Entries by Ammar Ibrahim

I'm happy to announce Jordan Mac User Group (JoMug).

Read the announcment.

I just tried to book a hotel on expedia.com. The site keeps refusing my credit card, although my bank made sure I can do online transactions. I called the credit card dept. of the bank, and the guy told me that on his screen he can see that it's being refused of possible fraud. Why the hell can't this guy call the online payment company and tell them everything is OK, and that this client is Legit.

Anyhow, I called the hotel directly, and had no choice but to book through the phone, this way I will be paying $100 extra every night! That's so unfair.... I really feel like hitting someone

Anyhow, tonight I will be leaving Lyon and heading to Paris around midnight. I will try to go to Amesterdam to spend a day to enjoy the wild city...

Introduction:
The other day in the quiz night, Adel (3adoola) asked me about my todo list which I totally forgot about. I can't thank him enough for reminded me about a todo list which I wrote almost a year and a half ago.

The old list:
So, let's take a look and see how things went:

• I want to graduate from University, because I have been there for too long, soon, My mates will become my lecturers.
  Done
• Improve my spanish & go to Cervantes( Spanish cultural Center )
  My Spanish sucks now. I have to do something about it when I have time.
• Go to Spain in Summer
  Planned summer 2007
• get a digital Cam
  Done
• finish my website
  Done
• Learn C
  Didn't have time for it. I still want to do this maybe after a year from now
• Accomplish my secret open source project (PHP related, would take 2 years of work at least)
  Cancelled
• Shut down my current business and move on to the next big business I wanna start in no more than 3-4 years
  Done. Hopefully I will announce my new venture sometime around mid-late January
• retire by the age of 27 and start working on my crazy experemntal projects
  Rescheduled to 30
• Gain weight
  Done, still need more though
• Start playing basketball again.
  Haven't played any sport in such a long time
• Visit every country in Europe.
  I still need 10 years to do this, but I'm planning 3 new countries this year.
• Go hiking again in Wadi Al mujib
  Done, and also planning another hike next summer
• Write a PHP book in 2 years
  Almost there. What's even equally important is that I finished a technical review for one amazing Linux book. I will be writing about this very soon.
• Get certified, I only need a day or two to read the guide! I don't have the time to do that.
  No longer interested.

Evaluation:
I'm quite satisfied with what I was able to acheive in 2005 & 2006. I managed to focus on what I really want to do. This list doesn't sum 20% of the major acheivments in the past two years. I do know, just like any other human, that I could have acheived more. I will not stress myself, and blame myself for not acheiving more. I will learn from my mistakes and do things smarter in the future.

Future:Although it's tempting to write a new list for 2007, I'm going to hold my horses for very simple reasons:

• Most of my future goals revolve around work/business
• Although I'm an open person, most of the goals are not for sharing due to confidentiality issues.
• My two main areas of interest have almost stayed the same
• Improving my technical skills (especially software architecture)
• Managing IT the right way (I beleive people don't understand IT, the apply classical management to something that is not classical. I'm learning/researching alot about this issue)

I love my new IBM machine! Check the uptime...

$chmod 777 okhtak

I just love geeky talk, here's a line while chatting with one of my geek buddies.

"let me slap my greasemonkey ( thats my p2p client, not my penis)"

I've been working for almost 7 years as part timer/free lancer. It never made sense to me to work full time. As of Sunday next week, a big change in my life will happen, I will start working full time with Al Bawaba. I will be working as the CTO of the company. Al Bawaba seems to offer most of the exciting things that define the kind of work I want to be involved in.

We have so many fresh and exciting plans that are so challenging. A few web 2.0 ideas that we're working on. And above all, Albawaba supports open source, and 95% of the technology is open source.

At the same time, I will be running my own company (still under
construction), where we will be doing heavy web development, and some
customized software for inancial services companies. I guess my social life is gonna kiss my ass good bye.

It's gonna be a hard change in my life, I will start having to sleep early, waking up early, no more swingers night-life-style.