Archive for September, 2008
Home Problems
Posted by Bloggylife in family, troubleshooting on September 28, 2008
We had an Internet problem and so I called KEMS because apparently my bros can’t pick up the phone and do the job themselves, the operator informed me they had a maintenance issue and that’s why we were reduced to a dial-up speed
According to Bashar’s post, it was a link problem and they should’ve solve it so it was a surprise when I got home from work and still our speed hasn’t picked up
So I called again and they informed me they are updating my record and to check in 5 minutes. I went to sleep, woke up, had my futoor and decided to give them a call because still the problem isn’t solved
The guy concluded that there is a problem with our telephone line and since I was in a good mood I told him I will look into it and then call back
Checked out our DSL modem and heard some sound as I shaked it, good excuse to open the thing and see if any pieces have fallen out, searched for my tools that I got out of attending one of Microsoft’s seminars -a girl has to have her tools-
It was just a piece of broken plastic, so I got out another old DSL modem and configured that and connected it to my room’s socket and still the problem’s the same. I wanted to disconnect everything
Called my bro downstairs and told him to remove the telephone line and the splitter/filter and to my surprise when he told me that the telephone was directly connected to the wall without the filter … OK where is it ?? So that’s the problem
See I like to think I learned a thing or two when it comes to IT stuff and my family, they are a destructive unexplainable force and good thing my last trip to Jarir that I got a spare DSL splitter even though we didn’t need it. Got that out of the box connected it to the telephone and all things went back to normal. Called the ISP to adjust our speed and now all are happily Internet-ing away … My bros with their war games and chatting and me with my downloads
KEMS has a speed test site link
So spare parts, I need to go get another splitter for the future, a power module, RAM just in case, VGA cards and perhaps a motherboard because with my family you never know !!! and you wonder why I am beginning to hate my job … I just can’t have a break !!!
في أحد قاط ويه بموضوع “التربل شووتنك” … تقدرون تصيدونه
Dreams
Posted by Bloggylife in personal on September 27, 2008
Didn’t have much sleep last night
weird dreams … the usual …
Our house, the fort we were preparing in, ready for battle
Who are we fighting and why … No idea at all
In my room and I knew they were going to strike soon, ran to my big brother’s room to warn him and I heard the fajer prayer in my dream … let’s pray and then fight … they were many of them against us but we were ready
I wonder why I don’t have those pinky dreams where something nice is going on, something that makes me don’t want to wake up. Keep dreaming …
But no, my dreams are always chaotic, full of being chased, fights, being shot at, being killed several times and surprisingly I don’t die, I keep on feeling that blade going through my body and I know it’s a dream and I force myself to wake up, just to stop the pain I am feeling
But I haven’t had those in a while. Now my head is filled with unexplainable IT dreams, I don’t want to even try to describe one of them because they don’t make sense at all
You know how sometimes people dream about what movie they watched that night, whether good or bad, the good never does it for me, imagining myself part of a comedy, romantic or even funny action movie is out of the question whereas horror or bloody shit, now that’s something that will definitely creep into my dream against my will
Thinking positive beautiful thoughts, didn’t help at all either
In my dreams, no matter how good of an escape plan I have, how hard I run, fight, drive, I always seem to lose, an obstacle I conquered I find another one until I fall … no matter what I do, I can’t seem to win!
Woke up with a huge headache. I have an Dr.’s appointment at 10, dragged myself there through the heat blazing sun and I reached the receptionist:
Al-Salam alakom, I have an appointment
Your name?
yes, your appointment is at 10 … as in 10 PM!!
OH SHIT …
Thoughts on Infrastructure
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, thoughts on September 23, 2008
So how about your infrastructure?
What do you mean by infrastructure?
Your network
Aha … well …
Once we have your infrastructure ready …
…. !!!
Your Microsoft infrastructure, your domain, your active directory, and then we can build your applications atop of it
So you see one word has many meaning in different people’s vocabulary. One can even say the country’s infrastructure and mean by that its streets, cabling, piping, etc.
That’s the confusing part of having to deal with different people, using the same words but each meaning it differently!
