That's me up there, again!
Click the yellow Close Button or hit the Escape key to get back to the website.
has gotta start blogging again! Hopefully will begin sometime this week.
Type something in the box above to view suggestions based on tags.
O
M
N
O
R
A
T
U
S
Said by Rabbi Ya'acov Perin.
While I agree that the Arabs have done nothing to help their cause, it remains that the Jewish nation isn't a portraiture of a little innocent bunny that many (Harper?) would like us to believe.
Overheard on the Go Bus. Arab guy Palestine-supporter (wearing checkered black and white scarf), talking on the phone.
[After a 5-minutes conversation...]
Oh, and before I forget, brother, I have sent you the bomb stuff on your Mac email too.
[Other person says something]
Yea yea...the bomb calorimetry lab.
[Other person says something]
Don't worry inshallah you will do good on the lab like I did!
[Conversation continues...]
(start racism) - Arabs shouldn't use the word "BOMB". Ever. - (end of racism)
The Registrar game is over!
The registrar replied yesterday with a generic message saying something along the lines of:
'Thank you for your inquiry. Unfortunately we cannot process it over email because of issues of confidentiality. Please call xxx-xxx-xxxx between 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM and someone will assist you.'
So after waiting around for a couple days all I get is an automated message. This only proves my point - that the Office of the Registrar is a complete joke.
In other news, here's a cool quote.
Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down
As expected, the Windows 7 Beta is a further copy of Mac OS X Leopard.
To begin with, the Taskbar no longer displays text adjacent to each icon.
In other words, the taskbar looks a lot like the Mac OS Dock, which also doesn't contain any text.
The next thing that I noticed was that the Quick Launch bar, first introduced in Windows 95, is gone. [...] However, once I began using the new Taskbar, I quickly forgot all about the Quick Launch bar because now the Taskbar itself acts as a place to both launch common applications as well as access running tasks.
This is completely like the Dock. The Dock is, by definition, a place to launch common applications and access running tasks also.
For example, once you launch Internet Explorer using the icon on the Taskbar, that same icon transforms into the task icon that you use to switch back and forth between applications.
So this *is* the Dock. Just call it the Dock, will ya? Works exactly the same on the Mac. Click the Safari icon to launch the browser, and the same icon transforms into the task icon that can switch to and from Safari.
The task icons will also use a stack concept to show you how many open windows, or in the case of Internet Explorer how many tabs, are open by the application.
Finally....they couldn't come up with a Microsoft-ized name for 'Stacks', so they decided to blatantly steal that name.
when you hover your mouse pointer over a task icon that’s showing a stack, you’ll see thumbnails for each window or tab
Kinda works like the Expose in Mac OS X, but I'll give this one to them.
Another capability of the Internet Explorer icon is that it can indicate progress of a download.
Another capability of Microsoft is that it can completely copy Apple's ideas.
The new Taskbar also incorporates a new feature called Jump Lists. [...] Jump Lists appear on the Start menu as well as on the Taskbar when you right-click on an icon. For example, the Jump List for Windows Media Player will show frequently used operations, most recent music selections as well as some common tasks, as shown in Figure D.
This is exactly what happens when you right click on iTunes' icon in the dock!
One handy feature of the Quick Launch bar that might appear to have slipped through the cracks is the Show Desktop icon. However, that same functionality is now enhanced by Aero Peek and accessed by hovering your mouse pointer over a small, innocuous button in the far right-hand corner of the screen adjacent to the clock. When you do, all open windows on the desktop instantly become transparent with only a faint outline remaining and you can see the desktop.
The same thing as Leopard's Active Screen Corners? You move your mouse to whichever corner of the screen you want, and a particular Expose-related action is triggered.
All right.
I emailed the Registrar's Office (my rant on the Registrar) today at 8:30 PM asking about the status of my transcripts.
Let's see how long it takes these people to respond.
Starting timer ...
Again, this is by no means a political blog. I report news (sometimes) and while that might make my blog politically charged, I really do not intend it to be that way.
