Is your life only about making money, money and more money? Welcome to my blog, and I hope to share with my money management tips. I will post my money status online, so that you can reivew them. My dreams are to live wealthy, becoming rich, making money online with internet marketing, internet business, and Entrepreneurship altogether.
Life is about finding your dream, and working towards that dream.
Asking a date from a girl is a difficult task for me. Since I am usually busy with work and stuff, I don’t have much time for myself either. Just to share a few tips I have on my own on dating the perfect person.
#1 - Know the person well.
It is quite wierd or silly, to ask someone you don’t know her well enough. It means the “relationship level” isn’t at the point where you and her can get out and meet up.
#2 - Know where she likes to go or what she loves to do.
Does she go for some classes, or where does she work ? Does she have dinner at home or is she able to give you some time for a dinner outside ?
Ladies loves shopping. And you could probably tag along if “you have something to buy.” (just make it up and buy something!)
#3 Have a plan before asking.
So you expect someone to tell you what to do ? Or ask her where she want to go instead? Make your choice instead. Ladies prefer YOU to decide. (But if you are treating her to a meal you might want to go for a cheaper alternative first*).
If you were out there to accompany her, finish her task first. Then ask her if she is free to walk around or if she needs to rush home. This is where your time-planning come into play. You need to think on your feet! Have in mind what to do first before planning for your her day.
#4 Use your past experiences
Based on your past experiences, are you able to somehow use that onto something new ? Lets not say a date with a female, what about asking your male guys out ? I am sure you were straight and direct when you ask a friend or two out to have fun. Just treat the girl as a friend and talk normally. Once you get used to this, words pop out easily.
#5 Best time to ask: Tuesday - Thursday
You probably plan a date out on a friday, or weekends. The best time to ask her is in between Monday to Wednesday. This gives you a better chance of asking her out, or at least ask her if she has any plans for the weekend. If you were slightly later, eg. Friday, you’ll probably get an answer like,”So-so have already dated me out.” or “I am going to this party with so-so gang.”
These are always my general guidelines, but I may be wrong. I don’t often get alot of success, but hope this can help you.
Like another other typical white collar worker, I spent my day in an office environment, filled with air conditioner, water heater, computers (and MORE computers), and that clock hanging 10 meters away from my cubicle, which gets the most attention during the 4:30pm to 6:00pm.
Here is my break down of the number of hours for work. After working for some time, I figured out that in my 8.5 hours work daily, I don’t really work that… short ? Where did the rest of the 3.5 hours go ?
I mention about a good office environment and culture before, right here What motivates you - Love, Money, or Family ? where it does some good stuff in motivating workers. My bosses allow us to report work at a flexible time. This means we can come to office between 7:30am to 9:30am. Add a 8½ hours and thats about the time we knock off. (It means we are required to work for 8.5 hours, as stated under the labour laws in Singapore.)
So how did i derived my 12 hours ?
1) 8½ hours - Working in office
2) 1 hour is a lunch break
3) 1 hours travelling time x 2- from the moment I stepped out of my house, to the public transport, and reaching my desk, and twice the time for me to travel back home.
4) 0.5 hours before and after work. Note that this includes eating breakfast, wearing my socks and shoes, ensuring my bag comes with a book to read and changing to my shirt.
I calculated this 0.5 hours because reporting for work is really tedious. Before we start, we have to get ourselves ready. For the ladies, its even worst. They’ll need make up etc etc … (sorry I know nuts!). When we come home, we have to undo what was done in the morning, and it is again time wasted due of work.
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You are Black Monkey, whose character is cheerful, amiable and simple.
You possess both smartness and gracefulness.
Your appearance is youthful, and no matter how old you get, you will always have a young heart.
You don’t worry much about someone being late with appointment, or your subordinates making mistakes.
Nevertheless, you tend to be proud, so when you face troubles that hurt your dignity, you suffer a great shock.
You tend to be rather faddish.
Even if you are talking with someone you don’t like, you can show smile on your face, and actually inside, you are being hard on your preferences.
You hate to lose.
You put in great effort not to get behind others.
You have a tendency to show yourself big, by saying that you know things, even if really, you don’t.
In the atmosphere where you can relax, you show great natural sense of humor, and amiableness.
You have a huge dream, and will work hard to make that come true.
You will not get in a rush, and will follow your own pace.
You are good at handling numbers.
You can persuade other by using data, and therefore, you tend to have a bottom-line thinking even in private matters.
You are not good at reading deeper thoughts.
If you can overcome this weakness, you will have far greater chance of success.
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Its almost accurate !
