I don't get it... Why do people promise when they know they're going to break it?

I guess they're used to the feeling you get when you're lying and you know it... The feeling that goes like hope that person forgets about this whole thing...

I'm not a perfect person... There are many things I wish I didn't do... But I continue learning... And hope that other learn from me too...

Patience...

There is a time in everyone's life, when they love something more than what they had ever loved their entire lives...

Everything else seems so un-important.. It doesn't matter what others think... It doesn't matter whether it is right or wrong... The moment is full of purity... The moment is full of enthusiasm... The moment is full of happiness... The moment is full of everything good... The moment is full of all the good feelings one can think of...

Well we know what we were feeling but what were we thinking?

That's the thing... We don't remember... Maybe we don't want to remember... We try to block out stuff from our memory and learn lessons from it... It's definitely easier said than done...

As kids, we're always taught, "Look before you leap" but we, by human nature, want to feel in control... We don't want to think of the consequences...

What is done... is done... and there is nothing you can do to change the past... But...

It's only the wind, and nothing more... Not the end of the world knocking at the door... So close your eyes and dream again... Believe me... It's only the wind...

But do not just dream the same thing all over again... You should have learnt what you did whether wrong or right... This is called experience...

Experience is a comb which nature gives us when we are bald. ~Proverb

And then sometimes things don't go so well...

Even the best fall down sometimes... Even the wrong words seem to rhyme... Out of the doubt that fills my mind... I somehow find... Everything collides...

That's when you need patience...

Bohemian

I recently watch Moulin Rouge coz I had nothing better to do. Their emphasis on Bohemian Ideals caught a bit of my attention.

Now Bohemianism started out in 19th century France. Although it has several meanings... All of them revolve around the 4 basic ideals stated in the movie:

1. Freedom
2. Beauty
3. Truth
4. Love

But isn't there a problem with this pattern?

You have the Freedom to depart from Morals into the lust of never ending Beauty where you start hating underprivileged in beauty (Ugly) - racism? - abiding by being True to your own self even if it means False to others... and Love...

The best thing in life is to love and be loved in return...

Is this really true? Where is the Freedom in being Loved? By default you are bound to the other person once you Love... Or is this part of leaving Morals behind?

The Degringolade of Conscience

Browsing a magazine this other day, I see some of the victims of natural disasters... I feel sorry for them...

I turn the page...

I see beautiful models dressed in very expensive clothing on the catwalk...

What am I supposed to feel?

Death, sickness, poverty on one side of the page...
Glamor, beauty, money on the other...

I figure they're just out there to kill our conscience... It is only our conscience that keeps us human and if that is dead we're no better than animals...

Considering what is going on is several parts of the world, I believe it just a lack of conscience and nothing else.. We are deteriorating (for lack of a better word... darn there's no proper opposite of Darwinism/Evolution)...

I just hope we can keep our conscience in tact... You're being attacked from everywhere... and soon your conscience will die... like it has died for the rest...

A li'l more interesting...

A car is purpose is to take its owner from place to place, and if it breaks down and isn't able to fulfill its purpose, the owner has no use for it. Likewise, if we don't fulfill the purpose for which the Creator and Owner of all created us, then He has no use for us.

Interesting...

You are here to perform a great job -- the greatest and noblest job there is. You are here to know the One Who gave you everything -- everything you have, have had, and ever will have. And then you are to tell others about this One. If you do this correctly, you are successful; if you don't do this, then you have failed to fulfill the purpose for which you were created.

Books

I don't get these people... There are quite a few novels out there that just exploit beliefs...

Useless people in dire need of publicity...

Frustration

I never thought I'd be blogging about work but here goes...

You get to see managers in your lifetime that seem to be quite competitive. Eventually they turn out to worse than you, except that they know a wee bit more than what you know in a specific field.

We have Program Management Officers who seem to be quite qualified, except that they just know that much and that's all they will ever know. No matter how much you teach them or tell them, nothing will change their perception of something.

We had a meeting discussing the ability of Vendor Project Managers to "Publish" their project plans in our portal. Mind you, the first meeting we had regarding this was 3 months ago and we had decided that the Project Owners (i.e. Project Manager from the - our - Company side) should take the plan and publish it, assigning all tasks to the Project Manager so that he can update it.

