Computer Issue Solved

I bought a new computer… not.

During last year’s March, I left my computer for a while to take a break from work and I returned to my computer being restarted. The windows 10’s updates did the ridiculous restart and it had probably given me a few minutes to halt the action while I was away.

Anyway, what happened next was hell. My automation software started becoming lagging and I had to restart my computer in order to put it back to normal. It couldn’t last for a couple of hours before the software became unresponsive. My internet browsers gave way as well.

Instead of restarting my computer once in a few weeks or months, I had to restart it a few times per day. There were times when I didn’t go home, my automation software was as good as on strike. The only blessing was that Photoshop continued to run normally. I was able to play the online game Team Fortress 2 (TF2) and the issue didn’t seem to pose any problem to the game.

Another ridiculous thing was that my computer was a working beast with 32GB of RAM and running on Solid State Drive (SSD). The CPU and RAM usage had been staying comfortably way below 30%. My internet was running on fibre optical network. I ran speed test for the internet bandwidth when my software were unresponsive and it showed that my internet was actually stable.

I went online to search high and low for solutions. I configured the settings of my Windows 10 (including registries), downloaded special software to update all the drivers (some newer drivers weren’t detected by Windows 10), installed software to detect for errors in both my hardware and software, defragmented my disk drives, ran virus and malware scans, and even opened up my CPU to clear away the dust physically. Eventually, I reformatted my Windows 10. I also consulted some IT experts. Nothing worked.

Having to spend long hours in front of the computer everyday, it was hell for me, especially when I was someone who couldn’t stand inefficiency. For example, I would always try my best to use my computer to reply messages because it was much faster than typing on the tiny soft keyboard of my phone.

Although I kept telling myself to focus on my work, every few weeks or month, I would try to go online to search for solutions for hours. I was trained to find solution since young and I had the never-give-up attitude, or some people would say “stubborn”.

After my elder brother bought a new laptop, I installed my automation software on it and I was amazed that it was running smoothly on the Windows 10 operating system. So, I was able to confirm that it wasn’t the software’s fault (lazy programmers).

I tried “playing” around with some software as recommended in websites/forums, including Microsoft’s. Then, I even changed the LANs cable. I had probably exhausted all the testing and had little luck. The frustration thing was that every changes I made, I had to restart the computer and wait for a couple of hours in order to determine if it was the solution.

Out of desperation, I made a drastic move to uninstall my antivirus instead of temporary disabling it, which I had done before. An hour later, I was very hopeful that my software remained very responsive without gradually slowing down. It was near dawn and I left the computer alone without doing the usual rebooting before going to bed.

How I would describe my feeling was that I seemed to have recovered from nine months of constipation.

Second Movie with Family for the Year

[Saturday, 5 February, 2011]

My brothers and my elder brother’s girlfriend started playing monopoly deal game in the room. Lucky joined us but he was moving around to change his sleeping position, unlike my mum could sleep throughout at the corner. Lucky, however, refused to stop farting. After the game, I continued with SEO work for the quit smoking site and went to bed after 7.30am.

My mum woke me up before 11am to get ready for movie. We went to Great World City to catch the movie “It’s a Great Great World”. Since we were in a rush, we did not take breakfast before that. It was a good movie and I enjoyed the pieces of stories inside. It was filmed in a humorous and touching way.

We went home after dropping by the pet shop. We had steamboat at home for our first meal of the day. I started dozing off and by the late afternoon, everyone was out of the house. I continued sleeping with Lucky using my chest as his pillow as usual unless 7pm.

I started playing a game in Command and Conquer before watching my favourite show on channel 8 – Zheng He Xia Xi Yang.
Skai Chan @ http://sillydumb.com

Chinese New Year 2011 Day 1

[Thursday, 3 February, 2011]

While my family went to Chinatown to squeeze with the others, I played the Command and Conquer game by myself to relax. I managed to push the new article regarding teenage dating to live and sleep at 5am.

I woke up at around 1pm and my family and I went to my aunt’s house an hour later. We did not buy MacDonald’s and dined over instead. As my aunt had not been cooking regularly, there were insects inside the rice and I was quite disgusted while eating, picking up more than ten dead bodies in the small portion of rice. I did not finish it.

All of us dozed off after the relatives left. Suddenly, my young uncle woke up and Lucky barked at him and there were some dramas. I was quite disgusted and did not feel like staying there at all.

