Iron

I was watching Spider Man 2 (again) this morning, and as Mary Jane Watson ran away to Peter Parker's apartment and vowed to be his, and Peter's friend Harry was being prepared to become a vilain, it was fun noting how we'd see M J in Spider Man 3, ironing the spider man costume for her beloved husband cursing who the hell came up with the idea of the heavily ribbed suit.
On a more serious note, it was worth grasping that we shouldnt be disappointed by how people hate us even though we're doing the right thing. There are people who think highly of us, it's just that we dont see that when others say bad things about us or treat us badly. When you fall trying to stop a train headed for disaster, you will find people who will lift you on their shoulder and stand by you.

Sense

Surprisingly, some sense has gone into the brains of the powers that be controlling the Internet connectivity tap to Pakistan, and the blogspot.com domain is viewable again in Pakistan. Better late than never, I guess.

Monkey business

In Ayubia recently, I found these monkeys going about their business. You can see Pakistan in the background, clearly identifiable courtesy the garbage in a public place.

VPC

Read about my recent first encounters with Virtual PC 2004.

Presentation upload

I have a technical blog at http://idevelop.spaces.msn.com/PersonalSpace.aspx. Please do visit it. I also have an MSN group called IDevelop and have uploaded the presentation in the files section of that group. The message is posted on my technical blog. I am sorry about the delay, I was caught up with a research project. I was hoping to upload it to my webserver so I can offer you a simple URL to download instead of the "join my MSN group" marketing crap, but there are some complications with the upload and I'll get it fixed asap. Thanks for the appreciation and keep in touch.

Long time no (PD)C

OK. So, I've got several complaints that I've not been blogging, which is pretty well placed, too. I was pretty busy with life in general and a research project in particular. I came down to PDC 2006 with minimal preparation for my session, which I feel didnt go too well. It's not that my demo didnt work or anything, but I wasnt satisfied with how I did in presenting the material. Maybe a bit rusty, but I'm sure I can work on that and fix it. Unfortunately, this had to be at the mega event such as PDC.
The community lounge was pretty bad this year. The volunteers were not interested in anything but each other. There were issues everywhere. "I told him not to do that, and still he was doing it" type of material. Pretty immature stuff. The event overall, didnt come out to me as good as last year's. Let's hope for the best next time around.

Long time no post

Life's been busy. Got married. Toughest quarter yet. Projects still outstanding. Will write more frequently later. Fareeha, I couldnt reply to you directly. Will try later.

Beauty and the geek

Beauty and the geek

The Americans have landed

The Americans have landed in Karachi! No, its not the FBI or the Marine Corpes. It's my sister, her husband and my nephew. They are here after about five years. Long time no see. They came down as a surprise. They werent supposed to come in another week or so, but they did and called home from the Karachi airport.

Appreciation

I guess that the positive side about blocking of blogspot.com is that some people high up have noticed "blogs." That's a quantum leap in bureaucracy. Which is also bad news for me, because if I keep blogging what I blog, I'd be picked up by some secret service one of these days.
I'm just glad they werent smart enough to ban blogger.com. Or maybe they wanted to leave us write only access. I thank them if it is the latter.

Choka

Last quarter results are out for all three courses. This time I hit fours in all three courses! Yeaaaaaaaaaa! A+, A, A. In the first quarter I had A+, A, B. This will improve my CGPA and help me in retaining my scholarship here at LUMS.

Beautiful

I love the LUMS campus. Especially when it rains. The lush green grass, and the red buildings look so cute. It's downright, out of this world. It's at times like this that I wish I had brought my camera. Its raining right now and been raining for several hours. I feel like taking a dip in the rain. I have to see my advisor to decided on some resources for my term project for the course Topics in Internet Research right now before I go home.

In your face!

I've been unable to read my blog for quite some time. At first, there was a report of a distributed denial of service attacks against popular blogging sites, so I thought, OK. But DDoS attacks shouldnt last weeks. So, there was another report that some ISPs have banned some blogging websites because one blogger posted a blasphemous cartoon to his blog.
So, I thought, OK. You're challenging me with something even a school kid could bypass. Have a look at the following snapshot dated a few minutes ago. (I havent uploaded it to my webserver yet, but I'll do it tonight insha Allah).

Anonymous HTTP proxies can easily bypass these trivial, childish, and foolish bans. You cant sensor stuff anymore. You block one medium, it'll pop up on another. Even if you ban HTTP traffic completely, I can view web pages through email. So much for your sensorship. Grow up! Some ISPs havent banned it. Let's be frank here. How many ISPs block pornography? They know that it is the number one thing that people are after. They are in a business of making money, not losing it.

