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We bought furnitures from Mode Studio, a subsidary of Red Apple Furniture on Aug 24, 2009. It has been exactly two months and we have yet to recieve full shipment of our order.

The initial delivery was expected before the end of  September (one month from the date of order). When we called to confirm our delivery, the sales person denied having agreed to such a date and told us we would only receive our order by mid October. Our sales person then went MIA after the first week of October and we had to follow up with another guy.

Our sofa and dining table arrived two weeks ago. We’re still waiting for our dining chair and coffee table. Oh, it’s the China holidays, it’s the bad weather, order’s not submitted, order went missing, communication problem, shipping delay, wrong container. It’s just excuses and delays after delays.

Their logistics company called to schedule the remainder of our order to be delivered yesterday but I won’t be home, so I asked to have them shipped tomorrow morning.

Anyway, there’s a thread in HardwareZone Forums discussing some other customers’ experience with Red Apple Furniture and I would recommend that you read it.

This is what I wrote about my sales experience:

I didn’t ask for a ridiculous discount. In fact, I was “offerred” a package when I stepped in. A dining table, 4 chairs, L sofa and coffee table. All for approx $3.2k. Then the sales person added a GST after we agreed to the price. BTW, this is a sales gimmick. If you have ever visited my retail store www.whymobile.com, you will know that I am very familiar with these sales tricks especially in my trade. If you want more info, read the Mission Statement under “About Us”.

Anyway, after giving them a weird face (I almost wanted to walk out), they said they will waive the delivery charge. IMHO, $3.2k is not a ridiculous price. You get about that kind of prices for china made furniture everywhere. ($1.4k sofa, $800 dining table, $400 for 4 chairs, $400 for coffee table, with some spare change for delivery.) I credit them for better design but certainly if you were to compare Ikea’s prices, product quality and after-sales service, they’re no where near.

Here’s another thread at RenoTalk.

I never had a hiccup with Ikea’s logistics. Their products are of great quality considering the prices. I never really had an Ikea thing fail on me like many others said they would. I have a 10+ year old Ikea study table still straight and solid. Like Ikea furnitures today, it’s made of the same MBF 10 years ago. There’s also an Ikea bookshelve at the back of WhyMobile. It’s battered day in and out in a busy retail store and it’s still stands straight.

I’m happy to have spent over $2k on Ikea furnitures for my new home with no hiccups at all. After all these fiasco, I declare myself a supporter of Ikea furnitures and food.

If you’re buying Ikea, don’t expect your $39 table to last a lifetime, duh. Buy something of higher quality at Ikea.

I’m surprised to find Renoma Paris’s site (in English) made entirely out of Flash. While it took ages to load, it also played an annoying music that I couldn’t turn off unless I turned down my speakers.

Once the page loaded, I was presented with a scrolling marquee of images. They were so small that I couldn’t figure out what they were, so I clicked on any random image that passes and it brought me to yet another page that required loading. I sat waiting and stared at the red squares in the middle of the screen as more of them appeared after several seconds.

Frustrated, I closed my browser tab. I was on the site for barely two minutes.

This is a classic example of how your site can literally drive people away. Try it yourself – go visit that site.

Many business owners don’t understand that what they like to have on their own site isn’t necessarily what people want to see.

Here’s some of my personal DOs and DON’Ts of web design.

