Failures

The FreeBASE (2011-2014)

This was the first project that gave me the illusion that somehow I was going to be big. The FreeBASE was a video game console built with the off-the-shelf parts that played free games and media. The swath of open-source games and freely-available content made the console quite the tantalizing concept. However, despite all the effort that went into design, cost estimation, prototyping, marketing and even building a team; this project lead to nowhere.

The most obvious flaw was in the business model. How do you make money when everything is free except for the console? Unlike other manufacturers like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, we couldn’t sell our system at a loss and recuperate them with licensing fees since we had no licensing of any kind. This poor business idea and inability to market the system properly meant that the first step was failure.

FreeBASE was a project destined to fail and never exist in it’s designed form. I remember spending hours learning Blender to design a compact system that used regular off-the-shelf x86 components. Unlike our bigger brothers, we couldn’t put everything on a small PCB and call it day; putting it in a tiny box.

I wrote a blog post about this that’s no longer on this website due to long hiatus in blogging. I spoke to a friend who was closely involved with me in the project and we agreed that the system was designed on an emotional basis. The imaginary walls that we encountered put a stop to our tracks.

We, as a team, didn’t feel like we learned our lessons from this project, and were destined to do more mistakes in the future. It’s not enough to fail but understand where the failures came from. Despite this project being dead for a long time, I don’t feel like I learned my lesson.

There’s even a stupid promo video that was made for this blunder.

NoteBox (2014)

Another attempt at fame that went into disaster at very last moment with a kickstarter campaign that never took off let alone published. The idea was a modular laptop that used off-the-shelf parts that would allow customers to design their own system with crazy ideas such as a DVB-T tuner and even a software defined radio.

It even went to point where I actually built a prototype that was fully-functional, a laptop made with my own hands. The failed kickstarter campaign was full of details up to a concept drawing and all sorts of other details that I wouldn’t even think of now such as our implication in the open-source world.

I’ll admit that near the end of the project, I got too scared to continue. I realized that it was too much to swallow especially being an individual project. The fear let me to giving up and realizing that I didn’t actually have the resources to make this possible with the biggest challenge was making it as depicted by the concept drawing, and yes, there was one, the I actually drew with my very hands.

Flight Simulation (1998-current)

I feel in love with aviation after my first ride on a plane. I wanted to relive those memories somehow and soon discovered there was something called simulation. When I was young, I got a hold of a copy of Flight Simulator 98. I was too young to take things seriously and the aircraft bundled with the game were incredibly simplistic. As I grew older, I started buying addons for the game which were more study-level but I was reasonable: just two of them, an airliner and a single-seater. However, my collector mindset kicked-in and I bought so much addons that I never ever would use all of them.

My goal was to prepare a YouTube channel with various adventures flying different kinds of planes. However, I never had the energy or the will to actually learn the procedures and practice. It was always a dream and bought a bunch of equipment impulsively like a podcast-quality microphone and an HDMI recorder. Soon after they were sold on classifieds.

Later on, I was really impressed with X-Plane 11 and bought a dozen addons for the simulator some not even being installed in the first place. Out of all the addons bought, I haven’t learned a single one of them.

My dream is to know a plane inside-out and fly on VATSIM with the correct procedures and ATC phraseology but it’s still a pipe dream.

I think about this ‘project’ quite often but these days are more and more full and I don’t know if I’ll have the time to learn unless I neglect say work.

Eventually, I deleted all the installers for FS2004 and lost my precious collection that will be a mess to recover. X-Plane 11 is currently installed on my system with all of the addons that I purchased. The last time I started that thing was several months ago. A unread collection of FCOMs, tutorial, QRHs, checklists all remain unread on my tablet.

Reading (1996-current)

School taught that the most sacred thing in the Universe was reading, something that I didn’t disagree with. As I went by the years through elementary and secondary school, I was made to read more and more books. However, they were all fiction and that left a very sour taste in my mouth. The last book I read was The House of Spirits and I promised myself to never read a novel ever again.

Little did I realized that I was missing on a pile of knowledge that is hidden within these pages. I bought a tablet, got the eBooks I wanted (Library Genesis) and only sat the first night reading a book. After that, it never happened again and I haven’t made progress ever since.

I’m intimidated by long running tasks for some reason no matter how small the tasks are divided in. When it comes to read a book, I make the biggest excuses not to do it, usually going to sleep. I have a list of books that I want to read but I feel like I have failed myself so much.

Personal Website and Related Projects (2013-current)

This one bothers me a lot. What started as my portfolio to show off, I wanted to grow into a window to myself. I started this blog which has been pretty active and kept cleaning up my website when it got messy. The centre of attention was this blog but I soon realized that no one read it. I’m just a nobody on the Internet and no one cares about what I’m thinking about or why I’m angry that day. My life isn’t exciting with a world full of travelling or anything like that. This was on purpose, but not having a niche that my blog-mind focused set me up for failure.

