Berakhir sudah Ramadhan..
Selamat tinggal Ramadhan .. sedih jugak sebenarnya meninggalkan Ramadhan kali ini — mungkin sebab Ramadhan kali ini lebih bermakna dari yang dulu2– OK I have to admit I was not terawih regular before..selalu skip especially yang hujung2 tu.. Tiap2 hari kami yang dok di Apartment “Sri Wangi” Riyadh , berbuka bersama kemudian terawih pun bersama beramai2 ke surau di hadapan rumah. Imamnya al-hafiz so solat terawih kami memang lengkap 30 juzuk bacaannya sepanjang Ramadhan– terbayang2 angan2 suatu hari nanti anak2 menjadi hafiz dan hafizah walaupun perjalanan masih jauh — Imran dan Sabrina akan masuk ke sekolah Arab 11 hari lagi (Imran keluar dari Multinational School — he told his teacher that he moved because he wanted to be a good Muslim! That was exactly what I repeatedly told him — explaining about the move to the new school to get him mentally prepared for the new school) — after a year of soul searching+ fact finding we decided they better off going for “a classical education” (hey! they like watching The Smurf too!) and science + math and english can always be homeschooled .. Dah terbayang masalah yang akan kami hadapi di sekolah baru memandangkan ilmu agama kami yang cetek ditambahkan lagi dengan “arabic vocabulary” kami yang masih “limited”. Tapi kami percaya dalam perjalanan menuntut ilmu ni — yang penting usaha dan banyak berserah kepada Allah insyaallah akan ditunjukkan jalan 
Sambung cerita puasa , anak2 makin membesar — Imran , 7 tahun Oktober 18 ni buat kali pertama puasa dan cukup sebulan! Seronok agaknya bersama rakan2 sebaya walaupun liat nak bangun untuk sahur dan solat subuh. Ammar skipped few days of school because abahnya liat nak bangun 7am untuk hantar ke sekolah (Saudi working hours untuk Ramadhan pukul 10am – 4pm! ) Sabrina pun sibuk ke hulu hilir dengan 2 rakan sebaya main bersama dengan adiknya Alysha.
Aktiviti Ramadhan yang lain? Seperti biasa resipi.net hosting overloaded! Kami berpindah lagi buat ke sekian kalinya –trafik naik 4 kali ganda! Leceh sebenarnya kerja pindah hosting ni — ended up all other (at least 5!) websites have to be moved too..
Other than that I got back into old hobbies — electronics but this time its more serious — bought few books from Amazon dan other gadgets like multimeter, oscilloscopes, Arduino microcontroller and the mission– to learn building a robot! . Cisco CCIE project also still ongoing now I have 5 routers with NM-4A/S as frame relay switch + the NM16/A as the terminal server — maybe considering CCNP first to force myself get into it seriously.
Raya? Today is the first day!
Akhir kata Salam Hari Raya dari kami sekeluarga di Riyadh -Maaf Zahir dan Batin !
Some pictures here .
Power of Positive Parenting — Free Online Course Materials — USU OpenCourseWare
Just found an interesting online parenting course, the good news is ..its FREE.
Power of Positive Parenting – Free Online Course Materials – USU OpenCourseWare
Read MoreCourse Description
This course has been developed using portions from several of the books, videos, and audio products produced by Glenn Latham. These materials will give parents the skills necessary to raise children well. Glenn Latham said of his book, The Power of Positive Parenting, which is his definitive book, upon which this course is built, that it has been “subjected to more independent, scientific scrutiny than any parenting book in print today. In every instance, it has been shown to be an effective parenting tool. For that reason, it has been adopted by parent training programs, schools, university professors, early childhood and head start programs, and governmental programs as the basic text for teaching parenting skills.”
Utah State University OpenCourseWare would like to thank Dr. Latham and his family for providing us with the materials and permissions to make this course available. Please note: This course is licensed under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Creative Commons license. This means that derivative works may not be made from this content without first obtaining permission.
Closing my typepad account
I am closing my typepad account very soon for the following reason:-
i) Too much limitation in typepad, having my own wordpress website I can easily edit and choose whatever I wanted to do . It seemed that typepad does not allow me to do so + the widgets sucks too.
ii) I got a new “dedicated virtual hosting” for my wife’s resipi.net. For the last Ramadhan, the traffic doubled , CPU processes went up too high due to number of mysql queries (you should know why) + I was irritated with lack of “friendly” support on the previous hosting – so for x times in 5 years, resipi.net was relocated to another hosting. Having a dedicated hosting, I took the chance to close all other hosting accounts that I have (and I thought hmm I should close this typepad account too!) and moved them here.
