Intricate Zone

Silent pledge of Silence

2010-11-30T20:54:00.000-08:00

In life, a lot of things happen. And after lot of incidents, you make a lot of promises to yourself, and you claim of a lot of things to the people around you. You say that you won't do this again, you say that you will start doing this and that from now on. But after a little while, as you relax, as you calm down, you realize that you cannot hold up to a lot of these promises.

But sometimes, just sometimes, after some incident, you don't make any promise to others, not even to yourself, but without any promise, a silence settles within you and this silence you propagate around you as well.

You become a quiet person. You lock that talkative, bubbly person somewhere deep down and then you throw away the key.

And not many people realize that. Because some people only knew you as a quiet person, for them you are the same.

And those who did know how cheerful you actually are fail to notice because from where they are standing, you are fine and you are happy. Because you smile when you meet someone and you smile at jokes cracked by your friends and hold back a retort.

But from where you are standing you understand that the smile on your face when you meet people is the smile that you put on to hide the tears in your eyes, so that the focus shifts to the smile instead of the tears.

And you know that when you smile at a joke cracked by a friend and hold back a retort, it is because you don't have anything to say, because silence is your refuge now.

And quietly and silently is how you start spending your days. And quietly and silently you start to remove yourself. You don't remove people from you lives, instead you remove yourself from theirs, because if someone detests you so much, isn't it better to save them the torture of having to look at you, or even seeing your name somewhere, or seeing anything that would remind them of you?

So quietly and silently you step out of their lives. And with a final goodbye you close the door and you never look back.

These are the silent pledges of silence.

Eid Mubarak

2010-11-16T23:12:00.000-08:00

And it's Bakra Eid again.. my favorite favorite Eid :) :)
I used to spend the entire day downstairs with animals in the few days before Bakra Eid.
This is the eid of sacrifice and Muslims offer sacrifice of animals in the path of Allah on Bakra Eid.

Kids….

2010-11-06T21:50:00.001-07:00

We should learn a few things from kids, like;

Having a fight and then forgetting all about it. Forgiving the person you fought with instantly.

Being curious at how everything works.

Standing up, falling down and then standing up again. Never giving up hope or faith.

Finding joy in the most simplest of things.

Smiling in a way that makes everyone (even the so-called adults) smile and forget all about their worries.

Not to be judgmental.

Not over-complicating things.

Not dwelling in the past.

Being Happy…

All about Recipesss....

2010-10-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

A new addition to our very own blogosphere is the blog "Recipes in demand".

The blog is all about the most yummiest of recipes, with the most mouth watering ingredients. Written in a way that makes even me think I can do it.. :D and believe me that IS something. :)

The best thing about the blog is that it is updated daily. So you have something new to look forward to everyday.

The method given is written in a simple language and the ingredients are easy to pronounce (meaning you'll be able to find them in your home and thus not waste money on something you'll never use in anything else).

So people check out this blog.
Start following it.
And DO add it to your blog roll.
And spread the word.

Happy Cooking! :)

LCD Needed... NO... DEMANDED

2010-10-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

I have been complaining for a long time that I have a regular CRT Monitor while all (well.. almost) others have the privilege of using a LCD monitor everyday at office. As expected, my inane demands and complains have proved fruitless.

The best output I have gotten so far from all the lamenting and whining is a screen saver on the CRT I have been using for the last two years. As old as it looks it has managed to survive all this long. If my CRT wasn't this deterministic to face all odds with persistence and keep on living I would have gotten a LCD long ago. As the rule states;

"As long as your CRT monitor is working, you can't get a LCD."

But all of this has resulted in some amusing and interesting suggestions from my team mates:

1. "You should have come to your brother before you went to your boss. Come on, let's steal someone's LCD. Is there someone you don't like in office, let's steal their LCD."

2. "The next time you have a drink of water, don't forget to pour it on your CRT... accidentally of course."

Any other suggestions, people.

NOW, it’s over… :D :D

2010-10-16T06:54:00.001-07:00

Finally got my MS degree on Monday. Yaayyyyyyyy… Now it feels like it’s over, when I finally have the prove.

A lot of things happened since the time I was working on my Research Survey's Final report till now. A lot of things that I would have preferred not happening at all. But also a lot of things I am extremely happy about. :D

The day I got my degree in my hands, I decided to put an end to all the things and try and enjoy my life to the fullest. :) Not that I was not doing it before.. but still... I intend to read a lot of books and watch a lot and lot of movies :D :D

All the other things that I wanted to learn before and kept putting them off saying that I will read up on them after my MS.. I don't think I am going to do that.. because now I don't like opening any book other than novels... Though it has been months since I gave my final presentation.. I still haven't been able to bring myself to read anything useful..

The point is NOW.. it's over, because NOW I have the prove. :)

Thanks to the friend who sent these congratulations images. They sure made my day.. :)

Eid Mubarak

2010-09-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

It's the forth day of Eid (and I don't think there is any such thing as the forth day of Eid :P) and here I am wishing everyone Eid Mubarak. I know I am pretty late, but better late than never, right?

So here goes,

The story of Hope and Fate

2010-09-07T19:53:00.000-07:00

What we are always told in life, is to hope for the best and expect the worst.. or something to that effect. But we are never warned that, hopes, the unrealistic ones, can be extremely devastating. These hopes have the power to let you sink to the bottom, to eventually leave you hopeless. You start wondering where you are, how did you get there, what went wrong, what did you do wrong, what did you do to deserve this.

We are never told to know when to stop hoping, when to give up entirely. And this is something that can never be told because it is one of those things you learn after bitter experiences. You learn when it is time to stop hoping. This should be the time when you've done all you could to stop something bad from happening, in fact you have done more than you even imagined yourself doing. This is the time when you have given more than you could, more than you were capable of giving. This is the time when you realize that your efforts are going in vain. And if it's not just a personal experience, then your efforts might be given a wrong meaning, a reflection of a thought that never entered your mind. And this is the time when you should stop. All the time you were trying to bring improvement in the state of affairs, you were hoping that things would eventually turn out well, and that you'll forget all of this or at least mark it and put it in the 'Fun and Learning' cabinet of your memories storage. But as it doesn't turn out that way, this is the time when you give up just on the efforts, this is the time when you have to sit back and leave everything on Allah. Allah asks us to make efforts but also to trust Him and to believe that whatever He gives to us is the best for us, no matter if it doesn't seem that way at the time. So this is the time when you keep hoping, but this is also the time when you stop fighting. You leave everything on Allah, and you don't even so much as move a finger to improve the situation. You just let it be. At this point, again, things could go in both ways, they could either be in your favor, or they could either push you to the edge, to the line which separates you from 'living your life' and 'just going through it'.

If all goes well, then you are happy, then all the decision you made seem to be the right ones, all hopes that you had seem to be realistic.

But if this is not the case, then you are quite far away from the happy-folk's land, all the decisions you took seem to be the wrong ones, all hopes seem to be unrealistic. And this is exactly the time, when you should stop hoping that things would ever be the same again. You should always hope that somewhere along the way you'll be able to buy a home in that happy-folk's land, but you should stop hoping that things would go your way at the moment. If they haven't until now, then hoping that they ever would is equivalent to pushing yourself to the edge and then not even wanting to be rescued. If you have left everything on Allah, then accept whatever he sends your way, because whatever he sends would eventually turn out to be the best. The things that you didn't get in spite of working hard, praying hard and hoping hard, are the things which are not good for you, which are not meant for you to have. There are somethings which have to be accepted as fate. But at this point, you should know that at least in the future you'll be saved from the torture of thinking 'I could have done something', because you know that you did all you could have done, and you know that you gave even more of yourself than you should have and than you could have.

I might have not been able to make my point clear through this post. I might not have been able to do justice. But I guess this is something you have to go through to understand, to really understand. And unfortunately, we all go through it at some point in our life. :)

The book with two faces

2010-09-05T07:34:00.001-07:00

Yes, yet another article on facebook. Yes, yet another article focusing on the atrocities and injustice of this social networking site but also shedding light on the exhibition of extreme imbecile attitude from our side. With too many emails popping up with Facebook in the subject line, yet another article on the same topic seems to be a drag, it's like playing the old, old song everyone has tuned themselves out to. In spite of knowing this, I want to and need to have a say in the matter.

Most of us claim that we cannot imagine life without facebook. You don't have to exercise your imagination cells for this diminutive task as we've all been there done that. There was obviously a time when there was no facebook and I think we all survived that dark age.

We claim that facebook lets us connect with our friends. Well, ever heard of MSN, GTalk. It's not exactly called 'connecting with friends' when you update your status every other second as if the world actually cares about what you do the whole day. It's simply called 'addiction'.

And to connect with who, the friends who lack the sheer decency of calling you up to invite you to their party, instead they prefer to send you an event notification. And the people who can't even remember your birthday and need to be alerted by a system. In order to keep up with such friends we refuse to abandon facebook!

And then, of course, there are our farms to worry about.
"Who would plow my fields if I don't log in after every 14 hours or so?"

And all the photos uploaded by 'friends' without looking at which I am bound to contract a deadly disease. At one hand we keep complaining about the threats to our privacy posed by any social networking site and on the other hand we ignore of all such breaches made by facebook which badly needs to go through quality assurance. I am not going to accentuate the loopholes in their privacy policy nor am I going to highlight the bugs in their system. What I am trying to put forward is a simple statement

"Have we actually become obsessed with a social networking site which has put an end to our social life?"

I though socializing meant meeting a lot of people. Actually meeting, talking face-to-face. But yes, in this busy life of ours we don't find enough time to socialize, yet we find the time to 'relax' in front of the pc and meet people simultaneously. Working in parallel, the need of time.

Why am I against facebook? Why do I advocate quitting facebook. If I don't like it I can quit, why force others to do the same?
I do so because of one simple reason;

"I can't stand being humiliated in front of the whole wide world."

I am not going to quote any Quranic verses or Hadiths because to be honest I don't find myself knowledgeable enough to do so. Yeah, shame on me to talk about something I don't have a clue of. But what I speak here is, to the best of my understanding, pure logic based on a simple enough postulate;

"You defend what you claim to belong to."

We cater to our egos at all the wrong times. Now when there is a need for our so-called ego to come in and play it's part we sing a lullaby of our social needs and put it to sleep. The time when our reputation is at stake we choose to hide behind the veils of internet, because who would know if a Muslim logs in or not. They keep insulting our religion and we keep pretending we didn't hear a thing. From all the books they could have burnt they chose to celebrate a day to burn OUR book. And all we have to say is

"they are not actually burning it they have just put an event."

If all it is is an event then why not "Burn all books day".

We keep fooling ourselves with excuses that sound lame even to ourselves. We try to evade the truth by weaving reasons, such as:

"We are not visiting that page"

Would you keep going to a building where there is only one room where you are treated like dirt, like you are made of stone and nothing hurts you?

"In fact we have joined the community against celebrating such events."

Really!? How's that coming along? Has it brought any betterment yet?

"This is exactly why Muslims have been labeled extremists. Quitting facebook altogether is the intense reaction they are hoping for so they can later make fun of us."

NO. Extremism would be to stop using internet. Who is stopping you from using other social networking sites. There are alternatives for all the facilities they provide.

Socializing	Chatting applications, Email groups (where private conversations are in fact private)
Photo sharing	Picasssa, Flickr etc.

It's not going to put even a dent in their business. They have millions of non-Muslim users.

Its not our intention to make them suffer. It is just our way of saying 'No'.

We keep coming up with ideas of how to participate in the event and defend our religion.

Either come up with an idea strong enough to compel them to quit insulting us or.. quit yourself.

Quitting facebook would be equivalent to shouting out to the world, without even raising our voices one pitch, that

"We are Muslims. And we respect our religion more than anything else."

This of all the places is not where you can apply the theory "Can't fight them, join them." It's a situation where you keep fighting till you win. No one's asking to wage a war against them. Just a request to make them understand that what they are doing is not called freedom, it's just simply wrong. And this post is a request to all Muslims to make them understand that there cannot possibly be any other motive behind these gestures,.. other than the obvious one.

Note:
This goes not just for facebook, though the post has been written in a way that focuses only on Facebook. This goes for all entities which are promoting or participating in such events.

The Crash

2010-07-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

This post was written yesterday, 28th July, 2010 Wednesday, the night of the crash.

It's been a long time since I wrote something for my blog, and all the recent posts have come from some deep, dark corners of my mind, so I sure didn't want another sad post to be my first post after a long time. But I have to get this out of my system.

Today, at office, concentrating on coordinating with the QA department to resolve the issues occuring at client side, the news of a plane crash in Islamabad landed on my ears. We all have become a bit accustomed to hearing bad news, a bomb blast here a riot there, or maybe it's just me who has become utterly heartless, but whatever maybe the reason, I continued to work on the task at hand.It was after a while when I started hearing from my colleagues that their relatives or acquaintances happened to be in the plane. That is when it started mattering. That is when the environment at my office became what can be called gloomy. Coming from a team where laughter is the evidence of work being done, the quiet seemed to be a bit saddening.
Coming back home, it was the first time when I was actually waiting for 9 o' clock news. All along I beared with the sense of drama being created by the news channel (is there a need to mention the name?), what with focusing on the news caster and going from bottom to top.. really, were they trying to imitate the entrance scenes usually attributed with the lead roles of movies.But still, just focusing on the words and tuning out all the drama they were trying to put in for I don't know, increasing the viewership or something, I watched half of the report being shown. All of us watched the families crying, calling out to their loved ones, while we constantly ignored the question they kept broaching for the audience, "Who was responsible for it all?". Do we really need to ask that? It wasn't like a bomb was placed in the plane that we would need to ask where the security was? It's not like the President of some country was flying that we would ask who wanted the President dead. It was a plane crash!! For crying out loud.. A PLANE CRASH. I went along with all of that. But then the news channel brought in something that compelled me to storm out of the tv lounge, and I really mean storm out.
They interviewed this person, who actually seemed to be a pretty intelligent and experienced guy. And to keep it brief, what this guy was saying was that the crash was due to some HUMAN ERROR. And all of a sudden.. they found the guy responsible.. Yippeeee... Congratulations to the news channel, they found that out all by themselves.. And here's the person to be blamed for the deaths of 152 (is the figure correct?) people including himself.. and the person is.. the PILOT.
Now what I ask is...
We all have been taught never to speak ill of the dead. I think this is not just a teaching of Islam, but all religions. Then how come blaming the pilot is not considered speaking ill.
There have been countless times when the pilots have been RESPONSIBLE for getting the passengers safely to land.. how many time the news bulletin have thanked these pilots?
How many times did this particular pilot flew the plane safely? How many times was he thanked?
Do all planes who face difficulty in bad weathers crash? NO. Then are these pilots ever considered the heroes of the nation. Then how come this pilot is the villain of the story?
And how come we are forgetting that the pilot himself passed away too. I don't think he was out for a suicide mission. How many people do we know of who would gladly and deliberately crash the plane on a mountain?

Okay. Let's just say for a minute that this WAS the pilot's mistake. Let's just say HYPOTHETICALLY that the pilot himself crashed the plane deliberately. That this was in all his and only his mistake. Then haven't we been taught to forgive and forget. Well who would forgive when the lives of 151 innocent people were lost. But when you call something a mistake, then as far as I know, it's a MISTAKE, something that was not done on purpose, but something that just happned. Aren't we supposed to forgive in that case? And it's not like the pilot himself is alive? He died with them all. Who are we to judge? Who are we to decide? Why not let the matters of Allah be His matters only? Why interfere? Who gave us the right?

Just received an sms, informing that an ex-class fellows's sister in law, the mother of a 6 year old girl, is also a victim. Which reminds me of something else. While they were interviewing the affected families, none of the relatives, in their state of immense grief, once mentioned that the pilot is to be blamed. Had any of them said the same thing, I would not have been this angry, because going through something like this, takes a lot from you, and mostly it takes away the ability to decide, the ability to decipher between what's right and what's wrong.And in such a state sometimes somethings are said or done, that needs to be forgotten later on. In fact, that needs to be forgotten immediately. Then if these people didn't say anything like this how come the people who have expertise in planes and in flying, who had not been embraced by grief thought they can blame someone and actually came out and did just that.

And for the life of me I cannot understand how a pilot can say something like this about a fellow pilot. Have they all resigned? Do they think they'll never fly a plane again, and such a thing cannot happen with them? Did they forget all that?

...........

The essence of 'Life'..

2010-06-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

A post to collect all the thoughts which have been going through my mind a lot lately. Things I have pondered over. Things I keep thinking about. Things that I keep discussing with people. And things that I have wanted to write a post on for a long time.

Happiness went away on a greyhound bound for Georgia:

(The above is a line from a song :P)
It seems like ever since we've 'grown-up' happiness doesn't seem to stick around. And dissatisfaction has become more permanent since we've started with our jobs and have started earning money. And this is not just my opinion. I have really asked around and this was the general opinion. And reasons have also come up. The main reason being that we've stopped enjoying the small things. We've let go of the small joys and have started focusing on the big things. We've forgotten that it's actually the small things that bring life into our lives. We've unconsciously started running after money.. and tada... we do have money now.. (well to some extent.. at the end of every month.. before we spend it all... :$) and I thank Allah for that.. not that I dislike the concept of salaries.. but we've engrossed ourselves so much into "adulthood" we've lost all essence of life..
Remember the times when we went out for lunch/dinner with family/friends ONCE in a bluemoon. That was the time we enjoyed eating out. Now eating out has become a norm and eating-in has become .. well.. how do you put it.. not very interesting...??!!!
Remember the times when we used to rent movies over the weekend. That was when it was actually we fun. We still enjoy watching tv and movies.. but it has become a routine and hence, not that much interesting any more..
Remember the time when we used to read.. actually read books. When we became so much involved in the 'story-book' that we found ourselves IN the book. That stopped happening for me a long time ago. Now we all have so many other things going on in our minds that it has become impossible to detach ourselves from our real lives and enjoy being a part of the book.. Now every time I am reading a book something steals me away from it, more often than not it's my cell phone, with another forwarded message or sometimes a 'hi-hello' one from a friend.
A few months ago we had a company-sponsored training. The focus of the training was "Communication and Presentation Skills", but the trainer also mentioned a few things related to the topic of this post. She said back when we were children we were not afraid to try out new things. We enjoyed doing something new everyday. She also said to spend time with children, play with them. And she is right. When you are playing with children you are really having fun. And it was also advised to spend less time watching tv. There are other ways of relaxing. One activity which we should all carry out to realize the quality of our life was this: In one minute write down all the things that you enjoy. It seems that one minute would be less and you would have more things to write when the time's up, but that doesn't happen. In my case there was still time and I had nothing more to right. :| (I don't exactly remember the time allowed, maybe it was less than one minute, but I do remember that I was short of things to write. It was like sitting in an exam, writing answers you didn't prepare for.)

Now we are living a routine life.
We've stopped spending time with our families. If I give my example, I spend 9 hours of everyday in office, and when I come back I switch on my computer and start looking for things that I can watch that day. The only hours I spend with my family are the hours where there is no electricity and hence no TV, computer,... but even then I have my cell phone. Why do I feel it important to share jokes with my friends or talk to them but I don't categorize spending time with my family as important?

Lack of Confrontation:

Another thing which is actually sort of related to happiness is that we've started taking ourselves too seriously. (I know it's a quote, but couldn't find the reference. It goes something like ' Don't take yourself seriously, nobody else does. But it's a quite true).
We think we are just too important. We let our egos take the best of us.

As children when we used to have fights with our friends, the next day it was all better. Don't say that then it was on petty issues.. like who'll bring a ball the next day.. we still fight on small issues.. it's just that our priorities have changed. A ball seemed important then. We've changed our perspective of "what's important" now. And our perspectives are still quite wrong.

