Shall I be impressive?

During the last few weeks, with the advent of my casual days - post-retirement, there has been a tendency to relax myself as well as my wearing style. However, I found that it's sometime not my preference to wear as I like when outing.

At one afternoon, I went to shop with my wife with the maintenance of my domesticated outfit; frayed collar T shirt, nap rised short and a pair of 2 dollars saddle. I felt the delight and casualness for being at such loose apparel at the shopping mall. I was enjoyingly perceiving my sight seeing while smiling to people who had had eyes-contacted with me.

Within a moment, I strangely felt like something was going wrong. I'd noticed that most of the people who be coming from the opposite direction be throwing a glance at me as if I was so special that day. I could not figure out the odd straightaway since my heart had been soak into a happy-go-lucky enjoyment.

So I asked my wife, "Yong, am I looked handsome today, if not why so many people were used to look at me?" "Of course lah! you're wearing like a boh-thuck-cair-eh-lang (illiterate person) and no wonder people may thing of you as a snatcher, a popular skeptical icon these days." She added, "if there were anything to be happened here, you are likely to be picked amongst the first batch for questioning via cctv."

Her word was later on proved to be literal when I was supposing to make a luggage purchase. That silly salesgirl who had been keeping her closed paces to me, was having her both eyes static at me all the time, as if I was not a genuine buyer! Alamak! what 'dog's eyes see people shorter' (dogmatic) manner it was!

This has proved that it can take only moments for people to pass judgement on you with these initial impressions largely based on visual image. What I'm thinking is clothe may not necessarily 'make' the man or woman. Men with proper tied on may not necessarily having money inside his pocket. But the reality is because image talks with this advanced society, and what our image communicates can dictate the quality of the response.

For the reassessment of my thought of whether should I be impressive, I've found an answer. As professional image consultant, Sharon Moore of Image & Moore Pty Ltd once said "There're only two types of people who don't have to worry about their appearance - the very rich, and the very silly. For the rest of us, it's about managing the impact we make on others."

I think I kinder find my old man style that would probably fit the range of what's appropriated for all occasions. And it's perhaps the Charles Bronson's!

A good resume

I am fusty on the way of writing a modern resume. Look! here is a typical one that has found in my inbox.

Let's don't muss too hard upon the enjoinment of silence upon bloggers; the enormity of robbers; the unrest of society; an engrossing college story. And enjoy this particular resume!

Remarked that the copyright of the content of this resume is enigmatical.

Here it's:

SECRETARY'S RESUME:
Deer Sir,
I waunt to apply for the secritary job what I saw in the paper. I can taip real quik wit one finggar and do sum a counting. I think I am good on the phone and no I am a pepole person, Pepole really seam to respond to me belly well. I´m lookin for a Jobb as a secritary but it musent be to complicaited. I no my spelling is not to good but find that I Offen can get a job thru my persinalety. My salerery is open so we can discus wat you want to pay me and wat you think that I am werth, I can start imeditely. Thank you in advanse fore yore anser. . hopifuly Yore best aplicant so farr.
Sinseerly,
Peggy May Starlings
PS : Because my resimay is a bit short - below is a pickture of me taken at my last jobb.

Employer's reply:...... Dear Peggy,
It's OK honey, we've got spell check..... Welcome onboard!!!

D-Link DNS300

I'm annoying with my printing jobs over my home networking shared-printer. Everytime it took me the hassle to fire up my dedicated PC (server) in order to get my document be printed.

I have been considering to get rids of such annoyance by employing a printer server or by using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) which has a built-in print server. After weighing this-and-that, here-and-there, I finally committed with this baby - D-Link DNS300.

Installation of this baby is a breeze. Open up the device's casing, I plug in a harddisk; then I connect it to my wireless router (in case any hub or switch will do) via an ethernet port; and then I hook up my printer to one of the 2 USB ports available at the back of this device.

