Category: General

This is not good. I’ve dropped things quite a few times. Things seemed normal so far, but suddenly, my laptop seems to have taken offence and is beginning to misbehave. Right now, I am not typing this from my trusty computer, but some other box.

The connection between the adapter and the socket for it on the laptop is totally screwed (I’d like to say “for no real reason”, but it’s my, hmm.. handling). It’s currently “just” not connected, and ends up arcing as a result. This has serious consequences as within 5 seconds, that area of the computer is too hot to touch (definitely not good) and the thermal sensors go haywire and all the fans come on making it sound like a helicopter.

So, I’ve slowly started moving my data out before sending it to hp. I think it’s going to be a lot harder than I thought. Enter the model number, the serial number, the manufacturer number, the this, the that etc. Carefully find each one, enter in different forms.

BEEP! Sorry, that combination of numbers is not good for us.

Damn it, I want my computer to be happy again that’s all.

*Runs back to trying ALL permutations of ALL numbers showing up anywhere near the computer.*

Cleaning up hard drive days are so interesting. You’d never realize what tidbit that’ll show up. Today, while I removed some 3 gigs of generic “stuff”, I ran into this.

Yes, just about as believable as the 22 greatest bands ever?

How seriously do you take such things?

Due to, I assume, lack of entrants, this week’s “Picture of the week” is mine. Mine I say. Muahahahahah.

Check it out while it’s still up here. Sure, they spelt my name wrong and didn’t publish my rant about the licensing and things, but hey, they’re not geeks, just normal folk.

Even more annoying, since it’s in a frame, the direct link just takes you to that portion of the page. To see all of it in its (not so) glory, you need to follow a more arduous route: www.umich.edu/~isa/ :: follow the link to the “leisure” section (on the top navigation menu) :: click the “photo of the week” link on the left navigation menu.

Phew.

Hmm.. I watched some more of the US Open today, and it felt weird, very. Again, against all reason, I was totally rooting for Roddick’s opponent to win.

This was strange for two reasons. First, it’s JUST a sport. I normally never even follow, let alone take sides, let alone take sides and totally pin all hopes on that person, cheer, or get so involved that it affects me. Again, all of this happened during today’s final as I was rooting for Roddick’s opponent.

Then it hit me, it had nothing to do with the “other” guy. I didn’t even know his name.

It was just that I wanted Roddick to not win.

Again, that had nothing to do with Roddick.

For some strange reason, I think it has something to do with Mandy Moore.

Now what she’s got to do with anything either, I don’t know.

I guess I’ve got to stop analysing and learn to enjoy.. *shudder* sport.

But is this more fun?

This is the fastest I’ve ever burnt out, ever. Actually, I don’t remember ever burning out ever. That’s, obviously, not because I am super human, but because I’ve never really pushed it.

I mean, what good would that have done? (Besides probably the unimportant things like over achieving, becoming rich and famous and all that.)

This week has been, I have to say it, more than what I can take. I’ve been leaving early early in the morning and returning late late in the night (yes, repeating the words, not as typos, but to emphasize, how early and how late). Yes, smoke and mirror away the numbers, and you just have to trust me on it being really early or late.

Anyway, I’m not cut out for galavanting across campus on different bus routes to catch consecutive classes from the time I wake to the time I sleep, and getting work done in the remaining time. What remaining time you say?

What work I say.

So the weekend’s been nothing more than laaate waking and idling. Re cooperating sort of thing. I’ve also drastically dropped the course load, to make more time for real work. Notice I never ever said the classes were too much for me to handle intellectually. I just said I am not cut out physically to actually handle being there at the right time each time through out the day.

In this down time however, I’ve got quite a bit of tennis watching in. Sports don’t matter, and I normally never get involved in what’s going on, but COME ON, Nalbandian should have won.

Sure, he served slower, didn’t hit the ball as hard, just kept the ball in play until the other guy screwed up, among other things.

But it’s just no fun when the crowd favorite wins you know?

Also, saw some totally bogus program on MTV2 about what I thought was on the greatest bands of all time. I was all furious over the peoples’ votes, but then realized, after 3 near heart-attacks, that it was just a poll based on the “greatest bands” that had their greatest string of commercial success during the post-MTV era, circa 1981.

