The Rain Machine

Almost 20 days have past. Earthquakes of an average magnitude of 4.5 are quite common now.. :S I keep a glass of water on my desk, that tells when a quake is coming (remember jurrasic park :P) which also confirms its not me shaking. Oh and the wooden doll that rayhan gave me, dances when a quake comes :P ... Oh well, We're all back to normal. I'm listening to soundtracks of the Sonic the Hedgehog videogame. Freeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!. Midterms over. Presentations over. Here comes the much awaited 2 weeks holidays :D ... Besides all that:

I've been using Mozilla Firefox for quite some time now. Lately, I added a number of extensions and stuff some of which were recommended to me by friends... Its really awesome! Firefox's tab browsing feature is the best. No multiple windows of Internet Explorer to go thru. All your pages open in multiple tabs in ONE window in firefox. And with extensions it becomes even powerful! :D

• Session Saver: First of the extensions and the best in my opinion. It keeps taking backups of your work in firefox (histories, favourites, tab status). This usually happens that i've got a dozen tabs opened, and I suddenly have to restart my PC. Closing firefox would mean I'd lose every page. But with this extension, I can close firefox anytime, restart (or shut down), log in, and run firefox. It automatically reloads everything to what i left it as.
  
  
• Mozilla Archive Format: I usually save some webpages as .mht files. This could be done in Internet Explorer and not in firefox. But with this extension I'm able to save pages in firefox as .mht documents along with other features.
  
  
• Highlighter: Small text highlighting tool, that highlights stuff on webpages.
  
  
• FlashGot: My favourite download manager is FlashGet (previously known as JetCar). Its 5 times better than Getright and way way better than the spyware Download Accelerator (bleh!!). With this extension, I can redirect whatever I want to download to my FlashGet download manager.
  
  
• IE View: hehe, a small and simple extension. In case i want to open a page I'm viewing in firefox to open in Internet Explorer, I just have to right click and click on "View this page in IE".
  
  
• Web Developer: For those who do web development of course would love this. I has a variety of tools and options that let you study any website you open in firefox.
  
  
• StumbleUpon: A good thing when you want to kill time and have nothing better to do. Many people say its really really addictive. StumbleUpon is an extension that gives you any website depending on your interests and you have the option to rate it, write a review and recommend to other StumbleUpon members. Its a nice fun way of surfing the internet where you find alot of new and interesting stuff. Do give it a try..
  
  

To get these extensions, click here and search for the names using the search box on the top right corner of the page (and selecting 'extensions' of course).

Oh and i dont feel like writing about what happened on the 9th of Ocober and afterwards ... its just too sad :/

After a busy Friday evening, I was awake all night and had sehri just after finishing my last post. Forced myself to go to bed by 7:30 in the morning and was asleep in a few minutes. But what happened afterwards the real thing is totally indescribable.


Here are some links you should check out.

• Siesmic Activity on the 8th of October
• Another Site: Siesmic Activity on the 8th of October
• History of Siesmic Activity
• Illustration of Quake Activity in the World
• Google Earth: I'm where Tarbela Dam is
  

(for those of you who do not know: my university (near Tarbela Dam) is 120 km north-west of Islamabad and just a few 10 km's away from the epicenter of the earthquake (click here to see how far we are) between 7.8 by the japanese, 7.6 according to the others.)

Suddenly my bed started jumping. I could feel myself in the air for a brief moment. Stuck in a state of shock and awe, I just couldn't think what was happening, instead kept staring at the ceiling. It looked as if my room was a small little box vibrating vigorously!! Shaking as if there were rocket thrusters beneath. :S As if it was on the move. Took me around 10 to 20 seconds to realize that this was not a dream, this was for real. Is this the end, or is it not? What is happening? Why is it happening? Is it really an earthquake? Is it a huge sonic-boom? Is there a war going on? Did a bomb go off? Doesn't sound like it... :S Seems some heavy machinery is traveling beneath my room? Is this how it feels to be riding a huge waveform?

Still staring at the ceiling, screaming from within that its going to finish... Now? .... Or now? .... Is it? And as I kept hoping it finishes the more violent and louder the quake got. Stationary on my desk and shelves clapped against each other, cupboard and windows chattered frequently. Time was either flying or was at a standstill. I couldn't tell. However, after quite some time, I managed to force myself to jump from my frozen state - knowing that I'm trembling so much that I wont be able to unlock the door - I jumped into my wardrobe (which is below a huge beam).

