Random thoughts in an entropic world

Back with a bang...may be...

2008-06-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

I have been out for a while and have also contemplated shutting down this blog...neverthelss, I was digging some old crappy emails and found this...what a tribute :)
Letterman's tribute to Bill Gates

Stay tuned for my Rim to Rim at GC...

Prius drivers

2008-04-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Let me call these species as Priusians. Why are they so F bad? Look here guys, when you buy a Prius and you have a sticker, that means you can use the HOV lane only during the peak hours. You have to be courteous to other drivers, may be observe who is at your tail once in a while. It wouldn't hurt to look at your rear view mirror, not that the power from your eyes is gonna diminish the car's value. This will also be an added incentive to this accessory you paid for, which you would never ever use while on the reverse gear unlike the rest of us because of your stupid camera.
Also, I do understand 55mph is a great speed to drive in and braking often also makes sure your batteries are charged to help you attain a great fuel economy. But when there is a good flow of traffic and you guys occupy the fastest lane(the left most lane if you did not know, also called the passing lane by quite a few), it is very very very irritating.

Added observation: I haven't noticed this behavior by any other hybrid car drivers.

Jon Stewart and elections

2008-04-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

With Cable downsized @ home, I am missing Comedy Central more than ever. Jon Stewart's Gaffe-in

Progressive - My A**!

2008-04-04T15:32:00.001-07:00

I came across this article today, titled, " Poll: 76 percent say U.S. ready for black president" .
I you are thinking about those who voted 'NO'...then think about this ...The fact that someone took such a survey is by itself very demeaning and wrong in its entirety. So why is media being so divisive?

Embrace change - the Defacto linux distro!

2008-04-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

This is a very positive article - a short one though. I would really like to see the user base increase with every release. After all, knowledge is boundless and should be open and available to everyone at no extra cost. Go Hardy Heron!!

Zeni's

2008-03-31T10:45:00.000-07:00

Some kick-ass Ethiopian food. This is a very small (hole in the wall like) restaurant in a not too goog looking strip mall but with some good ethnic decor and awesome food. We went there last evening to try this place. Some real good food...Anyways hogged like I had never seen food for quite a while. They also have another restaurant named Gojo @ W San Carlos on the S.Bay

Top mgmt burned out by Vista:)

2008-03-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

Read this

Notable mention:
Steven Sinofsky, the Microsoft executive in charge of Windows, struggled to even get his home printer working with Vista.

The "Jon" referred to is Microsoft board member and its former chief operating officer Jon Shirley, who experienced compatibility problems with his Epson printer and scanner and his Nikon film scanner. He could not even get some of Microsoft's own MSN software products to work on Vista and refused to upgrade his other computer to the operating system.

Watch Letterman's tribute to top it all

TIbet?

2008-03-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend of mine sent me a link to "Free Tibet" Orkut campaign. I thought a little about it and then accepted the invite eventually. So going back and pondering a little more, I was like, "Why did I hesitate the first time?" Do not all people deserve the right to live a happy, peaceful life, in their own land. Particularly given the Tibetans have one of the most docile, peaceful culture that can ever exist in the civilized world. I thought for a second, wouldn't this be double standards on my part for the Kashmir issue. But thinking further, this is the fact, what is happening at Kashmir is sheer terrorism. There is no curbs put on the common man from practicing what he/she wants. Frankly, India is a democracy (the Largest Democracy to brag) and nothing would prevent it from going the other way. The People will have every right to practice what they want sans jihad. But with Tibet, it is a totally different story. Given that India has been the home to more than half the Tibetan expatriates for a better term (than Refugees), I feel we should take a driving force to provide the Tibetans what they need- to get back their homeland, which they so deserve.

Frankly, Chinese Communism sucks and I can only say the United States, whatever the F they have been doing in promoting democracy around the World, have no balls to go in and put a strong foot in there.

Tamizh subtitles

2008-03-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was watching ChakDe last night and playing around with the subtitle menu and voila, when I found, tamizh as an option. I was wondering if this was to reach to the tamizh masses in South East Asia or to reach to the hindi-illiterate denizens of TamilNadu. Anyways, looking back at history , I guess the thamizh nationalism might have hurt us more than it could have helped. After all, I doubt if pride can hardly cross any path with practicality. I doubt it, with full earnest.

