Nameless Blog

Story of a soldier Pt. 4

2010-08-15T08:00:00.002+04:30

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.

After I introduced myself to the MP Officer, he signaled one of his soldiers and the soldier pulled my hands behind me and cuffed my hands! When I asked him why they handcuffed me the soldier laughed and the officer refused to answer me. They sent me to a base in Tehran where I spent the night in captive.

First they emptied my pockets and took my shoes and socks and shaved my head after that they imprisoned me in a cell where there were few other prisoners. Some of them where scared, some confused and others where as relax as they could be on their homes. Me, I was confused and angry, I didn’t know why I was sent there, but I could guess.

Next morning they lined us up and handcuffed each prisoner to a soldier then they took us to the military court. After few hours of waiting I was in front of judge. I explained to him my situation and he told me that I can be released on ten million rials bail.

I didn’t have that much money with me, so next stop was the “Heshmatieh prison” which is a military jail. They start to process us again this time it took few hours because they documented our personal information, portrait photo and full finger print records.

To be continued…

Creeping back to health Pt. 4

2010-08-14T11:21:00.000+04:30

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.

The point is that to consume nicotine gums after triggers not regularly one of the reasons that nicotine patches are not so successful is because of this fact that you don’t train yourself fighting against crave, you just supply your body with almost constant level of nicotine hopping to never feel the crave.

Search the internet there are many organizations which help smokers quit. I remember that I read an article about quitting smoking and its benefits, but it wasn’t like other articles. The writer organized the article based on time passed from quitting time. Here is the list:

20 Minutes after Quitting Smoking:: Your heart rate drops.
12 hours After Quitting Smoking:: Carbon monoxide level in your blood drops to normal.
2 Weeks to 3 Months after Quitting:: Your heart attack risk begins to drop. Your lung function begins to improve.
1 to 9 Months after Quitting:: Your Coughing and shortness of breath decrease.
1 Year after Quitting:: Your added risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker's.
5 Years after Quitting Smoking:: Your stroke risk is reduced to that of a nonsmoker's 5-15 years after quitting.
10 Years after Quitting:: Your lung cancer death rate is about half that of a smoker's. Your risk of cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney, and pancreas decreases.
15 Years after Quitting:: Your risk of coronary heart disease is back to that of a nonsmoker's.

I still sometimes review it again to see my progress.

So remember to always think about what you are gaining not what you are losing. At first you might not notice the changes in your body but after few months you’ll feel the changes. That’s when you’ll realize that how smoking was destroying your health and you’ll start to hate smoking and feel pity for all smokers.

Story of a soldier Pt. 3

2010-08-12T23:40:00.000+04:30

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.

Big mistake, huge, it's one of those mistakes you cannot forgive yourself easily. I left the base and started to study for master course entrance exam.

The 505 hospital took six month to complete my paper works and I couldn’t do anything about it, not in any legal way! The reason for this long period was that the typist of my documents typed my BMI 3.64. My BMI was 46.3; the doctors who should sign my documents noticed the mistyped and corrected it by pen and when my documents were send to the central health office they reject my document because they suspect fraud. So my documents had to be typed again and be signed by 12 doctors again.

Nobody told me that there will be another health committee in central health office of the military which must also accept my exemption in order to my exemption takes effect.

Two things happened in that six month first the rules by which my exemption was accepted were dropped by the government and they also stated that all the previous cases of exemption must be reevaluated by new rules! Second event was that I understood that military police is pursuing me because of the “escape from duty” charges against me!

To be continued…

Anno Domini

2010-08-06T13:20:00.002+04:30

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.

These were the events that happened for me the first time I listened to the “Anno Domini High Definition” from “Riverside”, it was like I have not enjoyed music in a very long time, enough to forget the taste of the good music. As you might guess this album is about the modern life we are living, always in hurry, the constant fear of the future, daily stresses with all kind of sources and of course the anxiety. Simply, it gives you a tour of your lives in a high definition picture, reminding us the value of stillness.

In my opinion “Anno Domini High Definition” is the best album that Riverside has made so far. It’s a perfect mixture of all of the bands influences. I strongly recommend this album to who has a metal heart and a progressive mind.