So enough said , I am diverting you back to my old aminur.info
Perantau.net reborn!
When I first got the idea (and later got accepted!) to work abroad in Saudi Arabia – I always knew that I need a new web project for our group of friends who work almost anywhere (in this planet earth!) so that they can share experiences, pictures and tips living abroad.
Most of them are people that I knew and some I have worked with since mid 90s (good old days!) and we kept in touch via email -sharing laughter, tips and also changing work opportunities .
Thinking it over , why should I limit the scope among those people at subcon ?
So then came Perantau.net!
To cut it short , the website was once boring until one day ummi decided to take over from me
Looks lot nicer isn’t it??
My Favourite Windows Tool
I just can’t live without these tools! (literally speaking of course!) Arrange randomly ( I just can’t decide!)
#1 MyNotesCenter 
Price :24.95 Its not free yet the most useful tools for my daily work. All notes, scripts,license info, passwords which are used most of the time for my works arranged in tree like organization. Automatically loaded once my PC is started and saved before logging off.
For those who are budget concious may consider this TreePad
VIM
Old fashion guy like me still prefer Vi! 
Ethereal http://ethereal.com/
Sniff sniff! Best network troubleshooting tools around (free punya laaa) ? 
Irfanview http://www.irfanview.com/
A light but powerful image viewer! Being a support engineer (a lot of time) I have to send screen captures of problems to Product Line, view image files (I know whats in your head!) and Irfanview always been the handy tool. 
Putty http://www.putty.nl/
I tot I tee a putty cat! I don’t think it needs more introduction.
PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.
Subnet Calculator
There are a few but Solarwinds’ is my favourite. Its free too! 
Network/Unplugged http://www.mobiliti.com/netUP.html 
Its not free and installed in all notebook in my organization. What its all about?
Network/Unplugged provides a comprehensive and automatic synchronization and backup solution for today’s work force. Users can operate in a Virtual Network environment when detached from the network, making Network/Unplugged’s synchronization solution extremely easy to use. Network/Unplugged’s proprietary technologies enable fast synchronization and backup (including outlook pst files) ensuring that only the portions of files that have changed are transmitted during synchronization and backup including outlook. Network/Unplugged provides the enterprise a cost effective software solution that is lightweight and scalable with deployment and administration support. Features in Network/Unplugged 5.0 * Open File Backup for PST Files * Offline Files and Folders * Incremental File Backup and synchronization * Adaptive file level differencing * Synchronization over internet
http://www.realvnc.com/
I haven’t use this for ages (it was my favourite maybe 10 years ago!) but recently there was a request for a free solution for a remote PC control from a customer , so here it is. 
Qcheck http://www.ixiacom.com/solutions/display?skey=qcheck
Qcheck – Network Performance Measurement What’s good-looking, powerful, improves your quality of life, and is FREE?
Qcheck, the network troubleshooting utility from Ixia, slices, dices, and checks network response time, throughput, and streaming performance. It even runs anywhere-to-anywhere traceroute!
Read MoreSummit Astronomy Fair
Do you know things that I would always try to avoid?
Few of them but I will name 1 for today – Watch depressing movies!
Titles that I can remember:-
1.Legend of the Fall
2.Casino
3.When a Man Love a Woman.
and..
Did I tell you that our streamyx was down for 2 days?
Darn! Anyway I hate having depressing news here so lets talk about my trip to Summit USJ for the Astronomy Fair 2005.
It was Sunday 11am, reached there as promised with friends from
www.falak-online.net and met Tommy ( I really have a lot of respects on him, very friendly , enthusiastic astronomer!) and later Shah (help him with Mr. Looi to place the gigantic LX200 to its mount! ,see picture) , botok (old friend of Ittutor.net finally met after so many years!) and of course CK of Perseid ( I finally bought something from! him a finderscope + a 15mm GSO eyepieces).
Some story about CK, I have sent dozens of email to him asking for quotes for telescopes, he answered patiently in details (same as Sufen of Stargazer + Jason of Trifid Optics) but at the end of the day I didn’t buy any from them! Ouch!
Did anyone tell you that finding a right telescope probably much harder than to find a wife?
Is that true?
I left the scene in a hurry due to some guests coming to the house on that evening + a neighbour’s wedding that I need to attend.
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again..