Insecurity

I hope everyone at PAF KIET including their staff, faculty members, current and ex students read this so that I dont get bombarded for any future "racist" remarks. Here's a letter from an ex faculty member at NED. I personally knew her through email contact and must say that it is another great loss to the student community at NED. Read her letter to the editor of dawn.

Sunshine and rain

So, it turned out that it rained yesterday for a bit after the windstorm. The weather became pleasant, but only for yesterday and now we're back to the hot weather. I took out one of my kurtas declaring the start of summer as far as I am concerned.

Road sense

Enter the Pakistani pedestrian! I was driving down a street and there was a guy and his goat walking on the left handside of the road. Walking on the road, not off the road. Should've been walking on the right handside, but, hey, it's Pakistan, we do exact opposites just for fun. As I approached in my car, the goat moved off the road, without even turning around to see. The goat driver, however, continued to go his merry way. He wants others to watch out for him, when he doesnt watch out for himself. If you dont care about yourself, why do you expect others to care for you?
This goes to demonstrate that an animal has better road sense than an average Pakistani.
Today, though, I finally spotted an animal that had an exact replica of a Pakistani pedestrian's road sense. A donkey! An abandoned donkey, to be precise. Walking right in the middle of a road with complete abandon. How ironic! A donkey who is old, worn out, good for nothing, not even worth feeding. We have a match! I guess even the donkey would've forgotten his instinctive road sense because the bigger ass driving him in the donkey cart drove him in very erratic ways. We're even corrupting the animals.

Nomenclature

Oh, the ironic names that people give to their brain childs here in Pakistan. I guess it's the same in other non native English speaking countries, too. For example, a friend of mine showed me a "Playboy Beauty Parlor" for ladies only. Yesterday I saw a driving training school vehicle saying "Diana Driving School." To think that the most famous Diana in the world died precisely in a car crash. I guess there'll be an airline called "Plane Crash Airlines" somewhere, too. At least on paper.

Today

I had an exam yesterday, and then the next one is on Monday followed by another one on Tuesday next week. I decided to study for the exam on Tuesday first. I thought I might need to access the Internet for some problem solutions, so I came to the campus to leach on the wifi. Meanwhile, several MSDN TV episodes are also being downloaded on a download manager.
As I went to pray, there was a slight windstorm and the weather seems to have improved a bit. I'll resume studies after lunch now. It's not the kind of weather when the last thing my students would have wanted to do was study and I forced them to, for their own good, so it serves me right to sit and study now. So, here I am in the library with a beautiful view from the window behind me, and a book in front.

May Day!

Mithu was attacked on last night. Now, we've got a couple of golden puff chickens. The male is very bad tameez and doesnt let the lady eat, so my brother was sitting in front of their cage when he gave them the food. When he's near, the male doesnt come close the food because he's scared he would be punished for his bad deeds.
Bhai also happened to have mithu on his lap. Seeing mithu, something got into the male and he jumped at Mithu, took him by one of his wings and dragged him in. Bhai acted quickly and slapped the male on his head to let go of poor mithu. All night, poor mithu had eyes the size of golf balls.
We have lodged an attempt of murder case against the golden puff and are awaiting the court's decision. Well, who knows, maybe the court would rule against the golden puff and then given them "fifteen days" off, to allow them to attack mithu during that time.

Of Mian and of Dad

Last night, Javed Miandad was on TV on a sports commentary show. To me, Javed Miandad came across as a great batsmen and nothing else. He wasnt a great player. Just a great batsman, which is why he didnt make a great captan. He doesnt have a great understanding of the game. While the rest of the world moved on and on including Ramiz Raja and Waqar Younis and developed great understanding of the game, our hero stayed his crease.
So, now when he comments, he is usually not very compelling. When he talks, he's saying "Dekhain, woh meray khayal main iss cheese ko us tarah naheen lay ker chalay jaisay chalna chahiyay tha. Aap is ko is tarah daikhain. Cheezon ko aik plan k sath lay k chalna paray ga." Now he's just speaking, without making any sense at all.
It seems that he has been placed there by powers that be to have another one of "their guys" on TV.
His brother called and asked a question why he was not sent an invitation card to Imran Khan's hospital innauguration. While Javed didnt answer the question, I guess that he should've given the narrow minded brother of his the answer he was looking for "Chota sooba, bara sooba."
Geez, when will we every grow up. Answer: Never. At least not the Southern part of the country.