Never thought I’d see this, but I snatched it up the moment I spotted it. Not gonna say from where in case the manufacturer gets pursued for making counterfeit goods. ;p
Some things you just don’t hesitate in buying. 
Since I actually had time to log on and just post whatever.
Lots of things have happened during this long absence, with perhaps the biggest event being the migration of datacentre from Equinix to Ascenix. Hectic process, done in one single night (straddling my “25th” birthday and my wedding anniversary!), and then suffered another 5-6 days of inaccessibility due to IP migration. End of the day, it has all been settled, and I’ll now have to focus on looking to restructure and reorganise the rack, sometime soon. Now, I just have to let the network and servers prove themselves to be the reliable and stable platforms I’ve been claiming all along, and hope the customers who have been affected will place their trust in ConceptLane once more.
Times are bad, and the outlook is bleak. Just have to bite the bullet and try to survive. Gotta prepay for the rack, gotta prepay for office rental soon as well. Sigh. Too much to worry about, too much.
On a brighter note, Man Utd has inched closer to the top of the table, especially after a brilliant 3-0 win over Chelsea last weekend. Just where would United be without the brilliance of Sir Alex Ferguson, nobody knows. Looking further into the future, I dread the day his retirement and departure from the club is cast in stone.
Chinese New Year is approaching yet again, time to bleed (from the pockets) again. But with many a horoscope predicting a fairly good year ahead in terms of career/business, I’ll need to keep the faith.
I refer anyone and everyone to this article on Straits Times, and pay attention to MAS’ disclaimer.
Sure, it is easy to hide behind a set of rules and policies and laws. Should we get robotic monkeys to sit in their places and follow the rules and policies and laws then?
Strictly business:
1. The investors signed the agreements with the respective Singapore finance firms. I’d love to see hard copies of the agreements to see how these finance firms indemnified themselves against such a collapse. If they didn’t, then it is jolly-well their responsibility to keep their promise, for the choice of investment portfolio was theirs and theirs alone - it is as good as the firm saying “Please lend me some money so that I can invest and share some profit with you.”. I think this should be the way of interpreting the relationship between individuals and finance firms (banks including), not “Let us help you earn some money, but it is not our problem if our investments fail.”. Is there such a thing as “good faith” any more?
2. A government is there to protect its citizens. Why bother to have debates and pass bills then? Or should we start paying $50K/month salaries to robots who run such “daily affairs” and then another $50K/month to the brilliant individuals who take office and convene X times a year to say “aye aye” to whatever bills they want to pass? Those “brilliant human brains” are there for a reason - to think of solutions in times like this. But apparently, they are spent thinking how to balance their own books, such as slashing road taxes and increasing ERP rates, tearing down blocks of big HDB houses and then rebuilding them with small units at the same “market prices” etc etc etc. I could go on forever I think.
3. I digress a bit to the fact that DBS is also one of the guilty parties. And guess who is the parent company? Whatever and however it is linked to the government, there should be pressure exerted to assume responsibility for the wrong choice in choosing Lehman-linked bonds. Sure, who would know a 158-year old bank would collapse just like that? For goodness sakes, the very fact that individual investors probably do not get access to such financial data, or do not understand such financial data, is the very reason why they have a purpose in existing - to digest that info and make an informed choice of investment portfolios. How can banks and finance firms bear ZERO responsibility when they are the middleman? Heck, we should start gathering resources and form our own banks then.
Last but not least, experts at wayang should know when to wayang. Don’t do stupid things like “warning” the nation of bad times ahead and then release concrete figures a few days/weeks later, before proclaiming a stupid term like “technical recession”. What’s next, CPF board proclaims massive losses in the CPF funds after revealing that the funds were invested in Lehman as well? If that’s the case, the ones drawing millions per year should dig out their own accounts to make up the shortfall. Like any business, Pte Ltd or not, the directors/decision makers must be held responsible for misconduct/mishandling of business/company finances. So why should S’pore Pte Ltd be any different?
Want to be nannies, better be prepared to face up, or lose that “above all” tone when talking to us. Some of us don’t owe jack shit to the nation, even if our previous generation felt some sense of gratitude for the better lives, relatively speaking. Since when did we have the “class” mentality? Our fathers and grandfathers were sloggers, so we should continue to be? And thank our lucky stars we have some people “looking after us”? 1965 is 43 years back. Some debts do not last that long, and are not meant to be “carried forward”.
My mum got a rude shock yesterday morning when she received a call at 9am and heard me crying and asking her to get my dad to my location quickly because I was beaten up badly. She got my dad to drive her over to my place, and was panicking, shouting my name as she rung my home’s doorbell. And when she saw me all and well opening the door, it was a face of bewilderment.
Apparently, someone sounded just like me and called my sis’ place and claimed that “I” was beaten up (my mum goes over to my sis’ place to help her look after her kids everyday). Guess those scammers never thought that us 3 families lived within the same estate. And on my way to the office, apparently that scammer called again. Had I been around, I’d have asked for the location and the rundown on what happened. Then notify the police and ambush those buggers.
I wonder whether SingTel would cooperate if we reported the incident to the police. Would they dig out their call logs and trace the calling party? These scammers ought to be shot. Literally. These people are twisted and serve no purpose in the society, just like cockroaches.
Well, in summary, I bought a 500GB SATA2 HDD on 13 Apr… and it darn well failed on me on the next day when I installed it. First time a Seagate died on me so quickly… always had very good experiences with them, so I only purchase their HDDs. What’s more, 5 years warranty is not something any other brand can compete with.
Anyway, I then arranged to send the unit in for RMA last Friday. Except for the fact that it was a little hard getting to the location in the first place (just a tad, nothing a determined guy couldn’t overcome), everything went smoothly. Got my acknowledgment slip in 3 minutes, and left the RMA centre after that. 5 1/2 hours later, I got an email stating that my replacement drive is on the way. Woo!
And got a call duely on Monday morning that it would be delivered. Can’t beat that really, to ask for the whole process any faster on this little island would be too much in my opinion.