Category: Everyday Me

A Week Of Fatherhood

It’s been a week since my baby son was born, and I’ve pretty much taken a break from everything in this world but him, which explains the lack of blog entries recently.

First of all, I’d like to thank everybody who took the time to either leave a comment on the blog, call, email or chat on IM to congratulate Eman and me on the birth of our baby boy. We both truly appreciate your wishes and thank you greatly.

The mother and son are doing really good, thank God. As for me I’m great, I’m still as excited and ecstatic about this as I was on day one, if not more.
And even though I guess the reality that I’m now a dad hasn’t entirely settled in, I do have a strong sense of how much our lives have changed and will change because of this.

Maybe the most obvious and immediate one of these changes is the fact that we no longer sleep at night. It seems our little Adam is a night person, he spends all day asleep, and wakes up at night with a bunch of plans for us.
The first days after the birth were basically non-stop continuous sleepless marathons for us, until we started using every second of sleep time he gave us during the day time, so yeah, he’s laying out the rules already.

An amazing fact though is how I could just sit there for countless hours just watching him, more like admiring him, adoring him, worshipping him; I can never quite get enough. And when I’m out for even a short while, I miss seeing him and being next to him, and I rush home as soon as I possibly can.

A number of my friends are still under shock and can’t believe that I’m a father, in fact they can’t even imagine it, I can’t say I don’t understand them, but well I’ll be doing everything to be the greatest dad ever and to give this kid the best the world has to offer.

I’ve received some requests for photos of the baby, and they will be coming soon, but no way before Suri Cruise goes public; In our case, at least, there is proof that Adam exists from the photo in the previous post.

Adam’s blog is under construction too, it’s where we’ll mostly be posting news, photos and stuff about him as he grows up.
So no worries to those who were afraid this blog would become all about the baby, even though some special events will eventually spill over onto here from time to time.

So from today, even though my baby boy and spending time with him is always my first priority, we should be going back to regular programming over here. Stay tuned.

I’m A Father…

Adam & MeLast night I witnessed a miracle…
The miracle of life…
And what a miracle it was…

Last night, Monday 28/08/2006 at exactly 9:35PM, in Clinique Avicenne – El Manar, my lovely amazing wife gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy…

The birth experience was so incredibly overwhelming for both of us; how we both felt when the baby was born and we got to see him for the very first time is a feeling that no words can describe and no other thing in life can duplicate; a feeling that can only be shared by people who have gone through the same experience…
It’s just out of this world…

The name we chose for our baby boy is “Adam”…
Why this name in particular? For many reasons, among them the fact that it’s one of the very few names that exist in almost every language and are pretty much pronounced the same wherever you go; it’s also a reference to “Adam”, the first man God created, which we found very suiting for our first child; it’s also mainly because we both loved the name and because it fitted the baby so well…

How do I feel?
I’m overwhelmed, flying, floating above the clouds, happy, overjoyed, proud, overprotective, confused, vulnerable, afraid, responsible, confident, strong, and a list of mixed incredible feelings that I’m still sorting out in my head, but above all I feel touched and changed, I know I’ll never be the same person again.
My priorities in life shifted the instant I laid eyes on my baby son; nothing in this world is dearer to my heart or more important than him and my little family…
The love I have for this baby and for his mother could fill up the heavens above…

I’m a father…
And if there is one thing that I am absolutely sure of is that I’ll be doing the possible and the impossible to be the best father ever for my baby son…

Subzero Blue Hacked

So as some of you might have noticed, Subzero Blue was hacked today, both versions too, English and Arabic.

Eman’s blog AquaCool which is hosted as a subdomain of Subzero Blue was also hacked.

Fortunately the damage wasn’t that bad, the English version of the blog was basically restored as soon as I noticed. As for the Arabic blog, it was offline for hours until I got home and restored some files from my backups.
Eman’s blog was restored pretty quickly too but without it’s design, which I had to get from my backups too when I got home.
Anyway, now everything is back to normal, without any loss of data.

