Musings From New York

Little Ms. Adorable

So Vidya mailed me some of the picture from her brief swing through New York. Specifically, some of the ones of me & Aditi (aka Little Ms. Adorable). I've uploaded some of my pictures & videos (thank you, Canon Powershot S60!)

First, take a look at this. You can't deny the uncanny resenblance to this.

There were definitely a couple of memorable moments that day ... for example, the remote-controlled stroller. Then ... who can forget the mystery (insert ominous music here) of the Bumblebee Mushroom? ... Or seeing Aditi standing ... er, sitting tall?

And all said and done, she does have a nice voice, and isn't camera shy, like her mother.

More photos may be found over at Vidya's blog.

Happy Birthday!

To IMDB, which turned 15 today. Anyone remember IMDB during the heady days of dialup? Waiting for the pages of quotes from Star Wars to load on IE 3.0 at a pace that'd have made a snail turn its nose ...

It was (and still is) the premier source of movie information & trivia.  They have a 15th Anniversary section too, if you want to read up about them.

I do have an issue with the IMDB Staff 15 picks ... Fight Club at No. 1?? Followed by The Matrix? If this is a popular vote, rather than an artistic vote, then where's Star Wars (any)? Where's Gone With The Wind? Where's Lord of the Rings (any)?

Asterix and the Falling Sky

Uderzo's complete lack of funniness continues ...

I got the book this morning (I had a colleague who was visiting the UK last week; she picked up a copy for me).

Plot Details: Aliens (yes, space aliens!) come to the village in an attempt to take control of the magic potion.

Thats about it. It's so boring, I almost cried.

Moving On

Well, some of you regular readers (yes, you over there, and you at the back) know that I had a job offer from another consulting company. I accepted it, and with the visa application sorted (but not finalized), I submitted my letter of resignation to TuringSMI on Friday. I will admit I was surprised as to how many people were surprised when they received the news.

SMI has been pretty good to me over the years ... By weird coincidence, I started with them on November 1st 2002, which means that I'd have spent exactly 3 years with them. Its been a tough 3 years too, which is probably not uncommon for any new company. Although I hate to admit it, the work was somewhat boring as well, and only picked up interest in recent months.

The new job is going to have its challenges, no doubt. Least of all is adjusting to a new lifestyle of being on the road Mon-Thu. But you know, with me being single and all, it's not going to be that painful being away from hom 4 days a week. It should be fun, meeting new people, etc. Hey at the very least, after one year, I'd have enough experience under my belt to be an attractive hire to a corporate job.

My personal e-mail ID and cellphone stay the same. And I'll be blogging here ... not sure if I'd be as frequent as I am now, of course.

Moving to a new job is a weird blend of thrilling excitement ... and fear, isn't it?

WTF ...

The new Asterix book is out today and nobody has any reviews, spoilers, or even some plot details?! WTF, I say! WTFF!

Technology & me

Sometimes I wonder if I radiate some sort of anti-technology field ... or if I'm some sort of walking EMP ... my watch stopped working this morning. I wondered why my alarm went off at 3am, and went back to sleep. The gloomy weather outside doesn't help either. It looks like a Transylvanian-esque permament twilight.

What would Conan do?

I don't watch the late night talk shows nowadays, so I'm not sure if they've already done this, but it's pretty darned funny!

Call me Destructor!

Update 10/14: A new option suggested by my friend in the UK!

Yup, the score now stands at

Destructor 4 Laptops 0
Destructor 1 Desktops 0

Yup, I've screwed my desktop at home now. I figured I'd upgrade it by throwing in an extra 512 RAM module (bump it to 1 GB). The cooling unit, which come to think of it has been fairly noisy off late, can't seem to handle the extra load.

Three catastrophic crashes later, my Windows directory is corrupted, and I have about 30GB of data inaccessible. I have five options as I see it:

1. Shell out about 300 or 400 bucks to retrieve the data, and then wipe the hard disk and rebuild the machine. This doesn't solve the problem of overheating mind
2. Buy another PC that has some of the goodies I want, slave my old hard disk, and retrive my data. Keep the 2nd desktop unit as backup.
3. Build my own PC that has ALL the goodies I want, slave my hard disk, etc. (see above)
4. Rebuild the PC, and then run a recovery utility I purchased a few weeks ago to try to retrive that 30-odd gigs of data. This still leaves the problem of not solving the problem.
5. Buy a new hard disk that I'd eventually use for the new PC. Restore the PC on the new disk, use it until I build me my new PC. One I assemble the other PC, slave the old hard disk to the new, retrieve the data, and then put the old hard disk back.

What are the goodies, you ask? Dual-core AMD 64-bit processors, 1GB minimum RAM (I might even splurge and get 2GB), 256 MB VRAM nVidia graphics card, Creative X-FI sound card, DVD +/- RW writer, about 160GB storage. I'm not greedy :-) ... I'll forego the pleasure of dual graphics cards, RAID configured hard disks, and will probably not spend any money to pimp it up (there are some cool glowy looking cooling units and stuff on the markets these days).

The other option to the PC was to buy a Mac. I looked at Apple's online store, and i figure that rather than spend 1700 bucks on a new iMac, I'd rather build a kickass PC!

I figure the cost of these components will probably be about $1,500+ ... Hence, I'm going to sleep on it for a while. I've got a friend in the UK who's putting together some specs & costs to help me decide what to buy.

Admitedly I have only minimal experience in building PCs ... the last MAJOR piece of work I did was helping Rubal upgrade his motherboard/cpu in January 2004. But that went along quite smoothly ... barring the oversight on our part of not noting what LED connector went to what pin on the board.

This also unfortunately means no more Warcraft for me for a while (no, Nikhil, I won't switch back to XBox Live!) ... sigh, and we were just gearing up to take down Ragnaros.

Puzzled ...

Mosey over to today's (10th October) Foxtrot strip ... what's the sequence being called out by Marcus in the last panel? The answer isn't up on Bill Amend's website yet ...

Musical Interlude Yet Again

So I bought the new Franz Ferdinand album ... and have been listening to it commuting and whilst working in the office. Admitedly, I haven't paid close attention to it, but even so, there haven't been any songs that really jumped out. Hopefully, this will not be the case after a few more listenings. I also bought the latest Maiden live album. I would consider it a 50% waste of money, simply because I do NOT want to listen to YET ANOTHER recording of Fear of the Dark/ Number of the Beast/ Hallowed Be Thy Name/ Run to the Hills.

Also, browsing iTMS last night, I stumbled across Ten Thousand Fists (the song, the first track in the album of the same name) by Disturbed. It is probably the best metal song I've heard this year. I mean, I don't really listen to much contemporary stuff, and am probably guilty of ignoring several good artists (I pick up new-er music listening to Musicmatch Radio most of the time ... or from an ad on TV). But Ten Thousand Fists is like ... Megadeth, if Dave Mustaine could sing ... Judas Priest (that is the current Death/ Speed Metal configuration) meets Soundgarden. However you choose to describe it, it's still one kick-ass metal song.

Oh, I also bought Strangelove by Depeche Mode, and 3 live Rammstein tracks (as impossible as this may sound, the band is even more menacing live)