Huh huh huh, customers suck. Trying to get my DVD burner working yesterday, so I contacted their online "chat"-style support. Not exactly an enlightening experience. What follows is the exact transcript (they email it to you afterwards.) My comments in brackets.

Daniel: Thank you for contacting Iomega's Online Support Services. How may I help you?
Mark: Hi... Was chatting to Vivian earlier about getting by CD-DVD burner working. He had me install your HotBurn product
Mark: It got only as far as "Writing the Lead-In area" and hung up

[Five minutes pass.]

Mark: you there?
Daniel: Yes.
Daniel: Ojne moment please.

[Ten minutes pass.]

Daniel: Which version of Iomega Hotburn software are you using?
Mark: 2.4.2
Mark: build 70
Daniel: Ok.

[Five minutes pass.]

[I write and erase several nastier versions before finally sending:]

Mark: Are you multitasking or something? I'd like some help with this.

Daniel: I apologize for the delay in my response. It was because of some system problem that I was facing.

[Ah, the dreaded "some system problem". The kind that keeps you connected to the chat servlet but also keeps you from responding. I'm sure it's not because you're playing EverQuest or anything.]

Daniel: Please let me know the complete error message you get as stated by the system.
Mark: No error message. It just hangs up when it first tries to write to the disk

[...like I said already, you prat.]

[Ten minutes pass.]

Mark: Is your system problem something I can help you with?

[Five minutes pass.]

Mark: disconnected
Daniel: disconnected

I'm going to deal with them on the phone Monday. I can't wait.

Crime free, my ass. Took the train back to the station yesterday where I had left my bike in the morning, and it was gone. Someone cut through the lock in broad daylight in the middle of a heavy pedestrian area, and in Singapore no less. I can't remember what brand it was, so I haven't reported it to the police. It was only S$35, but it was nice to have. Someone needs a caning.

Oh, and "Nice, Jim."

Tax mystery solved. I complained earlier about the Singapore tax form not having any place to fill in how much you actually owe in taxes. I called their hotline today, and found out why: you just give them the numbers, and they send a form back telling you how much you owe. Now that I think about it, it makes more sense that way.

Frustrating. Last night I spent at least an hour typing up a big long screed to post to a mailing list I'm on. When finished, I clicked "Post", and poof, it just went away. I'm usually good about backups, auto-saves, and archiving of outgoing messages so this doesn't happen. But I was typing it through a web interface this time, and now it all vanished into the mists of time.

I know I'm not the only person this has ever happened to. Why isn't there an operating-system-level feature that just records your last 10000 or so keystrokes? It could save you, regardless of your application. Something you could turn on and off, obviously, for security reasons.

My personal theory is that aliens monitor us by stealing every fiftieth email and tenth printout, which explains why some things just never make it through when you click on "send" or "print".

A little off the top, please. Inspired by the recent Foxtrot comic strips, tonight we gave ourselves virtual makeovers just for grins. It's a pretty cool program they have to do it, but a lot of hairstyle choices look unreal, and there aren't a lot of choices for dudes. Still, we may have found me a new look.

Sunday's match report from the coach. (Hey, you know I only post these things when I score! That's happening probably more than it should lately, considering I'm supposed to be playing defense. And actually, their first goal was an own goal by me that I had to redeem myself for...)

Ventz PM were caught in a mixup as our game was rained off at the last minute. We shifted fields but there was now 3 teams in 1 game! Therefore it was decided we play a half against each teams and I decided to let the other two teams play first. In the first halve/game against Poser Utd , we went down early when they broke thru to slot pass pur keeper. We took control after that and pressurised them for the equalizer. Close to the end , after much presure , Mark S cut in from the left to unleash an unstoppable shot pass the keeper.

In the 2nd half/game , over confidence and fatigue allowed our opponents to take the lead. We huffed and puffed to bring the game back and scored thru a Steven A volley from 20m at the stroke of full time!

Ah ahhhh, Mr. Heath. You'd think a one page tax form, when we have no extra income or reliefs (deductions) would be a piece of cake. But it has confounded us utterly. After big sections for listing your income and reliefs, there seems to be no place AT ALL to list how much you actually owe. The formula for computing the tax is hidden away on a separate worksheet, but what do we do with the numbers?

