tzlee.com/blog

  • Second Trip to Ikea

    Believe it or not, we spent $1,090.55 at Ikea last Saturday. This is our second trip to Ikea, so it’s almost $2,000 worth of Ikea stuff if we added up the first trip!

    I’ve decided to bring my Olympus DSLR along, so enjoy the photos that follow.

    Every Ikea trip starts with food…

    Meatball Spaghetti
    Meatball Spaghetti

    That’s Yanpo’s dish.

    Stuffed Salmon
    Stuffed Salmon

    Dear’s dish.

    Swedish Meatballs
    Swedish Meatballs

    I’m having the most popular dish at Ikea.

    Herring Plate
    Herring Plate

    Fish, to share. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who likes it.

    Fried Chicken Wings
    Fried Chicken Wings

    Who can resist these crispy, oily, golden brown wings.

    Feasting in Ikea
    Feasting in Ikea

    Look at these guys. They’re certainly enjoying the good food.

    Last Three Balls
    Last Three Balls

    The last of the balls before Yanpo had them all.

    HZ after a satisfying meal
    HZ after a satisfying meal
    Dear's new hair!
    Dear's new hair!

    Yes! Dear got a new haircut on Friday. Looks so cute!

    After a very satisfying meal, we went on to shop till we almost dropped. Here’s what we got this round…

    • Another small table as an extension to the current one for the study room.
    • Another table lamp to go with the new table above.
    • A 1 x 4 book shelve to go into the window recess in the study room.
    • Another 4 x 4 book shelve for the study room.
    • A floor protector for the study room. Expensive but hopefully useful.
    • A wine rack! YES! More reasons to stockpile Shiraz at home.
    • An armchair. It should stay in the master bedroom for now.
    • A small TV console for the master bedroom.
    • A sturdy step-stool to reach higher places. This is VERY useful for $29.
    • A mirror for the common bathroom. Expensive.
    • A water jug for cold water.
    • A temporary coffee table, which will become my tool table next time. Pretty cool table for $17.
    • Dustbins for the rooms, kitchen and toilets.
    • Some toilet accessories.
    Three Trolleys of Goodies
    Three Trolleys of Goodies

    That’s a lot of stuff! The shelves and armchair are the most expensive stuff of them all. The others are less than $50 items.

    Finally, I’m getting a Wii to keep us entertained on weekends!

  • SingTel Misleads Customers with iPhone Tethering

    I’ve been having problems trying to establish PPTP VPNs using my iPhone over my SingTel 3G connection. After quite a bit of troubleshooting, I found out that using the e-ideas APN assigns the iPhone a private IP address. I switched to the internet APN and the VPN worked right away.

    However, when I switched to the internet APN, the tethering option disappeared. So either way, I can’t establish a VPN using my laptop. Effectively, this means I’m having a 3G service that doesn’t work.

    So, I called SingTel’s helpdesk at 1626.

    I asked if I could use the internet APN for tethering. They said I can’t, and gave me some bullshit about the internet APN being billed differently from e-ideas.

    I asked if they could file a complaint for VPN issues over the e-ideas APN and they were so quick to disclaim their responsibility the moment I mentioned VPN; quicker than you can finish saying “boomz!” In fact, the customer service dude told me to call Apple when it’s obvious this wasn’t Apple’s problem.

    VPNs are common in enterprises and I believe a lot of people out there need it to work. I cannot believe that SingTel would just disclaim responsibility to support VPN over the iPhone.

    Worse even, some users in the HardwareZone Forum found out that using the e-ideas APN caps your transfer rates. This is something that’s not made known publicly, so if you are going to buy an iPhone with the SingTel iFlexi plans, please be aware.

    This is not the first time SingTel has played punk with its’ customers. Last year, SingTel added Value Added Services (VAS) to customers’ accounts. The unaware customer gets the service free for a short period of time, and then they are later changed.

    No, this is not the typical free service you get when you sign up for a new contract. SingTel actually added the services to existing customers!

    Such a business practice known as negative option billing is not only unethical, but also against IDA’s policies.

    When my wife called to cancel the service and asked for a refund, they rebutted and asked rudely if she had read her contract!

    I have already written a formal complaint to IDA, but have yet to receive a response from them.

    Think I whine a lot? Why not type SingTel Sucks into Google and read for yourself.

  • House Cleaning, Part Two

    A quick check on the to-do list:

    • Pass ah fen a hamster – done.
    • Grab the side table we ordered from Defu – done.
    • Pay the balance for the sofa and dining table and arrange for them to be delivered next week – half done. More screwups with the delivery.
    • Grab the trolley, TV and sub woofers from parent’s office. I left my new TV there for storage – done.
    • Bak Kut Teh at Jurong East for lunch at 1300 hrs – failed.
    • Clean the living room, and maybe three bedrooms if they get dusty again – done.
    • Figure out where to mount the bathroom accessories, and what else we need to buy – half done. We know what we want to mount, but haven’t figured what we need to buy.
    • Assemble the Ikea lamps – done.
    • Set up the home router. It’s going to a Linux box with Vyatta, then I can establish an IPsec Site-to-site VPN! Whoopee! – Not done!
    • Hopefully a karanguni drops by so I can get rid of the old ceiling fans – didn’t happen.
    Leaving Sakae Sushi at TradeHub.
    Leaving Sakae Sushi at TradeHub.

    When Ferren arrived at Jurong East, she found that the entire hawker center was under renovation, so we ate Sakae instead of Bak Kut Teh.

