Lawrence and Christine Family Blog

Posted in: on Friday, December 22, 2006 at 0 comments  

In rounding up all over the Internet for strong alternatives to Windows Application, the Linux Equivalent Project lists Linux alternatives to dozens of popular Windows applications, from Adobe Photoshop to ZoneAlarm.

The idea here is to show potential Linux adopters that making the switch doesn't necessarily mean saying goodbye to their favorite software. You can use Scribus in place of PageMaker, Quanta Plus in place of FrontPage and so on.

Another strong reason to review a complete switch over to virus-free Linux environment for the corporate users.

Read more [here]

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Just as I thought, as everyone seems to kick into a slower gear whenever a year draws to a close, folks receiving their year-end bonus break a sight of short relief in this debt-driven society. As for me, I am likewise putting my clients on hold in taking on new projects as the spirit of this festival sets in.

But more importantly, it sets me to rethink about the purpose of our christian walk. Many see christians around them as hypocrites (sad to say), some just plain ordinary Joe like themselves (nothing special) while yet some are just confused if christianity has anything to do with them.

Christian = follower("ian") of Christ

where a genuine born-again believer is fully in the appropriate position to leverage the power of God (our Almighty Creator) in his or her life, moving His arm to do what the world sees as impossible through prayer and careful decisions - in a time frame predestinated before the existence of everything. So, you say, we are the chess pieces in the universal play set of God. Yes, we are! But if we fail to see this (to genuine believers I say) in our daily walk, there isn't a real, driven purpose to please God in our lives, is it? And if there isn't that passion, why then do you call yourself a christian? I believe God has not called christians to limp along in life aimlessly but to perform what ordinary man sees as impossible...God brings possibilities through us.

Without Christ, one can try (like the Pharisees) to fulfill the perfect law of God and be dead sure failure is emminent and disastrous. Only by believing in the finished work and power of Jesus to both remove your spiritual death and exercise a complete trust in what God can do in you , will you then begin to truly walk in the grace and the true purpose God has handcraft for you - A Super natural life.

Come to the Almighty yet gracious Savior of souls today and live supernaturally for Him henceforth...

Updated by Lawrence

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There are many who question whether a Christian should or should not celebrate Christmas at all. This is a legitimate question when you consider the pagan origins of Christmas and the pagan origins of the common traditions of celebrating Christmas today. I believe that Christmas can indeed be celebrated but not in the way the world does.

It is interesting to note that the early church never celebrated Christmas. They never heard of such a thing. In fact Christmas wasn't celebrated during the first 300 years of the Church. It never occurred to the early Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ. It wasn't until the Roman Catholic church's hold on the Christian world in the 300s that The Roman church introduced the mass of Christ's birth.

It is true that Jesus Christ was not born on December 25th. He wasn't even born in December. He was born in the middle of summer. So why is the birth of Christ celebrated on December the 25? Put your comments up and discuss...

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For those restless geeks out there this festive season, here's a Christmas candy for you. Perform a theme overhaul for your Nokia phones!

Follow the instructions [here] and you'll be fine.

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I am not too sure who among you heard of LinkedIn but I thought it's an extremely useful tool to enlarge your professional circle of friends, may it be work or play. I personally have been using it for over two years.

Check it out and you may even find your ex-colleagues from your youth in this large network.

Have fun!

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HP StorageWorks 1/8 Ultrium 448 Tape Autoloader

2U Form factor (rackmount or desktop)
Native capacity  - 1.6 TB native capacity
Backup rate  - 24 MB/s native transfer rate
1 drive to 8 data cartridge slot ratio provides for weekly automated backup
Includes HP OpenView Storage Data Protector, Single Server Edition for Windows® 2000/NT/2003/XP
Interface: Ultra160 SCSI LVD/SE
Uses Ultrium generation 2 media; HP Ultrium or LTO Ultrium cleaning cartridge
Reliability - 250,000 Mean swaps between failures (MSBF)
Warranty - 1 Year next-day parts exchange warranty
Free U320 SCSI HBA worth S$235 (107O450)

S$8850 including 5% GST

Posted in: Technology on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 0 comments  

X60 T1300(1.66GHz), 512MB RAM, 60GB 5400rpm HD, 12.1in 1024x768 LCD, Intel 950, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, Secure chip, IEEE 1394, 4c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Home
3 Years Warranty
S$1850.00 including 5% GST

Upgrade to MS Windows XP Pro for only S$145
(FREE UPGRADE TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA BUSINESS EDITION)

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We’re all busy these days. We eat half of our meals in cars and the other half on the phone. Or at least it seems like it. One of the main excuses things I run into when trying to exercise is a lack of time. Well, if you’ve got 5 minutes you can do a lot of good.
Here’s the schedule:

Minute 1: Stretch
Stretching promotes blood flow and relieves tension in your body. It can help you melt away stress and relax, plus it helps with your flexibility and takes no equipment and little room to do. Find some helpful stretching techniques [here]. Don’t worry about getting in a full body stretch, you won’t have time. Just pick something that seems sore, or doesn’t get stretched often, and do that for one minute.

