Christmas Audition

I used to be a worship co-leader in my previous church. Worship was in my blood. I loved singing, played 2 instruments, and enjoyed the challenge and joy of jamming with a group of musicians while singing my heart out on a mike. I did that for 11 years. Since I joined the new church, I haven't been back in worship for over 3 years.

Today, I decided to take a small step toward an old dream. I went for an audition to sing in a Christmas musical. Apparently I passed with flying colors. I was told on the spot that I had passed, and was asked to go church on Sunday 2 hours before service for a briefing. Strangely, I felt very powerful after my audition. There was no dramatic emotional moment for me, but after the audition, I realised that something in my soul was starting to dance that I was getting back to what I loved to do, what was at the core of my being.

So what's the big deal? I'm just one out of 65 vocalists in a Christmas musical. I don't know, but it represents a milestone for me I guess.

Multitasker Meets Her Match

So I pride myself on the ability to multitask - I can perform up to 3 activities at the same time.

Example 1: I watch tele, eat and talk on the phone.
Example 2: I watch tele, blog and have an IM conversation.
Example 3: I am on IM, having a phone meeting and clearing my email box.

Oh, and my personal best: Having lunch, holding a phone meeting, replying an email, attending an IM conversation, and doing text messaging.

Last weekend, I met my match. While all my multitasking were done at my task, the new guy in my small group did it in a Karaoke room. An Australian born Chinese, he's in Singapore for a year and is a trained Physiotherapist. Last weekened, he invited me to join a bunch of friends for karaoke and I called my girlfriend along. Ended up, he gave all the gals (except me!) a good therapeutic massage in the karaoke room, while choosing songs, listening to other people sing, and singing along. He wins hands down...

Blog Googling

So while doing some blog reading, I came across an article that informed me that Google owned Blogger. My jaw almost dropped. That explains a lot. How that now I need to log into blogger beta with my google id & password instead of my original blogger credentials. How dense can I be?

What? You didn't know that too? When did this happen? Well according to reports, Google bought over Blogger as of Feb 2003. What? That was a long time ago? Yes, it was.

The Best and the Worst Web Tools

Wired News recently conducted a survey of the best and the worst web tools available on the web, and I was happy to see that I had discovered (and previously installed) 3 out of the 5 best web tools. Unhappily, due to migration to beta blog, I am still figuring out how to re-import them into this new template.

However, that doesn't stop me from sharing them here. Read the list from Wired News here:
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,71810-0.html?tw=wn_index_2

The New Wii from Nintendo

Even before its arrival, Amazon had such an overwhelming response to pre-orders for the Nintendo Wii that it had to end the offer and confirm how many units of the Wii would be allocated to them.

What is Wii? It is Nintendo's new game console that brings players to a whole new level of gaming. Instead of using just your thumbs to control the movement of characters, your actual body action will be mimicked by your character in the game. Imagine that you were in a kick fight in the game, and you would be actually punching away to ward off assailants. Mom better be putting away her valuable vases and chinaware...

Read more about the Nintendo Wii:

http://www.amazon.com/Nintendo-Wii-Games/b/ref=amb_link_3599232_1/104-7688539-4716759?ie=UTF8&node=14218901

The Magic of Administrator Access

Most of the time, Einstein's law stands true - Everthing that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong. While we constantly attempt to control all factors of everything we do so that the impact of this law is minimized (yes, I confess that I'm a control freak yet again), fate sometimes performs a rare act of kindness and you find an accident happening that actually REMOVES a big pain in your life. Like how penicillin was discovered, but I digress.

I remember blogging that my previous laptop had crashed. So when they gave me a new laptop, they weren't able to transfer my hard disk image to the new laptop as it was dead. Which means that they had to install ALL my applications to my laptop again. As I had to resort to tugging on a few (right) strings under consultation and support from my boss so that my need for a new laptop got immediate attention, the head engineer was assigned to my case instead of my regular engineer (No, I don't have a personal engineer assigned to me, but I have managed to obtain the direct line of one of the best engineers at work and made pals with him).

In my letter of complaint to a certain personnel that could make things move, I had highlighted the number of work days lost as a result of having laptops that were not functioning properly. As a result, the head engineer was under pressure to get me a new working laptop in the shortest possible time. So instead of taking a day to install all my applications (yes, I have a lot of applications installed because a web manager needs all kinds of tools to get her job done!) before giving me the laptop which was what my regular engineer did, he brought the new laptop to my work station and installed my applications in front of me so that I could see that he was working as hard as he could to get my system up and running for me.

