Disappointment to Empire XXI

I ordered a premiere tickets of Eclipse, the third book of Twilight Saga using my students' account since my balance wasn't enough to buy for the tickets. I was planning to reload the balance today just before we took the tickets (the same goes with my students, since his balance was already 0 as well). We ordered for the 5.20 PM show and i got there around 4.50 PM because i wanted to do the reload process as well.

Since i already bought the tickets using M-Tix (mobile ticketing service which allows members to buy early tickets in the morning), i only need to take the tickets at the counters without having to stand in the queue. But what happened when i got there? I had to stood in the queue just because there were no separation for those who will take the tickets (M-Tix users), people who wanted to do a balance reload and people who wanted to subscribe to the M-Tix service. There were only two people that serve the M-Tix, one for new registration (it will take around 5-10 minutes per person per registration) and another one for reload process and ticket pick up (ticket pickups will require just 1-2 minutes, while the reload process might take up to 3-4 minutes per person). What makes it worse is that they only give limited time to register for M-Tix and do the reload process, which only three hours a day (3 - 6 PM) and only on Monday until Friday. Can you imagine how long will it take when about 20 people are standing in two lines waiting to get to the counter desk?

We asked the other officer standing near us and they didn't give us any solutions. They pointed that we can go to the counter and asked for our tickets just because we already bought the tickets. That's not the correct solution, as people would yell at us because we are taking their position. He said that they are lacking of resources to do the job. I'm not convinced with their answer, since they can put one more people to serve for people who just need to take their tickets. What he/she needs to do is ask for the booking code, look for it in the list and give the tickets to the people. Is that very hard to do? I saw there were many male officer in the office and they didn't do anything. It's just so unefficient.

In the end, we had to wait for more than 30 minutes just to take our tickets which we have bought since morning. Luckily, the movie hasn't started yet when we entered the studio where the movie was played. It would be a disaster when it really happened.

So, here are my advice for Empire XXI management:

• Give different queue line and also markers for people who wanted to take their tickets, reload and register for M-Tix service. It will make the process faster and more efficient. It's very confusing without any markers. You can make use of your staff to do the job. You don't have to hire more people. Just use one of your male staff. You have plenty of idle staffs there.
  
• Give more time option for people to do the reload process. There's only one movie theather in Jogja which has M-Tix service and three hours a day and 5 days a week is not enough i guess when people have to stand in the same line to do most of the process.
• Use kiosk machine to print the tickets for M-Tix users. This is what the advertisement displayed on every studio when the movie was about to play, but in reality it only appears in Jakarta. In Jogja, we had to stand in a line to get our tickets.
• In short, you should give more added value to M-Tix users who have deposited their money. We already bought the tickets and the balanced has been reduced since morning, but do we still have to wait to get our tickets?
  

Actually i still have other disappointment, but i don't think there's nothing we can do about it. It's about the parking slot. I wonder why didn't they built a basement parking slot? I think the number of cars can be parked inside XXI building is very limited.

Oh well, i hope the XXI management sees this blog post and they can find a solution for this problem. I think it's not just me who have a disappointment towards how Empire XXI threats their M-Tix users.

Expanding Disk on VMWare

In the past, whenever i created an image for Windows in VMWare, i set the space so that it would be sufficient for my need and in most cases, it didn't since i need to install more and more application for my CEH classes (security never stopped evolving).

With VMware Workstation 7 and newer, it has supported expand feature in which you can expand the disk capacity from the VMware GUI and avoid using command line anymore. It's much simpler, but it requires two steps.

Expand Your Virtual Disk Setting
Select the image, and click Edit virtual machine settings. Select the Hard drive and click on the Utilities button on the bottom of the screen. There will be four options there: Mount Disk, Defragment, Expand, and Compact. I'm sure you know what to pick right? Go ahead and set the maximum disk size that you like. Click expand when you are done and the VMware will expand it in no time. It would take a few seconds to expand it.