Never felt anything like this, literally felt how it's like to "hold on to dear life". Seeing the room from a different angle made it even more scary. I closed my eyes and prayed that this goes away. Minutes later (which felt never ending) the 'amplitude' of the quake reduced, which gave me enough courage to quickly grab my cell phone, unlock my door, and run like anything!!!

Outside and into the open, meeting a sea of students. Some were in their boxers. Everyone was terrified. The quake was still in action. I quickly sat down on the stairs outside the hostel and took huge signs of relief. Thankfully, the hostels were strong enough to withstand that enormous earthquake. After 15 to 20 minutes of after shocks, thinking it was all over, most of the students moved into the hostel's common room (adjacent to the main doors) switched on the television to know what's going on. From 9 a.m. to 12 noon, within every 10 to 15 minutes, another earthquake struck and again scores of people ran out. After shocks were constantly being felt nonetheless.

First of all, I called up home and told them that I was perfectly safe. Surprisingly they also experienced a 'horrible earthquake'. Other friends having relatives and families in Lahore, Multan, Peshawar, found out that they all felt a 'horrible earthquake'. This left us thinking where the epicenter was. An hour later, local news channels reported that the Margalla Towers in Islamabad collapsed. I had relatives either in that tower or in the neighboring ones. Tried calling them up, but the network was too busy. After every 5 minutes another quake struck :\ All this got very exhausting.

There were mixed feeling about the earthquake. Everyone had a different way of dealing with the terror. The serious ones, those who were affected by the quake and those who lost loved ones, sat silently on the stairs and spoke to no one. The rest were laughing it off. Trying to make fun of the other. Whatever it was, I was just sick and tired of the constant shaking and after shocks and a few frequent earthquakes, that I fled to lie down on a huge open ground and tried to sleep (which i couldn't) till evening. After opening my fast, the sky was quickly filled with huge dark clouds. A storm began in minutes. It was a sign from God. He isn't happy at all.

By then, all the aftershocks and earthquakes made every muscle in my body tired. It had induced a headache and frequently shivering muscles/limbs. Standing on the ground for more than a minute made you feel that there's another earthquake, but you're wrong, its only you and your body/imagination/fear. Then there's this fear, that if your body's trembling you wont be able to feel whether there is an earthquake. Knowing that there is one is better than not knowing at all.. :S .. ugh, scary! :/

Till the end of the 8th of October, we all still in fear, got used to the after shocks and frequent earthquakes.. It was frustrating, annoying, depressing, confusing. I've never seen myself like this ever.
(I've still got a minor headache, and i dont know what I've typed so far, hehe.. I'll post what happened on the 9th later)

Ah! its been weeks since I last posted anything here. Something hard to do once the semester begins. Oh well, a lots been happening and I hate forgetting. In the first weeks of the semester my computer started acting weirdly :S ... (I'll cut the techincal bullcrap) I bought a new power supply unit since the old one leaked current. That didn't work :/ later I noticed a smell come from the casing. The kind of smell you get when u burn a battery :S .. To prevent any damage, I disconnected everything and got a friend to check what the problem was... Turned out that my motherboard was malfunctioning. I had to get a new one from Lahore and all the while when i was without a computer, life seemed so much handycapped... :
I was using a DM850 or whatever the model number of the motherboard is ... The one with the failed ram technology known as RDRAM. Bought the motherboard and ram 3 years ago when it was thought to be the best (and really pricy). Now the motherboard and ram technology is said to be "Intel's biggest failure". Someone else said Intel said it themselves that the motherboard was "flawed". Oh well, since i was getting a new one curiosity struck. I gave the old motherboard power and watched what happened after the smelling phase. Staring at the motherboard, I suddenly notice a thread of smoke coming from the bottom edge. I flipped the casing upside down and kept staring :D ... The really small portion of the edge from where the smoke was coming from started to melt. A few black bubbles popped out of the black melting part.. Then suddenly a few bright sparks ignited a little fire :D ... Till this moment i was in shock and awe, once the fire started to 'grow', I pulled the power plug out and blew the fire out...

Now I have a NEW motherboard!! :D 512 MB DDR dual channel!! yay for me! :P
But with the type of stuff i do :/ i need more RAM, thus im saving some money.