Twenty one years ago, Eric from Formulated Solutions reached out to me to design a website. First it was just a small Flash-based product brochure, then another with multiple product lines, then his main company site, and then a full e-commerce site with a PayPal shopping cart and customer portal. In 2004, I moved to Florida to work full time at FS, and steadily the company went from just 20-30 employees to 700+ at last count.

With growth, came complexity. At first we made products for tanning salons but soon after we got into personal care products, sunscreens, aerosols, and eventually high-volume brand-name pharmaceutical products. The web apps I built in 2002, running on PHP3, over time got upgraded and extended to run a full ERP system with MRP, planning, inventory, warehousing, quality, and project management modules used by hundreds of employees across multiple sites 24/7.

I made so many friends at Formulated over the years that more than half the contacts in my phone are tagged FS. I am making new friends here in Woodstock now but there's no way anyone can take the place of Eric, Brian, Kelly, Linda, David, Sandra, Jeff... I could keep listing names but you get the idea. When I look back, I can only recall the good memories of my years at FS despite the many, many stressful days I know we slogged through.

While I look back at these years with fondness and pride, due to Juliet's ongoing treatments, I have had a very hard time last few years to continue to take care of the FS systems. So this Monday, I said my last good byes and asked the IT team to turn off my access. It was bittersweet for sure. I will miss the camaraderie but I look forward to spending more time with Juliet now. Instead of doing our groceries online, I want to take her to local farmers markets for fresh produce. Instead of fast food, I want to prepare healthier meals with her.

I know not what the future holds but I know my past is full of trust, support, and love during my tenure at FS. I hope to build on that for the rest of my life. And Eric, thanks for taking a chance on me. It was a hell of a ride!

Juliet doesn't always keep her phone or smartwatch nearby when she is home. Normally it is not a problem since she does not get any urgent calls from the kids' schools or doctors, as those go to me. But I get pretty annoyed if I try to call her when I'm away from home and get her voicemail instead.

Not anymore! Thanks to the wonders of technology, I have figured out the perfect way to annoy her back and have her call me immediately. I hooked up a Sonos to the dozen in-wall speakers we have throughout our house and can use Spotify to blast a song at full volume no matter where I am in the world. Naturally, my song of choice is Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.

Who needs a landline when you have Sonos?! Surprisingly, just as I was typing this, I realized that we do have a landline! It's the emergency line for the elevator via Ooma. I know landlines are a thing of the past and pretty boring in general but Ooma's tech and pricing is pretty cool. You buy the equipment online and they give you a phone number and service for free, with the only monthly payment being taxes and FCC charges (around $7 for my location). Their equipment is well-designed and cleverly solves the reliability vs. reach problem.

So here's the problem I needed to solve: The elevator's emergency phone line required an old-school landline connection over an RJ-11 phone cord. I cannot easily get a standard landline where I live so my only choice was cellphone or internet-based phone. Cellular phones do not have RJ-11 ports and even if I found one that did, cell service is not dependable indoors, at least not for life-and-death matters. This left internet-based phone service as my only option, but most VOIP (voice-over-internet) services offer phones that connect to standard Ethernet (RJ-45) and there's no cheap "adapter" to go from one to the other, at least not stably for an emergency phone. Additionally, the elevator's control box where the phone line would plug in, is far from my router. Now while I do have good wi-fi all over the house and even the yard, VOIP over wi-fi may work for casual usage but I would not recommend it for emergency phones.

That's why after looking online for months, I was elated to come across Ooma. They offer a base-station ($50 refurbished on Amazon) that plugs into your router with an Ethernet cord and a compatible wireless phone jack with a RJ-11 port (another $50 on Amazon) that can talk to the base-station over RF, without using your home wi-fi. This means I could keep the base-station in my network cabinet, mount the wireless phone jack right next to the elevator's control box, and get reliable phone service without pulling a new RJ-11 cable all across the house. And that's exactly what I did and it works great. It even has a dial-tone with pulse-dialing!

If blasting Carly doesn't work out next time, I might have to call our elevator's emergency line to get Juliet's attention!

This past week I promised myself that I will start making time for myself again. Over two decades ago when I started this blog, I was in the midst of college exams, homework, and projects and barely had time for anything other than studies, chores, and some work. And yet I always had time to write an update here. But last few years have been so exhaustively busy and stressful for me that while I made time to play with the kids and go out with Juliet, I pushed off my personal "me time" aside.

Add to that the long list of paperwork I have had to do and still haven't done, being alone in my office became the most opportune time to check things off the to-do list rather than relax, share my thoughts, or be creative like I used to. I don't even comment online anymore because if I have time to type paragraphs for strangers, I have time to update our Au Pair family profile so that we can find Adele's replacement once she leaves in early September. But thankfully, old tasks are getting done now and new todos aren't piling up like they did a year ago. The Au Pair family profile has been updated. I filled out the claim forms for moving damages from last year. I have the documents I need to register our cars here in Illinois and sign up Leela for day care. And soon my parents room downstairs will be ready.

Maybe then I can write down some of the thoughts that I've been itching to share for quite some time now. So next up will be my treatise on... love.

For centuries, people have made predictions on what the world will be like decades and centuries into the future. I am a lot more interested in 5-10 year predictions than 20-50-100 year ones because the former are more actionable. Like many others, I could easily see that streaming services were going to take over the world and that nearly everyone was going to have a smart phone. Nothing worth bragging about as it was pretty obvious since 2005 unless something went terribly wrong.

What fascinates me are the things that I was wrong about 5-10 years ago, not because I lost money or respect over it (trust me, I care for neither of those) but because it means I was imagining a different world than the one we live in now. It means that today when I see 5-10 years into the future, I could be similarly wrong and it is best that I take some time to look back and alter my underlying assumptions that turned out to be wrong.

1. Bandwidth: I grew up with 28kbps and 56kbps dial-up connection and personally experienced the jumps to DSL, then cable modem, and right into the 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE speeds. And now I manage fiber and cloud networks at 5-10gbps daily. So you would think that someone in my place would be optimistic about there always being enough bandwidth in the future. But turns out I am not. At each of these stages, I could not foresee things getting any faster and instead spent my time optimizing and building for the current speed. While this sounds like a bad thing, it actually works in my favor in day-to-day work situations because it makes me build things that work fast now, not after everyone upgrades to 5G. However, if I was more "futuristic" in my thinking, I would build things for the future. So when 7G comes, my bandwidth-hog 3D video-streaming game-simulation app will be just what people try out first.

2. Video Streaming: Tagging along with my bandwidth shortsightedness, has been my ever pessimistic view on how much video streaming will really be possible. I always thought Netflix wouldn't be able to support streaming a hundred million streams simultaneously so they will come up with alternatives like P2P streaming, DVR-style recording/downloading, custom devices with terabytes of storage etc. But instead they did something that just blew my mind because of how plainly logical it was - they worked with major ISPs and put Netflix servers right on the ISPs internal network and wrote code that cached the most commonly viewed streams. This means that when I click 'Play' on my TV to watch a popular Netflix show, the file is coming to me straight from my ISP's building in my city a few miles away, not across the Internet from New York or California.

3. Compression: I was wrong about how limited the video quality would be too, as I watch nearly everything in 1080p and some 4K today. Compression has continued to blow my mind at how great things look and how small lossy video/audio files are. Sure, nothing beats 70mm film in theory but I can barely see any blurriness or distortion when watching a YouTube video on my phone. Even now I scoff at 8K videos, who needs that! But based on how wrong I have been in the past, within a few years I will surely be annoyed when the 8K stream I'm watching on my virtual glasses hiccups a bit. All of this is made possible due to the insane level of compression thanks to literal geniuses in math, signal processing, and computer science.

4. Battery vs. Phone Weight: I have absolutely been wrong about this and I still don't know why the world doesn't see it my way. My phone is thin and light enough. Even when it's brand new, the battery barely lasts 8 hours. Just make the damn phone thicker and give me a 3-7 day battery! Stop making the screen bigger. But turns out I was wrong. People want thin, light phones that they have to charge 3x a day. Literally every person I know connects their phone to charge the moment they sit down for an hour. I'm not saying I thought batteries would be better by now. I thought people would realize that long battery life was worth the excess weight. But turns out I'm wrong.

5. A.I.: I'm still every pessimistic about strong or general AI i.e. computers with human-level intelligence or beyond (super AI). I don't think that's happening any time soon. I was also always optimistic about weak or narrow AI that has a very specific task like image recognition or text to speech. What I could never imagine was that throwing a data-center's worth of computing resources into a narrow AI can actually make it perform close to a general AI for most purposes. In simpler words, while we don't have a magical smart AI genie, we have really good software that can translate between languages, and if we make that software learn the entirety of everything ever posted on the Internet, the resulting AI will not only be great at translating between languages but it will also be capable of translating between languages it has never seen before. It will also be capable of writing new text in any language, like news reports, based on a few key inputs. This isn't necessary strong AI but for all intents and purposes, it is good enough. If you've read a stock market summary of the day in the last 5 years, it's AI.

6. Bluetooth: I was more optimistic on this than reality turned out to be. I thought we would have better alternatives to crappy Bluetooth by now. Turns out we don't. I don't even want to get into why because it is just 500 pages of depressing.

7. Social Media: I easily saw where Twitter and Facebook were going to end up and the reality is not too far off from my expectations. I am not surprised with walled gardens and information bubbles etc. That was only natural. What I am surprised about is how easily you can still live without them. I don't use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok or any number of cool social media apps. I still read and infrequently post on reddit and watch some of my favorite science/tech channels on YouTube regularly. However, I've easily gone weeks without so much as looking at reddit and I signed up to watch my YouTube creators on Nebula for $5/mo. Literally nothing in my life is going to change if any or all of these social media sites went away instantly today. I might have some more time to kill and maybe will read more. I am utterly shocked that something hasn't compelled me to start using them like kids school programs or neighborhood or medical community chat. As relieved as I am to say all this today, I am also still pretty pessimistic for the future. I'm fairly certain there will be a time when I absolutely will have to sign up for some social media site just to go about my life. Note that I don't hate them or anything. I just don't have the time or energy to maintain an online presence beyond this blog.

8. Remote Desktops: I was more optimistic on this too than what really transpired. I thought by now, we would all have an individual "computer" in the cloud that we'd pay $5-10/mo for and it would have all of our files and software that we could access from any computer, phone, TV etc. I thought may be a small token or app on our phone would make any computer/monitor into a full-blown desktop with all of our data. Technically this is absolutely possible today and it was possible 10-15 years ago too. I just thought it would be common. So if a friend came over, they would just connect to their remote desktop on our living room TV and show vacation photos. Instead, people text each other entire movies (hello #1-3 above) or "cast" their phone to a Android/iOS device connected to the TV. The latter technically mirrors my original vision but the phone is the source of the data, not a gateway to the cloud server, so it's not the same. I think if you are in the Apple ecosystem, there are some signs of going this way with AppleTV playing your iCloud photos/videos, sharing your purchased apps/games with family members etc. However, it's all connecting to computers that Apple controls and manages, not you.

9. Self-driving automobiles: I still can't believe we have these and that they work in most environmental conditions. I also can't believe that they are not already the standard in every new car. I thought it would take forever to have cars that drive on their own. Or rather, the whole world would need to install magnets or sensors underneath every road and highway so trucks and cars would detect them and stay in the proper lane. Instead Narrow A.I. (#5 above) got so good at image recognition and depth perception that it can drive cars and identify road markers in real-time. Totally blows my mind. I also thought that the moment one car company came out with self-driving cars, it would be just a few years before every new car would self-drive because that's the best way to ensure safety and remain competitive. But instead every company is selling a few self-driving features like lane-keep and adaptive cruise control in their higher-end models while completely skipping on these for their economy class. I get why they do this because of costs but I thought consumer demand would necessitate these safety features. Nope, I'm wrong for now.

10. Video Conferencing: COVID-19 did more for video conferencing in 2 months than tech advocates did in 20 years. There is literally no way I could have predicted every person with a laptop or phone totally being ok with multi-hour Zoom sessions. Sure, there is still a lot of room for improvement but my 5 year old spends 4 hours each weekday on MS Teams video conferencing with his classmates and teacher in virtual school. That is amazing!

I'm sure I have many other current assumptions about the future that will be proven wrong eventually but for now I am just happy that many of my pessimistic predictions turned out wrong. I am glad Netflix can do 4K on a thin, light cellphone that can also educate my kid during a pandemic. I think I'm going to spend some time on what I believe the upcoming 5-10 years in technology will be like and maybe come up with ideas on how I can create tools for that future instead of just making things for immediate use today.

Leela turned one this Sunday and to celebrate, we invited all of our friends and family to a virtual party on Zoom. We would have loved to throw a party in-person but since Juliet is immunocompromised, we cannot risk her getting infected with Coronavirus. On the flip side, many more people from across the country and world were able to join.

Juliet and I had been planning the party for many months now and it took a surprising amount of work to prepare everything. We knew we didn't want to have just a standard 'everyone fawn over our baby while yelling across each other' event so we spent a lot of time coming up with fun ideas to engage the guests. We came up with the following itinerary for a packed one-hour session:

1. Intro slideshow with two dozen latest photos of Leela with/without us, on loop while everyone slowly joined.
2. Quick welcome by me with technical suggestions like please mute when not talking and turn phone to wide-screen.
3. Pre-recorded Official Party Welcome by a special guest: NOT Tom Cruise.
4. Leela's first year of adventures slideshow of about 50 pics/collages with both Juliet and I sharing a line or two about each slide.
5. Leela's Playroom: A Scavenger/Treasure Hunt game for all guests with hints provided by special guests in the form of nursery rhymes. I managed to get personalized videos wishing Happy Birthday to Leela from Lisa Loeb, LeVar Burton, Gilbert Gottfried, Carole Baskin, and Danny Trejo! And to keep things cute, I had Naveen sing Old MacDonald Had a Farm.
6. Slideshow of 12 Months of Leela in pretty costumes
7. Pre-recorded Happy Birthday song with karaoke-style subtitles sung by Lisa Loeb and Gilbert Gottfried.
8. Finale: Cake Smash by Leela.

Since I was going to handle the slides and videos, I asked my friend Arthur to manage the guests and host the technical aspect of the party. He admitted people into the waiting room, muted guests after they were done speaking, pinned my stream when I was presenting, kept the score for the game, and recorded the whole session so we can remember it forever! This was no small task and so a big thank you to Art!

Juliet's cousin Alex stayed with us for 3 weeks last month and came back again for Leela's birthday. Without her helping around the house, I would not have time to do any photo or video editing, nor would Juliet have been able to put up the wonderful decorations as pictured below. So thank you Alex!

I used OBS Studio to present the stream and that included playing videos, flipping through images, showing our webcam feed live, overlaid with various transparent images like the frames below. The images look pixelated because they are screenshots of the live session, not photos.

Overall, even though this was just an hour-long online party, it was honestly no less exhausting and exhilarating than any of our other parties like Naveen's birthdays or Juliet's Baby Shower. While this had a unique set of challenges, fortunately for us, there were no technical issues. Best of all, both Leela and Naveen loved it!

Happy Birthday to Leela, my lovely little baby girl :)

Leela turns six months old today! She is healthy, smiling, and surprisingly easy to care for. Naveen is doing well, especially now that Juliet bought him a tiny indoors trampoline to jump on all day. We've been at home for 7 weeks now and keeping ourselves busy. Four days a week, we attend an online martial arts class hosted by our friends Maria & Megan at Mt. Song. Naveen's been playing Terraria on his Kindle and I've been catching up on last few years of DC superheroes shows on Netflix.

Not to say that things are all peachy. It is definitely a detriment to both the kids that they have nobody else their age to play with at this time and might not for another few months. Juliet has started getting Naveen to exchange letters with his friends. She is pretty social and outgoing herself and hasn't seen her friends in a while too so I'm sure it's been hard on her. Not much has changed for me since I barely go out to meet people in person; most of my socializing is online or on the phone so I'm the least impacted.

As to my thoughts on how the virus will further spread or die out - no idea. I've been keeping an eye on it since late December when it was just a rumor. We now know so much about it but it is still not enough. We don't know which medicines help and at what stage of the infection. We don't know if lack of Vitamin D has a material impact on severity. We don't know if most people already have it. We don't know if there will be another wave or two. We don't know if there will be a vaccine in a year or two. We don't know which country is doing is right for the long term - Sweden or Singapore.

What I do know is that we know a lot about seasonal flu. We have vaccines, procedures and protocols, and a century of painful experience and medical knowledge. And yet seasonal flu kills tens of thousands of people each year. This variant of coronavirus is new, unlike other common viruses, and as of yet, incurable. So regardless of whether it's r_o factor is higher or lower than flu, there are far too many unknowns for anyone to predict months out. We can extrapolate infection case counts for a few days or week but beyond that, nobody knows. We can look at community infection rates and suggest mitigation efforts but we cannot predict how people will adhere to them. Anyone who says anything concrete is just giving their best opinion. Will it go away after everything reopens? Nobody knows. Will it caught a million deaths by end of 2020? Nobody knows.

It is common for there to be world-wide issues that affect everyone that nobody knows how to predict. That's been the standard of our experience for millennia. Nobody knew when the World Wars would end. Nobody knows when the next big earthquake, tsunami, hurricane, or volcanic eruption will be. Nobody knows what price of oil will be in three years. Our entire society is built on not knowing something but working very hard to find out. That's what we humans do. We say "I dunno but..." and then we figure it out a decade later. Our problem isn't that people don't know. Our problem is people who don't know but claim they do. It is totally ok to be cautious at this time because we really don't know. And frankly, since we don't know, it is also ok for others to have different outlook than you, provided they are based on something resembling reality.

My long term outlook of coronavirus is that we will either have a decent enough vaccine or a pretty reliable treatment procedure. Along with the seasonal flu, we will have seasonal COVID cases but they will be fewer in number. Unlike SARS, I don't think coronavirus will be contained and eliminated from general population since it has already spread so much. So it will be closer to swine flu or norovirus. Billions of people with none to mild symptoms, tens of thousands of deaths annually. If my suspicious are correct, then it won't matter if countries chose the Singapore route of "test-everyone and wear masks" or Sweden route of "keep elderly safe but everyone else keep working" except to flatten the hospitalization curve.

Right now most places have indeed flattened the curve but I think that might give people a false sense of safety. People in countries like Vietnam and New Zealand who now have close to zero cases might think their country avoided the COVID pandemic completely. But until there is a vaccine, there is no guarantee that they won't become the next hot spot after reopening their borders to tourists. Contrast that with Florida that is already reopening and most likely will have an uptick in cases over the summer. A year from now almost all Floridians will either be immune from COVID or some unfortunately dead. So in 2021 summer who will have a better tourist season? Vietnam or NZ which could be a coronavirus zone or Florida which already went through the worst?

These are just opinions, like everyone else. Nobody knows and so all I can say is stay safe, stay healthy, and try not to lick handrails!

There is no better feeling than interacting with people who know what they're doing. I often have to contact companies for help with software issues and usually, that involves creating online tickets, filling out detailed forms, going through multiple levels of customer service tiers until I finally reach someone who knows the software well. Sometimes I never even get that far and just give up. But every now and then, I end up working directly with the person who made the software and it can absolutely make my day.

Many years ago I ended up buying a few licenses for Bvckup2 software for work. Backups are a big deal and I cannot afford to have them fail. Ever. But when you have hundreds of users, computers, and tens of millions of files, backups can be a nightmare. There are a thousand different pieces of software that take files from one computer and put them on another. Every use case has a different tool that works the best. For my case, Bvckup2 beats every alternative. I know this sounds like a paid ad but I'm just a happy customer. I've been getting my daily 'Bvckup2 completed successfully' emails for years now and I could not be more satisfied. However, every now and then it fails because of some new issue. Today it was me trying to backup a single file over 2TB to the cloud. No matter what I tried, the backup software kept erroring out.

So I just emailed Alex, the developer of Bvckup2, shared with him some of the log files, and he emailed me the exact changes I need to make to the configuration to fix the issue. This seems like such a simple problem-troubleshoot-solution process but I cannot even begin to describe how rare such an occurrence is for me. I currently have multiple tickets open with a software documentation company, a payroll processing company, a cloud storage provider, a network security firm, and a ton of smaller IT vendors. I swear if each of these companies had an 'Alex' working for them that I could email, I would save so much time each week.

I hope that whenever people interact with me for IT issues, they get the same experience but of course, for complex issues it is not always possible. So whether it is Alex who writes backup software, or Bud who fixed my leaking pool, it is always a wonderful feeling to work with people who know what they're doing.

Naveen turns four today! We're going to his school to celebrate his birthday with all of his friends. One of the requests from his teachers is that we share one anecdote per year of his life. Here's what we're going to share:

Birth: Naveen came three weeks early. We had some indications that he was going to be early so we did our best to prepare. We had the car seats ready, the crib was setup, and all the baby clothes and toys were organized. We brought him home and realized something we missed - there was no place for us to put him down except for his crib. We hadn't assembled any of the baby rockers or jumpers! So the first hour that Naveen came home, mom held him in her arms while dad built a rocker for him.

Year 1: As per Indian tradition, Naveen got a full head-shave when he turned one. He did not like it! He went to school all sad the next day and all of his friends noticed he was completely bald. So they kept trying to pet his smooth head and all the attention suddenly perked him up. He came home smiling.

Year 2 (option A): When Naveen was two, we noticed some of his small toys kept disappearing from his play area but then mysteriously appeared at the dining table. To figure out what was happening, instead of leaving him with one or two small toys, we left a large pack of tiny plastic toys in his play area. After about ten minutes, I peeked into the play area and all of the new toys were gone! Naveen was waddling around slowly and kept saying "Pants! Snakes in the pants!" He had stuffed all of the toys inside his pants so he could play with them at the dinner table but this time it was far too many toys for comfort.

Year 2 (option B): For Halloween, Juliet showed Naveen a ton of costumes idea online. She asked him which one he wanted and he pointed to the filter for the costume color: red. She clicked on it and the website showed all the red costumes. He still pointed to the little box for the red color filter and kept saying "Red box. I want to be the red box!" So naturally, instead of buying one of the numerous red-colored costumes, Juliet and Naveen spent an entire evening making him a "red box" costume. As we went trick-or-treating door to door, people kept guessing what he was dressed up as. Naveen proudly said "I am a red box!" to anyone who couldn't guess.

Year 3: Last year we went to Weeki Wachee to see the mermaid show. On the drive home, out of nowhere Naveen announced, "When I grow up, I'm going to marry a mermaid!" Juliet was thrilled at the prospect and said "Tell us everything!" So Naveen described how he was going to feed his mermaid wife fish, hold her hand all day, and teach her about the solar system. When I asked how he was going to breathe underwater, he said "No Daddy, I don't want to marry an underwater mermaid. I want to marry an above-ground one." Frankly, he put more thought into his future life at 3 than I had at 23.

The 24-hour news cycle could have unleashed an era of meticulous, nuance-driven news coverage but it gave us an echo chamber of soundbites. Imagine tuning in at 8am for public policy news, 12pm for local project updates, 4pm for geopolitical briefing, 8pm for fiscal analysis, and midnight-to-morning for a summary of global news in the past 24 hours. But instead we ended up with each hour starting with 6min of breaking news, then 12min of expression of shock, followed by 6min of reading of tweets and playback of soundbites, capped with 18min of yelling by disparate panelists. Throw in 18mins of ads and we got an hour of news. Repeat this 18 times a day with a different set of shouting faces and replay 6 of those hours between midnight and 6am and we have the global 24-hour news media format.

No matter the country, language, or channel, the format is essentially the same. You can't fault any specific entity for this because this is the natural order of any attention-seeking broadcast platform. Gravity makes all rocks fall down. 24-hour news cycle makes everyone repeat things 24 times a day. If they deviate from the norm, they lose viewers and shut down, reinforcing the format in the remaining networks.

Social media could have made all of TV news inconsequential. There is no specific air-time and the web doesn't end at 59 minutes. But it didn't fix any of TV's problems, but rather exacerbated them. Whereas TV started with experienced journalists repeating pre-approved talking points, social media gave a loudspeaker to anyone without any barriers. So whereas conflicts of interests sort-of mattered in the TV-era, nobody knows on the internet what biases someone has or which masters they serve. If it is in their interest to create outrage, they will create outrage. And boy have they championed the sport of creating outrage.

How we ended up here is relatively straight-forward. In a winner-take-all voting system, it is guaranteed that voters will end up aligning with one of two major parties. It doesn't matter how educated, rational, or compassionate the people are, if every voter can only select one person on a ballot, and whoever gets the most votes wins, it is absolutely certain that you will end up with two, diametrically opposed parties. And furthermore, over time the parties will continue to get further and further apart. If instead the voters could choose more than one candidate, preferably by ranking their choices in order of preference, then more than two parties can gain support and candidates who unite the people will win, instead of the most polarizing ones.

The same happens on the Internet when image macros, tweets, and 30-second muted video clips reduce the depth of an issue and leave you with only one of two choices - like/retweet/share or ignore. Remember ignoring is treated as dislike by social media algorithms so even if you think you are not making your opinion known, you are. When every bit of content online is judged on how much attention it receives, then only the most attention-grabbing content gets to the top. And there is nothing that gets more attention than something that causes us to fume in outrage and disbelief. How can X happen? I can't believe X said Y! Does nobody care about Z anymore?!

Our natural reaction to all of this is to exclaim that media is biased! Just like everyone has an accent but do not think they have an accent, all news is biased except the news you agree with. But biased isn't bad. Bias is natural. Our biases show where we come from, what values we espouse, what causes we are willing to stand up for. I am extremely biased in favor of legal immigration, interracial marriages, and having pets. Doesn't matter if it is suddenly proven that cats are destroying humanity or computer programmers from India will cause global meltdown in 2038. I'm not giving up my cats and I'm not voluntarily renouncing my US citizenship. I am biased and I stand by it. Biases aren't really a problem. The problem is our inability to recognize the bias in ourselves when we come across rage-inducing headlines and instantly give in to the rage.

I've been online for two decades now and not ONCE have I benefited from being instantly infuriated by something I read online. Not once has my life been better because of a visceral gut-reaction to an image stamped with some words by an anonymous troll. But I can't even count the number of times it has spoiled my mood, which most likely ruined a meal or a day trip. It doesn't matter if I was reading something true or false, important or trivial. All that mattered is that it instantly caused me to change how I felt, regardless of how my life was going normally. I could be having the best day with my family and friends and suddenly breaking news ruins the moment. Two days later it comes out that the original news while true is toothless because of some nuanced stipulation, and all of my rage subsides. The overly simplified news fed my pre-existing biases and caused me monetizable outrage. People made money from me being angry and frankly, I don't want to be a part of it.

So how do I de-bias the news I am consuming? One of the favorite things I learned in a Computer Science class years ago was how to use an unfair coin to simulate a fair coin toss. An unfair coin is any coin where the odds of landing on heads or tails is not exactly 50%, say if the coin is smoothed out on one side, causing it to be lighter and landing slightly more often. Flip a fair coin a trillion times and you would expect close to 500 billion heads and 500 billion tails. But flip an unfair coin i.e. a biased coin a trillion times, and you could get 430 billion heads and 570 billion tails. So how can you use an unfair coin in a fair way?

Just flip twice instead of once. If you get heads followed by tails, that's heads. If you get tails followed by heads, that's tails. If you get two heads or two tails, ignore the results and flip twice again. That's it. This method is proven to give you a fair, unbiased coin toss. Yes, you might have to flip the coin a lot of times in case you keep getting doubles initially - HH, TT, HH, TT, TT. But the first time you get either a HT or TH, you have a fair outcome.

Another trick I learned long ago that involved deciding the fair outcomes between two parties was about splitting a piece of cake into two. While both sides will fight to get the larger piece of the cake, there is a simple way to make it fair - flip a coin to let one party cut the cake into two and the other party gets to take either of the cut pieces. If the cutter tries to cheat and makes one slice much larger than the other, the picker can take the larger piece, leaving little for the cheating cutter. So it is in the best interest of the person cutting the piece of cake to make it as fair as possible.

To save me from outrage, I combine these two methods. First, regardless of how insane a news article seems, I wait 48 hours to decide. In two cycles of 24-hour news, the opposition will either properly refute or the original party will provide additional proof. I am willing to give the benefit of doubt to any side but I am not willing to give in to financially-motivated entities that profit from me to be offended. If something doesn't enrage me two days after I heard about it, then it wasn't worth being enraged two minutes after. Next, I mentally swap all proper-nouns in negative articles to people I like. If the article no longer antagonizes me with the names swapped, then I have proof of my hidden bias and no longer care about the original article.

This is not the proper strategy for journalists or media personalities with influence. They need to do what they believe is right. This strategy is like defensive driving for the Internet. I am not trying to solve the problem with the Internet. I just don't want it to corrupt my mind. Some motorists describe defensive driving as "driving as if everyone else on the road was drunk." I web-surf like everyone else is trying to indoctrinate me into their angry little cult. So far so good.

It started off as an elaborate April Fools' joke in March of 2019. I wanted to prank my friend so I wrote a simple script that used Google's new Duplex AI digital agent to call him at odd hours. The AI voice was "human" enough to fool almost anyone, interjecting pauses with "umm" and "aha", repeating the same thing using different words. Gone were the days of Prof. Hawking's monotone voice. My friend was now being nagged by a believable set of voices who were trying to book a scuba lesson in his non-existent swimming pool, buy his not-for-sale hair, and apply to his world-famous clown college! My script emailed me every hilarious interaction he had to put up with but by the sixth one, he started asking the bots if I was paying them to call him. On April 1st, I called him up and asked him to review some code I was having trouble with and waited until it dawned on him. I heard a series of loud cuss words followed by uproarious laughter.

"You know I totally believed it was real people," he said. "I mean the accents could use some improvement but I honestly believed someone was posting my number on Craigslist or something. I had no idea these were computer voices!"

Over the next few months, I got busy with life and forgot about the script until one evening I had to call my cable company. They had unexpectedly raised my monthly rate without increasing the Internet speed and I figured it was time they heard my true feelings. But I was on hold for so long, I realized that it wasn't worth my time or sanity. "Only a robot could hold patiently for 30 minutes and not get enraged at the poor customer service rep for an unexpected charge," I thought. Maybe it was frustration, maybe it was the prospect of another funny story, but I spent the night rewriting my April Fools' script to bargain with the cable company. The logs showed that it took about 3 tries before an agent at my cable company said "I totally understand you frustration. How about I revert back to your old price but you keep the new speed?" My pre-programmed script sighed "Ok, that will work I guess." I didn't want it to sound too happy lest they might think I was trying to pull a fast one over them.

I shared the story of lowering my cable bill with friends and family and they all wanted to try it out. I just needed them to send me their cable company name and account number. I already knew most of their home addresses. It took a few days but eventually I had a very detailed, realistic script written that could handle most of the top 10 cable companies and it could even change the tone when talking to supervisor. I analyzed the logs and the script worked right off the bat in 60% of the cases and took at most 3 attempts to get 95% success. I eventually created a simple online form for friends of friends to enter their cable company name and account number so I didn't have to manually type things out.

I woke up one morning with a billing alert from Google. Apparently I had used $150 worth of Duplex agent credits in one night! A quick peek at the site analytics told me things had gotten out of hand. Someone had posted my app to their Facebook page. So I did what any broke person who just got his 15 minutes of fame would do - I put a big banner on the page that said "Lower your cable bill by $10/mo" and put a $1 PayPal button under it. No privacy policy, no terms of service. Just gimme a buck and my robots will take care of your problems! It only cost me 10c/call so there was barely any risk. I figured maybe in a few months, the PayPal button will make me enough to offset the $150 I lost.

I woke up next morning with a $540 PayPal balance. Positive balance! Someone popular had mentioned my site on their podcast. By evening, it was $1400 and PayPal shut down my account thinking it was scam. Took all next day to get it unlocked. After a few days, I started getting calls from people saying Company X had started training their employees to ignore my script. So I spent a few hours increasing its vocabulary and fed it a few books on negotiation and customer service. That worked. First month sales were $24,000 and expenses were barely $500!

The next few months leading into January 2020 are a haze. I was receiving feedback and requests from people around the world at an overwhelming rate. I expanded the basic cable-company caller system to handle health insurance claims, Craigslist inquiries, and even added a business-ready module that could reschedule Outlook and Gmail appointments. But the one that went viral was the car purchase negotiator. You simply enter the car make/model and your zip code and my AI bots would look online and call up every dealership in a 100-mile radius. Then it would negotiate the best price, essentially making each dealer bid against the others in near real-time. Once the script reached optimal pricing, you would get an email summary and then could call the dealership to finalize the purchase. Only cost you $25 or if you joined the monthly Gold plan or higher, it was free.

Growth was good and rapid. Soon I had a team of talented coders, a horde of eager investors, and a following of lazy slackers who never wanted to make a phone call again. But replacing phone calls wasn't the end-of-line for us. We had stopped using Google's Duplex once Mozilla released their open-source AI agent framework Firefish, which could do a lot more than talk. It could intelligently fill out forms. So we added a premium "No Snails" service. All of your boring postal mail comes to us and we handle it. Late fees on car rental? We negotiate it down to near $0. Bill for a "free" service that keeps auto-charging you? We cancel it for you! $49/mo is not a lot to live a hassle-free life. The only mail in your mailbox is birthday cards and wedding invites. No more scary IRS bills. Our Platinum plan members got their tax issues resolved automatically.

Maybe it was the public's lack of technical understanding or their faith in our brand, but people stopped thinking of us as an algorithm company. As far as they were concerned we had a call-center full of 100,000 people fighting on their behalf. It was barely 10,000 cloud servers! By the time we needed a million servers, we had acquired ten million paying customers. We were still private, IPOs having lost their charm by the market failures in late 2020s. We wanted to do something special for our ten millionth customer and the folks in travel department came up with an ingenious solution - World Citizen plan.

We already had Full-Life management plans where we took care of almost every issue you could have from picking health insurance to finding the right job. But no matter what we did, everything was location dependent. Even if our system could help a Canadian citizen find a job in US and automatically handle the filling, mailing, and replying to all of the paperwork needed to get passport and work-visa, the person still had to go for an in-person interview for security reasons. What if we could negotiate some sort of deal between both US and Canada where citizens of either countries could bypass the interview as long as they met certain criteria? Well, since most of the politicians in both countries were already Full-Life management customers, it didn't take long for us to convince them to support our World Citizen plan. After all, we already knew our customers in more depth than any interview or background check could reveal.

As far as I was concerned, I had no interest in selling anyone's data or getting hacked. Sure we experienced the odd instance of run-of-the-mill corporate espionage but securing our systems remained our top internal goal. This helped sell the World Citizen plan to more than the North American politicians. Soon Europe, Africa, and India joined in. Beauty of the World Citizen plan was that since we managed the application and approval process on both side of member countries, our customer's didn't even have to proactively apply for a visa. Instead our travel department would suggest places for them to visit as soon as they became eligible for a visa.

It took a few years but we finally worked out the kinks in the visa-free travel process. Terrorism had always been the primary threat to visa-free travel and we found a unique solution, that our customers surprisingly didn't hate - bank with us. Once a customer moves 100% of their banking, investment, and credit accounts to our system, we could easily detect and prevent illicit activities. We weren't as interested in preventing crime as in having non-criminal customers. Shady financial stuff got you banned from our service permanently. And if you wanted to appeal, you would have to fill out the forms manually and make the calls personally. There was little incentive for criminals to join our service.

For the next decade or so, we continued to acquire more customers and around the time the ten billionth baby was born, we added our third billionth customer. Of these three billion paying customers, 400 million were on the World Citizens plan. We were essentially the fifth largest nation in the world albeit without sovereign borders, currency, or elected officials. We did have a flag though and although it wasn't planted on any planet or moon, it was quite popular among new customers.

Things seemed to be going well for us and our customers well into the mid-2040s but then things took a turn for the worse quite quickly. Our non-customers revolted globally and continued to do so with an unyielding frenzy. We all understood why but we didn't know what we could do that didn't further spread violence. They either made too little to afford our service or had history (criminal or objectionable as per our internal standards) that prevented them from signing up for even the Bronze plans. These folks rarely got approved for visas now that most of the UN countries had signed up to the World Citizens registry. They had a hard time beating our AI at finding decent jobs, dates, or even restaurant reservations. Our AI lawyers beat their AI-aided human lawyers in 90% of the cases and our banking system was better insured than most countries' reserve banks. In nutshell, if you were our customer, you did not have to worry about bureaucracy. Sure it cost you a bit more to get your kid enrolled in a prestigious school but you can be sure that once you set a $3500/mo budget, our system found the most optimal school that fit your budget, education goals, and even your morning commute. The school didn't have to update their enrollment process or website. Our system did everything like you as a human would have via phone, snail mail, and web, just at a thousandth of the cost and with nary a care.

