I’m taking the usual steps when I travel to make sure I have everything with me that I need. My flight is in the afternoon so in the morning I went to the office to finish up a few things. Then I went for a haircut at 9:00am, and I came back to my house to pack my bags since I didn’t pack anything the other nights.
- Laptop
- Business Cards
- Ticket & Hotel Bookings
- Camera
- MP3 Player + New Songs
- Suit, Shirt, Tie, & Shoes
- Very Light Clothing (Its Hot in Egypt)
- Magazines + Book
- Dropping off my car for service
- Bathroom Things
- My Moleskin Pad
- Wallet
- Egyptian Cash
- Chargers (3)
The only airline I could take is Kuwait Airways so I’m hoping that I won’t be delayed too much, they seem to be having strikes these days. If I could I would have avoided flying Kuwait Airways but at this point, I have no choice so I’m crossing my fingers.
Equipment:
- LX Dual Monitor Desk Mount
- 2 x Dell E228WFP Screens
Ergotron LX Dual Montior Desk Mount:
Price: $297.00 (Amazon + Delivery to Kuwait)
Dell E228WFP Screens:
Price: $270
Total Price: $570 (Ebay + Delivery to Kuwait)
I got this idea because I’m always switching between screens and computers to get things done when working on the computer. So this required a bit on disentanglement to get to the correct wiring of all the screens. I have a DVI KVM for all the computers to one screen so for the second screen I directly wired it to the Vista PC for dual screen mode.
I setup dual screen though the Nvidia 7800 GT card and then I installed Ultramon which is a software specifically for Vista dual screen mode and adds extra features of controlling all the windows and how they interact which is fantastic.
Overall it took me an hour to put things together and drill the table to mount the Ergotron LX Dual Monitor Desk Mount, it is one heavy piece of equipment. This whole setup is very worth it when using dual screens, and its a high quality build.
I was having a long day and wasn’t sure if I could head over to my cousin’s place so I asked him if he could come by to my place to grub and watch some Jericho, this was early in the afternoon. I told him the day before that I might have a few things come up, and as it happened everything came up.
Since he is a lazy bum he refused to come over to watch Jericho, and I had no plans for later in the evening but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. After going through the day I had meetings until 6:50 pm, I called my cousin then to tell him I would come over if he had Shrimp Chow Mein ready for me when I arrive at 9:00pm. After that conversation I headed to over to pick up my suit, and I have to say I look good in the suit overall I just need to shave and every thing will be good. I felt like one of those guys from the Sopranos with their pinstripe suits, and closing only the top button.
Then I went home and I had a few things to finish up, I managed to leave the house at 9:00pm I called to ask him to delay dinner 15 mins. I flew like demon because I was so hungry, my last meal was the day before at 6:20 pm, so all I could think about was the Chow Mein. When I arrived both my cousins were sitting in the basement watching lost, and they were giggling about something. Then they told me the cook was on holiday and there was no food, at that moment I felt like killing both of them. They said they ordered persian food from 6alabat.com, I didn’t care I wanted the Shrimp Chow Mein. The food wasn’t there I was walking out and my cousin was chasing after me not believing that I was leaving. At that point I would have settled for McDonalds and headed home, to watch Jericho another day. He ran up after me and he sat in my car and wouldn’t leave. As we were arguing the food arrived and I decided to be stubborn and got down, throughout this whole process I did find my predicament funny but I also wanted to beat them to a pulp. The food wasn’t good at all but I was too hungry to care, and during the second episode of Jericho I passed out but I watched it again at home when I got back. This time they won’t the battle, but they are now going to deal with war!
With the help of Jacqui, ZDistrict.com has officially been upgraded to WordPress 2.2.1 from WordPress 1.4
The interface has completely changed, and the blog has been smoothed out. I didn’t do this out of fear that I would screw up and everything would disappear but I was completely wrong and it was a rather simple process. It has to be done from Dreamhost (My Host) and then it has to be updated from the WP-Admin side of the blog.
What has changed:
- Much better interface
- More intuitive
- A lot of fixes
- Easier and quicker to post images
- Fixed all my video and audio problems
- Better management of blog overall
- Smarter comment management
- Had a few more standard plug-ins which are useful
- Saves drafts automatically, so you don’t lose posts if the window crashes
Overall I am very happy with the changes and I will be working on the Anime and Riding page to make sure they are overhauled/updated. I’m also very happy that the Gravatar issue has been fixed and now you can see the ZD symbol next to your nickname!
So I am going to a friend’s wedding in Egypt this coming weekend and I came to the realization that I don’t have a suit for the occasion. I’m the type of person that really doesn’t like shopping for cloths and that is why I really like dishdashas.
I decided to go for an Ermenegildo Zegna suit since I feel that they have some really nice suits, and they are Italian. You can’t really go wrong with Italian. So I went with my friend to get the suit and see how fast they can make the tailor adjustments to it.