Just Thoughts
Posted by Bloggylife in thoughts on September 18, 2008
Don’t you sometimes get sick of all the technology?? I know that it’s not good feeling this way about something I work in! But sometimes I feel if anyone asks me another tech question or another problem happens, I am going to do something drastic!!
I hate the fact that I notice technology everywhere I go, that K-net machines in shops now are connected both ways, some through shop’s LAN and others through GPRS then thinking good … redundancy … just in case something happens to the Internet connection you have another way!! These kind of things annoy me now
I’m not a geek and I’ll never be. But I do enjoy trying new stuff and exploring and reading technology even if I don’t understand it!
If I could choose another thing what would it be? I remember having a shot at being a programmer but I chose not to. So what if I went down that path, how would I be today??
OK, now let’s say I have the chance to change what would I be?
Well I am good in math, I’d solve problems in my spare time and always looked forward for the test, I loved genetics in biology, I like reading novels
And sometimes I fantasize about being an archaeologist or even a stunt person. I was saying that the other day, I think I would make a great stunt woman, that is if I didn’t die from the first attempt, I’d jump off the building and then remember I forgot my safety line or parachute! Get things bumping, in my line of work, your heart races because of problems and after a while you get sick of them. It’s just that I am the end user, I don’t get to decide or develop new things
A problem happens, troubleshoot, find the cause, solve the problem
Sometimes I’m so fed up that I just cut and paste, in a zombie like way. My professionalism is decreasing
The other day I downloaded a firmware upgrade to our mail filter and installed it directly after taking out data reports. After restarting, errors kept popping, files not found … usual bullshit and “aham shay” is I didn’t take backup of the configuration and we just formatted the damn thing. Because “makan lee khilq” I signed off and back in and everything was working normal and then I took a backup. See problems don’t make sense and are solved in a senseless way by themselves!!!
I think this is a broken record. My brothers, I don’t know how to put it, killed the PC again! So they told me three weeks back and still I didn’t look into it because I know, most probably it’s the power module and I have to go to Hawali
They just call me, this is not working, this message popped up, my brother even called me at work saying our DSL line is down!!! -ya3nee ana shino asawee min el-dawam- and I did solve it for him over the phone, more the reason for him to call back in the future
Maybe I’ll open a childcare center, or a restaurant, coffeeshop, or a shop of any kind. Maybe I’ll learn a handcraft, earn a living with my hands, maybe make furnitures or something … I dunno .. useless thoughts
Maybe I’m one of those people, who can’t do one thing for a long time, I have to shift from one thing to another. You know that kind that gets bored all the time, or maybe I am just in the wrong business
Or simply … I’m just sick of technology …
Bad Skype
Posted by Bloggylife in technology on September 18, 2008
I just got off the phone with my friend in Jordan. When she called me, I told her I’d call back in 20 minutes through my Skype account and surprisingly the quality was awful compared to the last experience (link)
My ISP is KEMS and I am not sure if they decided to throttle VoIP traffic or what ?? See how I’m blaming ISP directly 
The voice quality was bad, I called her mobile, after some seconds she couldn’t hear my end clearly and my voice breaks and I can’t hear her that well either! After three failed attempts we resorted to the old mobile way
Well since one experience went well and another straight down the drain, I think I should give it another chance before deciding the verdict
ManageEngine – OpManager 7
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows on September 18, 2008
I was looking for a network management solution to monitor all our network devices, router, switches, servers, etc. and I came across this application OpManager
I formatted a server -hate this task- and downloaded the application. The specification of my server: Pentium III, 1.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM with win2003 installed. That I discovered after the 3 hour formatting process, I couldn’t find the CDs, found them but broken, endless issues, anyway so WTH is this machine still doing here!!!