We've put up a image of ourselves for others so that they would like us. But inside, we are not that good.
Because inside we keep grudges,
because inside we hate others,
because inside we are jealous of others,
because from inside we are not happy,
because from inside we actually dislike our own existence.

These days we don't confront people. And for good reasons. :) We don't wanna fight in front of the whole wide world. So we refrain from that.. which is good. But we still keep grudges, we start ignoring others, we meet everyone with a smile, but no one should know what's going on in those little heads of ours.. because what goes on up there is not something everyone would like to know. We think it's our right to analyze people, and so we focus on all the bad things. We think it's right to criticize others and call it healthy criticism. We think it's right to judge others. We think it's right to be jealous of others, because we don't consider it jealousy, we consider it improving ourselves, bringing betterment in ourselves. Well, is that really true?

I think I have written enough. Comments are welcome. :)

Would we still???

2010-05-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

On my way to office, yesterday morning, I was, as I usually do, reciting Ayat-ul-Kursi, durood shareef..
When I noticed that I do this whenever I get scared of Mobile-Snatchers and the likes and I started to wonder that we, human beings,.. well most of us, remember Allah in our times of need. We do remember Him when we are happy but the enthusiasm is heightened in sorrow. And I questioned myself..
"If I had everything good in my life. And I knew that sorrow won't reach me.. Would I still remember Him? Would I still pray?"

And this is what I put up for everyone to think (comments are welcomed)

"What if we have everything good happening in our life? And we know for sure that nothing bad is ever going to come? And we won't do bad to anyone around us, so that we don't have to beg for Allah's forgiveness either. And we had nothing bad happen to us in the past as well. Would we still talk to Him? Would we still cry out to Him? Would we still pray?"

2010-01-29T19:07:00.001-08:00

Note:

Received in a sms. Don’t know who the poet is.. if anyone does, please do leave the poet’s name in comments. :)

Zamana dost ho jaye to buhat muhtat ho jana,

K is ke rang badalnay mein zara se dair lagti hai

Koi jo khwab dekho to usay foran bhulla dena,

K neendein toot janay mein zara se dair lagti hai.

Kisi ko dukh kabhi dena to itna soch kar dena,

Kisi ke ah lagnay mein zara se dair lagti hai

Buhat hee mautabbar hain jin ko muhabbat raas aa jaye,

Kisi ko raah badalnay mein zara se dair lagti hai

Just when you….

2010-01-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

Just when you start thinking your life is good.. it decides to take a harsh turn..

Just when you think everything has fallen into place… you realize everything is starting to fall apart..

Just when you think everything’s gonna be all right.. you realize you thought too quickly.

Just when you think you’ve finally found friends among strangers, one of them turns their back on you

Just when you think you can start trusting people again, someone betrays you

Just when you think you’ve had enough.. you are pushed a little more towards the edge

Just when you think you can’t get hurt any more.. someone hurts you deeply and badly..

Just when you think you have had enough bad experiences to make an incorrect choice again, you realize you are again walking on the wrong path..

But just when you think you should give up.. just when you think it’s not worth all that pain.. you realize you are wrong.. you realize that it’s just another challenge you’ll have to face, just another fall you should get up from.. just another reason for you to be happy, just another opportunity for you to prove yourself to the world… :)

Vote for my blog…

2010-01-17T08:23:00.001-08:00

I have nominated my blog for Best Personal Blog at Pakistan's First Blog Awards .. yes, I have nominated myself, talk about being pretentious.. :P

Please vote for me at the following link

http://blogawards.pk/2010/01/16/personal-blog-intricate-zone/

Don’t forget to drop in nice comments too.. as they will be counted as well..

Thank you very much.. :)

The Awakening

2010-01-08T21:38:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer:
Received this in an email. :)

The Awakening
(Author unknown)

A time comes in your life when you finally get…when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out…ENOUGH1 Enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on. Then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon.

You realize that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings, and that any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you…and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are…and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions.

You learn the importance of loving and championing yourself…and in the process a sense of new found confidence is born of self-approval.

Your stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you – or didn’t do for you – and you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected.

You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and everything isn’t always about you.

So, you learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself…and in the process a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.

You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties…and in the process a sense of peace and contentment is born of forgiveness.

You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. You begin reassessing and redefining who you are and what you really stand for.

You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you’ve outgrown, or should never have bought into to begin with.

You learn that there is power and glory in creating and contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a “consumer” looking for you next fix.

You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era, but the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life.

.......

Then you learn about love. You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You learn that alone does not mean lonely.

You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of setting boundaries and learning to say NO.

You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs.

You learn that your body really is your temple. You begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin to eat a balanced diet, drinking more water, and take more time to exercise.

You learn that being tired fuels doubt, fear, and uncertainty and so you take more time to rest. And, just food fuels the body, laughter fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play.

You learn that, for the most part, you get in life what you deserve, and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making it happen.

More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You learn that no one can do it all alone, and that it’s OK to risk asking for help.

You learn the only thing you must truly fear is fear itself. You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your own terms.

You learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom.

You learn that life isn’t always fair, you don’t always get what you think you deserve and that sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people…and you lean not to always take it personally.

You learn that nobody’s punishing you and everything isn’t always somebody’s fault. It’s just life happening. You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls.

You lean that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about: a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower.

Then, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself and you make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never, ever settle for less than you heart’s desire.

You make it a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility.

You hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind.

Finally, with courage in you heart, you take a stand, you take a deep breath, and you begin to design the life you want to live as best as you can.

Celebrating New Year?!!?

2010-01-01T09:48:00.001-08:00

As I tried to weave my way through the web service I received an sms,… wishing me a happy new year;

“Hmm… this one’s a bit early” I thought

“What’s the date today again? Oh 31st December, 2009. Oh I didn’t realize. The new year starts tomorrow!”

The thoughts rushed through my mind filling me with as much enthusiasm as,… well, the web service I was working on.

For me, it was nothing to be excited about. If you think about it realistically, just for a second there, you would realize too, that there IS nothing to celebrate actually.

Would the world look any different tomorrow? na.. I don’t think so..

Would I be any happier or satisfied tomorrow? Naa.. fat chance, then why should I celebrate?

For me, everything’s going to be the same. I’ll follow the same routine in Jan 2010 as I followed in Dec 2009.

Then why on earth are the people outside my window celebrating with fireworks, I ask myself at 12 AM, 1 Jan 2010.

This is how we begin the new year… with fireworks.

What for?

Fireworks, or any kind of celebration for that matter, seem like an utter wastage of time, another bunch of money down the drain.

Should we, as a nation, be celebrating new year when we have so many things to mourn about?

Why do we keep forgetting we have nothing to celebrate today. Not this time, at least. Not this year round.

No milestones achieved.

No promises kept.

In fact, as far as I can see, there is only LOSS.

So many lives lost. And if that wasn’t enough to sooth our urge to destroy we went ahead with burning shops and bringing chaos to an otherwise saddened nation.

We literally ended the year with a BANG. Bravo!!

In this new year, though I don’t see the sanity behind calling it new except the fact that now the wall in my room will be adorned with a new calendar, we have another set of recently unemployed people to worry about, yet another family hoping for justice and mourning the loss of their loved ones, a collapsing economy with little hope, brand new addition to the category of not-school-going kids because they will not be joining school after vacations considering the sad fact that the means of income for their household, the shops their fathers owned is now no more than a mere ashtray.

Yes!!! NOW I see the reason behind the celebrations going on out there. It’s all clear now. Yes, they have much to celebrate. No one can stop them. No, not even rational thinking.

And then there are all those people who keep asking me about my new year resolutions. And I find myself at a loss of words when I remember that this time around I have decided not to go with the New Year thingy. After all, this is not OUR new year, is it?

Yeah, yeah we don’t actually go by the Islamic Calendar, though we never fail to take an off if the day is an important one according to the Islamic Calendar. This way we get to enjoy the benefits of BOTH the calendars. Lucky, smart people we are..

I have nothing against following solar Calendar. What I am against is adopting THEIR custom of celebrating new year.

And I am not against resolutions either. But why do we have to wait for a new year to begin so that we can try to be what we want to be. Why do they have to be New Year resolutions? Why can’t we start with our resolutions or work towards achieving or goals in the middle of the year? And why do we have to have resolutions for an entire year? Why can’t we take one month at a time?

And if new year resolutions have an importance of their own, why didn’t we come up with anything at the start of Muharram. Simply because that’s not how it’s done. That’s not how the world does it. And we, obviously, have to do what everyone else does.

How many of us thought we should start this new year with offering prayers instead of fireworks and sms? How may of us left our beds for Fajar prayers after a night of unearned celebrations?

Nothing wrong with analyzing the year that just passed, trying to sort out what can be done to make the coming year better. But is that really what we’re looking for when we wish each other a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR? Really?!!?

Justifying Failure

2009-12-29T01:31:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you don’t fail because you didn’t work hard enough..

Sometimes it’s because you didn’t exactly know what to do…

But could that be a justification???

To study or not to study..

2009-12-17T21:36:00.001-08:00

It’s been long since I have written something for my blog, or written anything for that matter. And today when I am here, I shouldn’t be.. I have taken an off from office and I should be doing nothing but studying.. but allow me to justify my (extra curricular) activities by saying “I am tuning myself to my study mode” :P

Anyways, this is supposed to be my second last semester of Masters, and InshaAllah, I’ll be done with Masters in July 2010.

But sometimes I wonder whether it is of any use studying all this or not. For e.g. two out of three courses I am taking this semester are pretty interesting and knowledgeable, but all the knowledge gained (that is, if I do gain any) will be lost as I won’t be able to implement any of it. I am not at this point in a position to implement them. But then again, if I learn them now, I hopefully won’t have to learn it the hard way, that is, if I remember all the things I learn, and if I forget then it would mean I would have to learn them all over again the hard way. Then what exactly am I doing here?

But then again I don’t expect to gain any technical knowledge in Masters, now, do I? We were supposed to do that in BS and after that you are on your own.

I had a conversation with a friend a while back, and she was of the opinion that if you sit in a class for three hours, every week, for an entire semester and then also give exams, you are bound to learn SOMETHING.. and she is right. You ARE bound to learn something.

But… Do I pay attention in the class?? (well, that’s my fault only) and there are still a lot of other things.. would I learn enough? would I remember enough? Would I be able to implement or make use of it? Ever?? Would saying that I have a Masters degree (once I inshaAllah get it) would be correct? Would I have the same amount of knowledge a Masters degree holder should have?

Or am I just wasting my time?

Well, right now, I AM.. I should be studying.. I have a paper tomorrow..

But hey, people, who read this some day.. share your experiences.. am I the only one feeling this or do all of us go through this at some point in time… :|

Inserting HTML tags

2009-11-01T06:29:00.000-08:00

The problem with writing HTML, ASP etc. codes in your page is that the browser considers anything starting with an angle bracket as HTML code, it will try to make something of the code and hence your page will not be the way you intended it to be.

Let's say you are writing a tutorial for HTML and you want to convey to your readers how to make certain words appear bold in html. You'll naturally use the tag for bold... you'll try to use the tag, write some text within the opening and closing tags and try to show your users how the tag is used... instead, what you'll get will be the text appearing as bold and the tags used to make words appear bold absent.. this is because the browser considered the bold tag to be what it actually is.. the bold tag, it would think that you intended the text to appear in bold.. how is it supposed to know you are writing a tutorial anyways... (on second thought, if you are good enough to be writing HTML tutorials.. you would know this already)

What makes a tag, a tag are the surrounding angle brackets.. if you omit them anything you write won't be considered HTML or ASP tags.. the trick is to use the codes for the angle brackets...
The codes are as follows

<	<
>	>

So for the above example, you'll write something like..

<b>This is bold text.</b>

Refer to the following link for more codes..
http://codex.wordpress.org/Writing_Code_in_Your_Posts

My Blog is Fabulous

2009-10-18T08:40:00.001-07:00

There are people in this world who think my blog is fabulous.. Yeh!!!!!!

Hurray!!!!!

** Happy Happy **

** Smile Smile **

Haris Gulzar honoured me with this award.. Thanks a lot :D

Do I have to give a award-receiving-speech? I think, I better not :P

Here is the award:

Rules of the Award:

* List five current obsessions.

* Pass the award on to five more fabulous blogs.

* On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them.

* When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well.

* Don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by leaving a comment on their blog.

Hmm… so FIVE obsessions.. really? five?

Okay, let’s try it.. (I think I’ll copy some of Haris’s, coz when I read them, some of them seemed like mine.. :) )

TV Shows:

I have been a TV buff, since,… well… as long as I can remember. No matter what’s happening in the world, no matter if I have an important exam the next day, I would still find some time for TV. :)

Now I don’t watch TV, but I still watch TV shows.. on my computer.. I won’t even start listing the shows I have, do or plan to watch.. it would be a complete waste of space.. so just believe me when I say this, it’s an obsession all right.. :)

Farmville: (for the lack of a better obsession :P )

It’s an on and off obsession.

I have never been a games freak. And I still won’t call myself that.

Some of my friends got me to play Farmville, and as I said, since then, it has become an on and off obsession.

Sometimes I don’t even like playing it, and I still keep playing.

Yesterday, if I hadn’t been playing farmie here, I would have completed that dreaded, lengthy fourth chapter, and would have been able to write *SOMETHING* in the paper. The teacher gave a full question out of chapter 4, and only those topics from that chapter, which I didn’t even bother skimming through.. Can you believe it!!! Well, I know, everyone can… it must have happened with everyone at one time or the other..

Talking:

Oh now I am getting the hang of it, coz talking is REALLY an obsession. I can talk for hours.. seriously HOURS

My mom sometimes gets so irritated that she asks me to stop talking.

My friends.. well.. most of them are just like me.. Anyone else, who isn’t that talkative, can’t bare me, let alone be my friend.. :)

If you want prove… check out the length of this post.. it said to list down 5 obsessions.. I could have just abided by the rules and listed them down, instead of writing a story for each..

A lot of people, well one in particular, (are you reading this post? or did you just leave it, like all other posts? :P) has complained about how long my posts are, and how he can’t read any of them, because they are all soo long…

I would stop now.. I’ll write a post on this obsession sometime, maybe.. :P

Eating: (this is one of Haris’s)

Yes, me too, I live to eat.. not eat to live..

If I am working/studying I get hungry.

If I am free I get hungry.

I eat a lot when I have exams.. and I always have exams.. so.. well…

(and they have just called me for dinner.. haha :P)

Chatting:

Is that the same as talking?? well, I am talking about internet, instant-messenger chatting…

I get tired of typing, and I still chat.

I sit in front of the computer at office, and still when I come back to home, I switch on my computer and sign-in to all the messengers.. and pity the person I find online at that time.. I’ll keep bugging that person, till they decide to answer :P

Okay, here are the five blogs I follow, and are fabulous for me

Rambler

Ammad Saleem's Blog

Things I’ll never say

Bewildered Soliloquy

What happens in London

I have been really late with this post. I didn’t do any justice with the tag… and this time I won’t give the I have been busy excuse.. but that’s what I have been, busy.. oh was that the same excuse? :P :P

Thank you, Haris, once again, for honouring my blog with this fabulous award. :D :D

Sometimes goodbye’s the only way

2009-10-09T10:05:00.001-07:00

I read a blog post, a while ago, about friendships and how they are supposed to always, always end. (Will post the link when I find it)

And the writer was absolutely right.

There was this line in the article that I really liked, and it was something like

“Your friends would do exactly what they promised they won’t do”

And this is a fact. Because when we make friends we just consider them “our friends”, forgetting the most crucial fact.. they are also “people”.

No one’s like you, no one is supposed to be like you. What would be the fun in life when everyone was just the same as you are. What would be the fun if everyone understood each other.

That article constantly reminded that all friendships eventually reach the same fate… “THE END”… all are supposed to end at one point or the other, the thing is, when would that point come.. sooner than you think.. or later than you anticipated.

But I have to disagree with the “ALL” part. Not ALL friendships end. Sometimes you have to make compromises, sometimes you forget about your ego for the other person, that is the time when you realize that your ego is insignificant as compared to the friendship you share with that particular friend of yours. Sometimes you give the other person a second chance. Sometimes you find a way out of the misunderstandings. Sometimes the fights would lead to a better, stronger friendship.. but not all the time… So you fight when you want to end the misunderstandings and continue with the good times as if they were not interrupted at all.

But there are also times,….

When you realize that there are too many misunderstandings, too many problems without a solution, at that time, instead of using harsh words and ending up hurting each other and THEN ending everything.. it’s better just to end it, without the preceding “big fight”.

Sometimes goodbye’s the only way… for everyone involved. It’s not good, but then again, it’s not supposed to be good, but it’s the only way.. and you would eventually GET OVER IT, you’ll HAVE TO.

Say your goodbyes with a smile.. and let go…

Happy Second Birthday to Intricate Zone!!!!!

2009-09-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

Happy Second Birthday to my blog.. Intricate Zone... YEH!!!!!!

The first post "And Pakistan Lost" was published on September 25, 2007.
And the blog has now completed TWO WHOLE YEARS... HURRAY!!!! :D :D :D :D

Though the journey started with a different address, but who's noticing..

Yeh.. again...
:D
:D
:D
:D
:D

Good thing I don't have to repeat the same kind of story as was narrated in my first post, coz yesterday Pakistan WON!!!! against India.. Yeh again!!!!!! Hurray again!!!!

And yet again...
Happy Birthday to my blog...
Happy Birthday to Intricate Zone......

:D
:D
:D
:D
:D
:D

Those magical, magical days…..

2009-08-28T23:09:00.001-07:00

While I was chatting with a few friends of mine, at night, a memory long buried popped up in my head and demanded attention. And I asked The Writer, when I didn’t think he would know a thing about it, let alone remember it;

“Did you in your childhood read/heard the story Podna Podni?”

And as a reply, I got an excerpt from the story itself. He remembered the full story word for word. We went on discussing our favorite parts of the story. Mine was

“Guhs guhs mere kaan mein guhs” :P

(While on another window I started narrating the whole Podna Podni story to a friend, who had somehow missed it in her childhood).

This is a story I heard in Kassette Kahani. I don’t know how many of you have spent your childhood hearing these Kassette Kahani’s but I know a major part of mine was spent listening, and relistening to them. Always getting my parents to buy me the volumes I didn’t already have. Each Kassette Kahani would have an advertisment of the Kassette next in the series, and then I would want that one too. Traded it with friends just so that I could hear the entire collection. Although some of these stories were the Urdu translation of fairy tales like “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Cinderella”, these would be the ones I have had had a pleasure of reading as well, but hearing it was another kind of magic.

In the Kassette, the story of Podna Podni is narrated by a Nani amaan to little kids.

For those of you who are wondering; Podna is the name of a little bird (am not sure what the English word for Podna is, was it Sparrow?) Anyways, the King’s men caught Podni and then Podna sets out on a mission to rescue his Podni from “Raja”. Along the way, he meets ants, ocean.. and something else, I still can’t remember what the third thing was, these three after hearing Podna’s noble mission, offers him their help, in reply to which, Podna says;

“Guhs guhs mere kaan mein guhs”

In the end, of course, like all kid’s stories, Podna rescues Podni from Raja with the help of his three friends…

This post is in the memory of all those days, we spent reading and hearing fairy tales. The time long gone, but which still gives pleasure. Those were truly the days… :D

A year gone by

2009-08-24T08:22:00.001-07:00

I have been meaning to write this post since 1st July, 2009, but never got around to actually writing it, and until recently I had decided not to write at all.. But it’s worth a shot :)

So… 1st July, 2009 was the date I completed exactly one year at my job. One year gone by.. first year completed of the career journey. And if I think about it, a lot has changed since I graduated from University and joined my very first job. And of course, this is nothing new, it happens with every one, and so has happened with me as well.

