A very surprising (and unexpected) congratulations to my boss Eric and his wife Amy for the birth of their beautiful daughter: Katie Dann!!! I hope you read this Eric and realize how much everyone in our small but loving company cares about you. On a slightly serious note, the baby was born about 45 days prematurely but thankfully Amy and the baby are both in a healthy condition. Katie's not on a respirator and is breathing well on her own. Hopefully within a week, the hospital will let them bring the baby home.

On a less personal but more business front, I was supposed to leave for Texas on Monday night with Eric and Scott for an early Tuesday morning business meeting with a big company. In fact, until this past Tuesday, I wasn't even supposed to go because it was going to be mainly a management + branding sales meeting. Of course, now Eric will 99% not go and Scott & I will be throwing the sales pitch. Eric's dad might come with us but it won't be the same. The thing is, almost everyone in our company was working non-stop for a month to prepare for this meeting and now the main person, Eric, is probably not gonna go.

This means, a lot more work for me and Scott. Since I designed the presentation and structured the marketing/sales strategy, I guess I'll be doing a lot of the talking. Of course, I will try my best and all that jazz, however, it's hard to replace my boss's 15-20 years of chemical and cosmetic manufacturing experience with my big fancy words. I mean, it's physically impossible to learn in 20 hours the knowledge someone has accumulated in over a decade. Life's not a Matt Damon movie.

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So I bought two new hard drives and setup a clean installation of Windows on one of them. And thankfully I was able to salvage almost every single file from my dying hard drive, including latest emails and documents. Now I'm trying to see if I can recover all my program settings as well. If I can do that, then I'll actually be better off than I was yesterday because now my computer is running MUCH faster than before :)

So all's well in the chir.ag world.

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This morning as I was brushing my teeth, I realized I haven't posted a 'blog entry in a week. I thought, maybe people will think "no news is bad news." Personally, I think "no news is good news" when it comes to personal life. If you ask someone, "How's it going..." and they say, "Same old..." then at least you know it's all going as usual and nothing catastrophic has happened.

Like you know, finding out that your primary boot hard drive is damaged. After brushing my teeth, I went over to my computer room and turns out my main PC was stuck at the hard-drive detection stage in the boot process. I turned it off, turned it back on, phew, thankfully it detected the hard drive. Then Windows starts to boot and after loading the GUI, during the "Applying Security Policy" stage, it gives me the Blue Screen of Death due to "Hard Error." Doesn't even say "Hard Drive" or "Hardware" error. So I turned it off, and got to work.

I think I'll use a Knoppix CD to salvage my data on to a new hard drive, since my old hard-drive is not fully dead, just damaged. I don't think my registry is damaged either - just some random data sectors. Of course, I have backups but since I configure my system VERY VERY finely, it will probably take me weeeeeeeeeks to get it back up the way I am used to.

Anyways, I'm gonna try to stay cheerful. I have a lot of things at work that need patience, optimism, and excitement. Can't let personal stuff get in the way of work stuff.

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My eye hurts a bit now but I'll survive. So anyways, I was reading Paul Graham's article What You'll Wish You'd Known from this Slashdot post and it got me thinking. Almost everyone I know has a life that's so closely related to their work. After all, most people spend 8-10 hours a day working. There's so many theories about the 'work' part of your life. Don't work so much that you don't enjoy your life. Don't give up on your ambitions (meaning spend all your free time working). Fight Club quote: "You are not your job. You are not the money in your bank account." And yet, all people talk about is where do you work? What do you do? Are you getting a promotion?

So where exactly does your 'work' fit into your 'life'? Of course, almost everyone will agree that your job is not your life. There's a lot to life than just working all the time. But think back to high-school, when everything you did was supposed to be towards your future job/business. We are taught from birth that work is work, play is play and work basically sucks. Unless you get a glamorous job, you're basically screwed. But is work really necessary? Do we really HAVE to work? There's some that say, we should abolish work. And then there's some that say, once we have progressed far enough, we can let the robots do the work. Well till we get to that stage, somebody's gotta clean the restrooms and somebody's gotta design the new system that'll run the manufacturing process. You gotta work to pay the bills. That's the reason why 99% of the people probably work.

