Flying HIGH and Proud II

I’ve gotten 2 back 2 prelim papers. Here are the overall results:

BAD.

I just realised that the US currency is getting stronger! When i check the live currency exchange a few minutes ago, one unit of US dollars was 1.43028 SGD. I saw the exchange rate yesterday and it was already rising a bit at 1.39 SGD per US dollar.

All of you, convert your currencies in Paypal to US dollars now! You can get a better return (maybe a few cents or few dollars richer)! Hehehe =x

Symantec Norton crashes was not really solved yet, but i kind of found the solution to the problem. It may be due to the TeaTimer application from Spybot that has the same functionality as the Norton AntiVirus on my system. I’ve disabled the Tea Timer protection to see if that helps.

6th September, the Serangoon MacDonalds had a mini celebration at the open space beside it’s restaurant! Lots of kids were running around, and i think there’s a mini performance too. I’m not so sure because when i was passing by the restaurant, i saw Ronald McDonalds taking photographs with the kids, and there’s a mini stage at the side of the restaurant!

Ronald MacDonald was waving at all the kids, the emcee was promoting the McDonalds meal to everyone, saying something like, “Welcome to Serangoon’s MacDonalds, remember to try the EXTRA value meals..”. Something like that, i’m not so sure anyways..

Ronald MacDonalds was taking photos with many kids, and he was talking rubbish to the kids, which the kids does not understand. He was saying something like..

“hey thats right man”
“hey you got it”
“yeah right, you’re right”

Ya ya. Blah blah. He was crapping all the way and the kids doesn’t even know! Daddies and Mummies, don’t get the Ronald McDonalds to fool all your kids!

Saw my ex-schoolmate during the McDonalds special event. He was from the braddell westlake school, which merged with our school after our old campus underwent the PRIME. Oh, don’t work there. Don’t help to fool the kids!

Anyway.. Zijian was asking me a few weeks ago, he realised that i was not in McDonalds for a very very long time. He asked me why i wasn’t there, and i told him i was kicked out several times by one specific manager everytime i get into the restaurant (even when i’m having my meal inside with my books on the table).

He told me he got chased out several times too, and told me he didn’t care and continued to go there for his daily revision. He just asked me yesterday whether i wanted to go for revision there again, and said he will be reaching the restaurant at 10pm. I told him, “hmmm.. maybe not”.

Asked him a few hours ago just now whether he got kicked out, he told me no one chased him off. Maybe THAT manager needs a break, because people just don’t listen to her. Oh poor thing!

Anyway, i may be changing my mind and halt the boycott thingy with McDonalds. Let us see how it all goes.. I’ll get to hear from Zijian again if he calls me for revision!

I planned to erase all datas from my disk drives, and start everything a new, since there was this trojan that struck so hard that normal antivirus software couldn’t clean, delete, or quarantine it. The data just kept duplicating itself over and over again, which is not only annoying, but most importantly dangerous! The creator of the trojan was happily playing a fool with me the other time, which i did not blog about it because i’m simply too lazy. But this is what happened:

As i am a Zinc Admin (in fact, the oldest Zinc Admin as i was an Admin since.. many many years ago!), what i do is to maintain both the irc channel to make sure there is no users violating the zinc’s policy, and also the forum board to make sure everything is moderated properly. There was once when a user spammed something on a hidden hostmask (which is a string of url) so i went to check it out to make sure it’s not a malicious activity.

I clicked on it, it says “Free Steam“. Woah, you can get free Steam account for counter-strike? I became interested rather than “checking” whether it was a malicious code. So i downloaded the installer and installed onto my system. My Mcafee antivirus software did not detect a single thing, and i wholly depend that anti virus for detection. Installed, but the program was a piece of dung, because there is no dialogs, no pop ups, and system stays like it was.

Then i became suspicious. Why could someone be so “kind” to spam something so that the rest could benefit? The user might as well sell such application or crack for quite a big sum of money instead!

Then suddenly, i saw a message popping up. It was an error message saying that a URL was not opened properly, and when i check the logs, i found to my horror that “something” was attempting to open Internet Explorer and getting onto a pornographic website.

I freezed my connection (disconnecting it from the internet), and did a full system scan. Again to my horror, no results found. Strangely, that coder must be perfect programmer! I hope we can recruit him to Zion one day. Then i thought the trojan was just a “mistake”, so i went online again. Again and again, error messages popped up, telling me not to scan my system because there was no use doing so. The person interesting created a webpage on their hacking web host, stating all my personal information (oh gosh, where did i post them online?) and told me “good luck!”

That was kinda funny, because i knew those information came from a whois result of my domain name. That was a stupid move.

Scanned my PC with a spyware cleaner and found out there’s a system1060 malware. Trashed it and used CCleaner to delete all unwanted registries. Used HijackThis to double check there’s no more stupid stuff. Then i’m safe! But then again, you may never know if it will struck again. The best thing to do, reformat my pc!

——-

Mentioning so much on reformatting.. Backed up all my files on DVD roms. Used about 30GB of the DVDs to store some datas that i need. Then i was thinking, “hmm why not dual boot windows with linux this time?”

No need to decide, just do it. I popped in the LiveCD that Ubuntu shipped to me, partitioned a space just for linux, and installed it on my system. All worked well.

Then i popped in my Acer Recovery DVD 1 to install windows. Oh not exactly installing windows, but “restoring” it with original files. Took about an hour to do so, and restarted my pc.

Bad luck, the bootloader was loaded with GRUB. And there is an error message saying:

GRUB Loading,

Please wait…

Error 17

Woah, what the fuck?! The screen hanged there. I cannot get into either Windows or ubuntu. This time i’m dead.

I’ve no bootdisk for Windows Media Center. I’ve no Windows XP installation disc. BUT i only have useless Recovery Disc (which do nothing other than transferring file from CD to System to restore settings”, and my Ubuntu LiveCDs.

What to do? I remembered the liveCD had this function where you can try Ubuntu without installing it into the system. Done that, and i contact some of my friends, who are professionals dealing with windows and linux stuffs. Talked to them and asked them if there’s a way i can delete my partition to start a new installation with ONLY windows XP on it.

Yes! The LiveCD had this application called GParted where i can delete a partition from my system. Did that, rebooted my system and i got another error:

GRUB Loading,

Please wait…

Error 22

Gosh, it’s Error 22 this time. What the hell?

Then i found that this error was something got to do with my bootloader. They aren’t using Windows bootloader, but Linux’s bootloader, GRUB. I asked my friends how to get the windows one. Then they gave me a solution. To get “ms-sys” via “apt-get install ms-sys”. Those are compatible to Windows.

Tried, and it works. Reinstalled Windows and everything became alright.

And.. I took many many hours solving this. Without the Ubuntu LiveCD, i don’t think i can ever get Windows back. Luckily Ubuntu saved my life.

So… Some advertisements? No not really.. But i’m giving away FREE Ubuntu CDs (yes i know you can download them and burn them to CDs, but that would be too tedious.)

If you need a Ubuntu CD, get it from me! Only for my friends of course, because i can’t possibly send it via snail mail because i gonna waste my money, and i don’t have a BIG envelope!