Harddisk installed!

After a few months of data acquisition and installing of tons of programmes and games, i've only got about...100gb left on my WD 300gb harddisk. So i decided to use the WD 250gb one that i've kept in reserve for all these months and install in on my computer.

Took a bit of rough work, considering the lack of space inside the casing, but it turns out i'm pretty lucky 'cos my graphic card's smaller than Mr Goat (aka tzeyang lah) so there's no need to remove my graphic card just to eject the bloody ram chips and get them out of the way. Needed some help from tzeyang 'cos my system couldn't seem to read it at first, so i couldn't format it, but now it's done! So i've now got a sweet 550gb of storage space in my computer! Sweet... :):):)

Oh, anyway speaking of hardware, check out this system mod that i found from shoutwire (yet again)...



Yup it really IS a computer...With a thumbdrive slot on her thumb and a webcam in her single EYE.

Here's the original link:
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/leela/

And the supposedly original original link:
http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?showtopic=488840&st=220

Someone on shoutwire said that the power button should be between her legs...like DEEP inside...I personally wonder where they put the exhaust fans..:D

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Myths about Atheism and a slightly crappy NS posting.

Was flipping through shoutwire like i normally do when i get bored, and i saw this article..I'm gonna post it on my blog so that certain people can get a peek at an atheist's perspective of things...The dude who wrote this is called Sérgio Rebelo or something...and well it's focused a lot on Christianity instead of other religions 'cos the writer doesn't have much contact with other religions, apparently.

Oh but i'm not atheist btw...i'm a freethinker. I personally find it hard to simply declare that God doesn't exist...there's simply no proof for or against. Some people might call me indecisive...but i really do think that we don't know anything, and should consider any and all possiblities. I guess that's why my own "holy scriptures" change all the time. Erps.

But i DO think that organised religions like christianity and the like have really stifled true religious thought...there're less people in the world openly discussing the possibilities of how our universe came to be and what happens after death...probably because there's a need to be..sensitive..to those who really believe what their bibles/priests/monks/etc have taught. Oh and i don't consider bible study or the like as true religious discussion...those who participate in these start off with preconceived "truths" and prejudices because of what they've been told since their early youth...How stifling, indeed.

16 Common Myths About Atheists

by Sergio Rebelo (...i think)

1. Atheists hate Christians and Christianity. No, we don’t. Personally, I do hate the atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion, the dishonesty of most religions, and the way that they encourage people not to think or question, and not to trust or use their minds. But I don’t dislike someone just because of their religion.


2. Most atheists started out as Christians, and stopped believing because of some bad experience with other Christians. Or maybe we simply started to question, to wonder what happened when we applied the standards of logic, reason and burden of proof to religion, as we already did to everything in our lives. Or, perhaps, we were never believers at all. It happens, you know.


3. Atheists have no sense of morality, since morality comes from God. Ah, the old “without fear of hell, there would be nothing to stop people from being bloodthirsty monsters” argument. It may come as a surprise to most Christians, but there are reasons for being “good” other than fear of punishment - which isn’t really a reason, anyway, and only shows Christians in a very bad light. Reasons like human empathy, genuine feelings for others, and, most importantly, rational principles. Behaving yourself just because daddy will spank you otherwise does not make you a nice child.


4. Atheists are a unified group, like a church. Are we? I must have missed the memo, then. If anything, I’d say atheists are more diverse than Christians, because we’re less “sheep-like”, and don’t accept things on faith, or from authority.


5. Atheists actually know, deep inside, that there’s a God, as that’s perfectly obvious; they are simply too proud and arrogant to admit the existence of something greater than themselves. Not exactly. You see, the existence of a god is only “obvious” if you’ve been brainwashed (either by others, or by your own irrationality) into believing it. We are truly convinced that there’s no god, and are not in denial. Really. I’m serious.


