Snow in London

April Snow in London is not common, neither is the fact that Jordan witnessed no Rain during the entire month of March. Year 2008 is going to be a tough year for everybody in Jordan. Oil prices jumped ridiculously (Diesel doubled and selling at around 88 cent / liter), water is scarce, rent is sky rocketing, electricity tariffs increased and I am afraid that Humous and Falafel meal shall soon become “a delicacy”

ammar

Mohammad Rateb Nabulsi

I was at dinner party two days back where the guest of honor was Dr. Mohammad Rateb Nabulsi, a Syrian scholar. Even though i was not feeling well due to severe cold conditions, but i have to say that i enjoyed Dr. Nabulsi interpretation of many controversial issues in religion domain. He is very elaborate, yet concise with a wealth of information that is barely surpassed by the most prominent scholars of the world. Adding to pthe leasure of listening to him was his eloquent language and organized logic.

backup your computer data

undoubtedly, we all have important data residing on our computers. That may include emails, important documents , financial sheets, digital photos, database files etc..

data can get lost: your hard disk can break down, a virus can wipe out your files, your laptop can be stolen, let alone fire, water floods etc

having said that, backup strategy is your insurance against a tragedy.

Human tend to fall in to the following categories backup - wise

1- Do not understand the need for backup
2- Understand the need for backup, but always look at the bright side and as such can dispel any backup related obsessions or flashes
3- Understand the need but either lazy or incapable of performing it
4- Understand the need, and are taking it religiously

Well, one day a disaster will take place and you will loose what can be indispensable data. Taking regular backup can be a daunting and not to mention a very boring process. I searched the internet and found some user friendly tools that should prove very helpful in assisting you to create an effective backup strategy. Most of these tools can allow you to take incremental backup. An incremental backup only take the changes between your last backup and the current one , thus making your backup much faster

Anyway, i will name a few products, and you can search the net and by using the following search words for more tools

file duplicator, File synchronize, File mirror, Mirror Disk

you will find tools that are prices from a few bucks to several hundreds.

I tried the following two products

ViseVersa http://www.tgrmn.com
Titan Backup http://www.neobytesolutions.com/

You should not know have an excuse for loosing data. Please remeber that it is not enough to take your backup to a different hard disk within your computer, it should be taken to an external device and stored in a safe place

Happy backing-up (or backup-ing)
Ammar sajdi

We never cease to learn - Cadre

The word كادر is a common word that is used in the Arabic language to describe a team of people to deliver a certain job. Before today, i would have sworn my life that it is a word of Arabic origin. Today i have received from a customer a request for a quotation. Within the document i came across the following

RealSoft shall p0rovide a capable technical cadre to be on call to correct any breakdowns ...

Not that i am a linguistic wiz, but it was the first time that i read this usage. Wikipedia came to the rescue with the following

"Cadre (from the French; pronounced /ˈkɑːdreɪ/) are the backbone of an organization, usually a political organization ..... The term is also commonly used in other venues to indicate an "original" or "leadership" group, i.e. the "first set" of users of a system who then will act as the seed-group who gain initial experience with a system, in order to facilitate its later use by a more general population"

Amazing!, i added a new easy work to my English vocabulary

Just for the Fun of It

Test your personality

visit the site http://www.kisa.ca/personality/


my results
Introverted (I) 57% Extraverted (E) 43%
Intuitive (N) 68% Sensing (S) 32%
Thinking (T) 65% Feeling (F) 35%
Judging (J) 95% Perceiving (P) 5%

ولد الهدى

ولد الهدى فالكائنات ضياء وفم السماء تبسم وثناء

Arab Bank and an attempt to abandon the dark ages

This is not the first time, as a company we closed most of our accounts in the Arab bank due to the fact that Arab Bank thinks that we have nothing to do in this world but spend all of our time finishing up transaction with the bank. Unfortunately, i still have a personal account.
Last week I received a call from Arab Bank telling me that they renewed my Credit Card and that i should be receiving a new credit card with Aramex. Within a couple of day, i received it. I ended up with two cards, the old card that expires at End of March, 2008 and the new Card expires 2010. Today, i went to the Swiefieh Branch at 8:30 sharp in order to cancel the old one and activate the new one. The women was helpful enough to explain that I need to call customer service center in order to activate the Credit Card. She gave me the phone no. Still i could not understand why activating the card cannot be done in person. The reason why i showed up in person was because the Arab Bank built a culture in me that I could not do business with them over the phone; in other words, you have to do the walking and you cannot make your fingers do the walking. They always ask you to come in person, present IDs, and several other documents including, but not limited to, your Electricity Bill.

It was a joyful moment to me as i thought no more parking issue, or queue up, the Arab bank finally realized that channels are open! And finally we are out of the dark ages

I called the customer service no
A lady politely answered, and as you would expect, she talks like a recorder. Nothing surprising there, since during my career, I developed a customer service management system and i know that scripts are created to dictate how the customer service agent talks

I told her that i received a new credit card and i wanted to activate it. She immediately barraged me with huge amount of question

Your name
Your birthday
Your Credit Card no
Your account no
and the killer question: what is your current balance?
I answered politely that i could not remember the balance! She said that she cannot do anything, because she needs the balance ( I suspect, the balance is needed as a means of authenticating me)

As part of my profession, we develop web solutions; some of them involve making money transaction over the net. I understand what Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is , i know what public key encryption is! I fully understand what authentication, authorization and non repudiation is!. I read about most of the available means and mechanism of establishing one's identify, but this new Arab-bank innovative what-is-your-balance identity management technology is quite new to me. I want to ask the arabbank not to bother to patent its new invention; since I seriously doubt that security sensitive institutions would be particularly keen in using this new identity technology

Fine, maybe the Arabbank has pioneered technology that i am still short of understanding, but surely, i can still understand instruction.

