In Loving Memory of Uncle Prem

February 1, 2008 By 3 Comments

“You doh know that if Robinson couldn’t close he leg, he woulda fall through he asshole!”

Uncle Preman referring to former President and Prime-Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, A.N.R. Robinson.
25th December 2007.

Deonarine Parsan
Sunrise: 14th March 1951
Sunset: 27th January 2008

One of my best uncles passed away this weekend. Deonarine “Preman” Parsan passed away on the night of Sunday 27th January. Born way back on 14th March 1951, he leaves to mourn his wife – Tara – , three children – Sunil, Sunita and Kavita – and four grand-children – Jerome, Joshua, Vinda and Atma – as well as his mother and father, brother and sisters, nephews and nieces, and numerous friends.

He was always the life of the party and you could always depend on him for a laugh with his numerous jokes and antics.

He will be sorely missed.

It is ironic that I said to myself that this year I would keep more in touch with my family and friends. It just goes to show that the time to start anything is now, because you never know, you could be here today, and gone tomorrow.


Uncle Prem and his animated antics on Christmas Day 2004.


Uncle Prem (left) and my Dad at my wedding reception on April 12th 2003.

You can find more photos in my photo gallery.

Filed Under: Main

The IEEE Computer and Communications Society T&T Chapter is now offical!

January 20, 2008 By 2 Comments

Those who saw my earlier post on the IEEE Computer and Communications T&T Chapter would know that the inaugural meeting was held on the 12th of January. The meeting was smaller than I had hoped, but did expect. Member apathy is one thing that we really need to overcome. The executives for the period 2008 – 2010 are:

  • Chair – Sachin Ganpat
  • Vice-Chair – Prof. Mansour H. Assaf
  • Secretary/Treasurer – Gifton Caesar

I think we have a very good team here, and I am extremely excited. Below was my address to the small gathering:

Good Morning fellow members, IEEE Executives and fellow professionals.

I would like to thank you for coming out today, taking time from your usually busy lives to come to this our first chapter meeting. And the first of many.

The IEEE is one of the world’s largest volunteer organizations. As such, it is through the work of the local Chapter officers that the work of the IEEE and its Societies is accomplished. To accomplish its goals, the IEEE and its societies are dependent on the involvement of its members through the local Chapters. This means that the future success of the Chapter, the Section and the IEEE as a whole depends on you, fellow members. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Odds and Ends

Security Heads Retreat!

January 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment

So it seems that the Minister of Backpedaling, umm, I mean National Security, has taken the heads of all the security agencies and others to a nice weekend at the Salybia Beach Resort. While they are calling it a retreat, I think it is to breaks from the licks they are getting after Joseph admitted that the Government failed with it’s anti-crime initiatives.

Later Joseph recanted his statement after the PM said that they did not fail.

Now, I take the ole talk sometimes, but now is not the time; we need action and no amount of ole talk can create that. A source revealed that some of the new anti-crime initiatives were:

  • the return of round the clock bike patrols in residential communities
  • a gun amnesty
  • increased rewards for information leading to arrests
  • a return of the community police
  • a restructured Rapid Response Police

Now, does any of these “new” anti-crime initiatives look new? All these were suggestions made so long ago, by everyone, including the current government. Again, ole talk!

Are they going to address the public’s non-trust of the police service? Are they discussing the social issues regarding crime? Are they discussing the apparent non-intelligence of the police force? We don’t know what they are discussing.

The Opposition also only wants to politicise the issue when we need to come together to resolve this mess.

We need to have action now, and stop the blame game. The police service needs to get their act together and start enforcing the laws. We need to get the criminal elements out of the police service, and we know that they are there. And we as a people need to start holding the government of Trinidad and Tobago accountable for our security. Every month we pay for them to provide protection for us, we must ensure that we get our money’s worth!

Filed Under: In Local News, Rants

Airplaneseatreclineology

January 2, 2008 By 1 Comment

I’ve never considered Stephan Pastis, the author of the comic “Pearls Before Swine”, to be much of a philosopher, but this one from the 23rd of December 2007 really got me.

It just made so much freaking sense!

