Misc. of Life

Seems like a shitty world, doesn't it?

2009-11-06T22:54:00.001-08:00

So many things are going on these days... Most of them pretty crappy for a lot of people in the world. Economy, terrorism etc etc. It sure seems like this is the worst time planet earth has seen, ever! A lot of people are immune to what is going around in the world. People are dying and many don't give a damn. People are hungry but no food in sight. People are sick, but no health care in sight. The ones that have the resources don't want to share it with others since that will reduce their wealth. Right now might seem like a really good time to a lot of people for the Judgment Day to arrive.

Sure there are lots of good things going on in the world. But there is so much more good that we as humans can do if we actually act like humans. It doesn't take much to listen to someone and give a shoulder, maybe volunteer some time, or just pray.

Life is short, don't make it shorter by trying to help yourself only. Help others and your life will seem longer and happier than you ever thought. I pray that these crappy days end soon.

Posted via email from Hassaan's posterous

Just a Thought...

2009-06-30T19:23:00.001-07:00

If we stop breathing, we die...

But with every breath we take, we are losing a breath out of our lives.

It's important that we make every breath count!

Posted via email from Hassaan's posterous

Back To Hike

2009-03-24T09:41:00.001-07:00

Finally we start hiking again! Summer seems to be around the corner here in Colorado and we just started our regular Sunday morning hikes. The weather was great and the air seemed clean. It wasn't as tough as I thought it would be after such a long time. I guess the skiing trips helped.

We started the season with the same hike we did the very first time with the group. Mt. Sanitas (natural stair master, as some people call it!) is always a fun hike. But this is just the beginning. This year, our goal is to get to at-least 3 14ers which should include Longs Peak . Good luck to me and the group in trying to achieve our goals :)

I will start adding more blogs from now on and you will see at-least one per week for the hike update.

Happy Hiking!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Hassaan's posterous

Ski Fun in Colorado Rockies

2008-12-22T07:14:00.001-08:00

Skiing is always fun, but it's funner when there is a lot of snow and the weather is COLD!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Hassaan's posterous

State of Muslims

2008-12-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about writing this for a very long time. Too much contemplation retards the process of progress.

I have kept the title simple and straight forwards since that is exactly what I wanted to write about. I might cut my post short this time but will try to continue with more later on, continuing with the same topic.

Current state of Muslims as a whole is below any level previously known of a society or community. It is mostly just the perception, but nonetheless, it is. Money is the driving force in our society, although Allah says do not let it drive you. Allah says stand up for truth and we try our best to keep away from it. Allah says fight against injustice, but we don't.

Lots and lots of Muslim men go to pray at the Masajid (Mosques) at-least for Friday prayer. They listen to sermons from the community's religious leaders. This is a great institution in Islam. If used properly could bring about change that nations can only dream of. What do we use it for? Nothing! We say we are using it to spread Islam. I always wondered why are we spreading Islam to those who are already Muslim. What the people standing in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands of Muslims are doing is forcing their interpretation of Islam. "You wear a chain on your neck... You are going to hell!" I have heard this in a Friday sermon. I have yet to hear someone say "You came to the masjid for this prayer... you will probably to go heaven". It is so easy for people to say so and so will go to hell because of such and such act. I have never ever ever ever heard a Muslim scholar say so and so smiled at his neighbor and helped him clean his yard because of no reason and thats why he will go to heaven! We have assumed that if we don't do everything exactly like some of the leaders of Islam say, we will go to hell. Why is it that doing one bad act will lead us to hell, but doing one or even multiple good acts will still not confirm heaven.

Allah has said, do good deeds and stay away from bad ones. Believe in oneness of Allah and believe in Quran. This will surely take you to Heaven. It seems like the people giving sermons in Friday prayers are using the shock and awe theory. Keep the people in fear and they will do good! We have been using pessimistic approach for a very long time. Isn't it time that we change that since we know for sure it's not working for us.

Why don't we hear our leaders tell us how to live better in life. How to be better human beings. How to respect life. Of ours and of others. I have never come across an article from a Muslim scholar or a religious leader saying that the killing of innocent people of any country, be they Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists or of any other religion or don't even have a religion, is against the teachings of Islam. Are they afraid to raise their voice? Not standing up against injustice is against Islam.

Collateral damage is not Islamic. If you can't fight the culprit, stop abusing the ones who merely look like it.

