デフコン

This afternoon the Internet at my workplace went down. Since the rest of the network infrastructure was running fine, I thought it was one of those random pesky Unifi downtimes that happens once in a blue moon.

After a couple of hours I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to investigate and observed the primary gateway is slowly chugging along. Well, a quick hard reboot should fix it…

… Not.

Then I noticed my secondary gateway has high CPU usage as well – so a soft-reboot should do the trick…

… Nope.

Tried to run PING to Google (el classico!) and the response was quite odd – on-and-off responses.

I thought something was definitely wrong with the network, and boy I was pretty damn right.

A quick peek at the network monitoring tool shows 5 MBps activities on my network servers, it’s a magic number just enough to drown the Unifi link. Something is hogging the network.

So I disconnected my IP masquerade from the network – and Internet access (on the server) immediately restored.

Time to find the bad boy – DARKSTAT to the rescue. In a few seconds, the wolf among the sheep is found (more like a zombie, that fella was happily flooding the network with RDP requests). First thing that came across my mind is to immediately configure the firewall to drop all packets coming from the machine.

Yep, this time it fully restored the Internet access in our network.

ZENMAP showed our target as a Windows 2003 Server SP2 machine with a handful of opened ports. From the outside it doesn’t seem vulnerable.

… From the outside that is…

I saw RDP was opened so the most logical thing to do is to try to remote access that sonnovabeech with the most powerful account available and the most stupid password known on Earth.

Jackpot – Administrator privileges granted on the first try itself. As expected, I was greeted with loads of suspicious looking processes and a very nicely placed backdoor (LogMeIn) upon firing up the task manager.

Let’s kill this beach before it lays eggs.

Next time I’m going to audit each !@#$ server that is going to be placed on the network.

とある物語３

Imagine you are going to conduct a full day technical training to government officers. Imagine you have suited up with your best professional appearance.

Imagine you arrived on site on time. You took out a large box containing 21 pieces of equipment from your boot, your 5 kilo working backpack, your water bottle from the car.

Locked the car and proceed walking towards the traffic light junction between the car park and the government building.

Everything is cool and smooth. You felt your pants pockets and…

Shit happened - your car ignition key is missing (imagine the key is not kept together with the remote for security reasons).

You looked frantically around you and the key is no where in sight. You have to deliver the equipment on-time, there are issues requiring your on-time support, and top it all off it is your turn to present soon. You are afraid if the key is picked up by someone else. You are afraid you will not able to go home today.

You’re sweating profusely, your shirt is all wet, after all that trouble you took to look good. Time is ticking, make your choice.

This is not fiction.

I chose to deliver the equipment to my colleague (the current presenter) and fulfill my commitment to support the technician in the Personalization Centre. Apparently there was some unknown (to the technician, at least) error during personalization of test cards, and the issue was very urgent.

I requested the technician to open up the PIN file, but watching the clueless technician staring blankly at the monitor is excruciatingly difficult. Clock is ticking. Calm down, don’t let the personal stuff affect work.

After a good 5 minutes or so he gave up and asked if I could locate it. He should have done so in the first place. I made an educated guess and found the file I’m looking for. Looks like someone was lying, the machine is clearly not pre-configured for test card personalization.

After a few trips back-and-forth the meeting room (where my notebook was) and Personalization Centre, I found out the culprit was just a mistyped SAM PIN. Awesome.

Went back to the meeting room (where the training session was held) and troubleshooted a few participants’ code.

Finally got the chance to continue the search for the key after things have pretty much calmed down.

After searching the grasses, the pavement, the tar roads, under cars, in the boot, on the seat constantly rewinding my memory trying to recall the most possible place the key could have misplaced or dropped, hope was gradually lost. I was going to give up, the search area big and full of obstacles for such a small key.

I texted my family members saying I have lost my keys and might need to tow my car later.

“The Law of Attraction”, I recalled the words someone told me. It’s too early to give up. Kept my cool and restarted the search from my car, searching beneath nearby cars, under the scorching sun.

Underneath one black car a few lots away from my car, there was my key. And then I was like “ZOMG IT’S A MIRACLE I’M SAVEDZZZZ”

Started my car with that key just to double confirm.

