Blog Compass Lite 2.0 - personal blog About Me Album Bookmarks

Friday, April 28, 2006

Out of Town...

Tomorrow morning I will be out of town to Japan for a seven-days vacation. Not until Eric told me about the holidays arrangement did I realize the opportunity to align 9 consecutive days off.

I don’t know much about Japan, or better say I don’t know much about any part of the world. First China then Korea, now is Japan, hopefully I shall go to Australia, Europe and US later on (only if I can have more money…)

So much to settle before and after the trip. And yes, you may ‘register’ for souvenir by leaving me a comment (not anonymous of cos) :-)

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Samba Problem: Error was Permission denied

Linux Networking: smbclient -L locahost (connection refused).

Problem Scenario:

Setting samba server under Fedora Core 5 with everything alright (including network connection, firewall port opened for smb, proper authentication method, user accounts and shares), yet cannot browse the folders in Windows. It keeps asking you for the password.

When read through the log in /var/log/samba, the following message is found.

[2006/04/23 08:34:00, 0] smbd/service.c:make_connection_snum(663)
  '/path_to/folder' does not exist or permission denied when connecting to [shares] Error was Permission denied

I have gone through smb.conf millions of times but the problem retains.

Solution:

Finally I found the solution in Experts Exchange (again), the problem is related to SELinux:

Amend /etc/selinux/config and set “SELINUX=disabled”, then reboot.

Though I have no clue why it is related to SELinux, it works.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

April Jukebox (Classic)

Amazon.com: An American Tail

Somewhere Out There (theme of “The American Tail”1986)
by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram

Somewhere out there
Beneath the pale moonlight
Someone’s thinking of me
And loving me tonight

Somewhere out there
Someone’s saying a prayer
That we’ll find one another
In that big somewhere out there

And even though I know how very far apart we are
It helps to think we might be wishing
On the same bright star

And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby
It helps to think we’re sleeping
Underneath the same big sky

Somewhere out there
If love can see us through
Then we’ll be together
Somewhere out there
Out where dreams come true

(PS: Time flies, it has been 20 years…)

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Xanga RSS feeds

Does Xanga offer RSS? @ Radio Free Blogistan.

Problem Scenario:

I am just wondering if there can be an RSS feed for Xanga blogs. Popular blogging site like Xanga surely can’t go without RSS right?

Solution:

It seems that the RSS feeds for Xanga accounts are never published openly. But if you do want to allow your audiences to subscibe to your RSS feed, just replace home.aspx with rss.aspx with your account name as suffix:

For instance my RSS feed is: http://www.xanga.com/rss.aspx?user=peterchoicm

Replace my username with yours to get your feed.

Monday, April 17, 2006

Odd things happen...

I don’t know why this thing happens fairly frequently these days: a hair as short as a sting stuck right into my thumb. I don’t know how they get into my finger but they did. They usually don’t stick deep but it’s harder and harder to pull them out. And this time when I pull one out, my thumb finally bleeds… What a day.

Busy Easter...

It has been a busy holiday for me. My schedule is so fully booked that I can hardly gain time for extra rest. For the whole Easter holiday, I wake up as early as usual and sleep as late as usual… what a pity…

Thursday, April 13, 2006

生命中的磚頭

徐大轉貼電子報 -- 生命中的磚頭

A young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar.
He was watching for kids darting out from between parked cars and slowed down when he thought he saw something.
一位年輕的總裁,以有點快的車速開著他的新Jaguar經過住宅區的巷道。
他必須小心地駕駛,在巷道中遊戲中的孩子會突然跑到路中央 所以當他覺得小孩子快跑出來時,就要減慢車速。

As his car passed, one child appeared, and a brick smashed into the Jag's side door.
He slammed on the brakes and spun the Jag back to the spot from where the brick had been thrown.
就在他的車經過一群小朋友的時候 一個小朋友丟了一塊磚頭打到了他的車門 他很生氣的踩了煞車並後退到磚頭丟出來的地方。

He jumped out of the car, grabbed some kid and pushed him up against a parked car, shouting,
"What was that all about and who are you? Just what the heck are you doing?"
Building up a head of steam, he went on.
"That's a new car and that brick you threw is gonna cost a lot of money. Why did you do it?"
他跳出車外,抓了那個小孩,把他頂在車門上說: "你為什麼這樣做,你知道你剛剛做了什麼嗎?"
接著又吼道:"你知不知道你要賠多少錢來修理這台新車,你到底為什麼要這樣做?"

"Please, mister, please, I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do!" pleaded the youngster.
小孩子求著說:"先生,對不起,我不知道我還能怎麼辦?"

