they say lightning doesn’t strike twice. then either i’m one very lucky or one very unlucky b*****d coz my tv, astro satellite decoder unit and ps3 was damaged, twice by lightning.  This happened three month’s back.

but, then again, tat is my life story. always seem to gain the short end or the longer end, depending on the case situation.

so, again back to the lightning thingy. normally, i would leave the astro decoder plugged to the antenna dish n has been in that set up for so long.  but if u noticed, weather has been crazy of late n as a result, one day after coming back from work, noticed that my astro wasn’t working. after checking with astro customer service n noticing some hints of burnt rubber from the decoder, astro said they’ll send their technician to replace the faulty unit. at first, i thought only the decoder was damaged. only when the astro technician came to replace the decoder n tried to view the channels thru my plasma tv, did we notice that the lightning had also damaged 1 of my 3 HDMI inputs. the technician said i was lucky coz most other tv have only 1 HDMI input. phew, crisis averted. n so i thought.

after that, i made it a ritual to remove the antenna connector from the decoder unit. but, as fate wuld have it, about one week after the earlier incident,  i did not remove the antenna connector coz i figured that come Sunday morning, i wuld wanna watch more tv. tat Saturday nite, it rained at 430 am n was awaken by the sound of lightning coz it was so loud ! Immediately, shoot, i said to myself n rushed to take out the antenna wire but I was too late. this time coz i also left my astro decoder, my tv n ps3 all on standby, all of them were now damaged by the lightning that striked the antenna dish. all of them now culd not be switched on ! sad ! can u imagine the frustration tat i had ! i was most worried bout the tv coz i thought i had to lug my 42inch Plasma Panny to the service center to get it repaired, and maybe pay an arm and a leg to get it fixed.

so the working day, i arranged to get all info on the related repairs coz i do not like my stuffs to be not working. either use it or throw/ keep it away, tat’s my motto. astro services was straight forward enuf. for as long as it was damaged by lightning, they will replace it FOC. phew. again, i dreaded to think and face the repair cost of my damaged tv as most manufacturers do not cover lightning damages.

Luckily, i went and bought and extended warranty coverage n it provided for FOC repairs for these cases, one time only. THANK GOD.  and more surprisingly, these modern flat screen tv’s do not require sending in for repairs. In my case, the Panny technician came to my house n after removing the back panels, replaced two motherboards that were damaged which incidentally if i were to pay wuld cost more than RM1,500 n it is now, good as new !

So easy

after purchasing the PS3 slim tat was also damaged, now, my AV centre is complete. forgive the geek talk but love my gadgets.  my latest edition is another media center from A.C. Ryan that i use to download my torrents and media storage for all my photos n videos.

so until i lower down my dish n no more becoming target practice to ‘em pesky lightning, i remove my antenna wires every time i leave the house. better be safe, rite. luckily my house is grounded well so not worried bout lightning damages thru electrical spikes, knock on wood.

Not sure wat to write next, but till then, hope all is good n may u be in good health.

]]> http://ahmadzul.net/?feed=rss2&p=187 0 http://ahmadzul.net/?p=183 http://ahmadzul.net/?p=183#comments Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:45:45 +0000 ahmadzul http://ahmadzul.net/?p=183 I m test blogging using my BlackBerry. Wonder how it will turn out.

Not exactly the best time to write but a commitment is as good as nothing without committing to it, or to that effect.  So, gonna write bout Pn Habibah bt Hj Musa, my auntie.  Three days back, TokMa; her pet name was admitted to Damansara Specialist Hospital as she had demonstrated small symptoms of heart problems, or for now it seems, . My cousins forced her to be admitted and when i went to visit her during my lunch break, she seemed her feisty self and determined to be out by that day. Though the doctors have not visited her, she remains adamant that she is well n it wuz juz a small ‘thingi’ and wuz not bothered bout it. So much so, she asked the driver to go n buy her some Chee Cheong Fun from her favourite place at WanU.  Not one to aggravate her, i still mentioned that she should not be eating stuffs like tat, at least for now. She argued and insisted that that dish was healthy and forced fed me one forkful, just to show she is and still in control again.

TokMa though very vocal in thoughts and actions, is always one of my loved and respected aunties, my mother’s third oldest sister.  I stayed with her when i waited for my SPM results and she too supported me when i went to Japan to pursue my studies.  She bought for me a full suit, gave me pocket money and stuffs. when i came back from Japan, she had a get together and prepared a feast for me and since i had not eaten a truly handmade, authentic Malay spread for 4years plus when i wuz there, even now i can still hear her recalling the 3hours i wuz in front of the table, eating away at all the food prepared….huh, those were the days.

on a another note to share, my dearly departed grandma did not like to idea of me going to Japan, especially coz of the hardship she had to endure during the WW2 occupation of Japan. But my mother and aunties, especially Tokma talked and convinced her that tat wuz the best for me.  She relented coz it seems i wuz among her two favourite grandsons.  May peace be upon you, Nenek Hasnah.

