Vodafone Pay-As-You-Go service has always been very convenient because you can keep those lines for a very long time, but it seems my time is up. I have lost the number and it has gone back into the number rotation. Meaning that the life of my line has come to an end, and it has gone back to the Pay-As-You-Go lottery numbers and anyone can pick it up, and I have had this number for 5 years, since the summer of 2004 and after talking to a UK Vodafone agent I can’t seem to get it back.
When I spoke to them before they said as long as I have credit on the number that it can’t go back to rotation and last I checked was that I had 100 GBP (Pounds) on the card, but after talking to several representative for a while, it seems I didn’t really have an option of getting it back. He said that to keep a line alive I have to use the line once or top it up once every 3 months, and if it gets disconnected I have a total of 9 months to re-activate it and get the line back but I passed that mark making the assumption that I can’t lose it if I had credit on it from another representative. Having a UK line even when roaming Europe is a lot cheaper then using a Zain line on Roaming, something Zain’s charges are always higher and its convenient that your able to top it off using Vodafone cards from other countries using the Euro currency. Now it seems I either have to get another Pay-As-You-Go line or get a subscribers line, I will weigh my options when I’m at the Vodafone store. Just a thought popped into my head, I remember a long time back it was MTC/Vodafone so they can get the red from under Wataniya but I don’t know when the relationship went sour between them.
As of beginning of the week I got on the plane and took off for a little while with some family and some work. It kind of worked out to be a combination of work, getting some work travel done in between spending some time with the family. First stop has been Italy and I have been wanting to come here for years but never had an excuse to come but I’m quiet happy we are here now. What more can you want, amazing people, love the language great food, amazing scenery and you can feel the culture and that’s only in Rome. A few more stops before heading home but its going to be an interesting trips, and luckily I brought my camera with me.
Now that GulfRun is coming up I’m really looking forward to test driving my car after the modifications that have been made. TAM have been great in updating me with the tasks, there have been complications but luckily they are professional and have the expertise to complete the tasks at hand.
I took the car out for a fast spin, fast being above certain legal limits, and I have to say that Dubai roads are very wide and I do enjoy those big round abouts when you have so much traction. Then I took the car back after the successful test run, I didn’t have a chance to wait to see the dyno numbers but I’m going to get that by email.
The one thing I do enjoy is every time I visit there are always a different combination of cars, from classics, to muscle cars, Italian cars, and Japanese monsters. All these machines are extremely unique and are in safe hands, I’m amazed at this strange combination and I’m always curious what modifications they are working on, some are simple and some are very extreme.
The last couple of weeks have been extremely hectic, I didn’t even have a chance to relax during the weekend. Usually work calms down during the Ramadan, but this case everything turned upside down and I was even hacing meetings on the weekends. It turned into an interesting pattern, normal work was done during the day and meeting any big wigs took place later in the evening, usually between 9 pm and 11 pm lasting up until 2 am.
Then there was a few other things that popped up unexpectedly, which was handled. Then there were customs who were stopping every shipment I was getting, that was a headache trying to get the servers out of customs again, it took over a week to get it through.
I called up Tristar this week in preparation for the weather to cool down. I have had this urge to ride my bikes for the past month but the weather was ridiculously hot, and Ramadan schedule is all booked up. They are going to pass by next week take the bikes for service and change out a few parts, so I’m looking forward to riding when the nights cool off.
I have had this server case sitting on my floor for months on end now and not really getting around to it except a couple of days ago. 4U Rackmount case, the plan was to install two drives, and have a simple setup to use it as a fileserver for all the downloads, sort of a distribution center and on top of that I didn’t mind putting the machine together.
I took the graphics card, one Seagate 750GB HD, one Seagate 1TB HD, a CD-Rom Drive, and two 2GB DDR2 sticks from my old Bunker Server. There are only two new items which I had to purchase:
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 Quad-Core Processor, 2.66 GHz, 12M L2 Cache
- ASUS P5Q WS (Same Motherboard as my main WHS Server, HAZMAT)
- Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit
Putting it together didn’t take too long, but I just found out that my rack is a little smaller then expected. I knew it was network rack because I managed to get a cheap one but instead of being 800mm deep it turned out to be 600mm, that was my mistake but the server is still rack mountable since its really short but the rack kit for it won’t really fit so its just going to sit on of the rack mounted UPS.
We put it together and installed the OS, didn’t take too long but the configuration was going to take some time since I had to download all the different software and make sure it all works together. Then I faced a problem of the machine not starting up, I tried everything but it would only power on and not show anything on the screen, I check the error code on the board which said FF and that means the motherboard is fried. I was stumped, I couldn’t figure out what happened, next day K took a look and saw a loose screw which was touching the board and the PSU so it was shorting it out and when that was removed it booted normally which was fantastic. So its now mounted to the rack, ready to go for all my needs, nothing better then building a new machine.
