Year: 2007

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Lassy and Big Joe

Here’s a small story / piece of reflection I share with you:

Lassy
As the sun rises and the stud officially declares the beginning of a new day, all the fellow chicken wake up to start all over, always grateful to their fellow cock who played a big role in their life.
Our fellow chicken, Lassy, is very religious and fears its God. For Lassy, being grateful to the farmer, big Joe, is something sacred. He feeds her very everyday, cleans the inn, hires a dog to watch over the nasty wolves.
Lassy never knew what hunger means, she always prayed for the farmer, who only wished her happiness and health.

Big Joe
Big Joe, owner of a chicken farm, is a very business oriented person.

He’s not religious at all, all he cares about is his big fat bank account, but on what account? (pun intended).
He hates to wake up early in the morning, but he has to, for he has good things to sacrifice for.
Everyday, Big Joe spends a generous amount of his time looking for the best food supplies that make his chicken fatter and grow faster. Big Joe knows that if he does not clean the inn, his dollars, err…his chicken, would die out of intoxication. And if he doesn’t enslave that stupid dog, he would loose his fortune to those greedy wolves. All what Big Joe wants is to see his chicken grow very quickly and have them slaughtered and transformed into money.

The Narrator:
My friends my friends, who’s Lassy and who’s big Joe among you?
Are you both?

Origin: Self

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Should I call it “Spiritual” Addiction?

We know that a certain addiction hurts but we can’t resist it.

He who smokes, knows he will get his lungs burnt out, but is willing to take another puff…
He who drinks, knows about the massacre happening to his brain cells, but longs to escape from reality…
He who loves, knows that his love is an illusion, but still longs for the lover…
He who over eats, knows that he can’t solve his problems by eating them up, but he wants to eat more…
He who gambles, knows that he’s losing his soul, still hopes for the best…
…….

Why?

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The water of madness

A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drank that water would go mad.
The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, and which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and the inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water and they though the king’s decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them.
When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication.
In despair, the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying: “Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then, we will be the same as them.”
And that was what they did: the king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country?
The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days.


Heard from: Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Origin: Unknown

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What if?

What If

Today I was in a bad mood and just for one time I decided to embrace that feeling and not escape from it.

I realize that this bad mood springs from inner thoughts, inner expectations, inner fears, waiting for things, hoping, dreaming and fearing of the future.

I came to ask myself:

– What those who love me stop loving me for a reason?
– What if all what I got is lost and I am with nothing?
– What if what you’re waiting and counting the days for will never happen?
– What if you wake up one day and you are bankrupt?
– What if you lose your beloved ones?
– What if you become homeless and have to beg and sleep on the streets?
– What if you are doomed to stay alone for the rest of your life?
– What if the world is against you and you feel guilty and yet you will never get your justice?

Can you for a moment take each question, sending it deep to yourself and wait for a response?

What do you feel?

Is it fear? Is it sadness? What is your soul trying to tell you in response to all those questions?

For just one moment, don’t try to analyze, explain or make sense, instead just observe and be a good listener and see what your soul wants.

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The Celestine Prophecy – First 9 Insights

1. We are discovering again that we live in a deeply mysterious world, full of sudden coincidences and synchronistic encounters that seem destined.

2. As more of us awaken to this mystery, we will create a completely new worldview — redefining the universe as energetic and sacred.

3. We will discover that everything around us, all matter, consist of and stems from divine energy that we are beginning to see and understand.

4. From this perspective, we can see that humans have always felt insecure and disconnected from this sacred source, and have tried to take energy by dominating each other. This struggle is responsible for all human conflict.

5. The only solution is to cultivate a personal reconnection with the divine, a mystical transformation that fills us with unlimited energy and love, extends our perception of beauty, and lifts us into higher-self awareness.

6. In this awareness, we can release our own pattern of controlling, and discover a specific truth, a mission, we are here to share that helps evolve humanity toward this new level of reality.

7. In pursuit of this mission, we can discover an inner intuition that shows us where to go and what to do, and if we make only positive interpretations, brings a flow of coincidences that opens the doors for our mission to unfold.

8. When enough of us enter this evolutionary flow, always giving energy to higher-self of everyone we meet, we will build a new culture where our bodies evolve to ever higher levels of energy and perception.

