Observation

There are some things that cause me so much aggravation... I take the Chicago El to work. I have noticed a simple fact on it. People don't get rid of their backpacks. Never. Not even when the train is jam packed at rush hour. How freaking tough is it to see that taking the backpack off will take the significant congestion away from the car?
I had high regards for the median IQ of the white race. I am beginning to rethink. :D

I bought the lottery

$$ 360 Million !


I could certainly use that :)
Please god, please please please. I will build a shinto shrine for you. In Africa !

A new year

.. and more of the same...

Those who are happy today - may they remain there.
Those who are not happy - may they improve their station...

wish the mayans were right though....

I never get what I go out for

Its always happened to me. Innumerable times. I go for something else, and I get something else. Sometimes I end up regretting my decisions, and sometimes its pure serendipity.

So, I am trying to furnish my room - and I need a TV stand. After doing some research, I go to IKEA which is 20 miles away. But I did not really like any of the TV stands that they had. So, I am looking around trying to find an excuse for not going back empty handed - and I see the 6 shelf Expedit bookcase.
Now I need a bookcase too, so I go over to it and in the notes by the product, they say we can put the shelf horizontally as well as vertically... and bazinga.... pure epiphany strikes me.

I can put my TV on this shelf if I put it horizontally ! There is my TV stand. I am so smart (Those are the exact words that I thought to myself. Seriously). Now I have the bookshelf, I wonder if it will hold my 37" TV ...

Ah well, I am gonna use it as a TV stand and we will see how it goes. I might need to change my opinion about myself, but I don't care :)


Also, need to assemble it tonight - won't get time next week, as I am off to LA for an official trip...

what does one do ...

... with REALLY hard green peas. I found them in the grocery bag because my room-mate once put them there... I have no clue how or why those peas are so hard... Tried boiling them - no dice :(
What do i do with them?

need to use the full powers of my imagination ... !

I really need some ...

... luck. Going to vegas baby :)

Hopefully I don't bring anything back from vegas other than fond memories and more money than I left with !!

Sometimes I think

that I must have harmed a lot of people. Inadvertently, though.

Why?

Because the good lord gave me a good heart but not much else...

It's good to know...

that what I have felt has been captured in words. Someone else has felt this too.

Adele- Somone Like You 

 I heard that you're settled down
That you found a girl and your married now
I heard that your dreams came true
Guess she gave you things, I didn't give to you

Old friend
Why are you so shy
It ain't like you to hold back
Or hide from the lie

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it
I hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me, it isn't over

Nevermind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love
But sometimes it hurts instead
Sometimes it lasts in love
But sometimes it hurts instead, yeah

You'd know how the time flies
Only yesterday was the time of our lives
We were born and raised in a summery haze
Bound by the surprise of our glory days

I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it
I hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded
That for me, it isn't over yet

Nevermind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg, I remember you said
Sometimes it lasts in love
But sometimes it hurts instead, yeah

Nothing compares, no worries or cares
Regret's and mistakes they're memories made
Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste

Nevermind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg, I remembered you said
Sometimes it lasts in love
But sometimes it hurts instead

Nevermind, I'll find someone like you
I wish nothing but the best for you too
Don't forget me, I beg, I remembered you said
Sometimes it lasts in love
But sometimes it hurts instead
Sometimes it lasts in love
But sometimes it hurts instead, yeah, yeah

Is it the full moon yet?

After a long while, I got some time last night when I did not have much work from office. So I looked at the moon; it was beautiful. There are things that come to your mind when you see something beautiful like that. New ideas germinate. Beauty is indeed a gift from the gods.

It also reminded me of those words - "When you remember me, look at the moon - and I will look at it too, and we will know we are both close to each other". And in the blink of an eye we were 4000 miles apart...

I had not looked at the moon in a while. It's beautiful.

I don't have a writers' block

What I have are timing issues. While doing the most mundane things, my mind keeps going back to the the events of my life. All the moments when I have been happy. And all the (many more) moments when I have been sad. And I think of all the things that I would write, if I had a pen paper at that moment.


But then life catches up and I focus back to the job at hand. And all those beautiful things vanish from the mind. So I don't have a writer's block. I have timing issues.


Take for instance, the events in Norway from a month or two ago. I wonder what Anders is thinking about right now. I have had time to analyse it and there are so many (questions and answers) that came to mind. Perhaps I should write about it someday. But the sea of political correctness and liberalism is nauseating. Being an immigrant, it might even be detrimental.


Do you think Anders knows that there are people out there who understand his point of view? Even if they may not agree with the actions he took. His must be a loneliness. I can connect with that...

This week ...

... I broke the 6-figure mark. But I have paid a very high-price ...

current affairs

There is this emptiness within me, even though things are going great. I got great colleagues. A great career. I have been promoted and I am on the verge of buying a new condo.

Then I see all these happy people around me, and they make me angry.

