Facebook down again for second time this month

From this part of the world where we are, it seems that Facebook has gone down. This will be its second outage in this month, the first on August 7th which was attributed to massive DOS (Denial-of-Service) attacks which also brought down the Twitter network.

This time, no clue yet on the cause of the outage. Here’s one the first site to report on the outage, and its advice for Netizens starved of their usual Facebook fix.

Spyware Terminator disabled ALL network function

Recently due to a weird problem of the mouse cursor moving by itself on et’s laptop, we installed the program Spyware Terminator from download.com.

Initially things were ok. No spyware found. Only thing was the irritating alert notices for even the most innocent network activity such as when BOINC initiates some network activity.

However things turned nasty last week. Spyware Terminator gave its usual cryptic alert notice of a potential change related to winsock. Not sure of what the alert is all about, she proceeded to allow Spyware Terminator to Deny the action. That’s when all hell broke loose.

Firstly VNC went down. Then all browsers became useless. Followed by Skype. Lastly, even the network icon at the Taskbar has an ‘X’ to it. Total and complete network loss…

Somehow there was no way to undo the action done by Spyware Terminator even though their website mentioned that it can be done.

Performing System Restore did not help solve the issue as the message was that System Restore could not restore the system completely. Hmm ….. which renders the System Restore a rather moot Windows feature then.

Winsock has a really wide reach. With winsock blocked/disabled by Spyware Terminator, most things just refuse to work. Almost all Microsoft-related programs can’t start, and that includes Help and diagnostic. Even the Hewlett Packard PC Advisor couldn’t start.

In the end, she found one thing that worked. The solution was to reset the winsock.

With the command line netsh winsock reset , everything miraculously resumed service! The command was found at this page. It only works with Vista and XP SP2. Others will need extra steps in order to achieve the same effect.

So with all that she had been through, the first thing to do after the system had returned to normal was to uninstall the Spyware Terminator. ‘Nuff said on it. Bye bye Spyware Terminator. 

Healthy quick and easy dinner on 14/07/2009

On 14/07, both of us felt somewhat tired and not in the mood of cooking our dinner. So et suggested that we buy salad from Jusco and have that for dinner.

Since salad is not a bad choice, after all it's probably time we eat something really healthy, we decided that salad it is for our dinner.

Et got the boxed Caesar Salad from Jusco supermarket. Or at the least, it's labeled as Caesar Salad, seeing that it does not even have the typical ingredients of croutons, eggs and parmesan cheese.

Here's what Caesar Salad are supposed to be like, according to Wikipedia.

What we did after getting home was to add more ingredients into the salad, to add variety and make it a more complete meal. We added the following ingredients:

• Hashbrown
• Egg
• Tomato
• Carrot
• Olive Oil
• Honey apple vinegar (from Eu Yan Sang)
• Parmesan cheese powder

The salad, together with miso soup, was a nice quick and easy dinner for us. Really healthy too :)

Sensible post against the smearing of a fish

Couldn’t resist highlighting the following post which is a really sensible article touching on the smearing and slandering of the sutchi fish, aka pangas/cream dory/swai/patin/cobbler/etc.

 

http://mattsteinglass.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/thou-blackguard-thou-slanderest-my-fish/

 

Excellent parody on MACC and Malaysia’s BN government

There is an outstanding video clip that parodies the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on its recent debacle in the tragic death of Teoh Beng Hock.

The video clip which can be found in youtube has now attracted close to 130,000 views and the view count is still increasing.

I could be mistaken, but me thinks the video clip uses excerpts from the movie Valkyrie, which starred Tom Cruise among others, and the added subtitles are referring to the current hottest news item in Malaysia. Whoever had done this, was brilliant as the story perfectly correlates the tension seen in the movie.

Many laugh-out-loud moments in the movie, most especially the part where the lady purportedly said “don’t worry, we still have Khir Toyo” …. hahahaha.

Enjoy…

Good PDF suite, with freeware, payware and free online tools

For times when some PDF documents are needed to be converted to Office documents such Word or Excel, I find that nitroPDF’s family of online PDF tools are very useful. Just like Acrobat, nitroPDF’s software also enable the whole range of tools for PDF files.

I’m in no ways whatsoever related to nitroPDF. Am just a satisfied user of their online PDF tools, which IMO is one of the best out there.

For more information, here’s nitroPDF website.

And to go straight to their online tools section, you can go here.

 

 

Quick home made dinner on 13/07/2009

With both of us working now, there is often little time for cooking dinner. I'm sure this scenario is a common thing seen among our modern society. We do try to make 1 or 2 home-cooked dinners every week, aware of all the benefits one get from having homemade meals.

For Monday 13th July 2009, we made pasta. We regularly make pasta as it is one of the quickest wholesome meal to prepare. For the day, we made Linguine Carbonara with Oyster Mushroom, Chicken Sausage and Sutchi fish.

Sidenote: Linguine is commonly misspelled as Linguini, as highlighted in its Wikipedia entry.

We stir-fried the mushroom, sausage and the sutchi fish together in EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) before adding in the carbonara sauce. Lastly, pour the mixture over linguine cooked al-dente.

Results, one yummy wholesome dinner :)

Vietnamese Cobbler as Cod

A few days ago, an article was published in UK’s online edition of the The Times, www.timesonline.co.uk regarding a fish called Vietnamese cobbler being sold as cod by some fish and chips restaurant in the UK. Those found doing so are being charged by the authorities there as fraud cases. Here’s the article link.

The Vietnamese cobbler goes by the scientific name Pangasius hypophthalmus. Sounds familiar?

This is the same fish imported from Vietnam and being sold as dory fillet by Carrefour in Malaysia, though mostly being called as sutchi fillet in other hypermarkets. It is also being called pangas and swai among others, depending on which part of the world you’re in. There has been earlier blog posts about the fish here and here.

I wonder if similar fraud cases are happening here in Malaysia…