Yo !

We all know how the music scene in Pakistan is kind of growing in Pakistan, and we’re looking at lots of rock bands popping up from every corner of the street, and then we come across a complete BS ! no seriously !

Check this music video by Maha, the song is uljhan. A complete rip off of Evanescence’s ‘Everbody’s a fool’. I guess she think people in Pakistan just don’t know music… well girl… F..OFF !

How sad is that ? I saw this video sometime back ,but didn’t know who sang it.

On the other hand.. I m getting alot of work.. I might also be flying to Dubai soon, Inshallah !

There’s not much to tell otherwise.

First of all, I’d like to say Ramadan Mubarak to all of you.

Now I’d like to tell about the greatest beach experience I’ve had. Yes I was with some of my friends at the beach, and not just any beach, it was the most clean beach I had ever seen in and around Karachi, the only reason was that not everyone one goes there, and it’s a fishermen’s area, they fish around that place, and they have their own village there.

So any how, it has mountains around too, the best thing, is we went on to explore both, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.. true relaxation.. also got to check out fishes right around my feet.. Check out the pictures, and decide for yourself.

Images from the trip above belong to Muhammad Omair © 2008.

A couple of days back (25th Aug ‘08), I had my last day at Creative Chaos, a company I think would pride itself with super happy employees, and truely they deserve it, with an environment like their’s most companies in Pakistan cannot even compete..

Any how, the day started pretty normal except that I went in pretty formal outfit that day, any how, got in the office van as usual, and off went to the office, the peeps in the van were a little shocked to see me in all formal, since I don’t usually wear that kind of stuff, I m usually seen around in jeans and trousers and stuff like that, which looks more casual..

As I was in the office, I had questions thrown on my face.. “So whats the last day plan?” what plan ? I m leaving thats it That wasn’t really the answer I gave and it was also the answer that I gave, depending who asked..

Around mid day, at lunch, there was some love spreading in the air, and my rocking dude, from whom I ‘ve also learned quite a bit, and had decided to come to office late, just dropped in before lunch or around lunch time I guess.. He just got the hint that it was my last day, though I know he knew, maybe slipped out of his mind..

Damn I had to give 2 damn treats.. I mean c’mon I was supposed to get one, isn’t ? but I ended up giving them the treats.. Ice creams ya know..

And then I rode home, but before and in between all this, I had a pretty good bye bye time.. I m hoping everyone remembers me.. (enter corny-cheesy text here )

The ubuntu story
I’ve got Ubuntu on my computer too, which is pretty awesome, seriously, if some one could port Adobe Photoshop CS3 to it, I would switch immediately.

A day or two back, my friend H-N was at my place for some work reasons, and guess what, he got Najam’s external HDD with him, which had his files, a dozen and more bunch of viruses..

My antivirus (avast), instantly recoginized these viruses, and stopped most of them, some were too quick and planted them in my OS drive, which is absolutely a primary drive to run the operating system of the computer..

2 days later and my computer was still infected, I actually was occupied with work that’s not related to computers so this dis-infection of the computer was delayed. DAMN !

Any how, this particular night, I had enough of this virus pop ups from my AntiVirus scanner, and I decided to get rid of it, with a little help from the internet (my little form of research), I discovered it was a Rootkit virus, which generally are a bit hard to remove. Any how I guess most of it or a 100% of it are gone now, since all the dsoftwares I used to disinfect my computer say that there’s no more virus in my 320 GB HDD..

I m going to list all the softwares and methods below so anyone who gets something as nasty can get some help from here.

My Antivirus is Avast Home Edition 4.8, and prompted that I had some infected file in <System Root>\system32\drivers folder which was called klif.sys, I moved it to the antivirus chest, in other words quarantined it, and then deleted it from the chest, means making it ineffective and deleting it, obviously even deleting this would not help, since it had spread a bit. So I also ran a boot time scan of my computer, after I had run a thorough scan.

My next step was to run a complete spyware scan of my HDD, which revealed I had 2 registry values added or modified, I used Spybot Search & Destroy and TrendMicro Hijack this, for this purpose.

