Work has been full for the past couple of weeks, and taking a two day break was good for my brain but my body does still feel a bit beat up. For some reason throughout the day my right shoulder was a bit sore and my right side just feels like its stiff for some reason. I did feel like I wanted to get a lot done but I decided to finish up one task and go to sleep early. I think I’m just in need of a good night’s sleep and some relaxation, I need to start going to the gym soon. It was even a debate between sleeping and eating, but I was even too tired to eat.
Around 11 am I got a phone call telling me that the school was packed with people so I decided to go vote later in the day expecting people to go eat lunch. Went around 12:30 pm met up with my father and brother, and we went it. There was very little presence of the candidates up front unlike in 2006. No tents, no ice cream, no buses, no huge banners, nobody running after you as much, it was different for sure.
Inside they were very organized breaking up rooms by letters. My brother and father were in one room, within 15 – 20 minutes they went in voted and were heading home. I was with a very long line, I didn’t up waiting about an hour and 5 minutes before finishing up voting. They shouted my name 3 times when they took my citizenship card. When I looked at the sheet it took me sometime to find the candidates I wanted to vote for, and I triple checked it to make sure I got it right.
I left after some time, and later in the day I took my mother so that she could vote. The police man said that I couldn’t approach the school but I ignored him knowing that she sometimes has difficulty walking and the police officer up front told me that I can not enter and he was polite about it, he said it was his orders. He was very polite about it so I told him I will wait on the road, its frustrating knowing that my mother might have difficulty I wouldn’t be able to be next to her. If it is a medical case then they should make an exception, but this is the case you just have to deal with it. After some time she came out a bit tired, but they let her through due to medical reasons. But this year it seemed very organized unlike last time which was a large fiasco.
I don’t know what exactly but there is this feeling of wanting to get over this. I think that we want to see the results of these candidates and what exactly they are going to do. I’m fed up with them running us around and not doing anything, so my spirits weren’t as high as it was in 2006 about the parliamentary elections.
Link: Flickr (Cajie)
The past week I have had some funny comments made regarding my weight but none of them seem to affect me. I’m just going to write up a few of these funny conversations.
Situation A: Walking to Mishref co-op to buy some Baskin Robins
Doc: “Marzouq I’m noticing something as I am walking behind you”
Me: “What exactly is that…”
Doc: “You have become fat.. more then usual”
Me: “hahaha.. all good”
Scenario B: Standing in the Dewaneya looking for someting
Mohammed: “Marzouq I haven’t really seen you much since last year”
Me: “You need to visit more often”
Mohammed: “No.. what I’m saying is that your a lot fatter”
Me: “Hahaha.. you bastard, I’m big boned”
Scenario C: Sitting with the family
M: “Marzouq we are out of coke bottles”
Me: “I tend to like coke in a bottle more then a can”
M: “You are getting fatter you need to stop drinking coke, and then there would be more bottles”
Me “I agree with that statement but not a this moment in time”
My Weight: 100+ Kgs
Where I Want To Be: A lot lower
The funny part is that it isn’t bothering me at all except that my jeans are getting a little tight around the waist these days. So I think I need to drop some weight over the next couple of months, the situation has gotten critical. I’m not really worried, and I’m very comfortable in my skin, I tend to enjoy lounging around these days so I wont say I haven’t enjoyed it but I do need to shape up. I have feeling if I start running again I’m going to be very short of breath.
I didn’t have a chance for a while to get a shave or a cut. I was looking for the right time to go, so I headed in on Satruday and the place was packed. I knew there was going to be a wait so I took a magazine with me. Time flew since I was reading a motorcycle magazine while taking a few phone calls.
As soon as I got on the chair I wanted to get rid of the wookie like beard that I had. Its not that bad, but it gets really itchy throughout the day and night. He inserted a new blade, put the warm towel and then the cream, the best feeling in the world is when he took that all off. It felt fantastic, I no longer had the itchy feeling it was really relaxing and so I took a nap like usual. There is something about the barbershop that is sacred to men, when I woke up I had that very clean feeling, no more scratching.
Continue Reading…
It was just one of those days, came back from work had a few things I wanted to do. I even wanted to go riding later on at night thinking its cool enough and I’m not too tired, I was wrong. After lunch I was finishing up a few tasks, reading, watching some anime. At around 6: 30 pm I fell asleep, when I was about to fall asleep I thought I would wake up in an hour or two max. I woke up around 10 pm to food on the table for dinner, and all I could think of was going to bed and passing out. Food would have been a very bad idea if I ate anything at that point, I went to bed and I woke up around 6:35 am. A total of 12 odd hours of sleep which I haven’t had a long time, I’m annoyed since I wanted to do a lot of things after work but I didn’t have a chance, but it does feel damn good to get that type of rest every once in a while.
The one major mess that I have is the wiring next to my shelf, since the power was out I took the opportunity to plug in this very ingenious surge protector that I found at Ace Hardware.