End of story.

爆発！

*cough*

It sure is dusty here…

Having an “explosive” luck this few days, literally. Things tend to go boom after I touch them.

First a 0.1 uF Tantalum 16V capacitor (yesterday) exploded on my face after plugging into my Pikachu, then a 3300 uF electrolytic capacitor (today) went off with a loud bang within 3 minutes after plugging into the yellow rodent.

While walking from the car park towards my office, I picked up a Sony Walkman that looked like it had gone through some serious torture – with the enclosure totally cracked open.

The LiPo (Lithium Polymer) battery seems to be dry, so I decided to charge it with my laptop USB.

The impressive OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display lighted up flawlessly after plugging in, and the device seems to mount properly in my laptop, enabling me to access the contents inside.

Unknown to me, the LiPo battery was expanding rapidly, budging out like a balloon, waiting for the moment to… wait for it... explode. (yes, just like Chinese exploding batteries, AS SEEN ON TV)

Fortunately I unplugged it before it could scare the hell out of my colleagues.

なにもない

过了那么久，还是会每天想起。原本想送最后一份礼物，不知怎么和想聊天的念头一样，又打消了。

来点开心的。

加薪20%，这个月还没有加。明年加？希望老板没有玩我。钱是推动力，有那份薪水，我也不好意思偷懒。

1月15日，非常期待的日子—到底花落谁手？Dr Christine说Chee Leng要她确定我一定去，而且要准备致词的脚本。有没有机会夺冠？还是泡影一个？

(Update 20120115: 我是冠军 :D)

这里，还有人在吗？

北京

This marked the second time I went to China without my family, and definitely my first business trip to China. Excited? Oh yeah.

In the past, it was always China Eastern Airlines or Thai Airways – but now, I went there with (a bit of) style – Malaysian Airlines. It is one of the few things “Buatan Malaysia” that I’m proud of.

The Airbus A330 is definitely comfortable, equipped with on-seat touch-screen entertainment system – you can watch TV, movies, play games and listen to music (on crappy headphones, unless you bring your own with airline adaptor).

Malaysian Airlines prepared quite a wide variety of fresh content – from what I saw – X-Men: First Class was on the list. But what I usually watch are those rare Japanese flicks you don’t usually see coming to Malaysian cinemas.

If that’s not enough, there’s a USB port for you to plug in your thumb drive – you can browse your files and listen to your own music. Next time I’m definitely packing myself an airline adaptor.

However it was rather disappointing the games didn’t work. They went all the way of preparing a special controller (read: built-in QWERTY keyboard and gamepad buttons) but the games couldn’t load. (for my case: on both flights)

To top it off, Nasi Lemak definitely pwns sandwiches.

Enough about big flying bird machines, let’s talk about Beijing.

It was autumn, from what I heard from the locals, the best time to visit Beijing as it’s neither too cold nor too hot. 20-26 centigrade daytime, 10-19 centigrade at night – awesome weather that will leave you sunburned without knowing it.

The Beijing network of roads is organized into multiple rings. Outer rings are marked with higher numbers, while inner rings are of smaller numbers, closer to the heart of the city. It’s kind of like an onion if you ask me :P

Compared to Malaysia, the major roads are definitely wider, and are generally high capacity and straight. However the traffic is rather chaotic but still ordered, a very contrasting phenomena difficult to be explained unless seen by your own eyes.

In a nutshell, I would never want to drive in Beijing.

The people whom we are working with were very welcoming, accompanying us for lunch, dinner and driving us (my superior and I) around after work hours till late night – on working days mind you. Most of them already have their own families, spending time with us would mean less time spent with their wives and kids.

To be continued…

展望台

Purposely left work early to join buddies for dinner at Look-out Point (Ampang). Somehow it felt nostalgic when we passed by the place I once stayed, from childhood till couple of years ago.

I could still remember clearly the location and names of the shopping complexes, except a few closed down and a few new ones popped up since the day I left this place.

The look-out point is roughly 15 minutes drive from Ampang Point, around 300 meters above sea level. It was kind of a mixed of hazy and misty today, we didn’t get to see any spectacular views, but the cool air is kind of calming.

