Yes. My coins deposit yesterday has cleared, with the total of RM418.03. Not bad. But before I start using this money buying unneccessary stuff, it’s a lot better to use this money to settle my debt.

It’s not the courts payment that you think. There’s this one installment purchase that I made from Courts Mammoth for my bedroom set. So with haste, I got to go to Courts Mammoth today, and get this purchased settled.

Aaaahhhh.. One debt out, and one asset acquired.

Well. There is this one more debt from Courts Mammoth that I need to clear (on top of my credit cards debt). Just a little bit more actually.

• 0 Comments

There’s a saying that goes Sikit sikit lama lama jadi bukit. I don’t the the equivalent english proverb for this (anyone know?).

I have started keeping loose change for my daily expenses in a container for quite sometimes. As of 20th April 2005, this is how much coins that I have collected.

And as of today, I’ve collected even more, and I think it’s time for me to bank this in. Being ambitious, decided to count how much I have collected. First, I sort the coins into denomination, and start counting the 50 sen and 20 sen coins.

Sigh. This is tiring. There are plenty more to go for 10, 5 and 1 sen coins. I guess lets the machine in the bank does the counting.

I have banked in the coins today, and for coins deposit, there will be 1 day float. So I guess tomorrow only I can know how much coins I have.

• 4 Comments

Yes. Finally I have found a buy for my 4th generation (with photo) 60GB iPod. I really sell this at a very good bargain. Scratch free iPod (as from the first day I bought it, I put it right away into the casing), the casing itself (worth RM100ish if to buy a new one), iTrip (again, worth RM100ish) and boxes that are still in month condition – all of that for RM550.

I just can’t wait to get myself a new iPod – the 80GB fifth generation one (with video). It happened that there is a promotion at that time, where I get free charger and Sonic Gear speaker.

Sometimes, things just doesn’t make sense. I got my 60GB iPod for about RM1900++ last time. But this new one, 80GB (20GB more that previous one), and with extra function – video, it costs less that what I paid for 60GB last time. This one is selling at RM1499. I guess the packaging cuts the cost quite a lot. Smaller box, and iTunes is no longer provided in the CD, but you have to download yourself from Apple website. That cuts the cost significantly I guess.

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My 300GB Maxtor harddisk is at the critical level now. About 5GB free space left. It’s time for me to do spring cleaning, burning some files to DVD.

Most of the stuffs in that harddisk come from P2P sources – torrent, eMule, Ares, Limewire – to name a few. Sometimes, I just simply download things, and just left the file untouched and unexplored in the harddisk.

So, I found this one very interesting file, which I don’t really remember when I download it. It’s Sailor Moon – Super Dance Lesson.

There is 1 song that that is very catchy, and I kinda like it at my first time of hearing it. Here’s is the song, “Here We Go!”

You want to sing along? Sure! Here’s the lyric for the song.

Yume miteta
I had a dream
Kiseki ga kuru no wo matteta
Where I was waiting for a miracle
Isshun no kisu kimagure na no?
Was that sudden kiss just a fluke?
Ne “gomen” nante zuruiyo
Hey, it’s not fair to stop and say “Sorry”

Mada suki na koto
I still can’t tell you
Watashi kara wa kiridasanai
What I want to tell you
Mata narande sora wo miyou
So I’ll stand beside you gazing at the sky again
Chansu nara ima da yo!
If I’m waiting for a chance, now’s it!

Tsunaida yubi tashikameteru
Our interwined fingers will tell me
Mou hitori de sayonara kimenai de
I should stop deciding it’s over all by myself

Here we go!
Atarashii futari nara mae yori umaku iku ne
With a new “us”, I’m sure we’ll do better
Kyou wo shinjiru chikara de
With the power to believe in today
Unmei kaetekou
We’ll change our destiny

Here we go!
“Daisuki” tte ienakute kokoro ni shimaikonda
Unable to say “I love you!” I retreated into my heart
Tooku hanareta mita
And stayed far away from you
Yuuhi no kazu dake
But I want all sunsets,
Anata ni agetai
To give them all to you
I love you

I know that your feet start to tap to the beat. If you want to dance along, don’t worry. The lesson is provided here.

Swing, jump, land, jump, jump
Cross, stomp, cross, stomp, cross, stomp
Pa, kem, pa, kem, pa, kem, pa, kem, pa
Soto, naka, soto, naka, soto, naka, soto, naka
Big circle, I love you
Bang

You’re good at it already? Now, lets try with music.

