Hashemian Blog

Web, Finance, Technology, Running

After donating a pint of blood to the Red Cross a few days ago, I got a blue mark on my forearm that looked eerily similar to the Star Trek insignia.

As a trekkie, I was only too happy with this temporary tattoo.

Of course it didn't last long and it has pretty much faded now. Oh well, there will be other blood drives.

My father passed away a couple of weeks ago from complications arising out of cancer. He had beat this disease two decades ago but this time it proved fatal and after five months of courageous battle he succumbed to the illness. I had expected the news for some time, but losing a parent, as I discovered, is a life-altering event nevertheless. There's sadness and grief, but there's also the realization that you are next in line to face death. There are no longer any buffers to give you a comfortable distance from the ultimate fate.

My father wasn't the greatest father in the world, No one is. I'm not the best father in the world either. But he was the only father I had and one must judge a person's character based on the totality of a life lived. On that basis he was a good man with qualities of integrity, honesty, kindness, and sincerity. He did have a short fuse, a hot temper, was often cynical, and had sub-par driving skills. Six years ago I vowed never to ride in his car and I kept that promise until the end. Like many fathers and sons, there were agreements and disagreements between us, but in the end we would get along fine by never crossing the boundaries of respect and courtesy. And there always was a great deal of unspoken love.

What my father truly excelled at was his inveterate adherence to diligence and integrity when performing his duties. As a father he made certain that his children had every opportunity to follow their chosen paths and reach their career goals. On that we didn't fail him and I know he was proud of us. As a pediatrician he healed generations of infants and children, never allowing his dedication to be influenced by how much money a patient could pay. All children received the same care, regardless of their parents' financial status.

Of all the things what I miss most about him is his passion for the outdoors, especially mountains. As a lazy child I always tried to find excuses not to go on mountain excursions with him. He had an insatiable reverence for mountains and somewhere along the line I was fortunate enough to gain the same appreciation. As an adult I could never get enough of hiking with him on those rare occasions we were together. He certainly was in excellent physical shape until the end that would put many younger people to shame.

I took this picture of him on one of our hiking trips a number of years ago in the mountains north of Tehran.

There he is hiking swiftly and expectantly towards a green patch in the middle of the dry vastness. Perhaps he was searching for water or just wanted to rest under a tree shade for a while. Most likely it was his natural curiosity that was propelling him forward. Whatever the case I recall following him there and enjoying the little oasis for a while. If there is indeed life beyond death, I'd think this picture is a perfect representation of where my father is right now.

Thanks for everything Dad. Rest, and hike, in peace, Dr. Seyed Ebrahim Hashemian. (1931-2011)

If you are not familiar with New Canaan, Connecticut, it's an exclusive, plush town in Fairfield county where a million-dollar home is considered cheap. The movie, The Stepford Wives, was filmed there.

I work in a city adjacent to New Canaan and sometimes browse the listings to see what I can't afford. A couple of weeks ago I saw this listing (depicted below) for $20,000 that almost made me jump out of my seat and call the broker.

Good thing I didn't, because the house is only the size of a small room (160 square feet). But it does come with 99 bedrooms and 99 full bathrooms! I decided that it wasn't worth my time inquiring. obviously the house was made for mice. If only it came with 99 garages

housing,new canaan,real estate

The faith of the Dutch ABN Amro will be decided by its shareholders. They will decide between the offers of Barclays Bank of the UK and a consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis, and Banco Santander Central Hispano.

Thing got more interested with a Dutch court decision of the $21 billion sale of LaSalle, ABN's U.S. business, to Bank of America as part of the merger ABN-Barclays agreement. The consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis, and Banco Santander Central Hispano insists that
LaSalle remains as a part of ABN.

The shareholders vote will also determine the future of ABN Amro's management. Under the Barclays deal, current ABN executives will retain their jobs. It isn't clear though that such provisions are in place with the offer from the consortium.

The consortium's offer includes more cash and a higher price, but more uncertainty. The shareholders will eventually decide what is going to happen. It would be definitely interesting to see the result of the world's biggest merger (acquisition). Meanwhile, The Dutch Authority of
Financial Markets (AFM) ordered today that all information concerning the ABN Amro takeover has to be made public.

The other day I was helping a colleague with an SQL statement and I noticed he had a left join in his query. For those of you unfamiliar with SQL, it is a query language programmers use to access and manipulate data inside databases. Joins are used to cross-reference data between various database tables.

With the mid-term elections around the corner there is quite a bit of usage of words like right, left, liberal, and conservative around the nation, so seeing the left join in the query invoked thoughts of politics in my head. My colleague is a conservative, and I am firmly to the left of the center, but not quite off the cliff. We sometimes engage in political debates, and as all debates go have never convinced each other of the other person's persuasions.

Anyways, I scolded him for betraying his party by using a left join in his SQL statement. And then I thought to myself what a perfect way to resist the right-wing agenda.

So, no matter what your platform (as in your database platform), Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Sybase, or even Access, on November 7th boycott right joins and only use left joins. Then vote Democrat. You can do it. Right joins are useless anyways while left joins are so much more intuitive. They just make more sense.

Yeah, let's write a petition to ANSI and all database vendors and demand an end to the right join absurdity. Together we can send right join to the ash heap of query history. Obsolescence and deprecation is the right join's destiny.
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