Vickiepedia

Something shiny caught my attention as I walked past the working space of one office lady during lunch — a new 17-inch LCD computer monitor. (This was a few years ago.) I leaned in with an ooooooh to check out this hottie (the screen), and quickly noticed that the office lady was still using the old screen resolution from her last setting.

“This is a five-by-four screen,” I said. “You’re still using a four-by-three resolution on it.”

She blinked.

“You know? The ratio? Five… to… four,” I explained, accompanied with body motions that somewhat resembled the chicken dance.

Turns out when someone doesn’t speak your “language”, speaking slowly or doing the chicken dance doesn’t really help.

I grabbed her mouse as she continued to look at me in confusion. Minimise all, right click, click, click, click, click: 1280×1024; there, a correct screen resolution for a shiny new screen. I smiled, satisfied, and turned to walk away (casually noting the lingering confusion on the colleague’s face), giving myself a mental pat on the shoulder for an unpaid job well done.

“OH MY GOD!” A scream of terror.

I paused, thinking if I’d forgotten to apply the new screen resolution setting properly so the screen had automatically reverted back to 1024×768 while she’s admiring the sharper images. It didn’t.

“Why is everything so tiny? Why do I look so fat in the picture?!” She cried.

And then I cried too.

(She insisted on switching back to 1024×768. I undid my mental pat on the shoulder and complied.)

My brother alerted me to this first, but “The Storm Warriors” (風雲II), the upcoming sequel to a semi-popular Hong Kong movie, is using the first 22 or so seconds of the Guild Wars theme song on their official website. For a movie with a HK$100 million budget, you’d expect them to compose their own music (unless, of course, they bought the copyright to the song / had permission otherwise)!

Here is a sample of the Guild Wars (Guild Wars Prophecies) opening theme song: DirectSong > Guild Wars > 01 – Opening Theme.

Here is the movie’s official site: Traditional Chinese version, Simplified Chinese version or English version.

This is my expression after I heard the song on the movie’s official site:

Hello, Internets.

Still not quite the porn entry I mentioned at least 100 years ago. But random new layout? You betcha.

Layout should work on all modern browsers, as well as older browsers you should never touch again, such as Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 5.5, Internet Explorer 5.01, Internet Explorer in general, (layout now fluid and no longer works on IE5.5 and below), Mozilla Firebird 0.7, Opera 7.11, Netscape 7.2, etc.

Comments, constructive criticism and error reports mucho appreciado, as usual.

Now to pick up blogging again…

Torn between finishing typing the blog entry on porn and starting to write one of the eight university essays due on various dates within the next 7 weeks, I compromised by doing neither, but made Vickiepedia look more or less the same on IE5, IE5.5 and Firebird 0.7 as well instead. Yeah, the site should now work on those browser versions.

I can’t quite decide whether I love or hate you, Vickie, you moron.

Like many unsuspecting foreigners who tried to get their own phone line and an acceptable broadband connection in Australia, Vickie, after some research, stupidly went with Optus’ phone line. Surely as a competitor, Optus would provide all of what Telstra could provide… or so she thought. (But they do offer an online sign-up with even their cheapest plan, which is really nice to people who have a phone anxiety like yours truly. (Don’t worry, nobody else who knows about this takes my anxiety seriously either.))

Apparently, however, with Optus’ phone line you’re pretty much stuck with Optus’ ADSL plans or nothing, which, of course, the company never mentioned or hinted because they want to sell their own overpriced products. What also irked me was that none of my Australian computerphile and technophile friends who heard about my plan of getting a new connection seem to be aware of this, or didn’t think it was necessary to warn me at all. No, it’s not their fault; I just want to blame someone, okay? THIS IS MY BLOG!

Anyway… Now I’m practically down to 5 options:

1. Continue to share the connection with the landlord’s family and let the phone line die after 12 months, all the while try not to kill the landlord’s son, and try not to let the landlord’s son kill me; or

2. find an affordable, i.e. non-existent, cable plan; or

3. go with Optus’ Internet plans, which is way out of budget and essentially a rip-off; or

4. cancel the phone line for a $200 fee, sign up with Telstra for $300, then sign up with the ISP of my choice; or

5. build a time machine and try to stop my past self from signing up with Optus.

None of which, unfortunately, particularly appeals to me.

Or maybe I really need to just GTFO of this otherwise fine country.

*Warning: This is a long, rambly rant entry. (At least I warned you somewhere!)

UPDATE: Turns out there’s an old, inactive Telstra phone line lying around in the house so I looked into this Naked DSL thing. I called the Telstra people about the line at first and the woman yelled at me when she heard that I only wanted to get Naked DSL on it (I shouldn’t have told her that; or called Telstra, even).

I later called and signed up with iiNet (the rep laughed when he heard about the Telstra woman’s response), but the Optus tech used my Telstra line instead of giving me a new one so I had to call Optus to come in and fix it again (for free; the woman on the line was also very nice and polite). iiNet then did something and said my line was activated but I couldn’t get connected. I called in again and they said there’s something wrong with the Telstra line so a Telstra tech came in (for free). Telstra tech did something while I greeted him with morning breath…

36 days later, I’m finally connected to iiNet. The waiting period was very long in my case but things have been good so far otherwise. The friends say I get disconnected on MSN every now and then, though.

Special thanks to the landlord’s son and his girlfriend for their invaluable help. We don’t have to kill each other now.