It Was Alive But Still Needed Lots of Oxygen

On 29 June, the net was there. But the situation was pathetic. I had to do some online testing of a web site. Can't explain how did it. There were a total of 10 issues that I had to check. And it took me from morning till afternoon to complete that. It was like I would do one click, on a button or a link, and then wait for 3-5 minutes, or maybe more. [In these 3, 4, 5 minute breaks I was playing FreeCell ;) ]

I had to upload some content as well. I struggled with it for an hour or so and then gave up. Wrote a mail to my CEO that because of the pathetic net speed I am unable to continue with the task at hand. ;-)

So 29th was wasted as well. Almost wasted. Did testing offline of a thing called DCD. And did some web site testing as well. Completed a document too. Prayed that the 30th should not be as fruitless as the 29th.

The Slightly-Alive Net Came Back

On the afternoon of 28 June, a "slightly" alive net came back. It would serve pages but with such dead speed that you would wish for yourself to be dead. :-S

That whole day was sort of wasted. Nothing could be done. Rather everything seemed to have come to a halt. There were some tasks that i could do offline as well. But since the "life line" was dead nothing seemed to be working.

The colour of life had kind of faded.

Ding Dong The Net is Dead!

It really is. I am not kidding. In Pakistan it is dead. Well let’s say it's almost dead.

It started when a telephonic/internet meeting was going on. I was silent participant as well. It was about a demo to be given by our CEO in USA to the clients in the USA. We, the Pakistani office people were supposed to listen to what was happening. And to look at the demo being given via Net Meeting.

I was getting late, so around 8:45 pm I asked my PM to allow me to leave. He did. I was just turning of my own PC, when the call and all was disconnected. I thought maybe it’s a temporary problem. I left in 10 minutes.

At home around 12 mid night, I tried connecting to the Internet. It would connect but no pages would be served. I disconnected and connected the net a couple of times but in vain. The disconnection of net in the office came to my mind. I just had a thought that maybe the whole Internet of Pakistan is down. Having the thought alive in my mind I went to sleep.

The next morning when I reached the office, my fears were confirmed. Got the news that the submarine cable, somewhere near Karachi, has been damaged. Also heard that engineers are supposed to come from Singapore to fix the cable.

That time, all I wondered was, when will the Internet finally live!

I am Disgusted

Ever since i put the Site Meter counter on my blog, it has been a habit to visit that site regularly and log in to check my blog traffic [which is at times really pathetic and painful :D heheheee]. One of the nice things about the detailed information provided there is that the URLs that refered people to my blog are also listed there.

Yesterday, I was just checking out the site meter site and spotted a new visitor. I opened the details page to see who the visitor is, where was she/he refered from, to which part of the world she/he belongs to etc.

There was this referring URL there it the details. I clicked it. As soon as the page opened, i was disgusted. It was some sort of a search engine thingy, providing services to search blogs. There it was, the name and URL of my blog, in the list. But the rest of the entries in the list were shocking and alarming. Almost all the entries said something like 'See so-&-so N***'. Some even contained some words i wouldn't even dare mention here. It made me sick. Felt like puking.

Didn't have a clue as to how to scratch the name of my blog off such a search engine. I know i can't do a thing (Maybe i can try disguising my blog under a false name). And i have a feeling that that was not the last time i saw such a thing.

But i like blogging. And i guess minor *gulp* such things can't force me to go underground and erase my bloggy presence from the web. :-)

'Dupatta' Advantage

I thought of an advantage of my 'dupatta' (a silly one!).

Because of it being on my head, nobody can see my dreadful hairstyle. ;-) heheheee


{If anyone does not know, a 'dupatta' is the Urdu word for a kind of head covering.}

It's Been a While

I can't even remember when was the last time i logged in here and wrote a blog. I know i can check the date from my blog entries list, but the point is that it has been so long that i can't remember it on my own.

There are some other things i want to do and haven't done in a while. Like on the net i want to reply to so many emails & i want to leave comments at my friends' and others' blogs. Offline i want to call my pals (the list is quite long), i want to read some books, i want to watch some movies, i want to give some time to my guitar playing, i want to..... And the list goes on.

But i am unable to do any of this. The main culprit being my work. I wanted to keep it between 9am to pm. But it is taking much more of my time. I have even started having dreams about it and about my deadlines. Scary, isn't it?

Some people say that without work there is no life OR work is life. I say that work is just a part of life, and some play should also be involved. All work and no play DEFINITELY makes me a dull girl. Maybe not that dull, but bored to the highest levels.

I guess one of my shortcomings is that i don't have good time management skills. And so that's why all my time gets drained into this work and work related stuff. But then i don't want to lead a very regimented life, full of lots of discipline and time tables. If i want to do something i like, i want to do it at my free will. And not because it was listed in a time table.

Oh well, i guess its just one of those phases of life. I am hopeful that it will pass, SOON. ;-)

No New Messages

Every day when I come to the office and open MS Outlook (configured with my company email server), I find at least one new email there. Its bold black subject indicating the freshness, stimulating me to take a bite.

But today when I opened my email program, there was nothing there for me. I clicked the "Send/Receive" button a hundred times, in hope that maybe a big fat message might be choking in the communication lines and would slip in easily if I did that. But all in vain.

There was no email and there was no email.

It makes me kind of sad to see an empty mailbox. Whether it is my company email box or my personal email box, the sight of "No New Messages" just makes my heart sink. I guess I am too addicted to the Internet and emails. :-S

Do you think it's bad?

How Wrong Was I

Is that an hour glass? (the thingy you see at the bottom left of an Internet Explorer page). I always thought that it was an eaten up apple. :-D heheheeee

Anybody out there who thought the same as i did? ;-) LOL


What is this?

A Lesson Learnt

I am coming to believe strongly in the fact that the lessons learned the hard way are never forgotten. They do leave a bad taste in the mind at the time of learning though. But I guess it's worth it since once learnt the lesson pays off forever.

I am learning several small such lessons at work.

The one I learnt today is that never overlook even a tiny thing when testing a software. Test every teensy weensy inch of it. And no matter how "Experienced" the developer is, and no matter how confident she/he looks, never take that as a guarantee that her/his code will not be buggy.

I learnt the hard way. Well it was not that "hard". The boss simply pointed out the bug in a launched project and raised a question "who tested this?". The fingers could be pointed to no one else but me.

I felt confused at the question. I could not believe that I could miss such a big error. I tried to recall the events that took place when that feature was introduced in the application. My mind returned a NULL value.

But I won't let that happen again, hopefully. I am going to be meaner and stricter (some might give a tag crazier). After all I have my own back to save. ;-)

Clearing Up the Clutter

Today was a very relaxed day at office. The big project being released last week on Wednesday, and its documentation completed on Friday, there was no work for me to do today. (At least nothing I could think of.) So what I did was that I cleared up the clutter.

It was not a physical clutter but a virtual one. I cleaned up my PC and removed all unused, obsolete files that were merely eating up space on my hard disk. I did let some old files stay. But those I marked with a bold label 'Old'. I did that because I did not want my old and new files mixing together to give me the headache of a lifetime.

Now my desktop is tidier too. Mulan along with Mushu are completely visible now. I will keep them this way, before I switch back to putting Sully, Mike and Boo back on my desktop.

I wish things were clutter free in my room at my house too. ;-)