Ruby on Rails

If there is a programming graphic that stands out, it has to be the logo of Ruby on Rails.

Life is very interesting!

Life is really interesting. I can remember the day when I first sat down in front of the computer, scared that if I pressed something wrong, I would probably blow the computer or something like that.

I remember the very first day I went to an IBM exhibition and asked an IBM representative, probably the dumbest question on earth. A question that I will probably never forget-- "Can I use this computer to do my homework."

Thanks to Shahzil, one night I got to open my hands on his computer as he slept. (Thanks man)

Then I remember the day I walked daringly into an Internet cafe and asked the "techie" guy another dumb question--"Do you think I can learn HTML?"

"Sure you can," was his answer. He grabbed a few brochures and told me that classes are about to begin at a nearby location. The problem was, I did not have enough money to register for the classes being offered. I thought to myself, "forget about it."

Weeks later, I found myself looking at the source code of a web page trying to make sense of it, all by myself. I had no idea what the "<" and the ">" signs meant, and why things looked so much "prettier" when the HTML rendererd.

"How can this ugly looking text turn into a neatly aligned page? Where are all the colors coming from?" I asked myself. Honestly it all looked like a foreign world.

Curious and kinda lost, I copied and pasted "html" into Yahoo! and came across a web site offering HTML help. Hungry as I was for knowledge, I started reading page after page on the site.

Since then, I have just never looked back and kept learning technology after technology.

Today, I feel I have learned so much that its becoming increasingly difficult for me to put on paper--therefore I am writing this post in the hope of just dumping all my skills and projects on one page so I can myself start making sense of everything.

For starters I graduated last year with a dual degree:

1. Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) in Accounting
2. Bachelor of Science (Computer Information Systems)

While studying for my degree, I got a chance to lead and get involved in a series of very interesting and innovative projects. My goal always was (and currently is) to just learn, learn and learn. Belonging to an enterprenurial family, I always wanted to run my own business. Nothing is more agonizing to me than not being able to be creative. You can say I am one of those people who just cannot stand doing a repetitive work (like data entry unless its for my own project).

Working on so many diverse projects, My work ended up becoming my hobby and in my leisure time, I would just work and work. When I needed some time for myself, I would just work more, usually on planning some personal projects or learning a new technology.

Google: One company I wanted to work for
Although I always wanted to work for myself, back in my mind was a thought that if I ever need to work for any company, it would probably be Google. Microsoft wasn't my favorite company (at the time), and Yahoo! wasn't attracting me (now it does).

For my business communication class, I pulled up a Google job opening for "Software Engineer" and started preparing my resume for Google thinking that I will have to start somewhere, why not have the resume started at least.

Here's my cover letter that I wrote (I never sent it to Google). Keep in mind that this is not the cover letter I would send today if I had to.


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Google Human Resources Department
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: 650-623-4000
Fax: 650-618-1499

Re: Google.com Software Engineer Position (SRE)

Dear Google Team,

While reviewing the recent job openings advertising the position of Google.com Software engineer, I had a strong realization: this ad was targeting a person exactly like me. I am a “part ace coder, part adrenalin junkie”. I have a knack for discerning practical solutions immediately upon identification of a problem. I have been coding for years now, not to get bored with the “old design-build-review-test-ship-repeat routine“, but to quench the intense thirst that I have to acquire knowledge and skills about software engineering and systems automation. Yes, I am one of those software engineers who lives to manage complex networks and administer UNIX/Linux clusters.

Match my thirst with your search for a “top-notch thrill seeking” software engineer. Automation is my passion, synergies my goal and creative development my tool. My experience in various programming languages backed with years of practical development and technical consulting, provides me with the essential qualities that Google is looking for in its Software Engineers.

Over the years I have mastered stress management to help me solve urgent issues immediately without loosing my calm. Customized automation algorithms that I developed to save time helped me achieve new horizons in project planning, implementation and management. I strongly believe that my dedication and aptitude will only help Google move in forward direction.