BTW, I am for the freedom of expression of language and I do understand that forcing someone to learn a language is completely wrong. I do not condone it by any means. But let us think past this point and realize the practical aspects of it. I understand and realize it helps a lot more to learn a language and blend in with the larger population rather than staying aloof based on pride and sucking up to the fact that we are in a way delineated from the society at large.

I am opposed to fundamentalism - irrespective of whether it is hindi or tamizh. And I would show my fingers to all those supporters of EVR and Anna and any one else who advocate thamizh pride as well as to those who come and tell me, I need to speak Hindi just for the plain fact that it is the National Language. Well, ....!

Inglés teacher

2008-03-07T16:30:00.001-08:00

I do not want to sound like a teacher here. But there have been few conversations I have had with people that really Grrrrred me out. Not to sound pedagogical, I do like to speak English properly as much as I could. In this process, I am learning to undo a lot of bad things we have done with Indian English. Okay, for all you accusers who think I am presumptuous, I am not. I just want to be good at what I do, and it is my personal ** opinion. Sorry for being rude and defensive:)

First of all, there is no word called prepone. There is advance which is the opposite of postpone. However I do understand that new words are formed as time goes by. Words like guru, karma (I hate the way Americans pronounce karma, Iran and Iraq. To be polite, it makes me throw up.), curry, etc have been added in the recent past; and so are new words like google(a verb) etc...

I believe in learning a language and its correctness as one speaks and I have no idea what the difference is between an adverb, a conjuction, etc... is? Still, an argument could be made that the local dialect commands the language, and blah blah blah, but still, I would like to sound at my best and avoid any superfluous information. So what grrrrred me?

1. I read this today morning.

I might have said, I read it this morning. I might be wrong here, though. If some one knows , please let me know. But what I do know is, the next one is def. wrong

2. What time do you leave?

Wouldn't the correct usage be, "When do (or would) you leave?". I think this is probably an effect of a direct translation from our native language. Suggestions are welcome here!

Another common one I have heard is, "I did it yesterday night".. Wouldn't, "I did it last night" make more sense! Duh!!

Desi drivers and cars

2008-03-07T13:46:00.001-08:00

Disclaimer: This is an offending post to a lot of desis. So beware!!

I am not sure if this is a Bay Area thingy, but I have increasingly been seeing this phenomenon. My guess is its prevalemt more than 75% among desi drivers (families mostly in contrary to happy single desis who are watching their time clock dwindle away in eating at Saravana Bhavans, Chaat house, etc... and horridly thinking about being matched with someone they haven't even seen in their lives within the next couple of years). Anyways, the thing is, have you guys come across license plates that read like "ILUVPRY", "RKHIluvsSMIR", "WEluvPNKY", the luv replaced by the symbol, etc... You get the idea!

The things is if you drive a Honda or aToyota , there is a 80% chance that you are a desi. However, there are certain cues that point to the demographic - say, single , married, married with a kid, etc... (I am not venturing into any more permutations)

For example,

When it says something ilke "VCKYRCKS" ...you know this is an egotistical single desi.
If it says smthing like "ILUVPRY", "LVLYRKHI", it is a newly married guy who hasn't still experienced the sweet times of the marriage:) (yeah, I am sarcastic, if you did not get it!). Even should it be true, do we really need to know what he feels?
And, if it says smthing like, "WeluvPNKY", it is definitely a daughter. First of all, I have no idea how someone could name their daughter based on a finger( or pinkie, ). What's next, chubby, mandu,etc... I wonder if these daughters will have a real identity issue when they grow up? Duh!
As an anamoly, if it says smthing like "CHICinPNK", you can be rest assured it is a blondy:)

I have been so horrified seeing these license plates, I think someone better dare up and ban them all together! If you sync with me, please spread this awareness. I do not want to be driving around watching these horrific license plates. And, if you ever goto IMC6 or NAZ8, please just go blindfolded:)

postscriptnotes: My hundred thousand thanks to helloji for rewakening my spirit and inspiring me to write a post like this.

The Genius has finally ** realised

2008-03-07T13:34:00.000-08:00

As much as I chastise about India, I doubt if I can ever hate my country. Though I am embarrassed by a lot of things we desis do and sometimes other desis do :), I have realized at least we have a dummy head of state than a dumb head of state. Oh Gosh!, Intelligence has finally dawned upon him, Bush: It's clear our economy has slowed

I wonder what the IQ level in a red state is?

Globalisation - really! Then why move cubes?

2008-03-07T11:11:00.001-08:00

We are gonna be involved with a new exercise at work. Relocation. Not as in relocation that I am gonna be closer to work, rather, it is intraoffice relocation, and if I am correct, I would have to travel, 20ft more everyday. As Dilbert might put it, I am being moved around within the corporate zoo. So you would ask, why I make noise around it? For those who might not know, every animal in a zoo, marks his/her own territory. I do not want to go into further details about this:) Similarly, once assigned a cube, I think of it as my home. We personalize it, We adore it. Now imagine, the landlord coming over and asking us to move for reasons I do not necessarily comprehend and understand. I was told, the reorg is to make the team better and give it a sense of working together. My dumb mind, really asks the question, don't we work across timezones? So does it really matter where we sit? Is it really gonna make any difference ? Shouldn't we be concentrating more on non-direct, non-face-to-face communication, like working on phone conversations and email in the currently globalised techie world. Then why, why? My simple mind does not agree necessarily, but nor do I have the clout to disagree. So, I fold under pressure and vent through my blog:)

IIT.

2008-03-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Great read ... Hilarious if you are not from IIT:)

Pet Peeve - Which is more annoying?

2008-03-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

As a techie in a caged office, a.k.a. cubicle, which do you think is more annoying?

1. You get to listen to all of your neighbors cell phone's ring tones. IMO, the most popular one seems to be the Nokia one!
Or,
2. The annoying , irritating, "tring tring" tone of an instant messenger. The winner seems to be Yahoo here.

Vetti pechu! a.k.a Asinine questions

2008-03-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

I have observed this lately:
When we are sad, we become thoughtful and come up with very meaningful questions. (I am talking about a normal human here; so exceptions please ignore this post :) ). Isn't this because of an innate nature of us 'humans' to fight adversity ? (which could be said is heavily borrowed as a result of evolution. So we say ,... "as we evolve")

So does it mean that when we are happy we do not think? Which means, if we do not think to counter issues, we cannot evolve? So doesn't that mean that challenges are very important in our life? So wouldn't this mean we should not be happy all the time, Duh!

This is insane because it brings us to the point - we fight adversity to be happy:) !!!

"My friends"( like McCain, with Arms wide open), I have been thinking too much lately which is a direct indication of my discernible grey hairs now! Should I be happy that I am thinking or should I be sad that I am aging? :)

Sad day. ASK me why?

2008-03-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

Just read this article. ASK was one search engine I believed were innovating and thinking different and had the potential, though very tough, to give Google a real good run for the money. It's sad to see them change their strategy and go the other way. They were the only ones, IMO, who were trying to innovate rather than imitate like Yahoo and Live.

Googling and wikiing.

2008-03-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

I was in a discussion today about how wiki has become a verb to me recently, just like google is synonymous with search.. It goes like,
you don't know about this, then wiki for this "blah blah blah"....
or just google it, silly!

So I came up with this wonderful Q&A:
Q: How can Live search return Google like results? (We know MS in its infinite wisdom, Duh!, is investing heavily on its Live Search)

A: Use the Google WebService APIs, ofcourse:)

Punjabi style Burrrrrritos!

2008-03-01T21:34:00.000-08:00

Just got back from this restaurant at Sausalito - Avatar's. Man, it kicked some ass, real ass. Awesome food I have tasted lately. A small dungy style restaurant with a home cooked flavor. Ashok, the owner, invited us and on knowing that this is the first time ever for us, he decided to take it upon himself to "surprise us" with his specials. For the appetizer, we had some sweet potato stuffed samosas(yum!) with some tangy tamarind sauce, mango slices and yoghurt, and some pappadums too. Following it was the main course, with stir fry-like dish with vegetables and basmati rice, and some pumpkin-gravy currie-style stuffed enchiladas, topped with yoghurt and tamarind sauce. In two words- Kicked ass! The best fusion dish I have ever tasted.