The food at Haven was quite pricey, but the portions are quite good. If you get yourself a good spot, then the ambience might just hit the right bang-per-buck spot you’re looking for. A nice place to chat up with friends, also a nice place to have a brief escape from the city life.

---

VERBOSE

Paranoid. Confused. Didn’t know situation. Holding up a promise I made to myself, to eliminate all signs of threat coming from myself. To retract my fangs. To avoid barging into others’ territory. Probably ended up awkward.

新しい物語

Hello blog, it’s been a while. *blows away dust*

I’ve been busy lately, busy completing the things-to-do-before-I-start-working list, before I started working. Unfortunately I left out two of them – to go to Sunway Lagoon at least once in my life, and to go vacation on an island not surrounded by the Straits of Melaka.

Yes, I started working (finally). Currently worked as a software engineer in one of the companies owned by Dibena Group. From what looks like a random assignment, I got into a company known as Smart Consult Solutions Sdn Bhd.

Though the HQ is situated in Damansara Heights (Dibena HQ) – that place is so densely populated I can’t even find a car park at 8:30AM. In the end I gave up the second day and relocated my workplace to the Cyberjaya office (which the rest of our R&D team is situated).

As for what I worked on – I can only say it’s related to the smart card operating system (the technology behind MyKad and credit/ATM cards with chips not made out of potatoes).

It’s pretty cool actually, think of it as a miniature computer, equipped with memory to store your data, a general purpose CPU to do some calculations and dedicated hardware crypto processor to secure your data.

As for the current R&D members of the same team that I know of, 3 female colleagues from Panasonic lead by a guy who has worked on PCI Express using Verilog before (hardcore shit). Another 2 ladies from Panasonic will be joining us within this few days.

Yes, FEMALE CODERS. And yes, I am asking the same thing: where were they hiding all along?

けち

   1:  clear all;

   2:  clc;

   3:   

   4:  % Prompt

   5:  conv    = input('Conversion Rate  : ');

   6:  amt     = input('Amount           : ');

   7:   

   8:  % Synthetize range

   9:  amin = round(amt*0.95*100)/100;

  10:  amax = amt;

  11:   

  12:  range = amin:0.01:amax;

  13:   

  14:  % Find result after rounding

  15:  ay = floor(range*conv*100)/100;

  16:   

  17:  % Result without rounding

  18:  y = range*conv;

  19:   

  20:  % Differences

  21:  dy = y-ay;

  22:   

  23:  % Plot

  24:  subplot(2,1,1);

  25:  plot(range, y, range, ay);

  26:  subplot(2,1,2);

  27:  plot(range, dy);

  28:   

  29:  % Find minimum difference

  30:  [my i] = min(dy);

  31:   

  32:  % Result

  33:  disp(['Best amount      : ' num2str(range(i))]);

  34:  disp(['Result           : ' num2str(y(i),10)]);

  35:  disp(['After conversion : ' num2str(ay(i),15)]);

  36:  disp(['Difference       : ' num2str(dy(i),15)]);

When you’re dealing with Paypal, their conversion rates are usually 5 decimal places (e.g. 2.88145), but what they give you is 2 decimal places.

See the problem? 1 USD is originally RM2.88145, but they give you RM2.88 instead! Yes, they sucked out the RM0.00145 – this might not look a lot to you, but imagine they get RM0.00145 from 1 million people.

RM1450 into the pocket – for doing nothing at all! (after already robbing you by offering lower conversion rates)

This MATLAB script tries to limit your losses to the minimum.

Scenario

I have 429.33 USD, if I convert directly, I’ll get 1237.09 MYR instead of (1237.0929285 MYR), therefore losing 0.0029285 MYR.

Using the script, the best conversion amount is 423.45 USD, yielding 1220.15 MYR (instead of 1220.150003 MYR), therefore losing only 0.000003 MYR.

Excellent? If you haven’t notice, it’s 99.9% savings :D

Yes, I’m stingy =P

ランスの料理日々– Day 1

Today I finally decided to try on a recipe (more like a sloppy technique) – Fried Pizza. Original recipe from here: http://brainz.org/14-easy-meal​s-every-guy-should-know-how-ma​ke/

Last weekend I had pizza for dinner, but didn’t manage to gobble down 2 regular pizzas like what I’m (or technically, was) usually capable of. So I had leftovers placed in the freezer awaiting for this fated day.

