Musings From New York

I don't mean to forward ...

A guy on my team sent this to me last week (only just caught up to it!). According to some perfunctory Googling, it's an urban hoax, probably put forth by the snobby Brits againt the uncouth Yank, but still ... Enjai maadi ...

Sometimes it DOES take a Rocket Scientist!! (This IS a true story)

Scientists at Roll Royce built a gun specifically to launch dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, and military jets, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea was to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl and to test the strength of the windshields.

American engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the American engineers in 2003 for testing.

When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Yanks sent Rolls Royce the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the British scientists for suggestions.

You're going to love this......

Rolls Royce responded with a one-line memo (see below)

"Defrost the chicken."

WTFF?

A interesting search that linked this blog. Care to explain, Kartik?

You know what sucks?

Being unwell when living alone, that's what. It's probably weather changes, plus stress, plus the long hours ...

Oh, and my project got extended till May. Frequent flier miles here I come!

Future Upgrades

Microsoft Vista is now "feature complete", meaning all (I guess "all") has been developed, and it's onto bug fixes and user experiences now. Read about it on PC Magazine. And Here's a good article talking about what type of PC one'll need to get the most out of the new O/S. Right now, I figure I'll need a new graphics card, and I'll probably make the switch to a dual-core AMD chip at that time ... I doubt I'd have to replace mobo too (but the article does talk about a new AMD standard, so I probably will ...)

Hasta la vista, baby! (sorry, I couldn't resist!)

PS: Oh, and I've been listening to Satyam Shivam Sundaram (Govinda Remix) by Theivery Corporation. It's excellent lounge music ... not very "Buddha Bar". More of a Indian-ized Massive Attack. It's on iTMS - check it out.

Call me Ting Ting

The dark circles around my eyes have gotten so bad I look like a freaking panda bear :-(

I've always wondered about this ...

The truth shall be revealed!

I really need to change the colors and/or layout of this blog

Any suggestions? Usually I'd have bullied Gowri into going online and helping me with it, but she's gone underground in Boston. :-(

Weekend Update

I got quite a bit done ... er, no make that: did quite a bit (they're not the same thing) this weekend ... I think its because I forced myself to wake up at 8am on Saturday. For starters, I finished putting together my performance goals and training plan (well, most of it) for 2006, and submitted them to my Performance Manager. So now I've gotta wait for the feedback and amend accordingly.

I watched 3 movies on Saturday (yeah, 3!) - 1 amazingly bad one, one bad one, and one amazingly good one ... The Pacifier (hey, at 8am, there isn't much on!), The Brothers Grimm, and Good Night and Good Luck. The latter was on my list "Movies to watch before the Oscars" ... while The Brothers Grimm was a VoD ... I shall not be keeping it in my Netflix queue! I've basically set to watch the Oscar nominees for Best Movie (which also happen to be Best Director) ... a couple of weeks ago, I watched Munich ... so now, I have Brokeback Mountain, Capote, and Crash to watch ... although I wonder why Crash hasn't been released on DVD yet ... it's been a while since it's theatrical release, no?

I also ended up finishing Half Life 2. All I can say is ... "Huh?" Yet another bizarre ending (read the Wikipedia entry)! But ... The game was just frikking AWESOME. Although pretty linear in its storyline and maps, the graphics and gameplay were amazing. The Gravity Gun & the Source engine were beautiful .. whoever thought up the Gravity Gun deserves a medal ... or a promotion, at the very least! Interestingly, there was no sniper gun, which is pretty much a staple in First-Person Shooters these days. That should give you an idea of how much close-quarters combat there is in the game (hint: the shotgun's alt-fire is your friend). Anyway, the ending makes it abundantly clear that a sequel is in the making ... let's hope we don't have to wait another 5 years till it's release!

Was it a blizzard?

The press seems to have given the snowfall a moniker of "Blizzard of '06" ... yet I'm told by some that the front that passed through didn't meet the requirements for a blizzard and so should be classified a storm.

Regardless, here's a typical reaction to the blizzard/storm (in case the strip moves, check out the archives for Monday 13th February).

How were things in Boston & DC?

Let it snow ...

Yeah I'm ... well, not exactly snowed in, per se, but ... well, snowed in!

LGA closed yesterday, cancelling hundreds of flights, including mine this morning. I've been able to rebook for tomorrow morning, but since there's another important conference call to attend, I might end up rebooking for Tuesday evening.

The thing about snow in New York (well, at least Manhattan) is this: there's nowhere to shovel it to. For example, the snow plows push the show to the side of the road, near the sidewalks. The building supers shovel the show to the edge of the sidewalks too. This results in a doubling of the amount of snow in one particular place (factoring heaping, etc.). So over the weekend, we got about 27 inches of snow. That meant that when I walked out last night, the pile on the kerb was about 4 feet high! And noone seems to give a second thought to intersections & pedestrian crossings ... the snow clogs up the drainage system too, which means that the kerbs at the crossing are half slush, half icy puddles! Olympian athletes for the long jump and such should be training here!