Mohamed Ibrahim’s Blog

I was watching the CNN headlines today when I heard that Halliburton - the largest contractor of the US army is moving its headquarters to Dubai. I always knew that Dubai has an excellent business system. They don’t take income taxes, neither from corporations nor from individuals. They break records doing business compared with almost all Arab counties, and it is one of the fastest places in the world to incorporate and run a business - their record is 3 days!

When I thought a little bit about the move of Halliburton, I believe they are attempting to position themselves in a good market, close the military bases, which is their current biggest customer and closer to China, the next future biggest customer.

Yesterday my elder daughter (2.5 years old), decided to help me. She cleaned my laptop with Lysol. She knows that when someone sprays that they are actually cleaning. She got a bottle of Lysol and emptied almost all the bottle on my almost new Dell laptop. The laptop was basically drenched and dropping lysol when I found it.

The part that got hurt most was the LCD as the lysol appears to have gone from under the screen border and went to the inside of the LCD.

Today I tried correcting this. I opened the laptop part by unscrewing the screen border. I actually unscrewed every possible screw until I reached the LCD panel itself, a glass plate plus a white border and some circuits. What I was wondering if I tried to remove the background, will that screen still function after putting it back ? My knowledge says that those screens work by light similar to the neon light in the background.

I researched it online for a little bit, and found that screen will cost approx $206 without shipping, when the laptop costed my $406 including shipping during ‘06 Thanksgiving. And since I decided to buy another one after this research, then I’ll take my chances with it this week, I’ll open it all the way to the end and see if I can clean anything, and will it work again.

Of course when I discovered this I tried to wipe as much as possible, unplugged the laptop and left it to dry. But it looks that it wasn’t enough.

So now what I ended up with is super white glowing streaks at the bottom of the screen as you see in the pictures.

Ballmer’s opinion was described in an article that vista’s sales tanked because of piracy. The same article also describes that Microsoft’s plan to increase the sales in emerging markets by tightening on the windows licensing.

I believe that Microsoft WILL SLIGHTLY increase sales in the US, Canada and Europe by tightening security, however in the emerging markets IMO the price of windows is outrageously high compared to what people make. Consequently businesses are going to buy but not the end user, unless Microsoft OEMs windows for pennies, which won’t add any revenue.

Let’s look from another perspective and see what people really want from the OEM industry, for example on Dell’s ideastorm. The most wanted feature is to OEM laptops and desktops with linux distributions. What’s amazing is that Dell is listening.

Re-iterating again - Will tightening windows licensing increase Microsoft’s sales? Wrongo its listening to people that will increase Microsoft’s sales! I really hope that HP and Toshiba as well as major laptop distributors take the same route as Dell and start providing laptops and desktops with open source software, including linux options as well as openoffice.org. And I really hope that Microsoft will interact with users, listen to requests and stop spreading their efforts thin chasing every other product in every industry, and focus on OS to produce a good quality operating systems that meets people’s requests.

Mark your calendars, 30 Minutes With EXiT will be presented on March 6th, 2007 6:00 pm at EXiT realty plus, Germantown MD. A dinner will be offered plus a presentation by Don Kane the regional owner of exit rights in Delaware and Maryland aka Exit Mid Atlantic - one of the fastest ever growing EXiT Realty regions.

This event is a presentation of why the EXiT Realty system excels over all other present real estate systems. It is the only system that provides 10% residual bonus from your sponsored realtors, a retirement plan as long as your sponsored realtors sell with EXiT and a beneficiary residual for your family.

Email me, call, reply or comment to reserve your spot.

I was reading the Realtor Magazine yesterday, and in it NAR is predicting that 2007 will be have a stronger real estate market than 2006. Honestly, it depends on which side of the story you’re at. If you’re a buyer, then YA its stronger for you and you will push the price down further.

I don’t think that the 2007 will be a stronger year compared to 2006. Take a look at the monthly report released by GCAAR, and let’s do simple math. In January 2006, there was 1851 active listings and 557 settlements for single family homes 30% of the inventory sold. In January 2007 there was 2571 active listings and 543 contracts 21% of the inventory sold. If any body has some sense to numbers, he will realize that the real estate market is going deeper and deeper in the hole! IT DIDN’T BOTTOM YET.

