Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Appeals of Mara loans / Rayuan Permohonan Pinjaman Mara

In my previous posting about Pinjaman Mara , some still do not understand the facts and figures.

OK , put it bluntly... lets get to basics.

HOW MUCH CAN YOU PAY? Lump Sum + Monthly ?
Please check your CCRIS and CTOS report from Bank Negara and via the CTOS apps.
Can you open a Checking Account or Current Account?

As a lender, MARA is an organisation that is based on trust and for that matter, you are linked with your 2 guarantors, usually family members or friends. It pains them too because of you, they are in trouble.

Why I ask these matters, is that you must take charge of what your assets are and what are your liabilities. Student loans can be forgiven or huge discounts be given. I have heard full waivers if YOU COMPLETE 3 pointers aka 3.0 CGPA Grade or First Class Honours.

If you study and flunk out like me.. need not fret. It is NOT the end of the world. Some educational institutions locally or overseas can take your grades as credits and provide you waivers. However, you need to get your act together. Just because you have kids and all, does not mean you cannot work or study. Some take great lengths to work and study at the same time.

What pays GOOD MONEY? Driving a Truck or Bus pays as much as RM4500 a month. Working in Singapore too will get you more, provided you stay in Singapore and do not commute as the time wasted can be used for OT or other stuff. Bus Drivers in Singapore take home at least S$3500 or about RM10,000 !

MARA DOES NOT BLACK LIST YOUR NAME FROM LEAVING THE COUNTRY!!
PTPTN does that. Bankruptcy does that too. At one point or another, I did mediocre jobs like being a despatch rider for McDonalds and PizzaHut to feed the kids. Its long hours did not mean I cannot do anything else during the TRAFFIC JAM hours such as postal delivery et al.

I truly understand where you are coming from and at times, family will press you down. I remember my late father ridiculed me having a PhD + MD and ride a bike sending food but that put food on my table and my kids not to go hungry. Going up and down is a grim reminder of me to be a HUMAN and be kind to others, to be charitable and even the small help will go a long way.

Coming to the appeal. Encash every single piece of jewellery you can find. AR-Rahnu pays good money for jewellery. Do not borrow from Credit Cards. It's a trap!

Now... Set this way.

Pay off MARA with 50% of all assets.
Sell all liabilities such as car etc. leave only ONE CAR and ONE BIKE for commute.
Write or call them. Email also works. Find out who is your case officer.
Think of your GAME PLAN. You want to work, study back, etc etc?

Think first.....

I will continue with this soon.

You can reach me at Facebook *(Azrin Info Web) or LinkedIn... for help









Tuesday, November 13, 2018

MARA Study Loan Waiver or Reduction.

I spoke about this before in a few other forums, on How to reduce your MARA Study loan ( Macam Mana Nak kurangkan Pinjaman Mara ) and since I did not monitor my Yahoo email ... because of spam and other reasons, I feel sad for many of them, whom had many issues.

I know, death of loved ones , loss of job etc can be harsh on a person. I suffered the same fate and with many other reasons but that does not mean your debt remains unpaid.

First off, Find out HOW MUCH IS OUTSTANDING.
Go to Mara Website and check on Semak Baki.
It will show you the exact balance.

MARA or Majlis Amanah Rakyat or The Peoples Trust is created to help bumiputera and many more in studies and entrepreneurship. Many however, broke their trust.

If you completed your studies, then you could appeal for a FULL WAIVER if you are a CGPA 3.0 score achiever. However, many especially overseas, barely scrape through due to lack of understanding, poor conditions or just being a student and irresponsible.

Many dropped out half way and it is unfair to pay the university for 4yrs of education when you only attended 2 years. Dropouts due to health issues can be used as an excuse provided proof is available.

OK, back to basics, how you send an appeal.
Are you , able to commit to a monthly payment of RM300 a month? If so, then open a CURRENT ACCOUNT with check book and prepare a year of payment.
If you have money in KWSP, you can ask them to withdraw it to pay off MARA.  You can find the checklist from Unit Kawalan Kredit

So what about you really cannot pay? Unemployed etc?
You need to write in to them and explain your scenario and offer them a resolution. Even RM50 a month is better than nothing at all.

