The Lunar Problem

It was Shabb-e-Meraj a couple of days back.

As you kknow, Shabb-e-Meraj is one of the nights known to have significance, in Islamic calendar, among others such as Shabb-e-Baraat and Shabb-e-Qaddar.

I remember, in good old days, when I used to have time and when I had things to do other than sitting in front of my PC, we friends would stay late in Masjid on such nights. There used to be a Jalsa in the masjid. At the end sweets were distributed. We normally were part of the volunteer group, organizing things like getting sweets from shop to masjid, receiving guests, distributing sweets etc., intazamia as they call it. Normally there used to be 2 scenarios after the distribution; we would either run short of sweets, and nothing would remain for us, or we’ll have plenty of it left. In former case, we’d try to play graceful, as if we dont care , whereas in latter, we’d get lion’s share without looking nadeeda

After jalsa we’d sit in the mosque, offer nawafil, recite Quran and talk.

Those were the days …

Khair … this is not the topic of today’s post.

I was wondering, as we get different lunar dates in different parts of the world, i.e. it might be 27th of Rajab in Pakistan, with 28th in Saudi Arab, and 26th in some other part of the world. So … as we believe these nights are blissful, are all 27ths blissful, or is it just one of them. I hope I am making my point.

This gets particularly significant in case of Shabb-e-Qaddar, as its a special night. So special that it has got a complete surah for it. I might be wrong, but it seems its one night, and cannot be more than one. And as it is one of the odd-numbered nights in last 10 days of Ramdhan, if it is on 25th in Pakistan, it would be on 26th or 24th in some other part of the world, neither of which is an odd number.

Also, as our religious high-ups are notorious for manipulating Shawal’s moon, if in one calender year, they actually erred, that causes an error of a day in the lunar dates. For example here in UK, they dont base the Ramadhan/Shawal moon on sighting, but with the date announced in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. How does that effect these nights?

I have no answer to this confusion, hence putting it here …

Interviewed

Recently I got an interview request from Pak Spectator. I responded to that, and its online for your reading pleasure.

Yup, dont worry, I haven’t acquired Microsoft yet. They interview a lot of bloggers, for some reason I dont know 

Chal mere dil, khula he mae-khana

I was late from office in morning, so decided to make up my time, & leave late. Asif bhaee & Waqas were like, going home & coming back is a bit hactic, so we panned to go to shab-e-jumma straight from offices.

I’ve been being late, since last couple of weeks, since the time they have moved the bayan from after-maghrib to after-asar. So I was thinking to be in time, this time.

There was still some time to go before I was to leave my office, when some colleagues turned up on my table and were like, we are going to have some drinks, wanna join? I was like, no thanks. I have some work to complete, so … sometime later. They were like, c’mon man. They named the pub near to my office, and said we’ll be there for sometime, join us once you are done.

… and I was thinking to be in time, this time

They were standing outside, when I joined them. Outside is better, as inside there is so much noise and it gets difficult to talk.

We talked on diverse topics and in some cases, I realized they were quite comfortable talking about the stuff we, normally, would never talk about with our colleagues. I, most of the time, stayed quiet in those discussions and just observed. Its a difference of social norms. Its, obviously, a different society.

…

After finishing my drink, I headed straight, from mae-kadda to masjid

Absence

To all my valuable readers, yes I really value you all , I currently am waiting for SKY to activate my broadband at home… they have taken almost 4 weeks to let all this through … and now they say it will be activated by the mid of next week. Lets hope they do.

So that is why I have been unable to post anything. In office, I hardly get time to actually write up something …. so …

See you next week !!!

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”

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 …

Irony of commercialism

I was onto The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs when I saw this ad.

Yeah, rite, its Microsft Dynamics, a product from Redmond.

I dont know how (fake) Steve Jobs would be feeling after knowing about his blog displaying such ads as he normally goes quite hard on Microsoft e.g this, this & this.

But then the piece of software that gets ads and displays em is innocent enough to realize the stuff

BUSIness or BLOODIness

I went to a computer-composing shop (at saddar) today evening to have a couple of pages, 3 to be precise, scanned. I just realized that I do not have my flash-drive with me. I told the guy at the shop and asked if he can do me a favor and email the scanned documents to my email? To which he said, “Sure”.

Once he was done, he emailed and closed the window. I asked him to delete the files from disk as well as from Sent folder in his mailbox. So he opened the browser again and deleted from mailbox as well, after deleting from disk.

All went well till I asked the guy how much to pay? The dialogue that followed went something like:

the guy: 50 rupees.

me: 50? At what rate?

the guy: 10 rupees per page.

me: And there are 3 pages. That  makes 30.

the guy: 20 for email.

me: (you can imagine how my face would have been looking) What ?

the guy: (very calmly) yup.

me: You are charging for an email? Courtesy bi koi cheeze hoti he yaar.

the guy: (braggingly) We are using a DSL connection.

me: So … ?

…

me: OK. And why 20 rupees for an email? If you have to charge me.

the guy: 10 rupees for an email.

me: (a bit of @#$%) and what is the other 10 for?

the guy: I had to open the mailbox again to delete the file. Bandwidth use hoti he.

me: <speechless @ this bloodiness>

I mean, gimme a break.

It makes sense to do business but our shopkeepers need to learn the norms. We should not be leaches to suck as much as possible. We should be humans. We, after all, are humans; the vicegerents of the Lord of the Lords.

Bilawal Bhutto goes off-book

Now this is hilarious.

Somebody set up  an account on Facebook with the credentials of BB’s son Bilawal. He pretended to be Bilawal. And put up some stuff, including his love for Buffy stuff, related to him up there. Put some quotes from BB and boom. The profile is ready.

A snap of Bilawal’s profile.

The profile has been quite a buzzword on Facebook, and as Mr. “Somebody” says: received condolences, interview calls, friendship request etc etc.

“Facebook on Thursday said two purported profiles of slain Pakistan politician Benazir Bhutto’s son Bilawal were not authentic, and that the company had taken them down”, Yahoo reports.

Radar Online has stories both before and after the news broke.

And I was about to believe all being said, when I came across this. I am confused whom to believe.

[ Image Source ]

Good Mourning PTV

I was watching PTV today evening, yes PTV, and guess what was on air? A lady was asking an old-man, I don’t know his name, about Hajj being in winters, what precautionary measures people should take? And the old-man was kind enough to share his views on the issue. Weired isn’t it? Its been more than a week Hajj was performed.

What I was able to guess is that since 3-day official mourning is being observed in all the governmental functionaries across the country, so is it @ PTV. And I don’t know what relationship religious programs have with mourning, but somehow PTV is airing Naats/Qawalis etc. Hajj being a religious matter, also came under the same heading, and the guy arranging the visuals was wise-enough to include this recording in today’s schedule.