Let’s consider some facts here, the DC Metro area is always characterized by isolation in terms of its real estate market. It is always described to have a much stronger real estate market than any other area nationwide due to the continuous in-flow of people, which is supported by government jobs and government spending. This is in fact true by itself. Lets now imagine that this area has its market slowed down one third approximately (from 30% to 21%), what do you expect to happen in the other weaker areas? Its more like a car being slammed in a train. The car here represents that real estate market that was adding on to the values of properties without real support.

The census bureau released a report today saying that the sale of new homes dropped 20.1% comparing Jan 2006 to Jan 2007 PLUS OR MINUS 9.4%, and I think they should revise those numbers. I believe from the numbers I have that if the DC resale market fell approximately 33%, then the weaker areas nationally should have fallen for resale more - may be close to 40%. And lots of analysts claim that the new homes lead resale homes by six months THUS I would expect that the drop in new homes is actually at least 66% if not more.

A slow market is usually accompanied by the idea of I want to minimize my losses, especially if you are a seller. Do you know what you’re up to? You’re putting your property between the hands of someone you don’t know, and whom you never met before. Before renting your property make sure that you meet with the person. Make them fill an application in which they write the contact information for their employer, and give you the permission to talk to his or her employer for the purposes of employment verification. If you have a Realtor representing you, then make sure that he or she gets their credit report. My advise is do not rent to someone with major credit problems. My experiences with people who leased to someone with credit problems are not the best, and some involved suit cases.

Always hold enough deposit. In order to widen your market, you can allow people to make minor modifications as long as they put extra deposit, enough for you to correct those modifications in case they don’t remove it, and return the property to its original condition before leaving. Always remember that they need to consult you as the landlord and owner of the property before committing any modification into the home.

Always remember from the investment point of view as well as tenant rights, always offer an extended two year lease instead of one at the time of signing the lease. It can be a nice gesture from you, and if you found the correct tenant then it is always a good idea to keep them there as long as possible.

Did any one tell you that buying is financially better than renting ? Well, it really depends how does the real estate market look and how much are the interest rates. Currently, in the DC metro area the market is stable. No huge appreciation or price jumps take place. Not a huge crowd is building appreciation equity in their homes, however they feel they own the homes. Of course that feeling in itself is satisfactory to many of us. On the other hand, some do not really care whether they rent, or buy - its just that they live somewhere and that’s what they are looking for.

Ginnie Mae is one of the companies that help in making homes affordable. They have a buy versus rent calculator which I used to see whether in today’s market it is more affordable to own or to rent. The result was really not shocking to me, it is more affordable to RENT than buy.

This is a screen shot of the result I got numerically. I assumed the buyer is financing 100% of his home, which is the case with the majority of the buyers I sold homes for. Moreover, I assumes an appreciation of 1% a year, which is very realistic of what is going on in the real estate market now. I also assumed they are planning to stay in that home for 5 years. The majority of people in the united states move from their home after 5 to 7 years. I assumed the home costs $450K, and rents for $2000 which is a practical case of a home I know that costs that much and rents that much in Germantown, MD. And I believe this is a very reasonable assumption. The result is if you rent that home you will save $22K on the course of five years !.

Things will change a lot if you stay longer in your home. If you stay more than the average five to seven years, it will be cheaper to buy than rent. I assumed that the buyer will stay 10 years at this home, then the amount of savings in case he buys is $12K on the course of 10 years.

The case also looks totally different if the buyer places a down payment on his/her loan. The assumption of 7% for the interest rate was placed in the earlier two cases because to get 100% most buyer will actually end up with two loans. The first loan is 80% of the financed amount at around 6.5% and the second is 20% at around 8% or 8.5%. However, if the buyer will place a down payment then I assumed for the last case that the interest rate id 6.5%, which is inline with the today’s market. In both the five and ten years scenarios it turns out that buying is now cheaper. Savings from buying ranged from $8K for 20% down and 5 years to $93K for 30% and ten years stay.

So in summary, buying is not always the cheapest solution for you. There’s a lot of other factors to consider while making your choice.

It is very strange how many cultures use the moon to count time. I was always under the impression that the Islamic world are the only culture using the moon to define major events. However, I realized today that the Chinese are using the moon too to count time. When I googled Lunar new year I found this wikipedia page on lunar ears, which had the following cultures celebrate the start of lunar year:

* Chinese New Year
* Korean New Year
* Tết (Vietnamese New Year)

Other cultures use entirely different methods to determine their new year:

* Islamic New Year — This may be the only major new year celebration that is based on a purely lunar calendar.
* Rosh Hashanah — In the Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown on the 29th day of the month of Elul.
* Thai New Year (Songkran) — Although the traditional Thai calendar is also lunisolar, Songkran is determined on a purely solar basis.