The fact that you are reading this site, shows quite alot of my personality. I tend to be proud, young at heart, think big on myself, with many huge dreams !(realizing them soon). I hate to lose out to people around me and I’ll put in effort to improve myself anytime. And I am here trying to persuade people as well.
On and off we lose interest on daily tasks. After some thoughts, I figured out these few factors that kept people motivated. I felt that these factors keeps me motivated always.
Love
This is a big word. It has different meanings to some of us, because we do what we love right ? Unfortunately, there are things in this world where we are forced to do, like working in a job that is boring or tiring etc.
Be it rushing at a deadline for a project, studying for an exam or just to tidy up your room (mine’s quite messy), we need to find the motivation drive that trigger us. That is where I will list down some reasons why I like to do something particular, and then keep it refreshed in my mind.
And so, this is how I get myself motivated with love. For eg. I hate waking up in the morning for work and then walk 10 mins, just to squeeze on the public transport with a bunge of people who share the same fate as me. However after reaching my desk, I start to chat with colleagues on how I spent my night the day before (obviously I spent my night on my PC blogging away). My brain starts think and analysis, and get errands done for my superiors and bosses. One thing I got to admit, I have a very good work environment that is very motivating!
Money
Money money money. This is what we work for. Theres never too much of it. Looking at rising costs of fuel, medical and probably food in the coming years, I think we may need a whole lot more than today. Not forgetting inflations.
It is obvious that money motivates us, and the more there is, the more we put our attention to it. We get paid by the hour, or by commission by whichever ways to earn that sum of money, we do get excite. So why not we go though some of the stuff which we aren’t motivated at all, and try to put in a money element into it ?
I like music, as a leisure or as a hobby. I learn and enjoy what goes into my ears, but after awhile it just get boring (try listening to the same song over and over again). Have a look at my music profile before you continue: My music profile
At first it was interest that brought me there, but later on I realised there are people out there making money in music. It can be teaching, performances, a rock and roll band, or music related stuff. Along the way I discovered more motivating ways that kept me going on. But as I have said we should love what we do.
Family
What can I say. You work hard and at the end of day you go home and see you spouse and kids. They are the reasons why you get things done. Your kids will certainly motivate you! Though I don’t have a family, but I know I am working for my parents and doing my best for them.
And to other relatives, I try to do something proud and then tell them my achievements. This keeps my motivated as they share their experiences with me. Some of us may be unfortunate, where we were brought up in a unstable or less income family. It is a responsibility of each member to contribute towards the family. After all who would love you more than your family members ?
Summary
In short, if your want to be motivated in something, list out the reasons why you you should love doing it. And look at the potential of returns you can get. Ask and search around whether someone makes money out of what you are doing too. Finally do it so for your family and love ones. Stay happy too !
I wrote this on my Nokia E61 while flying back home from a Hong Kong trip, so it was kind of
I-write-what -I-think” post. Anyway…
This post is about “Why some people are smart and some never will ?”
By learning how a another person behaves, you might be able to be as smart as them. I’m not asking you to copy the way they move or talk, but more how they think and process their thoughts.
Many factors can change you, and turn yourself into a better or worst person.
I’ll just list down some negative and postive factors we should avoid or follow.
Point #1: Don’t be lazy !!!
Laziness.
No matter how smart you are, a lazy guy will lack behind the others. They will be viewed differently. By showing others the lazy side of you, people will just change how they feel towards you. You don’t want others to look at your this way.
Being lazy means you might have done a lot more especially if you were a smart enough, but lack the discipline to do things. This could get you into trouble! The soultion is to buck up, remind yourself and be motivated.
Point #2: Think smart, work smart
Working smart.
A clever guy work smartly, and think smart too. Working hard is not what they want, but rather working to find the better ways in doing things, faster and more efficient.
This will come with a price. Imagine your team members trying their best to churn out work, while you hide in a corner challenging your brains to come out with a better solution. There are goods and bads but if lets say you were able to come out with a solution for others to follow, you won them isn’t it ?
Point #3: Work hard and gain creditability
Working hard.
To put in your best effort every now and then is difficult. It takes alot of motivation and preseverance to maintain the momentum to go on. I posted an article on how to manage work and study. As long as you put in efforts, you will definitely gain in one way or another, and it belongs to you eventually. For eg. studying or learning a new skill. It is a personal gain.
Point #4: Don’t give up !!!
Presevere.
People who don’t give up will get his fair share of rewards. Giving up is quite a common reason why we fail. Lets take dieting for example. It is not easy to maintain a heathy diet, to eat less of those fatty and oily stuff, and switch to healthier food. The temptation for food is simply irrestible. Don’t give up !