I also had to look up manually if any autorun files had been added, and there’s no surprze they had been done so on all my fixed Hard drives and also my ipod which was connected.. These files would pop up each time even after I had removed them.. so what I did was to run a live version of Ubuntu which I had just downloaded and remove all the autorun files from there.. for those who’re wondering, ubuntu is a free linux distribution, recommended for any home/pro user.

I then booted again in to Windows XP, and reran the antivirus and antispyware and used Sophos Rootkit Remover, this also found something, and cleaned it for me.

I ran an antivirus again and found out that my computer was now been clean, but somehow, I couldn’t still view the hidden files, no matter how many times I enables/disabled it from the folder options, so I searched a bit and found that a registry value could’ve been added/modified, and as I checked indeed, it had been modified, so yes, I modified it again, and you can find the solution to it here. It’s a bit of a registry work, so proceed with caution.

So now I have my computer back, anyone who has been bothered by my “non-presence” this was the reason, I m sorry.

I m hoping everyoen says safe from Viruses, please if you still haven’t got an antiviurs, do so and keep your files safe, and donot connect drives unless they’ve been checked for viruses, getting the viruses off your system is a big hassle, trust me.

Oh and if this helps any one, do tell me.

I guess most people now know, that I had resigned from Creative Chaos (Pvt.) Ltd. last month, and was just serving my notice period, and then I had some great opportunities to select from.. I think I had found the right one, and might be relocated for that particular purpose.

Right this day, it’s going to be my 2nd last day, Monday being the last day that I serve at Creative Chaos, also, I’ll be collecting all my letters and all sorts of stuff that’s post resignation on Monday.

I have also been working on a sex education website, which should be live by Monday hopefully… or thats something we here at Creative Chaos are hoping, I’ll post the link and review here, once the website goes live.

I’ve also been listening to Ali Azmat’s ‘Klashinfolk‘ on loop lately, which has been released just recently, and boy it’s good.. to good !

I m also planning to take a 2-3 day break before I join the other company, and fix things that shouldn’ve been fixed some time ago. Also I will need to help dad on somethings he had planned, but that’s going to happen only after he’s well.. right now he’s still a little weak, and needs speech therapy..

The rest all seems ok, I know one thing right now, I m going to miss Creative Chaos and all the people here alot.. There’s no one here, that I might not like, all the folks here are awesome !

18th August’08 will go down in history as the not so normal day..

President Pervaiz Musharraf, stepped down as a president, while resigning from the office of the president and leaving the President house… People you need to wake up.. we’ve been seeing a lot of hush hush to get the country into democracy… well hello.. are you waiting for another disaster? With a population that accounts less for 30% educated people, half of them who only know how to just write their names, democracy in Pakistan right now is just a disaster waiting to happen !

I as a citizen saw many ups and downs in the country since Musharraf came into power, and with all honesty I think he has been among the best President we have had, with my complete no-trust vote for PPP, or Muslim League, or any other political party. What he had done and achieved, will forever be remembered, and some may want to forget, yet still use and utilize what he has given this country.. Ever heard the term “Think what you can do for your country, not what the country can do for you - JF Kenedy”, P. Musharraf was a great example for that phrase.

We’re standing at a point where the coalition leaders want to decide who’ll be the next president, either to later kick him/her out, or to eat up the remaining economy of Pakistan, many might argue that prices saw inflation during his regime, well I would disagree.. The inflation in prices came with the New PPP/Nawaz Shariff government, before that things were pretty much stable, the price of dollar, oil, flour, and countless other things was a lot in control, and as soon as this new government popped up, prices ran an all time high.. I mean come on, can’t you se… ?

Any how, I m not really a political activist, neither want to be one, I just want this country to be stable and livable, not bearable… I want this country to be a dream come true of Quaid-e-Azam.. I want this country to be a country and not a political zoo…

Much love, faith and regards.. Pakistan.. Pakistan Zindabad.

Hello folks.. here’s some Sunday Smiles love from Kurri Pataki.. !

She tagged me, and I had not posted any sort of tag material for a long time, I thought I’d do now…

Random 8 things about myself..