    Duckie smiling on the way to the new house.
    Duckie smiling on the way to the new house.

    Even Duckie’s excited about the new house.

    Study room cleaned and ready.
    Study room cleaned and ready.

    This is the study room with Ikea chairs and tables, all set up and ready for use.

    Watching TV in the living room after a tiring day.
    Watching TV in the living room after a tiring day.

    We watched G-Force and some crappy YouTube videos in the evening after two days of cleaning.

  • House Cleaning, Part One

    Sincere thanks to Hui Zhen, Ferren, Yan Po, Wen Xi, Chrispin and Sheng Xuan for helping clean the house. Every little bit counts!

    Unfortunately, I left my DSLR in the new house. I will get some photos and post them up tomorrow.

    Meanwhile, here’s what we accomplished today (Saturday).

    • Cleaned up the store room and moved the mess in the kitchen over.
    • Cleaned up all three bedrooms, kitchen, windows and grilles. Thanks ladies! Fantastic job.
    • Built the Ikea furnitures – a study table, two office chairs and a side table with drawers. Some instructions are wrong, especially the cheaper furnitures.
    • Installed the almighty lock that only requires one key for all! Whoopee. How I wish my car key could be used instead.
    • Set up the bed in the master bedroom.
    • Carpenter dropped by to inspect the work done on Friday.

    Here’s the agenda for tomorrow (Sunday).

    • Pass ah fen a hamster. 🙂
    • Grab the side table we ordered from Defu.
    • Pay the balance for the sofa and dining table and arrange for them to be delivered next week.
    • Grab the trolley, TV and sub woofers from parent’s office. I left my new TV there for storage.
    • Bak Kut Teh at Jurong East for lunch at 1300 hrs.
    • Clean the living room, and maybe three bedrooms if they get dusty again.
    • Figure out where to mount the bathroom accessories, and what else we need to buy.
    • Assemble the Ikea lamps.
    • Set up the home router. It’s going to a Linux box with Vyatta, then I can establish an IPsec Site-to-site VPN! Whoopee!
    • Hopefully a karanguni drops by so I can get rid of the old ceiling fans.

    I’m still thinking if I should start moving some old books and computer equipment. Maybe my R/C stuffs can go over too.

    The audio system will go over next week before the weekend, that’s for sure!

    More shopping list for next week.

    • A stool, just to facilitate cleaning some stuff that’s higher than us.
    • A (cheap) bicycle? Just to get to and fro the in-law’s place and Bukit Panjang Plaza.
    • A mini TV console for the master bedroom?
    • Another Ikea side table for the master bedroom?
    • Subscribe to StarHub TV and Internet! (Sorry SingNet, your marketing and helpdesk just fails me.)

  • DRAM Error Rates are Actually Hundred and Thousands of Times Higher Than We Thought

    DRAM, or commonly called RAM, is something we have on all computers and most mini electronic devices such as our mobile phones and portable players. Without them, computers won’t work. They hold vital data while they are in use, such as when you are editing your Excel spreadsheet, or when browsing a web page. Computer’s don’t work on data directly on the disk; once data is read off a disk, they are stored and worked on in memory. Yet Google did an extensive research and found that the error rates are much higher than we thought.

    A two-and-a-half year study of DRAM on 10s of thousands Google servers found DIMM error rates are hundreds to thousands of times higher than thought — a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year.

    This is the world’s first large-scale study of RAM errors in the field. It looked at multiple vendors, DRAM densities and DRAM types including DDR1, DDR2 and FB-DIMM.

    Every system architect and motherboard designer should read it carefully.

    Read the original article here.

    Time to buy ECC RAM as default for all systems. Chipkill should be in servers soon.

    Or maybe RAID5 for RAM, anyone? Buy 3 x 2GB, gives you 4GB with redundancy. Hot swappable… if possible.

  • Sun Netra T1 AC200 is Alive!

    It’s alive!

    I’ve finally decommissioned a server that has served me well for over 5 years. WhyMobile, IABPI and Naturext were the last sites hosted on the server.

    The old hefty 2U server is now sitting in my mum’s office waiting to be upgraded with a new motherboard, power supply and hard drives. It should serve well as a disk storage if configured right.

    I have just racked an old Sun Netra T1 AC200 in the empty 2U space. It’s 7 years old and had a dead motherboard. I’ve just gotten a motherboard replacement off eBay to get it working again. Now with a refurbished board, 2 x 146GB SCSI LVD drives (was originally 2 x 9.1GB SCSI LVDs – pathetic storage) running Solaris 10 and ZFS, it’s ready to go again. Unleash the power of an ancient 500MHz UltraSparc III with ZFS!

    Servers in Rack
    Servers in Rack

    The Sun Netra T1 AC200 is at the bottom of the rack. The first two silver/grey servers are production Sun X2100s running VMware. The third server in white is an OEM Asus server for development and testing. It was donated courtesy of Kelvin, and also runs VMware. The cardboard boxes contain spare disks and some other stuff… for disaster recovery.

    Network and Power Cables
    Network and Power Cables

    You can see an old 24-port Cisco 2950 switch here. It’s a workhorse. I’m thinking if I should get a spare. It’s not just a plain old switch, the servers are running tagged (or what Cisco calls “trunk”) VLANs.

    Every server has dual NICs. All the servers that run VMware are configured to run the dual ports on active-standby mode for port-level HA. I haven’t figured out how to do NIC bonding in Solaris, so that’s on my to-do list, albeit low priority at the moment.