After looking around I went with a Charcoal Suit with grey and light blue pinstripes, with a white a shirt and light blue tie. I was going for something modern, simple and to the point. I knew what I wanted, I wanted to go and out, and finish things up. It did look good, but I also need a shave to complete the whole modern look. I think this will do for the wedding.
Zegna do have some very nice suits, but I rarely have a reason to wear a suit and so it would be a waste to buy some of the other suits, but if I had to I would get some of their very nice suits.
Is it just me or is getting really hot, while running around between meetings and events outside work I had a hell of a time trying to drive. The steering wheel was so damn hot I kept moving my hands around because it felt like they were burning. The temperature said 48C which is getting pretty hot and the temp for Monday is said to go up to 51C, I can’t believe its getting this hot already.
My Landcruiser is tinted and its still getting pretty hot, I can’t imagine how it is to drive cars without tints. Tinting doesn’t necessarily mean making the window darker its also about getting the high quality tint which absorbs the heat. But this heat is a little bit on the ridiculous side.
This weekend was one of those time where I just kept going from point to point doing something. Wednesday I came back after work and went right to the basement for some gaming before the arrival of the guys.
We started watching a movie after dinner but nobody really cared about it as much as the desert later in the evening. I don’t think anyone left without being full of ice cream.
There was a variety of ice cream this time but a few favorites by ranking:
- Strawberry Cheese Cake
- Pralines ‘n Cream
- Gold Medal Ribbon
- Orange Sherbert
I was feeling tired but it was nice hanging out with the guys, and I stayed up late again watching anime.
Thursday was a short workday since I finished most of everything during the week, they were supposed to deliver Pyro later in the day so that was something to look forward to. I decided to go out for drive and pick up the movie tickets to Die Hard 4.0 since we were going to go and I didn’t mind getting them. I got in my car and just switched on the music and enjoy the A/C and nice drive, the roads were somewhat empty so that was something to enjoy.
Then I passed out by 10pm, I couldn’t even keep my eye open past that, I woke up early in the morning for the ride with the book next to me and the laptop with a dead battery. So then I got up to get ready for the early morning ride.
Over the years I have been through a few different phones, and I usually sell my old phones if they don’t break over the years. These are some of the phones that I still have in my cupboard and I really used and abused them, each one has a story.
- Nokia 7110 – The Matrix Phone – This was the first phone I bought myself and I loved it so much that when I broke the first one I bought another one later the same year in 1999. It had the scrolling control in the middle so we could play pong on the phone against the computer or against another player using infra-red, there isn’t even bluetooth on this phone. I took real good care of this phone and it still works.
- Nokia 6600 – This was an interesting phone from Nokia since it was the first instance of the Symbian OS and Palm was still at the top with its PDAs! It was great with all the programs and tweaks available on this phone, it kept going for a while but then it totally crashed out after two years but it was great, I was able to use songs for ring tones!
- Nokia 6230 – This hands down is the best phone ever made by Nokia, it could do everything you could want from a phone efficiently. My phone still works and I use it as a backup if the phone I’m using goes down for some reason. This is when they had good graphics on the phone and they could barely improve it with the 6230i, nothing could replace it and they can’t repeat such a great phone.
- Imate SP3 – this is an interesting phone, I have been using it for years now, the Windows OS is real funky and different to deal with but surprisingly it always works with no issues, never crashed, no real problems, the interface is just a bit akward or annoying. I use it whenever I go to Europe since it has all the numbers and information stored in it. I remember riding my bike across London and wearing a sling back pack with this phone in the front pocket, it was so loud that I could always hear it while I’m riding with my headphones on.
Always a story to a phone!
I haven’t had much rest the past couple of days, basically since the past weekend and everyday I haven’t been getting enough sleep due one reason or another. For the past two weeks alarms of any sort have had no affect on me and I sleep right through them. Today I reached the end point of my system, during my whole time at work I was completely fuzzy and not able to concentrate.
I came back from work thinking about jumping right into bed. I was happy to hear my nephew as I was entering the house, and I knew we were going to have a family dinner. So I thought to go to sleep early to be some what functional. I slept from 4:45 pm and woke up at 7:05 pm, I felt a lot better and took a shower, changed, and went to play with the kids running around the house and sit with the family. I was happy I got some sleep, that really made a difference. Relaxing this weekend will be a very good thing.
I got my new hard drive in and so I started installing Microsoft Vista right away. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go but I’m familiar with the setup and process. I started with the CDs copying the information and went from there. There were three things I was worried about which were the wireless adapter, screen adapter, and sound adapter. As I started the install I went through all the prompts fairly quickly.
As I got to the log-on screen I waited for the graphics to adjust a bit before working completely, but to my delight everything worked like a hitch. No problems with the wireless, sound, hard drive, screen, and other hardware components. Everything was working fine, I just need to do some tweaking for the screen since it needs all the correct drivers which are available from Alienware.
