Thought of the day

On the crossroads of life, some new paths always shows up. You just have to indentify and choose the right one.

An international affair...

Yes, my birthday was an international affair yesterday. Not that it was publicized all over the world, but there were like 8 friends from 8 different countries/origin. So just wait and I will post a few pictures from the party.

Is the empire falling down ?

Those who are following the Ashes Series must be surprised looking at the recent revival of English Cricket. Don't you think that the Aussie Cricketing Empire is falling down. After all it has been on the top for almost 10-15 years.

I truly feel that it is now the right time for the English side to stake rightful claim as the best test playing nation. The character this English side is showing, one hasn't seen that from any of the English side in the past 10-12 years. Apart from a few cameo performances the English side has faltered when it mattered the most. But not now; they are indeed playing great Cricket and making the Aussies toil even for a draw is something special. The Aussie side has never been forced to follow on since 1989 and after a good 16 years the current English side has managed to do that. It is indeed a great achievement.

Over indulgence

I think the internet has played a major role in making me a loner. Agreed that I didn't have friends when I came to this town but that didn't make me loner. I must admit that it is the internet that has made me loner. So I started using internet more and more frequently so that I could be at least in touch with my old friends by "chatting" with them online. As it continued I slowly realized that I was caught in a viscious circle, that kind off prevented me from making new friends.

There are definitely many advantages of using computers and internet. I guess I need not mention it in detail as it is self evident but I guess at the same time it has made people very anxious, detached and lonely. Not only that but it makes you more and more indulgent, and to me that is the biggest concern. Because it is the over indulgence in to computers and internet that makes you more and more detached and thus lonely.To give you the best example, today I just logged into my yahoo messenger and browsed my yahoo messenger buddies list, to my surprise (or horror) I have some 62 people added to my list which are supposed to be my "friend ". So I ask myself thse following questions and I answer it myself.
"If I have so many "friends" should I feel lonely?",
"Absolutely not".
"So do I really have 62 friends?",
the answer is obviously "NO".
"Then why I have these many people in my list?"
the clear answer to this question is "Over indulgence".

And just when I thought emails and messengers were the root cause of all this malices(may be) we now have this extremely popular thing "blogging". Anyways keep blogging

it ain't over till it is over !

I thought that the verdict, I was waiting for will come finally today. But that wasn't meant to be. Now the ball is once again in my Boss' court. Nothing wrong with that and I hope that he will agree to the requirements set by the IPO. But as they say, 'it ain't over till it is over'.

I think this is going to be a good test of my patience, as this time it is my boss who is on vacation.

Being positive

It was one of the most ordinary B'day in my life until I got a call from my cousin from India wishing me on my B'day. Yes as per the Hindu calendar I am now officially 25yrs, luckily it falls on the auspicious day of Rakhi/Narali Poornima.

Other than the call from India, today was a pretty ordinary day for me and was in no mood of celebration. I am trying to stay as calm as possible but I cannot because of the uncertainty looming large over my head. Anyways, at least as my B'day resolution I have decided to have a positive outlook towards life.

I have realized that with nothing in my hand, I have infact nothing to loose. With my back against the wall the only direction I can move is forward and that's what I plan to do, whatever be the verdict on Monday. So on this positive note.....

Good night & All The Best

British 'attempted to kill Bose'

This will add to the mystique of India's most
charismatic independence war figure.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4152320.stm

As the deadline looms

I am having exactly the same feeling that I was getting a week before my MS thesis defense. My sleep quality has gone down drastically from what it was a week before. I get up early in my bed like around 445AM in the morning. I think the feeling of anxiety is getting the better off me.

As was the MS thesis important, so is this decision that I have been waiting for so long. I try to pacify myself by diverting my mind into some other activities, but then you see this is going to be one of my life turning incidents, or at least I think right now.