When i first received a call to tell me that i would be receiving my new card, the lady did not give me instructions that when i call their customer service center, i need to memorize my current balance

When i received the Card, no written instruction exists in the envelop telling me that i needed to memorize my current balance when i call the customer care center

Finally, and most annoyingly, when i walked in Face to Face to the Swiefieh Branch, the lady, who gave me the customer care phone no also did not tell me that since i was already in the bank, I might as well inquire about my balance before calling them.

I asked the lady what to do, she told me that I need to login to the internet and inquire about my balance – That was no solution as I was not connected nor did I have the password ready. The other solution she offered is for me to go to an ATM machine and inquire about my account. Back to the Dark ages!!!!
Drive your car that is coasting 1 USD/Liter, find your way in the busy streets, find an ATM machine, find a parking and inquire about your account. Then call back,, we are 24 x 7 service.

The Arab bank seems to be still living in the 60's when the streets were empty and used to take you at most 10 minutes to go from one side of Amman to the other... When parking was never an issue, when you had only one account (if any). When you could spare the entire day to visit the bank! and most importantly, when no body was constantly claiming that the investment climate in Jordan is advancing, when plans on top level are been made to encourage foreign investment.
This requires no Einstein to foresee, nor a noble prize winner to realize that, No Foreign Investment shall be seen, because as things stand, Local investment shall seize.

If Arab bank wants to dictate its regulation, this is absolutely fine with me, on one condition, not to expect us to be fortune tellers, but at least make the instructions clear

Finally, Arab bank does not really have to bother with this. Further discussion with Arab bank shall be to no avail. Arab bank has made a record 1 Billion USD in profit and can surely sustain business without the disarray that I m causing. The best solution is to close the account and cancel the Credit Card, I am sure it is an easier process that activating the damn credit card

Ammar Sajdi

Disconnected

this year, and in order to limit errands that i miss during traveling, i prepared a check list! when i pack, i just check it to make sure I put an end for the habbit of leaving things behind.

Well, It seems that i forgot to add my mobile on this list.
I came back from bahrain yesterday without my mobile. Where exactly it is, is something that remians to be found.

It feels good to be mobileless,, at least you get some privacy.. which makes me pose the following question

Were mobiles invented for the convenience of the mobile owner or for the convenience of others? In my case, i feel my mobile serves the others more than it serves me

Electronic mailing is Archiac indeed

The hosting service that i user for e-ammar also offer email hosting.
I have never used it nor given the email to anybody nor opened the inbox.
I came to know that fact that i have this email by pure accident when the hosting service sent me an alert saying that i am running out of disk space.
Well there is about 13000 emails , and not only that, but some of these were sent back in 1969

Barack Hussien Obama fatwa

Two interesting things

First:After gaining grounds in US elections, US media and Obama's competitors are over stressing Obama's middle name (Hussien). What does the middle name of black american person in the allegedly free America signify. I mean in the land of equal oppurtunities and the land of no discrimination (or is not). If obama's middle name was William, would this give less issues to worry about towards his chances of winning the US election in the Land of Human Rights. My advice to parents in the US comeing from non-William or non-Jeffersson ethnic background is to think twice before giving names to their kids. (in a nutshell avoid , Mohammad, Ali, etc, you never know, one day you might be deprived from attending school based on your name or middle name)

Obama was born in Hawaii, from a Kynian father (Foreign student father) and a snow white American woman from Kansan. His parents were divorced and his father, Hussien, returned to his home town and died in a car accident in 1982. His mother re-married to another foreign student, but this time from Indonessia. Barack therefore, spent a few years in Jakarta during his early childhood before returning back to the land of equal oppurtunities. Obamas mother died of Cancer in 1995.

Second: Time magazine uses the term fatwa as if this word is now adopted as an official english word. (http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1718255,00.html?xid=rss-topstories)

"The pundits were quick to applaud McCain's fatwa against the use of Hussein, and broadcasters began trying to report on the controversy without actually saying the name too much, dancing around the offending word as if they were doing a segment on The Vagina Monologues. In both cases, the word comes off as not quite illicit, but certainly a little taboo. "


I search the net and found an entry for fatwa in Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fatwa)


fatwa
One entry found.
fatwa
Main Entry: fat·wa
Pronunciation: \ˈfət-wə, ˈfät-wä\
Function: noun
Etymology: Arabic fatwā
Date: circa 1889
: a legal opinion or decree handed down by an Islamic religious leader

A step closer to joining the EU - Turkey

Of course, the pcitures below are not the real reason why Turkey cannot join the EU , however, some poeple would like to think that the images explain why. I just think these pictures are funny, and i am not sure that they are really taken in Turkey