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google sets

this is really neat: google sets.

try putting in these words in the first and second box to see google’s piousity:

“fajr” in box 1, “zuhr” in box 2. “shahada” in box 1, “salat” in box 2. “ramadan” in box 1, “shawwal” in box 2.

i am sure there are more but… feel free to post them in the comments. dang, that’s awesome :)

blasphemy of ignorant fools

good morning, sign this petition.

i read the book’s review on amazon just to be sure before signing the petition, and all i can say is that i am aghast that such a person can be so blasphemous and say these kind of things. what an ignorant person…

i was going to continue on with this post explaining why the above sentence is true, but i think i can write a long essay defending points about this, and now’s not the time…

anyhow, back to work, that’s all for now.

random updates

greets, peace, etc. today, i decided to upload the nasheeds i have produced over time to this webpage. they’re all in the new “audio studio” section on the webpage. and yes, they’re not great nor listenable-toable, but they’re there to induce (slight) laughter. there are still some other things i want to upload to this page, but it’s a matter of time…

picture of my fingers freezing off it was sooooooo cold today! [i learned that my camera does some cool stuff today when i looked at the book to find out how to get the camera to automatically take this picture after 10 seconds… i want to take some pictures!].

oh yeah, the other day at the masjid… sighs (as one could tell from my previous post, i really prefer the environment of the masajid in atlanta…) – but the other day (friday), i ran into two awkward situations (i got a whole list of these by now hehe).

so they changed the time of 3isha from 8:15 till 8:00 (desi standard time) – and i had forgotten, and i remembered around 8:05 and so i left late for the masjid. when i got there, it looked as though they hadn’t prayed, so i asked someone if they had prayed yet, and i was told that the imam hadn’t come yet. so i went up and sat down in the front row. the brother next to me, one of the first people mansoor and i met when we got there, tells me to lead the salat (3isha) because its getting late. so i lead 3isha, and when i had finished, the imam had come back, so he lead tarawee7 as normal.

so after the 20th rak3ah, the imam said, “salat ul witr” (as usual), and was faced towards the qibla, so i glanced at my watch to see what time it was (itching to go home hehe), and suddenly he turns around and looks at me and says, “can i lead witr?” – and i am like huh!? (and at the same time feeling really embarrassed, thinking to myself, “is he asking me this because he saw me looking at my watch and thinks i am being disrespectful by checking the time?”) – and he said, “can i pray witr, because you lead 3isha,” and so i said, “please, please do.” (and i was very puzzled at that).

so after finishing tarawee7, a lot of the times i just tend to leave right after witr. but due to that situation, i decided that i would stay for the short talk after witr to avoid further awkward situations. so as soon as witr was being completed, before i could even say my second salams, the guy next to me, a really old uncle, touched my hand. i was like, “huh? maybe an accident?” - so anyway, after witr, i sat for the short talk.

and the talk ended, and i was ready to go home. but when i came to leave, the uncle touched my hand again. and i shook hands with him and the other people and began to walk towards the exit, and he followed me, and asked me, “did the imam read only one rak3ah at any point during the tarwee7?” – and i am like, “yeah, at the very last rak3ah he did.” – and he started going off on this whole spiel about how in pakistan, all the scholars agree that a person must read at least 3 ayahs per rak3ah for the salat to be deemed valid; and how he experienced people reading less in other masajid and his conversations with them and so on. and all this time i am thinking, “why is he telling me this?”

so anyway, not knowing what to say, i say, “jazakAllah khair” and continue walking towards the door, get my shoes and put them on. and as i am about to leave, the uncle starts to talk to me again and says, “you know, if you know quran, you have more right to be leading than him [the imam] because you have (and he touches my “beard”) this.” and other people start coming towards where we are; and i was taken by shock and had no chance to reply, and he says, “i’ll talk to you about this later.” – and he leaves.

two very awkward situations… so on saturday, to resolve the first situation, i went to the imam after salat and i apologized to him for having lead 3isha (thinking that maybe he got offended or something) - but apparently he wasn’t upset, he said, “no its a good thing that you listened to them and lead 3isha, because when the salat time comes we should pray at its time.”

as for the second situation, i didn’t see the old uncle on saturday, and on sunday (today), i saw him but avoided him at all costs. dang, people want to use me to overthrow the current imam.

not to mention that the statement he made is untrue – because 1. the current imam’s memorization is multiple folds better than mine, (and there is NO exaggeration in this statement whatsoever, i am a fake hehe); 2. he has a lot more knowledge than me; 3. he is older than me; and 4. i feel that he is very sincere, to the extent that although he studied deen, he then persued a degree in computer science so that he supports his family from a “non-deen” occupation so that his deen work is totally for the sake of Allah.

so yeah; the current imam is masha’Allah a very sincere and very nice guy – not to mention his memorization is insanely strong masha’Allah, and the fact that his one way drive to work is ~3 hours (!); and yet he still manages to take time out to lead tarawee7 masha’Allah (whereas during normal non-ramadan times, he would stay at a hotel throughout the week and just come home on the weekends). so sub7anAllah, that takes insane dedication.

but what can i tell you, there are always those people who will complain about a small thing that they see that a person has done that is wrong in their eyes, rather than look at the great amount of effort which a person may exert in the sake of Allah… sub7anAllah.

that’s my rant of the day. i got nothing more to say for now. peace out.

