Category: Everyday Me

Computer Idee

Cover: Computer IdeeToday, when I got home, I found this big letter stuffed in our mailbox. It was torn on the edges as if someone tried to peek in.
I wasn’t expecting anything, and the technical magazines I usually get come in transparent covers so I didn’t know what this was.

When I opened it, I found a really great surprise.
It was “Computer Idee”, the number one computer magazine in Holland, yep that place they also call The Netherlands, and it was in Dutch.
Hmmm, so why was I so happy about it, especially that I don’t understand one word of the language??

Well, it’s because this issue has a feature about blogs, in which a number of bloggers are profiled. And yes you guessed right, I am one of the bloggers who were interviewed for this feature and profiled in it.

I’ll be scanning the article and putting it up here asap. It’s a shame I don’t have a scanner at home.
I’m truly honoured to be featured in this magazine. I’d like to thank Remko who interviewed me and wrote the feature article again.

Trackback Spam

If there’s anything I hate more than email spam and comment spam, then it must be trackback spam!

I’m getting bucket loads of trackback spam these days.
Just this morning I found around 40 linking to a bunch of porn, beastiality, fetish, gambling sites and what not.

The problem is that after the problem I had with my blog last August, MT-Blacklist, the plugin that I use to take care of comment and trackback spam, just stopped working efficiently on trackbacks because of some irregularities in the database that I only got to sort out this morning.

But still, even with the spam plugin, it’s very annoying.
Sometimes it just makes me feel like disabling all trackbacks from the blog, even though I don’t want to.

Being in a somehow violent mood after watching “Kill Bill” again last night, I wish I could go on a similar quest to rid the world of spammers.
I’ll have to pass by Japan first to get my Hattori Hanzo Katana though. And then the slashing begins…

Dentist, Finally…

Today, I finally went to a dentist…
And what a small world it is; It turns out his older brother used to work in the Tunisian embassy in Jordan and I know him very well.

He took a look at my teeth and told me there was a lot of work to be done, as if I didn’t know that already. In fact, I could’ve told him what each tooth needed, but well, I’m paying him for that, so no need to help him out.

He said it seemed like I really liked sweets and that I must’ve been to many dentists in my lifetime; I just smiled, I thought it better to keep my feelings of hatred towards dentists to myself at this moment, especially with me lying on a horizontal chair and him staring into my mouth with a bunch of drills nearby.

I told him which tooth was hurting me the most, and we decided to start with that one.
I knew it needed root canal treatment, and I knew the exact procedure so well I could’ve actually guided him through it, so I didn’t even bother to ask what he was going to do and he didn’t elaborate much either.

After injecting around my tooth with a local anesthetic, he started drilling, drilling and drilling until I felt like there was nothing actually left of my tooth.
I remember feeling that same feeling the last time I had a root canal treatment on the parallel tooth a few years back in Jordan.
That’s when he pulled out this tiny screw-like thingie, that hints at his hidden intentions with this tool. He injected more anesthetic into the tooth (Ouch! Pain!) and started cleaning up the 3 root canals (Yucky feeling!).

Then he just stuffed some cotton in my tooth and told me to go home and come back next week for more work and to finish that tooth up.

I’m now at home writing this, still not feeling the left side of my mouth and with a numb lower lip and tongue, passionately waiting for next week’s appointment.

Aren’t dentists just a bunch of fun to be around?!

Three Years Of Bliss

Today is our third marriage anniversary.

It’s amazing how time flies by yet seems so slow at the same time. I mean it’s already three years since we got married, yet it feels like the wedding day was yesterday; It’s only three years of marriage, yet it feels like we’ve been together for a lifetime.

To my sweet and lovely wife: “Love”, as a word, doesn’t even come close to describing how much feelings I have for you.
Thank you for making my life as beautiful and complete as you have.

My Traveller Wish

One of my ultimate wishes would be to get to work on something like those travel shows they put on TV; getting to travel to a new country every week, discovering new places, seeing new people, knowing new cultures, tasting new types of food, learning of different customs and traditions… and then reviewing them for the whole world.

That’s something I would totally love to do, something that would make me really really happy.

I’ve always loved travel and found it very enriching. I think I am a more understanding person because of all the travel I’ve done and the different people I’ve met.

