Thursday, December 27, 2007

Car Ownership Transfer

They say that it would take all day for the procedures to be done. Well, not so accurate. I would say "almost a full working day", that should be it. I've been through the hustle because I just did a car ownership transfer without bank loan recently.

Simple say, there are only 3 steps to get your transfer done. But yet, 2 among the 3 steps will kill your time. Ok, nothing is free and each steps require you to pay, pay and pay. Here is my experience.

Firstly, get your car to Puspakom. Bring your car registration card and RM30. Be sure that you be there early, else you would need to wait in the queue and it took me 2 1/2 hours to get through 5-7 cars queuing in front of me. They will inspect your windscreen (where your front windscreen transparency level must not be less than 70%, and 50% for the side windows and rear windscreen), car chassis number, car engine number and kereta-potong (which simply means 'cut-and-joint' cars in Malay).

After the long wait has been settle in Puspakom, you need to get your car insurance ready. Either you buy a new policy or get an insurance policy transfer from the previous owner. Transfer price will vary according to the available NCD/NCB. Get your insurance agent for the fee.

Lastly, the 2nd waiting session. Bring your car registration card, RM100, insurance policy/transfer letter of proof, Puspakom inspection result, K3 form, the owner and the new owner to JPJ to have your name printed on the car registration card. You can print your own K3 form at home and fill it up before going there. Well, I did called JPJ Putrajaya regarding this and they told me that neither the owner nor the new owner need to be there, Just get your photostated Identification Card verified by commissioner of oath. But it seems like JPJ Melaka is different. From their look (most are quite friendly, only one at the counter 29 seems scary and snobbish), they seem looking for both person. And I too heard that JPJ Melaka really do require both of them to be there from a friend. How true is that, I dare not challenge. I would not want my time wasted for nothing.

Wallah... Done... The formula on how to waste 1 full working day! Sigh... Driving from one place to another, which is certainly not near really waste much of the time.

But somethings I cannot understand why must we send our car to Puspakom for checkup before ownership transfer. It is really a waste of time. By the way, Puspakom is a member of DRB-HICOM, which is a private company. I guess it is just a way to make more money to team up with the government?

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Dev : Telnet-ing

A simple tips to share to everyone. As we know, each program that dwells through the network will be communicating through a certain specific port. For example, MSSQL2000 is using port 1433, SMTP is using port 25 and ssh is using port 22.

If we fail to connect, lets say, the mail server of the company, we can actually do a quick check on the problem. Using windows telnet to connect to the network port would be a great start. It will just take a couple of steps to check on the SMTP port of the mail server. Although telnet is defaulted to connect to port 23, but with an additional parameter, we can also telnet to any desire port.

Steps (Make sure your firewall is off and network is up for clearer picture)
1. Open your Command Prompt (Start --> Run --> cmd).
2. Type telnet mailserver 25.
3. If you receive such message Connecting To mailserver...Could not open connection to the host, on port 25: Connect failed, this means most probably the mail server itself is down or maybe the mailserver daemon is not running. Daemon is a small program running in the background either waiting for command or run on its own on a specific port.
4. If you success, you will be brought to a new blank page (normally). This means the mailserver and port is running fine. You will need to check your mail browser instead. Press keyboard ctrl+] to disconnect the telnet.
5. Type quit to exit the windows telnet.

This is very useful, esspecially if you are trying to set up a program such as Apache webserver but you are not sure whether it is running fine or not. You can try connect Apache webserver on the local machine by using telnet localhost 80.

*Keep in mind that normal telnet is telnet ip_or_hostname_of_machine. Telnet checking should be telnet ip_or_hostname_of_machine port_used.