Malak is our King

I don't know if you have noticed, but in Lebanon we don't settle for Prince, Duke or even Highness, we only want the KING aka MALAK!!!

To Eat
We have Malak el Batata the oldest of all Kings, in Hamra you cannot miss it, the "Botatoes" are treated in oil since the invention of car, so we bought the oil but replaced the car with batata!

Then who can miss Malak el Taouk, a double decker of bread layers with an irresistible smell of garlic happily devoured by men and by women! the only missing thing in this place is "No Fire" sign or the whole shop could explode due to the heavy load of "toum" nitrogen.

The followers are Malak el Avocat : ) a dynamite cocktail of Avocado for all the "pumping" gigolos, maameltein addicts and the Fast&Furious BMW drivers.

Malak el Shawarma will keep no doubt in all heads that the best shawarma is here! Can you argue with a King!

Then Last but not Least, Malak el Hamburger or better known as Burger King, but this American brand has been well accepted in the circle of our Local Kings who seem to be still growing.

To Pray
With respects to all Religions, here we have the King of Kings and the whole branding that follows; car stickers, fish or no fish attached, round, tall, shiny etc... so forgive my thinking but this King of Kings was more servant than all, and I wouldn't think that this title will serve Him well!

To Socialize
The top of the top is "Malak el Sex wil Corneflex " cause usually you have sex at night and then our Malak will have Cornflakes for breakfast ;) then follows; rouh ya Malak, mafi Malak addak, inta el Malak ehhh inta! all referred to the male gender, rarely we find a "malakeh" or a Queen, but no one forgets the quote "Behind every Malak there are 6 Lebanese girls" ...

At the end, the way I see it, Life is similar to a chessboard but in Lebanon all players are Kings trying desperately to kill each others.

God Bless the King, whomever that might be!

Bricked HDD

This is a technical post. Be afraid!

Woke up last weekend and realized that one of my Hard Disks (HDD) in my Media Center (home PC) is not visible anymore. A total of 500gb of data lost completely. Quite a shock to realize and accept the loss, but knowing my bad luck it was kind of an expected event.

It is a quite new HDD that I bought 6 months back, so there was a warranty. I researched the cause of the breakdown and below is what I found out (luck can not get worse):

1. Well, it turned out that these HDD had a manufacturing problem and a firmware upgrade was posted on the manufacturer site back in February 2009 for fixing them. However the firmware should have been applied before the disk became 'NOT visible' in you PC. This is a very decent HDD, it is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB disk after all.
2. I paid 124$ for this disk that is worth 60$ now (6 months later).
3. It was a brand new generation of HDD back when I bought it over the internet and I had a friend of mine carry it from the US (Thanks Samer). So from a warranty point of view I am screwed as the only way to get a replacement back or a refund is to have it sent back to the US.
4. Luckily enough I found a workaround posted on the internet BUT none of the needed ingredients are found here in Lebanon. And the workaround around this workaround to secure some needed ingredients would cost me more than the HDD itself. Yet I went for it!

So here we go. This link is the solution I found to make my HDD visible again so that I upgrade the firmware. In brief the solution consists of:

• Opening your HDD and removing the Circuit Board, then join them back while keeping the board disconnected from the HDD while connected to the spinning motor (using a paper separation slid in between).
  
• Next step was to use a USB-to-RS232 converter, connected to an RS232-to-TTL converter. Luckily enough these 2 converters can be found in a single cable provided by Nokia. This cable is quite expensive and rare to find as it is a 5 years old technology to connect to very old Nokia Phones.
  
• Now you cut the cable, identify the 5 internal wires (TX, RX, GND, Power GND and +VCC). TX,RX and GND connected to the HDD while the Power GND and +VCC connected to a +3V battery (I used my car keys battery. it was a 3V battery)
  
• Now you connect the USB to your laptop, install some drivers, open up a terminal and start sending few commands to the disk in order to reset its CMOS (some manipulation is also required).

A Messy solution, I know! An expensive one as well and yet I had no choice. Worse case I destroy an already useless HDD.

I worked on it for 2 full days with whatever ingredients I could gather and yet I was not able to recover my data. Nothing worked! Knowing the my bad luck it was kind of an expected thing for sure. I also had taken precautions and have some back up for some critical data.

So all in all, I lost around 480gb while I had a backup of 20gb of critical data that I regularly backed up previously. I ended up buying a new 1TB HDD (from a different manufacturer) and I have been running like crazy trying to gather all the 480gb that I lost and was able to find it at some friends of mine.

I can say I can fully recover all my data by this weekend. However, I am never buying a Seagate HDD ever again

Cheers

Clinical Trials

It is astonishing to realize the amount of clinical trials that are underway currently for the different incurable diseases out there. As someone who has an autoimmune disorder for the last 20 years, it was always exciting to hear about a new drug being tested and a new clinical trial. It kind of gave us hope and reassured us that someone out there, a scientist and a doctor, is doing something to help us.

My perception for Pharmaceutical companies changed however lately (over the last few years) and I started realizing how greedy and manipulative they tend to be. My biggest perception was that these companies are creating drugs to heal you. But unfortunately this is definitely not true. Yes you do feel better on the ultra-expensive drug, but you’ll need to stay on that drug indefinitely AND it is not a cure by any means.

I do understand that autoimmune diseases are hard to cure and YES pharmaceuticals need to develop drugs to manage and control the disease. Nevertheless, over the last 15 years not a single drug nor clinical trial was about curing diseases, but simply controlling it and managing the symptoms.

From a business point of view it makes sense. Why develop an expensive drug to cure a disease while you can develop something to control the symptoms and keep the patient hooked indefinitely. And that is exactly why I started loathing pharmaceuticals. At least tell people that you are working on a cure, even if it is just a lie.

Unfortunately, pharmaceuticals focus on controlling symptoms (and draining you from all your money) while the only research for a cure is being financed but Non Profit Organizations and the like. It is sad to have reached such stage in our humanity but that is the price to pay when you live in a capitalist world.

Try the Buzz

Out of the huge amount of games out there on the market very few impress me much. Not that I am difficult to impress but the criteria for an ‘impressive’ game is a bit different.

While all the industry experts rave about a certain game, I tend to loath it most of the time. As an example of these criteria, my game is a short game and does not require a month to finish. My game has an exquisite online mode that keeps you coming back again and again. My game is of a specific genre game and not a mix of all genres.

One of those games that are easily categorized as a ‘must have’ for your PS3 console is the game Buzz! Quizz TV. Not only it has a great replay value but it also offers an amazing online mode and a second to none entertainment tool whenever you have friends or guests over at your place.

This is not a blog to review games nor does SONY pay me to do game marketing on their behalf. So if any of you reading this blog owns a PS3 console then head off to the nearest game store and get your hands on this gem of a game. Trust me, you will not regret it!

What are the Odds?

Reporting from Bodrum, Turkey with a quick post.

I got this trip on a short notice and I knew I wouldn’t be able to benefit from the sun nor the sea due to a small accident that caused a 2nd degree burn on my leg a few days back. So I didn’t bother getting any swimsuits with me and this trip could not have come at a worse time since I would have to limp through my whole stay as well. I accepted that!

Checking in to the hotel I realize that I got assigned a room in a distant building than the main hotel building due to room availability. This was a long walk with my luggage (lucky me I have a suitcase with wheels and can be trollied). This was fine until I discover that my room is on the 4th floor in a building with no lift.

I Woke up the next day (today) and was shocked that it is raining cats and dogs outside. Obviously no umbrellas and definitely no sprinting to the lobby. Confined to my remote room I decided to vent about it by writing this small post.