And yet, at some point in everyone's life, they are told by someone wiser and older, that you gotta find what you love to do and find a way to make money out of it. I'm sure the guy who re-issues my driver's license at the Department of Motor Vehicles was told by his high-school counsellor that he must look deep within himself to find what he loves. And I'm even more sure that 're-issue driver's license' wasn't in his list. So I think most people just fall into the jobs they have, most of the times, not by choice but by the need. But it's those 1% that end up launching probes to Mars and Saturn's moon Titan, and building the world's tallest bridges. Of course, to love your job, you don't necessarily have to do something heroic, you could just as well be a happy tax accountant who loves helping out her clients.

Uh so what's my point? My point is, if you think you have a good job that you sincerely look forward to every morning, then you are by far amongst the luckiest people on this planet because hating something you do for 8 hours a day, 300+ days a year is not a good way to live. I, for one, am lucky as hell to have a job I love. But of course, there's strict rules about having a job you love. Do not under ANY circumstances, bring it home with you. Work is work, home is home, and the twain shall never meet. Ya, I think that's it from me. I should really go to bed. My eye still hurts...

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So it cost me $53.57 to find out that I don't have pink-eye. The doctor @ Walmart told me I just have an inflammation that was probably caused by sleeping with a partially open eye-lid. It still hurts a lot. I couldn't work at all so I came home. Now I'm going to bed...

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This morning when I woke up, I could barely open my left eye. I think I have conjunctivitis (pink-eye). I know I am very susceptible to it. Urgh. This sucks. I can't even do my job without pain...

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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.

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My mom is undergoing an operation to remove a metal-plate from her arm. She broke her arm last month and tonight is when the doctors remove the supporting metal plate. Hopefully the bone will have healed by now. I'm hoping she gets all well in a short time.

Anyways, went to University of Tampa tonight to see my coworker/friend Scott's advertisement submission to the Addy Awards: The MagicTan Gift Box. We're all hoping he wins :) Just as I was about to leave, I ran into my friends Heather and Michael. Chilled at the show with them for a while and got back home. Kinda tired now. Should go to bed soon.

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

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I am officially a dumbass. Having foolishly destroyed my keyboard a few days ago, I decided to go to WalMart after work today to get me a new keyboard. Here is the list of things I got from WalMart tonight for $120: Groceries, Wine, Toothbrush, Vitamins, Cough Drops, Kitty Litter, Kitty Food, Water, 2 Sleeping Bags, Gasoline, and a lil junk food for my friends when they come down here. Guess what I didn't get... that's right! A new keyboard! Oh well, I have 3 computers in my apartment so I'm using one from my server right now.

Anyways, things are good as usual. Work is exciting. Got a few computers to setup and a few websites + presentations to complete. After that I get to plan and develop my new awesome software.

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I can't stop thinking about the new system I'm making at my work. It's gonna be awesome. I love my job :)

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Happy New Year everyone! I just got back from an awesome mini-vacation to the Florida Keys with Brian and Linda. We had a great room next to a swimming pool, facing the beach. We drove down to see my friend Bruce (from my old job at Rutgers, NJ). It was great seeing him and both Brian and Linda loved meeting Bruce and his wife. We had a few drinks and left back to our hotel. Later that night we went to Holiday Isle to usher in the new year. Next day we rented a small motor boat and went into the ocean for over four hours. I anchored down the boat next to a small mangrove island and we had lunch. Later that night we drove down to Key West, picking up my friend Tim on the way. Walked downtown, shopped a bit, had a few drinks, and drove back to our hotel. Woke up this morning, got ready, and drove back to St. Petes. That was in short our mini-vacation to the Keys. A lotta fun packed into a short span of three days :) I feel so refreshed and ready to get back to work tomorrow.

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