Filed Under: Odds and Ends

New Year, Same Shit…

January 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The new year has come, but besides trying to remember to now write 2008 instead of 2007, nothing has changed.

The murder rate has started with a nice even figure of four for the year, so we are have started on the way of setting a new record. The assistant commissioner of police is trying to dispute the murder figure of 396 by saying the newspapers have it wrong and that if we take away the manslaughter figures you end up with 384. Phew! What a big difference that makes; that figure makes everything okay now. Oh for fuck’s sake, accept that you didn’t do your fucking job and do something about it. This trying to smooth everything to make it sound better may fool some of he people, but believe me, people are getting real fed up of the shit.

So this year what would I like to see:

  • Better police enforcement from to smallest crime up. So charge the PH drivers, the CD and DVD pirates and the litterers. Working to ensure the lawlessness stops will help.
  • A more efficient judicial system. This thing about waiting years for the trial to start have to end. By the time trial starts you can’t find the witnesses or people memories get fuzzy; heck my mind gets fuzzy after a week far worse for two or three years.
  • The enforcement of the death penalty. Contrary to what many people are saying, there can be no return of the death penalty because it never went anywhere. It is still the highest form of capital punishment and it is required by law that a person convicted of first degree murder be sentenced to death; it just has not been enforced.
  • A stronger agricultural sector. For a small country like ours, with many families starting out with farming and agriculture, should not have to paying through our nose for produce far less having to import food. Come on people, we will not be able to eat bricks and drink oil to survive.
  • Government spending our money wisely. While I will quicker see Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny playing poker at the Tooth Fairy’s house than see the government of Trinidad and Tobago manage the country’s finances effectively and efficiently, I will still wish it.
  • People having a better understanding and appreciation of the environment. Once they do, they would understand why we need to do all we can to protect it.
  • People learning to respect all life and not see other animals as “dumb”
    or “lower”. I’m pretty sure that if aliens were to come down here and
    treat us like how we treat other animals, we won’t like it.
  • People just being more courteous to each other. I think this will solve a lot of our problems.

While I don’t expect these things to happen, I can always hold on to the belief that it can. And maybe I can also convince myself and a few others than they can help cause these things to happen. Whoa, what a wonderful thing that will be.

Filed Under: Main, Odds and Ends, Rants

The IEEE T&T Joint Computer and Communications Society Chapter

December 28, 2007 By Leave a Comment

The IEEE has a Trinidad and Tobago Section of which we are trying to get a Joint Computer and Communications Society Chapter up and running. We already petitioned and got permission from the IEEE to form the chapter about a year ago, but have been unable to get the other aspects working. So I have now taken that up to get the inner parts working – getting an executive, members active, etc., etc.

Trying to get people involved is proving to be difficult, but I still have high hopes. I am hoping that it is the season that is affecting everything – Christmas is a bad time to try to get anything done down here.

We have a large number of members, so it is just for them to get actively involved. Let’s see how it pans out for the new year.

Filed Under: Odds and Ends

The Breathalyser is coming!

December 28, 2007 By Leave a Comment

I had the opportunity of seeing and using the breathalyser recently. It was quite easy to use and easy to understand. The officer (I can’t remember his name) was quite helpful and gave a pretty good presentation of the product, not to mention  displayed good product knowledge. What I can’t understand is why it hasn’t been introduced as yet.

What the officer explained was that while it has been passed, it has not been assented to in law (at least I believe that is the term). For sure we need this product in this country, especially for the Christmas and Carnival seasons. I could only imagine how many people will be caught using this product.

Here are a few things to note:

  • Mints will not help you to pass the breathalyser test. It may cover the smell, but the alcohol on your breath comes from your lungs and is not covered up.
  • Using mouthwash just before the test as an excuse will not save you. If you use mouthwash and the test reads high (which it will), you will be placed in the back of a police vehicle for the most ten minutes. During this time, the mouthwash would dissipate, and the reading should be low; if the reading is high, it means you are drunk.
  • More than two beers can bring you over the limit; it all depends on your size and gender (men are less affected that women).
  • Water helps. Drinks lots of water while drinking to help rid your body of excess alcohol.

