The curse of technology failure has hit me again.
Well for those who don’t know about me and my extreme bad luck with technology and gadgets, let’s just put it simply - no computers/gadgets I have owned has actually NOT failed on me yet. Let’s see…
- Self-assembled clone PC - multiple failures it’s horrible
- Twinhead notebook - even more multiple failures it’s even more embarassing
- PowerBook - logic board failed once
- Sony Ericsson k700i - randomly shuts down and drops calls
- Sony Ericsson s500i - back button failed & randomly hangs
- Sony PSP - battery charging mechanism failed
- Nikon D70s - CF card slot on camera failed (of all things to fail)
- Dopod GPS-PDA - err.. let’s not even start counting this one…
On top of that, I have also successfully crashed every single OS I’ve used. Windows? I’m a BSOD magnet. Linux? Screwed up before too (beyond recovery). Mac OS X? Yep, that too. OpenSolaris? That too. User problem? I’m not sure, it just somehow randomly happens to me. I can even tell you instances where people who insist it’s a user problem, goes and (supposedly) reformat and reinstall and setup the system properly for me and all is well until I walk back into the room and then it crashes again.
Actually it would seem the only thing that hasn’t failed on me *touchwood* are my iPods (two of them).
Anyhow, to continue on with the tradition of gadget-must-fail, my MacBook Pro died the night before I was supposed to go to Singapore. Whee. Fun. Logically I panicked because:
- I was supposed to be in SG for work, and need my MBP
- It looked like it could be a hard disk failure
- I did not feel like bringing my Time Machine backups along as it is a heavy desktop 3.5″ drive
Anyway, I went to SG and got my hard disk checked out by the Service Center, who did their diagnostics and integrity checks and found no hardware issue. So I reinstalled OS X, and this time it finally managed to reinstall successfully (previous attempt resulted in a fail for some reason). It really looked to me like just one of those random things that always happens to me and technologies.
Well now the difficult part was that I had a computer that was fully functioning again but with no content. No applications, no backups (as my backups are in my hard disk back in KL), no contacts, no email accounts, no calendars etc. Surfing the web? Crap, my password manager and passwords aren’t in either.
Then I suddenly remembered: I had MobileMe and everything synced up. So I setup my MobileMe on my MBP and synced everything down. In a few minutes (cos I was on a super duper hi speed internet line) I had all my contacts, Safari bookmarks, calendar events, Mail accounts, etc etc etc all in my computer again. (PIM data is very very important to me in doing my day to day work!) I also had some documents needed for my work stowed away in my iDisk, so those came down as well. Thankfully too, I had the oversight of making a copy of my important documents I needed to bring along into my iPod touch as well before my Mac crashed, so those got synced back into my Mac (thanks to AirSharing).
Now came the part about having all my bookmarks but not knowing the passwords to enter them. Since I use a password manager, I no longer need to really remember all my passwords for the different sites I go to. Not worried. I had 1Password on my iPod touch. I downloaded 1Password, synced from my iPod into my desktop, and I’m ready to go.
Once I had access to my online web services, I was ready to go. Most of my stuff are still not in my Mac and would have to wait till I go back, but for many of my other important stuff, I could already start working on them. And that mattered a lot to me. What really surprised me was MobileMe (previously called .mac) - I used to rather not rely on .mac for urgent information retrieval, but I’ve noticed recently MobileMe has really been fixed up. I decided to just let it do its thing on my Mac and it did it beautifully. To me, MobileMe is one of the things I took for granted until I needed it — but it’s there when I need it.
So yes, that’s the story of my Mac.
Before I begin the horror story let me just highlight the Bridge Alliance - an alliance between the major telco providers in this region. Maxis and SingTel happened to be the alliance partners for Malaysia and Singapore respectively, and I have both a Maxis postpaid number and a SingTel prepaid number. What this basically means is that if I have issues with my Maxis number while in Singapore, I can go to a SingTel Bridge Concierge Counter to have my problem sorted out, and if I need to top up my SingTel prepaid number while in Malaysia, I can go to a Maxis Bridge Prepaid counter. The list of alliance partners outlets are listed in this customer service guide PDF by Bridge Alliance.
Moving back to Maxis.
I had just only stumbled upon Bridge Alliance recently and coincidentally, need to top up my SingTel hi!Card as well. Today being a Saturday, I wasn’t sure what time the Taipan Subang Maxis Center (listed in the pdf) was open. I called the listed office number, but the number had changed. Logically, I dialled 123 to find out the operating hours - wouldn’t make sense for me to go Taipan only to find out they’re closed.
The personnel who took my call asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, top up my Singtel card. He seemed to know what Bridge Alliance was, and told me this is handled by their prepaid department, and hooked me up to the Hotlink customer service.
The lady who took my call (pity I forgot to record the call, it was just horrible) was just hopeless. I first enquired with a generic statement, “I would like to top up my SingTel prepaid”. She didn’t even know what was SingTel, and had to put me on hold, only to come back in a while to ask, “SingTel is Singapore right?”