Please review my enclosed resume. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely

Farhan Mashraqi

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Technologies I specialize in (working list)
Databases: Highly comfortable with

• MySQL (MySQL Replications, Clusters, Stored Procedures)
• Microsoft Access
• PostgreSQL
  
• mSQL

Extensively experinced in

• MySQL DBA
• MySQL Clusters and large scale MySQL Replications
• MySQL Benchmarking and Optimization
  

Programming/Scripting Languages
Significant Experience in:

• PHP
• Perl
• C++ and Visual C++
  
• C# and Visual C#
  
• Javascript
• ITL (Interchange Tag Language)
• AWK and GAWK
  
• BASH and Shell Scripting (CSH)
  
• Visual Basic
• Regular Expressions
  

Intermediate Experience in:

• RTML (Yahoo! Stores)
• Python
  

Operating Systems

• Unix
• Linux
• Fedora
• RHEL
• Windows (95-2000, ME, NT, XP)
  

Protocols / Distributed Systems / Markup Languages
Strong conceptual background in

• Internet
• TCP/IP
• UDP
• HTTP/HTTPS
• XML/RPC
• RSS
• EBRL
• NewsML
• WML
• WAP
• SOAP
• WSDL
• Data Mapping
• RDF
• CSS

Integrated Development Environments

• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 7.0
• Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0
• Zend IDE
• PHPEdit etc

GUI Toolkits

• Windows forms
• Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC)

Web Services Application Development
Significant experience in web services application development using C#, PHP, C++, Visual Basic utilizing XML/SOAP/WSDL.

Server Management and Networking
Extensive experience in

• DNS Management / Domain names
• Server Administration (Installation / Maintenance / Troubleshooting)
• Automation
• Management of Fail-over Load Balanced Clusters

Software
Advanced user of:

• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Access
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft FrontPage
• Adobe Photoshop®
  
• Adobe GoLive®
• Macromedia Dreamweaver®
• Macromedia Freehand®
• Macromedia Fireworks®
• Macormedia Flash®

Open Source Software Experience
Significant Experience with technical knowledge of over 40+ major Open Source software including knowledge of the software limitations

• PHPBB
• Interchange
• Drupal
• MovableType
• sed
• Vi/Vim
  

Server Software and Utilities

• Apache/HTTPD 1.0 - 2.0
  
• BIND 8.0 - 9.0
• GNUPG
• FTP / SFTP
• VIM, TAR, GZIP etc

Accounting Information Systems
Extensive Experience with:

• QuickBooks (Online and Offline)
• Turbo Tax and
• Accounting Information Systems.

Major Projects

• OpenEncyclopaedia (Under development): A Web 2.0 resource sharing system for organizing information online.
• DIBN: Designerz Integrated Blogs Network, a network of blogs based on MDMS (Multiple Domain Management System)
• DIIN: Designerz Integrated Information Network, a network of 6000+ Segment Targeted Portals™
  
• DINN: Designerz Integrated News Network: A fully automated network for organizing and delivering the world’s news in real time with 30 minute updates, approved to be indexed in http://news.google.com . DINN crossed 1,000,000 unique users within the first five months of its launch.
  
• DISN: Designerz Integrated Shopping Network:
  
• 3Clicks: Desktop Shopping Client Software
  
• StorePros™ web enables and manages product inventory, creates and updates product displays and shopping carts, monitors and records sales transactions and order fulfillment on an automated basis.
  
• Cellular-Store: Fully automated multiple E-commerce store management system for Cellular Accessories industry based on Interchange.
  
• 3Clicks ImageTransformer: For transforming bulk images into multiple formats such as ico, JPG, PNG etc
• Digital Watermarking Protection: Automated watermarking system to protect against intellectual property theft of copyrighted images.
• DzProcessor: MDMS (Multiple Domain Management System) capable of automating slave implementations based on a master implementation.
• DzMan: Generic database systems management and publishing system
• DzMon: XML based desktop software to monitor load, performance and usage of multiple Linux servers.
• DzRSS: Fully automated publishing and maintenance system for publishing 1,000,000+ feeds in RSS 2.0 and XML formats.
• Order Import Manager Module for StoneEdge® E-commerce software.
• MOEPI: Manual Order Entry and Posting Interface enabling suppliers to retrieve orders manually posted by their dealers.
• DzHelp: A Help Desk / Trouble Ticket System
  
• I2F: Automated system for generation and submission of daily product feeds based on heterogeneous open source based E-commerce systems (OSCommerce, Interchange etc) to Froogle (Google’s search engine for shopping).
  

