Puteri’s World

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. ~ Samuel Adams

America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality. ~Adlai Stevenson

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it. ~ William Faulkner

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it! ~ John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, April 26, 1777

Happy birthday, America. May God continue to bless you and may you remain that shining light on the hill.

My earlier wifi booster caused the readers at my Iban language blog much amusement! They had never seen anything quite like it but as I gleefully pointed out to them that despite it’s ugly look it worked very well!

I subsequently found a cheap aluminium strainer and used that instead of the earlier version. The strength of the signal it picks up is about the same as the earlier version. It can go up another 2% which is quite negligible. But the best thing about the new version is that the signal strength remains at “very good” for most of the time.

This version certainly looks a lot better than the previous one!

I find that the current location, which is on the balcony outside my old bedroom, is where it picks up the strongest signal from the city’s free wifi service. I’ve tried the downstairs patio and the signal at best is only at 30% strength.

So I’ll leave my wifi booster where it is right now. I do, however, take my wifi adapter off when I am done surfing the web. I do not want the only wifi adapter that I have to be exposed to the elements!

I love to do bead work, and recently I found that the weak reading glasses that I rely on for close work just don’t seem to be as helpful as before. That means I need to get myself a pair of slightly stronger reading glasses.

When it comes to my vision, I am resigned to the fact that as I grow older, I will need stronger and stronger reading glasses. I have not heard of any real natural solution for improving hyperopia (long-sightedness), that is, until I read the positive testimonials of people of have tried wearing pinhole glasses to improve their eyesight.

What’s that, you ask? My thoughts exactly when I first heard about the pinhole glasses! I mean, I have heard about eye exercises for strained eyes and even some exercises that are supposed to improve your vision problem but I have never heard of eyeglasses that do not even have glass lenses that can help improve your vision!

The way pinhole eyeglasses work is that they prevent light rays that come at extreme angles from reaching the pupil. That means only direct light rays reach the eyes thus minimizing distortions in the images that the eyes perceive and resulting in better definition and clarity of the objects that we see.

However, there are limitations to the pinhole glasses. You can’t wear them while driving because they severely restrict your peripheral vision, and while doing activities that require movements. They are also not suitable for people with refraction disorder of 6 diopters.

But they are great for stationary activities like watching TV, at the movie theaters, reading the blackboard in the classroom, and for working in front of the computer.

If the pinhole eyeglasses work as well as claimed by the people of have used them, I think I should try them for myself too. I hate the idea of having to rely on stronger reading glasses as the years go by!

I finally found a USB extender cable that works with my laptop. It’s 5 meters long and and a good thing I got one that is that long!

I paid RM 25 (about US$8) for the cable and didn’t feel like spending RM 27 for a metal strainer for the wok-fi! How come the strainer costs more than the cable?

Anyway, I started with a metal strainer (from my mother’s kitchen drawer) that was about 6 inches in diameter and which I lined with aluminium foil, and strapped onto the rails of the upstairs balcony at my parents house. It increased the signal strength by about 13% to about 36%, which I thought was quite good.

Today, I scrounged around the house to see if there was something I could use that was wider than 6 inches in diameter. I found the cover of an old table fan, and it was about a foot in diameter. I attached it to a piece of wood, wrapped it in aluminium foil, strapped it onto a metal rod and strapped that rod to the rails of the upstairs balcony facing the closest wi-fi hot spot in the area.

Ta da! The signal strength has increased to 60% and it hovers between three and four bars! And the wi-fi is is not from a neighbour! I was able to connect to the free wi-fi service from the city! Woohoo!

This is how the contraption looks like! Ya, ya, I used the aluminium foil from the previous pot lid. I should put a new one around it, and who knows the signal received will be much stronger, eh!

Who knew the metal cover of an old table fan could double as a wi-fi signal booster!

When I saw that headline on the online version of the UK Telegraph, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Oh no, I hope I don’t have that disorder!”

When I read the story further the description of the person who had the disorder did not fit me.  Phew! According to the story, sufferers spend “unhealthy amounts of time playing online games, viewing pornography or emailing” and they even forget to sleep! Games? Porn? Emailing? Nah, not me! Blogging is my thing! Reading the news is my thing!

But I could spend a lot less time in front of my computer though.  I should spend more time exercising and getting myself in better shape!

Doug sent me a link to show me how to build a “wok-fi”. What do you think?

The metal strainer used for the “wok-fi” is easy enough to find.  The only problem is the USB extender cable.  My laptop does not give out enough power/current to go through even a 1.5 meter cable.  Like I mentioned in my previous post, the message I got was “Device Unknown”.

