I started running again recently. Today I ran (and partially walked) 5mi at our local park. Twenty years ago when I started training for marathons and ultras, all I needed was my youthful ambition and gumption. Now at 42, I bring multiple herniated discs, varicose veins, and some extra weight with me on each run. And if I want to go far, I need to plan and prep properly. I also need a lot more motivation and discipline. After a few short runs, I started buying new running gear - running shorts, shirts, compression socks, headband, headphones etc. I will likely buy new shoes and water bottle/pack soon. I am excited because all of this modern gear is so much better than what was available in early 2000s. The shirts don't chafe, the shorts have pockets with zippers, the headphones conduct the audio through my bones, keeping my ears open!

The best thing I did was sign up for Nike Run Club App. I setup my running goals in the app and have a weekly plan that works well for me. The first week, Nike's Coach Bennett guided me via the app at every stage of the daily runs. Every run has a purpose, whether to get far, get fast, or just get started, said Coach Bennett's voice in my head. With every guided run, he suggests topics for me to think about as I try to keep moving.

Today it was about being grateful. What am I grateful about as I run today? Who am I grateful for? Who brings a smile to my face and makes me laugh so hard it hurts? The moment he said "grateful", I immediately pictured Juliet in my mind. I am grateful she came into my life. I am grateful she is here with me. I am grateful she is still doing her best to take care of me and our kids. I am grateful she loves me.

Three years ago when she first got diagnosed, our whole life turned upside down. Leela was a newborn, Naveen was not adapting well to school life, and the pandemic shutdown all travel and large events. Not surprisingly, I never got back into long distance running by my 40th birthday. Instead I took her from one healthcare specialist to another. 2020-2022 were tough years.

I am grateful that things are better now in many ways. Both the kids have adjusted well to our life in Illinois. Juliet has made a number of local friends and spends a lot of time doing arts & crafts. Her medical conditions have not drastically improved but we have both learned what works best for her - temperature control, no long drives, lots of breaks, minimal stress. And best of all, we are surrounded by beautiful nature and kind people. I could not ask for more.

I am grateful that I can run again. A lot of pieces had to get fall into place for me to be able to run again. For now, the chaos has died down enough for me to take an hour of my day to go running. I still have a ton of chores, paperwork, and medical stuff to handle, on top of actual IT/programming work, but my head is not on fire 24/7 these days and that is wonderful.

Last year, our focus was on setting up the inside of our house. We spent most of the year under construction with dust and debris covering one room or other. We continued the construction earlier this year and finally had everything done by mid May, just over a month ago. Since then, our focus has been outdoors, especially since the weather has been nice here.

Both Juliet and I were pretty familiar with the natural flora of Florida but we have almost no knowledge of the vegetation here in the mid-west. Last month we were fortunate to have Mr. Ders Anderson, president of The Land Conservancy of McHenry County stop by and educate us on the plants we have around our house. He pointed out a number of invasive species that we should eradicate, lest they snuff out the native plants. He showed me the healthy sedges we have and suggested we should plant more. Sedges look like grass but they're not grass. Rushes also look like grass, but they are neither grass, nor sedges. Here's how to tell them apart:

Sedges have edges,
    Rushes are round,
Grasses have nodes
    from the top to the ground.

I am not deeply into gardening or growing my own vegetables but I respect others who are. For my taste, I just want native, non-invasive vegetation around me so that we can help local wildlife, including birds, bees, and all sorts of insects and worms. And above all, I don't want the invasive species take over the native ones. So we're learning as much as we can, so that hopefully over the years, we can become a refuge for countless migratory birds and butterflies as well as a shelter for fireflies, humming birds, and rare plants.

My cats Giga and Tera were born 18 years ago today. Happy Birthday Giga! I miss Tera so much and I know Giga does too because after her passing, he has been so much more affectionate with our Chihuahua Lady Bug. In cat years, Giga's a spry 126 years old, though he is jumping and running less these days. Lady Bug is probably 15-17 years old and more docile too. We adopted her in 2010 from someone who didn't know her age but despite a ton of health issues years ago, she has recovered well.

We left Florida last winter after rehoming most of our pets that we could not bring to Illinois - our goats, chickens, tortoises etc. It has been a lot less stress for me but like Juliet and the kids, I do miss walking into the yard to pet them. And now with only aging Giga and Lady Bug, when at one time we had 4 devious cats and 2 loud dogs on top of the rest of the petting zoo, things are a lot calmer, quieter, maybe even a bit morose.

You read about life in books. You watch movies and shows about characters living their lives. But you never step back and think of your own life as just another story in the encyclopedia of homo-sapiens. While everyone sees themselves as the main character in their own lives and some even talk and write about themselves in depth, we rarely see ourselves as simply another tiny human going about our short lives doing typical human things. But the more I think about our pets, especially the ones no longer with us, the more I realize how much I am fulfilling my role as a standard-issue human-being. I pet the cat, I feed the dog, I throw a ball towards my child, I move heavy things for my wife. I am human adult.

In a world where people are hustling for fame and fortune, struggling to make a name for themselves, and striving to achieve productivity goals, I am patting myself on my back having taken a single celebratory cat photo earlier today. Not because I can't be productive or am done with goals but rather because thinking about my pets connects me to the saga of humanity while inventorying my achievements and failures singles me out and makes me feel isolated, unique.

Thinking of myself as unique and special with the agency to determine my destiny is exhausting. Accepting that I am human #106,839,249,965 going about my silly little life is relaxing and frankly, cute in a metaphysical way. There's no checklist of activities humans need to do to qualify as valid human and getting 100% in some exam or making $X of money would definitely not be on that list. But if there was such a list, getting nuzzled by a fuzzy cat should be on it, along with burning your tongue because you bit into food that was still too hot and staying up way past your bedtime because you enjoy the present company. These are human things, these little incidents, events, and activities weave the narrative of our lives. Pets, friends, family, love, kids, breeze, rain, that little bit of dirt still left over no matter how many times you try to sweep it into the pan with the broom — these tell the tale of our lives.

We love to read stories, play stories, watch stories, hear stories, and make up stories. And every single story is about life. There are no stories of rivers just flowing, molecules just colliding, and numbers just incrementing. Stories are about life. And life, when viewed through the eyes of a master storyteller with a penchant for small wonders, becomes ever so fulfilling. The passage of time, the grief of losing loved ones, the ennui of navigating human institutions — these hurt, stress, and aggravate me on an individual level but they make me feel like I am checking all the items on the being-human to-do list when I take a step back and observe.

Today I took a step back to observe. Tomorrow I have a ton of meetings and chores. C’est la vie.

Many of my friends are aghast at the absolute lack of precautions millions of people are taking with respect to Coronavirus. At the same time, I know many people who are going about their lives with or without masks convinced that the pandemic fears are overblown. It is hard for people to reconcile with the actions of their polar opposites because everyone is judging everyone else based on their personal level of risk tolerance.

People who have health issues cannot comprehend how others can be so callous about hanging out in large groups. People in good health, especially those under 35-40, do not feel the need to put their life on hold for another 6-9 months, when they don't have much to lose if they get infected. If you think wearing mask is a binary choice - either you wear it properly or you don't, then it is impossible to tolerate people who do the opposite from you.

However, if you rate your adherence to wearing mask on a scale of 1 to 10, then you might find you are at a 7, not 10. Which means you are close to a 5 mask wearer than a 10. Add 1 point for each criteria below to see how strictly you stick to wearing masks properly. The list gets harder to adhere to with each criteria (think earthquake Richter scale):

Chirag's Mask Adherence Checklist:

1. I wear a mask whenever I leave my house
2. I make sure my mask is tightly sealed around my face, over my nose/mouth, and does not fog my glasses
3. I will not eat inside a restaurant
4. I will not enter a business if more than 5 people are in a 10'x10' area
5. I do not order drive-thru fast-food or eat outdoors at a restuarant
6. I wear a mask even if I am alone in my office or anyone comes to my house
7. I use masks with filters and change them as per guidelines
8. I sanitize my hands after adjusting or touching my mask every single time
9. I don't use cloth masks, only professional ones like N95
10. I double-mask using two different types of material (N95 + surgical, or surgical + cloth with filter)

The problem with wearing masks is that nobody is going to be 100% on each of these conditions at all times. If you absolutely do 100% of the above at all times, congrats on winning 2020. But I'm going to be honest here. I rate about 4-6 on this, depending on how my day is going. I could try to do more but realistically I just can't. Things are hard enough as it is. Juliet's probably 9-10 on this, Naveen 2-3, Leela 0. So we have four people in our house with four different mask adherence scores. And this is just mask, let alone all other things like washing hands, not touching your face, maintaining social distancing etc.

This year has been tough. We're all trying to do our best as per our personal level of risk tolerance and abilities. I am closer to Naveen's level of adherence of most days than Juliet's. Does that mean I don't care about my wife's health? Absolutely not. It simply means I am different from her and as long as I do the top 4-5 things on this list, my risk is greatly reduced. Juliet cannot afford to get infected so she does nearly all of this. I can absolutely understand why some of my friends who are a 6 on this scale get frustrated at people who are a 3. But by the same token, Juliet at 9 should go ballistic on me at 5 but in truth, the risks are not proportional to the effort necessary.

Wearing a mask properly whenever you are in public is good enough for most people. Double-masking N95 + surgical is probably only 1-5% better than wearing a properly fitted cloth mask with filter. But it is a lot more work to wear two masks. So sticking to the top few items is usually good enough. The real problem here is that everyone who is a 0 (i.e. completely avoids wearing a mask) thinks anyone who wears a mask is expected to do all of the 10 requirements. And most people who wear a mask think anyone a point or two below them is a total 0. People who are 0 could be more easily persuaded to get to 2 if they weren't expected to get to even 3. Similarly people who are at 6 could temporarily relax to 4-5 as needed, without seriously increasing their risk, e.g. going to see a doctor or dentist. Too many people are avoiding routine healthcare this year but in many cases that is much riskier, especially if they have issues like high sugar, high blood pressure etc.

There's not much I can say to the people who think they are 10 and everyone else is 0 or vice-versa. There is already a ton of political chicanery on this topic and emotions are running hot. However, I can say to the people between 1-9 that you are not as perfect or imperfect as you might assume and neither are people who are different from you. We all have a different set of life factors affecting our personal level of risk tolerance. If you're worried about getting the disease, raise your level temporarily and see if you can adjust. If you're having a complete breakdown due to isolation, temporarily lower your level a bit and see if it that improves how you feel. There is no "correct" level of adherence except what you decide for yourself.

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.

This will be a series of long blog entries because it is my attempt to put into words an idea that has been percolating in my head for more than a few years now. Ever since I figured out what newspapers were as a kid, I have attempted to soak up every bit of information I come across, in an attempt to build my grand unified theory of the human experience. Two decades ago I logged on to high-speed Internet for the first time, a whopping 64Kb/s fast track to the information superhighway, and got hooked. The Internet is amazing. But let's back up.

It took humanity one million years to learn how to control fire. It took another hundred thousand years for us to talk right. Then ten thousand years to grow food. Followed by a thousand years to figure out machines. Only took a hundred years to master human flight. Now we are ten years into the great experiment of connecting all of humanity via social networks. And we're barely a year into every tech company walking into our homes. My hypothesis is that we humans as a collective are not ready for this. As individuals we can fly space ships and prove conjectures but as a group, we are no more capable of accepting society-wide changes than our fire-phobic ancestors would have been a million years ago.

What led me to finally write my disjointed thoughts on this topic was a remark by Dr. Milewski in his first lecture on Category Theory. He posits that humans only know how to (1) break down complex problems into simpler problems and (2) solve simple problems. Every bridge every built, every CPU ever designed, every heart ever surgically replaced relied on our ability to break down complex problems into simpler problems and then solve these simple problems. But this is not the only possible way to solve problems. Some alien civilization could solve simple problems as a byproduct of solving multiple complex problems. They could solve complex problems directly without breaking them down into simpler problems. Or they could combine a bunch of simple and complex problems and have one large complex solution to them. But Dr. Milewski argues that we humans only know how to solve simple problems. You don't have to take this as gospel or even agree with it but this is the spark that got my brain-fire burning.

I've been programming professionally for well over two decades now. No matter how complicated the problem, coders like (and better than) me all over the world break it down into the smallest parts possible and then attack each unit independently. How do you get a computer to recognize your face? First level — break it down to image acquisition, image processing, and image recognition. Second level — break down each of these into sub-problems e.g. image recognition into detection, classification, and identification. Third level — image detection can be further divided into features like edge detection, corner detection, Hough transforms etc. Fourth level — edge detection can use first-order approaches like Canny and Sobel or second-order like differential or phase congruency. No matter what field of study we pick, from art and sociology to political science and medicine, beyond third or fourth level, things sound like gobbledygook to anyone outside of the field.

But Chirag, you say, the examples you gave just made things more complex at each level, not simpler! Alas, that's the problem with how our language evolved. The simpler terms are often assigned to the most complex things. Face detection is not simpler than phase congruency. Art is not simpler than avant-garde geometric abstraction. The more general a topic is, the more complex it is, because it is composed of a thousand nested sub-topics, like a tapestry made of textile, made of multi-colored threads, woven warp and weft with picks and piles. But unlike a beautiful piece of tapestry, which we can step back ten feet and marvel at in awe, there's no way for our brains to see the big picture of billions of cellphones feeding our deepest thoughts and emotions.

As a species, we have become quite adept at solving problems. Early on we realized that we had a problem with passing knowledge from one person to next. So we made up numbers and words. Then we realized we had a problem with passing knowledge from one generation to next. So we made up lore and epics, passed down orally. Then we realized we needed something permanent, so we started writing on stones, scribes, and parchment. A few thousand years of that and we realized that a room full of manuscripts isn't enough to pass down the ever increasing volume of information humanity was generating so we came up with fields of study, education system, libraries, and professional teachers. Your college may have just built a new student activity center with virtual reality games but at its core, education today is not much different from Taxila or Plato's Academy.

So great, we figured out a solid way to education the masses. What's the problem with that? There isn't. The way we break down the universe of knowledge into fields, and sub-fields, with different degrees each taking years, broken up into gradually advancing courses is fantastic! This is how we managed to cure diseases, build dams, and send rockets into space. Good job, humanity! The problem is that this only equips us to deal with the problems we had ten thousand years ago - health, economics, and politics. Any new problem we come across, we try to shoehorn it into one of our existing models of study. Sure, we come up with new fields like operations research and management science as we broaden our knowledge-base but all of these rely on the same education system we built thousands of years ago.