Tokma has been discharged but hope to GOD that GOD will be kind to her in her later age as how she has been kind to all that she has cared for, for all these years. All of my aunties have the biggest heart you could ever imagine, so love them all dearly.

That reminds me. Have not called my mother. Good day too to call her coz it’s a Friday, a holy day. So allow me to log off, n will write next about Astro and their ‘not so clever’ latest customer ’service’ initiative. PEACE all.

anyhu, been promising myself to update this site since i just renewed it’s first year subscription fee.  so to start off, i wanna update on this first. my new phone.

i wuz very excited when i got to know tat SonyEricsson wuz launching a new smartphone. so, i spent with the consent of my loyal wife, a silver X1, which was just launched a couple of months’ back. wuz quite happy with the phone coz it wuz solid, quite fast n ran on WinMo so i culd install n try out  a lot of third party softwares out there. It wuz fine for bout two years but as luck(let’s call it tat) wuld have it, it is now a useless brick. to be fair, it did survive a bit of a dunking but at the end of the life, the microphone totally went and the last straw(for the phone, at least) came when the slider function stopped working. when i slide out the screen, it wuld go blank. everytime! so tat wuz my cue to find a new phone.

to be fair, i can send it for repairs, which i will, soon ! but to replace my phone and me, being a gadget freak, i had to find an equal or better replacement. after much searching, decided to try the fad, Blackberry phones. scoured n found out tat my operator wuz havin a promotion n immediately when to buy it. the model i wantd wuz quickly running out of stock n went to shops to buy it. to be honest, the decision to buy wuz a quick one, which is not me. Tq boss for letting me come in a bit late.

so now, i own a Blackberry Bold2. initial impresssions; it wuz wide n big, compared to the X1. but after using it for more than one plus month, size is not much of a problem n the most impressive function tat i have of tis phone, is the ability to be online n connected, any time. mails, sites n info from internet is juz a touch away so, in summary, did not regret my purchase.

me thinks, enuf for today so i end here. will update more of my ‘projects’ in the coming days and i wish peace and happiness to all.beeaway from my site for quite some time, duh…my fault  becoz of me, myself n I. wonder tat tell me sometin bout me, other than what i know of myself.

Contemplating since a few months back, it took me a while to decide to go with plasma technology as opposed to LCD. Did a lot of reading and research on the internet as well as using my own eyes to decide which technology shall i invest in. with importance being natural color reproduction n good high speed representation, plasma proved to give better performance as compared to the digitally superior LCD units nowadays.

However, the down side is, and this is usually unspoken of, are the downside of plasma tv, that they consume more electricity and have a burn-in concern as well as running-in period for plasma units.  my advise is to please do ur research thoroughly and decide what u want from ur investment.

so, in the end i bought a Panasonic S Series sized 42 inches.  this unit has full HD capabilities and only when hooked to a blu-ray player n in my case, my ps3, do u really see and appreciate the buzz of fullHD.  so now, quite happy with my purchase n even more looking forward to seeing the colors come alive once i pass the 400 to 500 hours mark.

gotta to go n do some house chores before going off to bed.  missed the date of 9/9/9 to which i initially planned to post something, i post this and will continue later, god willing.  have a great day ppl.

so, in place for today, i will post pictures of several products that have attracted me within this one week.  these products were taken from one of my sites that i rss to which is http://www.engadget.com.  They scour and post various products  details and highlight the fun, the good and the beautiful.

so what i extracted among the products posted from endgadget are a table, an ice bucket and a usb drive.  i like the table coz it has highlights of whales swimming around the base of the table. 

very green and beautiful, i must say. as for the next product, it is a very neat ice bucket.  Wonder why no one thought of tat particular design till now coz it looks so modern and yet functional.   and it won a red dot design award, so it is a very well designed product, as judged by fellow professionals.  Lastly is the smallest yet trendiest usb drive i hav laid my eyes on.  So small, tat if it were sold here, i wuld buy it instantly just for the sake of owning it.  To me, it is one of those products tat speaks for themselves.  small as it is, it pack abig 16Gb so it is not juz for show but a fully fuctional product, on its own.

the link to the ice bucket is as such.  http://www.drinkstuff.com/products/product.asp?ID=5443&catID=-1&name=DO+Cooler+Ice+Bucket&recursive=true&newin=true.  the link to the usb thumb is as such. http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/24/buffalos-16gb-5mm-thusb-umbkey-its-really-small/.

well, this was my fair share of good product design highlights and wishing you all the creativity and resources to create and enjoy these innovative products. See ya later.

Courtesy of Citizens for Legitimate Government:

The NSA is doing continuous intercepts of phone calls and personal email of all Americans, not to mention foreigners.  In a manner that hasn’t been stated, someone momentarily roused Congress from its slumbers and it became irritated because it discovered the NSA’s spying is much worse than they initially disclosed.

