Blogging To The Bank?

I can't imagine someone who just plays around with blogs all day long and eventually earns so much money. But this guy did it:

I just finished listening to a podcast and it totally blew my mind away. I instantly launched a couple of niche blogs using the tools which I already know and have used. I found out that my lack of vision and the lack of discipline is the main cause of my failure in finance. Anyway, check it out Rob Benwell Product and let me know what do you think about it. Ok?

Is CCNA a Good Certificate for me?

Being in the employment world, your paper qualification really counts especially in Malaysia. Recently, a friend of mine who works with a small start up company had one of their ongoing project put on hold by the client after discovering that the company has no qualified personnel handling their project. Of course if I were the client, I would jeoperdize my money to be put on someone who is not qualified or imcompetent to do the job. So, it's a no brainer that his employer should invest some money to get their personnel trained or find someone who is already trained or who holds the paper certification. However, there will be a lot of other factors to be considered such as the salary, benefits and other related stuff including trust and reliability.

Anyway, my application to enter a CCNA course at my former university has been approved. It will commence on 2nd of June 2006 by UiTM Cisco Regional Networking Academy. The course fee is only RM2,400 for the whole year and it'll be on a part time basis. Meaning that I can still go on with my job while studying. Basically, my intention to get this certificate is not for the company I work with, my employer is not ready to sponsor anything yet so I had to take matter on by own hand. Well, I'm going to see how it goes.

Finally..My Hotmail is Bigger

I registered my first e-mail when I was 16 years old. That was almost 10 years ago. The most ever popular free e-mail at that time was Hotmail. During those years, almost everybody I know who are IT savvy uses Hotmail as their primary e-mail. They provide 2MB of e-mail storage for everyone who register. Unfortunately, that was the amount of storage they give out even after Microsoft has bought them over. Last Thursday this is what I discovered on the 1st page when I logged on my account:

My account has now increased to 25MB. Eventhough it still cannot compete with the 250MB Hotmail give to the US Citizen but it should do fine with me for now. It was tough trying to maintain the Hotmail account because I had to delete junk e-mail messages that is coming in.

Still, Hotmail is not my prefered e-mail account. I prefer to use my Gmail because they provide more usability for the users. Anyone wants an invite? ;-)

I Got Stranded in The KTM Komuter Train

Ever since the hike of the price of petrol, the government encourage the citizen to take the public transportation. It was also told that the subsidy that the government gave to the petrol subsidy was being pumped into the improvement of the public transportation. Because of that, since my office is just nearby one of the Putra LRT Station, my normal route to the office starts from KTM Komuter Station Segambut until KL Sentral where I then take the Putra LRT at KL Sentral until Putra LRT Taman Jaya. My fare for a one way journey from Segambut to KL Sentral is RM1 while the Putra LRT to Taman Jaya is RM1.60.

So, what happen yesterday was very unusual. The normal komuter train delay happened. When I got into the the train, I had to wait for another 10 minutes inside the packed train before the train got off the station. Before that, I heard an announcement that the komuter service to Sentul has been ended because of power failure. So, my journey to Segambut should be fine. The jam packed train got even packed when more people got in despite the fullness of the coaches. I was trapped at the heart of the train with people surrounding me. It got even warmer as the train passes through 2 stations.

Right after Putra KTM Komuter Station, the train was on its way to another station where I should got off. All of the sudden, after going through a tunnel, a thundering sound was heard just on top of my head. All of the passenger was panicking. I then could see a few pieces of cable lying on top of the train just hanging down the window of the train. The driver of the train quickly reminded the passenger to remain where they are since the cables are live. I was still stuck in this massive crowd of people and started to sweat. After about 15 minutes of helplessly stranded inside the crowd, everybody starts to sweat, the door is closed, oxygen is running low, the people got fed up since there was no rescue who came. Even the driver sounded panicking through the speakers.

Eventually, the passenger had to take the matter on their own hands. They smashed the emergency switch and got out of the train. From what I saw, there were hundreds of people had to walk back to the station. They even brought down the fences to get out of the railway. I didn't bring my digital camera so it was unfortunate of me not to take pictures of such experience.

I then headed back home using the bus where I had to walk another 3 kilometres to the nearest bus station. All the buses was full too. Passing by Sentul, I then saw a crowd of people overseeing the railway. I wasn't so sure what I saw because it was dark already but I'm guessing it's a big object lying on the railway and it's a big object. So, today I read The Sun e-Paper and there it was, the story:


Thousands stranded after rail mishap
RUNAWAY LORRY SNAPS POWER LINES, PLUNGES ONTO TRACKS

by Charles Ramendran

KUALA LUMPUR: Thousands of commuters of the inter-city KTM Komuter services were stranded at its stations after a runaway tipper lorry at a road construction site severed overhead power cables and crashed onto the railway tracks near Sentul yesterday.

