How do you like me now...

Feels funny to be back.

I don't know what bought me back exactly....

Anyways, lots has happened since my last post. I could do a recap but it would take forever and I'll still miss out stuff so....fresh start.

Let's start with pinning this moment in time....
- Favourite songs as of this moment 
(been long since I listened to anything...my wife has the same complaint! lol)

• Rolling in the deep
• Set fire to the rain
• How do you like me now
• Last man standing
• Lowrider
• Missing You
• Rock me
• I 'm free
• Let it go
• Mercy
• I walk alone
• 21 guns
• Closing Time
• Bad Moon Rising
• No sugar in my coffee
• More than a feeling

- Can't wait for

• Man of Steel
• Into Darkness
• Vacation

- Updates on RL

• Daughter had her birthday yesterday. She is 7 now and she is a pataakha, ma shaa Allah.
• Usama is planning to go for the CMU Botball competition in July.
• Wife and son travelled internationally alone for the first time since his birth to Dubai. Had some quality time with my daughter. I hope she did too!
• Other sister is halfway through Szabist. Doing her internship right now. Poor company!
• Brother cleared his FRCPS. How? That's what he said too!
• Been one year since I joined QF. I am part of the Qatar National Library. Another good organization just willed itself to be destroyed!
• Met Habib after 7 years! His children have grown. Too bad, he hasn't!
• Met Asim after  a long time. Almost 15 years!! 
• Playing LoL a lot these days. Not getting any better!

Latest addiction

• Whatsapp
• 9gag

More later.....

Back in Black

Trying to pick up bloggin again. Maybe it'll be easier with IE8 Accelerators. Just installed IE8 and taking it out for a test drive right now.

Other things I have adopted over my MIA (Missing In Action) time on blogger are:

• New Font: consolas. All my Developer tools use this font now. :) Recommend you try it. Available on Microsoft Machine by default.
• VS 2008 rocks. Although I recommend MS do somehting about the ViewState! There must be a feature to disable it. See, I have an application with over 2000 checkboxes and it REALLY slows the crap out of it while rendering and submitting. I can handle rendering time by just making a copy from the VIEWSOURCE and pasting into an normal HTML file but what about the submitting?! Any ideas are welcome. (Send me an email..)
• DW CS3, Flash ActionScript 3, Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3. The suite is simpy amazing. And I love the new AS3 coding style and conventions.

More later.

(Byt he way, this is coming in thru IE8..:))

Follow the day and reach for the sun

New year. New resolutions. Well, actually old resolutions again. Just never got around to keeping them!

Anyways. You know how you have that feeling that this year is going to be fun and different? That you are going to (finally) do all those things you have been keeping on hold? That everything is gonna be great and things are going to work out? That THIS is THE year!! Well, I don't have that feeling this year. In fact, I have never had that feeling. I wonder what that feeling is like...?

2007/08 were good years in hindsight. I have seen my children grow so much in these last two years. My son knows more about science than I do! Not that THAT is any achievement on his part coz I really don't know much about science. Heck!, until recently, I didn't know if the 'i' came before the 'e'  in 'science'! 

My daughter is well on her way to becoming a woman. 

• She has started to ignore me. Well, my wife taught her that. 
  
• She talks non-stop. 
  
• She loves to argue. 
  
• She gets her way  most of the time. Yep, you guessed it - the waterworks.
  
• She shops for her own clothes.
  
• She will insist on trying shoes that OBVIIOUSLY are not her size.

It's amazing she learnt all this in UNDER THREE YEARS!!

I just wanted to point out that I usually base my post titles on song or movie titles. This post is based on a lively song. The lyrics are forgettable but the tune just puts a hip in your stride. You can't help but feel good about this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFtGHM1Qkhg

Rage against the Machine

Warning: This blog is not for the feeble or weak of heart!

A couple of days ago, (feels like weeks!) my harddrive seemed slow and my machine seemed to be dragging. What is the first thing you do? Defragment it, of course. So I just Defrag-ed my harddrive but the thing still took forever to run my most frequently used programs which have already been moved to the QuickLaunch. Hmmm...What if I partitioned the harddrive? And make lots of FOLDER heirarchies in an attempt to organize my work? Cool idea, lets do it. But how?....Aha! Partition Magic 7.0!!!! Ok so let's break my 80GB HD into smaller 20GB chunks. One for the OS...one for the installations so I don't have to look for them everytime....One for the Software that I install after much deliberation...10 GB for the documents/pdfs/emails I will eventually accumulate over the years...8 GB for misc stuff(read installed games/game patches and trial games)..and 2 GB for the Virtual memory - just to speed things up. After making many diagrams on paper and redesigning the partitions numerous times, I go with the initial idea of 20GB partitions. PM 7.0 is installed and I configured my partitions. Lets reboot and let PM do it's magic!...Hmmm...it says 24 Operations left and Operation No.1 is going to take about 2 hrs....No prob. It' time for me to go home anyway. When I come in the morning, I'll have a 206 Mustang in place of this 1970's VW...Or so I thought!!!

The next day.....
Arrived at work a little late coz my Mustang was going to be meaner and faster and I (thought I) could accomplish a day's work in half a day! Smugly, I moved the mouse to "wake-up" the machine. The orange light on the monitor turned to a healthy green...PM 7.0 was asking the user (that I persumed to be me, coz no one else was around!) to "Hit any key to reboot"...Just minutes from experiencing my 24 Valve V8 Thundering engine...The machine is rebooting...Shows the Windows XP loading screen with the animated blue bar at the bottom...Oh Joy! A little skipping dance is in order....In mid-dance, the screen goes blank and the machine is rebooting again...Hmmm...No matter. Let her reboot again. I continued dansing. The machine showed Windows XP Loading Screen and rebitted gaian...uh huh! Did I take a backup of my data before attempting to rearrange my data? Er...no...and why not? Coz it never did this on all my previous successful partitionings. And I call that a valid reason?...Ok, it's rebooted five times already...clearly something is wrong? How about reinstalling windows....That will save the data...right? Hah! No such luck. The only way out is to format the HD and reinstall Windows.....NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo.........

So, my avid reader, the next time you think you know what you are doing ask yourself to backup or shutup!

In the End (Linkin Park)

Saw the trailer for SpiderMan 3. Check it out on www.quicktime.com. I guess, we'll get a dose of Venom this time. One of the best trailers I have. Enough to whet the appetite but not to spoil the feast.





I particularly like the poster. Man, I wish I could by a life size glossy print of it somewhere. Its' jsut so....fantastic. How the pose captures the exhaustion at the end of a battle...or in the middle of it!


I wanna end my blog with a saying that has me thinking since I read it. It's from the movie Black Hawk Down.


"Only the dead have seen the end of war."- Plato

Red Son Rising

Uploading pictures of my daughter, I became aware that my son's were missing. So here's a gallery dedicated to my son. He's every bit as special and handsome as my daughter. The credit goes to my wife, though. She's moulded his personality and the looks are entirely hers too!

Sweet child o' mine

Children. They have a way to melt your hearts. I have been away from mine for over a month now and I miss them like Hell. I left a small, month old doll, who would hardly do anything other than crying, when I came here. Now look at her...



See? Now if that ain't beauty, I don't know what is!