Again, what's the problem with that? The problem is that we are now left to solve collective problems using tools meant for individuals. The foundation of our economic, political, and health-care systems is that each individual human is independent in their decision-making and will make the rational choice for themselves. Money is a tool meant for individuals. Voting is a tool meant for individuals. Proper diet and exercise is a tool meant for individuals. It's not my business if you go broke shorting stocks, vote for a guy who wears a boot as a hat, or eat cheesecake for breakfast, you are a free human with the liberty to do as you damn well please. Better yet, we even have laws that protect me if your actions or in-actions have a negative side-effect on me. We have built our society to incentivize human independence in every imaginable way and speaking as an independent human, that's a beautiful thing.

But speaking as someone who has read the news at least once in the last few years, we have some issues. We have some major, unsolvable issues. I don't mean the staples of hunger, poverty, and war. We are actually tackling these at an unprecedented rate. And we're using the tools of individuals (education, money, technology, voting) to chip away at these problems. Go humans! I mean major issues that we barely recognize, let alone know how to solve. Take for instance tourism, or rather over-tourism. Policymakers around the world are trying to curb the ill-effects of over-tourism by restricting length of stays, limiting the number of people admitted to pristine sites, raising taxes, and creating new regulations to best manage the local tourism industry. At a glance, this doesn't seem any different than lawmakers trying to stop any other unwanted human activity like drugs, smoking, or loitering. Lawmakers gonna law-make! But let's flip things around and look at the demand for tourism instead.

Why are so many people going to Easter Island all of a sudden? It is certainly not the steady increase in world population. Analysts at Skift, a travel website, say it's because of bucket lists and perfect Instagram snaps. When Bucket List, the 2007 film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman first came out, nobody could have predicted that it would lead to over-tourism in the Easter Islands. Sure, things like this have happened in the past for hundreds of years e.g. Dutch Tulip mania, but this is different. It's different because of the scale and the speed. Every well-off person on Instagram from India to West Indies wants to take that perfect shot under the big Jesus statue in Rio or push up against the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A hundred years ago, relatively few people knew about these places. Now they are must-see globe-trotter destinations, shared and retweeted a million times daily.

What's the big deal, you ask. Policies will be made, locals will adjust, and a sustainable level of tourism will be achieved over time. That's how our civilized world works and it's been doing so for a few thousand years. My problem isn't with the specific act of tourism. Tourism is great. More people should travel the world etc. etc. My problem is that a small photo with a caption can change our mind. My problem is that anyone can make that photo. My problem is that the photo can spread through a vast majority of humanity in mere moments. More people have seen Psy's Gangnam Style video in a few years than the entire population of Earth in 1950!

We have built our entire society on individualism. We now have methods to influence an ever-increasing number of individuals on a global scale. We can change a hundred million minds with a single photo in an instant! And we are all addicted to this steady stream of novelty that we call the Internet. We're on it. Our parents are on it. Our kids are on a slightly different flavor of it because what we use isn't exactly cool. But we're all consuming wholesome memes, outrage-fueled news, corporate astroturfing, rage-inducing CCTV footage, political propaganda, and outright nonsense all day. And most of the time, we have no idea who came up with it and why.

Our brains are addicted to new and we will accept anything that's new. Refresh, close, re-open, refresh. Sort-by-latest. Top-in-last-hour. Show me most viewed. I want to feel the pulse of the world. I want to be connected to my community, my town, my state, my country, my world. It's 2018 and I must form an opinion on every breaking news story. So let me drink from the fire-hose already!

This is the Internet now. The Internet and us. All of us. Yes, even you who deleted your Facebook or don't post on Twitter. You are with us now. Just because you get your fix from a different source doesn't mean you are not one of us. This is us.

In Part 2, I hope to write more about "The Internet" part and how we got here.

Exactly ten years ago on this day I first laid my eyes on the woman who would become my wife. I wrote about that day long ago when I was but a young man. Today was the first time in years that I re-read that entry and it feels like I wrote it yesterday. So much has happened in the past decade since this beautiful woman walked into my life and all I can think of is how much more life Juliet and I still have to experience together. As we raise our son Naveen, we hope that someday he can have a couple of siblings to play with. We want to go to Galapagos to see the giant tortoises and see wild lemurs in Madagascar. We hope to have a real homestead someday where we'll raise a dozen dwarf goats with the help of our kids. And maybe one summer I will drive around the country with the whole family in a big RV.

Looking back, almost all of our wishes and dreams have already come true. She graduated at the top of her MS class, I became a work-from-home software consultant, we bought a nice house in a good neighborhood, climbed up a glacier in Alaska, found a great school for Naveen, and most of all, have supported each other through our toughest days. Now that I think about it, the only pending item on my wish-list is getting a high-pressure rain-shower in master bath. Pretty sure I'll check it off some time in the next ten years.

It was quite a coincidence that I even remembered today was the exact day. We were watching the new season of Stranger Things and during a scene shot in a cabin I turned to her to bring up our past trip to the Smoky Mountains. Maybe it was the lighting or how her hair just slightly covered her face but my mind suddenly flashed back to the very moment I first saw her a decade ago. If someone had told me that day that exactly ten years later I would be watching a scary show with her after we put our son to bed, I would have laughed at how ridiculous that sounded while secretly hoping for all of it to come true.

And then I saw her face. All of it had indeed come true.

What a busy weekend we had! Juliet and I are both halfway between introverted and extroverted. We love entertaining friends and family but we can only do that comfortably in small groups for a few hours at a time. We have been trying to plan a 50-60 people party at our house for three months now but have not made any progress yet. While we haven't been able to pick a date due to circumstances beyond our control (landscaping guys took too long, house projects got delayed because of damaged shipments etc.), I think even if everything was lined up perfectly, we would still be hesitant to get started because we're just not the big-party-for-no-reason kind of people.

In the meantime, we have been inviting all of our friends to come visit us any time they want. Coincidentally, a dozen folks visited us this weekend and it was awesome. It felt like Diwali back in India! My godson Jackson, his mom, and his cousin visited us Saturday morning so they could play with our home zoo. Then my buddy Brian came over for some serious table-tennis time, followed by Juliet's friend Karen and her three kids. Sunday morning my friend from Philadelphia Megan and her husband Chris dropped by to spend an idle day by the pool. In the evening, our friends Cary and Laura stopped by to bid us farewell before they move to Arizona this coming week.

Ten years and a week ago, I moved to Florida with the help of my buddy Arthur. For the past week, I have been trying to come up with something meaningful to write about the whole decade that passed by - words of wisdom, lessons learned, top 10 most embarrassing moments - anything to summarize the ten years of life I have built here. But now I realize that is pointless because it doesn't matter if I'm still driving the same car I bought in 2004 (I am!) or gained weight (15lbs/7kgs, mostly due to my awesome beard) or have lost friends or made new ones (who hasn't?). Life happens to all of us and while I made mistakes and learned or didn't learn from them, so did everyone else in their own respective lives. All I know is that ten years ago I was alone in the whole state of Florida and this weekend I couldn't find one minute of alone time to write this entry.

We went to my old college friend Michele's wedding this weekend and had a great time. I'll post the photos soon.

Right now, we're in the middle of a lot of house projects: reorganize garage, level backyard, setup goat area, fix up bathrooms, and lots of minor upgrades. As soon as the goat area is ready, I'll share the pics.

Life's pretty busy with a lot of different things lately. Other than coding projects that keep me up all night, I've been dealing with a lot of boring but important paperwork for insurance, health, travel, and financial planning. I calculated that we pay more for insurance than any other expense except for taxes. We have home hazard insurance, flood insurance, mortgage insurance, health insurance, term life insurance, accidental life insurance, disability insurance, professional liability insurance, and auto insurance. On top of that, we pay for cellphone insurance (which I've availed of twice already thanks to my recklessness), pet health plans, and travel insurance for every trip we take.

Speaking of travel, now that I'm a US Citizen, I have to apply for a visa to travel back home to India and the paperwork for that is surprisingly exhaustive. I'm hoping that my schedule will become a bit more relaxed over the next few months once I've dealt with all of these tasks. Until then, it's just one thing on top of another every day.

I don't remember a single instance in my academic life when I finished my homework well in advance of the due date. Yet surprisingly, I can't recall being late for any assignment unless I had a serious excuse. For as long as I can remember, I have always scheduled my homework to be completed just moments before it was due. Or in other words, I have always waited until the last possible moment to get started. You might think that this negative personality trait is sooner or later going to get me into serious trouble. I'm not cocky enough to deny that possibility but due to the reasons I list below, I highly doubt it.

While the disciplined students and obedient employees were working on their big projects months in advance, pacing themselves cautiously, providing adequate buffer zones in case of problems, I was learning how to improvise at the last minute, regardless of the subject matter at hand. While they were trying their very best, I was unknowingly learning how to ration the resources I had (time and energy) while delivering my desired quality of work. On the surface, this makes me look like someone who does just enough to get by but nothing could be further from the truth. Not only have I always aimed for the best results, I have forever challenged myself to be more ambitious. It is that innate desire to do more things juxtaposed with my inherent laziness to do no more things that has fine tuned my ability to "just wing it".

I am not writing all of this to show off my improvisational skills but rather to encourage the last minute heroes to continue procrastinating tasks as long as they do not miss the deadlines. I spent my school and college years participating in many different activities and programs simultaneously, waiting to do everything until just before the cutoff time. The amount of self-inflicted guilt I bore for not being more disciplined was demoralizing and unjust, especially since the results of my efforts were almost always top quality. I made myself feel bad for not following the path I was told was "right", even though I was surrounded by disciplined students who took weeks to write their essays and ended up receiving lower grades than the papers I wrote in the final two hours.

It was not until I joined the workforce over a decade ago that I realized that my lifetime of last minute heroics had prepared me to excel in the face of impossible deadlines. In school, you get four months to do your research, collaborate with your classmates, and design your presentation. In real life, you get pulled from an already-delayed project you're working on, to take over an urgent do-or-die assignment that you know is a bad idea in the first place. Given that situation, would you rather be the disciplined student who needs a four month plan to accomplish anything substantial or the champion of procrastination who has been living on the edge all their life?

I am taking a break from coding (because one of my meds is giving me very painful migraines) and instead of watching a funny movie or exciting TV show, I found myself transfixed on month-old recorded videos of the local "Code Enforcement Board" proceedings on St. Pete TV.

The mission of the Codes Compliance Assistance Department of St. Petersburg is to maintain the quality and extend the life of existing housing, to stabilize neighborhoods and to protect the public. As I understand, the Code Enforcement Board rules on violations of building codes and gives fines when the violations are not rectified in the allotted time.

Word for word, the above paragraph qualifies as the top candidate for the most boring thing I have ever written on my 'blog and I've written some seriously bland material on the housing-bubble and financial crisis. Yet here I sit, completely captivated by video of a board room with seven administrators, hearing one case of violation after another. For each case, a code enforcement officer takes the stand under oath and reads out a case number, name of the accused, and the violations. The violations are everything from shattered windows and broken fences to operating unlicensed restaurants in residential zones.

What impressed me was that everyone from the enforcement officers and board members right down to the accused homeowners were so rational, logical, and frank. Unlike the fake TV judges with over the top stories about domestic skirmishes, this is real life and even though no major crimes are committed, there is so much at stake for the homeowners and community. And unlike courtroom cases where there is a lot of he-said-she-said interpersonal conflict and drama, homeowners end up facing the Code Enforcement Board when for some reason or other, they fail to take care of property, paperwork, and procedures. In simpler terms, instead of resolving playground fights, this is the grownup version of why Johnny didn't do his homework.

In one instance, a homeowner did not take care of a fallen tree that was partially blocking the road. One of the neighbors filed a complaint with the city, and rightly so. The city did an investigation and sent a notice to the homeowner, giving him a month to fix it - a pretty fair action. The homeowner ends up in the board room because he did not take care of the tree after a month. Now we hear his side of the story. He said a large section of the tree was touching live electric cables. The electric company was scheduled to take care of that but they haven't. The board then unanimously gave him another 60 days to take care of the tree, more than enough time to resolve the issue with the electric company. While this sounds fairly routine, the homeowner sounded pretty frustrated because all of this was beyond his control. He didn't cause the tree to fall, he cannot clear it because it is touching electric cables, he had a hard time getting in touch with the electric company, and here he was, being dragged into board room on a regular work day.

Unlike the hundred "This can happen to you!!!" stories we hear about in the media, this is the one that can most likely happen to me. And it is hard to find someone to blame in this. The electric company probably has thousands of such cases to deal with after every thunderstorm, the neighbors don't want to hit the tree while driving, the homeowner isn't going to risk getting electrocuted cutting the tree himself. The city officers did the right thing in investigating it and the board did the right thing in extending the period. While I have no background information on the board members, each of them who asked a question or made a statement, did it politely, clearly, and without any prejudice. This is not some all-powerful "board" who's judging the poor citizenry. This is just regular people making rational decisions and hard choices for the good of the community.

However, sometimes you do feel bad for the accused. This guy (actual screenshot below) was being charged with operating an unlicensed barbeque grill in a commercial zone. Come on guys! Let the man cook in peace!

I've spent almost the entire year planning, designing, and repeatedly modifying the duck and tortoise area you see in the photo below. I worked with my wonderful neighbor Bevv (who did the initial design), my handyman Dan and my lawn expert Chris to build it all.

We have a large Sulcata tortoise (Lola) who lives with the two ducks (Peek & Poke). Here are the major structures:

Fence: The back portion is just a typical fence with a stained wooden 1" trim on the top, everything held up straight by 8ft 4x4s. The side and front edges are 4x4s piled on top of each other, with 6ft iron rods drilled straight down through them with concrete at the base. Then we piled up dirt on the outside and planted a variety of greens. Since the ducks kept jumping out and chased our small Chihuahuas around the whole yard, I added the wooden criss-crossed trellis around the front. A primary reason for making the fence solid is that it prevents the tortoise from trying to scale it.

Enclosure: They all sleep in together in the wood enclosure built by Dan (towards the bottom left of the picture). The enclosure is heated by infrared bulbs on thermostat set to turn on at 70F. The enclosure has a front-flap that can be raised up with a simple pulley and hooked on the side to keep it open during the day. At night I just lower it. There is also a back flap that you can open up like the trunk of a typical sedan and we use that to fill up water/food. Also very useful when I want to hose out everything. There is a small mesh on one side of the enclosure to make sure it doesn't get too hot in the summer. If it gets too cold, I can put a small blanket on it to keep the warmth in.

Pond: This was the most difficult thing to get right and I spent more time, money, and effort on it than anything else. Initially we had one of those pretty koi-style ponds with a big pump and filter as you can . I was prepared to deal with duck poop but I had no idea what the tortoise had in store for me. The tortoise ate grass all day and clogged the pump, filter, and pipes so bad we had to scrape the entire pond and rebuild. The pond you see now has a simple gravity drain. It is a large stagnant pond which gently slopes to the back. There is a 4" PVC pipe that drains everything out towards the back of the yard. There is a single heavy-duty valve that I can access without getting into the duck area which empties the pond within 30 seconds. I hose off any messes on the pond, close the valve, and refill. Takes about 10 minutes. The ducks and tortoises get fresh water and I barely have to do any work to keep it clean. I'm pretty sure I can use the drained material as fertilizer around the yard.