So to speak the this weekend and a couple of weeks after this are going to be really decisive. It would be such a waste of all the efforts that I put in if things don't work out as I had planned. I have always trusted on my instincts which have helped me bailout of situation time and again. May be I am asking too much from it this time, but then I have to have belief in something that I know has worked before.

So.... just wait and watch

U2

What would you say about an Astronaut listening to the latest U2 song?
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Astronaut with Vertigo.... :)

iThink

iThink the iPOD inflicts upon the iGeneration the feeling of iSolation and inSecurity

A brilliant idea

A useful video describing how to fold a T-Shirt quickly and neatly

http://www.howtofoldashirt.net/

Feeling Minnesota

It rained like crazy a day before yesterday , a hailstorm with a baseball size hails on the city outskirts.

Yesterday it was totally sunny and hot.

Today, it has been raining, light to moderate drizzle, all day.

Looks like the summer is ending. So I checked the weather for the month and the next, and it looks like we are on the downhill slope of the Minnesota Summer and from my last years experience, there are about 60-75 days before the first snow fall occurs.

I think I should try to make the most out of the Minnesota summer, before the winter really kicks in.

Some Interesting fact

Those who have seen the Giraffe from Toy's R Us advertisement, who sounds like a Donald duck when he breathes the Helium from the Balloon he is flying, this link provides the logical explanation behind that voice.

It turns out that, and even I didn't know , that speed of sound in Helium is 3 times that of the speed in air.

A trendy Guitarist

Eric Clapton

The collage of Eric Clapton clearly shows that he has been one of the trendiest of guitarist/musician. Whether it was 60's or 90's he has been changing his looks to look as trendy as possible, and he did everytime.

iPOD Hacks

This site has a nice and sometimes geeky hacks if you have a iPOD.

Microcontrolled Life

Life is like a highly complex operating sytem. In an operating system micro improvements/mistakes can cause a macro change in performance, so is life. Small things in our day to day activities addup to a major events in the life. It is left to every individual what kind of changes does he make to change his life for good or bad.

Unfortunately, no one really knows until the day comes when you see a big difference. All I am trying to do is to strike a right balance between the improvements/mistakes. Hopefully it will take me to the path I wish.

Guess the google

Try the following link

http://www.weavedigital.com/guess-the-google/?l=1

See for yourself, how well you can use Google Images using keyword.

"Discovery is Home"

These are just 3 words to a common man, but for the entire team at NASA it was realisation of their 3yrs of hardwork, and big sigh of relief.

"Congratulations NASA, Job well done !"

My Star Wars Score.. what is yours ?

Darth Vader 72% Yoda 61% Obi Wan Kenobi 58% Anakin Skywalker 56% General Grievous 56% R2-D2 56% Clone Trooper 56% Chewbacca 50% Emperor Palpatine 36% C-3PO 36% Padme Amidala 33% Mace Windu 31% Which Revenge of the Sith Character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

For the Connoisseurs

A friend of mine asked me about a good wine. Eventhough I am not a great fan of wine, but I happen to know a few fine wines. Courtsey of this site. This site has a good listing of great wines and cheeses.

I also like to experiment with different variety of cheeses and this site definitely helped me develop my taste. For cheese lovers I suggest the Italian Fontina cheese or Dutch Gouda cheese. Both are litttle bitter ones, but I bet they would taste amazing with some fine red wine.

At last some respite.

Have been holding my cards close to my chest for so long. I knew a day would come when I will have to make this decision. Sp I made it finally today, and decided to keep my current job. After hearing different things from different people I realized that, eventhough I might not earn a lot, but I will definitely get to work on what I like. To chose a relatively high paying job not particularly of your primary interest or chose a job which pays relatively less but is more of your liking, is always a debatable question. But I am the kind of guy who agrees in the later part.

At the spur of moment

Many a time, I am taunted as a guy who has poor planning and timing. I agree that I am not a planner, I am more of a spontaneous kind of a person. And I think things I do spontaneously work out best than the ones pre - properly - planned. This applies especially to my picnics or road trips.