While it was not a well calculated move (I had to make my phone calls sitting on my desk as he was hunched over my chair fixing my laptop), it did give me the peace of mind that he was installing the right applications and I was able to tell him what he missed and what settings were required.

So I have been working on my new laptop for 2 weeks, enjoying the new speed and quietness it gave without the "click-whirring" noise from my previous laptop before I made a discovery that would change my life! Ok, so I'm being dramatic. But it has made my life at work a lot easier.

When I was installing iTunes 7 on my laptop, my colleague in the next cubicle who was previously with the IT department commented that installation of iTunes required administrator access. See, our company has this policy that where users (i.e. me) would not be able to install programs without administrative access (i.e. a company engineer). This was to protect against employees installing pirated software on corporate laptops. Only certain programs like Yahoo Messenger! that were free for download did not require administrator access if we were not logged onto the company network.

I had assumed that iTunes was in the same category as Yahoo Messenger! until my colleague told me otherwise. He explained that the head engineer who had set up my laptop programs for me must have enabled administrator access on my laptop to install my programs and had forgotten to take it off. Apparently, he had administrator access on his laptop as well.

As I was sceptical, he located the "rights" folder on my laptop and lo and behold! The administrator access id was there. I was elated and gleeful. For every single program that I had required, I have had to find the application on our company network and request for permission to install something as basic as Photoshop. That request would be directed to my boss who had to approve it first before the IT department would grant me access to download and install it on my laptop.

This process could take from a couple of days (if my boss were in Singapore and I could pop into her room to highlight that I required her permission for a software installation) to almost never (when my boss was traveling without stop and there was no delegation of authority for such approvals). As this process was such a pain, I shunned from installing any application apart from those that were absolutely necessary for me to carry out my job.

Things were different now. I promptly installed the PC suit software for my mobile as well as the palm OS. Now both my mobile and clie UX50 are synced to my outlook calendar, contacts and tasks. I can check my next days' meetings on my phone (which alerts me 15 minutes before a meeting) and check off completed tasks on my palm. In addition, the complete profile of all work contacts (email, land line & mobile number) have been automatically updated to my mobile. To my amazement, apparently the syn works both ways as well - all the mobile text messages in my in and sent box in my handphone were also saved onto my PC. Talk about having a central terminal for all your communication messages!

I am now more mobile than ever. The level of my efficiency has just been upgraded, and will have any and every type of information I need with me all the time. The only downside is that the number of cables at my cubicle have increased (it now looks like a mini powerhouse!) and you will see chargers and syncing cables as well as my iPod hooked up to my laptop as a hard disk or during synchronization. I dread the day the world runs out of (electrical) power.

iPod Hard Disk Feature

Of all the consumer brands I am loyal to, none has delivered as much "customer service" as Apple. My trusty mac powerbook has not only provided me precious hours at hot spots and cafes. It has "saved my life" when I have forgotten assignments and tasks with a couple of hours to spare. Being light enough for me to carry almost everywhere with me, it was present with me during those times. I had been able to whisk out worship sheets, complete urgent articles and even performed HTML editing at a cafes with wireless connection.

Recently, another Apple product has "saved the day" for me, yet again. I am given only 2 gigs of network server space to store my working files and folders. I had been meaning to buy an external hard disk for when that space ran out. Busyness, and procrastination, found me at work one day when my file synchronisation between my local hard drive and my network folder failed because I had run out of network space.

As the documents I was working on for that week were important and urgent, I couldn't afford to not have backups. They consisted of vendor contracts, agreements and materials for a regional training that will be taking place in 2 weeks. However, my files weren't backing up, and I was out of time on my projects to make a trip down to Sim Lim square or Funan Centre to get a hard disk.

I stared at my laptop for 10 seconds before a flash bulb went on in my head. I whipped out my beloved iPod and hooked it up my laptop. After downloading the latest version of iTunes 7 which made switching between the iPod hard disk and entertainment features as easy as breeze, I simply dragged all my files on my network folder to my iPod and deleted them from the network drive after I backed them all up onto CD Roms as well.

So now I have a working system all set up. Only immediate folders that are required for current month's projects are found on my network drive. Every few days, I transfer new / updated files on my network drive to my iPod hard disk. And I a copy of all my files / folders cut out on CD Roms for easy access in the office if I should ever forget to bring my iPod (which is almost never) and needed files from past projects.

My take is that for all the brands I support, Apple is the only one that serves both consumer entertainment and practical functionality wrapped in stylish, sexy packaging. Future Apple upgrade plans? The Mac keyboard for composing songs and monitor for viewing television programs. *starts punching on calculator*