Now this meeting started off with discussing the drawbacks of having the Vendor Project Managers publish the plan instead of the Project Owner. The debate went on for some time, then all of a sudden, my fav. colleague (NOT), came in the meeting room (although he was not invited), and gave his suggestion, "Why don't we assign all tasks to the Project Manager and let him update the plan in that way?"

Bloody crap, don't you know we already have these permissions implemented.. Forget him, all the other Project Management Officers were like, "Yeah, why don't we do that... GO ahead and implement this, we review this tomorrow, meeting adjourned..."

Today, they tested it out, don't like it... so we go the same route again in the meeting today...

Time's awasting, dudes...

Birthdays

Days come... Days go... Years you look forward to... Years you look back at and remember...

Is life really worth living?

Health: Very limited
Wealth: Just vanishes
Love: Dies after time
Accomplishments: Nobody notices

Why do we celebrate Birthdays? To mark another year in our lives we haven't met the Angel of Death?

Pessimistic one year, Optimistic the next... It's all about living a life for a purpose...

To find THE purpose, the One who created the Universe, provides you with Religion... It is upto us to follow and find the purpose... or just plainly reject it coz we like living the way we live... every breath drawing us closer to darkness... The blinding darkness of old age... The ultimate darkness of the grave... and the final darkness of our soul...

Implosion Due?

"We face the real possibility that the Internet may implode on itself in the coming years, and will ultimately be a nice history lesson for future generations," he said. "I hope we can save it, but the current signs don't point in that direction." - Sachs of the Internet Storm Watch

Haha.. This should be interesting...

Quiet Mornings

For some reason I love quiet mornings... After I wake up till at least I get to work (timespan of 1.5 hours) I like it very quiet... not one word to be spoken to me nor do I like to speak..

Many of my mornings have been spent in complete silence... This helps me get a new perspective of things and helps me to notice things around me... also helps me to sort of plan the day out...

Comeback...

Been a long time... thought about loads of things that I wanted to write about... forgot most of them...

Its amazing how we go about our lives, from the time we were kids and didn't know anything and didn't remember much to the time we will be old and won't know much and won't remember much either. I recently got to meet a grandmother of some very young kids. She used to be a Teacher at a school. Quite a good one at that apparently, now she can't even recognise some of her own children unless she stares at them blankly for some time. Times change...

I used to read alot about mindfulness (noticing things)... quite interesting...

How do you sleep?

I sleep really well... no alarm wakes me in the middle of my sleep... in fact nothing (barely anything) wakes me...

Amazingly enough, I was so tired yesterday I decided I'd sleep half naked... It was fun.. until I felt really cold with AC on full.. so I sorta woke up, turned off the AC then went back to sleep... Then I felt really hot so I sorta woke up, turned on the fan and went back to sleep...

It was fun... well most of it... Thank God I live alone...

Satisfaction=Happiness?

From Finding Happiness at Work
Read the following statements about each basic desire. If they strongly describe you mark "+" if they somewhat describe you mark "0," and if they apply to you very little mark "-":

1. Curiosity. I have a thirst for knowledge. +

2. Acceptance. I have a hard time coping with criticism. -

3. Order. It upsets me when things are out of place. 0

4. Physical Activity. Physical fitness is very important to me. 0

5. Honor. I am a highly principled and loyal person. +

6. Power. I often seek leadership roles. +

7. Independence. Self-reliance is essential to my happiness. 0

8. Social Contact. I am known as a fun-loving person. +

9. Family. My children come first. -

10. Status. I am impressed by people who own expensive things. -

11. Idealism. Compared with most people, I am very concerned with social causes. 0

12. Vengeance. It is very important to me to get even with those who insult or offend me. 0

13. Romance. Compared with my peers, I spend much more time pursuing or having sex. -

14. Eating. I love to eat and often fantasize about food. -

15. Saving. I hate throwing things away. +

16. Tranquility. It scares me when my heart beats rapidly.


Now, look at your "plus" items. These are your priorities, and you should have five or six of them.