From what we can tell, though, we don't have a lot to complain about, amount-wise; tax rate seems VERY low here, at least comparatively.

Sure to start neighborhood fights. Been playing around with this site which lets you see which US candidate your neighbors have contributed to. You can even look people up by name. Apparently, you have to be pretty up front about contributing, because even famous people are listed (along with their addresses, which I wont post here). My comments in brackets:

Former pols:

Barbara P. Bush (Retired):
George W. Bush $2,000

Michael S. Dukakis (Professor Northeastern University):
John Kerry $2,000

Walter F Mondale (IR IR):
Bob Graham $500

Henry A. Kissinger (Chairman Kissinger Associates):
George W. Bush $1,000
George W. Bush $1,000

H. Ross Perot (President Perot Systems Corporation):
George W. Bush $2,000

Big money dudes:

George Soros (Investor SOROS FUNDS MANAGEMENT):
John Kerry $2,000
Bob Graham $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000
Howard Dean $1,000 <-- interesting, he gets less

Donald J. Trump (President The Trump Organization):
John Kerry $2,000
George W. Bush $2,000
[That's a head-scratcher. No, I guess not. Trump just wants
to be on the winning team.]

William H. Gates (CEO Microsoft Corp.):
George W. Bush $2,000

S. ROBSON WALTON (CHAIRMAN WALMART):
George W. Bush $2,000

Big money entertainers:

Jerry Seinfeld (Entertainer Self-employed):
John Kerry $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000

Jessica Seinfeld (his wife):
Wesley Clark $2,000

[None of the Friends cast, those rich indolent bastards.]

[None of the big shot hosts: Leno, Letterman, Oprah, Colin O'Brien, Kilby, Jon Stewart.]

Barbra Streisand (Actress/ Musician Self employed):
Howard Dean $1,000
John Kerry $1,000
John Edwards $1,000
Dick Gephardt $1,000
Al Sharpton $1,000
Bob Graham $1,000
Wesley Clark $1,000

Susan Sarandon (Actress Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

[Pundits: no Michael Moore, Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ollie North, Ann Coulter.]

Stephen King (Writer Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

Tabitha King (writer Self employed [his wife]):
Howard Dean $2,000

Robert Deniro (Filmmaker Tribeca Productions):
Howard Dean $2,000
Dick Gephardt $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000

Ben Affleck (["]Actor["]):
Wesley Clark $2,000

Edward Norton (Actor Self-employed):
John Kerry $2,000
Dennis Kucinich $2,000

Michael Douglas (Actor and Producer Furtler files):
Howard Dean $2,000

Meg Ryan (Information Requested):
Wesley Clark $2,000

Helen Hunt (Actress Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

Steven Buscemi (Information Requested):
Wesley Clark $1,000

The national and city maps are very interesting too.

Quitters Inc. I was talking to Marjorie the other day about my tendency to crack my knuckles, and my neck. I said, since I'm sharing an office, that these are probably not the most endearing qualities in an office mate. She replied, "Or a spouse."

So I hereby give them up. While I'm at it, I'll throw in biting my nails.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it's easy to quit, I've done it hundreds of times. I actually quit nail-biting before, for a good long time, by wearing a rubber band around my wrist, and snapping it whenever I caught myself mano-a-boca. But then, five years later, I started up again. I tried the rubber band trick again a few years later, and it didn't work at all; I snapped it several times daily for a good long month, but never stopped the biting.

I generally have pretty good will power, though, so this time I'm going to quit these habits just by trying really hard, and by the old public shame method -- letting others around me know I'm trying to quit. Hence this post.

Just about the most depressing thing ever. When my job sent me to an Air Force base in Germany for a month, and then a Nato base in Italy for a month, it used to boggle my mind that there were so many people in both places that had been stationed there for years but had never ventured off the base, or learned a word of the native language. A few -- just a few -- of the military guys there shared my frustration, and these were the guys I befriended, and went out exploring with when I could.