KTM Berhad managing director Datuk Mohd Salleh Abdullah said it was estimated that 40,000 commuters would be affected by the mishap. Three thousand passengers were travelling in five trains between the Kuala Lumpur-Rawang and Kuala Lumpur-Sentul routes during the peak hour at 6pm when the trains came to an abrupt halt following the incident.

The trains edged slowly to their nearest stations where the passengers disembarked. No casualties were reported. It is learnt that the unmanned lorry, parked on a flyover of the Sentul Link Expressway under construction near Km5 Jalan Ipoh, had moved backwards down a slope. It rolled over the road shoulder and plunged 15m onto the dual railway tracks, snapping the power cables.

In a statement, KTMB said both routes will be closed until repairs are carried out.

There was no story or pictures about the KTM Komuter train to Rawang of my stranded experience. What dissapoint me the most was there was almost no effort of KTMB trying to help the crowd of stranded people getting out of the KTM Komuter. It was a pity for old citizen and women to jump down from the train on the railway as it is like 1 metre from the ground up. The driver I'm guessing has no training in handling the passenger in the case of an emergency. Still, I'm guessing KTMB has no emergency plan in case something like that happen again. That is all when the government has put in the subsidy money of petrol into improving the public transportation.

Public transportation in Kuala Lumpur is well known as not reliable. It does seem true from my own experience. There are plenty of works to be done to improve the current situation. Until then, I will rely on my own transportation and see if the situtaion improves.

P/S: You can read more about this incident at KL Bizz Portal Village. A new portal developed by my own team of online friends.

My Web Building Development

I've been busy doing more and more stuff in my quest to be more actionable rather than just reading. Of course I still read but by just reading wouldn't make things happen. Okay back to my development report, I've done an exclusively post on my other blog, just see what I've done by clicking on the image below:

Alright, now..back to work..

My New Blog Layout and Features...Again..

I lost count of how many times I've changed my blogskin. However, I've added new features to my blog. I know that my blog doesn't really have a lot of visitors, but that's fine. I do get a stream of traffic from searches under specific keywords that I really didn't anticipate to get index with. Anyway, I'll keep blogging like I use to. Here's some features I've added to this blog:

If you didn't notice, I've added an e-mail subscription box. When you enter your e-mail, you need to confirm your e-mail first. By using this service, I'll exclusively update you through your e-mail or probably give you some gift or so.

I'm not sure what coComment is all about. However, I've ditched my old shoutbox for this one since my former shoutbox contain some pop-ups somewhere. This coComment looks clean and nice. I need to read about it more and see what I can benefit using this. I'm thinking of hosting my own shoutbox instead of using services provided by others. I found this script at hotscripts using PHP without MySQL and I probably going to develop that one on this blog.

Oh well..it's development time again. My team and I are doing a small pilot project for a local portal. It's going to feature the latest news around. However, it's offline now. I don't know what is going on with the webhosting. I'm going to transfer the website to another host when I get enough money. Until then, happy weekends...

Entrepreneur Idol Video

I found this page on one of my RSS subscription on Google Reader. You can take a look at it:

Nice stuff for entrepreneur wannabe like myself. Enjoy

How To Get Your Broken Car Out of The Car Park Basement

This is a follow up of my previous post. The ceiling to the basement car park is so low, so the tow truck can't go inside and tow my car out. It had been 2 days my car is trapped inside the basement. I had to get it out fast because the longer it stays there, the more I have to pay. However, I doubt the tow truck can come in because of the low ceiling and what the previous AAM mechanic had told me, so I went to the parking management office. They then told me that small tow truck can come in as long as the truck height is less than 2 metres.

So, I called AAM back and asked if they can help me change the broken part of my car instead of towing my car. They replied 'no' and said it was outside of their scope of work to do major work for the car. They then told me that they are going to send me a tow truck and see how it goes. I then said okay. In the meantime, I had to make a plan B in case the AAM truck cannot go inside the basement. I've obtained a number for a mechanic nearby to change the part that I've bought.

Plan A was unsuccessful because the driver of the AAM truck who came was not so sure he can drive the truck inside the basement parking. So, I had to proceed with Plan B which is to call up the mechanic and asked him to do the job down in the basement. Here's a few pictures taken during the moment of rescuing my car:

The mechanic who came was shocked to see the broken CV Joint. The thing wasn't supposed to break like that. Probably cheap material were used during the production of this part.