• DON’T use flash for your entire site. It’s not only slow and heavy on a computer’s CPU, it doesn’t scroll well within a browser, it renders fonts differently from browsers making them difficult to read at times, the back and forward buttons don’t work, etc. The list of problems are endless. Oh, and did I mention that those Flash guys charge an arm and two legs? Don’t use flash. Period.
• DON’T embed audio into your pages. It might give an old lady a heart attack, or simply just piss young people off by distorting whatever Wonder Girls track they’re listening to at the moment.
• DON’T use a splash page. They only serve to delay a user’s entrance into your site. 9 in 10 splash pages I’ve seen have no real purpose other than the intent to create a “grand entrance” to a site. People visit web sites in search for content and will gladly click on the first sight of an “ENTER” button.
• DON’T upload full resolution photos and simply use the HTML width and height attributes to resize your images. Resize  images using an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP to achieve optimal image quality and file size.
• DON’T underestimate the power of image compression. Choose wisely between GIF, JPEG and PNG compression and experiment which works best for you. GIF generally works well with text, JPEG works well with photos and PNG works well if transparency is involved. When used incorrectly, your images will not only look bad, it will consume unnecessary storage and bandwidth.
• DON’T pop shit windows up. It’s not only annoying but confusing. Open the next page in the same window – people know how to use the back button on the browser.
• DON’T use FORM POSTs excessively. This is what most Java and ASP.NET developers don’t quite understand. FORM POSTs (or POSTBACKs) not only prevent the back button on the browser from working, they also prevent caches from doing their jobs.
• DO engage a third party to check for grammar, spelling and content accuracy. Badly written content translates to a bad user experience.
• DO test your web site over a real Internet connection at home to check its loading time. Most sites load in a split second over a LAN but not over the Internet.
• DO read up on how to make your site cache friendly, especially if your site handles lots of traffic. ISPs spend tonnes of money on web caches to conserve their bandwidth and yet web caching is one of the most misunderstood technology on the Internet. When your site is made cache friendly, ISP caches will greatly improve your users’ experience especially if they are far away.
• DO add more line spacing. It’s easier on the eyes.

There’s much more to web design than this short list though. Here’s my golden rule – humans like control. Give it to them.

On a side note, I provide consultation for web marketing. Feel free to drop me a (private) message.

Believe it or not, we spent $1,090.55 at Ikea last Saturday. This is our second trip to Ikea, so it’s almost $2,000 worth of Ikea stuff if we added up the first trip!

I’ve decided to bring my Olympus DSLR along, so enjoy the photos that follow.

Every Ikea trip starts with food…

Meatball Spaghetti

That’s Yanpo’s dish.

Stuffed Salmon

Dear’s dish.

Swedish Meatballs

I’m having the most popular dish at Ikea.

Herring Plate

Fish, to share. Unfortunately, I’m the only one who likes it.

Fried Chicken Wings

Who can resist these crispy, oily, golden brown wings.

Feasting in Ikea

Look at these guys. They’re certainly enjoying the good food.

Last Three Balls

The last of the balls before Yanpo had them all.

HZ after a satisfying meal

Dear's new hair!

Yes! Dear got a new haircut on Friday. Looks so cute!

After a very satisfying meal, we went on to shop till we almost dropped. Here’s what we got this round…

• Another small table as an extension to the current one for the study room.
• Another table lamp to go with the new table above.
• A 1 x 4 book shelve to go into the window recess in the study room.
• Another 4 x 4 book shelve for the study room.
• A floor protector for the study room. Expensive but hopefully useful.
• A wine rack! YES! More reasons to stockpile Shiraz at home.
• An armchair. It should stay in the master bedroom for now.
• A small TV console for the master bedroom.
• A sturdy step-stool to reach higher places. This is VERY useful for $29.
• A mirror for the common bathroom. Expensive.
• A water jug for cold water.
• A temporary coffee table, which will become my tool table next time. Pretty cool table for $17.
• Dustbins for the rooms, kitchen and toilets.
• Some toilet accessories.

Three Trolleys of Goodies

That’s a lot of stuff! The shelves and armchair are the most expensive stuff of them all. The others are less than $50 items.

Finally, I’m getting a Wii to keep us entertained on weekends!

I’ve been having problems trying to establish PPTP VPNs using my iPhone over my SingTel 3G connection. After quite a bit of troubleshooting, I found out that using the e-ideas APN assigns the iPhone a private IP address. I switched to the internet APN and the VPN worked right away.

However, when I switched to the internet APN, the tethering option disappeared. So either way, I can’t establish a VPN using my laptop. Effectively, this means I’m having a 3G service that doesn’t work.

So, I called SingTel’s helpdesk at 1626.

I asked if I could use the internet APN for tethering. They said I can’t, and gave me some bullshit about the internet APN being billed differently from e-ideas.

I asked if they could file a complaint for VPN issues over the e-ideas APN and they were so quick to disclaim their responsibility the moment I mentioned VPN; quicker than you can finish saying “boomz!” In fact, the customer service dude told me to call Apple when it’s obvious this wasn’t Apple’s problem.

VPNs are common in enterprises and I believe a lot of people out there need it to work. I cannot believe that SingTel would just disclaim responsibility to support VPN over the iPhone.