There was a time, when I had spent a month at office and a senior had commented

“Aap ko aik maheena ho bhi gaya.. aur pata bhi nahi chala”. (You’ve been here for a month, it didn’t seem like a month to me)

I took no time in replying

“Mujhe se pochein, mujhe to aik aik din pata chala” :P

Such was the extent of my boredom, during the first month. All I was expected to do was to read documents and even edit them. It took me everything not to say

“You know na, I haven’t been hired as a technical writer, rather as a Software Engineer. My appointment letter actually says ‘Associate Software Engineer’.”

At that time, I couldn’t figure out WHY on earth was I being asked to edit some centuries old document, and put in what.. screenshots!!!!

I was also given the code of one of the projects and was asked to go through it

“Ghool ke pee lein isay”

my Boss would tell me. And this is what I tried to do, of course, I wasn’t actually able to do the same, but that did help me to understand a lot of things.

I can still remember my first meeting cum training session, where my supervisors explained the entire theme of the project on a small white board. I don’t think I remember any thing else from the meeting.. except a few terms I didn’t have a clue about.. and I wondered why everyone kept using them but I never realized those terms will become a part of my vocabulary, and I’ll be the one using them in every sentence that comes out of my mouth.. :P

My vocabulary is now punctuated with a lot of terms which don’t actually exist in the dictionary, and if they do, not at all in the sense we use them in our day to day life. The process started when I joined University.. I learnt the word Cheetah there, before that we simply used the word Genius or Einstein… and I thought the process would end there, and that I have learnt all the jargon terms.. but I was so wrong.. In this training session, the words that got my attention and got stuck in my memory were.. let me put the entire sentences here..

Code nahi phatna chaye

Peeli screen nahi aani chaye, chahe kuch ho jaye.. koi bhi screen aa jaye.. peeli screen nahi aani chaye…

Yeah.. go on, call me illiterate for not knowing these terms during bachelors, but we actually didn’t. We simply used to say, in plain terms.. “Yaar error aa gaya”

But now I use all these terms like I learnt them during my first year in this world and not the first year at job.

The first month went by slowly.. with no friends at the new place, my reserved self refusing to go and talk to any one unless and until it was absolutely necessary, avoiding a face-to-face conversation as much as possible, and using our network chat software, trying to figure out whether I’ll be editing documents all the time, or will I be given actual work someday, and then at a later time, am I Support Engineer or what, I should have joined Support instead of the so-called Development team.

But things began to roll, slowly at first, the clients called up with all the problems. In fact, my very first cut over was to go live with all the modifications. I was taken to the client side so that I can get accustomed to the environment, meet our clients and all. That cutover, went smoothly enough. Just one script refused to execute, giving an error every time we tried. I got nervous like anything.. saying things like

Phele to yeh script sahi chal rahi thi (This script worked fine before.)

Thankfully, my supervisor handled the situation pretty well, not loosing his head like I did on the face of a problematic script (:P).

And this above, is actually called a smooth enough cutover, because there are always problems.. always…

I was given a project, which can’t actually be called a project from scratch, but it wasn’t equivalent to giving support to clients either. I was to develop a new module in the existing site, and I wasn’t even able to complete that when I was given another project, I was asked to make changes (which started out as a few changes and later became a big change) in the same project (but on the existing modules).

Then came the time when I was to visit the client side and test out all the new developments and modifications. Again, my boss sensing my nervousness decided that he and my supervisor will go along with me, to make sure everything’s going fine.

My boss asked me then

How much time do you think it will take you to test out everything?

And I said something like.. two hours or maybe two days… and it actually turned out to be WEEKS!!! That time was horrible (but marvelous at the same time :D), I discovered a lot of things I had done wrong, because I didn’t know any better, I used to take the office laptop at home and worked there, then directly went to the client side the next day.

But all that going to the client side for so long, did a very good thing. Before that, I didn’t really like going to the office everyday, but after the client’s visit, I thought, going to office is much better than going to the client side, and though I hadn’t really made any friends at office, at least there was some one to talk to, I could roam about.. and that’s what I did when I came back.. I roamed about, and talked to everyone.. and I started to ease-in a bit with the environment..

Again changes were requested in the project currently deployed at the test server. And again I went through the same cycle; development, testing, testing at client side, entertaining their farmaishine (wishlist).. it was another month or so there.. and finally, a cutover.. on a SUNDAY!!!

During this time I got permanent as well.. thankfully.. I was worried that after so many problems occurring at the client side, they won’t make me a permanent employee… might even let me go.. :)

My Masters began after a month into the job as well.. so all was going at the same time, job, first project, first cutover, classes, midterms, assignments, finals… everything.. and we thought Bachelors was difficult. :P

So eventually the project ended, went live with it, and since then, it has been one project after the other, and the journey uptil now has been good. At the beginning, I took more tension then needed, but slowly I got used to it, now I don’t deliberately forget about lunch just because I have work to do. I’ll always have work to do, so better always have something to eat to go along :P

For once in my life, I am getting along with my seniors. Never during my academic life (till Bachelors) have I ever been friends with any of my seniors. My seniors didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them, that is changing (but not much), I hope for the betterment. :)

(This post, highly resembles another post of mine, doesn’t it.. can’t help it.. just love to talk about the first few months at my job :P)

So, I have grown from a fresh graduate to one-year experienced employee, from someone who sat quietly at the corner, working and only working, with no messengers connected, to a person to whom people keep telling “aik yahoo messenger hee reh gaya hai woh bhi khul lo yaar” (Only Yahoo! Messenger has not been installed, why don’t you go ahead with that too?), from a person who didn’t budge from her seat now keeps bugging people until one of them agrees to go to the tuck shop with her, from the person who came in the office, switched on her computer and started working immediately to a person who now gets everyone to go to the roof with her before starting work, from the person who completely forgot the meaning of the term lunch, now starts buzzing her lunch mates to go to lunch from noon almost every other day… and the list goes on…

I know this has been the story with everyone else, but looking back at the year makes me realize that it was a good first year, MashaAllah, Allah ka shukar, :D, hope the rest of the career is as fun, or more fun.. Let’s just keep hoping for the very best and nothing else :D

Ramzan is here...

2009-08-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

And from tomorrow starts the blessed month of Ramadan in Pakistan. :)

We all know that this months brings with it blessings. But it's not only about fasting, it's also about earning more sawab in this month.

We should be praying more and reciting Quran more in Ramadan, and most of us definitely do that, but as it turns out for some of us (and here I am including myself), eat and sleep more during this month. Work and school goes out early so that gives us an opportunity to sleep during the evening as well. We go to sleep early at night so that we can get up in sehri, and then go to sleep again after fajar. This time, we should all try to spend more time in praying.. as one of my university teachers once said;

Sonay se kya ho ga? Kya kal phir neend nahi aye gee? Koi yeh keh de ke mein abhi zada so jaon to agla pura hafta nahi soan ga to woh aur baat hai, par aisa hota to nahi. Phir Ramzan mein to subha jaldi uth jaya karein aap loog. Neend to kabhi puri nahi ho gee.. shayad akhir mein ho jaye.. par woh bhi zaroori nahi

So, this time, let us all try to do the following;

Recite Quran as much as possible.
Recite the surahs we have memorized as much as possible. This can be done while travelling to and from work/school.
Recite Kalmas as much as possible. Again, can be done while travelling to and from work/school.
Try to memorize more surahs, but not just memorize the Arabic words, but the translation as well. And let us all try to understand the words.
Educate ourselves about our religion. The only way we can improve the image of Muslims in the eyes of the whole wide world is to become better muslims, and we can do that only if we try to earn more knowledge about Islam.

Have a blessed Ramzan everyone. May Allah bestow us with his blessings always. Ameen. :)

AJAX Control Toolkit

2009-06-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

With .NET 3.5, you can easily work on AJAX without installing any add-on. AJAX can be used in any web application without any hassel to speak of. And with AJAX more interactivity can be put in an application.

AJAX control toolkit makes life more easier. It provides many interactive controls, that can be put in your application easily. It is an open-source project.

How to start using AJAX Control Toolkit:

1. Download the toolkit here
2. Here's a video that explains how to set up the toolkit.

ASP.Net's official website gives an over view of all the controls provided in the toolkit here.

With the toolkit you can easily put animation in your app. There are a lot of things which can prove to be very helpful. You should definitely go through the above link, it shows how all the controls work, plus code is given to help you get you on your way to using these control effectively.

For every page that's going to use AJAX, or the toolkit (in other words, AJAX) ScriptManager has to be added.
All you have to do is put

<asp:ScriptManager ID = "Scr_Mgr" runat = "server" />

Plus to use the toolkit you have to register it first. If you just drag and drop any control then the below line of code would be added automatically, other wise you can put the line yourself;

<%@ Register assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" tagprefix="cc1" %>

Masked Edit Extender:
In the application I am working on these days; I have to provide a mask for the text box, so that each user who enters data can simply punch in the characters and the data will be formatted automatically. Of course, you can use a javascript for this, it's not like people didn't do this before AJAX came into the scene. But with the toolkit, as I mentioned, it becomes much more easier.

For the above scenario, Masked Edit Extender can be used. Masked Edit Extender, extends a textbox, you have to provide a Mask. Mask basically tells the format of the data.

Let's say you are looking for a format like this: "0312-3456789".
The syntax would go something like this;


<asp:ScriptManager ID = "Scr_Mgr" runat = "server" />
       <asp:TextBox ID = "txtbx" runat = "server" />
      
       <cc1:MaskedEditExtender ID="txtbx_MaskedEditExtender" runat="server"
           TargetControlID="txtbx"
           Mask = "9999-9999999"
           MessageValidatorTip="true"    
           MaskType= "None"
           InputDirection="LeftToRight"
           AcceptNegative="Left"
           DisplayMoney="None"
           ErrorTooltipEnabled = "true"
           ClearMaskOnLostFocus = "false" >
       </cc1:MaskedEditExtender>


1. It doesn't let you type more than the number of characters in the mask.
2. It lets you type letters if the mask allows you to. So say you put mask as
"AAAA-99999", for the first four characters only letters will be allowed, and no numbers,
and for the rest of the input, only numbers will be allowed, no letters.

The problem I faced was that, the mask appeared only when the user clicked on the text box, and when
the user was done typing and as the focus shifted to some other control, the input data again became
unformatted. That too can be handled simply by setting a property.

ClearMaskOnLostFocus = "false"

That's all for the moment. Other controls I found helpful are: Filetered Text Box and Validator Callout.
Might write something on them soon. :)

Shadows of the past.....

2009-06-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

It amazes me sometimes, how we keep living in the past. How something bad that happened to us a long time ago still has the power to affect us. I am not talking about things that have put a permanent dent on our lives, but things that we have overcome, simple facts that we have learnt to live with, the facts that are no more facts.
A simple example would be not getting something you really worked hard for, and even after you have realized that that something really wasn't for you, and what you've got as a substitute proved to be perfect for you. That not getting that something, not getting your desire, not getting what you wished dearly for, may have been depressing at the moment, but all got better after that. And maybe you got what you wanted to, but a little late. And you know all this, you know that whatever happened, happened for a reason, and a good one. You know that what happened was the best thing that could've happened to you, but whenever you are pushed down the memory lane, and you have to travel through the same depressing time again, why aren't we strong enough to make the journey down that road again with a smile, knowing that it had all passed now, and what you have at the present is good enough for you. Why?

And why, when you keep on telling people, who are going through something like that in the present, that everything will be fine. You keep reminding them that life won't give you anything you can't handle, and you really believe it too.

But even then, why do we still let that past control our today??
Or... is it just me????

And Pakistan brings home the cup..

2009-06-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Again this is not an informative/news post.. EVERYONE knows Pakistan won Cricket World Cup T20, those who didn't watch the match, got to know that by the excited chattering of their cricket-lover friends..
Then what this post is for then? Well.. nothing,, just a post :P

Almost everyone, even people who after being disappointed again and again by Pakistan team's performance, put aside their frustrations and watched the final match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka, who had not lost a single match throughout the tournament, finally lost the most important match of all. But they did play very well. It was not a match won easily. It was not an easy win, and hence deserving, with superb performances by our team. :D :D

And so the people went crazy. We've been disappointed too many times, that when Pakistan won the match, and when we Pakistanis finally got a good news amidst the troubles the nation has been facing for quite a while now, all went delirious (well, most) in their own unique ways.

It was quite a celebration everywhere.

As soon as Pakistan won, people started messaging each other, sending their congratulations to their friends. Appropriately saying.. "We WON!!!!"

Many had already gathered at friend's places so that they can watch the match together, and that sure would have been fun.

The next day, people were actually hugging each other and saying congratulations.

Almost everyone on my messenger and gtalk list mentioned in their nicks that: "Yehhhh.. Pakistan won" (by the grace of Allah)

This was prove enough that we were all full of bliss.. :D

A good post, with a few facts can be found at Ammad Saleem's blog

Office Chuckles

2009-06-22T03:15:00.000-07:00

Note:
The following though may not be very funny for all, and it wasn't exactly hilarious for me either, but it was something I thought was worth sharing on blog.. so here goes.. (aren't Notes supposed to be in the end??? well.. never mind.. :) )

As I sat trying to work my way through the log files, trying to find the reason due to which the customers were facing an error, thinking..
"Ab kya phat gaya yaar?" ("NOW what's wrong?")
suddenly a voice like "Peeepp" from behind me startled me, but only for a few seconds, as I realized what it was, I got back to my work.

A message popped on my screen (Office Network Chat);
F:
"That voice...any idea?"

Me:
"Yup, it's the laptop. Apni zindagi kee akhri saansein letay waqt chila raha hai.. (crying while counting minutes to it's death)"

F:
"Oh...."

The peep voice continued and after a while I added.

Me:
"And all of us are too busy to put the laptop to peace. We'll let it shout and disturb us rather than get up and do something about it. Getting up and taking a few steps towards the laptop may be counted as exercise you know."

F:
"Then why don't you get up if you are so worried about it."

Me:
"Naah... Let it be"

Just about then I found the root of error and called my boss. At that point my boss and the people sitting next to him realized the noise pollution emitting from the cubicle near me... It took them a few seconds to realize that it was the laptop. And I, helpful as I am (:P), suggested that we keep it for charging.
And my boss, as he walked towards the laptop, rejected my suggestion and did something more wise.. He put it to sleep... (equivalent to killing it in accordance with my analogy of the laptop dying).

Though it was the obvious thing to do if you weren't in the mood of going through the hassle of putting the laptop on charge, neither F nor I came up with it. And it was a little funny when I saw my boss executing the easier solution.

Cricket World Cup T20

2009-06-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a long long time, almost two years, since I have watched cricket.
When I did watch, it was more for the love of watching Pakistan win than the love for the game itself. I have always been interested in Pakistan playing and winning (of course) as compared to enjoying the game.
And why it has been so long.... the last year at Bachelors, which we like to call the FYP year was spent doing a lot of things; studying, making your FYP, job surfing, interviews and of course enjoying the last year, celebrating days etc. I was so busy doing all this that I forgot about cricket altogether. Plus, the last World Cup, with the coach's story and Inzi resigning and Pakistan loosing horribly, didn't help at all. And then when that hectic year ended, another began, and the tempo was lost somewhere. :P
Anyways, so these days, I am not actually free, but I have found my long-lost interest in Cricket... that may very well be because of the fact that Pakistan is performing better. Plus, after every match, team mates discuss the highlights. All this was bound to get me back on my track..
So ta-daaaa I am back!!!!!!

Anyways, so I am not actually here to discuss World Cup T-20, if you wanna do that.. go hang out on Cricinfo... Here we'll be discussing something else... :P This is a trip down the memory lane.. only people who were there with me will be able to enjoy this (of that too there is only a thin chance) :P

So all of this cricket-fuss reminded me of the time when I used to be a die-hard fan and still couldn't understand why there was such a thing as LBW.. :P

Only one of the girls in my class shared my never-dying (which eventually did die.. but only for a while) devotion for Pakistan team, and only one was what I needed.
During breaks between classes, we'll rush to the computer labs, trying to find a free computer, hurridely logging in and then checking cricinfo for the latest updates. But more fun was when we didn't find any free computer, but still we couldn't risk not knowing ball-to-ball details, so we would go and nag others;

We would either find someone with cricinfo open (and there were many!!), we would make sure they happen to come in our route to the door, and give a furtive, non-interested glance to their computers while we were passing by, and there... we'll have our scores.

Or we'll sneak up on our unsuspecting friends, snatch away the keyboards from them, and check the score. And hear things like;

"Koi kaam nahi hai tum logon ko kya????"

"Don't you people have TRW class?"

"Khud ko to kuch karna nahi hai.. humein to project/assignment bananye do...."

And then there was that day, when one of our teachers, who proved to be an even-bigger fan, started discussing a match, giving her comments (and that too like an expert) on yesterday's game, and suddenly one of the guys stood up, and said, with a very serious expression on his face..

"Ma'am mein abhi ja ke score check kar ke aata hoon"
like that was the most important thing in the world to do at that exact moment.. and seriously it was... :) :P

And then came the World Cup... I wasn't disappointed at Pakistan loosing, more disappointed by the way our people were reacting. No matter how important it is for anyone to watch Pakistan win, it's still just a game, nothing more, nothing less.. These are the people who make heroes and they are the ones who perish them.

And I remember.. well not exactly, as I didn't watch the match... the match between Pakistan and Ireland, which unfortunately Pakistan lost, and which was Inzimam's last match.

Back to the present, as Rambler and I were going up the flight of stairs, making our way towards the lunch room and we had an encounter with two ladies coming back from lunch....

Lubrilu:
"Mubarak ho India haar gaya"

And as the match I mentioned above (the one between Pakistan and India), was all that I had on my mind that day, I found the mention of cricket as a great opportunity to let everyone have an insight on my story... I immediately switched into my story-telling mode, not caring at all whether anyone was interested even a bit or not;

"I remember that Pakistan-Ireland match... and can you imagine? I had a mid-term the next day.. and that too of Software Engineering.. Why would they ever schedule papers during World Cup... "
FarQuest said:
"And I know you still watched the match"
Me:
"NO!!!! I studied.. and I flunked... well what else was I supposed to do... Almost everyone failed that mid-term.."

(And I don't know why I would mention something like me failing a paper on my blog.. but well.. I just did. And I'll get people to comment and vouch for 'everyone failed that midterm..' to prove that I wasn't the only one)

The reason I decided to mention this match was that I still remember the only glimpse I had of that match.. Inzimam-ul-haq going back to the pavilion after playing his last batting inning, with tears in his eyes... You put in so much of your time on a game, even if you are playing for yourself, and not for your country or your team, even then.... you deserve a better farewell than Inzi got.. His team mates might have given him a better one.. and maybe Pakistanis did too, and I just don't know of that, but what I do know is that what was happening in those days, our reaction at that time.. well, they weren't good.. :)

And as that was the last match I watched before I lost my interest in Cricket, it's going through my head these days, this match and all the fun we had in uni, the way we died to hear of the updated score. And I thought I should better write a post on it (for the need of having something better to write)

Anyways.. I am back on track.. I have started watching cricket again.. Pakistan is in Finals (YEHHH!!!)
Yesterday, everyone was hugging each other and saying Congratulations like Pakistan has won the final already.. (when it has won the semi-final only, I hope it does win the finals, and then it will be time for celebration..)
And about two to three times, the semi final was discussed by my team-mates.. Sentences like
"Kya awesoommee match tha yaar.."
kept landing on my ears...

P.S:

The first post I wrote on my blog was of Pakistan loosing the match.. :P

The Writer commented on me a few days ago..
"You can write an essay on anything"
Though I did not take very lightly to that comment.. but I think I have just proved him right, haven't I?
Just wrote a mindless post.. on a mindless topic, which was completely OFF the topic... :P :P

Aab-e-ZamZam

2009-04-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

We, the "IT" people

2009-04-18T20:40:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from a chat session with a uni friend. This must have happened somewhere in July, August 2008.