The group of hackers who took the blogs down go by the name of TNT-Cagri, who seem to do it for fun, which explains why they didn’t do more damage, even though they could have.
A list of the sites they hacked can be found here.
And the actual page that records that they hacked this blog is over here.

A special thanks to Soly Z for informing me about being hacked before I realized it myself.

I hope it never happens again.

Now let’s go back to regular coverage, I guess…

Three Years Of Subzero Blue

Three years ago, on a day just like today, unbearable heat wave included, I wrote my first entry in the blog that was to become Subzero Blue.

Before that, I had played around with and tested several blog platforms, posting a few random entries, but not knowing what to make out of the whole blogging thingie and what particular subject I wanted to blog about.
It wasn’t until June 29th 2003 that I committed to a blog and said that I would start writing on it and just go with the flow of what I feel like writing about at the moment.

It started out on blogspot, and then was generously hosted by Houssein (Thanks always), and then I got it a hosting account of it’s own.

When I started blogging, the blog was more of a place for me to make fun of life and the world around me, somewhere I could be sarcastic about it all. Then at some period of time it became a bit like a diary detailing my everyday life. After that I started adding more and more topics and discussing more and more issues and well here I am today talking about a variety of things from world news to music to technology to cinema to life to Tunisia, and more.

As for the blog’s design, it has evolved over the years, from a crappy default template on Blogger or Movable Type, to this design that I keep tweaking lightly here and there, every now and then. It feels really comfortable for me, and even though I get urges to have a full re-design sometimes, I’m not sure I’ll ever really do it anytime soon.

I never expected the blog would have the success it had or that I would end up meeting so many interesting people through it, being interviewed by mainstream media, attending the World Summit on Information Society, taking part in the Global Voices Summit and more.
It’s just all so overwhelmingly amazing…

So what next?
I don’t know really. I don’t know how much longer this will last or what other directions it will go into.
Blogging isn’t a means to an end for me; I don’t blog because I want to get somewhere, I blog because I feel like it and because it makes me feel better.
So all I know is that I’ll keep going with the flow of ideas in my head, and that I will keep on blogging as long as I still feel passionate about it all.

I would like to truly thank the readers and commentors of this blog for sharing this experience with me and enriching it. Your support is much appreciated. You rock.

Looking forward to another year of Subzero Blue…

Foot In Mouth

Have you ever been in a position where you think about something, and in your head it sounds really funny and cool, but then you say it and it comes out all wrong and makes you sound like a stuck up arrogant asshole?
Well that happened to me at work yesterday!
And it felt like shit!

To make things worse, one of my co-workers kiddingly jumped on it and kept amplifying it, only making it even shittier, and making me feel guilty as hell, even though I never meant anything bad from it.

I hate situations like that, and well even though I hope the people around me know me well enough to realize that I’d never mean something in a bad way like that, but still it bugs the hell out of me.

There’s this old saying in Tunisia that tells us to turn our tongues in our mouths several times before saying something, meaning that we should think about things well enough before talking.

But the problem is that sometimes, the way you meant to say something and the way it comes out are very different.

Restoring Factory Settings

Yesterday, while shopping around in Carrefour, yeah I know I said I would never go there again, but well it’s right next door and I’ve sort of figured out the best times to go. Anyway, while I was shopping around and checking out the tech stuff, I came across the shelf with the CD-Rs and stuff, or “CDs Vierges” (Virgin CDs) as they call them in French.

Seeing these piles of CD-Rs reminded me of my long planned, yet never done, format of my laptop. I mean, I’ve had this laptop for 4 years now, and it’s never been formatted. That’s abnormal, especially from an IT guy like me.
A load of crap is lying around on it’s hard disk everywhere, the Windows XP installation is barely breathing, and day after day it’s getting more and more impossible to work with.

So, I picked up a pack of 10 CDs, which I thought added to the CDs I have at home would be enough to back everything up, and as soon as I got home, started backing up every bit of information I need onto these CDs.

I backed up my photos, which needed 5 CDs on their own, my documents, my work files, my downloads, my rubbish and whatever else.

I finished backing everything up last night at midnight, and when I woke up this morning, I popped in the Recovery CD and chose the restore to factory settings option. After a bunch of warnings that all my data will be going to neverland, the laptop was restored to it’s orginal state, and what a pleasure that was.