Plants/ground-cover: These I left up to Chris. We tried typical sod in the middle but the tortoise kept eating that instead of her food. Also the ducks made a mess everywhere. So we opted for pine-straws and lots of small shrubs. We planted Jasmine on the outside of the front fence and bunch of other flowering plants like Lily of the Nile. The planters will hopefully grow long enough to cover the back fence soon.

We got the ducks last Christmas and I have spent the entire year getting this area setup just right. The ducks are SO happy and the tortoise is very active too. While I may not have done much work with my own hands, I came up with all the little solutions for each tiny problem and trust me there were many. We wanted our critters to live as close to their natural habitats as possible and I think we got it pretty close.

I like to get nostalgic often, not because I miss good ol' days but because I want to refresh my memory. If you never look back to the past, the memories will slowly fade away. Every time I recollect something from the past, I strengthen my memory of it and can recall it again in the future with ease. The problem with refreshing memories of wonderful forgotten experiences is that they are already forgotten! How do you recall that which you don't remember you once experienced?

I've noticed that I start to remember long-forgotten events precisely when I am making new memorable events. Last week I went to a conference where the host used a handheld Tibetan Singing Bowl to beckon the audience and it reminded me of a trip to Darjeeling that I took with my family over fifteen years ago where I got to play these bowls myself. We even bought a bell that you could play by brushing the striker around the circumference instead of hitting the metal. A couple of months ago I was setting up our new bunny cage and I had an instant flashback to 1991, when I volunteered at my boarding school to clean the bunny cage, so I could avoid mandatory early morning lectures.

Obviously not all forgotten memories are wondrous stories of glorious times had. Sometimes as I'm falling asleep, my brain starts flashing Chirag's Top 100 Most Embarrassing Moments videos, from the time I broke my dad's friend's accounting software system to the time I told another kayaker that I've been paddling for years and promptly flipped over in the middle of the ocean. My brain (and sometimes my wife) does a phenomenal job at making sure I never forget these unflattering moments. That's why I actively try to remember the other times when I didn't make a complete fool of myself so that when I grow old, my past won't seem like a series of gaffes and uncomfortably silent moments.

Today I learned that Rabbits and Prairie Dogs are extremely territorial. Sit back and read the tale of how I found that out first-hand.

A little over a week ago, we got two adult Prairie Dogs. Having taken care of them for some time now, I know one of them is very friendly (named Willy) while the other one is very shy (named Nilly). Nilly can get a bit bitey if you try to play with her so Juliet and I are very careful around her. As I was making my afternoon arounds in the backyard, feeding and tending to our home zoo, I notice the friendlier one, Willy was on his feet, barking loudly and biting the cage wires. I walked up to his cage and he started rubbing his head under my fingers. I opened up his cage to pet him and he gently walked over my arm, moving towards my shoulder. Since I haven't played with him outside of his cage much, I thought now might be a good time to let him feel comfortable around me.

I locked him back in his cage, walked over to the big walk-in bunny cage, made sure Buttercup the bunny was sitting quietly in her little bunny hutch, out of the view, and brought Willy into the bunny cage. Willy suddenly got all excited at finding dirt under his feet and started sniffing around. I was starting to feel quite pleased with myself when suddenly, he stood up on his two feet like Prairie Dogs often do and started barking and yelping at me. I tried to pet him but he kept lunging at my hands. Now Buttercup, hearing all the commotion, got out and pounced towards Willy. Picture me, a grown-ass man on a Wednesday afternoon, trying to separate a rabbit from biting a Prairie Dog and vice-versa. Now I know why people sit in front of computers in cozy offices all day - no hissing animals trying to bite everything around them!

I kept separating them, then tried to calm Willy down, when all of a sudden he would bark, and Buttercup would rush out of her hutch again. This went on for about fifteen minutes, by which time I ran out of breath and my back started hurting from bending up and down constantly. I knew there was no way Willy was going to let me pick him up and put him back in his cage.

So I devised a plan. I would bring a little sleeping bed from his cage and put it in the bunny cage to make him feel at home. I carefully got Buttercup to go hide in her hutch, while I nudged Willy into the furthest corner away from Buttercup. Now that there was some distance between the two, I opened the bunny cage door, rushed to the Prairie Dog cage, got Willy's bed, and hurried back into the bunny cage before the two started something again. Fortunately, upon seeing his bed, Willy calmed down, but not enough to let me get near him. Now I had to find a way to pick him up along with the bed without being torn into shreds.

I know! Thick plastic gloves! Once again I put the bunny in her hutch, and moved Willy and his sleeping bed to the corner. Then I darted across the backyard at full speed, jumping over the cats relaxing by the pool, into the back porch, where I struggled to unclasp the bungee cord securing the doors of the cat food cabinet, inside which I keep a spare pair of thick plastic gloves. I pulled those out of the cabinet, ran straight across the yard yelling "NOOOOOO" at the top of my lungs to Buttercup, who was now inching cautiously towards Willy. Just a second before Buttercup was ready to leap, I swung the door open into the cage, effectively barricading her from Willy. Now began my yellow-gloved dance of calming Willy down.

I didn't wear the gloves fully, leaving a good two-to-three inches of finger-tips hanging empty so if Willy bit it, I wouldn't get hurt. Oddly enough, he did not mind being petted by the soft empty glove tips but anytime I tried to hold him in my grasp, he fought back. After about ten minutes, he got used to the glove enough that I could pet him. Then before he noticed, I quickly picked his bed up, four feet high above the ground - high enough that he wouldn't jump. So naturally, he tried to jump right into my face but having learned my lessons when handling sugar gliders and even small kittens in the past, I managed to maintain a safe distance between Willy and my face. With my other hand, I slowly opened the bunny cage, walked out, gently closed the bunny cage (without being able to lock it shut), and rushed over to the Prairie Dog cage, opened it up and let Willy in.

Within five seconds, he was rubbing his head against my hand, and kept doing that even after I took the gloves off. He was back to being the sweetest thing ever. Meanwhile, Giga the boy cat was readying himself to get into the cat-attack mode at Buttercup because she was trying to get out of the bunny cage. I immediately closed the Prairie Dog cage, ran towards Giga to chase him away, and locked the bunny cage. I walked back to the Prairie Dog cage, tightened the lock to make sure it was secure and then finally trudged my way into the back porch.

And there she was, my girl kitty Tera - sitting on the floor, hastily chomping down days worth of cat food, having pushed down the sealed container from the cabinet on to the ground, scattering food pellets all over the floor. Within seconds, Cookie and Giga joined her in the unexpected feast. I'm living Jungle Book meets Night at the Museum!

It has been almost a year since I took a long walk to determine the course for the rest of my life and I feel it's time for some retrospection. Last year, I decided to leave my promising job as the Director of IT at a fast-growing pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Florida so I could work on KType full-time. KType is my independent and self-funded research project to improve communication for people with speech & motor disabilities by creating low-cost, customizable software and hardware tools.

Giving up a rising career at a growing company was no easy decision for me and a part of me will always wonder what if I hadn't taken the road-less-traveled-by. When I started working on KType, Juliet was studying hard for her final semester at graduate school, we had tons of debt and barely any savings, and I had absolutely no idea if KType could even be built with the requirements I had in mind. A year later, Juliet is now a surgical PA having graduated at the top of her class, we have paid down our debt considerably and even saved a little, and I have a fully-functional KType prototype that I'm excited to have potential users try out very soon.

Though I am constantly making progress, I know I still have a long way to go. The primary goal of the KType project is to help others communicate and I feel disappointed in myself to say that despite a year's worth of R&D, I still haven't helped improve anyone's life yet. But that's going to change now. Over the next few weeks, I will reach out to local hospitals, special-needs schools, and nursing homes to find potential users for KType. Last year I resolved to make KType. This year I resolve to share KType.

To say that I am extremely nervous about all of this is an understatement. But if I can help even one person, I will consider KType to be a success. If you know someone who cannot speak nor type because of paralysis, injuries, ALS, cerebral palsy, muscle spasms, or other neurological causes, please feel free to contact me.

When I was a wee-little kid, I used to love TV shows, mostly cartoons and children shows. Movies were for grownups. And I never figured how some guy who died in one movie was alive in another. Then as I grew older, I came to love movies a lot more. Everything about movies was perfect. They have a definite start and end, a storyline with a definite plot, and tons of excitement packed into a few hours. As I started to go through some of the great films, I learnt how to recognize and appreciate good direction, screenplay, and editing. In contrast to these amazing movies, television was dull, slow-paced, and frankly unprofessional. TV shows were for old, boring people.

Now that I'm on my way to be one of those old, boring people, I'm finding myself falling in love with TV shows all over again and for very different reasons. TV shows characters stay with me for a long time. I can identify with the people, relate to them, and see them mature over time. Two-hour movies (except for series like Harry Potter) just can't capture years of character development. I don't watch reality shows and prefer to watch shows with adventurous and humorous themes.

When I was in my movies-are-better years, I used to make fun of my parents and grandparents because they loved watching melodramatic TV shows that went on for years and years. In the last few years, I've seen many TV shows completely and loved every moment of it. It actually makes me a bit worried when I think about the amount of time I've spent in front of the TV and that's why I decided to write this 'blog entry.

Off the top of my head and in no specific order, the shows I've watched every single episode of: Avatar: The Last Airbender, South Park, Futurama, Dexter, House, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, Doctor Who (New Series), Torchwood, X-Files, Mad Men, Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, The IT Crowd, Eureka, The Riches, Louie, The Office (US version), Seinfeld, Friends, Penn & Teller BS, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Big Bang Theory, Dilbert, Ally McBeal, Mad About You, and SATC. I've also watched almost all episodes of The Simpsons, Frasier, Family Guy, American Dad, Monk, This American Life, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Whose Line Is It Anyway, SpongeBob Squarepants, Two and a Half Men, Spin City, That 70's Show, The Wonder Years, and Doogie Howser. Lately, Juliet and I are watching 30 Rock together and I'm going through the first season of Merlin (she's not much into scifi/adventure shows).

It does sound like I watch an awful lot of television and I haven't even mentioned documentaries like Cosmos, Understanding, The Universe, Modern Marvels, Planet Earth, and Attenborough classics. Time and again I've considered watching less TV and reading more but somehow I just keep finding new shows that I end up loving. I don't feel guilty for watching TV because I know it helps relax my busy-bee of a mind and gives me a much needed break from programming. And since my programming productivity hasn't gone down and in fact has risen lately, I find no reason to stop my television watching activities. I've been mixing TV with programming and it has been working pretty well for me. I code for 4-5 hours in front of the TV, then get tired of coding and play with my cats and bunny while watching TV for a couple of hours. Then I get bored of TV while the pets get tired of me, so I turn off the TV and program for 5-6 hours in absolute silence.

For me, the end goal is sustainable productivity, while being healthy in mind and body. Also, keeping my wife, family, friends, and pets happy. So far so good! However, I've learnt to be careful whenever I start to like something too much, in this instance, TV. Hence I decided to pause Merlin for an hour and write this 'blog entry, just to get my thoughts out on the whole subject for me and you to decide. Now that I've written it up, I feel pretty good that I'm not going down the path of addiction, be it to TV, internet, programming, or pets. Of course, you may think otherwise so feel free to speak your mind and let me have it.

I have been working nearly full-time on KType for a couple of weeks now and things are finally starting to take shape. If you're unfamiliar, KType is my research project to build software/hardware tools for improving communication for people with disabilities. For the past 6-8 months, I've been talking about it to everyone I know and I'm glad that things are coming together now. I bought a Mac Mini two weeks ago, spent the past week learning how to program iPads, and finally created the initial design of the KType iPad app. Check out the screenshots. I am nowhere close to being done but I know I'm slowly getting there.

As part of my research project, I'm maintaining a wiki at ktype.net and updating it with anything useful that I come across. I have a basic reference page with links to news articles and products about assistive technologies. Over the next few months, I will be post detailed case notes as I work with my potential end-users. Now that things are moving at a good pace, I will post regular updates.

I know I've barely started working on KType but just getting to this point in my life where I can put a good 40-50 hours a week into such a project has been a challenge. People thought I was stupid when I told them that I was planning to quit my job so I could work full-time on a multi-year research project that will not get me a degree, money, or fame. And when I explained that I intended to drop out of a prestigious MBA program so I could work on this 8-10 hours a day out of my house, they thought I had gone insane. Of course, once I talked about the project goals, applications, and end-users, I got a lot of support from everyone.

The real difficulty about KType is everything that is NOT KType. Programming and computers are easy. Life is hard. Just because I'm working on KType doesn't mean I don't have to worry about family, pets, house, cars, mortgage, bills, and taxes anymore. In fact, my money-related nightmares have quadrupled since July. I have been using my cashflow application diligently to plan our spending and thankfully so far, things look good. Giving up my job meant giving up on a stable middle-class lifestyle in exchange for financial uncertainty. Once Juliet gets a job next year, I will worry less, though I doubt I'll ever stop.

Not knowing our future financial situation means not being able to plan the big changes in life, something that I love doing. We want to buy a bigger house so my parents can come stay with us whenever they want, for as long as they want. In the current housing market, I doubt I'll be able to sell my house easily so we might end up renting it out for a few years, which comes with its own set of responsibilities. Juliet and I want to start our own family and while I am ready for it personally, I don't know if and when we'll be able to afford her student loans, two houses, and a baby or two on top of everything else.

What I'm trying to say here is that life's going on as usual. I'm working on something I truly love while doing my best to take care of everything else. It's tough but worth it. I have a wonderful partner who understands my dreams and supports my decisions even if it means postponing someone of our plans. As my favorite Doctor says, allons-y!

I'm off on my desert/canyon vacation trip with my buddies! Next top, Houston, TX. I'm so excited. I'll miss Juliet and all of our critters.

Tomorrow is the big race and once the race starts, you can track my progress here. To say that I am overwhelmed would be an understatement. Yesterday Arthur and I hiked up to the top of Fred's Mountain and back down just to get an idea of how tough the race is. During the race, I have to hike up and down Fred's Mountain four times. It is extremely rocky and I almost slipped many times. I think doing it the first time will be ok but I have no idea how I'll do it at 1am after I have been running for 19 hours straight. This is no doubt the craziest thing I have ever signed up for voluntarily.

I met a lot of people in the last few days and everyone is extremely friendly and encouraging. Some of them are doing the 100-miler, while most are in the 50-mile and 26.2-mile marathons. Now that I have seen how utterly difficult the track is, I have no idea how far I can go within the 36 hours. All I know is that I am going to keep walking, running, jogging, and crawling till I either finish or get disqualified for being too slow. I trained as hard as I possibly could have and there is no way I could have prepared for such high elevations and rocky terrain in Florida. So now, all I can do is give this race the very best I can. My next 'blog post will be once the race is over. Wish me luck.