There are many instances where as long as we strive hard to do what we think is correct eventually we will get there. There are many success stories on how people succeed. Don’t give up !
Point #5: Practise makes perfect
Practise and practise correctly.
In an unfamiliar area of unknown skills,
practise helps sharpen the skill required. So when time comes, that area of skill can be utilise for better results. Skills we should constantly practise includes verbal communications, human relationships or business understandings etc.
So far there are no such thing as bring born talented in, except for some rare skills, but so far most of the things we can do requires practise. And I emphasis on correct practise, with a mentor who can guide you along.
These were roughly what I had in mind as of this writing. I might have, the special given ability to tell
whose smart and whose not, in many areas. Since human have seven areas of intelligent, if we can identify who is good in which areas, copy and learn them to benefit ourselves, we will definitely become improve.
A few days ago I posted an article about pie charts, which I thought it might be more interesting writing something related to pyramids diagrams as well…
The triangular shape is a rough image in my mind. It is a hierachical representation of a subject that deals with populations or are classified into groups and grades. The pryamid differs from pie charts. It provides a top to bottom view, with the higher portion as minority, and the bottom as majority. The top usually represent the rare or unusual, while the base illustrates a more common type or group.
To analyse pyramids, the figure tells us the breakdown of population more clearly.
These shapes motivates me as I look at myself and wonder where I am. I often compare myself with things around me, and the ever changing environment.
What do I compare with ? Sadly to say in my company, I am still a junior staff as I have just started out working not long ago. I often thought about how long or how much effort I need to put in order to reach the top.
Other stuff cross my minds, like our income and salary. With people of the same age group, I see which percentile I stand in terms of yearly income etc…
I hope the article triggers you to think about planning your life because these small tricks help you with goals settings and constant feedback to yourself.
I decided to write this down because I kept thinking of it every moment. What is it ? Its about pictures and images of circles flashing in my mind. So what are in these charts, why are they so important ?
A circle can represent things like market share, percentages of a particular source or proportions of statistics data. It can show very clearly each type of sources and their % they hold against the total figures, by looking at the size of the pie.
This is an example of a pie chart, with a cut-up figures broken into months as a whole, represented in a diagram.
Why love them? The charts reminds me of how well the job market looks like in terms of jobs sectors and industries. In the working world, I constantly remind myself where my job stands in this big pie chart. If its a small percentage, it means I am in a niche market. If it is a big share, it means I can move about through different companies or industries, depending on my trade.
Visualise where your money goes to at the end of every month, with of a chart. Things like how much I set aside for savings, spending, holidays, education, and daily needs. It is good to know what is happening to your money. (I remember playing Management PC games and some games show this chart.
Another graph that I looked at and studied, is how are traffic driven to my site :). With google’s analytics, I see 3 types of traffic coming here. It is certainly useful and the picture of the division has been photographed into my head. If the porportion changes, I will notice that immediately!
With some practise, the usage of pie chart may improve our daily lifes by logical thinking as a visual aid.
This is a topic which I did a researched on during my Bachelor IT Programme titled “Weak passwords really do help hackers” I find it interesting…
The What
In this article, a research was done by understanding how hackers manage to break into Linux servers via weak passwords. The research was done by studying the passwords that hackers used to break into these servers. Studies were also done to understand what hackers do after gaining access and how they would behave. The results: it proves that weak passwords can be guessed easily, and it makes the jobs of hackers easier.
Over the past decade, it is quite common to see security policies that include password management. They include the minimum 8 characters in length, a change of passwords every 3 to 6 months, and setting complicated passwords not found on dictionaries or special characters. Why is this necessary? You will not realise the importance of these policies until your account’s password has been compromised.
The how and why
Password policies each serves a different purpose. The longer the passwords length, the longer it takes to cracked them. To strengthen the passwords, ASCII characters (eg. !@#$%^&*) are used instead of alpha-numeric. The common MD5 cracks of Linux shadow passwords and rainbow cracks on Windows SAM passwords are the commonly used tools used for cracking passwords.
Changing of passwords periodically also help in a different approach. The passwords might be compromised or gotten through some other means. Changing it prevents hackers from gaining the new password back. As for non dictionary words, though it avoids traditional dictionary attack, brute forcing can still be done.
There are different types of authentication systems that are based on usernames and passwords. Some of these includes GPL Linux OS, Windows OS (2K / XP / 03), email accounts (webmails or local pop3) and some other websites (forums, online shopping, download) that provides service and requires you to log in.
