Eid Adha Mobarak or not yet?

I wish a Happy and Blessed Adha Eid for everyone of you despite the confusion whether the Eid starts Wednesday, Thursday or Friday (or even later). This makes me wonder why would it be so difficult to agree on a unified Eid!?

Explanation 1:
In my humble opinion, the authoritative sheikh in KSA, who also happens to be the employee of the Saudi king, is using a defective calculator to figure out the correct movements of the moon. Or maybe the calculator has a weak battery which usually leads to erroneous results, etc. But I can assure you that the fault will be solely due to the calculator.

Explanation 2:
When we were kids, we learned that the Earth has one moon and we actually believed that!!! But as the Lebanese proverb says:
حبل الكذب قصير
which means means that “the life [rope] of the lie is short”. Now, with the Adha Eid starting today for some, tomorrow for others, and after tomorrow for the rest, we cannot but wonder how can one moon give three “readings”! The earth must have three moons and from Lebanon alone, you can spot at least two of them. Otherwise how can two scholars in Lebanon conclude differently; one says that Eid starts Thursday while the other says that Eid starts Friday?

Explanation 3:
A third explanation which also makes perfect sense is that not all scholars are spotting the same moon. Some might be watching the moon of another planet for that purpose; I won't blame these people because with the size of our galaxy, things can be confusing.

Explanation 4:
They heard one of the following songs and they got all mixed up:
“نحن والقمر جيران” ([We and the moon] are neighbors) for Fairuz.
“يا قمر مشغرة” (Oh, moon of Mashghara) for Fairuz.
“على بابي واقف قمرين” (At my door, stand two moons) for Milhim Barakat.
“يا قمر سلم عليهم” (Oh moon, send them my regards) for
“تجي نقسم القمر” (Let's divide the moon!) for Walid Tawfeeq.
“قمر الزمان” (The moon of the old days) for Wadi' Mrad.
“قمرين” (Two moons) for Amr Diab.
And the singer Mostafa Qamar, whose family name means “moon”.

Explanation 5:
They spot something else – other than the moon.

Anyway, in the mean time, let's enjoy the extra long vacation. ;)

The Age I Wish To Go Back To Meme

Niki-chan tagged me to write about age in my life that I would like to go back to and experience over again.

I thought about this tag for quite some time and I couldn't come up with any reasonable reply; in every part of my life I learned something and there is no way that I could have accelerated my experience and understanding in any way.

However, I was most satisfied during my school days so that's the age I like to go back to. In particular, I would choose my last year at school to live over and over again. I was 17 years then old and I was so confident of myself and my skills; I had big dreams and an optimistic vision of the coming years, I saw great opportunities and a prosperous future. Plus, I used to get high (as in overdosed) solving algebra, solid geometry, physics and chemistry problems. Life was good; my only concern then was to graduate as first in my class!

I would like to read the answers of Engy, Lori, Metro, Nesrina and Jane only if they like to take this tag. :)

*******************Start copy************************
Instructions:

Title: The Age That I Wish To Go Back To

Requirement: Write about the one age that you wish to go back to and why?

Tag Mode: 5 bloggers

1st - You leave their blog and post link and add to the list below.

2nd - Let the blogger you want to tag know they been tagged by comment in their blog or etc.


The Age that they Wish to Go Back to:

Amidrin wish to go back to age 22 to correct back some mistakes in life.
Lemonjude wish to go back to age 6 to enjoy kid’s life.
Hui Sia wish to go back to age 16 to meet her first lover again.
Giddy Tiger wishes to go back to a childhood life with no worries in the world.
Eastcoastlife wishes to go back to age 24 when she's in demand
MikeM says it doesn't get any better than it is right now!
niki yokota wish to go back to age 3 and roll on the floor.
a h m a d wishes to go back to age 17 to enjoy again the most satisfactory year of his life.

Lebanese Sense of Humor 3

Thank you Delirious for this forward! :)

The Perfect Presidential Candidate

I was thinking about the perfect presidential candidate; what would his qualifications be?

The internal challenge:
The future president has to deal with two opposing parties and these two parties are crazy! You don't believe me?

Proof #1:
One of them calls itself March 14 and the other calls itself March 8. I mean, why on earth would someone calls himself with a date? Did they run out of names or what? Anyway, still, such names are not creative enough; had they asked me, I would have recommended something special like February 29 or even something impossible like February 30. In worst case, they could have used November 22 to show their loyalty. But, there is no cure to narrow mindedness.

