Techno Mambo Archives - My One Cent Worth of Thoughts

Displaced by Technology

September 21, 2017 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

The hub is on an overseas business trip (yes, again!) so I am the “Tchaikovsky” for the fortnight (next week, too!). I kind of like driving the kiddos to school. All of us are stuck with one another in the car, all strapped in, no distractions like toys and all.

小小宝贝 : I like Google Home so much! (gushing over the darn machine enthusiastically)

Me : (what the…?! Ah ah.. no swearing…) (in my most gentle mommy voice) Why is that so?

宝贝 : Di di talks to it all the time!

小小宝贝 : You were not at home. So I asked Google, “Why is the sky blue? Why is the sun yellow? Why are the clouds white?” And the Google was so smart!! She knows all the answers!

Me : So what did she tell you?

小小宝贝 : Oh I have forgotten.

Me : Do you want to know the answers? (finally my chance to impress my son!)

小小宝贝：It’s ok. I will go home and ask Google after school today. She is always there! I can always ask her! (Is he subtly trying to tell me something??!!)

I swear I’m going home to trash that gadget today!

#jealousofagadget #displacedbytechnology #ihategooglehome #machinesaretakingover #quitmyjobandstayathome #afteritrashgooglehome

Destroy and Conquer! Zhiwei 1 Google Home 0

How do you Spell Stoopid?

September 13, 2017 Zhiwei Comments 2 Comments

小小宝贝 : Mummy, how do you spell the word ‘stupid’?

Me : You are not supposed to use that word on people. It’s rude. If I tell you how to spell it, you are going to write it everywhere. Unless you promise that you won’t do that.

小小宝贝 ran to the living room. Oh great! He’s going to play with his toy train. In the next second, I heard, “OK GOOGLE! How do you spell the word stupid??”

GOOGLE : S.T.U.P.I.D.

小小宝贝 : Thank you Google!

GOOGLE : You are welcome!

I swear the robots are going to take over Earth soon!!!

Uprooting Myself After Many Good Years…

October 7, 2016 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

I have always been toying with the idea of getting my own domain name. Because, technically speaking, if one day, WordPress decides to terminate my account with them, all my writings, pictures, videos which I have posted since 2002 (Yes… I have been blogging for 14 years! Albeit on and off though… I was one of the pioneer bloggers who have gone nowhere. LOL!) will be gone!

Excuses, procrastination, everything that you can think of. Finally, I have done it! I have got myself a domain, a webhost and migrated the whole website over. Believe me, the migration was as bad as moving a house where you have lived in for last 12 years. It was PAINFUL. Maybe because I was very cheapo, I did everything myself and refused to pay a fee to migrate the information. It took me one whole day! It’s also because I am terribly noob at the technology. So instead of paying movers, I figuratively moved my “furniture”, “boxes”, “belongings” all by myself (and I’m only 5 feet tall… ).

So my new “house” is ready (well, kind of…) with the bare walls. I’ll maneuver myself through the tech part to beautify it later. So, yes, the new site works but just not too awesome looking (with my noob skills it’ll at most be so-so lah!) unless I pay a pro to jazz it up. Then again, that wouldn’t be me anymore. Let’s look beyond the physical beauty and go for the content.

Come visit me at my new place www.myonecentthoughts.com!

Creating Space in Cloud

September 19, 2014 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

I’m using an iPhone 5 56gb. Believe it or not, I’m down to 500mb. My brother went…? how can anyone use up so much storage just on photos?! Don’t you back it up???

The truth is, I do. In fact I’m extremely kiasu after my phone crashed and I lost a lot of data, once upon a time… Now I back up on my iMac and I back up my iMac on another portable hdd. ? (ok ok I see people shaking their heads and tsk tsking.)

The number of photos balloons right after the birth of 宝贝 and after the arrival of 小小宝贝 it became totally unmanageable. Children tend to move so much that the multiple speed of the point and shoot camera can’t keep up with it. So it’s all trigger free with the iPhone camera. Them the trick is to delete the unwanted ones.