As proud as we were of everything we did for our 3/10th of the human population, it wasn't great to be part of the other 7/10th. So after a few tumultuous years, on Jan 1st 2050, we made the entry-level plan free for everyone without a bad history. Bam! Five billion new users in a day! The rest were mostly kids under 13 or ineligible to sign up.

Looking back at my life, I am proud to say that I helped improve the world in my own unique way. No, I didn't cure cancer and didn't eradicate world hunger. I barely donated to charity beyond what my Full-Life Tax AI suggested. But I'd like to think that I made the world a better place because I got rid of stress and misery on a global scale. We are all but human. I never expected us flawed humans to always do the right thing and I could never convince politicians to fix the laws or update their convoluted processes. All I could do was write a few automated scripts to make living less bothersome. Who knew it could end up touching so many lives! And to think it all started as a joke online.

In Part 1, I argued that we humans as a collective are not ready for the exponential growth in technology and the resulting connectedness it has brought us. I ended it by saying that here in Part 2 I will write more about "The Internet" part and how we got to where we are today. It is easy to see where we are today in terms of technology and the social aspects so I will be succinct in my thoughts on both. What I'm more interested in though is the unseen, unpredictable effects of being part of a connected world and will wildly extemporize about things I have not heard being discussed elsewhere online.

The technical history of how the Internet came to be is covered quite well by Johnny Ryan in his 2013 book A History of the Internet and the Digital Future:

It tells the story of the development of the Internet from the 1950s to the present and examines how the balance of power has shifted between the individual and the state in the areas of censorship, copyright infringement, intellectual freedom, and terrorism and warfare... how the Internet has revolutionized political campaigns... cloud computing, user-driven content, and the new global commons...

The only thing I can add to this is my personal opinion that from a technological standpoint, steady and significant progress is being made all over the world to make the Internet better. Every programmer or engineer has their own theory of what's wrong with how we code, communicate, or cooperate vs. how we should. However, since development is an iterative and generally additive process, i.e. we usually build new tools instead of completely throwing away old tools, if you do not buy into the latest fad, you can continue to use your 42-year-old battle-tested environment.

When I first started writing this series, I kept thinking about the effect that the Internet has had on all of us socially. From keeping in touch with family and friends to finding someone to marry, the Internet has drastically changed how we live. I was hoping to write a lot more on this but realized that it is unnecessary. If you're reading this, you know exactly the effect the Internet has had on us. You've heard about the thousand ways it is effecting our social interactions, sleeping-habits, family relations etc. But if you haven't, here are a few million academic papers on it. So let's move on to the fun thoughts that keep me up at night.

Fun thoughts like — what really is a thought? It can be an idea that can change our world. Or a concern that erodes our resolve. Or the noise in our brain that we filter out to achieve inner-peace. A thought is a force. It is the impetus for us to do something, anything — routine or extraordinary, good or evil, trivial or significant. We think about a lot of things, all of us. We even think about how we think. Thoughts shape our opinions, which form our beliefs, which fortify our ideologies, which direct our actions. In the long run, a thought has might.

But is the thought original or a replica? Why does it matter? It matters because the Internet has now become a decades-long experiment in planetary thought-replication. Our thoughts, which used to be our creations and possessions, are now being influenced and hijacked by others. Don't believe me? Ask yourself when was the last time you had an original thought. I don't mean things like "I should buy shampoo" or "I think it's going to rain tonight." I also don't mean novel inventions, new sandwich recipes, or odd-ball ideas like taping bread to cats. I mean simple, original thoughts, with little influence from anyone else.

Here's an example: "There are too many superhero movies." Maybe you had this thought after watching Justice League in 2017. Or after the second Spiderman reboot in 2012, or the third Superman movie in 1983. It is entirely possible for you to have had this thought without talking to anyone else and without reading a single film review. Even if you had this thought all on your own, you were most certainly not the only one thinking this. Original thought isn't the same as being the first person to have the thought. Original just means nobody told you how you should form your opinion.

Who cares if you had this thought originally? Because if you had it, then that means the conditions were ripe for others to have it too. A hundred others. A million others. That would give someone 17 billion reasons to prevent you from ever having that thought. Before the Internet, it took some serious amount of work to shape thoughts on a global scale. Today all you need is a photo with a phrase. So now if you think "I can't wait until the next superhero movie", is it an original thought?

Let me be clear, I am not against Internet's ability to influence thoughts and opinions. Without it we wouldn't have support for countless humanitarian causes, donations to an array of foundations and charities, and patronage of thousands of self-motivated creators. The Internet is awesome. But it has altered our thought process.

Ok, so the Internet influences us to buy things. Just like TV, radio, and newspapers have done for over a century. At least we can block online ads. What's the big deal? The big deal isn't about marketing or influence. The big deal is that now we have been trained to not form opinions without consulting the web first. On the surface, that's great. Everyone should form opinions after researching something in depth, not before. But this has had the side-effect of also training us to form opinions immediately after seeing anything online.

Before the Internet, we formed opinions based on our life experiences, years of knowledge, and gut feelings. That's how humanity evolved over a million years. We learned not to eat certain berries, drink standing water, or kill our own tribe members. We learned to form instincts and trust them because we knew what happens if we didn't. But now we instantly Google when a famous person says something to find out why they said it and whether we should support their stance or not. That means, although we didn't have an opinion of them ten minutes ago, we used the Internet to influence our thoughts to form an instantaneous opinion. Again, so what? Well, next time you come across a 15-second video or a 140-character sentence that sort of relates to this topic, your beliefs will strengthen instantly. You didn't ask your parent's neighbor's cousin to share that video with you, but now that they did, it reinforces some of your past instantly-formed beliefs, either in agreement or disagreement with the content being shared. Remember, these are not opinions and beliefs that you have formed after years of study and personal experience. These are prefabricated thoughts that were replicated from the mind of a single individual who shared content with someone else who shared content with someone else and so on until the idea got lodged in your mind.

For instance, you were not intentionally thinking about real-estate market in China but now that I told you that 70% of all new houses in China are bought as investment properties by people who already own a house, you are going to connect this dot to Vancouver's complicated relationship with Chinese money. Next time you cross a street and see a young, Asian male in an expensive car, you might end up thinking about his parents expatriating funds out of China, regardless of the actual truth. But thanks to me, you now have a crappy stereotype embedded in your head. What happens when the next person who fits this stereotype applies for a job under you? Or wants your vote? Or your help after an accident? Too bad, you will immediately have flashbacks of the terrible stereotype I infected you with.

Your only option is to fight it. Not fight the stereotype. That's just forming a contrarian opinion. You have to fight the innate human urge to think your thoughts through to a satisfying conclusion. You need to unnaturally force yourself not to form an opinion just because you read something online.

I know it's taken me a thousand more words than necessary to arrive at the lesson here but it's worth thinking about. And that lesson is to not think. I don't mean ignoring everything online as if it's all fake or shutting yourself off completely. I mean allowing yourself to learn new things but not forming an opinion on them.

Well that sounds completely impossible! How can you read about government corruption or medical fraud but not form an opinion on it? I don't know. If I did, I'd write a book about it. But I do know that we are letting everything we read or see online, influence us completely without questioning the medium or the messenger. And the more we do, the more we are cocksure that we are in fact the select few who are well-read, well-informed, and consistently rational.

One late night a few years ago, overcome with stress and anxiety from all facets of life, I decided to blog about everything that was bothering me, hoping for some sort of catharsis. But a funny thing happened when I wrote them all out, even before I posted anything online. I felt better. Just writing down a list of things that were causing chaos in my life made me feel better. So instead of posting it for the world to see, I just copied them to my todos under the heading: Chaos List.

The Chaos List isn't a list of chores I hate doing or bills I'd rather not pay. It is for the big problems in life, things that utterly bring me down, sometimes literally like the neurosurgery I needed on my C6-7 discs. I can control a lot of things in my life, from work schedule to eating healthy. But for the things I cannot control, there's the Chaos List.

I recently added "C5-6 discs" to the list because my neurosurgeon said it looks like I will need another surgery, right above the previous one. My pain level was down to 1/10 by mid-July but it is back to 6/10 now. I'm getting headaches, neck pain, and back pain because even though my doctor wanted to operate on both my C5-6 and C6-7 in March, the insurance company would not cover the cost of C5-6, only C6-7. So now I have to go under the knife again, the doctor has to re-operate on a recovering patient, and the insurance company has to pay 100% of the cost instead of just 15% additional. If this isn't chaos beyond my control, I don't know what is.

Another item on the list is "Old house sale." Today the buyer for my old house canceled the sale after being under contract for 90 days! The sale was supposed to complete tomorrow but the buyer got fired from his job on Friday. And since the lender denied the loan due to buyer's unemployment, I don't even get to keep the escrow. Now we start the whole process again and the earliest we can find a buyer and complete the sale is October or most likely November. This means 3-4 months of mortgage, electricity, water, and lawn mowing bills for an empty house. Argh!

There are a few more items on the list, most of them too personal and honestly too boring to share. Nobody cares about these issues other than me or my family but they definitely ruin my mood every time I let my mind wander. So I put them on the Chaos List. If it is on the list, I do not allow myself to think about it. No point in wallowing in self-pity over things already on the list. That's why they are on the list. I have already admitted that they are self-pity worthy! I don't need to keep wasting my time thinking about them.

Of course I cannot always consciously stop my anxious mind from running wild. So when I am absolutely past my ability to function or think straight due to the stress of everything, I stare at this list. Not just one item in the list but the whole list, because it is never a single issue that weighs me down, but the burden of the entire pile! And so I stare at this list.

I think of all the qualities that define me, that constitute my personality, my being. Nothing on this list has anything to do with my true nature. I am who I am, good and bad. But I am definitely not an unsold house. I am not a denied insurance claim. I am not a rejected application. Things that happen to me are not things that are me.

I don't stare at the list hoping all of these will be fixed or go away. They may not. They might get worse. The list could double in size overnight. But I will still be me. Even when I change, from experience, wisdom, or life just knocking me around, I am still never going to be a list of out-of-control events and situations. I am always going to be a real person, experiencing life, sometimes in control, sometimes out of.

Earlier today after I signed the cancellation agreement, I felt a cloud of uneasiness slowly coming over me. So I did what I've been doing for the past few years and stared at my Chaos List. It takes a bit of effort to detach myself from the events in my own life but it helps me focus on what matters without losing myself.

This was a very private year for me. From the birth of my son to my family and friends visiting us, 2015 was all about real-life social connections and nurturing relationships. Most of the time, I kept the going-ons private and offline. We took probably 5000 photos of my son but posted only a handful of them online.

This was a year of learning and doing for me, very little introspection or relaxation. I could have easily made more time for kayaking (which is when I do most of my contemplation about life) but I just didn't want to. Maybe because I'm still learning how to be a good parent or maybe because of social obligations, but I didn't make much time for myself. Most of the year I was in autopilot mode, simply doing what I needed to without overthinking my actions or the reasons behind them.

This was a year without creativity for me and I don't want to repeat this again in my life. I can't look back at this year and proudly say "I made that" about anything. I don't regret a moment I spent with my loved ones instead of making something cool but I do know that I get my energy and drive from making, not consuming. So in the long run, I need to be more creative to keep myself sane.

This was a year when I came to terms with life, death, and everything in between. From insurance policies to prolonged illness, from baby's first words to news of a friend's death, this year drove home the point that I am smack dab in the middle of adulthood, accepting everything life throws at me. A few years ago I would lose my wits dealing with the ups and downs of routine life but the roller-coaster of this year makes the past turmoils seem almost smooth sailing. Apparently, this year I also started using a lot of conflated metaphors. I plan to put a stop to that right after this sentence.

This was a loving year for me. While not much changed in my career, finances, or social-standing, I have never felt so connected and loved by the people in my life. Juliet is an unbelievably loving mother and wife, my parents and sister are always there to talk to me about anything (especially Naveen), and my friends and coworkers have been so supportive all year. There was no drama, no guilt trips, no awkward social situations all year. It's been a wonderful year people-wise and I couldn't be more thankful for it.

Tonight is a big night - it's the first time our son Naveen is sleeping in his crib in the nursery. He's already rolling and sitting up on his own and I'm fairly certain he will start crawling in a matter of weeks. My parents have continued to be amazing and we will all (including Naveen) miss them a lot when they go back to India later this month.

Once they leave, life changes for me. Instead of hiring a nanny or sending him to daycare immediately, I am going to be taking care of him during the day when Juliet is at work. I already do most of my work later in the evening when fewer users are online so I don't think my work schedule will be impacted much. But waking up early in the mornings when Juliet leaves for work is going to be hard. I am planning on having a good, fun routine for us and will hopefully stick to it until he's ready for daycare. As worried as I am about handling the new responsibility, I am tremendously excited about doing new activities with him every day. We have yet to go on the Pinellas Trail! Or the beach!

I don't plan on making this a daddy-blog - it's just a blog about my life and right now the focus is the baby. And I gotta admit, having a baby has changed me in ways I could not have imagined. Things that used to bother me to no end, are slowly becoming non-issues and sometimes even pleasant - like interruptions during programming. I used to hate it when someone interrupted me in the middle of work or activity. But if I hear the baby cry, I pay attention immediately - whether I just sat down to work or almost finished. Most of the time it only takes a few minutes to feed/change him so it is often a welcome break from hours of non-stop coding.

Another drastic change I've noticed is that I have nearly stopped procrastinating. All my life I've done things at the last moment and never expected to change because that's just who I was. But now? I jump on to every chore at the first chance I get - be it changing my life insurance policy or emptying the trash. I've been wondering why I suddenly feel obligated to do my chores without delay and I can't come up with a rational reason. It's just something that happened over the last few months without me realizing. And it feels wonderful :)

In 2008, Iron Man I came out. I really wanted to go see it. I asked a few friends and nobody could make it. I asked coworkers and nobody could make it. I got bold and asked out a cute girl I knew and she couldn't go either. I went home and went to sleep early because I was so distraught. Over 7 billion people on this planet, a million of them in my own town, and not a single person wanted to go watch a movie with me.

But then suddenly out of nowhere, I thought, "Hey I can just go by myself. It's 10pm, late enough that chances of any embarrassing run-ins will be low, but not so late that I'll be late for work tomorrow." So I go out of bed, dressed up like I was going out with friends, bought a single ticket, and enjoyed the movie thoroughly. As I drove home, I called my best friend to say how great the movie was and that he should definitely see it. Next day I talked about the movie with my other friends and coworkers. I was constantly scared of them asking me "Who did you go see it with?" but surprisingly, nobody asked me.

Without realizing it, I had overcome my fear of rejection. The next day I told the same cute girl that I was going to the local mall and she should meet me there. She liked how confident I was and said why not. We had a great time at the mall and met up more often later. Soon she moved in with me, then we got engaged, then we got married. It's been the happiest six years of my life and I don't think any of that would have happened without that single ticket to Iron Man I.

I decided to write this down because I came across someone else online who didn't have a friend to go to the movies with.

Life's going on as usual down here in Florida. I've been keeping myself busy with a variety of computer, house, and home zoo projects. Now that Juliet has a predictable work schedule, we've been spending a lot more time together doing typical married-couple things. We went to the farmer's market on Saturday and bought fresh fruits and vegetables. We're cooking more at home and living a pretty healthy lifestyle (except for my late night programming sessions).

I've already written about not writing more often before so no point in repeating myself but it's not the lack of time that has kept me from updating my 'blog - it's my state of mind. There are just too many things I can write about but don't know if I should even bother. Had Snowden, Syria, or Sequester happened a decade ago, I would've written numerous passages elucidating my thoughts and expressing my cynicism on every topic. But now it feels pointless to write about things I have no direct involvement in. Everyone is getting their news from the Internet today, no point in being one more source of textual drivel.

Even though we are all affected by the news indirectly, my opinion on each matter no longer compels me to stand up on a pulpit and yell them out loud for everyone to hear. My opinions have not gotten any milder, just my desire to voice them publicly. I wonder if this has anything to do with age/maturity or rather my current lifestyle, which is very laid back and full of non-stressful creative outlets. Do I (a) spend an hour writing about what the morality of doing X is, (b) go out for an evening walk with the missus, or (c) build a gravity-drain for the duck pond so it is easier to clean up? I used to choose (a) but now I'm choosing (b) and (c) a lot more often.

In a way, I am happy I don't have much to write about lately. It means everything is alright within and without my head. And if I really feel like typing furiously at the keyboard, I'll avoid online debates and channel that energy into writing something positive on my 'blog. Till next time!

I have been pretty quiet lately, not just on my 'blog but also socially. While things have been quite busy between research, work projects, and house projects, my silence has not been for a want of time. Over the years, I've scheduled my life so that I have ample time to relax and unwind every day. I think my recent taciturn attitude has more to do with a gradual but noticeable change in my mindset about life, legacy, and lore.

When I started this 'blog over a decade ago, I had an exuberant desire to share, contribute, talk, discuss, and vent. I don't think my enthusiasm has waned but rather my definition of what it means to share. Sharing no longer means uploading photos, videos, and stories online. Sharing means giving someone a wonderful memory. Whether it is a small gift or a fun-filled weekend driving around Florida, I am just happy to be there with my loved ones.

I think the only reason I still continue to write my 'blog is because I've never forced myself to write. I write when I want to and because I want to. It is not an obligation to the world but an outlet for me. Today, after over a month, I felt the urge to spew some drivel and here you are, sportingly bearing every word of it. Here's hoping the fodder for my next update will be genuine excitement and not ennui.

I just had to sign some PDF documents and send them back to a software vendor. I hate the entire process of printing, signing, scanning, and emailing or faxing so I decided to find the easiest and most reliable way to do it online. After an hour of searching, signing up for various online services, and testing out their PDF-signing tools, I have to say HelloFax.com wins hands-down.

I had a scan of my real signature on my computer so that made the process easier but HelloFax lets you create signatures using a mouse or email a photo of your signature from your phone. I signed up for the free account, uploaded the PDF, uploaded my signature, placed the signature on the document appropriately, typed today's date & my name, and clicked "I'm done!" HelloFax instantly emailed me the signed PDF and I emailed it back to the company. The entire process took just a few minutes and did not cost me anything. I would have most certainly paid them $1/fax had I needed to use fax instead of email today.

Last night I was telling Juliet about the stories of Vikram & Vaital that I grew up reading and watching on TV as a kid in India. Feeling that I didn't give her a good enough summary of the collection, I decided to look online and found something I didn't expect.

This is the part I knew: According to the stories, King Vikram promised a sorcerer that he would capture a vampire spirit, Vaital, who hangs from a tree in a desolate forest. Each time Vikram tries to capture the spirit, it tells a story that ends with a riddle. If the king knows the answer, he must answer and if he answers it correctly, the spirit would escape and return to his tree. If Vikram cannot answer the question correctly, the spirit consents to remain in captivity. King Vikram guessed the answer 24 times and the spirit flew away each time.

This is the part I learned today: On the twenty-fifth attempt, the spirit tells the story of a father and a son in the after-math of a devastating war. They find the queen and the princess alive in the chaos, and decide to take them home. In due time, the son marries the queen and the father marries the princess. Eventually, the son and the queen have a son, and the father and the princess have a daughter. The spirit asks what the relation between the two newborn children is. The question stumps Vikram. Satisfied, the spirit allows himself to be taken to the sorcerer.

In summary, the "I am my own grandpa" story is over a thousand years old and has roots in ancient Indian tales. And the Ray Stevens song based on the story is hilarious.

I have been working on my side-project ZetaBee.com for slightly over a year now. Over the years I've made a lot of websites and software but they were all built from scratch each time. The idea behind ZetaBee was that I would make lots of small but useful apps under a single site so I don't have to recreate features like user management, shopping cart, billing, and secure access over and over again. So far, I've made three apps in ZetaBee and yesterday I shared them online.

I received tons of useful feedback but more importantly, I got a lot of encouragement to keep working on these in the future. I'm working on KType full-time but whenever I need a break, I add a feature or two on ZetaBee. Working independently on any project for months on end isn't easy and certainly makes you wonder if what you're doing is actually useful to others or just a waste of time. I'm really happy that others found ZetaBee useful.

I use all three ZetaBee apps myself and only created them because nobody else had made something similar that I could have used instead. My personal favorite is Text because I use it to plan every single thing in my life. It's also pretty secure so I don't have to worry about anyone getting a hold of my personal notes and world-domination-plans. I recommend you check out the demo and play around it with yourself to see if it would work for you or not.

Happy B'day to Keval! To celebrate his birthday, I launched KType.net today. I've been working on the iPad app for a few weeks now and things are coming together quite well. I'll have a video demo soon. For now, you can checkout the demo online.

I just bought my sixth monitor, an HP 24" LCD with a resolution of 1920x1200. I already have five LCDs (1050x1680 each) and have placed them next to each other like this. Last month, I hooked the 5th one to my Mac Mini. However, programming in XCode on a small monitor like this is a pain, especially with the iPad Simulator shrinking to 50% scale by default on lower resolutions. So now I'll have a sixth monitor. I was going to put the fifth one away in storage but Juliet insists I should have all six on my desk because it makes me look like a total nerd.

Last few weeks I haven't written much code for KType because I realized there some more important material that I need to learn. So I'll be studying for the next week or two using online lectures. Sometimes I feel bad about "wasting" time watching lectures instead of just jumping into the code and hacking it on my own. But experience has taught me that one day spent learning often saves me ten days in coding.

I'm skeptical of people who talk for a living. If you wrote a self-help book and now give lectures around the world talking about your book, chances are I want nothing to do with you unless everything you say is grounded on hard science. If what you say cannot be proven or disproven, I'm not interested, even if all of it might be true. This includes alternative medicine advocates, nutritionists, personality coaches, most business / leadership coaches, NLP counsellors, and definitely the followers of pseudosciences like astrology, faith / spiritual healing, dowsing, ghost hunting, homeopathy, magnet therapy, and ESP. I know many people in my personal life believe in some of the above but it doesn't bother me. After all, I'm a fan of a time-travelling Doctor from the extraterrestrial planet Gallifrey so who am I judge what someone else believes in.

I came across an interesting video yesterday titled Your Brain At Work by a business coach. While the title, presentation format, and mention of a business coach set off red-flags, I gave the video a shot because it was presented in the Google Tech Talk series. I was pleasantly surprised to find it had many moments of insight with the presenter constantly citing case studies and medical research to back up his claims. What he said obviously seemed very true. The brain indeed has a prefrontal cortex and certainly studies have shown it is important for complex thought processes and critical analysis. And personal experience tells me that humans certainly get affected by negative stimuli much more intensely than positive stimuli. The presenter certainly knows what he's talking about.

His words reinforced my understanding of the brain's functions and capabilities and I even mentioned it to my wife that she should watch this sometime. I was so impressed with the presentation's logical reasoning, structured format, and reliance on actual reason that I let my skeptical guard down and completely ignored all the subsequent red-flags that I always watch out for. This morning I decided to go back and review some of the research he cited before I shared the video with some of my friends and that's when the house of cards came falling down. None of the original research has been published in any well-known journal in the fields of neuroscience, brain, medicine, or even psychiatry. The presenter made substantial references to studies but they were conducted by him and most of them were published in a journal founded by him. He coauthored many of these studies with researchers with impressive CVs but some of these researchers were not even in the fields they conducted the research in. None of these are deal-breakers individually but when I spot a series of them, I step back and question a validity of the primary author.

While there is an easy way to sniff out bogus science, there is no tutorial on how to spot a life coach who wants a lot of money to teach you how to live better. So having failed to identify the lack of hard science last night in the presentation, I decided to make up a list of my own. This list is not a critical analysis of the video I watched yesterday but is just a model to help me and hopefully others.

Five Easy Signs They Just Want Your Money:

• Bold, dynamic speaker: You need two things for someone to pay you to talk: (1) Have something worthwhile to say and (2) Be an awesome speaker. Most life coaches I've seen only have the second part and they do their very best to hide the lack of actual, original content in their presentations. But that is an art in itself as you'll see below.
• Obvious facts get repeated: This is an easy one to spot. If you catch yourself agreeing with someone talk, that's a big red flag. Knowledge doesn't work like that. You have to work hard to understand scientific methods like path integral formulation. I'm learning a new programming language using online documentation and video presentations and I keep going back and forth every few minutes to make sure I really "get" it. If something as mundane as a programming language is that difficult, what makes you think someone can explain "how the human mind works" in 45 minutes? Asking 1,000 people whether they like red or blue after seeing green and concluding that the human mind prefers red is not science, despite gratuitous use of fMRI images. At best, it is a well-designed survey. The goal here is to make you feel like they know what they're talking about so you can feel like you're learning something. If I show you that I know something, then I talk about it, instantly you'll feel like you now know it too, especially if I ask easy to answer questions that cement your beliefs.
• Generalizations abound: Real science is very, very specific. Generalization in science is very difficult, if not impossible in some fields. For almost a century now, many scientists including Einstein have tried and failed to come up with a unified theory of how everything works in the universe and so far, this remains an open line of research. Yet the guy on stage who wrote a book on herbs can explain everything about everything? Usually, speakers with a good grasp of one field will try to apply it to every problem that the audience presents. So a guy on stage selling vitamins will say there is a vitamin tablet for every single problem in your life, including your son who keeps getting into trouble at school, your boss who doesn't appreciate your hard work, and your business partner who keeps trying to steal your share. Another guy selling meditation tapes will tell you that meditation is the solution to all of the above problems and the guy selling "mind-body control" or "neuro-linguistic programming" will say his tools will fix everything. Beware of generalizations.
• Unique perspective on the common: This one's a doozy. I said above that most speakers don't have anything new to say yet now I say having a unique perspective on a common phenomenon is a gotcha. The reason is that this is their big sell and how they managed to get on the stage. If there is absolutely nothing new in someone's talk, it is easy to call their bluff despite their dynamic hand-waving abilities. But if during all the hand-waving, the speaker makes you wonder "huh, I never thought of it that way" even once, then you've fallen hook, line, and sinker for their act. And every act needs a setup. The speaker's unique perspective is their thesis statement, their angle, their bait. "Have you ever felt like A, B, C? Believe it or not, but A, B, and C are all because of W, which is just an upside-down M!" Surely you never thought W being an upside-down M had anything to do with A, B, and C. So this person on stage must have some insight that you don't. Right?
• Special acronyms & mnemonics: I saved the best one for the last because it is something EVERY SINGLE life coach does. They make up really cool, action-word-laden acronyms to help you remember the bad and the good. Often they'll put up a slide saying "The real cause of stress in life is DONKEY: D for Dishes, O for Office, N for Naggers, K for Karma, E for Enemies, and Y for YOU!" Hey, that sounds about right. This guy sure is insightful. And then they say "The solution to DONKEY is NOPANTS: N for Never giving up", O for Onomatopoeia, P for Palindromes, A for Ants, N for Nts, T for Ts, and S for Seriously, I'm done making this stuff up." There. Easy as pie. Making lame acronyms doesn't make anyone deep or insightful. It simply gives them more practice at making stuff up, something they're already doing when writing the rest of their speech. Instead of cheap acronyms, I prefer Steganography, "the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message." You want an example? Scroll up and read the first-letter of all five of these paragraphs :)

I really don't have a problem with experienced people teaching others how to do anything, including living a good life. Most of what I've learned is from others. However, I do have a problem with people who claim to have done SCIENCE and then when you dig in, turn out to have done no such thing. I don't expect a hair-dresser teaching an apprentice on how to curl hair to cite a dermatological journal. But if you talk about neuroscience, quantum mechanics, nanotechnology, or any hard science, you better be standing on firm ground. Quantum Thermodynamics is a wonderful field but you can't use it to explain why sometimes you feel like aliens are watching your every move.

I spent a considerable time this past month learning new systems, platforms, and tools to improve my skills in programming. Choosing what to learn is often quite a difficult task of its own because you never know how the 200 hours you spent learning a new technology will impact your skills, creativity, and the very way you think. One important thing I learnt while learning to learn is how to distinguish between tools and raw materials, and more importantly, why.

Tools are what you build the product with. Raw materials are what the product is built of. The fable of The Chicken and the Pig would be quiet appropriate here: No matter what you build, tools are involved but raw materials are committed. I used to spend a lot of time picking the right tools for the right job because that's what you're supposed to do. Yet I saw lots of examples of really crappy tools being used improperly in very successful products. On the other hand, I also saw very good tools being used properly in products that failed miserably. How could there be no correlation between the input and output? Turns out I was only looking at part of the input. What I should have been concentrating on, was the combination of the raw materials and tools:

Success Matrix	Strong Materials	Poor Materials
Strong Tools	Designed to succeed	Awaiting disaster
Poor Tools	Awaiting sweat & blood	Designed to fail

Having a successful product certainly requires a lot more than strong raw materials and tools but having those two right gives you a strong foundation. That buildings and bridges built with poor materials fall is no shocker. What does surprise people every now and then is seeing something built with poor tools succeed. These products require a lot more sweat and blood to succeed but they can succeed indeed. I don't have first-hand knowledge working with the following tech sites but based on the information I've gathered from articles, interviews, and online postings, I would classify them in the success matrix as:

Success Matrix	Strong Materials	Poor Materials
Strong Tools	DropBox	Xmarks
Poor Tools	Orkut	Cuil

The problem with technology (and the primary reason I decided to write this post) is that it is difficult to decide what is a tool and what is a raw material when in the end, it's just a bunch of 1s and 0s. If you're building a shed, wood and nails are raw material, axe and hammer are tools - no ambiguity at all. But for a web project, is the back-end database a tool or a raw material? What about the platform, the programming language, the framework, the client-end scripting library, the graphics engine, or the server host?

Since the difference is hard to spot, the question is if it even matters or not. I'd say it does, for one simple reason - raw materials cannot be changed after you've started building the product whereas tools can be, albeit at a minor cost. You can't switch from wood to cement half-way through a building project but you can certainly upgrade to a nail-gun from a hammer when your arms get tired. Using the ability-to-be-swapped as the primary condition, it can be easy to decide if something is a raw material or a tool in a tech project. Hosting? Usually a tool, unless you build your project solely for AWS. Programming language and framework? Usually a raw material unless the back-end is what's doing the bulk of the hard work and the front-end is simply a pretty proxy. Database engine? Could be a swappable tool if you abstract away all database-specific calls from your code.

Programmers often get into long arguments about which technology is right for the job and why you should use X and never use Y. Fact of the matter is, if something is a raw material for your product, take the time and do the research to make an educated guess. It will always be a guess because you never know what will happen in the future. If something is a tool, just pick something that gets you going quickly because if it doesn't work, you can always switch to something else later.

Salman Khan is a famous Indian actor with over two decades of box office success. Recently, another Salman Khan is gaining fame because of a different kind of audience he holds captive. This Salman Khan, or "Sal" as he likes to call himself, is an educator unlike any other you've heard before. Sal runs one of the most popular and prolific online universities in the world, Khan Academy, from his home. Khan Academy is an ever-growing collection of YouTube videos that aim to teach a variety of subjects from math to history and biology to physics.

Sal scribbles down math equations on a digital blackboard and narrates each step of the equation in a very soothing but not boring tone. These lectures last 10-15 minutes and cover a small part of a subject. Currently there are about 140 videos spanning the subject of "Linear Algebra" and I've reviewed the sixth video in the series so far. I am in the process of reviewing a lot of math that I haven't touched since graduating from college six years ago. I plan on doing a lot of independent research over the next 6-12 months and I need to learn a lot of math behind digital signal processing, computer vision, and audio synthesis. That means hundreds of hours of learning calculus, linear algebra, physics, and complex numbers.

I've known about the Khan Academy for many years but didn't bother checking out any videos because I felt it was meant for middle and high school students. Indeed, that is how Sal started making these videos - to help his nieces and nephews with their school work. However, now that I actually want to relearn a lot of stuff I've learnt in the past but forgotten over time, I find Sal's videos to be perfect for me. They are very straightforward, he explains almost every detail, and since it's YouTube, you can rewind or skip sections easily. I watch a 15 minute video in about 8-9 minutes. However, there are some parts I watch 2-3 times if I don't understand them the first time around.

I've been listening to Sal's voice for three days now and I'm certain I will continue to do so daily for the next six months. I looked at a lot of other OpenCourseWare, including free classes by MIT and nothing comes even close in terms of quality to Sal's videos. I think the real reason is that while all the large universities are trying to upload videos of in-class lectures by professors and making books, notes, and exams available online, Sal is concentrating on what matters most - simple and clear instructions in small, digestible doses. An MIT OpenCourseWare lecture on Computer Algorithms is daunting. Each lecture is between 60 and 90 minutes long and contains slides, related content, assignments, exams, projects, multiple downloadable formats, and group discussions. Sal's videos run full-screen and have no distractions, interruptions, or extra work. If you want to truly learn a subject, Sal's videos are what you need. If you want to get the in-school experience of doing homework, assignments, and exams, then get started with OpenCourseWare from any number of universities.

My goal is to learn many different subjects in a short span of time. So in addition to Sal's videos, I'm reading books, writing programs to solve some of the new problems I encounter, and reviewing any scientific papers that interest me. 2011 will be an exciting year for sure. I can't wait to catch up on everything I missed.

For as long as I can remember, I've been a trypophobe. Trypophobia is the irrational fear of clusters of holes, pods, circles, cracks, cuts, and other asymmetrical shapes especially those found in nature. When I look at these things, I get very uneasy, grossed out, and sometimes even nauseous. Some of the things that have this effect on me include lotus seed pods, pumice, holes in concrete, bug tunnels in wood, enlarged pores of the skin, bone marrow, Wasps' nest, and bubbles in dough.

My phobia extends not only to that but also to some textures and patterns that are irregular and not symmetrical. However, not all irregular patterns gross me out, nor do all clusters of holes make me feel uneasy. I used to think I was the only one till I came across an online discussion about textures and their effects. This blog post by another trypophobe definitely rang true to me.

Juliet is pretty good at identifying what kind of textures might gross me out and warns me beforehand, usually she's correct. I don't think I'll ever get over this fear but then I don't really care enough to. It's just one of those little things that makes me, me.

We went to the Ikea in Tampa yesterday and surprisingly we found the food there better than the furniture. The store was setup amazingly well and there was a really good cafe. However, the furniture didn't seem to be of high quality and it wasn't cheap either. Plus I would have to haul it all the way home and assemble it myself. Just didn't seem worth it. So instead, I ordered a kitchen buffet online and got free shipping. It looks better than what we saw at Ikea and is made of solid wood instead of particle board or MDF.

Juliet spend the entire day cleaning the house and I rearranged the office / computer room. We still have a lot of stuff to move around but it's finally feeling like home. I need to get rid of my plastic cabinets and get some decent filing cabinets for all of our documents. Maybe once the house is painted, I will start looking. Tonight I have lots of homework to complete so that's it from me.

I have been working on a group assignment for my class all evening. I would just like to tell all those people who use two spaces at the end of every sentence in a document to kindly take their respective posteriors down to the fiery domain of Beelzebub. It's 2009. We have proportionally-spaced fonts instead of mono-spaced text. Everything written online is automatically converted to single space because web-browsers treat one or more space characters as a single space. You may have experienced this yourself when trying to make a 'blog post or comment online. You actually have to use a special code to force web-browsers to render multiple space characters in a row.

Since we have charts and graphs in our paper that use a series of space characters for formatting, I cannot do a global search-and-replace for two space characters without messing up. We've all written different sections of the paper so each person has formatted and spaced it differently. The formatting I can remedy easily by using Word's style bar. However, I have to manually search through forty pages of text to find double-spaced sentence endings and fix them because the text looks pretty inconsistent otherwise.

Other than this, things are going well. I'm so glad to have Juliet back home. Since she missed my birthday, she got me lots of gifts and a nice big cake upon her return this Tuesday. I thought I had cleaned the house thoroughly before she got home. Then yesterday she went around every room and actually cleaned it. The house looks so much cleaner and makes me wonder if I even cleaned anything last weekend or just had a dream about it. I have my finals this week and two projects due so I'm busy studying day and night now. I have no classes next week but after that another half-semester starts. I feel like these classes are just never going to end.

