I'm moving my updates to a different blog, http://www.farah-faisal.blogspot.com, since it's an easier address to remember and spell. It's been a great ride updating this blog, hope you'll follow me on to the next chapter!

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Assalamu'alaikum...
I just realized that if you use Firefox to view my blog, the you can't hear the song and the tagbord doesn't load properly. Sheesh. You would think that being a CS major, I would have thought about doing some browser debugging before posting anything but nooooo.... I had to just post stuff and assume everything works because it works okay in IE. Note to self: never assume anything, because IE sucks, so even if it works there... it might only work there.
So you guys might wanna use IE (Internet Explorer) to view this page so you can hear the song and see the tagboard.

I love Firefox, debugging my pages using it is such a synch, and I know I don't really have to worry about anything (much) if my pages load properly using it. I love the tab feature, I love being able to look at CSS sheets of those lovely webpages that you wish you know how to do, and see exactly how the elements come together. However, I need to figure out the meta tags, I'm still pretty new to the whole CSS stuff, some of the features still boggles the mind...

I'm currently at work, and I have gamelan class later, guitar class after that, and a Tech Day meeting with Genevieve. Hopefully we'll come up with some kick-ass idea for our display, it would be so great if we can win something. However, it might be kinda hard to compete with the Solar Car team, or those chemical engineers who are probably gonna let people make their own slime again. We need something that appeals to both girls and guys. Hmmm.... what would that be.....

The last time I went to my sorority chapter (meeting), I was on a time crunch, so Ijat and I decided to cross this big road to get to the League. Lo and behold, my cellphone fell in the MIDDLE of the road. I wanted to double back and retrieve it, but a couple of cars came so I couldn't, so I watched by the side of the road helplessly praying that none of the cars would hit my phone. And they DIDN'T! And I got it BACK! And it's not even scrached! Ohh thank you thank you thank you.....

I have to get back to work. I love all of you, even the ones who can kiss my ass for all crappy stuff you did to me. To my girlfriends in the know, hos before bros :) (we are sooo addicted to One Tree Hill... )

Wassalam.....

Monday, October 25, 2004

Assalamu'alaikum...

Oh my gosh, I haven't updated for quite some time now. Sorry for that, been busy lately. Actually, I still have a bunch of stuff to do for this week, but I decided to take a break and pen in some stuff before people start complaining again, hahaha. Shut your yappers.

Anyway, my EECS final project is going on pretty slow, at least on my part. My fault, of course, I've been busy with other stuff, lately, to be exact, I've been busy with my architecture project. It's supposed to be an easy A, and I do not want to mess up. I'm determined to do well, regardless the fact that my lecturer is a tad bit more fussy than last semester's professor. Never fear, I will prevail.

Wish I have that kind of attitude for my final project. Amazing, there are times that I just wanna give up, but lo and behold, suddenly everythng makes perfect sense. And while that's supposed to make me happy, it doesn't, because then I'd feel like the challenge is over and I have nothing to look forward to. Ah, humans, we're never satisfied with anything.

I'm just so confused right as to what I wanna do after I graduate. What I really wanna do is go to grad school. I want it so bad, it hurts. But looking at my results, it's average at best. And I really want to stay in Michigan and do grad studies here. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. I don't want to sound too much like Gloomy Gus, but that dream seems to be further from my reach day by day.

Okay, on to more "sunny" subjects. How about football? Hahaha... Michigan against Purdue last Saturday. I had to do the tailgate at Pierpont on Saturday, so I get to watch the game guilt free since it's part of my job. I get paid to give people free drinks, chips and watch TV. Great life. Dennis told me that I HAVE to watch the game. According to him "Good things seems to happen when you watch". Well I don't believe that, of course, but I watched anyway because I do like watching a good game, and I usually try to catch them whenever work permits. Wish I did get season tickets, this being my senior year and all, but while watching the game on TV is fun (especially when Dennis is there to explain stuff to me over and over and over...) , I can't imagine standing for hours on end in the middle of a big crowd like that. I'm sure it's great fun, but even the thought is enough to make me claustrophobic, I would have probably ended up not going to most of the games. Hats off to those willing enough to brave the crowd.

I'll be manning the Tech Day booth with Genevieve on Nov 6th. Tech Day is basically when students put on displays for little kiddies so that they would be interested in majoring in an engineering field when they get older. I'm excited, I love doing booths. I was really sad when I couldn't help with the Malaysian booth for the South East Asian thingamajig, but I had to work during the whole damn time. Oh well. Sometimes I wish I was an officer, but I wasn't sure what to expect, so I decided to forgo that this semester and slowly ease into the whole activities. Don't wanna overdo it now, do we?