So today I when I stumbled across this blog on Blogdex, I thought, here's a guy who feels like I do. He was even better than me at befriending locals and taking the sorts of photos that I never had the guts to take, especially given that he's stationed in Iraq. And it sounded like he was truly trying to help the locals. He's a guy I would like to hang out with if I ever found myself stationed there. I went back and read half his archive, and planned to add his blog to my list of blogs I check routinely.

Then, reading further down in Blogdex, I discovered another link that explained why his blog was rated so high in Blogdex. With a sick feeling I found that he was just killed in an ambush while making a foray out of the safe zone.

Just, so senseless.

I pieced together this panorama from Tioman Island. I'm not sure if the variations in lighting from frame to frame are the camera's fault or the weather's. We holed up in the little shacks to the left of the picture.

Monthly geek-out! Bear with me. A tenth planet has been discovered. "Sedna" is actually not really a planet, but it's the biggest thing that's been discovered since Pluto.

Someday I'm going to start a website that's all about trying to give a sense of size and scale to our universe, especially our solar system, with splashy diagrams and descriptive text. (And of course I would have to call it the Total Perspective Vortex, in honor of Douglas Adams.) In the meanwhile, here's some decidedly non-splashy graphics I whipped up that'll give you a sense of how far away this new object they've discovered is:

Se---j----s--------u----------n--------p-----------------------------------@----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------!--

where
S is the sun
e is the earth
j is jupiter
s is saturn
u is uranus
n is neptune
p is pluto (on average)
@ is Sedna, at its CLOSEST
! is Sedna, at its FURTHEST

Just how far away is that?

Have you ever seen a car with 186000 miles (300000 kilometers) on it? Imagine traveling all that distance -- every side street, vacation trip, work commute, whatever -- in a single second. That's how fast light travels. A (say) radio message traveling that fast would take over ten hours to reach Sedna at its closest point, and it would be another ten hours before you got a response. At its FURTHEST point, your message would take 117 hours (almost five days!) to reach Sedna.

Picture our moon; Sedna's about half as big, best guess. And at the distance it is out there, it's not going to be reflecting a lot of sunlight. It's amazing that they could spot this thing. The article doesn't say, but I'm sure it found near it's closest point in orbit, which it makes the rounds to every 10000 years or so. So, its last visit this close was around the time that agriculture and the bow and arrow were novel concepts.

Commericals. Some of my favorite commercials here in Singapore:

1. Two guys are looking out a hotel window, wide-eyed. They gleefully run out of the room to the elevator, then down and through the lobby (slowing down to try to appear calm when passing the reception desk) and out into the street, where it is snowing. It is obviously their first time seeing snow, and they look up to feel it on their faces, and start throwing snowballs at each other. The commercial is for Emirates (the airline out of Dubai) and features their slogan, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Sure, it's a feel-good commercial, but it makes me feel good.

2. Travel commericals for Malaysia, New Zealand (featuring, unsurprisingly, "Don't Dream It's Over"), and lately, some island off the coast of South Korea, just because they remind me there's a lot of places left to visit.

3. A young Singaporean couple, very much in love, are consulting their auntie about the most fortuitous day to get married. The auntie is taking the dates they suggest and looking them up in her book of astrology. Or so it seems; actually, inside the astrology book she has a TV schedule. So for each date, she's actually looking up what's going to be on TV that day, and responds "Saturday the 6th, hmmmm, not auspicious", or "No, Friday the 12th, doesn't look good..." (because there is so much good on TV, you see). Nicely captures a lot about Singapore and their melding of the modern and the traditional.

Tioman. Last weekend Mom and Dad acquiesced to our need to getout of town, and agreed to our suggestion to go to Tioman Island, up north in Malaysia. The package we booked involved a bus ride over the border and three hours north to the coastal town of Mersing, where we would catch a ferry out to the island. Things started bad as I realized I forgot my Singapore work permit just before we boarded the bus. We decided to just go anyway and hope that the stamp in my passport would suffice. It did; we were able to leave without too much hassle.