Friday went to the cities to meet up with my friend. We had no plan what so ever in our minds for the weekend. Got up late on Saturday and then we were just pondering upon the options available. Finally decided at 11AM to leave for this port city in the upper midwest. Thought it would be a 4 hr drive and hence we will have a night halt at one of our friends. After checking the internet found that it was 6hr drive. Anyways, we stuck to this now ready plan, and set out for our journey.

Reached there at 6PM we had some chat and then took a stroll around the Lake Michigan. It is mammoth but beautiful. Came back and then decided to have our dinner outside. Again it was, 10PM in the night with most of the restaurants closed. Somehow found out one restaurant in Downtown which is open 24/7. Had our dinner there, food was Ok. Came back home and off I went to bed.

The next day morning, had tasty breakfast of "pohe" and "Idli". Some home cooked food after a long time, and at that time I felt the drive was worth it. We chatted for long and then at 1PM decided to head back to the cities. I had to catch a shuttle at 7:15 so we had 6 hrs to cover 340 miles . Luckily the traffic was supportive (fast). Cruising at 85mph the distance didn't feel that long, until we reached the cities where we had to take the city roads to reach the airport.

I was very luck again, as we reached the airport just in time. At 7:10 I got off the car, slowly walked to the shuttle's office. No sooner did I reach the counter they announced for the shuttle departure. Got in the shuttle and reached home at 8:45 PM.

Everything worked out so perfectly that one would think it was nicely planned. But in fact, nothing was planned, it was just spontaneous and worked out very well. I know it doest always work and that's why I am trying to be more disciplined. But, I am glad that once again it worked well, and hope this spontaneity will keep helping me in the long run till I become a disciplined person.

The Great Lakes

Went with a few friends of mine to the America's Brewing city, and saw one of the mammoth Great Lakes. It is so beautiful with the sidewalk along the shore and the parks and old buildings, it makes a perfect sightseeing spot.

The downtown which lines up along the shore is small and pretty. Though small it is lively with a number of pubs and clubs and restaurants which remain open late night, it surely reminds of Austin, but put on the Galveston shore line with clean (non smelly) water. Didn't take too many pictures but will put them soon.

Addicted to Blog

My friend introduced me to blog a week ago or so. Turns out that as of now I am totally addicted to blogging. I am surfin web to checkout the new tools that I can use with my blog. All this experience is like a child getting a candyshop as christmas gift.

My fav pit babe

Some Snaps from Indianapolis Grand Prix 2005

Shumy had to face a lot of wrongful criticism

A Little late, but sure it is funny

Always have I.C.E. ... just in case

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Tips for Life - As seen from Star Wars point of view

1. Never trust men in dark helmets.
2. It really isn't necessary to be fluent in over six million forms of communication.
3. Before kissing ANYBODY, make sure they're not related to you.
4. You may have family members in surprisingly high positions.
5. Before you kill someone make sure they aren't your father.
6. Cute cuddly widdle teddy bears usually will eat you alive unless you can prove you are a god.
7. Never stand on a trap door leading to a Rancor pit.
8. Never, never ever underestimate the power of the Dark Side.
9. It’s never my fault.
10. There are those who are less forgiving than Vader.
11. Always let the Wookie win.
12. Whining about something never helps.
13. Watch your hands when sword fighting.
14. Electricity really hurts.
15. Never tell someone the odds.
16. Always accept apologies.
17. Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.
18. Don't get cocky.
19. Mind what you have learned, save you it can.
20. Don't jump down garbage chutes.
21. The hard part of a jail-break is getting out; plan for it.
22. Cold weather can cause one to hallucinate.
23. Blowing on a torch will not put it out.
24. Don't use technology you don't understand.
25. Never underestimate the powers of a Jedi.
26. Don't give into your anger.
27. Grasping at your throat will not stop the choking.
28. You shouldn't always listen to your parents.

