Year: 2016

Posted on

The three teens and the belfie obsession

ass-touching-girls
The other day, I was sitting on the bench facing the lake and talking to a friend. I could not help but notice from afar on the docks three teenagers taking selfies in turns.

They spent around 30+ minutes taking photos of themselves making duck faces, yolo signs and all sort of vain poses and facial expressions.

At one point the selfie session became even more weird: the two teenagers asked their third friend to take a picture of them. They turned their back to the camera, protruded their behinds a bit, and then each girl touched the other girl’s ass while posing for the picture.

It is ridiculous how the teenage girls are very obsessed with their assets: face, hair, ass, tits, legs, you name it!

They forget that one day, they will grow old and their skin will sag. External beauty is like a flower, it will whither slowly but surely.

What values did they develop more than their vanity and narcissism during their formative years?

By the way, is there is anything more vain than the term: “Instagram model“?

flower separator

You might also like:

Posted on

Backup and restore NTFS files permission with the ResetPermission utility

This is a follow up article to the popular article Resetting NTFS files permission in Windows – Graphical Utility.

In this article, I document the new feature in the ResetPermissions utility v1.1.5, where you can now backup and restore the NTFS files permissions. Continue reading “Backup and restore NTFS files permission with the ResetPermission utility”

Posted on

The 2016 World Predictions according to Michel Hayek

michel-hayekThis is the first time I decide to translate the 2016 predictions of Michel Hayek, a Lebanese psychic, from Arabic to English and post it on my blog.

I don’t have a stance on predictions and I cannot say whether I believe or don’t believe in them. We, humans, have a lot to learn and discover about our full potential and what we can and cannot do. Bottom line: I am open to all the possibilities.

The reason I decided to translate this video is when I saw on the news that Mark Zuckerberg received threats from the ISIS supporters, which reminded me of one of Michel’s predictions for the year 2016 which was aired in December 31, 2015.
Two things to note before I present the translation:

  1. I am not a professional translator (at least not yet).
  2. I did not translate everything. I skipped many things including predictions of events that are very local to the Arab region and Lebanon.

Note

Check the 2017 predictions here

Watch the video with the help of an interpreter if you want to know about all of his predictions. Continue reading “The 2016 World Predictions according to Michel Hayek”

Posted on

Avalon Bellevue Towers: 4 years of time well spent

In this blog post I will be sharing my experience of living in the Avalon Bellevue Towers Community right in downtown Bellevue, Washington for 4 years.

Avalon Bellevue Towers’ slogan is: Time well spent. Let me explain what they mean with that!

The staff and the service

abt-602-During my 4 years living there, the community and its staff lived up to their word.

The concierge staff was always professional and friendly (hello Ken and Stephen). Apart from greeting them when I enter the building, they took care of the package reception and delivery and other mundane issues.

When it comes to maintenance requests, I can say it was top notch. Mr. Attila Madaras, the maintenance supervisor, was always there in person to fix all kinds of problems in the apartments: from replacing busted light bulbs to repairing a broken appliance. I would place a maintenance request online and within the same day (or max the next day) I would get the issue taken care of.

The leasing office staff was also very friendly (hello Cathy, Michael, Rebecca and Terri). I interacted with them often, not just once a year when I was renewing my lease.

As a positive “side-effect” of the staff’s friendliness, they became like a small family to me.

Note: I don’t want to sound all sensual in my experience, I have to say that I did encounter some misunderstandings with the staff during my stay, but when I communicated my concerns politely, I was met with nothing but good and prompt service. Continue reading “Avalon Bellevue Towers: 4 years of time well spent”

Posted on

Mouse Without Borders: Control up to 4 computers with one mouse and keyboard

mouse-without-borders-iconMouse without Borders is a prototype that makes you the captain of your computer fleet by allowing you to control up to four computers from a single mouse and keyboard. This means that with Mouse without Borders you can copy text or drag and drop files across computers. Mouse Without Borders is a Microsoft Garage project by Truong Do. Garage projects are side projects that Microsoft employees like Truong build for fun on their nights and weekends. Mouse Without Borders was designed for people who use many computers in the same room. For example, a laptop or tablet that you take to meetings might sit right alongside the desktop PC in your office.

I love this software. I use it whenever I have my laptop and desktop sitting next to each other. I can just use my desktop’s keyboard / mouse to control the laptop’s mouse and keyboard. The moment the mouse is moved away from one monitor, it crosses the borders to the other computer’s monitor. Not only that, any clipboard content will also transfer across borders. If I copy text or files on one machine, I can then paste them seamlessly on the second machine!