I love bundled applications, I mean it is a web based application, I didn’t have to install IIS, it utilizes free Apache and MySQL. You have two options when installing, which is straight forward, either the free version and you can monitor upto 10 devices or the professional edition with which you can monitor unlimited devices for 30 days, I choose the later
Once installed run it access through any browser from within your network and assign devices. There is a discover devices options or you can add the devices manually. Also, to monitor more than what the ping can offer enable SNMP on all devices. On Windows OS, Go to the Services console -> SNMP Services -> right click -> properties -> Security tab and assign them the same community name, ex. “Public” and either accept packets from any host or add the network monitor server to the list. If SNMP is not installed, Go to Add/remove programs -> Add/Remove windows component -> Management and Monitoring tools -> details -> SNMP
On Cisco devices, you should see something like this: snmp-server community public RO
What I love is for every feature there is a test button. If you configure email alerts, you can test. Monitor features and thresholds. I like the fact that you can choose that your session never expires, so you don’t have to sign in again after sometime
I discovered and manually entered the devices. I categorized them in server, router, switch, etc. I set notification profiles and set email alarms. I am looking into monitoring the event logs
Still I am in the exploration phase, I got 27 days till the license expires. Whenever I am free I configure and customize it more
We tried one other application which was Netsmart which wasn’t a successful experience. No matter how good the application is, if it doesn’t have an easy to use interface and it is manageable then it’s a hard sell
Command Chain
Posted by Bloggylife in thoughts on September 16, 2008
The chain of command where the upper most node passes to the node beneath it and that node passes to the one beneath it and the flow goes
Until it reaches the tail, the poor single tangling node, just dump everything on it!
The only solution is, since distributing the work load it out of the question, is for that node to get another poor node to command
xobni – Outlook Plug-in
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, windows on September 15, 2008
I use Microsoft’s outlook for my work mail. As I was reading PC World magazine, I came across this recommended outlook plug-in. I went on and installed it from xobni
After installation, the indexing process started. A total size of 1.5 GB, I am not sure how long it took, because I installed this just before leaving work and I kept it running and I left
The interface is really nice, it’s just another pane added in the view and the most thing I love is how fast the searching feature is and how neat and the information it provides. First I was a bit annoyed that I didn’t get to choose the folders I search, sometimes I just want to search the inbox, the sent items or any other sub-folder I created. I did that because it was such a hassle using the built-in search so I would narrow the search space like that but with xobni it didn’t make much of a difference because it is fast and informs you where the item was found
Another nice feature, it extracts the contacts information in a nice way from the email message itself. And provides information history about that specific contact. The files exchanged, the chain of emails, the contact’s people network and another cool feature are the information some kind of statistics, who you send emails to the most, received from, fastest response, simple funny facts, there are charts, you can take a look at all these facts when you’re bored or need a break!
Today, I saw another beta module added, where they ask questions, like a survey, today’s question was, Are you happy? didn’t answer this question of course
I’m still happy with this plug-in, it made searching a lot easier and much more faster
Hopefully Never Again
Posted by Bloggylife in family, thoughts on September 14, 2008
What is different about school starting this year ??
I am free! I don’t want to jinx myself, but today my youngest brother went to high school -all grown up- so no more dropping off to school in the morning. Especially this one, he takes forever to dress up in his everyday school uniform. So no more making sure he’s up, no more horrified that I’ll be late dropping them off and then to work
How long did this tradition go? Well ever since I got my license. My big bro, my lil sis and I would rotate the task. I would drop them off and pick ‘em up, sometimes I take them to breakfast in the morning or to the “dikan” or buy ice-cream after they finish school. And the consequences I suffer after a hot day in the playground playing football
“OH MY GOD, you guys smell awful … open the windows … ‘7ayastooooneeee offfffffff”
How time flies by so quickly? When it’s the first day at school and they want to go extra early to have a go at the front seats. Sometimes I’m their human dictionary asking away questions and solving their homework on their way to school. When they forget their pocket money
I have different memories about all various routes to their school in all types of weathers!! Shortcuts, long way, avoid traffic, alternative … memories …
Will I miss it? YES … but as long as I don’t have to do it again …
Senseless Thoughts
Posted by Bloggylife in thoughts on September 10, 2008
If I come in early … I leave late
If I come in late … I leave late
If I come in late … I regret not coming early
If I come in early … I leave late
See where I’m going with this!!
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