9. In this way, we participate in the long journey of evolution from Big Bang to life’s ultimate goal: to energize our bodies, generation by generation, until we walk into a heaven we can finally see.

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The white pigeon

I was sitting the other day, next to work, exposing myself to the sun, after spending most of the time in the office, then
I happened to look around and the first thing that came to my sight was a small white pigeon.

I was not in the mood that day, and I reacted saying: “what a stupid creature it is…”

After saying that, I felt guilty as if I did something terribly wrong, but all of the sudden I felt as if something has awakened inside of me. It was a gentle voice telling me to stop these negative thoughts.
At that moment, more sadness filled my heart, making me realize that I was not fair with that pigeon. And with a sudden movement, as if the
pigeon felt that I was sorry, it flew away accepting my sorrows, only to lead my eyes to another saddening sight: a blind beggar waiting for a kind person who would give him some food or money. Continue reading “The white pigeon”

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The “CON” Folder

I just received a funny email today, reading:

TRY IT NOW , IT WILL NOT CREATE ” CON ” FOLDER.
YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS !!!!!!!! An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as “CON”. This is something pretty cool…and unbelievable… At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn’t answer why this happened!

TRY IT NOW , IT WILL NOT CREATE ” CON ” FOLDER.

What is funny about it is that people forward emails without research or verification.

As a programmer and as most programmers know, the “CON” is a special device name which stands for console. There are many other reserved devices names in the DOS/Windows OS, such as: AUX, NUL, LPT1, COM1, etc….

However, you would be able to create use such names if you pass a complete file as: “\\.\c:\con”. As an example, follow these steps:

  1. Start -> Run -> Cmd
  2. type: “notepad \\.\c:\con.”
  3. now go to “My Computer” -> “C:” and notice the file named “CON”
  4. Notice that you won’t be able to delete that file simply by selecting it and pressing DEL. If you ask why, it is because (again) Explorer is passing the name “CON” to the operating system’s DeleteFile() API and not its full name
  5. Now to delete this file, simply type “del \\.\c:\con.” in the command prompt

If you want another “CON” (console) trick, here’s one that allows you to create a text file without using notepad or any other text editing tools:

  1. Go to command prompt and type:
  2. copy con hello.txt
  3. start typing anything you want here, for everything you type here will go into the “hello.txt” file
  4. When you want to finish, simply press CTRL+Z (which will show as ^Z on the screen) and press ENTER

If you wonder what’s the CTRL+Z (aka ^Z) it simply marks the EOF (End Of file).

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PHP5 on Vista 64 and IIS7

Hello,

The other day I wanted to install PHP the Vista 64 with IIS7, however IIS7 is totally changed and couldn’t get PHP to work without doing some research on how to use IIS7 and add PHP handlers to it.

At first, I found “How to install PHP on IIS7 (RC1) – BillS’ IIS Blog” excellent article describing how to get started.

However, after following the exact steps, PHP still failed to load, saying:
After some research it turned out to be that the ISAPI modules are for x86 (32bits) and this is why they are not being loaded.
For this reason you have to do these additional steps:

  1. Open IIS Manager and expand the root node
  2. Click on the “Applications Pool” node
  3. Notice you have “DefaultAppPool” and one more  entry in the list
  4. Now to the right, select “Advanced Settings”
  5. In the “Advanced Settings” dialog, select “General: -> “Enable 32-bit Applications” and set to True (screenshot)

Now everything should be working.

While you’re here trying to fix your PHP / IIS7 installation, you might want to take a look at FastCGI a collaborative work between Microsoft and Zend.

More useful links:

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What to choose 32 or 64 bits operating system?

Today I purchased a new PC (Intel 2.4GHZ Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM), and knowing that this processor is a 64bit processor I got puzzled if Windows XP 32 or Windows XP 64 is better for me.

So what is a 64bit system

The most important difference is the addressing size: 32bits system allow you to access up to two to the power 32 bits of addresses, that is 4GB, whereas on 64 bit systems you can address 2^64 addresses.

If you wonder what does that mean, it simply means that your application can use more memory and can work with 64bit data natively (which is an advantage over working with 32bit data).
Mostly CAM and CAD software users can benefit from this memory addressing expansion.

