Christmas holiday season
I’m very excited for the holiday season in West. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. Now I have only experienced it through movies and books and news, but it still makes me feel good. The videos and imagery of snow-covered streets combined with twinkling lights and families holding hands going shopping and stopping to take a picture with Santa make me excited.
The songs, movies, and everything we see on Internet and elsewhere are so good. It make me feel a sense of warmth comfort. I watched “Red One (2024)” few days ago, starring Chris Evans and Dwayne Johnson. Not my type of favorite movie but still made me laugh and feel joy.
We have so much good Persian traditions which I adore but they can’t stop me from wanting to experience the traditions of Western cultures. Everything I see sparks my curiosity. Many of the traditions aren’t even specific to Western cultures, such as exchanging gifts and visiting family members, they are some of the most-respected values we have in Persian culture, yet they seem somehow different in West.
The portrayal of these celebrations in Western media has painted a picture of unrealistic happiness in my brain which I know may be a lot different in real life yet I can’t control my desire to experience them.
Winter is my favorite season so you can understand how a holiday in the winter, which is always shown to me with specific pictures of snow-covered houses and decorations, can make me this much excited.
But the celebrations and festivities aren’t all I’m excited for. As a Middle Easterner, you surely can understand how the feelings of unity, happiness, goodwill, and celebration are carved in our DNA so I want them as well. It’s not just about the cold weather and good decoration, it’s about embracing deep feelings too.
Perhaps one day I find the opportunity to participate in these celebrations, to create memories and blend in with people who truly appreciate these traditions. Until then, I’ll continue enjoying movies and videos, pictures on Internet, reading good news about it, and talking to my friends. I can enjoy the season imagining I’m part of it as well.
Back to normal
Aside
It’s been a while since I’ve written on this blog. If you haven’t noticed, it was shut down for a while. I was doing some digital detoxing, trying to remove whatever I don’t use and lessen my online presence as much as I can. The blog just felt too much at that moment so I took it down.
It’s back online now and everything is available to read and share again. I did some detoxing and much-needed cleaning. Everything’s back to normal now.
Zen Browser
Link
Andrew Tate
Quote
I think John Mulaney made the observation: “Trump is a poor person’s idea of what a rich person looks like. Yeah, I’ve got gold taps.” And I think so Andrew Tate is like a 14 year old boy’s idea of what masculinity might look like.
Jimmy Carr on The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Podcast
Friendship circles
I think the way Google+ worked was the nicest between social networks. Remember the circles? We would add every friend or person in a circle and we could choose what to share with each circle.
Sometimes some people were included in various circles and we could choose to share stuff with various people based on what information or material we wanted to share. That was nice. It was a replica of what we actually have in real life regarding our friendships.
I think social networks and microblogging services often try hard to give us a real-life experience and Google+ was the nearest we had ever.
But it was a social network after all and it was operating under Google so it was a nightmare regarding privacy and user rights, I still wouldn’t use it but the concept was very nice. If I had to use a social network, and there was a Google+-ish option, I would definitely choose it.
Is it necessary?
I’m only one step away from deleting this blog and it’s so easy for me. I have no attachment to it. I no longer see any purpose to sharing what I think about stuff and I’m certain absolutely nobody cares what I think or experience.
Not that it’s bad. I don’t mean nobody cares so it’s bad, I mean nobody cares as nobody shouldn’t care. Why someone would care at all if I experience some inconveniences or liked something or have some comments on a post someone wrote? If I deleted this blog now, nothing in world would change.
And again, I’m not saying this out of sadness or anything, it’s just a fact. Nothing is special about this blog, I’m just a little human in an infinite universe writing words some other humans can understand. Is it necessary to have a blog or write about stuff or share your ideas? Absolutely not.
However, this blog has something special for me that prevents me from deleting it. That one step away from deleting it is that it made me some amazing friends along the way that I probably couldn’t enjoy their friendship if I wasn’t publishing it. I have the pleasure of talking and communicating with some awesome people because of this blog.
We usually comment on each other posts via email (and other messaging tools) and share our ideas about various topics. I realized I have so much in common with my friends and it’s so satisfactory. I could delete this blog right now. It’s few click away from a static empty page and nobody would get hurt. I would even save time and energy by deleting it but I’m still tempted to make more friends, have more conversations about topics me and my friends are interested in, and have the courtesy of experiencing these joyous human relationships I have.
