down under

tomorrow i am supposed to be traveling to Perth Australia with Jumana on a two week trip to visit friends living over there. A vacation, in other words. Due to thoughts beyond my control, Juaman will end up going to visit and I guess i will be staying right here in Amman

coming up in a trip to Angola, a country with extremely poor population, and yet one of the most expensive African countries where Malaria and Yellow fever can be found in abundance. Not only that, but if you are driving in the Capital, keep all cars locked and do not stop to anybody. Avoid being alone, avoid traveling, avoid leaving the hotel and you will be safe.

mish bilmood

The title says it all

رأيت نابلس

An article my mother worte after visiting Nablus last month (NOV 2007)

بعد عدة سنين وفجأة قررت والعائلة زيارة بلدنا المحتلة نابلس، لمشاركة أهلنا هناك بمناسبة فرح يعنينا أمره. تلك المدينة التي ولد فيها والدي وأولادي إلا إياي ....، كنا ننتظر على أحر من الجمر، رغم الحذر والمخاوف .. أن نصل مدينتنا الرابضة الراسخة بين جبلين، راسخة بما تحوي بين جبليها من ثراء عتيق وخضرة نامية وانسان ذي جذور تمتد وتمتد....
طريقنا إلى نابلس لم تكن صعبة، ولكنها طريق غريبة .. بعيدة بعض الشيء، مقفرة في بعض أجزائها وجديدة كالشرق الأوسط الجديد، تاركة العارضة والبادان اللتين هما الأجمل والأخضر والأكثر ثراء.
وعندما أشرفنا على الوصول، ظهرت أمامنا .. وكأنها تسد سماءنا وهواءنا فلا نكاد نتنفس، مستوطنة ضخمة جاثمة على أعلى الجبل، مرعبة منذرة تطل بعنف وسيطرة على المنطقة، تحول دون خفقان قلب الحنين والحب إلى حزن وانكماش وخوف.
دخلت البلد وأنا خائفة أن أرى ما رأيت في الطريق .. وكان توقعي في محله.. المدينة أكبر وأكثر عمراناً .. إلا أن نابلس الصغيرة الخضراء العتيقة التي يضمها الجبلين .. ويجعل أهلها أكثر التصاقاً وتلاحماً .. تغيرت .. نعم أنا مقتنعة أن التغيير أمر عادي وطبيعي ولازم للحداثة.
وصلنا الفندق وبلدنا لم يكن فيها فنادق إلا حديثاً .. فكل البيوت هي بيوتنا، فنحن نحل إذا أردنا حيث شئنا .. فنحن ضيوف البلدة كلها .. هذا ما نشعر به .. ألم أحدثكم عن طبيعة العلاقات الإنسانية الحميمة قبل قليل ...
الفندق صغير ومتواضع ولكنه مفعم بالمحبة والقبول ... خرجت إلى الشوارع أجوبها يمنة ويسرة .. والذكريات تتدفق كالفيلم السينمائي، هناك حنين وشوق وفرح باللقاء .. وكان الناس جميعاً تطل من النوافذ تقول "أهلين"، هذا الجو أغفلني بعض الشيء عن اتساخ البلد المؤسف وعمرانها الممتد عشوائياً لا يروق للناظر.
في الليلة الأولى استمتعنا بحفل فرح مرح ضم الأحباب والأصدقاء .. خاصة الشباب منهم الذي تركتهم أطفالاً ويافعين مجتمعين في الحاكورة .. والآن هم يشقون طريقهم بقوة وعزم في أرضهم الطيبة التي حددت وسرقت وضاقت عليهم إلا أنها عزيزة .
الليلة الأولى حفل ممتع ثلاث ساعات ضم الأهل والأحباب .
والليلة الثانية معركة ضارية استمرت من الساعة الثانية ليلاً إلى التاسعة مساءاً في اليوم الثاني، استشهد فيها شاب مقاوم، وأما الكهل والطفلة رانية البالغة من العمر ثلاث سنوات فقتلا خطأ كالعادة !! مع الاعتذار بعد القتل طبعاً !!، وجرح خمسة وعشرون شخصاً مختلفي الاصابات، كما أعتقل كثيرون .. وانتهت المعركة بنسف منزل آل الهواش واعتقال ابنيهم ... آل الهواش المعروفون بشرف المقاومة ضد الاحتلال.
لم تكد زغاريد الفرح تملأ الأجواء وتصل إلى أعلى السماء، حتى خنقتها زغاريد الحزن العميق تتخللها نواح وولوله .. على فقدان الأحبة، هذا الفقدان الوحشي والقصري المتحدي والخارق للشريعة الإلهية والإنسانية.
بعدها يختفون وتختفي كل الآثار وكأن هناك حجاب يحجب كل الأخبار عن العالم الخارجي، صمت رهيب يلف الأحداث .. وكان المخلقات من انسان وبنيان تختفي عن وجه الخليقة هكذا دون أن يلمسها أحد..يا إلهي ما هذا الأسلوب الشيطاني القمعي الدقيق التخطيط, في وجه أسلوب عفوي فوضوي مختلف التبعات والعدوات، يضل الطريق يجهل كل شيء عن المستقبل .. كل شيء إلى أين .. ومتى . وإيان

امل جردانة سجدي

The world's TOP 100 Engineering and computer universities

I was not surprised not to find any Arab or Islamic university among the leading universities in the world. Also not surprised to find two Israeli universities, which tells you what?
And that the top 15 Universities are all American with Cambridge (UK) coming 16th??
Tohoku (Japan) at 17th???

Are the high rise building and mega malls in Dubai getting us anywhere?
Or the tones of IT graduate from our 22 jordanian unversities contribute anything to the world?
Or the massively luxurious car, unprecedented in other parts of the world taking us anywhere?
How about the near $100 Per barrel OIL prices that our neigbouring countries are charging now a days?
Isn't the quran that started with the word 'IQRA2' ? (read- a clear indicator for the important of education)
Let me NOT imagine what prophet mohammad would react to all of that

(source: http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ARWU-FIELD2007/ENG.htm)

1 Massachusetts Inst Tech (MIT)
2 Stanford Univ
3 Univ Illinois - Urbana Champaign
3 Univ Michigan - Ann Arbor
5 Univ California - Berkeley
6 Pennsylvania State Univ - Univ Park
7 Georgia Inst Tech
8 Univ Texas - Austin
9 Univ California - San Diego
10 Purdue Univ - West Lafayette
11Univ California - Santa Barbara
12Univ Southern California
13Univ Maryland - Coll Park
14Carnegie Mellon Univ
15Cornell Univ
16Univ Cambridge
17Tohoku Univ
18California Inst Tech
19Univ Toronto
20Northwestern Univ
21Univ Wisconsin - Madison
22North Carolina State Univ - Raleigh
22Univ Washington - Seattle
24Princeton Univ
25Kyoto Univ
26Ohio State Univ - Columbus
27Imperial Coll London
28Swiss Fed Inst Tech - Lausanne
28Tokyo Inst Tech
30Univ Florida
31Texas A&M Univ - Coll Station
32Natl Univ Singapore
33Univ California - Los Angeles
34Univ Minnesota - Twin Cities
35Harvard Univ
36Univ Pennsylvania
37Hong Kong Univ Sci & Tech
38Technion Israel Inst Tech
39Osaka Univ
40Univ Massachusetts - Amherst
41Univ Oxford
42Univ Colorado - Boulder
43Univ California - Davis
44Univ Manchester
45McGill Univ
46Univ Waterloo
47Virginia Tech
48Univ California - Irvine
49Natl Chiao Tung Univ
50Duke Univ