6. Atheists don’t really know anything about Christianity. Again, it depends. Some certainly know more than others. However, religion is so ubiquitous that, like it or not, we’ve all had varying degrees of contact with it, with its teachings, and with believers. Besides, a lot of atheists are naturally curious. I, myself, have read the Christian Bible - more than once, in fact. Now, dear believer, ask yourself how many atheist books, magazines or essays you have read. Oh, I forgot, they’re all the work of Satan.


7. Atheists’ lives are cold and empty, as they can’t feel the joy and love that comes only from God. Really? I’d never call my life “cold” or “empty” - I have the joys of friendship, love, family, and doing the things I love to do. And, what’s more, I’m self-sufficient, unlike anyone who says “I don’t know how anyone could live without God in their lives” - as many Christians do.


8. Atheists are depressive and nihilistic, since they believe there’s nothing after death, and therefore there’s no point to anything. On the contrary, we, unlike you, know how precious life is, because we’re aware that it’s our only one. And, this may come as a shock to you, but we can love our lives, we can feel the joy of being alive, because we don’t believe that “this is the devil’s world”, or that “this is just a test before the real thing”. Life is precious, and it’s our own - not any god’s.


9. Atheists are cold and uncaring. No, we are not. Having delusions doesn’t make anyone more “caring”. And, again, we treat life as precious, and do what we can to improve it, both ours and that of our loved ones. On the other hand, many Christians believe life is suffering, and that there’s nothing we can do about it.


10. Atheists are arrogant. What, because we dare to use our minds instead of asking “who are we to know”? No, we’re not.


11. Atheists want to forbid religious worship. Wrong. We just don’t want to be harmed by it. Want to believe in God, Jesus, Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy? Be my guest. Want to teach your kids to do the same? I feel sorry for them, but it will still take many years until people realize how crippling one’s reason in childhood is like a bird crippling its offspring’s wings. (*) Want to give all your money to a guy with a Lexus and a bad haircut? Fine. But don’t try to “save” me, don’t harass me in the street or at my home, don’t get politicians to enact laws to give power to you, don’t try to teach your religion in science classes by dishonestly giving it a new name and disguising it as “science”, and don’t use my tax money to write your idiocies in public places. In short, do as you want, as long as you keep it to yourself - just like I don’t go to your place trying to un-convert you.


12. Atheists are incapable of feeling awe at simple things, like a beautiful sunset, as they see everything in terms of cold science, instead of miracles. Ah, unweaving the rainbow - the idea that beauty and poetry only exist if we know little to nothing about how things work. But I ask you: does the fact that you know about astronomy, physics and light make the sunset any less beautiful? Was it beautiful only because it seemed “magical” - or “an act of god” - to you?


13. Atheists live their lives in constant fear of death. Few people actually want to die - those that do are either depressed and suicidal, or are Christians who believe that the world is evil, “please, Lord Jesus, take me”, and all that. A reasonable fear of death is perfectly natural. Also, we may believe that this life “is it”, which makes us treat it as precious, but, at least, we don’t think that there’s a chance of going to a place where you burn and are tortured for eternity…


14. Most criminals are atheists (or, alternatively, the percentage of atheists among criminals is higher than among the general populace). Oddly enough, the opposite is true.


15. Atheists are stubborn and closed-minded. Not unless you define “closed-minded” like this. But, as Ebon said, Ask any believer what would convince him he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist, and if you get a response, it will almost invariably be, “Nothing - I have faith in my god.” Although such people may well exist, I personally have yet to meet a theist who would acknowledge even the possibility that his belief was in error. Many theists, by their own admission, structure their beliefs so that no evidence could possibly disprove them. Atheists, on the other hand, are easy to convince - all it requires is for God to show himself in some unfakeable way - say, for instance, by doing any of the many things he supposedly did in the Old Testament…


16. Atheists make bad parents. Again, there are good and bad atheist parents, and good and bad Christian parents. Atheist parents, however, would never do what Abraham was about to do to his son Isaac (and Christians see Abraham’s behavior as laudable!), because, to most atheists, our lives are our own. In fact, even if there was a God, it would not follow that our lives are his.