So how did I do it?

First off, I was furthering my education into another field, overseas. Whilst then, I offered to pay them what I could which was RM50 a month since I am still studying. I acknowledge my debt and asked for waiver of any such fees, which they did.
Promptly, I send them post dated cheques for the payment amount which I can offer. They may be a bit pissed off but tell them , that's what you can. Substantiate with evidence such as letter of acceptance, your bank statements and stuff like that.

Trick is, if you pay them properly, even slowly, they are more compelled to grant you waivers or discounts. Recently, MARA boss Annuar said they are giving 50% off... so what else can you do but go grab.. Pay them, Drive Grab etc.
You need to feed your family too right?





Monday, November 12, 2018

New Mission Statement and stand on Modern Slavery

I am a Muslim and it means I submit to the orders of God, the One , The Mighty.
And in doing so, I pay my Zakat or Tithes and it reminds me of the recipients of zakat which one always overlook, Riqab or Freeing of Slaves. In the old days, if one does not pay one's debt, one become MUFLIS (meaning No Fulus / coins) and thus a bankrupt. What happen then is the person or family is sold as slaves till debt is paid.

Though I am not such a devout Muslim, I try not to piss the Boss. Now, in these new era, a slave is one who is not independent, a Bankrupt or Insolvent. One is then trapped in endless vicious cycle of chasing for money to pay off debts. Credit cards are such a trap. And I seen it how it affects if you are a bankrupt.

Every time someone borrows you money, give them leeway to pay. And if one really cannot pay up and if your forgiveness can cause much joy and help the borrower's family, then, it should be such.
There was a movie or phrase of such in Italian "Rimetti a noi i nostri debiti" and it's a meta phrase from Jesus words himself.

If one forgive others, God will forgive you more of your debts.

And as such, we hereby publish our stand on Modern Slavery which is Riba or Usury which is far worse than interest taking.

May God forgive our sins.

Secure or not

So what is this buzz over secured web page et al?
Well, if you have been blogging (not InstaGram etc), you have noticed that your page will no longer be ranked safe if it is not over secure SSL.
SSL or Secure Sockets Layer is that yellow logo with a padlock on your browser but mainly its to tell you that your connection between the server and yourself is safe and secure.

But is it really secure?

Some fanatics will keep on telling you to use a VPN or secure tunnel if you are paranoid and as a service provider, I will honestly tell you, that the ISP has nothing to do with downloading your data surfing online, unless you are after stuff such as terror related ( aka how to make a dirty bomb ) or how big is Amy Yip Bombs are *( read as Porn) , then you will want that. However, ransomware , adware, malware infestation is the biggest bugger and those bad boys usually use a burn PC.

In honest fact, many sell SSL certs for nothing. Comodo (yes the dragon) is one of the cheapest and yet many do not trust. Many prefer GoDaddy, Google, Microsoft or even of the GlobalSign.

Enterprise grade ones work for the not just websites but network communications between servers and clients especially those running SAP which needs RDP (Remote Desktop) connections. Though signed by Microsoft Server (whichever version), keys can be expired or compromised.

For me.. I don't care much. I pay with AndroidPay or a burn card which is tagged to my phone.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Stopping Petya Ransomware


I am a kiasu guy.
So ..no this ransomware will be a kick in my butt.

So here is a tip I learn from ZDNET (Credit to them)

Create a file called PERFC 
No Extensions etc... notepad etc won't allow you to write to windows..so bypass it

So Run CMD in Admin mode

Then do an old school file write
By Default, you will be in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
VERY DANGEROUS

So you are now in DOS.
up directory.
If you forget .. it's cd ..

Then create a file called PERFC
There is no case needed.
The whole example is there.
enter 3 times...
CTRL-Z to save
Like the example above.
Simple..

Now is the tricky part.

Go find that file again.. change to read only

File Explorer - > Properties -> READONLY
You need to give admin rights.