Can I install 32bit Windows on a 64bit Machine

Yes. 64bit machines allow you to install 32bit Operating Systems on it. For this you may install two Windows on your machine: Windows XP and Windows XP 64. Then using the OS’s boot menu you can select which OS to run.

Most applications that run on 32bits run on 64bits

Most of the 32bit applications will continue running smoothly or even at a slight speed increase under Windows 64, and this is due to the WOW64 subsystem (Windows On Windows 64-bit, used to be WOW32 on 32bits systems).
Due to more addressing capacity, a Win64 system can allocate much more physical or virtual memory than a 32bit program. It is worthwhile mentioning that on 32bit systems, the maximum usable physical memory is 4GB while under 64bits you can reference up to 128GB.

Drivers need to be present for either 64bit or 32bit

You need to realize that the WOW64 does not work for drivers. For this reason you need to have a different driver version.
Because of this your CDROM burning software will not work anymore, neither your favorite AntiVirus. You need to download 64bit enabled version of that software.

No more 16 bit applications: DOS or Win 3.1

Windows 64 does not support 16bit applications anymore. However, don’t worry, you can still use virtualization software and run your favorite old program or game virtualized.

Reference

For an excellent reading, I suggest you take a look at Charlie Russel’s white paper for XP x64 (which also
applies to Vista x64), here:
Is Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Right for Me.

Other recommended links:

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Scan for Virus using several AntiVirus programs

Have you ever scanned a file using your favorite AntiVirus (AV) program and found nothing, but yet you were infected?
Is your AV not up to date and not detecting everything?
You want to know the different names of the same virus?

If you answer is Yes, then VirusTotal.com is what you’re looking for. You can either send your suspicious file as attachment via email to scan@virustotal.com with the “SCAN” as subject, or you can simply upload the file using their online interface.

Speaking of OnLine file submission, did you check out BitDefender’s Online scanner?

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Fear is the mind killer

I was watching “Dune” movie the other day, and the hero (Paul) was put to a pain test, and in order to take all that pain he recited this wonderful pain “mantra”:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

I was surprised to find something about this quote as well on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litany_against_fear

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Visual Studio and some useful keyboard shortcuts

Hello

I will present a short and handy list of useful keyboard shortcuts:

Key Meaning
*Make text selection then Shift+( This will surround the selected text with “(” and “)”
*Make text selection then Shift+{ Same as above but with { } surrounding
Ctrl+Ins/Shift+Ins To Copy / Paste (aka Ctrl+C/+V)
Ctrl+SPACE or Alt+RIGHT Toggle the autocompletion combobox
Ctrl+T To test a resource dialog
F12 When cursor is over an identifier, it goes to definition
Ctrl+- and Shift+Ctrl+- To navigate back and forth
Alt+F, J To go to Recently Opened Project

Hope you find them useful!

(*) You need Whole Tomatoes Visual Assist

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Surface Computing!

The other day I stumbled upon Microsoft’s Surface computing website. I have to say that I was impressed of what I saw. One can say that the future is promising!

More links:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/
http://multi-touchscreen.com/
http://multi-touchscreen.com/perceptive-pixel-jeff-han.html

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Thought and Body relationship

Hey,

I have always read that most diseases are of psychosomatic origins. That is the disease starts in the mind and manifests in the body.

In Reiki and other energy healing systems they teach that for example:
– those who have difficulity breathing are those who have a problem in giving and taking from others (See that the lungs give and take)
– those who have stiff neck are those who are not flexible mentally and stubborn
– those who have constipation are those who are unable to let go of things
– those who have pain in their legs are those who are unable to take certain steps in their lives
and the list can go on and on…

Some of the stuff I experienced in my early life was the inability to let go, pain in the legs, …and those manifested in the body. No doctor could really cure me by giving me pain killers, only when I realized the nature of this thought-body relation that my problems went away.

For example, the next time you feel jealous, angry or thinking negative notice how you tense up and how you feel in your stomach. To help you feel better, try to have an empty stomach and drink some lemonade. After that try to think negative or try to repress yourself. See how you burn in your stomach!

Be easy on your body by observing your ongoing moment to moment thoughts.

–Elias