1. Two of my little write ups was published in the school mag, when I was in grade 2, and one in grade 5.
2. I absolutely love computers and I m crazy for a Mac
3. My iPod rocks, even though it’s 5.5G
4. I cherish the friends I have.. and I hate some of them for fun
5. I m jealous I m Zair’s coding skills I envy him.
6. Some times I fail to see the good things in life..
7. I panic, like everyone does, sometimes when there’s no need to, but sometimes I might not panic, and it looks different
8. My relationship with M lady is about 7 years old now

Yeah thats about it..

Tagging Zair, Raheel, Bilal, Ammar, Asim.

A couple of folks at my work place might know this, and alot of my relatives and friends do too. My dad is not well, and had a mild paralysis attack this last Tuesday, two days before the independence day.

Here’s what happened.

We are assuming this Attack was in the morning, since he seemed to have remembered, he had some sort of jerking movement in the morning at around 6, when we all had left the house, or work and school, but since we usually don’t talk in the morning, and just walk our ways, he didn’t notice he had a paralysis attack, he went to the toilet, and returned to bed.. He’s usually up by 7:30.. Some guy had come over at around 8, and dad attended him, but could not speak, his first thought was that he was low on sugar, so he made tea and added around 3 teaspoons of sugar, soon his friend had called for some work, but as he noticed that dad was not in a good condition he rushed to the house, only to find a weaker and ill Farid Khan (my dad), he asked dad to be taken to the hospital, but he refused assuming it might not me somehitng major, and some thing just caused by low sugar, and he lay down.

Around after noon, when mom was home and so was my sister, mom got to know the whole situation and dad was taken to the doctor, where he recieved medicines and a list of tests.. Dad had become a little better since the medicines, but was alot weaker and not in the position to do anything. He wanted to sleep.

Next day I took a day off from office and took dad to the nearest hospital “KIRAN Hospital (Karachi Institute of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine)” where all the tests were carried out, turned out he had high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high sugar, and add to that, he smokes a lot..

The docs advised that he should not be taking oily and greesy foods anymore, and salt intake should be reduced to the minimum, and smokes are a no no…

Leaving long time habbits is a bit task, and a person might get angry and frustrated at that.. Something that I witnessed recently is also this anger.. Though he got the situation..

We had to take him to Liaqat National Hospital for a second opinion, but couldn’t get an appointment, so we’ll go there in the morning tommorrow, but today we went to a different hospital to get the tests again, just a check..

He’s improving and getting better, I hope he’s back to normal soon, regardless of how angry he might get at me, at things that I do sometimes, and regardless of our generation gap, I love him, and he loves me, and thats what matters, I with my family, want to him to be rocking again..

Love you dad.. Get well soon.

Notice: Following is the article, that I wrote for Teabreak.

Present day: There is so much hate and frustration amongst that, that it’s easy to miss all the good things that we have been gifted with, good things that we as people and we as a nation have. It’s easy for the reality to be lost amongst so much lies…

I remember when the Earth quake hit the Northern Areas of Kashmir, in October 2005. It hit in the morning and the country was all ready and helping and organizing ways to help people who had been victims.. I remember that, yes I do, I witnessed a whole lot of activity, an activity which was in good will of the nation, which was to help people, regardless of their location, that was the spirit. I remember how camps were organized, how people donated whatever they could.. even the tinniest thing the people might need were donated.

We also witnessed, how people had reacted to this act of nature, we all got together, and no one had even asked ask to, this is what is inside us.. hospitality, the caring for each other attitude, no matter how we are, and who we are..

We also saw how people had reacted to the Tsunami that had hit a big part of South Asia, Pakistan was amongst the first to be there helping other countries and communities to overcome the problems that were surfacing.

Pakistan, my friends may have faded and fainted a bit but it’s still our country, we need to do something positive about it.

Independence day is near, and instead of making some thing very nice on those lines, I’d made up a pretty negative type work !

And why you may ask this is.. Well I m not that bad, I m also going to make one on a positive vibe too, but for now there are too many things to face..

Oh and guess what I m also decorating the design room at my current work place with all sorts of patriotic stuff… so far looks cool.. will upload pics some where soon.

Oh did I forget to mention, Muzzi (aka Soul Maker), has left and infact reached USA now, and is already getting bored.