Sunday, November 30, 2008

Mumbai Blasts...

I am not a news fanatic. The reason... I don't like what's said on the news or what's written in the paper. It's all about a blast here and a blast there.

Though I like watching movies in which the world's about to end and a team of Heroes save the world. But I hate it when it feels the world is close to it's end in reality. The reason, we don't have a team of Heroes to save the world. There is nothing like 'Save the future.' or something like 'Save the world'. Reality bites, doesn't it?

I got to know about the Mumbai blasts because everyone in office was discussing it.

I got to know they were blaming Muslims.

I got to know the attackers are claiming to be Muslims.

All of this through people..

Then in yesterday's (Saturday's) class, our teacher said that you should read what the general Indian public has to say about Muslims. They have been writing a lot in their blogs, blaming the Muslims. Of course, they are furious, they ought to be.

And so here I am, a non-political person, a person who doesn't even like watching news in fear of what I'll see, writing a post on the Mumbai blasts. Because I thought I ought to write something, I thought if there are so many people writing against Muslims then there must be some people writing in favor as well. I know there will be a lot of those out there too. But I thought I ought to join in as well.

I am not here to give the latest statistics on the blasts.

I will not be quoting anyone, I don't think I should.

I am just here to write what I feel.

And I feel it's wrong to blame Muslims for everything bad going around.

I know, I know, some Muslim group has admitted to be behind the blasts, they have taken the 'credit' for it.

But first of all, you don't become a Muslim just by saying that you are. Anyone can claim to belong to any religion, but that doesn't become true just by saying so.

Secondly, no terrorist group, if they are indeed terrorist, can't be Muslims, even if they say, even if they are Muslims by birth. They simply can't be Muslims.

And third. Would everyone be reacting in the same way, if the people who are behind all this claimed to belong to some other religion? If they claimed to be Indians.. would the reaction be the same?

It's easy attributing everything to Muslims. But hadn't there been any other blasts else where in the world by non-Muslims? There indeed have been. Is the reaction always the same? If terrorists belong to some other religion, do people really start treating everyone belonging to that religion this badly?

And let me tell you. Terrorism,... this isn't what our religion teaches us. Islam is the religion of peace. Before you start blaming any religion, you should go and read up on it. And Jihad.. there are certain rules to that too. Not everything can be called Jihad.

I know this post is going haywire. It lacks structure, as all other posts of mine do. But the thing I am trying to say is: We people are blinded by what media and government puts in front of us. We are blinded by what they say. We believe everything they say, even if we don't at first, after hearing the same thing over and over again, you are bound to start believing it. Someday, we start believing what everyone is saying all around, and we don't try to go in the depth of stuff. We are like that. But with this all, we start making the wrong decisions.

If the media says some religion is wrong, that doesn't make it wrong.

If the media poses something as the right thing, that doesn't make it right.

People have started looking down at the Muslims for a while now. You might bring up a lot of points at this that would direct the blame to the Muslims themselves. But again, if you don't know about this religion, you shouldn't be blaming it for it's teachings.

There shouldn't be any discrimination amongst human beings.

This is not a war between Pakistan and India.
This is not a war between Muslims and Non-Muslims.
This is a war between humanity and inhumanity.
And putting the blame on others, discriminating against a particular cohort of people, won't get us, the still-humans, on the winning side.
We'll keep on fighting an unwanted war against the people on our own side, and we would keep on loosing.
This would be the end. And it shouldn't be.

We, here at Pakistan, are saddened by what's happening in India. For us, this is not a loss of Indian's lives, this is not a loss of Hindu's lives, this is a loss of lives. As simple as that. A loss of life, doesn't matter whose life. A loss is a loss.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Microsoft Outlook - Receive Office emails elsewhere (say, at home :) )

I started using Microsoft Outlook, or should I say, I was made to start using Microsoft Outlook, about five months ago, because official addresses are mostly used through Outlook.
But, there are times when you may want to access your office emails at your home. You can do two things for that:
You can set up the Outlook at your home PC to your Work Email Address or
You can check your emails through mail.yahoo.com. Type in the entire address, including what comes after @.

But the problem is; all the emails that you have already downloaded at your office pc, don't appear when you check them through Yahoo or Outlook of Home PC. I never bothered to google for the solution. Fortunately, yesterday a colleague told me the solution for this. All you have to do is check an option by the name of : "Leave copy of messages on the server."

So today, I did google for it and found the following link useful. This link would tell you where to find the option, what checking the option would do, the pros and cons. So do check out this link before deciding to experiment.

Leave a Copy of Email on Server

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Money Matters..

When it was our parent's money that we were throwing away happily, we never thought once about how we are spending it. I remember, in our last year of bachelors, we kept planning about going to that place for lunch or that place. I always voted for KFC, but somehow that plan always got canceled. One day one of very nice friends told me "Yaar, I went to KFC last night with family and thought of buying Zinger for you, but then I decided not to, as it would turn bad till the morning."
Now I am a person who doesn't like it when someone spends this much money for me without an occassion. So I said "Nahi yaar... It's good that you didn't buy anything for me. Why waste money?" And I got a very sweet reply "Friends mein chalta hai yaar."