I worked three hours yesterday trying to remove the snow, and frozed ice from my drive way. Generally, the amount of snow wasn’t bad, but the frozen ice was. The snow blower basically removed the unfrozen shim leaving a good layer of ice, that one can slide on over the black top.

Worked from home yesterday over our beloved VPN -that solves most of our problems. The snow removal compay J.B. Kline said they were overwhelmmed with the amount of work required to remove the ice. They attempted removing the snow from my neighborhood around 6:30 pm, and ofcourse failed.

Today I walked out at 6:00 am to test the shared part of the drive way, and see if there was any hopes of going to work. The only way I could make it out of the almost 100-150 yards of frozen ice is the back to the future way. The driveway had little part of black top shoinwg, which I cleaned yesterday and the rest is basically frozen ice with wheel marks from the neighbors close to the exit.

So I decided I’ll give it a shot. I ran with the car almost at 40 mph on the drive way, and once I reached the ice it was basically a slide guided by the old wheel marks till I bumped in a big pile of ice and then I was on the road.

See closings and delays

Moving a large number of files across the network is a very time consuming process. I tried to copy all my PhD work from Miami to Maryland. The total size compressed is 2.1GB. It uncompresses to a huge number of files, numerous source code, lots of small images, many pdf and PS papers.

I tried moving the directory tree with fish over KDE. The last time I did that it was between two computers in the multimedia lab and it took two and half days. Figuring out that I’ll be moving that same structure over the internet obviously would take weeks using KDE. Compressing the files over the hardrive then moving them is out of question since the hardfrive over there did not have the space.

After research, I found that one can pipe the output of tar over ssh, so basically tar -czf - ./ | ssh home tar -xzvf - would do the job.

Adding cvs files can be cumbersome especially if they are in a directory tree. The cvs tool although provides a lot of functionalities, yet recursive addition is not there.

There’s a couple of ways which one can achieve this only on linux or unix environments and that by either using xargs or awk utilities.

Using XARGS: find . | xargs cvs add
The only problem with that all the files found will be concatenated as a long string and passed after cvs add. After several trials, I found that not always this works out. An example is when one of the files has a space in its name.

Using awk: find . | awk '{print "cvs add \""$0"\""}' | bash
This one simply writes every line using awk, and passes them to a shell to be executed. This one always worked for me correctly.

I always use CVS over SSH. One wonderful addition that can make your life much easier is to use key authentication instead of password authentication. By this way cvs will not prompt you for the password for every action it attempts. Use cvs-keygen to generate a pair of keys on your local machine. Copy the id_rsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in your home directory on the server.

I always used CVS over pserver. Lately, I faced a problem with UBUNTU edgy. The cvsd wouldn’t execute checkouts. It only executed updates, commits and diffs. Basically it did everything except checkouts.

I tried cvs over ssh, and I actually found that it is much better than cvs over pserver. Although it is slower, yet, I don’t have to run a special service for cvs and the way cvsd operates, is by actually jailing cvs pserver due to security reasons. So it made more sense to me to run it over ssh.

To do that, one will need to set the variable CVS_RSH to ssh, and CVSROOT to :ext:UserName@host:/cvs/directory . Whether or not you can read the repository, or commit to the repository is determined by your account priveledges. In the old pserver way, all the repository belongd to the user cvsd and the group cvsd.

How to convert one acre to the corresponding square feet ? Use the Seven Eleven Rule :). One of the easiest rules to remember. Both numbers the seven and the eleven, if broken down will result in the 43560 sq ft, which is one acre. Here’s how.

The 43 sums to the 7, and 560 sums to 11.
Technorati Tags: acre, convert, square feet, sq feet, seven eleven, 7 11

Yesterday I listed the Phams house, 20412 Boland Farm Rd. The house is a beauty, assessed for taxes over 1 Million. We listed is for $1.1 Million and got a showing from the first day.

The Phams are building a Patio in the house. They took photos for their place yesterday and I posted them on my website as well as the MLS - it should be everywhere by now. The home listing contains the pictures just below the description.

The house is approximately 6000sq ft. It has a huge sunroom extending from the kitchen, an eat in area between the kitchen and the family room. The kitchen, eat in area, family room and the sunroom are open style with 12′ ceilings, which gives the feeling of humungus space.

