Here’s Batch 2.
Dub Be Good to Me by Beats International
She Drives Me Crazy by Fine Young Cannibals
Don’t Forget My Number by Milli Vanilli (We all loved this one even after the scandal)
Ooops Up by Snap
I need you by BVSMP … Yo Hey … Check this out … I remember when this was performed on stage by Walter and Charlie …… I think for Fathers’ Day 
More will come … Again!
I am going to be putting up videos to songs that we used to jam to in high school. Every time I hear them nowadays, they take me back to that time. Walter and Charlie were the clowns that performed or maybe lip synced them. Walter, I know you are somewhere out there. I hope you see this!
Below are a few :
Dial My Heart by The Boys
The Way You Love Me by Karyn White
Sensitivity by Ralph Tresvant
Close to You by Maxi Priest
More will come!
I hope this will help someone someday for it took me a minute to figure out. I am working on a web application that requires the addition of datasets that can be unique or similar. Each set is to be displayed on a unique row and each row will display data that is being pulled from a DB, a grid framework per se. Users of the system will be able to alter the contents of the rows and rearrange the order of the rows on the fly before they can save them back to the DB.
I stored everything in multidimensional arrays and when adding new sets or new rows with keys that already exist in the sequence hindered the correct reordering of them. Example:
The grid is comprised of
$set1[$key1][1]= $array1;
$set2[$key2][1] = $array2;
with $key1 and $key2 being numerical.
Adding a new row of $set1[$key1] at the end of the grid, i.e.,
$set1[$Key1][2] needed to generate the following order:
$set1[$key1][1]= $array1;
$set2[$key2][1] = $array2;
$set1[$Key1][2] = $array1;
However, no matter what I did to populate the arrays sequentially, the order reverted to:
$set1[$key1][1]= $array1;
$set1[$Key1][2] = $array1;
$set2[$key2][1] = $array2;
The easiest fix I could find (I know several others are out there) to achieve the goal was change the keys from numerical to strings. I did that by combining them and separating them by a glue character (-, @, _, etc.). The result was:
$set1[$key1_1]= $array1;
$set2[$key2_1] = $array2;
$set1[$Key1_2] = $array1;
To process the data afterward, I split the keys into an array by taking into the account the glue character that I used.
A lot of times I get asked about our story. How it started, where we met, etc. Usually my face gets red and the words refuse to come out of my mouth. I am going to try to put a short pictures storyline together and refer all future questions about the subject to here. This is how it goes:
I met her 9 years ago at SIU; thanks Ayum, I owe you big time. Due to reasons that are not important, we couldn’t be together. However, we remained friends and kept in touch after she left. We even visited each other!
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This was in Pensacola, FL where she moved after she graduated. I think that was when I realized that she is going to be my wife one day, even though we were just friends. |
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She came and visited me in Carbondale. That was the first time I cooked for her. I think I might have ignited something in her or struck a chord when she tasted the food that I made. |
Afterwards, we kept in touch but we got disconnected for a while. She moved to Chicago to go to Graduate School and we lost contact. I called her Mom and she gave me her contact information. Thank you Mrs. Lawrence (I owe you big time too).
| I attended her graduation from Graduate School and that was when we started to be an item. |  |
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We both looked beyond the obstacles and decided to give it a try. |
| We took it to the next level. |  |
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And we eventually landed here. |
A lot has been left out since the journey took almost a decade so far. For me, what is important is that it is just the beginning of a very long journey with the love of my life, my peace of mind and my trophy of trophies. She is all the aforementioned; a million other words put together will not do justice to what she means to me.
I love you Mrs. Gasim
Happy Fathers’ Day to all the fathers out there.
I wrote the following poem a long time ago (2000) to my late father. It’s not here for awes or complements; It’s my gift to him on this day.
It’s been over nine years since you were gone
A fact that is always on my mind I can not condone
I don’t know if this will get to you but I have to let it out anyway
I have been holding it inside hoping it would go astray
However, my efforts to forget went in vain
Nothing compares to the way I feel but agony and pain
Whenever I remember the way you smiled I break down in tears
Your laugh was always the thing that wiped out my fears
I still remember the day you left like yesterday
I always wish I knew, maybe I could stand in your way
I know it was beyond our powers to change our fate
Nothing good on this earth stays or lingers as was said
I get so happy whenever I have you in my dreams
I wake up weeping though realizing it is not what it seems
I just hope that I would grow up to be half the man you were
touch souls the same way you did and be always fair
I miss you father and will always have you on my mind
The day you left I lost my best friend, a person very hard to find
I just wish that one day we will meet again my dear
I just have to work hard to get to where you are or near
Dear Mr. President,
I hope this letter finds you in good health. My name is Haitham Gasim and I am a very proud resident of this great country that you are the head of. I felt like writing to you to let you know how appreciative I am of everything you have done so far. Furthermore, I wanted to show my optimism of my future and humanity’s future in general. I am not sure if it will get to you in person, but I am a big supporter of giving credit when it’s due.
I think your biggest strength is not the fact that you are articulate, cool or accommodating of different views, but rather your care and respect for “THE PEOPLE”. You always talk about the plight, the needs and the rights of the people, regardless of who they are and what they stand for. An example of that is your quest to provide for everyone affordable healthcare, better environmental conditions, etc.