The bus ride was a white-knuckle adventure, with a driver who didn't dawdle on the turns or let little things like no-passing zones prevent him from overtaking other vehicles. At a rest stop we spotted a pair of Oriental Pied Hornbills -- very cool. Our driver's hurry paid off as we managed to just catch our ferry out to the island. Actually, it was less of a ferry than a state's fair carnival ride; hot, cramped, bumpy, and poorly maintained. It didn't help that our driver smoked. Quite a change from our last visit here, where we had a two-story ferry with a snack bar over calm seas. Fortunately my mom had enough bonine for everyone.

Arrived two hours later ready to kiss the ground. Our rooms at the Salang Beach Resort were a little more -- shall we say 'rustic' -- than I was expecting. But they kept the rain off our heads. (Fortunately we only got a little rain.) The AC in my parents room was so loud it would have kept them awake, so they had to switch rooms. In their next room the AC was nice and quiet, but didn't blow cold air. Third room was the charm.

Did a little snorkeling, then had a nice fish dinner and drinks. That night we were woken from our slumber at 4 am by the guest in the next room who was VERY drunk and wouldn't stop trying to get in our room. (Note to self: Add "pepper spray" to travel packing list.) We eventually went down to the "police station" (a one room white bungalo) and managed to convince the guy there to put on shirt and follow us, but he didn't speak English well enough to even understand what was going on. When we got back our neighbor had gone inside his room (apparently our "We'll see how you like it in a Malaysian prison" threat struck a chord), and our barefoot officer seemed reluctant to pursue anything, or even come up off the sidewalk. He disappeared back into the night a minute later. We shrugged and went back in to try to sleep, once the adreneline wore off. We complained to the management the next morning. Others complained about this guy too, but they didn't kick him out. Instead it was our turn to switch rooms.

After a breakfast of banana pancakes (the traditional backpacker brekkie), we decided to do a little hiking. Now, we were at just about the northernmost resort on the island, so the only direction to hike was south. There are no real roads on Tioman (except for a short one near the middle); instead, there is only a footpath that skirts the edge of the island. This suffices because pretty much all the development on the island is within 100m of water, since the interior is mountainous. So we decided to just walk south to the next water-taxi stop south of us, or at least to "Monkey Beach", a supposedly nice place in between. Following the signs led us up the hills into the jungle, but we only made it a short way before deciding it was just too steep and too muddy. We were going to go on anyway until I posed the question of just how many hours we were from any sort of decent medical care, should somebody fall. I wish I had taken a picture of my retired parents scrambling down a muddy path through the jungle on a Malaysian island with their hands down in the mud.

Plan B was more snorkeling from the beach. Though the day was cloudier and the water was more choppy, it was still pretty good. My favorite sightings were several so-called "cleaning stations", which are fixed places on the reef that fish visit to have their parasites picked off by cleaner wrasses. I saw a big parrot fish even let a cleaner wrasse swim into its mouth. Also spotted were giant clams, blue and black angelfish that swam up to my fingers, file fish, nudibranches, and a clown fish and its parent in an anemone.

That night we spotted eery lights from under the water just off the beach from our huts; it was a night-diving expedition, which I don't know if we'd have the guts to try. Maybe someday. Still need to get certified first.

We were hoping for calmer seas on the return trip, but it was not to be. I think it was a bit rougher, but at least we were going with the waves this time. Still, the little kid behind me got sick, and I had to keep going to the back of the boat to splash water on my face.

The bus ride back was somewhat less intense, as there wasn't a ferry to catch. My Dad sat opposite a Malaysian guy -- Jules? -- and struck up an interesting conversation, which I only heard snippets of. The guy worked for Peace Cola, the Malaysian alternative to Coca Cola, which donates part of their proceeds to peace causes. He had lots of other interesting information about Malaysia and their relationship with Singapore, that I wish I could remember more of.

All in all, a very interesting trip. Given the difficulty of the commute, it would have been nice to spend more time, but it was still nice to get away. And hopefully we gave my parents some good stories to relate to the folks back home.

I ate lunch today at a hawker center stall that offered "Claypot Vinegar Pig's Trotter".

I opted for the red wine chicken instead.

