I haven’t verified this piece of news yet, but according to a close friend of mine: Abdulbasit —the salesman of the age-old, small Markaz Al Kuwaity videogame shop in Hawalli’s Rihab Complex— has quit his job!

Little is known, but it’s been said that there were some disputes between him and the shop owner so he decided to take off and run a store of his own, currently located near Kuwait’s ice skating rink (Shuwaikh?).

Abdulbasit, for those not in the know, was one of the pioneers to take the local videogame market seriously and he’s been selling consoles and games for as long as I can remember. Many of Kuwait’s youth know him since their earliest childhood, lived through the console wars around his time, and have been faithfully entrusting him to get their gaming fix ever since.

Even though more people nowadays rely on online retailers, the likes of Amazon.com, for game-purchasing, it still saddens me to hear that the man responsible for bringing so much joy to the homes of many early Kuwaiti gamers has been pushed aside for—I’m guessing—monetary reasons.

Update

His new store will be open right about the time Metal Gear Solid 4 is released (mid June?) in a new shopping mall that’s being built near the ice skating rink. He also plans to start a (free!) home-delivery service as well as a website if deemed practical.

Lets throw a baby off the roof for good luck! Mothers, shouldn’t watch this:

Question to Mac users: Do you use folder/file color labels? If so, how?

I find myself hesitant to use them because I know that at some point in time, I will have to remove them, so I don’t bother at all!

Now I really do hope it rains cuz this dust is horrible! :O

Warning: Extremely Crazy/Geeky Thoughts!

I couldn’t help but noticed how my friends and colleges tend to automatically pair up around college. Pairing up makes it easier for students to recover from missing lectures, solve homework, etc… because your friend serves as your backup. Kind of like a RAID-1 array.

In a more generalized sense, marriage should be a RAID array for everything in life, no? Your backup for going against the world. Mathematically speaking, your failure rate is 0.0004%.

But one of the most redundant configurations is RAID-6 which, according to my analogy, means having 4 wives! XD

With Raid 6, the system can tolerate two concurrent disk failures, or in human sense, two people can become ill and things would still be moving along as normal.

But then there’s internal disputes that are unaccounted for… meh, so much for security. :P

This is genius!

Ladies and gents, behold the french fries holder.

I had to share this:

The Washlet is a toilet seat that does more or less everything for you: the seat lid automatically opens when you approach it and the seat is warmed to body temperature so you can immediately sit comfortably on it. Once you’re done doing your business, it rinses you with “clean water” —not exactly a revolutionary concept for Arabs/Muslims, I know— then dries you. Finally, once off the seat, the lid automatically closes and the toilet is flushed. Odors are changed to “good air”, you’ll “feel happy” and your bum couldn’t be more refreshed! XD

Watch how all this technology works by visiting their website.

PS: I’m aware that Japan has more advanced seats, but I felt that their presentation was more entertaining. ;P

Version 8.04 is here

Note: If you have a Core 2 processor, you should download the 64-bit version for better performance.

Dumb Luck

It’s been roughly a year and a half since the launch of the Nintendo Wii, and the demand for the console is still outstripping sales. Looking at Amazon.com, the device continues to suffer from shortages, and currently ranks as the most searched product at the store.

A recent article from Ars Technica hints that this trend is not stopping.

“Just when our expectations are set for what Nintendo can do in sales, the company comes up with a new way to blow away the competition. Nothing in software or hardware came close to touching what Nintendo did this month.” —Ars Technica

It just goes to show that the president and COO of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aime, was true to his words when he set the Blue Ocean Strategy into effect. The company is now back on track and ahead of all the competition. Bravo Nintendo! You have truly outdone yourself.

Looks it’s going to be another storm. There’s dust everywhere and I’ve been getting SMS messages asking everyone to be careful. :/

Testing. This is one of my favorite articles on digg just because of the picture of Steve Jobs sitting with nothing around him.

“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs

read more | digg story

Wow, it’s been such a long week, hasn’t it? Well, at least to me it was. So much so, that I lost track of what I have been doing throughout. I looked at my blog and all I could recall was the storm that happened last Friday. Everything else up to now is a blur. :/

I’ve got a ton of stuff to update for The Paper Dump and Kuwait ISPs so I hope I’ll manage to get them done over the weekend —I plan on creating some images that indicate, “best download rate at advertised speed” and such, to make it easier for viewers to evaluate ISP services.

But before any of that… I need to sleep to make up for the entire nap-deprived week! ~_~

Got more pictures via email this morning:

It’ April 12th, and I got yet another FastTelco SMS! Unbelievable.

What a storm! :O
Updates later.

Update:

It was quite a strong blow despite its short duration.

My grandfather’s water tanker insulator flew off the roof and pierced one of their car’s trunk as it landed. Thankfully nobody got hurt.

