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.

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

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.

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.

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

Twitter is becoming a way of life. So it has it’s own culture grown around it. Many bloggers have written so many articles about this very fact. Specially people were worrying about Twitter etiquette or we can call it twittiquette :D. I don’t know if you should follow any rules in tweeting but I have my own set of… well I’ll call them habits. I don’t call them rules because I don’t necessarily so strictly follow them. But I always be careful to continue with these habits. Some of them are self defined while some are learnt from web and also other tweople.

So here goes my twitter habits list.

• I try to post something useful to everyone.

I do this most the time I tweet. Sharing knowledge, news or fun stuff are the best things we can do with Twitter. Those are the main reasons why I use twitter. And that’s why Twitter is so popular.

• I do not post too much of personal things.

Twitter asking “What are you doing?”. But things are changed, or more precisely “evolved”. So I don’t post so much personal stuff unless it’s cool, or useful to someone else or *Very* *Very* important to myself.

• I do not chat on Twitter.

I know very well that Twitter is not an IM client :P . And I know really well that I hate when I see 3-4 replies to same twitter name in a line.

• I do not post welcome messages to followers.

I think this is an annoyance for current followera. This is a good way to show that you are caring. But there are better ways doing that retweet, being in conversation (replying to tweets) are two of them. Or else there’s something called Direct Messages :P

• I send a short description with the links I post.

I’ve seen automagic link posts saying currently browsing ‘link’. No on will click those links unless they are there to just waste time (or atleast I won’t click such links unless I’m killing time). So I try to give a little idea on the content of the link.

• I retweet cool stuff.

If I find something cool on twitter I can just say ‘@dude cool!’. But this will be just garbage to people who follow me but do not follow dude. If I can Retweet (RT) AND say cool, That’s the best thing I can do to show my love. But I carefully decide when/how to do this.

Update 24/4/09 : Now You can thank on Twitter with Twollars.

• I haven’t set any automattic updates on my Twitter.

Yes I know I can set certain stuff to be automatically dumped in to my twitter timeline. But I don’t like it. I wanna keep things real, when I can. I don’t autopost, at least my blog content.

• I read most of tweets on my timeline.

This helps being in conversation. there’s no point of being on twitter if I don’t read the tweets of tweople I follow. But most probably,  won’t read any @ replies going to people who I don’t know unless.. as always.. it’s important to me (I have good scanning capabilities built-in :) . so I scan through my timeline so effectively) .

• I don’t like to post 10-15 messages in a line.

I hate when I see my timeline flooded by a bunch of messages from a single tweeter (Unless there is something very interesting). So I try to avoid me doing it.

• I follow people who follow me & reply me.

I do this because I feel that they are really in conversation with me & so I should follow them.

• I’m friendly. I just be selective when I chose whom to follow.

I can’t explain this :) .

• I very very very very rarely post good mornings or good nights.

I don’t think it’s necessary unless it can add more spice to the moment or you have a new cool way to say it. IRC do not want away messages, Twitter do not want good mornings.

• If I unfollow I give a reason.

This will help her to know if somethings wrong & perhaps give reasons (and eventually stay friends forever :) ). If I just want to unfollow or I think you are a spam bot I won’t bother to give any reasons though.

Can’t call these habits, but I do these too…

• Having a profile image & a bio.

I check for these when I’m gonna follow some one. A good/creative bio would impress me. So I hope I can impress others with mine. I kept a link to my blogs about page in my twitter bio. But learned it’s not nice & wrote a bio inspired by the bio of my friend @seejay (I changed it :D ).

• A unique and/or clear theme for twitter page.

By the word ‘theme’, I mean ‘background & colors’. I created my Twitter background even before I see anyone else’s custom background. I just used my Twitter background to show my love to some things I really love. The theme is a good way to stand out. And keeping it simple & clear helps your followers reading your tweets without problems. Yes I always check Twitter pages of people I follow time to time even though I use a twitter client do most twitter activities.

I never ever say that ‘you should’, or at least ‘you better’ follow these habits. These are just personal opinions of me. If you too feel anyone or other is good, you can follow them. Just help to make a better twitterverse, the way you can. Anything to add (or remove)?, place your thoughts in comments. And if these habits make you feel that I’m worth a follow Here is my Twitter :)

Yes Everyone knows that I have a Dialog HSPA connection. OK I must say that I’m experiencing the ‘goodness’ of Dialog ISP services. At a time I dropped connection (which is very familiar to me :P ) I came up with this idea for a new commercial for Dialog.

Dialog: Where faults are defaults & you don’t have any options.

I thought of sharing this because dialog can make a good advertisement with this, Or drop “The Future. Today” for this :P .

