Archive for February, 2008

The Measure of a Man

measure-of-a-man

I simply loved this book, I was intrigued by the title, it is a spiritual memoir by Sidney Poitier.

I have this vision of my life. When people see their future they see themselves, their significant other, their kids, etc. what pops in my head, is me in my seventies. Just peacefully reminiscing about my life. It really is the basis of lots of my decisions and the way I live my life. I always see myself at that age looking back at my journey, so when I hesitate, get scared or even lazy, I imagine myself in my seventies looking at this precise moment and thinking what I could have done if I had the chance again. So I put my fears aside, reluctance, disappointment and go ahead. It works most of the times.

This book is truly so unpretentious and I related to it a lot. He details his life and significant moments. The obstacles he faced and what life taught him. I discovered that I shared with him a lot of life’s perspective. You’ll feel that he’s so honest, open, confident, stubborn, arrogant, selfish, committed, has his own principles and I love that. People who are transparent and don’t give a damn about what other people think as long as they are doing what they believe is right.

The thing that got me thinking is I always believed that after I reach my golden age, 70 – if I live that long-, I would be resting preparing for the afterlife, but he, at a much later part of his life still had challenges and fears to overcome and goals to achieve and passions to fulfill. I guess that changed my view a bit. I might stumble on a few things before deciding to shutdown.

I believe one should read this book to really feel it because I am not doing it any justice. To really capture what I want to say, I would have to quote from the book itself. I do highly recommend reading this book. It’s light, easy and spiritually powerful.

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Just Smile and Wave

Smile and wave … this should be considered a valid intelligent response to basic human interface ;)

In this world there are the witty responses people, they have a comeback for everything whether good or bad. They amaze people and don’t make them feel awkward by repeating themselves.

On the other hand, there is this group of people with a pool of specific responses like thank you, ok, no, aha, etc. To come up with a response to something that hasn’t entered their system before, they need time. They can’t process on the spot. So all they can say is OK, thank you, or mutter something underneath their breath so the recipient would think they said something intelligent which they haven’t ;P

What I’m suggesting is considering smile and wave a significant response.

Laaaa mashallah, did you see their interaction…

Yeah, the way they smiled and waved.

How easy would life be ….

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IT Diaries

Back in the programming days, when I programmed in C. I don’t know why we didn’t use the editors. We wrote it in notepads, saved it and run the commands through command prompt window (poverty I guess). Error lines stream down your screen. And you spend hours pin pointing the problem, re-designing your code, enhancing it … until ultimately you notice you forgot the ‘&’ in the ‘scanf’ command, and all those crappy errors were bull. You laugh and cry at the same time. You wonder will it be too much of a drama scene if you start banging your head against the monitor … eventually you call the instructor, show the output and leave.

As you get more experienced you seem to forget the little things. If a problem happens, no matter how bizarre it may seem the solution is simple. I get way over to solve a problem, the funny thing is sometimes I discover glitches along the way that I end up fixing along with the original problem which is not bad for the overall result.

On the other hand, I get caught up in those other things that I completely forget what the original problem was ;P –that reminds me of something—

3ala 6aree programming, why do most people hate it?? I believe I would have made one hell of a good programmer. The downside is I wouldn’t exist in the real world, I’d be living in Java land with all my imaginary Java buddies. Back in the days, if I had programming, I used to sleep with a notepad next to me, wake up in the middle of the night, and write down my ideas or solutions. I once dreamed of the problem and solved it, woke up and wrote it down. From that moment on, I knew if I wanted a normal life, stay the hell away from coding. Now I just play around with my Java when I am bored. On the other hand, maybe it’s my destiny, hmmmm, should I give it a try???

big_daddy_java

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Full throttle

Cool weather, good upbeat music, full tank and just outta work == Dangerous combination

car-outside

Got out of work, cracked the window open and turned the music loud. Cool breeze and music automatically makes you push your foot harder against the gas pedal. I was driving kinda fast, not my usual just before reaching my house, I noticed a police car behind me, it followed me for a couple of turns and as any guilty person I thought it was for me ;P but it wasn’t …

I try to enjoy what’s left of this beautiful weather, it’s getting hotter so fast, sometimes the weather is so beautiful in the morning I really don’t understand how people dash so fast in and out of lanes windows closed grumpy faces uptight.. Relax people … ENJOY

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My Bad

Mistakes, we often make mistakes and from them we learn. The only difference is how, when and how big?

Some make mistakes alone and notice … then solve them.

Some wait for a grand moment, where you are surrounded by everybody, in a meeting or seminar and BAM make you huge stupid slip. That’s me.

A moment you feel smart, then you trip .. stupid .. rectify it … smart .. wrong … stupid … infront of people … talk … stupid … stupid … stupid …

I get so mad at myself, I wana copy myself and let the copy me beat the hell out of the original me … teach myself a lesson …

On my own I am fine … you collect good points to yourself by yourself … then when it happens to be the bad one … it has to be infront of an audience … GOD forbid you make a mistake and nobody knows about it … NOOO you need to put yourself under the spotlight so everyone can see …. That’s me.