Me:"The fact that you are not replying to me and am still talking is prove enough of how boooreedd to death I am"

Dhat: "Yeah... they say Software Engineers go crazy after a while"

I have had my share of IT people, and when I joined my job I promised myself I wouldn't join their league. I have this friend, who because of the pressure he has to endure at work, has become very quiet. He spends his entire day at office, and that's more than the usual 9-6 timing. Then at home too, he sits either in front of the tv or spends his time with his beloved laptop. And this is exactly what I didn't wish myself to get into.

And during the first few months, I held true to my promise. After 4 hard years at university, where even when we were at our homes, we had to spend our time working on the computer as we had a lot of assignments, projects and presentations to get done. So naturally, when I joined job and came back home at about 7, and had nothing to do at all, I felt I had a lot of time on my hands, and I spent it sitting with my father, talking endlessly, then I would go to the kitchen and sit on a stool and talk to my mother, both of them now know everyone I know at my office. And then I don't know what happened, but I went back to my old routine, which includes coming back at home, freshing up and then switching on the computer. Sometimes the excuse is;

"I have to submit this presentation proposal tomorrow."
OR
"I have a long overdue assignment I have to work on"

But they are just that.. excuses, mere excuses. And I too have become a part of the league I was trying to evade in the beginning. It hasn't been one year yet and I have broken the promise I made to myself.
In my university days, when I noticed what that friend of mine (the one I wrote about above) was doing to himself and when I thought that his family must miss talking to him, my resolution not to become like him one day strengthened. But now, I have become just like him. And it's not just me, it's the story of every other software engineer I know.

We all wake up in the morning, as late as possible, get ready for work, go to our offices, sit in front of our machines for 9 hours or more, then come back to our homes and then again switch on our machines, and spend the remaining of our day in front of our Home PCs. The only times we aren't sitting in front of our computers is when we are eating, sleeping, or traveling. We don't have much time to talk to our families, or our friends. We don't know what's going on in their lives, and we don't much care either. We get more worried when our computer breaks down, then we care about when one of our friends is feeling low.

The friendships that have remained since I graduated are with the people who have the same routine I have, and this is because we can chat with each other. The rest of my friends.... I don't know where they are, or what they are up to these days.

To prove my point, this is an excerpt from an actual-talking session with one of my class-fellows and now my colleague;

"I go back home, switch on my machine, log in to MSN, and spend my time doing on one thing or the other(all which involves computer). My mom keeps shouting that I don't spend any time at home, even when I am at home. But what to do? I guess she'll get over it"

The truth has been twisted here a bit. But more or less, this is what we are all doing.

And I have realized that this is the reason, why I am exhausted all the time. I have a life, yes I do, but there is no such quality of life to speak of. I never feel relaxed because even during the time I should be relaxing, I do things that get on my nerves and the funny thing is that I don't even realize it.

The problem lies in our daily routine. And the fact that we are not aware of the problem. We are just spending our lives... just spending it, not actually living it.
We all are a part of a marathon, and we don't even know who we are competing against, are we just trying to prove others that we can spend the most time in front of our computers without having an actual conversation with any one, without having any life?????

How long do we think we can go on like this?????

Penny for my thoughts......

2009-04-11T22:46:00.000-07:00

Prologue
A lot has been happening for the past month or so (why do my posts have to start with this?), and I have had time to think a lot about all that's been happening, this isn't because I have nothing better to do, it's because I can't stop thinking about it all. And my friends have to go through the torture of listening to me and then calming me.. So I decided to save them from the trouble and pour all this on my blog (but I would still make them read it, so there's no salvation for them :P)... so this is sort of a page from my personal diary (which by the way I don't have :P). So here goes....

Penny for my thoughts

...maybe if I could just be able to steal myself away from all this, maybe if I could just learn to forget, maybe then I'll stop feeling like this, maybe then I'll feel a little better... maybe if I could just stop dwelling on the past... maybe...
...maybe if we could just stop the blame game, maybe.... maybe this wouldn't happen.....

The wars inside...

A while ago I received a forwarded sms from a friend and I thought I would write a post on it, but wasn't able to because I didn't get time, and when I did get time, I wasn't in my "writing mood".
I have deleted the sms now, but this is what I can remember:

An old man told his son;

"Every day two wolves fight inside us. One wolf is good, joy, happiness.. the other wolf is evil, anger, ego.."

The son asks;

"Which wolf wins?"

And the old man replies;

"The one we feed..."

And if you think about it, this is very true. At the end of the day, what matters is the decisions we made, in fact, the entire day depends upon the decisions we make. We can decide to get angry and not only ruin our mood but also other's, or we could just let it be.

The human aspect
And I wonder sometimes about us human beings.. how we are made.. sometimes in fact, most of the times, we forget all the good a person has done for us, and remember the one bad thing he does, the one mistake he committed.

And sometimes it's because we have had enough, maybe we were forgiving and forgetting things for so long that we can't continue with it anymore. At that time we think that putting an end to it all is a much better option. And sometimes we are right in thinking that.

Forgiving and Forgetting
I read this (also in an sms), and I am not sure whether it's correct or not...

"Learn to forgive people for their mistakes, like you want Allah to forgive you for yours"

But it's so hard to forgive someone, right???
And why should we be the one forgiving others? Why don't they try? Why be the first one to end a petty fight?
And sometimes we even forget what it was all about, how it began, but we still continue living between walls...
And we are so wrong in doing all this. We expect Allah to forgive us for even bigger crimes, and we expect others to forgive us every time we hurt them, but we are not willing to do the same for other people.

And those we love
And then there are times when we vent out our feelings, more specifically our anger, on the people we love. These are our parents, our siblings, our friends, or maybe just someone who's willing to listen. These are the people who had nothing to do with making us angry or depressed. These are the people who have always been there for us, and this is exactly why we take them for granted...

Everything happens for a reason
Now isn't that true? Everything happens for a reason. Isn't that what everyone says, particularly those who at the moment are enjoying the best of everything, their lives couldn't have been any better, and they are the ones to give you advice. What do they know??
But let me tell you, they are right. 100%. Everything does happen for a reason. It's what you do with it that makes all the difference....

And you get what you deserve
And I have finally realized that this is very very true. A while ago, I found myself in a situation where whatever decision I made would leave one of my friends hurt. And one decision would hurt me more than the other. And guess what I did.. I made the decision that would hurt me less, and guess what.. I was wrong, the decision I made did hurt me as well as the other person.

But the thing is, about an year ago, I put one my very nice friends in such a situation. It was for the same event, and the situation couldn't have been more identical. And she, being an intelligent and mature person that she is, made the right decision. And still I was furious with her, and I didn't talk to her at all for (I don't know) a few days, when somewhere in my heart I did know that it wasn't her fault at all, it wasn't her doing, but someone else's, but I still had to show my anger, and I chose this way (silence) to let the anger out of my system. I ignored her, even when she herself came and talked to me, I just passed by, ignoring her. It must have hurt her a lot, I realize now, but at that time I had my own anger to cater to.

And now I understand how wrong I was, when fate put me in the same situation, and when I made the worst decision that I could. I realize now how wrong I was....
But never the less, I don't want time to go back or something, what's done is done..

but...

...maybe if I could just be able to steal myself away from all this, maybe if I could just learn to forget, maybe then I'll stop feeling like this, maybe then I'll feel a little better... maybe if I could just stop dwelling on the past... maybe...
...maybe if we could just stop the blame game, maybe.... maybe this wouldn't happen.....

The Marks Theory

2009-04-11T08:05:00.000-07:00

Back in Bachelors we waited for results and dreaded them at the same time. But at least I had a category of good and bad marks. But in Masters the very thick line between what are good marks and what are bad marks has not just gone thin, but it has vanished completely. I don't have any concept in my mind now which defines good marks.
This Tuesday, one of our Professors showed us our Mid-term copies. I sorted through the answer scripts, looking for my roll number, fetched my copy and of course my eyes automatically went to the section where marks are entered.

'Hmm 64 out of 70,, hmm not bad'

(whereas in Bachelors it would have been

'Coollll yaar, I got 64 out of 70, I mean, come on yaar, SEVENTY.. SIXTY-FOUR SEVENTY')

As I walked back to my seat with the copy in my hands, I realized it wasn't 70, it was 90. And still the expression remained the same, 'hmmm, not bad'. Whereas in Bachelors it would have been...

'GOD!!!! 64 out of 90. I have practically FLUNKED my mid term. How would I ever recover in finals? And how many marks would I realistically be able to obtain in Finals, when we would have the entire course, and this time it wasn't even half the course. I would have more to study......'

And the depression phase would have gone for the entire day. And resurface again before the finals.

I don't know if it happens with everyone or not, but it sure is happening with me... Am I normal?? :P Please, don't answer that, I don't even wanna know the answer to that. :P :)

Masterpieces

2009-04-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

For some unknown reason, the image I have put on my header doesn't display. Why am I so desperate, that I keep on mentioning it over my blog (you don't know what the people around me are going through these days, they have to listen to me all day long complaining about the header, and the image it refuses to show), is because I got one of my very nice friends to make an image for my header. She visited my blog just for that and then Photoshoped three images for me. As I can't put them on the header, I guess, it's fair enough to dedicate a post on them.. so here are the images people... All created by this talented friend of mine..

Parametric Singleton Pattern

2009-04-05T05:53:00.000-07:00

We were asked to study Parametric Singleton patterns as an assignment. It was a long time ago, and I just thought today that I can write a post on it... just for the sake of having something new on my blog, if not for anything else. :P

You implement Singleton, when you want that only one instance of your class can be created. A single instance is created the first time, and everytime an instance is requested the same instance is returned. You do this by making the constructor private, and creating a function which takes care of creating an instance when the first request is made and then returning that instance on subsequent requests.

Now what happens when you want to maintain single instances pertaining to particular parameters. You could go with creating multiple Singleton classes, but it would be a complete waste of time if the three classes do the exact same thing but differ only in the parameters.

While searching, the best example I found that explained to me the need of having Parametric Singleton was of Logging.

When you create an application, most of the times you need to maintain a log file, which keeps track of all the things the application is doing. Let's say your application connects with a database and plays with the data and manipulates it depending on certain logic. It iterates through each row and makes a decision on what to do with it. Let's say you wanna keep track of all the rows it iterates through and the decision it takes. And you decide to log it all in a file. For this specific purpose Singleton Pattern will do just fine. In fact it would do just great... But what if your application needs to maintain more than one log. Let's say your application connects with an external interface and it needs to maintain a log for that, then there are things that the application does internally and it needs to maintain a log for that too. So now we have two logs, creating two separate singleton classes for each kind of log is not a very good option because if you get down to it, it's simply writing in two different log files, just the path and the name of the file is different, all the rest remains the same. So why have two different classes which do the exact same work, why not have one Singleton class which could this time return two instances pertaining to each file type (external interface and one for internal working).

So:

In a parametric singleton pattern a single instance of a class is created for a parameter.
It is based on the Singleton design pattern in which a single class is created. Whenever an object of that class is required the same object is returned.
Similarly, in parametric singleton pattern a single object is created pertaining to each parameter.
The instances are created and put in a hash table, array list etc. (to keep track of the objects created). When ever an object with particular parameters is requested, this table is checked to determine whether an object containing the specified parameters has already been created or not. If it has, the existing instance is returned; otherwise a new object is created and returned. This new object is saved in the table as well.

The advantages of using Parametric Singleton, I suppose, would include all the advantages you get from Singleton pattern.

You can get rid of creating extra instances of a class now, based on parameters. This couldn't be done with using our traditional Singleton and hence we ended up not-using Singleton and creating multiple instances, though not exactly needed.

Do check out the following sites for better insight:

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/satisharveti/ParametricSingleton02112009062638AM/ParametricSingleton.aspx (this one's has a good code example)

http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/dhananjaycoder/singlepattern11252008002706AM/singlepattern.aspx (Singleton Pattern)

http://www.jot.fm/issues/issue_2007_03/column2/

Accident

2009-04-04T13:17:00.001-07:00

Neither was this one imported.....

Originally Posted on: 11/21/07

Yesterday could be categorized as a bad day for us - our class. A friend of ours, had a bad accident. All we got to know in the morning was that she had an accident. God knows why I didn't think it was serious. I just can't understand this attitude of mine. An accident is an accident. it's just that yaar.
Anyways, i heard my friends saying that it was a serious accident. but it didn't hit my stupid-self until i saw her. and that was that. I was horrified to see her like that, couldn't even recognize her. :( and then today i got to know the details. a car hit her and she flew and fell a few feet away. the guy who hit her, who by the way is younger than us (is a student of matric) had atleast the decency to take her to the hospital. when her father came back to the site, he only saw her shoes there. isn't this all horrible. difficult to contemplate.

a friend of mine in college met a horrible accident too. a truck hit the bike his brother was riding, she was sitting behind him. you haven't heard the horrible part yet.... her brother died. she was in a critical situation, but she survived....

but if you ever go through such situations, would you ever be able to forget, be the same again....
you might become a better person after that or you might become a worse person, but can you ever be the same again????

Searching

2009-04-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Didn't import this one either..... :( :(

Originally Posted on: 11/21/07

Don't need to make a post for this... but what the hell....
these days we (my group members and i) are trying to make some sense out of codes written by other people. we mostly fail. sometimes we just succeed in understanding what a particular functions is supposed to do without putting much thought in how it does it. :P

I have found a treasure on the internet :D

2009-04-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

I am trying to do something about the comments that Blogger failed to import to my new blog.. and I found that I might be missing a post or two as well. I tried to search for this post on this new blog of mine, and I couldn't. Though this post is not a very interesting one, but I still wrote it.. so here I am pasting it here... :) :)

Originally Posted on: 1/25/08

You can find everything on the internet."
"Internet can really help you in a lot of things."

That's all very true.
I knew it to be true for a very long time.
When I learnt a few things by reading the tutorials on the internet.
Like I learnt to work on Macromedia Fireworks by reading tutorials provided by a website called www.entheosweb.com.
When the internet helped me in studying for some of my courses.
When the internet helped me in completing research assignments, presentations and stuff etc.

I knew for a very long time that Internet can help you in a lot of stuff.

But I never loved it like I do now.

For some time now I have gotten this strange urge to collect as many ebooks as I can.
On as many different subjects as I can. (but these different subject must have to do something with the computers).

It wasn't until I found a treasure of ebooks on internet that I fell completely in love with it.
Internet really is a treasure.
And it wasn't when I found the ebooks of infomational material like books on Software Engineering or Data Mining when I started enjoying the internet. It was when I found a reservoir of Stephen King novels that I realized how useful internet can be.
I found books on the net whose titles I have only read on other books but never saw then in any book store or book fairs. Like The Dead Zone.
And if you can get them for free on the internet then why wouldn't you like it haan?

Before I found the ebooks on internet I used to go through the "net storage" of my institute and found books there. But ofcourse they only provided course or reference books. What else would you expect from a university? Novels?

So here are the websites you can find good books on:
www.dbebooks.com
www.esnips.com (this one has novels too).

Aur bhi ghum hain zamanay mein.....

2009-04-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

For quite a while now I have been trying to upgrade my blog's theme, adding more widgets (which actually work). I can't find my way around CSS and I am bad at designing, and I mean really bad. Girls are supposed to be good at choosing colors and contrasts sort of things, but guess what, I am different!! :P
So I got this friend of mine, who is a complete cheeti in Photoshop (next thing I am calling her up to tell that she got mentioned in my blog, maybe that would get her to visit it), to design some good images for my header.
And she sent me three brilliant designs, loved all three of them, and picked up the one I thought was the best... NEWS FLASH!!!! Blogger uploads the image all fine, saves it all fine, but when it comes to displaying it on the blog... THERE IS NO IMAGE THERE TO SPEAK OF...

Then there is this other thing going on.. Blogger introduced "Reactions" to posts thing, which I think is pretty cool.. But.. it doesn't work on my blog either. Any guesses why?

The only reason I could come up with is "They HATE me".. Why? I don't have any answer to that.
Maybe they are just angry, why?? I don't know that either.

So I got another blogger to upload an image on his header.. maybe there wasn't anything wrong with my blog, maybe things were going not-so-well at blogger people's end.. but not prizes for guessing, the image uploads and displays on his blog, but refuses to do so on my blog (so maybe they really do hate me).

I decided to put my rantings on Google's help forum, thinking that I would get some answer, some solution, or just some sympathies.... ohhh I was so so wrong.. Uptill now there hasn't been any answer there.. just my lonely lonely post....

And there was the problem of my comments not getting imported on this new blog :( :( sigh, sigh.... tears, tears.....

So I again started searching for themes. And couldn't find anything good on internet. I want some thing that is simple and which doesn't take ages to load.

I am quite happy with my current theme, if it would just allow me to upload a decent image.. I only want to upload an image, for crying out loud, is that too much to ask for????

I finally found a working code for "Most popular posts". Appartently, it's working fine.. let's see for how long that remains true.

I checked "Google's help forum" yesterday, to see if someone had answered my post there, but what I found there was not an answer to any of my problems, but a lot of other problems... and thought "Yaar, aur bhi ghum hain zamanay mein.. yahan to sirf aik image hee nahi upload ho raha...."

Mid term blues

2009-03-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

And the mid terms are here AGAIN... Exams never seem to end, do they?

And I still find myself wondering why I didn't study side by side.
If exams are not going on or about to start, studying doesn't seem an option at all. It's always I am tired right now. I do nothing fun the entire week so Saturday and Sundays are for that, having fun, chilling out, sleeping, watching tv and movies, NOT for studying.
But when the time's up I always always promise myself that this won't happen the next time. From now onwards I'll study hard, concentrate on my classes, read up on things on a weekly basis, search the topics we cover in class on the internet so that I get more knowledge, but even when I am thinking all of this I know they are nothing but empty promises.. and that's what they always turn out to be.

So right now... I am trying to study Design Patterns, am stuck with the Adapter patterns since about 8 in the morning. Trying to get the assignment done as well (yeah an assignment during mids, don't think we didn't try to stop him.. but there is never stopping teachers.)
I am still on the trying to study phase as I refuse to sign out of the two messengers installed on my machine, and so I continue chatting with my friends, who by the way don't have any exams so they can chat all they want.

My deciding to write a post for my mid terms is prove enough, I guess, that I am in no mood to study (am I ever?).

Anyways....... I think I should get back to the assignment. If anyone has ever done any assignment on "Parametrized Adapters" feel free to share... :P :P

SQL Server Triggers

2009-03-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

Scenario:

Stop a query from execution
Know from the query was being executed.

Solution:
I was a bit skeptical about this. About the part where you execute a query from execution.
We knew we had to create a trigger for this, but how on earth would you stop a query from execution.
Turned out, SQL Server does provide a way to do that.

So let's take a look at the syntax of creating a trigger as put in on MSDN:

CREATE TRIGGER [ schema_name . ]trigger_name
ON { table | view }
[ WITH  [ ,...n ] ]
{ FOR | AFTER | INSTEAD OF } 
{ [ INSERT ] [ , ] [ UPDATE ] [ , ] [ DELETE ] }
[ WITH APPEND ]
[ NOT FOR REPLICATION ]
AS { sql_statement  [ ; ] [ ,...n ] | EXTERNAL NAME  }

 ::=
  [ ENCRYPTION ]
  [ EXECUTE AS Clause ]

 ::=
  assembly_name.class_name.method_name

Trigger on a CREATE, ALTER, DROP, GRANT, DENY, REVOKE, or UPDATE STATISTICS statement (DDL Trigger)
CREATE TRIGGER trigger_name
ON { ALL SERVER | DATABASE }
[ WITH  [ ,...n ] ]
{ FOR | AFTER } { event_type | event_group } [ ,...n ]
AS { sql_statement  [ ; ] [ ,...n ] | EXTERNAL NAME <>  [ ; ] }

 ::=
  [ ENCRYPTION ]
  [ EXECUTE AS Clause ]

 ::=
  assembly_name.class_name.method_name

Trigger on a LOGON event (Logon Trigger)
CREATE TRIGGER trigger_name
ON ALL SERVER
[ WITH  [ ,...n ] ]
{ FOR | AFTER } LOGON
AS { sql_statement  [ ; ] [ ,...n ] | EXTERNAL NAME <>  [ ; ] }
 ::=
  [ ENCRYPTION ]
  [ EXECUTE AS Clause ]

 ::=
  assembly_name.class_name.method_name

The part in bold is what is responsible for getting the trick done.