With the power on, I fire my Firefox (browser) and issue 192.168.0.101, the default IP address of the device. There the interface for configuration is well designed yet elementarily simple. The Quick Start page finds the drive on the network and prompts me to format the harddisk to a recognizable Ext2 format. It is very fast to get my 80g hdd be formatted. Thereafter I can easily create shared folders with configurable rights, define users, assign access privileges. And interestingly, a default no-security public share folder is presented thereof.

This NAS operates as a standalone network file server with good handling of its integrated Linux Samba server talking to and listening from the Windows's environments.

Another interesting feature is I can hook up an external USB drive to another USB port of the device. And I can get my 80g mobile drive be quickly formatted into Fat32 format which I can't be able to do that under WinXP. I think this is an useful function for getting large capacity harddisk to be formatted into Fat32 format without the fuss of breaking into several partitions.

My Canon LBP1210 laser printer unfortunately fails to cooperate remotely and I guess it could be of printer's memory issue, since this Canon printer does not have its own Ram inside. Changing over to my another Canon Pixma 4200 printer is therefore functionable but sluggish. As a reminder, I think my next purchase of printer would be the HP's rammed one.

One annoyance with this baby is it buzzes so intensively (a high db of humming noise) that I have pondered to remove its tiny exhaust fan located at her backside.

Another annoyance is I have to figure out myself on how to switch off the unit. Nothing I could find a single clue from its accompanied documentations as well as from D-Link's website. Oh yes! finally by holding on its power button until its power led is blinking, is the answer. By then I'm not sure whether it is a conventional way.

Anyway, the throughput of files throwing in-and-out within this device is inspiring and is running at a satisfactory condition.
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The good: Choice of desiring space; easy setup; USB ports for printers and USB drives attachment; Samba works fine.

The bad: Headache with its humming sound; lack of documentations; not a solid built.

The bottom line: It prices fairly, at RM550+-; it turns out to become my wireless server as well as print server when connected to my wireless router; a good choice for the average user.

I'm back

After nearly a month of being away, I finally made my way back to this "lu-kong wa-kong" (bloging) circle. Sorry man! my readers (although it's small in number) Truly being away from the blog wasn't by choice. It was because I've been welcomed to "Gout land", an atmosphere of being suffered from gout.

At there, I've to take a new leaf of life. Diet has to be disciplined. I've to say no to foods that are considered high in purine content such as shellfish, red meats, organ meats, beef, beans and nuts etc. Especially the limitation of wine intake, that is the most heart-cutting option. Gout is not only discriminating me but my wife too. As she'd have to follow me to diet in such a way I did since it's now only "just the 2 of us."

Basically I took Goutnil (painkiller), Indomethacin (anti inflammation agent) and Allopurinol (uric acid reducer) daily that are obtaining over the counter. I've done a broad research on gout and getting to know that the best medicine was regular exercise.

I've also suffered from insomnia occasionally because of gout. Sometimes it felt like an owl - active in the night and sleepy in the day. No matter how I rolled and flipped on bed, it sometimes just couldn't get sleep.

It's all about the culprit, the excessiveness of uric acid resulting to gout!

This morning, I read about the intro of a book called "The Right to Write" by Julia Cameron in the Startwo column. The intro has never the less given me some encouragements to share my experiences with you, that's how "I'm back" be written.

Pressure released

Ah! Finally it was a pleasure upshot - a release of last minute pressure - after months of harsh working pressure. Eventually I got my office's taxation jobs completed ahead of schedule before June 30. When I saw happy faces of my colleagues who were collectively enjoying the contentment of "mission possible" by beating the job's deadline, I was happy too this evening thanks to the full cooperation of all colleagues.

We had our works this year procrastinated for some reasons: some because we had failed to call upon clients to get task systematically at hand; some because some of our colleagues were still fresh to get idea to start; others because of the "World Cup 2006" heat that makes the whole system to slow down. That certainly included my frequent escapes from "dull and unpleasant tasks" to reserve for watching football!