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“Unbaking” a Cake March 2, 2007

Posted by atharkhan in : Humor, Personal, Tech , add a comment

I used to work with a guy who had the greatest analogies. Every time we were about to work on a server, he would say “Remember, you can’t unbake a cake.”

This was his way of highlighting the importance of planning and beta testing before making a change to the production environment.

The concept applies to regular life as well. Before you open your mouth, remember “you can’t unbake a cake.” Well… let’s just say… I baked the biggest cake in history this Wednesday that desperately needs to be unbaked.

Luckily with humans there is an option of restoring from a backup, doing a rollback and clearing edits.  In other words, the concept of “forgiveness” may help unbake this one … over time.

German Shepherd Dogs March 1, 2007

Posted by atharkhan in : Personal, Review , add a comment

I grew up with German Shepherd dogs. In fact, when I remember my childhood, there was never a time when we did not have a German Shepherd. Now that I am able to afford a dog and have the space for it in my apartment, I am looking to find one that will offer the same kind of companionship and protection that I grew up with.

TRAINED DOGS

I thought it may be a good idea to check into some trained dogs. A quick web search yielded a couple that I contacted. I soon found out that although glamorous, these dogs were well out of my price range.

Harrison K-9 (Aiken, SC): http://www.harrisonk9.com

I checked out the Harrison K-9 website and called them as well. They seem to be importing their dogs from Germany where they have gone through some training. At the Harrison facilities, they undergo an additional 3 months of training and then are sold to the buyer. The price tag on these dogs is probably the highest I have ever seen but perhaps that is justified because they are the premier purveyors of trained German Shepherd Dogs in America. As per their website, the dogs sell for anywhere from $12,000 to $42,000. In an interview, Harrison CEO Harrison Prather said that the highest that he has ever sold a dog for was $50,000. Most of their dogs will fall between $14,000 to $18,000. The dogs are very good looking and seem well cared for. If I had the money, I would probably buy one of their dogs.

Florida K-9 Services (Orlando, FL): http://www.floridak9services.com

The first thing that the Florida K-9 representative did was to take my name and number down. I am not sure why that was necessary but they did anyway. Then she put me through to the lead trainer. The first thing I asked for was an estimated cost of the dog. Having just called Harrison K-9, I wanted to know how they compared to them. The trainer seemed a little miffed at my question but was still nice enough to talk to me. He explained that their trained guard dogs started out at $6,750 but their obedience only dogs cost between $2,250 and $3,000. They also emailed me a special page which contains a lot of useful information. Overall, I found the trainer and the company to be a little dismissive of me. But considering that they probably get hundreds of calls a day with a very low inquiry-to-sales ratio, the standard email and pricing page helps weed out the seemingly casually interested like myself. I mean, how can they really know that you are genuinely interested unless you lay out some cash. 

BREEDERS

There are a few breeders that I have contacted. I am planning to visit them and post their reviews on here. If you would like for me to stop by your kennel and take a look at your dogs, simply .

Here is a list of kennels that I have contacted:

Kahler Heide (Germany): http://www.kahlerheide.de

Kahler Heide is pretty much the only breeder that I am going to list on here that is outside of California. This is because, my family has purchased dogs from them before and have never been disappointed.

You can expect to pay about 3,000 to 4,000 Euro for a show quality dog or about 1300 Euro for a great looking dog to raise as a pet. The breeder, Gerd Reims is a very pleasant and helpful man and will work with you so that you may receive your dog anywhere in the world. Clearly, the Kahler Heide kennel would be my first choice for a puppy.

Other Breeders in Southern California:

I have decided that I am going to start visiting some local breeders. I will photograph their dogs and post reviews about them on here. Hopefully this will make your quest for a German Shepherd Dog easier.

ANIMAL SHELTERS / RESCUE MISSIONS

While looking into breeders, I wondered if there were any abandoned animals that I could provide a good home to. I learned that if you find an animal between 1 to 3 years of age at an animal rescue, it is most likely due to the fact that it had some behavioral issues. Usually, the animals that you will find at a rescue are over 5 years old if they are well behaved. Such older animals have been abandoned simply because the owner was unable to care for them or if they were mistreated and left to die.

German Shepherd Rescue of Los Angeles: http://www.gsrescue.org

Spam Filters March 1, 2007

Posted by atharkhan in : Review, Tech , add a comment

Note: This is an old post. Since then, Bloomba has been acquired by Yahoo.

WHY?
I am always looking for solutions to help eradicate Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) often referred to as “spam” from my inbox. Here are some different software products I have tried out. Hopefully my cursory beta testing will point you in the right direction in your search for fighting spam

MY REQUIREMENTS

I needed a client side product that would work BOTH with a POP email account as well as an MS Exchange email account under different Outlook profiles on the same computer. At one point, I was looking for something that would work with my HTTP based Hotmail account but since I no longer use it, this is not factor that I considered while evaluating these software packages.

SOFTWARE

Before you begin reading, I would like to point out that all reviews/opinions on this page are based on very cursory testing. As soon as a software exhibited any undesirable or unpredictable behavior, I removed it. Secondly, my opinions are based on MY requirements. What works for me, may not for you.

1. Qurb: http://www.qurb.com

I have been using Qurb for a while and it has worked great for me. Its an incredibly simple approach to fighting spam which works 100% of the time for me for both my Exchange and POP profiles. It does absolutely no content analysis. It works solely with White lists. It dynamically creates and collects all “approved senders” from the contacts folder and other folders that you specify as valid saved email. It can also do an auto confirmation which offloads the responsibility of validating the email in the quarantine folder upon the sender. You may want to edit the message though…its a little slanted towards advertising the product.

Qurb Pros:

Qurb Cons:

My Opinion: I use it. I like it. It works for me.

SA Proxy: http://saproxy.bloomba.com/

Another product I used (sometimes in conjunction with Qurb) is the Spam Assassin Proxy.
I started using SAProxy because it uses Bayesian filtering as outlined by Paul Graham’s “A Plan For Spam” (http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html)

But, the issue I ran into with SAProxy was that it did not work with Exchange. It could only work with POP Accounts. And, once the subject header is altered with the flag “*****SPAM*****,” I didn’t know how to revert back to the original. On a brighter note, it never flagged the wrong messages. It just let a few spam messages through here and there.

SA Proxy Pros:

SA Proxy Cons:

My Opinion: I am not actively using it. But, it is still on my computer. That’s a huge compliment coming from me. I never even install any software unless I like it. I will most likely go back to using it in conjunction with Qurb.

Spammunition: http://www.upserve.com/spammunition/default.asp

I have also tried another Bayesian Filtering product called Spammunition but it was absolutely worthless when working with two profiles (one exchange and one POP). If you are using just one profile, it could work well for you because it does a Bayesian analysis on all your folders and then uses those for its statistical analysis. Try it and see how you like it.

Spammunition Pros:

Spammunition Cons:

My Opinion: Would work fine with a single profile. Did not meet my requirements.Â