Category: Life

Things will start to get better for me at work. Finally frustrated with
Maximizer CRM, I decided to go PHP and look for an open source CRM application.
Found SugarCRM. Sure, Sugar
lacks some features that Maximizer has but as long as it’s open source and PHP,
I have the confidence to make changes to this application to suit my client’s
needs.

I believe I’ve convinced my boss that this would be a better option for our
clients and us. SugarCRM is free. The source codes are readily available for use
and modification. The catch is, I cannot charge for the codes. But I can charge
for hosting it or adding new features. Existing files that are modified do not
belong to me. New files that I’ve added do. View
SugarCRM Public License.

Maximizer on the other hand, charges by user accounts. For every user you
want to create and use in their CRM program, you would have to pay for a
license. For every user you want access through the web portal, you need another
license. This way of charging, is in fact, worse than their rival CRM program,
Goldmine. Where
you only need to pay for the amount of concurrent connecting users (which means
if you pay for 10-user license, any 10 users can login into the system at the
same time. The 11th user will have to wait for someone to logout.), and you can
create any number of user accounts.

Maximizer may be better than Goldmine but the charges are simply too absurd
if your company has a huge number of salespeople or people whom you want to
empower them with Maximizer.

Also, Maximizer is too cramped to use on my 15″ LCD monitor (resolution
1024*768) at work. You would need at least a 17″ LCD (1280*1024) to work with it
comfortably.

If I had continued generating white hairs over the process of customizing Maximizer, I would
have ended up spending time to go around the world to all my client’s offices and set up
the Maximizer software on their system should it be approved. Thanks to SugarCRM, I no longer need to
as it is a web application. Oh yea, unless it’s Japan, I hate travelling overseas. ;)

Something trivial.

• Primary school – Foot – 5 minutes.
  
• Secondary school – Foot – 15 minutes.
  
• Polytechnic – Bus & Foot – 30 minutes.
  
• To work – Bus – 60 minutes.
  
• To my grave – Various types of transport – 50-70 years.

Hahaha. Anyway, my crave for coffee has grown stronger again. The first cup I had was back in my poly days. It was an afternoon and I was playing an RPG game on my Playstation. Then my mum asked if I wanted a cup of coffee and she made me one.

From then on, I began drinking a cup a day every morning before I leave for my lectures.

During my industrial attachment, I had up to 3-4 cups a day! Realizing that, I controlled myself and dropped back to 1 cup a day.

Now it’s 2 cups/day for me. Still acceptable I guess,

And so feelings turned into strong emotions and on the bus ride home
yesterday, I kept thinking about the DS. I eventually ended up alighting at Ang
Mo Kio Central, walked down to an electronics store at Jubilee and bought myself
a Nintendo DS.

S$288 for the unit alone, S$348 with a DS game (Super Mario64 DS). Bought 2
other GameBoy Advance games (Final Fantasy I – II: Dawn of Souls, Legend of
Zelda: The Minish Cap) at S$68 each. And a pouch for S$25. Given a $9
discount by the lady boss, the total was S$500.

Tested the unit, no dead pixels. But it was only until I got home, started
playing a little, then I noticed a bright pixel. [:(]. Now I’m posting at HWZ
forums for advice. Hope I could get it replaced.

Read up a bit on Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSP. Now I feel like buying myself a
Nintendo DS for those hour long rides to work and home. The games I’ll be
playing would be games from the Final Fantasy series and Zelda series. Too bad
they don’t run first generation gameboy cartridges anymore. I still have them
lying around.

The Nintendo DS has significantly longer battery life than PSP. There are no
loading times on the DS while the PSP has. PSP has a very short
battery life. PSP has problems where the cartridge slot pops open during use when the unit get’s
twisted and ejects the game disc.

Both systems have wireless capabilities built into them for multiplayer
purposes. I don’t know about PSP but it seems that for DS, for some games, you
only need 1 cartridge and the rest of the players can join in the fun without
the need for a same cartridge.

I’ve also read that someone has successfully connected his DS to his wireless
router and played with a friend over the net, over a distance too long for DS’s
wireless range. Update: found the link to the guys, XLink. Click on XLink Kai
at the top navigation bar.

Watched a video demonstration of Nintendo DS too. The touch-screen
capability of the lower screen certainly does seem to give better interactive
gaming. The PSP only has a single wider screen.

I can’t say if I’m biased or not but based on my half-assed research, I ended
up liking DS more than PSP. Now… Just waiting for the right shop, right price,
right time, right games.

The games I intend to purchase for the DS are:

1. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles


2. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls


3. Super Mario 64 DS


4. Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

About 13-14 months ago, as I was struggling with PHP and MySQL, I was
listening to an old album of The Pillows, White Incarnation.

Today, I had to revisit my 1 year old project which started out as
ASP+Access, converted to PHP+MySQL along the way. I’m making changes to that
project and listening to the same album. Somehow if you think about it, you
realize another year has passed.

I don’t think I’ve matured in anyway, physically or mentally. All I’ve
achieved over the past year was newer toys and no more money-worries when
shopping/eating.

Looking back at my blog entries, here’s my top highlights for the year 2004
in chronological order.

• Jan 9th – Made my first online transaction with my debit card, Golden
  Village movie tickets.


• Jan 18th – Enjoyed Lineage 2 on the Taiwan Open beta followed by the Japan
  Open beta.


• Jan 21st – Bought a Radeon 9800Pro. Always wanted a high-end graphics card.


• Feb 14th – Registered domain name: wyred.nu


• Mar 7th – Attended my first lan party at Funan IT Mall.


• Apr 5th – Visited Paris due to work circumstances.


• Apr 18th – Setup a second machine for hosting this blog and some other sites.


• Jun 3rd – Began playing FFXI.


• Jun 21st – Lineage 2 account on Japan Open beta got banned because I supplied a fake Japanese address.


• July 1st – Sourced myself a new machine. Runs an Athlon 64 3200+. Gaming purposes.


• Nov 6th – Took a week long vacation from work for the sole purpose of
  playing FFXI.


• Dec 6th – Flew to Hong Kong due to work circumstances.


• Dec 30th – Purchased 17″ LCD monitor.

Also, a list of tasks I failed to accomplish in 2004. [:(]

• Develop my own collaborative blog site.


• Learn how to administer a Linux machine.


• Adopt a CVS system at work.