RANK from 50-75

Arizona State Univ - Tempe
Case Western Reserve Univ
Chalmers Univ Tech
City Univ Hong Kong
Kyushu Univ
Michigan State Univ
Nanyang Tech Univ
Polytechnic Inst Turin
Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst
Rice Univ
Seoul Natl Univ
Swiss Fed Inst Tech - Zurich
Tech Univ Denmark
Tokyo Univ
Tsing Hua Univ
Univ Bordeaux 1
Univ Bristol
Univ British Columbia
Univ Delaware
Univ Leuven
Univ Melbourne
Univ New South Wales
Univ Sheffield
Univ Sydney
Univ Twente
Univ Virginia

Rank 76 - 100

Boston Univ
Chinese Univ Hong Kong
Delft Univ Tech
Hokkaido Univ
Indian Inst Sci
Iowa State Univ
Johns Hopkins Univ
Korea Advanced Inst Sci & Tech
Lund Univ
Natl Taiwan Univ
Natl Tsing Hua Univ
Pohang Univ Sci & Tech
Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ
Tech Univ Munich
Tel Aviv Univ
Univ Alberta
Univ California - Riverside
Univ Central Florida
Univ Leeds
Univ Louvain
Univ Montreal
Univ Naples Federico II
Univ Newcastle
Univ Paris 06
Univ Southampton
Univ Utah
Univ Utrecht
Uppsala Univ
Washington Univ - St. Louis
Zhejiang Univ

Kunafeh Sunday

Our engagement for the E-government project in Syria is officially over (and practically 98% over). It was rather a Chaotic entropy, not a particularly easy engagement, however partially ejoyable, and therefore, Kunafeh is served in the company on Sunday! I am not fond of kunafeh at all, neither my genetic belonging to Nablus had any influence towards improving my affinity to Kunafeh. Neverthetheless, i observed that Kunafeh is one way people of this region exhibit their ceremonial inclinations.

weather matters

looks like we are going to have a rainy week this coming week.
we are going to have some rain tomorrow evening, but this is not the reason why i am writing!
If things in the atmosphere remain the same, we are expecting a real wintery storm next Wed, Thursday. I mean Strong winds, cold temperature and lots of rain.
It is not easy to confirm things at this moment, because Atmospheric science is so complex of a science and our atmosphere is a fairly complex system. Weather forcasts stem from computerized model that require super computers to simulate including data mining techniques. (follow this link to a what data mining is)http://www.e-ammar.com/introduction_to_data_mining.htm
Business intelligence (BI)and to a less extent is picking us also in government sector here in Jordan. Yesterday, I had a demo to the Customs department in Jordan in which we showed them techniques and technology we currently used to create BI solution for them.
We are also building our skills to satisfy IBM demand for consultant capable of using IBM DataStage (One of the leading ETL tools).

The interesting thing to observe here is that my personal interest in weather system and atmospheric science is not immensely decoupled from what i do for living.

Next blog, i will post an article that my mother wrote after visiting Nablus after so many years of absance

shelfari now in Beta

Shaelfari is a special purpose facebook alike. it specializeس in sharing your favorite books titles by creating your own shelfbook. It is always intresting to know what interests other. you can learn or at least assume things about people by knowing what they like to read (if at all , of course)

http://www.shelfari.com/

اعز مكان في الدنا سرج سابح وخير جليس في الزمان كتاب

عمار

khusara a great loss

I felt so sorry to read in the newspaper and on the first page news about the loss of Younis Shalaby; a great comedian with unprecedented talents. He shined in Madraset Al-Mushgebeen and later in il3eyal kibret. It is a great loss, reinforced by the fact that now a days there are hardly any substitutes for the stars that we lost in the past 12 months. Namely, Fuad Il-muhandes, Abdul ilme3em ilmadbouli and now Shalabi. He was 66.
May his soul rest in peace

Kiss your ADSL router good bye

In a ceremonial event at Four Seasons hotel, Omnia has announced the launch of its new WiMax Internet Access the day before yesterday. By the way, the Steak that was served was exceptionally delicious.

The steps are easy

Get Rid of your ADSL line
subscribe with Omnia
Get your wireless Wimax router, no land lines or anything!!
bring the wimax router home
get your pc connected

you feel like sitting in a public place (for example Al-Alfieh Garden). No problem, bring on your WiMax router and your are connected (i assume you still need power).
I hope that you get the idea.

Later on , buy a USB WiMax router
Hook it to your laptop
and you are connected everywhere there is coverage

I still need to verify the reliability of the line!!

The cost ! Around 465 JD / Year for a 2Mb line

Do you want to make money in BI

IBM today announced that it is buying Cognos
Oracle had already acquired Hyperion
SAP amicably acquired Business Object

There isn't much left in the Business Intelligence software sector. Except, that is, for Informetica. This is the last man standing, and therefore, a potential candidate for acquisition.

Informetica share is trading at 16 USD, a potential price is 21 USD,,, If this prophecy proves to be true ,, a deal with 25% profit stands up in the horizon.

Ammar Sajdi

Greater Amman Municipality

The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) is now blogging at
www.ammancityblog.com
This is a real chance to convey our ideas and critiques to make Amman a better place!
Back in the 80's, Amman was such a beautiful, clean, seren and majestic city. At these years, i was not easy for me to travel and not miss it.
Unfortunately, i am missing these feelings these days. All I see is traffic jams, no parking space, black smoke, angry drivers, people innocently getting rid of Pepsi cans and coffee cups out of the car windows, Chaotic steets and alleys. I will personally blog to write about the dirts that restaurents leave out, Fakher Elddin is an example, where the leftovers are trashed just opposite to the back door of Astra building.
Every morning, there is probably more that 2000 GAM employees that start cleaning the street from the early morning hours. There are ,on the other hand, some 2.5 million making sure that they get these streets dirty. Why not spread awareness and teach the 2.5 million not to litter rather than cleaning after them. There is a pedistrian passway connecting Dastour Newspaper to Abu-Elhajj commercial center and you just cannot imagine the amout of dirts that compiles there!!

Status Quo!

Today we have bigger houses and smaller families;
more conveniences, but less time;

we have more degrees, but less common sense;
more knowledge, but less judgment;

We have more experts, but more problems;
more medicine, but less wellness.

We spend too recklessly, laugh too little,
drive too fast, get to angry too quickly,
stay up too late, get up too tired,
read too little, watch TV too often,
and pray too seldom

We have multiplied our possessions,
but reduced our values.

We talk too much, love too little
and lie too often.

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers;
wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.

We spend more, but have less;

we buy more, but enjoy it less.

we write more, but learn less;
plan more, but accomplish less.

We've been all the way to the moon but
fail to visit next door neigbour.

We've learned to rush, but not to wait;

we have higher incomes, but lower morals

We are long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion;
tall men and short character;
steep profits and shallow relationships.
More leisure and less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition;
two incomes, but more divorce;
fancier houses, but broken homes.

As of today, you do not keep anything for a special occasion,
because every day that you live is a special occasion.

Search for knowledge, read more,
sit on your front porch and admire the view .

Spend more time with your family and friends, eat your favorite foods,
and visit the places you love

Life is a chain of moment of enjoyment, not only about survival.
Use your crystal goblets. Do not save your best perfume,
and use it every time you feel you want it

Let’s tell our families and friends how much we love them. Do not delay anything that adds laughter and joy to your life.

Every day, every hour, and every minute is special. And you don’t know if it will be your last If you’re too busy to take the time to convey this message to someone you love, and you tell yourself you will send it “one of these days “. Just think…”One of these days “, you may not be here to do it

Well, I received this from a cousin! Why specifically it was sent to me!! a Good Question?
Every Week starts, and by the time it ends, I try to evaluate that; It passed so quick and was full of things, but it is still like any other week. Still However, I enjoy Thursday the most. Why? Because, it is almost always the end of a wild and chaotic week and that has got to stop!