I did some research and found out that there is such a thing as a USB repeater cable.  This cable will boost the energy running through the regular USB extender cable.  I doubt I will be able to find the repeater cable in any of the computer shops in town.  But who knows, eh.  I will check out some of the computer shops in town and see if I can find a USB repeater cable.

For now, I am using my brother’s new laptop and it does a far better job of picking up the city’s free wi-fi signal.  Hence the more frequent updates on my blogs!  :wink: 

Last April my in-laws went on a cruise some where in Europe. I don’t exactly know the details of that cruise except that they enjoy that particular cruise so much that the one that they took in April was probably their third one.

Doug and I have never been on a cruise any where even though we’d love to check out the European Cruises and maybe even go on one of those cruises that his parents seem to enjoy so much.

It might be a while before we can go on any European and Mediterranean Cruises but an Alaskan Cruise might be a possibility in the near future. It’s a lot closer to us being on the West Coast and if we find a good deal during an off season we might go on one. We’ve been spending a lot of our vacation time and vacation budget visiting my parents in Malaysia and we’ve talked about doing something different next year.

 Cruises from New York might also be a possibility. I’ve never been to New York and a visit to the Big Apple and take a cruise from there does seem attractive! It’ll be fun to just go along the Eastern seaboard up the New England coast and the Canadian coast. The cruise packages along that route don’t seem too expensive and that seem like a good introduction to a cruise vacation for us.

Maybe next year, eh!

This was what my youngest brother rigged up for me to help boost the wi-fi signal reception! It seemed to work for a while, and the next day, alas, the wi-fi signal was as weak as ever!

A pot lid wrapped in aluminum foil and my wi-fi adapter sitting on that lid. The power from the laptop was too weak for a USB cable extender. Otherwise that pot lid would have been hung from a high window and I am sure the wi-fi signal received would have been stronger!

The signal received seemed quite impressive at first. Too bad it did not stay that way! Today I had to borrow my oldest brother’s laptop which seemed to do a far better job at picking the wi-fi signal with his built-in antennae, er, what exactly is that thing called? Modem?

I sure do miss my DSL connection back home in California!

I have been having some success at picking up some wi-fi signal on my laptop from my old bedroom in my parents’ house. The problem is that the signal is so weak that it comes in and out and it can be very frustrating when you are trying to read something online or post a blog entry! I have given up using the slow-as-snail dial up connection.

Today I bought a USB extender hoping to use it to hang my external wi-fi adapter from a window. Since the signal that that adapter picks up is so weak, hanging it a little higher on a window might help with boosting the signal a bit. So I have been told!

And that was not the only thing I have been told. I was told to hang my adapter in the middle of an aluminum foil wrapped metal strainer or even in the middle of a pie tin! Unfortunately I have not been able to test if indeed the method works because the extender that I bought received a “windows does not recognize the USB device” message! What the heck?

I took the USB extender back to the shop from which I bought it and exchanged it for another one. I thought maybe the one I bought earlier was defective. The replacement also received the same kind of response from Windows.

So I am stuck. My internet connection is still iffy … big time frustration! Tomorrow I’ll go back to the shop and bring my wi-fi adapter with me so the technician at the shop can test and see if he can find a USB cable that will work with the wi-fi adapter.

It’s been a while since I have been faced with such lousy internet connection. Not since my early days of the internet using a slow modem, slow dial-up and slow computer processor!

Early in the week, I met an old friend whom I had not seen in several years, at a coffee shop. Her comment about my appearance was that I still looked the same old slim self. Naturally I was pleased by that observation!

Not very many people are able to stay slim especially after they have reached a certain age or because of their poor eating habits. In a 2001 BBC news report the number of people who are obese in the UK has tripled in the last 20 years and if the current trend continues one in four adult will be obese by 2010. That does not seem a very encouraging figure, does it?

Some take control of their weight problem by undergoing laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding surgeries. Others prefer not to go under the knife and rely on the help of prescription Diet Pills.

If I were overweight I would try out prescription diet pills like Acomplia or Reductil in conjunction with regular exercise and a new eating habit before I would go for anything as drastic as a surgery!

As with any prescription medication, these diet pills are not without their side effects. Therefore, anyone who intends on taking these pills should consult their doctor or complete an online consultation form if buying these pills online. The safest place to buy these medication online would be from places like The Online Clinic, a healthcare provider, whose activities are regulated by the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency.

There are many benefits to losing those unwanted pounds, not least of which is the reduction in the risks of heart diseases, stroke and Type 2 diabetes.

Let’s all work towards staying healthy, eating healthy and keeping off those unwanted pounds!