1. Curiosity. I have a thirst for knowledge. +
They don't have any crappy piece of way to gain knowledge here with that "Colleague" in front of me..

5. Honor. I am a highly principled and loyal person. +
I do my work as required of me, always go by the book and extremely hate work politics...

6. Power. I often seek leadership roles. +
I like to lead my own self then others... You wouldn't be anywhere without leadership...

8. Social Contact. I am known as a fun-loving person. +
It's nice to have a friendly conversation here and there...

15. Saving. I hate throwing things away. +
I hate wasting... so yea...


Although I totally disagree with:
"To do well in a career and enjoy life, people need to be in a job and work environment that are compatible with their intrinsic desires," concludes Reiss. "By repeatedly doing those things that fulfill your values, there is no limit to how meaningful and happy your life can be."

Repeatedly doing anything gives me the bore... New challenges within these fields are always interesting...

Venting...

I was thinking about writing about satisfaction.. but a few mails changed my mind..


X:
I have reviewed the ***** Workflow functionality and it seems it is exactly what we need. Can you, as a matter of urgency arrange for a live demo form a supplier and forward to us the product cost details.

Me:
I seem to notice that the Workflow is only limited to documents and specific lists provided by the installation. The Workflow cannot be extended to other lists available in Sharepoint. I have contacted *****, and hopefully they will reply with clarifications.

Colleague who is an !@#!@#!:
You seem to have read only about the Workflow for Share Point. Check out their regular workflow engine in their website.

I AM talking about Sharepoint dammit...

Colleague who is an !@#!@#!:
Can you please send me a progress report of what activities you were engaged in on Sunday last and yesterday!

Me:
I have been trying to setup the Failover server which shall be completed Today

We also had a 3 hour communication plan session and User Training. I have to train one PO and one PM today 1:00 pm.

Colleague who is an !@#!@#!:
It is a wonder you want me to guess your activities based on what you projected to do. I am asking about what was done. A mail sent at 10: 46 AM does not tell me what you did until 5 PM.

Managers

As requested by Princess Donna, Ima write sum'in about my Managers...

Well, my first experience with an Egyptian manager hadn't been good. He started off in IT as a Graphic Designer (seems like all managers I hate start with graphic designing)... When I had first joined the company he was the Multimedia Director... I was introduced and everything was fine until he showed me his works... So I thought maybe he just needs improvement and should be fine.. I later found out that 90% of the presentation he claimed he did was done by this other guy... Now I could smell something fishy so I decided to stay away from the guy...

Later on however, I found out that the guy was promoted to Head of the Web Department... I was literally like, "What!! He has no skills.." I kept it to myself obviously and his team... Now, his team hated him as much as I did (or vice versa)... I thought to myself, "I have to do something about this..."

So, the next thing you know, he's promoted as the Chief Technology Officer and he knows crap about technology... Apparently he had learned Oracle in 13 days... *shrug*

I had a sincere talk with my CEO about the future of the company.. and guess what? He promoted me to the Head of the Web Department.... Seeing this, that guy's blood boiled... Even more so because the team had informed the Management personally that I was a whole lot better than the previous guy... So this guy started playing games...

We had a new project... Quite a big one at that.. We had to make a replica of the UEFA site, except completely in Arabic... The CEO obviously consulted the CTO who directly said 5 days... I was like, "WTH (I couldn't use F coz that's considered really bad in this env.)!!!"... I had to convince the CEO with the CTO smiling at me and interrupting me quite a bit... Finally I got the CEO convinced that it would take 15 days... The CTO hated me even more.. He started shouting and screaming...

Rivalry ensued.. He would come and start giving my team tasks without my approval... Start coming and disturbing us very often... Start being picky on every little thing...

In any case, we completed the project on schedule, on time, in budget, complete customer satisfaction etc. etc... That guy started boiling so bad, he would sit late every day (The GM used to come in late every night)... And I started noticing these things and finally I decided I can't take it anymore... I went to the CEO just to tell him I quit.. He asked me to stay till the end of the month and I did... And then I left feeling sorry for the company...