Are we done yet? YES, for the first part, but remember, this only expand the virtual hard drive, but not the real hard drive in your Windows image. What the operation does is adding an unallocated disk space on your Windows hard drive so that you can use it later on.

For example, your current disk space is 10 GB and you expand it up to 50 GB, that means you will have around 40 GB in a new unallocated disk space. What can you do with it? You can create separate partition or you can resize your current disk space to use the unallocated disk space and you will get more free space.

Resizing disk space in Windows
The second operation should be done in the guest operating system itself. If you want to create a new partition, you don't need to use third party tool. You can use Disk Management from Windows to create a new partition from the unallocated disk space. Type diskmgmt.msc in the Start->Run command box and pick the unallocated disk. Right click and pick Create New Partition. That should work just fine.

When you want to resize your current disk space to use the unallocated disk space, the internal Disk Management utilities is not the correct tool. It can't resize the partition, so you will need a third party application to help you. I would suggest Norton Partition Magic to do that. It's by far the best partition manager application i have ever tried. With only quite a simple click, i'm able to resize my partition and in no time, i already got a lot of empty spaces on my Windows image under VMware

Now, i don't have to create another Windows image when i need more space. All i need is to expand the disk and i can enjoy more empty spaces to work with. VMware does really a good job on providing this handful feature

Bad Service

Today i went to a restaurant which is famous of it's pizza product. It's not Pizza Hut, but far smaller than PH. My friend said their taste was unique and delicious, so i tried it for the second time (i have been there but it's been so long since my last visit).

I reached there around 6.30 PM and i ordered three menus. Our drink order was out in just a moment, so i have no complaints about it. What i'm complaining was the waiting time for the main menus to get out. It took them about one hour to make it and i guess it would have been longer if we didn't complaint to them. Even Pizza Hut at their peak load will take at most 15 minutes. What's worse, they don't give any fork and knife to eat with and also no plates . I don't think it's worthed with the price i had to pay with the service that i got. I must say that i was really disappointed with their service. I will never go there again in the future.

Good Bye England

Just now, the big match between Germany and England ended with an outstanding results. Germany beat England 4-1. I predicted that the match will be an equal match since both countries had so many star player, but that didn't become a warranty for a team to win the match.

I didn't see any improvements on England's strategy. Rooney didn't even scored in this tournament, very contrast of what he has done for the last season where he become the goalgetter for his club Manchester United. The same goes for Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Jermaine Defoe, and John Terry. Their contributios for their country doesn't seem as much as for their clubs.

Well, so long England

Blackout

Today i went to Malioboro Mall with my girlfriend and we had our first Hoka-Hoka Bento dinner together. She already been there with her family, but this is my first one in Jogja. I had it before, but it was in Jakarta, not in Jogja. It was crowded as usual, but since it's World Cup, the queue wasn't as long as it used to be.

Anyways, there was a blackout when i was about to leave the mall and it lasted for about 30-40 seconds. Many people were shouting and was about to leave when the lights turned back to life. It was quite embarassing to have a blackout in the mall

Graduation

Tomorrow, there will be a graduation party at my campus. Tonight, there was a feast at campus, but i didn't attend it since i have another agenda.

I would like to congratulate all of you my students who finally earned your bachelor degree. It isn't the end of your journey, but consider it as a start to build your career in the future. Be prepared for a new life outside campus

Exam Ready

This is my first time i completed making the mid test and final test questions even before the class started. Usually, i make the exams few weeks before the real test, but since i'm handling short semester, i will be busier than i used to be, so i take an early actions by creating the questions before the class started.

So far, it's been good. I only need to review it later when the exam is near. It surely reduce my workload when short semester starts in the next two weeks. By then, i can focus on preparing my materials and also having a technical meeting when the students are attending their mid test.

Using MidpSSH

I used to remote my computer as much as possible using SSH protocol for secure communications, because i can work and maintain the server in the same time as long as there are Internet connection.

