I ordered the Norco DS-1500 Sata Storage to incorporate into my Rack Server, planning a very interesting build. I have had it in my Amazon Cart for about 6 months, and I at last decided to buy it as of three weeks ago. Around the 20th of June it came into Kuwait and there was a problem at customs, I knew something was going to happen just wasn’t sure what. The smart people at Aramex listed this Sata Storage device as a sporting goods on the manifest, so how surprised were the customs guys when it looked like a box with a bunch of wires. So automatically they held the box so Aramex contacted me asking for the invoice, I told them the invoice is inside the box and I decided to finish the paperwork myself.
Went to the customs guy and finished all the paper work necessary, they just asked for the MOC clearance for the product. I know that usually they will clear it quickly. The box was opened one day so the next morning I went to the MOC and that took sometime, more then I thought was necessary since I had to find the head of the MOC clearance department and he was taking a longer break then usual, as the secretary said. I didn’t have time to go to the customs so I thought I would go the next day. When I went the next day they couldn’t find the box, I went to Kuwait Airways and they said they returned the box to Global Logisitics for storage. It has been over four days now and I have sent formal letters to both Kuwait Airways and Global Logistics regarding my Sata Storage and nobody seems to be giving me the time of day, I’m bouncing back and forth between the two and they are both denying that any of them had kept it or the other received even though I was with the customs guys when they returned and it has been over a week and I’m asking for financial damages to paid for the item as well as the shipping that I paid for it. Lets see how this all works out and how long it will take, and the customs guys are saying that Kuwait Airways and Global Logistics are responsible for holding the items.
I’m a simple creature of habit, especially when it has to do with these types of items. If I find something that I am comfortable with I will stick to it completely. I found FCUK make bathroom items for men for a while now and I have to say that I am happy with their product line, I get really annoyed with changes but thats what I am facing with Boots Kuwait and FCUK. FCUK are making some product changes, but Boots seem to be struggling in Kuwait so they change their products very often. I remember when they first opened it was a huge wall of mens products and over time it has shrunk to a few shelves shoved to the side. Now they have recently changed their product line for FCUK and I picked up the three variations, all seems pretty good, the thinner one is better for travel but the shorter and bulkier one smells nicer so I went with the shorter one. Men are simple, if they like something they stick it out, quit changing the product lines.
Last week I spent about 7 hours in the sun and got a little too burnt, my skin was red right away and it was producing heat. Even after a cool shower my skin was hot as hell, got home and my shoulders and back starting to feel like it really was burnt and I’m feeling pain. So staying out in the sun without a little sun block is pretty dumb, I have started remembering all the things I would bring with me to the shalaih and this time around I should remember to bring some sun block.
Spoke to a friend and I was recommended to pick up an after sun cream with Aloe Vera extract but I didn’t know what to get. After getting the solarcain which had aloe vera extract I applied it right away and that helped a little. Then I took a cold shower before going to sleep and applied it again, you can feel the relief because the pain decreased, even the pressure from the water hurt. I had a hard time sleeping since I couldn’t sleep on the side, I had a restless first night but the solarcaine helped reduce the pain. After three days of applying three times a day it got a lot better, by the third day it felt like a small annoyance and suprsingly my skin didn’t peel at all.
This has been an interesting weekend, after hanging out Thursday night for our usual get together we headed out straight to the shalaih at night. We all got there about the same time, 6 cars all together, already a few people there ahead of us. Most of us crash early, I spend a few hours watching anime which I almost manage to finish the whole series.
We get up next morning around 10 am, breakfast already in the kitchen, but I decided I wanted eggs and worked on that while watching Mel Gibsons’ Payback. We all decided to jump in the water, one jet ski was brought out and then a few others. Later on in the day the boat was brought out then another friend came with a boat. By noon we were more then 20 guys in the water, some flying around in the jetskis and some on the boats and some in the water. Then they started towing the Banana and all I can say is that I have a few bruises to prove that we flew off. I need to bring my life jacket with me, because it also absorbs some impacts which I could have been sparred. On another note, sun block is your friend because at this point I’m a little burnt and crispy especially after 7 hours in the sun. I’m all bruised up and feeling sore in all the wrong places but I never laughed that much in a while.