My projects also never caught on. Counting on what archive.org has shown from my past, I probably have had a total of 15 projects many of them thrown out or in unliked sections of my website. Several incomplete and code removed from my GitHub. My resume makes me seem like I’ve done a lot and even though it’s true, they’re not in the complete state that they’re perceived to be in.

Even the projects that on their way to fruition are unpopular. The only way I make myself feel better is by telling myself that they are ‘passion projects’ only done out of the love for whatever medium I’m expressing or what I’m trying to sell.

The store page has not led to a single sale yet. No one listens to my online radio except me. My suggestion boxes and emails have not received a single thing in their inboxes.

No matter how much I yell on social media and plant my website on anything that allows me to put a link, I get nothing in return. I’m screaming at a door of an empty house. I wrote about this before, but I’m just a dot in the sky. Seen but easily forgotten. I consider this website a failure but it’s not going down.

I’m deeming myself as a failure, a really big one; I’ll never grow and will never learn from my lessons.

Me

At the end of my teenagerhood, I was used to being the center of attention and being popular. I was a model son, a model student, a model social king, a model speaker; a model in religion; as viewed by others: a perfect person. I was the pride of my parents and the focal point for everybody else creating jealousy and envy.

However, around 6 years ago, my life started to change a bit. I was no longer an example for everybody to see. In this past time, I moved out, I’ve took part in vices, tried things I was forbidden to do, developed a mental condition, renounced my religion, and finally got the chance to express myself.

I was expecting for my family to distance themselves away from me as I was no longer the perfect son. Nevertheless, I found out that extended family members and family friends were sifting through my reddit account, my Instagram, my Facebook and so on and was way more popular than I have ever been. What was unraveled was a completely different somebody, one who has changed: no longer the perfect Ahmed. The attention came back as rumour mills and quite some drama, which people love so much.

it makes me feel strange that the most frequent visitors to my website are family members overseas, employers and recruiters. That’s not exactly the kind of people I want to read my stuff but then again, this blog is an opening to the deepest parts of me and it’s enticing.

Online, it’s a completely different story. I’m absolutely unimportant. No one cares about me, I’m just someone hiding behind a website and a blog that appears to most people, a babble of nonsense. We are dreaming of popularity but maybe it’s not the best thing.

I desperately throw my content on all the social media accounts that I have only to drive little traffic. Whatever projects I’ve done are just becoming passion projects for me, not something that others care about.

My blog doesn’t have a direction, it’s just my mind going crazy and throwing up inspiration that randomly comes to me. My blog is me and nothing more. I’m one of the billions of people on Earth and the several millions who have a website. I’m starting to realize that I’m nothing special, why would anyone care about what I have to say?

In the real word, I might be generating a lot of buzz because of certain life choices that I made or exposing conditions that I have. However, online it’s a completely different story: I’m nothing. Just a dot.

I’m sure many bloggers and website authors can relate to me. There’s a pressure for popularity but it’s in vain. No one cares that Ahmed El-Hajjar wrote about his change in career or why he was angry that day.

To my many friends who blog, vlog, stream and so on, I feel your pain. You want to express your freedom but there’s no one to express it to. If someone else has posted the exact same content as you, their stuff might have become unstoppable and viral because of connections they have to a certain industry or perhaps survivorship bias.

I have almost 40 blog posts that is aimed at a large audience but in reality, I’m just talking to myself. This has been more than 3 years of shouting on my side and silence on the other side of the door.

It might sound that I’m frustrated and I’m angry though the dryness of my text doesn’t help but I do feel anxious. What I wrote are subjects that people don’t care about. I started looking at every post, every sale, every view as a passion project.

Inside me, I feel this innate pressure to become big like the others but that doesn’t seem to be my fate. At the end of the day, this is for me only and there’s a select few who have joined me to see what a random stranger on the Internet thinks.

I’ll soldier on and keep at it keeping my expectations at the bottom. It’s just me.

Working from home: my hate and my insanity...

The whole COVID-19 pandemic has caused a paradigm shift in terms of what working is going to look like for a long time. Even when things are back in control, we'll still find ourselves being home employees. Employers are taking advantage of this to perhaps save money on office costs  Many venues are closing because their response to COVID-19 has put them into abject poverty or even in bankruptcy. Restaurants, coffee shops, gyms and other places that thrive on a large customer base to function are closing; especially the small ones. 

Working from your domicile means all the home distractions are available to us. I hear of friends with low workloads using Caffeine or Amphetamine to give the illusion that they're working while in reality they're taking naps, watching shows and gaming. My current job is more fast paced and I don't have that luxury though admittedly I've slacked off a bit.

There's a contrast between sitting next to your manager and staying at home with all the freedom you want. You can pretend to work and extend deadlines making your work seemingly more difficult. I noticed my coworkers including my teammates taking their time on tickets that normally take 2 days done in 2 weeks instead. Everyone is playing the lie.

The isolation is something that drives me really nuts. The few meetings and no real interaction makes for a very lonely experience. Instead of walking to a friend’s desk for some help, now you have to send emails and schedule a meeting.