So again, is it necessary to have a blog or write about various matters? No. Does anyone need it? No. Do I want it? Heck yeah.
Am I an engineer?
Recently, instead of using entrepreneur as a bio, I tend to introduce myself as an engineer. This is because my main job right now isn’t my business, rather is an engineering position in a company. But I was thinking to myself, am I an engineer because I’m practicing it or because I hold a degree?
So if someone has an engineering academic degree but practices medicine or philosophy or maybe is a salesman, is that person still an engineer or not? I’ve been called an engineer even when I was not working an engineering job, so I think people really don’t care about the title, as opposed to doctors who I think really care, but the question remains, is someone with an engineering degree who doesn’t practice, still entitled to be called an engineer?
I know in some places you should get a special license to practice or be called an engineer, and I think it makes sense somehow, but in general, what should we do? Should we call people with an engineering degree (who don’t practice it) an engineer? What about those with experience and those who practice an engineering job but don’t have a related academic degree?
I personally think we should call both engineers. Wikipedia calls engineers “professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets, and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost.” So I think it’s that simple, one who fits in this description is an engineer.
In 1961, the Conference of Engineering Societies of Western Europe and the United States of America defined “professional engineer” as follows:
A professional engineer is competent by virtue of his/her fundamental education and training to apply the scientific method and outlook to the analysis and solution of engineering problems. He/she is able to assume personal responsibility for the development and application of engineering science and knowledge, notably in research, design, construction, manufacturing, superintending, managing, and in the education of the engineer. His/her work is predominantly intellectual and varied and not of a routine mental or physical character. It requires the exercise of original thought and judgment and the ability to supervise the technical and administrative work of others. His/her education will have been such as to make him/her capable of closely and continuously following progress in his/her branch of engineering science by consulting newly published works on a worldwide basis, assimilating such information, and applying it independently. He/she is thus placed in a position to make contributions to the development of engineering science or its applications. His/her education and training will have been such that he/she will have acquired a broad and general appreciation of the engineering sciences as well as thorough insight into the special features of his/her own branch. In due time he/she will be able to give authoritative technical advice and assume responsibility for the direction of important tasks in his/her branch.
(source)
I wonder what majority of people think? And is there such confusion or disagreement in other titles and fields?
RIP Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen (along with Randy Suess) is the inventor of BBS. Bulletin Board System (or BBS) is what many of us used to communicate, upload, download, and share stuff with each other. Many traditional BBS servers moved to the Internet in early 2000s and that was when many of us started to know it.
Personally, my life would have been a lot different if it wasn’t for BBSes. I used to play games on them, used to communicate with a lot of people using message boards, and learned a lot about computers. I was fascinated about them and I still am.
Even though I’m much younger than many other people who used to use them, I still remember using dial-up late at night (when my parents went to sleep) to check boards. Ars Technica calls Ward the architect of our online age, and he is indeed. Many of us are owed our IT careers to him, many of us know what we know about Internet and computers because of him.
And remember I got to know BBSes a lot later than many other people, I used BBS a lot less than many other people and I haven’t experienced what many other people have yet it’s one of the best experiences I have regarding to computers and some of my best memories involve these boards.
I’m pretty sure some older people have a lot of amazing stories regarding BBSes and I would be so happy to hear them.
Unfortunately Ward passed away few days ago on 2024 October 11. May he rest in peace. Thank you for everything sir.
Give me the menu!
I don’t know how common is this around the world but I’ve recently been to a lot of restaurants where they’ve stopped giving people a physical menu! Now I see QR codes everywhere where I have to scan to see the menu.
I’d like to see myself as a tech guy but this is nonsense. Give me the menu. I don’t want to scan some QR code or be forced to give away my phone number so I can order some coffee or eat some cake.
Maybe I don’t have a smartphone, maybe I don’t have cellular or Wi-Fi connection, or maybe I simply don’t want to scan some random code in a random place and visit a random web site. And I was almost tolerating all of that until I was told that some cafes and restaurants force people to sign up on a third-party web site to get the menu and they are forced to pay online for the meals.
It’s wrong at every level. I want the printed menu. Maybe some people are fine with this or even like it but I’m not and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people like me so even if you’re doing this privacy-violating menu thing, have some printed normal menus so concerned people like me can eat. We pay you too, you know?