This is not a man with a blog.

The Zen of Business Travel

By Shabbir | March 12, 2007 | Comments Off on The Zen of Business Travel

I am now standing in the longest security line that the TSA employees in the St. Louis airport have ever seen. I slept through my 4:50am alarm and missed my shower. For the rest of the week, I get on a plane bound for a new city every morning. I have some sort of intestinal…

…and in record time.

By Shabbir | March 10, 2007 | Comments Off on …and in record time.

Although I took this photo [which is now missing, thanks Cingular] in rural minnesota, where Jill my anthropomorphised GPS unit sent me on the shortest route from Mayo clinic to St. Louis, I’m already sitting on my mom’s back porch and smoking a cigar. I’m not really quite sure how I did it in under…

More new music

By Shabbir | March 9, 2007 | Comments Off on More new music

Sarah picked up the Rhapsody all you can eat $14.99/month service and made me a playlist on my way out of town and introduced me to a couple of new albums that you ought to check out.  I was familiar with the bands, but it was nice to have someone weed some specific tracks for…

This is the most dangerous man in the hospital.

By Shabbir | March 9, 2007 | Comments Off on This is the most dangerous man in the hospital.

They found an infection in my mom and were giving her antibiotics by IV drip pumped by one of those electrical pumps. When the bag was empty the alarm sounded. None of the nurses could hear the alarm go off because this guy was running the vacuum cleaner. This was no big deal, he was…

Leaving the mayo clinic

By Shabbir | March 8, 2007 | Comments Off on Leaving the mayo clinic

I’m at mayo trying to get my mom discharged and get her home. I notice that even well run hospitals are still entirely unpleasant places to be. No matter what your age, you don’t have as much time as you think. Don’t waste your days.

So our house is going on the market.

By Shabbir | March 5, 2007 | Comments Off on So our house is going on the market.

I’ve already secured and populated our DC apartment, and we’re going to sell our DC house to get one in San Francisco.  The DC realtor got furniture for it after we moved out, and sent us photos.  It’s not our style, but then our style would have impaired the selling of the house.  If you’ve…

Buying a new camera

By Shabbir | February 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Buying a new camera

Recently my brother in law asked me an important question: Need some advice – we are planning to buy some electronic equipment with the baby – a new picture camera and video (dvd) recorder.  We were wondering if you had any recommendations.  Sameena heard that any of the SLR cameras are good because they don’t…

“never been governed by any power”

By Shabbir | February 27, 2007 | Comments Off on “never been governed by any power”

From the Washington Post: The new director of national intelligence said yesterday that the United States is "very concerned" that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership are attempting to rebuild their terrorist network and establish training camps in a region of northwest Pakistan "that has never been governed by any power." This is a…

Efficiency tip #468: Make a ‘todo’ bookmark category to keep URL-only e-mails out of your e-mail box.

By Shabbir | February 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Efficiency tip #468: Make a ‘todo’ bookmark category to keep URL-only e-mails out of your e-mail box.

One of the efficiency tips I’ve learned over the years is that you need to keep a tidy inbox.  One of the enemies of a tidy inbox is e-mails containing things you need to check out.  Because e-mail is like a network-centric data store, I’ve often get a note from someone that says, "Hey, check…

You want dark? I’ll give you fucking dark.

By Shabbir | February 24, 2007 | Comments Off on You want dark? I’ll give you fucking dark.

My precious server, a machine I built by hand, did not survive the move.  It had everything on it, my Quicken with the family’s entire finances, all my unprocessed photos from Pakistan, our MP3 collection, and my entire online poker history, every hand. I’m not a hardware guy, so the fact that I built this…