What you need is simple: the biggest frying pan you can find in your house (which unfortunately I didn’t have), a cover for it, cooking oil and (preferably defrosted) pizza.

STEP 1

This is a no-brainer, heat the frying pan with highest heat to remove all moisture. After it’s dry, pour a thin layer of oil onto it and distribute evenly.

STEP 2

After you can see small bubbles forming in the oil, or smoke is coming out, your oil is ready. Turn down your stove to low heat (not medium low, unless you are confident enough not to create a fireball and charcoal pizza like what I just did).

WARNING: Do not heat the oil until it’s smoking too much – this would kill the base of your pizza before the cheese melt.

MY STORY: I was expecting the oil to boil, which in the end it didn’t, except it was smoking like nobody’s business. “What the hell”, I turned the fire to medium-low and placed the pizza onto the pan.

Within a few seconds it turned into charcoal, and best of all, after I removed the pizza from the pan, the pan actually lit up into a ball of flame – till my neighbors yell “API! API!” and went over to check out on me.

At least my kitchen didn’t explode. =P

STEP 3

Cover the frying pan up – this will contain the smoke and heat, hopefully melt your pizza toppings early enough before the crust turns into ashes. (hence defrosting beforehand is helpful)

Wait for around 3-5 minutes and check on the bottom of your pizza (flip it slightly, don’t topple it). If there’s no sign of burn, you may continue frying it until the cheese melts completely.

STEP 4

After the toppings have melted, remove the pizza from the pan and place it on a plate. You may want to place paper towels on the plate beforehand to absorb the excess oil from the pizza. On the other hand, if you still keep the pizza box, you can just place the pizza directly on it, no towels needed :D

STEP 5

Enjoy your crispy-bottom-melty-top fried pizza. Awesome!

星の扉

Three days – munchkin-raccoon pair managed to survive 3 days of (kononnya) battle.

Monday – Elimination Round

First pair was formed by Rotaract members. By the way he spins the racquet, the guy looks pretty strong . We were lucky the guy opponent didn’t execute much smashes, and I managed to land a few lucky kills.

First time seeing munchkin getting so aggressive.

---

Tuesday – Quarter Finals

Was actually very nervous, until I know who our opponents were – two cute cheerful girls (yes, mixed doubles with female doubles inside), with one of them first time playing badminton.

So we ended up a heehaahaa match (and we lucked out again).

---

Wednesday – Semi Finals

What can I say – the guy is not a noob like me. We were up against a big guy equipped with powerful smashes and good maneuverability (seen his singles match before), and his girlfriend which didn’t looked like a beginner either.

The difference in firepower was very obvious.

Did managed to exploit the girl for a few times with low serves and lucky kills. Munchkin was really scary today with her kills.

Vice versa, the guy managed to kill off some of our serves.

The guy later tend to stick closer to the girl preparing to take most the kills, and the girl gave less room for kills. Her clears were still quite vulnerable.

We were essentially at the mercy of the guy – he was clearly avoiding smashes, so I took back my idea of smashing the girl either. We wouldn’t stand a chance if he go all out.

It was a good defeat, we were simply outmatched by the knight and his princess.

---

We had the chance to compete for the 3rd placing. This time, our opponent is nowhere comparable to the previous one, both in terms of skill and power.

The guy didn’t manage to smash at all, and his back-court clears unfortunately only manage to reach mid-court – highly vulnerable to smashes.

The girl on the other hand, shared the same quirk like the previous girl – vulnerable to net kills when serving.

And so we happily exploited our way to the 3rd place.

Bah, at least we (a bunch of noobs) got to play more than a round. (Lucky!)

緋色の空

It has been a while since I last blogged. But here I am, trying to jot down the little bits of my life, for the future me to look at the footprints he left.

Tomorrow will be the first time I participate in a badminton competition. Till now I rarely compete in sports (except during times I was being forced to participate). The basketball competition I was forced to join last time still gives me the chills.