Yeah right.

Ahh yes, another hectic day. Didn’t do too much besides the ordinary worth talking about. It’s at these times, I hope, that pictures can come to a rescue.

Here are a couple of pictures of different sites that I’ve worked on. “Worked on” is an ambiguous term. The truth is all my sites have been stolen from different locations, to varying degrees. But no, nothing majorly illegal, I do it when they’ve said it’s ok to, and credit back or whatever is required of the license.

Aesthetica is a forum that’s been dead over a year. It was a phpBB powered forum. Yes, it was inactive.

And now I am fooling around with something called “espeek.”

I found a template I liked on css Zen Garden and decided to use it as a framework for an MT powered blog for someone else. As is obvious, it requires a lot more work.

Here I go, still scratching around the same old hole
My body feels young but my mind is very old
So what do you say?
You can’t give me the dreams that are mine anyway
You’re half the world away
Half the world away

I’ve been lost I’ve been found but I don’t feel down.
No I don’t feel down.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. What I meant to say is, I am without a watch. I’ve had my trusty watch for a very long time, and it has given me very little trouble. Of course, I’ve had to change the strap a couple of times, and the batteries a few times, but hey, it has worked so far. About a month or so ago? just before my Albuquerque trip, the batteries started dying again, and it failed BANG IN THE MIDDLE of my talk.

It is weird, I use (depend on) my watch more than most people. Next to google, it is my brain’s closest friend by being an ‘off line’ data store containing (seemingly important but actually unnecessary) information like people’s contact information and birthdays and all that sort of thing. It helps keep my mind freer for the hopefully more relevant things.

But, I do use it to tell time too, and often.

Which is why, when it died in the middle of the talk, I was more than a bit flustered. Of course, I then resorted to the more fundamental art of telling time by how bored the crowd looked. And, surprisingly, it worked. Judging how patents and so on work in this country, I think I can patent the idea of “telling time based on how bored your audience appears” and make a fortune some day. Some day.

It’s been dead since then, and I’d almost learned to live without it, apart from the sporadic “stare at empty wrist hoping to see the time” syndrome. I’ve just been too lazy to do anything about it. I assumed I could get by, and yes, I was wrong.

Today was one of the more hectic days and I rushed in and out of five? or so (with four of them being fairly advanced math analysis) classes. Not fun when they are in totally different parts of campus and I didn’t really know what time it was most of the while, which resulted in some odd, and slightly embarrassing, class entry/exit times.

I have to get it fixed. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

I also realized I’ve messed up, I think, by getting into engineering. I should have pursued pure physics/math instead. Damn it, those people are so much cooler than we can ever be. Even the halls and the buildings just radiated a “we know more than you people” sort of glow, complete with the “we just love knowing, and we don’t stop as soon as we know ‘just enough’ to make a product, or write a program, or design a circuit… like you lowly engineers”.

Sure, half of my degrees should make me a hybrid, like I halfway belong with them. But it’s still not as pure as it could have been.

No, it isn’t.

And one of the cooler things that could have happened did happen today. As I was running around those older, feel more “grand university”ish halls, absolutely random people (lying down in the corridors with their all free software stickers plastered laptops and so on) were all smiles, starting random conversations, gesturing (something vaguely resembling a thumbs-up) and so on. Why? I was in my friendly Free Software, Free Society shirt.

Again, if these normal people (complete with the ones with hair all over their face and beards upto their knees) can see, recognise (the importance), and strike up a civilized conversation on some geeky topic, why can’t the engineers?

They’re just pseudo geeks, they don’t really know or really care. Just fake it.

I was looking into some of last month’s site statistics and here is something interesting, to me. Out of the top three browsers to hit my site, two are gecko based. Mozilla Firebird (now Firefox) and everybody’s favorite (except the GNOME dev team :() gecko browser, galeon.

2995: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030429 Mozilla Firebird/0.6

2675: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; T312461; .NET CLR 1.0.3705; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

2109: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686) Gecko/0 Galeon/1.3.3

Yes, it is just me. And I know you don’t care. Move along now, nothing here.