If you are ever in the vicinity , drop in and have some, currie flavored mexicano food.

Infuriating to read

2008-02-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

My colleague forwarded this post to me: Is India bad for Jaguar?

Kinda sucks to realize that we live in the 21st century, and to see the colonial mindset still casting its shadow on the global world. So a good question would be how would you handle if you were the CEO of one of the bidders? I have to agree I am no business grad, but I would go ahead with any steps towards a hostile take over and give the racists the F* finger.

GPS- off dash systems

2008-02-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed the GPS systems available in the market - Garmin, Magellan, Alpine, etc... I have always wondered why no one named it after Columbus, particularly the Americans? Is it because they realize that the Jackass was lost and it would be such a bad name for a product. Imagine how would it be, if the GPS takes you to places like Columbus who thought he was in India but actually was in the other side of the world:)

Pet peeve - Hey, how much it cost you?

2008-02-23T08:40:00.000-08:00

Another, peeve, is when fellow desis assume it is a matter of right, take you for granted and ask you about numbers. To be fair, I have seen this at work, even beyond the desi. I hate divulging information to people I do not know really well and I hate when people get too nosy. I personally feel very offended when any Tom, Dick and Harry ask me about how much I paid for this and that? At the minimum, add a disclaimer guys... "If you do not mind me asking ..." and if someone says they do mind, do not get offended. Yeah, I understand that this could feel like being snubbed, but the important part is to understand, that the other person is not really comfortable about sharing those details. I generally get off by giving a range, sometimes a wide range, that the question is pretty much left unanswered:)
I have been told, I am being too much American, but hey isn't that the reason we are here, to exchange and learn from other cultures too?

Pet peeve- Unsolicited advice from an obnoxious desi

2008-02-23T08:20:00.000-08:00

Have you ever found yourself traveling with an obnoxious desi, who just doesn't understand to shut-up as much as you try to avoid hearing their unsolicited free advise. I had to hitch a ride a couple of days back, and my colleague at work was gracious enough to offer me one. However, what I did not know was, his car-pool partner was a grumpy middle aged fellow desi, who just could not stop from getting into other people's business. We went through the mundane routine..."Hi,. How are you? ... Nice to meet you..... blah blah blah". It was all good to start with until my colleague brushed on the topic about my car shopping. We were discussing about stick-shifts etc... So this Mr.X jumps in and starts lecturing about how a stick is not practical, how it affects your rest of the family from driving the car, how boring it is to change gears while driving up, blah blah blah. I had to sit through this ordeal for the next 40 minutes. As pissed off I was at the end of this journey, I tried to get back my composure and get optimistic about the whole thing- all I needed was to imagine how worse could that have been, should that have been a grumpy, leechy, Amway dude Life is not fair, but at the least it doesn't get shitty!

Pet peeve - Buying a stick on craigslist

2008-02-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

I was rear-ended a few days back, and this has caused me too much discomfort and a change to my lifestyle. So what were you guys thinking:) ...pervs!
My cargot hit and all that's remaining is 3/4-ers of my TSX. So I am in the market again for a new car. Being influenced by a friend of mine, (and a bad example at that), I have decided to go for a used car and started looking in craigs list, and am seriously thinking about getting a bike. Coming back to the car, I am determined to buy a MT...for newbies, that's just manual transmission/stick-shift/gear. So, what's up when the dumbasses, advertise their cars as MT but only when you read the description, you figure out that it has a steptronic or tiptronic or whatever stupid technology they got. I bet more than 95% of the guys with this dual trans, do not use it or do not know how to use it. Just a simple fact with cars, if there ain't no clutch, that ain't no stick-shift, you morons. If the sales dude fooled you into believing this is a MT, you are just a plain idiot!
On a positive note, I have increasingly found a lot of my colleagues driving MTs. Shame on you , others. As a matter of discrimination, I generaly avoid having non-MT owners/drivers sit in the front passenger seat. My way of sticking it up for spite:)

Explaining "Windows firewall" from Digg...

2008-02-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

:)

Windozzzzzzzzz...