Ammar

Simplexity

Simplexity is the name of a book i bought from Bahrain Airpot at 6 AM this morning on my way back to Amman. As usual, RJ cannot possibly pick worse flight timing even if it hired people to do so. The Flight departure time is 7 AM (6AM Amman time), so you need to be prepared early very early in the morning. It true that you arrive early in the morning to Amman, but you spend the entire day tired. Anyway, Simplexity, is a book about Simple Rules of a Complex World written by Jeffery Kluger. I liked the title, but still need to examine the contents.

my time is bahrain was almost full. I ended up spending at our company apartment, whcih turned out to be much better that i initially imagined but of course, not a five stars standard. It is a 2 bedroom apt with 2 bathrooms, small kitchen and reasonably sized sitting room and a big TV and free internet access. The building contains good facilities for the tenants like an indoor swiming pool, Gem, and a recreation room. Just opposite to the building, there is a small shopping area with a nice supermarket and a nice coffee shop with wireless internet. Fortunately, the apt was cleaned before my arrival

no rooms in bahrain

it is a must to go to Bahrain tomorrow. There seems to be a sports events in Bahrain, and since it is such a samll country, not a single room is available. Well, i guess i will take bed covers with me and see where my fate drops me off tomorrow. pary for me :)

Who am i

Marriage Season for every species

out of observation, i know that there seems to be marriage season form most animal species. I know for example that cats marriage season is enriched in February.
Human however, seem to enjoy marriage all year round! making no specific marriage season!
For REALSOFT/INFORMOBILITY, there seems to be an exception. 2 female REALSOFTers ar getting married to 2 Males Informobilitees. One is today (congratulation goes to Hayat and Eyad) who worked for REALSOFT/INFORMOBILITY before they even graduated, and the other couple (Ahmad and Luma) is next week. Also Mohd Mansour and Lama diverged and decided to get their partners from outside the REALSOFT/INFO domain. Lama is scheduled to get married on Dec!

Good Bye Business Objects

The German giant SAP, the world’s leading provider of business software, plans to acquire Business Objects, the frensh BI industry leader, in a friendly take over. The value of this acquistion is something like 4.8 Billion Euros.

Oracle, SAP rival, has been very active in the acquisition process. Oracle aquired many large firms like JD Edwards, Poeple Soft, Sieble, Hyperion, Stellent and many more. Currrently, Oracle is bidding to acquire BEA, the Application Servers market leader. Oracle proposed an offer of 17$ per share. BEA management is likely to turn down the offer and ask for 21$. Oracle offer of 17$ per share when the share was trading for 13$ at NASDAQ.

Suffice it to say,Oracle acquired People Soft in a hostile take over!!!

I would be very interested in this story, as Application Server domain of business is something we deal with on daily basis

Mars starts using animal products

Some of the UK's best-selling chocolate bars, such as Mars and Twix, will no longer be suitable for vegetarians.
Also affecting brands such as Snickers and Maltesers, owner Masterfoods said it had started to use animal product rennet to make its chocolate products.

check the entire article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6653175.stm





Ammar Sajdi

www.palco-me.com

questioning Darwinism

During recent decades, it is claimed that scientific evidence from many disciplines including cosmology, physics, biology, etc . .. have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism evolution



"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."



A list of 700 Ph.D have signed their name testifying their skepticism. The list is published by Discovery Instiute (http://www.discovery.org/).



Press release about the list

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2732





you can check out the list

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660



check out this book

http://www.darwindayinamerica.com/

This is how weather in Amman looked like

Driving back from Damscus to Amman at night is definitely no fun at all. It is a task to accomplish. What is exciting last night was the fact that there was a weather system crossing central Jordan. Lightening, thunder, and rain. Very localized rain, where certain areas were soaking wet, while others in close proximity were completely dry. This is a distinctive feature of weather system mostly characterized by unstable condition. Normally caused by warn wind convicting upwards and meeting cold front.


Since I am passionate about weather conditions, I am really thrilled to show you some pictures taken by people of the Jordan weather forum. I know that this might be really boring for those who have no affection towards nature. I do not blame them, I cannot explain why and how my interests in this emanates from



Imagin the thender


Radar image showing rainy clouds moving towards Jordan while crossing palestine



I guess the excitement of a new rainy system is starting

Ammar

Aftermath

Now that Eid is over, it is about time to assess the damage



1) First Day of Eid: I was in Damascus the day before Eid and I bought 1KG of peanuts (which smelled so tempting). The night of Eid and in the early morning hours, i kept eating peanuts until my stomach really got upset. I had to tolerate abdomenal pain from noon till night while having to skip the delicious Eid Lunch



2) First night of Eid: After the abdominal issue tapered off a little bit, i received a call from my colleague Jaffar telling me that we are supposed to deliver a propsal to a customer in Nigeria at or before Sat morning and that we still need to repond to some parts of the Request for Proposal. I went to the office at around 10 PM, He left at around 11 because he was so tiered working the day before and on Eid day. I was supposed to spend a couple of hours, I ended up leaving at 7:30. While it is not uncommon for me to leave office at 7:30. What was different this time is that, it was 7:30 AM. It was quite a long time for all-nighters! apart from traveling, i do not remeber staying up all night since college time! My biological watch is not used to sleeping at morning, i managed to sleep for two hours.



3) nothing special about the 2nd day



4) The third day was consumed totally while trying to make JMS working in Oracle JDeveloper Env. Once accomplished, i continued to couple client application with JMS provider through JMS webservice, which at the end of the day surprisingly worked.



5) Third Night, While watch TV at around 9 PM, next thing i remebered waking up at 8 AM, sleeping for 11 straight hours!!!!!!!!! I guess making up all the sleep deprivation.



6) Fourth day (not any more Eid), against all social norms, i replied bulk SMS i received and visited my sister and aunte!



7) Fourth night: we were invited over at Fakher Elddin, and since i had no lunch that day, i excersied my joyful habit of making things up that i missed, and had consumed so much food that made this meal the first real meal since the begining of Ramadan. This event did not go by unnoticed, my stomach got upset again, and therefore, i did not feel well for the reminder of the night and today.



And now, while i am writing this, i think, the aftermath of Eid is well contained, and i seems like things are returning to normal.. Tomorrow morning, i need to rise up and get going at 7 AM to the neighboring Syria. By the way the distnace from where i live in Amman to where the customer is in Damsucs is exactly 205.5 Km. Under normal cirumstances, it requires around two and half hours

Eid Tomorrow غلط , It is only politically correct, Real Eid is on Sat

الافطار بكرة غلط غلط
According to astronomists here in Jordan and every where else, Sighting the crescent (hilal) this evening scientific impossibility. Hear me loud and clear; it is impossible to have spotted the Hilal with naked eyes or telescopes this evening. I was following up very closely the stream of news emanating from the press room headed by Dr Ahmad Heliel of Jordan. Jordanian astronomists were also present, who, not only made their calculation, but also set up 5 sites to try to sight the invisible crescent just to prove their point and make everybody happy. Their prophecy came true, and obviously, nothing was found only because the baby crescent sets 7 minutes before sun set. The situation became immensely complicated, when all of a sudden, a breaking news announcing the end of Ramadan Came from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and all Gulf countries except Oman. Moments afterwards, Egypt announced that tomorrow is the 30th day of Ramadan and henceforth, Eid is on Saturday. The announcement of Eid in Jordan was not, therefore, based on sighting the Hilal but was announced in solidarity with other Muslim countries. (الاسلام دين جماعة)
On what basis was Eid declared to be tomorrow in KSA? Sighting had to be made by one or more trustworthy men testifying before a committee of Muslim leaders! Spokesmen in the press room said that they contacted their Saudi counterparts who also confirmed the sheer impossibility of sighting the hilal then evening.

How then can Saudi Muslim leaders accept the testimony of anybody when in the 21 century scientists over emphasized the fact that seeing the moon is impossible

Personally, i cannot go against an official announcement and take an odd direction tomorrow by completing the fasting of the month, but i will have to definitely make the day up by fasting an extra day after Eid.