I was thinking of throwing in a Linux distro next to Windows, but well, that’ll have to wait; Windows XP Home Edition should do for now.

I’m aiming to keep this a light installation with only the ultra necessary programs. I hope my curious testing side doesn’t take over again making a mess out of it all over again.

I found out that in the heat of the moment, I forgot to backup my email data, so I’ve lost every email that was downloaded to my hard disk through outlook express or thunderbird during the last 4 years, but well, not such a big deal, they’re mostly old emails.
I also lost all my fonts, which sucks, especially that it’ll be hard to find some good Arabic fonts all over again.

Other than that, all is fine, and here I am blogging from a faster, lighter installation.

Taking Our Lives For Granted

It’s amazing how much we take our lives and the things we’ve been given for granted sometimes. We just forget how lucky we are for it all.
Maybe we just get too carried away with the details of our lives and we become somehow self-centered, thinking that our problems are the biggest, that our jobs are the most tiring, that our dreams are the ones not coming true, that we’re the ones who are accomplishing the least in the world and the depressing list goes on.

But we have to stop and look around us every now and then, to think and see how well we’re doing in our lives.

It happens to me almost daily; I’ll be stressed out because of a number of different things, from work, to family, to money to all the other stuff, and I feel myself getting lost in it all and starting to fall into that negative spiral of thought; but then I pass next to someone, our eyes meet, and I find myself living their life for that split second, discovering their conditions, imagining all the details, only to realize that I’m lucky to have the life that I have now, with all the happiness and success that I’m living everyday.

These people I pass by aren’t just people who are unlucky or poor, sometimes they’re people who seem to be better off than me in life. But in that split second, when our eyes meet, I see how I would never give up my life for theirs, if only for the fact that this is my life, a life I am proud of, and that I worked all these years to build.

At moments like that, I realize how much I sometimes take my life and everything in it for granted, and I remember that we should thank God everyday for blessing us with it all.

Charts Number One On Your Birthday

I just came across this link on Kassus’ blog that gives you the #1 single in the UK charts on the day of your birth, making it a song your parents could have probably been listening to.

For my day of birth, the #1 single in the UK was: “Tragedy” by The Bee Gees.

Hmmm, honestly, I’d really like to think that my parents weren’t listening to a song called “Tragedy” on the day of my birth, a bit depressing for me, if you know what I mean.

Special Perfect Bed Days

It’s morning again; you subsconsciously know, because the birds that have chosen to build their nest behind your air conditioners’ engine are chirping away ever so merrily, stretching out their wings, getting ready to face a busy day of doing whatever it is that birds do.
A few of the sun’s rays have also managed to make their way through the blinds to teasingly tickle your face, attempting to promise you a beautiful day outside.

The bloody alarm clock will start beeping like crazy in a few minutes, teasing you with every bit of energy it holds within its triple A batteries, and even though you have the snooze button to thank for a few extra precious seconds of sleep, you know you’ll have to give in and wake up anyway.

But today it’s going to be harder than usual; today is one of those special perfect bed days; you know those days where you’re stretched out in the optimal, most relaxing position; where the cover is so soft, engulfing you, hugging you at all the right places; where the warmth of the bed is just right; the coolness of the pillow is absolutely perfect and you feel like you could just linger on in that moment forever. It’s days like this that are the hardest to wake up from bed in.

These days don’t happen quite often too; only 4 or 5 days a year; it’s a shame to miss them and have them ruined by some stupid alarm clock, reminding you of one of your life’s daily pending obligations.

Personally, I believe we should be able to just stay in on days like this, enjoy the moment for as long as it lasts; but no, our personal sleep satisfaction doesn’t figure in any corporate policies or job laws.
Who cares whether you enjoy your sleep or not? In fact, they’d be full of envy to know that you’re having one of those days and they’re not.

So you face the reality that’s been haunting you for the past minutes, you open your eyes to a new day, which you hope, once again, won’t be just another routine loop in your life; and you drag yourself slowly, against your will, out of your perfect bed.