Your recent speeches are historical and will be reckoned with for decades to come. Personally, my own family solidifies the points you were trying to make in Cairo. People can live together in peace regardless of their backgrounds as long as they respect that fact that those particular backgrounds might exhibit fundamental differences. Concentrating on what is common and emphasizing what is mutually exclusive might actually result in diminishing the effects of the aforementioned differences.
I know a lot of people have had high hopes ever since you got elected and have expected you to fix everything that they think is broken right away. I also know that those hopes keep shrinking as long as nothing or little is being done. I think what needs to happen is for them to ask themselves what realistic steps or events need to happen before an issue is fixed or changed.
By nature, humans are very skeptical and unwilling to change anything that might be of inconvenience to them or might disrupt the natural flow of things. Conforming to a certain ideology and basing one’s opinion and decisions on it, while disregarding practicality and sense, will mostly lead them to hit some kind of a wall or no where. One should always consider trying different shoes or vessels before they get on a path. One should always think about what is good for not only them, but everyone and everything that surrounds them.
To conclude, I want to request that you keep up your remarkable guidance and vigilant pursuit of a better life for everyone. I want to assure you that I understand the power of the forces that you are up against and that my support for your causes will never fade away. May all the seeds you have planted and the initiatives you have established come to fruition. May you and your family be safe and sound.
Yours faithfully,
Haitham Gasim
I think I am a pretty reasonable person and I try my hardest not to let things get to me. I am a people’s person and I am always looking for news from family and friends. However, when the only thing I am getting from certain folks is just forwards, it annoys the heck out of me.
I keep scratching my head trying to remember the number of letters I had received back in the day, when there was no email and no internet, that started with “FW: ” . Letters that had pictures of kittens attached, religious scripture or even just requests to put the letter back in the envelope and forward it to everyone that I have addresses for (if I don’t do so, I will have bad luck for x number or years). The answer is always zero!
What happened to “Dear Haitham, how are you? I hope this email finds in you good health.” or “What’s going on man? I was thinking about you and thought I would say hello.”? Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of those and they always make my day, but I also receive a lot of what I am talking about and I don’t read them. I just delete them before opening them sometimes.
I AM always looking forward to hearing from you and hearing your news. I want to know how your job is going and what the kids are up to nowadays. I want to be here for you when you are down , wanting an honest opinion about what you are going through, or when you want to share your joy with me.
I AM NOT interested in Microsoft paying me a $100,000, why the end of time is here, or the funniest little johnny jokes. When I have time during my day, I can get all of that with a few keyboard strokes and a mouse click.
If I had done that in the past to you, please forgive me. I promise it won’t happen again.
Yours truly,
Haitham
I was at the post office today to send off a package. I had to pull out my card to pay for what it cost and right after that I left without noticing that I dropped my wallet. I got in my car and started driving back to work and then realized that my wallet was not on me.
As some of you know, Erin lost had her purse stolen a while ago and we had to go through a lot of chaos to remedy that situation. All of that flashed through my mind while turning around to go back to the post office. I got there 5 minutes after the fact and walked to the clerk who served me earlier. He mentioned that he hadn’t seen a wallet on the counter although he remembers me paying with a credit card. I walked back to my car and started looking inside hoping that it’s under the seat or some where in there. It was no where to be found!
All of a sudden, a gentleman walks up to me and tells me that he though that the picture on the driver’s license in the wallet he found looked like me. He said he saw me walking around weary and realized that the lost wallet was mine.
I thanked him and told him he didn’t know how much what he did meant to me. Being the idiot that I am, I forgot to ask for his name or anything for I was still full of anxiety. He could have done anything he wanted with it, but his kindess prevailed. People like him remind me that goodness do exist. Hopefully I will be able to return the deed some day back. Thank you Sir!
Today marks another shot for me to finally quit smoking. It has been a habit of mine for quiet some time (15 years) that I have struggled to kick. I am hoping this time is my last and most successful match and I am willing to give it my all.
I also know that I am the one who has full control over it; support and patches are helpful, but unless I develop and maintain the will and power to conquer it, everything else is irrelevant. I have quit in the past a few times and when I think about it nowadays, I can’t really put my hands on why I went. I just say it was boneheaded idiocy.
Concluding on a good note, I feel better already. The side effects of the nasty habit (different from one person to another) are slowly diminishing. It is mostly just metal nicks and bruises from the counter-punches!
My site is finally up. Thanks to Ms. Jennifer Oster (jennoster.net) who did a great job to make it look this way. For the past couple of years there was nothing but a coming soon page. I had wanted so badly to put something up because, with everything that has been going on around me and around the world, I always have thoughts buzzing around in my brain and would want to write them down somewhere. I think blogging satisfies just that!
This will be just a place where I am going to talk about my life and what I encounter, whether it’s work, fun, politics, etc. I’m hoping that I can share my thought and engage in dialogue with the poeple that I care about and those who just stumble on here.
Please Feel free to comment or just drop a line. Just be careful with what you write ’cause you never know who you will offend. As for me, it’s my site dammit! Just kidding.