More late....

Heck of a time!

2008-08-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you get a late start from home, amazingly bad road, heated automatic transmission, very late start from trail head, amazingly cold weather, snow in early August, not proper clothing for the weather, and above all... totally infuriated wives!

A 14er hike worth writing about!

Our plan was to get two 14ers down. Grays and Torreys via the standard combination route. The plan didn't work out as expected. Our late start and lack of proper clothing for the cold weather was the biggest hurdle in getting to the second summit. In one of my earlier posts I had said that preparation is the key to success. None of us took that point seriously!

We started off about 20 minutes late, but with fast driving from Kamal, caught up with time a bit. It wasn't until we hit the really really bad entrance road to the Grays peak parking lot at the trail head that we lost a lot of time. The automatic transmission on his Honda Pilot had heated up quite a bit and was smelling really bad so we had to wait a bit before moving on. Finally at the trail head, we started our hike.

The hike itself is very smooth. The trail is well maintained and the views are nice. Nothing much to note though. Just a long winding trail going up the mountains. When we did finally get up top, it was cold and cloudy. I didn't have gloves and my fingers felt like icicles and I was pretty sure I was going to get frost bite, in the middle of August. The clouds were moving so we could get a few glimpses of the amazing scenery behind the summit. It always great to get up to the top and view the world!

I got up to the summit first and waited for others. Irfan got there after me and feeling really cold, I thought I should check with others when they will be getting up here. Not having my own cellphone with me, I called home to get Jarrar's cell number. Which triggered the panic back home. Why are these guys not together. What's happening with others etc etc. Finally, I got the number and talked with Jarrar and found out it will be some time before they get here. Too cold, I decided I cannot go to Torreys this time around. None of the others wanted to go either.

After everyone got up there, we had eggs and sandwiches and took some pictures.

Cold and miserable, we started back. Total, it took us about 6 some hours from start of trail to back. It was tiring and the wives were upset. It was all good! We had just done a 14er! Not many people do that. Although the trail was crowded, I don't recall seeing another desi there!

The joke of the trip I guess would be the punch line, it shrinks!

To sum it all up, the entire trip was a blast and I am sure all of us had a lot of fun. I hope we can do this again soon. With the hope that we piss of our wives a little less next time.

Exertion and Beyond - July 27, 2008 Hike

2008-07-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

Bear Peak Trail via Shadow Canyon (South Mesa Trailhead) 6.8 miles that we accomplished this last Sunday was to date the toughest of the hikes for the group. A longer than usual hike for us on a dryer and hotter than usual day. It was tough on the body and on the mind. It did teach us (at-least myself) a few things though.

Getting up early on a Sunday morning (or night as the sun doesn't rise until after 5:50am) is not a big deal for the group now. We got up well before 5am and got to Junaid's place by 5pm. Highly motivated to make to the summit and complete a rather longer hike within a few hours so we could all get back to civilization and enjoy Khaba (that is food for free at someone else's place!!!) later in the day, we got to the trailhead before 5:30am. The light was just beginning to show. All ready for the hike, we started off on the trail. A long, straight forward, slow but gradual climb into the mountains. The sun started to show before we made our first stop to get some pictures. The views and scenes are the best part of hiking around Boulder and we make sure that we take enough pictures to prove that. Loaded with three cameras, we took a lot.

Watching wildlife is another reward you get during these hikes and we got to see quite a few deers and antelopes during this climb. Chipmunks are also found at most of these hikes.

After the first hour of hike, we had gotten into the middle of the trail and had broken in two groups, sometimes stopping to get together again. Everyone felt the toughness of the hike since the trail was getting steeper with no end in sight due to heavy tree population. Large boulders also hindered the view which was unusual for us.

Every so often we would check the time to see how far it still would be, although no one knew how far the summit actually was from that point. Tired, hot and dry, we moved on. Pushing each other to go further and further. The fact that the summit was not quite known to us and we couldn't see anything beyond a couple hundred feet due to the trees was even more disturbing. Nonetheless we kept our pace.

After almost 3 hours of hiking, we finally got to the point where we saw the final 100 feet accent to the summit. We were finally there! We took a lot of pictures of the western ridge, which we haven't seen in any of the other hikes around Boulder, CO.