Practice hard until you do okay! And guess what, dance really is the mark of a true guardian. So, if you are good enough already, let’s transform into guardians!

Moon Prism Power!
Jupiter Power!
Luna Prism Power!
Make Up!

• 4 Comments

Bob went to Indonesia again this Labour Day and Wesak Day holidays. This time, to Jakarta. He promised me to get all other CDs that he didn’t manage to get from his Medan visit last time.

He’s back, and I can’t really wait to see him as he SMS me that he got the CDs that I want already. So first thing that I do upon arriving office today is to see him, and get these CDs from him.

I’m very happy! All of these CDs are old albums already, but I like them very much. Couldn’t get the CDs in Malaysia, and the MP3 that I downloaded from the internet for these albums sounds crap.

Hey. There’s a pink hippopotamus next to my new CDs in the photo above. Well, that hippopotamus is one of the three stooges that guards my office PC.

So basically what they are saying is “We are watching you!!” for anyone that come to my cubicle.

• 2 Comments

Lately, it seems that my house has been infested by ants. It started with a few, but now, they are in a big size now.

I guess they have set up a colony at the roof of my house since when I follow the trail, the trail ends up going into the ceiling of my house, to the roof top.

They causes a lot of trouble. If I give food for my cat, the uneaten one got covered with thousands of ants pretty quick, which it usually ended up being thrown into the dustbin since my cats didn’t want to eat food with ants in anymore.

To make it worse, it even near any water source. Each time I want to take out hot water from my kettle, I have to let the nozzle flow through the hot water for several seconds as there are lots of ants in it.

This is just the time that I have to do something with this. So, went to Ace Hardware after work, I got this Terro Liquid Ant Killer.

How to use this? It is quite simple. Just tear the piece of cupboard from the carton, put a few drops on, and place the cupboard where the ants are.

How this works? This is something from the box:

First ants will come in large numbers, but soon disappear. This product is specifically formulated to allow worker ants to consume the product and survive long enough to carry the liquid back to the nest and deliver a dose to the rest of the colony.

But what about my cats? What if they accidently eat the liquid (my cats are known for climbing up high places and will found the cupboard with the liquid that I place on the rack in the kitchen)

TERRO® Liquid Ant Bait is a sweet food based product similar to pancake syrup combined with Borax. Borax is a mineral that is mined in the desert in California and is a common active ingredient that is used in soap products such as 20 Mule Team Borax.

The product kills ants but will not harm people or pets. If you spill some on your skin there will be no reaction at all. Simply wash with warm water.

Pets occasionally find the Terro and eat it. Our advice when this happens is to do nothing at all. The product is not toxic enough to cause a problem and the pet will be just fine.

Good! That sounds promising, and I should not worry about it then.

• 6 Comments

Bob, my officemate has recently went to Medan, Indonesia. And it’s a normal thing he received a lot of cd buying request while he was there. So, I made request too, asking him to get the 2 Dygta albums (Persembahan Jiwa & Pecinta Sejati), and also all La Luna’s album that he can find.

But after he came back, he said it’s rather hard to find good cd stores in Medan, where he told me that he can only get the latest Dygta album. Dygta got latest album?

As a matter of fact. They do. Dygta – Bukan Kekasih Setia is their latest album. I’m so happy. Even though that Bob didn’t manage to get other CD that I ask his help to buy, this album already makes me happy.

And here is the track list for this album.

Rp 30,000 for an original CD. That’s about RM11.36. Bloody cheap for original CD. If I ever have a change to go to Indonesia, I just can’t imagine how much CDs that I will buy there.

Anyway, I’ve been a big fan of Dygta for so long. But after listening to this album, I still like their second album, Pecinta Sejati the most, out of all their 3 albums. I bet Mala will be wanting to get MP3s for this album. Am I right Mala? Hehehe..

Well, do you know that you can peep at what I’m currently listening to at my Last.FM profile?

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Looking back at 1 and 1/2 years back, I feel really stupid on why I have my own domain managed by someone else. I don’t have the ownership at all to something that I call my own domain.

I remember clearly, when I first set up my website at mohdimran.com (which hosted at mesrahosting.net at that time), I did ask them what’s the login for my domain on onlinenic.com if I want to manage my own domain? But I didn’t get a reply from them (as expected).

I get to know Google Apps for Your Domain product from Google for so long already. More about this product is here. But I didn’t have change to use it since I don’t have complete control of my domain.

