Geekeria is celebrating the glorious system administrator day !

Everyone is being nice to geeks around the globe, bringing them coffee and candies, no one is complaining about their msn not working – everyone waits patiently for the internet connection to be back – no one is infecting their computers with stupid viruses, all servers and computers are humming quietly, happily and obediently , bugs are taking the day off , no one is asking stupid questions, instead people are spending their day reading the manuals patiently written by the sysadmin instead of reading junk from the web – oh such a glorious day it is !

*wakes up to the error sound generated by microsoft windows*

If you happen to live in Lebanon – you are one of the few people left on planet earth and in outerspace who get to enjoy the art of buffering YouTube videos. ( yes, even in outerspace, they got now a faster connection than lebanon who happens to be in the middle of the planet between all those internet cables )

But fear no more – YouTube and in a nice move in their new player , showed a great deal of empathy toward the lebanese people – by adding *drum roll* SNAKE ! yes – snake as in snake the game – to their player.

So what happens now, is that you click on the youtube link and instead of waiting and waiting and uffting and effing or instead of -god forbids – getting some work done in the meantime you can simply start playing snake !

Procrastinating while procrastinating i tell you ! :evil: muwahhahaha

How to :

With web2.0 the Fremium business model gained quite some popularity and now whenever someone comes up with a new model a “nium” is added to the end and ta-da, you got yourself an indisputable model !

In this spirit, i want to introduce you to a brand new business model being widespread in tech called “pain-assium”
As you might have guessed, this model is based on the idea of “pain in the ass”
While this, under special circumstances and for some people might be a good thing, in software – trust me , it is no way enjoyable – here is how it goes :

Words like FTP / VPN / RDP / SSL / SMTP / DNS  and many others are included in geeky conversations and their meaning is taken for granted . Our jargon becomes heavy with tech words and sometimes we are not aware that actually the normal human facing us might not know what “FTP me means”

Another interesting fact is that many non-techies are crossing to the geeky side – blog owners – eMarketers – HR – social media experts – all those people with a non-tech background are starting to use more advanced technology tools

I  am stating the above based on facts and the number of friends who acquired a hosting and by the type of questions i get as freelancer or from friends – no one wants to know how to burn a CD anymore or how to fix winword, they all want to know now how to setup FTP / how to configure their own mail / how to access their home computer from work / how to configure the wirless network at their home and of course how to bypass security at work :evil:

All those tasks , if you look at them are worth an IT certificate !  yet somehow and amazingly people are shamed to ask because many times they are bullied, laughed at by the geeks or simply “dismissed”  #shameOnYouFellowGeeks !

Lately, i’ve been asked many times from les “nouveaux e-Riches” aka new hosting owners many questions on file transfer and FTP and how can they use their unlimited hosting space to send large files, do online backup, file sharing and such – that is why i am putting it in a post !

This post is also dedicated to a special certified web designer who strongly believes that FTP stands for File transfer person and who thinks that i should go manually take the file from his office – this office happens to be in one of lebanon’s most high-trafficed areas ( phone support didn’t help )

So without more blablablaying here is what you need to know about FTP

Abir aka @abzzyy, a fellow lebanese blogger wrote a damn good/hilarious post about the sucky situation of our phone network during the world cup games.

to quote her :

“What shocked me and left me with a huge sarcastic sad smile on my face, was the fact that the mobile coverage in Beirut was down.
As if the assassination days are back… No one was able to call, receive or sms. Even our sorry ass wap  connection was down.
I mean Brazil and Argentina lost big boohoo, but of course we as brazilian by origin and blood we will be bombarded with condolences calls or with mockery calls by our German or Holland originated friends. It is not enough that the network coverage sucks already… Noo, we need half of the lebanese people calling the other half, to really test the strength and the infra super structure of both Alfa and MTC. ”

You can check the full post here : Football assassination

In the replies – a sarcastic yet true comment stated that we don’t complain and we don’t demand improvement of service and that’s why we will be stuck in this shitty situation.

This of course brought that little evil monster in me and i called  the support of my phone service provider (mtc) and well – i can say the conversation went in a pretty sarcastic way :evil: – I was recording it on purpose to share it with you – here is how it went :

MTC Call

and please please please – call mtc or alfa – get creative in your complaints, record and share them ! we can collect the recordings , vote for the best ones and have some free fun while getting our “voice” heard. After all they are charging us very very high fees for really really shitty service ! ano come on ! the number of users on the “network” is tiny compared to other countries – this is not a “technology challenge” they have to solve – just an investement that needs to be made and it is really crucial to be able to make phone calls in many situations – imagine someone had an accident, needs urgent medication or you urgently have to share some info – it is not acceptable to have a communication blackout in the whole freaking country for 30 mins for example !
Those 2 posts might be sarcastic – but the issue is very serious – COMPLAIN ! IT IS FREE !