It was an interesting day yesterday.  Apart from people clearing the office and streets, some interesting conundrum was happening at home.  I was  buzzing away with the “Police Catches Anwar, Everybody goes home early” article on my newly installed Windows Live Writer.  A much improved version from what I used to tinkle with a year ago must I add.  I got the article done, and zoom, posted it on the web without any trouble.  Then, I fire up my Firefox and access my blog through the usual interface.  Little did I know one amazing thing was happening, and another ‘Crap in my Pants’ thing was about to materialize.  As soon as I got the article posted, I received more than 1k of traffic during the night and majority of the traffic comes from Malaysiakini, yea, their trackback work wonders. 

While my site was being hit crazy, I was snoozing into my WordPress interface.  Note Snoozing, not sure why my access to my site is sooooo slow.  A note highlited that version 2.6 is released upon signing in.  Sweet! I thought, I went to do the upgrade immediately.  Everything went well, a testament to their 3 step upgrade.  Bam!, my blog went down.  None of the permalink to the individual article works.  Only the Index page works fine.  Took me hours to figure out what happen , by them, > 50% of this wonderful hits I have been receiving have passed.  And I was left with a sore thumb and a red face.

Log into my wordpress and was greeted with a new version to download.  Dumbly upgraded my wordpress and suddenly, I could not access any of my single post.  index page was still fine, but individual post could not be open.  It keep giving “page not found” error.  I found out from wordpress forum that permalinks with index.php in it are broken with this revision and will only be fix in the next revision.  During that short duration that the blog was out, I lost valuable viewerships.  The simple fix is to remove index.php out from the permalink structure, or in the cagegory or base tags, put something in there, anything is fine.  Howcome no one caught this gross bug?

Are we a creature of fear or fear has brought out the creatures among us.  Soon after the news flare over the Internet on the arrest of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim at lunch time, it becomes the talk of the office.  By 4 something, the office starts to become quiet, and my boss jokingly said, “you all dont want to go home early ar? Anwar is caught by the police already, and maybe got trouble in the streets”.  Well, that sounds like a good justification to go home early.  None of us took up my boss offer, but noticeably, the office was indeed quieter, and leaving the Free Trade Zone area, the usual traffic crowd seams to have reduced significantly.  Are there any relation to Anwar being caught by the police? One could only speculate.

According to Malaysiakini, the arrest was done in front of Anwar’s home and by a convoy of 15 cars and mask men.  Mask Men? Wow, Swat team? The intriguing part is this, the police says that they have followed procedures and have put the safety of their men first.  So, what has 15 cars and mask men got to do with safety? Then it daunted to me.  Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was allegedly have committed sodomy with Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan, a dashing young man.  So, 15 cars are to ensure that they have enough men just incase one or some of their men were “attacked” by this 61 years old man.  Since he allegedly can sodomize this dashing young man, it could happen to any of the arresting offices, so they show up in force, 15 cars in total to ensure this 61 years old man is contained.

Then, why masked men? Again, this is for the safety of the arresting officers.  Some of the officers must have been as handsome as the dashing young man that made the allegations.  So, for their safety, they have to cover up their face and avoid the 61 years old man getting a hard on and ‘attack’ them.  It all makes sense doesn’t it.  What else could explain 15 cars and masked police man arresting a 61 years old man, who are not known to have any weapon nor was not thought to be involved in a violent crime.  Anyway, all these are pure speculations.  Nevertheless, I am glad that the police has put their officer’s safety up front, it is what every employee wants from their employer.  And as a tax payer, I am glad that with such design, un wanted things could be avoided and safe more tax payer money having to send the officers to hospitals.  So, all in all, this is good.  As the saying goes It is better safe than sorry.

MalaysiaKini – Mengapa Anwar di tahan di luar rumah… (Police explaining that their officer’s safety is at heart)

MalaysiaKini – Anwar ditahan police bertopeng (Masked Police and 15 cars convoy)

The 21st Century Outsourcing phenomena have reached a new personal level. In the last 10 years, companies have been outsourcing jobs to 3rd world or to a cheaper provider. This probably inspired Thomas L. Friedman’s book on this subject. Just early in the year, I blog about my wife’s job being outsourced. Now, outsourcing becomes personal. Companies like AskSunday.com or GetFriday.com can help you complete task that you are too busy to do. Too busy to buy flowers for your Girl Friend? AskSunday.com can help. These companies market their services as Online/Virtual Personal Assistance, which in fact, are outsourcing your task to them. UK university students have been outsourcing their coursework to India, and there’s a term to this, ‘Contract Cheating’. So, if you have outsource all your task away, what do you do with all the extra time? Go play Pachinko?