TEL HASHOMER, Israel — Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Gazan and a doctor who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
But on Saturday, the day after three of his daughters and a niece were killed by Israeli fire in Gaza, Dr. Abuelaish, 53, struggled to hold on to the humane philosophy that has guided his life and work.
As he sat in a waiting room of the Israeli hospital where he works part time, he asked over and over, “Why did they do this?”
Elsewhere in the hospital another daughter and a niece were being treated for their wounds.
[...] Dr. Abuelaish, does joint research projects with Israeli physicians and for years has worked as something of a one-man force to bring injured and ailing Gazans for treatment in Israel.
Dr. Abuelaish [a widower] said he wanted the Israeli Army to tell him why his home, which he said harbored no militants, had been fired upon. He said if a mistake had been made and an errant tank shell had hit his home, he expected an apology, not excuses.
An army spokesman said that a preliminary investigation had shown that soldiers were returning fire toward the direction of areas from which they had been fired upon.
“The Israeli Defense Forces does not target innocents or civilians, and during the operation the army has been fighting an enemy that does not hesitate to fire from within civilian targets,” said the spokesman, speaking anonymously on behalf of the army.
The Israeli public became witness to the Abuelaish family’s tragedy on Friday night when a conversation that a television journalist was having with Dr. Abuelaish was broadcast live.
At the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer on Saturday, Dr. Abuelaish was surrounded by Israeli colleagues. Several were crying. Tammie Ronen, a professor of social work at Tel Aviv University, knelt beside the doctor.
Dr. Abuelaish recalled that it was Bisan who, after her mother died of leukemia, urged him to continue his work in Israel, saying she would look after the younger children.
“I wanted every Palestinian treated in Israel to go back and say how well the Israelis treated them,” he said. “That is the message I wanted to spread all the time. And this is what I get in return?”
Via NY Times
Let' try reading this bit again:
“The Israeli Defense Forces does not target innocents or civilians, and during the operation the army has been fighting an enemy that does not hesitate to fire from within civilian targets,” said the spokesman, speaking anonymously on behalf of the army.
The coward can't even disclose his name while he is bleeding lies and bullcrap through his teeth. So what was that school children incident? Or the incident that went something like this:
Israel: "So...just go into that house, and you'll be safe there..."
Palestinian civilians: OK!
*Everyone goes into the house*
Israel: Oh wait...what do you know...we lied!
*BOOM* (innocent people die)
Also watch this related video also please:
I guess this is relevant!
The US flag in Washington
Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool.
Taken from the Lincoln Memorial.
This post is probably going to read something like one of CaptainChaos's posts, but I'll try anyway.
---
So today I was at the registrar's office (after forgetting to pay them a visit for two consecutive days), and as expected, was waiting in line. This post, is thus going to be about the Registrar's Office, and not be the post I was planning on making earlier - that will come on a later date.
The registrar's office today was extremely inefficient as usual, because of the general incompetence of the staff working there. The Office is staffed by two ladies, who, regrettably for the students needing the Registrar's services, are good friends. For example, after serving every student, the lady went to her colleague and talked for about a minute. Add up the time required to walk to the co-worker's desk (15 seconds), talking (one minute), getting a refill on her coffee (30 seconds), and then proceeding to walk back (15 seconds) - an average of two minutes are wasted for each customer served. Moreover, after having served one student, she would wait about ten seconds seemingly staring into the empty abyss that is the wall of the Office of the Registrar. Unsurprisingly, at this time of the year, most students are only picking up transcript requests (which require matching a number on the student card to one printed on the envelope containing said transcripts). Such transcript requests therefore take only about a minute to fill, so wasting two minutes after doing one minute of work means they waste about 66% of their day. Nice work, Office of the Registrar. Nice work.