Considering the amount of time I spent on playing badminton lately, and considering mixed doubles is probably the easiest category in badminton, I have not much confidence in winning the competition. Somehow the mind and body are not used to badminton just yet.

Though I didn’t really originally plan to join this competition, will try to do my best and hopefully this odd raccoon + munchkin team can at least go through the elimination round, into the semi-finals.

---

On a side-note, I have achieved my education goal (or at least achieved a primary objective) by securing a solid degree. But somehow I don’t really feel as happy as I expected. Human emotions is such a mystery.

However I’m standing at a crossroad between securing a job on a MyKad related company, doing my masters in the states, or climbing onto PhD at South Korea. I wonder if the extra education is really worth the time and money, does it really matter in practical situations? Or is practical work experience gives a better edge in the corporate world?

Anyhow, what lies in front of me is the door to the adult world, upon stepping into it, I’m bidding farewell to the carefree days, landing my feet right into the world of responsibilities, liabilities, and commitment, there’s no turning back.

Somehow I envy the young people who are living their carefree life off their parents.

But still, life goes on.

EPILOGUE 2011

It only has been half of 2011 and already feels like a year had passed by. The past 6 months had been full of events and experiences. Though I’m worn out a bit, recalling back all the information that had gone through my 5 senses – the amount more than what I’ve experienced in the past 3 years altogether – I somehow feel satisfied.

I started off my year with my life shifted 180 degrees. It was the time when I experience, for the first time, an emotional attachment to something. It’s something like the feeling of euphoria drugs give you, and they leave you craving for more – you basically get addicted to it. It’s the first thing you think of in the morning, and the last thing you think of before you go to bed.

Throughout the days I learnt a lot of new things, things I wouldn’t learn if I was still single, experience I wouldn’t go through if there wasn’t a 180 degree shift in my life, dreams I wouldn’t dream of if I was still the old me.

They say good times won’t last forever – and they were right.

Things were heating up pretty fast during the 2nd quarter of 2011. Project management challenges, technical difficulties, college stress caused a snowball effect. Things seriously went downhill when the emotional attachment I was clinging on to, suddenly got detached.

My life took another turn of 180 degrees.

Yes, I didn’t see that coming. It hit me like a brick right in the face and left me sulking for days. Analogous to the withdrawal symptoms you get in drugs, I couldn’t get used to the big hole it left in me, totally lost my mind.

That’s when I finally realized how vulnerable I could be – and I don’t want this to end this way.

Faced with finals around the corner, I had to bite the bullet. There’s no choice left for me but to gaze to the front and run like hell. I’ve seen how my condition can do shit to people if they don’t move on, I’m definitely not willing to share the same fate.

After sleepless nights, lots of hard work, lots of Redbull/Livita and a bit of ass-covering, somehow I managed to run past everything relatively unscathed. Boy, I didn’t think I am a mean bad ass, but I guess I am :D

I managed to get rid of my addiction (thankfully) and learn to cherish things I would normally take for granted – my brothers-in-arm, they’re probably the only ones that will watch your back when shit happens; and family, they’re the only ones that will shower you with unconditional love. Like air, these are the important people that are there all along, but always get swept aside.

And now I stopped and think – hey, things weren’t so bad after all, I’m glad everything turned out this way, except the part he, who went through similar fate as mine, is still stuck in the endless limbo. Hope he pull himself back up soon.

Now, I’m proud to say – I can build robots from scratch. ;)

僕のバレンタイン

One fine day, Angry Bird found a pink package lying on the floor. He got curious and took a good look at it. Affixed with a golden stamp, the pink package seemed to had flown from a land far far away…

As impatient as any Angry Bird, he quickly and swiftly, yet elegantly opened the wrappers with his beak, careful not to shred the wrapping paper.

Within the mysterious box was treasure! Angry Bird soon got carried away popping the bubble wraps… (as these are the only things he is interested in)

Goodies! Chocolates, cup (with a message “everytime I think of you… something grows!”), “grumpy old man” coin box (I think this is for Angry Bird, should be “grumpy old bird” instead ;D), loads of gf-made cards, a shirt (:D).. and the list goes on…

Crocodile wire wrapper and a handwritten (and drawn) letter :3

Sugar-overdose handmade cards… *sniffles* felt like hugging the person who made this…

Happy happy happy :D

(Engineers and GM – you guys are not left out ;P)

英国のクイズ

What’s with the British flag, British pencil and British cap you say? I just got back from a trip to England :D…

Yeah right.