عمار السجدي

What is so special about OCT 4th, try peter answers soul engine

I will try to demonstrate why this Question is an interesting one

In order to illustrate the peculiarity of OCT 4th, I shall use Oracle database and SQL Langugae to demonstrate my point

Ammar>select to_date('27/1/2007','dd/mm/yyyy') SHOW_DATE from dual;

SHOW_DATE
--------------
27/1/2007

The above merely displays a date in dd/mm/yyyy format. Now let us see what happends if I try to display the result of the expression ('27/1/2007') after adding 1 to it


Ammar>select to_date('27/1/2007','dd/mm/yyyy') + 1 SHOW_DATE from dual;

SHOW_DATE
--------------
28/1/2007

Barely an surprises, the day after 27/1/2007 is 28/1/2007

Now, let me repeat the exercise for another date, namely for 4/10/1582

Ammar> select to_date('4/10/1582','dd/mm/yyyy') SHOW_DATE from dual

SHOW_DATE
--------------
04/10/1582

Let us see what the day after 04/10/1582 would be?

Tarrraaaaaaaaaaaaa

Ammar> select to_date('4/10/1582','dd/mm/yyyy') + 1 SHOW_DATE from dual

SHOW_DATE
--------------
15/10/1582

Say What? the date after 4/10/1582 is 15/10/1582.

This is against any logical, empirical, or interpretational result a human mind can go through, but it is TRUE, and this is not a bug in the software!!!

You may think that you need the help of extraterrestrial power, like the interactive soul engine called peter answers that i talked about before
http://oraclejo.blogspot.com/2007/01/peter-answers-interactive-soul-engine.html
but once you know why 15/4/1582 is the day directly after 4/10/1582, you will come to realize one important issue in our universe; If there is something that is beyond the frontiers of your comprehension, it , in no way, implies that this thing does not exist!!

afterall, there is a reason why 15/10 if after the 4th of Oct 1852

Ammar Sajdi
www.e-ammar.com
PALCO/REALSOFT/INFORMOBILITY
JORDAN, Amman

Facebook

i had facebook account for quite sometime,,, intially, not reallying knowing what it is. Just finding myself receiving a message that forced me to sign up. Since then, i have been very passive (still is) as i do not feel the necessity for such a tool when other channels have been available for a while. I receivs things that i do not understand like gifts, wall, etc ... Also receving -Add friend- request from people i never new, and accepting a mix of both I know and I do not know. Consequently, the traffic is low and to be honest, cannot find myself really interested. Last night, i saw some family youngsters on Ifrar working on laptops. I saw them working on the keyboard like firing machine gun. I thought they were playing a game. In reality, they were just working on facebook. Literally hundered and hundreds of things on their screen. While trying to extrapolate the usage of Laptop for this generation, i arrived to the conclusion that a Laptop is made for Facebook,, no other URL exists. All infrastructure is for Facebook. 1 MB ADSL, Wireless connection, PC's with Flat screens and laptops to support the enthusian for Facebook. This morning, and just for the heck of it, was a historic moment what i added (or attempted to add as results are yet to be knows) the first facebook friend. Recently, another pressing sign up request came from something else called JAXTR. Finally, i could not keep resisting the curiousity and ended up signing up. It seems like voice enable community. if things continue into this channeling, are we going to need to get together anymore, or knowing one fact and physical attributes shall be no longer needed. We can keep making virtual interactions. Why do we resist making friends via Cyber means, if we do not recognize names and/or faces. I think because we are only used to that, and not necessarily because this the only proper way. What last thing about yesterday Iftar was one of the young relative girls asked me "What is Quantum Physics?" she is Nine and told me that she cannot wait until her age becomes Double Digits??!! It was a big question for which i could not find a easy answer although there is a short answer rgs

Last two week

Constant anxiety, sheer physical strain, sleep deprivation
lots of driving between Amman and Damascus (and sometime coming back on the same day, while fasting), excessive stress, and at Iftar time, almost always invited out. I m Seeking enormous sympathy here!!!. Why? working on bleeding edge technology for the Syrian projects, All types of distributed processing, Asynchronous Web Services, JMS queuing, dynamic meta data driven data models and on top of that developing J2EE interface screen using Oracle ADF technology. Finally filling the data warehouse with economic indicators pertaining to Foreign Trade, Consumer prices index.
After tomorrow, we are having steering committee with the project management board representing three European companies, one of which is the German Giant Software AG.
If all goes well, we should be winding down and probably disengaging at end of Oct.

Today, we had Iftar gathering for PALCO/INFORMOBILITY/REALSOFT group at the Royal Automobile Club. It was good food @ reasonable prices

Play on Words

Well, when you want to enforce restriction on the distribution of Intellectual property assets , you use the word COPYRIGTH. That if you have a piece of software that you want to distribute freely without legal protection. What word is used! I could not get more blunt that this. I am not kidding , you just play on the copyright word, and it becomes COPYLEFT. Just expanded your vocabulary. Not only that but we are all familiar with the copyright sign (c), and we can get by without giving COPYLEFT it own sign. Just to make it easy for all of use, just turn the (c) to the Left and there you go , a new sign is born






other synonyms of COPYLEFT when it comes to Software are

reciprocal licenses
Anti copyright
Public domain
shareware
Freeware
GNU General Public Licnese

In the End, maybe the sign is not used in literature, but the word is

Ammar Sajdi
REALSOFT

smell of winter

today the 23rd of september was officially the first day in Autumn (fall in north america). It is the September equinox. (An equinox is when the sun is directly above the equator) Some countries consider 21st as the begining of Fall. The day started of as a spectacular sun shiny day. And in the afternoon hours, it turned partly cloudy with westerly refershing breeze and brisk at times. It was a fabulous afternoon, where a pre-iftar drive amids a cool, humid

Zaha center

on Sept 16 at 9:00 PM (after Iftar) we headed to Zaha Center in Khalda to celebrate my auntie Zaha birthday. The birthday party was organized by the kids who have this center as their hang out. It was a cool September night with temperature around 16 Degrees. The events was held in an open area, and i was not really prepared as i was wearing a T-Shirt.
Kids played music (Arabic music, I loved the kanoon), they sang old Arabic songs and one of the young kids (no more that 12 years old) demonstrated the emergence of the new Nizar Qabani with a couple of poems that he eloquently gave. That guy already had published a diwan. you would not believe that the words are for 12 years old Mr Warda Wakeeleh
The function lasted for one hour. It was really nice gathering to meet friends and family

Ammar

The Female Brain

It is a Book by Louann Brizendine, and not an attempt by me for any interpretation of any sort to this topic.
The author is taking a biological approach into describing how female brain works and where it is different from that of a male. It rahter strickly base the explanation on Neuro-Hormone characteristics. Neurotransmitter (dopamine, serotonine, oxytocin,norepinephrine) and hormones (estrogen, progestrone, testosterone etc ..) according to the author, can determine what the brain is interested in doing. Such chemicals help guide social, sexual and aggressive behaviours. In a nutshell, biology represents the foundation of our personalities and behavioural tendencies.
The book is both interesting and amusing, however, i am not sure about the validity of the scientific basis behind the facts introduced in the book.