My chosen few from
http://www.ccraig.org/everything.html

Telephone Interviewing Tips

One of the emails I received and I felt like sharing. If anyone has objection regarding it being posted on the web, please leave a comment and I will happily remove from the web.
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Since a telephone interview is often your initial contact with a potential employer, it is worthwhile to discuss some tips on improving this first impression. After all, it may be your only opportunity to “sell yourself” and to have a trial run for the face-to-face interview.

When an employer interviews you, he or she is looking at you for two things. One, your technical skills. Can you do the job you are being interviewed for? Two, your personality. Do you have the personality to fit into their culture? Be enthusiastic and positive, communicative and curious. Most businesses today need people who can interact with not only the internal staff, but the customer, as well. Therefore, they will often hire individuals who have a real people-oriented personality.

Typically, we will prepare you for the phone interview by letting you know who will be calling you, their title, the time and date, etc. Based on this information, you should try to develop several questions ahead of time that will be helpful in gathering additional information for yourself about the position. Some examples of questions are as follows:

Ø What are the most important responsibilities of the job?

Ø Please tell me about the product’s history and future vision for the company.

Ø To whom I will report and what is his/her background?

Ø Will I mainly inherit projects or initiate them?

Ø Is this a team environment or an individual contributor role?

Ø What is the most important thing I can do to help your firm during the first 90 days of my employment?

Ø Will I have subordinates? If so, what are their strengths/weaknesses?

Ø What aspects of my background make me right or wrong for this position?

The objective of a telephone interview is to gain an invitation for a face-to-face interview and to gather more information to be used in future steps.

If you are to be a “problem solver,” one thing you need to do during the telephone interview is to determine “What problem is this employer trying to solve by hiring you, and what do you bring to the table to help them solve the problem? How can you help with your skills?”

Other tips include:

Ø Do not discuss money, benefits, or vacation at this state.

Ø Have a pad, pen and copy of your resume near the phone.

Ø Go to a quiet phone or office to call the interviewer back at a more convenient time. Avoid background noises like TV’s, stereos and other conversations.

Ø Hold the receiver one-half inch from your mouth and speak directly into it.

Ø Smile and be enthusiastic – it comes through the phone!

Ø Don’t eat, smoke or chew gum during a phone conversation.

Ø Speak in a conversational manner and be sure to speak loudly enough to be heard – with some variance in inflection and tone. Record yourself responding to some normal phone interviewing questions asked by your spouse or someone else. Hear how you sound to others and practice improving that impression.

Ø Let the interviewer do most of the talking, but use questions to stimulate the conversation as needed. When he/she asks you a question, don’t just answer “yes” or “no” – expound on the question and use the opportunity to “sell” your skills and experience.

Ø When the interview appears to be ending, find an opportunity to ask for a face-to-face interview. Please let the interviewer know you ARE interested in the job.

When the interview is over, call your recruiter so we can follow up with the client and work toward the next step of the face-to-face interview.

Dark Humor

Check out the billboard on the top..........

In Case of Emergency

Hi All,
The London incident &; now the Mumbai floods have promoted concerns and I
share with you something useful somebody just sent. As long as everyone
knows what ICE stands for, it is not a bad idea. A useful thing to add
to your mobile address book!

It was thought up by an ambulance man/paramedic who found that when they
went to the scenes of accidents there were always mobile phones but they
didn't know which numbers to call and he thought that it would be a good
idea if there was a nationally recognized name to file "next of kin"
under. Following the disaster in London . . . East Anglian Ambulance
Service have launched a national "In case of Emergency (ICE)" campaign
with the support of Falkland 's war hero Simon Weston.

The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone
Address book, and against it enter the number of the person you would
want t o be contacted "In Case of Emergency".

In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able
to quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them.
It's so simple that everyone can do it. Please do.

Please copy this message and email it to everybody in your address book, it
won't take too many 'forwards' before everybody will know about this. It
really could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest. For more
than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.