Story of a soldier Pt. 2

2010-08-02T08:00:00.003+04:30

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.

The next day we met our commanding officer, lieutenant Bayat. At first we thought to our self that he is a very serious and hard man but soon we found out that he has a good sense of humor and a distinctive personality, he earned our respect right away. He was very kind to me and asked the same questions that everybody were asking me, after my explanations he told me that I should not go for exercise or marching practice because of my obesity and I also don’t need a pair of boots. Exercise, marching practice and boots were my exemptions; I cannot say that I’m proud of them.

A week passed and one day Lt. Bayat told me to go to the infirmary and start military duty exemption process again! So I did what he told me the good doctor at the infirmary sent me to the 505 army hospital for detailed examination.

In the 505 hospital they measured my BMI and told me to come back there after a week for the medical commission. After a week the medical commission accepted my exemption request and gave me seven day leave.

To be countinued ...

Creeping back to health Pt. 3

2010-08-01T08:00:00.001+04:30

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.

The need for a smoke is more physical than you think the tobacco companies make sure of it by adding addictive substances to their products; Nicotine is just part of the trick, the most addictive added substance to tobacco is ammonia which also you can find in the toilet cleaner products! Most smokers believe that smoking is more like a habit than addiction, which I think that is the reason they cannot quit.

Before I quit smoking for good I had several failed quitting attempts, what I learned from my failure was that first I was screwed, second I need to somehow distract myself from thinking about smoking and third I also need some chemicals to help with the cravings.

It’s easy to categorize what you need to do on a piece of paper, but in practice you’ll find that not thinking about smoking is the hardest part. My solution was not easy I had to change almost everything.

First I abandoned all my smoker friends and hangout places where I used to smoke. Second I started to list my triggers, which was a long list. By triggers I mean the things that happen before you start to crave for a smoke. After I listed my triggers I tried to replace the smoking part with something else. You can’t do this for all of your triggers.

I will explain more in future posts. To be continued …

Story of a soldier Pt. 1

2010-07-31T11:47:00.003+04:30

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.

I was always told that military service will not be an issue for me because I was suffering from obesity since the day I was borne. But when my time came, which was in the middle of Iraq freedom operation, Middle East was in a hostile state. What happened next changed my life, government decided to drop all the exemptions.

My Body mass index (BMI) was off the chart you didn’t need a fancy unit like BMI to say that there was no way I could serve in military but to my amazement they declined my exemption request, after nine month, and posted me my dispatch info and that’s how I became a soldier.

So here I was, on Thursday, August 24, 2006 in front of the 01 military training base in east of Tehran. Everybody on that base were shocked when they saw me and everybody were asking me that if I had filled the exemption forms or not. Anyway you can say that I was an exception in that base from the minute I set foot there.

To be continued . . .

Creeping back to health Pt.2

2010-07-26T09:43:00.001+04:30

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.

My father is a heavy smoker he smokes a pack of cigarette since he was 20 and that is why he got bladder cancer and he needs to do this surgery every few years but still he smokes!

I guess you can say that I was finally ready to hear the facts about smoking and think about it. By hearing I mean to take the dangers seriously, every smoker knows the hazards of smoking but doesn’t take it seriously until the wakeup call which could be a stroke or cancer or heart failure. Fortunately my wakeup call was my father’s cancer.

Anyway Mr. Dehghan talked to me on Sunday evening, October 19, 2008 and since then I have not smoke pretty much anything that can be smoked. By this post I wanted to thank Mr. Dehghan for helping me to quit smoking.

I will write about how I quit smoking on later posts. To be continued.

Web Development Pt.3

2010-07-25T18:34:00.001+04:30

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.

When it comes to writing an ASP.Net web page you have to choose between two frameworks available. You can build web pages by using either “ASP.Net Web Forms” or “MVC framework” which is the most recent technology it combines the model-view-controller (MVC) architecture and the best parts of the existing ASP.NET platform. You cannot really say which one is better; it depends on your code writing style. Personally I found the MVC framework easier to understand.