More to come :)

Its coming

When I started this blog, I really wanted to post every day about what I am doing. I have just been so busy these days working on OE that I am not getting the time to post here. However, I promise I will do something about it.

So thanks for being patient and stay tuned :)

My Day In Review

Today was another interesting day in my life. I went to the "Meet the neighbor" meeting in Lavonia, GA for the first time with my wife and in-laws.

Yesterday, at the Friends of the Lavonia Library meeting, I volunteered to teach computer classes and gave some ideas for new ways to fundraise. What I learned there would shock both me and faeriebell. We were told that over the recent years the budget for books has been steadily declining and today it's less than the cost of stamp per capita in Georgia. This is something that all Georgians should be very worried about. If anything we should be increasing the budget rather than decreasing it. More on the situation and "buck for book" program at Faeriebell's blog.

Sir Richard Branson has launched an interesting staircycle today. The funny thing is that he is advertising "investment opportunities" on his site.

PRWeb has launched a photo PR service complete with tagging. Seems to me like Flick'r for press releases.

I lost my license key to Toolbar studio and after failing to get anyone on phone, I wrote them asking for my key. Hopefully it will arrive shortly.

Tax season is here and in case you haven't ordered 1099s for 2005 yet for your company, you can still order them at QuickBooks.com before Jan 20 to meet IRS deadline.

Poor Garfield (our cat) was sick today and we really hope she feels better after puking.

That's it for the day. Stay tuned for five weird/interesting things about me (tomorrow).

OE Tags: library tax 1099

One major screw up with Del.icio.us

Don't take me wrong as I love Del.icio.us. However, I cannot believe that you cannot tag anything with a space character in it. The reason being that at Del.icio.us the space character is used to separate the tagged keywords (pretty dumb). I often find that sometimes people use the period (.) character to separate keywords, while others use the underscore character (_) and so forth. The problem with this approach is that you cannot have two word tags and sometimes you simply need two or more words to describe something. It boggles my mind that the developers of Del.icio.us used the space character as a separator.

That's why when I was working on OpenEncyclopaedia.com, I decided to use comma as a separator (no heavy thinging here, just common sense) so users can tag a post with keywords that contain multiple words.

Security and Privacy at Risk

"I cannot believe this is true," were the words of my wife that caught my attention. "What's wrong?" I asked her. What she said next left me speechless.

She was reading a news article published on Chicago Sun Times online*. The article reports that anyone using a cell phone or a land line phone is at risk of having their phone records sold to just about anyone for less than $150.

A screenshot of locatecell.com selling personal phone records.

Unfortunately, it seems as if the law currently doesn't prohibit the sale of these personal records, though it certainly feels like a gross invasion of one's privacy. While your financial information is protected under law from such "pretexting" no law exists to protect the personal information that can be leaked from such deceptive tactics.

Curious, I pulled up the web site of locatecell.com and was once again shocked. This time by their claim that they can provide the cellular and land line phone records of anyone within "1 to 4 hours during business days on orders received by 5pm."

It's time for phone companies to make it harder for prying eyes to get to our information.

Some, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York have already been working to pass legislation that will make sales of personal phone records illegal.

For our protection, there needs to be a waiting period and checks and balances in place to confirm that the legitimate owner of these records requested the information.

Another possibility to better protect our phone records, and thus privacy, would be to have the phone records sent only to the address on file with the phone company. This would prevent companies like locatecell.com from duping the phone companies out of our records.

This serious threat affects not only private citizens but also our law enforcement, military and national security. Something needs to be done.

* The Chicago Sun Times article can be accessed online at http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privacy05.html

Farhan Mashraqi is a computer and Internet security consultant in Lavonia Georgia and can be reached at comphelpsc@yahoo.com

Say Hello!

Time comes when every blog has to make their first post. Well, here is mine.