Minutes 2, 3 and 4: Push-ups
If you’ve only got time to do one exercise. This is the one you want to do. It’s a great upper-body and core workout, it’s quiet, and it takes zero equipment to do properly. Try and do sets of 10 with 30-45 second breaks in between. Do this for 3 minutes. Proper push-up technique is [here]. You may not be able to do the classic at first. That’s OK. Try it with your knees on the ground or even try it standing up and pressing against a wall in front of you like you would press against a floor. If you start either of these ways you can work yourself up (or actually down) to the classic floor push-up.

Minute 5: Stretch Again
Now that you’re slightly warmed up, the stretching will be more effective at increasing your flexibility and it still retains the benefits we talked about previously.

That’s it! Try it...

Posted in: on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 0 comments  

After like what seems like eternity - 32 hours, Reba manages to reach home with her son's help! The intense fog at her last stop actually resulted in the pilot turning the plane back to the departure airport! But thank God she is fine and ready to do some "damage" while shopping and visiting families and friends.

Do continue to pray for her safety as she travels for the next 3 weeks.

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In an affluent society like ours, the rich man's diseases are plentiful and common...take cholesterol overloading for example. Well, here's a little project for each of us - find out the most practical way to help our dear brother John lower his astronomically high cholesterol!

A call or text message to remind him to stay from unhealthy food, a good recommendation of food combination, etc. would all be welcome to him...

Posted in: Friends Update on Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 0 comments  

Microsoft has announced the release of Windows Desktop Search 3.0. The software searches through all types of documents including emails, music, and even your Outlook appointments as well as through PDF files. The WDS provides the ability to re-index portions of the drive, instead of doing the whole drive in one shot. A checkbox allows WDS to index and search through encrypted files. It adds a search bar in the bottom-right corner of the screen next to your system tray.

The software can be downloaded from here.

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Ever wonder if the author of your travel guide book actually have been to Oslo? Well, I am not surprised if that's not the case. Turn the coin round and you now can ask a pool of members from all over the world about the place where they actually have been to...isn't that cool?

Check out Virtual Tourist [here] and bring authentic flavour and meaning into your next trip.

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Apple making a Phone? Yup! This world is getting more commercial by the minutes...its reported to embed a 4GB or 8GB drive for your MP3 and will be available Q1 2007.

It's so new this news that the specs of this is not yet known...

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Posted in: on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 0 comments  

We love things that are fast! Fast food, Fast Cars, Fast Internet. Why should my browser lag? Fasterfox is REALLY cool extension that adds a HEMI to FireFox. The extension works by tweakings network settings, adjusting the pre-cache, pipelining, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

As an added bonus Fasterfox has a little page load timer that shows how much time it has saved you!

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A very effective plugin has been identified [here] named Fasterfox. It incorporates a cool extension that adds a HEMI to FireFox. The extension works by tweakings network settings, adjusting the pre-cache, pipelining, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

As an added bonus, Fasterfox has a little page load timer that shows how much time it has saved you!

A valuable tool to end users when speed is essential.

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Ajax, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

• XHTML (or HTML) and CSS, for marking up and styling information.
• The DOM accessed with a client-side scripting language, especially ECMAScript implementations such as JavaScript and JScript, to dynamically display and interact with the information presented.
• The XMLHttpRequest object is used to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. In some Ajax frameworks and in certain situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data with the web server, and in other implementations, dynamically added
• XML is sometimes used as the format for transferring data between the server and client, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML. These files may be created dynamically by some form of server-side scripting.

Like DHTML, LAMP and SPA, Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies.

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Well, Tim is a dear friend of mine and I gladly welcome him into our extended SF! (clap, clap, clap) Just a brief intro, maybe Tim can give it himself!

Feel free to browse around and contribute your pulse to this SF!

God bless!

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For the travel gurus, a destination that would be out of this world to be in...expected completion date - 2008. Where it will be built? Dubai.