Proof #2:
Let's start by chronological order. First, let's take a look at the so-called March 8 movement. Among them, we can find General Aoun, Hezbollah and Amal. If we go back few years ago, when General Aoun was in France, he didn't spare a chance to attack everyone especially Hezbollah; now they are political soul mates! Let's go back further in time, Amal's only loyalty is to Syria and General Aoun lead a very fierce war against the Syrian forces in Lebanon; now he is getting along with Syria's puppet?! Worse than this, ordered by Syria, Amal wanted to eradicate Hezbollah, and blood was shed for that matter; only so that now they are allies again!

If we check March 14 movement, things aren't any better. Among them, we can find Jomblat, Gaegae, Jmayyil and Harrirri. During war years, Jomblat and Gaegae lead an unholy war against each other where massacres were committed against innocent civilians! Jomblat was an ally of the Syrian regime and he only changed that recently when he remembered that it was Syria who killed his father! Saad Harriri is now in politics only to revenge for his father's assassination.

So, in my opinion, this is not politics, this is craziness and our future president has to cope with that!

The external challenge:
Now, let's see what kind of neighbors we have. On the eastern side, we have Syria; a regime that won't hesitate eradicating their own people! On the southern side things only get worse, we have Israel and you know what it did last summer! I would confidently say that Israel is the most detestable neighbor anyone can have.

Conclusion:
WARNING: The conclusion contains vulgar and obscene language so discretion is advised.
So on one hand the future president have to deal two crazy movements and a detestable southern neighbor. In other words, he has to handle two nuts and an a$$hole! To give you a hint about the perfect candidate, I will quote from the movie Fracture.

Ted Crawford: [refering to his private investigator] My Dick is good.

I bet you agree!

Mobile Number

How (not) to give your mobile number!

X: Do you have a mobile phone?
I: Yes.
X: What is it?
I: It's a Samsung.
X: I meant the mobile number!
I: An MTC Touch!
X: I am asking about the number you silly.
I: Ah, the number! It is 8 digits with the code included.
X: Stop it!
I: Stop what?!
X: OK, I don't want your mobile number anymore.
I: Well, who told you I want to sell it in the first place?!
X: I feel I am really wasting my time now.
I: Same here! :)

Shall I buy a new laptop?

I am thinking about buying a new laptop to replace my older laptop; however, when I come to think of it, I don't want MS Vista, I don't want higher specifications and worst, I don't want to pay a fortune for what I don't need. All I really need is an extended warranty -beyond 3 years- if such a thing exists here!

My laptop is almost three year old and therefore its warranty will expire soon. My current laptop is an IBM T42. If I am going to buy a new laptop, I think I am going to buy IBM Lenovo T61.

The first T61 I am considering is ThinkPad T61 8898-55G with a classical 14” screen.

T7100(1.8GHz), 1GB RAM, 120GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1024x768 LCD, Intel X3100, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 4c Li-Ion, WinVista Business 32

The second T61 I am considering is ThinkPad T61 7664-18G with a wide 14” screen.

T7300(2GHz), 1GB RAM, 120GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1440x900 LCD, 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11agn, Bluetooth, Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 4c Li-Ion, WinVista Business

Now, the question: is it a good idea to pay up to $2000 to buy a new laptop? Do I really need a new laptop?

I can confidently say that I use my laptop for:

• Internet browsing with Firefox.
• Web mail and occasionally I download them to my local mail client, Thunderbird.
• Occasionally, I use VMware Workstation to test operating systems and other software.
• At times, I do some photo editing.

If I come to think of it, I don't need a laptop with high specs; my current laptop is doing just fine on the performance level. (Almost any laptop will do fine as long as you don't install on it unnecessary software including toolbars, adware, spyware, malware, virii and worms.)

Moreover, buying a new laptop might mean that I have to upgrade(!!!) to MS Vista. But that's out of question; I don't want to be Bill Gates' Guinea pig. Although currently I am using MS Windows XP, I am planning to upgrade to GNU Linux (such as Ubuntu or Gentoo) the moment I can free myself from MS Active Directory and MS Exchange. For your information, MS Vista will give a poor performance on the latest Intel CPU (such as T7100) unless you upgrade to a minimum of 1.5 GB RAM.

I would settle for my current old laptop but I feel that it is going to die soon. During the past three years, I have (ab)used it extensively. I let it run 22 hours a day, burn 100's of discs, show 100's of movies, experimented heavily with virtualization and watched its CPU peaking continuously, etc. And yet, it tolerated me!

Then I think maybe I should just wait till it dies, then I will buy a new one!