Some of the issues that the book introduces, again, it would be nice to assert the scientific source of these issues

- Every brain starts as a female brain!!! and that holds true until the 8th week after conception.
- Women use 20,000 words a day while men user about 7,000 (no science is needed to prove this).
- IQs average the same, for both sexes
- Women have faster and broader verbal skills.
-Women have more neurons in the part of the brain devoted to emotions and to detecting emotions in others.
- The average man will think about sex as often as once a minute, while the average woman will think of sex much less often, as infrequently as once every one or two days, stated by the auther as "Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road," she writes. Men, however, "have O'Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes".
-A 20-second hug will trigger the release of oxytocin in a woman's brain. The effect of this chemical will often give the woman a feeling of trust in the person hugging her.

and many more. It is a fun book to read
ISBN 978-0-553-81849-9
available in Amman (books @cafe)
amazon
www.rbooks.co.uk for 7.99 pounds

Ammar Sajdi

Finally, another day off

After years and year of debate, finally, we at REALSOFT will have two day weekend.
That was not possible before due to the fact that our office in Oman works Sat to Wed, and if we work Sun to Thursday, we are going to be out of communication with our office in Oman for three days in a row!! Finally, Oman, and all Gulf countries (with the exception of Saudi Arabia) have adopted Fri-Sat weekend. Therefore, officially, We have no reason to go to offices on Saturday. Our working hours are 8:30 to 6:00 with one hour lunch break - 5 days a week

Our Ramadan office hours are therefore extended till 3:30 and shall start at 8:30
starting tomorrow

Ahlan Ramadan

My first Ramadan day shall be in Damascus, Watch out for Ramadan No, No things

This trick will allow you know the country of origin of your mobile phone
Press the following code on your mobile*#06# and the-international mobile equipment identity number appears. something similar to 343456001397734

Then check the 7th and 8th numbers: (in the above example the 7th and 8th digits are 00 which i highlighted in red)

according to an emial that i received from a company colleague (and the judgement of the quality of the mobile based on the country of the origin is also given by the same person and is therefore can be a matter of opinion)

IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 02 or 20 this means your cell phone was assembled in Emirates which is very Bad quality
IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 08 or 80 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Germany which is fair quality
IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 01 or 10 this means your cell phone was manufactured in Finland which is very Good
IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 00 this means your cell phone was manufactured in original factory which is the best Mobile Quality
IF the Seventh & Eighth digits are 13 this means your cell phone was assembled in Azerbaijan which is very Bad quality and also dangerous for your health

Hebrew, an attitude towards normalization ?

If somebody from the far east ever asks you to create Hebrew fonts and download such fonts to a certain device that he created, how would you react? Would you look at it as yet another font for some language, or you would tie up with the oppressive state of Israel. Personally, i am radically against any movement towards normalization with the Zionist state! It would be much easier for me to give my judgment only if i am not directly involved in this situation and maybe unable to abstract the situation an isolate any bias I have toward the benefits of the company

Informobility products of Jordan conquer Taiwan

Informobility LLC , REALSOFT sister company won a contract for the arabization of the newly launched HTC line of smartphone an PDAs. Informobility is truly a leading provider of mobile and wireless products and services with an impressive track record of innovative solution and a phenomenal number of successful implementation in Jordan and the middle east. http://www.informobility.com. HTC is a Taiwan based world-class manufacturing company of cutting edge smartphone and PDA products. HCT is the original manufacturere of the well known I-mate and Qtek range of PDAs. http://www.htc.com. Based on the terms of the contract, Informobility shall be Arabic enabling HCT smartphones and PDAs for two years to come. We at Realsoft celebrated this event and congratulated ourselves and our partners at informobility during a lunch gathering here in Amman.

Gala Dinner and a mobile

Last night, ORANGE Brand was officially launched in Jordan at a Gala dinner held on the premises of Amman Citadel. As you would imagine, many people were there. The food was good, the weather was nice. Many attempts were made to entertain people (Belly dancing show, fireworks, Lebanese Female singer). To me, only the fireworks show was a real attempt, other than that forget it. The Female singer is somebody called Carol Sama7a (cannot deny that I heard the name before, but the face looked like a total stranger to me).
Ilmohem, while we were leaving the dinner, men received a mobile phone, a real sleek Motorola Moto Razer 2 (obviously locked to Mobilecom SIM) and my wife also had it share with a well craftet silver necklace.
Apparently I made a mistake in wording in part this post; I should not have written the statement (obviously locked to Mobilecom SIM) I should be writing (obviously locked to ORANGE) otherwise my attendance yesterday defeated its purpose

Duncan Again

Using the Value of an ADF List Binding
Written By Duncan Mills, Oracle CorporationJune, 2006
Introduction
Using list bindings ADF makes it very easy to associate drop-down lists and radio groups with either static or dynamic sets of data. When a suitable attribute is bound by dragging from the Data Control Palette and dropping as "Single Selection" the user specifies the value that will be populated and the label to use on the list entries themselves.
Where things get slightly confusing with such bound list UIs is the matter of a developer's initial expectation as to how the list should work. Taking the example of the EMPLOYEES and DEPARTMENTS table from the HR demo schema. If the Employee DepartmentID attribute is bound as a list and populated from the DEPARTMENTS table, the natural assumption would be that the list is composed of a set of elements, each of which, has a DepartmentID value and a DepartmentName label, for example 10-Administration, 20-Marketing, 30-Purchasing ...80-Sales and so on.
With this assumption in mind, developers often make the mistake of treating the value of the list binding as one of these expected values and trying to write code or expressions based on that. For example the developer might decide to conditionally render the Commission field on the screen using an expression based on the value of the DepartmentId field. In the example of a JavaServer Faces UI this might look like the following:
However, the expected result is not achieved because that initial assumption about the "value" of the list binding is actually incorrect. ADF actually manages the selected value of the list item internally and the value that is exposed through the list binding itself is only the index number of the selection in the list. So in the above example, the evaluated value of bindings.EmployeesView1DepartmentId.inputValue will probably evaluate to 8 rather than 80, depending on the contents of the DEPARTMENTS table.
This article examines how you can access the true value of the selected list item or radio button directly from ADF.
Creating a Secondary Binding
The simplest way to gain direct access to the true value of an attribute that is populated from a list binding is to create a secondary value binding to the underlying data. This secondary binding can then be used within expressions to access the true value of the attribute. Reverting to the example of the DepartmentId field, here are the steps. This assumes that you have suitable collections of data defined, in this case we're using ADF Business Components with default view objects for EMPLOYEES and DEPARTMENTS. We also assume here that you have already bound the DepartmentId attribute of the Employees collection as a list (for example an af:selectOneChoice if using JSF)
Open the page that contains the list item if it is not already open, and select Go to Page Definition from the right-click menu.
In the Structure window, select the bindings node, and from the right-click menu choose Insert inside bindings attributeBindings.
The attribute Binding Editor will appear. From the drop down list labeled Select an Iterator, select the iterator that the form fields are based on i.e. the Employees in this case. Then select the DepartmentId attribute on the right hand side. The dialog should look like the following illustration:
OK the dialog and a new binding (in this case called simply DepartmentId) is created. The primary (list) binding for the DepartmentId attribute will be called something like EmployeesView1DepartmentId.. You might want to clarify the purpose of the secondary binding by selecting it in the Structure window and using the Property Inspector to change the Id property to something that describes its function, such as "DepartmentIdCurrentValue".
Now the secondary binding is created you can go ahead and use it in expressions, for example "#{bindings.DepartmentIdCurrentValue.inputValue =='80'}" and it will evaluate as expected. You can also use the binding in code for example:

AttributeBinding deptIdBinding = (AttributeBinding)getBindings().getControlBinding("DepartmentIdCurrentValue"); Number deptId = (Number)deptIdBinding.getInputValue();

Summary
The ability to specify multiple bindings against the same attribute provides the developer with a great deal of flexibility. This example of working with list bindings shows one common use of the technique, but it can also be used in alternative contexts such as combinations of table and attribute bindings for "Summary Table + Detail View" type UIs.

Oracle - Delightfully creepy

(I) It's not the software itself that's expensive and painful, it's the psychotherapy you need afterwards...

(II) The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison

Intrinsic decency -- a rare commodity

It is strange when bad things sometimes make you happy!!!!!
How would you feel if your BMW 525i is hit! Bad, right! i mean Real Bad!
Well my car was hit yesterday on the left wing while is was parked near Al-Dastour Newspaper main building. Normally, i park my car at Abu-Elhajj commerical complex at floor -1 where i have a parking lot reserved for me,, but sometimes when i am coming from the University direction and traffic is heavy, I just part across the street.

