A SAD ENDING

I am at the receiving end of my latest Scrabble game. My opponent is a Singaporen girl named Idilina Kamis. She has AI on her rack, while I am left with CNOUU. The Us make my move difficult. This is what the board currently looks like:

Now, I have several options, all of which will lead to my defeat.

1. Put CH, COL for 16 points and leave NUU (3 points) on the rack. My current points are 312, so 312+16-3=325 points. She may put PIA for 15 points and that's it. 316+15+3=334 points. 334-325=9 points difference. WORST.



2. Put COUP for 11 points and leave NU (2 points) on the rack. 312+11-2=321 points. She may put VIA for 7 points. 316+7+2=325 points. 325-321=4 points difference. BETTER.



3. Put UPON for 18 points and leave CU (4 points) on the rack. 312+18-4=326 points. She may put VIA for 7 points. 316+7+4=327 points. 327-326=1 point difference. BEST.



All these, of course, with the assumption that she will put the AI in one move. Hardly a miss.

Kelantan 3 - Selangor 0

Simply outstanding. Breathtaking. I was simply out of superlatives to comment on Kelantan's play this evening. All the goals were beautifully taken. The first goal came out of nowhere, but credit to Norfarhan for his effort.

The second showed that Akmal Rizal still has the talent in him which made him one of the feared strikers in Malaysian League. Oh, and what a good ball from the captain.

The third one was simply the icing on the cake. It surely calmed my nerves after Selangor seemingly got a grip of themselves with their bold subtitutions. Once again, Akmal Rizal was at the centre of things, squaring the ball to Badhri Razie to slot it home. Bravo!

See you in the semis, Kedah!

Mum is covering her face during the fogging

MY NEIGHBOURHOOD HIT WITH DENGUE

My neighbourhood, as recently as last week, had been fogged following a confirmed case hitting my neighbour's daughter. My advice:

PLEASE OBSERVE CLEANLINESS
BECAUSE IT IS A PART OF OUR FAITH

Some interesting facts:

Poster kesihatan: Penyakit Denggi

Denggi: Kelantan kedua tertinggi selepas Selangor - Sinar Harian

Wabak demam denggi semakin serius di Kelantan - Mstar.com

I LOST MY BATTLE AGAINST 'BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH'

Yesterday, my colleague asked me to look at her problematic laptop. What happened was the occurrence of a black screen with only a movable cursor after booting Windows 7 Ultimate. When I googled the problem, the term 'Black Screen of Death' appeared. It seemed that the problem has been troubling users for some time now. Many solutions offered, but none of it could be used to solve her problem.

I used my laptop to surf for solutions. I surf websites, and even youtubes. One of the websites I found detailed the fix, but it was useless for this laptop. This is because I had to pop open the task manager, whereas I could not do so because, after hitting the ctrl+alt+del keys simultaneously, the options on the screen just read = 1.Lock this computer, 2.Switch user, 3.Log off, and 4.Change a password. Then I restarted the laptop and pushed f8 while the Windows loading so that the Advanced Boot Options screen appears. I tried each boot options including last known good configuration, safe mode, safe mode with networking, etc and still left dumbfounded. Then I tried the option Repair your computer, eventually a screen appeared. I tried Startup Repair with no luck; it scanned and finished without repairing anything. Then I tried System Restore also with no luck because, sadly, there was no restore point. When I came down to the dreaded Command Prompt (I said 'dreaded' because I never learn how to use the command; I grew up with Windows), I managed to open the task manager. This was only after I learn some commands from the Wikipedia. I typed explorer.exe in the new task box, but a dialogue box appeared saying 'Windows cannot find explorer.exe'. I tried a suggestion from this youtube also, but to no avail.

It seemed that I had failed to find the solution, and had to return her laptop as is.