Thursday, June 30, 2005

Random Thoughts...

...I love putting down random thoughts. No pressure to maintain coherence, no need to write enough to make it seem interesting and most importantly no need to put in that mammoth effort to bring yourself out of a state of lethargy and force yourself to make an entry. They just flow, so here we go...

1) What we really need in todays world are earplugs that let you listen to music while you are swimming. Its not fair that you can only distract yourself while running and not when you are underwater. I have done my fair share of swimming and it gets awfully boring after a while. And the music that plays at the pool can be heard only when you stop in between laps with your head outside the water! So, I came up with a weird way to keep myself distracted while doing laps. If I know the song that is being played then I note the moment of the song before I start my lap
(at which point Im cut off from the music) and keep playing it in my head and see how close I am to where the song actually is when I bring my head out after I finish the lap! Though its fun I still think man should invent water-proof ipods or something! Get to work you lazy ass mongrels!

2) Yahoo is a bitch! It is forcing me to buy LaunchCast-Plus. I think I just might cave in! Well, this is what is compelling me. If you are an avid listener of launch you should be knowing that they allow 600 songs per month after which they take away your skipping rights! Not that it bothered me much, I beat that by shifting stations to get to new songs. I never really cared about the commercials either, if they were too long and annoying I used to remove my earplugs and wait for them to finish. But now yahoo has gone ahead and done something absolutely horrific. If you now exceed 600 songs they dont let you listen to any station except your own customized one! That just breaks my balls. I love my station and all but Id much rather listen to songs on Classic Rock or RHCP Fan station or Love songs (just kidding ;) This is such a corporate bitch thing to do...mofos! I wonder what happens to those listeners who have broken the 600 barrier but dont have a customized station of their own. I think Ill just go ahead and pay "less than 3$ a month to get unlimited song-skipping and commercial free radio"...and also double-latte with whipped cream :)

3) I have always heard about Smashing Pumpkins being a great band. Now Ive listened to one of their songs and absolutely love it. Its called "Bullet with butterfly wings" and it rocks! Will be on the look-out for more Pumpkins!
Also hooked on to this Rolling Stones song called "Sympathy for the devil". Damn good vocals by Mick Jagger.
And lastly and also the leastly...Jessica Simpson has a new song called "These boots were made for walking"...a cover of a Nancy Sinatra original ( remember the song "Bang Bang" from KillBill...thats a Nancy Sinatra song) Its quite catchy.
You can check out all the above songs on yahoo videos

4)I somehow cant get over my OCD to keep spreading links to funny videos! Help me nuture my disorder
http://www.wimp.com/impressions/

5) Ill be off to DC this monday for my first international conference. Have to admit my work isnt of very high standard but still I guess I have to begin somewhere. Am equally excited about my vacation after my conference. But for now I am yet to finish my presentation that Ill be showing to all the big shots in my field. Thus common sense dictates I stop this randomness and I work on presentation. And before I go check this out...(Im on a family guy roll :)

Peter: Well, I'm gettin' something really special too. And by special I don't mean special like that Kleinaman boy down the street. More special like... like Special K, the cereal. Hey, what do they do with the regular K? And for that matter, what ever happend to K. Ballard? You know, if you said mallard and you had a cold, it would sound like ballard.
Brian: Do you listen to yourself when you talk?
Peter: I drift in and out.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Stewie's...


..."Sexy Party"
http://music.yahoo.com/ar-20348981---Stewie
You have gotto check out the video! Its hilarious!

Friday, June 24, 2005

NBA Finals...

...happened yesterday night and the Spurs took the title beating the Pistons. I was a little disappointed cuz I was rooting for Detriot. They are an excellent team in the true sense of the word and I loved the way they had trashed the Lakers last year. Yet, while reading about the game in todays news amidst seeing a few Spurs' team pics I couldnt help but admire Duncan and the Spurs. They have an innate nice-ness about them. Duncan seems to be such a humble person despite being a player of his stature. And the rest of the team seem to jell so nicely with each other. The Spurs seem like a team with immense talent and the temparament to go with it so that they dont create any unforced problems for themselves. To quote the article I was reading today..."the Spurs are built to last". I definitely agree!

