First Message from President-Elect Donald J. Trump

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People By Stephen Covey

Explained in video:

• Habit 1: Be proactive
• Habit 2: Begin with the end in mind
• Habit 3: Put first things first
• Habit 4: Think win-win
• Habit 5: Seek first to understand then to be understood
• Habit 6: Synergize
• Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

Donald Trump - Acceptance Speech After Winning U.S. Presidential Election 2016

Hillary Clinton - Concession Speech in U.S. Presidential Election 2016

President Obama - Post Election 2016 Statement

More than 500 million Yahoo accounts stolen back in 2014 and What you should do?

Yahoo has confirmed that more than 500 million Yahoo accounts were stolen back in 2014 by a state-sponsored actor. Investigation concluded the stolen account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. This did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information.

What is Yahoo doing to protect my account?

From the Account Security Issue FAQs published by Yahoo:

1. We are notifying affected users.
2. We are asking affected users to promptly change their passwords and adopt alternate means of account verification.
3. We invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account.
4. We are recommending that all users who haven't changed their passwords since 2014 do so.
5. We continue to enhance our systems that detect and prevent unauthorized access to user accounts.
6. Our investigation into this matter continues.

I personally tried to log into all of my three Yahoo accounts and out of these three, one of them could be compromised. If yours is too, you will see the below popup.

Is there anything I can do to protect myself?

From the Account Security Issue FAQs published by Yahoo:

1. Change your password and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which you use the same or similar credentials as the ones used for your Yahoo Account.
2. Review your accounts for suspicious activity.
3. Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.
4. Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails.

Android Pay VS Samsung Pay VS Apple Pay

Since the launch of several mobile payments option in Singapore like the Android Pay, Samsung Pay and Apple Pay, just how different are they from one another? The Straits Times put up an infographics tabulating their differences.

How Android Pay is different from Samsung Pay and Apple Pay [via]

You may wish to check out the various banks for the promotions they are offering. Do not miss them!

NDP 2016 Theme Song: Tomorrow's Here Today

Year 2016 National Day Parade theme song is released. The song titled "Tomorrow's Here Today", written by composer Don Rickmond, sing to rally Singaporeans to ponder about the tomorrow of Singapore. It is performed by local band 53A.

How do you feel about this song? For your pleasure, I have consolidated all NDP theme songs from 1998 to 2016.

President Obama slow-jamming on Jimmy Fallon Show

Watch how President Obama slow-jam news together with Jimmy Fallon. Only if our own President is as cool as Obama!

One day off-in-lieu if public holiday falls on a non-working Saturday

With the upcoming Vesak Day that falls on a Saturday, many especially those whose companies they work for do not have clear HR policies on day-offs, must be asking whether there is a mandatory off-in-lieu. The answer is fortunately YES!

Back in 2008, Ms Jean Tan, Director, Corporate Communications for Permanent Secretary Ministry of Manpower, made this remark on Rules on Off-In-Lieu:

For an employee on a five-day work week, Saturday would be considered a day-off and Sunday a rest day.

Under the Employment Act, if a public holiday falls on a day-off, an employee is entitled to one day off-in-lieu or be given one extra day's pay.

If it falls on a rest day, the law provides that the working day following the rest day will be a paid public holiday.

A more recent article on this topic was published on the Manpower Ministry website and I quote:

For employees who are not required to work on Saturdays, they are entitled to claim a day off or compensation in lieu for that public holiday if they are covered under the Employment Act. It is therefore not up to the employer’s discretion or goodwill to grant their employees a day off in lieu under the law.

iHerb Promotion Code - ICO460

Use promo code ICO460 upon checking out to get $5 off your first purchase at iHerb (www.iherb.com). No minimum spending required.

iHerb (www.iherb.com) sells nutritional supplements and other healthy products both in the U.S., as well as internationally, including Singapore.

SharePoint - Site URL Inaccessible from the Server

Despite you having set the 'alternate access mapping' e.g. http://domain.com/, and added the domain url into the server's hosts file, accessing the SharePoint site may encounter HTTP 401 authentication error from the server itself. This issue does not happen if you accessed it from outside.

One cause of this behaviour is related to the loopback security check the Windows server is doing. There are two workarounds as described by an article from Microsoft KB and the following are sufficient to make it work great for me.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
   
   
2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
   
   
3. Right-click Lsa, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
   
   
4. Type DisableLoopbackCheck, and then press ENTER.
   
   
5. Right-click DisableLoopbackCheck, and then click Modify.
   
   
6. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
   
   
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart your computer.

Unable to view Roles and Features in Server Manager after Windows Update

Server Manager on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Sever 2008 R2 may not be able to view Roles and Features after a Windows update. Did a Google search and chanced upon an article on Microsoft Knowledge base.