If i don't bring my laptop or i'm not close to desktop computers, i can also use my mobile phone to connect to the computer since i'm using MidpSSH application which can be used as SSH client. Right now, the developer is working for BlackBerry version.

If you are a mobile worker and need to maintain your computer remotely using your mobile phone, i suggest you try this application. It's free

The Last Olympian

It's been some time since i bought my last novel. I couldn't remember when. But today i bought the fifth (last) novel by Rick Riordan on Percy Jackson Series: The Last Olympian when i visited TogaMas in Galeria. I got 15% discount there also

This book was published last year, but the Indonesian translated version has just came up few days ago i guess, since my friend couldn't find this book even though he occasionally visited TogaMas.

I always admired his work, especially Percy Jackson's series. It was a true imaginative and fun and easy to read since it's not too complex as Harry Potter.

To find out about the author (Rick Riordan), please visit his official website

Mozilla Firefox 3.6.4

Firefox 3.6.4 has been released by Mozilla team and this version brings a new feature that enhanced user experience in browsing, called uninterrupted browsing. When one of your plugins (Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins) crashed, usually you will need to restart your browser, but with this new feature, you only need to refresh your pages and the plugin will be restarted just like a new one. In other word, crashed plugins are now localized.

See the full list of changes in Release Notes

Cutting Hair

Today, i accompanied my mother and my girlfriend to cut their hair at the barber shop near my office. I bet, that was the longest waiting time i have ever took. I got there around 2.35 and i got out of there by 5.30 I even slept there for some time (i didn't recall the time, but i think it's more than 30 minutes )

They had a strange queue system. Even though we have booked via phone, they will end up using FIFO method, so whoever gets there first will be served and for one person, it might take about 45-60 minutes to finish, even though it's only a simple cut. I know the barber is a great guy. He was a famous barber and my mother like his performance because he is very precise and detail.

Since he already worked since morning, at the end, my mother didn't have a chance to get her hair cut by the barber. What a waste of time. Unfortunately, my girlfriend had a chance and she is getting prettier than before

Grandmother's Birthday

Today, my family and i were celebrating my grandmother's birthday which was supposed to be last Saturday, but due to some reason, we couldn't celebrate it at that time, so we decided to celebrate it tonight. I asked my girlfriend too so we can celebrate it together

We had dinner together at Quality Hotel and we ate dim sum. It was delicious and not too expensive either. The only problem was the waiting time before the food were taken out of the kitchen. They have to wait until all of the orders were ready and they will took all of them at once. For small people, i don't think it will be a problem, but if you bring many people, lets say 10 or more people, i think you will end up waiting for about 20-30 minutes before the meals are ready for you.

Anyways, we had a great time together with my auntie and my cousin too. Unfortunately not all of our family members can join us, since they lived in Jakarta, Salatiga, and Australia. We hoped that we can have another delight moment when we are reunited at the end of this year like what we used to do at the end of each year

Buy or Copy?

There has been a common idea that copying a book is better than buying the original book. I did that in the past while i was a student, but there was a reason behind it. The college didn't negotiate with the publisher to provide a textbook for the students to buy, so the students ended with an original book which was so expensive at that time (i was studying in bachelor degree when IDR's rate was in a bad shape related to USD).

Things have changed now. We are trying to make our process of learning new knowledge become better by trying to provide a low cost text books to the students. The distributors will give a very special discount if it used by the students and based on what i seen, the difference is so high. You will not get those price at normal price such as in Amazon.

The problem now lies to the students, whether they would use this chance to buy the book or not. It's not just about the price and the information in the book. It's about the add on materials that are only included if you buy the original book since some books has an additional companion websites which gives you access to additional materials not available on the book itself. I think if the college has given you this opportunity, you should take it very well, because not every college is willing to deal with the distributor to handle the process.