The problem with being a Mom is…. All the repeated photos look so adorable even though they have just a slight difference that can’t be detected by non-mom’s eyes. So…. I ended up keeping all of them. (Sheepish look). And even though I’ve made numerous copies of back up, I just can’t help keeping them with me on my mobile so that I can run through them and reminisce about the moments, especially when I’m tired and depressed.

So, ya, my 56gb iPhone is full. And I’m going on a 3 weeks’ holiday with no extra storage space for my holiday photos!!! Horror of all horrors! So being a tech idiot I wanted the easiest and no brainer way out – buy a new iPhone with larger storage space. (I know I know… People say, buy an android phone with extra mem cards. I’m a die hard apple fan and they have the best customer service around.)

I tried for day and night…. The M1 (my telco) website was either
1. Too busy – message says come back in 15 minutes (more like 15 days)
2. When I tried at unearthly hours, I managed to get to the payment page then it says “error”!!! (I swear they must have blacklisted my ip or something!!)
3. Taken down because of security loopholes.
*facepalm*

Not only that, It’s sold out on apple website.

Ok. Plan failed. ?

I was moping around and complaining to everyone, threatening to change telco, until my highly intelligent brother said “why don’t you upload it onto a cloud storage?!”
“Huh?? Safe or not?? Celebrities’ photos get splashed online leh.”
(With more eye rollings) “please lar!!! You celebrity meh?! You have nude photos?!”
“Now not. Maybe next time??? I’ve nude photos of my 宝贝s. What if they become celebrities or ministers in future?”

Ok ok. As I already have an existing google drive (there are numerous other cloud storages but this is the most convenient one for me.), I uploaded the past holiday photos with no nude ones. And freed up 2gb!! Yay!!

And if I run out of storage just buy more lor.

At US$1.99 per month, it’s way way way much cheaper than getting an iPhone 6. Now I can wait for apple to fine tune the iPhone 6 and for the mad queue to cease before I saunter into the telco shop and get my iPhone 6 without sweat.

Another tip : don’t upgrade your storage through the phone app! Do it through the desktop website. It’s 4x cheaper! ?

Sheepish Addiction…

June 21, 2014 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

Ok ok. It’s a lame pun. But it’s exactly how I feel!

It all started one fine evening. I had to go to our neighbour’s place to drag 宝贝 home for a bath. I found the 2 of them hunched over an iPad mini (sigh… Despite my best efforts to keep her away from gadgets. Oh well… I guess it’s ok once in a while.)

Me : Eh!! It’s time to go home!!
宝贝 : wait! I’m trying to finish a game with Barry!
Me : (alarm bells ringing in my head at the mention of game) what game? Is it some violent game?!
Barry : it’s a sheep game! She even beat me a few times! (Gah! Must have been the dota sessions I played every day while I was pregnant with her!)

They showed me the game. I allowed her to play one last game in my presence before we went home for her bath.

It’s called Bump Sheep.

And then, because it looked really interesting, I downloaded it. And now I’m hooked… That was since Thurs….

Now I’ve to play it secretly in the toilet so that she doesn’t know I’m addicted to it.

My best score so far…

Anyway it’s a very simple game. It’s like the military game I played some time back. You deploy troops in 5 different rows to push back your enemy’s troops. Except they are really cute sheep. You have the little Mary-have-a-lamb smallest sheep to the impressive bloodlust giant stags.

And they have cool win-lose poker cards at the end of the game.

Enough said… Back to my game…

Sequel to the LG Refrigerator Saga

April 8, 2014 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

The maddening call to the LG customer hotline on Saturday morning left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.

I vented it out on social media and felt much much better. No need to practise yoga. Bitching on social media is also a form of destressing….

I stuck the photo of the burnt hole on the LG Singapore Facebook page and on Monday I received a follow up message in my Facebook mailbox and then a phone call from them.

Ok folks, ditch the hotline number. The service center is useless!!! Just go to the Facebook page!! Thank you Mark! For making a difference to our lives by starting Facebook!

They sent a Korean specialist to my home today to check out the Fridge foc. According to my Mom who was present (I was at work) the Korean was very “gan jiong” about the condition of the fridge and swore that it’s the first time it’s ever happened in the LG history. Gee! I must really go and buy 4d for this. So lucky ya!

