House of Harlow : BF Competition!

From left : Toots "Pothead" Ismail, Lina "my-ass-in" Mohd Yassin, Shai "sunshine" Jeyabala.

Thisis not something I normally do. Aside from the fact that I love the online shopping site, Thepoplook, I actually submitted a photo (above) for their House of Harlow: Best Friends Competition.

I had this picture for years and every time I look at this, I have this warm and fuzzy feeling inside of me. A picture of me with two of my best girlfriends.

We were supposed to create some sort of caption to describe our friendship. Told Toots about it, and we managed to came up with something that truly captures our closeness.

"We hang like monkeys on tree. We scratch each other's back and get rid of each other's ticks"

Haha. All because of that poor-pixelated-camera-phone-pouting-like-monkeys-picture!

So, without shame, if you think that we deserve to win, go HERE and click "LIKE".

Ossum Possum!

Lazy Ass.

Today I wanted to be lazy. There's no point of rushing deadlines when I had already been away from work for the past 1 1/2 days because I attended some lame ass course. 1 1/2 days off work means more work are piling in. Work will never stop and why bother slaving around while I can choose to enjoy the remaining days doing nothing but browsing shits on the internet and bought some cool global warming comic painting for just 100 bucks.

I decided to hang in the office rather than at home, well at least when my colleagues come over to my cubicle, they have something to entertain them and at the same time, create a bit of awareness. I guess.

They complain that I always ignore them. When I do my work, I put on my mp3 player and immediately am in my own world, oblivious of my surroundings.

So there you go chaps, some global warming awareness comic for your blardy entertainment!

I hate disclaimer or anything that sounds like one.

It is like saying, you have this awesome shit going on but when it doesn't go your way it, it's not your fault.

Or you own a blog and championing the freedom of speech and expression, but when people practice it on you, you slam them openly and ask them to fuck off.

Or, your blog header's description is a harsh way of welcoming readers. i.e.
"This is my blog, I write what I want, if you don't like then you leave".

Or some shit like that.

When you own a public domain and you seek the attention of strangers or the public to read it, make sure you are tough enough to not care of what people think of you.

People are mean by nature. That is something that is beyond our control, but to "manage" their reaction to your blog content (if there's any); moderation of comments, putting up tonnes of skimming and filtering process; is the exact opposite of freedom of expression. You are your own blog police.

I think the idea of expressing oneself is by far, only limited to what they like to hear or what they want to hear. Which is crap. In order to be fully receptive of this idea, it needs to work both ways; the incoming is as important as the outgoing.

Of course people are not enjoying the negative comments about themselves, but if the negative comments are nothing more than a bunch of bullshits, then the commenter is the one that is making a fool out of himself/herself. Stand for what you believe in but be open of what others have to say about it.

I'm just saying.

Some sense of Decency.

I'm contemplating about raising this issue because I wouldn't want to be seen or called as insensitive jerk and what not.

But here it goes..

I'm always against PDA - Public Display of Affection. It is not so much about being on a higher pedestal of moral conduct, but it creates an uneasy feeling and can't help but to feel ashamed when you encounter with one. (oh well maybe it is just me). The affectionate display between you and your spouse should have some limitation when you are out in public. Of course we are not talking about holding hands or a quick peck on the cheek but full blown French kiss with squeezing or caressing. Uneasy is one thing, but when you doing it wrong and rather raunchy, it is just disturbing.

You want to be indecent in your own private place or behind closed door, that is totally up to you. I have nothing against it.

Then comes the breastfeeding in public.

How should I put this? Yes, we understand the need to feed the newborn baby every few hours and am sure most mothers could vouch that the connection between mother and their baby is an out-of-this-world experience, but doing it in public? No matter how much you are trying to cover your tops as appropriately as possible, for me, it is just not appropriate enough.

I've seen young mothers doing this in the shopping mall, at the park and other public places with careless conduct. I even asked my mother about this and she said, never once she lifted up her tops in front of strangers or relatives to feed any one of us. For her, there's a place that she can do it comfortably and it is called "home". Privacy is the main key here.

If you really really really need to get the hell out of your house and taking the baby with you, doing shopping or whatever, I suggest that you find somewhere secluded with not so many people to do this business. I think all the shopping malls' ladies are now well equipped and their management actually provide facilities for this. Heck, they even provide comfy sofas for it.

Just think about it. Popping out the breast (even if it is used to feed a baby) will attract unwanted attention from all walks of life and most importantly, it makes people cringe!