After you are done.. go back to the dos to verify.
Enter ATTRIB PERFC

it will show
 

C:\Windows>attrib perfc
A    R             C:\Windows\perfc

C:\Windows>




That's it!

Other than that.. run a full backup... and upload the darn file into google cloud.
use either Azure or Google to store in your image..

Pray hard for the PETYA not to whip your butt.

Like it? Follow me and also visit the sponsors!





Friday, June 16, 2017

Killer Goblin of Ethereum

(I x-post from my other page)

I was doing a lot of Research and Development recently and I was trying to figure out why it is taking so long to update my block chain on Ethereum Network.

Apparently, every time I launch my geth sync mode, it hangs... and I really hate it.
Turns out, the laptop cannot take the amount of data to be pooled into it plug the whole database needs to be launched into the memory bank.

I used this command to launch the synchronization process
geth --cache=2048 --rpc --nat extip:35.185.184.162 --pprof --v5disc
where the cache is set to 2GB and ext IP is because my network is firewalled pass thru, but in itself, that is the direct IP address, useful for VPS or Google Cloud Compute.

Do note the whole stack (3,888,903 blocks as of 17 June 17) takes 24GB of space in the hard drive and it takes AGES to synchronise unless you have extreme fast internet, and SSD hard drive.

Of course it is faster if you could do an offline download.. and yeah.. I would be happy to do so, for a small fee. Just send some ether (0.01 will do) to my wallet (0x162c28e126a97d0009158fbda0ca93e6e9cc13d0) to cover the network fees and drop me a note on my facebook (@azrin619) that it's done... with your gmail address so you can access it.

If you do not believe how much the goblin took from me.. see this

I set 2vCPU with 8GB Ram and it went over the limit.
Just a warning.

And if you need to see where your money is..
geth --verbosity 2 console
and then you see the dreaded black screen...  I placed the verbosity 2 so the screen is not garbled.

Now U need to unlock the account of your coins.
> personal.unlockAccount("0x01YourAddress","Your-Plain-Text-Password")
It will show if you unlocked it by replying TRUE.

To see your Balance.

> eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase)
Reply will be 10000000000000000 which makes no sense (gas wei??)
A more sensible one will be

> web3.fromWei(eth.getBalance(eth.coinbase),"ether")
And you can see the reply which is 0.01, showing I'm a poor skint dude!
Make sure you have the correct updated states.

> eth.syncing
{
  currentBlock: 3883059,
  highestBlock: 3883075,
  knownStates: 4955,
  pulledStates: 4955,
  startingBlock: 3883058
}


This is offered later on.. and it is 8GB as of now, after compression etc.

You can just import it easily. Its on a server..so U can trust me on this.

Saturday, June 3, 2017

ETH Mining Requirements

After all the tweaking and stuff like that.. I found out that ETH mining needs loads of stuff...
And when I mean loads.. means tons.

Using Windows.. ETH Mining uses about 2.8GB of RAM and do not try to use a scratch disk aka page file. I tested and system auto crashed! Disable all your services and startup apps.. including all those crap Windows Installed.

GPU Mining needs a heck more. Seems per core requires almost the same as the DAG file gets huge nowadays.

I suggest you utilise the AMD Radeon RX480 as it has 8GB Ram on board and since most boards cannot load that kind of power usage... I honestly hope you are ready for a 1200W based PSU unit which will set you around $900. Most boards have 4-6 PCIe slots so U need a riser for that.

Typical configuration would be
i7  or i9 CPU,
16GB RAM
SSD 128GB Drive
4 x RX480 using CABLE RISERS. Use the SATA MOLEX power line to power up the 150W GPU.

In Essence, it would be 4 x 150 + 200W CPU which takes a full load of 800W and that is a low rough figure.

If I have it my way.. I will use the 24 core DUAL XEON 48 Threads E8840 V4 or even E5 2699 v5 will blow you away.

In terms of money wise.. the baseline system can already hit your pocket (4GPU) around S$3000, but still, if you don't mine with it.. you can play great games on it!



