ATM ate my money (and bank vomited)

Story
Once I was at an ATM machine, of course to get some money for a gift to a friend of mine. I keyed in the amount & was waiting for money. The machine took a while, printed the receipt, gave out the card. Yes that’s all. I got no money but a receipt saying that the machine gave this amount of money & that amount of money left in the account. I lost my tongue except to murmur Faaaark!. I pushed my card back in checked the balance in account & the machine was very happy to say that I’ve just lost this amount of money.
The gift I was planning to by was intended to be a wedding gift & my friend was/is not the kind which is gonna marry again ;). I went to the bank, talked to the pretty girl & my story didn’t amaze her in any mean. Hmmm…That’s something to think about.

Thoughts
Facing that inconvenience, my mind kept thinking of the very thing a lot, I mean about the technical stuff. Why the machine don’t handle that very little but so very important event? What’s the system run on an ATM machine? is it an embedded system? does it run GNU/Linux? :) hell a lot to think.

chit-chat
After few days I went on a long tour with two of my geek friends & the topic ATM took priority at a time. And my friends provided me with these info. There are ATM machines which runs Microsoft Windows XP :D (in Sri Lanka) & earlier days it was OS2, according to Such. Kunchana has seen windows XP booting on an ATM after a power down. [Wikipedia confirms Such and Kunchana :)]

Assumptions/Solutions
In thinking deep about ATM machines I made some assumptions in my mind.

1) The machine keeps track of the money using some kind of a hardware mechanism or someone adds money & update records on the machine. So that the machine keeps track of the amount remaining. If this is the case it’s only a matter of a software modification to compare the remaining amount and requested amount to stay away from hassles.

2) Since there was no evidence to backup above assumption, I happen to think that ATMs don’t keep track of the amount of money they have. So in order to avoid problem I faced, the machines have to have a mechanism to keep track of remaining amount of money and of course compare the remaining and requested amounts.

appendage (17/12/09) :
This was quite an old writeup I never had chance to post till now. This is totally black boxed thinking without looking up Internet for more details how an ATM works. The incident I mentioned happened at Commercial Bank Nugegoda. I got the money back in my account in few days (The bank fixed it manually, I guess). I’ve heard few other cases like this but never again happened to me. And also Things should be changed and these problems should be ironed out by now. Anyway Off to Look up “How ATM works” :D

PS: And the friend who got married was geekaholic :D . The incident occurred  someday around 20/06/08, the wedding day.

Would you rather ask Google than a friend?

The privacy is again in hot zone of topics in communities I follow. The reason is @ericschmidt, Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

The register reports, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” under the heading “Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy”. That’s how journalists do it. Let’s have a better perspective on the subject.

“Judgment matters… If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place… If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

Quoted from Eric Schmidt on CNBC video found here (some interesting stuff about Schmidt too ;) ).

Doesn’t really sound as bad as The Register report, but still it’s bad.

Google has to obey the laws, I agree, and the laws are not perfect. Anyway laws and regulations is not the only reason they track and log certain information. It’s a part of their business model.

Google offers simply awesome services and I find it really difficult to stay away from all that awesomeness thinking of privacy issues that doesn’t seem to be hrmful for the time being. Hope it’s the case for you too.

It’s not only Google that we should be alarmed of. Recently Yahoo said something similar to “Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, Consumers“. Is that sound frightening?

So I think it’s the time to at least stay concious about these issues, if not to stay away. I would rather ask Google than a friend, of a private and sensitive question, thinking my secret is also gone with the closed search page. But it’s not the case anymore. Unfortunately.

Note: Find some interesting ideas about privacy, on secutiry guru Bruce Schneiers blog

The HeartBroken.

I know exactly how it feels when you break your heart. Actually some one else does that for you :). Then you start to feel broken. Start to feel lonely. Start to feel left behind. You want to see the end of the world, soon. Just to get away from the pain. But if you are suffering a broken love or one you just can’t get on with, things just get worse.

You want some one to listen. And you want that someone to react the way you think is right. This is really bad but still really normal. When you hear something not very sweet in your ears from the listener you just avoid her. Simply because you believe she doesn’t understand you. It’s normal that you don’t understand that you are the one who is weak in mind, for the moment.

If the listener keep telling those not so sweet things again and again you start to hate her. ’cause she is shattering your dream world. You just see the happiness surrounding the feeling, not the great pain burning inside. You simply want to suffer it. And there is almost no one who can help some one who enjoys the pain.

You start to live on assumptions. You lose the world around you without knowing. You never realize that there’s a day that all these things end up ’cause all these are just an illusion of nature. And you keep running away from everything else you loved and loved you in return.

Fortunately there is a solution. It’s so simple that you don’t understand. ’cause you think way too hard. And maybe you simply don’t want an answer. You enjoy the pain. But just think simple and tender. And just embrace what you love and still loves you back. You know what you enjoyed before. Just throw yourself in to them. Drown yourself in them.

You still have the scars of the pain. It’s alright. But at least now you don’t burn in that ugly hell. Instead you enjoy life. And believe me, those scars are not there to stay. They go away when you find something better. And you are finding something better. For sure. It’s all relative.

Just listen and think, simple and mild.

NOTE: This is not based on my personal experiences. At least not anything recent. But there are plenty of this kind happening around me. Just wanted to break writers block. And I’ve been tired of writing lot’s of semi-colon ended stuff.

About Image: I love this image. Using on this blog for the second time. Click image to go to deviantart page.

Join me in MJ ass kissers club.