I'm probably gonna get a lot of grief over this, but on the way back home from the Islamic Center just now, terserempak dengan Apu. He reminds sooooo much of Someone, the resemblance is quite uncanny. As a result, I message that Someone to say hi. Don't get any ideas, people, Someone and I are just friends, but we became friends under the weirdest circumstances.Ah, the good old days when the heart is young and everything is rosy and liking someone is as simple as saying "I have a crush..*giggles*" to your roomies.

Okay, I'm rapidly becoming sleepy, and tomorrow morning, I'm driving.. somewhere. Hehehe.. I'm keeping that detail under wraps, *wink wink*. So I better go do my prayers and get some shut eye...zzzzz...

Wassalam...


Monday, October 18, 2004

Assalamu'alaikum...

hahaha.. nothing to reprt today, except I put in a new song. Took me a long time to get this, it's finally full. Enjoy Switchfoot :) , I know I do. This is offficially my new current favorite song.

I have nothing to write about today, it's been slow, I haven't been doing much work, basically slept a lot. I called Tomorrow I have... something.. in the morning :). Now I have to go pray and such :) .

I love my friends and family, hope you guys have the best ramadhan ever!

Wassalam...
Assalamu'alaikum...

My head is spinning so bad..... I'm currently working on the user interface for our online advising website.. wait, did I ever mention this? Okay, for my EECS 497 class (think of it as a senior project, because it is), me, Kate and Liz (we're one out of the two all-girl groups that exist in that class) are working on a web service that lets EECS students schedule advising sessions online. Apart from that, we're letting them view their past advising transcripts and upcoming advising sessions. We're gonna have a website that explains the project itself, but for now it's not up and running yet. So bear with my meagre explaination.

I'm doing the user interface, and so far, my progress has been sloowww. Like really, really, slowww. Today, I finally managed to get the damn navigation bar to appear sorta okay, but it materializes only in IE, not in Firefox or even Netscape. And I haven't tested it with Opera, Safari and all the other browsers that I know I have to test with but for the life of me can't remember. Creating CSS style sheets is such a pain. Having to make everything standards compliance is enough to give me nightmares. I haven't begun to find out how to use HTML Tidy yet yet (more about that later...). Thank goodness for Google, I managed to get out of my predicament by Googling some stuff (like the nav bar). Unfortunately, when something fu***s up, and that something is the one you Googled, then you're kinda screwed because you don't know how to debug the dang thing.

Ahh, the life of a college student. I have to download like 11 browsers into my laptop just for this project alone. I wonder how else I'm going to *hentam* my darling lappy with next semester when I (hopefully) work with Soloway. Maybe he'll let me use a PowerBook. Yumm... that would be niiice....

I love everything and everyone, even though people in general piss me off because we have so much hatred in us it's disgusting. We need to start treating each other better, especially bulan Ramadhan nie. 'Cause if we can't even be civilized during Ramadhan, then we're basically screwed for the rest of the year.

Wassalam....

Saturday, October 16, 2004

FREE STUFF, PIZZA AND SOME SOCIAL CONCERNS... ME RANT YOU READ

Assalamu'alaikum...

First of all, selamat menyambut Ramadhan to everyone!!! Everyone loves Ramadhan, I think the fasting month is just so rewarding. You're just sooo focused on your work and all the important stuff, and you're more calm and collected and you don't bitch quite.. as.. much...

I'm sorry I haven't been updating my blog, I've been kinda busy. And when I'm not busy I'm just basically glued to the TV watching Gilmore Girls or One Tree Hill or America's Next Top Model. Yes, I do love my TV. My living room still looks like a bomb zone. I think I'm gonna have to concede to getting rid some of my furniture, so if anyone in Umich is reading this and they want a sofa, a coffee table or this wheely thingy that you put microwave on, lemme know. I can't get in to Wolverine Malaya from my room, so that rules out advertising there.

I've managed to become a connoisseur of pizza and free stuff lately. My room is peppered with things I got from recruiting talks: Microsoft t-shirts, Google boy and girl t-shirt, Captal One's phone card and pen holder, guitar picks (that's not from a talk, but still, I got them last week), Goldman Sach's jelly beans case (I ate all the jellybeans, they were yummy), Google pens, Capital One pens, some other stuff from goodness knows where..... I have a lot of stuff. And I ate a lotta pizza during those talks. Great way to save money, even though you feel yucky afterward for hours because of all the grease and cheese.