Back to Taiwan

Few days ago, i posted about change of my watching style. I have been saying that lately, i have been watching Chinese dramas, but since yesterday, i changed again. Probably due to long episodes that makes me feel bored after taking three movies continuously. Chinese dramas usually took around 50 episodes per movie, can you imagine that?

Right now, i'm watching another Taiwanese Drama called The Prince Who Turns Into a Frog. The main characters are Ming Dao and Chen Qiao En. It's a funny drama with a lot of funny noise on the spot, since the producer added some funny noises on several acts. It only has 30 episodes in it and so far, i have completed 18 of them, which means there are 12 episodes remaining

Accessing SVN Repository Behind Proxy

If you use Subversion as your SCM tool and you are working on an environment which uses a proxy, then you will not be able to access your online repository directly without changing the svn configuration.

Here's a small howto:

• Open ~/.subversion/servers (located in your user's home directory)
• Add these lines
• http-proxy-host = your-proxy-host
  http-proxy-port = your-proxy-port

after that, you can start working with Subversion again

Change of Style

In the past, i always watched Korean or Taiwanese Dramas, but lately, i have been watching Chinese Dramas. I have finished watching Legend of the Condor Heroes and Return of the Condor Heroes (latest remake) and tonight, i have just completed another one, Chinese Paladin (first season).

My next movie list are The Spirit of the Sword and Demi God and Semi Devil

Passport Fee

Today, i went to the imigration office again to attend a photo and interview session as part of my passport extension. I arrived at 9 AM and took the queue number. I got number 17 and the display showed 16, which means i'm next customer. It didn't take one minute before i was called to fetch my documents.

Next, i waited to pay and i was surprised, since i only have to pay IDR 275000, less than i expected before (it's mentioned on my previous blog post). It seems the finger print fee has been included as well, so here are the details:
- 48 pages passport : IDR 270000
- Passport cover: IDR 5000

After i payed the fee, i have to wait for photo session. They took my photo and also scanned my fingerprints (all of them). The last session was an interview session. It took me less than 3 minutes to finish, as they only asked one question and after i signed that all of the data i wrote in the application form has been verified, i'm done with the process.

All i have to do now is wait for the next two days to get my new passport

First Project Management Class

Today is my first day of teaching in short semester. There will be two classes that i will teach, which are Operating Systems and Principle of Project Management and Quality Assurance. The OS class will start at second block, which will start on July, while the PM and QA class started today and it will last until July as well.

I have been playing with PM and QA thing during my role as a software engineer in Jakarta few years ago. I had some experience of dealing with project management for a while and i'm using this experience in sync with Kathy Schwalbe's book of Information Technology Project Management which shows about the application of PM in IT field. I find it very interesting and fun to be able to teach this class. This is a dual degree program, and i might be teaching it again on next regular semester as well, so let's just think of it as a warm up class

Extending Passport

My passport is about to expire soon, so in order to prevent unwanted condition, i decided to extend my passport today. The procedures has been slightly changed since my last extension and i think it's getting better even though it can be improved a little bit more.

Now, you need to bring your authentic papers, not the copy of it. They will verify your papers on the site and they will return it to you when they are finished with it. I didn't know about this, so i had to go back to fetch my papers again and go there again. Also, they now uses a queue system, not by FIFO principle any more. We had to took a number when we entered the building and then wait for being called by the officer.

The rate which has to be paid is also slightly decreased. If i'm not mistaken (since i haven't made any payment), it will cost me about IDR 300.000 to have a new 48 pages passport. In the past, i think it will cost me more than IDR 400.00 - 500.000 to have the same page as nowadays.

The details are:
- IDR 7.000 for application form
- IDR 270.000 for 48 pages passport (150.000 for 24 pages passport)
- IDR 15.000 for fingerprints (i don't know why they charge for this kind of service)
- IDR 2.000 for parking rate

The process are a little bit slow i guess. It will take two days before they will ask you to come again and take a photo for your passport and having an interview and then you will have to come in another two days before you can retrieve your new/extended passport. In the past, we only have to come twice, but now we have to come three times before we can get our newly passport.