OK, There’s one now. wait.. wait… it was not me. That sage girl defined the club. First of all let’s see who are already in.

The Way you make me feel | How I see it
Michael Jackson and Me | Landon Lanka and Drums
A Legend | A heart on a sleeve
The way you make me feel | delilah says
There will never be another you, MJ | Jus Chillin’
MJ’s gone :( | A glimpse of lady devine
What’s your fav MJ? | Chaar~Max 2.0
Singer Michael Jackson dies at 50 | Gossip Lanka
‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson dies at age 50 | City Hits
The Six List – Tribute to “The King of Pop…” | Untitled
So, about MJ | The Abyss

Update: Here is a comprehensive list of blog posts on MJ’s death on achcharu.org. (thanx drac for the link) Most of the writers should include the club. Now I really love to be in this club :P .

Dropped in happily:

Doesn’t matter if you are black or white. | Bumble for PM

So this is all I found on a kottu search (query:MJ Michael). If I’ve missed any of you please let me know. And if you think you don’t match the club since you are not upset of MJ’s death, ping me I’ll remove you from the list.

11 posts (edit : at the beginning it was), written by people who are shocked by the death of MJ. I just feel like that’s not enough. I too join the club.

Yesterday I woke up to the news ‘MJ died’ on Fox news or something. First thing I did was switching on my laptop & rushing to the interwebz. My twitter feed didn’t have much info but Twitter search kinda confirmed that I should start to feel upset. Not that I’m a big fan. But I dunno why the hell I feel so bad that MJ is not any more. I can remember I grew up listening to him. Heard those strange stories about him. My uncle had few albums of MJ which I still can remember the cover art of.

I was upset when people call him a child molester. But I just didn’t give a shit. Yeah that’s my kind, “Just don’t give a shit”. But I can’t stop feeling upset of MJ. Maybe that’s because he was a legend, an icon & still he went away that way. Maybe I’m not upset about MJ but the universal truth, “it all comes to an end”. MJ’s death just make it a bit clear I guess. well… I dunno.

So I hope I’m in the club, *drumroll* “MJ ass kissers club”.

Damn it feels so cool here. But I wonder why the “sage girl” is upset about our feelings. We putting on feelings on our blogs which are public, which unfortunately are on kottu, which is sage girl’s personal feed reader. Indi… hey buddy please kick me off. Please do that. Sage girl is upset about what we write. And hope others in the club will also get their blogs out of kottu, just to make sage girls reading experience a bit better.

And by the way guys, sage girl also says like this.

“My blog is mine. I never invited you to read it.” (source. And it’s not the first one)

Now tell me why you put your blog on Kottu? isn’t it kind of an innocent invitation to other kottu readers to read this? Well.. I like when people read my posts, kottu people too. But unlike sage girl *I don’t write for Kottu*. So just think why we should get labeled as ‘ass kissers’ for being on Kottu? (and stuffing sage girls good read heaven a hell).

Anyway sage girl always manages to eclipse her own thoughts by her own thoughts. Sounds freaky but that’s the way it is. Defending her own false facts with another bunch of false facts. What got pissed me off of is aiming bloggers who are free to write & free to be on any social aggregator as long as they don’t harm the community or any terms set by the aggregator so badly. And this not the fucking first time.

I know I’m trying to put too much light on a small bug. But I don’t want to see this happened again & again.

PS: I was trying very hard to not use any offensive words (ex: fuck, fucking, shit) coz I’m practicung to reduce the usage :-S.

Are Geeks really multitasking?

I’ve read this fine article by rands, about the Attention Deficiency Disorder which nerds normally known to have. And it sounds like “Geeks are multitasking”. But I have another explanation for that. I’ll use the word Geek instead of nerd since it’s better known at the time.

I think I have most of those qualities which are known to be in Geeks. I never called myself a Geek until another geek called me so. I used the word tech-freak instead. But there are many people calling me a geek & I have no problem with that. So the so called explanation is based on what I think/know of myself. I know it cannot be hundred percent true or hundred percent false.

When I’m at home & at the computer, if mom comes with a hot tea & a good topic, normally in few minutes she gets angry with me & start complaining that I don’t LISTEN. When I’m on the phone, if I look into the computer screen, money spent for making the call is gonna be a big waste. What actually happened to that multitasking feature? Gone with the wind?

Most the time when I take input from my computer screen all the other inputs are getting closed. Or at least loosing priority. But why, I am supposed to have multitasking built-in.

Maybe I don’t have multitasking. But still there are 10-15 Firefox tabs open, few terminal windows/tabs open, email client, may be the text editor with few more tabs, IM client & irssi too. And also some music playing in the backround streaming through the net or in Amarok. I think I’m Alt-Tab-ing through them so many times. Hmmm… complicating huh?

OK, here’s what I think of “what’s going on?”. Let’s face it, I don’t do multitasking. Yes they say that normally men can’t do multitasking , But women can . I don’t know whether they are right or wrong. But I’m sure I’m not multitasking. It’s just dividing time. My brain divides & allocate times for each task. Listening to music at a given chunk of time & quickly jumping in to some coding at next chunk & then something else. (The task list has a priority & the way priority is given is another story & a half). Sounds like TDMA isn’t it? Time Divisional Multiple Access if you haven’t heard of it. For this to be done, ones short term memory and organizing of stuff inside brain should be very good. I’ve personally experienced good short term memory & relatively poor long term memory in my brain wiring.

This is what I have to say. I’m really sorry if you don’t understand what I’m trying to say. I just wanted to put these thoughts out and free up my brain. BTW did my post get any good position in your priority list? :D