Scratchpad

I am in the habbit of keeping a text file on my desktop, named “scratchpad”. It contains all those small pieces of information that you can’t find a place to notedown, including those-registration-requiring-website-passwords, account references, qoutes, code snippets, URLs, rail ticket refrences and a lot of other stuff. Yes there are many applications that let you do this stuff in an organized way … but somehow this flat file has always been more helpful than any organized way .. at least for me

Today is my last day at my current company, ohh I didn’t tell you ? Yes it is. I am moving on. And I was doing the usual cleanup of my PC when I came across my scracthpad.  While going through it I found some interesting qoutes , collected from different websites, people’s email signatures, and Code Project

So I decided to paste them here for your reading pleasure:

I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every moment of it.

“Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead.
Walk beside me and be my friend.”

I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
- W. C. Fields

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
- Mark Twain

Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.

Sometimes I speak to God… and He laughs at my plans. [one of my favourites]

“The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage.”
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
- Aesop

If you open a can of worms, any valid solution *MUST* involve a larger can!

“A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement”

My programs never have bugs, they just develop random features.

Knowledge is knowing that the tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in fruit salad!!

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems. — Jamie Zawinski

There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.

If you lend someone £20 and never see that person again, it was probably well worth it.

If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

“It doesn’t matter how big a ranch ya’ own, or how many cows ya’ brand, the size of your funeral is still gonna depend on the weather.” -Harry Truman.

“Each night when I go to sleep I die, and next morning when I wake up I am reborn again”
- M K Gandhi
“Each night when I go to sleep I am reborn and next morning when I wake up I am dead again”
- Software Engineer

The Secret of My Success…

Breakfast
Brunch
Lunch
Tea
Dinner
Supper

Sorry, that’s not the secret of my success, thats the reason for my waistline, I am always getting them confused

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity

“Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks” – Pete O’Hanlon

“An optimist says the glass is half full, pessimist says glass is half empty, programmer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.”

Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)

John Andrew Holmes “It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.”

KISS – “Keep It Simple, Stupid”

Lemonade .. really ??

Yesterday, we went to a pizza restuarant in city center for lunch. Yup, sometimes, you know dil pashori ke leye, we get into some pizza place and eat vegi pizza, yup vegi pizza And whats interesting to note is that they have a buffet for pizza, pizza + pasta + salad actually. So sort of “all you can eat”.

We were three, me MUF and his arab colleague, lets call him SD. In drinks, MUF asked for a 7up, we asked for 2 lemonades.

After placing the order we got to get the food. When we returned there were three glasses, big glasses actually like we have for lassi in Pakistan, on the table. The liquid in all the three was colourless, as you  normally expect from 7up. What confused us was, which of these are lemonades? They looked the same. I was like, lemonades should have a bit of colour, a bit of whiteish you know … SD agreed to me, but …

We even tried to identify the odd ones by observing the number of bubbles that go up from bottom to top, as MUF said 7up is supposed to be more carbonated as compared to lemonade,  but that was also same … :S In all this process, I was trying to get the waiteress’ attention, who was serving us, but she would never look our way.

Khair .. at last MUF picked one, and said this has to be 7up, took a sip, and confirmed. So, logically speaking remaining two were lemonades. We, me n SD, each took one glass, and tasted it; yeah it looks like lemonade, but … anyway …

We were still eating, when the bill was placed on the table. It stayed there for a while, as everybody was busy eating. When were done, we noted the amount. I normally read the bill before paying, so just out of habit, I took a look and it read:

Three 7UPs.

An adventure

MUF had to buy a wireless router for home use, and interestingly enough he couldn’t fine a router in Bristol City Center So we decided to go to PC World which is a little aside from city center, in an area we have never been to, before.

We checked the location of the store online, and proceeded to bus stop to see which bus goes that way. We were able to find more than one buses, but some of them were morning only, some noon only, and some evening only, running with quite an interval of time in between. Khair we decided upon one of them, and got on board. While we were discussing with each other ke ‘yaad he na utarna kahan pe he’, I was like, yup its the second stop.

