The Word of mAn[S]o0r

Note: the following is not a suicidal post!!!

Cruel world, for me, became blogger and my urge to try out anything 'beta'! *sigh* i tried living with it, adjusting to its ever stupid demands, going through proxy and proxy just to have a glimps of it, yet somehow.. it was not meant to be. So now i've decided, this is going to be my last post here!! and thats final!

But no, im not gonna stop blogging! Ofcourse not! im too addicted to quit! What sort of message would that send to the poor kids!?

Yesterday, while going through the decision i've been mullin through for months now, i saw light at the end of the tunnel! The decision being, if to go away from blogger, then where!? (choice of host and platform are very important and after months of blogging, i have a pretty good idea of what i needed).

The answer?

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 1:32 PM | Permalink | |

I've said it again and again.. and yet, i'll say it one more time.

I hate doing my finances.... because no matter how much or how hard i try, i always end up in red.

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 12:46 PM | Permalink | |

This i wanted to post yesterday, but since i was offline the whole day, today is going to be it.

Sunday, October 8th, we witnessed the first 'anniversary' of the devastation caused by the Earthquake in the northern regions of Pakistan.

For me, the quake kind of had a much more personal touch... my father was posted in Islamabad when it happened, and the way he described it to me, forever changed my priorities in life.

He was sleeping at the time. When the first of the tremors hit, his eyes opened and for a few seconds he could not understand what was happening. Everything around him shaking, the sound of rumbling was defeaning. Then it hit him, he was in the middle of a quake! Being the logical man that he his, he figured out it would be no use to even try to get up and get to safety, the quake would be over much much before that, so he did the next best thing, he prayed.

In his words, "I thought to myself, this is it, this is my time. I thought of my family, said a small prayer of forgiveness, and started reciting the kalma"

I still get nightmares on what could've been...

May God bless all those people who lost family members in the quake, and give them the courage to move on.

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 11:21 AM | Permalink | |

Because i didnt want to make a new blog or leave this space, i put up haloscan and reverted my blog to its previous template.


p.s. blogger beta sucks :(

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 2:41 AM | Permalink | |

When blogger initially launched, they lacked a lot of features which
would become a mainstay of the blogging world later on. These included
trackbacks, and more importantly, comments!

Comments, which make each and every post worth writing.
Comments, which allow interaction on ur blog
Comments, which make you want to open up your mailbox every morning.

After a lot of lobbying by bloggers around the world, the people at
blogger added comments and Blogger finally became worth setting up a
blog on.

Then... the Pakistani government blocked blogger blogs in Pakistan,
thanks to the cartoon controversy. Their mechanism was very simple,
block the IP on which blogspot was hosted, and voilla, all blogs were
inaccessible at one go. Posting on the blogs was okay, since for
posting another domain www.blogger.com was used, which had a different
IP, only reading was a problem. But we were not to be dettered... some
talented people came up with pkblogs.com and we all breathed a sigh of
relief. The blog ban was kind of lifted... atleast with people wise
enough to know pkblogs.com.

But... and theres always a but... things were not going to be that
simple. Blogger decided to upgrade their services, and as with
everything google, they came out with blogger beta! Introducing a lot
of new features which were desperately required by the community in
general... but also introducing a very big problem for us bloggers in
Pakistan who had 'upgraded'! They setup the new domain
beta.blogger.com on the SAME IP as www.blogspot.com was hosted on.

What does that mean for us? Nothing much, except that we now cannot
post blogs (the people who upgraded) nor can people in pakistan post
comments on our blogs. What pleasure it is to upgrade! no?!

I <a href="http://wordofmansoor.blogspot.com/2006/10/coming-soon.html"recently</a>
dabbled on making another blog on blogger using the previous setup, or
maybe move to another platform altogether.. but that was not to be. I
couldnt part with what i've put up here since so long... i wanted to
keep it! Now the only problem was.. how to enable commenting???!!

THAT was resolved a few minutes before posting this entry!! Welcome
haloscan! A service launched quite sometime ago to address no comment
feature on blogger, today came back into use thanks to the major f-ups
bloggers been going through! It allows users to post comments for each
post, which are saved on the haloscan servers, and accessible to
everyone visiting the blog through a popup window. The world comes
full circle yet again!

Comments are back up! and im not going anywhere yet! Long live the
pakistani spirit!!