I am 39,000 feet high up in a plane connected to the Internet. I couldn't wait to get online so I could write a few words about my race and I'm glad American Airlines has Wi-Fi now. As my track sheet says, I stopped after running 50 miles out of the 100 miles that I signed up for. After four months of intense training and considerable preparation, I ended up with a DNF - Did Not Finish. Ever since I ran my first mile in April, I had been dreading the acronym DNF. To me that sounded like failure and lack of preparation. Till the day before the race, I was terrified of ending up with an embarrassing DNF - oh the shame! And then I ran 50 miles for about 24 hours in 10,000 feet altitude and 35F temperature through mountains, jungles, and canyons paved with loose rocks, tree roots, and extremely steep slopes.

One of the greatest feelings in your life is completely and absolutely surprising yourself about your own abilities. The fear of DNF is gone and replaced by the sheer excitement of what I was able to accomplish when the odds were so severely stacked up against me. I live at sea-level in Florida, run on absolutely flat, paved, marked trail in 100F temperature with high humidity. The Grand Teton Race trail was the complete opposite and I was in no way prepared for such rocky trails and high altitude. I knew I was not training appropriately but till I actually saw the mountain trails in person, I had no idea how unprepared I was. But I couldn't give up. I was here to run an ultramarathon and I was not going to stop until I did. After 50 miles (80 kms), my feet couldn't take it anymore and I happily DNF'ed.

I have blisters on all of my ten toes, both heels, and sides of both feet. This sounds bad but the best thing is that other than my soles, I have absolutely no fatigue, muscle pain, or weakness in my entire body. This makes me extremely excited because that means my body can take 50 miles and a lot more without any engine troubles - I just need better tires. I was glad to feel completely healthy (except for my feet) because that means my exercise regimen in Florida was good. During the race I managed my food, electrolyte, and fluid intake well, I was in full control over my mind and actions, and even after 24 hours, I could have kept going.

I know I did not get a medal for finishing this time but I got more than enough encouragement to keep on running from the tons of wonderful athletes, ultramarathoners, volunteers, and race organizers. They pushed me throughout the course and kept my spirits and energy high. My friend Arthur was my pacer and flew up from NJ to make sure I kept moving forward and helped me with everything from gear, nutrition, and medical assistance. At the same time, my friend Vishal in India, Tamara in NJ, my boss Eric in Florida, and my parents and sister in India kept tracking my progress and sending me encouraging words. My family, friends, and coworkers encouraged me before, during, and after the race and that is more than I can ever ask for.

The one person who probably suffered more than me during my entire training was Juliet. For the past four months, I refused to do anything fun on Friday nights because I had to wake up early on Saturdays. Every Saturday morning I would go out running and leave her alone at home with all of the house and pet chores. Every Sunday I would sit around and be lazy so I could "recover from my long run." She encouraged me to keep training no matter how little progress I seemed to make early on. She bought most of my gear, set up the food and drinks for my runs, and even came out a few times to train with me on some of my shorter runs. And during my race, every time I returned to the base aid station after a loop, Arthur would tell me Juliet called up and said she sends me her love.

After the race, everyone asked me what my next ultra will be. Ultrarunners are serious addicts! They made lots of suggestions, especially races that I can train for while living in Florida. I would absolutely love to do more races but I don't know if I can anytime soon because of the huge time and money commitment that even short races take up. I'm taking a break from running for at least a week or two so my feet can heal up. After that, who knows. I want to get back into kayaking again and probably build something fun like our aviary in the backyard. My school starts tomorrow and I have a pretty big project at work that I need to concentrate on. I don't know how the other ultramarathoners do it but it is definitely not easy to train for one race after other. One thing I know for certain is that I loved the wonderful experience I had during this race and would most definitely do something like this again in the future when I have ample time to train. Thanks everyone for the love and support. Next time I'll bring home a medal.

I did not know that Florida had two time zones. I am currently sitting on Juliet's bed in a cute little apartment in the Florida State Hospital campus in Chattahoochee where she will be staying for the next six weeks. She is here for her first clinical rotation; the concentration is psychiatry. After this she has seven other rotations in seven different fields and hospitals over the next year and a half. If this past year of school was intensive and stressful, the next one for her will be extensive and adventurous.

Chattahoochee is a five-hour drive from our home in St. Petersburg and the clocks here run an hour behind. It is a quaint little town with a rich local history. The long drive into the town through the scenic rolling hills and narrow lanes reminded me of Wyoming where we eloped to last year for our wedding and honeymoon. Who knew that a year later I would be dropping her off in a remote town for a month and a half with such a heavy heart. I'm incidentally leaving for the same mountains and canyons of Wyoming in a few days for my ultramarathon. I really wish she could have come with me but this clinical rotation is a huge opportunity for her career and I wouldn't want anything less than that for her.

Yesterday was the "White Coat ceremony" at her university where the teachers officially gave students in her class their medical white coats as a rite of passage, thus bestowing upon them the responsibility and trust that is expected of a medical care professional. It was a short and sweet procession and Juliet was awarded a scholarship for being the top student in her class. I cannot put into words the amount of effort and dedication that she put into her studies over the past year and was immensely proud to see her hard work being rewarded in front of hundreds of students and their family and friends. Most students in graduate and post-graduate programs, including yours truly, just do enough to get decent grades so they can move on to the next course. Not Juliet. She gave every lecture, class, lab, quiz, test, and exam her utmost best. While her eighteen-hour study days drove both her and me crazy, I realized that very soon she will make a genuinely caring and brilliant Physician Assistant. I am very proud of her and so happy that she is in my life.

Our friend Sandra and her daughter Madison were also at the ceremony and took lots of photos. We celebrated the night with some yummy Hibachi and crashed early. We packed both our cars this morning with all the things Juliet will need for the next six weeks and drove up to Chattahoochee. Once I get back home, I will try to put some of the pictures from her ceremony online. Right now I'm stuck in a small town without any wired Internet access and am using a laptop tethered to a cellphone to write this 'blog entry. And Juliet just prepared some dinner for me so my tummy says good bye Internet!

I came across this question posted online: "Every time I go out in public now, everything I see disgusts me. The fat, lazy, ignorant people... It makes me sound like an elitist, but I just can't help it nowadays. Anyone else feel like this sometimes?" This reminded me of the movie Taxi Driver where the mentally-disturbed lead character played by a young De Niro comments that "All the animals come out at night - whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."

The way I see things, there is good, there is bad, and then there is the ability to see good in bad and bad in good. Not everything is as one-dimensional as we often make it out to be. The fat could be the next virtuoso, the lazy could be the next Nobel Laureate, and the ignorant could be the next lifesaving hero. When judging and stereotyping people becomes second nature, we must take a step back and try to remember what it felt like to be a child with a clean slate. Every new person was an experience, every new place was a vacation, and every new sight was an answer.

Pessimism and cynicism are not the sole tools available to our mind for making realistic expectations of the future. Optimism, surprise, and awe should be as much a part of our prediction engine as any other emotion. Limiting your mind to only use negative streams of thought in making expectations of the future is like thinking the stock market will constantly go down forever, regardless of what else is happening in the world. Thinking that people will always be fat, lazy, consumption-driven and are getting more so means you leave no room for any other positive expectations from them. Moreover, judging weight, laziness, ignorance, and consumerism to be solely negative traits takes away any good that might come out as a result of these traits. World isn't definitely black or white and neither are traits absolutely good or bad. Elitism itself has good and bad aspects. It encourages improvement and purity in pursuits while it limits explorations into fields previously deemed impure or lacking, though they might not be so.

I often run into people who tell me the world is going down the wrong path or times are changing for the worse. They haven't been around long enough to know it has always been like this and in fact, technology and knowledge are slowly improving things around the world. We are nowhere close to world peace but we have come a long way from the Dark Ages. Reading the news everyday does make one feel like the world is ending and things will never improve, but rest assured that in the grand scheme of things, all of this is arbitrary yet improving. All you can do is keep an open mind so that even when you tend to judge a book by its cover, you can appreciate a surprising twist every now and then.

My training for the Ultramarathon is going well. I've been running or exercising five days a week and resting for two. Most days I run 4-6 miles in the park in the morning and spend 2-3 hours on StairMaster and Elliptical machines at the gym in the evening. I'm losing weight but not fast enough. I hope to lose at least 10lbs within the next two months. I've been mentally preparing myself for my 30 mile run this weekend. It will be the longest distance I've covered in my life, 4 miles longer than a regular marathon. I'm hoping to cover 30 miles in under 8 hours.

Life's back to normal now that school is in session for both Juliet and I. Work is going well and I'm pretty excited for a major infrastructure-upgrade project that will start soon. The pets are healthy and happy. I love sitting out in the aviary after work and on weekend afternoons. Even though it gets pretty warm outside, the aviary is cool and breezy. I introduced Tera to our bunny Chichi this weekend and they seemed to like each other.

Since most of my free time is spent running, I made sure I was done with all of my web-projects. For the first time in years, I have no todos outside of my work, school, and home. It's a wonderful feeling coming home and only getting personal emails from friends and family instead of a hundred "Can you PLEASE change the color from red to blue?!" and "Please scrap 200 hours of work and redo it because I said so!" The only project I am working on right now is a personal project for my family, which I will put online once I have made more progress. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can make it work because it means a lot to me and my family.

For the past three weeks, I have been running six miles or more almost daily and have lost about 12 lbs (5kgs). I'm training for the Grand Teton 100-mile Ultramarathon in September. This is a 100-mile (161 km) race through mountains, canyons, and forests in Wyoming and has to be completed within 36 hours. Regular marathons are 26.2 miles (42 km) and most people finish in 4-6 hours. Ultramarathons are races longer than marathons and most ultramarathoners run the 100 miles non-stop. At the pace I am training, this would mean running, jogging, and walking for over 24 hours non-stop. By no means is this a minor challenge for me, physically and mentally.

I am crazy not stupid so I understand that in order to even attempt to run 100 miles, proper training is a must. Training includes running, walking, proper eating, and lots of cross-training. Since I live in Florida at sea-level, my body will have to work much harder to persevere at the high altitudes. Additionally, the terrain here is mostly flat whereas the actual trail requires runners to go up and down thousands of feet every few miles. This means lots of StairMaster training at the gym. Personally I am not interested in going to a gym and would much rather run outdoors but the lack of steep hills in Florida means I have to train my quads indoors.

Running an ultra is different from running a 10K or even a marathon. After all, a 100-mile ultra is like four back-to-back marathons. When training for a regular marathon, speed and timing matters. In an ultra, the pace and endurance matter the most. The saying goes, "to run an ultramarathon, start slow and then slow down." I can't run fast but I can run slow forever, which is why I have been very excited for the past few weeks. Ultramarathon seems to fit my style of running a lot better than regular marathons.

When training for ultras, long runs make or break your race. The only way my body can run 100 miles in 36 hours is if it is used to running 50 miles in 16-17 hours or 25 miles in 6-7 hours. This means, before I run for 100 miles, I have to try running 30-50 mile distances on weekends, on top of running 5-10 miles per weekday. If I just run four miles a day, no matter how fast, I won't be able to run the ultra because my body will not learn how to adjust to 6-12 hours of continuous running. The key is to make your body feel as comfortable as possible when running or jogging. A big part of my training is to learn to eat, drink, and relax while running slowly but steadily.

Work, school, and life at home keeps me busy enough and now I am planning to run 70-100 miles a week for the next four months. This will seriously reduce the time I spend goofing off online. However, it will give me a lot of time to listen to good music and audio books, especially on Saturdays when I go for my long runs. Maybe I can blog while running.

Tonight I worked on my business school project while the Oscar ceremonies were on. I set my DVR to record the whole show and went back to working on my assignment nonchalantly. It was only when my dad called me from India and exclaimed "Jai Ho!" that I realized that my favorite musician A. R. Rahman had won the Oscars for the best original score and the best original song for Slumdog Millionaire. I said "That's so awesome" to my dad and went back to studying. Maybe I was just stressed about the project or maybe it was something else but I felt quite uneasy after that phone call. That was quite a stereotypical American hipster response coming from me, as if I have become so unfazed by media, splendor, and glitter that Oscars are passé and winning awards is dull.

Once I completed my assignment, I watched the entire Oscar ceremony in about an hour, with the gratuitous use of the fast-forward button. In true Oscar-audience fashion, I laughed and I cried, I cheered and I clapped. When it was over, I went online to read more about the Oscars and hear what others were saying. I often do that after major events, just to feel like I'm part of a global community at 1 am. To my dismay, other than the big media outlets like CNN and BBC, none of the sites I frequent cared much about the Oscars. One or two even mocked them and the winners. It was the consequent feeling of cognitive dissonance that prompted me to stay up well past my bedtime and write my thoughts down.

Americans just don't get the American Dream. They read about it in books and think it is a house in the 'burbs with a white picket-fence and a big dog. They think immigrants from all over the world come here just to buy a big house and watch the Super Bowl. I know this is what they think because I've been living here for the past eight years and by all accounts I'm living proof of having achieved it. But that's not what THE American Dream is. The American Dream that millions upon millions of people around the world aspire to achieve someday is not a mediocre life of relative stability with a two-car garage and automated bill payment.

The American Dream is being born as the youngest of eight children, failing medical entrance exam, dropping out of law college, joining film institute against family's wishes, and fourteen long years later winning a god-damned Oscar in front of the whole world. The American Dream is not the glory but the never ending struggle that one must go through while everyone around you has become complacent and already accepted the status quo as their fate. The American Dream is daring to dream that despite the millions before you who tried and failed, you have something within you that sets you apart and ever-so-slightly shifts the odds in your favor.

The saddest part about the American Dream is that for most people, it stops the moment they set foot in the country. I vividly recall my first flight to the US. I was nervous but determined. As the plane reached cruising altitude, I managed to calm my emotions down. After all, I had just bid my family, friends, and home for twenty years good bye. I told myself that I will make my parents proud and my friends will someday say "he used to sit right here next to me in class." I did not have a specific goal in mind and especially did not care about money or riches. As boring as it sounds, I just wanted to be "somebody." I just wanted my piece of the American Dream.

Eight years later, here I am. I've assimilated quite well. I have a gorgeous loving wife, lots of pets, a wonderful job, a nice house, two cars, and for the first time in my life, a real savings account. Having all of my wishes come true wasn't the American Dream. Arguing with my dad for two years to let me come to the US against his wishes, was. Having my sister determine the fate of my life because my dad asked her if I should be allowed to go to the US, was. Living alone for six of the past eight years and managing to remain optimistic about my future life, was. And yet, I haven't struggled even one-percent as much as most of the other immigrants who come here. By most standards, I've had it pretty easy. My American Dream delivered above and beyond my expectations. For most, it doesn't. It stops being a dream when the bills pile up and discrimination begins. The only glint of hope is that the kids will have a better shot at life someday.

I don't care to watch the Oscars because Meryl Streep has been nominated for the fifteenth time. I watch them because I want to see a grown man cry like a baby when he realizes that this very moment is the culmination of forty years of hard work. I watch them because I want to see lives changed and careers validated. There are no triumphant awards for programming web services or coding warehouse systems. Watching others get rewarded for their hard work is the closest that I can get to feeling like there is still some fairness in this world; that tireless efforts are eventually rewarded and perseverance pays off in the end. Watching others achieve their dreams helps me keep my dreams alive, however incomparable they might be.

The American Dream is not about money, fame, or power but about beating the insurmountable odds. The American Dream is never accepting that the best part is already over. The American Dream is achieving it and starting it all over again.

I was reading the Serendipity page on Wikipedia and by mistake I clicked on the 'Pileated Woodpecker' link under the main image on the right. Suddenly I realized that this is exactly the type of bird that I took a photo of yesterday when I went to Boyd Hill Nature Preserve with Juliet. I was not able to identify the bird till just now. Serendipitous indeed.

This weekend we watched three light-hearted comedic films. Friday night we saw Yes Man, Saturday night we caught Bedtime Stories with Sandra and her daughter Madison, and tonight we rented Forgetting Sarah Marshall from a local Redbox kiosk for $1/night. I love the concept of Redbox - a vending machine that rents out DVDs and you can reserve them online in advance. I just wish there was one within walking distance of my house.

It's about two months from SXSW 2009 and I can't wait. I'm taking Juliet with me this time even though we'll only be there for 3-4 days. I hope we get to see lots of unreleased and unknown films like I did last year. The amazing movie-going experience was definitely one of my favorite things about SXSW. Hope there's a repeat this year.

Juliet and I are in my aunt's house in North Brunswick, NJ right now. We left Florida on Friday December 19th at 10am and went to see her grandma in Deltona, FL. After that we drove to Atlanta, GA to see my friend Heather and her boyfriend Sean. We saw the famed Bodies exhibition and another very unique but eye-opening exhibition, Dialog in the Dark. I highly recommend both of these, especially the latter. We drove to Alexandria, VA from Atlanta to see my cousin Purvi and her husband Allen. We went to the Botanical Gardens in Washington DC and had some surprisingly wonderful Ethiopian food. We drove next to Philadelphia, PA and chilled with my friend Megan and her husband Chris for a few hours. It was pretty good to see her again after over two years. Finally we drove to North Brunswick, NJ and got to my aunt's house on 11pm on Sunday, December 21st almost perfectly as planned.

Earlier today we went to a local shopping center for a few hours and then went to a pub in New Brunswick, close to Rutgers University. There we had a few drinks with my friends Tamara, Syed, and Arthur. It was great seeing them after a long time and finally we topped off the evening with some truly greasy food from the infamous Grease Trucks on College Avenue.

Of course, the best part of the last few days is just seeing and talking to all of my friends and family whom I don't get to see on a regular basis though we do keep in touch online or over the phone. I'd say the best thing in life is spending time with loved ones and there's no better way to do it than drive 1,500 miles across the country and making it actually happen. By the way, it is 1,500 miles or 2,900 kilometers from the north Indian city of Srinagar to Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India. Next up on our list is New York City, Queens, Maryland, and whatever else may tickle our fancy. It is pretty exhausting but meeting everyone makes up for the tiredness. We still have another 1,500 miles to get back to Florida so we're going to need all of the energy we can get.

I'm sitting outside in our Florida room next to Juliet, huddled in a blanket, studying on my laptop. I can see our three turtles, Loch, Ness, and Wolf swim around in the two aquariums along with the fishes and Giga keeps looking for ways to escape back into the house. The gliders Paxil and Rita are asleep and so is Herbert the tortoise. Jack, Tera, and Cookie are inside the house, probably asleep.

We went to Treasure Island beach yesterday for a stroll and had wonderful Thai food for lunch. We watched The Score last night. A two-hour movie is pretty much all the time we can spare to sit in front of a TV without starting to worry about projects, papers, and exams these days. She keeps glancing over to read what I'm typing and I keep hiding it from her. The sounds one hears in this room are soothing - the pitter-patter of the water in both the aquariums, chirping of morning birds perched on eaves and evergreen boughs, wind-chimes swaying in the winter breeze, and leaves rustling in the wind - it's quite a relaxing environment if you can tune out the infrequent automobile noises.

I have to write a six-page paper by noon and have more school assignments after that. I also have to work on a website with Tay whenever he hops online. Juliet has two exams this week. I got 97/100 in my Accounting exam last week. I cared tremendously about my grades back in undergraduate college but now I don't give much value to grades. The new things I am learning are valuable enough without me fretting over grades. It's back to reality for me now, i.e. the six-page paper that I have to write in a little over two hours.

Someone on reddit asked, "How are you famous?" As I expected, most people started listing their best accomplishments or personal anecdotes of importance. I thought I'd chime in with some of the cool things I've done over the years that got some media attention. It was while listing my accomplishments did I realize how trifling they were in the grand scheme of things.

I've had an article written solely about me on WSJ.com last year and was on the front-page of wired.com (with my pic) for about three days earlier this year. I've had newspaper and magazine articles written about me since age 16. One of my websites was reviewed on G4TV. My apps have been showcased in magazines all over the world, from Germany to Philippines.

Yet I don't consider myself famous, because I'm really not. Internet-fame is different from real fame. Internet-famous people have their own Wiki pages. Famous people have their own villas in France. We often forget there is a distinction between the two, especially when discussing it online. It has less to do with the amount of money you make and more to do with long-term personal relationships you build.

People with a website and an audience often forget that their audience is in a constant state of flux, just yearning to stumble upon something interesting and entertaining, be it via unconventional 'blog posts, established news outlets, or even email forwards. The fact that you have a daily readership of 20,000 or even 350,000 means nothing if the relationships stop at the keyboard. Of the millions who have downloaded my software over the past decade, there is exactly one person I consider a real friend. The rest were users who sent me valuable feedback.

Instead of making applications and websites that millions come across, I could have volunteered at a local charity and touched the hearts of just two people. That would be twice the number of real, long-lasting connections I've made in a decade spent writing code online. However, this doesn't mean I regret any of this. I will continue to make useful and useless applications for all to see and click around. I will try harder to come up with more interesting ideas to waste people's time in the hope that my little website makes someone's day. What I will stop doing is assuming that just because I am internet-famous, I am indeed famous or have done anything significant to impact the lives of many. Linus and Guido have, I haven't. I still have a lot to accomplish. As Shakespeare wrote, "Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open."

As I sit here online on a typical Saturday evening, the woman of my dreams is on a flight to meet my parents vacationing in London, UK. Four weeks ago, Juliet moved into my house and life without much fanfare. Three weeks ago, we got engaged. Two weeks ago our new bedroom furniture arrived and we went kayaking to my favorite beach, Caladesi Island. A week ago I met her family. This week she met my friends Taylor, Kaela, Sandra, Arthur, Taylor's parents, and many of my coworkers. Now she is en route to meet my parents and family members for the first time. In this past month, my life has changed so much I find it hard to answer greetings such as "So what's new?"

I clearly remember the day I met this wonderful lady named Ms. Juliet Summers. In the evening of Saturday, October 27th 2007, I duly noted that "Today turned out to be yet another unusual day." Earlier that day, I had gone to my friend Jessica's baby shower despite feeling quite glum and unkempt. As the official godfather of the soon to be born Jackson Adams, it was my duty to present the father with some good beer. As I sat there observing the excited couple opening baby gifts, I saw the most beautiful woman walk into the room, her eyes as if trying to find a friendly face. My immediate thought was "You are so in the wrong place." Turns out it was the right place indeed after Jessica smiled and motioned her to take a seat a few feet across from me.

I distinctly recall the pervading thought that captured my mind throughout the rest of the baby shower. I know this will sound very cheesy and shallow but I actually asked myself, "Have I ever seen a woman as beautiful in my entire life?" I had a prolonged flashback that took me through all the college parties, math classes, music shows, and checkout lines at grocery stores and the answer was a resounding "Hell no!" Unbeknownst to me, she too felt that there was something special here. Being the guy who stereotypes people all too quickly, especially the prettier ones, I didn't bother trying to get her contact information. I figured I don't need to be yet another guy trying to ask her out. Furthermore, I had more important things to do, like play with my cats. So as the ceremonies and chats ended, I bid my farewell and walked over to my car, amused that today wasn't such a bad day after all as I had just talked to the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Just as I was about to drive off, Juliet walked up to my car and said "I'd invite you over to a party that I'm going to but I don't know if I can bring any guests, so how about I give you my number? I can introduce you to many of my friends who live around this area." I smiled, we exchanged contact information, and drove off our separate ways.

Over the past eight months, Juliet and I became good friends. She tried to introduce me to some of her local friends but to no avail as I hate being setup on dates. During this time, I slowly got to know the kind-hearted, excitable, ambitious, and sensitive woman that she truly was. Despite her girlie-girl persona, one of the things about her that stood out was her blunt and direct attitude. There was no beating around the bushes and no passive-aggressive drama with Juliet. Though we were just friends, I knew there was a connection here that I had never felt before. I don't know how we went from being friendly to falling in love but last month, I asked her to move in with me and before I knew it, my home turned into a menagerie. We now have a combined four cats, two musk turtles, one tortoise, and one playful little Chihuahua. I love animals and couldn't be happier with our little zoo here.

If you just read all of the above and frowned because we completely skipped the requisite months and years of dating, you are welcome to join the club of skeptics. I understand all of this sounds haphazard and foolishly rushed because everyone knows it takes years of commitment and compromises to nurture true love. How can you be so certain if the person is right for you or not? I hope I never have to eat my words but all I can say is that once you've met the one, you know. You know it when she hands you her paycheck and bank account and says "You do all this crap from now on." You know it when she paints the bedrooms, grouts the tiles, vacuums the carpets, cleans the bathroom, scrubs the bathtub, and rearranges your kitchen utensils. You know it when she's terrified of flying alone yet decides to fly half-way across the world by herself to meet your parents just to get their blessings. You just know it. I know I do.

Last week has been pretty crazy so I haven't had much time to get online for my mundane updates. I had a blast at Ginnie Springs with Tay and his family but the campgrounds were so crowded and full of drunk college kids that both Tay and I went back home a day earlier than planned. I know I'm getting old when drunk college girls start to annoy me instead of getting me excited.

I'm getting more and more fired up about my Pacific North-West camping trip in less than two months and have made pretty much all the reservations well in advance. My neck's feeling much better but the pain returns if I rest at any awkward angles. Life's good and there's not much I can complain about.

All day I had been staring at the logo on my favorite hangout reddit.com and kept wondering who the dork on the alien's body was. I went to redditalien.com and redditall.com to see if there were any details but no such luck. I gave up thinking it was probably some weirdo online. Turns out, *I* was that weirdo! The always awesome Alexis put MY head on the reddit alien's body. And despite staring at it all day, I didn't even realize it was me!

Alexis changes the reddit logo often so here is the screenshot with my head on reddit logo and here's the original photo of yours truly on the beach by Taylor. Since early afternoon, Tay had been sending me cryptic messages, as if hinting at something, and only now do I get what he was pointing at! I feel like the most clueless person ever. And here's folks on reddit discussing today's logo.

"Earth Hour" is exactly the kind of feel-good useless environmental activism that makes me want to build a rocket so I can get off this planet. If I wasn't so lazy, I would celebrate Earth Hour by turning on all my four computers, every light and fan in my house, turning on my big-screen TV, setting the microwave, electric oven, and all four gas stoves to high, running the washer/dryer to max-cycles + max-loads, cranking my air-conditioner to highest setting, and putting up Christmas lights for the whole neighborhood to see.

You want to "save the planet?" Give up leisure flying. Don't ever fly to Europe, South America, Nepal, or New Zealand for a vacation. Ever. Only travel when you absolutely have to. Oh, is that too much of a sacrifice? Well, if you don't want to make a real difference because that entails giving up something you want and instead just wish to pretend like you are somehow helping the planet with no major inconvenience to yourself, go ahead, turn off your lights for an hour. I will spend my evening doing things I do every Saturday - cook, watch TV, go online, not participate in meaningless group-think movements, teach my cats to play fetch - you know, the usual.

I think I finally slept enough today to shake off the tiredness from SXSW. I actually woke up at 5am to go kayaking but went back to sleep after I checked the weather online. Cloudy days are no fun for kayaking but perfect for sleeping in. I am now washed and dryer'ed. It's time to hit the town.

It always bothers me when people say you have to live your life as if tomorrow is your last day. That's because if tomorrow is my last day, there are many things I will do that I would certainly regret if I'm alive on the day after tomorrow. Given just twenty-four hours to live, most people including yours truly, will just party non-stop for as long as they can and then retreat into delirious seclusion because of the immediate threat of death. Living your life as if you're going to be dead before the next mortgage payment comes up is pretty irresponsible and not a good motto to live by. On the flip side, living as if you have all the time in the world to do everything you want just makes you lazy and procrastinate without ever accomplishing anything.

People are bad at making 5-10-15 year life-plans and except for a very few people (like med-school students and retirees), nobody knows where they'll be in a couple of years. What made me think about the appropriate length of the ticking-death-clock is a mention of Prof. Randy Pausch online. About six months ago I watched his moving "Last Lecture at Carnegie Mellon" online. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006 and given three to six months to live. His last lecture was in September 2007 and thankfully, he is still vigorous and active till date. Here's a brilliant, energetic family man who has lived the last 18 months thinking he'll die within the next three months. And to top it off, he has went on to accomplish his childhood dreams (like practicing with his favorite sports team and getting a talking role in the next Star Trek movie) as well as ensuring his wife and kids have wonderful memories of him.

In a span of three to six months, you can do a lot. Travel across a continent, write a book, build a swimming pool for the kids, and go on a long road trip with your best friend. You can live each day to the fullest while not driving the people you leave behind crazy. This is quite achievable and exciting if you think about it. Today is March 2nd. If everything you ever wanted to do, had to be done by September 2nd, what would you do and when? No, you can't wait till Christmas. You can't put off going skiing till November. You don't have infinite money and your savings aren't enough to support six months of bills on top of all the fun you want to have. That means, you have to keep your job, you have to continue to pay auto insurance, and you have to be responsible about your actions. All this, while the six-month clock is ticking.

I can't imagine what Prof. Pausch is going through, especially with the chemotherapy treatments and tremendous media exposure, but I know it in my heart that whenever he hugs his wife and kids, he does it like a man who has three months to live and wants to make every moment of it memorable for the ones he leaves behind.

Last Sunday when I woke up lazily around noon after a long kayaking trip the previous day, my partner-in-chime-and-crime, Tay showed me a new site he was working on. He has been going to the South-by-South-West (SXSW) Music & Film festival in Austin, Texas for a number of years now and has managed to make a name for himself by making easy-to-use-and-print calendars for the event. SXSW features over three thousand music shows and hundreds of film premiers, along with hundreds of interactive conferences and panels over the span of ten short days. For the twenty-five thousand people that go to SXSW each year, deciding where to go is a hectic process because so many interesting events are taking place at the same time in downtown Austin. The last thing you want to do is miss your favorite band or a book-reading by your favorite author because you were stuck at a boring party and didn't know what else was going on just around the block.

This year, I'm going to SXSW with Tay - March 7th - 16th. I saw the new design for his schedule and immediately wanted to help turn it into a wonderful, easy-to-use, auto-updating event-planner. Thus Sched.org was born. Every evening after work this past week, Tay and I worked on refining the design, layout, features, and content of Sched.org. We launched the site early this morning and already have over 200 users signed up for 4000 events. Frankly, all we wanted to do was make a neat way to find what events (films, music shows, discussion panels, and parties) were worth going to. So it's pretty amusing that not even 12 hours after launch, we're being considered among the SXSW Breakout App of 2008 contenders and getting some props.

The way I see it, I hopped on to Sched.org (I picked the name by the way - go me!) was to accomplish two things. First, make sure my ten days in Austin will be exciting and memorable (here's my incomplete sxsw schedule). Second, and more importantly, get in the groove of working in a fast-paced project development mode with Tay. I've worked on many projects online with a lot of people but over the last four years, my professional rapport with Tay has continued to improve and strengthen like no other. It's not all bunnies and butterflies because we disagree on a lot of fundamental design and business points of view. However, the fact that we always come to an agreement that actually works better than our own personal choices, is why it's always a pleasure to work with him. Simply put, I want red and he wants green. We yell at each other for 10 minutes and in the end one of us picks yellow and we both immediately say "That's perfect!"

Just like Chime.TV, our newer projects aren't about making yet-another-typical-website. Both of us are too lazy to make something that already exists, even if it's not free. Consequently, it doesn't matter to me personally whether every tiny app we build goes gold and garners publicity, though positive feedback is always wonderful. What does matter is that in the end, we feel proud of what we made and manage to help a bunch of people in tiny little ways. Here's to Sched.org and a hundred more creative deviances in the future!

My first HD video is finally online after hours of editing: Kayaking down the Chassahowitzka River. Click on the 'Full' button for the highest resolution. I'd say even after just one video, I have learnt a lot of things that will make my next video better.

Ten things I learnt after my first nature/documentary-style video:

10. Dont talk about useless stuff i.e. keep mumbling to a minimum.
9. Take slow, long shots. Preferably move instead of just panning.
8. Don't zoom. Instead, take a clip, stop, zoom, take another clip.
7. If you said something wrong, retake entire clip.
6. Make sure there are no annoying noises in the background. Dubbing takes a lot more effort.
5. Feel free to take multiple shots of the same thing.
4. Don't even bother to shoot scenes you will edit out anyway, like four blurry minutes of sea gulls flying around.
3. Don't turn 180 degrees unless it is shaded in all directions because the sun will mess with the lighting.
2. Dont make girly motions with hands no matter how secure you are in your manliness.
1. Speak more clearly, slowly, and do not start EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE with "So..."

I'd say my next video will definitely be more interesting. I am more than satisfied with the quality and performance of my new $200 Kodak Z812IS. I believe in upgrading my equipment when I truly outgrow it. For now, there is no camera in the world that can improve my video editing skills. Nor will any video editing software help me with impromptu dialog delivery. I used a trial version of Sony Vegas to edit the 70+ Quicktime H.264 movie clips that my camera shoots to natively and if my next video editing session goes well, I will certainly buy the software. Video editing is fun!

Me yesterday. Me today. Also my new Kodak EasyShare Z812 IS camera just arrived yesterday. It's an 8 megapixel camera with 12x Optical Zoom and shoots HD video in 1280x720 resolution. I'm still waiting for the 8 GB SD Card so I can actually start using it to its full potential. Right now on the default 32mb internal memory, I can barely get it to take a few pictures. The camera and SD card including shipping & handling were under $250. Beat that!

Also notice the top bar above where I added a new button: my videos - click it anytime to see all the videos I shoot on my new camera. Yes, finally in 2008 I have managed to figure out how to upload videos online so others can see. So far I've upload two videos of my kitties with really bad background music and one ten-minute long video of me indoor-skydiving. Hey, I never claimed to be the next Kurosawa. It's kitty and kayaking videos from now till the end of time as far as I'm concerned.

Green-Green-Green: Who doesn't like saving the environment? We humans have the audacity to pretend like we can "save" a planet with mass of 6 trillion-trillion kgs (that is six followed by twenty-four zeros) while we cannot even figure out an affordable way to harness solar power. Yet every company is now trying to be green. When a company goes "green" what they are really saying is that "from now on, as we continue to plunder the natural resources of a geological area like we have been for the past two centuries, we will print lots of pamphlets and brochures to show you exactly what used to be here so you can feel less guilty about buying our products."

Behind the brilliant feel-good marketing strategy is the plain and simple truth that production of any kind requires resources and despite every attempt to use renewable resources, in the end the environment is worse off. The only way to absolutely not harm the environment is to not live in a civilized society and wander around in small herds picking berries and hunting wild boars. I tried that once and while I would not recommend it, it was still better than my trip to Disney. So where is the happy, sustainable medium between blowing up the coral reefs and foraging for wild fruits? It is somewhere nobody wants to be. It is the no-electricity, no-Internet, no-running-water, no-healthcare, no-mass-production world that over half the population of the world wants to rise up from. The drought-ridden populace of Africa is sustainable, the flourishing Scandinavian or Latin American world is not, let alone United States, Australia, and continental Europe. As long as every single person in the planet strives to achieve a decent standard of living, there is absolutely no way to save the environment.

When the dear old grandma in the heartland of China wants to get running water, someone has to make the water pipes, tap, electric pump, power lines, and a billing system to measure how much water she uses. No matter how green each of the companies that produce these items are, they are magnitudes away from an earthen-pot filled with water from the nearby stream. Nobody wants elderly women to break their backs and suffer due to the lack of clean water but that is the cost of actually going green.

Driving bicycles instead of monster trucks is a good start but it still requires metal foundries, plastic fabricators, heavy machineries, and electricity and fuel to drive it all. Add to this the physical buildings that employees work in and the entire construction industry that built it all up. You can go from a truck to a cycle but you cannot go from consumption to no-consumption. If the companies truly want to go green, they should say "stop buying out products, and if you do, use them for as long as you can even if that kills our growth."

Despite every attempt to save the environment for the children of the 6.5 billion people on this planet today, we cannot do so while promising everyone a good standard of living. Even if we magically get a free never-ending renewable source of energy tomorrow, we will still have to dig up mountains and cut-down forests to supply the entire world with rocks, minerals, metals, wood, and habitable lands. That was fine when there were 10 million people on the planet but for 1000 times that population, there will be no green way out. There is no green solution to this problem because civilization and nature by their very definition are completely opposite. If we go too far in favor of civilization, we ruin nature. If we go too far towards saving nature, we ruin people's lives.

Pretending like we can achieve a healthy balance, which is what most companies going green seem to claim, is like saying "despite every single thing we do that inadvertently ruins the environment, let us cut back marginally in some instances and thump our chests loudly, proclaiming that it is a big deal." The entire movement of going green is a band-aid to the systemic cancer that is central to this whole issue - too many people wanting too many things. If every single means of production today went perfectly green, it would not achieve even a small percentage of what a moderate decrease in demand would.