Oh well, i think they can still be improved in the next five years

Anti Spam

Today, i received a lot of spams on my blog posts. It's really annoying to see those kinds of users spreading links to porn site on other's blog.

I really hope that Google team sees this blog post and develop a mechanism to block or ban the users who's spreading these kind of messages in the future.

Nervous

Four matches has been played on the World Cup 2010 and so far, only South Korea who had an impressive performance compared to other countries, such as France and Argentina. Even though they were favoured to have easy win, in fact the result didn't come up as they wanted to.

France got their first draw on this competition while even though Argentina won their first match, it's not likely their best performance tonight. I think they are still quite nervous to go to their first match.

Let's hope England will have better results. We will find out in the next few hours

Welcome World Cup 2010

Finally, the awaited four years event has been started few hours ago and while i'm typing, the opening match between the host, South Africa vs Mexico has entered the second half.

I didn't watch the opening as i went to the movie theater with my girlfriend and watched Karate Kid. It was a great movie. I picked this movie instead of The A Team, since Jackie Chan played at the movie and i thought my girlfriend would prefer this instead of the A Team and it was a correct decision.

It's definitely worthed to watch. I would give 9/10 for this movie. The remaining 1 is because the ending was too quick. Well, i can understand the reason (this movie has 195 minutes duration), but for me, the ending still plays an important role to determine whether a movie should get a rating of 10/10 or not.

Flash Player 10.1 Available

After being targeted, Adobe has promised that they would release a fix for the vulnerabilities related to Flash Player and today, they fulfilled their promise by releasing Adobe Flash Player 10.1.

It's available for Windows/Linux/Mac/Solaris. Curious about the new features? Check it here.

Go get them

Another Improvement on Google Docs

Google Docs users will see a lot of improvements on Google Apps in this month. I have just received an email regarding changes to Google Docs. This will be an incremental updates rather than big bang updates, so no big changes that would make users

Here are the changes, taken from the email from Google Apps:
● Starting on June 16th, 2010, we will introduce new sharing settings in Google Docs, designed to make sharing easier and to give your users more control over their files. Now your users will be able to assign a sharing setting to a file in just one step and see at-a-glance how each document is shared. To learn more, please visit the help center at http://goo.gl/I8Jp.

● Starting on June 21st, 2010, we will begin activating the new Google documents editor for all users. This new editor offers character-by-character real-time collaboration, better document import fidelity, and many new features like built-in chat with co-editors. To learn more, please visit the help center at http://goo.gl/8Idy.

● Starting on June 30th, 2010, we will begin activating the new Google spreadsheets editor for all users. This new editor offers many new features like an editable formula bar, cell auto-complete and faster performance. To learn more, please visit the help center at http://goo.gl/Qgze.

Giving Birth

No No No, it's not me who's giving birth definitely, or else i would become the second male who gave birth

It's my colleague who had a new daughter few days ago and i visited her today with my other colleagues. She had a great daughter even though we hadn't seen her yet, but by looking at the videos taken by her mom, she looks very chubby and healthy.

Congratulations to Mrs. Rosa, you had a wonderful daughter. Wishing you all the best for your family

New Index Engine by Google

Content on the web grows faster than everyone can imagine. Even Google is having problem to index all this content using his old search index engine. That's why they built a new seach index engine and they called it Caffeine.

Today, they officially announced it on the Google Blog. The basic idea of Caffeine is like a real time updater for any content on any web. Any small changes on your web will be known by the indexer and it will add it to the index database on Google's server. Thus bringing the latest content to people's search in Google's website

Google has also provide a small information about how it works. It is a cool system indeed.

Taken from Google Blog:

Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

You can see how the old and new search index works in the illustration above.