In the evening after we got home, the Red Cliff movie screened on channel 8 distracted me from my SEO work for the tuition agency. My aunt from my dad’s side came over and my family went to the “Chun Dao He Pang” with her. I stayed at home alone again with Lucky.

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Slept for Twelve Hours

[Thursday, 9 December, 2010]

I went to bed at 3am and eventually slept for twelve hours, waking up at 3pm.

I spent the afternoon working on my tuition agency website and I set off to the gym earlier than usual. After doing workout, I accompanied Bobby and John for shirts amendment. Bobby had his early dinner and I followed him back to chat with him.

On the way, he made very impactful comments on SEO. He would spend a high budget on Google AdWords to get his site up on top so that he could speed up the progress of earning more money. If the site failed to generate a lot of money, he would have known it earlier to save time. He was one of the greatest offline businessmen I had ever met.

Anyway, I tried out the fighting game on the Xbox 360 Kinect before Bobby started to rearrange the placement of the game set. I stayed on to see if I could offer any tiny help and dragged on until around 7.30pm before I went home. I actually thought it was a Friday.

I started working on my tuition agency website again.

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Stressful Meeting

[Thursday, 2 December, 2010]

My new pages for my tuition agency website were up though the contents were not fully ready. Meanwhile, I had difficulty filling up my stomach with the dinner my mum cooked for I had roti prata with Kachua a couple of hours ago. I managed to get the website’s url up in Wikipedia before I went to bed at seven plus. It took me quite some time to doze off.

David gave me a call at 1pm to deliver to me the bad news that the viewing for the office had to be postponed to the next day.

I tried to work on the new website for the new project with my gym friends but my mind was all about the tuition site to stop me from making any progress. Anyway, the thought of the tedious design and programming work frustrated me because I knew with my lack of experience, it would take months to deliver the work.

I went to the gym at 7pm with my stressed mind. Andrew was training under Dan and he looked worse than me. However, I did not display my frustration and instead, I showed everyone the opposite side of my mood. I started playing the Xbox 360 Kinect and the volleyball game got me tired soon. Eventually, when I moved too near the gym bench, my toe was cut badly by the sharp edge. I lost quite a big amount of blood and Bobby was quite worried. He wanted to go upstairs to get me the “yellow medical oil” but I went up myself instead since he had two clients coming at the same time – one came late and another was earlier.

Before 8pm, Andrew was very worried. His stressful face did not recover even after sweating out. He told me to call Letian and Junze. Both of them were already on their way and were pretty on time. We were lucky that Bobby was around during our meeting again. He commented that we were not moving after so many sessions of meeting. We decided to take actions and I told them of my concern of the website. Andrew suggested to engage his partner’s service. I was happy that the problem could be solved as the professional definitely had much more experience, manpower and existing coding to establish the website probably more than ten times faster than an amateur doing one-man show. The meeting was eventually interrupted and before we realised, it was over and we started playing the volleyball game on Xbox.

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Xbox 360 Kinect

[Friday, 26 November, 2010]

I worked insanely on my tuition Singapore website again and went to sleep at 8am. There were still so many things to be amended.

I woke up near 5pm and had fried rice. Then, I continued on my work.

Tze Khit started asking me down to the gym, telling me Andrew was there already. I explained to him that I still owed them work and thus I felt more stressed when seeing them.

I went down eventually an hour later to take a break. I met them while they were crossing the road. Since Bobby was left alone in the gym, I decided not to join them at Icon for dinner so that I could at least accompany Bobby. I started working out soon while chatting with Bobby.

It was a very exciting night for they started to install the new Xbox 360 Kinect and we started to have fun. Since I had my workout a while before that, I was totally wrecked soon. Andrew, however, proceeded with a few more games.

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Smart Tuition Singapore Development Continued

[Wednesday, 20 October, 2010]

I finished a new page for Smart Tuition Singapore. Then, I started blogging till around 7am.

I woke up at 3pm eventually and “mended” my Facebook game for a while before going down to the third storey with my elder brother and Lucky to pee. After that, I continued working on my website.

My dinner was packet rice. After that, my elder brother and I took Lucky down for a walk. We went to find my mum to get her to sew the leash to a metal chain as Lucky had torn it earlier with his teeth. Then, both of us went down to meet my younger brother at the bus-stop. Before that, we bought a cup of Slurpee from the 7-11.