He called me up and apologised profusely and offered to loan us an LG fridge until my new one arrives on Thursday. According to him, they were bringing the fridge back and were arranging for a team of specialists to fly in from Korea to investigate this.

What a vast difference in the attitudes! Compared to the laissez faire self righteous attitude of the LG customer hotline staff (backed by the various parties he consulted) this was indeed a 180° change.

He promised to let me know the results of their investigation.

The replacement fridge arrived in 2 hours. Pretty impressive turnaround time.

Meanwhile they should look into their hotline staff’s attitude. A lot can be done to it. And yes, the hotline personnel pissed me off. Big time!!

LG – Where’s Your Sense of Social Responsibilty?

April 5, 2014 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

Check this out. Would you freak out if this appeared in your refrigerator?

I did. My LG refrigerator showed an error message on the display. I called up the LG service center and gave them the error code. They advised me to switch off the refrigerator, let it de froze for 4 hours and clean it.

Fine. Being an obedient customer, I did it. While cleaning it, to my horror, I found a burnt hole, 10cm long in the freezer compartment, near the bottom part of the wall. Something obviously caught fire and burnt the plastic wall! I could even see the blackened metal parts behind it!!!

I was so lucky!!! It could have caught fire and burnt the house down!! Worse, burn the house and all of us in it while we sleep!!!

So I called up the LG customer service and alerted them to this problem.

Their reply : since my warranty was over, I’ll need to pay for a technician to go down and investigate.

My point is : I’m going to buy a new refrigerator. (It gives me the shivers that it may catch fire even after it’s repaired assuming that it can be repaired.) so why should I fork out extra money for them to investigate this matter??

This is obviously a product fault. Even if the warranty is over does it mean the fridge can be allowed to start a fire?? They should at least send someone down to investigate, in case there’s a severe problem with this particular model of refrigerator. I mean I’m lucky. But someone else who’s using the same model may not be as lucky as I am!!

LG where’s your social responsibility???

They didn’t even ask me to email them the photo. They just brushed me off as a complaint call. Because to them, it’s my fridge, my problem. In fact the customer service officer even consulted various departments, including his superiors to arrive at the same conclusion – if I don’t pay for the technician to come and investigate, it’s not their problem.

Imagine how many of such cases have been swept under the carpet?! Fwah!!

I fear for your consumers! Perhaps there’s been calls on my fridge model and I wasn’t alerted because LG refused to investigate.

This is the last time I’m going to buy LG products because I’m not going to introduce time bombs of fire hazard to my home where my loved ones are.

I’m totally disappointed with LG’s lack of social responsibility.

If you are using refrigerator model GR-B208BVQ, good luck to you!

If you are using other LG product, all the best to you!

The Digital Age is HERE!

March 5, 2014 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

When we were choosing locks for our doors, before the renovation, I was fiddling with the digital locks at the shop.

“It’d be so cool to have one of these!!! Look! Fingerprint!!” I said wistfully as I played with the locks.
“$1000 each lock leh! Already busting the Reno budget!”
Sigh… So that was the end of the story.

I hate, hate, hate the basement lock. That’s where we enter the house if we drive. And usually it means that we will have our hands full with bags, groceries, carrying children AND we still have to fumble for the keys.

Ok maybe it’s just ME! My hub has never had any problem with locating his keys. I just keep misplacing them. Heck! I even misplace my car! Ok ok that’s yet another story. Let’s not start there.

It was so bad that I ordered everyone not to lock that particular door if I wasn’t home yet. Everyone left the door unlocked, EXCEPT my hub. I swear he’s doing it on purpose so that I’d learn the importance of keeping my keys at the same place in my huge bag. But it’s sheer torture!!! I contemplated hiding his keys one day so that he’d know the feeling of not being able to get in!!! Must make sure that he’s holding like 10 bags at that time!!! Muahahah! My secret torture fantasy.

One fine day, I saw Fred’s Facebook post “Yale digital lock on promotion!!” Yes!!! Probably the universe has received the numerous signals I’ve been fervently sending out.

Mai tu Liao!! I called him to order the lock!!!

Here it is!!!! I fingerprinted the whole family and dumped my keys…somewhere. Except my hub’s prints. Well he was at work when the lock was installed. He had to scream for help. Really made my day!!! *evil cackle*

Now, if only there’s a way to get rid of my car key too… Hmm…. Any car that locks by fingerprint???