The views from the top were amazing and the sun beating down on us was not a concern anymore. We were there! We had made it! Boulder and surrounding cities looked beautiful. We could see the Eldora Ski area and other mountains which we haven't see in any of the hikes. Taking our time, we just relaxed and chilled for a while.

On every other hike, including the one 14er we had done earlier this month, the descent s have always been easy, fast and go by without notice. This was not every other hike. This descent would prove to us that every path going down hill is not as easy as it sounds.

Taking almost 2.5 hours to get back to the parking lot, we walked slow, stopping often and losing a couple friends behind who were slower due to knee problems. We did keep in touch with them through cellphones.

The descent was unusually tiring and so tough on knees that we had to stop a lot. The steepness of the terrain was easy to blame, although it now seems that it was our own fault.

We were less prepared, we had less time and we had been arrogant! Getting a couple months of hiking experience under our belts, we thought we could summit the world. What's Bear Peak? We were told by nature what it really was. It isn't really about Bear Peak alone. It is about any hike that you do which you haven't done before. Next time we go on Bear Peak and make sure we are prepared well and have enough time and supplies (mostly water) wouldn't really cut it. It is not a matter of this particular hike or any hike this long or tough. It is about being prepared for a hike unknown.

All options need to be considered before you go on an expedition of any kind. Supplies are one important part. Length of the hike, toughness, weather, and knowledge of the area are all important aspects. Our knowledge of the area or lack of it was a very big disadvantage. Had we known that it would take us over 6 hours to get back to the parking lot, we might have skipped this hike for last Sunday or we would have started much earlier.

All things considered, this hike surely made us better hikers at-least in mind. If you are considering hiking, keep these points in mind. Make sure you have enough time to not hurry back and possibly hurt yourself doing that. Make sure you have enough supplies and that you know the area well. Talk to multiple people and ask them enough questions to know what to look for. Get weather information and prepare accordingly. Above all, keep in mind that you may not be able to complete it this time! If you have a feeling you can't, leave it and come back. You will be able to do it next time, or the time after that or... You know what I mean. Don't kill yourself, or get close to that fact. Be safe, not sorry.

The best thing we got out of this hike was that we are not sorry! Thank God.

Next Sunday we are going to Green Mountain! Hopefully we will apply the knowledge from this last hike to all other hikes to come.

Hiking Craze - Hopefully will last long!

2008-07-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

So, me and a few friends from around Boulder area have started hiking the Rocky mountains around Boulder. We go every Sunday and try to hit a different hike/route every time. It's fun, good exercise and you get to see nature's beauty!

It all started from the Memorial Day weekend 1st Birthday party of Junaid's son, Hamza. We were sitting there having good desi food and a fun talk about RedBox DVD rental and their system of updating their boxes with new DVDs. According to Rizwan, they probably have a way of sending code to burn DVDs over the network instead of sending employees to put in new DVDs every Tuesday (usually when the DVDs are released). There was almost a bet for Cigars for everyone since Masood and a lot of others thought that was a ridiculous idea at the moment. Everyone believed that it is quite possible, but that's not what RedBox does currently. They should however!

And then, Jarrar (who had been talking about going for a hike to Mt. Sanitas for some time) insisted that we go for this hike on Monday (it being a holiday - Memorial Day). We all pondered and finalized that we should leave at 6:00am from Junaid's place. If you are not familiar with Junaid... getting up at 6:00am for Junaid is like not sleeping for two nights. Not many people liked the idea of a hike and that so early in the morning on a holiday when you can sleep a few more hours than a usual Monday. So it all came down to that me and Jarrar and Junaid were going to go for sure. Jarrar picked me up and we went to get gas before getting to Junaid's place. While we were getting gas, my phone had fallen on the seat on Jarrar's car and I didn't hear the phone ring while talking to Jarrar. It was Junaid calling to make sure we were still coming! I realized while going towards Junaid's house that he had called and probably would be thinking that we had chickened out and were still sleeping. When we got to this house, he was standing out there waiting for us. It was a relief, since we might have backed out that days hike if he didn't come.

We got to Mt. Sanitas trail head on Mapleton Rd. after a few detours since it was Memorial Day and we all had conveniently forgotten the fact that it was the day of BolderBoulder, a 10K run which stops traffic in most of Boulder. We did get to the trail head after probably a 45 minute delay. Since it was our first hike, we got to to the trail map, thinking of getting some information about the trail before heading up. There was a laminated, new looking notice on the board... Mountain Lion activity. We highly recommend that you consider a different hike!