Other Bloggers’ Experiences:

• http://chikapappi.com/2008/04/11/doomsday/
• http://www.248am.com/mark/moblogging/4574/
• http://picasaweb.google.com/kuwaitina/HurricaneKuwaitna
• http://www.248am.com/mark/kuwait/hurricane-kuwaitina/
• http://www.laialyq8.com/?p=1130
• http://mraziz.com/kuwait/2008/04/11/hurricane-kuwait/
• http://www.248am.com/mark/kuwait/videos-of-hurricane-kuwaitina/
• http://8thofaugust.blogspot.com/2008/04/q8-short-tsunami.html
• http://my-journalentries.blogspot.com/2008/04/storm.html
• http://www.rampurple.com/blog/2008/04/11/hurricane-in-kuwait/
• http://omgcake.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/hurricane-sibeecha/
• http://www.kuwaitism.com/2008/04/12/hurricane-sibeecha-hits-kuwait/
• http://benchsaints.blogspot.com/2008/04/hurricane-kuwaitina-what-hell.html
• http://amuq8.blogspot.com/2008/04/wind-dust-rain-and-hails-storm.html
• http://www.2by4.org/content/2008/04/11/broken-glass-everywhere/
• http://calmness.net/2008/04/11/it-felt-like-a-tornado/
• http://www.q8x.info/blog/2008/04/12/fawaz/177/
• http://www.248am.com/mark/kuwait/the-next-day/
• http://www.alqabas.com.kw/Final/NewspaperWebsite/NewspaperPublic/ArticlePage.aspx?ArticleID=381272
• http://3baidsblog.wordpress.com/2008/04/12/storm-aftermath/
• http://mmughrabi.blogspot.com/2008/04/1-minute-storm.html
• http://deemaland.blogspot.com/2008/04/letter-that-was-instantly-read.html
• http://www.frankom.com/?p=2869
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e9yZc26-PQ
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES4_30sfdqU
• http://soul-portrait.blogspot.com/2008/04/el-3afoooooor.html
• http://resshin.com/site/?p=45

The little girl inside you will scream, “I wanna horsey!” when you see this:

I made buttons for the Kuwait ISP blog. Please spread the word :)

As Sushi first pointed out, it’s bug season and the mosquitos have returned. This time they got me on my forehead! >_<

“It’s very rare for an Internet Service Provider to divulge their network performance to their customers. That’s why most Kuwaitis rely on friends, word-of-mouth, or go through an excruciating process of trial and error to find out what works for them.”

I’ve created yet another blog to keep track of Kuwait’s ISPs’ performance. If you’re reading this, then you most probably have an account with one of the major providers, so I urge you to check it out and voice your experiences about your ISP. It’ll make life easier for all of us when you can’t take marketers word for the speeds they advertise on paper.

Btw K.TheKuwaiti, I’m aware that you’ve done similar studies about ISPs before so I’m offering that you join in as an author with me and MBH.

Remember the project I was working on? Well it’s not quite there yet, but I’ve decided to reveal it anyway to spark people’s interests. It’s called, “Dewaniya Net” and in essence, the idea is about linking people’s digital content to create a unified Kuwaiti network. You can read more about the many advantages of doing so, how the name came about, as well as how to build your own server here.

My friend and I are still debating on which protocols we ought to use; we thought Bittorrent would be the obvious way to go but then realized its complications when it came to generating numerous individual torrent files.

I’m especially interested in what Bojacob and Marzouq have to say about this. Other geeks are welcome to discuss ofcourse :P

And now that April Falafil Fools is over, the award for most creative hoax goes out to IGN for their exclusive Legend of Zelda Movie Trailer:

Why can’t it be real? :’(

These pictures were sent to me by email sometime back in late February. Probably around the time Suspic said that I jinks the weather? :P
Anyway, I can’t tell whether they’re real or not so I’ll let you decide. Click the thumbnails to enlarge.

I got the chance today to cancel the jumper and apply for a lite DSL account at United Networks. When I went to pay the land-line fees, the grumpy lady behind the desk asked what my relation was to the owner. “She’s my mom.”, I explained with a smile. For some reason she didn’t look very convinced but didn’t ask for an ID anywho. :/

I think I’ll stick with this Prologue theme. It’s much faster to post and since I don’t have much time these days, it’ll come in handy when it comes to updates.

This is my SMS log for the past month or so…

February 24:

Dear subscriber, you are eligible for complimentary E-learning service at [URL].

February 26:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

March 12:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

March 17:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

March 19:

Be the first to obtain an AppleTV from FastTelco to watch the latest movies.

March 20:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

March 22:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

March 25:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

March 26, today, I get a phone call at 5:40 PM:

Hello sir, you have a DSL subscription? It’s about to expire would you like to renew?

I responded saying that I wasn’t interested in renewing for this month. A few seconds later, I get this:

Think I’m going to renew? :]

Update:
March 27:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expires on 27 March. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to avoid disconnection.

April 7:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expired on 27-MAR-08. Cust# is [number]. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to reactivate service.886666

April 12:

Dear Customer, your DSL service expired on 27-MAR-08. Cust# is [number]. Renew at [URL] with 10% discount to reactivate service.886666