will i am's delayed diary

Warning. Boring stuff ahead. You have an MSSQL server table with text, ntext or image columns. You wanna apply triggers on it that employ the use of the inserted and deleted logical tables. You're soooo screwed.

While having breakfast on Wesak Day, one guy came up to table asking me to show my support for a recycling campaign. Apparently, they go around asking people to sponsor recycling-awareness books for primary school students. Their target is 50,000 books. One book costs RM8.50. You do the math. The guy showed me a sample. It was quite thin, with glossy paper and full-colour printing. I bet the books will just end up in the landfill, unread, leaching its multi-coloured inks, dyes and bleaches into water table. If you want to promote recycling, by all means use recycled paper (even WWF pandai enough to do so). It's an educational book, not some fancy product launch booklet. Goodness. I told him to shove off, nicely.

I've finally gotten around to trying out the food at Nippon Yatai Mura, the restaurant with the Tanuki (Japanese raccoon-dog, can also be seen on Kameya near Federal Hotel) as its logo. A quick Mother's Day lunch. The food's really quite good. The soup bases are very good. Had Kyushu Ramen , Kimuchi Nabe and a soft shelled crab temaki . The crab was a tad too oily. Strangely, they don't serve Tanuki Ramen . Still, I would like to try out the other ramen on their menu. I kinda miss Jakarta's Ajisen Ramen. But then, not quite enough to wanna go back there... Overall a very nice dining experience except for the fact that there was this little girl sitting 2 booths away from us who kept on playing peek-a-boo with me and yelling "UNCLE" at the top of her lungs to get my attention. She was so cute with a big mop of hair on her head, but not cute enough to make me not cringe at the call of "Uncle". C'mere, I'll wring your little neck. Heh.

tai-chi Originally uploaded by williamnyk . What you see here is a poor attempt of trying to write down the lyrics to the theme song of Tai-Chi Master (a 2 in 1 DVD related to my previous post ). This is what I get for skipping P.O.L. (People's Own Language) classes on Saturdays during my primary school days. Always ending up at my classmates house nearby playing "Bare Knuckle", "Sonic the Hedgehog" and "De-Cap-Attack" on his Sega Genesis. All the strokes are wrong, and the characters are just... I remember having to write my Chinese name on the blackboard and the teacher remarked, "Are you writing or are you drawing grass!". The idiot. I hated that guy.

My brother found this in Endah Parade, Seri Petaling. Really had a hankering for lemang since raya . The rendang tok was wicked too. Too bad the palas was a let down. I gotta haul my ass back to the East coast for some decent Malay food. It's been 6 years...

There's this guy at the office who carries around a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin as his water bottle. I know it's not good to use mineral water bottles, but hasn't this guy ever heard of Tupperware ?! It's so freaky.

IMG_1470 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . This has been growing out of a palm tree in my garden. It looks freaky. It's most probably seeds, but who knows, maybe I'll get some Thumbelina variant.

My mother was invited to the launch of an "anti-snatch theft handbag" a few months back and this really piqued her interest. So, my sister recently bought her one for her birthday. This "innovative" handbag features a detachable strap. So if some guy comes along and grabs the strap, he'll only get strap while the bag falls to the ground. No points for guessing that the design is useless if the guy snatches the bag and not the strap. But that's besides the point. As one can guess, the bag must be designed so that the strap is strong enough to withstand everyday use, and on the other hand must be weak enough to detach when snatched. Unfortunately, this is a another case of "good design, bad material". After less than one week of normal usage, the strap is now perpetually in "snatch-theft" mode. It comes off every now and then (unless perhaps it's a orang halimunan snatch thief that we are not aware of). After inspecting the stupid thin

