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