On a different note...have you guys heard about the AND1 basketball guys who are going around the US cities inciting the local basketball studs, telling them that they can kick their local ass and making mix-tapes of them actually kicking some serious butt!
Google for AND1 mix tapes and explore.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

50 till I die...


Im sure the 3 words "What the fuck?" went through your head coupled with a broad smile on your face. I accidentally happened to find this long-forgotten scan of my caricature today morning and wanted to share it with the world!
The artist stuck to the true definition of the word caricature by making sure my nose looked as fat as it could possibly get, my glasses looked as geeky(sad?) as they actually are and my eyebrows were as thick as caterpillars, in effect making me look 50! Keen observers might have noted this was done during a time when my hair was at its longest as I was trying to grow it. If I remember right I got this caricature made in October 2004 and a few days later I went back to my crew-cut and got myself contacts!

Monday, June 13, 2005

Mondays...

...how I hate them! They give me the blues and I dont even know why. I know what you are thinking and you only have my words to believe that it couldnt be further away from the truth. I dont get up early in the morning to go to a 8 to 5 job from Monday to Friday so that by the end of the week I am totally exhausted which in turn motivates me to have a blast of a time during the weekend...only to be really depressed when its time to face the demands of a new week.
I sleep 10hrs a day, dont exactly exhaust myself working, my advisor is very cool and he lets me work according to my schedule, I attend social gatherings at a fair regularity and also indulge in good amount of sports.
Yet...I feel so blase!
One of the primary reasons I feel is the lack of above mentioned strict time based work ethic...I have this feeling that it would be really nice if I had the attitude of working hard from 8 to 5 and then totally forgetting about work for the rest of the day. I could so enjoy whatever I am doing in the latter part of the day. Right now, theres always that feeling of unrest in me...a feeling that I could have done some more (or as on some days...a feeling that I should have done atleast some work) which I THINK is preventing me from being completely refreshed and yearning to get some work done!
One train of thought that Ive had is that I feel the root of all my problems is my clear lack of self-motivation to do research (work for me). I know people who have a burning passion for the work that they do...almost all my professors and a good number of my colleagues belong to this category. They get up in the morning with an enthusiasm to do research. Like people say, "Love your work and you wont have to work a single day of your life"...These guys dont work! Maybe I should clarify, I do enjoy what I am doing. EMW rocks and Id rather be in this than any other field. Whatever little research I do I really have fun doing it. My problem is to 'begin' to do it. I always keep putting off reading a paper but once I force myself into doing it I find I enjoy it a lot and finish it at a satisfactory pace. But then its time to start something new and it takes me about 2-3 days to start working properly again!
All this has made me conclude that Im not cut-out for a PhD for sure! I just hope circumstances dont force me into it.
I feel like I am at a point in my life where I need to travel the world and see places and meet people. Id like to think of it as a soul-searching expedition but maybe Im just trying to give the sloth in me a nice name. :)
Hmmm....So why do I hate mondays? I can think of no particular reason expect that I have my weekly presentations on this day and it sort puts me to work on a sunday evening and also takes up a good part of monday and not-to-mention the exhausting presentation of our entire group from 3 to 6pm. Incidentally I had interrupted this writing to attend to my presentation today!

Everything Ive said above holds for me on any given day during this phase of my life...but truth be told, today I have an additional more personal reason to feel blue!
Cant decide how to end ...so heres an old joke!

One Atom to another: Hey buddy...whats with the sad face?
Atom 2: I think I've lost an electron.
Atom 1: Are you sure?
Atom 2: Im positive!