Link: Flickr
Didn’t get much sleep the last night it was pretty messed up but happily the pain was lessening by morning. I was awake in bed pretty much flipping from side to side from 4 am to 8 am. When to Mubarak hospital with my friend, got an XRay of my leg, hip and back area to see what exactly was going on. The Doc asked me a couple of questions, and put on some gloves, put some pressure and made me do some movements. Turned out to be inflammation of a ligament and I did something about 72 hours ago, which I would probably relate to water activities. He just told me to take it easy for the day and relax and gave me something for the pain, there isn’t much I can do for it except some physical therapy at a later point.
You know when you have so many tasks that they pile up and you really don’t get anywhere with anything. I come back from work exhausted and all I can think about is planting myself in front of the tv and doing nothing but watching Anime or Battlestar Galactica. I did go swimming on Monday which felt fantastic and I fell asleep right away that night, but I keep thinking if only I had music outdoors it would be a little more fun swimming late at night.
- Cleaning up my room (This has been on the back burner for a while now)
- Work on 2nd Gundam Model
- Rewire the cabinet area again, needs major clean up
- Go to Huperoptic for some tinting job for a car (Best Tint in Kuwait, going to do a follow up on that)
- Reorganizing about 229 GBs worth of Anime and Movies into their folders in the Hazmat Windows Homer Server
- Organize the pile of books I have
- Work on the Rackmounted Server and put it together, it has been sitting on the floor for over two months now
I think I should just pick one thing and work on it, all of this and I still have GulfRun in mind and planning for it.
I picked up this list from the Maximum PC April 2009 issue, there are some publications which are still worth buying in print and this is one of them. PC Geeks over the years have developed certain skill sets, some are through education, some through knowledge, and the majority of it is through breaking stuff. Well this is a list of things that I can relate with and I know a few people that can as well, there are people with a lot more skills and I’m one always willing to learn.
- Knowing the difference between the board connectors; PCI Express, DDR Memory, Dual Channel Rimm
- Benchmarking a PC
- Know basic HTML tags
- Bypass the Government content filter
- Run all your essential Apps on a USB stick
- Getting through to the real technicians of customer service
- Use photoshop to doctor a photo
- Wire your home with your know Ethernet and know how to crimp it
- Say NO to extended warranty
- Mooch Wi-Fi pretty much anywhere
- Use a DSLR in full manual mode
- Install a Hard Drive in a Laptop (Laptop broke down in the first month, damn annoying)
- Protect your Wi-Fi
- Take apart a damage external hard drive and extract the data
- Pull off an elaborate prank
- Set up a RAID configuration
- Securely Erase your data (They don’t know how to do that at Lockheed Martin)
- Solder like your life depended on it (I used to do that when I worked on my R/C Cars, would probably do some damage to a mother board)
- Rip CDs to FLAC
- Stream your movies, Music, Photos, and anything else to any location in your house
- Dual-Boot your PC
- How to hack a Windows Computer or Router
- Watch TV Shows on the Internet (Legally)
- Installing and configuring a Virtual Machine
- Protecting your tracks on the PC
- Run multiple monitors
- Know the important Linux Commands
- Avoid DRM at all costs
- Use Remote Desktop
- Rip a DVD to H.264
- Find everything you need to know Online
- Install Third-party firmware on your router
- Be an addict to Star Wars or Star Trek
- Be able to use the command prompt like a pro
- Be able to change your own tire
- Connecting to the ECU of your vehicle to tweak, or flash, clear codes
- Play Halo1/2/3 and still don’t want to sleep
I decided only a couple of weeks back that I wanted to vote, that I’m really tired of all this crap going on. Our country is on hold and everybody else is moving forward. A lot of our friends are depressed about Kuwait and you feel like their isn’t much you can do about it. I did something simple I just saw who were the candidates that fit my criteria, got their mobiles through friends and called them up. Some were good over the phone, and I asked when I could meet them at their election locations and I met with them for a about 20 minutes deciding who to vote for. It was a simple process of asking questions, seeing their nature, their replies, and asking about their past actions.