Oh, and im emailing this post in! Hoping it works

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 1:44 AM | Permalink | |

I have to get myself rid of blogger beta. Which can only mean two things....

move to some other platform OR
move back to blogger basic

apprently, number 1 is out of the question... so now i need to move back. But what to name it? Also, im thinking of doing some kharcha and get a domain of my own.

What should i name it?

www.wordofmansoor.com? Sounds cool na!

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 11:40 AM | Permalink | |

Subscribing to blogger beta was the worst decision i've ever made in my life!! Not only am i going through all the teething problems associated with beta (which i had quite quietly), i'm almost being forced to change where i blog.

Never knew i'd actually feel pain quitting blogger.com. Its been my cocoon, my incubator... bringing me into the blogging world and making me feel all there is associated with it. (Even though my cousins say i have *yet* to get a life).

I dont know where i'll be migrating just yet, though some options are wordpress.com, blogsome.com or getting my own server. I think i'll opt for option three, but that would be after Eid at the earliest. (comments welcome).

As of now though, at least i've got one way of posting here... through http-tunnel.com. If you guys can use a separate browser, then install it, configure it, and use it to browse through the blogspot world. Its a great piece of software, quite transparent too, and lets you feel free. The only downside is.. the free version only gives 1.5 kbps of bandwidth....

Signing out now.. apologize in advance for prolly not being able to reply on comment (though i will try).

Labels: my life, rants

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 12:06 PM | Permalink | |

My system just crashed yesterday morning!!! uummm.. well, not excatly crashed, its running as much as it can, my profile got corrupted, which ofcourse, resulted in me loosing all my settings!!

What i miss most though, is my firefox settings! I had a plethora of extensions, greasemonkey scripts and above all, a very exhuastive list of live bookmarks which i've lost now.. so since yesterday, i've been spending my time on the computer trying to get back all that i've lost. Plus, i dont believe much in making backups.

But, as with all crashes, it's given me the opportunity to try out new stuff, streamline my operations a bit, and generally loose some of the crap which had accumulated over time. Now what i need to do is to uninstall a lot of stuff, and the regeneration will be complete.

Labels: my life

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 1:34 AM | Permalink | |

My nephew, S, is two years old and sometimes he does the cutest of things. I wont go over how he's the best nephew there is, and had the most wicked yet innocent smile ever, and that he knows even at two just how to play people and that he's become my jaan.. cuz im sure its the same for everyone.

Anyway, i spent half-day with my aapi (his mother) and the kids today. After iftar, i was feeling my usual heavy headedness and badly wanted a smoke to complete my own iftari.. so after everyone was done and all, i quitely tried to slip downstairs without anyone noticing. Well, i had almost succeeded! My nephew, S, heard the door opening and ran towards it. When he saw i was trying to leave, he tried his level best not to let me with "maamu, aao", "maamu andar". I told him i would be right back, and not to worry... but he was not to be dettered. Then, and i dont know how he did it.. but he devised the best way to get me to come back.

Very innocently, he held out his hand... and said "maamu, chabi" indicating to me that he wanted me to handover my car keys!!!

That was just sssooo darn cute!!! though i was surprized that how at age two, he could come up with that?!

After i handed over the keys, he happily let me leave. Though by that time, quitely slipping away was no longer an option, as everyone was gathered at the door.

Labels: my life

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 1:54 AM | Permalink | |

Recently, over at my cousins, we had sort of a jamming session, getting everything off our collective chests and trying to feel a bit better about the mess that has become life. During this session, i realized something....

i was not connected anywhere..

Almost in all scenario's the discussion involved "... and i asked S for advice..." "...M told me not too, but i didnt lissen..." "...U had been my support throughout ..."

No where was i mentioned.. infact, most of the stuff i had heard for the first time ever. And these were the latest controversies in my own family.

That night led me to thinking... about how much a member of my extended family i really am? Before, i've always kind of prided myself in not being involved in the petty discussions going on everywhere and being kind of aloof... but these things were not petty. They were pretty life changing decisions being taken by people i hold really close to my heart.

In the last couple of days, i've thought a lot... and i have'nt come up with a solution! i'm so bad at socializing, that my nephew and niece promptly forget me in between meetings, and everytime i have to remind them that i'm their mamo! They know my other two cousins by name!

On the other hand however, being aloof has allowed me to live a relatively peaceful life. Since im not involved in the pettiness, im not involved in the fights, i have no bad will with any of my relatives, the little while i do meet them, i have a pretty good time...

Of the choices i have right now, im leaning towards maintaining the status-quo.

And so said mAn[S]o0r at 2:30 AM | Permalink | |