When the second stop came, we were looking at MUF’s phone’s GPS to see our location, and the road our destination was at, was quite near by. We didn’t get off the bus, expecting that bus is going to the same road, so we’ll get off on next stop. To our amazement, as we looked at GPS, bus started moving in opposite direction

Aaah, khair, we were like, ok, will get off at next stop and will come back, as in city stops are not much far from each other. But, what we didnt know was, we just left the last stop to be counted in the city. As we waited for the next stop, the bus moved on and on …

and on …

I would look at MUF, and he would look at me when we saw the trees all around, as far as we could see.

Now we were concerned about if there soon will be a bus coming back to city from the stop we’ll drop off, when MUF suddenly asked a very interesting question: Do you have cash with you?

Me: I dont think so … might have some change, but thats not much … kion?

MUF: I think we are out of zone 1, the zone for which our monthly bus passes are valid, into zone 2 may be. So we’ll need to pay for the ticket.

Me: Do you have the cash?

MUF: No .

Both of us … : £$%^&*#@

… bus is still moving on …

I got all the change I had, out, and that amounted to some 2.60 pounds I guess. MUF was quite -ive that this amount will serve the two of us, as ticket might cost more than that. And in this part of the world, Bristol particularly, if you are even a single pence short of fare, you wont be allowed to board the bus. If you would argue, driver would switch off the engine, and sit there, untill u get off the bus. So … we were worried now. And did I say it was already dark , around 7 pm.

The bus slowed down, and stopped eventually. We got off. There was nothing around, except a pub. I went int to see if they have a cash machine, they didnt. But got some hints that there is a cash machine at 15 minutes distance. As per the time table, next bus was due in 20-25 minutes, and if it would take us 30 minutes to come back to bus stop, we’d miss this bus as well only to wait another hour or so.

We didnt have money for the ticket, but still there was a hope.

Standing on a dark road, in a dark night, with a pub and 2-3 houses around, we were worried now. What if the driver didnt allow us to board the bus …

Also we were doubtful if taxi service would entertain an area this remote. We even thought to call police, worse come worse.

Now we were counting the people we can ask to come and pick us …

The bus pass normally contains a valid untill date in very big font, and other information like zone valid for in quite small font. So small that you can’t read it, unless you look closely. Drivers would normally look at valid untill date, when presented with a bus pass, but few would actually read every bit of info printed on it.

We planned to present the pass with a normal tone to driver, and expected him to read the date only, ignoring the zone information. This was our only hope. On the other hand, if he’d read the zone info, we were in trouble.

We were planning this when bus came. We waved to it. It stopped. I entered first. Presented the pass. Without even looking at it, the driver pointed inside. I was like, wow I was about to put it inside, when he called from back,to put it to the machine. Bus passes are machine readable. I put it to machine, and it beeped, means card not valid. I showed it to him, he looked at date, and told me to get in … phew ….

… so was it with MUF.

Yes, we were in … after some time of tension, quite relieved …

And now, the more we would think about it, the more it’d expose the wieredness of the situation … and more we’d thank God to get us out of this adventure …

Protest to stop Israeli aggression – Bristol

Yesterday, there was a protest , organized by Muslim community, here in Bristol against Israeli aggression in Palestine.

I was in office when I heard the shouts outside, around 3 pm, but my office being on a road joining the main road on which protesters were marching on, couldn’t hear clearly, neither could I see the placards they were holding. It was just that some protest is going on.

Protesters in Bristol City Center

Image Source

In evening, when we, me n MUF, went to a food takeaway near to my house, we saw a flyer, mentioning about the protest. And then we recalled that it was the same protest, as MUF also saw them in city center. We were like, could have joined had we known about it. The guy on counter told us the details. There was quite a good number of people and people came even from outside Bristol, to join it.