Worse even, some users in the HardwareZone Forum found out that using the e-ideas APN caps your transfer rates. This is something that’s not made known publicly, so if you are going to buy an iPhone with the SingTel iFlexi plans, please be aware.

This is not the first time SingTel has played punk with its’ customers. Last year, SingTel added Value Added Services (VAS) to customers’ accounts. The unaware customer gets the service free for a short period of time, and then they are later changed.

No, this is not the typical free service you get when you sign up for a new contract. SingTel actually added the services to existing customers!

Such a business practice known as negative option billing is not only unethical, but also against IDA’s policies.

When my wife called to cancel the service and asked for a refund, they rebutted and asked rudely if she had read her contract!

I have already written a formal complaint to IDA, but have yet to receive a response from them.

Think I whine a lot? Why not type SingTel Sucks into Google and read for yourself.

No, this is not a spam. I wrote this entry.

Most people doubt the safety and efficacy of weight loss pills, but Naturext Fitness+ VitaShape 800 might change your mind.

No, it doesn’t block absorption of fats, neither does it contain hormones; this product stimulates our body to build muscle naturally. It contains two amino acids – Lysine and Arginine. Amino acids are part of our daily diet, with some such as Lysine classified as essential amino acids because our body cannot create them by using other compounds.

Function of Lysine, as quoted from Wikipedia:

L-Lysine is a necessary building block for all protein in the body. L-Lysine plays a major role in calcium absorption; building muscle protein; recovering from surgery or sports injuries; and the body’s production of hormones, enzymes, and antibodies.

Function of Arginine, as quoted from Wikipedia:

Arginine plays an important role in cell division, the healing of wounds, removing ammonia from the body, immune function, and the release of hormones. Arginine, taken in combination with proanthocyanidins or yohimbine, has also been used as a treatment for erectile dysfunction.

By helping the body absorb calcium and build muscle protein in a natural way (not by taking growth hormone directly), one can effectively lose body fat, gain muscle mass… and probably perform better in bed.

A quick check on the to-do list:

• Pass ah fen a hamster – done.
• Grab the side table we ordered from Defu – done.
• Pay the balance for the sofa and dining table and arrange for them to be delivered next week – half done. More screwups with the delivery.
• Grab the trolley, TV and sub woofers from parent’s office. I left my new TV there for storage – done.
• Bak Kut Teh at Jurong East for lunch at 1300 hrs – failed.
• Clean the living room, and maybe three bedrooms if they get dusty again – done.
• Figure out where to mount the bathroom accessories, and what else we need to buy – half done. We know what we want to mount, but haven’t figured what we need to buy.
• Assemble the Ikea lamps – done.
• Set up the home router. It’s going to a Linux box with Vyatta, then I can establish an IPsec Site-to-site VPN! Whoopee! – Not done!
• Hopefully a karanguni drops by so I can get rid of the old ceiling fans – didn’t happen.

Leaving Sakae Sushi at TradeHub.

When Ferren arrived at Jurong East, she found that the entire hawker center was under renovation, so we ate Sakae instead of Bak Kut Teh.

Duckie smiling on the way to the new house.

Even Duckie’s excited about the new house.

Study room cleaned and ready.

This is the study room with Ikea chairs and tables, all set up and ready for use.

Watching TV in the living room after a tiring day.

We watched G-Force and some crappy YouTube videos in the evening after two days of cleaning.

Sincere thanks to Hui Zhen, Ferren, Yan Po, Wen Xi, Chrispin and Sheng Xuan for helping clean the house. Every little bit counts!

Unfortunately, I left my DSLR in the new house. I will get some photos and post them up tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here’s what we accomplished today (Saturday).

• Cleaned up the store room and moved the mess in the kitchen over.
• Cleaned up all three bedrooms, kitchen, windows and grilles. Thanks ladies! Fantastic job.
• Built the Ikea furnitures – a study table, two office chairs and a side table with drawers. Some instructions are wrong, especially the cheaper furnitures.
• Installed the almighty lock that only requires one key for all! Whoopee. How I wish my car key could be used instead.
• Set up the bed in the master bedroom.
• Carpenter dropped by to inspect the work done on Friday.

Here’s the agenda for tomorrow (Sunday).