Now we all have mashaAllah started our careers and now we always think a little before we go and spend even a small amount from our salaries. Now again, all of us were trying to make plans to go for lunch from our jobs, and the plans always got canceled. And then I finally decided I wouldn't go with my uni friends for lunch as if I plan for that I'll eventually starve to death.
Now consider the following conversation with the same friend of mine:

Friend: "Lunch tomorrow?"
Me: "No, not at all. You people will starve me to death as I am sure you will cancel this plan at the last moment as well."
Friend: "Hehe... Acha when we are going for lunch we'll kidnap you from your office."
Me: "Acha then you'll pay for my lunch as well."

Now read the reply she gave to me, the same friend who once said "Friends mein chalta hai" now said:

"Haan mein to darakhton (trees) se utar rahi hoon na"

:D :D

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Busy, busy

It's been a long long time since I had posted something that is not about SQL and neither are just links to other sites. There are two reason for that.. one is that I decided that I should stop writing about things that go on insanely in my head,, after all who would want to read about that. I wanted this blog to be technical, which I guess I have miserably failed to do. :P The second thing is that I have been way too busy...

Just last Friday, walking with friends from office to a restaurant near by, we talked about how we are neglecting our health... the proper amount of sunlight that we succeed in avoiding each day, as when we come to our jobs there is not much sun and when we leave there is no sun at all, and the proportion of calcium that we fail to consume each day. And I realized, not for the first time, that we take care of everything else except our own selves. At first it was studies we cared about, and now it's our jobs.

Everyone is racing against time. Trying to get ahead. So ahead that we neglect our surroundings.

When my friends and I were about to start our jobs, one of my friends told me that she has already informed her employers that she will work only for 9 hours, not a minute less, not a minute more. The reason she stated was "We have already spent a lot of time studying, I don't want to be doing the same at job." And I agree with her, I totally agree. We have woven our lives with threads of job and studies.. we no more spend quality time with our families (this is the 'surroundings' I was referring to above which we neglect).

We only try to manage work, not our lives.

Hmmmm, once again the post started with something else and then became something else.

So I was saying I have been too busy with work and studies (ummm well I don't think I am studying but I kept the book open in front of me the entire day, yesterday, does that count as studying?) that I neither got time to write something, neither is my head bulging with ideas. The above narration is the only thing I could come up with.. :P

Anyways, once again I'll try writing more. Somewhere along the way I have lost the passion to write. I still like writing, provided I don't need to work on it. But I do, I sooo do.

A few days back, one of my friends gave me the address of her blog (which I'll be including in my blog roll, after I am done with this post). And just ruffling through it, I realized how much I enjoy writing and reading blogs. And it's because of her blog, that I am trying to return and put some live into "intricate zone". At least, I'll be writing something, I know no one reads what I write, but still I'll be writing something.


I noticed that that friend of mine had put her articles there. And I remembered I too was planning to do that. So I guess, someone who accidentally stumbles upon my blog someday, might find my articles posted here as well, amidst other inane stuff that I produce.


This is where I end... :P

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Debugging stored procedures...

A while ago one of my friends told me about how she made a stored procedure and didn't debug it as she did not know how to, to which she had to hear "Yeh kaise programming hai?"

Hmmm so not knowing how to debug a stored procedure makes you a bad programmer.. huhh?

But whatever it means.. you should know how to do all the stuff that is provided in the softwares in order to fully explore the powers of the language being used.



So here I'll be talking about Debugging SQL stored procedures.

As I didn't know how to debug sps I too searched on the net and came up with many good articles.



Debugging stored procedures is very similar to debugging a function in Visual Studio. You set breakpoints, and then you execute the program in debug mode, whenever a breakpoint is hit the execution is paused so the developer can have a look at the current values of the variables etc.



I was thinking of writing the whole thing myself. But why waste my time and yours as well. I don't myself experienced enough to be writing all this. So I'll just put in the links that I found useful.



Debugging Stored Procedures in SQL Server 2000:



http://www.15seconds.com/Issue/050106.htm



This gives a detailed explanation of debugging stored procedures in SQL Server 2000.

I was only able to debug SPs from database that was on my own machine. I wasn't able to do the same by taking a connection from a database at a remote system. There must be some way of doing that but I don't know actually what that is. :)



Debugging Stored Procedures in SQL Server 2005:



http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/051607-1.aspx



In SQL Server 2005, you can't debug the stored procedures from within SQL Server 2005. But don't worry you can do it through Visual Studio 2005. I found this article pretty useful.

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Do keep in mind that some people argue that using "PRINT" statement is much better than debugging. You can PRINT all the values you want to and let the procedure run normally, without debugging.But I would recommend that you give debugging a shot as well, and decide which one is better for you. It is also possible that in some situations debugging is just another headache you are buying for yourself, but in some situations it might prove to be very useful. In any case, as I said, you should know everything you can about a language or a software to exploit it's full power.

Happy Debuggin!! :)