Epilogue: How to terminate your PTCL Broadband DSL contract

After months of bearing mental torture, limited or no connectivity, and bandwidth and service charges apparently without having a usable service at hand, I have finally decided to throw in the towel and terminate the contract I have for PTCL Brandband DSL service. Now, since the monthly bill for the service comes augmented with [...]

Ask: Do CRT monitors cause headaches?

I posted this on slashdot.org two weeks ago, but the story got rejected. I am posting it here.
I have myopia (medium to high myopia). I wear corrective lenses (in the form of glasses) with negative six optical power, both eyes. The optical power had gradually been decreasing, but since over two years now, it [...]

Would you like to step out of the car, please?

Imagine having friends in the car driving to a far-off diner, finding a safe spot to park the car what may appear to be little more than five minutes walk away from the diner hoping to avoid the traffic police from subsequently towing the car away (otherwise eventually leaving you with no other option but [...]

YouTube.com blocked?

This is a premature post. PIE routers are dropping packets destined to any of the various IPs youtube.com is living on. The following are two traceroute dumps that show packets destined to youtube.com abruptly disappearing after touching PIE routers.
From behind NTC link:

1 202-83-175-145.reverse.ntc.net.pk (202.83.175.145) 1.193 ms 1.172 ms 1.338 [...]

Of managers and wrong people at workplace.

I have been reading the book “Good to Great” for months now. It is such a wonderful read that I am intentionally resisting from devouring it in one go. I went through a few pages last night, and felt an itch to put the following excerpt on the blog. I typed it [...]

Stomach blues!

I have figured it all out. I can’t eat oranges. I can’t eat spinach. I can’t eat anything high on iron or that is acidic. I can’t eat anything save for what mom, dad and I cook (yes! I can cook. I am very much trained to do all [...]

Of road accidents and humping cars from behind.

I seem to be having a go at humping cars from behind on roads since the past month.
Last month when I rammed my car head straight into another’s, it was not only the car that got hurt, but the ego suffered too. In three years of active driving, I had kept a clean sheet: [...]

Shooting a bird flying high in the blue sky.

Do you believe in destiny? Do you subscribe to the belief that what happens, happens for good, that what bad happens, happens to avert worse from happening? Do you believe that from the point you settle on a decision till the point where you materialise upon it you are in total control of [...]

Space tabs are evil.

I take back what I said earlier.
Tabulators are the way to go. Spaces in place of tabs really suck. I learned it the hard way. If you go ahead and re-indent a piece of code that is space tabulated, you will know how quickly the spaces leap out to bite you (and also how nastily [...]

Re: Hot!

I guess the meteorologists flat-out lied in predicting Karachi’s weather.  Evening is about to get underway here in Karachi, and I can safely say it has been anything but hot so far.  Specks of clouds are abound, and the breeze is soothingly cool.  I hope it stays like that.