You use INSTEAD OF when you don't want the query which fired the event to execute. And you mention the category the query falls under (the one that is to be stopped from execution) after INSTEAD OF.

So the Trigger become something like

CREATE TRIGGER trgr_Name
ON Tbl_Name
INSTEAD OF DELETE
AS
BEGIN
//Your code
END

Now, let's come to the second part. The part where you discover from which machine the query was fired.

And guess what? That has a simple enough syntax.

HOST_NAME() give you the name of the machine.
So all you have to do is declare a variable

DECLARE @Host_Name VARCHAR(20);
@Host_Name = HOST_NAME();

There was a whole piece of code for getting the IP from Host_Name, but I don't remember it exactly, so will put that when I find it. :)

The whole point of this post was so that I myself can find it when I need it again, as I don't really trust my memory for such important stuff. So no offense to all the people from whose websites I collected this material from.

And.... it's done!!!!

2009-03-02T06:31:00.000-08:00

It's done.. I have finally given the presentation I was supposed to give for, I don't know, one month.. I have trying to avoid it, plus there were a lot of more pressing tasks to be completed. The task being the completion of a project and all.

Anyways, I should tell you what the presentation was about. It was about .NET Framework 3.0/3.5.

The story behind why I was given this particular topic to present was that since I joined I had been nagging everyone to migrate to 3.5 or at least make the new applications in 3.5. They finally got me to stay quiet by saying "Why don't you give a presentation on .NET Framework 3.5? Just highlight the new technologies introduced and convince us that we should migrate."
And since then I stopped mentioning 3.5.

Not that I didn't want to go through the hassle of making the presentation slides. It had more to do with gathering up the courage to speak in front of so many people (that means 10 people at the max) who you know have more knowledge than you about the topic you are speaking on.

Anyways, this time they scheduled it for Monday (that is, today 2nd March, 2009). I didn't get time in the office to work on the presentation, and I had a quiz this Saturday (which I am failing by the way) so I spent my entire Sunday on it. Full of tension, true, but learnt a lot things and that was fun.

I liked what WPF made possible, but I never really tried my hands on XAML, and I am glad I did for the presentation. Just a few lines of code were enough to get a button rotate on an angle of 45 and the window to appear in the form of Ellipse rather than the conventional rectangular shape one. :)

I might add a few references or a bit of the stuff I used in my presentation in near future (keep a note of 'might'). But none of the things I used were mine.... of course.. working on .NET 3.5 for a day doesn't make me any expert.

Anyways, almost the entire day, today (Monday) was spent on the presentation. I was supposed to cover all technologies (WPF, WCF, WF, WCS and LINQ) but was only able to touch WPF, WCF and LINQ. So in the morning it was decided that we'll go with this and for the rest of the things we'll schedule another presentation.
Showed the slides to my boss.
Then spent the rest of the time before presentation worrying about what I'll do when they start asking questions. And some of my team members encouraging me and telling me there is nothing to worry about. And also asking people not to ask questions.. the people I could ask to do so.
And installing Visual Studio 2008 on a laptop that will be used for the presentation, and not being able to.
Trying to find out why on earth does the VS 2008 on my Home PC doesn't color code XAML. Still don't have an answer for that though, can anyone answer that??

And finally the time for presentation came. Wasn't even able to connect the laptop with the projector. Two people were involved so that the slides could be projected for everyone to see.
During the presentation it seemed like I was giving it to my top-most boss only, with a few glances to the other people in the room. Couldn't help it. Even back in the days I used to debate, I concentrated mostly on one particular portion of the audience and had to make an effort to look at the others too.
A lot of questions were asked.
None of which I was able to answer :P
People got really excited about WPF though. :) And liked the two code examples I put in. :)

All in all the presentation went okay. With my supervisor supporting me by answering all the questions that were targeted towards me. And the rest of the team chipped in nice comments about the presentation and encouragement after the presentation ended. :D And it really felt good to hear those comments. :)

The remaining day was spent thinking 'shukar hai ho gaye presentation, tension to khatam huai'.

So an entire day was spent on a presentation. :P

Disclaimer: :P

This post is more for memory then for my two or three readers.. :) I should, like everyone else, keep the tag 'Dear Diary' as I have so many posts which fits this category. :)

Visual Studio Shortcuts

2009-02-27T19:40:00.000-08:00

A few days back I wanted to indent a piece of code... and as I didn't remember the shortcut (I never do) I had to do it through the menu.. Edit -> Advanced -> Indent (something like this).. and yeah, I am talking about Visual Studio here. I tried to google the shortcut but didn't get any worthwhile results. And today when I am reading up on Abstract Factory, I found this link on the left hand side... seems very useful, so putting it on my blog so if not for anyone else, I can find it easily when I want to.

VS Shortcuts

Blog moved.. Phase II

2009-02-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

Realization followed by complete HORROR:
They didn't export my comments.. I already had a few of them and they didn't even import that!!
Maybe they have a minimum/maximum limit or something... if you don't have these many comments you can keep on dreaming of importing them to your new blog.. Or maybe it's their way of saying "How stupid would you be to import blog from an hosting site and then export it on the same."
Whatever the reason was.. I know that the comments are imported as well. After all, Rambler did it... then why did they choose to act discriminatly (I don't think that's a word. I checked on dictionary.com and didn't find it, but you do get my point don't you)... maybe they have something against me as well.
I think I'll ask them about it... soon... but no use now. Because I have comments on this blog now.. so importing the old blog again on this one would mean loosing the new comments.

Should I go with copy pasting comments from my old blog on this one???.. I AM khwaar after all.. and don't have that many on the old one anyways...

Attention Blogger:
I might have ignored this before, but a colleague brought my wandering attention to a tennie wennie detail (read ERROR!) on my blog.

"Intricate
View my complete profile.
There was an error in this gadget"

What happened was.. there was nothing wrong with my profile. But the gadget below it refused to work on my new blog (maybe it didn't like the new address).

So have removed it.. what??? you thought I would keep it as a souvenir.

The not so cool background:
I got bored with the themes provided by blogger. So I decided to go elsewhere and searched for themes on google. A lot of good ones I found but a few didn't work.. the one that did was the one that was the theme on my blog for a long time.
UNTIL.. someone told me.. it's not as good as you think it is :P :P
No.. no one exactly put it that bluntly to me.. but there were problems of loading with this theme.. it took a long time doing that.. so decided to go again with blogger. Until I find a better theme... and for finding something you have to look for it, don't ya? And for that you need time, don't ya mattie? And I don't exactly have that,, what with all the sleeping I think I need to to do, and the novel that I must finish.. and the other stuff.. I am supposed to be preparing for a presentation but being the dedicated blogger that I am, I am spending the little time I have on it.

Bad times...

2009-02-24T17:44:00.000-08:00

You learn a lot of things from people around you.... if you just care to notice. Like I learnt from a friend of mine that a person should always keep alive the spirit to enjoy everything no matter what.
This life is too short, the time gone would never come again so why waste it.
Everyone has their own set of moods, you don't have to ruin yours because of others. I am not saying be selfish, no not at all. You have to be there for others too, support them in their troubles, walk them through their worrisome phase and get them walking back on the path of happiness. But not enjoying, not making the most of the time you have, just because others don't feel like it is a little short of stupidness.
Sometimes we get so preoccupied with our lives, our troubles, our worries, our problems that we forget to live. We forget that everyone else goes through the same thing every day, even if they don't show it, they might be going through even worst than we can imagine.
Again, I am not saying that we should forget our problems, don't do anything about them and continue living like nothing has happened. Just saying that a bad day isn't the end of it all. :)

Friend - a relative term

2009-02-21T22:41:00.000-08:00

The statement popped into my head while I was pressing my clothes.. Pressing is such a boring job that all kinds of inane stuff moves through my head while I am trying to get done with it..

But come to think of it, in my case, this statement does turn out to be true, very true.
Friend IS a relative term.
I am not trying to be philosophical or something, in fact, I hate philosophy. But this is so true, if you just think about it.

I don't know why I started to write this post, but I thought I have to, I just have to, even if I don't write anything worth reading. :P

So, back to the point.. I say friend is a relative term. You ask why... because I think everyone has their own definition of Friend, of what friends are supposed to be.
Friendship might mean different thing to different people.
Some people may give this relationship more importance than it calls for. And some might not understand why it's worth anything.

The importance may be learnt after a broken friendship, or the importance might be lost after realizing how much friends can hurt. The importance may break on you when you have a blast with your friends, or when you miss them.

But the thing is it might not be what you think it is. And others are sure to have a different opinion then you.

For example, when we were kids we all had a different perspective. A friend was a person who had the most expensive toys, and was also willing to share them with you. At that time friends changed and it wasn't that hurting.

I remember every other person used to be my friend. My favorite dialogue was "Dost nahi ho yaar."
Till college I used to threaten my friends with
"Mein tumhein apnay dost kee post se kharij kar doon geen" :P

And as I grew up the definition changed in a drastic manner. Now I think a million times before giving the title of friend to anyone.

And that works, because eventually, when they do what I expect them to do, it doesn't hurt that much, and it doesn't matter that much, and in the end you think that all that happened was for a good reason.

Another example, for some people breaking up a friendship is not that difficult, because for them friends aren't that important and thus they don't care. For them the definition is quite different.

Hence proved,
'Friend' is a relative term.

Of lsam

2009-02-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

Wuzu kar ke sonay k 4 fazail
1) Us ke rooh Baitullah Sharif ka tawaf karti hay.
2) Farishtay sari raat us ke liye naikyan likhtay rehtay hain.
3) Jab karwat badalta hai farishtay iski bakshish k liye dua kartay hain.
4) Jab subha so kar uthta hai to jo dua mangta hai puri hoti hai.

Namaz k 10 faiday

1) Cheray ke nooraniyat.
2) Dil ka noor.
3) Jism kee rahat.
4) Qabr mein sathi.
5) Nuzuley rehmat ka zarya.
6) Aasmanon ke chabi.
7) Meezane hisab ka wazan.
8) Allah ke raza.
9) Jannat kee kemat.
10) Aag se bachao ka zarya.

Jumay ke roz 7 martaba durood pak parhanay walay kee 100 hajatein puri hoti hain, 30 duniya kee, 70 akhirat kee.

Hadees-Nabwi (P.B.U.H) :
"Musalman ko jo ranj, dukh, fikar, ghum, takleef or pareshani paish aati hai yahan tak ke usay aik kanta bhi chubta hai to Allah us takleef ko us ke kisi na kisi gunah ka kafara bana deta hai."

Allah Pak farmatay hain "Tu mujhe fajar aur asar kee namaz ke baad thodi dair yaad kar liya kar, tere tamam kamoon ke zimedari mere hai."

Hazrat Ali (R.A.)
"Logo ko is tarah maaf karo jis tarah tum Allah se umeed rakhtay ho ke woh tumhein maaf karay ga."

Blog moved...

2009-02-20T22:42:00.000-08:00

EVERYONE who got to know my blog address had a few words for the address...
intricate86 why 86.. what's your obsession with 86 that everything has to have "86" appended at the end..
Everyone had to say something about it, and believe me it wasn't good.

So have finally decided to move it. The address is almost the same. Now it is the same as the name of the blog.. By the way I have a post on why it was what it was. So read up on it too. :P (like you have nothing better to do.)

Moving the blog wasn't that hard, mainly because of the Import/Export feature provided by blogger.
I had no fear of loosing my readers for the simple fact that I don't have any. :P

So it's only me who reads the blog and I don't have any problems in remembering the new address.. :P

A few things remain though.
Not all the widgets were imported correctly, so will have to do some copy/pasting for that.
But it can wait... as no one really depends on my blog.. and I have an assignment due, which I haven't started yet..

So the few people who stumble upon my blog..
Happy Reading!!!

Do drop in your comments. They are much awaited and appreciated.

Before and After

2009-02-20T21:07:00.000-08:00

“Can’t do this. We just can’t do this.”

“This is just impossible.”

“Remind me, why did we even take up this project. What do we think of ourselves? Extra-ordinary genius?”

These are just some of the feelings and thoughts that every person who is forced to do a project has to deal with.

The hazardous process of making and completing a project can be broken down into the following three stages:

THE BEFORE STAGE:
The before stage starts with happiness, content and life all around but ends with shock, disbelief and despair. This era of misery comes around when during the very first class of a course when you don’t even know the basis of the subject, it is announced that before the start of final examination a project is to be submitted.
Whatever you say at this moment regarding the injustice of the situation doesn’t change anything. What’s done is done. If it’s a project they ask then it’s a project they want.

THE MIDDLE STAGE:
The middle stage starts immediately after the ‘before stage’. Infact they always are so intermingled that it’s hard to decipher when the ‘before stage’ ends and the ‘middle’ starts.
o Making a group:
Almost all the projects require a group. The selection of the people you want in your group and the ones you don’t is I guess the most delicate task which needs extra, extra-attention. Because once you make a group no matter how hard you try to get away from it you amazingly end up with the same group and with the same people, with some rare exceptions.
This is the time when you analyze each and every person in your class, even those who you haven’t noticed up till now. You must have seen this in detective movies when in the start of the movie the bio data of every person is shown for the benefit of the audience. The same is with the person who is trying to select people for his/her group – analyzing and deciding at every step.

o Selecting a subject/topic for the project:
With the group ready the task ahead is of selecting the topic.

“It shouldn’t be too hard, it shouldn’t be too easy.”

“We should do something unique, something no one has ever done before.”

This is the period of dreams and fantasies, when everything seems possible and probable.
The list of “THINGS TO DO” keeps on increasing till the day you actually start working on the project.
o THE PROJECT:
Okay now, the period of fantasies is over people. Get down to business.
This is the time filled with depression and complexes (inferior or superior). Either you think you can’t do anything or you think that you are invincible.
But everyone has their own way of dealing with tensions and failures. I, for one, never take the blame of anything. If something goes wrong it’s the fault of the computer, my internet service or (you won’t believe this one) the electricity of my house which goes out just when I think of working.
It was one of those times, when nothing seemed to be going the way we intended and I, being myself, said out aloud with the voice of a computer-expert ;
“It’s not our fault, you know. We are doing everything right; the computer just doesn’t get it. It has completely gone insane and I don’t think there is any hope of it ever being normal again.”

My friend sarcastically added:
“Yeah, it is never our fault. Anything that goes wrong is not our fault. It’s the inane computer’s fault. And if we do accomplish something, the credit is ours to take.”
But it was one of other friends of mine who finally got me to thinking the ultimate stupidity of this absurd declaration.
This friend of mine soberly said:
“You must have done something wrong. How could it be the computer’s fault which until now had been doing everything you wanted it to?”
But let me tell you I am correct to some extent when I say that things often tend to fail you when you need them the most to work out. Once, two days before the deadline the computers owned by everyone in my group refused to work.
It’s just not my bad luck. This happens every time with everyone. In one project, my friend stayed up for two-three nights to complete all the research work. And when she did all there was to be done, the next morning the computer took its revenge.

o THE DEADLINE:
As the submission date comes near and near, you go far and far from a thing called “sanity”. Nothing seems to make sense. All your efforts to postpone the submission date fail miserably. Amazingly, during this period instead of praying for the project to complete itself miraculously you keep on praying that the date gets extended. But even if the project is really postponed, you waste the extra days in relaxing and catching up on lost sleep and when the new deadline is again approaching you finally wake-up.
If your computer or electricity didn’t let you down until now it’s bound to do so this time.
It seems that “Good luck” doesn’t exist for you anymore. Your friends (who are not your group members) just don’t understand your problems, your group members who do understand your problem (because it’s basically their problem too) get sick and if nothing else, you come down with a cold.
But there are always some people who are helpful, who are willing to help you in an assignment due the next day on which you weren’t working because of the project, or who help you solve problems of your projects.

THE AFTER PHASE:

IF YOU GET GOOD MARKS:
If you pass with flying colors then no one is sweeter than you. You thank all those people who supported you (remember these are the people who you were complaining about all along). And you count the unlimited miracles that happened in the most darkest of times.

IF YOU GET NOT-SO-GOOD MARKS:
Ahh! Tough luck. This time you do the exact opposite of the above. You do count miracles but the ones that didn’t come along, but could have made your life much easier. This phase is dominated by the words “Kaash” or “I wish”.

So people, you have been warned. If you have a project coming up then you better buckle up.

Date Written: Feb-2006

Along came a Lizard

2009-02-17T21:05:00.000-08:00

As soon as I stepped into the corridor my sixth sense gave me a red alert. A lot of girls were standing together and all the guys had a secret smile on their face (which they were trying to hide).

I was about to enter the Girls Common Room when one of the girls of my class literally jumped out of the room, with her hands on her ears and shouting so loud that I though I would loose my hearing ability.

Okay, okay, this was nothing but an exaggeration. (Forgive me for any inconvenience this may have caused. The words just flew out of my pen with no one who could stop them).

Back to the situation at hand, the girl (in reality) stepped out of the common room with a horrified expression. For a minute I thought she must have seen a ghost. But then I thought that this can’t be possible. “There is no such thing as ghosts” I tried to convince myself, “and even if there was, why would they choose the girls common room as their resident (maybe it’s a girl ghost) and why not go and haunt class rooms so that we may live in peace, after all you too will be at peace, if you didn’t have to attend classes all day long.”

Thinking about ghosts and smiling at the prospect of ghosts haunting our beloved university, I hesitantly put my hand on the door knob and turned it. (Did it make a squeaking sound? Did it always made a sound or was it just my imagination. And wait a minute why suddenly is there not a single sound in a corridor which seems to be brimming with vocal people all the time. Why is it that when you even think or talk about ghosts the entire world tends to become silent??) As I turned the knob, a ghost popped into my head, followed by another absurd image. And in a millisecond millions of images of what I would see in the room chased each other in my head, each bizarre than the other. But none came close to what I actually saw…… and that was nothing. Yes, nothing. There was simply nothing. I was even prepared to see a lion standing in the middle of the room(excuse me, for this incongruous notion, but I had watched ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ last night) but what I wasn’t ready for was the nothingness that greeted me.

I hurriedly entered the room, all this commotion about ghosts and lions was making me late for my class, I took my books and was about to step out, when I saw a lizard lurking on the floor. “Oh please don’t tell me, this lizard is the pioneer of all this turmoil.” I warned the lizard in clear words “if I get late for my class missy, I’ll kill you. Mark my words.”

In the class too, the hot topic of discussion was none other that the lizard in the common room. “People why don’t you name the lizard, if you love it so much. How about Liz or Lizzie?”

And with this a thick book came crashing down on my head. “How can you joke about such a thing?” was my friend’s remark.

The entire day, girls didn’t even go near the common room. In my two years at this place I had never seen the GCR completely deserted. I started seeing sings of desertion in the room, as it is depicted in the movies. A wilted leave, for instance. It took me a few minutes to realize that the leave belonged to the tree just outside the window.

Even worse then the abandoned common room were the stories that were being exchange among the girls. The girls for some reason had become a little shaky. One of the girls even shrieked when a spider jumped at her copy and decided to stay there until it was forced to leave. Thank God other girls hadn’t lost their composure and the spider found support in the remark of one of my very nice friends “Spider hai, spider man nahin hai” (“It’s a spider. Not spider man”)

I too had a story to share, but was doubtful about the reactions I would get. Of course I didn’t want someone to faint.