Uhhhh, what can I do? Except carry on. Yallah sh*t happens …

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Take a break … Blame

blame

Given the current problem that affected the Internet, it is both a curse and a blessing. I’m not going to talk about the down side but the plus side. It’s like the bad seed, blame everything on it. How often do you get a free pass like that??

You are head over heels with some documenting –YUCK I know— and people of course complain about the speed.

Blame it on the cable cut

Can’t access sites … again same reason ;P

Some people are hilarious when they innocently ask: can’t you fix it?

Oh why I can, let me get my diving gear and I’ll just swim across and dive just to put the two ends together … that tiny little problem ;)

Think of all the problems, even the weather … it’s that damn cable cut effect …

Until you receive a confirmation from your ISP that everything is back to normal … take advantage …

Can’t you hear it singing … and you can put the blame on me ;D — I know I’m mean, hehehe, but then again I can’t help it –

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IT Diaries

I was testing some software that uses the network resources and I configured it to utilize the wireless card since it’s the laptop I am using and most probably I’ll be going around outside with it so I need the wireless connection.

So as with any IT … what happened … I couldn’t connect through the wireless after a while !!! IT was working fine and suddenly stopped … wireless is on and no changes since the last successful run …

I swear … there is some kind of conspiracy against IT people, whenever they are around gadgets they seem to fail, everything seems to stop working. You have to fix it … I’d be crying why oh why … if it were any other person everything works smoothly …

Once upon a time I decided to stop at work in the weekend for maximum two hours to catch up on some late reports … got my coffee and my mood … as soon as I login … what’s wrong … NO INTERNET … honestly I was going to pick up my things and leave … but I had to fix it even in the weekend .. What are the odds of that …

Scheduled maintenance … simple cleaning and blowing …. All sort of disasters happen … routers hang … switches fail …

You are simply saying HI to an employee and suddenly his PC crashes!!!! WHAT I’m just standing near the door … I didn’t even look at that damn PC …

Back to the original problem … I told my brother … ‘malee khilq look into the problem’ I’ll check it later … after a couple of minor tweaking here and there over the last two weeks I decided to look into it more deeply today…

I uninstalled the softwares, drivers … restarted …. Installed drivers back and voilà wireless it working again … sounds simple but annoying ….

Mood swings of all related to technology … I’m getting old … have mercy …

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لا تعليق

اذا اشترك حمار بسباق و خسر


يمكن نقول صج الحمار ما يقايش الحصن

شنو نسوي بعد احنا علي قد حالنا

نشرك الحمار بسباق على قد حالة … مع بني جنسه …


بس خسر …


نقول يمكن رهبة السباق … مسكين … نعطي فرصة … انروح نشجعه …

همن خسر …

مو مشكلة … نيبلة مدرب سنع …

همن خسر …

اها … المشكلة بالمدرب … نغيره … مرة و اثنين و ثلاثة …

همن خسر … لا و طلع الأخير

احترنا … خلاص اندلعه … قام يشوف الدنيا … يروح الصالون … يتمشى …

همن خسر … لا و اخر خسارة لأن أحول و يركض بالاتجاه الغلط …


جاء للمسئول عن الحمار … حصان توه صغير … قاله عطني فرصة و مع التدريب راح أتحسن …

لأ

على الأقل شوفني أركض …

لأ … احنا متمسكين بحمارنا … عندنا مؤهلات …

هذي المؤهلات نسمع عنها و ما نشوفها صارها سنين مدفونة ما انضجت لوعتوا جبدنا … الحصان طلع و كمل طريجة …

المشكلة الحمار ما يستحي على ويه و يعطي مجال لأحد ثاني حتى لو حمار نفسه

عاش حمارنا …. عفوا قصدي أزرقنا …

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The Best Ever

livelovelaugh

Have you ever told the same situation over and over again and yet you seem to laugh everytime? Whether you tell it to a friend in front of you or over the phone, you can’t seem to stop cracking yourself up. While messaging, driving or simply before you sleep.

I laughed so hard, tears came pouring out my eyes while clapping hard. I haven’t done this in a very long time. I laugh … cackle … everytime I remember, I am smiling wide right this moment.

The situation maybe embarrassed the person to whom it happened but nevertheless you can’t seem to muster the decency to shut the hell up. NO, you turn your head back and laugh out sooooo hard, you can’t say two straight words all together.

Thank you for the best laugh I had in a very long time. Yesterday before I went to bed I actually felt pretty and light all because I laughed from the deepest possible place not just from within my heart but my soul.

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Passwords Plus

I have all kind of memory problems, starting from remembering people’s names to keeping track of all the passwords in my life both personal and work. To help with my lack of memory, that is the password section, I found this free application (Passwords Plus) where you can add records and set the categories you want to add for each record. For example, you can add a workstation and categorize its IP, password, hardware specification. Your network drive at home, its name, password and IP — if I ever remember what password I put —.

The thing is you need to put a tough password to run application because once someone gets access to it, they would know all the records and information you included.

pwp_desktop_win2

For me of course, I forgot the application’s password I initially set and it took me two days to crack it that is putting each and every possible combination I could think of. I am a hopeless case. But I believe I am getting better now, classifying the passwords and having some kind of system. I think it is working because last time it took me only five minutes to access a management website I haven’t logged in a long time while my supervisor standing over my head muttering: Did you forget the password again!!!

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