There wasn’t even half the enthusiasm that there usually is for voting this year, everyone is just fed up with the whole mess. I didn’t know what to expect but I was hoping for a good change, I think we just want progress at this point. I was very happy that a lot of people went out to vote but the results were devastating. Every person I voted for didn’t make it to parliament but that isn’t the disappointing part, whats disappointing is that a majority of the people who got into parliament will rip this country apart and there will be nothing progressive taking place in Kuwait in the next 4 years. It is said that a majority of the Parliament are from the religious faction and have plans in mind to change some laws, all I know is that what ever they have planned won’t be good. There is always hope and I hope things will get better and people will realize that they can’t keep voting for the same hooligans who make things a mess in Kuwait, we need progress. I’m even surprised that no woman made it to Parliament, Aseel Al Awadhi was good and of course there are the bad but I was hoping for more women but it doesn’t look like it will happen in this Parliament.

This whole past week I have been at GulfRun enjoying every moment on the track and in Bahrain. And before that I was traveling and a lot of other things that piled up. I came back a few days ago but its like I’m playing catch up with everything thats going on. First I’m catching up with my offline life then I will catch up with my online life.

It was such an active week last week that I was barely online and I didn’t have much time to check out my work emails. Even three days off work and I got 221 Emails piled up which I had to reply to not including the normal emails. When we drove back from Bahrain it was a lot of cars who attended GulfRun which was a lot of fun seeing people you know on a four hour road trip, but we were subjected to an extensive search of our car and items as they suspected us of carrying alcohol into Saudi, just took some time and the guy was a bit cold but it didn’t take long before we were at McDs grabbing some sandwiches for our drive. The best part is to be eating those fries on that long drive, it does hit the spot in the afternoon. Now go to settle down and catch up with everything, I want a vacation that I don’t have anything to do but the things I want to do while staying in Kuwait. I would get a lot done!

Its been too long since I have had my car detailed, I have even drove it much over the year. I took it for a very necessary service to get the beemer in optimal state, and I still had a few of the GulfRun stickers on the car. They fully detailed the car which took about a day and a half so I picked it up the next morning. Full exterior, interior, and engine detail brought the car back to a beautiful shine, damn it looked even better then it was at the dealer for the first time.

Whenever I leave Al Falah Car Wash I have to keep in mind that my tires were shined and just washed so I have to take it easy when I leave. But I just couldn’t help myself in such a clean car I just wanted to drive like a bat out of hell, and the roads were completely empty, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I was driving down the highway with the music blasting.

Link: AlFalahCarWash
Phone: 2245 2432

And the Mayans said it would be the end of the world as we know it! I think they predicted the movie. Happy New Years to everyone and hopefully everyone had an enjoyable night. I for one am making the most of it with family and friends, I haven’t thought about any new years resolutions and usually I don’t think much of them. I decide then and there when I want to do something and if I want to try to accomplish it. But one of the things I’m trying to do is to loose weight and try to manage my time a bit better to watch more anime and play more games, my gaming in 2011 was very disappointing, this year I’m planning to finish at least two games when last year I didn’t even finish one. Here is a great kick off to 2012.

I only recently joined Twitter in April of 2011, a late baby boomer. And when I joined I felt lost in this huge realm of information not knowing what the hell was going on. But within a few months I figured out my way about and honestly I’m loving it. Different then the blog and you get to interact with people right away and get information quickly if you need it. Its like a burst of energy for me, and to me its an addition to what I do online. I do love blogging and I love what Twitter has introduced, and nobody can deny that it is a huge phenomenon in the region but I for one am enjoying it yet not taking things too seriously. A surprising thing that I heard recently is that we make up a small percentage of twitter but the more interesting part is that Kuwait makes up almost 20% of the activity of twitter in the region even though we are so little in comparison.

Now with all of this a lot of people use twitter for different reasons and in my opinion some people take it so seriously. I recently found a way to see who follows and unfollows me and I find it very interesting especially these bots that keep on following and unfollowing, and also people who unfollow, and thats about it for my interest. I recently had friend unfollow me and I called him up and told him that I caught him and laughed, he said he didn’t expect me to see that I did, he was somewhat embarrassed. I told him who cares I just found it funny and I was surprised that he didn’t unfollow, he said I tweeted too much! I just started laughing, but I realized that a lot of people really get insulted when you unfollow them when reality its nothing at all. Seriously with life online or offline people need to have thicker skin, this craze started with Facebook friend and unfriending, and now with the unfollow and follow, come on don’t take things too seriously.

@Z_District

When a group of hard working guys find out they’ve fallen victim to a wealthy business man’s Ponzi scheme, they conspire to rob his high-rise residence.