When i arrived at the Car location, there was a note written on the wind-chill of the car, saying

"I am sorry to have hit your car while on reverse, Not to worry, my insurance shall cover for the expenses" She left her phone mobile no and name (Rula)

I was happy to realize that people with integrity still exist. She could have walked away carelessly! couldn't she? Regarless of "Samet El-baden" I went home with an inner feeling of joy. Henceforth, i called the lady and asked her to relax as i am not going to press chargeses, nor pursue her insurance credit.

Duncan Says

Few will enjoy this post or even make sense of it. It is about writing J2EE application using Oracle ADF/JSF framework. The frame work is good and productive, but has it own problems as well. Ducans Mills is one of the people whose finger prints are all over the ADF framwork and he writes below about what is know as Drop Down list.. and a reply at the end

Duncan says
"List bindings are a very powerful feature of ADF. They make it really easy to automatically manage the population of select-type components such as dropdown lists, radio groups and so forth from a collection of data you have in your model. ADF manages the mapping between your collection type and the format of the mini-model used by the controls themselves. There is, however, one problem with list bindings. They are intensely private. What I mean by this is that if you try and get the value of the list binding directly say using an expression (in the JSF case) of #{bindings.deptList.inputValue}, it will return you an index number which reflects the position of the selected item on the list - not the value of that selection as you might expect. This can catch you unawares, particularly if your values are already numerical - you could easily miss this and end up with weird bugs."

and i say
"The issue here is that when binding is explained using ADF framework, they are explained in a generic way. #{bindings.EmpView1Deptno.inputValue} means the value of an input item, and this works well for DNAME if you try it. How in the world am i expected to know that in the case of a list item, it returns an index. A human mind can only be useful if it can learn little things and then infer big things the follow similar behaviour. For example, Newton learned and explained a lot about gravity by watch an apple drop. All object drop in the direction of the gravitational force, if some object go up aginst gravitational force without any external force, then Newton would have been confused. The beauty is when things are exact and consistent as is the case with our universe. Well, the Universe is the creation of God, and ADF is the Creation on Man. Therefore, we strongly ask Oracle to write GOOD manuales that explain and pinpoint in great extend the behaviour of their frameworks with lots of example and therefore, make the learning curve less steep, because as things are designed in ADF, one cannot necessarily extends his understanding of EL binding and arrive to the fact that accessing the inputValue of a list item would return and index value.i hope i was able to give an insight about the difficulty that we can be facing. After saying all of that, i am still a firm believer of the future of ADF "

ammar

Introducing the 1.0 Version - Smart Comedy

This is entirely extracted from
" The crancky product manager"
The ugly side of software product development


Introducing the 1.0 Version
You may wonder where the Cranky Product Manager has been for the last few months.
Well, she and Delightful Husband had been working on their own product release of sorts.
The Cranky Product Manager is proud to announce the release of CrankyKid Version 1.0, released to manufacturing sometime in the last month or two (or three) at a very healthy birthweight. All in the Cranky Family are doing well and are in excellent health.
The new product release has been extremely well received by the extended families, even after playing with the product for a few weeks. Considering this is a 1.0 release, CrankyKid seems quite stable and free of major defects (though time will tell). This is particularly impressive considering CrankyKid was not developed with an iterative/agile development processes. Not taking the baby out of the womb to see if its done yet and then stuffing it back in. Nay. Instead, a more waterfall-esque methodology was used. Of course, as one would expect with waterfall development, the last month of the release cycle was arduous. And the last day -- that final "push" to get the product to market -- well, it was painful and hectic and painful and painful and a hell of a lot of work, to say the least.
CrankyKid truly lives up to his/her name. And thus, two major enhancement requests have already been logged:
# E000001) Identify and remedy the cause of CrankyKid's inconsolable crying (colic? acid reflux?)
# E000002) Let mother sleep more than 2 hours at a time
If only a service pack would clear up these issues...
And just you remember, the Cranky Product Manager is a fictional character with a fictional husband and a fictional child. Everything in this post might be fabricated and be utter bullshit* nonsense.
* Now that she's a parent, the Cranky Product Manager is trying to clean up her language. Hahahaha, as if.


http://www.crankypm.com/

Nice pictures

Bodrum the city


with Laith

Side view from our room balcony

Half Olympic swimming pool


From inside DolmaBahce

Ininity pool

Some Castle in Istanbul

Scenes from the room

Swiming with the kids

The beach

First day after vacation

Simply Ugly!
There has to be something called post vacation depression in medical literature! Otherwise i have found a new syndrome

ammar sajdi

On this Day

People get born and people die every day. But on this day (Aug the 17th) more than 30,000 people died when a 7.5 earthquake hit Izmit Turkey. On this day also, God gave life to a bunch of other people, probably to balance out the devestation of this day and more than offset the melancholy with a smile on faces :) (i m sure you also agree that i am too humble)

The list includes

-me
-Robert De Niro

Weatherwise

Hurrican Camille made landfall in the US in 1969 with a pressure of 909 mbar (hPa), estimated sustained winds of 305 km/h, and a peak storm surge of 7.3 m ; by maximum sustained wind speeds, Camille was the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone recorded worldwide, and one of only four tropical cyclones worldwide ever to achieve wind speeds of 190 mph. The hurricane flattened nearly everything along the coast of the U.S. state of Mississippi. In total, Camille killed 259 people and caused $1.42 billion (1969 USD, $9.14 billion 2005 USD) in damages.

Polictically

In a political-sex scandal Clinton admitted in taped grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998, that he had had an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky. That evening he gave a nationally televised statement admitting his relationship with Lewinsky which was "not appropriate".


Technologically - MD5 is no good

In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely used Hash Functionwith a 128- bit hash value.MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications,. An MD5 hash is typically expressed as a 32-character Hex number.

MD5CRK was a project started with the aim of demonstrating that MD5 is practically insecure by finding a collision using a birthday attack. MD5CRK ended shortly after 17 August 2004, when collision for the full MD5 were announced by Xiaoyun Wang, Dengguo Feng, Xuejia Lai, and Hongbo Yu Their analytical attack was reported to take only one hour on an IBM 690p cluster.
Note: a collision occurs when two distinct strings produce the same hash output.

Ammar
17/08/2007

Again from Turkey

Turkbuku, a pretty, traditional fishing village set on a peninsula hillside, Turkbuku is a fashionable destination for Turkish celebrities, and fashionable society.
The pricesses Hotel is around 5 minutes away from the center of Turkbuku, a nice resort with plenty of swimming pools and dazzling sceneries overlooking the Aegean sea. Even though the princess hotel is a five star hotel, but when it comes to rooms, amenities, service it stands no chance when compared to Ritz. Anyway, the food is very good, the landscape is excellent. The airconditioning systm poor.
We went to near by villege and had a good dinner in a restaurent called Sait. The waiter spoke Arabic as he was born in the Iskenderon provice (disputed land between turkey and Syria).
We had good seafood.

Tonight we are leaving back to Amman on Turkish airline, we shall be arriving in Amman at 2:00 AM, really ugly timing.

Ammar

Lavishly exquisite ... in Istanbul

a Lavishly exquisite Hotel in Istanbul. Yes, it is the Ritz Carlton. Over looking the Bosphorus and right opposite to the phenomenal Dolmabahce palace at the European side of Istanbul. No wonder why the Ritz Carlton group was rated a Strong First "Most Prestigious Luxury Hotel Brand" among 15 rated luxury brand beating the Four Seasons (which came second). This however, comes with a staggering price tag. eg, the lentil soup costs 13 JD (19 USD), Turkish Coffee 11 JD and snickers chocolate costs you something like 12 JD (The bar only not the entire pack). The service is amazingly superb and the staff are astonishingly friend (compared to Turks), but you feel that they were taught lessons. Once you have an eye contact with any of them , you feel that, some where in the system, a push button action is invoked and SMILE event executed. I tried to observe this performance over a period of time; it is so robotically crafted and this seemingly unconditional loop keeps iterating over and over without reporting a single bug in its logic. I guess the EXIT statement takes place when they leave the hotel to get a chance to immensely indulge themselves frenzy Istanbulian lifestyle caused by a spaghetti styled coded system.