It took us 15 minutes and 5 other hikers passing by us to calm down and start to hike. With our picked up tree limbs we started the hike. A 3.1 mile roundtrip hike seemed like a marathon. The 1 some mile hike to the top of Mt. Sanitas is about 70% log stairs. It was tough and we stopped almost 6 times before finally making it to the summit. At the top, we were the three happiest people on earth at that particular moment!

Many many people passed us while getting to the top. That didn't stop us from getting their. The way down was too easy after the climb.

Driving back home we called our better halves and told them to meet us at IHOP in Westminster for breakfast. It took us about 4 days to recover from the hike.

That was supposed to be the only hike but while coming down, we decided we want to continue this every Sunday morning (rain or shine, or even snow!)

That was the first ever hike that we did together. After that, we went to Mt. Sanitas many more times until we got tired of it. As Jarrar puts it... "wo hike boo chor gaee". We started taking different trails and also went to our first 14er, Mt. Bierstadt. A 14er is a 14000ft+ elevation mountain. It was tough and took us 5 hours to complete. Again I have to say "At the top, we were the three happiest people on earth at that particular moment!"

So it is an ongoing activity that we enjoy every Sunday morning. Since then Abbas, Irfan, Kamal and Zaidi have joined us for some hikes. Some of them after part of the permanent group.

Here you can get the blog from Jarrar about the hikes and here you can get to the google group for our hikers group.

Our next 14ers to attempt are Greys and Torreys peaks on August 10, 2008.

Office Depot Problems (Bad Customer Service)

2006-11-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

Recently I had an opportunity to shop with Office Depot Telephone Order. The company policy is that they price match any competitor. The product was cheaper at Dell. So I called Office Depot Telephone Orders (1-800-GO-DEPOT) and asked for a Price Match. They took my order, told me the total and said the product will arrive in 3 business days and I should get it by Tuesday. On Tuesday, I got nothing. So I checked my account online with Office Depot only to find out that my order was canceled. No reason was given. I emailed support and 24 hours later got a call from them. The representative said the order was canceled because it was out of stock at that time, but now it is in stock and I could re-order it. By then, the price at Dell had went up. Pissed off, I told the rep. that this was outrageous. After my outburst, she said "lemme check". She came back and said "the seller (I am assuming they were dealing with some third-party who was actually going to send the item to me) is not willing to price match!". I reminded her of the policy of price-match but she said she cannot do anything about it. By this time I was furious at the service I was getting. Lying to get out of their own words! I emailed them again stating my disappointment. Another representative called back and said the reason my order was canceled is because there was a rebate for that item from Office Depot (no-one during my first order mentioned anything about any rebates!) and therefore after the rebate, the price would be actually lower than Dell's price. A third explanation! How many times were they gonna bull-shit with me. I checked the rebate offer online, it had expired! So now I couldn't get the actual price Dell was offering or the one after the rebate. Just great. I should have ordered from Dell and not worry about wasting my time with Office Depot who don't even honor their own words!

Windows Live Mail Beta

2006-05-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

Most of you hotmail users would know what Windows Live Mail Beta is by now. Atleast I hope you do. It's all about lots of ads and extreme slow response. That's all I could get from my experience. If I was using it as my main email address, I would have torn my clothes off and ran off to a jungle or something! The only good thing about it is that you can use your keyboard's regular buttons to do most of the things and drag-drop stuff. Even doing all of that, the repsonse is so slow that you feel like you were better off without this functionality. And I am on a T3 line!!! I hope the dial-up guys didn't switch.

Yahoo came out with a similar email interface a while before msn did. It is much better to use than msn, still is slower than using regular interface. Lesser advertisements. If you have the windows live mail beta browser window open in a bit smaller size all you will see is ads and folders. The email itself comes out in a window so small that you have to scroll for almost each line.

Google doesn't have a "LIVE" experience email interface! I still love it. It's not annoying and almost no ads. I liked yahoo mail interface before this live experience. NEWays, if you think I am doing something wrong and correcting it would improve my experience, please let me know.

Interesting Number Combination coming up soon!