You can set up how your computer screens are laid out. For example, in the screenshot below, my desktop screen raised above the laptop who sits beneath it. Therefore, the moment I move my mouse from the computer’s screen all the way down, it then goes (across borders) to the laptop’s screen and activates the keyboard as well:

mouse-without-borders

It is very easy to set up and configure the “Mouse Without Borders” software. You can download it from Microsoft’s website here: http://aka.ms/mm.

flower separatorYou might also like:

 

Posted on

Control Color Explorer: Explore your colors

As part of Windows apps development cycle, especially WinForms applications in Visual Studio, you may want to pick the right colors for your ListViews, Buttons, Labels, etc…

The best way to pick the colors is to visualize them.

With Control Color Explorer, you can visualize all the colors in the System.Drawing.Color type. You have the option to render the colors using the BackColor attribute or the ForeColor attribute:

color-explorer-bkg

Once you chose the colors you like, you may simply click the “Copy Color names”  to copy them and use them in your application.

You may grab the source code of this tool from my GitHub repository to compile it by yourself, or just download the binaries from here.

flower separatorYou might also like:

Posted on

Windows Events Providers Explorer

Introduction

Windows Event Providers are part of the Windows Event Log services. An event provider is usually registered with the event logging and tracing service, so it can publish application specific events to the event log.

Each event provider contain metadata information required to interpret these events and to display that information in readable strings.

To list all providers in the system, you may use the logman utility like this:

logman query providers

C:>logman query providers

Provider                                 GUID
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
.NET Common Language Runtime           {E13C0D23-CCBC-4E12-931B-D9CC2EEE27E4}
ACPI Driver Trace Provider             {DAB01D4D-2D48-477D-B1C3-DAAD0CE6F06B}
Active Directory Domain Services: SAM  {8E598056-8993-11D2-819E-0000F875A064}
Active Directory: Kerberos Client      {BBA3ADD2-C229-4CDB-AE2B-57EB6966B0C4}
Active Directory: NetLogon             {F33959B4-DBEC-11D2-895B-00C04F79AB69}
ADODB.1                                {04C8A86F-3369-12F8-4769-24E484A9E725}
ADOMD.1                                {7EA56435-3F2F-3F63-A829-F0B35B5CAD41}
Application Popup                      {47BFA2B7-BD54-4FAC-B70B-29021084CA8F}

…

Each provider, in turn, has metadata containing fields such as: keywords, levels, tasks, opcodes and a message template. The article entitled “Getting Provider’s metadata” on MSDN describes how to use the Windows Events APIs to enumerate the provider’s metadata programmatically.

Enter WEPExplorer

Continue reading “Windows Events Providers Explorer”

Posted on

Honey, I want a 3 carat ring for our engagement…what a sham!

3-carat-ringWe live in a society where in order for a man to show his love to his to a woman, he has to spend money. He has to buy her gifts, diamonds, gold, jewelry and other shiny items.
The only ones who benefit are the advertisers and jewelry shop owners. The message they keep pounding into our feeble minds is: BUY, BUY, BUY!

Have you seen the slogan of Kay the jewelry shop? “Every kiss starts with a K”. They want you to prove your love by spending your hard earned money on metals or carbons, oops, excuse me I meant to say gold and diamond.

When will society mature and realize that this is all an advertising sham, meant to transform what is true, pure and immaterial (such as love) into a commercial endeavor and a shopping spree?

I met many guys who are confused and not sure “Where and which is the PERFECT engagement ring for his fiancé”. Dear Jesus, what bullshit is this?

Or perhaps if you live in the USA, you must have heard girlfriends chatting with each other about this absurd custom (that originated from a clever 1940 advertisement) that the man has to buy an engagement ring that costs THREE TIMES his salary.

Oh man….and don’t even get me started about the marriage industry and all the ridiculous and unnecessary expenses that “modern” society subtly (not to say strong words) enforce on the wed to be couples.

Enough food for though, see you next time.

flower separator
You might also like:

Posted on

Fawaregh – Stuffed sheep sausages

The stuffed sheep sausages, also known as Fawaregh, is an exquisite dish and one of the most traditional in Lebanese cuisine. Actually it is one of my favorites, but unfortunately I don’t get to eat this dish as often anymore, not after my grandma passed away. No one else took her place to regurlaly cook this delicious but tedious to prepare dish. To be perfectly honest, my aunt took it upon her to prepare this dish for me once a year, as a special treat, when I come back to visit her in Lebanon.
In fact, all the pictures below, except for the first one, are taken at her house last year!

So in short, the Fawaregh is simply stuffed sheep intestines and the usual stuffing are: minced meat, rice, chickpeas and spices.

flower separator

flower separator

The Fawaregh dish reminds me of the Menudo soup from the Mexican Cuisine. Does it also remind you of another dish from your cuisine? Let me know in the comments below.

You might also like: