Life of meaning

There were some people coming from different path and heading toward one same direction. They met in one intersection. Not too far from that intersection, there lied a tree, a big one (just combine the street, the path, and the tree, and you easily have a different story on it :p). A tree with enormous amount of fruit hanging on it. They looked at each other, and they decided to climb that three, to pick up some fruits. Some people climbed until a few meter ahead the others. Some people just looked for a long stick to reach the closest fruit above them. They didn’t climb. Finally, all of them got the fruit, relatively same amount of fruit in their bag.

A few second later, some people decided to start eating that fruit. Some people just stared on it, but ate the fruit at end. They sat down side by side down the tree. Everyone looked like enjoy their small food, in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly (there is always a climax in every story, but I don’t know how to start better than the word ‘suddenly’ ), some people started to cry. Not a real cry actually, the tears streamed down glide upon their face. Just a few second later, the others people started to throw the fruit on their hand, a half bite fruit, into the bush. They looked so terrified. The rest of them looked so confuse, about what just happened. They wanted to ask, but too reluctant to move from their seat.

So, already have an answer? No, it don’t actually have an even close connection with the title :p. There are three different schemas, three different kinds of people, and three different reasons of what really happen above. Why three? I hope you still remember about yesterday, today, and tomorrow things. So, what on earth this my three favorites thing play the role in my story today. The simple answer, it happened everyday. The closest thing around us. The easiest thing I can imagine. Thousands mystery there waiting to be solved (or not). And the last, they compose a thing called life (my ‘quote of the day’ ).

Basically, there are three different paths from them coming. Simply change the word paths into pasts on the previous sentence. That would be done it perfectly. These three groups of people are heading toward one direction: The future, or tomorrow. But, in the middle of their journey, just a few meters away with that intersection, they met a big tree with many fruits on it. The story teller always has a big expectation with every tree in their story. I don’t know why, but I can guess, that the tree has a similar character with its story teller or the story itself. It always grows no matter you do, covering you with it leaf, giving you a sense of peace, secure, and life. A perfect descriptor to describe about what the story teller want to be. Yup, I want to be that story teller, I want to be that tree.

Well, back to the topic. When everyone decided to picking up some fruits, they do in vary way. Most of them climbed that tree, with vary level of elevation. Rest of them just looked for some stick to help them to reach the closest fruit above them without climb up the tree. Still, at the end, they got relatively same result, same amount of fruit. We can’t get the real meaning of this until we move on the next scene (emm,, what the complementary word ‘scene’ in story matter? Whatever). After they got what they want, or maybe its better using phrase: achieving their goal, they react in vary ways. Some of them drop their tears, half of them calm for a second, and then look so terrified, and the rest of them act like common people do.

There are three kinds of people that I’m trying to describe. The first group of people are the people with the highest effort to achieve their goal, actually not an effective one, a process oriented one, a people that choosing life of meaning. They climb higher than the other, and they easily spill out the tear when they succeed achieving their goal. They respect the past, and do the best for today. The second groups of people are the people with an average effort to achieve their goal, they doubt all the time, and think about future much than the others. They really try to pursuing a life of happiness but unfortunately they got it all wrong. They got nothing but worried and terrified about uncertainty of tomorrow. The last group are the effective one, they goal oriented, they ignore the past, the past will only slow them down, they believe that tomorrow is just another today, tomorrow they will achieve even greater goal, they dedicated themselves to pursuing life of happiness. And likely they have it.

There are two different way of life. Life of meaning, and life of happiness. A clearly two different path that we never have it both. Chasing happiness in your life, will likely lead you into ‘yes that I want’ people, third group in story above. We talk about happiness in common, not the truly happiness (no one can describe this kind of happiness, only God had it right to fill it in your heart), the measurable one, the thing that had been chased by the ancient king in this world, the thing that sometime we feel it far beyond us, the thing, when you reached, will probably giving you nothing but satisfy. It will make you happy always, but which happy?

The other path is life of meaning. The life itself has totally teach us how to think, how to speak, how to react, how to respect, and how to life itself. You never lost when choosing this path. Because everything has it own meaning, it own purpose, no coincidence. You will respect the past as your great shifu, do your best for today, and make a wish for better tomorrow. There will no single moment such as pain, angry, sad, love, lonely, down, happy, without you notice what that really mean. We can look everything behind the wall, everything behind the code, everything beneath the earth, but it doesn’t seem what it like. Just like the piece of lyric from maroon five: ‘..we have not hit the ground, doesn’t mean we’re not still falling..’.

The better understanding of the life is, the better we can overcome the entire problem. I don’t really mean to be a teacher here, I just want to spill out the ideas that has fulfilled my head in this last twelve hour. Perhaps you’ll find out that many ideas doesn’t match with yours, feel free to give me a feedback. I know I have no competence to write about life and so on in my relative young age. You’re the one who have greater experience about your rough life. But, remember this is not just about the story…

Setting Proxy in Windows using SquidNT

Finally we’ve got our own internet connection. My friend was in the best mood that day. He decided to buy an expensive Huawei E 220 series just before I desperate to get my own internet connection. So thanks to my friend for his massive contribution.

So, what’s the story today? Yes, I’ll tell you about my experience built our own internet connection using Huawei modem with telkomflash firmware on it (i dunno if the phrase firmware is right in these context). We have to be a member of telkomflash program in order to get this modem. This modem is kinda cute, tiny, and fragile (i think ). So, after all prerequisite met, we started to plan how this network should be. We started to think about OS. At that time we have no choice but Windows. The implant firmware on Huawei only work with windows and its variant. So we gave up. We used windows, windows xp, as server.

Wait, server for what? Yes, Server for proxy of course. This internet connection need to be shared among all member of this local area network (LAN). So, what is proxy? You can find the answer here. The first problem encounter here was the proxy server have a poor relation with windows (in this case windows XP). Combining proxy server with windows is not my favorite. I believe most of the proxy server in the world using non windows operating system to operate (this is just what i think). With a hard step, we try to get windows version of this proxy program, and we made it. It called SquidNT version 2.6 for windows. Squid have undoubtedly reputation within linux user. But in windows? yeah right. You can get it from here.

The configuration file, structure of program, is all identical with the linux have. You may see var, etc, bin, sbin folder inside it . So, this quite relished. It sure wont be difficult to find some tutorial how to configure, install, and start because this tool quite popular. First, we get into ACL section in /etc/squid.conf and make sure that you define all ACL correctly. Here what it does look like in my configuration:

acl all src 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0
acl manager proto cache_object
acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8
acl SSL_ports port 443
acl Safe_ports port 80        # http
acl Safe_ports port 21        # ftp
acl Safe_ports port 443        # https
acl Safe_ports port 70        # gopher
acl Safe_ports port 210        # wais
acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535    # unregistered ports
acl Safe_ports port 280        # http-mgmt
acl Safe_ports port 488        # gss-http
acl Safe_ports port 591        # filemaker
acl Safe_ports port 777        # multiling http
acl Safe_ports port 5050    # YM
acl YMPort port 5050 # Yahoo messenger
acl CONNECT method CONNECT

and then we go into http_access section. In this section we are able to set what address allowed to pass our proxy. Make sure we define our local network address correcty. Here’s mine:

http_access allow manager localhost
http_access deny manager
http_access deny !Safe_ports
http_access allow CONNECT YMPort
http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
acl our_networks src 192.168.2.0/24
http_access allow our_networks

That will be done enough. But if you want to block some unwanted site (this is probably because of its bandwidth consume content, or pornography reason :p) i’ve found this in the internet:

acl bad url_regex -i “c:\squid\etc\blockedsite.txt”
http_access deny bad

Just write any phrase on that blockedsite.txt file to prevent that site being accessed inside your proxy. Although this can be cheated by LOT of bypass proxy tool, but at least, we try to be a good man already.

You can set what port this proxy will listen at HTTP_PORT. Just write any number you think, usually 8080 or 3128. And here we go to the other main function of proxy. Proxy will cache any page you’ve visited. This cache is seem very useful when we likely browse same page in all day. I prefer to have a disk cache in this proxy server. Bigger better i think :p

cache_dir ufs c:/squid/var/cache 1024 32 256

We can read further explanation about what ufs and sequence of number above. But first number (1024) is how big your space reserved for cache in MB. I think that will enough to create a ‘beginner’ proxy server. Hehehe…

So, after we done with /etc/squid.conf file, we ready to move into installation of this squid. We can use “squid.exe -z” command to create a cache directory first, and then execute “squid.exe -i” to install squid into windows services through cmd. I recommend to switch squid service from automatically started into manually started. Because we use telkomflash application that connected via usb and identic with port number and so on, so starting squid first is not a good idea.

After installing squid, dont forget to set your firewall system to allow all packet come from port 3128 and 5050 for YM. Just look on the exception tab and add necessary port to unblock. And dont forget to enable router forwarding from registry. Just run regedit.exe and jump into HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters and set IPEnableRouter DWORD value to 1. That will done YM connecting problem in proxy in windows, i think.

So, that’s all my story today, and correct me when something above wrong. Sory for my bad english…