Audio Blogging is NEAT

Being a Patient

Last week I was a participant in one of the research studies here at my workplace. 'Sleep Study' as it is rightly named; it basically looks at your sleeping habit and quality. It started something like this.

I got into the Clinic and checked myself in at 545PM. I would hate to say that 'I was admitted' as I was not a patient, but just a study participant. But everything after that was like a true experience of being a patient. The nurses come and explain everything they are going to do, even if you know already. They drew sample of my blood to check the % Hemoglobin in my blood so that they could do the required blood work. Well at time I realized how rusty my brain was. It’s all the decent percentage of Hemoglobin contents in my blood that contributes to the problem. And with the numbers I got, the things don’t look good in the near future as far as my rustiness is concerned. But on the flip side it is good for my body J .

Now this is something that was most interesting. The cardiac surgeon came and covered my lower forearm with the blood pressure cuff, and then inflated it. Normally one would expect, the cuff to remain inflated only for a few seconds, but this was something different. She kept it inflated for almost 5-6 minutes. You don’t realize how much pressure it actually exerts, you feel like your blood vessels are going to burst and finally they go numb. Moments later the pressure was released and this point you get some tingling sensation in your forearm. Anyways, the interesting part is when the cuff is inflated. The doctor took ultra-sound scan of my Radial artery. This was to look at the behavior of my arterial walls before, during and after the stress. They wanted to measures the stiffness in my arterial walls as it is one of the major contributing factors of most of the heart diseases.

One amazing thing that I noticed when they took the scan is that, when the inflated cuff is suddenly deflated after about 6 minutes, you can hear the sound of blood gushing through the artery, which exactly resembles the sound of a river gushing through the rapids. Those who have done some decent rafting probably level 3 and above will understand what I mean.

Now comes the part where you do exactly opposite as instructed by the doctor, and I am pretty sure knowingly. Around 9PM the cardio-vascular surgeon along with a sleep study specialist came in and then started hooking me up. Literally, they started attaching some 20- 25 electrodes, all over my body. The few on my legs, arms and torso didn’t really bother me, but the ones on my scalp, face and neck were little problematic. After hooking these electrodes they to my body they took ECG and EKG. Well I didn’t understand why they took both, because as per best of my knowledge they look at your QRS- complex from the cardiac electric waves. The only difference that I found between the two was the number of electrodes that are used. While ECG uses a standard 12 lead approach the EKG uses only 4 leads. To add more complications they put on a CO₂ monitor right in my nostrils. This was to analyze my breath.

So to say finally, the overall study went really well apart from slight discomfort in the sleep. I got my results couple of days couple of days later and as I expected it turns out that I have a good sleeping habit, with no signs of apnea of arrhythmia.

Well, I didn’t take part in the study to know how I sleep. I took part in it just to get a feel of being patient. I am a Research Technologist and I put subjects through something similar if not the same, so I wanted to know how they feel when they take part in the study. I would like to say that being a research subject is OK, but I would like to be a healthy fit person throughout my life, because the same setting but as patient is just frightening.

The Hard(est) Drive

Looks like another problem added to the never ending list of mine. Last week got this new external hard drive (Maxtor 3100) from best buy. It would work perfectly the first few days. Since yesterday evening, it is giving me some weird problems. It takes almost 1 hr for my computer to detect it, but I still consider my self lucky, as on rest of the office computers it won't work at all.

I will try a couple of more days before I take it back to BestBuy for replacement. If anyone of you have experienced similar problems and know how to fix this problem pls let me know.

Some Respite

One good news today... I have been working on this code for quite some time.. and just a while ago, finished it. Preliminary results indicate that it won't crash.. but then after all you know who has written it.. so can't gaurantee...

Welcome Finally

Hello all,

After lot of thinking or lack thereof... I decided.. to imitate my friends Shiva, and Amit.. I am not a great thinker and quite often I don't think at all before doing something.. this blog might be an example of that.

Anyways, guys keep checking my blog. May be if u r lucky enough u will find something intelligible.