I'm in Alta, Wyoming at the Grand Targhee Resort (street view). I had a long day yesterday traveling from Florida to Wyoming but am fully relaxed now. I have three more days before the Grand Teton Ultramarathon begins. Hopefully, my body will acclimate to the high altitude and the thin air before the race. I'm eating lots of fruits, foods rich in iron, and drinking lots of orange juice. That should help boost my red-blood cell count and help me breathe better here.

There are very few people here right now and not much to do other than sit outside and admire the gorgeous vistas. I plan on taking lots of pictures but I don't think I can upload them till I get home next week. I would love to go for a long walk in the wilderness right now but I'm saving my energy and muscles for the really long walk this Saturday and Sunday. Once my race begins on Saturday 6am, you can track my progress here. I added this same link to the '100-mile race' button in the top-left of my 'blog, right under my name/logo.

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!

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.

I had my first real in-class exam today after a break of four and a half years from college. I think I did well for someone who barely had the time to sit down and study. I have been pressed for time lately and this very lack of time is gradually teaching me how to better manage my todos, stress, expectations, and goals in quite an unorthodox way. I know my thoughts below will initially seem to be going all over the place but just hang on a bit because I will eventually reach the focal point that I intend to discuss.

The problem with life is that for most people, it really is the same story day-in and day-out. Even if you have an exciting work or social life, the excitement has the same flavor on a day-to-day basis. Then one day something changes and it starts to get more stressful. You can't change your life around immediately to counteract the increased stress, so it builds up. Pretty soon you fall way behind on your todo list and your goals and hopes are nowhere in sight. A few years later you ask yourself how did I end up here and whatever happened to my dreams and all those plans.

At the same time, you see successful people in every walk of life around you. The gym instructor is in better shape than you'll ever be, your coworker knows more about Excel than you thought was possible, your sixty year old neighbor can run faster and further than you can, the mechanic knows more about your car than you ever will, your friend has read more books than you can imagine, and even the stupid guy who interrupts movies on cable TV seems to cook better than you can ever hope for. It is as if we are being told we suck at life by being encouraged to be good at everything and we are going crazy trying to deal with it all.

Then New Year's Day comes around and the go-getters among us make resolutions and promises. Time to join gyms, lose weight, start reading, help the community, sign up for a music class, and take a course in web designing. All of this is supposed to make us a better person and help us grow. And I am all for it too, regardless of when and how you start. Knowledge, skill, and art makes one a well-rounded person so go for it by all means. The problem isn't that these things don't help us in the long run. The problem is that they displace the honest, self-actuating goals we had on our list and have forgotten over time. What was once a list of unique, personal goals, goals that truly mattered to you, is now a list telling you to sign up for pilates, swing dancing, and pottery classes just like eighty million others.

The trick is to not buy into it. I don't want to run faster than anyone and I don't need to be an awesome cook. I will not be jealous of my well-read friend's library and I will not try to be the best Excel number-cruncher (though I'm pretty damn good at it already.) What I will be, is the best me. I no longer want to be the best at anything and everything. If that means I get a B in Accounting while making more time for my wife and pets because that's what matters more, that is how it shall be. If it means my website gets fewer hits because I'd rather be sitting outside staring at the moon instead of computer code, so be it.

Throughout our lives we have been taught that it is a great thing to be good at something and success is what we should strive for. Society puts a great deal of value on the champions in every field. You cannot fight these uncontrollable urges to be better at everything unless you are consciously aware of your true desires in a given field. From the bottom of my heart, I do not care about running a mile in under six minutes. I never have and never will. However, the moment I see someone dart past me at a park, an annoying little bulb lights up in my head and commands me to "wake up early every morning and start running again so you can be fast like this runner." So I wake up the next morning, run for a few days or weeks if I'm lucky, and then give up. Why? Not because I hate waking up early or despise running, but because running is not something I genuinely want to do at this point in my life.

The simple reason most of our resolutions fail is because we don't want to do them. And on top of that, we are told that we are utter failures if we don't stick to our resolutions and plans - plans that we never even wanted to make to begin with. So this is where we are right now. We make our own dreams but get sidetracked when we get stressed in our day-to-day life and see others succeeding at their own goals. So instead of working on our goals, we pick up their goals because self-help books and self-titled gurus said so. We try hard but fail after we realize we don't really like bending over backwards in yoga or rock-climbing. Then finally we ask ourselves what happened to our goals and why life seems so stressful and joyless despite our every effort at improving things.

I learnt all of this over time after trying to do too many things too fervently and failing miserably at almost all of them. I still hope to do a lot of things but only ones that I really, really want to do and without trying too hard to succeed in most of them. The handful of things that I am passionate about and dedicated to, will still get my full attention but the rest of the things on my todo list will get sort-of done, whenever, if ever. By not caring too much about everything, I am able to care a lot more about some specific things and that I feel is the key to reducing stress and reaching one's personal goals.

A lot of people have been asking me what this whole "economy in crisis" situation really is. How can banks in the world's most prosperous countries run out of money? Is it because the houses were overvalued? Is it because the people aren't saving? Or is it because of a variety of reasons like health-costs, unemployment, inflation, gas prices, or political instability? On the surface, it would seem prudent to say that it is a deadly combination of all of the above that's causing the financial crisis. We hear statistics being quoted on the news constantly that inflation rose, unemployment rose, new-home sales fell, auto-sales fell, and stock prices crashed. As I see it, these are the effects of the financial crisis not the causes. The causes are far too murky and boring in details for the average person to identify and enumerate. Luckily for you, I have all the time in the world and I love talking in metaphors instead of confusing finance terms when explaining something, so here it goes.

We have to remember that at every level of business and economy, different people are looking at different pieces of information. What you and I hear in the news is what the media has decided is the information most relevant to us. So unemployment, foreclosures, inflation, and most importantly gas prices are the things we hear as the cause of the crisis. This is the same information that the industry leaders, lobbyists, and politicians use to tell us why the bailout was necessary. However, this is not the information they are all personally looking at. Warren Buffet has sailed steady through enough business cycles to not flinch at above-average foreclosures or rising oil prices. What he sees and bases his decisions on, is an entirely different zoo of numbers.

One of the most seemingly benign creatures that is and will considerably affect the economy of the entire world is "Credit Default Swap" (CDS). Economists and some smart people (pdf) have been warning against CDS for a while but nobody seemed to care. After all, what is CDS and why would it ever affect anyone not involved in big-business? Here's how I explained CDS to a friend. The names and figures are merely for illustration and not accurate.

A few years ago, Lehman Brothers bought certified poop for $10,000 dollars and asked American International Group (AIG) to insure them for up to $10,000 in case the poop starts to stink. AIG took $100/year in insurance premium and said "Sure! Why not? This $100/year premium sounds wonderful." Thereafter the executives at Lehman and AIG proceeded to pay themselves $50 because man, this is an awesome deal! Now you have to remember that the folks at AIG were a smart bunch and didn't really want to ever pay $10,000 to Lehman or the ten others like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley that they had similar contracts with. So, they got Bank of America (BoA) to insure them for up to $100,000 for only $500/year in case they ever had to pay off anyone. Bank of America obviously said "Sure! Why not? This $500/year premium sounds wonderful. " Thereafter the executives at AIG and BoA proceeded to pay themselves $250 because man, this is an awesome deal! And just like AIG, BoA bundled up 10 of these $100,000 contracts and found themselves yet another insurer. Sometimes, they would even go back to AIG to get them to insure $1,000,000 for $1,000/year!

Now a few years later, Lehman's poop surprisingly starts to stink. So does the poop that Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley bought. AIG has to pay up now. So AIG goes to BoA for the money, which goes to Barclays which goes to a subsidiary of AIG and that's when AIG puts its hands up in the air and says "OMG! I have no money! Somebody help me!" Lehman and Merrill Lynch go belly up. All the companies start to freak out because everyone's certified poop starts to stink, they cannot resell the poop to anyone, and nobody can pay them for the stinky poop even though they had insurance in the form of CDS against it.

Now multiply all the above numbers by something like a billion and that's where we are at currently. The total amount of money currently outstanding in CDS is over $54 TRILLION. To give a slight perspective on that, the amount of money that the entire nation of US spends on buying everything from food to houses to electronics to airplanes to space telescopes to rebuilding Iraq is $13 trillion a year a.k.a. the US GDP. The entire world GDP is $54 trillion and the CDS is currently slightly more than that. And this CDS is outstanding against just a handful of financial companies around the world.

The top-level executives see this figure and realize that a pretty big chunk of $54 trillion worth of CDS would have to be paid if every piece of certified poop starts to stink. If that ever happens, every company even remotely involved in CDS will go belly up just like Lehman Brothers. So they get the daddy governments to fix this mess they have gotten themselves into. The bailout that Wall Street has now won is nothing more than a $2 can of air-freshener they hope will mask the stench for a little longer. While $850 billion is a huge number, it is still only 0.17% of the entire CDS. This means if even 1% of CDS has to be paid, the companies will bleed money. If you have 100 pieces of certified poop, guess what percent will eventually start to stink? The executives at all these companies know that answer and are justifiably worried.

Now I have to add a big disclaimer that not all companies were as mind-numbingly dimwitted as those that have already gone belly up or are on the verge of. Some were instead pretty smart and actually bought CDS against these companies so in case these companies went belly up, they actually got money! Then there were companies that bought CDS against dirty socks and used towels which may not stink as bad as poop but still aren't sweet-smelling roses from the fertile lands of Bulgaria. And obviously there were many companies that bought CDS against those sweet-smelling roses in the rare case that the smell went away. So in reality the $54 trillion CDS is a mix of the good, the bad, and the despicably smelly. While nobody really knows the exact breakdown of the good vs. bad CDS currently, it can be easily understood that the bad chunk must be large enough for the entire financial sector to lose sleep and shirts.

Failing CDSs are just one part of this financial train-wreck. The larger part is of course the certified poop, known in more respectable circles as Collateralized debt obligation (CDO) and Mortgage-backed security (MBS), often backing some arcane Structured investment vehicle (SIV). MBS is the part that involves housing market, mortgages, and foreclosures. CDO is what magnifies the problems of faulty MBS exponentially. And SIV is what banks did to enable them to continue lending beyond their legal limits. So when I said above that Lehman Brothers bought $10,000 of poop, what I really meant is that they bought share in a bundle of house mortgages for a lump-sum of $10,000 in the form of a CDO, a CDO of a CDO, or a SIV backed by a CDO of a CDO backed by MBS. Even to me all of this sounds like a bunch of random letters thrown in without making much sense.

When I bought my house in 2005, I borrowed about $150,000 from a local bank here in Florida. They checked my credit history and determined that I was financially responsible enough to pay my loan for the next 30 years. However, dealing with all my payments is a chore because sometimes I want to pay extra, sometimes I want to pay a little early, and sometimes I want them to give me a detail of why my insurance and taxes requirements were increased. The local bank really doesn't want to deal with me and tens of others like me so they bundled up my mortgage with those of others and called up Citibank. Citibank did not care much about the quality of the mortgages it was buying from my bank because the executives who arranged these deals got paid on the potential revenues from this deal without taking into consideration the risk involved. Now Citibank bought ten mortgages from my bank, ten from another, and ten from another. Soon enough, they had a hundred mortgages that they expected to make a lot of money from over the course of three to thirty years. Now being smart like all these financial wizards are, they decided to do something productive with this money. Enter the insidious SIV, the infamous MBS, and the inscrutable CDO.

Thanks to the few remaining decent banking regulations, Citibank cannot loan out a lot of money if it does not have enough deposits. When Citibank bought my mortgage, it basically loaned out money to me and since I don't have any deposit in Citibank, I reduced their ability to loan more people more money. So the Citibank wizards decided to create a separate company, say CitiSIV which bought all the mortgages from Citibank. CitiSIV being a brand new company had no money so it borrowed a ton of money from the open market at low interest rates to pay Citibank for the mortgages. The lenders in the open market gave money to CitiSIV because after all, it's Citibank and everybody knows they are AAA rated. CitiSIV borrows money at low market rates but collects higher interest from the home mortgage payments. So CitiSIV make money. Then Citibank charges CitiSIV for loan origination and transaction fees so the money ends up back with Citibank. Not surprisingly, all of this is perfectly legal.

Now Citibank has a lot of money and none of the loans on its files. This means it can loan out a lot of money now and start the SIV cycle all over again by creating CitiSIV2. And there is where certified poop comes in. Lehman Brothers gave $10,000 to CitiSIV so CitiSIV could buy mortgages from Citibank and pay interest to Lehman Brothers. These mortgages that CitiSIV bought are now certified poop because the homeowners can no longer pay the mortgage. Why can't they pay the mortgage? Because most people, unlike me, bought houses much bigger than what they could afford and at variable interest rates that have now sky-rocketed, making it impossible to justify home-ownership with respect to renting. So there are a lot more foreclosures now. The mortgages that CitiSIV holds are not going to be all paid back and are effectively worthless. Why did people buy homes they couldn't afford? Because the local mortgage banks let them and even preyed on them.

While I know a bit about complex financial transactions from my background in Economics, most people don't and shouldn't be expected to. School teachers, research scientists, and office workers may know everything about their own fields but not much about ARMs, LIBOR, or HELOC. Most people can be expected to be moderately smart about their finances but that doesn't mean they know everything. What these borrowers weren't informed three to five years ago is that adjustable rate mortgages (ARM) and interest-only mortgages are only for those who know exactly how to invest their money. Selling ARM to an office manager was like selling drag-racing car to a soccer mom - both can only end in disasters. This means, the local mortgage companies loaned money to people who couldn't afford it after a couple of years. Why? Because they made money on sales and not on long-term payments. Real-estate agents and mortgage brokers got hefty commissions every time a house was sold so why should they care if the person who bought the house couldn't afford it?

Here is the wonderful game of hot-potato that has resulted in the current crisis. The home-owner didn't risk much when they bought the house because they got to "own" a fancy house without any down payment and could now potentially borrow money against this house. The mortgage broker did not risk his money, the mortgage bank did. The bank did risk money but only for a short time because it bundled up a bunch of these mortgages and sold them to Citibank. Citibank didn't worry about the risk because it sold SIVs against the mortgages. The people who bought the SIVs, say Lehman Brothers, didn't worry about the risky SIVs because they had AIG write CDS against these risky purchases. AIG didn't have to worry because BoA has insured them against all of these risky CDSs. BoA has no worries because Barclays has them insured. Barclays has nothing to worry about because AIG has them covered. So in the end, we have more money involved than most minds can fathom, resting on transfer of risk from one entity to another, all of it relying on the promise of the music-teacher who makes $25,000 a year that starting 2009 when his mortgage readjusts, he can pay $2,000 in mortgage payments a month.