So without running off into the wild, what can an environmentally-friend person do? Firstly, realize that no matter what you do, you are absolutely positively harming the environment by simply existing. The very fact that you breathe out carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, adds a tiny tiny bit to the problem of global warming. Secondly, accept that since you are part of the environment and have chosen to live a civilized life, there is no point in pretending that you can in any way, save the environment. No, don't even think about it. You are killing it just like I am, so please stop acting like you are in any way better than an SUV driver who eats baby pandas for breakfast. You and he use magnitudes more resources than the dear old lady in China as you both drive on the same roads, live in houses made of same materials, and shop in the same kind of big box grocery stores.

Even if you consume one-third of the fuel an average person uses, that is still infinitely more than not using any resources at all. Moreover, the fuel and resources you use may not be directly visible to you. For instance, the pain-relief medication you take that the SUV driver does not have to, was brought to mass-production at a cost of over a billion dollars, millions of which were spent on manufacturing equipment, printer paper for documentation and promotional purposes, a decade of clinical trials combined with laboratory testing on cute fuzzy lab rats, and intensive medical, quality, and safety training for all personnel involved in the entire chain. So stop trying to think that you are saving the environment while not doing anything substantially different from any other around you. Third, and this is the only one you have some control over, stop buying things you do not need and can live without. Replace real-life versions with online-versions. Loading a web-page of a news-article uses less resources than the same article in a printed magazine. Be careful here as this is the part that exemplifies the primary trade-offs between civilized and hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Should you read books printed on paper or idle away all night watching the stars? Should you stay at home and brush your hair all day or travel 1400 miles away to attend a film festival? A well-traveled, well-read, well-dressed person is bad for the environment by the very acts that defines them. So pick wisely. And most importantly, stop buying the "we love the bunnies and rainbows" marketing spiels by every company that is just trying to raise their quarterly sales figures.

Say a company sells 100 widgets at a cost of five dead penguins to the environment. Now they go green with 40% improvements in efficiency and only choke three penguins for the 100 widgets. If their green marketing strategy works and sales double from 100 to 200 widgets, they are now offing six penguins as opposed to five before. It does not matter if percentage-wise they are doing much better - environment works in absolute terms. They have one additional dead penguin AFTER going green because of a rise in the demand for their product. If they stole business from other non-green companies that desecrated seven penguins for each 100 widgets, it is indeed a net absolute-gain for the penguin population however, with a marginal rise in demand for their widgets over time as a result of their effective sales campaigns, they will be back to the old pre-green dead penguin total. The only thing going green can do is slow down the damage for a very short term. And that is basically what everything from the carbon-offsetting scam to food-as-fuel is all about - making negligible environmentally-friendly advances in the near-term so as to downplay the inherent crisis of incessant resource abuse that is paramount to our way of life outside self-sustaining hamlets.

Cities like those in Europe can plan better public transportation systems and encourage bicycle use but they cannot promote negative growth. No municipality organization wants people to move out of their city to go live in villages because that would mean lower tax-revenues and negative local GDP. Every public or private planning commission in-charge of saving the local flora-fauna has the primary goal of infusing growth while ensuring minimal direct damage to the natural landscape. That is akin to a doctor who rubs alcohol on a death-row inmate before emptying a syringe full of lethal chemicals. There is no balance that can be achieved in the long-term if the axiomatic goal is to favor the destructive course of action over the non-destructive one.

The brightest, most-compassionate minds of today are striving to achieve this balance between standard of living and preventing environmental abuse. Try as they might, the only real solution will come about naturally and at a tremendous cost to humanity sometime in the future. Recurring episodes of the traditional Malthusian Catastrophe have forever ensured that whenever the population grows beyond their own ability to feed and fend for themselves, there is a sharp rises in mortality rates that in the end, bring down the numbers to sustainable levels. Bluntly put, nature takes care of over-population by killing a large number of people. It could be the starving kids in Sudan or an infectious pandemic in a densely populated metropolis; advances in technology can go far in delaying this eventual catastrophe but they can never prevent it forever.

Prof. Albert Bartlett, a modern-day Malthusian or in other words a cynical, practical economist like me, often explains how the term "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron. He is the true genius that famously stated one of my favorite quotes of all time, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." I wrote all of the above before reading his thoughts on long-term energy supplies (pdf). From the very beginning, I was quite careful about what I wrote as the last thing I want to do is sound like a pessimistic doomsday fearmongerer. But having read his article now, I feel oddly vindicated that my line of thinking was pretty much similar to his - too many people needing too many resources. He has a garnered lot of criticism, especially for voicing that over-population is to blame for depletion of resources. I usually try to stay away from the same claim mainly because the moment you mention "population control," people think of communist regimes mandating abortions on women with more than one child.

On the two sides of every debate, is a realist and an idealist. The realist sees how things are and calls a spade, a spade. The idealist reads the numbers and has a gut feeling that things are wonderful and will get better regardless of all the glaringly obvious problems. Idealists are great for leading daring expeditions in uncharted waters. Realists are great for making policies that minimize the gap between the number of single males and the number of single females in a country, so as not to cause a major uprising by the male denizens who cannot find a wife. Similarly, people can observe the status of the world as it is today, exponentially growing population with an arithmetically growing energy supply, and come to their own conclusions as to what will eventually happen. Will the go-green fad actually prove its effectiveness or will we continue down the road of oil wars and deforestation-related droughts and famines? You are welcome to let me know what you think.

People that know me well, know well enough that I am completely devoid of any beliefs, faith, superstitions, and paranormal inclinations. I don't believe in ESP, ghosts, mythical creatures, or UFOs. I don't "believe" in science, rather I have a good foundation in scientific theory and principles with a pretty decent understanding of the universe we live in. I don't claim to know or understand everything and so even if I don't know what caused the Big Bang, I'm perfectly fine with my lack of scientific explanation for it. Regardless of all of this, my entire past week has been pretty damn weird.

I woke up last weekend and sent this to Tay online: "I had a dream that I was vacationing in Gujarat (a state in India) in the Gir Forest lodge house, surrounded by tigers and lions. My family was there, so were you, Anthony..." I didn't get into detail since he was leaving but the dream wasn't about the lions attacking us. They were trying to get inside the lodge to get away from something. Two days later, I came across this tragic article online: "Five Lions electrocuted by poachers in India." I hadn't seen any documentaries about Gir in a long time. I hadn't watched any Animal Planet or Discovery shows about big cats nor read any Nature articles. This was completely out of the blue. Color me spooked.

The rest of the week was full of little coincidences, too many to list. Today turned out to be yet another unusual day. I don't know what's in the air but for some reason, I was treated extremely nicely when I went to the grocery store, deli, and then later at a Chinese food place. I know everyone has days when people seem extra nice (or extra mean) but I'm talking double free food from a fast-food chain run by Pepsi. People were so nice today that I kept wondering if something was wrong with me.

A few minutes ago, I finished my food and started reviewing the stats for Chime.TV. I was about to lament that the growth is not accelerating at the expected pace when I popped open a fortune cookie to find these words: "They will be grateful that you cared enough to make it."

Like I said, I don't believe in anything. I don't believe I am here for a purpose, I don't believe everything happens for a reason. I do know that I have managed to overcome some pretty tough hurdles with support from my loved ones and a ton of luck. Lots of strange things happen in my life that I can't seem to explain. However, the fact that I don't understand why something happens, doesn't mean I am going to believe it happened because of some mystical miraculous reason. Life is just plain weird.

I made something neat for Chime.TV tonight. Soon you'll be able to embed your Chime.TV channels or any YouTube/Google etc. videos from almost any website on your own website in a non-stop playlist. Currently most video sites let you embed one video at a time but this new app I made tonight will let you make your own TV channel and display it on your site. It's not fully done yet and I will be adding more features soon. Since it can be embedded on your own site/blog, it means you can customize it to blend in with your site nicely. For example, here is my own music channel. Click on the big play button to begin. Then try the previous and next buttons to go up and down the playlist.

Get your own TV Channel on Chime.TV!

Here's my random selection of interesting videos that my friend Tay and I have found online:

Get your own TV Channel on Chime.TV!

It's 2007 and computer hardware is still the bane of my existence. Like a good little nerd, I spent the entire Friday night and most of Saturday setting up a computer to hook up to my TV. I had the whole setup ready and was about to sit back and watch the latest episode of IT Crowd when the computer crashed. I spent two hours trying to isolate the problem and turns out the motherboard is dead. It's an old server motherboard that can't be replaced for cheap so now I have to find another computer. I love software but I truly hate the hardware it has to run on. It's like loving the brains but being repulsed by the body. Kinda like online dating.

I'm not a big fan of productivity advice and lifestyle tips so when I casually glanced at the headline "The seven habits of highly subversive people" on reddit, I expected nothing more than a rehash of every other "Work Smart" Top 10 list. I imagine it was my disdain for this genre of articles that caused me to misread "subversive" as "productive." Now that I read the article without any preconceived notions, I can't help but pontificate about my own personal and lifestyle habits.

I'm not certain how this change came about in my personality but over the last couple of years, I have stopped buying things unless I absolutely need them. I don't go "shopping" anymore and don't order t-shirts, gifts, or cool gadgets online. I have no new collectible items to adorn my showcase and the only products I buy regularly are food and household items. I haven't even bought new clothes in years (sadly, it's starting to show.)

However, I realize now that contrary to my claim just half a year ago, I am not a bad consumer; I just spend my money differently. I've minimized buying things and maximized buying experiences. Instead of $250 to get a better cellphone, I got $150 wind-surfing lessons. Rather than spend $600 on a bigger TV, I'm spending $50/month so I can chat with my family in India every day on my drive to work for 25 minutes. The only major purchase I've made this year is a $2500 server/workstation to code Chime.TV on but that's strictly a development decision and given the expected four-year life of the PC, quite economical in the long run.

I remember asking my dad to take me to Fancy Market in Kolkata, India so he could buy cool wristwatches for me. It was a lot of fun to find a unique designs before others discovered them. Since then, a significant change in my thought process has occurred. You know how you love that one shirt or that book or that wristwatch or your lovely car? I don't. I barely care about objects anymore. My car is a mechanical device with a simple purpose to transport me around and requires regular maintenance. My computer is replaceable as long as the backups are current and my wristwatch costs $9. Stuff is merely stuff. And I refuse to allow my purchases to represent my inner-self.

I know this sounds pretty Fight-Club-esque and maybe I am going through the same disconnect with reality, after already having procured every minor item I thought would make me happier and not finding the satisfaction. It might also be that I have realized I don't have what it takes to afford a $12m house with heated pools and tennis courts and hence have opted to get out of the rat race altogether. Or my minimalism somehow makes me feel superior to the mass consumers out there and is just an elitist act to maintain my smugness. Or maybe I've woken up one morning to a fire in my apartment and realized that in times of life and death, the stuff you so gleefully bought is what gets in your way as you try to save your loved ones.

I often get caught up in long debates with my environmentally-conscious friends who think that I am single-handedly killing the planet because I am vehemently against most methods of recycling, use paper plates instead of washing dishes, and think purchasing carbon offsets is completely idiotic. While I can defend my position at length on all those issues, I would much rather explain that the best way to be green, save the planet, and be environmentally conscious, is to BUY LESS STUFF. Live in a smaller house with a bigger yard. Drive the smallest car you can manage with. Don't throw away things unless they break - upgrading for the sake of upgrading is sickeningly wasteful.

Learn to manage with less. Instead of a $600 GPS, buy a $15 Atlas. I did, and discovered that Okefenokee was only four hours away. You don't need a 650 DVD movie collection. You don't need a 32-piece set of steak knives. And despite your intellectual ambitions, you don't need a 3,200 book library. Manage with less, manage with alternatives, and manage with compromises. And with the money you saved by not buying the entire audio CD collection of Songs from the 80's, take Salsa & Merengue lessons.

I'm not the first person to say all of this either. Eradicating materialism has been the tenet of many a religion like Buddhism and Jainism. However, it's pretty difficult to give up all the things you're used to and care about. I can't give up computers and I rather fancy my kayak. Loving your pair of black shoes isn't going to destroy Earth so keep on dancing. All I'm saying is don't get in the cycle of desiring more objects, getting a more strenuous job to afford those objects, and then realizing you need more objects because your new peers have them, and working 70 hour weeks to afford these objects that you didn't even know you needed, only to find out that while you're working and buying and working and spending, you imprisoned yourself in a cage of debt, stress, and complete lack of direction.

So I say be less productive, less materialistic, and less successful and be more adventurous, more leisurely, and more content.

Earlier this week Tay and I went to Silicon Valley, California to participate in Mashup Camp 4 (pics here). A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience.

We showed off Chime.TV (as a video mashup that combines top 10 video websites) and people loved it so much, we were voted the Best Mashup and won 1st prize (wearing my reddit t-shirt)! Here's ZDNet interviewing Taylor to show off our mashup entry (video here). Our kickass webhost for Chime.TV, SingleHop also interviewed us earlier this week. Highly recommend them for the great 24/7 dedicated support and an awesome performance/price ratio.

It was a great experience to visit Silicon Valley for my first time ever and meet so many brilliant people. I met some pretty smart folks from the development teams of AOL, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, YouTube, and more. My super-crazy-smart college buddy Tim dropped by too. I had a lot of fun hanging out with Tay's friends at eventful - Chris & Nate and also John & Liz.

I haven't been online much after we got back. Yesterday I went to Busch Gardens with my friend Heather and her roomie Bonnie. We saw a lot of cool birds and animals but it rained soooo hard that all rides were canceled. We ended up returning home early and just watched a couple of movies instead. Good thing about Busch Gardens is that Florida residents can come in multiple times for free once they buy an annual pass for just $5 more that of course I did.

It's my lazy Sunday afternoon now and I'm just relaxing and unwinding after a pretty exciting week. Time to sit back and just enjoy Chime.TV now.

I am at work right now, on hold with Dell, trying to renew the warranty on some servers we purchased last year. I can easily whine about how awful the overall support nightmare is, having talked to over twelve people in the last two hours. But right now, I want to sadly talk about something that has been bugging me for years now - the pitiful tone and the lamenting language of the average Indian call center employee.

Having lived in India for the first twenty years of me life, I am well-aware of the social constructs, language barriers, and job market woes. So I have nothing but utter respect for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working, honest call center employees. I have a few friends in Delhi that work for outsourcing firms and many of these kids are brilliant. I am hurt every time I hear anyone stereotyping and insulting them online and offline, just for being different and hard to comprehend. I had a strong Indian-accent when I first came here and I still have problems being understood sometimes. Being packed in a cubicle with 3 others, stuck on a phone with irate customers for ten hours a day is not an easy way to feed your kids. So I understand how difficult things can be.

However, what drives me crazy is the pathetic "Sorry Sir," "Thank you very much Sir," "Please wait Sir" language that these folks are forced to use. It makes me ashamed to think that my people, even after sixty years of Independence from the British, still have to portray a public image of servitude, inferiority, and desperation when interacting with non-Indians.

The blame lies not with the workers. It lies with the management, often-times Indian, that enforces these scripted rituals of verbal enslavement. The employees maybe humble yet proud Indians but since their paycheck relies on them using these "Sir, Sorry Sir, Please Sir" interjections, they have to behave like dismal Third-World outcasts. What angers me the most is that these are well-educated, highly-skilled, respected people forced to behave like servants for some mythical foreigner 8,000 miles away. When I interact with people here in US, this is they behavior they expect of me. I'm sorry but if anyone expects me to be a sorry little Indian boy, you can bet they'll be my personal dartboard for a long, long time.

If you have ever called customer support and have been frustrated because it is hard to understand the person at the other end, realize that they have the same problem understanding you. All I can say is speak clearly and respectfully. It's not their fault your cellphone battery doesn't charge. What right do you have to insult a complete stranger solely because they sound different? You certainly wouldn't pull that on a cop with a different accent, so why are these hard-working individuals fair game for insolence? If you truly want to retaliate against the company, stop buying their crappy phones.

Now if this message ever reaches a call center employee, I have just one single request for you. Please Sir/Ma'am, be proud of yourself Sir, and boldly refuse to use the Sorry lines that your Respected Boss Sir Kindly Requested you to use Sir, Thank You Sir.

Last week I received an email from journalist Aaron Rutkoff at The Wall Street Journal Online for a phone interview to discuss my US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud app. We had a good chat over the weekend and for a limited-time, you can read his article about my work at: Web Site Tracks a History Of Presidential Buzzwords. If the link doesn't work anymore (since WSJ is a subscription-site), let me know.

I'm quite pleased at how clearly and sincerely Aaron wrote about this project and my motivation for developing it. Having had a few "interesting" experiences with media folks in the past, I honestly have so much respect for the WSJ because of how friendly and genuinely interested in my work he was. I think I showed off a bit too much about my kayaking while we chatted, him being in the freezing New York City and me living in sunny Florida :)

It's way past my bed-time now but here's hoping the link stays up free for a few days so my family and friends can read it all, since it's not available in print.

As it often goes, I was talking to a good friend of mine online and she mentioned how her mother kept expecting too much out of her and despite whatever my friend did, it was never enough for the mother. The parental pressure was not just infuriating my friend but also slowly depressing her. About a year ago when she was living with her parents and going through similar situations while selecting a graduate school, I suggested that she pick a school outside of her hometown and learn to live on her own. And she did.

So far, she's loved the freedom it has brought to her after 27 years of being told exactly what to do every single moment. I never expected her mom to stop nagging after she moved out. But I did hope that my friend wouldn't feel so emotionally tortured. That hasn't happened. It hasn't happened to my buddy who moved to Colorado and still hasn't happened to my friend who got married and moved with her husband to Boston two years ago. Yet, it happened to me. Despite being very close to parents who expect the world out of me, I don't feel emotionally tense anymore because of what they say or think of me. It took years for me to figure out why and how.

I want my parents' love, not their approval. I love my parents more than anyone else in the world but I have learnt that what I should be seeking in return is their love, not their agreement with everything I do. Moreover, not wanting approval doesn't mean I don't care about their opinion or that I don't care when I hurt them. I'm just saying, when I do something that I think is right but they don't, I understand it is a difference of opinions and carry on.

Oddly enough, it was my mom that taught me this lesson. Like every good son, for two decades I did everything I could, to get my dad's approval. Many times I succeeded but more often than not, I failed. Part of me knows that my dad held back many well-deserved congratulations so I would try even harder and go further. He wanted me to be a true winner. However, after seemingly failing over and over again, I would feel dejected and go to my mom asking for advice. She said simple things like "don't worry" and "just try harder."

I don't know when it struck me but one fine day, I stopped craving for my dad's approval. Everything changed instantly. I'm no longer living my life hoping he'll rubber-stamp my big ticket purchases, career path, new friends, or potential soul mates. I no longer expect my parents to like everything I like or appreciate the things I care for. I feel wonderful when they tell me they love me and my decisions but I'm not hurt or disappointed when they express their disdain for my unorthodox ways.

This is not a criticism of my parents but rather of my past self. Parents seldom change. But the kids can. And have to. I would love it if both my parents approve of everything I do but the world is not perfect and I would be foolish to expect the same. My dad and I can't agree on the same sport to watch together (cricket vs. soccer) yet for twenty years I hoped he would approve of every new friend I made. He is perfectly right in his mind to judge, like, and dislike whoever he wants in the same way that I have the right to talk, befriend, and love whomever I want. He does his best to prevent me from destroying my life and I do my best to explain the reasons behind my choices. Sometimes we agree and sometimes we agree to disagree. In the end, we remain close without any bottled up frustrations; at least I try my best to.

The day I realized I want my parents to love me and not wholeheartedly approve of me, is the day I truly became an "adult." Since then, I've expanded this rule to encompass my family, relatives, friends, and even coworkers. I'm glad if you appreciate what I do and am thankful that you care to offer criticism but if someone tells me I HAVE TO DO things their way without sufficient logical reasoning, that'll be the last day I talk to them.

On an average day, I read about 10-12 personal blogs of people I know and read news, articles, and journals on anywhere from 50 to 200 websites I find linked online. While there is much to be said about online news media outlets and commercial blogs, my gripe is with personal blogs. Regardless of how easy it is to start a free online journal and how many people sign up for new ones everyday, the problem lies not with the technology or the low barrier to entry, but rather with the utter lack of fresh content.

While this would be a good opportunity for me to make a list of the "Top 10 things I don't want to read on your blog," I'd rather spend the time elaborating on what I DO want to read. Admittedly, I'm not above my own criticism either as I've written many a word in the last five years that nobody including me wants to read anymore. However, with time, I've learnt what people do want to read and what they usually skip over.

All I want you to do is to say something new. Tell me something that I didn't know about - you, your life, your friends, your job, your love, your passion, your dirty secrets, and most importantly, your thoughts. I've already read everything newsworthy on all the meta news sites. So you don't have to tell me that some new movie is in the theaters now. What you do have to tell me is that you have started playing the violin or are practicing public speaking. Tell me why you think people should be married before age 23 or how one should go about organizing their personal schedules. I don't care if you're right or wrong, convincing or contriving, I just want to read something I couldn't have on any other website except yours. Be fresh!

You don't necessarily have to write about your personal life a la "What-I-had-for-lunch-today." In fact, writing about your personal life without being severely sleep-inducing is one of the most difficult things. While I started with writing about my cool programming scripts, I've slowly moved away from day-to-day activity logs (that I'm sure my family still cares more about) to more persistent topics that might be somewhat interesting four years after the weather has changed. Event descriptions are momentary, ideas are timeless.

Creating new content requires time and effort, thankfully rarely any money. It is very easy to say "Movie X sucked" or "OMG! Check out this site!" It is not so easy to spend an hour putting your ideas in words and telling the world how you think you can make something better, faster, smaller, bigger, easier, cheaper, funnier. You don't have to be a fantastic writer but it helps. And once you stop saying "I hate event X, object Y, and person Z" and instead write about how the little children that you talk to everyday finally have come to terms with the truth about Santa Claus, you'll notice your writing skills improve. Tell me something I don't know.

I'm pretty neutral about personal blogs that consist solely of links to other interesting sites. To me, that says nothing really about you. So you found a cool link that you want to share with anyone that might end up on your blog. Big deal. Sometimes the links are interesting and sometimes they're crap. Thanks but I want more.

Tell me about the new project you're working on or your retirement plans. What are you going to do next month? How can first-time homeowners get equity loans? Why do you think people should drop out of college and start your own companies? I don't care if what you're thinking of is smart or stupid, spill the beans already.

I hope next time you click 'New Entry', you'll say something I couldn't find on CNN.com, Google News, or Fark.com.

It's finally getting cold here in Florida. I went to Myakka River on Saturday and here's my pics from a nice 4-hour morning paddle.

On Sunday I started an online web-comic: Calm Down! I'd always wanted to write my own comic strip but never felt talented or funny enough. I always thought it's really difficult and needs a lot of creativity and artistic effort to get started. Having been a fan of xkcd for a few months now, I figured if he can do it, so can I! Though in reality, I just wanted to do something for myself. It doesn't really matter to me if most people don't find my stuff funny or give a damn about it. For me it's just a learning process. Maybe if I keep at it, it might actually become funnier and poignant.

The Calm Down! comic strip has a male and female character and the layout/format is pretty much fixed, with only the title and captions for the three frames changing. I drew the initial stick-figure characters and later my friend Tony drew me two very cute characters. The language is quite informal and the subject matter is just about anything that pops into my head - from stupid boy-girl jokes to linguistic paradoxes. I think the comic's audience is pretty limited and definitely doesn't have a mass family-values-type appeal. Even some of my good friends don't find it funny so I'm aware of it's niche appeal.

I'd say the male is bookish-smart yet childish while the female is matured, rational, and grounded in reality. I will probably write a new strip every other day and as time goes by, I hope to develop the characters into ones you could relate to and somewhat take a liking to. It will be a slow but hopefully fun journey.

Monday night, I went to The Castle in Ybor City, Tampa to chill with Sandra. I wasn't prepared to dance and neither was I dressed in the night-club-black, but she coaxed me into dancing for almost three hours! I got home, went to bed, worked all day, and here I am finally turning on the heater in my house.

If you know me personally, you could use the adjectives 'practical' and 'realistic' to describe me. I'm not shy about the fact that I have my feet solidly grounded in reality with a near-absolute lack of fantasy in my life. Every thought in my head has something to do with things I've done, things I want to do, and things I want to understand. It can be math problems, computer algorithms, process-flow diagrams, kayak trips, how-to-build-X guides, or even socio-political disagreements. Every single thought is based on something real and concrete. In my life, there are no video games, no role-playing, no fiction novels, no drawings, no story-telling, no fantasy, and certainly no imagination-beyond-what-is-actually-possible.

Yet that doesn't mean I don't have ideas or creative thoughts. I do. Tons of them! But every idea is about something that I can do realistically. Every creative thought is about something I can make possible given my skill set and abilities. Over the course of years, I have become so practical that there is no room for flying llamas and unachievable goals in my life. Now, despite shaking my head at Anne McCaffrey readers for so long, I'm beginning to think my way of thinking is just not right.

While each person has those "special and different" qualities in themselves, I think most people have a unique blend of realistic and idealistic tendencies i.e. to say, some people are more grounded in their acts and thoughts while some others are just "out there." Like everything else in life, balance is the key. Just a decade ago I used to love reading fiction. I loved making up my own stories or rather, extending the ones my dad so enchantingly spun. My earliest memories of playing with my toys consist of kingdoms and wonderlands I had imagined. Gradually though, I migrated towards function, away from form. Who cares about a magical land with funny-looking creatures anymore? I have to build something that's actually useful! And I did. Lots of little useful things I built up.

Then one day I could build no more. I don't know why but my true desire to create just vanished. Nevertheless, out of sheer habit I kept going on, a piffle made here and a trifle made there; always wondering whatever happened to that fire in my belly that had forever made me stay up late at nights working on something fantastic. I had some idea but couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't until I was spellbound by the 2005 film Mirror Mask earlier today that I realized the true span of my impasse. I have forgotten how to imagine the extraordinary.

The emphasis on the extraordinary points to the crux of the matter. My imagination engine is working fine, it's just not working right. I can imagine a pretty backyard and greener grass. I can imagine a week long vacation driving through the curvy cliff-hanging roads of Washington and Oregon in Fall. I can imagine performing Eskimo rolls while white-water kayaking in Colorado. My imagination engine is allowed to imagine this because my Reality-Sentry has analyzed the activities and approved them based on their high probability of success. What I haven't imagined is curing cancer. What I haven't imagined is becoming a Best-Seller author. What I haven't imagined is inventing the Anti-gravity shield. I haven't thought of these things because, come on, what's the chance of me actually doing any of that?

Big deal. I don't think of what is almost certainly impossible. What's the problem there? The problem is that with time, the Reality-Sentry becomes stricter and stricter. It starts with classifying world peace and flying flip-flops as impossible and then slowly starts to include robotic vacuum cleaners and online video-publishing websites into the impossible-to-do list. After all, I don't know much about robots to make an automatic vacuum cleaner and where am I gonna get the bandwidth, time, and publicity to actually make my own video-publishing website worthwhile?

What you just witnessed was my brain putting anti-gravity shields of science fiction and video-sharing websites of reality into the same impossible-to-do category simply because it tried to answer "what's the chances of ME doing THAT?" without actually letting my imagination and hands have a shot at it. While this certainly saves me from wasting my time and energy on every foolish idea, in the end the ideas that I'm left with are so dull and easy to accomplish that I don't even feel motivated enough get started with them. The other day when I was sick of tailgaters, I wanted to make a device that measures the distance between your car and the one behind you and flashes a warning when get too close. A practical idea indeed. Certainly not impossible to do with some proximity sensor chips, a MIPS processor, and a few LED lights. It's so simple a fool could do it! Which is precisely why I didn't.

This is not to say that every simple idea is worthless. The world definitely needs more Ron Popeils to make our lives easier. But for me, easy and possible just doesn't do it. If I'm embarking on a personal project, it has to be something outrageous enough for me to get excited over. However, with such a starved imagination engine, I'll never really get much fodder to be excited over.

Of the few things I'm proud of myself about, the willingness to find my own flaws and make amends under any circumstances is something I truly feel good about. I may suck but at least I fess up to it and do something about it. I need to dream again. And dream big. Not for success, not for fame, and not for fortunes glorious. But for myself; to help me create that which is truly fantastic.

Reading something online, I was reminded of a horror movie I saw as a kid in India. It was probably the first horror movie I saw completely. Took a few minutes but I finally found it's name: Demons. Oh the good times...

I have come to the sad realization that I apparently have the worst choice in everything. Every single thing. Ever. If I like it, then it sucks. It can be anything - music, movies, actors, actresses, sports, books, or food. If I so much as mention it to my friends that "Hey! This 'x' is good..." it is met with the juggernaut punch of "Ewwwwww! 'X' SUCKS!"

The list of things that I like and for some reason the people I know don't, is pretty damn long. From Jon Stewart and Johnny Depp to Scarlett Johansson and Uma Thurman, from Annie Hall and 007 series to Zoolander and Sin City, from Aerosmith and Cake to Queen and Coldplay. It does not matter whether Annie Hall is Woody Allen's greatest cinematic achievement till date, the very fact that I casually mentioned it a friend online, means it stinks. Who cares if Sin City is quite possibly the best rendition of a comic to a movie that still maintains the comic-book aura, the mere fact that Chirag Mehta in Florida, USA uttered the phrase "Wow! Sin City is superb!" means people have to absolutely bring it down.

The statistical odds of me unknowingly liking everything that is critically "bad" are very very low. If indeed I can like the suckiest of the sucky out there, I can make a lot of money by immediately betting on my dislikes. No. I don't think I have a case of bad taste in all there is to be. The problem is you. Yes, you. You pretend to hate every single thing that's popular because it's so much easier to say "'X' is an over-rated hack' and "'X' is too long and boring." It's ok though. Not your fault completely. Here's what really happened.

As a society, we've been trained well to listen to the view of the elite few and shape our views and likings according to theirs. So when Roger Ebert praises a film, we walk in expecting it to be good. Nothing wrong so far. His film reviews are unbiased and quite accurate and his words are in fact worth their weight in gold. The problem is not whether Ebert does and does not like something. The problem is our innate desire to be elite. After all, our society has been structured to respect and revere the elite.

It so happens unfortunately, our peers identify us by the choices we make, not why we make them. Consequently, if we want our fellow beings to respect us and be in awe of our choices, it is paramount that we pick everything that a commoner wouldn't. It is cool to be different. Corollary, it is uncool to choose like a plebeian. Instead of doing what the elite do to become an elite ourselves, we start liking things that we think the real elites like. We form a mirage of what the elites might like and start liking those things. You know, that raw-sounding underground band that only you know of? Oh and that foreign film with blue blood instead of red?

Now that you have wedged yourself between the layers of unique-taste and appreciating-the-underrated, it's time to start defending your high and mighty position. A friend mentions Sin City is great and you have to mention that Frank Miller doesn't know how to bring life to his characters, "They're so two-dimensional." Well no sheetrock Sherlock, it's a comic on paper! While I understand that everyone has the right to critique everything that they know nothing about, that doesn't mean you start hating anything that doesn't meet your precise definition of what might be good.

Having read a million online profiles and met tons of people, I've come to the conclusion that while everyone is different and has different tastes, once they fit in with a certain clique or stereotype, they choose pretty much just like everyone else in the group. In their view, the stereotype they're trying to fit into is the coolest, the most elite. So they have to like what other people with that stereotype like. Even the people that do not want to fit into a stereotype have similar choices. Odds are, if you like Fight Club, you also like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you like Futurama, you also like Amelie. Odds, not certainly. Odds are fairly good that if you hate They Might Be Giants, you also hate Monty Python.

I don't need to hear your excuse for hating anything. I doubt Monty Python will get any funnier because you have a different idea of how they should have acted out their skits. Truth is, most people hate things because it is cool to hate them. And what's cooler to hate than the popular? If it's popular, it means the commoners like it. If the stupid common people like it, you certainly don't want anything to do with it.

Try mentioning to anyone with even a slight pride, that you listen to the Billboard Top 40 songs and they'll frown upon you. "Ewww! How can you listen to that crap?! I only listen to the classic Beatles songs." Guess what? Beatles topped all those Top charts. You may or may not have better taste than me, but you certainly are trying hard to pretend like you do.

I doubt that I'm ever going to get people to appreciate the genius of Peter Sellers or the wonders of Tom Waits, so I'm going to do the only thing I can to avenge the insults I bore. From now on, everything anyone says is good, I'm gonna hate it. For absolutely no reason other than the fact that YOU like it. Once I've made it clear I hate it, I'll make up intelligent-sounding bourgeoisie-denigrating reasons to prove my point. You may now walk away in awe of me and leave me plum full of my elitist self.

Yesterday evening my new friend Teresa came over to chill with me. She introduced me to Violent Femmes. Been a while since I found a new band that I liked. I'm very apprehensive about listening to new music. I don't know why but I don't like it when people burn CD's for me and tell me to listen to them. It's not any odd music though. It's complete works of a particular singer/band. Now I feel like I have to sit through every song some guy ever sang and pick out the ones I might like. Since I don't really care how great the band is and am only interested in particular songs, I have to listen to 14 crappy ones to get to the two good songs. Only rarely do I find bands like Cake that have a lot of good songs that I like. From the last few songs I've heard, VF appears to be the same. One distinction here is mixed CD's. Since mixed CD's mostly have tons of songs by different artists, if I don't like someone's voice, I still have 9 other songs to pick from :)

Unlike new music, I am very open to meet new people. Be it coworkers, friends-of-friends, or people I've been talking to online, meeting someone you've never met before can range from a dull boring chore to thrilling experience. The thrill to me lies not only in how exciting the person is by themselves, but also how unexpected their being there is. Most of the times, you already know the kinda person you will meet in a given situation. If I go to association meetings from work, I already know that I'll probably meet people who're into X/Y/Z. And then someone stands out from it all, a peculiarly unique person with different way of looking at things. You didn't expect this guy or girl to come up with such a non-traditional way to look at the mundane, like the economist from Freakonomics. Otherwise, I already know 53 girls who like to "have fun" and want to "have a good time!" *choke* So once in a while, it's refreshing to meet new people with more personality than a sheet of paper.

Yesterday evening with Lanie was absolutely awesome. We went down to Gulfport and walked around for hours. I had pasta cooked in white wine! We drew colorful designs with chalk on the sidewalk just like the tens of kids with their parents. Of course, we had a "few" spirits during the course of the evening (Bailey's, some sorta white wine, Tequila, Goldschlager, and best of all Frozen Pina Colada with Attitude & Jello shots). Later we went to see X-Men 3 - The Last Stand. The movie kicked ass and I liked it so much, I went to see it today with my friend Brian from work.

Anyways, I'm just sitting here relaxing. Don't have any plans this weekend other than reading a book my boss gave me: Freakonomics. I've heard about it so many times online that I am totally excited to finally read it.

Just got back from my friend Megan's wedding in Pennsylvania! CONGRATS MEGS AND CHRIS!!!!! Such an eventful and packed weekend that I am still not over the excitement. First of all, this was my first time ever seeing Megan in person and yet we felt like we'd been friends forever. Well, technically we have; known her online via Fark.com for over five years now. Chris turned out to be even cooler and much more fun than I thought. I mean I didn't know much about him to expect anything. I kept thinking he reminded me very strongly of someone famous and then it hit me... Abhishek Bachchan - famous Indian actor. I mean it's weird to be reminded of movie stars when you meet real people but the resemblance, especially the walk and body language, was uncanny. Megan was definitely the life of the entire party... laughing and dancing every other minute.

The party for me started at the Tampa Airport on Friday afternoon. Having gone to work early on Friday and leaving early, I was already tired by the time I passed through the dreadded airport security. I sit down at this Mexican food place and ask the waiter for the biggest margarita and the biggest bowl of nachos they have. Next thing I know I'm in Philadelphia. I freshened up at my hotel (which did NOT look as polished as the picture makes it out to be) and decided to take a walk around Center City, Philadelphia. I took a few pictures and just kept noticing the little unique identity marks of the city. I noticed rows of houses sharing common walls, kinda like San Fran, but with buckets of flowers hanging from the front windows.