Monday, May 29, 2017

Open VPN - A Pain in the bum~

Yes.. Open VPN can be a pain in the backside for those who do not have technical knowledge.
Prior to this.. I used the OpenVPN AS version on a Linux Ubuntu 16 via Google Cloud Compute. Many things work if you just want a Single User ie Device to connect but if you are a bugger like me who program the OpenVPN client in Merlin interface, aiyayah.. It's a real bother.

First off, Open VPN AS works for Devices only.
If you using a frigging router.. then UR screwed.

U will need many tools.. like a way to SIGN YOUR OWN CERTS
I played cheat.. and installed Windows 2008 Server and used it as my signing certificate.

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Removing yourself from SPAM

Spam... it's a killer...
I use Google Mail as authentication and GMAIL Access..
No doubt it is a simple as that.. but on the DNS.. I forgot to add the TXT CODE to deter spam from originated or spoofed from my domain..

So I had to put into place a long line of SPF Records to ensure emails from my domains are not sent out other than being via GMAIL...

azrin.info.  IN TXT "v=spf1 mx a ip4:2404:6800::/32 ip4:172.214.0.0/16 ip4:8.8.0.0/16 ip4:35.184.0.0/13 ip4:64.233.160.0/19 ip4:66.102.0.0/20 ip4:66.249.64.0/19 ip4:70.32.128.0/19 ip4:74.125.0.0/16 ip4:104.132.0.0/23 ip4:172.102.8.0/16 ip4:172.217.0.0/16 ip4:172.253.0.0/16 ip4:173.194.0.0/16 ip4:209.85.128.0/12 ip4:216.58.192.0/16 a:*.gmail.com a:*.gappssmtp.com include:gmail.com"

Darn Long rite?? 
What it means is.. for AZRIN.INFO Allow only Emails sent from SPF Records originating from (Google IP Addresses... so many") and allow emails sent from domains of GMAIL.COM and GAPPSSMTP.COM ... it's Google Apps SMTP Server btw...
Anything else... NO Way.. just delete and bounce.

Good luck to my users using outlook.

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Dummies Guide to Google Cloud Compute Mining

Google cloud has various services , one thing I was quite happy about it is that you can easily scale the services without paying much through the nose.

In the typical world, Ubuntu Server 16.04LTS installation takes about 35-70mins, depending on your internet connection but with the rapid deployment, it takes a few mins.

Typically, what you will need is Google Cloud Compute account which everyone is given $300 to try out, so you are never out of pocket. Some sites and even if you are an incubator, they give out $10,000 in credits... all the better.

Now, what to do.

Setup your account. You will need a debit or credit card to verify your identification.
Once that set up, go and check your quota limits. It's under Compute Engine > Quota Tab.
Note the CPU Limit per Region.

Now, create a Ubuntu Linux Engine, using the Max CPU Allowed (customise) and less RAM. Usually for a full account is 24vCPU per region.
50GB HDD will do fine.

Once it is setup , you are almost done.
Follow my instructions on how to install the Eth Coin wallet and miner.
I will strongly suggest you install GETH in your LOCAL PC as that is the wallet you will need to mine your coins to.

If you are too darn lazy.. copy these instructions (cut and paste works) into your SSH terminal.

sudo apt-get clean 
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum-qt 
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install cpp-ethereum

once it's all done, you are good!

Try this command to see if it works

ethminer -F http://ethereumpool.co/?miner=0.1@0x162c28e126a97d0009158fbda0ca93e6e9cc13d0@SomeMiner

it will take 20mins to first time download the DAG or Dagger file up...something like the blockchain. Replace my 0x162 address after 30 mins 

Then it will run.

When it's all done.. go to EthereumPool.co to check on your miner. The miner address is the address you specified. 

All Good? DO NOT CLOSE THE WINDOW. 
It will shut down!

now... U need to make a clone of the disks to make the ultimate array.
One 24Core is nothing when U can run 5 x 24 cores. Yes..yr money will finish quickly...but worth it