Last Friday, the first day of Ramadhan, Prof. Soloway brought pizza to class. From Cottage Inn. In every single flavor imaginable. The first pizza I ran for (I was gonna keep it for berbuka, don't worry mummy, I'm still fasting and I haven't turned into a complete mala'un yet) was the Tomato Pesto pizza. I love pesto, and I love tomatoes, ergo.... And it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. Who cares it's not meat or it doesn't have a lot of toppings, that is officially the best pizza in the world for me. Domino's Doublemelt comes in second, probably because I've always preferred thin crusts over the normal ones.

Kak Fiza and Abang Amir have been selling food lately due to Ramadhan, so I've been stuffing myself with some really good stuff, like cendol, and today, I had biryani. Yum... biryani. Yum... cendol. Gourmet pizza, good Malaysian food... life has been good to my tummy lately, but lousy to my waistline. Dang it, I'll never get my girlish figure from sophomore year back, hahahaha. Oh goodness, that sounds so ridiculous I almost peed my pants. Oh well.

Prof. Soloway is gonna let me get involved in a project next semester. I'm excited. Talking to recruiters made me realize that I need more than what they're teaching us in the classroom. Besides, since I'm prbably gonna end up working in an office for the rest of my life, I might as well do something meaningful and something I can be proud of right now. If I can do something that would mean anything to at least one person, big or small, I would be the happiest person ever.

Sometimes I wish Malaysia would address the imporatant things instead of sweeping them under the rug. People keep concentrating on the killings or the purse snatching or the rape... no one really focused much on the smaller stuff that are the cause of the bigger stuff. Take drugs for example. People are doing Ecstasy and weed everywhere, in public places.... but the issue is never really addressed. Sure, they have raids, but there's nothing much in the media. No public service message that encourages people to not do drugs, no matter how cool everyone else say it is. There used to be this really graphic commercial about drinking and driving... that went away, I'm not sure why. Nothing about how you're not supposed to have pre-marital sex, or sex without protection. Everything is taboo subject. People are embarrassed to talk about it. Nobody wants to address the issue of condoms because nobody really wants to acknowledge the fact that in a world that is getting more Westernized day by day, pre-marital sex is a common occurance, regardless of where your income bracket is.

But is it really worth it to have all of these social problems just because we're embarrassed, or because some things are taboo? Think about it. What happens when your kid has AIDS from unprotected sex? Or your daughter became pregnant while she's still a teen because one night, she took Ecstasy with alcohol and wound up... preganant? What if you know that you could've prevented it just by talking, but you were too embarrassed to do so? Where would taboo and tradition and embarrassment land you then?

Wassalam...

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Assalamu'alaikum....

Today is Saturday. Aaaahhhh... bliss. My body is still going through the motions of last night. What was last night? Lsst night was Phi Rho's Barn Dance. Yeeehaaa, giddyup! Since I have been duly warned by someone that what happened at Barn Dance stays there, I'm just gonna regale some short bits that only involves me, heheheh.

All of us went to Irene's house at 7pm, got on the bus at 7.30, pm, and arrives round 8.00 pm. It looked like it was gonna rain, but luckily there was barely a drizzle. We got cowboy hats, bandannas (is that how you spell it? Probably not) and I'm going to get a mug at Chapter on Sunday. When we arrives at the barn, it took the DJ a few minutes to hook up the sound system. After that, it was on, baybee, hahahah!

I haven't danced so much since sophomore year. There was line dancing, where you dance to the lyrics of the song, some choreographed ones, and of course, random dances that involves shaking your money-maker however way you wanted to. It was basically more of a girl thing, hehehe, girls having some good clean fun. I absolutely love to dance, so of course I never really left the dance floor. Oh, and in the middle of it, we went on a hay ride. Two humongous horses pulled a cart with us in it. We sat on wet hay, so of course my butt got wet, which I tried to dry out by sitting close to the bonfire.

I had so much fun. It was definitely worth going for me, it felt so good to just let loose and go crazy and not having to think about serious things, and of course, not having to wonder if people are gonna remember what I did because some of them were drunk of their asses anyway. Not that I really did anything, anyway, but still, it's nice to not worry about anything at all and just go and have a good time :) .

I woke up this morning with slept-jeans, my wrinkled "Hot Stuff" t-shirt, hair that smelled like smoke from the bonfire, and a slight headache from the loud music. And now I have to go do some work :)~ . Aaahh, the life of a fun-loving college girl who finally had some fun.