At 9:30pm, I finally got to meet Megan! First time I see her in person and she's looking gorgeous in a bridal dress. It's kinda cooler than meeting someone at Walmart. Also met her friend Wade & Lisa, and of course, the groom Chris. We had wine and vodka, talked for a few hours, and parted ways. Next morning, i.e. Saturday, I had some continental breakfast, Meg/Chris picked me up, and we drove to Chris' Aunt Kathy's house in the middle of the beautiful rolling hills of Pennsylvania Country. Quite possibly one of the most beautiful landscaping I've ever seen in my life with waterfall, and all sorts of trees and plants, which of course is easily explained by the fact that Chris' uncle, Tom, runs a landscaping business. Oh and their neighbors had ostriches. Yes, OSTRICHES!

I met their families as they slowly arrived and we started setting up the tables under the big (30ft x 60ft) tent in the backyard. Good thing everything was pretty much setup by the time we got there and all we had to do was put up the lights and set up the bar. Gee, I wonder who took it upon himself to make sure the bar was setup right :-P Around 4pm, the guests started pouring in. The most relaxing aspect of this party was the attire - casual - jeans 'n shirt! It was more like a big bar-b-que party than some formal wedding occasion. As the sun set, it started getting cold, and Tom got his son Luke to build a HUGE campfire. I think the fire lasted from 8pm to 3am! And I made sure it kept me warm - I mean I've so gotten used to the warm Florida weather now...

As the evening progressed, most of the older guests left, leaving us kids behind. The music was on, the fire was warm, and the drinksa' floweth. I made my special California Sunset mixed drink for Chris and got two more orders for it. As I tell everyone, I'm a computer guy by mind but a bartender by heart. Around midnight, we setup our tents under the big tent - to keep us warm and protected from the harsh winds. Oh yeah, I took a tent on the plane! It was hilarious because the airport people kept looking at me funny when they saw I'm getting on a plane so I can camp out.

Sunday morning was the familiar post-party lazy-wake up chore. Got up, folded my tent, and showed all my mad sleeping-bag folding trickzzz to Megan & Chris. We had some pancakes for breakfast, packed up our stuff, said good-bye to the twenty new people I met, and drove to Chris' grandfather's house. And that is where I think I saw the most memorable country-side - in the little town of Embreeville Mill near the historic Brandywine River. I don't know much about American history but from what I learnt, every other house in this area was built sometime in 1700's and Chris' ancestors owned acres and acres of land. They were one of the first few canners in the country - canned the mushrooms that rural Pennsylvania is so famous for. It kinda reminds me of my ancestors in India because my grandparents and their parents grew up in the same family house in the village that their parents did. It doesn't matter where in the world you were three hundred years ago, life wasn't too different.

As I walked around Chris' grandpa's house, I noticed the exterior walls were TWO FEET THICK! Chris' dad (harbor-master of Longboat Key Marina in Sarasota, FL and the only other Floridian) said it took four years to actually build this house sometime in 1770's. The construction was rock-solid and the design was rustic yet timeless. The cold-as-ice wine-cellar was probably my favorite part of the house. We saw wild goats right outside their front-door and I was told by everyone to NEVER mess with a male goat - as if that was on my list of 50-things I wanna do or something :)

One of the guests at the wedding was Richard Chalfont, a famous painter. I talked to him at the party and later learnt his gift to the newly-wed couple was a beautiful painting of houses previously owned by Chris' family. Pretty amazing stuff.

After about an hour or so, we left to drop me off at a nearby train-station so I could get to the airport on time. Neat thing how the Philly airport is so well-connected to the local trains. Didn't have a problem at all. But man... the good-bye to Meg & Chris was sad... I told them normally this is the moment I say "alright guys, see you next weekend..." or "give me a call if you wanna hang out sometime..." but I doubt that's possible. It's amazing how close I felt to them as friends, even though it was my first time seeing both of them. Anyways, my train arrived on time, I got to the airport on time, and landed at Tampa after two flights, almost on time. I won't say the return trip was uneventful because there were far too many annoying people, unbearable noises, and frustrating incidents for it to be uneventful. However, I'm home now, safe and sound, and more excited than ever to get back to work tomorrow after my mini-weekend-get-away-to-Philly.

#5 - "Not talk to anyone..." above means if you have to be by yourself for a week because of illness, accident etc. and not that you should stop talking because you're mad at the world. Also no talking means no face-to-face, no phone, no email, no online chats - absolutely no conversations with anyone else. I don't know if I can even do it. But I'd like to be able to.

While chatting online today, Tay mentioned something about inspiration. A lot of people love to be inspired. After all, nothing pumps more energy into your youthful ambitious bloodstream than the words of a "successful" achiever in your field. You can see what the pro has accomplished and as a rising star you want to get there faster and shine brighter. Or maybe you're not the alpha-male type. You just want to encapsulate yourself in the glowing warmth of inspiration and ascend towards the apex with a Buddhist sense of omniscient calm. After all, if they did it, so can you! And they said that repeatedly in their hour long self-realization speeches.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I don't like to be inspired. I'm not saying inspiration is good or bad, just saying if given the choice, I prefer not to be inspired. Just like wealth, hardwork, and genius, inspiration appears to be a very good measure of the potentiality of success. Clearly a person inspired to change the world has more chance of achieving that than someone who cares not one bit and has no inspiration to leave a mark on the planet. Just like how everyone who is rich is successful, how every person who works hard always wins, and how every genius is recognized for his or her intellect by the masses. Right? No, you say? I guess then inspiration isn't that good of a barometer either, is it?

Other than a momentary appreciation of self-worth and an inflated sense of personal capabilities, inspiration doesn't really do much, especially in the long term. Great, so you just watched an amazing play or read a touching autobiography. Or you went to see a famous CEO talk about how he grew his company from his garage to over 100 countries in under five years. Wow! Nobody can deny that such growth is anything short of impressive. But is it inspirational? Will you go home and realize "if he can do it, so can I?!"

Like this sarcastic Despair poster says, "If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon." Inspiration is just motivation to dream big. Shame on you if you did not automatically think you could turn your 5-person company to a 500-people multi-national and instead needed some guy to come in for an hour and teach you how to dream.

If going to a 30-minute seminar on financial planning inspires me to change my lifestyle entirely, I'd say I'm ashamed of how I was spending and planning money before. I should've realized it on my own that I was bad with finances instead of having someone tell me I've been wrong all my life in just half-an-hour. What I AM in favor of, is of course, education. If going to this financial planning seminar taught me how to better plan my retirement, more power to me. But if I need to go to a "Retirement-Planning Info-Meet" to realize that hey, someday I'm going to be 65 and I just might need money for food, then well, I'm a pretty stupid person to begin with.

Most people get inspired from momentary experiences. A speech, a book, a movie, a play. While I love change and always welcome something small changing my entire outlook on everything, I think if an intro-book about bio-genetics is all I need to inspire me to give up computers forever and take up bio-genetics as my new career path, then wow, where was I last ten years while the Human Genome Project sequenced the DNA?

Maybe, people will not feel the need to be inspired if they just keep their eyes open and see what's happening every single day. In today's world, you only get inspired if [a] some amazingly major breakthrough occurs (very very rarely) or [b] you have been living in a cave for years (most probably) and just realized that you can draw pictures on back of business cards and actually make money selling them!

I guess I feel the need to not be inspired for two reasons. Firstly, as I hinted above, the state of being inspired isn't very productive. There is a state of feeling excited and ambitious that IS indeed productive. If I realize I can connect my old and new database systems using a simple tool, I am not inspired, I'm simply excited and well, feeling quite ambitious about accurate data migration, because now I know I can. When I was inspired, I wanted to make the world a better place by writing an email client that worked in different Indian languages; currently nobody I know uses this software that took me months to code. When I was not-inspired, but rather just indifferent and in need of a small simple music player, I wrote one within days that well, just played music; over 2 million downloads in last six years and counting. Inspiration, big dreams, and castles in the sky haven't made me famous yet. Creating tools that make others' lives easy, help me though.

Secondly, and primarily, I like to dream my own dreams and I like to dream big. You cannot quite possibly insert your dreams into my head and somehow show me that I didn't dream big enough. That is just not possible. I've already thought of every single thing that I can quite possibly do as a human, rather as a super human. I've calculated what I need physically, mentally, and financially to climb Mt. Everest and definitely looked into forming my own Antarctic sub-station. I've thought about giving up everything I have so I can save the baby seals and I've considered spending my life travelling throug the villages of India teaching young and old about computers, math, and science. However, I'm not rushing to start work on my online digital-life-management suite or take up International Relationships to get a seat on a UN sub-committee for Economic Development of South-East Asia.

I guess you can call me uninspired and unmotivated. After all, I could potentially be doing any of the above yet I'm spending my spare time filling a big hole in my backyard every day so it stops looking like the surface of Mars. Lack of inspiration alright. I believe short of a few physical/mental limitations, pretty much anyone can do anything. Inspiration is basically you realizing that "HEY! I can do it too!" Well guess what? I've already realized that I can do anything I have my mind set on. And so can you! The sooner you realize that, the better it is. Inspiration is just a stage you have to go through to come to the best part of your life - actually doing things that you really want to do! Creating, molding, finishing. Above all, choosing. I choose to fix my backyard myself instead of helping cute little kitties at the pet shelter get their vaccines and medicines.

Right now, you too could be doing any particular thing from a selection of thousands of things that you have been inspired to do - writing songs, sketching meadows and hills, planning marketing campaigns to overthrow your competition, or joining a sports club. But instead, you chose to be here and read my blog. Why? Not because you've never had the inspiration to do something bigger, better, and nobler. But rather because given your particular situation in life, reading this 'blog entry is something you want to do. Inspiration can only tell you what you can potentially do. Freewill and choice is what actually determines what you do in life.

None of these inspiration-arousing speakers were talking about being inspired when they were struggling like you and I. They did not do whatever they did solely because someone inspired them or because they wanted to change the world. They did it and then realized, "Hey, maybe I can help inspire others to change the world like I did." I'm not the one to doubt anyone's intentions but it's like saying, "Hey! Now that I have completed this one particular crossword, let me give you all the words that I used so you can try to jam them into your own unique crossword puzzle and see if you can solve it." Then you go home all inspired because now you have words like seamlessness, fluidity, and ideation that you try to jam into every open row and column. Not gonna work. Get a dictionary and you'll have every word. The only way to win is to figure out which words you need, not which word you can force in.

In short, don't do something because you're blindly inspired to do it. Do it because that is the thing you want to do the most out of a list of million other things you can potentially do. And if that leads to success, more power to you. If it doesn't lead to success, at least you did something you wanted to do of your own volition.

I often ask my friends if they have a 'blog that they update regularly. I love reading people's journals/online-diaries on my own spare time. A lot of people just say "well, just ask me what you want to know about me." The point isn't that I have unanswered questions about someone. But rather I want to know your thoughts, without me having to pick a topic for you to talk about.

When I ask you a question, I only find out about the question. Great, so now I know about your favorite movies & music, and that you don't like something the government is doing. But how will I ever know you think college is a waste of time or that Jelly-monster Aliens from Sepoocha Nebula invaded Earth and mated with the Tibetians to give rise to strong war-hungry Mongolians?

By having a 'blog that other people can read, you tell a lot about yourself to the world, without them having to ask for it specifically. Sure, a lot of people don't like to talk about themselves or attract unnecessary attention. However, it's still a great way to get your thoughts out - no matter how weird, confusing, or dull they are - trust me, some of my posts on this 'blog are merely polluting the Internet. Yet, I love to write whenever I can. Not because someone asked me to write but because I feel like sharing part of me. I guess it's a very personal thing and not many people are comfortable doing it. I still encourage everyone to do it though! It's awesome to go back in time and see how you looked at things just a few months or years ago.

Almost a week since I posted. Turns out there were some big issues with my cable Internet at home and as a result, I wasn't able to get online for most of this week. Everything's fixed, for now.

On Sunday Feb 5th, I went up to Orlando to see my friends Jeff and Wes. Chilled with them all day and watched the Superbowl in the evening. While I'm not a big sports fan I love chilling with people and eating/drinking for free :) Orlando's about a 2.5hour drive for me. Disney is about two hours.

Wednesday night I to see standup comedian Chris "Boom Boom" Johnson at the Tampa Improv with Lanie, Natalie, and Mike. I laughed so hard my head was hurting. Literally. Had some good food too, courtesy of Lanie & friends.

Work's going great and I'm excited about the projects I'm working on right now. Things are definitely getting busy for me and as I spend more time in my office, I'm also consciously making sure that I don't end up becoming a workaholic with no social life. It's too easy to concentrate only on one thing in life at the cost of everything else. I know too many people who never learnt the quote "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." It's hard to believe that some of my friends who are much older don't know how to balance work and fun. Sure, if you love your job even half as much as I do, work IS fun. But nevertheless, you still need time off from everything and let your mind relax.

I have a lot of friends in college who don't go out to party/movies/relax because they have so much homework to do and so many projects to complete. Sure, I understand, I went through that, in fact, much MUCH more just a few years ago. However, every time they decide to give up on the fun activities in order to study, they sit at home and do EVERYTHING except study. How can they concentrate anyway?! They're fatigued and stressed because they haven't had a laugh and a good night's sleep in weeks & months.

Here's what I used to do and it worked great for me: When I had three exams & two projects due, and only one weekend to study, I'd map out the work hours and the fun hours. If I had 60 hours before chaos broke out, I'd decide, ok, I'll sleep for a total of 20 hours in 3-4 naps, and of the 40 waking hours, I'll devote 30 to study and 10 to relaxation. Then I'd begin by using some of my 10-hours by watching a movie. Having just spent some time partaking in guilt-free fun gave me the energy and motivation to actually study honestly without any distractions. Once I studied for 5 hours, I'd take a well-deserved break and then get back to studies. Rinse repeat for 60 hours with short but adequate periods of sleep.

What everyone does is instead of sleeping 20 out of 60 hours, they sleep less than 10. Now that you're lacking sleep, you can barely study well during the remaining 50 hours. Of the 50 hours, you spend 20 wondering if college is REALLY what you want to do in life, whether this is the purpose of your existence, and if there is anyone whose life is harder than yours. Of the remaining 30 hours, another 20 are spent pretty much staring at books and notes while you wait for friends to sign on AIM or call you so that you can tell them how stressed you are and how badly you want to go to some house party but can't because of studies. Another five hours are spent looking for food, coffee, pills, and whatever it's gonna take to keep yourself awake like a zombie. And I guess if you try really hard, you can manage to study something in the final 5 hours. Of course, then once you've been through a weekend like this, you realize that even 60 hours aren't enough so you start acting like this 90 hours before the deadlines.

I know I'm being extremely judgemental and critical but the sad truth is, I haven't made any of this up. I actually know people who do exactly what I mentioned above and no matter how hard I try to explain, they never learn. What people don't realize is that motivation isn't always inherent - you have to actively reward yourself and keep monitoring your progress if you want to gather the energy to reach your goals. Unless you have serious external reasons to do something (need money for kid's operation) it's very hard to motivate yourself in the long-term. That's where discipline comes in. You decide beforehand how you want to split your work/study and fun times and stick to that. It's all about discipline. True disciprine... come from within.

Anyways, I have a lot of little chores to complete before I can start doing the things I really want to do, like visit national/state parks, go on road trips, take up a few more hobbies. I'm waiting for the weather to get warmer so that I can start fixing my backyard. I have so many plans for it. I want to go to the beach more often too. I went to the Treasure Island beach today after work to watch the sunset. It's so soothing. One of these days I'm going to drive five hours across the state to the East Coast just to watch the sunrise. I miss those.

I just bought MailMaster StoreMore Mailbox from Step2 online for $114 with shipping. Not bad considering that HomeDepot sells it for much more. It's actually a pretty sweet-looking mailbox and comparable in price to other mailboxes. The best part is that it can hold mail for up to two weeks so I don't have to ask a friend to bring in my mail when I'm out of town for more than a few days.

I'm being called. It's like people actually love me here and WANT to talk to me in person instead of online or on the phone. I'm so not used to this much attention. Rather, I was used to this much attention but over the course of 5-6 years, totally forgot how much everyone cares about everyone else.

Happy New Year everyone!!! I just got back from the St. Pete Pier with my friends Taylor, Kaela, Chad, Megan, and Taylor's parents. It was absolutely awesome. I'm way too tired to be online anymore but just wanted to say I hope 2006 is awesome for everyone! G'nite and Happy New Year again :)

I don't think I fully understood the suckitude of being sick for the next two months. When the doctor said my cough will go away in 60 days or so I didn't put much thought into it. After just one weekend of staying home alone and doing nothing except watch TV and surf online, I realize how much this whole thing really sucks. I don't like to whine but right now, I can't do ANYTHING that I want to do. I can't go out with friends for a drink because anti-biotics and alcohol don't mix. I can't even go out with friends because I keep coughing non-stop and every public place I go to, people stare at me as if I have the plague.

That leaves doing things by myself. Well I loved kayaking but I can't do that or anything physically intensive as it only makes things worse. Plus due to the ear-infection, my head constantly spins and I have absolutely no balance whatsoever. So even running is out of the question.

So let's see, if can't hang out with people and can't go out alone to do things, it leaves me with the only choices: sit at home and do nothing. Well I could get a bit more productive on the computer or read a book or two but trust me it doesn't matter. I'm a social person and I love company. Or doing things. Now I gotta sit at home every night and weekend and do absolutely nothing. I can't even talk to my family or friends on the phone because I feel embarrassed due to the coughing. Urgh.

This was a pretty dull weekend and it just scares me that there's gonna be more and more of these.

/rant-over

Pictures of Katrina's Aftermath.

Talking to random people online and offline in last few days I've realized that are there are lot of people who say "Oh I'm not watchin the TV or any news because it's too depressing." What they really mean is that "I am burying my head in the sand to ignore what's going on in this country because I am a coward." I think if something like this, i.e. the largest natural disaster in almost a century, doesn't move you, then you are a heartless monster. This is a time to help, to donate whatever you can, to show support - NOT to ignore and hope that this goes away and the news media can finally go back to reporting important things, like missing white teenage girls on Springbreak-Islands.

These same people today who are blocking all news and instead watching re-runs of "Everybody loves Raymond on TV are the ones who were glued to their TV-sets on Sept 11, 2001. Why? Because what if the terrorists attacked their little town in the middle of nowhere?! So they studied the news, read everything there was to know about Osama Bin Laden, and after extensive research miraculously concluded that waging a war on Iraq would stop all future acts of terrorism on the American soil. I'm sorry but the sheer stupidity of the common man is something that always amazes me.

Everyone was so up-in-arms about everything going on after 9/11, the invasion of Afghanistan, the "War" on Iraq. And now? Nobody cares! Why? Because well, we don't get hurricanes in Maine. Or Wisconsin. Or wherever these people happen to be. It is a sad day when apathy rules. From the common man to the Federal Govt.

Exactly a week ago I casually mentioned that there was another hurricane on the horizon and wondered how it would shape up. Not even in my worst nightmares could I have witnessed the devastation that Hurricane Katrina has caused in the last five days. It was a Category Four hurricane when it hit the coast of the state of Louisiana on the gulf coast above the Gulf of Mexico.

Before it hit Louisiana, it passed through South-Eastern Florida as a Category One hurricane and it slowly gained strength sitting above the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexco. By last Thursday, everyone knew this was going to be a major hurricane with wind speeds of above 150 mph. My friend Kathleen called it the classic book case - the perfect example of a storm - something students decades from now will be learning in classrooms, on how it formed, how it gained strength, how it moved with tremendous force, and finally, how is destroyed every shred of civilization on half the gulf coast.

As many are already saying, this is going to effect pretty much every person in the US in a very short period of time. Katrina was not a typical storm or minor hurricane that ruined a few neighborhoods and took a few lives. Katrina is absolutely one of the largest natural disasters US has ever faced and the aftermath of this on society, politics, and the economy will be very horrendous.

Let's begin with the area most affected by Katrina - the City of New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA). Majority of the city of NOLA lies about ten feet below sea-level. And as you can see in this map, NOLA is bordered by two major lakes, a river, and the Gulf of Mexico. On top of it, the city is literally shaped like a bowl. It was no surprise to anyone that if the city was hit by a major hurricane, the bowl would fill up with water and there would be no way of draining the water because the sea-level is actually higher than the city.

And then it happened. Katrina hit slightly east of NOLA, barely missing the city, but the damage was done. The levees and barriers that block the river, lake, and sea-waters from flooding the city neighborhoods broke from the sheer water pressure. When a hurricane makes landfall, the ocean swells upwards and sea-water rushes inland. This is different from the kind of tsunami that hit South East-Asia late last year. Tsunamis travel very very fast, hundreds of mile an hour, and shock the coast with their impact, kinda like slapping someone really hard, sometimes multiple times, but then pulling away instantly. Storm surge is when the sea-water floods inland because of the suction created by winds on the water-body, as a result of which, the water does not recede back into the ocean as long as the winds persist. A storm surge is like sitting on someone's chest and gradually applying more and more pressure till their ribs burst and getting up slowly afterwards. Of course, both are just as ravaging to human livelihood.

So now you have a bowl-shaped city of over 1.3 million (13 lac) residents that got filled with water. There just isn't any way out other than physically pumping all the water back into the ocean and lakes - a process which will take months and months. For the first time since the San Fransisco Earthquake & Fire of 1906 has a major city been absolutely ruined like this. Eighty-percent of NOLA is still underwater and it will continue to remain so.

NOLA isn't the only city affected by Katrina. Hundreds of cities and small towns were affected. From the looks of it, Waveland, Mississippi, located north-east of NOLA was affected the worst as pretty much every house in the town is levelled. The town is no more. There are no houses or buildings standing, no electric poles upright, the trees have been uprooted or snapped into pieces, and for all intensive purposes, zipcode 39576 is non-existant henceforth. And this is but one of the hundreds of towns directly affected. WalMart has closed 123 stores and UPS has suspended shipment to 900 zipcodes indefinitely. This is about three to four percent of the entire country of US.

The immediate economic impact is something people always feared - rising price of gasoline - petrol & diesel. I purchased gas at $2.599/gallon yesterday and it's above $3/gallon today in my city. Elsewhere, people are paying upgrades of $5/gallon and many small towns in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and even Wisconsin have run out of gas. It is no secret that the entire economy of US relies very heavily on gas and rising prices could mean economic depression. The Port of Southern Louisiana is the largest port in the US, fifth-largest in the world.

Here is something that has blown my wits away. Back in June of this year, FX Network aired a mock-umentary titled "Oil Storm" (thanks Eric!) The synopsis of the story is that sometime around the Labor Day weekend (that is the coming weekend), a Category 6 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico slams into Louisiana, crushing the city of New Orleans and crippling the vital pipleline for refined oil that is Port Fourchon (more details). The movie "examines the ripple effect of that event and the ensuing cascade of disasters associated with it..." Basically, the first part of the movie about the hurricane has already come true and the next part, about oil prices is already coming true. You can read the synopsis yourself to see how the story unfolds and ends, but the scary thing is, back when the movie aired, everyone was mocking, insulting, and criticizing it. Now, not so much. Nobody believed that a hurricane could drown NOLA, cut off the nation's oil pipeline, or set the oil rigs afloat. Yet that is what happened. This time truth is eerily exactly like fiction.

The damage to public and private infrastructure is only overshadowed by the utter senseless degradation of human lives. Right now, hundreds of thousands of people in NOLA area are thirsty, hungry, have no shelter, and are being terrorized by street gangs. Reporter Anya Kamenetz writes, "the city of New Orleans has a 34 percent poverty rate, triple the national average. It's about 70 percent black. White flight, first to Jefferson Parish and then across Lake Pontchartrain, to the North Shore, has accomplished the desired aim of de facto segregation in the public schools, which are 93 percent black in Orleans Parish and some of the worst in the country." Now, the aftermath of the hurricane is not only a humanitarian issue but also a racial one. Right-and-left people are debating whether the US Federal Govt. is doing enough or not, whether the National Guard would have been moved to NOLA for support any faster if there was a higher percentage of white citizens.

Yahoo! has managed to stir up some controvery regarding two pictures captioned slightly differently. They even issued a public statement and removed one of the pictures. Apparently, the caption under the very dark skinned person said " A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans" while a picture of two light skinned persons was captioned, "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store..." So dark people "loot" while fair people "find" right? The photographer of the second picture disagrees but for now, the issue has raised many a question.

Since eighty-percent of NOLA is currently underwater, some places as deep as twenty-feet, the only pictures and videos available of most areas are from helicopters. While thousands of people are being bussed from the drier areas in NOLA to nearby cities like Houston, Texas, there are thousands of people still stuck in their houses. Hundreds of dead bodies are floating on the streets and rescue workers can't do anything because they first have to help the victims who are still alive.

Any attempt to compare Katrina with the tsunami of 2004 is looked down upon right now because there was a tremendous loss of life in the latter. Additionally, tsunami was unpredictable while the weather channels along with the National Hurricane Center were blasting warnings for days before Katrina made landfall, giving people enough time to evacuate. Moreover, damages from tsunamis were not preventable while majority of the infrastructure destruction of Katrina could have been prevented as everyone knew the geography of NOLA and the nearby regions. And yet, I think there is a similarity despite what people say. The similarity is that poor people suffered. While they all knew about Katrina, there was little most of them could do. Many of the inner-city poor renters didn't have a car and the city of NOLA failed to provide public transporation to evacuate. So for no fault of their own, they were stuck. Sure, many of them might have intentionally chosen to hunker down and stay at home instead of going away, but now, they're all homeless.

NOLA has had near-hits many-a-time but this was the final blow. There is no City of New Orleans, Louisiana anymore. They will have to rebuild, almost from scratch. And so will the hundreds of towns with millions of people. It's hard to imagine that over a million people now have no homes, no jobs, no schools, and no life whatsoever. Everything will have to start from scratch. For the young it's not impossible but for people who have worked their entire lives to finally own a house, it's all gone. Sure, insurance will pay but what about the neighborhood. It's not there anymore. I'd love to see NOLA back on it's feet again but I highly doubt the Mardi Gras celebrations in 2006 (if at all) will be as carefree as this year's.

(I had written about seven more detailed paragraphs after this but due to a stupid mistake, I lost everything below this, hence rewriting it major parts of it. It always bums me out when I'm writing a long 'blog entry and lose part of it. I will fix the blog to not do this tomorrow but for now, I have to live with it. And since I'm too tired to rewrite everything, here's a summary of what I had written before.)

The political aspect of this entire disaster is no less complex. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had to halt all rescue operations in NOLA because of the danger to the lives of the rescuers. Violence has erupted in parts of the city with random acts of looting, rape, street-shooting, and sniper attacks. It's hard to believe but this is US and it seems like the Dark Ages. FEMA is not without controversy itself with two inexperienced directors, demotion from cabinet status, and refusal of funds to NOLA to strengthen the levees.

Louisiana is also holds half the world's supply of zinc and is a major manufacturer of industrial chemicals. There will be inflation in the short-term and dollar will fall in the ForEx markets. Oil will continue to rise for some time and a big part of US trade will be impacted, as LA is the primary port for US. Things aren't going to be pretty for the next few months and rebuilding will take a lot of time. People are dying on the streets, children are waddling through chest-high water, covered in feces, and dead bodies are floating everywhere. The biggest fear is the possibility of a pandemic of water-borne diseases.

I'm sure if anyone wants to learn more about the disaster there are a million places online to read from and hundreds of TV shows to watch. This was just a review of what I've heard, remotely seen, and learnt about Katrina and its aftermath. And here's hoping I never have to write such an entry again, though I think that's impossible. Nature is wild and very very powerful.

Yet another wonderful Florida day. I feel so relaxed and at home. Work was busy but exciting overall. Got home and watched a little TV and now online. Looks like we're gonna have another hurricane but let's see how it shapes up.

Looks like the hurricane season is back. Tropical Storm Arlene is heading for the Florida panhandle / Alabama area and hopefully will miss us by hundreds of miles. However, considering it's still huge and moving very slowly, my entire weekend is pretty much hosed. It's raining outside and doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon. Guess I can sit back and just eat something hot.

Things are pretty dull otherwise. Dull isn't bad necessarily, in fact, I happen to like it quite a bit. I like the fact that I don't have to work or study all weekends. I like how I don't have any major chores or big personal projects to complete. It's the ease and lack of tension that I absolutely love. I come home, play with the kitties, watch a little TV, read stuff online, go to bed, and sleep pretty peacefully. I guess I'll never really get rid of my constant nightmares but otherwise, things are good. I know my daily schedule seems pretty dull and I realize that it actually is, but it's a stress-free dull and not a stretch of depressive doldrums where I find myself stuck in life or something.

Hopefully life will get pretty interesting once I get a house. I don't want to jinx anything so I'm not going to show pictures or write a lot about the house that I'm going to buy soon. Let's see how it goes.

Just got back from the Tampa Fark Party. It was a lot of fun and I met tons of cool people. Hopefully we'll have pictures up online sometime soon. I had just one Long Island all night because I had to drive all the way back to St. Petes. Hope I get to go out more often with my fellow Farkers.

Also jetskied for a few hours today and had a lot of fun. Overall, a pretty good day.

The so-called Online "Hackers" lately have just been getting more and more retarded. I'm no hacker and have no intention of becoming one but if I wanted to seriously get into the illicit world of cracking 'n hacking, here's a few things I would do, a la The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord:

Top xx Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Online Overlord (and growing):

1. I would not hang out on online forums called DigitalGangsta.com, HackerzCrew.net, or anything like NetSupremeMafia.com. I would however create a forum somewhere tucked inside www.cauliflower-salads.com.
2. I would not use the #crackersonly channel in IRC for communication. I would write a very simple software to hide messages in spam emails using Steganography and also implement some decent form of encryption.
3. Read the full list here.

Went to a hidden bar called Cooters on Clearwater Beach tonight to meet an online friend's sister who's a bartender there. Had some good drinks and socialized with a buncha out-of-town vacationing drunkards :) It was a pretty good evening and now I gotta go to bed because I'm way past my bedtime.

The last few days have been pretty interesting. Friday, instead of working all day, my entire company, from shipping guy to production planner, from the owners to the newest employees, all went for a one-day meeting/seminar/thinktank to this place run by the St. Petersburg College. There we spent the day learning about what we do, what every person in our company does, and most importantly, what do we do as a company - where we stand in the market, what our core competencies are etc, and how to brand our company. We formed small teams and worked on similar projects for 30 minutes and made charts, designs, and collages on whiteboards. Everything was documented and by Monday, we'll be able to see it all online. All in all, a pretty fun day where a lot of the employees, including myself, learnt a lot more about the company, especially what everyone else in the company thinks about the company.

Last night at 11:45pm I was about to head to bed when Linda 'n Brian called me. We went to AppleBees and two hours later I had downed six Long Island Ice Teas (my favorite drink ever) and pretty much passed out on Brian's couch. Alcohol is good for you once in a while. I woke up @ 11am feeling pretty normal and came home to get clean.

I'm going over back to Brian's now and then we're gonna go jetskiing :) It'll be my first time ever. God I love Florida! The weather is gorgeous and every other car has a boat towing behind it. Looks like I'll 99% get the house I like and hopefully I'll move in by June end unless some major problems occur. Crossing my fingers that everything goes well, in two months you'll be seeing a lotta pics of the new chir.ag bunker, well it's more like a tiki. Yeah, that sounds corny enough for it to be cool - The chir.ag tiki :-P

I don't really like this keyboard I'm typing on at this cybercafe. It keeps eating up some keys like f, l, n, p, c etc. I have to double-check everything I type. But hey, at least I get to be online instead of walking around the airport terminals like a zombie.

I'm at a cybercafe in the Mumbai/Bombay Airport where access to the net is pretty cheap Rs. 60/hour ($1.25/hour). It's quite fast too - hope my dad could get a connection like this at home. It'll take some time but I'm sure they'll get it. Once my home in Calcutta/Kolkata has broadband connection then I can use something like Vonage to call them everyday at local phone charges and not international. Can't wait till that day.

So my flight was delayed as I expected. Had it been on time, I'd be in the plane already. Now I fly off at 11:20am. I checked in all my luggage and will hopefully disembark at the Newark, NJ Airport at 8:25pm tonight via Paris. Kinda sucks that I don't get to check out the Paris airport as the plane just sits on the runway for refuelling. My plane lands at 8:25pm and my connecting flight departs at 8:10pm. So unless I pull off some James Bond 007 moves and transfer from one plane to another mid-air, I'm definitely going to miss my connecting flights to Tampa via Atlanta. AirIndia here in Mumbai said that since it's their fault that the flight's being delayed, they will make sure that I get a decent accomodation and proper connecting flights to my destination.

For some stupendous reason there is no flight from Newark NJ to Tampa FL airports after 10pm tonight till 8am tomorrow. I was ready to get on a 11pm flight if available but they could only reserve me for two 8am flights. My reservation isn't confirmed either but hopefully by the time I'm in Newark tonight, they'll have it partially figured out. The journey that was supposed to take less than 24 hours is now gonna be longer than 36 hours but I'll get to sleep in a hotel overnight in NJ now.

I'll call my aunt/uncle in NJ to see if they wanna visit but I wonder if they can make it all the way to Newark airport on such a short notice. Anyways, I'll prolly be so tired after two long flights and the immigration checks etc. that I'll want to sleep till 6am tomorrow. I have my US Visa on my passport and I'm crossing my fingers that there are no problems.

I had a great time here with my family after almost three years of separation. Now I'm ready to face the new challenges at my work and career. While it's great living in US, there is one major drawback - you slowly forget everything you aspired to be; India reinforces your primal aspirations. Life in US is like slowly dissolving in a warm feel-good quicksand of acid - you don't know you're melting away molecule-by-molecule. India is a quick slap on the back that reminds you that you need to hold your breath, flap your arms, and get the hell out of the quicksand. In other words, before I left India for the US, I had a very keen interest in furthering my academic career and studying till my hair is grey. After getting a job, getting a car, finding a nice apartment, the fire within slowly dies down. One becomes lax about fulfilling the original dreams.

And just one 15-day trip to India drilled the whole academic-career thing back into my head. And not just the academic, the desire to work harder and smarter is stronger now more than ever. I want to make the systems my company needs and I want to make them smart, robust (I know, cliched), and scalable (I know, very much cliched). I want to be twice or thrice as productive as I was in the last few months. Hell I was barely productive in the last two weeks before I left for India because I was soooooooooooo stressed out about the outcome of my visa interview. But thankfully, I got the visa and now I have to accomplish what I desperately need to. There's new ideas to be thought of, there's new systems to be created, and there's a lot more effort to be put into every segment of my life.

One thing I would have regretted had I not got my visa is that I did not travel enough. I sit at home on weekends doing minor chores or idling away in front of the TV when I could be out, seeing the country. Seeing the world's not an easy thing on an Indian passport but I can damn well go around the US at least once a month. Off the top of my head, I need to go to Boston, Washington, NY, California, Vegas, and once again to Salt Lake City. I have a friend or two in each of these places that I need to visit. I think now I'll try to save up each month and look out for specials and cheap tickets online from Tampa to all of these places and god knows where else - after all there's a Fark party somewhere every weekend.

Having the thoughts about India vs. US fresh in my mind, I want to write a long 'blog entry or essay about the differences and similarities in the economy, culture, and the social environment in both the places. I know, there's probably a thousand books on this subject but I bet each of them mentions that every Indian has an elephant/cow/snake in his house and every couple in US fights till they divorce. Both are gross generalizations though hold some amount of truth. Indians do worship the cow and Americans do divorce a lot more than rest of the world. But we don't have a family cow in Kolkata and over 75% of my US friends' parents are still together or were very close till one of them passed away. What I mean by the differences are minor but relevant things on how they see the same events/things differently - divorce is a sad event in US but it's a traumatic and often life-ending event in India. Divorcees get to remarry in US but rarely in India. At restaurants, 5% is a big tip in India and 15% is a small or mediocre one in US.

And yet, the people are the same. My friends in US love me as much as the ones in India. That is something I find very hard to believe. I still can't believe my friends Vishal & Chetan stood out in the rain/sun for hours in 2000 when I first went to the US Consulate in Kolkata to get my student visa. And I still can't believe Arthur drove all the way from NJ to FL with me to help me settle down in Florida with almost all of my luggage from NJ. People amaze me sometimes.

Oh and on a closing note, CONGRATSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS to my sister for her TV Interview on Tazaa TV Kolkata last week! I don't know why she kept attributing her success and knowledge to me - I didn't teach her anything - she learnt it all herself! And yet on TV she kept saying I was her idol and taught her everything. I'd say the major credit goes to my parents and only partially to me.