"I threw the brick because no one else would stop."
Tears dripped down the boy's chin as he pointed around the parked car.
"我丟磚塊是因為沒有人停下來,小男孩兒聲淚俱下。

"It's my brother," he said. "He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up."
他接著說:"因為我哥哥從輪椅上掉下來,我沒辦法把他抬回去。"

Sobbing, the boy asked the executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair?
He's hurt and he's too heavy for me."
那男孩啜泣著說:"你可以幫我把他抬回去嗎?他受傷了,而且他太重了我抱不動。"

Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat.
He lifted the young man back into the wheelchair a! nd took out his handkerchief and wiped the scrapes and cuts, checking to see thateverything was going to be okay.
這位年輕的總裁動容不已,他抱起男孩受傷的哥哥幫他坐回輪椅上。
並拿出手帕擦拭他哥哥的傷口,以確定他哥哥沒有什麼大問題。

"Thank you, sir. And God bless you," the grateful child said to him.
The man then watched the little boy push his brother to the sidewalk toward their home.
那個小男孩感激地說:"謝謝你,先生,上帝保佑你。
然後他看著男孩推著他哥哥回去。

It was a long walk backs to his Jaguar... a long, slow walk.
He never did repair the side door.
He kept the dent to remind him not to go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention.
年輕的總裁慢慢地、慢慢地走回車上,他決定不將車門修復。
他要讓那個凹洞時時提醒自己 "不要等周遭的人丟磚塊過來了,自己才注意到生命的腳步已走的過快。"

Life whispers in your soul and speaks to your heart.
Sometimes, when you don't have the time to listen... Life throws a brick at your head.
It's your choice: Listen to the whispers of your soul or wait for the brick!
當生命想與你的心靈竊竊私語時,若你沒有時間,你有兩種選擇: 傾聽你心靈的聲音或讓磚頭來砸你!

Do you sometimes ignore loved ones because your life is too fast and busy leaving them to wonder whether you really love them?
請問你是否曾因為生活太快、太忙碌而忽略了你所愛的人 然後開始懷疑起你是不是真的愛他們呢?

Monday, April 10, 2006

internal error 2753 vmware_netinstall.exe

VMware Knowledge Base - Answer.

Problem Scenario:

Fail to re-install VMware workstation after a harddisk partition crash. The crashed partition formerly carries a virtual linux host. During the process of uninstallation a dialogue box with error message ‘internal error 2753 vmware_netinstall.exe’appears and terminates the process.

Solution:

The above link provides several methods to clean up incomplete uninstallations. You may download the VMware_Install_Cleaner.exe from the link, run it to clean up the registry and retry the new installation. In my scenario it didn’t work so I tried the second method and download the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility as stated here. It worked.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

To be a candle...

The most important meaning of going to mass every week, it keeps reminding me who I am. Every Sunday I see so many good people there, they smile and they help. It seems to me that there is never hatred and greed in the church, and only in there, I can feel my own presence as a Catholic.

I am so proud to be a true friend of others, for this priceless trust they can turn to me when they are sad. I feel like a candle bringing light to the surroundings ( I hope I really am ). Maybe I have really neglected the people around me due to my sole objective to move upward in my career, and maybe it’s time for me to make some changes.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Windows Live Toolbar beta

Windows Live Ideas – Product Page.

Here comes some innovation from Microsoft, the Windows Live Toolbar beta really brings some brand new look to the IE, and some new features too. Somehow I like the Favorites synchronization and Onfolio features very much.

But the fact is the new toolbar seems to slow down the IE a bit. The little flickering during tab switching is pretty much an annoyance during web browsing, seems as if the browser is about to hang or something. And I can’t see the menu items in Onfolio (seems that it is the problem as I installed Windows Blinds too).

More improvements are yet to be seen.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com

Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com

Today's Dilbert Comic

Witty method

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Holidays

Sometimes I am really amazed by the way God arranges things. Once we were all blaming life for the tough hours during the SIT. And now the time has gone and here comes two months full of holidays. Can't imagine how it would be like if the SIT happens in April or May, lots of holidays would be wasted:

Ching Ming Festival: a day designated for sleeping.
Easter Holidays: four consecutive days for all sorts of well-beings.
End of April through the first week of May: a golden opportunity for taking a vacation, lets plan.
Tuen Ng Festival: an extra day off at the end of May.

Bad day for running

Foggy. Mainly fine. Finally we finished the first milestone for the System Integration Test and again I can have a chance to take a short run around the river tonight. Yet it was not at all a good time for running. I started to lose my breathe half way down the course, the surroundings were so humid and the air was very much contaminated by particulates. What makes things worst are the smokers along the way that further pollute the air.

Sweating all the way I finished the journey without taking rest. The Hong Kong Observatory is showing a relative humidity of 96% now, with no sign for any decrease throughout this week. How can my best week for running be wasted…

Issued at 23:16 HKT
gif
Date
Weather
Temp
RH
gif
04 Apr Tue
Foggy. Mainly fine.
23 - 27oC
75 - 95%
gif
05 Apr Wed
Mainly fine. Some mist in the morning.
23 - 28oC
70 - 95%
gif
06 Apr Thu
Misty. A few rain patches later.
23 - 27oC
75 - 95%
gif
07 Apr Fri
Cloudy with a few rain patches and mist.
22 - 24oC
80 - 95%
gif
08 Apr Sat
Cloudy with a few light rain patches.
21 - 23oC
75 - 90%
gif
09 Apr Sun
Showery.
21 - 24oC
80 - 95%
gif
10 Apr Mon
A few showers.
22 - 25oC
75 - 90%

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Glasgow Love Theme

Love Actually
Amazon.com: Love Actually : The Original Soundtrack: Books.

I love this music piece so much since the movie “Love Actually”.

Dedicate it to my family, my friends and all those I love, enjoy…