Note: There’s already a list, The Top 10 Atheist Myths, by Dave Silverman, but mine isn’t inspired by that one. I agree with what Silverman writes, but I don’t think all of those are necessarily the top myths. Not to say my list is better, but these are what I think are the top myths… and a couple of them are actually in both lists. Besides, my list has more myths than his, which obviously makes it better.

(*) There used to be something harsher there, where I seemed to (but didn’t) compare teaching religion to children to sexual abuse. I just meant to say that it was crippling, and should be seen as we see parents who refuse their kids medical treatment because they’d rather put their faith in god: bad parents who aren’t capable of being parents. As it was misunderstood, I edited it. Any (pre-edit) comments about it are still below, though.

EDIT: Don’t believe that many Christians actually think some these things about atheists? Please read my new post, Are the myths about atheists real or not?

EDIT 2: Because there are so many comments, and because most of them (including some of my replies) were getting too far from the original subject, I’ve closed the comments for this post, and created a new one: Christian myths about Atheism: discussion. If you want to comment, or reply to this post’s comments, please go there.

Well, that's the end of that post. He was bashing Christians quite a bit in the end, wasn't he. Ahwell. Maybe he's gone under some kinda verbal abuse in the past.

Anyway to those interested...i'm in 3 Singapore Infantry Brigade now..in short 3sib. Kinda sucks. 'Cos they've got their own signal company to do all the work, so when there's any brigade missions..well they won't ask the signal battalions for help. They'll ask us. Bah. There's also lots of signal-only exercises too..which equates to more outfield and more helmets and SBOs and rifle carrying. Compare that to the 8-5 office work that some of my signal specialists are probably getting.

I wouldn't really mind so much (the work is pretty interesting, actually) if the facilities were better. Let's just put it this way...because the camp is situated right beside MINDEF, there's a lot of security. So, on most days, if my mum were to drive me in, or if i were to take the taxi, i'd have to spend 15-20 minutes walking just to reach my bunk. Compare that to 3minutes for Stagmont Camp and zero walking time for SISPEC ('cos of the bus). And gosh, is the bunk dirty too. Not dirty in that in can be cleaned up...most of it is rusty fans and really rusty cupboards (the really small kind, mind, not the newer gray coloured ones that we're all used to) that we have practically no way of replacing.

And i've got no friends there...well i'm making friends now but like there's no one familiar at all in the Signal Company. So even if there's nights off 2 days a week i don't know what i'll do. Maybe just take an hour to go and eat someplace for another hour and walk around by myself for another 2hours before taking another hour to get back. Sigh. I've asked a few of them what they do during night's off and most of them say that they go back HOME. Gosh but my own home's an hour away from camp as well! Damn.

Well i've complained enough. Hopefully i can accumulate enough leave so that i'll see the back end of unit life sooner rather than later.

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I've got bad luck.

Woohoo lady luck is not with me this weekend...dota was really no luck at all...and i won a bit from mahjong from my mum...just to go bankcrupt and lose all my cash to her the next day. I didn't win a SINGLE game. 0_o It's not as if i played badly..like i'd just be 1 step away from winning and then she'd suddenly zi mo and win. Gosh. Now i'm gonna have to book in to camp with a very bad throat so life really sucks. Anyway i don't feel much like typing today so i'll leave it at that.

Oh btw...you guys should watch samurai champloo..it's quite good actually.

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late, late releasal

Damn. We were supposed to be able to book out as early as 5.30pm today, provided we got all our work done. And the work seemed pretty easy at first..just needed to complete preparations for thursday's Summary Exercise..an exercise to err...summarise whatever we've learnt so far lah. Looked like there wasn't much to do, and in fact there WASN'T...we just had to use lan cables, switches and routers to link up the network and then test for connectivity and functionality of the servers and clients by sending emails between servers and clients and pinging. We then had to create an image of the 62 DIV server and upload it into the step-up server using Symantec Ghost.

