Rain

OK, so many anonymouses would be happy to know that it rained cats and dogs in Lahore and many streets and roads were flooded yesterday. I was out to get a generator for my car in a rickshaw. The rain came all of a sudden, so I conveniently didnt have a camera, but if you would kindly trust my honesty, and believe me when I say that several roads and streets were flooded. I'm sorry but the rickshaw didnt happen to pass by an underpass so I cant say if any underpass was flooded to the top or not. I wonder then, if you're right, and they are spending all of Karachi's taxes over here, then where do they go if they cant stop the streets from flooding here, too?

Rule of law

I've been around a few places in Lahore. While I've seen people caught for traffic violations on Mall Road or in Cantt area, never did I see a traffic policeman stop an offending vehicle in the DHA area. I guess they're not privileged enough to stop and ticket the Defencers.
So, they've launched a new traffic police in Lahore. Time will only tell how effective they are, but my rickshaw driver yesteday was driving diagonally on an intersection with those guys all around. I guess they were concentrating more on controlling the stopping and moving of the traffic. I'll tell you what. Until people drive straight, courteously and correctly on the road, it wouldnt matter if they follow the traffic light or not. Every day I see people driving on the right handside of the road. It doesnt matter what the reason is, it's wrong. It doesnt matter if you're trying to a shop on the right handside that is 10 meters down. You're supposed to drive on the left handside, whether or not the right handside of the road is empty. But we wouldnt take anything seriously, now, would we!

Anniversary

The other night, I was watching A-TV anniversary transmission. On came Nirma in a dance performance for the late Nusrat Fateh Ali's song "Afreen Afreen." Boy, did she save cloth? When the performers put her on a sort of board and lifted it on their shoulders you could see her entire leg naked. That's quite a thing to see on national TV. What exactly are they thinking anyway? I'm surprised no one uploaded a recording of it on YouTube.

Source code and presentations uploaded

For my session at Pakistan Developer Conference 2007, I've uploaded the source code for the demo and presentation at my website. The source code and database script are in the Downloads section and the presentation is in the Presentations section.

Nothing else to do

Like last year, this year, too, some of the volunteers at Pakistan Developer Conference were engaged and interested in only one thing: getting hooked to some other volunteer. All volunteers werent like that, though, and I am not generalizing, but a lot of people in our society are hooked only to this. It's their business, but in most of the cases, these are people who are not doing the rest of their job. Most of them are just a liability on this society, their fmailies. In my neighborhood at the "naan" shop, there are a few wooden chairs and a small wooden bench where mostly laborers and not so well off people have lunch and dinner, and a few weeks back I spotted a guy finish eating there and talking to a friend of his about a mutual trip on which they picked up some girls, and about another girl whom he is able to meet only for a very brief period of time at her medical college hostel. So, you can see that it has penetrated all social classes.
They may call it their right and freedom, but the fact remains that they are not productive for the society, are creating only evil, and are a worthless liability. "Education" just doesnt seem to do anything about it.

Once upon a time

Once upon a time, long long ago, there was a Pakistani who worked at the Graduate School office at an American university as a Graduate Assistant. The job was very important because that office deals with student grades, and a lot of other confidential information. Students have the right not to disclose their grades to anyone, even friends, and they usually didnt share their grades. This fellow, shared Mr. A's grade information with Mr. B, thereby making inappropriate use of his rights over information access. Later on, Mr. A and Mr. B had a disagreement and the argument took a certain turn in which Mr. B taunted Mr. A telling him that Mr. A had claimed to have gotten a better grade in a particular course than he actually got. Mr. A was shocked to learn that Mr. B had this information and further inquiry revelated the source of that information. Learning of this, the Graduate School banned hiring of any Pakistanis to the Graduate School.
While other nations helped their fellows achieve by lending a helping hand, the son of this great nation closed the door on a wonderful opportunity to all Pakistani students who followed him to that university. What is it with us and misuse of privileges.
I thnk that the idea of allowing comments only aims at getting praised for what wonderful work of art you produced, so I am disabling it. The blog is for me to place some of what I learn or experience. I grant you the privilege to share in what I write of my own accord. I am taking away the right to comment from you, thanks to several people, because in several instances it led to unncessary arguments. I apologise if you enjoyed posting comments to my blog.

Toshiba Tecra S2 memory card reader driver for Windows Vista

I was unable to connect my digital camera's memory stick on my Tecra S2, so I found a post on a forum, suggesting this driver. I'm giving it a shot. Let's see how it goes.

Exams over

Well, final exams for this quarter are over now. It seems this was probably the toughest final exams period I have had yet in terms of the amount of study required. It seems we covered plenty of stuff in each course. I had a lot to cover in each exam. Then there were projects and assignments in each course. Now, ahead is Summer. I need to focus on the qualifying exam right away and prepare hard for it. Also, I need to start sharpening my research focus.