Being able to do it all the time as a job would just be a magical dream come true.
For the time being though, all I can do is wish.
Unless someone out there is willing to finance me to travel around the world and blog about it. Anyone?

Damn Find & Replace!

Today was a really shitty day!
I woke up, still in a good mood from yesterday’s meetup, and I thought I’d get online to check my emails and read the comments left on my blog.

I did that and all was cool.
And then I found this one blog spam comment in one of my old posts.
So, I did a search by the title of the post, which was about the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia. For some reason the search returned many results, so I wanted to search again and narrow it down, only instead of writing in the search field, I wrote in the replace field and I clicked enter.
I quickly realized what happened and clicked stop in the browser, but it was too late, every single post on my blog got screwed up and all the content was lost and turned into an endless stream of Adobe Macromedia shit.

I got in touch with my host in an attempt to find a recent backup to restore my database from, but they didn’t have any.

So, I had to re-import my data from a backup I had that was done in mid July, and I had to re-enter each and every post from then up to now, which is over 80 posts.

I’ve been working on it all day long and I just finished. I’m exhausted. And if I wasn’t as addicted to blogging as I am, I certainly would have quit the whole thing alltogether.

So, all the posts are here. But without the comments and trackbacks 🙁
I have the comments in emails that are sent to me, but I guess it’ll take me a longer time to restore those.

Dentist Urgently Needed

Ok, it’s really about time I go to a dentist.
I’ve been trying to avoid this for a long time now.
I’ve been ignoring the bits and pieces of teeth that have been falling apart every now and then.
I’ve been gobbling up painkillers to try and get over the head-splitting toothaches.

But now with small holes starting to form and at least 3 of my teeth surely in need of that painful root canal treatment I’ve already tried once before, I think it’s time I go to a dentist as soon as possible before things get even worse.

I totally hate dentists, but well a must is a must.

So, I need a favor from my fellow Tunisian bloggers to help me out here and tell me about good dentists they’ve tried out and who have a “light hand”, as we’d say, meaning that he/she isn’t a sadistic bastard who will screw the living lights out of me with pain!

Leave a comment or send me an email with the doctor’s contacts and a short description of your experience with him/her.
Thank you…

Pakistani Restaurant in Tunisia

Thanks to Lea, an American student in Tunisia, whose blog I discovered today through Karim, I found what is most-likely the only Pakistani restaurant in Tunisia.

It’s in the back of Centre Dorra in El Menzah 6. Check the map here.

Eman has been dying to eat some Indian food for quite some time now, and well I thought Pakistani food was close enough, so I surprised her by taking her to lunch there.

It’s a little place, but quite nice. They have a few posters of places in Pakistan on the walls and some flyers about some Pakistani cities on the tables.

We ordered Chicken Biryani and some Pakistani bread.

Once the odour of the cooking hit my nostrils and I flipped through the pages of the Lahore flyer on our table to see the places I knew, it was as if I travelled back in time to the days I spent in Pakistan. Nostalgia hit me, and I started rambling on and on to Eman about Pakistan, what I used to do there, where I went, …etc etc etc.

Then the food came and it was really good, very delicious. I totally enjoyed every bit of it.

The prices are great too, pretty cheap actually compared to other restaurants in Tunisia.

I totally recommend this restaurant.
I’m sure I’ll be going back there many more times.

Blogging In Arabic

I’m very proud to announce the launch of my Arabic blog.

This is something I’ve been thinking of doing for some time now and for many reasons. Most importantly because of my love for our beautiful and rich Arabic language, the fact that there aren’t that many blogs in Arabic out there and because I think it’s important for us Arabs to blog in our language too to keep the language alive and growing.

It’s been a really long time since I wrote stuff in Arabic, so this will also be a great opportunity for me to get back to it all.

I was thinking of naming the blog something else, but then I thought I’d stick with the Subzero Blue brand, plus it turned out funny in Arabic 😛

The design is basically the same as this one, just flipped horizontally. As for the topics, they won’t necessarily be the same.

The Arabic blog is powered by the Arabized WordPress.

I hope more bloggers from across the Arab world will think seriously of blogging in Arabic too.

Oh and please let me know what you think of it.