A sprawling 1.1-million-square-foot complex—with lavish suites, a ballroom, a shopping mall and a missile-defense system to ward off terrorists—Hydropolis is an ambitious vision of luxury at 60 feet underwater. As of press time, though, the project had stalled in the preconstruction phase. According to Mansoor Ijaz, deputy chairman of the board for Crescent Hydropolis Resorts, LLC, Hydropolis is on hold pending “land acquisition” and probably won’t be finished before the current opening date, set for 2008

Posted in: on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 0 comments  

R60 Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 (Merom 1.83Ghz, 2MB L2 Cache)) 512MB DDR2 SDRAM 80GB SATA DVD MultiBurner Dual Layer, Gigabit Centrino a/b/g 14"XGA+ XP Pro 3 year, Active Protection System, Rescue & Recovery, 128MB ATI Radeon X300

PP Price $2399 including GST
Street Price S$2699

Discover technical specification [here]

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Overview Business Advantages of Compiere include

1. Inherent virutally unlimited license-free operating costs
2. Stronger database integrity and performance offered by Oracle or MySQL
3. Simplified user navigation that has a maximum depth of 3 levels
4. Multi-lingual capability
5. Strong record history of successful deployment by companies like Good Year, Audaxis in Europe.
6. Built-in web access for report viewing and partner self-help web store
7. Open-source nature implying changes to source code or format/GUI is possible
8. Product not locked onto a vendor who can disappear over time as self-support is trully possible
9. Strong CRM/POS/OLAP/Partner Relationship management capability
10. Strong digital forms workflow processing
11. Coehesive functionality to cut down processing order lead time

A good read can be obtained [here]

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IBM OmniFind is a enterprise-level search software solution that enables rapid deployment of intranet and file system search for both employees and customers.

Supports up to 500,000 documents.
Search both the enterprise and the Internet from a single interface. Configurable integration with Yahoo!
Integrates smoothly with existing infrastructures and intranet sites.
Incorporates open source Apache Lucene technology to deliver the best of community innovation with IBM's enterprise features.
Access to IBM's expert service and support professionals, available through a paid support option, ensures challenges are resolved in a reliable and timely manner.

View Flash Demo

Hardware Included
IBM x110 Server
Intel Pentium D 3.0GHz Processor
1GB DDR2 Memory
Dual 80GB Drive with RAID 1
1-year Ons-site Warranty

Get a representative to contact [you]

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Joshua must be very afraid in his heart. With over 2 million Israelites under his care and been given the instruction to react to "Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them" command from God, I am pretty sure the level of anxiety of the unknown is what we may face at times too.

Well, I do. Quite many times a day in fact. It's not about our faith in the Lord in question here, but the knowledge that we have to tackle what our minds, qualification, experience cannot predict. It can be scary or peaceful...either camp implying a different depth of trust in Christ.

What then? Live each day with a reactive spirit, waiting to muscle your way to managing the unpredictables? Or simply submit and surrender your life at 7am through a simple prayer of trust.

Lord, I ask you to help me cross that river in complete trust today...amen.

Posted in: on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 at 0 comments  

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OK. Reba is going back to see many people across the three short weeks and let us remember her in our daily prayer for safety and blessing!

Driver appreciated to send her to the airport...

Cheers.

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Just in case you forgot, we will be making our way to JB right after Mike's 
kitchen demo at 360 Dunearn this Saturday. So, there will not be 
dinner on Friday! 

Be ready to leave from around 4.30pm that day. Venue - a world-class (but very affordable) restaurant just 10 minutes from the causeway.

Meet at church. 

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Posted in: on Sunday, December 10, 2006 at 0 comments  

By shipping its first quad-core processors in December, Intel is beating AMD by at least six months. AMD doesn't expect to deliver its first quad until mid-2007. But upon closer examination, Intel's quads are actually pairs of dual-core dies slapped together in the same chip package, whereas AMD's will truly integrate four cores on a single die.

With Intel's architecture, the resultant is poor integration and poor performance, as all core-to-core communications must squeeze through the slowe front-side bus instead of through tightly integrated interconnects.

Our recommendation is to simply stay away from Intel's "stopgap measure" products until it rolls out what AMD's true quad-core sound architecture mid next year.

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I admit it's a rather unusual topic to talk about last Friday but I thought we could learn plenty about how we can overcome this common problem of mankind from each of you. As usual, we started with a few rounds of home-made Pizza, talk out loud how our week was. Looked like everyone has something to share about their encounters in this department.

Well, in summary, it's about acknowledging our weakness and asking God to replace that spirit of anger with the Spirit of love. You know, as Reba shared, it ought not to be looking at self continuously if we are to want to manage our anger. As we died in Christ of our sinfulness, Christ lives in us, and henceforth, not I but Christ. When that self is mortified, the light of hope and truth descends upon us, while all those lies of darkness (to justify our anger) - saying to the victim,"You deserved it!" disappears.