The cause of this issue is said to be due to some catalog files, manifest files or MUM files being corrupted on the computer. To resolve, you will need to download and run Microsoft Update Readiness Tool, run it, check %Systemroot%\Windows\logs\CBS\Checksur.log for corrupt information after the scan is completed, then replace corrupted package(s) that remains unfixed.

Read in details on Microsoft KB.

Microsoft Provides Workaround for Issues with KB3148812 WSUS Update

An important update from the Microsoft team on the KB3148812 WSUS Update.

How to find out which w3wp.exe PID corresponds to which application pool?

Should we have more than one website hosted on IIS, it may be difficult to identify which web application is the one listed on the task manager especially when the application pools are all on Network Service.

Task Manager showing multiple w3wp.exe processes

Each w3wp.exe process has a PID (process identifier), but to tell which PID belongs to which application pool, it is not straightforward.

One method to find out the application pool is to run the appcmd command on command prompt from C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv directory.

appcmd list wp

appcmd command to show application pool of a PID

Simply match the PID against the application pool name. I hope it helps.

Watch how Europe borders have changed since 1,000 AD

The below 3-minutes video LiveLeak takes us through how the borders of Europe have changed since 1,000 AD.

Rui En statement on her BMW car accident on motorcycle

Mediacorp actress, Rui En, 35, was recently involved in a traffic accident involving her BMW car and a stationary motorcycle in Clementi carpark. Reports mentioned the actress smelled of alcohol that day. Rui En was criticised of being arrogant, insincere and unapologetic when she was being confronted by the owner of the motorcycle. One of her first response was "Do you know who I am?". It was also reported that the actress attempted to offer $2,000 in cash as a settlement in private but was turned down.

Rui En's statement to this incident is as follows:

I refer to the recent media reports regarding my involvement in the incident that took place on 12 Apr 2016.

There are various interpretations as to the conversation that took place between the motorcycle owner and myself. To address the context of that conversation, I would like to share what I can without causing any
interference to the ongoing investigation.

Tuesday, 12 Apr 2016. I was about to reach home. Upon driving into the open-air car park where I usually park, I misjudged a turn and accidentally knocked over a stationary motorcycle parked directly in front of a kerb. No other driver was involved during the incident.

I was very disappointed with myself for knocking down the motorcycle. My initial intention was to move my car to a traffic-free spot before addressing the matter.

I was subsequently stopped by a man. He continuously knocked on my car window while I was attempting to move my car. I later discovered that the man was the owner of the motorcycle.

I tried to signal to him to allow me to move my car first but he persistently hit my screen and gradually, his knocks got louder.

I got out of my car. I attempted to explain that I would take full responsibility. He probably had the impression that I looked like someone that would run away from the scene.

In my state of anxiety, I told him “Do you know who I am, I live upstairs and won’t run”

He appeared to be very angry. I was unsure what I said came out sounding entirely different from what I meant. I was simply trying to convey that I live here, people would know and recognise me if I ran away. On hindsight, my choice of words used were inappropriate and I agree that it
caused unnecessary misunderstandings.

What was said next was a process similar to most traffic incidents.

I offered to compensate for the damages.

I offered him monetary compensation in the form of cash. He was not satisfied with the amount offered and asked for more.

By this time the police has been called in.

I would like to reiterate that it was a judgmental error on my part, there is absolutely no excuse on my careless driving and more importantly, I truly regretted it.

I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise to him for the inconveniences and distress caused.

Looking back I wished I handled the situation with more tact.

I sincerely apologise for the unnecessary inconveniences caused and I thank everyone again for your care and concern.

Yours sincerely
Rui En

The Panama Papers Leak - Explained In Cartoon

Heard of the Panama Papers leak but am confused over what is it all about? You may watch the following cartoon illustration by Vox Media for a quick summary on this scandal.

How do I enable ASP.NET 4.5 on Windows 10?

Despite you may have installed Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 on your Windows, IIS has to be installed and ASP.NET to be enabled separately.

To install IIS, you will need to turn on Internet Information Services feature.

The next step to get ASP.NET running is to enable ASP.NET. Prior to Windows 8, we used to run aspnet_regiis /i command. Unfortunately, this command no longer works. I have tried the following command instead to get ASP.NET enabled.

dism /online /enable-feature /all /featurename:IIS-ASPNET45

LG G5 - Official Introduction

How to Clean a Mattress?

Why We Love to Blame Our Partners?

Misued mobile UX patterns

Do you follow well recognised design patterns when building web pages? They may be generally good but they can end up inappropriate. A UX director from Ustream wrote how common mobile UX patterns can be misused.