The story goes like this: one fine day, Sheffield Hallam University held a SHU Alumni gathering thingo, so they invited KBU SHU students to attend.

As expected, nobody even wants to go – so as usual, the class representatives are chosen to be scapegoats. How nice.

So we departed from KBU at around 6PM, it was raining. When there is rain, there is jam – it’s Malaysian culture. So the traffic in KL was so jammed, we literally hop off from the van and started travelling by foot.

And yes, we arrived at the hotel earlier than the time we would take to reach the hotel by van – it’s only around 2 km, according to my GPS.

Crowne Plaza Hotel, 30th floor – wow, the receptionist spoke of heavy British accent, interesting…

Apparently TARC has SHU students too, they even displayed their bunting there, whereas KBU goes low profile and KBU students are the ones known as “the students who walked 2 km in KL heat”.

Tim was there. Martin was there. Andrew (who accidentally spilled water to his passport, got recommended to work in Chow Kit road) was there.

They’re some other ang mohs from UK (inc. Scotland) too.

Simple buffet dinner with Shepherd pie, some Chicken thingy, fish and chips (UK food :O) as main course..

Chips and desserts were nice.. But I ate a rotten cheese cake (yuck), chocolate cake was excellento, brownies was finger lickin’ good xD

(this guy likes his simple sugar :P)

We sucked at the quiz.. SPACESHIP! HAHAHA (insider joke)

(we got ‘awarded’ a box of so-called “British pencils” for our little 2 km journey *applauses*)

Yeah, David Beckham was born in London. We knew it!

まだ死んでいない:P

For the past few months I’ve been quite busy with college and life (as you can see for the dead-ness of this blog). I can imagine myself losing all the usual patrons for this blog already *talks to the air*.

Anyway, it has been quite an interesting 2 months. Digging up silver in the eGenting Programming Competition 2010, driving a BMW 3 series for the first time, ate food prepared by hotel management students (they were awesome) for the first time, triggering ABS for the first time, kayaking for the first time, CNY house visiting (friends’ houses) for the first time, sitting in front of the PC for more than 12 hours per day rushing on the Final Year Project for the first time…

We gotta admit, it’s the ups and downs that made life rather interesting eh? ;P

I’ll probably start blogging again today, jotting down things I find interesting… probably.

彼女から

They’ve arrived! The long awaited Christmas gift from her in a polythene bubble mail bag ~ x3

The cards are a bit battered up, but a bit of flexing does the trick.

Yes! They’re 100% GF-made cards :D I saw her spent so many sleepless nights working on these. T__T

Each card (except the one with a Christmas tree) has a personal message written on the back.

<3

試験の死剣

Had a memorable conversation with her yesterday, a conversation that somehow magically strengthened my resolve. Must not let her wait, must not let her down.

Time to work hard towards that goal. Time to buckle up!

ARE YOU READY?

GUY!!

(okay, enough Engrish)

来た！来た！

It flew a few tens of thousands of kilometres and withstood quite some physical punishment along the process – but alas, it arrived safely in my hands.

Another very important token received from abroad, glad it didn’t get lost in the mail exchange office. *cherishes*

嬉しい

<3

状態－良い

I feel things are going on more smoothly, more in control now. Sometimes the only way to ride the waves is to get smashed by the waves over and over again.

Life is kinda like the dungeons you find in RPGs. The stages of life are represented by dungeons of different difficulty.

If you luck out, you get to find the right path on the first try and clear the dungeon in no time.

“You can’t go the distance, without some resistance.”

If you’re unlucky, you go around in circles and find yourself in the middle of nowhere. But with enough patience and some time, you’ll eventually find yourself out of the dungeon.

All in all, each time you clear a dungeon, you get stronger. You know what to anticipate in your next adventure, you know your way around problems just by looking at it.

There’s always some obstacles along the way – the tougher the obstacles, the stronger you will be after clearing them.