I miss the tense situation and hi-tech gadget in Golden Eye or those by Pierce Brosnan; I miss seeing Bond messing around with Q's lunch and inventions..



Got home at 10.50 and found out that SWAT was showing on TV; so my dad said: "If I knew 007 was that bad, I would have been staying home and watch SWAT on TV." Haha..

What a dissapointing Bond...

Fire!!!

Fire at the opposite side of the road of the office...
I know nothing.. I just went out to see what's going on..

Here are some pictures by Ronny.

Reviving dead HDD

Got a 200 ways to revive harddisk (PDF) and tried a simple one: shaking it hard, plugged it back in and wallah.. it's spinning again.. I'm backing them up again now..

The HardBox blew up

Bloody hell, my harddisk just blew up before my eyes.. I was doing some work and suddenly a tiny boom just shook me.

I'm screwed up.. Everything I've been working on, movie collections, e-books, junks, and the worst: the Youth Camp 2006 video recording, in which I have no copies of it. 160 GB is gone..

Protests on Bush's visit

The US President George W Bush is coming to Bogor to meet the Indonesian President SBY on this coming 20th November. However, as many of the Indonesians have noticed, that protests and demonstrations have been going on rejecting Bush's visit. Despite of the only 10 hours being in Bogor, there has been relatively big budget projected for his visit.

What I'm trying to point out is that the number of protests going on across the country; that I have no idea what on earth they are thinking of condemning Bush for coming to Indonesia. I've seen on the news people using the name of Islam to say inappropriate words towards the guest, even some are trying to use spiritual powers to deal with Bush upon his visit. This is ridiculous.

Haven't we been taught to respect our guests? President SBY visit the US last May and September and he was greeted very well, and with not a small budget from the US government if I may say. But why would these Indonesians trouble about it? I could even see the leaders of some Islamic political party, the members of the House of Representative are condemning. I wonder how this country would ruin should they lead the government.

How many productive hours these people have wasted by just going to the streets protesting such useless thing? They could have done more important things than telling what the president should do while they are not doing their part themselves.

Boikot of US products
And here is a more ridiculous part of the demonstration; some people wants to boikot all US products. These guys obviously can't think and should they lead a country, it would be off the map in no time. Let's take a simple example of our living products; what can be done without anything made or initiated by the US scientists? Say computers? U don't want to use DELL, let's use computers made in Taiwan then, OK.. Fair enough, what operating system? Windows is obviously a US product and I say it's bullshit if the government wants to erase Microsoft from Indonesia..

Personal or Religion
I don't understand why most (all if I may say, because that is what I have been seeing all this while) of the wild and nonsense protests are from people who take Islam. I believe Islam is a peaceful religion; I have wonderful Muslim friends who I think are much better than my Christian friends. I suppose it's just people misinterpret things a lot.

btw, hope Bush is coming to bring a better situation for both countries.

Flu and fever

I'm terribly sick now.. Damn fever.. Can't enjoy myself.. :-(

Project Antara update

Time for a little sneak-peak of the new house..
All credit for my bro for the designs ^_^

Front view...


Rear window of our room...


View from our room...


Level 4...

The upset stomach

I could hardly sleep well last night, or this morning for that matter. I had this strange dream of the SAP system; that I was trying to do a goods issue process order, but the system kept showing errors that I didn't even remember. Consulted with the MM guy and we ended up trying and trying. So there went my good night sleep; such a discomfort of sleep last night.

However, the dream was not the point. I have learned that it happens often when I'm at my limit, that I'm going sick or physically/mentally unhealthy soon enough. But life went on and I had my shower.. getting prepared for another day of work.

When I got into the bus, suddenly this weird pain started stabbing my stomach and getting worse in minutes. For almost an hour in the bus I was fighting the pain and ended up loosing my energy that I could hardly walk straight.

At the office I had arrived at 07:50 and it went much better; but in 10 minutes it went wild again and I couldn't work this way. I asked for permission to see doctor at 10. He said it was something I ate wrong.

So here I am.. back in the office where everyone in the department thought I was not coming back. ^_^

Feeling better now.

IT discussion to off-topic

Had some discussions with the IT Manager; initiated from the need of a proper backup procedure for some servers. I stated the need of another PC-turned-into-server machine for backup purposes, where scheduled backup will be executed on every server with the target path pointing to the backup server.

The discussion continued to some IT related conversations and ended up talking about something else from the company's procedure to how to manage your financial planning. However, I have enjoyed the chat since the closest friend for the past half day was the PC.

