Story of a soldier Pt. 4

I wasn’t sure about writing about these events, until now only my parents and two of my close friends knew about them.

It was about three or four days before Nowruz holidays that one of our neighbors knocked our door and told me that some military personnel were looking for me and they gave her a phone number and asked her to give me that number. I dialed that number and found out that the military personnel were actually military police. The officer on the other side of the phone told me that I have to go and visit him, so I went.

Creeping back to health Pt. 4

Know your triggers, if you want to successfully quit smoking you must find your triggers. Ask yourself after what events you would like to enjoy a cigarette? While drinking, after and before each cup of tea or coffee, after every meal, when you feel sad and depressed or when you want to talk seriously or concentrate on a subject. These are some of the common smoking triggers; my list was far more detailed.

After knowing your triggers you must eliminate them one by one, but it’s not practical to think that you can eliminate all of them. Some triggers will happened and you will start to crave for a smoke, what I did was that I first replaced smoking with nicotine gums and after a week I replaced the nicotine gum with regular sugarless gums. Some other triggers can be avoided by not placing yourself in positions that might lead to activating a trigger, that’s why I abandoned all my smoking friends and hangout places.

Story of a soldier Pt. 3

If you were following my story so far, you might ask yourself; where is the disappointing part? Well you will read some of it in this post.

After the seventh day leave I returned to base and after two days Lt. Bayat took me to Col. Beygi who was the commander of our battalion. Col. Beygi also had a very distinctive personality, he was  a burned leader, a true commander, one that you obey not out of fear but respect and love. Col. Beygi told me that if I’m sure about my exemption I can leave the base.

Anno Domini

Everything started to slow down on a slow piece, before I knew it; I was removed from my worries, anxieties and everything ells, it was like I wasn’t bound to this life anymore. Floating in any direction freely, navigating to places I loved once but lost under the dusts of history. Feelings that had become strangers to me started to come to surface. I was simply taken.

Story of a soldier Pt. 2

We were lined up by the military police (MP) and they processed us; they searched us and our stuff for banned items like cigarette lighter, cigarettes, any lethal objects or any drugs then they send us to the office buildings for registration and other paperwork.


After the registration we were split to different units. My unit was the unit number 714 of the first battalion of the second legion. We were marched to our unit where they gave us uniforms, boots and other equipments. None of the clothes that they gave me fitted me! I had tailored myself a uniform but I couldn’t find a pair of boots for myself, I have a huge foot, size 47.

Creeping back to health Pt. 3

First night is the toughest, no doubt about it. You will start thinking about it constantly, the more you think about it the more you find yourself week and in need. Oh, the NEED, even now after almost two years sometimes I still feel it. If you survived the first night your need get worth and worth until the forth night after that it starts to let go and its grip over you starts to get loose.


Worried huh! I’m not going to lie to you that quitting smoking is easy because it’s not. Some experts in the field even said that quitting smoking is harder than quitting heroine! But the good news is that good doctors and scientist are here to help you.

Story of a soldier Pt. 1

If you are looking for a story about discipline, bravery, valor, leadership, pride or stuff like these then you are looking at the wrong post. In this story what you will mostly find is shame and disappointment.

Too much pain, too many bad memories, memories that I have been trying to bury inside me but I can’t do it anymore so here is the story. In my country which is Iran, another typical third world country, every male must devote two years of his life to serve his country, for most as a solder in the army.

Creeping back to health Pt.2

I continue smoking until I was 27 at that time I was preparing myself to take the IELTS exam. I had a classmate back then named Mr. Dehghan who played a decisive role on helping me to quit smoking. One night after attending the English class we were on our way home, since we were neighbors we usually accompany each other, he talked to me about smoking and its dangers to health, I already heard these stuff thousand times before but this time was different because of the incident I had a week before.

A week before my talk with Mr. Dehghan I got home for lunch and I saw my family staring at the TV screen. At first I thought they are watching some scientific documentary about underwater species but to my amazement I found out what they were watching was actually my father’s bladder surgery.

Web Development Pt.3

After I learned how to write static web pages it was time to take my web programming skills to a whole new level which was learning a server side programming language. There are several good server side technologies such as JSP, ASP, ASP.Net and PHP. Since I was already a .Net platform developer ASP.Net was the logical choice for me.


If you would like to learn Asp.Net I suggest first learn C# or VB.Net then use your knowledge in Asp.Net, trust me on this one, if you want to be a skillful Asp.Net programmer you need to have a strong foundation in C #or VB.Net. I will write some posts about C# programming and suggest some good book.

Creeping back to health Pt.1

It was a boring summer afternoon when one of my friends showed at our home’s doorstep and invited me to hang out with him and couple of his friends, I didn’t had much to do at home, so I accepted. We went for a drive in the city and after an hour or so we get tiered of circling around the city so we went to a tea house for some tea but it wasn’t just a tea house they also serve hookah there.