Going to the voting poll somewhat early in the morning was very important and I’m happy that I went and voted. I hope that this really works out and the next set of MPs really do something to jump start the country. We are tired of things going into a slow process which results with nothing happening, just the whole in country in a complete standstill.
I went in, they check your citizenship to make sure you are going in to vote. I walked in and tried searching for my letter. They have voting rooms by letter and I couldn’t find where exactly I was supposed to go, asked a few people but they weren’t sure where the letter M is located. I asked a bearded gentlemen and he told me the way to go and ask for me to vote for some Dr Something, who is probably of the religious right. Checked my name and the ID number (Raqam al Qaid), and waited in line to vote, the line was moving at a decent pace. After about 20 minutes I went into to vote and saw that the room had 7 people, and 5 of them were supposed to be people who recorded all the details on paper to compare later for fraud or mistakes. I made my four choices, folded up the piece of paper and placed it in the box. I felt good about the vote and I’m hoping for the right people to get a parliamentary seat, I have hope but I’m dreading the bad people who are bound to win.
I did some major clean up today, I got fed up with the lack of space I have and the pile up of papers. For some reason I had papers which I really didn’t need and magazines from three to four years ago which I have no clue why I kept, I flipped through them and threw them away. Then I turned my attention to the DVD stacks I had. I decided to turn all my attention to DVD stacks I have in the basement and a majority of them are DVD copies which I bought over the years. In 2007 I bought a few DVD copies but since then I didn’t buy any at all, some were DVD rips, some were shaky cameras and they drove me nuts, didn’t feel like driving back to Hawally and complaining.
- 164 Crappy DVDs = 246 KD (@1.5KD per DVD)
As I was cleaning up I found a stack of HD-DVDs from some of the movies that I did buy and think they are worth keeping. I still think these movies are a keeper, but who would have thought there would be a media war like the one we lived through. As for people like us who are early adopters are considered casualties of that war, I still don’t regret buying these movies.
HD-DVDs:
- King Kong
- The Matrix
- The Matrix Reloaded
- The Matrix Revlotuions
- Blade Runner
- Batman Begins
- Bourne Identity
- Bourne Supremacy
- Bourne Ultimatum
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
- Army of Darkness
I got my Flip MinoHD a while back now but I didn’t have a chance to really use it except a little recently. The box is nice and compact, comes with a few wires, a pouch, and the manual. The camera is smaller then I expected, its smaller then my Blackberry 8900, fits very nicely in my hand. Switched it on and it has some very simple settings, and you pretty much point and record right away. It records at 720p video which you can connect to your computer through USB, the USB connector is built into the Flip MinoHD, its at the top and flips out, then you connect it to your computer to either take the videos or charge it, to charge the Flip you also connect it to the USB.
It has very simple operations when recording, you just have one big red button to record and point in the direction that you want. There is a simple built-in software which I used to create the test video below. The sound recorded quality is excellent and so it the video quality, if you are looking for a simple point and shoot video camera for under $200 then this is the perfect camera. I was looking to use a camera to mount to my bikes while riding and mount it to the car while driving to make some fun videos, and it really did the job. You can do edit the video insert any effects but that must be done in something like Adobe Premiere.
- Holds 60 minutes of HD-quality video (1280 x 720 resolution at 30 frames per second; 16:9 widescreen) on 4 GB of built-in memory
- Weighs only 3.3 ounces, sleek design, fits into your pocket or purse
- Features one-touch recording and digital zoom
- Flip-out USB arm plugs directly into your computer to launch built-in FlipShare software
- FlipShare software lets you save and organize your videos, simple editing, make movie, email, or upload online
Flip MinioHD Test from Marzouq on Vimeo.
I honestly think they did a great job with this camera targeting a specific usage for it. I do think there is room for improvement but I gave it high marks because of the video quality I kept getting and sound capture, and overall extreme ease of use. Now you can the Flip UltraHD which does a little bit more for the same price, so I would go for this one at this point.
Price: $199
Link: Amazon
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