ぼくの日記

Monday, March 06, 2006

New Duel with JxMMy

6th March 2006, Monday

As quoted off Bobby, "so fast Monday again"....
Indeed the weekend gone by so fast, it leaves no extra minute for us to relish it ....
As the island was shock by the gruelling murder of a 2 year old Malay toddler in the hands of her step father ans stuffed her decomposing corspe under an expressway of all places, I spent most of it with my lass to get our well-treasured newly acquired gadget into gear...

Yes if you had not guessed it by now, our new toy is a 5th generation iPod well capable of playing video which really was a luxury...
iPod was meant to play endless hours of music but with this capability, as I mentioned I could have anime on the go which was exactly was a dosage delivered to us on the journey to her friend's Jack's house warming party as we enjoyed the pilot episode of "Shinigami no Ballard" on the MRT...

I had problem finding an encoder to convert normal video files I have such as avi or divx into mp4 version which the iPod recognises.
A call to the Apple Care Hotline was of no use as the technician on duty on Friday whom I am sure is one of those influx of IT experts from India's Silicon Valley and speaks in such computerised digital way, makes me ponder for a second or 2 whether is there a real person on the other line. He kept insisted my query about a suitable software as a technical problem which requires my iPod ID which I did not possess at that time.
Infuriated, I just hung up, felt the hotline is of no use at all. In the end he did sent me a few links for FAQs about uploading video onto iPod which didn't really nullify my doubts anyway.
Therefore a visit to Apple Center @ Orchard in Wheelock Place is crucial as they had the free ware to recommend and indeed through them, we got this Videora iPod Converter free from the internet which is relatively ease of use and hassle free...
My lass was also very into the idea of converting DVD files to be watched on iPod which requires some streaming and so far the free ware is not that easy to figure by yours truly.
Over at the Apple Center, we met this friendly sales guy named Benedict who helped us to properly stick the plastic covers to protect the screen and overall body of the iPods. Needs a lot of patience and intricacy to do a elegant stick job without any bubble nor dust particle stuck in it.
He even meticulously trying to complete the task despite the store has been shut at the stroke of the closing hours. Kudos to the man!
Actually intended to trade in my original "Poddy MKI" for some Apple vouchers to purchase some of the auxillary items especially the power adapter which unlike the 3rd Gen was not included this time round. However with the kitty offered only at $60, I felt it's better to keep Poddy around for enjoyment for others which can still last a while despite an ailing battery.

Back at work, the usual housekeeping chores for me in the morning and a run in the gym during lunchtime when I witness Lee Ang becoming the first Asian to win an Oscar for Best Director for his effort in "Brokeback Mountain" while the movie was pipped for the Best Picture by the dark horse, "Crash".
Meanwhile Reese Witherspoon grabbed the Leading Actress award for "Walk the Line" and a lesser-known actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Leading Actor in "Capote".

As the title implied I engaged in my first tussle with JxMMy for a long time to come...something to savor for my every increasing chapters of "Tension with JxMMy".
On Friday afternoon, there was an unexpected amount of plates to process from the German collaborators whose sending rate is erratic and reached the threshold on Friday, jamming the machines to the maximum.
However I was in dire need to run a batch of samples from our own project which is a repeated batch since the orginal batch of results thoroughly failed as the day before, our so-called Lab manager put others' samples in precedence over ours.
His efforts always won accolades from others but totally stuffed out from his own colleagues as we should be having the priority especially our samples are precarious and tend to fail if kept in the room temperature for too long.
Which was why I needed to clear that block there and then while others could actually wait due to the sturdy nature of their samples.
But NOOOooo... he just gotta removed the schedule list I had put up and replaced with the others, drawing my irk and refuted him for his claim as he in the end realized that my point was more efficable since ours are repeats and quantity of the templates would run out if the results failed once more and we go for yet another repeat.
It's been a while since he stepped on my tail and I don't relish that feeling for sure and it is 100% confirm both of us won't be sending each other X'mas cards this year....
I left in a huff that afternoon, feeling all my hard work to work slightly overtime then was been quashed by one man's action....
Anyway his curse returned once more as when he wasn't around for a fornight the entire service was running like a well-oiled engine with little blemishes and complains..then when he made his return, one of machines started mixing up everyone's samples to the dismay of the users (or ingrates as I like to know them as)....

Japanese word of the day: 決闘(Duel) Sure is more exciting than any Chinese pugilist novel around for the tension we had...

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