This turned out to be even better then I expected, and it is something that a lot of people can relate to. With the financial crisis taking place around the world a lot of investment companies and financial individuals were discovered to be complex Ponzi schemes so this movie hits an interesting spot. In this case Alan Alda was that business man, I still know him as Captain Peirce from M*A*S*H, and Ben Stiller worked in his hotel and he asked to have the retirement fund of all the staff to be invested by him which disappears. Eddie Murphy is back, and he was hilarious in the movie, now this is the Eddie Murphy Raw! The real actor from the 80s, not the toned down family movie guy for the past two decades. The movie is entertainment on constant pace, with a lot of interesting characters, and never gets boring with a few interesting surprises. If you haven’t seen the movie then you should.

Link: IMDB
Rating:

I am very careful with my machines, I update them constantly and I do regular scans. Sometimes some software crashes or a machine crashes, that happens every once in a while. But I am very careful of what I install or download, so when something weird starts happening I go into lock down mode. The day before my machine was acting fine when the next day any website I enter gets redirect to “Yandex.ru/blahblahblah” I didn’t know why. Some websites would stay but regular websites get redirected.

Googling it on the infected machine was useless because it kept getting redirected so I used a different machine to Google if this happened to anyone. Turns out there is a hostile bot that hijacks websites and automatically redirects them to Yandex.ru which is a Russian search engine/mail provider.

First Step:

• Turn Off All Add-Ons on Firefox and Chrome
• Run AVG Virus Scanner & Windows Maleware Defender

Result:

• The scanners didn’t find anything and the websites didn’t find anything

Next Step:

• Update Windows, Firefox, Chrome, AVG Definitions, Windows Defender, Chrome & Firefox Add-Ons, Flash, & Java

Result:

• Still getting redirected

Next Step:

• Deleted All Cookies, Cleared All Forms, All History from Chrome, Firefox, & Internet Explorer

Result:

• Thing went back to normal

I won’t lie I was a bit freaked out after each step and I was getting pissed, I thought some random Russian was messing with me and I wanted to punch him. So these are the automatic steps that I took and luckily things cleared up. And usually if worse comes to worse, I would format the machine after trying everything, I would have gotten paranoid that somebody really got into it, but it didn’t reach that point.

This weekend has been especially busy with the GulfRun Go-Kart Endurance Race, and these guys did a fantastic job organizing it. I took a lot of pictures and video of the event, which I’m planning on working on and posting up later when I have a chance. It lasted 26 Hours and these guys were on it nonstop, so the days leading up to it I was barely in front of a PC or a TV.

I also came to the realization that I am totally out of shape, more then I have ever been. I haven’t gained weight but I’m getting tired quickly and certain tasks that I did normally before were normal but this time around I’m getting tired which isn’t a good sign at all. I have a set a goal at this point, to lose weight and gain my stamina back.

I also want to catch up with a lot of TV shows that I have missed, some shows I am keeping up with but a lot of the shows that I regularly follow have been paused for a while now. So hitting the elliptical is going to be part of my routine so I can probably load up my iPad and watch some shows there, so thats one plan.

More details will emerge once I have everything lined up in my head. And yes sleep, sleep has been escaping me these days.

Is it just me or all the updates to iTunes is confusing me, so many updates with iOS 5.0 but it didn’t go as smoothly as everyone wanted. Apple has been on the for forefront of fusing media and technology, but with the introduction of iCloud there was a bit of a confusion and with iTunes match its even more confusing.

I for one use iTunes for all my music and purchase music when its available and get it through other means when I don’t find it on iTunes which is only 20% of them time. With iCloud you can move your library to iCloud instead of your computer which is good, but your limited to 5GB which is bad and then you have to purchase the rest on a yearly basis. I can understand that but then there are the other kinks, it backs up everything such as documents and files but it has to be a Mac Made file so doesn’t back up files from other devices or formats. And iCloud only works with Apple devices and nothing else, which can get frustrating with dealing with other devices. If you switch on iCloud storage for iOS device it would automatically erase all the media on your phone which they don’t warn you about. iTunes match is another thing now, it matches the music you have to that on the iCloud and if it isn’t bought from iTunes they try to match it which is pretty good but it is a bit on the confusing side how to activate it for your machines.

Seriously too many changes between iCloud, iOS5, and now iTunes match. I’m waiting for the dust to settle on this to see how exactly I can comfortable use it with my iPods.

Click the image above for a larger verson!

We all go through this, sometimes things just go wrong on the computer, the program you were using just freezes and this illustration TOTALLY defines the process I go through to fix it.