Dinner compliments of SK and HP yesterday. A celebration of sorts since they've both finished their Master's Degree viva . I think I know more than friends with a Master's degree or in the process of getting one. But no feelings of being left out, just wondering what I'm doing to go forward. Back to the glorious food. Some establishment by the side of Old Klang Road near the Taman Desa turning. Everytime I pass by that stretch of road I would curse the people who park their cars and hog the road (OKR is a highway now, no less). But as fate would have it, I had to park there as well. Oh well. Had a nice dinner of steamed chicken, sweet & sour pork, kailan and steamed egg (way too salty). For some reason, my tummy was not content, so we headed over to Sri Petaling for mamak food. Another round of cow's milk pulled tea, milo, ABC, thosai and naan . Fantastic. Oh yeah, and SK got "molested" by the Indian waiter after asking if the bananas on the table we

I've noticed that I'm getting grumpier and grumpier. I snapped at an elderly classmate yesterday. And I didn't even notice. I really should tone down the sarcasm a bit. I resolved to be calmer starting from yesterday evening, and yet, first thing this morning, I was grilled in the office regarding some UAT logs. Hated the guys insinuation that I didn't do any unit tests before handing over to the users. I smiled the whole way, but my words were dripping poison. Heck, I could feel my lips quivering. Arggghhh! I help out testers by doing a workaround and 'jalan pintu belakang' and they thank me reporting it to the management and sending out e-mails... Kena makan belimbing and celery to reduce my blood pressure.

IMG_1080 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Can someone tell me what's wrong with Blogger?! Can't post through their interface, but it works fine through Flickr! I'm getting sick of "404 Page not found".

IMG_1432 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Mum's birthday bash started off at Amarin Heavenly Thai, MidValley Megamall. The big SIX ZERO . When we were young, we often think of aging as a distant process that doesn't really affect us. But recently, I've recently admitted that I'm really relatively "old" and with this fact, my mum would definitely be "older". She has really aged, but gracefully. Really should spend more quality time with her. Back to the food review. Amarin's a nice place. Never crowded. Lotsa wood, ambient lighting. Simple decor. Managed by S.E.A Cuisine Sdn Bhd . They operate more than 10 different Thai restaurants around town. Had a shock when I looked at their business card. I for one over-ordered. The waiter wasn't very helpful in telling me that we had ordered too much. But then, it was a table of six and there were four guys. Apparently we all had small appetites. We forgot to factor in the mixed appetizer pl

IMG_1314 Originally uploaded by williamnyk . Labour Day : Spent the day watching Flight Plan and some episodes of Gantz . Flight Plan is OK, but Jodie Foster has really aged. After watching 3 consecutive episodes of Gantz, I have found that it is starting to annoy the hell outta me. Not even heaving chests and gratuitous violence could save it. Too little happens and the script is fluff and repetitions. Lotsa screaming at each other. Lotsa standing around. ?!?!. Dinner : Ate at Jogoya . Compliments of SK. Celebration dinner. RM88++ per pax. Ouch. Found on the back of the moist towelette -- Jo - A place to go; Go - A place where the king goes; Ya - Shop. One has to pay up front. Pengz. After paying, then only one can expect to hear greetings from the staff. As one is ushered into the dining area, you can see a giant projected clock on the carpeted floor. Probably a time slot reminder. Lots of wood, dark, marble-like materials. The floor is cement. The food counters are all spr

So, what did you do to commemorate 01:02:03 04/05/06? Well, I had three choices: a) Sleep b) Sleep c) Sleep As you can see, it's a tough choice. But then, I went out of my way and chose option d) Sleep. How about you?

Didn't bother to solve the "X-File". Several colleagues proposed a workaround. Load the file download code via a pop-up (ala GMail) or do it through a hidden iFrame. The first "solution", was dropped after I found that it doesn't work on HTTPS. So had use the second way. However, I struggled all afternoon to reference the stupid iFrame via JS to set its src property. Then it hit me, just write the bloody HTML into the page straight via a Literal object. Argggh! At least the job is done.

Doing this file download thing with ASP .NET. After using Response.WriteFile, the file downloads OK, but it drives the javascripts on my page crazy. They keep throwing "Access is denied". Anyone know a workaround/solution???