- Mounting, wiring, and configuring 5KVa APC UPS
- Cleaning out the rack and rearranging the hardware and wiring
- Preparing for server install
That simply put doesn’t really cover all that we did, that UPS weighed over 60 KGs which is a hell of a lot when your trying to mount it inside a rack so we took out the batteries first and proceeded to install the mounting kit. After cleaning out the last 8 months of dust inside that cabinet we proceeded to rewire the network cables and power cables to be a little bit more organized. This major UPS will be supporting three to four servers easily with a few other items, it has a nice feature being manageable through the network and doesn’t have to be connected to a specific machine. The next step over this coming week will be to install and configure the first rack server which will be a testing bed and ftp control server, meaning I will dump all my downloads into that for organization purposes. Then the WHS server will be coming along the week after that, and that will be a hell of an install with so many things at stake with this crazy install. The best part is when you complete an install, and everything goes smoothly which is very rare, now just a few more steps to complete the setup.
On another note Seagate just released their new 2TB drive which seems to be faster then WD, but I think I will stick with WD for now.
Its just one of those very nice things when you click buy and you have a bunch of items in your Amazon cart. Then suddenly you come home to a bunch of boxes with that Amazon smile, that has become like a Christmas gift to myself but it happens once every three months. I decided to buy a majority of the items since I had been keeping them aside for over 6 months now, and I’m not even close to finishing the stack of books that I have. Mostly sci-fi and odd books that I have wanted such as the Starcraft series since I’m getting too worked up about playing the new Startcraft 2 that keeps getting delayed, the Art of Up, Arcade Mania and an Anime book.
Then there is the Asian movie theater that is all piled up and ready to go. I want to have an Asian movie night, all fighting and martial arts ready to go.
I got in the box with a three day express DHL delivery which was perfectly on time. For 60 KD I got it the fastest way possible, and I got it out of the shipping box to find this nice HP Box inside. HP 5101 is a nicer then I expected, I think HP learned from their previous editions and improved on it. The laptop feels extremely well built and clean, the keyboard is spacious and the 10.1 inch screen is very nice. At low screen brightness I can get about 6 hours and 23 minutes out of the 6 cell battery and it doesn’t protrude out of the laptop. I went ahead and replaced the ram from a 1GB chip to a 2GB chip which was shipped separately, that was extremely simple with a small panel in the back and its easily replaceable. I currently have XP Home on this little machine, I installed the usual applications to start off with, my intent is to format it and install XP Pro which has a few extra networking features that I usually use but for now I’m going to use it as is and see how it goes.
I have the mobile broadband module installed in the 5101, and I inserted my MTC/Zain chip, I just have to see if it can work with it. I don’t have an Ego subscription and its asking me for a username and password which I do not have, so I’m going to take a sim card from my friend who has an ego subscription and try it out, if not Zain, then wataniya, and if not them then Viva to see if it works. Having a built-in broadband internet into the laptop with access to 3G services of one our providers in Kuwait would be fantastic so thats something I just have to work out. The quality of the laptop is great, a glossy black behind the screen looks very nice but pron to finger print smudges, and the whole laptop is built from a nice rubbery plastic which has a nice feeling to it when you have your hands on it or when your carrying it, just the right amount of friction. It has ports galore, 3 USB, VGA, and SD/MMC slot. Overall I think that HP has built a quality netbook laptop which is on the more powerful side of the netbooks, after using it for a few days now I managed to get a decent 6 hours and 35 minutes out of the laptop which is pretty good for a 6 cell battery that doesn’t protrude. My first impressions is that this is a very good netbook and I’m going to enjoy using it, but I’m going to it through its paces for a longer review.
Its a little while since I went for a check up, at least some blood work to see whats going with me. So I decided to go to BuHamra Clinic just off of fourth ring road while entering Salmiya. I was going for a full check of everything you can think off that would can be made from a blood and urine sample. The whole thing didn’t take more then 45 minutes with the preliminary results. Overall everything turned out to be good, I thought my cholesterol might be off the charts due to eating so much meat but it wasn’t bad, and my iron level was a little on the high side but thats better then being on the low side. The Clinic is owned by Dr. Mohammed Buhamra who is a famous dermatologist, but this was just a check up so I didn’t need to see him. Some tests will be sent to Paris and the results will be out in about 8 days and then I won’t have to do another check up in a while. At least my blood test doesn’t seem I’m overweight, it says I’m in pretty good health.
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I haven’t flown Jazeera airways for a while now, since I was either between Wataniya Airways or Emirates Airlines, where ever I needed to go those two airlines served my needs. This time around I need to go to Dubai and back the next day, but the timings were better with Jazeera and half the price of Emirates so I went with Jazeera. My flight was at 6:40 pm, next morning I found out we had an important meeting that just came up and I had to attend so I asked if I can cancel or delay my flight, they told me know even though it was around 10 am and at least 8 hours before the flight and I just booked it the night before. They told me that its a total refund and I can’t pay any fee to change it, I spoke to the next person who said that I can change it if I pay a fee of 120 KD and my ticket was only 156 KD, so I’m basically paying for the ticket twice. I called back later to argue and they only reduced it down to 85 KD even after losing my voice from arguing so much, and this is after I bought a full price Jazeera Plus ticket which is supposed to be the more flexible one but turns out they changed their policy and made it as difficult as possible. Another note, looks like you have to pay to choose your seat on the booking menu, if you are Jazeera Plus you pay an extra 4 KD to choose your seat and if you are Economy you have to pay 1 KD. Looks like they have really gone down the drain since they opened and I haven’t flown on them since last year and I don’t think I would fly on them if I had a choice.