List of items plugged into it orginally:
- Stereo (120V)
- ADSL
- Switch
- Sonos (120/240V)
- Infrant Ready NAS (120/240V)
- Voip Base (120V)
- Voip Phone (120V)
- USB Charger
- Nokia Charger
- Sony Ericsson Charger
The chargers aren’t in use all at once and 90% of the time the stereo is off, since my source of music is the Sonos. The previous strip had 5 available plugs, but this beauty had 10 plugs which made things a lot easier to plug and in an organized way. I have a power converter for the machines that need 120V, and some wires that I just can’t get rid of no matter what I do. At least now its a lot more organized, then before, I’m planning on getting two more, the will reduce the number of surge protectors under my desk from 4 to two, as I said before any power fluctuation in the house is due to my usage.
It was just one of those days, called in sick to work was feeling a little bit under the weather. I went back to sleep and woke up around 10:40 am. My work phone wouldn’t stop ringing, but I managed to get things done without having to leave bed which was a good thing, felt nauseated and beat up. So as the day was progressing I was feeling better, but getting annoyed with the work phone calls. A little while later things were calm and I switched off my work phone knowing the major stuff was out of the way.
As I was laying in bed I continued watching some Berserk (anime), and Star Trek Enterprise, it was entertaining and relaxing. I was remote desktoping to different PCs to get things done throughout the house without moving too much, my goal was simple to get as much rest as possible. I took a shower around noon and wore a dishdasha which felt relaxing.
By 1:30 pm I headed towards the basement to check on the WHS server and a few other things. 5 minutes down there and all the power went out, I thought I did something, I checked the circuit breaker and everything was fine. I went upstairs and there was no power there either, my assumption is that whenever something electrical in the house goes out its because my doing, since I’m always plugging something in and switching things on. Turns out that it wasn’t me this time, I checked with our neighbors and a few other people and it turns out that both Mishref and Bayan were out of power, and the traffic signals weren’t working either. I couldn’t find out what was the reason, but I knew it wasn’t going to be too long. My UPSes kept some of my machines running long enough for me to properly shut them down, they did a really good job.
I picked up my book was reading in the living room for two hours, I was very relaxed at around 3:20 pm the power came back on and I restarted all my machines. My network felt fresh and everything was moving very quickly, I love when all the machines have a fresh start. So I started a few network tasks that would take a couple of days but since they were all fresh it was ok. I still don’t know what was the cause of the power outage.
With the help of a friend, some trial and error, and trying a few different programs. I have come up with a list of very good softwares that could be very useful to people. I can’t do without some of these since I use them on a daily basis.
- Really good network management tool, keeps you updated of any people that joined that you don’t know who they are. Keeping track of all machine information as well as connectivity, a really simple network management tool that I have found extremely useful in my needlessly complex network.
- The Best Anti-virus available out there, keeps my PCs clean and it doesn’t feel like its there. Even when you uninstall it there is no trace of it and no problems occur because of that. How many of you face issues with McAffee, and Symantec? If you do then this AntiVirus will be heaven in comparison to those Anti-viruses
- If you have to extract multiple zipped or rarred files then this is the program for you. Sometimes I have to un-rar a whole series or a couple of movies, if I go the usual way then my computer system will come to a halt, and I have to leave it until the resources are free or it will crash. Extract Now is your best friend, you add as many files are you want unzipped or unrared and it shall be done without a fuss.
- If you have too many folders in different locations and you want to synchronize the folders then this your solution. There are multiple ways to synchronize, one way, two way, or custom, this is a very small piece of software with very rich features. Its a fantastic way to keep things backed up at a different location without having a back-up software.
- A simple ftp program with all the features needed to make it very useful.
- Best Video player available, if all my other players can’t play it correctly then VLC can with CoreAVC codec.
- For all my torrent needs, this does the job.
- There are some very cool widgets available which are independently developed. The best one for me is the Infrant NV management widget, and then all the other ones. Its relatively light on the system and I like the way it looks.
- A simple alarm clock with a very customizable alarm. The only thing that manages to wake me up in the early mornings.
- For all my audio ripping needs, this finds the database and rips a very high quality mp3. I have the LAME MP3 codec installed which gets a very high quality version. It has helped archive many CDs that I have.
- Does all your photoshoping needs without the need of Photoshop. It has 95% of all the features, but the program is very light and loads easily. The interface is very user friendly and my editing skills have improved because of this program.
Most of the day I was in a bit of a daze, so as soon as I got home I took a nap. That nap turned into a 3.5 hour nap, from 7 pm to about 10:30 pm. I woke up hungry and still dazed, I did feel better since I got some sleep but I still had a few things that I wanted to do. I then sensed I was hungry, and I had the sudden urge for KFC. I got in my car after about half hour of laying around, drove to the KFC close by and got myself a Chicken Fillet sandwich, it hit the spot.
During that training course it was the first time in a while that I was writing notes just so that I could remember the useful stuff. I was picking a few useful things that I could use at work, but I was writing it all down. When I was looking at my notes, I realized how horrible my hand writing was. I think one of the main reasons I liked computers so much is that it made writing that much easier and faster, and my hand writing was horrendous. If I take it easy, I could make it look nice but when I’m writing quickly it looks like squiggles of a grade 2 student doodling for his life. I like writing in my Moleskins and I try to keep it neat, but thank god for computers.