Now with my domain moved to godaddy.com, and I have nearly complete control over it (except deleting domain), I can change DNS, add CNAME aliases and change MX Records, things that Google Apps for Your Domain ask you to do.

My current hosting doesn’t come with email solution, and it is sold as seperate package. But fear not, Google Apps for Your Domain is there, where I can have 2GB of free email space, accessible online and with Gmail like interface (which I like very much). So here it is, my own email service at
http://mail.mohdimran.com/.

At the moment, I’m using TagMe! logo until I can find a better logo for mohdimran.com. Not just that, I also have http://calendar.mohdimran.com/, which both mail and calendar are accessible from http://start.mohdimran.com/.

What about blog? I remember someone asking me – I have my own domain name, I have hosting, why not run wordpress and I can have my blog at my own domain. But I kinda fallen in love with blogger already. It’s free, it fast and full featured (with the new version of blogger now), and uptime is much guaranteed. But the drawback is, I need to stick with using http://blog.mohdimran.com/ for the address.

But wait there. That’s no longer a case. Upon visiting my blogger dashboard today, I found the following text about Blogger Custom Domains.

The new version of Blogger now supports using a custom domain for serving your blog. If you already own a domain named, say, mysite.com and want your blog to be served at that address instead of at a blogspot.com address, we can host your blog on that domain for you — for free. Your old Blog*Spot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers.

This is so exiting, and I just configure my blogger right away – create a CNAME at my domain, then edit some settings in blogger (just refer to the link above to know more about this). As a result, my new blog address is

Update your bookmark folks! But http://blog.mohdimran.com/ will still be accessible. I’m so happy. I can use my own domain in the address, but everything stays on blogger server as it is. I’m very happy!

• 6 Comments

The past 2 days have been one of the happiest time of my life, and particularly today, I feel like I’m flying high. Sorry, I’ve been quite for a while, and it’s for a reason. I’ve been struggling (take not that the word struggling is bold) to get mohdimran.com up and running again, and being in fiery situation that I don’t have mood to blog.

To those who is wondering what really happened to mohdimran.com, or to TagMe!, here are the events in the chronological order that really put me in a very mess, wearing and fiery situations.

November 23, 2006
Received a call from mesrahosting.net, telling me that my hosting is using too much resources. And they said it comes from tagboard. They ask me to do something about it. I have a bad feeling already, so my immediate remedy is to close the new registration to TagMe!. Blog about this is here.

January 15, 2007
My hosting has been suspended, with this message shown “Suspended Due Overload Resources, Please Check Your Email For Latest Update”. Called mesrahosting.net, and they said they have sent me email about the matter. I said I didn’t receive any. Then he ask me to speak to Mr Zainul, and gave me his phone number. Give the fella a call several times, but not picked up. Called mesrahosting.net again, and ask them to leave a message to Mr Zainul to call me back about my hosting.

January 16, 2007
I think I had enough with mesrahosting.net. It’s better for me to terminate my account here, and find hosting somewhere else. I don’t really care that I still got 8 more months before my hosting is expired. The most important thing now is for me to able to transfer mohdimran.com domain somewhere else.

Gone through their Terms and Conditions on how to terminate account, and below is the screen capture of the exact texts that I found.

And that is what I did, sending account termination request to cancel@mesrahosting.net. And haven’t heard anything yet from Mr Zainul, so gave mesrahosting.net a call again today. My call couldn’t get through, but instead being picked up by answering machine. I wonder what time their office closed (I gave them a call around 3pm something). I tried the online support on their website, but no one pick up the session too.

I’ve also initiating a domain transfer request from current onlinenic.com, current registrar, to godaddy.com, new registrar. Since the domain is registered under their name, the email of the next steps for the domain transfer is sent to domreg@mesrahosting.net.