I was hoping to find a way to have company through a shared office space. However, I was alone there as few dared to put themselves at risk. I didn't have the company I was looking for to discuss random subjects and have that human interaction. Worst part, it was unusually expensive no matter the location. It would make things hard to afford things.

I haven't tried coffee shops but these seem more busy. Apparently, these kinds of locations increase creativity and production due to the chatter, less distractions and of course your boss not staring at you. Universities might be a good location too but it seems no one is going there.

What pains me so much is how much time we spend at home because of remote work. Although I argued in my first blog post that we work too much, we'd at least have more time for walks and whatever else refreshes us. However, an extra 8 hours at home just seems too much for me. We’re trapped because we have to be online all the time and our bosses expect instantaneous responses, otherwise they might think we’re unproductive. I try to do things outside of home when I can but it's hard during these lockdown days.

I'd like your opinion on how you cope with working from home and how you stay sane stuck in front of your laptop at home without any breaks. Leave comments.

Isolation...

These uncertain times have driven me nuts. I’m stuck at home no what I’m doing whether it’s working remotely or talking to loved ones. All you get is virtual interaction, but it’s not the same. You can’t feel people vibes behind a screen, it’s just a flat representation of them.

I have to stay home all the time. I want to see my family and sometimes I take risks even though I shouldn’t see them. I’m tempted to go to my friends’ domiciles. I want to give gifts but they might be contaminated. I don’t know.

I can’t host my meetup anymore. Other meetups that I join are all online instead of being around a table. My part-time driving job has come to a halt because everything non-essential has been closed and people are trapped at home. I get no riders and I’m scared they’ll pollute my car with the illness. Your appointments are virtual too, and even worse sometimes on the phone. How are they going to see your facial expressions and body language to know how you really are. How will they feel your pain when all you have is sound.

Going outside is scary, it feels like a taking a risk everytime and I have to admit I’ve taken big ones. It makes me anxious. People don’t seem to know how to protect themselves or others. Few have read what the experts have recommended to us. I feel unsafe because the rules aren’t being followed.

You never know when someone has it, maybe I do but I’m not reacting to the monster. Someone else may be the same but the reaction on me might be severe enough to send me for admission.

People with conditions are getting tired of all of this. Even healthy people are developing anxiety and stress because of this mess. I want my life to go back to normal and everyone does too. Even health care workers are getting sick of all the extreme protections they have to do, and even with that, people get hit with it anyways.

The timelines are uncertain and picking the wrong time might cause everything to spread again. Maybe in a few months, or next year, no one can give me an idea. How do we control something that spreads so quickly.

Scientists are doing their research to find treatments and other forms of protection from this disease. Yet it is not something that is discovered in a few months. There’s a ton of paperwork and trials needed to get things approved. It’s not going to be tomorrow.

I can’t put on my calendar when we’ll all be free again because no one knows when.

A closure on my past...

I’ve been haunted by my own past for so long. It’s not something I wish the reveal but I believe it’s finally time to put it aside and leave it only for only opportune moments when it’s warranted. I’m a drama queen and sometimes I talk too much about it, but in reality, it’s a balance between past and future.

My thinking patterns often revolve ruminating about the past with the inability to let go of what happen. Feelings of anger, regret and sorrow haunt me again and again. I subject myself to pain that I felt beforehand and no matter how hard I try to bear it, it hurts just as much as it did before.

Sometimes life presented me with surprises that I didn’t expect. Events and happenings that I would have never pictured in my past self. I can never tell if it’s emotions, my circumstances or just people that cause me all this pain. Actually, it’s an intangible mess of the way our world works. We clutch onto controlling it but the truth is, we are submitting to it. Philosophers have constantly argued on who’s the master of our fate: us or the Universe.

The past ten years have pushed my patience to the limit and made me realize how vulnerable of a person I truly am. I always assume that people have good intentions and it comes back to bite me. I hold steadfast onto hope until the very end despite all signs to the contrary. As a result, the anguish holds me down as I try to recollect the pieces of hope that just shattered in front of me.

I was lied to and accused of being delusional to statements that turned out to be vivid and looked past into the future. I was assigned titles I didn’t deserve and convinced of having things that I did not possess. I became so desperate that I desired to end my misery in any way possible.

When the whole adventure was put to end, I realized how bamboozled and how unduly tested I really was. Gullibility was my weakness and it drove me so far into psychosis. Disbelief made me blind to the obvious evidence that something was indeed wrong and a conspiracy was hidden right under my nose.

I’ve learned my lesson: I should listen to my gut. Toying with emotions are a sign of weakness and leave someone into insanity. I regret not following my intuition as it may have saved me from being abused and tortured. Next time, I need to submit to my unconscious mind.

I have chosen to change as much as I could in my daily life; every detail. I’m trying to gain a new perspective on life, one where the past is on the floor. A new chapter in my life has started where the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fit again.