In all I do hope they bring this out soon, but I can see a huge culture clash when it does come out. We are a nation of drinkers and it is especially expected during the Christmas and carnival season. It will take both a change in culture and a great deal of police enforcement.

Filed Under: Odds and Ends

It’s NOT the network!

December 28, 2007 By 7 Comments

Recently we had an issue at our office where mail was not properly routing to the different regional Exchange servers and mail was not being sent or received as queues were just building. The routing is done over the Internet through Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections.

I was asked to take a look at the network to determine if it was a network issue. I first asked a few questions just to determine the topology and how I can determine what might be happening, but not before I asked if there were any changes to any of the network or system elements – Firewall, Routers, Switches, OS or Application. I was told there were no changes, so I pulled out my trusty network protocol analyser – Network Instruments Observer ® – and hooked it up to a mirror port to the one going to the Exchange server.

After several hours of looking at the traffic, I could find no evidence of network issues. While there were TCP retransmissions, there were not enough to say that the network itself was causing the issue. In fact, what was evident was application layer errors (as opposed to errors at the transport layer and lower). So we started to look at the Exchange configuration; however, no changes were made to the configuration, or so they said.

Microsoft was later called in, who, after some troubleshooting, said that it was the network and had our IT guys making changes to MTU sizes and other things. For a while I started to doubt myself and my abilities to troubleshoot the network.

Try as they may, Microsoft could not resolve the issue. Somewhere during the process, they then disabled Smart Defense on the Checkpoint ® firewall and voila, everything started to work. So it wasn’t the network. It turned out that Smart Defense auto-update feature downloaded an update that caused the entire issue.

So what did we learn from all this.

  1. Automatic update is a bad idea for mission critical systems.
  2. Always check properly to determine if there were any changes to the system. A proper change management process is important.
  3. Always check every component. It is not always the network.

You always find that users complain that the network is slow or has problems when there is problem with mail, printing and especially the Internet. The most important skill to have for the IT industry, especially the service industry, is troubleshooting skills.

I find it easier to troubleshoot using the OSI Layers starting from the physical layer and moving to the application layer, ruling out each one as you go. But that is of course if you really have no idea of what the problem with be, so depending on the problem, it could be best to start from the top down.

Filed Under: Tech Stuff

Jury Service and Religion

December 3, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Well I am on Jury Service and I will say that the experience is not as bad as I expected. First I must say that I have not been selected for the jury as yet; I was not one of the lucky ones. But the the initial part was intriguing and I am all for new experiences.

So anyway, there was one thing that came up during the selection, and that was an application for exemption from Jury Service. This particular individual’s application was that their religion does not allow for their participation as a juror. Now I have heard about this before about Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I was not sure if this particular individual was one. The argument is that they are not supposed to cast judgment, only God is to do that.

Now I question this thinking. Yes God will cast judgment and yada yada, but do we trust all judgment to him (or her). Is this really rational thinking, not that religion was rational to begin with, but really? If God is to do all judgment, then why bother with anything like policing or an entire judicial system? I mean, what is the purpose of it all if we aren’t supposed to do anything to the criminals. It would be interesting to see a world run by people with the belief system, but then there shouldn’t be crime if everyone believed the same thing, wouldn’t it?

Still, at the risk of pissing off some people, I still thing the thinking is skewed, but then they shouldn’t be judging me right?

Filed Under: Main

Civic duty once again

November 21, 2007 By 2 Comments

“A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”

Robert Frost

I come home today after a hard day’s work and what do I find, a “Summons to Jurors” – Jury Duty. So now I have to report for jury duty from December 3rd, the peak of the Christmas season. Shit!

The real jokey thing about this is that I only got my Vacation approved today for two weeks… from the 3rd December.

Now I am all for doing my civic duty, but I really could have done without this at this time of the year. Also I wanted to do some other Cisco Certification exams before the end of the year. Unfortunately, I doubt that those certification exams would count for anything to get me off of service.

I only hope that I am not sequestered for this thing.

Filed Under: Odds and Ends
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