It was a few years back when I was a chatting freak. I would stay up all night just to chat with my friends. It was one of these nights when around 3 am I started fighting with my friend (see, I can even have an online fight). I decided it was high time I switched off my computer and went to have a glass of water before going to sleep. I had seen a lizard on the wall near the cooler. And as the first drop of water entered my mouth, the lizard jumped on my head and then jumped again on the counter and then ran away (most probably finding refuge from my unparalleled anger).

I washed my hairs thrice after the event and made up with my friend the very next day. So now you know why I gave up late-night chatting.

Reliving this story in my mind, I decided not to narrate this to any of the girls around me. It wasn’t just about people fainting around me anymore; it was now a matter of my ego. Maybe they would start calling me names like Liz or Lizzie behind my back.

The Age of Innocence

2009-02-15T20:51:00.000-08:00

Being the youngest in my family, I longed for a younger sibling whom I could play with, and if not for anything else then a younger sibling just to have the pleasure of bossing around. I envied my friends who had such luxury, and I never failed to mention this to them that they were very fortunate and they never failed to shout it out for me that I was the lucky one.

I loved children (I still do) and I chose to show my affection by pulling their cheeks and they chose to show their detest by slapping me hard across my face or let me have a view of their long tongues and then run like some super hero to their mommys and daddys.

My prayers for a child in house were answered when Allah blessed me with a niece and three years back not only my view-point about children but also my life changed dramatically.

And now I have come to realize that when you get to know kids up close and personal, they are not so innocent after all.

For one thing they taught me to be a little disciplined. In the past, I had this habit of keeping the entire house covered with evidences indicating that 'I' at one point in time had blessed this particular spot by my presence i.e. to say I had decorated my entire house with my things. I used to study on a table in the hall and even if I wasn't around I kept the books open to the last page I was reading (or looking, to be more correct). Not any more, people. Now I have learnt to hide my things from the reach of kids. Because if anything is out there, it sure isn't save. One of my assignments, which I had completed after a week's hard work, was signed by none other than my eldest niece, and that too on every page. All she had to do was to sneak up to my not-so-aware assignment, pull out a marker from my innocently-lying pencil box and put large trademarks of her own existence on each and every page. I am sure she must've gone through it again to make sure that she hasn't left any of the pages 'un-autographed'.

I miss my bus everyday (Author's Note: This is nothing but exaggeration, I always am late, true, but missed it onlyk I guess, twice in four years.) because I have to collect my things spread around the house and hid at the most unusual of places for half-an-hour. (Don't advice me to wake up half hour earlier, that again is not a possibility.)

I have at this very moment four kids in my house. Every few minutes I hear a knock on my door, which is more like a bang; or a cry from one of the kids, which leads to the crying and shouting of all the remaining kids, which leads to their moms shouting over them, which leads to my mom shouting on all six of them, which leads to my sneaking my head from the safety of my room to ask them to keep it down a bit.

Once I had a final paper the next morning and the above scene was being rehearsed right outside my room. Even with the door closed I could hear all of them loud and clear. The third world war initiated when my niece had this instant desire to ride the same bicycle my nephew was riding. We had one bicycle for each kid just to evade the chances of them fighting each other but well it isn't really easy to make human beings content with what they have, is it? Asking them to take their negotiations to another room or even out side turned out to be fruitless, asking them all to shut up was another futile attempt, and putting cotton in my ears was yet another failure. I put my BSB cd in the stereo and played it on full volume, but the Backstreet boys couldn't rescue me from this castle of sonance. For once in my life I longed to go to my university so that I could study in peace in the library.

This is how I gave my finals, so people it's not my fault if I get bad grades, and teachers if you are reading this, please try to empathize, being lillient in checking my answer scripts would be a good way to start.

After my final exams, my vacations should have been all fun, but guess what, that didn't happen. Well, it was fun to play with the kids, but it isn't exactly fun if you can't chat with your school friends just because your nephew requests, in fact, nags you to show him his birthday pictures, which quite amazingly happen to be saved on the computer.

My one-year old niece is just learning to talk and so naturally tries to copy every word she hears. So while she's around you can't say any word which is considered to be illegal for kids.

My nephew considers talking to any person I am talking to over the phone as part of good manners. He has nothing to say, absolutely nothing, so he keeps on repeating the same thing over and over again.

With my new semester already begun, I don't know how I'll be able to study, complete the assignments (I already have two of them) and how in God's name would I be able to complete four projects. It was impossible, even without the kids, but it has become more impossible (is there an actual word for more impossible?) with kids around. I naturally can't call my friends to my place for studying, it would be rude to go to their homes every time, and university….well there are many activities going on there besides studies (for one you can have free internet hours, and café is not so far).

The people who've searched on net many times would know how difficult it can be sometimes to get what you want. And once after surfing the net for half-an-hour I came up with some relevant material, when my niece pressed with her elbow some unknown combination of keys and got me back to a previous page (the key wasn't backspace, I assure you that). In all this fuss about my work being ruined, I forgot that there is a forward-button too at the top if you look closely.

Whenever I sit to study my nephew would come and ask me to give him a star on his hand. Or my niece would come and inquire innocently "Yeh ka hai? Abcd hai?" ("What is this? Abcd?"). The sweetness of her voice would tempt anyone to leave their homework and start talking to her; after all she is not going to stay one-year old.

Studying is not an option, this you must've understood till now, but so is watching television. It seems like we only have cartoon-network tuned on our tv. I have to watch Superman (the cartoon) while a much decent version named 'Smallville' is coming on another channel.

But you know what, it's still fun having kids in your house. Playing with these angelic beings and answering their innocent questions makes up for the number of times they bug you. Their sweet smile would make you forget all worries and tensions. It's good to be greeted like royalty every time you enter the house. My nephew wouldn't let me step in until he asks all his routine questions and then comments "Nice bag, Khala", "Nice watch, Khala" and then promising me that he would buy me a new one provided that it's not too expensive. God knows how his two year old mind came up with that theory when for him 10 rupees is more than enough to buy milk, chocolate, chips and biscuits.

I wouldn't trade my time spent with them for the world.

Tag: 6 weird things about me

2009-02-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

Tag:

6 weird habits/things about yourself

Rules:

The initial player of this “game” starts with the topic “6 weird habits/things about yourself” and people who get tagged need to write a journal about their 6 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 6 people to be tagged and list their names.)

1. Often I sleep too much and still feel sleepy the entire day. At other times I sleep a bit little then usual and still feel wide awake during the day.

2. I like buying books. I simply LOVE collecting books. And if it were up to me any book that enters my house would never leave, even if I don't read the book, even if I hate it, I like to keep it. Even if I have read a book a lot of times, have learnt it by heart (this though has never happened) I would still not want to give it away. Although I am capable of reading ebooks (as long as they are novels, for course books I need to mark every line I read with a pencil, so that when I open the book again I know that I have read it even though I don't remember), I still like buying hard-copies. And even more crazed about buying original versions of books. But I don't buy many books (original or pirated) because of the sky high prices.

3. I get angry toooo easily. And my anger is unpredictable. Sometimes it will be thought that this would really infuriate me and I would stay cool on that. And sometimes I'll be mad like anything on a very very small thing. But I have categories of people to be angry on. And this way, it's my friends who always find themselves the target of my rage, even if they haven't done anything wrong.

4. I talk just tooo much. And anyone can get me started. I can talk for one complete hour without getting much of a response from the other person. One of my friends, who happens to be the first person I made friends with in uni, had this as my first impression "God, she can talk faster than me..." :P :P. She too is very talkative. And it was because of this trait that we became and remained friends after many ups and downs in the relationship.

5. I love being in a crowd. And yet when I have more friends around, I talk less and listen more. Don't know why that happens. I am talkative when I am with just one person, but if you want me to stay quiet make me sit amongst 10 people.

6. I like being different. There are only a few people whose choices are same as mine. Every girl I know loves black, every guy I know has nothing against black either. And I, I don't even consider it a color. I have never worn black except for one time and that was because we were celebrating "Black Day" at Uni.. Yes university, not montessori :P. And there are a lot of such examples through which it can be proved that I indeed am a bit different than others (but then everyone is in some way). The thing is I like being different, don't know why.

Plus, I am supposed to write 6 weird things about me, and there are two people in this world who call me WEIRD. But I still don't know what exactly they found weird about me. So I just jotted down things that I think are weird about me.

I Tagged: I don't think I know six bloggers to be tagged.. But let's go ahead with the ones I know...

Rabbzz, Azeem, Madoo, What happens in London, Hinstance, Ammad

The first project

2009-02-14T19:36:00.000-08:00

It has again been a long long time since I posted something on this blog. And though reading this post will be a complete wastage of time, writing it won't. :)

So it has been seven months since I joined my first job, and finally in January we went Live with three products for the same client, and one of these products was the one I was working on since I joined. 18th of January to be exact. Yup, it was a SUNDAY!!!!

I have been working for the same client, and two versions of the same product. One version was already LIVE and I only had to do maintenance, deal with any issues that arise and stuff like that. The second version was developing an entire module, a new functionality our clients wanted.

Developing wasn't the hard part. The hard part was testing it. I have always hated testing and I am not good at it.

We had already gotten the clients to approve a static version of the new module. And we developed it, tested it on the client side and deployed it. But they wanted a lot of changes in it. So it was going through the process again. Develop the module, test it on the client side and deploy.
Second time around it wasn't just the testing I had to worry about. My finals were starting from the next day and as usual I hadn't prepared at all. Who prepares before you really have to???? (Don't answer that!)
So anyways, my supervisor took over the project for the time I wasn't around. And when I came back after giving my last paper. It was the same cycle again. And it was worst than ever. The clients had started complaining, demanding changes on every single page and still complaining. This was the most worst part. Had to listen to a lot of things. Days spent feeling low about myself and had no one to discuss it with. Each day when I reached home it was too late to call up any of my friends, SMS doesn't convey the feelings too well. And along with that my results were coming out. One of teachers had an actual meeting with me, scolding me on why was my performance going down the lane. And all this time work had to continue. And for the third time the cycle - develop, test and deploy was executed.

Meanwhile plans for Sunday (The Launch Day) were being made. Some of my colleagues who were working on two different products were supposed to spend entire Saturday night at the client side. I was supposed to come on Sunday at 8 A.M., while my supervisors were to reach by 6 Sunday morning.

Finally Sunday came. We went Live with all three products. With a very funny incident in between, for which there were high chances that I'll be scolded like anything, but my boss somehow decided to pass on that. I was going very low on my confidence level, and didn't want to launch the product just yet, while my boss was saying "Ab Live kar detay hain". I continued saying, "No, we should test that again." At first, he listened to me, but then at some point in time he realized that it's useless and that I'll never be satisfied so he decided to go live with it.

This wasn't the end though. The next week was spent monitoring, and dealing with issues. What made things worst was that people from other, more complex products were done with monitoring in just one day. And only I was left. Being this my first project, I was more nervous. Things like "Mera hee kaam khatam nahi ho raha.. pheli dafa mein sahi se kyun nahi ho gaya tha" etc. kept running through my mind.

But anyways, it all ended. A lot of people helped in getting this project complete. Supporting whenever necessary, boosting my confidence level when needed. Saying stuff like "Pareshan honay kee baat nahi hai". Also saw different sides of people and realized you don't have to take everyone on their word.

It was overall a very good and learning experience.
And the thing is I am finally done with the development and launch of my first ever Professional Project. Hurrahhhh!!!:D :D

Donut without the hole :P

2009-01-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

So am in mood of writing today...
Maybe that's because I somehow got to talk a lot at office today. :) :)

Anyways, so a few days back we had our famous "Donut Party" at office, which happens to be my first donut party... or I thought it was a "Donut" party... until I discussed it with a friend.

The party turned out to be educating for me.. While eating the "Donut" I wondered why there wasn't any hole in it and when I reached the middle why did I find butter??

I confronted one of my colleagues with this query
"Is mein hole kyun nahi hai?"
It sounded more like "Polo mein hole kyun hota hai?" (or something like that)
and he said "Pata nahi, hota to hai"

And then just for the sake of discussing all foolish stuff with friends, I told one of them in an email that I got to eat a Donut which amazingly enough didn't have a hole, instead it had butter in between. And she replied:

"Agar us mein hole nahi tha aur beech mein butter bhi tha to beta woh Donut hee nahi tha, usay Eclairs kehtay hain." :P :P

And hence my stupidity is proved yet again. :) :P

Those moments...

2009-01-29T07:52:00.000-08:00

Ever had that moment in life when disappointment reaches the peak point.. or shall I say reaches the pit.. when you think you can't be more disappointed with yourself.
Ever had that moment in life when you are depressed...
Ever had that moment in life when you don't understand how you ended up being like this, how you ended up where you ended up, when you stop for a moment and consider whether what you've got is what you wanted from your life.
The moment when relationships betray.
The moment when you think no one would understand you.
The moment when you realize that the way you've been your entire life isn't the way to live life. When you realize that it's high time you change yourself. When you decide everyday that this would be the day when you'll change yourself, and be like what you want to be and not like what you are by nature and then by the end of every day you realize that you can't change yourself.
The phase when you are exhausted, thoroughly exhausted and you don't understand why you are tired.
The time when you are not tired because you got no rest all day long, but when you are tired of yourself.
The moment when you think about where you'll be one year from now, and you don't know..
The moment when someone asks you what are your plans.. and you don't have any answer for that. This is the moment when you start dreading such questions.

And the moment when you start wondering 'at what point did all the things start going wrong....'

How to spend time at office

2008-12-27T07:27:00.000-08:00

Received these in email....

The Chat Mania!!!

2008-12-27T04:39:00.000-08:00

I have always been a chat fanatic.. I had written a few posts on that too. But it has been a few days since I realized that we all have become so addicted to chatting, and how this is not a positive aspect.

Now let me prove my point.. (I'll just keep myself the target.. :) )

To talk to my supervisor (who happens to sit right next to me), I find him on the chat network and send him a message. All I have to do really is to push my seat a little away from my desk and start talking to him, or I can just stand up look over the partition and start talking. But I don't do any of the above two and I send him a message.
When my class fellow, who is in my team, is having fun with our colleagues, and as I can't barge in but do like to comment on my friend, I do the same thing, I find him on chat and send him a message.
Whenever I am bored at office, and wanna have some fun, instead of getting up and going to a friend's seat, I chat with them. I don't get up, I don't budge, I just sit at the same seat I had been sitting on since morning, staring at the same screen and I chat. Whereas, leaving my seat vacant for a while won't let the business go down, would it? It would just be good for me if I could go and stand on someone's head for a while, and chat, chatting that includes talking NOT typing. But no matter how much I hate sitting all day long, I still don't go and stand and talk to someone.
At client side, two people from the same company, (one of them is obviously me), sitting right next to each other, and still... chatting.. not talking but typing. Even if the discussion is purely professional, we still chat.

They invented chat, they invented emails for God knows what reasons, but one of that must have been close to;
"to bring people closer to each other"

With chatting and emailing, even if your sister lives in another country, you can still know her day-to-day life, you can still have long chat sessions with her, you can still be close to each other. Distances have shrunk because of this technology.

Let's go a little beyond chatting now. We have emails and text messages too. Now friends make email groups so that they can keep in touch with each other. That's all fine. Pretty good. But whatever the hell happened to picking up your phone once in a while and calling them up. Of course you can't call everyone and through email groups you don't have to do that. But still.....
And what happened to having regular lunch with your friends just so that you can meet each other.

And text messages... uff.. I hate being wished "Happy Birthday" through sms. On my last birthday a lot of people wished but through sms only, and I have gotten so much accustomed to this that even I messaged my friend on her birthday rather than calling her.
I even get invitations to weddings now over sms.

(People may think that I have a very weak circle of friends, who don't like hearing each other's voice and thus, restrict themselves only to written conversations. But this is not so, if you think about it, the above applies to most of us, not all may apply to everyone, but some would apply to each. I have just collected them all at one place so it seems a little depressing.)

Another aspect of chatting; the emoticons. They have become a total replacement of emotions. We use emoticons when we don't have emotions.

And maybe we use chatting so much because it's easier to express oneself over a written conversation... Anyways, we have indulged into this activity so much that we keep ourselves from getting up and talking to each other as much as we can..
They call it "The Advent of Technology".
I say "There is something wrong with the human race".

Author's Note:
By the way, I intended this post to be humorous. Highlighting my laziness of not getting up to talk but sitting comfortably at my seat and chatting.
But as I am a very serious person, I turned this into a debate rather than a humorous and tanziya (couldn't come up with English for tanz) piece on chatting.
My readers (if there are any) don't mind; the joke's surely on me.
And yeah.. I have nothing against technology. I earn my living sitting 9 or so hours in front of the computer screen and even spend my weekends doing the same. :) :)

Kahan aa kay ruknay thay rastay, by Amjad Islam Amjad

2008-12-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

Kahan aa kay ruknay thay rastay, kahan mor tha usay bhool ja
wo jo mil gaya usay yaad rakh, jo nahin mila usay bhool ja

wo tere naseeb ki barshain kisi aur chat pe baras gayain
dil-e be khaber mari baat sun usay bhol ja, usay bhul ja

main to gum tha tere dhyan main teri aas tere guman main
saba keh gai mere kaan main, mere saath aa usay bhol ja

tujhay chand ban kay mila tha jo tere sahilon pe khila tha jo
wo tha aik darya visal ka, so utar gaya usay bhol ja

Kaheen Chak-e-Jaan Ka rafoo Nahee, Kisse Asteen Pay Lahoo Nahee
Keh Shaheed-e-Rah-e-Millal Ka Nahee Khun Baha, Ussay Bhool Ja

Kyun Atta Howa Hai Ghubar Main, Gham-e-Zindagee Kay Fishaar Main
Woh Joo Darj Tha Tairay Bakhat Main Soo woh Hoo Giya, Ussay Bhool Ja

Na Woh Ankh Tairee Ankh Thee, Na Woh Khawab Hee Taira Khawab Tha
Dil-e-Muntazir Too Yeh Kis Liay Taira Jagna, Ussay Bhool Ja

Yeh Joo Raat Din Hai Khel Sa, Issay Dekh, Iss Par Yaqeen Na Kar
Nahee Aks Koi Bhee Mustaqil Sar-e-Aieena, Ussay Bhool Ja

Joo Bisat-e-Jaan Hee Ulat Giya, Woh Joo Rastay Say Palat Giya
Ussay Rooknay Say Hasool Kiya, Ussay Mut Bulla, Ussay Bhool Ja

Qurani suraton kee khasosiyat..

2008-12-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

Sur-e-Fatiha Allah ke azab se bachati hai.
Sur-e-Yaseen Qayamat ke din pyas se bachati hai.
Sur-e-Waqia fikar-o-faqay se bachati hai,
Sur-e-Mulk azab-e-qabar se bachati hai,
Sur-e-Kausar dushmanon se bachati hai,
Sur-e-Kafron maut k waqt kufar se bachati hai,
Sur-e-Ikhlas munafaqat se bachati hai,
Sur-e-Falaq haadson se bachati hai,
Sur-e-Naas waswasoon se bachati hai.

2008-12-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

Life style of our beloved Prophet Hazrat Mohammad (S.A.W);
Talk softly,
Walk humbly,
Eat sensibly,
Breathe deeply,
Sleep sufficiently,
Dress properly,
Act fearlessly,
Work patiently,
Think truthfully,
Believe correctly,
Behave decently,
Learn practically,
Plan orderly,
Earn honestly,
Spend intelligently.

When we are students...