Having said that, we all have our fair share of trials last week (thanks HC, Reba and Daisy) and it sure looks like we need to pray for one another in this area. Prayer items - Reba heading back to the States, church activities, new SF focus for the new year, chinese construction ministry. We do want to remember John with his dry cough, and Douglas with speedy recovery from the common flu. Next week, our SF will be on Saturday, whereby we head out to JB right after Mike's cooking demonstration.

Stay tune...

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- Netplus 512k plan is due to cease after 3 months of free usage (Dec 2006)
- Internet gateway at present is 192.168.2.24
- Total 60+4 users on premise- static ip (DHCP disabled) for all users (bearing 192.168.2.xx)- Four 3com network switches in use today (topology unknown)
- currently one server Pentium 2 HP Netserver LC3 doing file service and Accpac backup instance (tape backup performed daily by a Sophia, not audited)
- one harddrive (fed by CDs given from overseas branches periodically
- India, Indonesia, HK, Philippines which are still not in MK yet; running Accpac stand alone; Seperate man power in Finance department managing this manual reconciliation today.
- Present server/s not protected by UPS- Ensure current lease line circuit (to be decomissioned upon ip-vpn deployment) should not share identical switch for load balance purpose
- No web proxy service in place
- one spare Compaq server which can be useful for future use found
- No centralized virus protection system in place
- Power requirement overloading suspected as limited power adapter are found at server room
- 2Mbps is to be shared for Internet/Mail/MK (Load balancer required)
- Redundant network switch required for site - for business continuity planning

Posted in: on Friday, December 08, 2006 at 0 comments  

Friday is usually a welcome and I say it sure is to many of us. I have not heard from you guys how things are in your prayer life. Please remember Nigel as his work load has just ramped up till next Feburary, meaning to say we may not be able to see him as often as we like to!

To some again, it's a long flight back the States for Christmas. So I wish you smooth journey back there. It's a brief pause for my work too as we look into the new year project schedules and more importantly, our SF direction and focus. So, relax, take a break, go somewhere, unwind and enjoy your own family reunion as HC, John and I come together to do a bit of brainstorming...

This year has been zippy. And I believe the role/function of the SF met your needs. But as usual, our needs grow with time and it's important they are met regularly. John has been very open to Helena's possible job opportunity in China/HK. Jenny as busy balancing between her pregnancy and her career. Robert working with his new boss and such. As for Christine and me, its the two boys, our service in the local church community, business development in HK and confirming the Lord's plan for the family this new year.

Remember our turn of service to serve in the Chinese ministry this Sunday! So, do join us if you can. Watch night service (or we call it Thanksgiving night) is just round the corner. As mentioned, we will be moving towards a two-service Sunday in the new year. Will keep everyone informed of the new schedules.

For the rest of us who is still on the island, let's attend the Christmas day musical (or you have another name), have a Christmas fruit rum cake, and have a round of sharing and thanksgiving today at HC's place.

See you later...

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I just got a set of the new 3.5G wireless modem today and will be telling all if it actually does the speed it boasts of. If all goes well, a minimal contract period of 6 months is all it asks for at only $38 per month!

The beauty is that it's wireless mobile, meaning I get to surf the net at 1800kbps anywhere I so choose. Now, that is cool.

Will keep you posted!

Posted in: Technology on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 at 1 comments  

In a continuous effort to track and analyze source of network attacks, Portal Phenom is please to introduce a tool that allows network administrator to track down location of IP address based on Google Map.

Use it [here]

Posted in: Technology on Sunday, December 03, 2006 at 0 comments  

It's just the Friday where our SF decides to go into mini caves, where small groups gather to wind down from our busy schedules. HC busily supervising her mansion decor, the Expats retreating into their "hibernation den", Nigel diligently choking up "career points", Lani dreaming up her wedding plan.

So, John, Helena and my family (only Dave was absent) decides to have a nice chinese dinner at Vivo City where the grand opening was accompanied by expensive 15 min firework. Andy and Angela was there too, and I was really hoping Hui Ling (my sister) and her hubby would join us too! I am sure John would be an excellent person to share the Gospel with Clement. But well, let us pray that God would open up door in this area again soon.

Besides, it's John's 50th birthday and 14th Anniversary! The menu was rather unusual and refreshing (unlike the usual egg noodles), considering it being the top-tier eating place for an establishment for Crystal Jade. We joked, caught up with one another and end the evening off with a coffee at a nearby coffee join. Helena was on a shopping mood and we all accompanied her...

It's really fun!

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