Are we surprised?

The only surprise here is that Congress is surprised by this.  The NSA and related agencies have been reading our emails and listening to our telephone calls for years.  Only after 9-11 did these agencies find an official excuse to admit they were eavesdropping.   And now Congress, agitated because their nap was interrupted, is mad because the NSA is spying more than they said they were at first.

Is your head spinning yet?

“It’s OK to steal, but you’re stealing a lot more than you said you were.  No fair!”

The NSA’s little bundle of joy is called Pinwale and is a database confirmed to be running today.

Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, is troubled by the NSA’s handling of domestic communications.

Good for Rush: he’s troubled.  Notice that the emphasis is on handling of domestic communications. Notice that this is only after someone roused Congress.  Does the phrase `too little too late’ mean anything?  Apparently not to Rush.

To make this travesty even more absurd, the Justice Department and national security officials have excused this heinous violation of privacy and liberty by stating that the overcollection was inadvertent.

“We meant to deprive you of privacy but we slipped and deprived you of more privacy than we thought.  Awful sorry.”

Mind you, part of this debacle is the result of Congress allowing even more spying in legislation last year.  (it’s for the children) So once again we have Congress making legislation on topics it cannot possibly understand.  Then we have the president (Bush in this case) and his bosses telling Congress they have to put all sorts of unconstitutional legislation through.  They dutifully bend over, possibly thankful that anybody noticed them in the first place.

This investigation is merely an attempt by Congress to cover its ample bottom.

The NSA had no comment.

Go ahead; make tin-foil hat jokes NOW!

End of article.

Those are the activities of the US’es NSA. They are doing their job and i must ask here, why wuld anyone be afraid if he/she was not doing anything wrong or illegal.  But when i put my self in the writer’s shoes and imagined if over here, they too had activities of the same sort, how wuld i feel ? Well, i can safely say tat i hav not committed any acts that may be construed as violating any law, be it major or minor, so am not worried.  BUT still, I wuld rather not have anyone looking over my shoulders, policing every breath and step I take.  So, I let them do their job whilst i go ahead with my life, not worried a bit coz got nothing to hide. And that is the truth.

anyhu, my kid brother, wife n Yasmin went back to Melaka with me for the weekend. So, i was quite looking to bringing all of them back n brighten up my parents day and especially for this week. they greeted us when we arrived which was about noon and as usual, my mother wuld be fussing around n my father was already opening a few durians that he bought earlier.  We all dug in n me, dug in too deep n when time came to have lunch,  i ate only a bit coz was stil full with durians.  in the evening, we all siesta’ed and come nite time, my kid brother being among the most experienced in grilling, took charge n started the BBQ tat was our celebration for father’s fathers day. half way thru the cooking, my third brother n family came back n though my pilot brother was nt around, i m sure we all understood his job n commitment. so there they were, dining alfresco style at the patio whilst some of us, were inside eating fruits and watching tv. i was busy wit my nieces and nephews so by the time i took pictures, most of them were done n in the picture is my father, my wife in orange n the pair in dark t-shirts is my kid brother, EVO magazine Motoring Editorial and the wife.

come sunday morning, my kid brother has to leave n cover the Japan GT race and later in the afternoon, we sent his wife n Yasmin back to Jalan Ipoh.

I write in full to remember the evening that was both bitter sweet. the resentment is still there coz of the hurt n evaluating whether trust can be given where it is due. well not that particular nite. not able to put in details what this last paragraph means and all will be revealed in good time.

last words here is that we hope my parents n my wife’s mother remain well n always be protect by GOD and happy and well always. To those who have passed away , may GOD be kind to them, as how they took care of us when we were young.  ending this session now n hoping for better days ahead.

This non mechanical product has six very high performance magnets that attaches to the outside oil filter canister, creating a 360degree magnetized surface that attracts metal particles from the oil, before it passes thru the paper filters.  You may say that that is exactly the role of the paper filter, which is designed to filter any contaminants.  However, u can also imagine the extreme conditions of heat, pressure and shear forces from the oil and contaminants that the paper filter has to endure and this is where Magnetrap will better improve the performance of the oil filter.

As shown in the illustration extracted from this link, we see the inner movements of oil in the oil filter.  With Magnetrap, metal chips and particles will stick to the inside walls of the magnetized canister and as a result reduces the stress on the paper filters by preventing hard materials from flowing thru the paper filter medium.  This creates a condition where only dirty oil is allowed to pass thru the filters and comes out relatively cleaner than before.

Me, being very careful about the maintenance of my two not so new cars, have used Magnetrap for several years and it has not presented my with any problems, whatsoever.

Sold at below RM70 and will last for many years, any car will benefit from using the Magnetrap, regardless new or not so new car models.  The ring is designed to fit most passenger cars and can be purchased at any Proton Edar service branches.  For details, do liaise with the service advisors there.