So here it is, the best book you can find about MVC framework. “Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework” by Steven Sanderson published by APress.

To be continued.

Creeping back to health Pt.1

2010-07-23T14:24:00.004+04:30

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.

That’s how it started for me, a stupid decision by me so I could look like grownups. I was 16 years old but I never took smoking seriously (I mean getting addicted to smoking) until I was 22 years old and that was a very difficult time for me so I was ready to do anything to distract my mind from my problems.

One day one of my smoker friends left his pack of cigarettes in my house and I ran out of tobacco for my hookah so I decided to smoke one of his cigarettes and that one lead to second one and so on, before I realize it I was already a smoker.

To be continued.

Abigail's Ghost

2010-07-14T14:44:00.000+04:30

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

2010-07-01T08:00:00.011+04:30

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.

After I learned how to write XHTML pages and add some client side functionality to them it was time to put some make up on them and make them more exciting and pretty. The next step as yo might guessed it already was CSS. Css is not a programming language it's simply some rules that you apply on different elements of your web pages. These rules will indicate that how the element they are applied to should look like. There are many books about CSS, but most of them are either too technical or suffer from lack of enough examples. Anyway the book that I liked since reading its first page till now was "CSS: The Missing Manual, Second Edition" by David Sawyer McFarland and published by O'Reilly.

Web development is not all about cool looking web pages you need to know how you should structure your pages in order to increase customer satisfaction level. I searched a lot for a good book in this area and the result was "The Principles of Beautiful Web Design" by Jason Beaird, which is published by SitePoint Pty. Ltd.

So if you are a code monkey like me and don't know anything about the Art or anything else related to art this book might be a help for making better looking web pages from an artistic point of view.

To be continued ...

Introducing OSI

2010-06-30T08:00:00.003+04:30

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

2010-06-29T08:00:00.003+04:30

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

2010-06-28T23:08:00.003+04:30

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.

These lines have been adapted from the official lunatic soul website:

I touched upon a vital subject on this record, namely... death. What came out of this was a conceptual journey to the world beyond full of reflections on transience and all we may want to leave after we pass (if we want to leave anything). In the sphere of music, it will be intriguing. I would call those sounds oriental-alternative, not really having anything in common with progressive rock. An interesting fact is that there is no electric guitar here at all.

As I see it, it will be an oriental-trans-psychodelic-verbal-musical journey through the pitch darkness available only to those who have... a lunatic soul.

Mariusz Duda

Web development Pt.1

2010-06-28T08:00:00.021+04:30

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”.

The next technology I started to examine was a client side scripting language named JavaScript. Many think that JavaScript is not a programming language, but a scripting language, which I cannot be more disagree. Just because it’s not compiled but interpret doesn’t mean it is powerless. I recently understood that JavaScript is not just a client side scripting language, but just a portion of it is for client side scripting. You can use JavaScript to script windows tasks and even your own programs. The book I read is titled “JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition” by David Flanagan.

To be continued...

Getting old or growing up?

2010-06-27T08:00:00.003+04:30

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.

For example I used to enjoy movies, either my expectations are getting higher or the film industry is running out of ideas! Movies are getting technically complex and stories are getting dull. But I’m OK with it. It’s the music that I’m afraid to lose my interest on it.

The old stuff are still enjoyable because they are simply the best, but you can’t listen to them forever you need new ones too. I don’t know! Maybe I’m becoming old school or perhaps the number of new bands with descent songs is decreasing.

I think by now you get what I mean when I say “The Pattern”. Most of my family members and older friends have gone through this pattern. What is scary is the end result; most of them do not listen to music regularly anymore and don’t enjoy it the way they used to be. The rest of them are simply faking it, which is sad.

If any of you feel the way I feel, please send me your ideas for cracking “the pattern”. If you don’t have any ideas but share the same worries, keep visiting my blog because I’m planning to introduce good music and perhaps new joy able activities.

ADO.Net

2010-06-26T12:48:00.004+04:30

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 ...

2010-06-25T20:32:00.002+04:30

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.

Nameless Blog

Story of a soldier Pt. 4

Creeping back to health Pt. 4

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