Some of my friend’s friends were smokers so they ordered hookah too. They start inhaling the smoke of the hookah and puffing it out and everybody take turn to do the same. Then came my turn; I never smoked anything before that but I didn’t want to everybody think that I’m still a child, so I started to smoke. I had seen on movies that people who never smoked before start cuffing after the first poke, but to my amazement I didn’t feel any discomfort in my throat. Later my friend told me that hookah has no danger to health that’s why you didn’t cuff, he couldn't possibly be more wrong.

Abigail's Ghost

I would like to introduce a band which it’s songs have a strange resemblance with “Porcupine Tree” songs. The band was heavily influenced by “Porcupine Tree” in their previous album but on this album they took that influence and mixed it with metal-influence and increased the energy level, the band also did a good job on emphasizing a morose atmosphere. After all it turns out that this is a band with talent and artistic vision.
The band’s name is “Abigail's Ghost” and the album which I was talking about is “d_letion”. This is an album that you definitely want to pick up, as there's no doubt that you'll get some great songs.

Web Development Pt.2

I must also mention another great book about HTML and XHTML, the books name is "HTML & XHTML - The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition" written by Bill Kennedy and Chuck Musciano and published by O'Reilly.

You can find all the details that there are for HTML in this one, So I think it is safe to call this book a reference for HTML.

Introducing OSI

I promised to introduce good music on this blog so here is the second one. By the way all music related posts have “Music” label.

The band name is OSI which stands for "Office of Strategic Influences", at first this name was actually the name of a US government organization which supposed to do US propaganda after 9/11. But the government stopped its activity soon after its creation (or it still exists underground). The name might be familiar for you networking engineers, yeah I mean the 7 OSI (Open System Interconnection) layers. Anyway now "Office of Strategic Influences" is a progressive metal music band name and it's not related to any of the OSI (Open System Interconnection) layers or US government.

OSI released Blood on 2009, which has a dark atmosphere and there are lots of electronic works on this album. So you can say it’s a mixture of classic progressive rock improvisations and modern electronic music.

Here is the link of the official band website. And Here is the link of the “Blood” album on amazon. If you are interested on details about the band check wikipedia.org.

Television

It is almost a year since I stopped watching TV, in this article I’m going to express my ideas about TV and why I decided to abandon it.

First thing I noticed was that I could finish my tasks on time and way before the deadline. Then I started to schedule my day to day life and I was surprised of the volume of tasks I had done in a week.

After a while I noticed that I can focus on my studies better than before. I think that’s because my mind is no longer being polluted by all those TV shows or serials. But I must admit that some TV shows are actually educational for example Dr. Phil  show is indeed educational but I rather face my daemons when they appear not to search for them.

I believe that the most important outcome of my decision was that the news channels could not play with my mind or my emotions anymore. One thing that I’m sure of is that no neutral news channel exist, all of them try to disturb your mind and bring fear to your hearts to make you believe that the only solution for your salvation is the one that their bosses say.

To sum it all up, if it’s free show or program it probably tries to wash your mind and if it’s not free you might get some good quality programs but most likely you are being rubbed.

lunatic soul

Today I want to introduce another album. It took a while for me to enjoy listening to this album, the atmosphere of this one is solid dark and it's about death, but I found it quiet relaxing and good for background music. The album's title is Lunatic Soul The bands name also is Lunatic Soul. So if you need relaxation or you are one of whom who don't like silence, then I suggest this music which has solid performances all around it.

Web development Pt.1

Last year I was just a windows application developer my knowledge of web application development was next to nothing. So I decided to improve my skills on that area. I was confused because there are so many technologies at work together on a web page, I understood that to become a skillful web programmer you must master several technologies.

The first technology I tackled was XHTML I’m really ashamed by saying that after all these years of programming I never find myself eager enough to learn XHTML which is fairly simple to understand and use. Anyway I must thank Mr. Jon Duckett for writing an excellent and comprehensive book about XHTML called “Beginning XHTML, HTML, CSS and JavaScript”.

Getting old or growing up?

I have seen the pattern and I didn’t like it back then, I don’t think I like it now either. What part of me is changing? Is it my taste in music or movies etc… or it’s really a pattern everyone has to go through?

As you might know I’m starting the 3rd decade of my life, and to be honest with you life is getting gray for me. I mean there was certain stuff which always made me happy and I never thought there will be a time which they don’t satisfy me anymore. Don’t misunderstand me, I enjoy my life but in certain areas things are changing which is pity.

ADO.Net

I always felt that my knowledge of ADO is limited or scattered. Although there are some new data access technologies like LINQ and Entity framework, personally I think as a programmer I must be familiar with older technologies for two reasons; first I might come across old codes for maintenance and second to fully apericate new features brouth by new technologies. That is why I started a research to find good books about ADO.Net 2.0 and by far my favorite is "Pro ADO.NET 2.0" ISBN: 1-59059-512-2 by Mr. Sahil Malik which is published by Apress. Here is a link where you can by this book:

Pro ADO.Net on Amazon.com



This book starts by presenting a birds-eye view of the planet ADO and digging into diferente aspects of connected and disconnected fashion data access. I strongly suggest this book to whom wants to have a solid understanding of ADO.

I wish ...

I wish that I had a good topic to write about. The thing about it is that I always wanted something which I can write about regularly. Let me know if you have one.