Last I heard about them... They're trying to survive.. The CEO has quit... Several others are planning... But holding on to the last string...

Anyway, I hate work politics...

Recently, the Indi Colleague's trying to tell me that I shouldn't be part of team meetings coz it doesn't concern me... And tryin to impose this on me by CC'ing the real Boss...

Well I guess time has come to change another job...

I hate places with no challenges.. No definite direction... No strategy... No personal development...

What is the point?

I just don't get it.. What is the point of making a website if you don't have something niche? Everywhere you go, you get the same thing... Forums, Blogs, Auctions, Portfolios, etc. Its all there on the web... What more do we need?

Message?

A few words from Al-Qaeda then the response from Bush (didn't have enough time to finish it off)

AlQaeda:

Stick and Stones (missles and bombs) can break my bones but words (Terrorist) can never
hurt me.

You see Mr. Bush, we are a people who have faith. The faith in the right things. History has
proven that the people who have faith persevere. Whether they lose in the beginning they win
afterwards.

We are a people who do not care about this world, since our existence is for a purpose. We are
created for something and that something is to make all worship the Creator and not the
creations. We stay with the pain. We believe that without pain without sacrifice we would have
nothing. Every step you take to try to destroy us, we are enlightened. We know that someday
we are going to die and we have accepted this as our true fate.

We are not a materialistic people. We do not own things except what is truly needed. In the end it is the extra things you own that end up owning you. We have the ability to let things that do not matter truly slide.

Please go ahead and try to attack us. Destroy us with all you can. It is only that when we have lost everything that we are free to do anything.

Predijuce does not show much reason. Your predijuce towards our people (Afghanistan and Iraq) made you kill innocent civilians. Your evil is man's inhumanity towards man.

There are varying degrees of evil, we are due lesser farms of filth, not to push the bounds and crossover, into true corruption, into our domain, but if you do, you will look behind you and you will see us, and on that day you will reap it, and we will send you to whatever God you wish.
Do you possess the depth of faith to go as far as needed? We are warriors, when engaged in combat, the vanquishing of the enemy is our only concern. We suppress all human emotion and compassion. We kill whoever stands in the way. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.
Revenge is never a straight line. Its a forest and like a forest its easy to lose your way to get lost to forget where you came in but we have a guide, the only true Guide.. Our God, Allah.

We deserve our revenge and you deserve to die.

We will make you suffer till your last breath, that is our promise.

Bush:

Your attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. Your acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.

This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good (we) will prevail. This battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it, we will win.

You are an enemy that tries to hide, but you won't be able to hide forever. You think your harbours are safe, but they won't be safe forever. You prey on innocent and unsuspecting people, then run for cover, but you won't be able to run for cover forever.

Your acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed; our country is strong.

Accidents

How many times have you been in a car accident?

Besides the fact that I drive like a wacko most of the accidents I have been in were the other guy's fault...

Accident #1
I'm driving on a straight two-way road and this guy comes and bumps into me.

Accident #2 - Life Threatening...
I'm driving on a highway, real fast, and this guy from my right tries to overtake me. Obviously he hits me and sends me spinning down the freeway till I hit a lamp post. The guy was nowhere to be seen...

Accident #3
I'm driving on the right side on a double road (two roads separated by an elevation with some trees) and this guy with a Cadillac Escalade hits my Corolla 90.

Crazy Drivers... pfft..

Hate

How often do you get irritated? What does it take to irritate you?

I get irritated by constant repitition... doesn't matter what it is.. as long as it is being repeated... it drives me crazy... My boss is the one person I know in my whole life who irritates me not only because of his repitition but because he doesn't want to understand...

For example, we have a problem and I somehow solved it without help from anybody... He just won't "understand"... He would go like, "No, how did you solve it?" - he's no techie and he tells me this himself when he's more sane... and when I tell him, then he goes I don't understand... I feel like saying, "Bugger off you imbicile", which obviously I keep to myself.. try to explain to him some more but no he would twist the question around so somehow HE is the one who solved it..

Bloody Indian... (I'm not generalising, just that this bloody Indian has gotten on my bloody nerves)... Hate the sound of this person...