Do You Want A Gmail Account?!

Dear barobax: in an effort to serve the barobax community I have decided to invite 4 of the barobax members to Gmail. The only thing you have to do is to answer this simple question:
"What does 'Barobax' mean?"
You can either tell me why I chose it, or what is the root of the word.
Please leave your answers as comments along with your name and valid email address. The first 4 comments which correctly answer the question will be chosen as winners, and then they will receive an invitation email at the email address they have provided. This offer ends on midnight of July 7th.

Good luck, and welcome to Gmail ;)

Negin, Football, Cottage! What A Mixture!

At the dawn of this Monday of June 28 two thousand and four, I speak to you with the honor of bringing light to your dark nerdy hearts. May the pressure of studies crush your souls and may your exams haunt you in your day dreams. That is of course your punishment for not asking of those who did not participate in Summer school and made themselves happy by not taking courses. However they did not expect to be left out, like lonely beggers in the streets of Tehran. Despite the turmoil I bring you light: as the day of celebration comes to an end for Negin, as she celebrated her birthday on that 27th day of June, I publicly announce this news to barobax so them too can wish her a belated happy birthday. May her day be filled with happiness in the streets of Ekbatan, where I grew up as a child, and went to school!

I speak to you with various thoughts on my mind, one of which is Euro 2004, which of course has seen the elimination of the biggest names in Football: Italy, France, England, Spain, Germany. And also shining of other teams: Portugal, Czech. May the "Hand of God" be with Maradonna who was well famous for it, and may God's blessing be with Portugal and Czech whose teams I wish for championship.

Other thought comes from a concept known to human beings under the word: "Travel". As I have now returned from the Lands of Great Satan and have now settled happily, I quench for a trip similar to one made to Pinery, where all barobax could once again gather, and cherish the soon ending moments of being together as youths. Soon we'll be all old and married and ugly and be carrying babies and kids and grandchildren and soon to miss the moments of shooting the ball, playing the cards and talking the talks. May God bring power to the minds of those who manage group trips, to reserve a place for a certain period of the year formerly known as "end of August". Perhaps, I will see the following title on an email in my inbox once again: "Cottage: not an ISAW event!". My prayers accompany you my dear children.

England's OUT!!!

Way to go Portugal!

Italy Eliminated By Goal Difference!

Cassano's goal on the 94th minute of the match between Italy and Bulgaria did push Italy to a victory against its opponent, but unfortunately the draw between Denmark and Switzerland prevented Italy from advancing to the next level. With all three teams having 5 points each, Italy got eliminated due to goal difference and now the team has to pack its stuff for home!

Italy has been my favorite team for years now, from their days of glory untill this day that they got eliminated for the first time in the first round of European Cup.

Whether the draw between the two leading teams was a conspiracy or just pure Football, I don't know, all I know is that my favorite team is now out. Perhaps the only fun thing left to do now is to cheer for England's opponents and wish for the "bloody" English team to lose. My fingers are crossed!

Updates About To Gain Speed Again!

Thanks to Ali, I have now settled in Amos avenue, and I am now in my new room. I still have lots of cleaning up to do but overall most things are set up. Yesterday I realized that before I leave I have changed my Windows XP password to something that I cannot remember! I struggled for hours trying to remember the two administrative passwords but I had no luck finding any of them. It is the first time I am having trouble with a forgotten password, but this first time got me good, coz without my Windows password I am partly paralized. I have now logged on using a normal user account which I had created for barobax, but I have no administrative rights with this account.

I will be updating Barobax more often now, with pictures and perhaps start working on the other sections of the site which have been left out for a long time now. The CD that has all the pictures from the US is in the old house, so I can't put up new pics untill I get that CD probably some time today.

I had said earlier in my June 19 post that I am trying to organize something so that we can bet on European games. As Hamed pointed out I realized this won't work very well untill the teams reach quarter finals at least. So we shall wait untill then.

Moving Day Today!