2008-12-19T22:35:00.000-08:00

Before my first mid term of Masters, I was thinking about how all of us friends used to sit in a room, sitting with our books and notes open in front of us, but not studying.. oh not studying at all, but talking.. talking and having fun. And I thought everyone in Masters would be mature and no one would be talking loudly as we used to in Bachelors.. Bachelors was a different story altogether. Here they'll all be studying seriously, they'll all just reach the university 5 minutes before the paper so as not to waste their time, and leave immediately, again so that they can reach their jobs and start working. No jokes, no making bogus plans for cheating, nothing. Just serious people, waiting to give an exam and get over with it...
And I thought I would miss my friends. I thought I will be the only one asking
"Yaar parhna kya kya tha?"

Or asking;
"Oh that's also included in the syllabus?"

But I turned out to be very very wrong...
Because the scene there was the same. All the students sitting in the examination hall (though it wasn't like Bachelors in one way and that was all of us hadn't gathered there since morning but only came some time before the paper was scheduled to start), and all of the students instead of studying were having fun.

The same..
"Yaar koi mujhe yeh chapter to parha de?"

The same,
"Yaar yeh Sir ne itna sara kyun parha diya.., puri kitab hee parha dee Sir ne to"

The same,
"Ooye tu ne yeh parha hai?"

The same,
"Tu yahan beth mein wahan betha hoon"

It was all the same... the very same.

Note:
When I started writing this post.. and that was back in December 2008. I must have planned to include a lot of other things... But now when I am completing it I have already forgotten why I decided to write this post in the first place. :P :P

I am sounding like an author who has just finished writing her 100th novel after 5 years of work on it. :P :P

World's shortest horror story

2008-12-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

World's shortest horror story by Martin Garner contains only the following lines:

"When the world's last man was alone in his room, the door was knocked."

Poetry

2008-12-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

Kuch na kehna chup chup rehna,
Yeh bhi aik udasi hai

Hans kar saray sadmey sehna,
Yeh bhi aik udasi hai

Baithay baithay kho sa jana,
Yun hee door khayalon mein

Chalte chalte hanstay rehna,
Yeh bhi aik udasi hai

Maar ke kankar lehrein gin'na,
Baith ke jheel kinare par

Kuch logon ka hai yeh kehna,
yeh bhi aik udasi hai.

Note::
This of course has not been written by me.
Had I been such a good writer, would I have such a pathetic blog???? :)

Loads of work

2008-12-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

The thing about 'WORK' is.... I don't wanna do it. I have loads and loads of work.... well not exactly.. but it would seem loads if you are not in the mood... wouldn't you???

Don't mind this post.. it's been inspired by reading blogs and then having a sudden urge to write something.
Something inside me said... write something yaar you have a blog too.

But it seems like I have nothing to write these days and that's what I have been saying for a long long time. It seems like I have never have nothing to write and then I manage to come up with something more inane than the previous post. I like the word inane.. it seems like the only word I know that can be called out of a vocabulary.. hmm or so I think.

So well, I have a laptop on my lap (of course where else would it be). Though one of my friends told me that you should always work keeping the laptop on a desk and not on your lap. But I say, that's where it's meant to be... :P

So I have a laptop on my lap.. a list of all the things that I need to do. And this laptop irritates me because I hate using this mouse.
And I have loads and loads of work to do and I am not doing it.
I have loads and loads of studying to do. I have a paper on Wednesday. But I guess, I won't study before tuesday. That's a rule... you don't study unless you absolutely absolutely have to. And that absolutely occurs only one day before the exam.

So somehow, accidentally I was navigated back to the list of all the posts I have written. See the magic of this laptop mouse. It click itself when it is pointed to somewhere for a longer period of time. Someone tell me how to deal with this. And don't call me 'Jahil', I don't use laptop. It's just a few times that I have used it and that too because I needed to. Desktop.. I use even when I don't need to, even if I don't have to use the internet, even when I don't have a project due the next day.. I would still have my desktop on all the time whenever I am at home and the electricity people cooperate. But laptop I use only when I have to.....

See... this has come out because I have to write something to make this blog look alive. :)

Anyways... so I have a lot of work to do and a lot of studying to do... and maybe that's why I am not doing it........... you see I have so much to do that I don't know where to start... and so I revert to blogging :P :P

Top 10 Ways to make people visit your blog

2008-12-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

The following is a list of a few tips to make people read your blog or at least visit it.

1. Make your blog address a part of your email signature. Your emails would then resemble those who like to brag about their positions or think that everyone wishes to contact them and thus insert all their landline and cell phone numbers at the end of each mail.

2. Visit other blogs and accidentally leave your blog address in the comments of the latest post of the blog being visited.

3. Make sure that you somehow bring blogs and eventually your personal blog into the conversation with each person you meet, every day, even if it happens to be the first rendezvous.

4. Like people send an email address change notification to their friends and acquaintances, you can send a ‘blog created notification’. After all, the two aren’t that different.

5. Threaten your friends to make them visit you blog every day. Say things like:
“Jab mein mash-hoor blogger ho jaon geen na to tumhein autograph nahi doon geen.”
Translation:
“Don’t expect me to bless you with an autograph when I become an acclaimed blogger.”

6. Try to indulge your friends in blogging. It’s mostly the bloggers who are the blog readers as well.

7. You can also get your friends, who themselves blog, to add you in their blogroll. (Blogroll: A blogger’s favorite blogs.)

8. Thinking of a new nick for MSN. Just put your blog address in the personal message.

9. If you also like to write for magazines, make sure that your next published article has your blog address along with your name. Or, a better option would be to write an article on blogs.

Even if you haven’t been a writer till now, writing just one article for your own benefit won’t hurt.

You can do just one little thing instead of all of the above mentioned tiresome tasks –

10. you can start writing a good blog.

Another random collection

2008-12-10T21:10:00.000-08:00

Un logon ka kya hua hoga,
Jin ko mere tarha ghum ne mara hoga,

Kinare par khare log kya jaane,
Doobne wale ne kin-kin ko pukara hoga.

Of Islam

2008-12-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

When you are blessed HE is Rehman,
When you are cared HE is Wadood,
When you are gifted HE is Kareem,
When you are forgiven HE is Ghafoor,

---

Agr 1 insan ke average age "75 years" ho aur woh har Namaz par average "16 minutes" rozana sarf karay to 75 years mein se sirf "3.8 years" lagaein gein Allah ke ibadat ke liye.
Jis ne humein zindagi ata kee, kya hum Us ke rah mein 3.8 years bhi sarf nahi kar saktay?

---

When Allah leads you to the edge of a cliff, trust Him fully, only one of two things will happen:
Either He'll catch you when you fall
Or
He'll teach you how to fly.

---

Jab insaan har kisi se chup ke gunah karta hai to Allah farmata hai,
"Ae Ibn-e-Adam, tujhay tamam rishton mein sab se ziada mein hee haqeer nazar aya"

---

1. Sura-e-Yasin relief frm azaab in the grave

2. Sura-e-Rehman it will make us rich

3. Sura-e-Waqiya it will release u from hunger (Read after every Maghrib Prayer)

4. Sura-e-Mulk brings light in your grave

5. Sura-e-Jasia it will bring peace in your life

Quotes n Quotes

2008-12-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

There is no market for your sorrows in this world, so never advertise them.

Success lies not in the Result but in the Efforts, Being the Best is not at all important, doing the Best is all that matters.

There is always: A little truth behind every "just kidding"

A little curiosity behind every "just wondering"

A little knowledge behind every "I don't know"

A little (emotion and feeling) behind every "I don't care"

The Smiling Moon

2008-12-04T17:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dshole/3075761024/

Finals again....

2008-12-04T17:49:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh again Finals. Going through the same ordeals of tyring to study and not being able to. Wondering why I didn't study when I could have, then justifying to myself that I couldn't have studied at that time either, trying to make a schedule so that each and every topic is covered while knowing that by the end there will always be something I didn't even look at, trying to study so that I don't forget a thing I read, while this time too, knowing that it's not possible.....
So it's Finals again...

Presentations....

2008-12-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

I don't know why but I have lost the little confidence that I had. In the past too, I was afraid of giving presentations, but I somehow got myself up on the stage, and uttered something. I always tried to come up with new ideas to get people intrigued by the presentation title, interested in the slide background and hooked up with words. That never seemed to happen completely, but I thought I was able to accomplish something.
Lately though, it seems I have lost the touch.

And because of the sudden loss of the ittsy bittsy confidence, I try to run away from presentations, run as far as I can.

As bachelors ended, I thought it was the end of it all. No more presentations. Bachelors ended with presentations. We had to present our Final Year Projects to our judges and secure marks. Even then I wasn't that afraid of giving presentations.

You would think, after four year of rigorous and tiring attempts at giving good presentations, I would have obtained enough confidence to speak in front of as many people as could fit in a room.

But you have got it all wrong.

I have become even more afraid I guess.

In bachelors, I always tried to use a new slide template for every presentation. I never used the ones provided by Microsoft Office Powerpoint. I created my own. And I was proud of that. But now I restrict myself to the ones I can easily get. I don't have enough time to create my own, I say. While the truth is, I am out of ideas.

I thought with bachelors ended the ordeals that I had to go through before a presentation or a debate. Ohhhh I was so wrong.

Now I am supposed to give presentations to the clients as well.
My colleagues find my nervousness amusing. (But they do support as well, and help out with a lot of things.)

And I am expected to give a presentation to my team as well. When I know all the people listening to my presentation know better than I do about the topic I am supposed to speak on. When I know that I won't know a thing about most of the questions they put forward.

And then ofcourse, there are the Masters classes. How could I think that the presentations would end with Bachelors when I was planning to start my Masters right after.

And it came as a shock, when I was told in my first class of "Advanced Operating Systems" that we were supposed to give presentations on a releveant topic. And so I did... and so everyone slept thorough the presentation,, even the teacher.. can you believe that???.. I thought no matter how boring a presentation is ,, teachers would continue listening to what their students have got to say. But her expressions said that she was finding it as boring as everyone else (and as boring as me). But well, I have given the presentation... And she (my teacher) asked a few questions, so I guess she wasn't sleeping after all.

Though, it's not something to be proud of, but I still tell anyone who agrees to listen that "I gave a presentation, and everyone in the room slept."
Guess I do have a talent... I have a mesmerizing effect on people when I speak. That's one way to put it. The other blunt way is "I am as good a sleeping pill as any text book of the world." :P

Anyways, the point is, I have lost the little confidence that I did have on myself, and the point is, there is no end to the presentation stuff. They will always be a part of life... hmmm......

Mumbai Blasts...

2008-11-30T08:15:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2008-11-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

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

Money Matters..

2008-11-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

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

Busy, busy

2008-11-08T21:08:00.000-08:00

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

Debugging stored procedures...

2008-11-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

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.

-------------

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!! :)

Long time... no see.................

2008-10-26T20:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a long long time since I posted... My last post was on September 29, 2008. And that post and a few before it weren't exactly something I wrote, just links to some other resources which I found beneficial. So my last real post, one which I actually wrote, was on September 16, 2008. Since then, I have been busy with a lot of things. It was Ramadan at that time, and after that it was Eid, was very busy in job during Ramadan and even few days after Eid Holidays, then it was my mid terms. So now, I have gotten myself to write something on my blog, and I'll try to update it as often as possible. During those busy days, there were a lot of things I experienced or learnt which I wanted to write about, but couldn't because of the time constraint. A lot of those topics I have even forgotten. For those that I do remember I'll try to put them up as soon as possible. :)

Well, there was one thing I wanted to write about and I'll do that now.
It has been one year since I started blogging. It was "Intricate Zone's" or "Bina's Place" (as it was called previously) First Birthday in September.
My blog is one year old now. :) :P
The first post I wrote was on "Tuesday, September 25, 2007". It was another inane post by me, but nevertheless it was my first post. :) :)

So Belated Happy Birthday to my blog.

And also, Eid Mubarak (Long overdue wish) to everyone.

Programming in SQL Server 2005

2008-10-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

A lot of programming can be done within Stored Procedures. Also when you are writing scripts to accomplish a complex task, it can be done more easily with programming. You can easily loose your way writing sub-queries, and you can end up compromising the actual task with something close to it but not really it.

There are a lot of things a person needs to learn in order to get the needed results and fast. And for that you need to have a little more knowledge then SELECT.

I haven't been able to find any good tutorials that would take me from the basics of programming in SQL to higher levels. There are a bulk of resources for Oracle but none that I could find for SQL. Yeah, maybe I lack adequate searching skills but whatever the reason, I have been restrained to use Oracle PL-SQL guide for learning SQL.
Now what I am doing is that I read something from Oracle Guide and then I try it out in SQL Server 2005 and when it doesn't work I search for that particular topic or syntax equivalent in SQL.

And what I am going to do here at my blog is that I'll write small posts giving the syntax for programming in SQL (something beyond the basic Transaction-SQL statements).

I don't have much to offer, but well.......

Anyone who can give me a reason for why I didn't get any decent search results is always welcome to explain it to me through comment.

Declaring Variables:

Syntax:

DECLARE @variable_name data_type

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188927(SQL.90).aspx

Declaring Cursors:
I don't know how to exactly define a cursor. (After all I am no DB Programming Guru, just in my learning phase.)

But cursors can be used when you want to select a number of rows and then iterate through each row one at a time, or manipulate them in any way.

Here's the
Sytanx:

DECLARE cursor_name CURSOR FOR sql_stmt

Example:
DECLARE my_cur CURSOR FOR SELECT * FROM Table_1

You don't have to start the cursor name with '@'.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180169(SQL.90).aspx

In order to execute the statement and populate cursor OPEN statement is used.

OPEN:

Syntax:
OPEN cursor_name

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190500(SQL.90).aspx

After the rows have been retrieved and stored in cursor, they can be worked on by using the FETCH statement.

FETCH:

Syntax:
FETCH position FROM cursor_name

where
position can be any of the following:
NEXT
PRIOR
FIRST
LAST

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms180152(SQL.90).aspx

Note:
I know you may not find this information very useful. It's all just basic information, and my resource is too the internet, where anyone could get it easily. But as I said I too am in learning stages. I'll try to update my blog with the new things I learn.
And these are just an overview of possibilities. You get to know what things you can do, and then you can refer to the links I have provided to learn more about them.
This post is not in any way a tutorial, just a baby-tutorial, to provide you with guidelines.

References:
I am using the following book for Oracle Sytax:
PL/SQL
User’s Guide and Reference
Release 2 (9.2)
March 2002
Part No. A96624-01

The following links were referred to for SQL Syntax (Some of these have been stated above as well)

2008-09-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Koi zabt de na jalal de
Mujhe sirf itna kamal de,
Mein har aik ke sada banon
K zamana mere misal de
Tere rehmaton ka nazool ho
Meri mehnaton ka sila milay
Mujhe mal-o-zar ke hawis na ho
Mujhe bas TU rizq-e-halal de
Mere zehan mein Tere fikr ho
Mere sans mein tera zikr ho
Tera khauf mere nijat ho
Sabi khauf dil se nikal de
TERI bargah mein aye Khudha
Meri roz-o-shab hai yehi sada
TU Rahim hai, TU Karim hai
TU sab hee balaon ko taal de.
AMEEN.

Of Ramadan and Islam

2008-09-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

When the Night equals a Thousand

SQL Sever Tips and Tricks

2008-09-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

http://sqltips.wordpress.com/

http://www.projectdmx.com/tsql/strcleanup.aspx

http://www.fmsinc.com/free/NewTips/SQL/SQLTip2.asp

The road ahead...............

2008-09-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.dawn.com/weekly/education/education3.htm

Best Friends Redefined....

2008-09-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

As I stood with my niece waiting for her 'van wala mama' to arrive, we started a little chat. To start the conversation my niece asked:

"Phopo, who is your best friend at university?"

Saying university in her own cute style, her own-created pronunciation, she utters the word like it's a very big word for her to say, which by the way it is, she is only three after all. Okay, back to the topic.
So I didn't know what to reply to this innocent question, so I decided to evade it by saying:

"Aap ho na phopo ke best friend."

At that she broached another question:

"Acha yeh bataein aap ko apni university mein sab se zada kaun pasand aata hai?"

At that I just laughed. Thankfully I was saved by the 'van wala mama'.

********

At dinner, I was narrating this story to my family (in my niece's absence). As they all laughed at the story, my brother (my niece's father) pointed out that she was actually defining what for her is the meaning of best friend when she asked me the second question.
After hearing my reply to the first question, she realized that I wasn't answering her truthfully, she realized that it wasn't the answer she demanded, she must have thought I was that dumb, so she rephrased the question for my benefit. For her,

"Best Friend" means "a person you like the most".

:) Which is not a very incorrect definition. Though this is not the way we adults define it, for us best friends would mean not the people we like the most, but the people who would give up everything for us.... well that's another discussion all together.

********

To confirm my brother's theory, I asked my niece the same two questions she had asked me in the morning. I asked her

"Who is your best friend?"

She gave me three names.
Then I asked her

"Who do you like the most in your school?"

She gave the same three names.

Definition confirmed:
Best Friend is a person you like the most. :) A simple and cute way to define the concept.

The Output Parameters

2008-09-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you write a function, you may want it to manipulate and return several values rather than one. Whenever I needed to do this I used to return an object.
But there might be a possibility that the returned object has no other purpose than to be used just to return multiple values from a function.
And then I discovered output parameters. Though I haven't really used them. (Just used them to check the functionality, nothing flashy. :) )

With output parameters you define the variables that will be returned. But you don't use the return keyword. With return keyword you can return a single value or object not multiple.
But with output parameters you don't use the return keyword to return multiple values rather you just specify that these variables are output parameters and their values can be used by the calling program and the called program can manipulate their values (in fact, assign them values).
For the above stated purposes you use the keyword out.

Example Code:
Say, you have a class "Class1.cs" (a very innovative name, right?)
In this class you have a function called ProcessNum which takes two integers as input and as output gives their sum and difference. This is how it will work:

public void ProcessNum(int a, int b, out int Sum, out int Diff)
{
Sum = a + b;
Diff = a - b;
}

Calling ProcessNum:

Class1 obj = new Class1();
int S;
int D;
int num1 = 5;
int num2 = 5;
obj.ProcessNum(num1, num2, out S, out D);
Console.WriteLine("Called ProcessNum of Class1 with parameters " +
"a: " + num1 + Environment.NewLine + " b: " + num2 +
Environment.NewLine + "Returned Values:::: " +
Environment.NewLine + "Sum: " + S + Environment.NewLine +
"Diff: " + D);

Source:

Apress Beginning ASP.Net 2.0 in C# 2005
Chapter # 3: Types, Objects and Namespaces
Pg. #: 75

Disclaimer..... or something to that affect

2008-09-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

It's not actually a disclaimer. Rather a notification.. or maybe not even that. But just liked the sound of it. :P

For the past few weeks I have been researching on a few things and a lot of things have come up that I thought I should blog about. (Maybe that's because I don't want my blog to be just sitting there with the most recent post being the one posted a year ago. So I decide to add anything and everything on the blog.)
Whatever may be the reason, the next few posts might be just links to articles that I found interesting and informative, they might be about things you already know, or they might be about things you would find useful like I did. :)

Another act of innocence

2008-09-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

My niece decided to drop in on me and inquire:

"What are you doing?"

She must have been intrigued by my posture of just sitting at my chair starring at the computer screen.
On her question I instinctively replied

"Reading a book."

At which point she asked

"Where is your book?"

Looking here and there, trying to look where I was hiding my book. She must have thought I was lying to get rid of her, while in reality I was reading an ebook.

New job... New life..... :)

2008-09-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

It has been 2 months since I started my new job, that is to say, my very first job.

(I joined on 1st July, and people told me that I should have taken a break, and now I agree with them.)

I have been meaning to write about my job since the day I started, but never actually got around to it. This is because I didn't know exactly what to write. I don't know now either but have decided to go ahead with it anyways.