The first language in Turky is obviously Turkish
The Second Language in Turky is strangely Turkish
The Third Language in Turkey is (unbelievably) Turksih
The fourth Lauguage in Tureky is sadly Turkish
The fifth language is normally a mix (some German, some Arabic and some English ..)

I wanted to ask what people learn as a second language at schools, but could not pose this question in any of the most popular 4 languages in Turkey!

What was most interesting for me was the fact that I went to Friday prayers at the DolmaBahce mosque (By the way i don’t know the root of the name, i know Dolma is stuffed vegetables Ya3ni Ma7ashi in Arabic). Same rituals as in any other friday prayer, but most intriguing was the fact that Salah is preceded by Quran read quite nicely in 90% near perfect pronunciation. Then the speech started with "Alsalat 3la Alnabi" Also in Arabic and many Du3a in Arabic by a Turksih Imam. Then the speach is Turkish {very short , just a few minutes, but i understood exactly what he was saying since, he was introducing some Quranic verses every now and then} The speech was about Isra and Miraj. Then the Salah took place in less than 2 minutes, (Al-fatiha and a small verses afterwards, i mean really really small) Looks like this Friday Prayer is well suited for tourist. A good offer (Iqama, speech and salat in less than 7 minutes,, we beat any other offer!!)

To treat yourself well foodwise, Balikçi Sabahattin is a fish restuarant that serves really good food. This is a place i would come back to. That was not only my opinion , but the entire group unanamously agreed (Price is about 50 USD / person -no Alcohol)

The most religious belief that the Turks observe seem to be Halal meat (kosher). It is kind of fun to notice how Infuriate they could become when you ask them if the meat is Halah (The answer is predictably Al-Hamdulila), immediatly then, they ask you if you care for a beer!

Anyway, the question that is still unanswered:

Are they proud of being Muslims???

So far, i could not mingle with the right people to get answers

Finally, it could possible be appropriate for me to mention at this stsage that my grandfather is half turkish!

We left Istabul two days back, we are now in an area called Turkbuku in Bodrum province. Our hotel is very big, it more like Spa. Some Russian Tourists but surprisingly, mostly Turks are staying in the hotel. Very little from the eastern med. We ran across two jordanian families that we know from Amman! and could over hear and Eyptian family and that is about it. More about Pricess hotel and Turkbuku later

Ammar

Untitled

maybe it is LIS (Lack of Interest Syndrome) or my every-once-in-a-while mood swing cycle. Not been in the mood.
As a remedial, i am taking a break, Yeh, i am traveling ! What is unique this time is the fact that I shall be traveling on vacation with family and relatives. The initial plan was to Spain (i declined then since it was going to be hectic), but joined in, when the destination was changed to a near by country. Two days at Istanbul, then some place called Bodrum. I have been to Istanbul some 10 years back and I thought it was a great City, I am keen to see it again, and feel any change. Also would like to sense Turks perception (especially those who are living in major cities) about the ruling party. Bodrun??? Really have no idea! hope it is better than Antalya. Only time will tell

Turkey, i must be getting something wrong

I meet people of Turkish descent on frequent occasions, who still pledge allegence to Mustapha Kamal Ataturk, ,who properly cry his memory as we speak, who pay attribute to his grave and offer flowers, who never visited Mecca and probably is not on their agenda, who never spilled a tear for prophet mohamad or any other prophet for that matter. A few month back, huge masses organized public demonstration calling for a wildly secular Turkey. I cannot but be forced to believe that separation between State and Religion is so explicit over there. Today I find out that Turkey's ruling AKP won 48.1 percent of the vote in a landslide national election victory after two thirds of votes had been counted. The AKP has presented itself consistently and credibly as a new type of Islamic-oriented party. Who voted for AKP then?

Ammar Sajdi

Starting Salaries, how much should you be making

Average Starting Salaries in the USA witnessed 3-6% increase this year.
Compared to starting salaries in Jordan, the figures shown below are obviously sky high. However, it is worth mentioning that the taxing system in the US is also equally unforgiving
Engineering, by far is the best paying job




Source: Yahoo finance

Zade Dirani returns to Jordan! musical performance

Accompanied by a 30 piece orchestra, Zade returns to Jordan for his first public performance in more than six years. Anybody can suggest if this worth attending


ammar

Mish Tabee3i

Where else could you possibly witness such a scene?
pciture taken by Ayaa Almusa

Similar Minds

http://similarminds.com/

most of us have some personality issues; compare your personality to the norms

http://similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html

ammar

Mabruk -- engagement season @work

A substantial percentage of ppl were I work are getting engaged/married . i mean in the last few month and until the end of this year, the percentage is more than 50%. Two men from Informobility (mobile based software development company) got engaged to Two women from REALSOFT. This month one person got married at PALCO, Next month 2 people from REALSOFT are getting married. The month of Oct, two couples, and the month after another 2 couples, at the end of year one person, and just now, i received an email announcing that another women in REALSOFT got engaged. Never before, REALSOFT, Informobility and PALCO witnessed that high rate of coupling. Anybody would like to apply for job, get paid and become a potential marriage candidate.

female circumcision

I was shocked to learn that female circumcision is widely practiced in many countries especially in Africa. It was the death of a 12-year-old girl in Upper Egypt a few days ago that triggered an angry barrage of appeals from human rights groups to both the government and the medical profession to act swiftly and stamp out the practice.

after this incident, Egypt has announced that it is imposing a complete ban
on female circumcision (also known as genital mutilation)

Why do people conduct this practice, Does it really inhibit women excitation. I though this is all in the mind anyway?

additionally, i do not recall having come across any Islamic recitation in support of female circumcision. However, male circumcision is widely practiced all over the word for Hygienic reason (if among other things)

Bahrain and Iran

I read a Local Bahraini newspaper yesterday an article quoting high ranking Iranian official as saying that Bahrain is an Iranian Island. Bahrainis of Iranian decedent tend to agree while Bahrainis of Arab decendent do not agree.

The following extract from wikipeadia sheds some light into Bahrain modern history

From the sixteenth century to 1743, control of Bahrain drifted between the Portuguese and the Persians. Ultimately, the Persian Afsharid king, Nadir Shah, invaded and took control of Bahrain.
In the late eighteenth century, the al-Khalifa family invaded and captured the islands from their base in neighbouring Qatar. In order to secure Bahrain from returning to Persian control, the Emirate entered into a treaty relationship with the United Kingdom and became a British protectorate. The population of the island was estimated at less then 10,000 persons.
The British withdrew from Bahrain on August 15, 1971, making Bahrain an independent emirate

By The way, Bahrain was the first country to find oil in the region and that was back in 1932.

Suffice it to say that even though i only spend a few days in Bahrain on monthly basis, but i do enjoy my stay and get very well with the Bahrainis. I drive illegally in Bahrain because the Bahraini authorities do not acknowledge Jordanian Drivers licenses nor an International Driver license issues from Jordan. Taxis (not only expensive) but are rare commodities, you could easily wait for 45 minutes (under 44 Degree temperature) waiting for a Taxi, which incidentally happened to me and my colleague Mohammad Mansour outside the Ministry of Social Development. Even after the 45 minutes, we ended up calling a friend.

I will travel back to Amman tomorrow early in the morning, it is only 2 hour flight.