Here's a video about how a search process works in Google:



Update (10 seconds later): I have seen this information listed in Google's indexing. That was very fast. It really works

Firefox Sync

When i used Google Chrome for the first time, i spotted a nice feature called Sync which enables us to synchronize our preferences on one computer to be stored at our Google's account and we can transfer it to another computer (for example our laptop or workstation at the office) without having to export anything like in the past. We only need Internet access to Google and open up your Google Chrome and pick Synced option. Logged in to Google's account and your preferences are synced. Piece a cake huh?

I tried to find this feature in Firefox, but i was disappointed when i used a third party extensions (i forgot the name of the extension since it was quite a long time ago), but today, i'm installing Firefox Sync (previously named as Weave) to give it a try again. It's a useful tool which enables us to save our history, passwords, bookmarks and even open tabs across all your devices. What i like about this tool is that it gives us more options about what should we sync. For me, i only need to sync the bookmarks entries so that i will have a same bookmark entries in all of my computers.

More Crowded

Today, i went to the swimming pool again with my girlfriend. This time, it was more crowded than before, but luckily the weather was in a good mood. There was no rain at all just like before, so i can swam without worrying too much.

The pool was more crowded than last week as there were so many foreigners who joined the pool while i was swimming. There were about eight people and they came in one by one.

As usual, western people like to chat while sun bathing on side of the pool while reading a book. I think it's a good habit to read a book.

Finding Mood

This week, the students will register for short semester and that means i have to start teaching again. I find it very exciting as it has become my daily activities for the past five months and right now, i didn't teach due to long break after a semester. The problem with that is that finding a good mood to start working and preparing all the materials again.

Today, i started to find my mood and i finally started to work on the syllabus for my class next semester. It's been my way to prepare all of the materials in the beginning so that i only need to so minor tweaks before my class starts. It will also give me more time to do other things i have to do on my daily basis. Sometimes, 24 hours a day is not enough for me that's why i have to manage my work earlier

Car Free Day

Today, Jogja is testing a car free day area in Malioboro, the main street in Jogja. Car free day is a day where cars are prohibited to enter some roads in certain area. It has been used in Jakarta in many main roads, but in Jogja, the testing was done only in Malioboro.

It lasted only up to 11 AM, so after that, it become so crowded as people started to entered

I think it's a good idea to have a car free day in Malioboro. I hope it soon be a weekly events and not only in Malioboro, but also in many other main roads in Jogja.

Swimming Again

Last semester, i didn't have time to exercise my body due to full schedule. Since i'm having a break before i will start a short semester, i'm using this time to start exercising my body. One of the most frequest activity in my daily life is sit. It's not a good habbit if we sit too long.

Today, i extend my membership at Melia Purosani Hotel with my girlfriend. We took the couple program for another six month. It's quite cheap IMHO and if we could use it extensively, i believe we would get more benefit compared to the money we spent on it.

I also took a chance to had a one hour swimming today. It was so great to have my body exercised again after quite a long time

Movie Wishlist

Tekken and Shrek has been airing on Jakarta's movie theater, but it hasn't been played at Jogja yet. I am hoping that tomorrow one of those two will show up on 21Cineplex and i can watch it with my girlfriend

I don't know why they don't play Shrek even though some movies are no longer favoured by the audience. I just can't think how they manage the schedule since i believe Shrek will become a big hit.

Project Management Class

Due to one reason, my colleague will not be able to teach Project Management class next semester, so he asked me to become his substitute. I have learned some of the concepts while i was working back in Jakarta and i have applied them on my daily activities, but i haven't prepared anything to teach the students about the frameworks, so it will be my first experience teaching project management class.

I think it should be a fun class

They Kiss Again

Right now, i'm currently watching They Kiss Again, the second sequel to It Started With a Kiss, a Taiwanese drama that has 20 episodes each. So far, i have finished watching 15 episodes and i found it very interesting as the story was so touching and sometimes so funny to watch.

It seems that big efforts does makes differences even though many people thought it would be impossible to be done. Xiang Qin has proven that. I hope for those who have seen these movies will think the same way. Go for what your dream is and fight for it