Then I can go keyless!!! Bliss….

For now, this is good enough!!!

Blog Pai Liao

March 17, 2013 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

I don’t know what I did. My “itchy fingers” clicked on a theme to try it out. Now everything has gone haywire. It’s going to take a long while for a tech noob like me to fix it. Sigh…..

Please bear with me. >.<

(P.S. unless some kind soul can volunteer to fix it for me??)

2 Days with My Whatsapp in a Coma

July 13, 2012 Zhiwei Comments 0 Comment

Yes yes yes!!!! My whatsapp just revived officially this morning at 1am gmt +8. You can’t imagine the huge relief I felt! Ever since I was “itchy fingers” and updated it to version 2.8.1 it crashed and went into coma!!!

Why was I so “itchy finger”?! Well, the last whatsapp update kept crashing every day or other and the history of the previous day’s chat would be wiped out too. And groups I’d deleted kept reappearing like phantoms! What worse could happen with the next patch?! Little did I know that it’s even worse!!! They used so much Baygon in the next patch to kill the bugs that it overdosed itself with insecticide and killed itself instead!!! T.T

Within hours, the 4.5 stars rating of whatsapp fell to 1.5 stars. And a few hundreds started “kaopei-ing on the review page of the app and across all forum portals about it. Darn! I shall check the reviews before I go tapping on the update button again!!!

Some T.T posted that after they deleted the app and reinstalled it, everything was wiped out!!! Noooo that’s not what I want!!!!

Some helpful souls posted some resurrection methods. I tried them in a desperate bid to revive my whatsapp in comatose. Because while it was knocked out, notifications of new messages kept appearing!!! Work messages most of them! Yes whatsapp is so entrenched in my life that we use it for work purpose as well!!!

First method to appear on the Internet – elaborate CPR
1. Double click on home button.
2. Click on whatsapp. Let it run and crash.
3. Repeat the entire process for 10-20 times and you will recover your chats.

Some lucky ‘uns managed to revive their whatsapp with that. I did it like 200 times and nothing happened!!! Ok I’d probably exaggerated a little but I did it so many times that I lost count. My whatsapp has a weak heart. Sigh. And I think my home button almost “ki chia” from that intensive exercise. But have no fear! My phone is still under warranty!!

My hub gave me “the look”. Don’t be an idiot!! How can you repeat the same process and expect the bug to go away?! Views from an IT expert. What the heck?! It’s already dead!!!! Doing something is better than doing nothing right?!??

But Evelyn did it and her phone revived. She won’t *sabo me right?!

Method 2 – simplified CPR
1. Double click on the home button and kill the whatsapp app once.
2. click on whatsapp and let it run. Just keep clicking on whatsapp for another 10-20 times.

I tried this for 500 times because it’s easier to execute. Ok. It still remained lifeless.

3rd method (latest to appear on the Internet last night) – full body massage
1. double click on home button to kill the whatsapp app from the minimized bar.
2. Click on whatsapp. Do not let it crash. Immediately press home button to kill it. Repeat this many times.
3. Click on whatsapp. Massage the empty chat boxes with your finger. (you can even use all your fingers if you like.)
4. The chat messages will miraculously reappear!!!

I was like erm… How does this help?! What the heck! What’s worse than a dead whatsapp?! So I did it anyway. The first time I repeated step 2 for 10 times. It didn’t work. What’s new… =.=”

The 2nd time I repeated step 2 for 15 times. And while I was furiously massaging my screen the messages really appeared!!!!! The person who thought of this must be a genius!!!!! I can just give him a big fat kiss!!! Whoever you are, thank YOOOOUUU!!!

The hub gave me the “huh?! Like that also can?!” look.

Ok. That means that my phone is more receptive to massaging than poking. Keke

Anyway, for all the still-frustrated souls out there. I hope this helps. Happy poking or massaging!!!

*kaopei-ing = kicking up a fuss
*ki chia = turn over and die
*sabo = pull a fast one / lie

My One Cent Worth of Thoughts

An Extremely Valid Reason for Skiving

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