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My MacBook (Mac OS 10.5.5) is having problem to detect my home LCD monitor, it keeps probing the monitor, until it went deaf.
I have to force reboot the MacBook more frequently due to this, as it always freeze when waking up from sleeping.

I have no choice, and revert back to 10.5.2 (the DVD restore disk provided), and upgraded to 10.5.4.
Everything works as before. I have reformatted the entire hard disk, and copying everything back part by part – wasted 1 day to do this, and another day to retune everything back to my working environment.

Now I have a rock solid OS X to work with, again. Happy.

I am using two “identical” HP w2207 LCD monitor, one at home and one at work. The one at home cannot recognize easily by Mac OS X after the update on 10.5.5.
However, the one at work still working as usual.

After some cable and connectors swapping, I realized that although both monitors look physically identical, they have different firmware.

At home: STMB1.2 (Samsung based?)
At work: GTMV1.6 (LG based?)

I still wouldn’t say it is the monitor at fault, as the unit at home working well before the 10.5.5 update.

There isn’t seem possible to get the firmware upgrade as it is more like vendor hardware specific things.

I am going to wait for Apple to fix this, or I’ll have to either change my Macbook or change the monitor. Not pretty.

It is not easy to reach a beach area if you stay at PJ, specially a decent one.
Port Dickson is 2 hours away driving, and very polluted.
Port Klang is nearer, but you wouldn’t go there to touch the water.

So we attempted Bagan Lalang, a beach that is about 1 hour drive from town, provided the traffic condition allowed.

First of all, I have not been to that place at all, and there is no one know how to get there – at the time I need to know.
So I fire up Google Earth (what else), plot my path, and note it down as a transcript as follow.

from main road to KLCC turn into LCCT (left).
hit the round-about, go 12 o’clock.
pass Jalan Dagang.
before sepang F1, turn left to Jalan Kuarters Klia.
come to cross junction, turn right to < B48 >.
enter sepang town, T junction turn right.
first left turn left, enter < 5 >.
exit sepang town.
heading to Sungai Perak.
count from junction < B119 >, go for 3 KM and turn left.

I would not say that’s a good place to be, the sea water are rather muddy, you can even see that from Google setalite picture, but at least that’s a quick spot to be if you want the beach so much.

There is a Sepang Gold Coast under development, if you wait a little more, say 10 years from now, that should be a place with more pollution and fewer sea shore.

We reached there at about 6 pm in the evening, the sun was right on our face.
There was 2 pairs of couple taking their wedding photo in within the gold coast restaurant area (provided that the place is indeed reasonably beautiful or really lacks of visitors so that the photographer can take good shoots without too much of human interference).

We left at 7, right before sunset so that it wasn’t too bad to find our way home.

Whenever there is an Apple OS update, I’ll hold my horses for a few days, until the dust settled, then only do my dirty.
This time around, I didn’t research much and applied the new update, and eat the dust.

First sign: it cannot detect my external monitor.
I’ve been using this MacBook with the lid closed most of the time, connected to a HP LCD monitor (HP w2207 to be precise). The internal LCD was rarely used.
Now, it is impossible to close the lid and still being able to use the external monitor. Big let down, shame on you Apple.

* The workaround is to keep pressing the Menu and Auto button on the monitor, and hope the scan and probe process on the MacBook able to detect it – which it did after a few minutes. After which, keep the lid open and don’t don’t go to system sleep, or else repeat from mark *.

So I have to be very careful not to simply put the MacBook to sleep, and will have to spend more time waiting it to find the monitor. Sucks.

If you have similar setup, don’t update until Apple has a fix.

MacBook 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Penryn).

I switched to OpenDNS instead of using my ISP dispeakable DNS (that should be another topic to come).
In the first day using OpenDNS, I’ve noticed a strange looking geek keeps appearing on the site that was down for access, like this:

Well, I didn’t bother after the site went up again.

But the geek’s photo keep hunting me back in recent days, when more sites going south.
I did a very simple experiment, just typed any none exist URL or domain name, call up the OpenDNS landing page, and voila, the geek attack.

OpenDNS quirk? I’ll let you decide.

[full size screen capture here]

I registered with POS Online http://www.posonline.com.my/ weeks before I renewed my road tax, just to make sure I am ever ready to grab my rebate.

Their online system always said that my vehicle registration number cannot be found, seek help from JPJ.

Even after nearly one month, POS still think that my car doesn’t exist.

I’ve finally gave up, and went to the physical Post Office instead of the online one. The queue wasn’t too bad, only about 20 persons ahead when I reached there at around 10 AM.
The form was easy to fill, provided you know Malay.

It took me 30 minutes of stand waiting, seeing people getting their RM 625.00 easily from the counters, by just getting the thumb dirty.

When it came to my turn, a look at the counter terminal, I said to myself “gee, their interface is almost like the one online at internet” — that’s not good, that bloody interface has been telling me my car doesn’t exist.

True indeed, they can’t find my vehicle number, and the girl was kind enough to repeat couple of time saying that “come back after 7 days on your road tax due”, without observing that my due date was almost a month ago.

I shown her my vehicle registration card, she got confused, and said that nothing she can do about it.

Just before I am about to ask her what should I do next, she clicked on a special button on the page, and the interface switched to their old DOS based terminal front end.
That’s, my friend, miracle started. She managed to find my record there, and she did something quickly — like making a “posting” request on the very primitive DOS interface, and switch back to the browser alike GUI.

Then she attempted another entry on my vehicle number, and voila, my detail appeared.
I had a feeling that the GUI terminal are actually running parallel with their legacy system, in 2 different backend, which may glue together at some points.
It seems their legacy system is still the primary workhorse!

Needless to say, I also got my left thumb dirty, and get my money back. Yeay.

So, if you are like me, thinking to save some time doing this online, but couldn’t find your vehicle registration, you might want to visit the real post office instead. Oh, bring some document too, such as your road tax receipt (the one that you left over after tearing off the road tax to stick on your front screen).

I’ve never been to Zoo Negara. This is my kids first time, and so to myself.
First impression, it stinks, a lot. But we have fun.

Here is the Flickr set if you wish to see more.