January 17, 2007
Didn’t receive any news yet from mesrahosting. I’m getting really tired about this. I tried the online support again, and manage to talk to them. Below is my chat transcript with the fella

Company: MesraHosting.net
Department: MesraHosting.net Support
Name: Administrator
Email: admin@mesrahosting.net
Day: Wed 01/17/07 03:38 pm
** You are now speaking with Administrator, MesraHosting.net Support.
**
Administrator : Selamat datang ke Pusat Bantuan Pelanggan Mesra,
Boleh saya bantu anda?
Administrator : nama domain anda ?
Imran : mohdimran.com
Administrator : ok . .apa yang boleh saya bantu ?
Imran : semlm, saya ada hantar email pasal nak terminate saya punya
akaun. nak checklah pihak tuan/puan ada dpt ke tak
Administrator : saya tak dapat lah .. u hantar ke email mana ye ?
Imran : saya hantar dekat cancel@mesrahosting.net
Administrator : ok .. boleh tolong hantar ke support@mesrahosting.net
Imran : okie. saya akan forward email tu balik
Imran : dan satu lagi. saya ada request domain transfer
Imran : dia ada hantar email dekat domreg@mesrahosting.net utk
authorization
Imran : so harap2 boleh authorizekan…

Sigh! Now they ask me to send the account termination request to support@mesrahosting.net.

January 18, 2007
Still no call from Mr Zainul, and I still don’t know what is the status with my mohdimran.com domain transfer request. They should forward the email that godaddy.com sent to domreg@mesrahosting.net. I called Zainul, couldn’t get through. Then called mesrahosting.net. The receptionist said that I should speak to Nurul, but she’s out for lunch already. Call her again after lunch, and only manages to get her at 2:40pm, where she told me to call back in 15 minutes time, where I have meeting at 3.00pm. Another day wasted.

January 24, 2007
Oh dear. I’m exhausted already with all the phone calls. Called mesrahosting again, and I get Nurul again. She’s making mundane voice, which implicitly said “sigh… this guy again….”. And same answer that I get – I need to talk to Mr Zainul. Arrgghhhhh. Why it always has to end up me to call Mr Zainul. Ok. This time, I tried to called him 5 times, but same as last time, my phone is not even picked up. Actually, on the mesrahosting.net website, there are 4 phone numbers of which they claim – Live Technical Support. One of the number is Zainul’s number, so I gave a call to other 3 numbers. The outcome – 2 numbers cannot be reached, and 1 number didn’t picked up. Ok. My last resort. I sent email to support@mesrahosting.net, using a bit of harshed words. And below is what I sent to them.

from: Imran Ismail
to: support@mesrahosting.net
date: Jan 24, 2007 4:16 PM
subject: Status mohdimran.com
mailed-by: gmail.com

Kepada sesiapa yang berkenaan.

So macamana nih. Dah byk phone calls saya dah buat kat mesrahosting.net. Dan dah banyak kali saya try call En Zainul, tapi tiada jawapan. Dah hampir 2 minggu akaun saya kena suspend, dan request saya untuk pembatalan akaun dan “domain transfer” masih belum terjawab.

Regards,
Imran

I’m a very peaceful person, and I don’t really like fiery situation when dealing with things. I don’t really dare to use any harsher words in my email, so the above is how harsh that I can get in my email.

Aaahh. Finally, I received a reply from them.

from: “MesraHosting.net – Technical Support Department”
to: Imran Ismail
date: Jan 24, 2007 9:06 PM
subject: Re: Status mohdimran.com

Assalamualaikum,

Saya memohon maaf kerana tidak dapat reply sms dan juga email ini dengan segera kerana saya MC sejak beberapa hari lepas yang mana kerja kerja domain adalah di bawah tanggung jawab saya, walau bagaimana pun sila hantar sekali lagi request anda untuk transfer dan ianya akan di hantar ke email anda di alamat mohdimran.ismail@gmail.com

Terima kasih

Finally, the registrant name and email of mohdimran.com domain has been changed to my name. And this is basically what I’ve been waiting for the past 8 days.

January 25, 2007
I couldn’t proceed with the domain transfer, since I required auth code from my current registrar. Managed to talk to onlinenic.com technical support, and they said I should get the auth code from mesrahosting.net. Oh no. I thought my business with mesrahosting.net has finished. Send email to them again asking for that.

January 26, 2007
Still no reply from mesrahosting.net about my auth code. Resend them second email asking for it. I won’t bother to call, as what they will say – please contact Mr Zainul.

January 29, 2007
Finally, got my auth code from mesrahosting.net. So I proceed with domain transfer process at godaddy.com. Then, received an email from onlinenic.com. For security reason, transfer-out notice is sent to current registrant fearing that the domain transfer request is initiated by unauthorized person. Basically, in that notice, it stated a way on how to cancel the transfer process, in the event that the transfer is initiated by unauthorized party. If I wish to proceed with the transfer, I have to do nothing. If they not hear anything from me by 1st February, the transfer will proceed. Feb 1st. Ooohh.. That still long to go.