Wow! The new Napster rocks! For months, they kept showing ads on tv about it and I thought it was just gonna be a crappy way to make money by charging too much for music. Tonight I gave it a shot and am absolutely hooked. For $10/month, I can listen and download any of the million or so songs - and that includes thousands of Indian songs, Comedy Central-type standup acts, and of course, every song I can think of! First two weeks are free and then the $10/month starts. I think the days of me looking for random music online are over. It's all soooo easy now! I think I can even burn CDs at no extra charge! God bless the new Napster :)

While chatting with my friend online, I just randomly made up three potential characters for the comic/movie seriees X-Men: Theoster, Spunts, and Trilla. Turns out, I did not make these up as Google search for each shows over twenty results - Theoster = 49 hits, Spunts = 27 hits, and Trilla = 19,100 hits! So this either proves that I'm unable to make any interesting names up or Google's database is sooooooo huge that everything I can think of is already out there. Kinda scary if you ask me.

I ran 8.5 miles this morning in under two hours. Yeah yeah, I know my timing sucks.

Anyways, watching TV while drinking some good cheap wine and talking to my friends online. Fun times :)

I usually don't discuss my dates or love-life online but tonight I have to write it all out. Tonight was the single-most romantic night of my life. I met Ashlie - the sweetest most beautiful girl I know. I picked her up from her house in Tampa (30min drive in traffic). We had dinner at Carrabba's on Dale Mabry. We shared a Dessert Rosa and giggled like middle-school kids the whole time. Then we drove from Tampa to all the way in St. Petes - Indian Rocks Beach. We held hands while walking along the beach and kissed under the stars to the tune of the ocean waves. I just can't believe any of this is happening to me. I just can't.

Here's some kickass personal news. Just day before yesterday I joined this new community website called What The Dilly. I joined because my friend Derek told me to join so that he can find me a hottie. Yesterday he made me a Gold Premium member of the site. And today the owner of the site Jeff made me an admin. As of today, I am the official design/code guy for What The Dilly.com :) This means 2-3 hours of coding every night and lots more on weekends. I'll be involved with creating new features and maintaining existing code for this humungous site!

All of this may not mean much to a random reader but trust me this is big. The Dilly has hundreds of thousands of users and at any given time, thousands of them are online on the website. I have to learn to write the code for 10 servers. Right now everything I do is in small scale. Now I gotta think big!

And of course, that's just like me. I joined a dating website and ended up as one of their lead programmers. Haha!

Here's a 'blog entry that everyone other than me and the girl involved is going to laugh at. I don't know if she's ever going to talk to me again or not. So here's the background info. I've been talking to this really sweet, smart, and funny girl online for about a week now. For her privacy, I'm not gonna name her. We've talked from computer stuff to philosophy. After a week of chatting, we decided to meet up and get to know each other more. Tonight was supposed to be our first "date."

I was willing to drive up to where she lived but she insisted on meeting halfway. Since I've only been here two months and hardly know the cute little date places, I figured, we could just meet at the big Parkside Mall/Theater. So I gave her the directions, we chatted for a while on the cellphone, and she drove over. I left my apartment, talked to her one last time to make sure she got the directions correct. She was slightly ahead of me and reached Parkside before me. I called her up to confirm if she reached safely and that's when all hell broke lose.

Parkside mall was closed. The movie theater was shutdown. And the area was under construction. From her point of view, I had lured her into a desolate parking lot with construction trucks all around. I reached there and told her to follow me to the Olive Garden restaurant nearby. In the Olive Garden parking lot, I tried to explain to her that I was sooooooooo sorry and that I had NO idea that the goddamned Parkside was closed down! I just went there two weeks ago with Lynn!

Guess she was too mad at me to even talk. She told me we'll do this sometime again once she's in a better mood, possibly in Tampa, where she lives. I'd really like to believe her. I think she just added tonight to her list of "worst dating nightmares."

From my point of view though, it just stinks. She'll probably cool down in a day but I don't think my feelings are gonna heal anytime soon. It was NOT my fault at all! How the HELL am I supposed to know that a whole movie theater that I went to FOUR TIMES in the past two months had closed down for some reason? I think it's God's way of keeping me single forever. Here I was about to meet such a sweet girl and bam! Things blow up in my face, she leaves thinking I'm some creepy pervert, and I'm home by 7:10pm! What's funny is that she asked me why I'm single. I guess I can add this incident to my list of why I'm single...

Just bought an insanely cheap computer from Walmart Online. It cost $258 with shipping/tax and has AMD Duron 1.6Ghz PC, 128 DDR RAM, 40GB HDD, CD-ROM, Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, and an Ethernet card. Now that I have a decent living room, I will hook this PC up to my TV so that I can watch Divx movies on my TV :) This is gonna be fun.

Here's to an amazing night out with four new people I met tonight - Heather, Michael, Tom, and Alex. We went to this cute lil place called Cafe Alma in downtown St. Petes for a few drinks and lots of interesting chatter. I met Heather via this sinister website and thankfully she turned out as cool in person as she was online. Tonight was definitely fun and hope I see these folks again soon.

I haven't 'blogged in a while because I don't have much to say. Today I feel an urge to share. A lot of changes are going to happen in my life now that I've completed my undergraduate studies. I'm graduating with BS in Comp Sci, BA in Econ, Math minor, Honors College. Hopefully my GPA's gonna be 3.9+ since I already got 3 A's and 1 B; the results of my Math class are not out yet. I don't have terribly high student loans and if my calculations are correct (thankfully they often are), they should be paid up within 12 months.

On June 12th I leave for Florida, an entirely new life. It's extremely scary and challenging. My client/boss called me up the other day telling me how excited he is that I am joining his firm. I have big plans for his company too and I know how to get them in place but I'm gonna be the only one doing all the IT work. So things are definitely going to be tough. I'm only 23 but the responsibilities are that of someone with 15 years of experience. Leaving all your friends, family, people at existing job, and going to a new place, new job, working with new people - honestly it's a big change. But, it only feels big when I think about it. If I don't think about how much of a change it is, it feels trifling - so I'm just moving to Florida to work for my client. No biggie. Hehe. From your point-of-view I'm sure it appears that way, Chirag making the big bucks and having a great job. From my point-of-view it is coming home everyday from a great day at work but having nobody to talk to.

Hopefully I'll make new friends in the kickass place that I'm moving to. Get this... it's a 1020 sq.ft. apartment with patio/balcony, two bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, huge livingroom, walk-in closets for only $625/month! I'm paying over $500 for a TINY one-bedroom, bathroom apartment in Jersey. Gotta love Florida. And I'm getting a two-bedroom apartment because you can come and stay with me if you come to Florida. Yes you, whoever you are, you're welcome to my humble apartment :)

So I got an A in my research but still have a lot of work to complete. I hope to continue my work-relationship with my professor but I don't know if that's going to be easy long-distance. Oh and I'm not giving up my dreams of Masters (or MBA) and PhD. That is definitely coming in the next few years.

Right now I'm talking to my sister online. She's the best sister in the world and we all know it :)

It's been a fun weekend so far. On Friday I went to dinner with Chris, Tim, Becky, and Kiranj. As usual had fun. Becky, I'm so gonna buy that Yoda someday. I swear eight of them!

Last night was pretty interesting too. Finally I met Halley! She's my cousin Priya's best friend from Utah. We met at Times Square at 10pm and her friend Cassie was there too. I've been talking to Halley online for over two years now, just never met her. When I went to SLC last year, she was in Germany. We went to sbarro and I had some awesome baked ziti. Next stop was Toys R Us but it was closed. So we just walked over to Rockefeller Center and just sat there for a while. Overall we didn't do much but it was still pretty cool. Last night I found out New York City is a city that never sleeps*.

* except after 10pm!

Here comes the long overdue lengthy 'blog entry. Lately I've been busy with too many things in my "real" life. So as you must have heard it by now, I have a job offer in St. Petersburg, Florida. My client wants to hire me full-time and will take care of my work visa (H1B etc.) requirements. The salary is good and my responsibilities are managable (or so I think). Here's what I've been upto:

Took a JetBlue flight to Florida on Friday night at 6:55pm. My online friend Taylor picked me up from the airport and brought me to his home. Turns out, just like his online persona, Tay is a real cool guy and despite his warning that in two days we'd be hating each other, we're still great friends; REAL friends now, not ONLINE anymore. After all, once I move to Florida, he's probably going to be one of a handful of people I know. So it's in my best interest to be nice to him *grin*

Next morning was the main interview with my client. It's always better to be over-dressed than under-dressed said Tay's dad. So over-dressed in a suit I went to my client's office, courtesy of Tay and his white pickup (more on the pickup truck later). Now about my client and soon to be boss... He is one of those people that you can instantly see made his own wealth from scratch. Very well-spoken and big-heart, he welcomed me into his office building like I owned it. My quite casual interview went on for the next six hours! My uncle had told me managerial positions aren't given by short 'n stout IQ tests but rather by long active personal examinations. Basically my client wanted to see whether my personality would fit in with his company or not.

To my pleasure, he thought I would fit in great and wants me to start working as soon as I graduate. I have a couple of commitments in Jersey (my work, my new apartment lease etc.) due to which I might be slightly delayed. But otherwise I'm trying to relocate as soon as I can. After all, Florida is beautiful and the work environment was great. Having been brought up in an mini-entreprenueral environment, I feel more at home as a manager in a small firm than a widget in a behemoth corporation. My dad owns his business and while I never said I want to inherit his particular business or form some startup with VCs etc., I've always looked at my work as if I own it. There is a spectrum of mentalities when it comes to responsibilities and I lie on one end, treating my work as if the outcome affects my whole company directly. At the other end of the band are most people who would love to get a job in Microsoft and Morgan Stanley - their work affects their bonuses. In between are people who partly care about the company and partly care about their packages. It's not about which mentality is right or wrong, it's more about can you find a place where you can fit in. Given my entreprenueral mentality, I think I'd fit better into a small company with broader responsibilities than in a large company with extremely specific job requirements. The big companies are doing fine without me. It's the small company where I can actually make a difference as well as learn what hard work and sleepless nights are all about. So yes, I'm fully aware my new job isn't going to be a cakewalk by any standards. Unless I interpreted things wrongly, it's going to be very difficult and I have a lot of goals to achieve in a very short time. Oh well, I've managed before and can do it again. The only difference this time is that now I know I must take care of my health before anything else.

During the interview I met one of my client's coolest employees and we went to lunch to The Dish. Interesting concept - you collect any amount of vegetables, fruits, mushrooms etc. in a bowl and sauces in another bowl and hand it over to the cook. Right in front of you they heat it all up together on a HUGE stove and hand it back to you. It was one of the best things I've ever eaten! Who knew broccoli could ever taste this good. Just thinking about The Dish makes me hungry. After lunch the interview continued and my client's wife walked in sometime around 3pm.

Now here's the critical part. Since the beginning of the interview, I was also interviewing my client in my head. I wanted to be sure that I was going to work at a place where the atmosphere was professional, systematic, and yet had some amount of homeliness and familial values. While my client proved to me within the first hour that his company is strong and growing, I still wasn't sure whether the work environment would be comfortable enough. I don't mind strict suit and tie formalities but being alone in this country for years to come, I want to work in a place which I can call home, simply because after work I gotta go back to an empty nest, obviously not home. And then one question she asked got rid of every doubt I had: "How is your cousin?" I'm just amazed that my client told her about Keval and that she remembered. It meant a lot to me. That's when I realized I'd found a new home and moving to Florida would be just like moving from my home in Calcutta to my aunt's home in Jersey.

Interview ended at 4:30pm and Tay being the coolest guy ever picked me up. One phone call after next, I estimate I spent $50 just one phone calls in that one day to inform everyone close to me that I am "gainfully" employed now. Tay's stepmom cooked some awesome Fettuccine Alfredo with vegetables for us for dinner and suggested a good comedy club we could go to. She basically knows every nook 'n cranny of the state. I told Taylor that people like her are the duct-tape that hold our society together, like my grandma and aunt, they take care of everyone and everything simply because they feel like they must. This is what I did at the Coconut Comedy Club: One Margarita, two Margarita, Motorcyle, Floor! Just kidding! I wasn't drunk at all. Seriously. No really. Trust me. I swear!!!!!!

Anyways, next morning we left for Universal Studios early and enjoyed about 5 rides/shows in 5 hours. It had been a while since I had just let loose and got the hell scared out of me - Back to the Future was the best. And then after the rides I kicked some Tay-butt in Ice Hockey and he danced like a chicken while playing Dance Dance Extreme Revolution Version XVII or something like that. As funny as he looked while doing it, I gotta admit there's NO way I can move that fast - not even if there's a gun on my head. So props to him.

The last ride that scared the HELL outta me was in his pickup truck from Universal Studios to the airport - the gas tank was EMPTY!!! There were no gas stations in sight and inside my head I was literally going crazy. I tried to stay as calm as I can but I knew something was gonna go wrong - after all my trip had been so wonderful and nothing is perfect ever! I'm gonna miss the flight! I'm gonna miss the stupid flight! Urghhhhhhh! Thankfully we found a gas station before the tank ran out and the ride to the airport thereafter was pretty smooth.

The only sad part was saying bye to him at the airport and early that morning, to his family. But the good thing is I'm moving to Florida and will be seeing more of them. Then the sad part will be saying bye to EVERYONE IN JERSEY!!! I admit it already - I'm gonna cry. I'll cry when I leave my present work and cry when I leave my friends and most of all when I leave my aunt's home. This is gonna suck major. Oh well, I'm a cruel bastard who keeps doing this to people ALL the time!

Found this anecdote online. I wonder if it's true or not. Not for the mathematically challenged. More math jokes here.

One professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home broke down. He called a plumber. The plumber came on the next day, sealed a few screws and everything was working as before. The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked. "This is one third of my monthly salary!" he yelled. Well, he paid and then the plumber said to him: "I understand your position as a professor. Why don't you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply tell them that you completed only the seventh grade. They don't like educated people."

So it happened. The professor got a plumber job and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly. One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber has to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check student's knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of the circle. The person who was ask was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he forgot the formula.

He started to reason it and soon filled the board with integrals, differentials and other advanced formulas to conclude the result that he had forgotten. As a result he got "negative pi times r squared." He didn't like the negative, so he started all over again. He got the negative sign again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a negative. He was frustrated. He looked a bit scared at the class and saw all the plumbers whisper: "Switch the limits of the integral!!"

I was searching for something online and chanced upon this mega-wedding in Lucknow, India. Seems like the son of Sahara India corporation is getting married and for some reason every celebrity, VIP, politician is there. Hell even Bill Clinton was supposed to be there but couldn't make it! And that was followed by 101 couples tying knots in a group ceremony. I don't think I will ever even remotely understand our Indian fascination of big weddings.

Personally I hate ten days of ceremonies and events, even though almost EVERYONE I know loves them. I don't know when, where, and how I will get married, but I do know that it won't be as flashy as every other wedding. Well that is as long as my bride-to-be is ok with that. Haha. I think that's the real reason guys go along with these weddings. Because of the girls. Tomorrow every girl I know is going to beat me up for saying everything that follows, but oh well, bring it on! Girls love flashy weddings. And diamonds and gold and silver - but NOT because they are expensive, but because they're ooooooooh sooooo shiny! The guys just want to get over with it as painlessly as possible. I'm sure I make a gross generalized statement on behalf of all guys when I say this, but come on, which guy in here doesn't agree with me on this one: Men don't care about the little ribbons around every glass and chocolates wrapped in cute little silver foils. So why do men go through it?

Maybe the elusive "love" really makes a man blind. Maybe he thinks this will make the girl stop nagging him. Or maybe, just maybe, he realizes that the beautiful girl he wishes to marry absolutely deserves the grandest of the weddings for she is truly the love of his life and the bane of his existence. I don't know if that will ever happen to me. I'm not bitter or jaded; just not as naive as I was a few years ago.

I think you have to be at one of the three stages in life to decide that "Ok this is the woman I want to hear scream my name in hell-raising fury everytime I forget to put down the toilet seat." The first stage, as I said before, is of naivete, between the ages of post-puberty and early adulthood. This is when you are 19 and in "love" for the first time. You have met a pretty damsel with enchanting eyes and want to spend every silly second of your life with her though you barely know her last name. I have no qualms in admitting that I have felt like this before. And not just once, many many times. Now if only polygamy were allowed I'd be one happy chap. But alas it is not, so I must wait until I hit the second or the third stage.

The second stage is when you are moving from your late twenties into your early thirties. You have had a series of relationships and a fair share of thankful and regrettable breakups. You have seen everything the feminine gender has to offer and yet for some reason you choose not to stick to any of them. Then your best friend's kid goes into grade-school and gets an A in crayon-painting. You remember how great it felt two decades ago when you got that A in spelling class too. And that's when it hits you. You don't have too much time to spare if you plan on having a family of your own. Sure, for years you laughed it off as something suckers with no ambitions do but now that your job is stable (and boring), that marriage thing sure sounds sweet.

If you're in India, you'd get your parents to start searching a nice bride for you. Since you are 31, you aren't exactly going to meet a pretty 20 year old. You'll end up saying 'yes' to whoever is available. On the other hand, if you're an expendable sprocket at some mega-corp in New York City, you go back into your closet to find that blackbook and see if any of the homely girls you once liked are still single. Chances are they're not. And that's when you decide to get married to whoever says 'yes' first. In either case, the marriage will be however she wants it - flashy, extravagant, ostentatious - in other words, expensive. Well what else do you expect? You were too busy being a free little bird when you had the chance to propose to that nice girl but didn't since you thought she was too clingy. Now you don't have a choice my brother.

And then there's the third stage. This is more like the thirteenth hour that strikes once a blue moon. Not everyone enters the magical third stage for it is shrouded by mystical clouds of bad dates, stalking ex's, hopeless setups, and shameful hookups; visible only to ones truly in love. This is when you have known someone for half a decade but feel like it has been forever. You never really loved her as madly as that hot chic from choir but you never really lived your life without her either. She knows how many Advils you take everytime you have a headache. You know how many hours it means everytime she says "just two more minutes." Both of you know what the other likes in their subs and sandwiches and both of you know everyone in the other's family. Being good friends, you spent a lot of time together but never really thought about being a couple, since neither of you is a fantasy of the other. When all of a sudden, one day, love happens. Out of the blue and unexpectedly spontaneous. It doesn't make sense! You are friends not lovers. This is so wrong. But it feels so right. You are not made for each other yet you cannot be without each other. But this isn't love. Love is supposed to be all natural and at first sight. Love is supposed to be tingly with butterflies-in-tummy. Love is supposed to be what they show in the movies and car commercials and beer ads. Or is it?

I don't think I can say what it is at this moment. Maybe some day I will. I hope when I get married, it is in the mysterious third stage and not the dreaded second; chances of the naive first stage are pretty much nil. Till then, I'll just take whatever life has to offer me.

I'm still alive :) Don't worry. Just taking a lil break. Been working on a friend's site all weekend. Yesterday I went to see Return of the King. Of course, keep in mind these 24 things NOT to do while watching Lord of the Rings just to be on the safe side. Been watching a lot of movies once again. Cable TV is waaaay too expensive (and frankly not very entertaining given the high price), since I already get my South Park online.

I saw the hilarious Monty Python film Life of Brian today. Saw three films by late Stanley Kubrick in the past week beginning with the satire/black-comedy classic Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Amazing (three) roles by Peter Sellers. Then the Vietnam War story Full Metal Jacket (thanks Art!) and finally after months of procrastination, A Clockwork Orange. Once again I ended up watching three films by the same director in a series, without planning to. But it's all good, since these movies were amazing.

Then it was time for an old Kevin Spacey (of the American Beauty fame) hit: The Usual Suspects. I kinda figured out the ending midway but it was still entertaining throughout. Also saw Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Pirates of the Caribbean again. I think that's about it. No more movies. Hehe. Well, I still have a lot of movies to see.

I just spent about $500 in one night of reckless online shopping :) I figured since I hadn't bought myself anything for my b'day, I could use a few New Years gifts. I sure hope everything arrives in a week or two. First of all, I bought 4, and yes I said FOUR Seagate Barracuda 120 GB hard drives for about $283. That's less than 60 cents per raw GB! I remember in 1998, I paid over $200 for just TWO GBs! I sure hope CDW honors this awesome deal. So I'll use these four 120GB hard drives and create a RAID 5 setup that will give me about 360GB of space using RocketRaid 1640 Serial ATA controller that cost me $90. RAID is basically a system of connecting two or more hard drives in such a way that if one of them fails, the others can recreate the data on the failed hard drive and thus manage to recover all your lost data. The cost is of course that 1/4th of the space used for backups. RAID also stores parts of each file into multiple hard drives at the same time, so that when you read the file back, it actually reads from multiple drives, which is obviously faster. Kind of like having more lanes on a highway - it's expensive, but works great. So now RAID 5 will combine these 4 hard drives and give me one big hard drive of approximately 360GB that will protect my data no matter what :) Plus it'll be two-to-three times faster than each of the drives individually.

Next, I bought a $1 microphone because I have no idea where my old one is and on top of that bought this gorgeous A4Tech RP-649 wireless optical mouse for only $33. This mouse has two scroll wheels, five configurable buttons, works from a distance of 5-6 feet, comes with 4 recharable batteries, AND includes a two-battery recharger! That's a LOT for the price. And finally, I bought a pair of Sennheiser HDC451 noise-cancellation headphones. Sennheiser makes one of the best speaker-systems & headphones. These headphones are normally priced at $150 but they were only $70 on Amazon! Noise-cancellation means just that - once I wear these headphones and turn them on, they basically cancel almost all of the surrounding noise :) So I can sit in the noisy buses, turn these on, and listen to my music as if the whole world is quiet and peaceful :)

So let's see: $284 HDD + $90 RAID + $1 Mic + $33 Mouse + $70 Headphones + $16 Shipping/Tax = $494. I think these are enough gadgets for me for now. Hehe. Oh and I still have an Econ exam left. It's in about 7 hours, so I better go to sleep soon! I <3 my gadgets and gizmos.

(If you're a CS major, you should read the original article I wrote this long blog entry on. If that is too confusing, feel free to read my interpretation and extension of it.)

Here's a long article linking computer science, philosophy, and quantum physics, by Jaron Lanier. You probably haven't heard of him (I certainly didn't) but you've definitely heard one little term he coined in the 1980's, "Virtual Reality. He looks more like a English major with a Philosophy minor than a computer scientist who "co-developed the first implementations of virtual reality applications in surgical simulation, vehicle interior prototyping, virtual sets for television production, and assorted other areas." In this paper, he looks at computers from an entirely different angle than we have been used to. Computer scientists (and in turn the rest of the world) basically think of computers as a bunch of electric signals being passed over wires at a very high speed. At any given time, there's really only one thing happening on your computer. You may think you are reading this website, listening to music, moving your mouse, and chatting online at the same time, but at the lowest CPU level, only one of these programs is running for a few split nanoseconds of time and then the operations for the next software are run. The context switch happens so fast that we get a perception that everything is running at the same time, which it isn't. Just like a 30 frames per second film reel, which is composed of a small number of pictures that are played just fast enough to give us perception of motion.

Real world of course doesn't work in this way. There isn't really some smallest amount of measurable time (at least not that we can measure with the current technology). Also in real life things do happen at the same time, that is you can be driving and drinking coffee while talking on the cell phone and scratching your head. Computers can only fake this kind of multitasking and that is where the problem lies. Fifty years ago it was very easy to conceptualize computers as simple straight-forward machines that receive input and product output. This led to instantenous implementations of the mathematical models of Turing machines and the first software. Sadly that is exactly what we are doing five decades since ENIAC - giving input and getting output. That, explains Lanier, is the reason why image recognition, voice recognition, video analysis and almost every application of artificial intelligence fails to product smart, intelligent results - because the current computer architecture is built to be perfect under perfect conditions.

Think about it this way. Theoretically, if you move your mouse cursor to the left, it MUST move to the left. There is nothing written in the software code for the mouse driver to move your cursor otherwise. But mouse cursor isn't the only process running in your system. Your stupid Word document will crash the system because there was a big photograph in it and your mouse is now stuck on the right corner of the screen, refusing to move. Theoretically, the code for mouse cursor did not fail, but your operating system did, and as a result brought down the perfectly functional code for the mouse cursor. The mouse cursor code is thus written perfectly to work under only perfect conditions. The alternative to this, he offers, is to write individual pieces of code, that don't rely on perfect protocols and systems to function with high accuracy. In his own words, "Wouldn't it be nicer to have a computer that's almost completely reliable almost all the time, as opposed to one that can be hypothetically perfectly accurate, in some hypothetical ideal world other than our own, but in reality is prone to sudden, unpredictable, and often catastrophic failure in actual use?"

Now if you've used a computer for more than a week, you know that computers are NOT perfect. In reality, of course not. But in theory, the science behind computers is perfect and predictable, mainly because it is built on the logics and functions of mathematics. If you add 2 and 2, you must get 4 under all circumstances. Find me a computer on which the Windows calculator gives anything but 4 for 2+2. However, the problem he says is that on small scale, perfection is relatively easy to achieve. Making small programs that work to specifications, is easy. But making a 10 million line program that analyzes the structure of the DNA is never going to be perfect, simply because of the scale. And Microsoft Windows has 50 million lines of code! How can one expect every line to function in tandem with the other 49,999,999 lines?

One obvious solution is to write better code and reuse the same code modules. I'm sure the brains at MS have thought of that before I just said it. And surely they tried to reuse as much code as possible. Yet they end up with 50 million lines. This only means that today's computer technology requires them to write 50 million lines to accomplish what they want - to provide us with an operating system that can play music, burn cd's, run datacenters, operate critical hospital equipment, and let you sell stuff on eBay. The keyword here is "today's", because there is nothing other than the limits of current technology that restricts anyone from writing smaller more efficient code. There is no need to obey the speed of light in order to write more compact code. There is no mathematical formula which predicts that in order to accomplish 'burn a cd' operation, someone must write 30,000 lines of code. Theoretically, we could design a CD burner that knows everything there is to burning a CD and all we have to tell it, is what songs or files to burn. But instead, we use a full-fledged CD-burning software to help us burn CDs. Then when the software fails, the burn process stalls midway and the CD has to be thrown away. Sure there is error correction built into the CD burner that will avoid jitter and prevent buffer overruns, but that is a unique solution to a unique problem. According to Lanier, there really should be no need to perform error correction. The CD burner should talk to the computer and as long as the computer managed to say 'hey I'm all ok' with 99% accuracy, it should go ahead and burn the CD.

Yeah I agree this sounds just as theoretically perfect and practically useless as every marketing campaign for some quasi-revolutionary killer-app released every other day, but it's hard to deny that with the current state of technological affairs, unless something is done to reduce the complexity of code being written for large projects (think, your utility company, the telephone companies, the stock market etc.) there is only so much that computer programming will be able to accomplish. Using pseudo-smart code can let credit card companies determine if someone's credit card might have been used fraudulently, but that means they have to first write the exact code to catch it. We humans don't learn anything exactly. When I drive a car, I drive with my left hand on the left-side of the steering and right-hand on the bottom, though my driving instructor taught me to put both hands in the 10-2 position. With him as my instructor (programmer), I learnt efficient driving but made my own adjustments to function better. Given the current logic circuits and architecture of computers, it's almost impossible to build an artificial intelligence system that can adapt to the world as humans. That is why we don't have talking robots and flying cars yet. Because it is not possible to design complex systems using zeros and ones. We've gone as far as possible using fuzzy logic to mimic true quantum states. But if there's ever a next stage in computers, if computer scientists ever want to break through the bounds of for-loops, return-values, and type-casts, they'll have to think of computers VERY differently from today.

How differently would you say? Think about magna-lev trains and dog-pulled sleds. Both do the same, take you from point A to B, but on entirely different levels. Today's technology is the bullet speed train that can achieve something at a really fast pace as long as the electricity is running, the magnetic track is well maintained, the passenger-load is within specifications. The pack of huskies pulling a sled on the other hand, may be 50 times slower, but they will easily walk around a big rock on an icy terrain without being reined to do so. Today's best computer software fail to achieve that. Think about it, as breathtaking as it was, the Mars Polar Lander was barely able to move around the mildly rocky Martian surface on it's own. A two year old child can run around faster and better. Why? Because the child's brain has millions of neurons and billions of connections that work at the same time, unlike the CPU of the robot, which no matter HOW fast, will always perform one-instruction at a time.

That is why Kasparov remains undefeated by the machines. Because he can think of 10 moves at the same time, while remembering 50 different layouts from the past, while the computer can only think of each move and layout at one time, although a billion times a second. A billion is still not larger than 10 to the power of 50. Someday the computer will be fast enough, sure, but it still wouldn't be able to laugh at a blonde joke. This is, I mean, if computers and software progress in the direction they currently are (and have been for fifty years). What is needed is an entirely different perspective on algorithms to get to the next generation, otherwise we have to stick to feeling 'intelligent' for writing software that opens doors for cats.

In addition to the current state of computer science, Lanier also connects computers with philosophical ideas, like the existance of objects, something that Peter Unger did in few of his papers. At the moment, I feel obviously unqualified to analyze Lanier's philosophical theories. Hopefully someday I will be qualified enough.

In the past hundred thousand years since man has communicated his emotions to his peers through verbal or physical gestures, never has he faced the emotional complexity that the everyday AIM conversation solicits. In one of my computer classes, I'm learning about something called: Context or Task Switching. I realized the same thing happens in my brain while chatting with more than one person - instantaneous switches between multiple moods and personalities. In one tiny window, I could be talking to Art and telling him how something is not going right and in another window chatting with Kat, I become all excited at her wonderful news from the family front. Then talking to Tay, I remain calm, comforting, and give the best advice I can offer so that he can salvage his 2,500 music files after iTunes "organized" them without permission. Another window, I'm laid back, discussing the pros-and-cons of reading books before watching the movie, with Jen. And back to Art, I wail how the hell might I get out of this current problem. All of this happens at the same time; my brain has about 1/100th of a second to switch between wise-and-composed to neurotic-and-whiny. I do this everyday. And everyone I know who chats online, does this everyday.

This doesn't seem to be an out of the world experience either. It's something very common and everyone I know is quite accustomed to it. However, from a psychological evolutionary point of view, this is something that is entirely new, brought upon us by the dot-com generation. Our personalities and behaviours change depending on who we are interacting with at any given moment. Around your teachers or customers, you put on a helpful or obedient mask, and around your friends, you quite possibly take off that mask. Right now, people who chat online, do the same, except 100 times an hour. Maybe this is something I noticed and probably doesn't deserve an observation. Or maybe this is something that requires intense research, to learn what happens to an individual's personality, after he or she is subjected to such rapid context switching for 6 years online. I am not a psychology major, but I feel the effects of chatting with multiple people simultaneously should not be ignored. Various psychological aspects of the computer life have been extensively studied, from causing social anxiety and reclusiveness to increased violence among video game players. However, I wonder why nobody has tried to explore whether engaging in multiple simultaneous conversations online increases the probability of developing or worsening Dissociative Disorders. Any Psych majors reading this? Tamara?

Wow the Prince of Persia game is now available online - in flash!

For programmers only: I'm extremely weary of the whole get-a-real-job-with-multinationals situation and have forever shunned making a resume. Now, I think I'm gonna make a resume like this one. How about... "I am a super-god high-end extremely advanced Minesweeper..." Anyways, when it comes to programming, I'd like to classify myself as a serious minimalist aimed at providing the highest usefullness/effort ratio. By the ratio I mean, I will put in enough effort to give a high level of satisfaction and then stop. I could put in twice more effort, but since the users will NOT be twice as happy from the extra effort, I don't bother. This means my work will never be 100% perfect, rather just good enough for the purpose. Perfection in my eyes is only viable when there is only one goal. If one has to work on 5 projects at the same time and achieve good results, it's best to do considerably well in each than perfect in one and intolerable in the rest.

Coming back to minimalistic programming, I have found a natural love for no-frill technologies which require the least amount of effort from the developer and the user side. I am drawn to simple php scripts and RAD languages like Visual Basic, instead of all powerful and mighty C++ or Java. Every day some new thing comes along in the IT field, a new language, a new development platform - from EJB to CORBA to SOAP to XML. I could if I really wanted, spend time to learn these tools but often I read an introductory tutorial, just to be aware how it works and then don't bother anymore. Mainly because there is no immediate use for any of these for me. Sure, object-driven databases offer a horde of features over the current relational dbs, however I hardly ever need to make a system that makes ten million queries an hour. Also I highly doubt that most people who DO use these hyped-up technologies really need them.

Yesterday a friend of mine from Newark - Arpit, came to see me with his business partners to get some idea on how to proceed with their new venture: Books for Lease. It's a good concept - why buy/sell new or used books each semester - why not just rent them for $10-15 and then return them in same condition? I might redesign the front-end for the site, which has been functional for over a year now. Other than design, I mainly explored ways by which they expand the site's usefullness by concentrating on the core concept - books for lease. While they can build in new wonderful features that only 5% of the people will use, they are better off creating custom tools that help the other 95%. That means giving up the use of pre-written packages like shopping-carts, that they purchased and write their own code to make the site work they way THEY want. It'll require a bit more effort, but the results will surpass the costs.

The most efficient programming style, lies somewhere in the middle of using tools that are very difficult to implement but very useful once in place and scripts that are really easy to write but have limited uses. They don't need EJB or Struts. But they can't get away with using pre-written packages like E-cart. They need to write some of their own code, and use the stuff that's cheaper to buy than write themselves. And I think this is where most of the IT world lies today. There are millions of websites doing business online, and from personal experience, the most successful ones are those with straight-forward systems - like Amazon and eBay. The concepts are simple, the sites are easy to use, and the back-ends are pretty run-of-the-mill too. Amazon still uses Perl! Yahoo's gonna use PHP from now on. However, Morgan Stanley uses EJBs and Struts and they definitely should. But Google doesn't need to, as it works great with Python.

Big complex technologies come and go, but the simple ones are still here - C and assembly :) Perl, PHP, and Python are going to stay for a while too. But bubye .NET and C#. Hope it goes exactly where Push-technology and Virtual Reality have gone. Here's a good article that says everything I said and more, quite beautifully: "Like any industry, the software world suffers its own fashions..." - Software Reality. Glad to see I'm not the only one who likes simple straight-forward languages and tools. Although subconsciously I'm always a bit nervous that not jumping-onto-the-bandwagon of some cool breakthrough might be a bit of a hindsight. Must admit I am risk-averse on the short run and don't get too excited at mega-world-changing-cool-corporate-tools, though hopefully in the long run, my desire to seek stability, simplicity, and balance will benefit me.

Just talked to my family in India again. Miss them so much :( My sis is online right now, telling me that my best friend Vishal was talking to her about my b'day. I miss him. And Chetan.

I had a really weird dream this morning. Somehow I could take a local underground train/subway to go from Rutgers to my house in India. I don't really recall the dream now but it's surprising how/why/when I dream. Everytime I put my pillow facing the door, I oversleep, wake up groggy, tired, and have nightmares. Last few days I've been sleeping the other way and have pleasant dreams. I'm sleeping the other way simply because I lean against the wall next to the door while reading a book. So here's what I wanna find out. Am I dreaming good because I sleep in one direction OR because I read a book at night. I'm kinda thinking it's the latter however I did not read anything few days ago and still had nice dreams.

I'm gonna be 23 in a few weeks and I'm still so very affected by dreams. I should've grown out of it by now. But hey, I had a happy dream, I put on some good ol' Indian music (Maine Pyaar Kiya songs), took a shower, and came to my work - thus beginning an awesome day. And of course, now I go online and read CNN to find out that how you sleep says a lot about your personality. Of course. once again I have to be different (zara hat ke!) and turns out I am among the 6.5% of freefallers: "The freefall, flat on the tummy with the hands at the sides of the head, is the most unusual position. Only 6.5 percent of people prefer it..."

It's been a long time since I blogged. So what am I upto. Studies, work, select friends, and books. Ah books. Growing up, I used to devour the books my dad read, mostly works by Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, and John Grisham. After I discovered computer manuals, help files, and FAQs, my interest in books dwindled. Last semester I took a class that got me interested in books again - Trauma & Literature; albeit a very different genre of books. This weekend I completed a book I'd been reading for over 2 months, Everyone's Burning by Ian Speigelman. Now I'm reading Andre Dubus' House of Sand and Fog.