Thank you Dialog :P .

Internet censorship is on it’s way. And what can we do against? Let me suggest.

Gather against it. Make yourself sound louder.
We can’t do anythng alone. Here’s the facebook group against internet censorship - No to internet censorship in Sri Lnanka.

Inform others about the threat.
If you have a blog or any medium to publish your thoughts write, shout out what you think, No matter what language it is.

You can can use following HTML code to show the image link which you can find on right hand side of this blog (for the time being). (using IE? go further down :))

<a href=http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22835879614/><img src=http://www.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/4a49fef23d.png border=0 alt="No Internet Censorship"></a>

It was a heart breaker to hear that the Sri Lankan Government is going to block adult content on Interenet. You didn’t hear the whole story, so don’t be hurry to judge me as a “porn addict”. The fun part is here. If you really want porn, you can get it. What’s so fun in it..huh?  In order to gain access to blocked porn you have to pay the government. Means what? Sri Lankan government is selling porn. How hilarious & ridiculous that is?

This shows how poor is Sri lankan government. Looks like they have run out of Taxing ideas. Even after those vivid colored taxes charged on almost every breath we take, they still want to do that dirty business with us. Feel like I wanna puke. this is so disgusting.

I do not want to worry about governments economical policies since there is no such thing. What I hate is censorship. Internet censorship is something I don’t ever want to experience, something I can’t ever bear up. I hate that clostrophobic feeling when I know I don’t have access to everything available. It’s not just about porn. By the time they’ll ban youtube, they’ll ban portions of wikipedia, they’ll ban anything containing the letters L , T & E, they will ban this blog & we will be browsing a very little amount of pages which government wants us to.What the flock, that’s not internet.
What I said above is not that far away from truth. Need example? Maybe you have heard of the new Mobile ID, an ID which government wants every mobile phone holder to have. Government wants more contorl over you and me. That’s why they do this. I know there’s a security problem in Sri Lanka. But still the govt. is asking for way too much.

Here’s a better example. SchoolNet, the network connecting some schools in Sri Lanka. The schoolnet has a proxy system which has cost a lot of money. People who have ever been behind it know how *cool* it is. Interenet must be filtered when it goes to school. But schoolNet does it in really a bad way. Who knows that government is not going to do that to the whole country? May be Dr.dog.

Internet censorship monster will grow up from it’s infancy, eating our freedom for lunch. Before that, we must destroy it. Somehow.

Yes I am. Or I was, for some time. Here goes the story which might sound little bit mad & it’s written before the day I post this.

May be this is my 2nd or 3rd blog post of this type. The feeling that I’m exhausted is come in my mind time to time & at that time I badly need a rest. No matter it’s mr.presidets work. I just can’t do it. I’m f***ing exhausted. But the problem is in my life, there are people who have a higher priority than president. If it was just a mere girl friend then I’m happy. But things are worse than that. I got a lot of friends & most of them have so called “High Priority”. And it’s so hard to say NO to them.

Saying NO is a skill. There are not many people who can do that regardless of who the litener is. And I think I’m one of those who find difficult to say NO. But I’m trying and learning to do it with my full effort. But often I fail & it provides the last straw.

To make a long story short & reduce my stress….
Today is a poya day(17.07.2008), and so I’m free at last. It was a loong busy period, my weak memory says it started after my friend geekaholic’s home coming day(I had one day break before geekaholic’s home coming :P ). The day right after the homecoming, I had a long journey to Ampara & Anuradhapura. I helped Such in GNU/Linux training program there. After that I came to Colombo leaving Such at Wariyapola because I had must do educational stuff (Yes I cut lectures for GNU/Linux event). From that day to the day before yesterday I didn’t have a break enough to relax myself. Lots of stuff to be done in higher education, and another little more for the podcast too. I do all of the above mentioned stuff with pleasure, when I take each one alone. But (to be honest) altogether they drive me nuts.

Plus the phone calls coming endlessly drives me even nuttier. Troubleshooting, Reparing computers, Software installation, All kinds of tech support through phone FOR ZER0 cost…..give me a break….. I can’t fix all f***ing windows problems, I didn’t ceate any viruses, I don’t know how to write Linux drivers for your f***ing hardware…..pleaase leave me alooone.

Whut, you want me to do something for that? come on man I’m not cupid. I am not a hit man either. I’m not a mchine even though I yearn to be one. And I’m not born to fix your problems, I’m homo sapiens man. Please stop getting on my nerves. My mind is going haywire. *BANG* *BANG* between my eyes or that buggers…but that’s far away from truth…aaaaaaaaaaarggghhhh!

I really need a break pal.