• Pass ah fen a hamster.
• Grab the side table we ordered from Defu.
• Pay the balance for the sofa and dining table and arrange for them to be delivered next week.
• Grab the trolley, TV and sub woofers from parent’s office. I left my new TV there for storage.
• Bak Kut Teh at Jurong East for lunch at 1300 hrs.
• Clean the living room, and maybe three bedrooms if they get dusty again.
• Figure out where to mount the bathroom accessories, and what else we need to buy.
• Assemble the Ikea lamps.
• Set up the home router. It’s going to a Linux box with Vyatta, then I can establish an IPsec Site-to-site VPN! Whoopee!
• Hopefully a karanguni drops by so I can get rid of the old ceiling fans.

I’m still thinking if I should start moving some old books and computer equipment. Maybe my R/C stuffs can go over too.

The audio system will go over next week before the weekend, that’s for sure!

More shopping list for next week.

• A stool, just to facilitate cleaning some stuff that’s higher than us.
• A (cheap) bicycle? Just to get to and fro the in-law’s place and Bukit Panjang Plaza.
• A mini TV console for the master bedroom?
• Another Ikea side table for the master bedroom?
• Subscribe to StarHub TV and Internet! (Sorry SingNet, your marketing and helpdesk just fails me.)

DRAM, or commonly called RAM, is something we have on all computers and most mini electronic devices such as our mobile phones and portable players. Without them, computers won’t work. They hold vital data while they are in use, such as when you are editing your Excel spreadsheet, or when browsing a web page. Computer’s don’t work on data directly on the disk; once data is read off a disk, they are stored and worked on in memory. Yet Google did an extensive research and found that the error rates are much higher than we thought.

A two-and-a-half year study of DRAM on 10s of thousands Google servers found DIMM error rates are hundreds to thousands of times higher than thought — a mean of 3,751 correctable errors per DIMM per year.

This is the world’s first large-scale study of RAM errors in the field. It looked at multiple vendors, DRAM densities and DRAM types including DDR1, DDR2 and FB-DIMM.

Every system architect and motherboard designer should read it carefully.

Read the original article here.

Time to buy ECC RAM as default for all systems. Chipkill should be in servers soon.

Or maybe RAID5 for RAM, anyone? Buy 3 x 2GB, gives you 4GB with redundancy. Hot swappable… if possible.

It’s alive!

I’ve finally decommissioned a server that has served me well for over 5 years. WhyMobile, IABPI and Naturext were the last sites hosted on the server.

The old hefty 2U server is now sitting in my mum’s office waiting to be upgraded with a new motherboard, power supply and hard drives. It should serve well as a disk storage if configured right.

I have just racked an old Sun Netra T1 AC200 in the empty 2U space. It’s 7 years old and had a dead motherboard. I’ve just gotten a motherboard replacement off eBay to get it working again. Now with a refurbished board, 2 x 146GB SCSI LVD drives (was originally 2 x 9.1GB SCSI LVDs – pathetic storage) running Solaris 10 and ZFS, it’s ready to go again. Unleash the power of an ancient 500MHz UltraSparc III with ZFS!

Servers in Rack

The Sun Netra T1 AC200 is at the bottom of the rack. The first two silver/grey servers are production Sun X2100s running VMware. The third server in white is an OEM Asus server for development and testing. It was donated courtesy of Kelvin, and also runs VMware. The cardboard boxes contain spare disks and some other stuff… for disaster recovery.

Network and Power Cables

You can see an old 24-port Cisco 2950 switch here. It’s a workhorse. I’m thinking if I should get a spare. It’s not just a plain old switch, the servers are running tagged (or what Cisco calls “trunk”) VLANs.

Every server has dual NICs. All the servers that run VMware are configured to run the dual ports on active-standby mode for port-level HA. I haven’t figured out how to do NIC bonding in Solaris, so that’s on my to-do list, albeit low priority at the moment.

Fancy a nude half nude car wash?

HE couldn’t believe what his girlfriend was telling him.

Mr Gary Yap’s first reaction was: “You mean they are going to wash my car for free? And they’ll be topless?”
They decided to go, to see if it was true.

And what they saw at the event surprised the 28-year-old freelance photographer and his girlfriend, Ms Bella Zhong, 24, an advertising executive.

Ms Zhong told The New Paper on Sunday: “I was quite surprised it actually happened.

“At first I thought, ?Cheh, wear bikini’. Then they took it off. They were wearing nipple tape. (The pieces) were very small, just covering. I thought, wow.