This is how screwed up things are. And apparently $850 billion can help make things better. The politicians claim that $850 billion will be used to buy the bad mortgages from companies like CitiSIV/Citibank, sit on them for a few years, and then once the financial crisis is over, sell them back to companies like Citibank for a profit to the taxpayers. You would have to be brain-dead to even for a second think that somehow the bad mortgages will become valuable in a few years once the crisis is over. The music-teacher is not going to make $115,000 in a few years and will not be able to afford $2,000 a month in mortgage anytime soon. The bad mortgages will remain bad and significant portions of them will not be bought back from the US Government at a cost to taxpayers.

The solution to all of this? Suck it up. Let bad companies go bankrupt. Let bad investors lose all their money. Let investment bankers, mortgage brokers, and insurance underwriters be fired. And unfortunately, let people lose the houses they cannot realistically afford. If the government wants to help, they should first help those in dire need.

There is no painless way to heal a gaping wound but to stitch it up and bear the pain once. The sad thing about good economic policy is that it takes a while to take lasting effects and it makes a lot of people miserable in the short-term. Bad economic policy tries to help a few people immediately while making everyone else miserable in the long-term. $850 billion is nothing compared to how much it will cost to try to "fix" this crisis by throwing money at it. A lot can be done to improve the situation by giving direct help to the homeowners and small business owners who actually need it. Not much will be done by giving money to the same exact banks that took foolish risks, lost money, and begged the government for handouts. The bailout will infuse the markets with additional cash, reduce the value of the dollar, and once again, encourage bad investments because no investment is risky if the government is willing to bail companies out with taxpayer money.

Just think about it. You pay taxes. The government is taking that money and giving it to the banks. Now the banks will lend you money to buy a car. You will pay interest on that money, a part of which is actually your own money that you paid in taxes. You will pay interest to use some of your own money! This isn't some exaggerated doomsday scenario. This is right now. The bailout bill has passed and next month when I want to go buy a car, I will pay interest to borrow some of my own money. Meanwhile, the CEOs of all these companies will continue to get stock options, unlimited perks, and golden parachutes. Who said life is fair?

I've been studying for four hours now. Juliet's working on her exam material behind me too. Yesterday we kayaked up and down the Ichetucknee Springs and later went to Gainesville to see Jessica, Andrew, and my godson Jackson. There's a lot going on in our lives right now, the details of which are irrelevant. What is interesting is how much of a change it is compared to just a few months ago.

I started this year with a very simple life. I had launched the new database system at work finally and had absolutely no major plans in my personal life. The tasks at my job were complex in nature, however, relatively stress-free. At home, it was just me and the kitties. I didn't have any other work or large projects to deal with. I could go kayaking every weekend and relax every evening. Fast-forward eight-months later and I find myself split between four different lives. I have a pretty busy life at home with Juliet and nine of our pets. Now I have a lot more responsibilities at my work as our company grows. Outside of work, Sched has taken a life of it's own and there's so much to be done for Chime.TV too. To top it all off, my masters program demands at least 35 hours a week including driving to and from Tampa, three classes, team projects, research, exams, and tons of reading material.

I pine for days when I can sit back and write whatever comes to my mind but I think those days will, for the next two years, be hard to come by. It's back to studying now.

I've been busy last few days with tons of paperwork and the overall reorganization of our finances. Combining my auto insurance policy with Juliet saved us over $600/year but adding her to my health insurance policy is going to cost much more than that. I signed up for a new credit card with 1% cashback and set it up to automatically pay most of my monthly bills like internet, phone, house utilities etc. She's busy finalizing the paperwork for her graduate school. I sent in the documents so I can get my student ID and parking permit. We still have to buy our textbooks and her loan certification is still in process.

The next three years are going to be quite tough for us as we're both attending graduate school. She is in the Master of Clinical Medical Science - Physician Assistant program at Barry University (St. Pete campus) and I'm going for an MBA in Technology & Innovation Management at University of Tampa. Hopefully both of us will be done with our studies by 2010 or at the latest 2011. We plan to stay put till then in the same house that I've lived in since 2005 and I hope to drive the same car for as long as it runs. She will need a new car sometime next year and we will get two more pets sometime this month. I have to build a storage rack for my kayaks so there's more space in our house. I love my job as I always have and hope to be here for as long as possible. She will be able to find a job nearly anywhere as a PA and that will be important when eventually I go for my PhD in 5-6-7 years.

Yeah, lots of plans. It's fun to make them. Nobody knows which of these plans we will be able to stick by but it's comforting to know we can make them. On top of all this, are my babies Sched and Chime, both of which still have tons of potential that I need to put my efforts into. Tonight I start building my kayak rack. Tomorrow, a bookcase for our school books. Day after, I get my glasses repaired (just some minor scratches), and then I get FiOS on Saturday. Even though, I have so many things to do, it seems considerably less work than before. I hardly have to worry about groceries, laundry, house chores, cooking, or writing thank-you cards anymore :) Having a good wifey is wonderful!

I don't know what it was but I started to feel a bit nostalgic tonight and put on some of my favorite Hindi music. Contrary to the cliched songs involving trees, mountains, and fancy clothes, most of the Indian music I cherish is sombre, soothing, and has beautiful lyrics. I couldn't listen to more than five songs without feeling extremely homesick so I decided to get on reddit and read a funny story or two. As luck would have it, the top story was "At a Loss" by columnist Dan Savage. Instead of his regular hilarious columns on relationships, this one had him say "My mother died on Monday." Forget getting a chuckle or two, I ended up with a stream of tears. And things only got worse when I foolishly clicked on a similar article mentioned by a fellow redditor: Dave Barry's column about his final good-bye with his father.

I could use a hug right about now.

Everything Taylor told me about SXSW has either proven to be exactly true or beyond my wildest expectations. He told me how initially you meet a lot of really neat people and parties get crazier each night. Then you start to lose physical energy, wake up later each day, stay up later each night, till the last day when you can't even get out of bed. He said how friendly everyone is and how carefree the atmosphere is. So far, it's been pretty damn awesome being here. Having people thank and congratulate us for Sched.org is icing on top of the already sweet cake. The music festival started today and although I didn't get the pass to attend official music events, there are still many unofficial shows I might go to. I'm going to watch a few more films and continue to meet more people, preferably while sober. Quite a few folks are following me on Twitter and I think I finally see the utility of the site. If you want to know what I'm doing during my stay here, sign up for Twitter and click 'follow' on my profile.

Having so much choice in what to do around here has had an interesting impact on the way I see things. Regular life is seeing and working with the same set of people day in, day out. So you get to learn who they are and can react based on how they have acted in the past. Here, I don't know anyone and nobody knows me (at least not on a personal level). The only person I know is me and the more people I meet, the more I hear this 'me' person talking about himself. I'm not on some mission to "find" my true self but my voice is clearly establishing an identity for itself.

I have often wondered where I fall on the introvert/extrovert divide. I can be social and meet 20 new people within an hour any given evening if I so desire. Or I can sit in the lounge (like I am right now), not talking to anyone and just minding my own business. I could be an extrovert and confidently call the girl I met last night without a single misspoken word or I can sit here hoping nervously that she calls me. I am beginning to feel that I am really a typical introvert who simply has a lot of experience faking extrovertedness. Who knows. All I know is that it's just wonderful being here and having the time of my life. And I have my buddy Taylor to thank for all this and more.

Wonderful Wired.com article about Sched.org. As of right now, we're the front-page story.

Yesterday, I met the guy who made one of my favorite pieces of coder-libraries, jQuery. Then the insanely cool Alexis from reddit bought us dinner. The entire group chilled at the Gawker party. Tay and I ended up on Wired.com frontpage. We also met Mark Zuckerberg at the Facebook party. I saw only one movie, Beautiful Losers, and it didn't disappoint. I don't know what I can do today to top all of that off. I'll try to watch some more movies and attend a few more panels. I'm so hungry.

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.

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.

Today I turn 27 years old. Last year when I hit 26, I "hit" 26. I was no longer a young kid and wasn't looking forward to growing old. Now, I turn 27 and I couldn't be more optimistic. What's not to love about growing older anyway? Here's my...

Top Ten Kickass Things about Growing Older

10. Wine keeps getting finer

9. Loans to repay keep getting smaller

8. Hairstyle keeps getting less critical

7. Music collection keeps getting larger

6. Embarrassments keep turning into good memories

5. Good memories keep getting fonder

4. Bad memories keep fading away

3. Being cool keeps becoming less important

2. Weight keeps becoming a useless number

1. Bonds of love and friendship keep getting stronger

I'm smiling that I'm 27 now. I can't wait till I'm 35.

Top this Tautogram: "The thirty-three Turkish tourists theorized that trekking to the Thai towns through the thick tropical timbers takes thrice the trouble that travelling there through the train takes, therefore they took the train to travel to their target."

I wrote that sentence, known as a Tautogram, almost ten years ago and came across it today while going through some of my old files. I edited it slightly and so there it is, finally, for the whole world to be awesomified by.

Now this is what I call a kickass weekend. Friday after work, I drove up to Atlanta, Georgia (8-hour drive). After only four hours of sleep at Heather's friend Winston's place, nine of us drove up to Nantahala in North Carolina to go whitewater kayaking. I borrowed Winston's sit-inside kayak as mine is a sit-on-top. It was a four hour paddle from the top to the base of the trail and most of the course was Class II with number of Class III rapids. It was one of the most adventurous things I've ever done as was evident from my yells of excitement most of the way down. At the very end, I lost complete control after jumping off the five foot fall and flipped my kayak upside-down. Good thing I was wearing a body-suit, life-vest, helmet, and grip shoes so within seconds I was out of the water, safe and sound. It took four people to get my water-filled kayak out of the water though. All in all, good times.

We drove through some beautiful scenery on the way back to Atlanta from Nantahala. We were very close to the Blue Ridge Parkway, regarded as one of the most scenic routes in the world. I want to go all across the Blue Ridge some day. Back in Atlanta, we had some good food and crashed at Heather's friend Jacob's house for the night. Finally after a much needed good night's sleep, I woke up, and left for home around noon. I wasn't too interested in driving down the busy Interstate-75 so as soon as I entered Florida, I took an exit for a smaller country highway and drove home through smaller, prettier roads. On the way I passed Ichetucknee Springs, Suwannee River, Homosassa Springs, Crystal River, and Weeki Wachee Springs. I definitely want to paddle down Ichetucknee and Suwannee sometime soon.

I got home around 9pm, uploaded some of the pics from this weekend here: Nantahala Whitewater Kayaking. Heather, Catherine, and John took more pics and I'll add them to this gallery as I get them.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about my low-consumption lifestyle i.e. I rarely buy something unless I actually need it (food, shelter) or it actually improves the quality of my life (kayak, night out with friends). I feel vindicated that New York Times just published an article titled "In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich." It begins with the story of a couple living in the fabled Silicon Valley (where we went/won) and have a net worth of $3.5m yet feel they are not well off enough. Their house is worth $1.3m but just because they are surrounded by people much wealthier than them (it's California after all), they feel poor. And people ask me why I don't move to the Valley.

Here's my favorite quote from the article: "I ask myself all the time," Ms. Baranski confessed, "why I do this." They go on to explain "that she must stick with it if they are to continue to live the life they enjoy here." On the surface, it's so easy to diagnose the problem here as greed, keeping up with the neighbors, or just mere pride and ostentation. But these are not stupid people we're talking about. These are self-made entrepreneurs, hard-working middle and upper management types with a Masters degree and contacts in every industry. These are the smart kids of 70's and early 80's who left their little homes in the country and moved to California for a bright future. Therein lies the problem.

They're no longer chasing their own dreams. They're just trudging along the path they're told leads to the American Dream. The desire to make it big and having the drive to do whatever it takes, is indeed the prerequisite for living the American Dream. I have nothing but praise for creative individuals who'll take a big risk to make something wonderful. However, there's a difference between "try try till you succeed" and eking a miserable living till some day you luckily hit it big.

To me, these once-promising people are just the more hard-working version of the lottery addicts who buy a $10 ticket every single day hoping to hit that $65m jackpot. I guess when I see things this way, I don't feel so bad for them. It's hard to. They're 20-50-100x wealthier than me and yet they whine and worry about whether $5m will be enough money for them to retire. It will be enough if they decide to move to Cape Coral, Florida and buy a $1m house right on the beach with their own dock. It won't be enough if they find out that their neighbor's house is worth $2m. And it will never be enough if they think that another $5m on top of their $5m is what will make them truly secure financially.

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.

After nearly six sleepless months, fourteen-hundred finger-crunching hours, and countless arguments (that always ended in mutual agreements) with Tay, earlier today I typed up the final few lines of code to bring our big awesome pet project to Version 0.99 RC (release candidate). We're hoping to launch sometime within the next few weeks, once all the little tweaks are made. The cake is baked, the icing already on, it's time for the little cherry on top.

Without disclosing the details of the project, it's hard to talk about it but I'll try. I don't think I can ever explain what today's milestone means. Everything I've thought of for months is finally done and ready for the world to see and use. I can't speak for Tay but I'm hoping for a gradual, steady adoption rate as opposed to going big in one day. I'd rather have slow, predictable growth than crash and burn within the first 6 hours of launch. Here's hoping!

I know nobody will believe me for saying this but we're not doing this for fortune and fame. We're doing this because it needs to be done and because nobody has even come close to doing it right. It won't be long before my words are proven right or wrong.

Now that my mind is clear, I finally did something today that I've been wanting to do for well, six months - clean my damn house! Took me about 3 hours but I have a pretty clean house now and am doing laundry as I write this.

I don't think people can understand HOW eager I am to stop programming every night and weekend and get back to entertaining you with my dirty laundry details, kayaking shoots, and photos of cats :)

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.

People make lists of favorite things all the time, from movies to music to travel destinations and cuisines. Bleh boring. Here's something more interesting.

My Top Ten Absolutely Unusual Favorite Things that You Didn't Know:

1. Favorite Conjecture: The Collatz Conjecture or more commonly known as the 3n+1 problem.
2. Favorite Portmanteau: The philosophical Grue.
3. Favorite Element: Ununquadium on the Island of Stability
4. Favorite Veridical Paradox: The Monty Hall problem
5. Favorite Fallacy: The Fallacy of Sunk Cost or Concorde Effect
6. Favorite Recursive Link: See link
7. Favorite Woodwind: The Japanese Shakuhachi
8. Favorite Anecdote: Taxi Cab # 1729
9. Favorite Precipitate (Meteorological): Virga
10. Favorite Vestigial structure: Goose bumps

While talking to a friend, the topic of games and intellect came up. She asked if I'd played Brain Age, an edutainment video game that boosts your IQ. I've never really been a gamer and unless it's a boardgame involving other people and lots of words, I'm generally not interested. I don't even know what games my cellphone comes with.