So I ended up having to explain to her how Bridge Alliance works, and told her, I needed to go to the nearest Bridge Prepaid center works (Maxis Taipan Sq), but when I dialled the office number listed, the number has changed. “Can I have their new office number or know their operating hours for today?”
The rest of the conversation went something like this (to the best of my recall, not verbatim conversation):
Her: For what?
Me: To find out if they’re open and what time are their operating hours
Her: Where?
Me: Maxis Taipan
Her: Taipan? Where is Taipan?
Me: (incredulous) Subang.
Her: Oh, Subang, you can go to Carrefour, they have a hotlink agent there (rattles off name of some third party telco services reseller)
Me: I don’t want to know the Carrefour agent, I want to know the operating hours of the Maxis Center in Subang!
Her: Oh you can go to the Summit we also have agent there.
Me: I don’t want to know Summit! I want to know if the Maxis office in Taipan Square in Subang is open or not today, so that I can top up my SingTel card!
Her: Ya, you can top up your SingTel card there.
Me: No, according to the Bridge Alliance guide, only selected Maxis offices have the capability to top up SingTel prepaid cards!
Her: Ya, you can go to the Summit.
Me: Are they a Bridge Prepaid outlet? Can they top up my SingTel card?
Her: You can go Summit there and ask.
Me: I don’t want to go Summit, I want to know what’s the operating hours for the Maxis Subang office!
Her: You can go to Summit there and ask.
Me: (even more incredulous) No, just let me know the operating hours for the Maxis center.
Her: 10-10.
Me: On a Saturday??
Her: 10-3.
Me: This is for the Maxis Taipan Subang office?
Her: Oh the Maxis Taipan Subang office close already. Now have to go Summit.
Me: *gives up* nevermind. *hangs up*.
Whether or not they had really closed the Subang office and moved it to Summit, I don’t even dare trust her anymore. She doesn’t even know what she’s talking about.
For what it’s worth though, yesterday when I first found out about Bridge Alliance via the Maxis/SingTel website(s), I called up Maxis and was put through to a really nice guy, who also didn’t know much about Bridge Alliance. The major difference in the experience though, was that he offered to find out more, and to call me back in a while with information. He called me back about 5 minutes later, fully equipped to answer all the enquiries that I had about Bridge Alliance at that point of time. Kudos to this guy, whoever you are (I forgot his name). At least he admitted upfront he didn’t know much about it, and actually took the initiative to research more, to assist me effectively and efficiently. Credit should be given where credit is due. Thank you!
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said about the other lady.
To truly understand the depth of what Obama’s win truly means to Americans and in particular American minorities (i.e. African Americans), this video of Rev. Jesse Jackson, tears streaming, in total awe of God’s mercy, lost for words as he digests Obama’s win sums it up: http://edition.cnn.com/video/ (search for “Jesse Jackson breaks down”).
I rooted for Obama not just because of hope or because I identify with some of the struggles he embodied: of equal rights of which as a feminist I believe in (and in another article I wrote of aligning my feminist ideals with Christianity), of faith, hopes and dreams (and it’s not a coincidence that my church is called the Dream Center either), and his conciliatory approach.
I look forward to Obama finally taking his place in the White House, despite the fact I am not an American.
Not because he’s the first African American president in the White House or that he’s bringing change.
But because he reaffirms me of God’s word, that all things are possible.
I’ve been invited to speak at FOSS.my 2008 which will be held on Nov 8-9 in APIIT. So if you’re a FOSS aficionado, or want to know more about FOSS, or if you’re a FOSSchix like me, do register for the event. I’ll be talking about Macs and/in Open Source.
While I was gone though, (well not really gone), but I’ve been mostly working and also building up MYCocoaHeads. Quite a nice change to see some new faces lately too. Also, MYCocoaHeads now has a new home at mycocoaheads.wordpress.com and also a Twitter account at twitter/mycocoaheads. So if you’re a MYCocoaHeads member, or want to know more about MYCocoaHeads, or if you’re a Mac/iPhone (or iPod touch in Malaysia for political correctness) developer, do feel free to join us and contribute. Have a topic to share? Let me know and I’ll include you in your monthly meetups (which is every 3rd Saturday of the month unless explicitly stated).
You don’t need to be a Cocoa developer to join MYCocoaHeads too — if you’re any sort of programmer doing programming work on the Mac platform, you’re welcome. And if you’re a (any-UNIX-variant)-based programmer or FOSS developer, feel free to join us too! Heck - if you can code, you’re welcome (but note to Windows/.NET developers, we probably won’t be able to help you out on Windows specific things though!)
So drop by both the FOSS.my events and MYCocoaHeads events and give us a shout. See y’all. G’day and Happy Diwali to all Hindu friends and readers out there!
P/S: side note - the downside of working in an international setting is that a public holiday is almost never really a holiday at all, cos someone from another country who’s not on holiday doesn’t know you’re holiday-ing… back to work from home for me.
