You can't get luckier than this heart attack patient.

Add a Comment

I miss living at home and doing things the parents/elders told me NOT to do. And I miss not doing things they told me to do. Oh well, but I totally love how I can wake up at 4pm and not have to answer any questions :)

Add a Comment

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.

Add a Comment

Last night I received a real cool CD made by my buddy Taylor. Thanks Tay! You rock.

Add a Comment

I just saw one of the most beautiful girls in my life and she asked me for "some spare change!!!" I swear. I was walking down to my fav. mexican restaurant (Tijuana Burritos) to get some food. She was dressed in cheap/torn clothes and was holding some total bum's hand as she walked down the street. As soon as she saw me, she let him go and came to me with a real sad look on her face and asked for some spare change because she was very hungry and hadn't eaten in days.

I just walked on, didn't pay attention (and didn't want her tall fierce looking guy to come after me). Sad world I tell you. It didn't look like she was an abused helpless woman. More like a totally screwed-up-in-the-head college dropout. Sad sad. So then I walk into the restaurant and was waiting after placing my order. This cute girl behind me, was telling her two guy friends how she's trying to get her boyfriend to agree to her plan but he's not willing. I couldn't help but overhear that her plan was to wake up at 5am everyday so that she could be at work by 7am. She could work two jobs till 9pm every night for the next two years while her boyfriend gets his Masters degree. Right now he can't find a decent job to support even himself, but she can - for both of them. So she was willing to go through all that just to get him to study more and he wasn't interested. At the moment he's sitting on the computer everyday playing games. He has been doing this for about a year now.

Her friends said that that's exactly why she should have left him a year ago because he hasn't changed one bit in 12 months and is pretty much hopeless now. So here we have a pretty hardworking girl with a lazy good-for-nothing boyfriend and there we had a hot begger who walked around with a guy who never passed 4th grade. Sometimes, it's people like these that make me lose my faith in world. But then of course, I manage to run across a gorgeous Farkette who is going for a PhD in Neuroscience and has full upper-body tattoos. According to her profile, she "can go from business chic to punk rock girl in 5 minutes flat."

So what's my point? Basically that there's all kinds of people out there and most of them are pretty screwed up. The secret to ending up at the right destination, lies in walking the right path every day. One little wrong step can take you away from a bright future to a sad bleak hopeless existence. Of course, you can get back on track but it's hard. I think in the 16 hours that you are awake everyday, you can do one of the two things overall - figure out or complicate yourself. Either you can figure out stuff, like how to do your work better, or have fun without spending a lot of money, or how men/women really work, or what your goal in life is. OR you can complicate stuff, like screwing up your work day-by-day, or running around after worthless things, or doing the same stupid things over and over that make things worse. I know I didn't write this out very eloquently but my point is still simple - all these people who seem to end up at the place where everyone else goes 'what the hell!', don't realize that they ended up here by not doing the common sense thing every single day. Sure, ignore the fact that your boyfriend abuses you almost every day because you "LOVE HIM" so much. And ignore the fact that your boss gets mad at you for not finishing your projects on time because obviously he/she is a total jerk. And ignore the fact that you are lying to your family about your grades in college because what do they care. When after 5 years your boyfriend beats the crap out of you, or your boss fires you, or your college kicks you out for bad grades, don't blame anyone but yourself.

And don't blame me when I don't give you some spare change. I earn my money by working hard and so should you, especially if you are 14 yrs or older and have no major disabilities. And remember kids, idiocy is NOT a disability.

Add a Comment

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

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

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

Add a Comment

Behold the website of Travis E.W. Doom, Ph.D Computer Science & Engineering. He is known, not surprisingly, as Dr. Doom. He even admits that the reason he got a PhD was so that people could call him Dr. Doom. Now that's a great reason to get a PhD...! I guess he can now join Professor Chaos :)

Add a Comment

Here's something interesting to find out - whether you have dominant genes or not. I found that I have almost all the dominant genes from Tongue Rolling, Non-Attached Earlobes, Interlocking Fingers, Dimples, Male, Bent Little Finger, Double Jointed Thumb, and Widow's Peak. The only thing I don't have is freckles (well obviously!).

Add a Comment

Christmas is over. New Year's coming up. I'm at my aunt's house and just relaxing for a few days. Saw a lot of movies in the past week and have a lot of shopping to do now. Things are going ok I guess, nothing that exciting or dull. I really do want a week of nothing-to-do - all by myself. Let's see how that works out :)

Add a Comment

I am winning this caption thread on Fark. May the hot cocoa sampler joke never die. Hehe. I can't believe I started a Fark funny :) Well more like taking something moderately amusing and making it hilarious :) Go me!

Add a Comment

So sadly my hard drive deal was NOT honored :( Turns out it really was a typo and well nobody wants to sell a 120GB HDD for $60. So instead I ended up buying four Seagate Barracuda 160 GB drives from NewEgg, which will give me about 480 GB of storage under RAID 5 for $580. And seeing as how I'm already buying non-stop, I went ahead and purchased another one of those wonderful Princeton Graphics Senergy 981 19" LCDs for $890 from PC Nation. Let's recap: $90 RAID-card + $1 Mic + $33 Mouse + $70 Headphones + $580 HDD + $890 LCD + $16 Shipping/Tax = $1680 within 24 hours on computer stuff that I could have lived without!!! Why? Don't ask me. I have too much money. Just kidding.