nostalgia and the onion

ramadan here is not the same as it is in atlanta… i “felt” ramadan a lot more in atlanta than i do here - besides being more excited about everything in general (iftars, tarawee7, etc), i also felt more motivated overall. ramadan here just isn’t the same – it really doesn’t even compare.

but its not just ramadan that isn’t even the same… its really everything. life in general doesn’t compare to what it was back home in atlanta… everything is totally different now.

today marks 2 months of being here… and i am not really adjusted yet. maybe its just a matter of time… maybe. or maybe not… i really don’t know.

today though, mansoor and i cooked chicken for iftar. and i was the one cutting the onion. so as i started peeling the skin off the onion, everything was fine. but once i started cutting it, i began having difficulty keeping my eyes open, and i had to struggle to cut the rest of the onion.

and once the onion was cut and the chicken was cooked and maghrib came and we ate, the food we made was (believe it or not) really good. and i realized something… this “onion” situation could (perhaps) hold a large parallel to what i am experiencing now.

at first when i was coming here and when i first got here, i was really excited about the new place, the new job, the new environment, and so on (peeling the skin off the onion). but once i started diving into the lifestyle fully (cutting the onion), i began to realize how much i miss what i had and how i really want to be back home rather than be here (the onion irritating my eyes). but perhaps, after some time, after some patience (continuing to cut the onion with my eyes half closed), and after washing my eyes out (resolving the situation within myself), i maybe able to go on with my life as normal (cook the food), and enjoy the benefits of life here (eat the food) and realize that it isn’t all so bad and that there are good things here too (realize that our food is tasty even if its not mama-G quality).

so that’s my $0.02 for the day. i don’t know. i am hoping that eventually i come out of this. apparently, its not just me though… a few of the friends i’ve made here amongst the new college grads have told me that they are struggling with the same thing. and i am sure that even those who haven’t mentioned it are going through it too.

i don’t know… maybe things like this just take time and patience…

ramadan kareem!

insha’Allah we’re starting our fasting tomorrow (10/15). more updates later…

random

peace. not much going on here. i posted some of the pictures i took in atlanta up, but i ended up deleting some of them on accident. so there are only a few on there, but you can see them on the photo galleries.

google launched sms.google.com - seems like something pretty useful and neat.

gmail rocks - i still got some invitations if anyone wants one.

i upgraded to the newest wordpress version that was released yesterday…

that’s all for now…

its friday!

peace.. today is friday. not just is friday special because of its religious implications, but also because its the end of the week. and, best of all, because today, after work insha’Allah, i am going home! al7amdulillah :)

i miss my family and friends, so i am really looking forward to going home. now if only the clock would move faster…

uber rain, etc

today, it rained like insanity. like seriously. so it rained all night and stuff and in the morning it was fine. so i went to work, and, just out of cautiousness, i took my umbrella. when it came time to leave, i was amazed - it was like pitch black outside and it was raining insanely.

so then i started driving home and the exprience was simply horrible. traffic was the least of problems… the water in some places was so high up, it felt that i was driving a boat rather than a car. i had my wipers on max speed, and it was still kinda hard to see. even more so, as i would drive, big splashes of water would come from both sides of my car. but al7amdulillah (all praise and thanks be to God), we made it home safely.

i haven’t done any coding for the past few days, or anything really note worthy either. so that’s all for now!

beautiful weather

the weather today was absolutely incredibly amazing. so i played basketball. and then i came home and was hungry. so i took a shower. and then i cooked dinner - chicken fingers/strips… and rice… and heated some vegatables (fasolya bayda - black eyed peas without a black eye) that my mom had given me before i left a month ago… and that is all.

oh and today (thursday) marks 1 month, 1 week, and 1 day of being here.

google code jam frustration

i am so frustrated right now, i feel like yelling and screaming, etc, except that i can’t because mansoor’s asleep and the neighbors are too…

sooooo… something makes me decide to sign up for this google code jam 2004 competition… bad idea.

so it was 2 problems for the 1st round (i guess there was a challenge round or something too but i dunno, 2 problems basically, and you had an hour to do both of them).

really cool problems too mind you…. especially the second one. the first problem gave you a “map” consisting of you and enemy targets, and you had to return an array of the distances of the enemies to you.

the second problem was awesome – given a rock that drops in a pond of water, you always have this “ripple effect” – so given an array of such rocks, and assuming that ripple in any one spot is additive (and that the effect of a rock begins at time 0 as its weight and decreases as the time increases), what is the largest ripple value in a particular pond?

the first one took me a while even though it was easy, especially since i misread part of the problem and proceeded to waste about 15 minutes first trying to figure out how to get an ArrayList to sort in java, and then writing my own quick bubble sort algorithm when i didn’t have to.

the second problem (the big one, 1000 points) is what REALLY frustrated me. due to the great amount of time spent on the first problem, i had about 25 minutes to do this problem (minus however long it took me to read it and figure out what to do). if i had about 30 more seconds, i would have done it right… i found out my mistake 30 seconds after i submitted it – rather than do:

for (i=0; i<arr.length; i++)
   for(j=0; j<arr[i].length;j++)
      // code goes here

i instead did…

for (i=0; i<arr.length; i++)
   for (j=0; j<arr.length; j++)
       // code goes here

thus throwing all my answers off, thus kicking me out of the competition, thus making me uber frustrated because i knew how to do it and did it right even with the limited time remaining… it was just one silly error. the sad thing is, i found this same exact error three lines lower and i didn’t see this one three lines above until it was too late…

i guess i do admit it was pretty fun… but nonetheless, i am upset, and as thus, i am going to sleep now…