This being the senior/final year, most of my friends are busy with their classes/homework so it's hard to hang out with them. Moreover, I have evening and night classes and work during the day. While it's great for me, since I get enough free time for studies, work, sleep, and just relaxing, it's hard to meet up with people and chill. I see Arthur every other day, just to chill, since he has a lot of free time in-between his classes. He gave me a ride to my aunt's house to pick up some of my client's mail. Then we went to an Indian food store and I bought some maggi for him. One by one I'll get all my friends addicted to it. And while my friends are gonna get fat eating Maggi, I have healthy lunches - today I had some good Chinese fried rice with tofu and vegetables. Since I have enough money to buy me mostly any food on/around campus, I have to be really careful with what I eat, especially if I get sick, there is nobody to take care of me on a daily basis. So I watch what I eat, but then people start thinking I'm on a diet. Look what Kathleen just said online with regards to my memory and eating habits: "You're an elephant with an underweight disorder. I'm calling you my anorexic elephant friend." But then just 2 hours ago I was with Cher eating some yummmmmmy french vanilla icecream, though only a single scoop.

I knew food would become a slightly bigger part of my life once I started living alone and well it has. I care a bit more about what I eat, when I eat, and how much I eat. But I never though cleaning would become anymore important. It is. I dust my room every other day and clean my bathroom once a week. What's my point? I'm turning 23 in 2 weeks, and finally I'm acting like one. No more excess drinking, eating, sleeping, working. No extremes - I'm becoming 'Fair and Balanced'. Hehe.

Anyways, my studies going on good. I have homework due tomorrow, on Wednesday, and on Monday. I already did the stuff for next Monday! Well simply cuz it's computer graphics and something that I absolutely love. Homework for tomorrow and Wednesday is pretty interesting too - mostly programming with a few question/answers. Nobody likes to do homework, but this is the first time I don't absolutely hate doing my homework - mainly cuz it's not repetitive or boring, rather interesting and creative. And as usual, my work's going awesome. I got one website to complete as soon as possible and got a new project for my university that I just started this morning.

Everything's going decent in my life right now, EXCEPT the weather. It's September and raining here as if it's the monsoons. Now I have nothing against rains, in fact love them. However I live 10 feet below the earth in well-sheltered bunker. I can survive a nuclear blast but I don't think I can easily survive Ms. Isabel - a Category 5 hurricane that could hit the US East Coast quite hard in a week or so. If by some misfortune the Raritan River in New Brunswick floods all the way to Easton Avenue (my home), I have no idea what I'll do. I'll probably move all my stuff (and trust me I have a LOT of stuff) out to the first floor of our house but it'll be a lot of work. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

It's two years already. Still gives me shivers thinking about the day. I was almost ready to go to college and my aunt was in the kitchen finishing up stuff. I never turned on the TV in the mornings, simply cuz there was never enough time to watch anything. But for some reason, I just turned on ABC 7. There was some gibberish of news and all of a sudden breaking news with footage of first tower! I couldn't really believe it. I instantly called my aunt to verify if this is the WTC or something else. She was shocked too, but it looked more like a tiny plane accident. She went on to get ready for work and in front of my eyes, a 2nd plane hit the other tower and ABC went blank; their broadcast antenna was on the 2nd tower. That's when I knew it was an act of terrorism. The name 'Osama' and 'Al Qaeda' instantly came to my mind, reminiscent of 1993 attacks.

We informed my uncle about the attacks and a few of our neighbors. I still went to college, even studied the 2nd class: 'Statistics I' and only after the class, was it announced that Rutgers was closed for the day. And the twin towers had collapsed! That bit was just unbelievable. How can two 110 storey buildings fall cuz of some tiny planes? It was later that I found out the planes were 747 commercial jet liners. It was an eerie ride in the bus. All the students just shocked and not knowing what to say. I mentioned the name 'Osama' and 'Al Qaeda' as prime suspects but nobody knew who they were. I said they were involved in 1993 attacks on WTC too, though I heard of them wreaking worse havocs in the state of Kashmir in India. I took the bus, reached my aunt's store, drove back home in her car, and spent the whole day on Fark. The next day I signed up for a fark account. Before that I was just a lurker. That day showed me what an online community really is. I also recorded some WTC videos, put them online and submitted to Fark, esp. for people in countries where TV stations were censoring the videos. That was the least I could do. It's 2 years past now. My life's pretty much the same. Yet the mention of WTC gives me the creeps everytime.

While talking to Suprithi online about 'childhood memories', I just mentioned that in a weird way, I remember my hostel (RKC) days, like short stories from R. K. Narayan's book Malgudi Days. The memories are vague, but strong, if that's even possible. She said she didn't know the book and I told her that they made it into a TV show and it was quite popular in 1980's and early 90's. And the theme music kinda went 'ta na na na na naaaaaaaaa' and she instantly remembered it :) Though neither her nor me remember any of the specific stories. All I remember is that they were based in a typical village with atypical impressionable characters - simple, very simple stories, yet touching.

A lot of college students complain about expensive books etc. Tonight I'm gonna show you my trick of buying books at extremely low 'net' prices. It's quiet simple actually - buy low, sell high :) I buy all my college books (used/2nd-hand) cheaply from Amazon and after I use them for 4-5 months, I sell them at a decently high price on Half.com. If you have ever taken an introductory course to Economics, you might remember that in a perfect market system, the price of similar goods is same everywhere. So if somebody's selling a book on Amazon for $15, the sellers on Half.com also have the similar price. However, what most people don't realize is the difference in the markets. Amazon is the cheapest place for used books. Half.com is owned by eBay and is the bookstore for people who use eBay a lot.

Now most people who use eBay, use it as the sole online store - they don't buy from anywhere else - that is how much they are addicted to eBay. Since more people use Amazon, the prices of used books are obviously lower there. So I buy my books from there. And since eBayers don't really care if some book is $10 cheaper on Amazon (or maybe they don't even know there exists an internet beyond eBay), they are willing to pay a higher price for the same book. So I bought my Math book for $45 few months ago from Amazon, used it for my class, and then sold it on Half for $55. That's $10 for USING a book (less $2-3 shipping).

This is not a good business scheme, cuz it takes a while to setup online accounts, go to the post-office to ship the books and to wait for the books etc. So even though I discovered a way to make a little profit, it's not good enough to pay my rent. However, it's a great cost-saving plan. In the last 2 years, I've spent at most $100 net total on books, whereas almost everyone I know spends $300-400 PER semester. So there you go. This is how to save some good money.

One important thing to remember is not to buy the cheapest book, but one that you can sell at a higher price. If the book is real cheap but in bad condition, it's possible nobody's gonna buy it. So it's better to buy a $100 book and sell it for $90 than buy a $25 book and not be able to sell it at all. Oh as a final show-off note, I actually made $40 or something on my Calculus books, that I used for 3 semesters (1.5 yrs!). How? I bought it from another student for a real low price and sold it on Half.com.

It's Friday evening and that means creative computer time for me :) I'm trying to integrate text-to-speech into my remote and was thinking of some voice like Dr. Sbaitso from the old Creative Labs - SoundBlaster era. After failing to implement Microsoft DirectX Speech libraries, I started looking for alternatives and frankly I'm blown away. Turns out IBM has a great TTS (text-to-speech) solution that you can test online. AT&T has an even better natural voice solution that is soooo real it's astonishing. A couple of years ago they said TTS was gonna hit big. I think the technology has finally advanced now to an acceptable level. I wouldn't mind hearing my news spoken by Rich and frankly Claire sounds creepily like Madeline Albright. Oh and they even have Anjali talking with an Indian accent! Of course I still have to find a good TTS library for my remote software. Hmmm.

"Fusing images, text and song, BROKEN SAINTS creates a whole new way of telling an epic tale following the adventures of four very different people bound by an unknown force." - Sun Dance Online Film Festival. Frankly I'm just blown away by the excellent graphics and animation quality. I need to make sometime to watch the 24 episodes, that even BBC talks about.

Here's an example of the kind of wacky chats I have online every day:

Suprithi: i ate some food...feel so much better rite now
Suprithi: where u wanna take me
Chirag: hehe pizza is best food
Suprithi: nah, i ate some rice
Chirag: compusa ? LOL :-P
Chirag: bestbuy....?
Suprithi: i am gonna pretend u never said that
Suprithi: ok?
Chirag: lol they all do!
Suprithi: i am still pretending
Chirag: *sigh* nobody understands what i truly want.....
Suprithi: and what do u truly want?
Chirag: dvi cable for my new radeon 9500 so that my 981 synergy works better on 1600x1200 w/ 75hz ref. rate....
Suprithi: yeaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Suprithi: ok
Suprithi: me too
Chirag: I'll marry you if really meant that!

I'm still using my old pc. My new pc is all messed up. Let's say the mother died while delivering the twins (meaning the motherboard fried up after we installed the dual AMD cpu's). Sad sad. Gotta go through a long process and return it and get a new one. Urgh... I was without a computer on Monday! Can you believe it?

That Monday night taught me a lot of horrible sad things about myself. First of all, in my room I have no means of entertainment outside of my computer - no TV, no radio, no CD/DVD player, not even phone numbers of some of my friends! Sure, I could go out and meet up with a friend, but I mean if I'm alone in my room, there is nothing to do other than read a book. I eventually ended up reading Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos all night. Great book. Highly recommend it to people who love math, people who hate math, and people who are absolutely scared of math. What scares me though, is that without my computer I felt extremely helpless - no confidence, no self-esteem, no strength. I was so panicky and nervous. Next day I told my friend Derek how bad my night was and asked if I could be suffering from extreme internet or computer addiction. He said you're feeling just like a mechanic who has lost the tools of his trade. As crude as it sounded, his answer comforted me. But just like Sharon said the other day, we've all become slaves of technology, myself more so than anyone I know.

I do think I am addicted to the Internet and to computers in general. However, as far as I know, it's not affected my real life. While I have refused dates because of website work etc., I've never said no to hanging out with a friend because I wanted to chat online. So I don't think my addiction is in the disease stage (yet). The day I tell someone sorry I can't go see a movie because I have to read Fark will be the day I need serious help. So far so good...

Now, on to better things. On Sunday, I saw The Graduate on cable. I'd heard about Mrs. Robinson syndrome before and knew it was from this movie, but finally I got to see it. While I loved the movie, what I loved more are the songs. I knew about Simon & Garfunkel before, but this was the first time I paid attention to their songs and now am absolutely in love with their music (at least for this movie). Looks like they are reuniting this fall.

Anyways, gotta get back to work. Lotsa stuff to do...

G search for dullest finally shows you the dullest blog in the world as #1. Sometimes I wonder if this guy is really so dull or just simply amazing. His #2 entry says "Noticing one or two leaves on the ground - As I was walking along I noticed that one or two leaves had fallen from the trees. This may have been due to the slight breeze that was blowing. I left the leaves where they were on the ground and carried on walking." Maybe he's not really dull. Maybe he's just observant. We live about our lives doing things and never noticing when and why we do them. But then his latest entry is just plain dull: "Leaning against a wall - I was standing next to a wall and began to feel a little tired. I leaned to the side against the wall and continued to adopt this slightly more comfortable posture for several moments."

Interstingly the search for dull took me to the Dull Men's Club - A place — in cyberspace — where Dull Men can share thoughts and experiences, free from pressures to be "in and trendy," free instead to enjoy the simple, ordinary things of everyday life. Wow. These dull men actually got together and formed an online club! Talk about being silly... Well at least I can look forward to this site 40 years from now. Hehe. Or who knows, maybe I should join it right away, especially since I love dull trivia.

Who are the public heroes of the real Internet? No, not Lee, Linus, or Guido, but rather the ones who have made themselves celebrities online by their sheer participation in the virtual web. The ones who created these technologies have gained more than enough popularity. How about the ones who actually used these applications to their fullest? Take for instance, Harriet Klausner. She is the #1 Top Reviewer on Amazon.com. Or look at CrazyOne in the Experts Exchange's Hall of Fame. There are tons of other people like them, some with extremely high Slashdot Karma points, some with tens of thousands of positive EBay feedback, and some with millions of dollars worth of virtual property in games like EverQuest. In real world social hierarchy is defined by wealth, fame, and most importantly appearance. Online, the ones who rule the charts are those who work the hardest and give their best efforts; most of the ratings are done democratically, usually by the sites' regular visitors. Derek Powazek explores online communities in his book titled, aptly Design for Community. Someday I'd like to read that book by Derek or this one by Amy Jo Kim. When I have this little thing called *time*.

Since you can't really hack yourself as the #1 Book Reviewer on the #1 book store in the world, you actually have to READ two books a day and post intelligent reviews to gain such status. Or you could contribute to the online community by moderating newsgroups, writing reviews of products, giving free programming tips, and staying faithful (meaning paying a few $'s once in a while) to sites that need your support. I personally have a few friends like that, those who check out my software and sites before I release them, find spelling errors, suggest improvements, and try their best to spread the word. Without these folks, my progs would be EXTREMELY buggy and my sites would always be off-color. What can I say, my sister's not here @ the moment. Hehe...

I dunno if I mentioned this but last week I bought a new shaver. I have now a shaver and a trimmer by Conair. Have to admit it, after trying a number of different products, I've come to the simple conclusion that Conair is a totally awesome company. I shaved last night @ 6pm (after getting the most expensive haircut ever - $18 - ya I was stupid - next time I'm going back to my $8 guy). It's over 14 hours now and not even minor stubble. I can finally go two days without shaving now and not look like a grizzly :)

Got econ exam tonight. Kinda worried since I don't have the book yet (it's in the mail) and the course material is pretty hard. Gonna do all my studying online on G. Lotsa stuff to do @ my work too.

Just saw the latest funniest thing online - Red vs Blue - Episode 8. I've been watching the episodes 1-7 for a while now and from the looks of it, RvB is growing in popularity as much as, if not more than, HomeStar Runner / StrongBad. Basically these 7-8 guys write a funny script about a buncha army men stuck in a box-shaped crater in the middle of nowhere - the Red team fighting the Blue team. Then they enact the scene by playing a video game Halo and record everything on to a computer. Then dub the script on top of the Halo game sounds and bam! They come up with the funniest stuff ever :) WARNING: You will need a cable/dsl internet connection (at LEAST 24kb/s) and the latest Quicktime plugin to view these videos. But trust me, they'll be worth it.

Just got back from Bruce Almighty :) Finally got to see that movie, with my buddy Mason from work. I'm backing up my all of my hard drives right now cuz well, there was a thunderstorm today and my computer went off! I'm really scared of what might happen if my hard drives ever crash. So I'm backing up as much stuff as I can on 9 CDRW's - most prolly all my work + important stuff. I don't really care about my collection of songs, movies, software - as there is nothing I can't find online - except of course, the software + websites + graphics that I made myself. Though even that stuff is gigs and gigs! Wish me luck backing everything up!

After watching the awesome webcams last night, I just felt like I needed to make something like that for me. And after 10 hours of non-stop coding, I proudly present: Live! from the Chir.ag Bunker :) Webcam! Well it's off right now, but next time you catch me online, ask me to turn it on :) And sorry, this stuff is not for dial-up people. Also there's no sound - only me, jumping and acting crazy at 5-6 frames/second. Nothing THAT great, but well I'm excited about it, cuz I wrote everything myself - from the VB Capture module to the super-fast-uber-tiny HTTP server to the Flash client viewer :) I can go to bed a happy geek now!

LiveWave cam is the MOST amazing thing I've seen online in months. It's nothing new - just live webcams of streets and cities, however the quality is simply astonishing. It's real-time hi-q live video and best of all you can actually CONTROL the camera! I just moved the Boston (Logan Airport) camera and actually tracked the path of a car. This is just real cool. Anyway I stumbled upon the site after trying to search for some software online that'll let me do precisely that - stream live webcam videos from my new bunker :) So far, no success personally. Oh well, I'll keep trying.

Oh and I had some yummy classic nachos (ONCE again) for dinner. Michele's friend Suprithi just randomly called up and drove down from Marlboro to see me :) Isn't that sweet!

Everybody loves taking online quizzes :) And so do I. I got 9/9 in the CEO material quiz!

I was talking to Michele online, discussing our grades. Turns out I got four A's, one B+, and one B. She got four A's, and two B+. She did slightly better than me. And just at that moment, I found this article on Fark about how girls are overtaking the education system in the country! Of course, one can't compare my grades with her cuz other than Physics, our classes are totally different. So what she got a B+ in, I might've got a C in that and what I got a B in, she could've got a C in that. However it's kinda weird that just at that moment I found that article. Damn coincidences.

I'm sure a lot of you have heard about Jayson Blair, the New York Times reporter who made-up articles (more). Basically he stole stories from other journalists using online tools, wrote articles about people he never met and places he never went to, and published everything in the world-renowned New York Times. But what's not why I'm interested. I'm more interested in the FUNNY stuff that was born out of this story. Like the fake NY Times headlines, his new job and the confessions by the-Line Online reporters.

Oh and if you love satire articles, here's the motherload.

Quote for the day: "We make it up. You read it. If the NY Times can do it, so can we." - the-Line Online

I was sooooo right when I said it'll only be minutes before hi-res pics are made online. Here's one I just found from the Money Factor - New Money site.

I am hereby the FIRST person in the world to have put pictures online of the new US $20 currency notes:

In a few minutes, better quality pics will be all over the Internet, and in a few months I'll have the notes in my pockets, but still, it's kinda cool to have been the first to share these with you all :) I'm kinda disappointed though. It was announced previously that the money has a different color. Now when people say DIFFERENT color, you think red, blue, yellow - NOT black & white. Oh well...

In a world going wrong, at least something went right finally - I got Optimum Online cable internet in my new place! I didn't buy the TV package, since well, it's all too expensive. Each month I'm paying $500 rent, $50 for my cellphone, $50 for internet, $150-200 approx. for food. So there goes $800 a month on just basic survival. Of course I need to pay for my college also. But no worries. Here's why:

"Hi. This is Chirag. If you are the phone company, I already sent the money. If you are my parents, please send money. If you are my financial-aid institution, you didn't lend me enough money. If you are my friends, you owe me money. If you are a pretty female, don't worry, I have plenty of money."

Anyways, here's my moving status: After my last exam on 13th, I'll slowly start moving my stuff. Hopefully by 18th (next Sunday) I should be all set in my new place. Life is easy and smooth from then on. Gonna go to my cuzins' dance show tonight and also next Saturday. I really can't wait till Econ & Physics exams are over. I'm not getting all A's this semester - mostly A's and B+. Let's hope I don't get a C+ or B in any class, since I know my computer and math exams didn't go as well as I prepared for them. Overall, I'm more than glad this semeste's coming to an end.

American Eagle has made these flip-flop slippers which evidently bear a picture of the Hindu Lord Ganesh. A lot of people have been outraged by this and have been signing an online petition led by American Hindus Against Defamation to make AE stop the sales of these slippers. I've received a number of emails to sign up too. Thankfully, it seems like AE has realized their folly and have sent an apology to AHAD and hopefully the product will be removed soon enough in a few days. Personally, it's REALLY stupid of AE to market a slipper bearing a picture of a God. I mean isn't there even ONE Indian working for AE who realized the design faux pas before it was manufactured in bulk?

Cher will pay me (in my dreams) $5 to replace her nickname 'Cher' with her real name 'Cigir' everywhere on this 'blog. My objection was that, then everybody will go - who's this Cigir person? So for the moment, I'm leaving the past entries as 'Cher' and will refer to her as 'Cigir' from now on.

So anywayz, Cigir & I didn't wanna study @ all, so just talked online for hoursssss. I like not studying. Especially procrastinating. I should do it more often *sarcasm*. Econ lab due tomorrow. Gotta complete it soon. Urgh.

Just ordered Cable Internet by Optimum Online for my new place. Yummy high-speed broadband access all for me and me only!

One of the saddest and most insulting things I could've read online is about my own university - the fact that Rutgers professors are demanding a 44% raise! I'm already working day/night to pay $15,000+ a year in tuition & books etc., and now amidsts one of the largest budget cuts (by the New Jersey State Govt.) these professors are demanding a raise that is incomprehensible! What the hell is going on! Does Rutgers really want to drive away the honest hardworking students and turn the college into a poophole for some rich party kids? Well if these professors (some of whom I really respect, but some whom I wouldn't even wish good morning) have their way and Rutgers keeps increasing the tuition, I'm gonna go ta-ta and off to some better place, where the tuition + living expenses are lesser. Urghhhhh. This is VERY infuriating in the middle of the night. It's a slap on the face of the Rutgers students. On one hand the college administration is urging students to write to the State Govt. and ask them to block the proposed budget cuts worth millions of dollars, and on the other hand, the Rutgers professors are demanding more money than ever. Yes, it's a hard world out there and professors should get paid a lot, but NOT at the cost of us students! I am REALLY ashamed right now. Really.

Ok so I was just talking to Leah online and while talking to her, I realized something pretty interesting. I met three girls today - lunch with Manzinder (who drives an Eclipse), Kathleen, (who drives a red Mustang GT '99) and Rita.... (who drives an Audi). And then I'm talking to Leah, who for some reason knows all the cool stuff about hot cars. My question now is, how come almost EVERY girl I know, knows more bout cars than me??? Michele can look @ a random car for a fraction of a second and go Honda Accord 1998 Special Edition while I'd be like - oh yay RED car! Hehe. Well I guess people who intend to buy Astons don't really have to worry about Hondas ;-) Oh tomorrow's my meeting with the Deans. So gotta get to bed REAL soon now. G'nite world!

I'm not in my room @ all lately. Busy with studies and stuff. So anyways, I had my LAST physics lab EVER today! That was my last class with Michele ever :( Gonna miss it. And the math exam today was 'eh'! I think I'll get a C in this class (if I'm LUCKY!) And after the math exam, Cher took me to see a really good movie @ Milledoler Hall - Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic - Vertigo. REALLY awesome movie. I've been submitting two of my progs to tons of random internet sites since 2 hours - Hot Chime & Chime Away! Let's hope I get some good traffic. It's been a LOOOOOONG time since I got some popularity online.

Workin' all day. I found this site via Fark. It's one of the funniest yet honest story I've read in months. It's called: Bank Error In My Favor: Collect $95,000 - by Patrick Combs. I don't believe everything I read on the Internet, and so I just thought this was yet another guy blabbering on about something random, till I checked the Rutgers Online Library references and went through the original Wall Street Journal aritcle from 16th August 1995 that he mentioned: Prankster Exploits a Bank’s Gaffe And Turns Trash Into Quick Cash. Yup, the story's 100% true, pretty much exactly like he said it in his story, which is available online for free. I sent him $5 via PayPal, just cuz I loved the story so much. I'm philanthropic like that, sometimes.

I'm stressed & over-worked incomprehensibly. Amidst of all this, I made yet another quick yet crucial decision - I just signed the lease for my next room. Took me exactly 30 seconds to realize that this is EXACTLY what I needed, walked over to the place, and within 10 minutes, the room was mine (of coure starting May-end 2003, not right away). It's a one-year lease, and I can only hope that I stay there throughout the term without any problems. It's $495 a month including everything. Here's the ad that I read online for it:

Air Conditioning, Room w/ Private Entrance, Private Bathroom, Washer available, Dryer available, Owner lives there, Near campus bus, Near public bus, Near train station. It is an apartment by itself and does not share with anybody else. The location of the apartment is very quiet and I would prefer a quiet person non-smooker. Two block walk to Rutgers, 5 blocks to downtown.

In other words, I get my own room, with everything I need, an EXTREMELY quiet place, my own personal bathroom/shower etc. for under $500. And to top it off, this place is a 2-minute walk to my job & main bus stop. Best of all, right next door is the grocery shop + deli etc. The room's not the biggest room in the world, but then all I need is some space to put my bed & desk. The closet is decent and the place is extremely clean. I move out of this place as soon as my finals are over. Now that I think about it, I can't wait...

If you're a stalker and would like to come visit me there, here's a little hint. Ok back to Econ lab.

Went to Sam's Club today with my aunt. She bought a lot of stuff for house/store and got me Eclipse strips :) I'm just relaxing @ home right now while they're having dance practice downstairs.

So anyway, I found out about Project Gutenberg today and am pretty impressed with it. Basically these hard working guys take books, type them into a computer, and make them freely available for the whole world. Pretty generous of them. Like, here's a bunch of plays written by William Shakespeare. Here's some of the English (prolly translated) text by Rabindranath Tagore. And best of all, here's almost every book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, available for free, online!

I was just talkin' online with my housemate Sharon :) I talk to her more online and less inside the house, cuz well she's never @ home. Told her to come upstairs and say hi to me next time she's home. Let's see...

So I was just talking to Taylor online and among other things, I decided I'm definitely gonna give this 'blog a major overhaul over the summer. Not just a basic design change, but implement more of a randomized theme feature, that'll automatically change the look of the site every time you visit it. It might be a nice white/gray combination in the morning, yellow-red in the afternoon, and blue-black in the evening :) Would be pretty cool huh! Of course, no more uploading html pages containing content - it'll all be managed by a remote database :) If wanna add a new quote, then all I gotta do is open the MS Access table - Quotes and type/paste it in. If I wanna add a new poem, just type it in the table - Poems, and it goes live on the site automatically! Ahhhhh the cool features I can think of...

I'd say today was another good day, just like 29th March 2002 :) Except for that email disappearing act :( Woke up @ 11am, showered 'n studied till 2 pm, and went to see Purvi @ the train station :) She had come for the night @ my aunt's house and was on her way back to the city. So I just walked down and chilled with her till her train came. Nice to see her after a long time (Utah - January). Next week I'm hopefully gonna go see her in the city for this program she has. Let's see how it goes.

Then I panicked over my emails and did my physics web assign. In fact I did two weeks of web assign, meaning no tensions next week :) So anyways, I was supposed to go see The Pianist with Cher, but cuz of the weather and my Econ lab and blah blah, it just felt like a stretch. So I did my Econ stuff till 10pm. Cher came online, and we decided to go have a nice cup of coffee @ Au Bon Pain. Of course, I can never have just a 'cup', so I ended up with a large 'Iced Mocha'. Hehe.

Anyways, four of my housemates got a nice house down on Hamilton and need a fifth person. Since I hadn't seen the house yet, I walked down there with Cher just to check it out. Next time somebody remind me NOT to go house-hunting @ 11pm! Nobody answered the damn door-bell! But the house looked pretty weird from the outside - it was shaped like a boat! Like it had a corner with railing that looked like the bow of a ship (you know, I'm the King of the World part... hehe). And they're opening a coffee shop right under the house! (We have the top floors). Though I haven't seen the inside, it looked like a good place. Now my problem is to get the lease/deposit money asap. I think credit cards are the answer :) Hehe!

So anyway, then we went to see my friend Vicky @ the College Avenue Gym. They're having a 32-hour dance marathon there with over 400 dancers, dancing all night 'n day. Pretty cool actually. I bought a nice Iced Mocha for Vicky, cuz well, I'm sure she needs all the caffeine possible. Ohhhh and I got a free bag @ the gym! I love free stuff. Met a couple of ppl from older classes, ppl I haven't seen in months and years :) Pretty cool actually.

And best of all, Cher got me bagels :) Yup. She works @ the bagel store and got me a coupla bagels :) Yummmm. We might go see the end of the dance marathon tomorrow. There's some mildly hot chics in there, though nothing THAT great. Plus you really don't look all that hot after dancing for 32 hours! LOL.

What a beautiful day... to LOSE HALF YOUR EMAILS!!!! I am sooooooo angry right now. Stupid stupid stupid computer! Ok here's what happened. Last night I printed out a couple of things and left the printer on. Then I ran the 'Compact All Folders' option in Outlook Express, and as it was going on, I simply turned the printer off. Nothing wrong in that, right? Hell the stupid computer crashed with a Blue Screen of Death error. I turned my pc back on and lo and behold, all the emails I had ever sent, and all the emails I had stored in my 'Rutgers' and 'Records' folders disappeared! This means I have now NO records of any of my financial data, college data, emails to clients - NOTHING! You don't see the crisis in here? Just think how would you feel if you turned of the TV and all of a sudden your living room got flooded with raw sewage! That's EXACTLY how I feel right now.

Stupid USB printers! Anyway, I had a decent backup from mid-January, so at least I got some of the stuff back. Also, all the personal + work emails that I received are in tact. It's mainly the Rutgers emails, Financial (Bank Statements, Online Purchases, Credit Card Statements etc.), and all the emails I sent to anyone after mid-Jan that's gone poof! Oh well. I guess I'll just manage somehow (and backup 7 times a week now!)

Working hard all day today *tsk tsk*. Had lunch with my awesome buddy Mason. He's a big Fark/HomestarRunner/StrongBad fan! That's like my twin! Only 6 inches taller and 100lbs heavier. Hehe. When I grow up, I wanna be like Mason. Hehe...

Anywayz been talking to Amanda online today. Long time no chat. Prolly gonna get dinner w/ Angie tonight. Studying all night for my CS exam tomorrow though. So no free time :( No party either. Gotta make my stdy schedule for Fall 2003 and pick all the imp. classes. Ahhhhh. And I gotta pay $3500 before May 8th for summer classes. Right now I only have like $1500. Cash advances anyone? Ok back to work.

I'm listening to random Indian/Hindi songs and just chattin' with ppl online :) Life is good...

Totally random lyrics for the night: "haan haan yeh pyaar hai.... aur ab to khul ke mujhke ikrar hai... main deewana hoon mujhe pyaar hai... sun le dil ruba..."

I was supposed to go home after my work, but freezing rain kinda messed up my plans. So instead had dinner w/ Mich and spent the evening with her. Just got to my room and about to hit the books. One thing's that making me mad right now is that AIM, ICQ, Google, CNN, and a lot of other major websites are not working for me right now! Kinda hard to do online research without good ol' Google :( Oddly enuf, my sites are all working. Fark is working but Yahoo is not. Real weird especially since Yahoo News is working. Hmm...

Hmm. So the free lunch thing didn't really work out! Manzinder was stuck in classes and said she'll take me for a nice dinner on Monday or Tuesday. Oh no probs :)

Anyways, so I was just working and talking to Stacy online and she decided to drop by the coffee shop next to my office. So I had a nice long coffee break/lunch with her instead, and just talked about things... It's all good :) And she challenged me to a vodka-shot contest! Well I'm gonna show her what Indians are made of soon! Not tonight (cuz I gotta go home) but def. sometime soon... Hehe.

PS: Ya, living on campus is actually fun. You get to hang out w/ people and have fun!

I have a few mins to talk about this now. Wanted to speak about it since I woke up. Yesterday, Cliff Wilson died in a car crash. I wouldn't have felt one bit of sympathy had he not been a farker - member of the Fark virtual community. I woke up this morning and read on the front-page of Fark: [sad] "Farker Kilipo4 dies in car accident" and saw the other farkers had posted over 200 comments. I skimmed the article and went to check out the comments section but after reading just the first few, I gave up.

All I could read were comments like: "This is sad. Sorry to hear it and I hope he's in a better place now. My sympathy to his family." I could have posted my sympathies to his family too. But for some reason, I did not feel like becoming a part of the grief. And I tried to ignore it. But it's kinda impossible to ignore the death of a member of a community about which you care so much. Most people who don't spend more than an hour a day online, will never realize how important these virtual communities are to the people who're online 8 hours a day. For me, a website like Fark is more than a bunch of html links and images. It is a congregation of like-minded people, people who don't live down my road, but still say 'hi' to me when I post an interesting comment.

And from Fark's grief, started this thread on another popular discussion site: Meta Filter. What moved me most, and prompted me to write this 'blog entry, was this:

What defines when we grieve? It's an odd question, but it's kind of relevant. 7 people die on a shuttle, and a nation grieves. 40 people die on a train and very few people notice. A girl dies in the playground and no one cares. A 'farker' who appears to have posted just twice dies, and an entire site seems to go into mourning. What controls our community and our sphere of mourning?

Yes, what defines when we grieve? Sometimes the death of a close relative doesn't make us as sad as a breakup in a relationship. Sometimes, forgetting my wrist-watch for a single day, agonizes me more than losing countless nights worth of sleep while studying for an exam.

Coincidences. They amaze me. Because this is EXACTLY what I wrote just last night in the Process Log - 02 for my Trauma and Literature class. I spent the better part of last night, pondering whether the sufferings of one differ from the sorrows of the other? In short, is your sorrow any worse than mine? If you are sad, are you any sadder than me? Do I have the right to question if your grief is superior or inferior to mine? Or more deserving of sympathy? While I didn't answer it in the log, I think not. Everybody has the same quality of happiness, sorrow, joys, and sadness in the world. Note, I said QUALITY and not QUANTITY. Someone may be unfortunate enough to get into a major car accident, rendering them disabled. And someone else might live up to the ripe age of 90 without even so a scratch. But does that automatically mean that the former victim, who might have a loving family to take care of him, has suffered more in his life, than the unscathed one that lived alone, unmarried, and lonely all his life? My point is: We are no one to judge. I guess this is akin to what I was saying a few weeks ago, in my incoherent babble, aptly titled: Chaos.

Anyways, I went on to read almost all of MetaFilter's comments, not because I was hoping to read a more analytical and sophisticated discussion on the topic (devoid of any sentimental statements that the Fark thread was full of), but mainly because I wanted to look at the incident, from an outsider's point-of-view. I, for some reason, did not want to let the sympathies of other farkers overcome my emotions and make me feel sad for Cliff too. I wanted to look inside, while being 100 miles outside.

Ahhhhhh the stuff this 'Trauma and Literature' class makes me think about. Don't worry though, I'm not gonna get depressed or anything. At the most, I'll become a little more social, humane, and loving :)

Haven't 'blogged in two days now. Yesterday, we went to Alta Ski Area, where only skiers are allowed - no snowboarders! Phew. Snowboarders usually interfere with skiers and go in weird random ways instead of predictable S-curved ski paths. Anyways, going down the slopes of Alta was probably the best 6 hours of my life ever. It was soooooo amazing I can't even explain. There was this one part right before I reached the bottom, where I was skiing down at approximately 30 mph (50km/hour)! My legs were shaking so hard I felt like I needed knee-suspensions just to hold myself steady. Hehe. And best of all, I went on the Black Diamond tracks with Purvi & her friend Alan. I fell a couple of times on the soft powdery snow (and it didn't hurt a bit) but I think I glided through most of the track pretty smoothly. Come on, Blue Squares & Black Diamonds on the third day of skiing? That's almost a World Record! I have a new (and expensive) hobby now and looks like I'm gonna return here every winter :) Let's hope at least.

Anyways, now I gotta wait a whole year till I can ski again :( But hey, it'll be totally worth it. We're not gonna go ski anymore in the next two days (got lotsa other exciting stuff to do). So anyways, after skiing yesterday, we got home, had a nice dinner, and then went to Salt Lake City Cafe and just chilled with Purvi's old high-school friends till 12 midnight. Then we rented a funny movie: Super Troopers from Blockbuster and watched it. The night before we had rented Ali. Ali's an ok movie, nothing remarkable. So that's like 4 movies already! Oh and yesterday I finally met Priya's friend Leah after talking to her online for over 6 months now :)

I woke up this 'morning' @ 12:30 pm and showered. Then we all went to a great Pizza place and I had the Five-cheese Tomato Pizza. Best. Pizza. Ever. After that we went shopping and I bought one nice expensive sweater-type t-shirt from J-Crew which looks kinda like this, but with stripes (I'm actually wearing it right now as we speak, since we're going out soon). And then we went to Barnes & Nobles and I bought myself three science-related books. Two of them are about the future of science and what the world famous scientists expect to happen in the next 100 years. And the third book consists of short anecdotes in the lives of famous scientists. All cool stuff that I love!

And now we're going to some famous Chinese restaurant within a few minutes. While I love Chinese food, the soy sauce messes up with my blood pressure often (because it is extremely high in the salt content). So I think I'll stick to noodles and low-soy items. All in all, this is quite possibly one of the best vacations ever. No tension, no work, no pending websites to finish, no big bills to pay except the expensive stuff I bought today! My shopping budget was exactly $100 and I spent exactly $99 today. So I have one more buck to spend on anything I want :) But then you can't get anything these days with a buck (other than a 20-minute phone call).

Oh and I got two more clients. That makes it a total of six clients waiting in line = 5 to 6 months of continuous business = good stuff :) In a weird sort of way, I can't wait to go back to Jersey and start working on these sites, especially since I haven't designed a new site in over a month now and I'm getting impatient. I want to make some really awesome sites now, kinda like Brighton.

Ok, gotta leave now. Chinese food is calling me. Hehe.

And FINALLY someone smart enough to admit what I used to think all the time: Online terrorism is bullcrap and people should just stop trying to monitor the Internet. Guys relax, Al Qaeda is NOT gonna waste their time trying to hack eBay and Amazon! Ok?