I wonder how the husband would feel like seeing the wife breastfeeding his baby in public? Because whenever I saw a mother breastfeeding a child, I didn't actually see any glimpse of the husband standing/sitting besides her or anywhere nearby.

I'm just saying.

Fighting the "Shortcut Virus".

There's nothing that can make me feel more suicidal than hearing the first thing that come out from my colleague's mouth when they see me stepping into the office; beaming with smiles because that day I've managed to get in earlier than usual;

"The shared directory is no longer accessible. I think it's a virus"

*sighs and walks heavily*

There goes the thought that I had earlier on about how it's going to be a great day for me.

So I stuffed all of my "stuff" in the locker...I was once told by my boss that I would probably be the only "girl" in my company that is so technical, I need to carry two extra bags consisting of - laptop,network cable, tester, my test pen, external hard disk, thumb drives, CD installers and what not, just to satisfy my technical side.... and dragged my flat feet straight to the server room - Only to found out that I left my server room's key in my handbag and had to walk all the 100m back to my cubicle but at the same time trying to look as if I was actually running around trying to fix the problem.

On my way back to the server room, I bumped into a door,my leg hit the edge of the table and shoulder a wall. Man! Talk about poor estimation of space and opening.

Bruises aside, I finally got into the server room and started doing some troubleshooting.

*

"Shortcut Virus". It hides all the original folders and files in the directory and creates false shortcut of them, hence the name. Man! The genius behind this virus must have been so bored with his life living in the basement of his parent's house. I use the word "his" because, come on, you know woman can never screw up things and make it as haywire as this. :)

Back to the "shortcut virus". Unfortunately, the Anti-Virus software for my company is fucked up. Can't even detect the existence of it, even it is constantly running at the background and "pretend" to be apart of Windows system process.

So what a system-admin-that-thinks-she-is-awesome-but-actually-has-limited-knowledge-on-virus-fighting-regime's to do? Go online and google for it of course!! I spent few hours trying to find the best solution for my server that is currently running on Windows Server 2000 (haha yeah I know, it's damn old but we are in the middle of migrating it, so spare me the lectures) that is also our AD and Web Server. So this is a critical server for our daily operation.

p/s: Beggars can't be choosers you know. I have to work within my means. Combining everything in one server could be seen as poor, but damn, when it comes to OPEX budgeting, WE ARE POOR! so beat it!

After a couples of trial and error attempts, I resorted to the SUPERHERO scheme. Track it down, and put it out manually myself! *shred shirts and wears out-tie underpants*

So if any of you suffer the same predicament as I did, use the following steps as guideline in getting rid of the "Shortcut Virus".

1. Unhidden your hidden stuff!

As mentioned earlier, this virus hides all your stuff in the directory. So first, in order to make sure that all the data is still there, you need to "see" it.

• Go to the folder options under the View Tab, check on the Show Hidden Files radiobutton, and uncheck the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) checkbox. This will enable you to see all the files available under the current active window panel.
• Do not try to unhide it by using the option under the Folder Properties individually because it is a hassle, and also most of it will be disabled.
  

2. Identifying the Virus Files and Ammunition.

Let me tell ya, this virus was solely created just to piss the hell out of you and messing with your head.

• It thrives on autorun.inf file available in your folder.
  
• It usually created 2 *.exe files under some random name that doesn't make any sense to you. In my case it was, taasmex.exe.
• Then there's, thumb.db. This file is usually automatically created by Windows when you are viewing the picture using the thumbnail options. But the thing is, original file under Windows is named THUMBS.DB. With an "S".

3. Killing the background process.

• If you are lucky enough, a mere task killing process can be invoked via Task Manager. But most of the time it didn't happened that way.
• If it is difficult for you to kill the bugger, then download HijackThis. A product from Trend Micro that would enable you to force-kill a running process.
  
• After you have downloaded it, install it on your server/pc, trace the process and kill it.
• Delete all the files mentioned above. I suggest that you Shift-Delete it rather than move it to the thrash bin. You never know that you might "accidentally" restore it back.

4. Delete all the shortcuts made by the virus and change the attribute of the directory or folders to unhidden all the hidden folders and files.

• Go to Start Menu - Run , type cmd. This will call the command prompt window.
• cd to the location of your infected directory. Let say its in E:\ then type this.

C:\> E:\
E:\> attrib -s -h /s /d *.

5. This command will make your folder to appear again before your very eyes.


If all the above mentioned steps do not work for you, then please email me so that I can bang my head on the table and try to hang myself on the ceiling fan.

Good Luck!