Seems quite complicated, but with some of the computer whizzes that we had, i thought we could get things all done by 3pm. Instead, we got stuck so many times because of dumbass mis-configurations and faulty equipment. My CCIS skills aren't very strong, so i doubt i alone could've found out that the network taf switches were "down", because of a dumbass faulty auxiliary cable or something, if i had been given 4hours or whatever. In the end most of the faults were corrected using trial-and-error techniques.

Anyway, i'd just like to say that SAF computers need LOTS of upgrading. The server took MINUTES just to start up!! Gosh..and these are supposed to be among the best that they've got..just change a few things in the domain settings and the whole system goes pfffft. Even the IS officer agreed with us. How to get the cash to do all that? Weeelll..they could always start by firing some of us...100 of us out of an SAF job would allow the horribly over-staffed army to buy, every month, 50 decent computers/servers. Maybe more. Or 30 or so pretty high-end servers. Lol. Just my two-cents. ^_-

So in the end we managed to get out of camp at 9.30pm. Because of that, i lost all my will to go clubbing tonight. And there was a party at Zouk. My friends were going. They had brought their female friends. For the first time. And tickets were supposed to be pretty cheap. Did i mention that my friends had brought girls along? Damn. Dumbass computer problems that weren't really our fault at all had cost us 4 hours of good home time (that could've at least been spent playing a good round of mahjong!!). A late, late releasal indeed. >.<

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Cheerleading Workshop!

Wow. 3rd entry in one weekend. I've got one that's been written halfway too. That's rare. Anyway. Apparently there's quite a huge number of people who read my blog (although hardly anyone ever tags...-.-)...so. I've decided to make use of my decent amount of er...viewership to advertise something my friend, Baorui told me about...

There's a cheerleading workshop organised by the best cheerleading team in singapore, called magnum force. It's on the 13th of August, saturday, from 9am to 5pm, and the fee is only $5. So you get to learn fancy cheerleading moves, and not to mention meet tons of hot gals (for those NS guys who just wanna rot their weekends away at home), all for a small fee and a small amount of commitment! Wow...:D

Anyone interested? I think jingze expressed an interest in it yesterday. I might go down myself if there're more friends to accompany me. So what's it gonna be? If you're interested, just sms or tag me or something. You can ask questions directly to Baorui at 91599228

Anyway, i've got 2hours left of freedom before it's back to Stagmont Camp..and Summary Exercise that's happening next week. Can't wait for National Day! And i'll be promoted to a 3rd Sergeant the week after, so plenty to look forward to. Ciaoz! :):):)

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Lame thoughts

I think my family has a bad habit. I tend to hear my sister do it a lot, but occasionally i do it too. And probably many people in this world do it. Like, when people say something, like, give an opinion or whatever not, we tend to highlight the fact that that person might be wrong, that he's making assumptions. For example, you could give an opinion about someone, and someone else would rush in to say "Yah lah, but you don't really know her THAT well, right.." or "Haiyoh how would you know, you could be wrong lah." I don't know why people like to say things like this. (Maybe it makes them feel smart..? Telling other people how they're wrong?)

"Keep in mind that although you might be sure of your opinion, you might also be dead wrong." It's actually horribly obvious isn't it...of course we might be wrong. But i suppose some people don't seem to realise it. Perhaps it's related. Let's call the mantra above, and other things and trends that people think of while lying in their beds, a "philosophical thought". Or in short, just a "thought". Anyone with a brain can think about it, once you realise it, but it's a thought nevertheless.

You see where i'm going? There're those who are able to fully realise the mantra, or any other "thoughts" that they might have, and then think that they're very smart..smarter than other people, because they assume that others don't realise what they've thought of. I guess it certainly makes people feel smarter.

Then there're those who realise that "You may have a very clever thought, but you should never assume that no one else has thought of it before as well". Which is another step up from the previous mode of thinking.

