Friday, September 19, 2008

MCP certified

Today marked an important day in my IT career as I manage to add an additional certification to my resume that has been rusty since 1999 for a Microsoft last certified cert.

Well done. Keep it up!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

CD Rom playing not smoothly

My PC DVD-ROM was not operating efficiently lately. I used to have this month for many years. And I have been bearing with it until recently I manage to find a solution and the problem of it.

I used to play Command and Conquer and the video clips seems to flick and not running smoothly. The DVD led light was blinking quickly, working very hard.

Not until recently, I became fishy and wanna nail down the problem.

Presto! Set the IDE channel in your PC, Start--> Program--> Control Panel--> System--> Device Manager

Looking out for Secondary IDE Channel (Assuming your CDROM is there!)

Set the default DMA mode to PIO.

In my case, my cdrom is only PIO.

It does the trick.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Lesson learnt on Budget Airlines

My first experience with budget airline was back in 2004 with Ryanair flying from Belgium to London for my honeymoon. It was so exciting and looking forward as I book the ticket online back home in Singapore and fly all the way to London, complete my Europe tour and then back to London via Ryanair. The experience was good though.

Thereafter, I have tried several trips from Senai, JB to Kuala Lumpur by Airasia. Also, on a company trip to Ho Chi Ming with Jetstar Asia. Most recently I got on a personal trip with one of the local budget airlines.

The experience wasn't very pleasant at all.

I booked my ticket for family of four last month to fly to Bangkok scheduled this December. My booking experience through their website is not pleasant. I have made several 'expensive silly' mistakes such as clicking "yes" for the extra baggage which inccur additional $10 fees for each way, which means $20(both way) * 4 = 80 on the additional luggage. All because that I did not read the selection option carefully. My fault I admitted.

Then, on proceeding with the payment in the summary screen, I wanted to know how much it cost for the insurance as it was not stated. I have to perform select & deselect for insurance option to see if there is any fee difference and ended I had paid more but without insurance coverage. Upon calling the customer officer, they insisted that I did not choose the insurance option. Then how come I am still being charge more as the price remain same? The website only showed the lump sum of price without the break down as in how much it cost person per sector in the final screen or the reservation e-ticket.

Also, this airline has changed my departure schedule and notifying their customers via email. They have arrange for an hour delay of flight. What happen to people who don't check their email or if the email was lost or went into spam etc...? Is this a professional service to notify customers on change of flying schedule? How about any compensation or refund for those customers who cannot make it for the changed schedule?

Last but not least, booking a budget airline early does not guarantee a cheaper fare but waiting for their anniversary or other promotion will guarantee you a very much more better deal.

Lesson learnt.

Anyway, found some article talking about relevant budget airlines to share.
http://talkback.stomp.com.sg/forums/showthread.php?t=41551

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Digital Photos Develop

This is my second experience developing digital photos. Last was like 8 months ago. The shopkeeper then already advised me to be careful about cropping.

The same mistake made again as I have long forgotten and was kinda of rushed today.

Basically, the ratio for 35mm equivalent is usually 3:2 while my digital camera Ixus uses the 4:3 ratio.