God, its good that no-one reads this blog. It would be a positively life-sucking experience to read this every day :)

Anyways, here is to those who have a need to be happy...

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The Prince and the Orc

And the Orc must kill the prince. Because all Prince trample Orcs...

I met an old friend yesterday

That friend is a feeling.

The feeling of being sucker punched in the pit of your stomach. So hard that the esophagus cannot react. You are left with an open mouth, stooping, though staggered a bit, but still standing somehow. Gasping for breath.

Having met this friend several times in the past, I thought I could handle it. God has his plans for me. He keeps me running into my friend just as I begin to forget him.

Finding a home

So, I am beginning my search for home. Today was the first day that I actually went to see a property. This was my first physical movement towards that goal.

And the showing agent could not get the electronic code for the condo to work !!

Nice start...

FUCK

MICROSOFT.

DEGENERATE TOOLS WITH NO SUPPORT

Thailand

Ah man - I could settle down there, for sure !!!

In other news - I never thought I would run into this place in bangkok !

Indian Idol 5

For some unknown reason, I never can get tired of this series. Frankly I don't really care who wins or loses (unless total crap like Sandeep Acharya beats someone like Karunya).

My guess is that I enjoy the auditions because one gets to see all kinds of sperms that made it to the egg....

Another powerful reason is that it is eye-opening to see a lot of kids from humble backgrounds vie with each other. I bet it would be ripe material to write a thesis if I were a sociology student.

Indian Idol 4 ....

So finally ... my days are being occupied with the fourth season again .... Last year was a revelation in the way large numbers of people from the north east came. This year also there are a few from the North East....

I think it must be the effect of some major impact participants like Meiyang Chang and Amit Paul... but it seems that a lot of folks from the North east are participating (& actually succeeding!) in these shows. There is this cute girl, Saurabhee (I think the spelling should be Saurabhi) ... she sings well and I wish her the best...

How long I have waited for this day .. when we come together like a nation & become more familiar with each other .... other wise , till now, it has always been a freakin maidak wala attitude towards other cultures that all of us have stories about ...

An xbox way...

I had a lil problem this weekend. This might be of interest to geeks who play on consoles.

My roommate left for India this Friday & I finally got an opportunity to hookup my XBox 360
to his HDTV. Since I had been playing on my SDTV till then, the difference was ...lets just
say... noticeable :) I could actually read the handles of my team members !!

My problem came when I tried to go online. Since I had been using the XBox downstairs
where my wireless router & cable modem also reside, it was straight enough to plugin
the internet cable into my console & the router. But there is no cable point on the first floor
of my home (Or I am too lazy to look for one)... so the problem was to get internet
working ...

One solution could be to move his rather big HDTV downstairs ... but nah ... I am too lazy
for that. Another solution could be to buy a wireless addon for my XBox. Nah .. I am too
cheap for that. Then suddenly *it* dawned on me. Read on.

I had installed ubuntu on my laptop recently (dual booting with Vista). I thought it
might be possible to use that laptop as a router for my internet connection. I could use
that cable to connect the console to the laptop and then use the wireless connection
of the laptop to login to XBox live.

It turns out that this is indeed possible. All you have to do is install dhcp server on linux.
You can use the synaptics package manager to look for something like dhcp3.
Once the server is installed you will need to make changes to 2 configuration files.
One is /etc/default/interfaces (I think). It contains the name of the interface on which
your DHCP server listens. Look for a line that starts with interfaces (the file is a simple
name value pair). The value for this key will most likely be empty. Just add the interface
name within quotes. In my case it was "eth0". You can also add multiple interfaces as long
as they are separated by space. Like "eth0 eth1"....

The other file you will need to change is /etc/init.d/dhcp.config (I think).
I am not that good at remembering these names. There are a lot of tutorials on the net
that tell you these specifics.
Basically, you will need to add details like the range of IP that can be handed down to
clients by your dhcp server and some other details. But HERE IS THE PART that is missing
in those tutorials. I was not able to get the dhcp daemon up & running till I made these
changes. First part is that you HAVE to have a valid DNS server name in this config file.
Following most tutorials, I was just adding some random DNS servers or the ones that
are already present in my resolve.config file. Since you can add multiple DNS servers
separated by space, it is important that you add the IP address of the interface that
you earlier marked for listening by DHCP. You can get the inet address by simply typing
$ ifconfig
on your bash shell. (or whatever shell you use).

The second major part is that you have to include another section called "name server"
in this same file where you specify the fixed address of the DNS machine. Since you
already marked the inet address (above) as a valid DNS machine, you can simply
add a section that maps the inet address to the MAC address (also retrieved using ifconfig)
in this file.

Thats it you should be done. You can run the dhcp daemon without fear. Your XBox will
connect with internet allowing you the immense pleasure of shooting people between
the eyes on XBox live.


Happy gaming !!