Although each of these systems has their own weaknesses and methods to crack them (eg. John the ripper), the most common method used by hackers, initially, is to guess them. As long as you can authenticate yourself correctly by inputing the correct password, the system has no way to identify whether you are the genuine user or not. Some common passwords combinations are identical username and passwords, empty password (“”), “password”, “root”, “admin” are some of the common passwords.
Admin’s notes
To make matters worst, some systems do not have a logout policy, meaning automated scripts can be used to guess them. In Linux for example, if it is running an OpenSSH server, chances are automated attacks can be used for guessing the root account. Guessing can be done at a rate of maybe once every 5 seconds, spreads across 100 machines, guessing it simultaneously. This could potentially crack the password for that Linux box, and only a strong password may prevent this.
Some poor password managements on IT administrator’s part are also the cause of guessable passwords. On Windows environment, the “default admin password” may allow hackers to eventually break into most critical systems. Such an example is the compromising of one server machine. Once compromised, passwords will be cracked (in a matter of hours based on current CPU speed), and if other Windows servers used the same passwords, then it defeats the purpose of setting passwords, no matter how strong or complex they are.
To end, we conclude that weak passwords really do simplify the hacker’s job. There should be more preventive measures, policies, access control, and most importantly, the practice of proper password policies.
This is a topic which I did a researched on during my Bachelor IT Programme titled “Microsoft security team probing new Word flaw” We will look into past history on what happen and what had been done.
The What
Ever since Microsoft Office 2000 were released, service packs and patches were release solely for Microsoft Office. You may wonder why Microsoft releases these patches, when Office can still function properly. Bugs and flaws were constantly discovered by programmers, security researchers and white/black hat hackers.
The Why
In Microsoft Office, the Word program flaw exists because Word has many functions that may contain bugs in them. This results in buffer/memory overflow that are exploitable. It also coexists with other programs, using libraries like visual basic apps, macros, or Internet Explorer.
There are also many versions of Microsoft Office (2000, XP, 2003, 2007), and many service packs for each version. The later versions of Microsoft Word may be built based on the previous version, so if a flaw is discovered, it affects the rest of the versions.
The How
The flaw can only work if all the above conditions are met. Firstly, the user must open the specially crafted document with a vulnerable or unpatched versions of Microsoft Office 2000, XP or 2003, as the flaw only works on certain versions of Office. Currently, all versions of Office 2007 are unaffected.
Next, the exploit works only if the user, with admin rights, opens the infected document. (Opening the document can be done by saving it on your local harddrive, or simply clicking Open when the pop up comes.)
Admin rights are needed in order to run the payload, which requires system level permissions. Lastly, the PC has to be connected to the internet while the document downloads the payload using Microsoft Word and execute it.
Once the exploit is successful, the payload will be executed. (The term payload, as defined by hackers, is a program or function that is executed after exploitation. The most common payloads are backdoors). For the hacker to successfully control the compromised PC, the backdoor must connect to a server and the hacker can issue commands to your machine.
Prevention
Unless the user is running a HIPS (Host-intrusion prevention system) capable anti-virus software, typical AV softwares will not prevent this. As the infection is not spreading wildly, AV companies will have difficulty developing signatures files. Payloads (backdoors) deployed can be manipulated and morphed, and thus slowing down the development of signature files for them.
The work around for this, as the usual recommendations by Microsoft, is to either update all software regularly, or you can grab a copy of Microsoft Office 2007, which is currently free of flaws. Usually, Microsoft only releases patches on the second Tuesday of every month, together with the time frame needed for the security team and office developers to fix the bug and build the patch, the window for exploitation period will be longer. For the flaw to work, all the conditions have to be met, so the damage of the flaw is not as critical.
The safest way to prevent this is actually user awareness, and updating software regularly. You should open only documents and attachments you were expecting. Human mistakes and carelessness are usually the factors why hackers can successfully succeed.
It has been a long while since I went into ARMY. Yes I am a soldier.
In case you don’t know, 1 and a half year ago, I finished my National Service. It is a law in Singapore that all men at the age of 18-21 has to serve National Service for 2 Full years, and Army is one of them. It was “Training to be soldier” for me.
And now, as I step back into what they call it ICT (In camp training), meant for people like me who “graduated”, to report back and get refreshed. It is a nice way of keeping contacts with my buddies or the “Band of brothers”. Some light exercises and training programme were catered for us during this 5 day training.
I had a trimmed hair cut and so I am going to look bad for the next few months before it grows back =).
And it is a good 5 day break for me as I not need go to work.
It would’ve been great if you had a solution. Or,...
thank...