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

"Brainwash"

He was only 10 years old. And was one of the brightest chaps in his class. He loved English and his command on the language and his mature grasp surprised all of his teachers. He excelled in school at this subject. So much so that his proud parents rewarded him with a computer of his own. He was thrilled. His quick sponge like mind absorbed all there was to learn about the internet. He spent hours browsing the web. The net was so huge and eclectic and such a wonderful source of information and inspiration for the kid. He read books, learnt about great men and their great achievements and about all the literary geniuses. And with characteristic and prodigal depth of thought, he contemplated about everything he read. He was a truly inspired kid ready to take on the world if only given a chance. But there was just one problem.

She wasn’t the English kind. She loved math. And seemed to enjoy only the company of those who loved math. It bothered him to see her with that boy only because he could do all those useless multiplications faster than her. He was convinced that only his ‘lhau’ for her was true love. ‘lhau’…he had grown to like this word.. He was running out of ways to impress her. In his own little world, if knowing the complete meaning of the word ‘sarcastic’ when his classmates couldn’t even spell it properly wasn’t good enough for her then what more could he do? Wasn’t it enough that he could explain what ‘democracy’ meant? Wasn’t it enough that he was now even inspired into taking up poetry? Yet, She didn’t really care about him
The more he saw her and the boy together at school, laughing and narrating those stupid tables the sadder he grew. Something had to be done. It was all a matter of muttering up the courage. There was just the impetus lacking. Life seemed so pointless. He decided to make the empty yard in front of his house his own park. Every evening he would just sit there looking and waiting anxiously for the miracle to happen. His behavior and lonely yard sessions troubled his father but he refused to tell him anything. It took an evening spent in the bosom of his loving mother on the front yard for him to spill out his woes about the girl he ‘lhau’ed . His mother smiled at him understandingly. She told him that such things were worst when kept hidden and that he should go up to her and declare his love for her. “It is a question of now or never” she told him. His innocent eyes filled with joy when he heard those last words from his mother sitting in the yard. That’s all that mattered to him. The impetus had arrived. Everything made perfect sense to him. He knew what to do. It was clearly mentioned.


“Good Evening! This is Sam Etaro bringing you the news at 10 and with me is Tanya Burns. In further investigation of the unprecedented and gruesome murder of two 10 year old schools kids by their classmate, police investigators said that in a search of the accused’s computer they found several stored links to various weblogs (or blogs as they are more popularly known). Further investigation has revealed that the contents of one of the blogs seems to be some sort of inspiration for the accused’s methodology of using a hammer and a penknife. Police are trying to trace the location of all the bloggers linked to from the accused’s computer hoping to get some more insight……"

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Slpeling...

...I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The pweor of the hmuan mnid is phaonmneal. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tnhig is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sltil raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the hmaun mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh, and I awlyas tghouht slpeling was ipmorantt.

I do check for spelling errors in my post duh...(re: comments for "Hey!Teacher") But this is an illustration of why I probably didnt notice that I had misspelt "Poems" as "Peoms". (Were there more errors???) I know this is a very common forward but it makes for a nice read for a small population of those who actually havent come across this!

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

"Hey! Teacher"

"Poems Everyone" said he in ridicule,
Made the kid feel like a fool.
For great was his strife,
His Mother controlled his life.
He was filled with bitterness and pain,
He took it out by using the cane.
The kid just wanted to scream,
Instead with his friends he chose to dream.
In it, they threw him in a fireball,
While singing, "Another brick in the wall"!

I stumbled across this on a piece of paper in my "Fibre Optics Communication" notes when I was looking for something else. I had written this about a year ago in one of those F.O.C lectures when Shevy would go so over my head that I had to think of something to do to kill the remaining time. I remember Subbu liking this. I then showed it to Duh and he wrote a review below saying that he was practising "critical analysis of literature" for his Lit. course. Duh bastard had this to say:

"7/10. Message is nice. But the incessant use of rhyme makes it seem childish. Not in keeping with the theme of the poem. The play on "his strife" and "his mother" which seems to be about the kid but becomes the teacher is the highest poetic touch in the poem"

Bluddy daawg duh! :)
Shevy, F.O.C and Priya Lunch Home rocked!