2006-05-08T10:11:00.000-07:00

I was sitting with my wife eating delicious Pakistani food at a local restaurant. This restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall kind of a place but the food is awesome. Everything is freshly prepared so you gotta call in before you go, so you don't have to wait too long for the food to arrive. Safari Restaurant 3925 Oneida Street, Denver, CO 80207. We were talking about some upcoming events and their dates. Suddenly I realize what's coming up in a month; 20th of June, 2006 8:06PM. Most European and Asian countries write their dates as Day/Month/Year and if you consider time in 24 hour format it all translates to:
20/06/2006 2006
or
2006 2006 2006

Just thought I should share it with others.

eBay Password Problem

2006-05-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago I had a problem with one of the servers not accepting my password properly. After a while i figured out that it only took first 8 characters as valid and all the rest it just discarded. Sweet security! So being me, I set out to check most all of the websites I use for account access etc. Didn't find many with problems, except eBay! I found out that the website access passwords are NOT CASE SENSITIVE!!!! That knowledge disturbed me alot. I emailed eBay support to look into the matter and to fix the problem once found. I received a couple of replies from them saying that they will look into the matter etc. etc. Then, nothing! Nothing at all. They have not fixed the problem until today Monday May 01, 2006 2:24PM.

I figured if I create a blog, if nothing happens, I am atleast telling the world about the problem.

Creating Personal Website - TOO MUCH TO DO!

2006-04-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Lots of companies are offering personal website creation these days. Lots and lots of people create personal websites and then abandon them! I have done that many times myself. What's the reason? First of, who is interested in looking at your website? What good will your website do to the world? How in the world will you let people know that you have a website? And above all, how will you make people visit your website? Most of it is in the content of the website. So you are imaginative and create a really cool website. Now what? You have to spread the word that you have a really cool website that people will like. But how can you put the word out? There are so many search engines to submit the site to! and then on top of all that, you have to compete with the world!!! That's a lot of websites we are talking about.

I created my website http://www.hfaridi.com some time ago. Have submitted it to most of the search engines. Now whats the key which will make random users come to this website? There are two ways! Spend a lot of money and put ads on search engines. I don't have money!!! 2nd is to spend a lot of time creating blogs like this one :) Ofcourse just one blog doesn't take long. You have to write a lot of them and make them interesting enough so people actually read it. Also, go do different websites and make references to your website. This way is cheap in monetary terms, but takes a hell lot of time. Which again, I don't have!

So finally, I thought I should just write one blog. Hope maybe someone will look at it and take a look at mywebsite. I am not saying that it's an imaginative website :) Just trying to make people look at it.

BTW, I created a php script for creating photo albums. It's a stand alone script which just needs to be copied to a directory with nothing but pictures or directories of pictures. Thumbs for the album are creating on the fly by just minimizing the actual pictures. If you have a directory e.g. "Pictures" and have 5 more directories inside of that directory named "January", "March", "Birthday", "Trips"and "Landscape". Just put the script file in "Pictures" directory. Make sure you do not have any picture files in the "Pictures" directory. When linked, the script will look at all of the directories inside of the "Pictures" directory (If there is even one .jpg file it will consider the "Pictures" directory as an album, therefore showing the pictures in album format) and show them with links. If you click on any of the 5 links, it will take you to the album with all pics as thumbs. Clicking on the thumb opens a new window with the fullsize picture. There is a link above the thumbs "Full size pics with scroll" which opens another page in the same window with the first picture in fullsize and previous, next links to previous/next pictures in that album.

If you do look at the website or the script, please let me know if it was of any use.

Happy surfing!

Why I had to give up my first DOG

2005-09-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

I adopted a dog from a shelter and loved it, for the two weeks I had it!

After getting the dog I found out that Muslims are not supposed to keep dogs inside the house and it is not advisable to keep one anyways unless it is being used as a watch-dog or sheep-dog etc.

Nonetheless, I kept it...

About a week later, I understood why it's not advisable for Muslims to keep a dog in the house.

Muslims have to read prayers 5 times a day. before dawn, early afternoon, late afternoon, right after sunset and late night. We have to perform oblusion (or however it's spelt), meaning clean ourselves from dirt etc. If a dog licks your clothes, they are not ok for prayers... if a dog licks you, you need to perform oblusion before reading your prayers. So, to cut the long story short, I had to change clothes almost 5 times a day for prayers, perform oblusion probably more than that etc. After about a week I realized that this cannot work out for both me and my dog. The dog was being left out since I could not have him in the same room as I was praying.

So this is the story of me and my first dog.

It would be nice to read opinions from others.