February 1, 2007
Nothing still happened, and my domain transfer status remains as “waiting for current registrar approval”. Penantian satu penyiksaan.

February 4, 2007
Hooray! I’m so happy today. At about 1:30 pm, I received email from godaddy.com that my domain transfer request is completed. That means, mohdimran.com is mine again! Anyway, I only happened to read the email around 10pm. So without further ado, I buy a web hosting as godaddy.com as well. The process is really smooth. The hosting is ready to be used as soon as my credit card payment is authorized. Changing DNS of my domain got updated pretty quick too, so I manage to use www.mohdimran.com only after several minutes I’ve updated my domain DNS.

February 5, 2007
Been really busy setting up my new hosting again. Been working on some changes to TagMe! as well, to make it work on this new server (with new environment)

February 6, 2006
TagMe! is ready, with a new feature added in – Control Panel. I can’t wait to let all TagMe! users know about this. Will do shortly.

There you go, my sickening 22 days of waiting before mohdimran.com & TagMe! is up again. And most of the time got wasted dealing with mesrahosting.net

Let us now look at the meaning of the word “mesra” as it is in mesrahosting.

mesra
–adjective amicable; friendly; hospitable; giving hospitality; warm and friendly; benign; kindly; mild and gentle; not malignant.

Well, I don’t feel any when I deal with them. If they want money from you, there will be super nice, sending reminder email that the hosting period is almost expired and needed renewal. But when it come to support, it hopeless.

What that Zainul guy claim that he’s been busy with so many hosting under him might be true, but does that show that it’s a one man show here? It’s the weakness of mesrahosting.net of not developing a good technical support, of which, why the customer like myself should be bothered about this? Or they are busy serving bigger customers, and since I’m just an individual customer, give less priority. But hey. You just loose one of your customer.

It’s no doubt that mesrahosting.net really offers a very cheap hosting service compared to any other web hosting company in Malaysia. RM100 for 2GB web space, 50GB monthly bandwidth, unlimited mySQL database (to name a few). But come to think of it again, they can offer cheaper price due to they are hosting lots of website on a single server, jeopardize the resources that one website can use. As a result, something that is not that heavy as my TagMe! already bottle-neck their server resources.

Talking about customer support, this really gave me heart attack. Don’t be fooled by the friendliness of the lady handling the sales department, as that’s what sales department is all about. And you won’t be handling with those from sales department all the time, since there will come a time that you need to deal with the technical department.

Talking about technical support, don’t be fooled again by what is stated on the website.

My first impression, wow! There are so many people available to assist you with any technical request. Until the time I need them, calling all the number won’t get any answer. You can try to call those numbers yourself if you won’t believe me. And if they answer you, I guess, I’m not as lucky as you.

It’s not really my intention to condemn mesrahosting.net in any way, but I just want to express my frustration with the bad support that I get from them.

My two cents, if you need to get any hosting, make sure that you register the domain yourself and have ownership to it. It is a lot easier if you need to switch hosting, or transfer the domain to other registrar, without having to waste unnecessary number of days just to resolve the ownership of that domain again (like what happened to me).

• 7 Comments

The drain of the sink in my bedroom’s bathroom is clogged like, forever. Yes. On the first day that I live at this house, the drain is already clogged. I just can’t remember how many times I pump the drain using the plunger, but the result is still the same.

Then I started to think of using chemical alternative. Here are some of the products that I use in the past several months.

The drain is actually not completely clogged, but the water runs down really slow. What happened was, the constructor that did the tiles in the bathroom actually pour the left over white cement into the sink, resulting the cement to dry in the drain, and clog the water runaway. Talking about constructor that can’t think of common sense.

The first type of declogger that I use is of gel type, which can be thought of in liquid form. But since it is not completely clogged, the gel is actually, the gel actually got drained out. The other type that I use is of crystal form, of which you pour a glass of water, and eventually becoming liquid form. So this doesn’t work too.

And yesterday, just before I got home from, I bought this foaming type drain declogger product.

And when it is in a foam form, it doesn’t really run down the drain quickly, like liquid does. So, the foam is in contact with the clog for the maximum time. I let the foam do it works for 1 hour as what said on the label. And what happened after that?

My bathroom drain is no longer clogged. Yippe!!! I’m so happy that I actually blog about my pathetic experience with the clogged drain of my bathroom’s sink.

• 0 Comments