However the issue of boosting IQ is something I've previously given some thought to. Despite the numerous arguments by IQ elitists, IQ basically measures your ability to think fast. With a high IQ and good memory, you too can win a million dollars on one of those TV game shows. Problem is, that kind of intelligence isn't really benefitial to anyone other than you. People with high IQ's and decent social skills can get great jobs and impress everyone around them. But they don't prove conjectures or spend seven years solving theorems. Or researching cures. Or explaining causes of economic slumps and methods to minimize the severity.

As always, there are exceptions to every rule, but the kind of intelligence that really benefits humanity and the world as a whole, is something that just cannot be measured by correctly identifying the pattern of shapes that comes next in the series. Personally, when I last measured my own IQ upon a friend's nagging, I was surprised to see it was higher than I expected. However, that is something I just don't care about. So big deal that I knew whether two of the following numbers added up to 13 or not: 1, 6, 3, 5, 11. Not. Does my ability to think fast and add a few numbers off the top of my head really help me "understand" complex schemata that describe the inner workings of network protocols at the lowest level? No. For that, I have to spend hours reading, analyzing, and understanding.

I cannot claim that having a high IQ doesn't help me. It does. Personally. When it comes to understanding how to undo void transactions from past periods in a double-entry accounting system, it's great to be able to think quick and learn just enough to get the job done and done well. But it doesn't give me any tools to make a difference to one other person. I've yet to invent a programming language that changes the lives of millions. It's not that I seek some sort of fame and glory. It's just that IQ is not the tool to measure the positive impact a person can have on the society by the virtue of their brainpower.

If more people stopped worshipping the high IQ folks while doing everything under the sun to become "smarter" and instead realized that dedication and selflessness is what's truly needed to make this world a better place, the world indeed would be a better place.

Just over a year ago, I bought an inflatable kayak to learn the basics of kayaking. It took a while but now I've completely grown out of inflatable toys. So today I bought myself an Ocean Scrambler XT Angler sit-on-top kayak. Also bought a Yakima roof rack for my little Scion xA. Of course, as soon as I bought all this, I had to take it out on a spin. Since Lake Seminole has been closed since January (as I just found out), I went to Boca Ciega Millenium Park. I was in the water for ten minutes and the clouds started rumbling in the distance. I've never paddled back to the shore faster :)

My kayak is actually one of the best kayaks I've ever tried. It's amazingly stable and can go quite fast with relative ease. Only one problem so far: Slippery when wet - it's very tough to lift on top of my car after kayaking. I guess with practice I'll get used to its 51lb frame. Otherwise, it's a kickass kayak with a huge water-tight hatch, comfortable seat, and lots of storage space. And the guys at Canoe Country said I can pretty much bring it in forever in case there are any problems. These things last for a long long time.

Now I'm gonna find new places to take my kayak for a spin. Unless it's raining outside, I don't think I'll ever be bored at home again.

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.

A lot of people read my 'blog and I am thankful for that. Now it is a known fact that everyone that reads my 'blog is awesome but what isn't known is that there are some that read it with more than a few misconceptions on their mind. There's not much I can do to make people see the reality except, I guess, explicitly write it out as one last attempt. So let's get right ahead to it.

The Top 5 Myths about the Life of Chir.ag:

5. You're just too lucky: No, I am not. I've actually been pretty unlucky in the last year or so. Who else do you know that contracted Scarlet Fever, Whooping Cough, Pulmonary Pneumonia, Conjunctivitis (twice!), ruptured Condyloid ligaments, multiple radial socket damage, and Scabies in just one year?! Trust me, it sucks to be me. You just don't hear me whine about it much anymore.
4. You exaggerate (a lot): Coming from the other end of the spectrum are people that think I make up stuff or turn a mole into a supermole with frickin' laser beams on its frickin' head. Well, a lot of the stuff I can prove with pictures. Anything beyond that, you have a choice to believe my words or not. I don't lie though sometimes I do follow the Mahabharata tactic of "Narova Kunjarova" - hiding the truth. Sometimes I don't want people to know why/when/if I do things. I don't lie; I just never mention it. Call it selective canting but this being a very public 'blog, there are things I'd rather not write here. Give me a call if you think there's more to a story and want more details. I'll probably spend 3 hours whining to you, especially if you're paying for the phone call :)
3. You've changed/lost-your-mind/become-selfish etc.: One-sided criticisms. You read something on this 'blog and you decide Chirag is now a useless drunk. You read something else and decide Chirag no longer cares about the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever. You read something else I wrote and sigh that Chirag is never going back to college. What can I say to that? You've made up your mind to judge who I am based on the words I consciously choose to write on here. I am well aware of what I'm writing and how people can take it. If it's something I don't want people to read and judge, I won't write it. So the fact that you noticed I party a lot or work too much, is probably true but also just as apparent to myself. Big deal. I'm a human with desires, expectations, and imperfections just like everyone else, including you.
2. You're amazing/perfect/great/smart: Praise, most of it putting me up high on a pedastal as if I am some larger-than-life symbol of hope, adventure, and gravitas combined into one hot-looking package of 100% Indian-goodness. Of course, I love the priase and the kind words. But come on, I'm a human. I screw up things small and big. I win and lose. People are people. And I'm the most peoplest of all peoples. So don't expect me to be some sort of beacon of righteousness or emblem of goodwill. It won't take me too long to shatter your vision of this perfect moral boy next time I do bodyshots off a dead hooker (just kiddin!).
1. You're hiding the real you: This is by far the most troubling response I get and is especially worrisome when the person knows me in real life. As mentioned above, I sometimes hide stories/news about me that I don't want everyone to know. Plus do you REALLY want to read about the disgusting nightmare that is scabies? However, that doesn't mean I'm pretending to be someone else all the time. I know at least one person that thinks I'm actually a sad little puppy and am playing opposite-day everyday on this 'blog. Sometimes a Chirag's just a Chirag! While every person has their skeleton-in-the-closet issues, that doesn't mean they are being pretentious all the time. I am like this in person when you meet me (probably a little more dorky and hopefully much less serious). I am what I am. And I like it that way.

Wow... what a day. Woke up at 8:30 and went straight into my backyard. Cleaned up the plant beds and did some digging for about three hours. Also trimmed a few plants in the frontyard. I sat on my back porch for a short break and felt kinda unaccomplished. No matter what I do, this whole backyard project is so big, I barely see any progress. So I decided I need a mini-project that's gonna make me happy and proud.

So presenting... the Log Lounge Bench! I found a picture of this lounge chair and decided I wanted to make something like that without the back-rest. I had the perfect place for it too - under my tree. Took me two trips to the Home Depot, $50 of wood & screws, and four hours from start to finish to complete the project.

First I had to cut-to-size the two large, roundish logs that form the main body. I used the extra wood as legs. The flat planks that form the top also had to be cut from two 12-foot planks. Once I screwed the legs into the two logs, I knew this was gonna come out sweet. Of course it wasn't as easy as it sounds because I had to first drill 3 holes for each leg into the big logs, then widen each hole upto half the depth, then use another drill-bit to drill through the big log to the leg, and then finally push in the screw into the leg using another bit. I love automatic screw guns.

Once I firmly attached two flat planks to the far ends of the logs, it was pretty much cakewalk after that. I used countersink to make sure the screws don't pop out from the planks. After all the flat planks were screwed on the top, I turned the bench over and attached the side-tray for holding my drinks :) Took about 2.5 hours to get it all together.

Now since the wood had a lot of splinters, I wanted to smoothen it. Sandpapering the edges is easy and cheap but it's a very slow process, so I ended up getting me a nice electric sander in addition to the wood & screws. Other than that, I had pretty much all the tools. Took about 1.5 hours to smoothen out every little edge and surface. I ran my hand over pretty much the entire bench - inch-by-inch - to make sure that there are no sharp edges or splinters that'll hurt me or someone else tomorrow. It looks very smooth now.

Now 4 hours and $50 later, I have a kickass log lounge bench that can easily seat 3 people comfortably or one person VERY happily and proudly. Altogether, I spent about 10 hours outside today! I'm kinda tired from all the hard work and pretty hungry too. Also, looks like I might be going out with friends later tonight.

Tomorrow is my day of relaxation. And laundry.

So here's my list of Top 10 Movie Marathon Ideas with 4-6 movies each:

10. View Askew Rapid-fire: Clerks, Mall Rats, Chasing Amy, Dogma
9. Nerd Alert: Tron, Hackers, Pirates of Silicon Valley, Antitrust
8. Coen Classics: Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother - Where Art Thou
7. Uncomfortable Embarrassment: Rushmore, Napolean Dynamite, Garden State, Lost in Translation
6. Future's Farked: Gattaca, The Matrix, Brazil, Equilibrium, Twelve Monkeys, The Fifth Element
5. Antiestablishmentarianism = 'Screw The Man': Fight Club, American Beauty, Office Space, Falling Down
4. Tarantino Torture: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill I, Kill Bill II
3. Pacino's Rage: Godfather I, Godfather II, Scarface, Carlito's Way
2. Mind Jobs Mania: A Clockwork Orange, Memento, Cube, Donnie Darko, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich
1. Hair-raising Heists: The Italian Job, Ronin, Ocean's Eleven, The Usual Suspects, The Thomas Crown Affair

My friend Tay is FAMOUS! He won the top prize at MashupCamp in California and his mug is all over the Internet now! The president of Sun Microsystems (yeah, the guys who made JAVA!) awarded a kickass Niagra server to him! This is pretty damn big news, in fact, he's suddenly become the most famous person in Tech that I have ever had a drink with. And that makes him cool and me proud :)

After a heavy lunch yesterday, my dad decided to show us all the venues & guest houses. I'm pretty sure that he had already planned the tour 2 months earlier, as with everything else during this entire wedding event. The initial marriage ceremonies have just started; the marriage is on 22nd. Here is what we saw yesterday:

1. Rabindra Guest House: This one is a stone-throw's away from our house and all the elderly guests and close family will be staying here. In addition to our own apartment (Flat #204) and an additional vacant apartment (#107) in our own building, we have two floors in this guest house. All the meals are prepared by the Maharaj (Chef-on-hire) and served in Flat #107 at least four times a day.
2. Fanindra Guest House: This one has three times more rooms than Rabindra Guest House and our extended family and out-of-station friends will stay here. It is closer to the event venues than our house, which makes sense because most relatives & friends will just join us at the events than our house.
3. The Regency Terrace - 20th Jan, Evening: The 'Zara Hat Ke' (Something Different) programme will be conducted here. It's the 30th and the last quiz show that my sister has designed and will present as a Mehta. I'm sure she will continue to create and present more shows in her new married life too. With a capacity of about 250 guests, the venue is a beautiful garden constructed above the 5th floor of The Regency building, which real trees, grass, and even a waterfall fountain. You gotta have fountains! In all honesty, the only way I can do justice to the breath-taking beauty of this location and others, is by showing the pictures of our ceremonies when they are held there. That'll have to wait till I get the entire wedding-site up.
4. Rangoli Banquet Hall - 21st Jan, Morning: The Mehendi (Henna) ceremony will take place here. There's space for about 300 guests in this beautiful marble hall. The hall will be decorated Rajasthani-style with Chunris & Dupattas (silk-thin shawls worn by Indian females).
5. The Cloud 9 Nite Club at Astor - 21st Jan, Evening: We drove past this and didn't see it from the inside. My dad said it's a pretty decent nite club with the same DJ/music/dance-floor setup that everyone is familiar with. The Disco Nite guests will be served by full-time bartenders.
6. Maharaja Banquet Hall - 22nd Jan, all day: Here be the marriage. I've been told that instead of the traditional square-block design, the mandap (traditional marriage booth/stall) will have a curved top, kinda like a dome. The bride, groom, parents/siblings, and the priest will sit inside the mandap for the 3 hour long wedding ritual. Hopefully I will not be required to sit down with my legs folded yoga-style for the entire time. I think this hall seats about 500 people.
7. Moksh Banquet Halls - 23rd Jan, Evening: The reception venue with three connected halls, can hold about 700-800 at most. The theme for the decorations is floral design and ice-sculptures. We have arranged for a mocktail bar in an adjacent hall with the dinner being served in another hall. This is the last function of the wedding; the first one that my sister will attend as a Sheth.

Apparently I wake up early on Sept. 18s. Anyways, I'm up because I'm pretty sure I'm experiencing the side-effects of my antibiotics. The doctor put me on Augmentin XR SR 1000mg x 4 times a day for my nasty inner-ear infection. Yesterday was the first time I took the pills. Since late last night I have been very dizzy and my head is spinning like a top non-stop. More strange though, is that I have just been VERY VERY ANGRY. I'm irritable, aggressive, and just plain mad at every little thing.

If you know me in person, you'd realize that I'm in fact the opposite and never ever get angry. I've never EVER had any anger issues. I'm getting mad at small things like my kitties drinking water loudly. So I know something weird is definitely up.

The effects listed on page 11 of this document (PDF), say: "Central Nervous System: Agitation, anxiety, behaviorial changes, confusion, convulsions, dizzyness, headache, insomnia, and reversible hyperactivity have been reported rarely."

Well once again I'm rare :) I definitely have high-level of agitation, MAJOR dizziness, and oddly enough insomnia. I mean it's 9am on a Sunday! I never wake up before 2pm on weekends. And I went to bed at 4am. I've been up since 7:30am this morning!

So I guess I'm gonna talk to my doctor tomorrow and see if this is the best medicine to be on. I guess I'm well otherwise. I'm coughing less, so that's good.

I read about 10-12 blogs of different friends regularly and it just amazes me that people who are so much like me, have such different lives and lifestyle. Here are some random excerpts from my friends' blogs, just to show how different their lives are compared to mine. I hope none of my friends mind me putting these on here as they are all publicly available on their blogs anyway. Also, I'd love to read what friends/family of my friends write on their blogs, just to get a different perspective.

Kelly:

WRX with some nice mods. I HAD to go from a dig with him 0-120mph. He got owned. 5.0 mustang. Roll and Dig. Roll he was owned. On the dig I remembered how to drive the first time. Second time I forgot how to drive so he took the kill. LT1 TA with a few mods. We were a dead even match till top end. Then I wanted to walk... but he always cut out before giving me that change. We ran a few times just for fun. 1g DSM with a Super 16g was 3+ cars behind.

Taylor:

As a late college graduation gift, my mother and I will be traveling to a few great cities over the next 2 weeks. Here is my approximate schedule: ... I will be seeing most of the touristy stuff, catching a few concerts (the BBC Proms!!), and taking in some overpriced dining.

Liz:

I'm definitely on the search for an engagement ring--of course i'm not planning on getting married, but if i'm going to have to freakin lie every single day about my marital status, then i might as well rock the ice just for the fun of it I haven't decided if i really want to drop some big money for a nice one, or just buy a really cheap one off of ebay....okay, so the practical side of me is saying to go cheap, but that wont stop me from looking at Tiffany's website, hehehehehe. It's really bizarre, too, my infatuation with engagement rings. I kinda wish they didnt carry the meaning that they do, cuz i would really like a simple diamond ring for my birthday--hell, let's be honest, for ANY day, do i really need a holiday to justify it?