Now it can be said: our guests were my parents, who didn't want to announce to any unfriendlies that their house was going to be unoccupied for two weeks. They've now arrived safely home. Here are some of the things we showed (or inflicted upon) them:

Sungei Buloh Nature Preserve. Our tour guide Rhea showed us many interesting things we missed on previous visits. No snakes this time, but we did see mudskippers, weaver ants, cross spiders, archer fish, and a giant monitor lizard.

Hawker centers. Not a lot of success here as we seemed to always suggest the wrong item, either too spicy or too weird, while they were already overdosing on strangeness.

Little India. On a Sunday night, when the throngs descend. Topped off with another too-spicy but tasty meal.

Tioman Island, as I mentioned before; I'll post details from this interesting side trip tonight, hopefully.

Also: Comfort food at Brewerkz on Clarke Quay. Orchard Road. The wet market and bird-singing place at Ghim Moh. Catholic Mass -- the "sign of peace" involved mostly bowing instead of handshaking. Brunch at Cellar Door. China Town. The Merlion. Games of bridge in the evenings (they're teaching us). Pricy Mexican at Margarita's.

On their own they checked out the Changi(?) Yacht Club, the Asian Civilizations Museum, Body Worlds, and Sentosa Island.

A wonderful visit! With each passing year I am more and more grateful to be able to call such wonderful and adventuresome people my parents.

Pissing down with rain on a boring Monday. For our guests' last day here, it rained. And rained. And rained. I've never seen quite this much rain here. Rainy season was supposed to be over.

While I gather my notes for the full report on our visitors, I can report on something we snuck off and did on our own last Thursday night: the David Bowie concert, at Singapore Indoor Stadium. Buying nosebleed seats paid off as didn't sell enough tickets, and closed the upper level of the stadium. So we ended up with much better seats, and even improved on them by wandering up to maybe 15 meters from stage right. (Not quite as good as seeing him from about three meters away last year in Brooklyn, but still.) Sound was pretty bad for the first half of the show until somebody plugged in a loose cord or something and the stack of speakers pointed our way turned on. David was in fine form and chatty. The set list was the tried and true formula of a familiar opening, a mix of old and new, and a finish of old favorites. Highlights for me were Five Years and I'm Afraid of Americans (which he graciously prefaced by saying was about just a few Americans that he was afraid of).

At one point I happily pointed out to Marjorie that David Bowie has no ass! This is a beacon of hope for me, that a man can not only exist but actually thrive without one.

As the show ended we bolted for the taxi stand, and were first in the queue. Of course, no taxis came by, preferring to cruise around until called (for the bonus $3 surcharge). So eventually we had to call one, as did everyone else who was waiting. While they all disappeared one by one into their summoned cabs, we waited and waited for our guy who never showed. He eventually called us but couldn't figure out how to get to where we were, and wanted us to walk around the stadium and find him. Yeah right. We ended up walking out through the now-deserted parking lots until we got out on the main road a flagged another one down. Sometimes I really miss having a car.

Lots to report, no time to report it. Got back yesterday from visiting Pulau Tioman with our out-of-town guests. It was adventuresome; stories to follow. Back to work.

It's Monday morning, and my software has gone on strike.

The program that I'm writing has suddenly decided to lay things out differently.

To modify the program, I need to check the appropriate file out of WinCVS, but WinCVS is crashing as soon as I open it.

I'm trying to upgrade it, but whenever I download a zip file using IE it comes up as an empty zip.

And to top it off, Mozilla mail is crashing every time I switch folders.

Sorry about the lack of updates... Our guests have been here since late Thursday and we've been busy running them ragged. Clarke Quay (Brewerkz), hawker centers, wet markets, Sungei Buloh nature preserve, Colbar, Cellar Door, lots of other stuff.

Still managed to sneak off and play soccer today; just a friendly intersquad game, and only enough for seven a side. Afterwards a guy on our team was giving me a lift home, and ran out of gas on the TPE (expressway). A small misadventure ensued involving some policemen and a couple of cabs. After finally getting home an hour and a half later, we took our guests to Little India for their Sunday night craziness, when the area gets inundated with young Indian men for their traditional night on the town. Had an overly spicy but very tasty meal at the [I forget the name], a subsidiary of the Apolo Banana Leaf restaurant.