So... new job.. a new phase of life. Completely new and definitely different. Utterly new for me because I didn't have any experience of free lancing or internships. Different for the same reason.

We have been doing projects throughout the four years of our bachelors. These projects included not only the programming projects, the softwares we created, but also the presentations we gave, or the researches we did and produced a report as a result. We did a Final Year Project to give us an essence of what professional projects are supposed to be like. But being in professional life in reality is different then any simulation you go through during bachelors.

And it's not only the work thing. It is basically about settling at a new place. With new people, who will play different roles in your career, they can be your supervisors, the people who'll work with you side-by-side on a project, the people who are hired with you and the people who are your seniors. It's about settling with an AC on top of your head, and you are feeling like you are sitting in an igloo. It's about getting acquainted with your workplace computer. :P (People who work with me would know what I am talking about.) It's about getting used to the working hours, though they are less then the time we spent at uni, but definitely more tiring.

It's about calling your office, your place.
In an orientation session at office, the presentor broached a question

"Can a person work at a place about which he doesn't feel like he owns it. Can he work at an office which he doesn't own?"

I sat quietly while the others nodded. My expressions must have betrayed me because the presentor pointed me out and said "Yes you tell me, is that possible." And although I wanted to say yes, he can, I instead said no. And then he explained, again because my face expressions must have betrayed me, that

"yes it is possible if the person doesn't like working at that place."

For me the answer 'yes it is possible' holds true for completely different reasons. My reason being that if I think I own the place, I'll stop working. :D :P
I'll work when I understand that I am doing a job there and I am supposed to work. If I feel like this company's owned by me then I would surely not press even a single key, would not even bother to place a ';' at the end of a statement.
But what he meant by owning a place is not literally owning the company, but he meant owning in a completely different sense. And I won't go ahead and explain what he meant, because I don't know how to explain this phenomena.

And in the end it's about enjoying... making new friends, experiencing a new side of people. And again, enjoying...
Coz it's not worth if you are unable to find an element of enjoyment. Enjoyment encompases enjoying your work, loving what you do, realizing that you chose the right field, the right profession for yourself. And you realize that only when you like doing what you do. No, not like, love it. Enjoying is when you don't really want to get up in the morning, and you drag yourself to your office, but when you start working, you get so indulged in it that you don't realize the time flying by. Enjoying is when you are finally done with a project and you get that feeling of happiness, yes the feeling you get when you have finally accomplished something no matter how small. Enjoying also includes the feeling of nervousness you experience when you are assigned your first project, when you are asked to give a time line and schedule of that project, when you are expected to solve a problem, when you are expected to come up with new ideas and what not.
Enjoying is.. being there, doing it. :)

Things to do in Ramadan

2008-09-06T05:38:00.000-07:00

As Ramadan approaches, pamphlets are distributed, articles are published in various magazines regarding the Ibadat that a person can indulge himself/herself into during this holy month. My mom read one of such articles to me, also specifying how can I complete them. Like at one point she said, you can easily recite these ayats on your way to office. You have ample time to complete one tasbeeh easily.
I am jotting down some of them below, so that we can all try to recite them whenever we can, and so that we may not forget to especially take out time for these. After all, this month comes but once a year.

One tasbeeh of First Kalma everyday.
One tasbeeh of Third Kalma everyday.
At least one tasbeeh of Astagfar every day.
One tasbeeh of Surah-Ikhlas (Kul ho Allah)
2 Nafil shukrana every day.
Try to offer Salat-e-Tasbeeh before Friday's Zuhur.
In Ramadan Surah-Qadr (Inna Anzalna) should be recited extensively. Recite it 7 times, at the least, every day.

You can recite a few even while working...
Read Ya-Allah, Ya-Salam, Ya-Hafeez.

Right after waking up in the morning, read Bismillah and then read Durud-Shareef three times, then blow on your wrists and then rub them on your face.
If you are irritated or angered by something then read Al-Hafeez, you'll feel better.
After Isha and Namaz-e-Taraveeh read Al-Qavi 21 times.
After Isha and Namaz-e-Taraveeh read First Kalma three times.

Source: Pakeeza (September 2008). Pgs. 303 - 305. You'll find a lot of other ayats you can recite during Ramadan. Do make it a point to go through these pages because I have jotted only a few of the many present.

Ramadan Mubarak

2008-09-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

I know I am a bit late with this post. We at Pakistan are already done with the 3rd roza, this post should have come early but well, better late then never.

Ramadan Mubarak to all of you

May we all take the full advantage of this blessed month. Pray as much as we can and may we keep ourselves away from all kinds of sins for this one month at least. Ameen.

This is the month where all Muslims try to follow the rules a bit more carefully. When we all try to offer our prayers, all 5 of them and all at the right time. When we try to keep ourselves away from sins and try to indulge ourselves in Zikr. When we keep ourselves away from food, in order to achieve Allah's blessings.

It's a completely different environment in Ramzan. You know everyone is offering Fast. You talk more about Islam and what we should be doing in this month. People offer Taraveh we all try to finish Quran in this month.

I am writing all of this, not because I intend to preach about Ramadan. But because these are the things that I especially like about Ramadan. The fact that we all strive to become good Muslims, even if it's just for this one month. But even so it feels good that after all that has been happening all around, and after all the things we have entangled ourselves in, in spite of all the complexities we have sewn all around us, in spite of all the conspiracies we brew to keep ourselves ahead of everyone else in the race of life, there are times, when we detach ourselves from all these worldly affairs, or at least we try our best, and engage ourselves in our deen.

I would also take this opportunity and request everyone reading this to forgive me for anything that I might have said or done to hurt you in any way. Please forgive me.
Who knows I might not be there to ask for forgiveness the next time Ramadan is here.

How to search Google?

2008-08-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

While searching for download links, I always wanted a way where I could limit the search so it doesn't include one of the many downloading services and includes all the rest. As I didn't know a way to tell google NOT to return the results including links that use say, "abc" download service, I used to put the name of the services that I did want google to return in the results. For e.g. if I want to download "Visual Studio 2008" I would request google to search [Visual Studio 2008 xyz], xyz being the service I want to download from. The problem was I don't know all such download services, I don't like downloading from abc for one reason or the other, but including xyz in the query would result in a limited set of pages, while the pages with other services would probably not be returned. I was at a big disadvantage here because there may be a possibility that xyz doesn't provide you to download Visual Studio 2008.

This is just one of the problem, if you are required to do extensive searches you may face a lot of such problems.

I always thought there should be a way, but unfortunately, stupid as I am, I never tried to look for one.

Then in my Text Mining class, the teacher asked us "Does anyone know what is the structure of a query when you want to search say, for "Algorithms" and "Operating Systems" with exactly two words in between". The class remained silent as a response. Then he asked another question "How many of you have read 'How to search google'?". I don't remember the exact name of the document he said but the next day I searched for a document and landed myself on the site:
Google Guide

This is an extensive site with good articles. Each article tells you about so many stuff that at least I didn't know about before. And reading just one article leads you to so many other links (mostly on the same site).
But the guide is very easy to read and understand.
I hope by the time I finish it I know the answer to the query "What do you write when you want to search for 'Algorithms' and 'Operating Systems' with exactly two words in between."

An Innocent Reply

2008-08-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

A small boy comes to my place for tuition. He had proudly put on a badge (with lights). I decided to take his interview:
I asked him
"Who made Pakistan?"
The reply tough very true was something I wasn't expecting at all. He innocently and confidently answered "Allah miyaan ne" :D

Phir se jeevay Pakistan

2008-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

This year we decided to celebrate a bit differently, trying to induce a feeling of love for the country into everyone. And letting people express this feeling with fervor.
So this year around, we decided to celebrate Independence Day with renewed enthusiasm.

The idea originator Rabia Sameem, floated an email amongst bloggers. I'll copy paste the email here so that you can all get an idea of it.

Assalam o alaikum my blogger friends,

Howdy? Well as each of you know that Independence day is just around the corner…and well I am about to ask you all a favor …in the name of Pakland :-)

Well everyone here is a request (read a very forceful request) to all of you to write a short, new blog post on the topic I am giving you below….Please :-)

“There is something Good about us….”

So as it is we all know that there are a whole lot of negatives about Pakistan and Pakistanis, the systems are corrupt and government is maybe good for nothing…and what not…but then again we all know that and talk far too much about it, so much so that we often overlook the nice things there are in us sometimes :-)

I read in a book somewhere that Oprah Winfrey once said in an episode of her show that a therapy to being happy is to think up 10 good things about your life each day and be thankful for them!!

Surely it generates positive energy!!

Taking up on that…I merely ask each of you to think up ONE good thing about Pakistan/Pakistanis that you have seen, know or think about…something that made you feel warm or you are proud of and write it on your blogs…but well there are a few simple rules:

•Please don’t pick up things that are fantastical or play word games…write something you know is reality based and actually there…. (people giving people lifts, someone helping someone cross road, neighbors helping, family values, respect for ladies) any incident you actually witnessed.

•And then write something you might want to do as your share, however little it might be…for eg: throwing garbage in dustbins instead of roads, following traffic rules, just telling anyone that despite all the short comings “I love my country” etcetera

Ofcourse none of your experiences will be applied to everyone for every situation but atleast it would be some chicken soup for the soul….I can think up a million things that cud be there, throw me an email if u need ideas :-)

We have www.teabreak.pk backing us up at this and so what I visualize is a collective effort of some 20+ then 30 + and then maybe even 80 or 90+ bloggers to say something good about Pakland (maybe end up practicing too) and tell it to the world around…and even if for a week or two we do something good, it still counts…because we count!!

And yeah I’ll really appreciate if you ask your friends ahead to do the same and of course do it before or lets say by “August 14th , 2008”!!

I hope that you guys will back me up on this one …Have a good Day all!!

Take care,
Allah hafiz

People hit back with ideas, and in the end it was decided that anyone interested can write a blog post as mentioned above, can change their blog color to green and append "Proud to be a Pakistani" to their blog names.

Teabreak.pk set up a site where everyone can post in their articles/post (even people who don't have their own blogs). The site's title is "Phir se Jeevay Pakistan".

Bloggers followed up with posts and change in blog. Some of the addresses are below:

Before Daybreak
Ali Raza Shaikh
Tehreer
Hinstance
Seed a brain

Don't forget to check out "Phir se Jeevay Pakistan" for all the articles/posts. You'll love what people have to share, and would feel the passion of independence.

Jashn-e-Azadi Mubarak.

Sab se phele Pakistan

2008-08-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

Hmmmmm…one thing I love about Pakistan…

When I was told about this topic I got really excited. The patriotism running wild in my blood. I had recently stated that my patriotism has gotten cold somewhere along the course of my life. But suddenly hearing the planning from Rabia baji I felt maybe it hasn’t gotten that cold after all.

So I got really excited in the beginning but then I thought what would I write yaar. Everything in my mind is too childish, but well I’ll still go with it. It might be childish but these are the things that I really do love about Pakistan, my Pakistan. And I’ll go on and write more than one thing, why restrict myself?

1. I used to state to my friends “I can’t possibly live anywhere besides Pakistan”. Why? they would ask. And I would simply say “I won’t get these bun-kababs, gol-gappas and gola-gandas anywhere else”.
And believe me, this is the reason, at least one of them. Sometimes these bun-kababs seem more tastier than KFC Zinger. They do to me. And gola-gandas…. just don’t ask about them.

2. We, Pakistanis have an amazing history. This is a land which came into being without any war fought, not a war with swords and tops, but it was a war of courage, bravery and patriotism, patriotism for a country that hadn’t been born at that time, but people still had patriotism. They still loved it, without it existing. The love which led them to sacrifice everything for Pakistan. This country may have been won without any actual war, but still so many things were lost in the process. This is the beauty of this country, an amazing history depicting stories of great, brave people, who fought the fight against all odds. I love it when people talk about Quaid-e-Azam and what a great personality he was, or about Allama Iqbal and his unforgettable inspiring poetry, or any other hero and their heroic acts. This is what separates us from others but unfortunately this is exactly what we have forgotten.

3. And I love the fact, that somewhere deep down we all are patriotic people. That Pakistanis become jazbati for Pakistan. (Sometimes this characteristic of ours is used against Pakistan). That even if we keep on complaining about Pakistan, we can still find some good things to say about it. That when this idea was floated around, no body, not even a single person backed out, they all agreed to, they all loved the concept, and then they all chimed in. That we can take out time from our so-called busy schedules to pass on text messages wishing “Happy Independence”. That I could hear our National Anthem in the morning (today). That the National Anthem was followed by National Songs. That we still love hearing these songs and feel patriotism. That we are still proud of this country, our country. That no matter what we say about it, we still call it “Our Country, Our Pakistan”, the our showing our love for it.

Happy Independence!!!

The Countdown has begun.....

2008-08-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Yup, the countdown has begun. You ask what countdown??? If you are really asking this question then better wake up yaar, get yourself detached from your work load and look at the calendar. It's that time of the year again... yup it's August, the month when we got our independence.
But yeah I know this countdown doesn't seem as exciting as your own birthday. But I still like it when the tv channels show 10 days to go etc. I simply love this countdown.
I remember how I used to proudly attach a batch to my uniform back in school, how we sang songs in the 14th August function every year, how I decorated my home's gallery with flags and all.
Don't do that now. I guess my patriotism has damned a bit with my age.
Any ways, to honor this month, I have changed the look of my blog. It's the month when you see green flags everywhere, and thus my blog should reflect it. :)

Happy Independence Month!!! :)

And yeah, 6 days to go. :D

Class of 2008

2008-08-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, this time, I was getting ready for my convocation.
Finally.... the day I have waited for my entire life.
I also wanted to be there, you know, up on the stage, receiving a degree amidst ceiling-bursting clapping. But I never got a chance in school or college. And prayed that they don't decide not to have it after Bachelors as well. But thankfully, they didn't, in fact we got our convocation the next month we graduated. And I was so so excited. I got through the entire week just thinking that I have my convo on Saturday, and I'll be going for rehearsal on Friday. The rehearsal seemed charming because all of us friends will be meeting there, it wasn't like we have been apart for long, but still yaar......
Any ways, finally they day came for which I was waiting my entire life. And I was getting ready for it... But we reached a bit late, as we had anticipated that the convocation would definitely start late as the chief guest never arrive on time but well this one did, right on time. And this time I was late. But no worries, nothing very very important had happened before I reached.
First other departments were called for conferment of degree. Then it was time for the CS Batch, that would be us. We all were told to stand up and make a queue long before our turn so that we were ready when it was finally our turn. And then we all walked up on the stage... girls in the center, guys on both side and we have so many guys in our class that they made a second row behind us. So many people stood there taking our pictures.. ahh it was amazing, absolutely amazing... and our Rector conferred us the degree and said Congratulations...... it was again amazing. Four years of effort finally paid off. Those assignments, the tension of projects that got you close to killing everyone around you, the days before your exams... all of that.. all of that hard work, and wishing and praying finally paid off. We have finally graduated.
We are officially "Class of 2008".

And the day went fabulous.... there was one room where photographers were sitting so that any student can go and get himself or herself photographed.
The lunch was good too, pretty good.
And then of course, being our selves, we had our own photo session. :)

But the day ended... as all things and all days do... but it was a day thoroughly, utterly, completely enjoyed, and too it's fullest.

The next day I woke up and searched the entire news paper for a news about our convocation, I wanted the entire world to know that we have graduated that we are the "Class of 2008", but there was no news :(
Next day, my batch mate and now my colleague told me that Daily Times has published OUR news :)

When you miss your friends…..

2008-07-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

You miss your friends at the most oddest of times.

You miss them not only when you are depressed, don’t know your way through an assignment, or you are too low for you don’t know how to deal with the things life is throwing at you. It’s not only in these moments that you miss your friends but at other occasions too, when you never imagined you would miss them, at least I never thought I would.

Some of these moments are:

At lunch time, when you sit and eat your lunch all alone. Even when the lunch comprises of your favorite…. things just don’t seem that good when you don’t get to share it with your friends, when you don’t get to talk to them and laugh at the most silliest of jokes, and take longer to eat a sandwich that would normally take only 10 minutes, saying “yaar khana hamesha aram se khana chaye”

When you are sifting through a magazine and you find something pretty interesting, you look around to find someone you can share it with and find no one who would be able to understand why you find it amazing.

When it’s raining heavily outside and you don’t have anyone to walk with and enjoy the blessing.

When you have to walk to the bus stand alone, with no one there who would listen to you complaining about buses, and your constant rambling on a topic no one has an answer to namely “Why does Karachi have such a situation of public transport?”, when you have no one who would reply to your comments with their own mustard with equal detest.

When you watch an amazingly nice movie or a surprisingly stupid one, and you don’t have anyone around who would discuss it with you.

When you log on to “cricinfo.com” to read up on the current match between Pakistan and India and you have no one else around who shares the same excitement and no one who doesn’t share the excitement at all and continues saying “come on yaar, we have work to do!”. (Yeah you even miss them scolding you.)

When you buy a brand new mobile and don’t have anyone you could show off to.

When you finally achieve something and you don’t have anyone to shake hands, deliver a hearty congratulations and then hug and hug tightly.

When you don’t have anyone to play “Name Place Animal Thing” with to kill your time or maybe to waste it.

When you don’t have anyone you could waste your time with right before a Final exam when you should actually be studying but realize that there are better and much more important things in life than studying like the reasons you didn’t study last night.

When a quiz is announced in a class, you look back and don’t find a friendly face or to be more correct the face of a friend whose expressions would prove that you’ll not be the only one failing this quiz.

It’s 5:40 in the morning, and my head was roaring with the above, and so I decided I should post them on my blog. My net’s not working so I am writing these on Microsoft Office Word. Will post it as soon as possible.

(The above was written yesterday, 30th July, 2008)

Random Thought

2008-07-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

It's true, I have finally realized, that it's not until you loose something that you realize it's importance.

Back in school, I enjoyed going to my school, even if it meant waking up early in the morning, even if it meant taking classes the entire day including classes of subjects like Sindhi and Maths (I used to hate Maths), even if it meant doing loads of homework. I still loved being there, being a part of it, having friends, having those long chat sessions with friends in the morning before the bell rang. I remember I especially got there early so that I can chat. My home was nearby, I could have easily gotten there only 5 minutes to spare, but no I reached my school early so that I can talk with my friends and have fun. Oh this brings up so many memories, that if I start writing about them it would just fade away the actual topic (the title hasn't come to me yet) :)
But still we never failed to complain about our teachers and the school management and how they fail to care about their most important assets, their students meaning us. Ten years spent complaining and moaning on things we didn't have the authority to change.

And then it was College, an addition of two years to my fantastic memories collection. Two years spent full of enjoyment. My friends and I sat together and were always found laughing. Oh those good old days. Thoroughly enjoyed.

And then it was University. I didn't realize that I was enjoying it. The first three years were okay but the last one was fabulous. I didn't know then that I would miss this place terribly once it all gets over.

And you know what the problem is. When I told anyone that this is my last year, I am wishing for it to end soon. All they had to add was "Life would be much tougher afterwards."
No one, not a single soul, gave me the tinniest of hope that things would be fine in the future too. It felt like they wanted to imply that my life would get over once this last session of my academic career gets over. Everyone made me feel like there is nothing good to look forward to. And I hated it. Come on yaar!!! (again roaming away from the topic)

Well anyways, the point is once the time passes you by with a swift you realize that it was good when you were going through it. You may not have liked it then, there may be somethings you would rather hadn't happened, but still it was good. And some part of you wishes that you could have enjoyed it more while it lasted.....

End of another inane post with no relevance to anything.... :)

Sometimes....

2008-07-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you have to leave a thing that you hold important for a thing that is important,

Sometimes you have to make the right decision even if it doesn't give you an pleasure,

Sometimes you have to give up the thing you love for the thing you need...