Weird Al sings about eBay. eBay is an auction website selling tons and tons of items people don’t want anymore. One man’s trash is another’s treasure - so some people would source eBay and look for interesting stuff to grab.
“Ebay” by Weird Al Yankovic
If you’re addicted to eBay, please step out of your house and get some fresh air, walk around your marketplace, walk your dog, smile at your neighbors. Just don’t add another junk in your house.
Yay, let’s write something more cheery.
I bought a Samsung Ultra Edition 10.4 U600 from SingTel. They’ll send me coming Wednesday if things go correct and I can go around fluanting my new phone. I never really bought phones that I really like. This is perhaps the first phone that I bought that scored high marks in the looks department. My previous phones are okay, they aren’t ugly but this is just too pretty. My previous phones are okay, they aren’t ugly but this is just too pretty.
Let’s see, did you know today it’s 070707. It makes a good day to be happy about. Perhaps it’ll be your lucky day today. A friend is launching a company today, and I’m aware Live Earth is happening too. If you missed this year’s nice number, you can always wait for 080808, or 090909 or 101010 or 111111 (cool!) or 121212. But they will not be a 131313 of course and you’ll have to wait a century to see these nice numbers again. So treasure these dates and start planning ahead for event to occur then. 
And my little hamster seems to be less scared of me already. It still tries to bite my fingers sometimes but I never got bitten till there’s blood now. Perhaps it’s just that I learnt how to handle it better. Maybe it just gotten used to the human hand.
Oh, I just went to Sim Lim too, I got a power supply unit to fix somebody’s computer. It was a good price at SG$63, it’s a CoolerMaster Extreme Power 430 Watts and it’s black and cool. The customer was concern with overheating and I recommended CoolerMaster because it sounds like it won’t overheat since it’s supposed to be a master in being cool. I like the packaging, CoolerMaster put in good effort to package a quality product.
Okay, now I am happier already. Time to go to bed. It’s almost 3 in the morning and I’m staring at some bank statements wondering where my money went to. It isn’t exactly most encouraging. Have a good 070707 day ahead.
Intel, Microsoft and Japanese online payments company Bit Wallet have teamed up to develop a mobile PC platform designed to bring computing to those traditionally considered to be unfamiliar with shopping online, browsing the web or sitting at a desktop PC. Like housewives, apparently.
There’s no mouse or keyboard, to make it more friendly for folk unused to such input devices, and Intel, Microsoft and Edy said they want to see apps with simple, button-based interfaces to come to the platform the better to appeal to people with little or no PC experience.
(Slate DT FeliCa.)
It looks likely the first device will be manufactured by local hardware company PBJ, which has already used Intel CPUs in its existing mobile devices.
More at Reg Hardware
Anyway, I think this is a good effort. This is a rather small news but I like the idea that they’re targeting housewives. Housewives is perhaps of the least tapped groups of people in the society to use computers. Exposing them to new technologies may be a good idea. And in return, I too hope that computers are easier to use since computers have to be housewives-friendly in future.
Our computers are just too hard to use. My aunt is still stuck thinking that the monitor contains the CPU. I encouraged her to get a Mac already.
Okay, sales didn’t really decrease but I think it would probably decrease. On July 1, the GST would be 7% and NETS surcharge would be 1.5% to 1.8%.
The government of Singapore has upped the Goods and Service Tax (GST) from 5% to 7%. Foreign visitors aren’t affected since they get rebates the last time I heard. But Singaporeans will be affected. To help cope with the 2% increase, the government grants some aid to Singaporeans. I got SG$300. I don’t have much complaints about the GST increase.
And most of my friends have bought their stuff on the month of June. The recent computer trade shows has good sales too. It seems like quite a handful of people are snapping up items before the GST increase. So when the GST increase, shops can expect sales to drop on July. Most people I know who intended to buy computers bought theirs before July too. (They think they are getting a good deal by the way.)
GST is not the only fee increasing, NETS has also increase their surcharges from between 0.35 and 0.55 percent to 1.5 and 1.8 percent (around 3 to 4 times increase). This is unwelcomed by most retailers and consumers. Most Singaporeans prefer to use NETS instead of debit card and credit cards. I wouldn’t be surprised if retailers would increase tweak their prices to cover some NETS costs. Or worse, could even offer cheaper rates for cash payments by tagging every product with 2 different pricings - one for cash payment, the other for cashless payment systems.
NETS has been introduced to Singapore years back as a low-cost cashless payment system, as an alternative to Mastercard and Visa. It worked pretty well. Most Singaporeans with a local bank account can take advantage of this system. I kinda support cashless payments, it’s easy and safe. Aren’t we always talking about digital lifestyle and stuff? Increasing the NETS fees is just a step backward.
For the board and easily amused Yet another spledid way to waste an hour or two - learn different ways of tying your shoelaces. 
If I were still in army I’ll probably try them all out.
Speaking of shoes… I just bought new sneakers. Gotten a new bag too, the old one’s just old. And I bought a whiteboard too. And I bought a box too. And I bought this book stand.
Bow tie, Double Helix, Lattice, Zipper, Checkerboard, Hidden knot, Loop back, and more…
Last Friday I went to the PC Show held in Suntec Convention Center. I carefully picked Friday since Thursday is a public holiday (Vesak Day) and Saturday Sunday is just weekends. I don’t want to go there when it is crowded you know.
I went with about 6 friends all aiming to purchase different things. I realize the hottest selling thing is probably storage disk, storage media and RAMs. I don’t think they are that cheap but everyone’s excited over storage cards. I wonder why would people need so much SD cards.
I purchased a printer, the HP Photosmart C5100. It’s quite affordable at SG$279 with a SG$50 voucher. And with trade in of my non-functioning printer, I get an additional SG$50.
Above is the printer. Can you name all the items on my table?
There aren’t really any special stuff asides the usual showgirls. Sony brought some people to do Brazilian dance or something. The Brazilian dancers shake here and there and patroled the entrances of the PC Show. It was seemingly good treat to the photographers. They’re snapping happily and the Sony girls were looking really good. And at the end of the dance routine, they unveil a scroll that has some Sony promotion which look awfully ridiculous and they shouted “Sony!”
I was stunned for a moment and the other girl shouted “Sony!” and they continued parading to the next entrance announcing “Sony!” every few shakes. My heart just died a little. Sony!
During the IT Show on March, I actually acquired this little device for myself - a SanDisk Cruzer Titanium USB Flash Drive. (Most of the Singaporeans refer to a flash drive as “thumb drive”.) It’s 4GB and it transfer things at quite a good speed. I especially love the way it looks.
I have yet to start using it but I am starting to populate it with those portable applications. The SanDisk Cruzer Titanium also supports U3. Very nice.