Ali B. made me happy today by calling me and informing me that I can sublet his roommate's room for 50 Dollars! As a result of such astonishing contract between Ali and his Chinese roommate I will be moving to Amos avenue where I will be settling for 2 months. Later the winds of change will move me to University avenue where I will be staying with Farbod for 2 terms. Let the moving begin.

Football Heat Is On!

It's betting time barobax! Euro 2004 is happening, and awesome European teams are challenging each other for this years Champions Leauge Final!
I am soon going to setup a table so that we can bet for our favorite teams and win! Today, I will try to figure out which way would be the most fun to bet on the games, then we will all chip in and playyy!

Stay tuned!

Google vs. Yahoo!

In the struggle between the two giants we saw how Google shook the world by introducing the beta version of its new email service, Gmail. Providing 1 Gigabyte of storage for free. Reviews all around proved that Google is definately on a fast track to knocking out the other two giants: Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo's Yahoomail. With Gmail still being in its beta stage and the rumors and hot topics about it cooling off, this morning Yahoo took the Internet world by surprise: upgrading all of it's free accounts to 100 MB of storage, and upgrading all of its paying customers to plus members, giving them twice the storage space of Gmail: a massive 2000 MB of mail storage!

As a person who was a long standing fan of Yahoo and yet was quite surprised by Gmail's move, and also having beta tested Gmail, I was fascinated by Yahoo's jump towards winning the race in this tight comptetion.

Eventhough I had totally decided to stop paying Yahoo for its POP and SMTP and switch to Gmail once it was officially released, I must say that Yahoo made me think twice! I now think that 2 GB of storage along with POP and SMTP accounts is definately worth the annual $19.95 charge. So here it goes: a big thumbs up to Yahoo!

Dillon> Vail> Aspen> Denver> Toronto.

Salaam Barobax! I say hello to you from the mountains of Colorado. I am now in a city called Dillon on the slopes of Rocky Mountains. Weather is beautiful here, with fog covering the mountain tops and snow the high peaks. Internet is thankfully faster in this ski resort city, and my room has two phone lines as well as high-speed wireless Internet. There are a few factory outlets nearby where clothes can usually be purchased at a lower price than the stores.

Vail is another ski city 30 minutes drive from here, which will be our next destination before we spend the night at this hotel.

Tomorrow morning we'll be driving to Aspen, one of America's most famous ski resorts which is also well known for it's wealth and rich visitors, which excludes me of course. If you've watched Dumb & Dumber, Aspen is the city they end up at to find the girl Jim Carrey has been chasing.

After Aspen we will be going back, towards Denver, where I will be going to Denver's International Airport to leave for Toronto, Canada. I will be connecting my flight through La Guardia airport at New York where I will be spending a good 120 minutes before my plane takes off. This was a nice trip to the States except that at every second of it I wished Sanam was with me. But no worries because I will be arriving at Pearson airport in less than 48 hours to see her :)

The picture at the top is my room's view to the mountains

Orkut?!

Here I am sitting in Colorado State University with my student card in my hand! Yesterday I came here to take a course as a guest student. Paid my fees and registered for classes. Today I came here to get my student card and moments after I stood in the Records office to drop the course and then refund the fees! Now I have a CSU student card, so the next time the border officer gives me trouble with his questions of where I study and what I do, I simply flash my CSU student card at his face. :D

Today we'll be going to a place called Garden of The Gods! Fancy name it has. It is a national park which is famous for its irregular rock formations. I shall take pictures there but it is a pity I can't upload them due to ridiculously slow internet speed. Actually here in the university I am browsing the net at a fast rate of 360K per second, but unfortunately I can't bring the pictures here for upload.

Midterms is upon barobax in Waterloo. Good luck folks!

Aside that I hear that barobax are becoming excessively active on a web portal called Orkut! Dear barobax, make the name proud with your good looking photos taken by my lovely Nikon Digital Camera! Look good, feel good, be Barobax. Uhhh...ok that sounded cheesy. I'm out.

G1 Is Good! America Is Better!!

