Sajjad's Blog

Have so much to write about, but the last couple of weeks have been especially hectic. In brief, Babar got married and all three events of the wedding went really well. Congratulations Babar and Qudsia. Nabeel also got married, though since the wedding fell during weekdays and at a time when there was lots of other stuff going on, I couldn't participate in the way I should have done.

The Dancom office shifted from the Evacuee Trust Complex to a building in the F-7 center. The new office covers the whole top floor and is over twice the size of the last one. Right now, there is still a lot of construction going on and we haven't gotten quite used to the bare, cold rooms, but it is at a very convenient location with an abundance of banks and other commonly used services nearby. Unlike the one, mediocre restaurant at ETC that has a very limited menu and even worse service, we have lots of lunch/dinner options to choose from. Lots of opportunities to spend lots of money on good coffee, good food and other expensive things to buy. Just what I needed at this point in time.:(

I finally managed to get the car back after many more trips to the courts and police station. My good friend Razzaq managed to change a few parts and get it running on the spot so I didn't have to go through the hassle of arranging a towing service to take it to the workshop. However, it'll be a while before I can arrange enough funds to get it back in perfect shape.

I don't know if it's just a passing phase or if things really are getting worse, but lately, I've noticed an increase in the number of traffic-related accidents. First it was my colleague's bike accident. Then mine. My neighbor's car got hit by a tractor and just today, a vehicle slammed into my friend Shiraz's nice and shiny new car. I've also had a few near misses on my own bike. Traffic may be worse in other cities like Lahore and Karachi, but unlike Islamabad, most roads in those cities aren't open enough to have many high-speed mishaps, especially those involving large trucks or buses. Hope something is done about it soon.

That's about it for now.

Posted at 21:23pm PKT Comments(4) | ¶

Gmail now lists email forwarding and POP3 access on it's about page:

While I'm quite happy with my Exim+Mutt setup, all this talk of Gmail made me create an account and check out what's good about it (other than the 1GB of space). I was thinking of putting a webmail system on top of our IMAP/POP3 setup, but SquirrelMail just can't compare to Gmail. Maybe I should spend some more time checking other open source webmail packages.

Posted at 19:45pm PKT Comments(2) | ¶

It's been a really long, hard day. Although the later part of it was spent doing some critical (and very tiring) configuration on remote servers for totally unrelated projects, my day started at the courts.

Ever since my accident a couple of weeks ago, the windshield-less car has been gathering dust and who knows what else at the police post nearby. I didn't have the time to go through all the procedures required to get it back, nor the heart to look at it again, but it's something that has to be done.

After a visit to the courts a couple of days ago, I learned that I need to get a copy of the police report I filed at the time of the accident and attach a few more documents before the judge issues an order handing me back the vehicle. That meant another trip to the police station where I filed the report and which happens to be in an even remoter rural area of Islamabad than where I live.

There, I had to tell the exact details of the accident to at least half a dozen people before they bothered to check their records and fish out the report. Even after that, it took them quite some time to get moving and make a copy of it.

This morning, I went straight to the courts and walked around for quite some time while gathering pieces of information about what I needed next and where I had to go. It was almost as simple as trying to build a jigsaw puzzle with your eyes closed.

Finally, I got to the crowded courtroom where my application had to get stamped. The courtroom was nothing like you see on TV, or even in Pakistani/Indian movies. It was just a small room with the "judge" and his clerk sitting on an elevated platform, signing away piles of files and hoardes of lawyers and other people standing around. I managed to hand my application in straight away, but had to wait almost two hours, listening to the proceedings, before getting it back.

Now that I have the stamp and signature on my application, I can go back to the police station and ask them for more papers. Once I get those, I'll get another wonderful chance to go back to the courts to get the final release order which I'll have to bring to where the car is, before being allowed to tow it away. Simple as that.

I need a break.

Posted at 00:41am PKT Comments(18) | ¶

Firefox, the lean and mean browser from the Mozilla project, has reached version 1.0. Mozilla's download site, as well as mirrors, are swamped with traffic and I'm still trying to find a place to download it. The torrents I got had some issues so it may take a while to get a good file. Optimized builds for Windows are available at MOOX though not as cleanly packaged as those from Mozilla.

Coincidentally, another problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer has just been reported. Variants of the MyDoom virus use a known flaw in IE to propagate and another outbreak is starting. More info on CNet, McAfee's site and CNN Money. An excellent time to switch your browser to Firefox (as well as your mail client to Thunderbird and best of all, your OS to Linux).

Posted at 12:21pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

The last company I worked for before leaving Japan was kind enough to host my server together with their own servers. There, I had a reliable, very fast connection with a fixed global IP. A good friend, who still works there, made sure nothing went wrong and things were running very smoothly (thank you Rey and everyone else who helped). Due to cost cuts however, they've had to scale back on IP addresses and bandwidth which means I've lost the hosting.

After my futile search for another place with good bandwidth to host my mail and sites, I decided to put it on my DSL connection at the office here. It's roughly a hundred times slower the one I had in Japan and we have frequent power and/or network outages, but it's the best I can do right now. You may already have noticed the slow response time from the site.

Don't get me wrong. I would be willing to pay for commercial hosting and you can get that anywhere in the world for a reasonable price (I was happily using pair.com for a while), but in my line of work, having full control of such things as the operating system and email service can be cruicial. Hosting a server with full control is usually many times more costly than simply hosting a site and your email on a shared virtual server.

The current server is an old (though very reliable) IBM Netfinity, running my favorite Linux distribution and Mail Transfer Agent. It is configured pretty much exactly the way I want it with virtual domains for both web and email. It also means the others at the office can now read their mail directly through IMAP instead of forwarding it somewhere else first.

It looks like things will stay like this for the meantime, but if anyone with a good connection outside Pakistan is interested, I'd be willing to provide support and services in exchange for keeping a machine running there.

Posted at 12:49pm PKT Comments(1) | ¶

Well he did it. The elections looked pretty clean so I guess from now on, most of the American public will be at least partly responsible for whatever Dubya does during the next four years of his presidency. Not like the last four years with people claiming that they didn't elect him.

It was pretty exciting to follow the results though. On election day (night in Pakistan) even the local channels were just focusing on the elections and discussing the various outcomes. They were also a hot topic of discussion among ordinary people who usually just discuss how bad the Great Satan is and ignore the internal politics involved.

So much for all those "get Bush out of the office" campaigns. One thing that the talk shows did discuss was that whoever got to the oval office, things are unlikely to change dramatically in Iraq and other places. The US PATRIOT act has caused a lot of controversy and could still be abolished and some of Kerry's ideas on foreign policy weren't much better than Bush's. One can always hope for the better.

Posted at 14:12pm PKT Comments(3) | ¶

Just isn't my time. I left for my office last night after having the iftari (evening post-fast meal) and as soon as I got on the main road, a truck hit the side of my car from behind. Yes, one of those tall, colorful trucks that so amuse you foreigners, but are probably the most dangerous thing on Pakistani roads.

The car spun around, hit the kerb and flipped over while the truck didn't even bother to slow down and escaped. I had to crawl out of the shattered side window, but luckily didn't get so much as a scratch on me (or my suit). Thank God for that.

In these situations, I have to say that Pakistanis are extremely helpful. Passers-by noted the truck's number and notified the police. Later they also turned the car right side up. Almost all my close friends arrived right away and got to doing the required legal paperwork. Thanks guys.

I have no ideas what the damages will amount to or if the truck driver will ever be caught, but it really hurts to know that this happened right after I had spend a huge sum of money and lots of time getting the car in a proper shape.

Posted at 13:19pm PKT Comments(4) | ¶