Vu:

Currently, the FIA has rules in place to actually give inferior tire performance, although aerodynamic considerations are much more flexible. Current tires have a mandatory high profile and have four channels cut into the tread to reduce grip and increase slip angles. Aerodynamics helps increase the mechanical grip otherwise possible with a static tire load. For the rules changes, the FIA hopes to increase mechanical tire performance while reducing aerodynamic effects.

Lisa:

There's shooting outside, and one of the new volunteers looks nervous, but we tell her it's "happy shooting". That means the gunfire from a wedding or a high school graduation party- celebratory. It's an ironic phrase, and we say it with a twist in our mouths, but it's the best way to explain. There's been more random shooting during the day in Nablus, since perhaps the past month. We don't really know what it's from, but this is a new volunteer, fresh and a bit impressionable, so we might as well say that it's happy. Let's be happy.

Megan:

pop (grandpa) passed away quite suddenly on wednesday. he was 85. he was one of my favorite people in the whole entire world. i just can't believe he's gone and i'll never see him again. every single memory i have of him is a fond one. when i was born, my parents lived in an old farmhouse - my grandparents on one side and my parents on the other. apparently i would wake up at around 2am every night. pop would get up and take me out of the crib and walk around with me and talk to me until i fell asleep. he was the only one who could get me to stop crying. he was my bud when i was growing up. we'd take long walks in the woods, he'd fix whatever i needed fixing, he'd come to my basketball games, he'd give me lots of hugs and "great to see ya, hun"'s. every holiday dinner, gram would ask me what vegetable i wanted, and i'd always say 'carrots', because i have an abnormal love of carrots. well, pop HATED carrots, and when dinnertime would come, i would tell him to pass his plate, and i'd load them up with carrots, and he'd laugh and put half of them back and then the rest of them on my plate. i'm making carrots for dinner tonight. i miss him so much already.

Tony:

Long veils are beautiful to photograph, but torture for the bride.

Lynn:

I have to be honest, if I were in LA, I would be looting too. I would steal food and shoes and clothing, dog food, water, and if I had a child, diapers and formula for my child. The fact that the governor of LA has enforced a "shoot to kill" policy is sickening. When someone is taking diapers or food, basic NECESSATIES, they should NOT be shot to death. This is ludicrous. And I must say something about the civilians who are shooting at the "help" - this is what happens when people panic. When people panic, it creates chaos. Who wants to be in such disastrous conditions? No one...

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.

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.

I was just listening to one standup comedian after another on this lazy Florida afternoon and I almost choked on my food. George Bush is listed under "Top Artist" on the "Comedy" section in Napster. Turns out, he is credited as the lead comedian in the comedy album BushSpeak: The Curious Wit & Wisdom of George W. Bush. I listened to the whole album and it was pretty much what the album claims and I had already expected - full of foot-in-mouth quotes by the W. If you have Napster or can find this album somewhere, check it out. Some prized quotes from the collection by Bush:

• "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
• "War Is A Dangerous Place."
• "I couldn't imagine someone like Osama Bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah..."
• More here...

This 'blog's slowly turning into a rant journal because all I want to do is keep complaining. Here's my top complaint for today - How the hell can you say you "LOOOOOOOOOOVE MUSIC" if the only thing you ever listen to is punk rock?! If you only like a few genres of music, then you don't love music, you just love a few types of music. The only people who have the right to say "I love music" are the ones who can appreciate music in it's different forms from Classical to Country, from Hip-Hop to World music.

Just like you cannot say "I love all humans" and only care about your own race, you cannot say "I love music" if you can't appreciate Mozart AND Black Eyed Peas. Sure, you cannot express the appreciation in the same tone and mode for different kinds of music, but if you really love music, you cannot outright discredit entire genres like Jazz or World music (which by itself is magnitudes richer than the handful of genres one would find in the Western music scene).

In essence, if you don't have at least one moderately favorite song/artist/album in each of the following then please stop saying you love music: Alternative, Classical, Country, Hip-Hop/R&B, Jazz, Oldies, Rock, and above all World Music, which includes every Indian song ever made on top of Arabic, Asian, African, Caribbean, and South American music.

Music is a world of it's own and you cannot "LOVE THE WORLD*" and put an asterisk (*) that disclaims "Applies only to Canada."

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 so much to say. First of all, my mother had a successful surgery to remove the metal-plate from her arm. She is healing well now. It was a year ago yesterday that Keval got into the accident in Goa. One year in coma... And what's amazing and heart-rendering is how much his parents are doing for him.

So on Thursday Jan 13th, my friends Arthur and Michele flew in from Jersey to Tampa. I waited at the airport, eating some good TGIFriday's when they landed. I got a call from Jessica that she was in O'Briens with her friend Terasita. So I took Arthur and Michele directly to the pub. Had a few drinks and then got back home to introduce them to my awesome kitties.

Woke up late next morning and went to Olive Garden for lunch. Next up, the Salvador Dali museum, followed by the Skyway Bridge. Had dinner at the Original Hooters later that night and went to bed early because we had to leave early for Disney the next morning.

Drove to Orlando the next morning and was at the doorsteps of Disneyworld's Magic Kingdom. After some ticket/reservation troubles, we went in. It was awesome! We took a lot of pictures and even one of me with Donald Duck :) Went on tons of rides and rollercoasters. Michele was chicken so she barely went on any fast rides. Arthur and I basically went on everything Magic Kingdom had to offer.

We got a decent 3 bed apartment for the night and didn't get to sleep much since we had to leave early for Epcot the next morning. Again at Epcot, we had some annoying ticket problems. Take my advice: DO NOT BOOK your Disney tickets through www.disney.com or their Walk Disney Travel Company. They SUCK monkey rumps!

So Epcot was a lot of fun too. We went on Test Track and Mission Space early on. Then spent some time at The Living Sea watching Dolphins poop and do stunts underwater. Next up, the World Showcase. Basically Disney has created 10+ countries themed sections that people can walk through to see what life is like in those countries. From Canada to Morocco they have a wide selection. I was kinda mad India is not there. But anyways, had a lot of fun touring that. Best of all was the Acrobats show in 'China' with 5-12 year old little kids jumping on top of each other and doing some amazing stunts. Loved every minute of it and glad that we didn't miss it.

After Epcot, we drove home and just sat in my living room, talking and watching stuff on TV. At 4am, I dropped them off at the Tampa airport. Work on Monday was a big blur to me since I was so exhausted. All in all, it was a great mini-vacation - my second in two weeks! And it was with two people I care so much about.

Anyways, I'm gonna head off to bed now. Long day ahead tomorrow. Lotsa cool things at work to do.

Top-most personal accomplishment ever: I ran 21 miles (34 kms) today in 4 hours 30 minutes and then walked/trudged/crawled for another 3 hours out in the sun. Basically I was out for 7.5hrs from 7:45am to 3:15pm! I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo sore right now that you won't believe. I don't know if I can walk tomorrow.

Jello (or Jelly in India) never tasted soooooooo good. God knows after how long I made jello. Probably 7-8 years. But the funniest part is, I don't have a fridge. I simply bought a $1 jello packet, poured it into a bowl of warm water and put the bowl (with a plate on top for cover) in a tiny little window in my bunker. Fast forward four hours and we have the most perfect jello ever! Temperature of normal freezers is about 5F and that of fridges is 35F. It's 2F outside right now. Of course the jello is well set :)

It's little things like these which make life fun. Well little things and 930GB of hard drives :-P

Today three really cute girls hit on me. Unfortunately, two of them with their snowboards on both my kneecaps and the third one with her skis on my neck. Ow ow so much pain. Exactly a year ago I went skiing for the first time ever. Today I went skiing to Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania with my buddy Art and his friend Shawn. Of course it was a lot of fun (except for the thirty-forty bruises I have all over my body). I didn't get hurt badly, but there's a lotta pain everywhere. I really should start working out and exercising more often now. Being out of shape is no fun.

Song for the day: "Mad World" - Soundtrack from movie Donnie Darko; surprise UK Top #1 hit.

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.

"It would take some kind of mad genius to get critics to give high praise to a film starring Adam Sandler. Fortunately for the world of film, Paul Thomas Anderson is that mad genius." So says one of the reviews for Punch Drunk Love. I like most Sandler films, and gladly liked this one too, though it's not a typical Sandler flick. The director, Paul Anderson, one of the Top 40 Directors, has made two other critically acclaimed films, Boogie Nights (that I saw last week) and the Tom Cruise hit, Magnolia. While his films are not the typical straight-forward Hollywood worth-the-price-of-ticket movies, his characters have depth and they make a seemingly simple story very moving. A few other movies I saw recently, that I don't think I mentioned yet are Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Tron. All good movies of course, and I know Monty Python deserves a lot more credit than I am giving it. But oh well, finals tomorrow. I gotta start studying now I think...

The world's new largest known prime number is 2^20,996,011-1, found by M. Shafer using GIMPS (but of course!). It's the 40th known Mersenne Prime; the top 10 are here.

The Top Ten Internet Fads. From WAP to B2B, from Thin Clients to Avatars/Digital Personae. Interstingly, I've seen almost each of these fads. Thankfully, never really got into any of these, except VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), cuz I still think it has a lot of potential if done right.

While searching for interesting links for Citizen Kane, I chanced upon this article (weird site) on how to break into Hollywood. It seems to be written by a set/location manager who's already in the movie business. One thing I like on his site is the list of top movies (on the right side) of all time. I've seen half of these and have a lot more to see. I'll make it through this tiny list in just a few more months. I'm sure :)

Quote for the night: "I don't think any word can explain a man's life" from the movie Citizen Kane.

Here's something that makes me smile: 40 Best Film Directors. It's no surprise to me that these are the same guys who made most of the movies I've been seeing lately: Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Gangs of New York), Coen Brothers (Fargo, Big Lebowski), Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill), and David Fincher (Fight Club) etc. The so-called bigshot directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are conspicuously missing from the list. Mainly because they aim to please the box office and not make the best films possible. Nothing wrong with that either. Just keeps them from giving their best to the world.

Thanks to this list, I have found another 100 good movies to watch now. Michael Moore is on the list, but I'm not too sure of that. He's only made one movie yet. It takes a while for someone to become Top-40 in the world. Gladly the Wachowski brothers of the Matrix trilogy made it. One of the youngest on the list is Samira Makhmalbaf, a 23 year old Iranian film maker.

Oh my God! Michael Jackson killed Kenny! You bastards! If I lived in South Park, I would probably look like the picture below. You can make yourself a South Park character too.

Digicam Pic: Chirag in South Park

Of course this site only let you choose from a small template, so it's highly unlikely you'll make Cartman Smith. That reminds me, saw Clerks tonight. Pretty funny movie about the real life in Jersey, sometimes so real, it wasn't funny. But looks like everyone likes it too. Very snappy with the dialogues and over 50 unique characters. Shot right here in Jersey almost a decade ago in black & white. While it's not a Rotten Tomato Top 100 movie, but it had a lot of good lines. I've actually heard a lot of these dialogues quoted elsewhere. Here's a funny one:

Quote for the day: "I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule."

I'm thinking of moving out of New Jersey for my graduate studies. Not because I don't like Jersey or anything, but just cuz I know there's tons of good places out there. I just checked the Top 10 Cities in US that young professionals move to. Phoenix, Arizona sounds good right about now. Let's see. I'm gonna spend upto $1000 in college applications next year. Whoever gives me full tuition and living expenses wins. Otherwise, I think Rutgers is good enough.

Sometimes things go so fast. I had my CS Graphics exam, told the professor that I wish to work as his research assistant next semester and that I'm applying for Grad school next year. Also signed up for GRE Computer Science subject test (Dec 13. is the test). At the moment, top schools on my list: Rutgers, Princeton, MIT, and NYU. I'll probably apply to a few more schools in NJ/NY and Boston area. Let's see. Ideally I would just like to keep my current job, get into grad school and pay for it myself, instead of becoming just another Teaching Assistant (TA). However, if I get to be a Research Assistant (RA) for some professor, that would rock, cuz then my tuition would be free and I'd get $1500 a month for living expenses (which is better than my current status - since I'm paying a hell lot for tuition).

But I live cheaply anyway, so I don't care about the money at the moment. I just want to get into a good grad school and see where it leads me. Damn can't believe it's Nov. 2003 already and I'm applying to grad schools. Huh. Oh well, got 2 projects due this week and one major one due on Monday. Gotta get back to that (and lotsa client work too!)

I joined this site & install their software called What Pulse that basically counts the number of keys I type. Every hour or so, it updates the stats page and tells everyone how I'm doing. So far, I'm already within the top 1000 people. But I don't think it is something that I'm gonna brag about at the club next week.

Yeah, I'm prolly going clubbin or somethin in a week or two. Haven't been out in a while... Let's see. Got CS OS exam tomorrow and have to do homework for Econ class. No rest for me. Worked on a lotta sites last night. Still have so many things to do...

Here are the Top 10 reasons for Space Exploration.

Just read Chapter 5 of Manna. Wow. While the author's writing style is not top-notch, the ideas are incredible. I love this kinda stuff.

If you live in US and control your expenses, you may want to read this article dispelling some of the top Credit Card myths.

August 15th is also now the Fair & Balanced Day. For one day, all the participating sites have changed the title of their 'blogs to Fair & Balanced, and if you see on the top of this window, so did I.

I'm still reading the Diamond story and must admit it's one heck of an adventure. The plot involves a US Vietnam General, genius Russian scientists, top diamond cartels from Belgium, corporate executives from De Beers, research scientists from Univ. of Florida. Add in a little blood and you have a Hollywood blockbuster!

Belgium... My friend Arpan is in Belgium right now. I talked to him just a few days ago. He's in the diamond business too. Still learning the tricks of the trade but he's honest and hard-working, so I'm sure eventually he'll hit the diamond mine :) Shout out to Arps! Hey buddy! Hope life's good in Antwerp.

Forgot to mention, one of my favorite progs ever - HotChime was selected as one of PC World's Top Ten Free Utils for 2003. If you are a poweruser with good keyboard skills, I HIGHLY recommend giving it a shot. It might be a little hard to learn but once you get adjusted to it, you'll wonder how you survived without it.

So I was talking to my new friend Gogi (we're gonna work on a project soon) about Desis and stuff, and landed on Desi Faces.com. Yeah. It's like the Hot Or Not for Indianz! Gogi said: "you know a site sucks when the top 10 women and the worst 10 women share the middle 5." Hehe. No more comments. Except, now I want to make a profile there too. Hehe.