Goooood morning blue planet! actually it's 7:16 PM here, and here I am sitting behind me laptop writing to the dear barobax around the globe! Weather is extremely HOTTT!!! reached 104 degrees Fahrenheit which apparently is about 43 degrees Celsius! Waterloo has got hot too I hear and with Dubai and Tehran being at their highs as well; it seems like barobax are sweating their asses off no matter where they are!

Sooo.... lemmie tell you about yesterday! Yesterday was a good day, "a day of God" if you will. As my father decided to go for a road test here to get a license, I decided to accompany him to the local driver's license office. As I got there happily with my milkshake in my hand and my G1 in my pocket, I saw my dad take out his G2 and show it to the lady behind the desk. The lady being there for a long time and not having seen any Canadians, took out her booklet and said: "We can give you a Colorado license right away but you must surrender your Canadian license". My eyes popped out like the water balloons jumping out of the mouth of an African Safari frog! The gears in my brain started turning like the wheels of a V12 S600 Mercedes Benz. "Busy Little Bee!" I happily move my hands towards my pocket and reached for my wallet which I had received as a birthday gift by the barobax themselves and after staring at the Samsonite logo on my wallet for 2 seconds and feeling good about it, I opened it to take out my good old G1. There it sparkled and glowed like the crown of Queen Elizabeth on Victoria Day. After my dad's G2 was brutally punched by Americans, I moved towards the desk to "surrender" my G1. "Is this a regular license?" The lady asked in wonder! "Of course! It's just like the one my dad's got". "OK!" the lady responded in pure honesty and ignorance. There my eyes glittered like the eyes of Zorro in the dark behind his mask.

Moments later I stood in front of a blue curtain waiting for the flash to go off, and as it did I could already see the license in my hands, before hand!
As I walked out of that office with my temporary license in my hands I suddenly remembered what I had read on the driving license website of Canada:

License holders from the following countries with less than 2 years of experience can obtain a G2 class Ontario driver's license, and "USA" flashed with glory in the list. Gears in my brain started turning again!

Am I In America?!

Wussup homies!...wait a second...what did I just say?! damn, it's gotten over me!
Alright, so we won nothing on Super7?! Damn, talk about bad luck EH?! Oh well, better luck next time, next cottage trip, next 40 dollar left over!

So here I am in the US of A. The officer at the border gave me shit, asking me weird questions giving me the look, I crossed by ground to avoid them seeing my passport...nice try though! the guy found it in my luggage: "So you've got the permanent residence of US AND Canada?!" ....uhhhh...yeahhh...hmmm...uhu...ahah as..buuuuwww...I got that to lower my tution! The guy gave me look which said: "Bullshit!". He took out all my stuff, made a mess...but who cares...I crossed eventually, got to Buffalo airport. The airport was smaller than DC library!! Dumb geeks! The airport was almost closed when I got there at 12 midnight! no oneee was there! It was bad...anyhow, I went to Atlanta and then to Denver and now I'm in a small city called Pueblo. It's exactly like Waterloo. Damn THERE IS NO INTERNET IN THIS PLACE!!! Am I in America or what?! For God's sake you can get online even if you're in freakin' Chaloos road in Iran!
Anyways, I'm on dial up now, AOL Free trial. Gave me hard time, untill I get on, then the power cables wouldn't match and I had to run to the mall in the rain to get one, and then a modem cable, and and and...
Seriously, US is not what people think of it...Come see for yourself. Anyhow, Internet's so slow I don't think I can upload pics, but I'll keep you updated with my boring TEXT updates! stay tuned...

Super7

Barobaxe Cottage: As you remember I was supposed to buy lottery tickets with the remaining money from the cottage expenditure. We had about 39 dollars left over, so I bought four Super7 tickets each worth 10 dollars, which you can see here. The lady told me the draw is on Friday and the jackpot is worth 7.5 million.

As many of you might know, I am leaving Canada on Thursday so the tickets will have to stay here. Hamed will hold the responsibilty of the tickets and the distribution of the prize if we win anything. Whatever we win will be divided by 22 and be divided among the 22 of us who went to Pinery together.

Best of luck to all of us. chaX.