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New Article and Debugged for Smart Tuition Singapore

[Tuesday, 19 October, 2010]

I continued with my first article for Smart Tuition Singapore. Then, I did programming for the website’s administration page while I fought against my mum’s loud snores. I went to sleep after 7.30am. Lucky attacked my bed like usual and he succeeded sleeping besides me as I was too tired to get him off to his own bed.

I woke up in the afternoon and started with the FIFA Superstars game. Then, I continued working on the Smart Tuition Singapore website. I went down to the third storey to use the temporary toilet and then I called my elder brother who took Lucky down for a walk. We met up near the main office of the HDB upgrade project. Since dog was not allowed, my elder brother went in alone to look at the mock-up room.

After reaching home, I continued working with the website. Suddenly, I realised I had forgotten to store a field in the request for tutor page. Before I could make any amendment, my elder brother and mum were ready to go down for dinner.

After having dinner at the same coffee shop as the previous day, my elder brother and I took Lucky to the third storey for a walk and we tried to train him to come to us immediately when we called out to him. After reaching home, I continued working on the website.

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Started Facebook Marketing for Smart Tuition

[Monday, 18 October, 2010]

I was working on the Smart Tuition website and fell asleep for a while. I spent some time blogging and slept after 5am.

I woke up at around noon and started off my day toying around with the FIFA Superstars game on Facebook. Then, I started Facebook marketing for the tuition agency website. However, halfway through, my mum and elder brother wanted to go down for dinner and we brought Lucky along. At the carpark, a neighbour started questioning my mum about her giving wrong direction to the workers to tear down our next-door neighbour’s built-in cupboard in the kitchen.

My mum had told us earlier about it and we knew that it was because this neighbour went to another neighbour’s house to use the toilet and made my mum look after the house for her during the renovation. She took as long as half an hour to return since she was happily chatting after the use of toilet and when the workers asked my mum who had no idea about it, they removed the cupboards.

I was very frustrated by this neighbour, the “victim”, as I found it really stupid for her to push all the blames to my mum after my mum did her the favour of monitoring the workers. She was at fault for leaving the house so long as the problem would not have happened if she were to return earlier. Anyway, anyone in her shoes would have returned home right after using the toilet and not make the kind helper rot over there. Lastly, it was very irritating and ungrateful for her to spread the story around the neighbourhood to badmouth my mum.

I was not very supportive of dining downstairs with Lucky because most restaurants and coffee shops would not have allowed pets along. It would be a different case if we were living in Europe where pets were much appreciated and could even go on public transport. We waited quite a while for tables outside the small shop near the 7-11.

After having dinner, my elder brother and I walked the dog for a while before going home. Upon reaching home, I suggested my brother to go visit the mock-up room for the HDB upgrade so that he could roughly see how we could purchase items for the bathroom and toilet. However, the man inside the temporary office turned us down, saying we should have visited it before 6pm.

After going home, I continued with the Facebook marketing. I had received responses for the Smart Tuition website. I spent some time replying emails.

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Shopped at IKEA for Bathroom Items

[Sunday, 17 October, 2010]

I was distracted by the Fifa Superstars game in Facebook. It was not the best game around but it definitely aroused my fighting spirit. I was never a competitive person and I believed it was doing me good except that it took away some time from me. I continued to work on my new tuition site and slept at 7am.

I woke up before noon. My younger brother’s German friend came over. He was standing at near two metres and we went to Ah Moy Street to eat the lor mee. We brought Lucky along this time. After that, we went to NTUC where my mum bought another box of big mineral bottles for the workers.

After going home, I took naps and also spent some time on the Facebook game, and also chatted with Anthea.

We waited for my younger brother to return home as we agreed to set off for IKEA at 6.30pm. He was late. After he reached home, I went to the third storey temporary toilet to shit before we went to the bus-stop at Cantonment Link.

We had our dinner at IKEA near 8pm. Since we knew time was running out, we ordered just main course enough to fill our stomachs and started shopping soon. We bought a mirror and corner tray set for the bathroom. My elder brother and I had hotdog bun while waiting for the collection of the items and then we set off to the bus-stop near 10pm.

After reaching home, my entire family went down to the third storey to take our bath together with Lucky. Though I really hated the hassle of preparing and carrying the items down, it somehow brought my family closer together.

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