It's raining

Seems that it has come to the time of the year where it rains a lot. I can see ponds all over the road; and in many places (especially on my way back home) the the water covers the entire road up to 20 cm. I could imagine that I'm actually in a boat instead of a bus.

Who wants to be a Bible lover?

During the Youth Camp just now, I popped out an idea of some Bible quiz with some real questions just like the game Who wants to be a millionaire.

The problem was how do we display the questions, select, identify it as true or false. Moreover, features like 50:50 won't go away from it.

So I made a small program out of VB.NET with MS SQL Server Express for the game. A simple program that just grab questions and the options randomly in each level it is.

Lack of the interface to input the question though; that I did it in only 1 night. So I have to put the questions and options and answer directly to the database table using the IDE.

There was a bug in the application and it popped out during the quiz. After the 50:50 (where I hide the visibility of random options that are not the answers), I forgot to enable the visibility upon next question.

Yes.. It was a dumb bug I admit, but it was a 1 night programming and I didn't even have the time to thoroughly test it out. However, eventually the game had a positive response from most people.

In fact, we at the youth fellowship (P3MI) are gonna take this quiz up again on next Saturday, 11th Nov 2006. Anybody insterested to join? See how good u know the Bible.

Here's the screenshot of the game.

The 50:50 hides two options that are not the answer.

And the setup screen for the questions. The system randomly chooses any question with the same level that has not been displayed before.


We found this game very educating since this would promote interesting facts about the Bible that many of us do not know of.

Clear roads

Still in holiday and I'm going to work already. I can see many of my friends are still enjoying their holiday and I'm confronted with work already.

The roads are clear though, at least I have the pleasure of driving for these 2 days (the bus is not running since it's still in holiday.

Happy Ramadhan for those who celebrate it.

Youth Camp 2006

4 days Camp at Parapat, North Sumatra; what a great week. Despite of the smokey atmosphere, everything was very much enjoyable.

I departed on Sunday morning for lots of prep from the comitee and had only 5-6 hours of sleep in between tons of work; but everything turned out to be cool. ^_^

The theme was "Make Things Happen" with the theme song "Nothing is impossible" (GMB)




Great blessings were passed on, and almost all correspondents responded positively for the project.



And some muddy games.. U can see the custom-made BodyGlove we've had. ^_^

And group photos of virtually everyone who's there.

The PDF softcopy of the book can be downloaded here.

Leave granted :-)

With the prayers and workaround, I manage to get leave for 2 days (23rd and 26th Oct) for the Youth Camp.

Never... ever.. underestimate the power of prayer and fasting. In fact, I just read in the news that based on research, those whom are prayed more by the loved ones are proved to be healthier. I can't recall where I read it, but I'm pretty sure that I have seen the article.

Have a nice day.. ^_^

Projects...

I got some programming projects going on here. Both with VB.NET. One windows application and one web application. The interesting part is the web application; it is an online text-based game based on DarkThrone.com. I can say that the concept is pretty good; having people to play RPG online and text based some more.

No heavy 3-D graphics, only texts. Build, train, attack, defend...

Aside from the excitement, it's gonna be hell of two weeks.

Leave not granted :-(

I submitted my leave application form for Youth Camp yesterday I got the reply today. It was a negative. The sky seems like falling down all over me.

Ouch.. the activity that we have been planning for the past half year.. and I won't be there to see it. I'm so dissapointed.. Though my IT manager approved the form, but the form has to be signed by one of the directors.

This is what I don't understand. For such (relatively) big company, such simple things (and many more silly simple things) are being handled directly under the directors. Since the managers have approved it, doesn't it mean that the managers have the responsibility?

Well.. Don't wanna say much of it.. I lost the mood for a few moments there. But I still think that perhaps it's God's way for the best. ^_^ U'll never know..

Anoter half-way SAP implementation

I'm assigned to another trip to the same remote site for SAP implementation. And this time I'm bringing my laptop with me (I found out that it would take at least a week). So it happened to be a whole week (2-6 Oct 2006)

The same story this time as previously; as expected, my module couldn't run smoothly coz MM didn't run smoothly.

Had a heavy flu on Thursday.. couldn't work properly.. I was supposed to supervise the production operative to key in data into SAP system; so I ended up in bed. Took some medicines and another happy good morning the next day. ^_^

Came back on Saturday early morning (5 am) and reached office before 1 pm. I drove half way (3 and half hours, bout almost 200 km). Still half ill.

A week has gone without being in the main office. ^_^