Shami's Blog

Sysadmin, Because Even Developers Need Heroes

Empathy, The New Kid On The Block

2009-02-05

If you’ve used Linux as a desktop, you’ll know it’s only playing catch-up when it comes to instant messaging. I’ve been using Pidgin since was called Gaim, I think I started using it back in 2003. I love how minimalistic it is. Sadly the developers are going nowhere with it, at least that’s my (as well as a few others) humble opinion.

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Alf Mabrook Tamer

2009-02-05

This is a shout out to my old friend Tamer, yet another fallen soldier from the ranks of bachelorism. We attended his wedding last night it was awesome!

Congrats man and good luck on your new life.

Xbox 360

2009-02-02

So I finally coughed up the money to get an Xbox 360, the thing is, every store that sells the Xbox in Jordan is highly overpriced (423$ as opposed to 199$ for the Arcade version) and the consoles are VERY old, dating back to 2007. This means they are using the old chips which are highly not recommended. A friend of mine, Tamer, came from Bahrain Friday and was kind enough to pick up the console for me. Thanks man ^_^.

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Google Chrome On Ubuntu

2008-09-05

I came across this guide about installing Google Chrome under Ubuntu. It is somewhat slow, slower than Windows and much slower than Firefox but it still works, well, kinda. You have a few problems with fonts, as well as sites that don’t work properly with Chrome yet. I’m sticking with Firefox for the time being, but at least I have an option for those sites that aren’t compatible with it.

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Slow Browsing Under Ubuntu

2008-08-23

EDIT: This post only covers IPv6, please check the update post which covers IPv6 and Firefox

Today when I rebooted to my Windows installation which I very rarely do, I noticed that browsing under Windows feels much faster than under Ubuntu. After booting back to Ubuntu I noticed the “looking up domain.tld” part was taking a lot of time, which seemed a little odd.

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Microsoft Keyboard Function Key Fix

2008-07-14

I’ve owned a Microsoft MultiMedia Keyboard 1.0A for years now. It’s a well belt keyboard to say the least. Only one problem though, the “F Lock” key. As a Linux user I have no use for the “Special” keys Microsoft added to the keyboard, and the button always starts turned off, no way to fix it.

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My Best Friend Got Married!!

2008-07-08

Congrats Faris on your wedding. I wish you and your wife all the happiness and prosperity this world has to offer.

Good luck

And I got a famous friend

2008-06-09

So I log in to my Facebook account (Which is something I very rarely do) and I find a friend invitation from a very famous singer, Ragheb Alama. I was very excited. So excited I ignored him faster than he could say: “Nasini Edonia”. As if someone like him would wander around in Facebook to add friends :). Even if he was the actual Ragheb, I’m not even a fan :D

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The Express Line

2008-06-06

An hour ago I needed some sticky notes for a project I’m working on. Since it was past 9PM the nearby stationary shops were closed, so I had to go to one of the mega stores in Amman. When I reached the cashier lines I was holding a pack of sticky notes, a roll of tape and a pen. Looking at the lines I saw one that had a sign above it that read “Express Line, 10 items or less”.

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FreeBSD, Postfix, Dovecot, and Active Directory

2008-05-25

A while back one of my clients had an unpatched qmail server configured with local system users, it was set up in a collocation long before I took over. After having to listen to a lot of complaints about slow internet connectivity I found out that 40-50MB attachments were very common. Another thing I didn’t like about this set-up is the fact I had to maintain 2 password databases; An Active Directory for local user login and a shadow file for mail. So a local set-up with Active Directory as a back end was needed.

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About Me

Dev gone Ops gone DevOps. Any views expressed on this blog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

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