“Then they took off the tape. They were really topless.”

Ms Zhong was one of 20 winners of an online contest held by a new motoring classifieds website, Motoring Exchange, which was launched yesterday.

She had been picked for having recommended friends to its Facebook page, called Tease & Wash, to have their vehicles cleaned.

Each winner was allowed to bring a friend.

The New Paper on Sunday had earlier reported how the motoring portal had planned to organise such a car wash.

The winners were given staggered time slots over two days, last Sunday and Monday.

The wash took place in the afternoon on both days at an abandoned warehouse in the east of Singapore.

When they arrived, they were briefed on the guidelines – no touching the models, and no photography, except by the two official photographers.

Then each car was moved up individually to be washed.

The models moved in, with their hoses and props – wash mitts, big brushes and sponges.

Each wash lasted 20 minutes to half an hour, including photo shoots.

Ms Zhong said she had entered the contest for fun, not really believing it was for real.

She and her boyfriend were among the earliest to arrive on Sunday afternoon.

Said Ms Zhong: “Since (my boyfriend) has a car, we decided to go and check it out. If it didn’t turn out to be real, we could just leave.”

The couple spent the car wash discussing the models’ figures.

Said Ms Zhong: “The Caucasian model really stood out. And there was one girl, who was very skinny and busty for her size.”

She said the event was very entertaining.

Was she concerned the event might be illegal in conservative Singapore?

Said Ms Zhong: “They are just topless and not doing anything funny. And we’re not allowed to touch them. So I guess there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Was she uncomfortable to be at such an event with her boyfriend of three years?

Said Ms Zhong: “I think I’m pretty open about it, no point getting jealous. It’s something we can experience together.

“It’s not every day you get to have a topless girl washing your car for you.”

Another winner was a 28-year-old banking officer, who would give his name only as Mr Lin.

He went alone to the event on Sunday afternoon, in his grey Mercedes-Benz SLK.

He said: “There was a (photo) shoot and wash at the same time, so the models were half posing, halfwashing.”

According to him, most of the winners were asked to park their cars and sit in a reception area, where there were snacks and drinks, and watch the models wash their cars from a distance.

But Mr Lin said he was allowed to put up the top of his convertible, and watch the wash while sitting inside his vehicle.

He said: “It’s something new and obviously exciting, not something that’s been done before. It was not a very sleazy thing, I think it was quite classy.”

So did the models do a good job cleaning his car?

“It was just a normal wash. No wax or polish. But I guess that’s not really the point,” said Mr Lin.

The organiser of the event, Mr Gerald Chen, 29, said the event was a publicity stunt for his new motoring portal.

He added that he knew the company was “treading on dangerous ground” by holding such an event, and readily admitted that he was out to court controversy to attract attention.

But he claimed he had sought legal advice, and had organised the event such that it would fall within the confines of the law.

Said Mr Chen: “The concern is always there. But we (were very careful). The last thing we want is to do anything wrong.

“It’s a risk we were willing to take.”

Mr Chen said censored pictures from the event, with the breasts of the models digitised, have been uploaded on the website, with an “above 18″ restriction on it.

Visitors must do a free registration and declare their age before they can view the car wash event pictures.

For the car wash contest, Mr Chen said the website received 259 entries, from which it picked 20 winners – 18 men and two women, who owned 19 cars and one motorcycle.

Four female models were hired for the wash, to appear at the event wearing only bikini bottoms and high heels.

Mr Chen said the company has spent almost $25,000 to film and produce teaser videos, which were uploaded online as a lead-up to the event.

The actual two-day car wash cost $11,800, of which $5,600 was for the models.

Mr Chen said he has poured in another $45,000 to set up the portal.

OK. I shall stop here at the $$$ figures. It captured my attention. If you want the full stuff, read the original article here.

Wow, tens of thousands to spare for a marketing event. Some people don’t even get that much salary in a year.

And goodness, $45k for the portal. Check out their site at motoringexchange.com.sg and teasewash.com. Doesn’t look like a $45k site, in my opinion. I shall not comment and will leave it to you to check out the photos of the girls…

Give me $45k anytime, I’ll redo the site. Call me. I’m serious. Anybody wants to build a site?

For the rest of you hum sup old men, here’s more photos.