Today I hosted the website for H&H in my basement computer running Debian + postgresql. The machine has been running for a while successfully. The trick behind that website is using the redirection provided by everydns.net . If you’re using Verizon business DSL or fios and have port 80 blocked consider everydns.net redirection.

The machine H&H should be converted to UBUNTU soon. I’ve been playing with UBUNTU and I like the fact that I have a pretty wide library of binaries, exactly as I have in debian however, with almost all new releases. My problems with Debian began when I tried to install PHP5 on the stable release. I ended up messing the installation because PHP5 is only available in the testing, and even the parts available in the testing branch did not cover all of the PHP5 basic libraries !. For example, I didn’t find the php cli package. When installed, and given that its testing, it did not correctly modify the config files in /etc and consequently didn’t run. I found myself really doing a lot of work that is already done for me if I switch to UBUNTU, and that’s why I will pick one calm night, and perform the upgrade.

I’ve been trying to do this for a while. Every time I get an error that modprobe can’t find fuse. Basically, after doing an apt-get and installing sshfs both libfuse2 and fuse-utils should be installed. However, on debian sarge (stable) one will get an error from modprobe complaining about the non-existance of fuse.

I had to do this:

apt-get install module-assistant
apt-get install fuse-source
cd /usr/src
m-a prepare
m-a a-i fuse
depmod -ae $(uname -r)
modprobe fuse


Its a continuous, non stop problem: How to reduce the CPU usage of queries?

I did so much work on optimizing the tables, creating indicies, showing postgres that queries are REALLY of the same nature as the indicies I created and convincing it to use a certain index. However, postgres is different from mysql. In MySQL one can write an sql select statement then force the DBMS to use a certain index during he query plan. In Postgres however, this is not possible. If the DBMS is not convinced that your query matches the index you created, it will do a sequential scan - even if you disabled the sequential scans.

What I found is that if you have a table like
TableName( col1 bigint, col2 character varying(32))
and an index idx(col1), then run a statement like
select * from TableName where col1=1
the EXPLAIN command says always that it will use a sequential scan. The caveat is that the DBMS understands the ‘1′ in the query as an integer and not a bigint, and so the index is incompatible with the query !!! - I’m using 7.4

The solution that I found for this is
select * from TableName where col1=1::bigint.

The second biggest optimization that I did was for queries like
select code from tab1 where key is null.
Whether or not there is an index on key the planner uses sequential scans. Again, the solution that I found is using a code which means null. So for example if key was integer, and we know that is always greater than 0, use -1 whenever you meant null. By that way the query will be
select code from tab1 where key=-1::bigint
if key was bigint. Only then the query planner uses index searches.

One of the very best ways that I also found today is to create a log file with the queries that you execute. The first step in optimization is to have real queries. The second important step is to use explain on real data. I created a function called query in my php scripts. This function based on a global flag will keep writing every query before it executes it in a log file.

One of the things that I noticed but did not optimize yet is queries that gets executed more than once in the same session. For example looking for a certain code in a listing. The way I’m imagining how I can avoid the double call to the DBMS is caching them in some stage, and checking the value before executing an expensive SQL query.

I’ll be focusing now on the interface. I’m planning lots of changes that would make the site more viewable specially on 800×600 screens, which I found that I’m getting lots of hits from people that are using them. Basically, close to 70% of people using my website have their screen resolutions 1280×1024 and less. 53% 1024×768, 10% 800×600 and 13% 1280×1024. The planned changes include a lot of CSS coding the remove a huge part of my HTML theming for the website.

All of the website updates are now running live. The database gets updated almost twice a day, all the front end is running much faster than before after I swithched to Postgresql. My sitemaps now show the date of update of everypage. Lots of work done, and I have lots more to do including optimization and tweeking the code to make it even faster. Also, lots of functionalities are coming soon that will make this website one of the unique real estate search tools in my area.

[photopress:Photo_070806_001.jpg,full]

While I was pulling weeds in my backyard I found this skin. Most likely it is there somewhere now. I know there is a plant called “Sheeh” in arabic that repels snakes and scorpions. By looking around in google, I found this page talking about snake repellents that names Flower of sulpher and wormwood plants as repelents too. I found 1400 seeds of the flower of sulpher on ebay for $2.5 and will give it a try.

The project for Kids Villa is working good, and hopefully the special exceptions will be successfully completed.