As further proof of their inefficiency, during the time I was there (about 40 minutes to serve 9 students), one of the ladies working there went on her coffee break, only to come back and declare that she is now going on her lunch break. Sure, it is noon and everyone is hungry, but couldn't you have taken your coffee break at some other time, lady? Do it when the between-class rush is gone; do it in the morning when there is no students there; do it in the afternoon when the line is shorter. In fact, do you really even need a coffee break when you work from 9AM-4PM and manage to somehow take a two hour lunch in that period, also?
Thankfully, the registrar learned this year that instead of having simultaneous breaks for all workers and closing the entire office down for two hours at noon every day (and thereby having truckloads of bored and disgruntled students waiting after they all returned from their lunch break), they can have their employees take spread-out-breaks (like every other business in the rest of the world), and not have as many students complain.
Unfortunately, this post was going to be about something COMPLETELY different (and which I was considering password-protecting). But because my rant on the registrar turned out to be long enough to merit a single post, the other stuff (which actually WILL read like CaptainChaos's blog, will come as a password protected post later on).
Unfortunately, I have gotten some spam comments in the past two days.
While I have my theory for who might be spamming me, let's not go into that here! 
Moreover, what's interesting is that these comments are apparently non-sense (mostly random letters) and link to a website, which doesn't work either. It's seems like useless spamming to me, unless I'm seriously missing something. 
For this reason, I have implemented some basic CAPTCHA. If you try hard enough, you can break this quite easily. But, because I have stolen these from Google, I can make hundreds more in five minutes! 
Also, don't spam! It's not good for the Internets.
People watching ranks among my favorite activities (sometimes). I guess that's why some call me a stalker. But of course, everyone knows there's a difference (is there?)! This is a picture of a man strolling along the National Mall in Washington, D.C.:
These Washington DC pictures are quickly running out. Time to find some real content to post soon! Categories:
Photography Omnoratus
Weird tree/leaves.
Lincoln
This is my Macbook's reflection in my housemate's sunglasses that I am wearing!
I can't wear sunglasses because we don't see the sun here in Toronto for three months of the year and so don't need them. [Also I wear prescription glasses so never bothered to get sunglasses].
Homeless man in Washington, D.C.
Continues on the theme of this older post.
Sitting in the parking lot of a Shoppers Drug mart in London Ontario. seeing homeless people collecting beer bottles makes me sad.
I told myself that I wouldn't make any posts about the war in Gaza, but it is too much now. I used to think that it was covered sufficiently in the newspapers, magazines, on TV and through the protests and also that I had done my part by attending the rally held in Toronto.
But reading this article made me wanna comment on it. This is why war is horrible:
SDEROT, Israel -- Mohammed Abu Hassanin may be a young boy, but he's old enough to know he's scared of the attacks being launched by Israel in Gaza.
"When the Jews bomb us when we are asleep, [Hassanin] says 'We get scared,' " a translator says.
The children have seen terrible images of tragedy: their friends injured or killed and bloodied bodies in the streets.
They are images Hassanin says he will never forget. He'll keep them stored away until he's old enough to do something about it.
"Today children are experiencing a serious kind of trauma, and I fear for the future," el Sarraj said. "The children of the first intifada were throwing stones at the Israeli troops because of the trauma they were subjected to. Ten years later, the same children became suicide bombers."
Gaby Schrieber, an Israeli psychiatrist at Barzilai Hospital, says [...] if [the children in Gaza] don't get the support they need or hope for a better future, Schrieber worries what will happen to them.
"Where is hope for them, and how can they structure their future in their minds?" Schrieber said. "They can become extremists."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/05/gaza.children/index.html
They can become extremists? More like: they WILL become extremists. As is the case for all wars, the only thing this one will achieve is scared Israelis in Southern Israel and future terrorists in Gaza.
Click on the picture for a larger version!
Toque!
This is my current desktop background also!
Hey! That's me up there!
Larger Version
My name is Abid and I am a 20-something chemistry student at a semi-big research university.
This website is my personal blog. It has my rants, opinions, musings, photos, and predictions.
Look around! Read the posts or see the archives.
For questions, contact me!
The easiest way to follow updates to this blog is via RSS.
Click the RSS icon below.