Bahrain is also known for the best quality natural pearls, In fact, the government of Bahrain prohibits the sale on industrial pearls in the island of Bahrian. A certificate is issued to prove the authenticity of every purchase. I Went to buy a pearl necklace for my wife, but i went late and the market was closed. maybe next time

I think PETRA desrved it

7/7/2007
what is with number 7

James Bond agent 007
7 The number of notes in a musical scale...
7 the PH neutral level
7 the no of colors in rainbow
7 the no of days in a week
7 for all mankind - Seven Jeans
7 in the no of bits in Standard ASCII representation
7 dominates in the Islamic doctrines (7 skies, 7 day creation, etc ...)
7 the number of segment needed to represent any digital number (seven segment display)
These are just a few examples, however, the following site gathers lot of information about the number Seven http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_(number)
There are also numerous websites that talk about the secret of number seven in the Quran.
The ones i mentioned above and alot more that can be found in many websites are just the obvious one, i am preparing a document to discuss the less obvious one that have amazing and shocking meaning!

many people planed to make this date unforgettable, today can be called a wedding extravaganza
(btw, today is my sisters 20th wedding anniversary)

Chinese-Made Cars

According to CNNmoney.com (http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/070703/070207_jdpower_on_chinese_cars.html?.v=5&.pf=insurance)
Chinese-made cars are still 5 to 1o years away from reaching a competitive Quality standard of American and European Cars. Chrysler, which recently terminated its team-up venture with Mercedes-Benz, Daimler-Benz after failing to achieve integration benefits, is expected to announce a long-term deal with a Chinese car maker (Chery)to build a small car in China for sale in the U.S. market several years from now.

While this news is floating around Chinese car companies have experienced embarrassing crash test failures in Europe where an SUV and, more recently, a sedan, both intended for the European market, failed crash tests by an auto safety group there. Not only that, but also recalls of toothpaste, toys, tires in the US market is making it difficult for people trying to market such product and penetrate the US market.

One the other hand, i do not think anybody is watching any Chinese product influxing our markets in order to protect the consumers against unsafe or rip-off quality products. I bought a Chinese Nokia charger while in Syria (found no alternative) that failed to charge my mobile for more than 2 minutes before it broke. I have to admit it was cheap, but was like throwing a few dollars in the rubbish can! Prior to that, and in Amman - Jordan, i also bought a Sony Ericsson Charges that lasted much more than 2 minutes, but instead of charging the battary, it supercharged the motherboard of the mobile phone and rendered the entire phone like KFC broasted and crispy chicken. I have to admit then, that the i had a choice between buying the original or like-original (as the shop owner put it) .

This post is not really about chinese-made cars, but more about consumer protection.
Here is Jordan, imported goods have to be cleared by an agency called "bureau veritas" http://www.bureauveritas.com/wps/wcm/connect/bv_com/Group. Aside from being a nuisance, I wonder if it is meant to provide a filteration process of bad product, and if so, is it really doing the right job?

enrique iglesias

Enrique is performing tonight Wed, July 4th.
There should be nothing outstanding about it. The thing is, the guy is performing at Damascus-Syria tonight. I came back today evening from Damascus (a 200 Km trip), and the posters are everywhere. I spent two nights in Damascus for EU e-goverment project; i met many nice people with good IT capability that can perform well if given the right guidance. If you think Amman is a busy city, wait till you see what Damascus is turning into, especially with the 1.2 million Iraqis moving in after the american invasion of Iraq

Ammar

Ta Ta .. Tatataaa

Marriage season is back in Amman
Nomadic Cars swaying across the highway lanes
masses of dangling bodies with camera-equipped mobile phones
taking snapshots of every chaotic moment there and in all direction making them evidents as the contemporary marriage rituals.

The good thing is that we are adhering to cutting edge technology and adapting it real quick
Fancy Cars
Mobile Digital Cameras
Video Cameras
Flash lights
Imported roses
Then gateau is served with diet Coke

Our marriage apparatus is twentieth century!! When it comes to marriage, no one dares to attribute our rituals akin to 3rd world class

A smile in the Mind - Graphic Design

Graphic design is beautiful only when it is witty
Graphic design in appreciable when every time you look, you understand what you failed to observe earlier.
Graphic design is aesthetic when it induces an intense internal feeling of joyful admiration that ceases to recede.
Graphic design is not about funny drawing, it definitely requires a genius to produce and may deem to require a genies to appreciate! Only then a smile in the mind is attainable.
Do you know a good graphic designer? A top notch J2EE is a Plus.

Aqaba

déjà vu

http://oraclejo.blogspot.com/2005/08/where-else-to-go.html

the nice thing about aqaba is that one does not think about temperatures,, whether there is a heat wave or otherwise, it is always hot, really hot, even after mid night.

even though it is the mid weak, but the hotel (interconn) is fairly populated.

Fill this petition

Please go to the below site and sign the petition!
Oprah Winfrey is planning to travel to Israel for a solidarity visit...to see the threats faced by Israel! Our petition is that she be fair, seek truth and justice by also visiting the occupied territories in Palestine to see for herself who are the ones truly facing threats.
Take a few minutes to forward to as many people as you know!!!!!!!!

http://www.petitiononline.com/104707/petition.html

Thanks

Oprah Contacts

In case you feel like telling her something regarding her solidarity visit to Israel

You can call Oprah at: (312) 633-1000
Or you can send Oprah messages by going to this link: http://www2.oprah.com/email/reach/email_showideas.jhtml
Or you can send Oprah mail at:
HARPO Productions
110 N Carpenter Street
Chicago, IL 60607-2146

weather again

the hot weather system i talked about last week is supposed to have started today. It was not that hot (around 32-33) in western side of Amman. However, tomorrow the temperature should reach something around 37 and should peak to around 38-39 on Sunday. This is not as bad as i thought i would be, nor as bad as published in Jordanian Newspapers.

temperatures shall start droping gradually before retunring to normal by the end of the week. I am going to Aqaba on Tuesday, i guess it is going to be hot anyway!

Cadbury & salmonella Please READ !!!

According to BBC, Cadbury withdrew chocolate bars which may have been contaminated with a rare strain of salmonella.

Reference http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5112470.stm

Expect very hot not weather next week

5-10 days weather forecast indicates the possibility of bad heat wave to prevail over Jordan starting Friday 22 June. Temperature will start increasing on Wednesday. I hope i am wrong, but there are indications that temperature may reach 43 C on Sunday.
I hope things change and move the heat system away.

Ammar

ETL

ETL is the process of Extraction, Transformation and loading. In fact it is a fundamental phase in creating and maintaining Operational Data Stores (ODS), data marts and data warehouses.
The are tools in the market that helps in executing this phase, like informatica and Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB). Sometimes, and for non complex ETL tasks, one might choose to run the run SQL script manually.
Whether this is done for the above mentioned objective, or any other objective, ETL could potentially be a time consuming processes especially when the data being loaded is not clean.
Foregin key violation, Primary key violation, missing data, invalid data etc.
When you run SQL script against Oracle database, any of the above violation causes the termination of the script and the rollback of the entire statement. The part that is frustrating is that the Rollback process can talk really long time to complete and undo the changes. You are expected to wait for the rollback to complete, then fix the problem and run again. This time the statement could fail for another violation and you are again expected to repeat the cycle. If you are working with small data sizes, this could be tolerable, but when you are loading millions of records, this could really have an adverse effect on the project.
Oracle 10g Rel 2 offers a new feature that allows you to continue loading your data (albeit of the errors) while keeping the violating rows in a separate ERROR LOG table. This give you the chance to only examine the violating rows while not having to repeat the same cycle with every error

The following two statement are needed

dbms_errlog.create_error_log('REALSOFT','ERROR_LOG_REALSOFT') ;

ERROR_LOG_REALSOFT REJECT LIMIT UNLIMITED;

I have included an exhaustive and simple example
please visit http://www.e-ammar.com/Oracle.htm