But then it goes on and on as well. "You may realise that 'everyone might have thought of that mantra before', but you also should not assume that no one else has realised THAT." is YET another step up from the previous one. It goes on and on to infinity..something a little bit like the "i know you know i know you know.." phenomenon that goes back and forth, never ending. How attuned you are to all this, in the end, depends largely on how many "steps" you can comprehend.

And there's also the dudes (like me, even) who realise that it all can go to infinity, and that makes them feel very smart too...but they ALSO should remember that they're not the only ones who realises it. And if they realise THAT, they should also...

In any case, if you find all of this confusing (oh wait. i shouldn't be assuming THAT), i'm very sorry. It's pretty difficult trying to put all of this into words. But for those who can't comprehend it at all, just treat it as yet another bunch of "lame thoughts" and forget about it. Lol.

Anyhow, i realise that when people doubt my words, or treat it with disdain, or simply launch into the "how do you know that you're right" tirade, i tend to get all frantic and jittery and exaggerate matters. I think it's a relic from my very young childhood, where i was put down by older people, and made to feel like i had a reputation for illogic, for saying things that really seemed logical to me when i was a kid. Like when i was 6..."all electrical toys confirm will have some kinda metal inside it"...Oh wait (although it's probably the truth) that's total rubbish (a.k.a. you're not necessarily correct) 'cos there's silicon!

So just a note to self: From now onwards, if people do the "you may be wrong" act on you, just remember all that crap above that you blogged about, and stay calm. "Of course i may be wrong, you don't have to state the obvious, but it's just a friendly opinion of mine, just the impression i get.."

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buzzkill.

Man. Total buzzkill. Went out today with jac&kenneth&chin&tze&jingze to celebrate chinhow's birthday...poor guy's wearing a splint on his hand because of an operation following a mallet accident..his right hand too so he can't do much but at least he's resting as much as he can..not to mention staying away from alcohol..although i really don't see why not.

Anyway, after hours spent walking around suntec and basically doing nothing notable, i followed jaclyn to VJC where i attended about..half an hour of their VJC council dunno-what-it's-called. House Comm doesn't have things like this..which's fine, actually. But they SHOULD organise a dinner for each house. Which hasn't happened yet for Phoenix...dumdeedum.

Left before the thing actually started (i wasn't exactly invited..didn't get to meet up with many of my VJ friends sadly) so as to not feel like such an extra sonofabitch and bought dinner before going home. I had decided not to go clubbing with weesong and gang 'cos there weren't gonna be any gals and i went club-hopping with my sis and bjorn the week before already. So. I was kinda looking forward to a nice evening of reading my book..not to mention starting our LANning session early, but ended up walking into my mum who for some reason wasn't at jurong or whatever.

So i got "hijacked" by her and went to jurong (my grandfather's place) where i ate and went straight back. Then the worst part came.

The dota matches. Oh. My. God. Total buzzkill. Haven't exactly played with my regular playing friends (aka jac&ken&u-know-who) for like a month already, and when the game started...i had this 2second delay whenever i did ANYTHING. Man...i'm thinking of suing starhub for causing me such distress with it's slow connection speeds and lousy shared bandwidth. Owned with my Tiny at first, then the lag started to get worse and well, whatever i took, i started giving back...what a buzzkill.

Then a played a QOP match with a 1sec lag and let the PA farm too much. What a buzzkill. Like how do i deny creep with a 1sec lag and a decent opponent. And that AM player just loved to hurl insults at me...because he grossly misunderstood what i said earlier. Later he apologised..but he still loved to trash-talk. I can hardly imagine how many more volatile people have quitted games because of his trash talking.

Then, feeling like crap, i decided to play another round to redeem myself. But in the end, there were 5 times when the opponent had like 20hp left and i had died. Gosh. Just 1 more hit. So it was 1 buzzkill after another. So now i'm feeling quite horrible. And i still have to blog it all down...so that i can totally relive this buzzkill day another time. Goddammit.

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