Actually, all of this is simple investment. If I stick to slow old systems and never bother to upgrade, the quality of my work remains stuck to the same level. If I have my own RAID 5 setup, I can put on my resume someday that I have the skills to setup a RAID architecture. Of course, having a redundant half-TB storage means that unless my whole bunker gets flooded I don't really have to worry about losing my data anymore. Obviously a decade of data is more important than a few hundred dollars. I've already had three major data loses this year and can't tolerate more. I couldn't work for over 3 weeks due to these and that's a big productivity loss. Dual monitors increase productivity and wireless optical mice just plain rule. I don't really NEED noise-cancellation headphones but trust me it's worth it when I think about the peace it will give me no matter where I am. I will be able to study better in library and student center, I will sit peacefully on the bus rides, and I will transcend into a blissful state of oblivion while I write my precious code. This sure is going to be the best personal computer ever.

Add a Comment

Finals over :) Holidays are here! Hurray! And I have some real good news that I'll break next week.

Add a Comment

Sony has outshone their own Aibo with an amazing new robot called Qrio - Quest for Curiosity. Here is a video of four Qrio's dancing in sync (6mb wmv format). The video starts slowly so be patient and watch the whole thing. By the end it seems so real that I didn't feel like these are robots but rather tiny midgets inside who are dancing. Pretty funny actually. The dance at first seems robotic or just weird but then I realized it's actually traditional Japanese dance and towards the end there are even steps of Karata/Kata. Simply amazing.

Add a Comment

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.

Add a Comment

I wish I knew some nerdy girl to send this to. So cuteee...

Add a Comment

Something good happened at work today that might make the next year wonderful for me. Still have a few obstacles to clear. I'll announce when I'm sure.

Add a Comment

Last night I saw one of the best movies ever made - The Shawshank Redemption. Everyone should see this. This is the first movie in months and months that shows there is something even more important than love in this world, and that is hope. "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies." Great acting, touching story, and wonderful ending. Rent it!

Quote for the day: "Get busy living, or get busy dying..." - The Shawshank Redemption.

Add a Comment

Econ paper done. Two exams to go. One tonight, one Friday. Two weeks of vacation after that (during which I'll mostly be preparing for grad school etc.) Gotta study for tonight's exam now...

Add a Comment

The 12 days of Christmas are really expensive.

Add a Comment

2 exams down. 3 more to go.

Add a Comment

One exam done (Operating Systems). Three more to go and one final paper to complete. After that, I got to make a few minor updates a couple of client sites and then continue working on my main project for the next few months. Rest all's going good I guess.

Add a Comment

There's a job opening at South Park Studios. As this interview proves, it's an awesome place to work at. Ah... if only I wasn't thinking of grad school...

Add a Comment

"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...

Add a Comment

I'm glad they caught Saddam.

Add a Comment

GRE over. I don't think I did too good. So I'm not too happy about it. Oh well, time to study for finals.

Add a Comment

Happy B'day Mummyji! I miss you so much :(

Add a Comment

Congrats Sneh! She got into NYU as an undergrad :) It was her #1 choice and she got in! And she got a $16,000 scholarship! (That's practically my full tuition per year). I'm prolly gonna apply to NYU also. It'd be really weird if I got in there too.

Add a Comment

Studying for Comp Sci. GRE for the next two days non-stop. Four finals and one final paper/assignment next week. No sleep till 19th Dec.

Add a Comment

Quote for the day: "Creativity is partly the ability to come up with something good every now and then, and partly the ability to distinguish between what's good and bad all the time." - Chirag Mehta

Add a Comment

Quote for the day: "Research shows that you are statistically insignificant." - Chirag Mehta

Add a Comment

Everyday I get about 2-3 emails from unsuspective Indians for employment. Basically they see Chime and think it's some company that they can work for. It's always Indians so I wonder how they find me. It's possible that I'm either listed on some job directory or they just see this app and assume I'm Indian. Well, at least someday when I do wanna hire people, I don't think I'll have a shortage. Now off to another long day...

Add a Comment

Took me about 34 - 8 = 26 hours to complete my final project for computer graphics. I'm quite satisfied with the results. Will post a few screenshots here later. I have Econ assigments due Monday and Tuesday and a comp sci homework due Tuesday. After that, gonna study non-stop for my GRE Comp Sci subject test - exam on Dec 13. This is one of those really big exams that will probably decide the course of my life. Much more strongly than all the graphics projects, all my web sites, and all the studies I've been doing in college. So I am gonna try really hard to do well in it.

Add a Comment

Last night, my friends Tony and Vu drove around the Livingston parking lot in the snow and took this amazing video. If you can't see the video, here's a spiffy photo of Vu in his Bonneville. Now this is a good way to remember a snow storm.

Add a Comment

Exactly a year ago, it was snowing too! It's so pretty outside. I went out and just ran across the snow covered roads and lawns. It's not deep enough to jump into though. Then had some good calzones with Mich @ the student center. Now back to 2 days of non-stop programming for my graphics class.

Quote for the winter: "By the time you are done with homework, the snow might go away. But no matter how much you play in the snow, the homework still stays. So be smart, and go play in the snow while you can. #$%$# homework :)"

Add a Comment

Tonight I found out something about myself that I am still unable to believe. It's funny how we keep discovering ourselves everyday. Like we learn something new everyday. Just unusual to find something so innate to me, so late in life.

Add a Comment

I dunno how long this is gonna stay up, but you'll get pretty interesting site as #1 if you search for miserable failure on Google. Or just type miserable failure in Google and click "I'm Feeling Lucky."

Add a Comment

The guy who coined the term 'weblog' is missing.

Add a Comment

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.

Add a Comment

The first winter snow :) Only a few mins but still cool.

Add a Comment

I have clean clothes again.

Add a Comment