I'm studying for my economics exam right now.

My cuzin Keval just came online and told me that the IBM Research puzzle we solved together last week, has a list of people who answered it correctly, and our names are in there! Scroll to the bottom of this page till you see "Keval Mehta (12.14.2002@06:34:36PM EST)" and "Chirag Mehta (12.14.2002@06:34:36PM EST)". Well, next time we'll hopefully solve the puzzle on the first day itself. Hehe... And so our names would be on the TOP of the list rather than at the bottom. Ok back to Econ now.

Work Wednesdays! I got a LOT of stuff to do. Last night I chatted w/ my sis online for a few mins. Things are ok on the family front I guess.

Here's a good article on Leasing a Car, instead of buying it on a loan. As it turns out, I'm a perfect candidate for leasing, since I am "a low-mileage driver who maintains cars in perfect condition, doesn't like tying up capital in down payments and doesn't mind never-ending car payments." Actually I do mind never-ending car payments, but then at $200 a month I can't complain... can I? I've been researching online all this morning and from the 20+ articles + public reviews I've read so far, it seems that though my car's final price ($16395) is kinda high even for a loaded Civic LX, for some reason, my lease amount is much lesser than what everyone else is paying. A friend of mine leases a Civic and she pays $228 a month for her 2000 EX model. Though EX is a better trim than LX, she doesn't have any of the upgrades. So I guess it's an even deal. I'm still not 100% convinced though. I have to research a LOT more till I'm satisfied that I'm getting absolutely the best deal possible :)

I had such a good day today. I woke up late, cleaned my room, bathroom, cleaned the kitchen, and then went to work. At 4 pm, my friend Vu came online and asked me if I was still shopping for a car. Instantly, we decided to go out and look for a good deal for myself. First we went to the local Hyundai dealer and checked out an Accent. But I wasn't impressed - it was clunky, made too much sound, and felt like I was driving a 1990 Tercel or something!

Next stop - Open Road Honda. We walked in and a salesman came upto us to help out. The coolest coincidence was that my buddy Vu knew his daughter! And then they started talking to each other in Vietnamese. And they even had the same lastname! So the salesman got all happy and started showing us all the best deals he could find. Finally I picked out a silver Honda Civic LX - 2002 model. It is fully loaded with power everything (steering, windows, doors, mirrors), metal alloy wheels, front-side-airbags, and an awesome 6-CD changer! I haggled over the price for a long time and we finally settled at a monthly payment of $200 for 36 months to lease the car (not buy). That is I pay $200 a month for 3 years and then give them the car back. Well I already pay around $100-120 a month on taxi, so $200 would not be hard at all, and in fact it will make my life sooo much easier and better!

So I put down a refundable reservation of $100 on the car and submitted all my credit-info. On Monday, the guy will let me know if I have been approved for the lease or not. And if I am, then once my uncle comes back from India, I can show him the car, and if he approves, I can just drive the car home :) And hopefully my monthly insurance costs will not rise a lot. I'm pretty excited about this whole car thing... Finally... after two and half years... you know...

Well so after the car-shopping with Vu, I went to Chichi's with Michele... mmmmmm Texas Nachos... I could not finish the whole thing and ended up bringing almost half the plate home in a package! Yay! Free food for tomorrow. Hehe. And Mich has been sooo nice lately... I'm glad I got a few good friends :)

Oh well, it's real late now and I gotta go to work tomorrow. So I should hit the sack right now. Good night world!

Just got home. Classes were ok today. Nothing great. After classes, had some important stuff to deal with @ home. After that, I chilled w/ the Mich & her friend Angie. I've been talkin to Angie online for over a month, but finally met her in real today. Ahhhhhh such a lovely girl. Well tonight, I go clubbin' w/ the chicas! Yay! Hehe. Tomorrow, I work all day. Oh well, it'll be cool, since I have to start this new hush-hush cool project that I can't really tell anyone about... hehe. Ok gotta get dressed and off to the partyyyyy!

Some random guy went to my Chime.Tv site and decided that I needed to hire employees, and so he sent me a 4-line resume without asking. It's pretty interesting actually, since it looks like he's trying the computer field cuz he realized his english major is not worth a dime! Here's the resume:

Professional Profile:

• In-demand Web developer/designer with proven ability to transform concepts into online, interactive reality.
• Combine creative, artistic talent with Java mindset to deliver revenue enhancing, marketing oriented sites.
• Savvy web developer and polished, persuasive designer with three years of experience.
• Advanced Computer

What the hell does the last line mean anyway? He has an 'Advanced Computer' in his house? Or he is himself an 'Advanced Computer'? Maybe this email was actually sent by an artificial intelligence robot? Who knows...

While doing my Discrete Structures II homework, I found this piece of text online:

"A typical digitized picture on your computer screen is 640 pixels long by 480 pixels wide, for a total of 307200 pixels. Using only 256 different colors, you can get decent resolution. Now if you take 256^307200 (256 times itself 307200 times) you get... well, a pretty big number, but a finite number nonetheless. That's the number of different images you can have of that particular size. Any picture you would scan into a computer at that size and resolution will necessarily be one of those images. Therefore, contained in those images are the images of the faces of every human being who ever lived along with the images of the faces of every person yet to be born." - The Math Forum

It's been a pretty long time since I wrote a nice sweet 'blog entry. And it's been even longer since I admitted my flaws & mistakes. Tonight I do just that. This 'blog entry... for my mom.

Today was a pretty long day... I cleaned my room & bathroom, drove my cuzins around all day, did all my homework, and finally settled down to finish off my website work. I think I was almost done with this site when my mom came online. Ahh... It had been weeks since I last talked to her. The sad thing is, whenever she comes online, I'm mostly busy doing my homework @ 1 am, and so I can't really talk to her. But tonight fortunately, I had all the time for some good mother-son chattin'.

Well I found out my sister is on the way to a nice vacation to Singapore, Bangkok, and Pataya with all her friends from college. W00t! I need a vacation! I need a vacation! Well, come Winter break and I'll get one. Hehe. Anyways, things are all mostly fine back home, the only worrying news is my grandpa's health. Fortunately the docs are saying everything will be fine soon, so it's all good.

Ok now lemme get back to my mom. I think about her a lot... actually at least once daily - right after I have my lunch. You see when I went to India over the summer, my mom packed me a BIG box of Mentos, in fact so many, that I can keep eating 1 per day for the next 2 years! Ya so every afternoon, right after I chug down a yummy sub-sandwich, I think of my mom and how much I miss her. I'm really really really close to her, and I know that she misses me a lot too.

Tonight, before she came online, I was feeling kinda tired in my head, from all the work, studies and the overall drudgery of my daily life. My mood wasn't too good either. And if you've been reading my 'blog lately, you'll see how I've been mostly tired and boring in the past few weeks. I'll admit it; I kept blaming everything on studies, and too much work, and that I kept making stupid excuses that I have no time for this and no time for that. And day by day, I was getting more and more sick of everyday life.

But then she came on and told me she's worried because I'm working so hard and studying too much. She said that most parents are worried that their child is not studying enuf or not working hard enuf, but she is worried that I'm over-working and over-studying! And then she said she missed me and wanted me to have FUN in my life and not just over-exert myself everywhere. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. I felt soooo good, realizing how much she cared about me.

My friend Jacquelin said, "it's cool how your parents are like, wired to your brain sometimes and know exactly when to email/call and say something that makes you feel good." That's soooo true! I really needed that chat tonight, to make me realize that no matter how much I think my studies and work are important, there's still one more thing important than all that and that is the quality of my life. I mean isn't that the ultimate aim? Living a happy, fun life? And here I am, doing everything possible to achieve something that's so far way, while giving deplorably stupid excuses for not enjoying my life! Damn! I have been soooo dumb. Thank you Mom! I know it sounds like a typical movie cliche, but you've shown me the light!

Now I'm not saying that right away I'm gonna stop all my work and stop studying! I'm just saying that from now on, I stop making stupid excuses and complaints about how tired I am and how much work/study I still have to do. And above all, I'm gonna go make myself some time to actually HAVE FUN with my family and friends! Enuf with this lots of studies and too much work crap! Chirag needs to have some serious fun! Now where's my little black book... gotta call up on that cutey from that class I took last semester... hehehe...

(PS: I love you Mummy. You're the sweetest, loveliest, kindest, and most caring mother in the whole wide world! Trust me! I KNOW I'm 100% right!)

Awake and online! I made a new online friend - a guy who works 24/7, and makes software, just like me. Hehe. Check out his site - East Bay Technologies. He's damn smart, and works in VB just like me. I was just giving him some free web-design tips. Hopefully he can return the favor by helping me beta test my softwares/websites in the future.

Well I have a long day ahead of me. Last night I successfully completed the Physics webassign. Yay for the me! Haha. Today I got lots and lots of work @ my job on campus. Ahhhhh. But it's cool. I'm gonna enjoy it, cuz it's some pretty interesting stuff.

In other news, life's good. I get exhausted a lot, but overall my mood is on the happy side. Hehe.

I'm back. Haha! Ok that was taking it too far... I certainly don't love any weather better than a computer lab, so I guess I'll stick in here and type out more random stuff. Well, now the list of cool ppl who wished me so far, in addition to my cuzins & uncle/aunt that I mentioned above: Eric, Kiran Uncle & Family, my Dad 2nd time (in a sweet email), Steve, Yogesh, Ali (aka Alf), Nikhil, and the oh-so-lovely and cow-kissing Megan. Damn the list is getting longer. Hehe.

Ok now a reflection on my life. Everyone lives two lives: one on the outside and one on the inside. On the outside, I'm studying, making websites, making software, buying expensive computer stuff, buying cool mp3 players, and of course working 20 hours a week while taking 18 credit hours - 6 days a week, from 7 am to 2 am. On the inside, I'm easily handling studies, having lotsa fun making websites and software, getting extremely happy for finally being able enough to buy myself decent equipment to work with, loving my job 101%, and totally feeling guilty for not having enough time for my friends and family. So overall, I'm all good on the outside, and almost good on the inside; that feeling guilty-for-not-socializing part ain't good. But guess what? Things are just about to get purrrrfect... I'm buying a car soon. It's 100% confirmed. Just need to decide how to go about it now. I know one thing for sure, once I buy a car, I'll def. have a LOT of extra time, so of course, I'll spend it with my friends and family (and prolly online too. Hehe.)

I was kinda worried a last night about buying a car - after all it's a big expense and there are 1000 things that can go wrong. But then this morning I got an email from my dad saying he too bought a used car too longgggg ago. And now I'm suddenly not worried at all! After all my dad's best of luck & wishes are right here with me :-) So Daddy... I'm getting my 1985 Toyota Tercel right away! Haha! Just kidding. No matter how badly I need a car, I'm not gonna buy a crappy one. It'll be something nice and decent, and quite possibly much cheaper.

So there you go... a long 'blog. Happy now? Got any questions? Well then

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email me!
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email me more!

You gotta love StrongBad!

Ouch! I just hit 22! Hehe. Yup, it's my birthday... turning the big fat double ducked twenty two now... It's just half an hour and already 14 people wished me 'Happy Birthday'! Isn't that sweet? First my sis, dad, mom, grandpa and grandma wished me online. Then Priya, her mom, and her dad. Then Taylor, Alex, Vicky (Calc2/3), Vicky's friend Sharon, Jenny, and Chris. And now I go and get some sleep. Not a good idea to stay up late the night before your b'day. Hehe.

I'm shopping around for a good auto-insurance provider. My current contract will end in a few months and so I'm trying to get something cheaper than what I have @ the moment. I know a few things though: Cuz of my little accident in January this year, my insurance costs are gonna go waaaaay up! And when I buy a car, it'll add major costs to my insurance. But one thing I've learnt hunting online lately, is that picking an insurance company is a pretty complex job and no matter what price you get from one guy, you HAVE to shop around a lot before you settle down for anything in particular. And next year if they try to raise your premiums, just shop around again. Of course, changing insurers every year is NOT a good idea, but if they decide to double the premiums (as I'm sure mine will), it's better to go with someone else who might charge only $100 extra, and not double.

Yeah, life's about making simple decisions from a selection of complex variables. Like, do I want to buy a car or not? A simple yes or no question, but there's a lot of thinking that often goes into making the choice. As time goes by I'm getting more and more impatient with this question. Slowly I'm diverting to the 'yes' part. Everyday I waste a lot of time waiting for buses or commuting by mass transit. I can save 2-4 hours per day (YES!) if I actually drove to college and back, and did not have to stay on campus in between classes that were 5 hours apart. Also I do not need to leave the house at 7:30 am on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays, cuz my classes start at 10. However, since my uncle can only drop me off @ 7:30, I have no choice. If I had a car, I could work/study 2 hours from home and then just leave for college @ 9:30. I was definitely gonna buy a good new car this August, but I couldn't cuz my college tuition was raised by $2000! That was my allocated budget for car. But now some things have changed, and I think I'll be able to shell out a few grands this year to buy myself a nice crappy old 1995-1997 used car, that will prolly last 12-24 months and at least save me 2-4 hours everyday. My budget is definitely less than $3000, more around $2000. Ahhhhh, let's see what happens. I'm too sleepy right now to think right.

Just did my physics webassign while sitting in the computer lab, instead of wasting my time online :-) I'm so proud of myself!

I was searching online on how to implement a simple shopping cart to a website when I chanced upon this odd site.

Just finished the homework for my Physics 203 class. This is one expensive class though. First the book is damn expensive, then every student has to pay $8.50 to use the online automated homework handin system: WebAssign, and on top of that everyone has to buy a Personal Response System (PRS) for in-class uses. But it's all pretty cool though. I mean I don't have to write anything anymore for my homework. I can just go online and type it in and it's automatically graded and I instantly know how good/bad I did. Plus I have 6 chances for each assignment, so even if I make an error, I can correct it in the next 5 tries. And the PRS's pretty cool too. It's just like the "I'd like to Ask-the-Audience" Lifeline from the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire show. The teacher shows a question with 4 possible answers on a big screen and everyone picks the correct one using their PRS remotes. Of course, nobody makes any moolah (except the company that manufactures PRS), but well the ones who answered it correctly prolly get some good grades. Hehe. Here's a partial list of PRS users in US and around the world. Boy that's a long list.

Oh and by the way check out the insider facts about the Millionaire show. They say the Indian version of the show, hosted by the Amitabh Bachchan has broken all TV records nation-wide. Also interesting to note that in Russia, the contestants don't use the "Ask-the-Audience Lifeline" often because "the Russian studio audience tries to give contestants the wrong answers." Wow. Why am I not surprised! Haha.

Guess who just went to Thomas Sweets for a nice dessert???? Me!!!! I found the address of the place online and went there with my cuzins. I had a nice double-scoop of chocolate chip + cinnamon orea w/ two toppings! Mmmmmm. I couldn't finish the whole thing actually, had to leave about two-three spoonfuls :( But it was sooooo good. I think I'm addicted to the place. *must control my sweet tooth*

Song for the night: No such thing - John Mayer

Here's a little tidbit of interesting Internet madness. There's this site run by this lady Karyn on how she blew up over $20,000 in debt because she bought all expensive clothes, shoes, and bags etc. So now being in $20k debt, she opened up a website to beg people for money, yes, e-begging! The interesting thing is, hundreds of losers already sent her thousands of dollars! Great. This proves that you don't have to be intelligent to be online. Hehe. In response to Save Karyn.com, Bob & Ben opened Don't Save Karyn.com. Check out some pages from Karyn's site and see the parody in Bob & Ben's ripoff. And of course, how could the Internet survive without active participation from the canine species: Save Sheeba! So there you have it, a reckless dummy, two smartasses, and a real bitch. God bless the Internet!

So there I walked into Walmart with 3 credit cards and a $10,500 credit line about an hour ago... I left the mega-store, with a $5.13 after shave - Adidas Dynamic. I think I might have finally learnt to put a cap on my spending sprees. LOL. Anyways, now that I'm back home with no energy to program/chat/goof-online, I'll prolly go out and water the plants. Oh, I can prolly take a few pics of the roses in our backyard! They've sprouted up real pretty.

It's Sunday afternoon, though it's hot outside, the AC's on in the house and my lil fan is spinning @ speed 3, all the house chores are done, had good lunch, and now I have three to four peaceful hours of being online :) These are the moments I know I'll remember... umm uh umm... I think tomorrow and day after and the next day till next Sunday when I'm all relaxed again like this :)

What a great time to write my 'blog! Well it's been kinda hard to come online, mainly because I am having so much fun here in Bombay ;) My cuzin bro Keval and sis Nikita are both fast asleep behind me right now and I gotta be extra careful not to type loudly. Hehe. Reminds me of my first few weeks in US when I used to share my cuzin Sagar's room. Oh and a 10^10^10^10^10^10 thanks to everyone who emailed me saying that they want to read more about the stuff that's happened since I left US.

So lemme start from the very beginning. My flight from Newark to Bombay via Amsterdam was pretty exhausting. Although it was not terrible, it was still pretty uncomfortable, mostly because of the total lack of leg-room. But the 4 hours that I got to spend @ the Amsterdam airport were quite cool. I met this Russian chic Kitana (weird name) and had the world's worst glass of Coke. Too bad she had to take a different flight :( The funny thing is, she thought I was a Latino and not an Indian. Hehe. Of course then I proved my Indianhood by talking in the famous Simpsons character Apu's typical Indian accent.

Flight to Bombay was pretty good, mostly because I slept through half of it. I had some red wine, and now I know why scientists say a little of it is good for your health. The reason is - IT GODDAMN BURNS YOUR WHOLE CIRCULATORY & RESPIRATORY SYSTEM! Of course, I loved every second of it, but still, it was pretty unexpected, cuz I thought wine would be nice and sober, not hot. After I landed in Bombay, it took me over one hour to get my luggage and during that time I noticed that the famous Indian actress Rekha had been on my flight too! Somehow she got her luggage within the first 5 minutes. Ahhh the joys of being a celebrity... As soon as I came out of the airport, I saw my cuzin Keval, Paresh uncle, Ruskin mama & Family, Khushboo, Niyati, Baboo and god knows how - my buddy Vishal! I was like... err... he does NOT fit into the picture since he's supposed to be in Calcutta. Turns out he came here on a business trip and decided to drop by exactly @ the time of my flight. Hehe. No wonder I'm a happy man - my family & friends love me.

Now on 28th, I went high-quality-expensive-traditional Indian clothes shopping all around the city but didn't like much. Then went to meet a few relatives @ night. The fun part of the day was sitting in the car with Nikita and see her drive... Trust me it's gotta be one of the most thrilling rides in the world, even more adrenaline pumping than those roller-coaster monsters in theme parks.

On 29th (almost today), I went shopping once again and met my uncle's sister (that is my dad's sister's husband's sister) who took me around to a few more good clothes stores. I picked a nice dress for cuzin Sneh and my aunt and two for Sagar. The measurements/stitching/etc. will be ready in 2-3 weeks. I'm thinking of getting something for myself too, but not very sure. Maybe I'll get something custom-tailored in Calcutta. Then later in the evening, I met Nikita's fiance Mehul and we went to a really good fast food place - Cream C**** (it's too late for me to remember that right now). Anyway the food was good and it was great hanging out w/ the future bro-in-law. The neatest part came afterwards when we four (Mehul, Niki, Keval, and me) went to this roof-top hang-out-type restaurant called Koyla (which means 'coal' in Hindi). We just sat there for over two hours and chatted random stuff, mostly me telling my corny jokes :) Hehe. But it was all fun and in the end, we decided that I needed to stay more in Bombay and that just one day that I got to spend with everyone, is not enough. Let's see... there'll be a big debate in Calcutta soon. Hehehehe...

After Koyla, Mehul left for his house, we came home, Niki started talking to Mehul non-stop on her cell, I introduced Keval to the raw genius of Office Space that I have on my hard disk, and I worked out for 45 mins and did my regular 1000 half-crunches :) By god I'm tired right now. After my exercise, I checked my email and started this 'blog.

I'm sure that this article about Muslims in India has a very strong message and is probably written after a lot of careful unbiased thinking, but somehow I just don't get it. Call me stupid, but it just doesn't make sense to me and I can't understand what the author is trying to say here. Why can't authors learn that when a person is trying to read a newspaper (online or offline) the language should be simple and clear? As I said before, I'm sure the author knows what she's saying; now if only I knew what she's saying too...

I got back the grades from both of my honors class. I did good in both - A :) Phew!

Isn't it funny that my exams just started here and my sister (she's in Calcutta right now)... her exams started too! Best of luck to her! I hope at least she studies... cuz well I'm just goofin' off all day online! Hahaha... God I'm gonna miss my cable modem...

I found this wonderful world map online. It's quite detailed too.

Online chat quotes by yours truly:

• "If God had an email address, I'd send him a great flash thank you e-greeting right about now..."
• "Ah email, the 4th essential food group."
• "But I read it on the Internet! So it must be true!"

So last night I was just too damn tired to explain nicely about my new site Education 411. Well for my research methodologies honors class final project, I had to make a resource that other people could use and benefit from. It doesn't have to be a website, could've just been a 10 page essay describing anything from how to open a new company to how to search a library for health related material. I decided to make a website (no surprises here huh? LOL) that guides a high-school student through the whole process of getting into a college here in US. The main reason was that my cuz Sneh is 15 and has just begun her college hunt. Basically my site should help her and all her friends find information online and offline more easily. Just fyi, I made the whole site in 10 hours flat non-stop! That's exhausting... trust me. Anyway, I have decided to keep that site up and running for as long as possible (doesn't cost me anything, except my time, which by the way is now $20/hr. Haha!) If you are a high school student planning to go to college then I would highly recommend you to check it out, not because it's my site, but because it is indeed helpful and informative. Well I've taken a LOT from the Internet. It's about time I contributed something.

I feel sooo calm right now - took a long nice cold shower :) Here's something that I found online, some of which is sooo true:

10 things that may take a life time to learn

1. You should never confuse your career with your life.
2. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
3. Never take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
4. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
5. There can be a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
6. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
7. No matter what happens in life, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
8. Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.
9. A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.
10. Your friends love you, no matter what.

Here's a sorry little chat excerpt from my online life:

Jacquelin: I'm past my bed-time.
Chime: I don't have bed time. I have eyes-close-and-open breaks.
Jacquelin: Typical computer g**k.

Oh my god! I'm soooo tired... I came home @ 10 pm from class, had dinner and finally got some time to come online. So it's finally spring break! Yay! That's 10 days of 'rest'. Now I prolly will be working even more, but atleast I won't have to study for the next 10 days! Phew...

Let's just say that March 07,2002 is probably one of the most beautiful days in my life. I know it for sure that 20 years from now when I'll be nostalgic 'bout my college life and look back, I'll remember days like today... It was such a perfect carefree beautiful day! The weather outside was soooo perfect... it was warm but not hot, it was breezy but not windy, and it was sunny but not parching. I went to work and I had no work! So I just chilled for a couple of hours, talked to my Dean and her secretary. Then out of the blue my really good friend Jessica came online and we talked for almost an hour. God it's been such a loooong time! I want to go to Newark and see her sometime... cuz she's soooo much fun. And then I literally walked for one and half hours from College Avenue campus to Cook campus! I mean I could have easily taken the college bus but it was just too beautiful outside! Felt like spring was here... I was just walking down the road when I met my buddy Ross's roommate Ian - he's one helluva cool guy! Then I walked a little ahead and met Andy! Whoa! This is one good day for socializing :) It's been almost a month since I met him and he said Kathleen was in her apartment so I could prolly go and visit her...

So I goto her apartment and her friend Megan was there too. We chilled out for some time and then Kath had to buy something so me and her go on a short drive. God she drives like a speed daemon; but it's fun :) When we came back @ her apartment, her roommates Astrid and Vicky were back too! Ah..... I hadn't met them in weeks too! They (Kath/Astrid/Vicky) are the three most wonderful and lovely girls in RU! Trust me...

Then in the Calculus class, we did pretty much nothing! Our TA just said that do whatever you want and didn't give us any assignment/homework! Yay! I mean HOW perfect could this day be?

Next me and my other friend Vicky (not Kath's roommate) goto the computer lab and I give her a 101 lecture on how to use this really weird math software called Maple cuz we have an assignment due in it. It was fun... because she's a Mac lover and I'm a strictly PC guy. For atleast the Maple Lab homework I converted her to PC! Haha... Aw come on Vicky... you know PCs rule! Hehehe... Oh well... I wish I didn't have a class after that cuz I really love hanging out with her too! We fight a lot though... but it's good nice fight...

Well then I goto my honors class and I see the most interesting movie I've seen in years I think: Being There - starring Peter Sellers. Trust me this movie will blow away your mind! It was such a simple yet beautiful movie...

After the movie I come home, have dinner and here I am! God this was one wonderful day! Seriously...

I have to admit, I haven't been updating this 'blog regularly and also not doing it whole-heartedly. The simple reason is time... rather the lack thereof. I have just toooo much studies to do. Everyday I wake up @ 7 am and goto bed at 2-4 am! I hardly sleep anymore! Don't ask me where the time goes... between the long commutes to campus and the 5 hours I have to be on campus before my classes start (cuz I don't have a ride), I end up wasting half of my day doing pretty much nothing. So I just study or goto the library or computer lab and read stuff online. Ahhh. I've got to get a car soon or else my studies will start going bad... Even a used car will do for the moment... Once I get back from India, I can go ahead and buy a nice new car, but there are two whole months of college left! I'm open for advice... (and donations! hehe)...

This has got to be the world's WEIRDEST marriage proposal. The owner of SlashDot proposed to his girlfriend Kathleen Fent online, in front of 250,000 people (more like computers)! Strange huh? Just to remind you, this is the same Slashdot that linked to my Glass2k software in November 2001 and cost me hundreds of dollars.

One really neat thing I found was the website of CESC Ltd, Kolkata. Anyone (from Kolkata obviously) can goto CESC Billing Site to view thier electric bill online and can actually pay it online too! Now I know that almost nobody will do this, but still the online bill query tool is pretty neat.

I'm on campus right now and my class is going on. In this class, I get to go online and do research etc. but since I'm already done w/ my assignment, I am free to surf the net! Yay! Anyways I had a long day today... will write the details when I get back home tonight... within 2 hours... ahhh...

Woooohoooo!!! God I am SOOOOOO lucky I should be in the Guinness Book of World Records!!! You know how I've been searching for a good weight/workout bench since last few days... well today I found it! This is the bench that I bought (hi-res pic for guess how much...? Well the original price is $129.99 and you can still buy it online for the same price... but I found that they had a display model which was a little scratched in one corner. So I bargained with them... and guess what? I got it for $25!!!!! That's the bestest deal I've ever made in my life! Hehehehe... It's lying right in my house... next to the main door... tonight when my uncle comes home we'll carry it downstairs (since our basement stairs are a bit tricky and I don't wanna chip off the paint by trying to carry it alone). So life's great! I got my bench at a MUCH MUCH lower price than I had imagined... oh and since I saved so much money, I bought extra weights that I was going to buy in March/April... The weights are a bit expensive $25 for 50 lbs... but it's the regular price so tis not like i'm being ripped off... ok time for web designing... ciao!

Quote for the middle of the night: "If AOL was a person, I think I would murder it..." - o0o0oHawlo0o0o (heard online...)

Sometimes people ask me if I miss my family. I say ya... a lot. Sometimes they can't understand how I can miss my family if I'm having so much fun and have such a great life here. I can write a 10000 word essay on why I miss my family... but I can say the same... by showing them this tiny little online convo that took place between me (Chirag) and my sister (Roshni):

Roshni: ya just like that hindi movie i know that mummy loves u more than me....hahaha
Chirag: hehehehehehehhehehehehehehe
Chirag: :: obviously ::
Roshni: yeah right
Roshni: i was just joking
Chirag: yeah right !!!!!!
Chirag: everyone loves me more than you !!!!!! except me.... i love u more than i love me.......
Roshni: ok now time for u to go to bed
Roshni: sleep
Roshni: how sweet
Chirag: lolololol
Roshni: i love you
Chirag: i love you too...

Right now I'm in the Douglas Library on campus. I forgot that my class starts at 2:50 pm on Thursdays and NOT at 1:10 pm! So I've got a lot of time to just chill out and do nothing :)

Anyways what a weird day (in a good way) this has been so far. I woke up in the morning thinking this will be yet another gloomy boring day but turns out things have turned out quite the opposite. I went to Walmart and I found this great workout bench at a much much lower price than I expected. The guy working there was pretty nice and showed me 10 different benches before I picked the one that would suit me. He ordered it for me and said I should be getting it within a week :) Yay!

Then I went to the First Union Bank near our store to open an account with them. I've been there many times and like the service they provide so I thought it'd be great if I can get things like online-banking, credit-card-payments-online, atm service, direct deposit etc., for a fee of like $10-$15 per month. Guess what? The girl there told me that since I am a college student... I can get ALL of the above... for... $0 !!! Yup! It's all free. There is no minimum balance, there are no monthly or yearly fees, there are no transaction fees, no charge for anything! I asked her specifically... umm... what exactly do you guys make for giving me all these free services? She said: Nothing. We just hope that when you start working, you will extend your account and get a full checking/savings account with us. I think that's only fair.

She instantly added me to the bank-database and I deposited $50 :) Now within 3-4 days I'll be getting my debit card (which I can use like a normal credit card) and so finally I can buy all the cool stuff online! Yay!!! There are sooooo many things I need to buy... Ah... The list is endless :) The cool thing is that this is a debit card and not a credit card. So I don't have to pay up stuff at the end of the month and blah blah paperwork stuff. If there's money in my bank account, I can use each and every cent to buy stuff online and if I don't, then the transaction won't take place. So I don't even have to worry about someone finding my card no. and using it to buy a $350,000 Aston Martin with it, since well... my account won't have $350,000 in it (atleast not in the immediate future... hehe).

Anyways after I got out of the bank feeling really great, I went to buy some computer parts (D-link Router, 256MB RAM etc.) since someone I know needs it. Guess what? The guy gave me 10% discount on everything! Whoa! This day is going great! Haha... Then I went back to our store, got on the bus and came to college, thinking I have a 1:10 class.. but turns out my class is at 2:50! Doh!

I'm still awake and working on a new site. Will put it online for demo soon. Anyways about 2-3 months ago I met a former professional body-builder online. He's a 65 year old guy - Logan Franklin, who runs this site: Gray Iron Fitness.com. I just got an email from him showing me this neat article on his site: Myth-Busting: Body-Fat vs. Six-Pack Abs. If you are working out, trying to lose weight, or just trying to stay healthy... then you most definitely should check it out...

Oh my god! This coolest dude thing has gone out of hand! I LOVE ALL YOU FELLOW FARKERS for voting me to the top!!! Seriously. Especially this devishly cute Farkette I met online: Vicious Darling! Now only if she lived in New Jersey! **evil grin**

Cutie for the day:	Comic for the day:

Ok so you prolly read about my bad grades yesterday. Now this makes me feel mad/sad/bad. But I don't become mean or angry to vent out my fury. I just do something to make myself feel a little good. Call me superfluous or shallow, but at a time like this... I just need something to make me feel good. So what did I do last night? Well I voted myself to the title of Calcutta's Coolest Dude!!!

Actually I've always wondered if I could make a software that can influence online-polls and voting-booths; turns out I can! Haha. I'm @ about 20% right now and it's going up! The average is about 0.0001%. Muhahahahahaha. I feel evil!

Oh my god!!!! I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS! It's IMPOSSIBLE! At 11:40 am I post that I want this USB Radio and at 2:15 my wish is granted! My friend Derek Prospero just purchased the item online for me!!!!!! And he is not even asking for cash! I mean... God! I love my friends.

Actually he's really happy @ me since one of my freeware programs helped him save a lot of money (since he did not have to spend anything on purchasing commercially available alternatives). What can I say! Life is GREAT! I'm just waiting for it now...

Good morning beautiful world! Things have been going pretty great lately. I woke up @ 8 and got ready prepared to go to work on campus but it's still closed :( On the brighter side, I get 5 more days of vacation!

Then I went to our store and did some work. But then I got to talk to my family! It's been a long time since I heard from them.

Anyways I think I heard someone I know on the radio today - Kath's roommate Vicky... I was listening to Z100 - New York (while driving to pickup some stuff for our store) and I heard them talk about some females-only club (the name of which I'm afraid to mention. Hehe). And I'm 99.99% sure that one of the guest callers was Vicky! Let's see. I'll ask her when she comes online. Hehe.

I was talking to my friend Vicky online and I just said these words, which I think are more true than anything I've said in weeks:

Quote for the night: "Life is great. I Swear. Someday in the future I'll look back on tonight and miss it." - Chirag Mehta

Today was a pretty relaxed day. My aunt cooked Vegetable Manchurian for the first time and boy was it good! She found the recipe online. I am soooo stuffed @ the moment...

Tomorrow will hopefully be another relaxing day. I need to get as much rest as possible before college starts again.

Kath's friend Astrid was online a while ago and she just told me that I HAVE to come to the Dec. 28th party on campus! Yey. Me glad. But this time, me no drinking. Yuck! I'll just stick to coke cuz it doesn't make me feel all weird the next day. Haha.

Oh my god! SUCH a big coincidence! On an Internet survey, conducted by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, this joke about Sherlock Holmes was awarded "The World's Funniest Joke" title! The coincidence lies in the fact that, about 3 years ago I started my own joke mailing list (some of you are still on it!) and sent this same joke to 50000 people in one night. Of course, it was a big spam attack and I got into a lot of trouble for it, but yes, this is the joke I personally think is the funniest also. Somehow this brings back sweet memories of the Chime Jokes-by-email (Joke Master) days. You prolly never heard of it but it remains a very special era to me. I met some of my best online friends during that time. I learned how to write my own smtp servers during that time. And that was when I started developing software and designing graphics in the name of Chime Softwares.

This is what happens when I goto bed like normal people at 12 midnight - I friggin' wake up @ 6:00 AM ! Now I can't sleep anymore. So I might as well start goofing around online or just pick up that darned Macroecon book and study! I dunno... I'm feeling really cranky right now. I thought I'd get some sleep if I slept early, but nooooo... Little Chirag's got insomnia :(

NEWS ALERT: Well if you've been in touch w/ my life (most likely through this blog) then you've probably heard me ogle about The Anonymous Calc Girl. Right ? Well, the name's Michele. Michele with a single 'L'. Yesterday we met again @ the bus stop after Calc2 class and we started chatting. She's pretty fun to talk to (but she'll admit I'm even more fun ! HAHA). Well after coming home, I went online and saw that she was on too. So we kinda like started chatting @ 4:30 pm and next thing I knew, it was 1:30 AM !!!! It's really surprising that I did not bore the hell out of the poor girl. Haha.

Well, she actually went through my whole 'blog and was quite happy to know that she was the anonymous calc girl! Haha. And now she wants me to say nice things about her. No way! I'm not gonna lie on my blog. Right? Oh well maybe a little. Ok, here'z a small little lie for you Michele:

"You're cute, nice, and sweet. Oh and did I mention - perfect?"

Happy? Haha

I might put Chime.Tv back online tomorrow. Not sure though. As long as ppl keep hittin me, I'm not gonna put it up.

Oh my God! I don't remember the last time I slept sooo late. I just woke up. Went to bed @ like 5:30 am. Well I'm in NYC right now @ Purvi's. Took me three hours to get here from New Jersey yesterday. I've go sooo many things to say but going online here on a vacation is a strict no-no!

Hey Kath and Steph! Guess what? Yesterday after you guys left me after Calc class, I met the 'Anonymous Calc Girl'. (Actually she's not anonymous anymore to me, but nobody else knows her name yet. LOL) Well we talked for quite a long time, and she hugged me Happy-Thanksgiving and I came back home. Woohoo! Things are going mmmm-good.

On train to NYC, I met an old friend (actually just a year old) and it was pretty neat to talk to him about the new things happening in his life and my life. I love chance-meetings with old friends.

After I came to NYC yesterday, we went to this restaurant called: America. I had a big 'Vinny's Veggie Burger' (and I think I'm still full because of it). Haha. And when I came back from there, guess what Peter (Purvi's friend) and I did? WE WENT GROCERY SHOPPING! It was the most difficult 45 minutes of my life. We had to buy like 10-12 items for tonight's Thanksgiving dinner and it took use THAT long just to find the items in the grocery store.

Now I have to go, shower, and cook food! Cya...

Done w/ my music essay. It is just sooo sucky that I feel ashamed to put it online. Sorry guys. You will not see a bad paper on this site.