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've been reading a LOT lately about 'blogs and 'bloggers and blah blah. There are 'blogs, 'blog search engines, 'blog competitions, top-blogs, celebrity 'blogs, 'blog stock market, academic 'bloggers, news 'blogs, comedy 'blogs, 'blog analysis sites... blah blah blah. The list goes on. 'Blogs are the new medium - a personalized medium. And tonight when I go home, I'm gonna analyze it myself and write a little article about 'blogging, what I think of it in it's present state and awaits for blogging in the future...

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.

HotOrnot Update: I just can't believe it! I'm 9.8 now! And I swear I'm not voting 10 for myself all the time. In fact HotOrNot (after all it was made by these guys from MIT) gives you negative ratings if you try to inflate your score by voting for yourself. Damn I just can't believe the score. Could it be that all the people are voting high because I'm sitting outside my aunt's expensive big-ass house? Girls love money you know. Well not all, but a lot of them. Hmm... Cuz well, I personally know I am NOT "hotter than 97% of the men" out there. Yes, I'm not ugly, but everyone knows I'm not the top 3%. In other words, if there's 100 random guys in a room and a girl is asked to make 3 choices, there's no way I'll be among the first three.

Ooooooo maybe the picture is nice and clear! Cuz my digicam takes really good pics you know. Maybe people got tired of fuzzy dull pictures and rated my pic high cuz it was crisp & clear. This pic was taken by my cuz Sagar :) Well whatever the reason for the high rating... I'm just glad no matter what! Beat THIS Kathleen! Hehe. Well she was a 9.4 last time we put her pic up. Hehe.

Happy Mother's Day!!! Too bad I gotta study all day for my finals :( On top of that I have an extremely bad headache. Urgh. Econ exam tomorrow. Saddest thing is my aunt, uncle, and cuzins are all going to Bombay Bistro (really good Indian restaurant 5 mins from where I live) and I have to sit here and study :(

Marcel reminded me of this one site that I really loved, but never mentioned it in here before - They Rule.net. The site begins with these words: "They sit on the boards of the largest companies in America / Many sit on Government committees / They make decisions that affect our lives / They rule." Ah the ruling elite - the campers of the Bohemian Grove (read more here and a short description here.) Basically the Bohemian Club is a conglomeration of the rulers of the world - from the politicians, to senators, to CEOs & presidents of major corporations, to the Presidents and Prime Ministers of various countries, including United States. Every year, unbeknownst to the common public, these members gather in secrecy for a two-week period in the Californian Redwoods and booze away the fate of the world, while urinating on trees, sleeping with prostitutes, and performing pagan rituals. Oh but of course, the club is Male-only. No females are allowed, except of course, the prostitutes.

Most of these people hold substantially powerful positions, as shown on They Rule.net To check out some really frightening statistics, goto They Rule.net, click on 'Load Map' and select "!7 most powerful!" map. The chart says that "These are the seven most connected people in the Fortune 100. Together the 6 men and 1 woman are on the boards of 26 companies!" Ya, scary isn't it? No? You don't really care cuz you think you won't be affected by it? Well it doesn't really matter which country you are from - the fate of the world is decided by them - these are the people who want the oil from Iraq and want to lay the Trans-Afghani oil pipeline. And suffice to say, they also control the price of coke, the per-minute cost of a cellphone call, and your electric bill. Still not worried? How about the price of wheat/rice/bread, determination of income/sales taxes, and control over the supply of fresh water resources throughout the world?

Well, such a realization (of being inherently powerless) frightens me sometimes. But then when I look two decades into the future, I see myself among them, making the same life-altering decisions for millions. If you know me well, you know that I intend to walk with the giants. Does that mean I seek the same inhuman/insensitive self-serving power? Nah. I'm always gonna be my grandma's "Chiku" and my mom's "someday-on-Discovery-Channel" son. I've been told that you can't reach the top without losing the child in you. Well I intend to prove "them" wrong :) Of course, this is all just one of the twenty life-choices I have. I might just as well settle down peacefully within 5 years, get a simple decent job, get married & have a child. One thing I do know - if you pick the destination before you pick the path, you'll have regrets for the rest of your life if you find yourself on a different path. Nobody picks their own path. I cannot choose whether I want to be a scientist or a businessman with full certainty, but once I am a scientist, I intend to be the best goddamned scientist there is. If I end up in the business sector, you'll read about me in the Wall Street Journal someday. And if I end up getting married within a decade, you won't read about me in Time, my talking-head will not be on CNN, and my portfolio will certainly not be worth millions - for I'll be spending all my extra hours with my family, just being the best husband & father there ever was.

So where do I see myself twenty years from today? I dunno exactly, but somewhere enviable :)

Shameless Capitalism rocks my world!!! Well I got my $1000+ tax refund yesterday and let's say only 80% of that is left now. I went shoppin' to Franklin Mills Mall with my buddy Art :) You wanna know what I bought? Practically the whole men's section! Hehe. Let's see (takes out the 5-6 bills), I bought a REALLY nice Van Heusen suede jacket, two expensive jeans & two t-shirts from Guess?, two khakis & three t-shirts from Old Navy, and to top it all, two Reservoir camp shirts & four pricey sweatshirts from Modells :) Had some baked-ziti @ Sbarro and got back here. So why did I spend all this money? Because I can! Actually, last night I calculated that I can afford a frivolous expense of upto $250 between now and May, and so I decided to spend 80% of it today. But sorry dear, I'm all outta extra money now. Can't buy anything for you. All out! Hehe...

Anyways, I'm off to the library in a few, to finish up on my reading. Gotta do it by tonight, otherwise I'm screwed.

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.

So anyways, haven't blogged in length. So tonight's the night. Today was pretty standard - some major network chaos @ work, usual asp/access programming, a good veggie sub sandwich for dinner and here I am working yet again on my Econometrics lab. Yes! The nightmare's back. I started my last lab on last Thursday night and it took non-stop work until this Tuesday midnight to complete it. And as soon as I submitted it yesterday morning, the teacher assigned another lab due this Wednesday! Each frickin lab takes 18-24 hours if you work non-stop! I am not even joking right now. On top of that I have big math quiz on Monday, Physics exam on Tuesday, two novels to read + paper to write by Wednesday for Literature class, and of course this Econ lab due on Wednesday. Of course I have 3 websites to work on! Arghhhhhhh! No more sleep for me :( I just want to get over with this Econ and Literature classes. Ahhhhhh someday... about 40-45 days from now... Can't wait...

Anyways, last night was pretty cool. Two things - first, all of us from our Trauma & Literature class went to hear the famed author Chang-rae Lee in the Rutgers Student Center read the first chapter of his next book. We're reading one of his most acclaimed novels, A Gesture Life in this class. He's a quite inspiring author and was just so young and normal looking, that it was hard to imagine that he wrote such marvellous books. That's the best thing about artists - they don't always have to 'look' like artists. So I still have to finish the book and then I have to start reading A Thousand Acres. Or I could just see the movie to save time ;)

I left mid-way though and went to the Economics Honors seminar cuz it was sadly @ the exact same time as the book reading. I did get the gist of the program though - I have to pick a topic in Economics, find a professor who would be willing to be my advisor, register for the honors program, and then go ahead and start with the real research. I came back home last night @ past 11pm! Was a looooong day - 10am - 11pm :(

I'm still tired right now. Haven't got enuf sleep either. Unless I get enuf rest soon, I'm gonna collapse :( Oh well, I don't have time to sleep right now - gotta do the Econ lab... oh well...

Presenting... the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time :)

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.

The coolest thing just happened. I was just channel surfing and by mistake I landed on VH1 and they had a program called 'Hard Body', where they were showing celebrity skin care locations, like top New York Salons and best California tanning salons. And guess what? I JUST SAW MY NEXT CLIENT ON TV! Last week we discussed on phone how I will design a new site for his tanning salon. And just now I saw him on TV! That's soooo cool! I just called him up to confirm it, and he said it was him :) Pretty sweet huh?

Oh and guess who often goes to his tanning salon? Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera to say the least! Pretty much every Hollywood celebrity goes there. I think I'll like working on his site. Next week or so I'll begin. Let's see how it goes...

My cuzin Priya asked me to make a list of the 10 most beautiful female celebreties in the world. Of course, the list keeps changing, but here's the ten I could think of, off the top of my head, in no particular order:

• Meg Ryan
• Laetita Casta
• Julianne Moore
• Renée Zellweger
• Shania Twain
• Nicole Kidman
• Amanda Peat
• Vanessa Mae
• Vanessa Williams
• Shannon Elizabeth

I think the list's pretty decent :) While some guys prolly won't like Julianne Moore (too old according to some pre-teens) or Renée Zellweger (kinda chubby according to some anorexics), most normal people would kill to get close to any of these hotties. Try to prove me wrong!

Ok I found myself a little ambition to achieve: Read each of these Top 50 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books (Ok maybe not Harry Potter, but at least every other book. Let's see how long it takes... 5 years? 10 years? Who knows...

Song for the day: "Chop Suey!" - System Of A Down

Just saw the Grammys on CBS. Norah Jones - step-daughter of Pt. Ravi Shankar, won EVERY top Grammy - Record Of The Year, Album Of The Year, Song of the Year, Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal, Best Pop Vocal! Wow! Solid proof that musical talent is genetic :)

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.

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.

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.

Anyways, today was the last day of college! Yay! Now I have exams on 9, 12, and 14 May. Then I am a free bird :) Tonight, tomorrow, and day after I study for Linear Algebra... then it's Calculus and then Computer. Oh Calculus... reminds me... today was prolly the last class I'll ever have with Kathleen, Vicky, and Jim. And most prolly Steve too. Jim and Vicky were with me for 2 terms and Kath had been for three! In fact she's the first person I met after transferring to Rutgers New Brunswick in Jan 2001. I've already missed Ross and Steph a hell lot throughout this term. And on top of it I'm now gonna miss all the bad Calculus jokes I made and all the fake laughter from my 'friends'. Haha... Ah... it's the end of an era... Next term I have 5 interesting classes... I'll meet more new people... but first... We all gotta get through the damned final exams!

Of course summer's going to be heaven! I think I've begun to hallucinate a lot lately. I keep thinking I am already @ home in Calcutta! Hehehe... This morning I woke up dreaming that I was in my room back home... then realized I was here in US... oh well, I love being in both places! Hehehe... I know one thing for sure, as soon as I reach India, I'll miss New Jersey. I've begun to love this place...

Forgot to mention, yesterday I went to see Ice Age @ Regal Cinemas with my cuzins! The movie was soooo funny that I was like laughing at the top of my voice the whole time. And we had a BIG bowl of popcorn and coke :) I love Coke!

Then I went to Voorhees Chapel to see Kath sing in the Voorhees choir. Have to admit it... she looked sooooo sweet in the formal choir black dress. And there were 100 other girls too! Woohoo. Hehe. Plus it was neat meeting her dad. He's one big guy and looks like one of those rich hi-society corporate Business-class-only ppl! Hehe.

Quote of the day: "When you find a mate, you should be faithful, and in your case, grateful." - Manny the Mammoth to Sid the Sloth in Ice Age.

Here's some pics from yesterday taken by my new Fuji FinePix 2600z (Arstechnica review). This baby cost me $279.99 + tax. But then I also got 64mb Smart Media card on top of it and bought a 3-year warranty for $50! God I'm spending waaaay too much money. But it's worth it. And of course, I bought TWO of these, not just one. One for myself and one for my sister :) But she doesn't get the warranty cuz you know, it's kinda hard to send a camera back to US for repairs from India. LOL. Anyways, the original pics were in much higher res, but I scaled them down for my photo gallery.

Here are the Top Ten April Fool's Hoaxes ever...

Wanna see something spiffy? Goto Google.com and search for 'softwares' (NOT 'software', but plural 'softwares'). You'll be surprised to see what is there on the top third position. Click here to see what I'm talking about.

Ahhhhh. Back home finally. God I'm soooo tired. I left our house @ 8:30 am and came back home @ 9:30 pm!!! That's 13 hours of college! And this is exactly how my Wednesdays and Thursdays will be like. Ahhhhh. What fun it is! I am soooo tired and I have soooo many things to do.

My work project on campus is going pretty good. The system is up and running and surprisingly crash-proof so far. I couldn't get into the economics class today and I really doubt that I will be able to.

The interesting news for the day is that today I discovered that I'm a victim of mathematicization: I have THREE higher-level math classes almost everyday right one after another! I took this Computer class called 'Discrete Structures' and two math classes 'Calculus 3 - Multivariable Calc' and 'Linear Algebra'. Turns out, Discrete Structures is also a math class although regarded as computer. Damn!!!!! I have 3 math classes and 2 honors classes! What a messed up schedule! No interesting classes, no fun, no nothing :( On top of that, each math class has weekly quizzes + tests + homework + 3-4 exams. Urghhhhhhhh. If I don't respond to your emails, stop writing this 'blog or disappear completely off the face of this Earth without trace, then you know what to blame!

Anyways, I should start doing all the homework I got and I still have a couple of projects to complete by this weekend. Ahhhhhhhhhh. 4 hours of sleep... Not enuf not enuf...

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:

And you know what's even better than hacking my way to the top of the Calcutta's Coolest Dude list? Having the Fellowship of my Fellow Farkers :) Yup! I got one more link posted on Fark! Today is a beautiful day.

After many days / weeks, I actually did some decent work around the house. My uncle and I just assembled 4 oak (or was it teak?) high-seat chairs for our kitchen table. Took us more than an hour! But atleast the new 9.6v power-drill was helpful :)

After that we insulated the hot water pipes that come out from our basement and go to the top floor bathrooms. And after that we fixed up the broken hinges and stuff in the air vents/tubes. Phew. All done now.

I had 2 slices of pizza, some REALLY sour orange juice, and then came up here. Life is beautiful. :)

I think I just downloaded about every song on The Billboard Top 100 chart. God! Sometimes I have just too much time on my hands. Actually I'm looking for this one song and I dunno whom to ask. So I'm just listening to every song that I can get my hands on.

I've modified this 'Blog to make it more readable. The latest entry appears on the top, and then all the past entries appear chronologically (from old to new).

I'm in the college library right now. Oh my god you won't believe it!!! This ZDNet article says that Glass2k is one of most searched keywords in Zdnet.com !!! It is the 3rd top-searched term - way above Ginger, Christmas, Compaq, Excite @ Home and WinZip!!! God I love today.

Beta News: I am 99.99% done with my freeware util: Glass2k. It allows Windows 2000/XP users to make any/every window transparent/semi-transparent, like Linux or Mac Os X windows. The latest version remembers each window's transparency settings, allows you to keep any window on top, loads on Windows startup, beeps when glassify'ng a window, supports mouse and keyboard shortcuts, and allows you to customize these shortcuts. Read the Glass2k page for more details.

Please Note: Glass2k works only on Windows 2000 and XP. It will NOT work on Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and ME.