Look at the ball bearing coming out from the broken CV Joint.

Because of limited space, my mechanic had to duck under the car and pull out the driveshaft out.My new driveshaft cost me around RM150. If I just change the CV Joint, it'll only cost me around RM80 but that would make the mechanic job a lot more difficult and cost me more, so I bought a new piece of driveshaft instead.

Look at the torn driveshaft taken out. Oh, BTW, the replacement is a reconditioned part and not original one. The original cost more but it's your choice to get an original or a reconditioned one. I don't have the budget so I go for the cheaper option.

After paying up the mechanic, I took my car out of the parking basement. The cost of parking since Saturday until Monday was RM14. Total cost of repair, less than RM300. If I could have check my car for damages before the incident happened, my cost could have been just less than RM100. So, the term 'preventation is better than cure' still hold.

I'm going to be more cautious from now on.

Another Misfortune

In life, there are ups and downs. I can't deny how both of them are equally important to balance out our lives. Anyway, yesterday I had another misfortune or in another interesting term, blessing in disguise, my car driveshaft given up on me. I just finished dinner after watching Mission Impossible 3 and I was just about to leave the mall. Suddenly, my car wasn't able to move forward and then there was a loud strange noise coming from the engine compartment. I suspect the drive shaft broke because all this while it was giving some strange grinding noise. It then make sense that the thing has broken down.

I'll show you how an anatomy of a FWD drive shaft looks like:

So this is a constant velocity or a CV Joint. Basically, it is installed in a front wheel drive (FWD) vehicle because the components are less than the rear wheel drive (RWD). However, FWD tend to be more complicated hence, it should cost more. Interestingly, a commodity products cost can be lowered down therefore it is much more cheaper to repair compared to a non-commodity.

More information on how to Remove a CV Driveaxle.

So, what happen to my car was, the outboard CV joint broke, so the engine has no load to distribute therefore, the energy cannot be channel. I had to push back my car into the car park lot in the basement and call for help. Unfortunately it was late and the next day was a weekend.

Oh well, the car is still there down in the basement. I'm trying my best to get the car out of the parking basement as the more days it is park there, the more I have to pay. Damn it...Oh well, got to get some rest now. Write again soon.

Help! I Lost My Yahoo Account

I was busy chatting with a friend of mine while listening to Yahoo Music. Suddenly, a pop up from another friend of mine with a link stating that she has a new photo uploaded in her Yahoo Photos. A new Yahoo Login page is opened, without realizing that the page was actually a hoax, I entered my Yahoo ID and password. Instead of my friend's Yahoo Photos, I find my own Yahoo Photos opened up. I suspected that there was something wrong going on here.

I then quickly tried to change my account setting which was to change the password and to quickly log out. Unfortunately, in matter of minutes my Yahoo Messenger suddenly logged out and I was unable to log in using my ID. I tried numerous time to recover my account using the Forget your ID or password page. However, my effort became fruitless. I'm so furious, so I lodge a report to Yahoo to only received an automated reply from them. I replied to them again. So, now I'm crossing my fingers waiting for their reply.

I can't imagine how so many invaluable information I will lost as a result of losing my Yahoo account. Most importantly, my contacts especially on Yahoo Messenger. I'm so sad right now. I've checked out a few pages regarding this phishing attack and it has been happening since last year. So, I urge all of you to beware of such phishing sites imposing as Yahoo Services:

I wish all of you, happy surfing and beware of Phishing Sites!

Ordinary Income, Eventually..Millionaire!

Because of last monday incident, I did a bit of soul-searching. I realized that I've been drawn back into the ordinary mindset which I shouldn't be getting myself into. So, I went to a bookstore to see if there are any interesting books available. Fortunately, I found this very interesting book, The Armchair Millionaire:

At Amazon.com, the price is less than RM10 after converting the currency. Still, I'm not really sure about the shipping fees. Anyway, I bought it for RM15 and I find the book very soothing to read.

What the book teaches is we all have the potential to become millionaires. However, the sooner you start to invest, the higher chance you have using the power of compound interest. So every month, using one method called 'pay yourself first' a portion of your income is going to pay for your investment. Actually I've read this method before in other books, however this book explain how to do it in a very simple and concise way.

However, the book mainly target for the US reader. A few chapters of the book is not really suited for international readers. So, you need to find your own country tax information. I find this book very interesting and I recommend this book as a guideline if you wish to become a millionaire without changing your career to a more income generating one.

As for me, I'll still search for more information that can really suit my financial goal. As for my job, well...I think I'll see what I can get in term of gaining extra knowledge instead of the money.