It was cold today morning. No, I don’t know how cold. I don’t want to know. All I know is that it was cold. Damn, I hope it just doesn’t get worse and worse from now on until it hits subzero (in their evil units) temperature. Sure it’s very, very pretty, but very, very annoying.

It did get better towards mid day though, I think. I have been cooped up indoors since then anyway, so I don’t know how warm (read ‘not cold’) it got.

Point being, it is fall already. Classes have started and I am currently rushing to 6 or so and attempting 7. Yes, it’s unnecessary strain on the mind, but it is something I do each term till I slowly back off until I hit that sweet spot, where I know I won’t die with work and can do moderately decently. Just what is moderately decently you say? I don’t quite know.

Anyway, I assume work and so on will come to a grinding halt for a little while at least, while these things reach a steady state.

I just thought about it, since I brought up ‘fall’. I’ve decided I prefer how the weather was where I’m originally from, and you DON’T HAVE TO SEE WEATHER NEWS, EVER. Because it’s always going to be very hot. That’s the weather report, on ANY given day. The way it should be. Sure, we don’t have “seasons” where plants shed their leaves, but hell, it’s so hot we barely have plants.

Since things like these always come in groups to exponentially increase their irritation factor, along with the changing weather (for the worse) and the suddenly quantum jumped courseload, there are the quintessential rommie issues. I don’t think I have anything particularly against ‘a’ roomie. I think I’ve begun to detest the very concept of a roomie. This dawned on me when I ran out of hot water a very short 40 minutes into my shower. Sure, it’s no one’s fault, but it wouldn’t have happened if roomies didn’t exist.

Yes, next plan is to rob a bank or whatever and get my own place. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing personal, it’s just, the concept that I’m beginning to not stand.

Before that, I am seriously considering changing the blog name to ‘the trials and tribulations of your usual grad student’ or something similar.

Today was fun. Left all the (now settling) chaos at home to spend some time at my aunt’s place. Which was different because the people usually here left for the *labour day weekend and I am spending time here with another cousin.

Yes, by saying it like this, I am somehow trying to smoke and mirror away the fact that I have fewer cousins than can be counted on the fingers of one hand. And the number who I actually have interacted with, and been in close geographic proximity (over a moderately significant period of time) doesn’t even need a finger of a hand.

With this scheme of things, I can’t see why my parents should expect me (or theirs’ them) to try to pull off any sort of “normal” level interaction any time soon. It is hard. My world is not the same. I don’t have 40 or something cousins living in homes right accross the street. No, I have very few, and in totally different parts of the world.

It’s not that I plan to use this as a reason for not trying. Ah, well, that’s a lie. I not only plan to, I do.

Today however, was an extremely pleasant change. Hung out, did.. stuff. Fun stuff. Among other things, caught the Pirates of the Carribean. Yeah, we were the oldest people there, but it was one of the funniest movies I have seen in a while.

Thank you, almost everybody I know who’d seen the movie, for the rave reviews (complete with the implicit, you will see it).

Of course, since classes and so on begin in a bit, life should, well, become more.. predictable. Predictable is good. Schedules are good. I like my life all mundane, predictable, and planned.

And, totally unrelated like the last thought, I was catching some US Open action today. I was wondering why my parents didn’t name me something cool, like Anastasia Myskina… besides the obvious getting mocked and horribly beaten in high school of course.

(*I will resist yankeefying my spellings for as long as I can.)

Life’s been.. oddly fun. After galavanting around doing very little in terms of real work over most of the summer, the past couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. Work started off slowly and has accelerated quickly to the point of almost overwhelming.

It’s been mostly fun though.

I am getting used to this “jumping into the deepest, murkiest, most shark infestedest waters I can find, and hoping I don’t die” approach to things. Which, roughly translated in my world is, three dimensional, anisotropic, inhomogeneous, nonlinear, multivariate, large deformation, multiple interacting species with growth/resorption/remodelling and what not problems which involve a good deal of tensor (variational multivariate?) calculus, extreme numerical methods, and most scary, mucking around with the associated FORTRAN implementation (or even scarier, the interfacing between my C’isms and existing FORTRAN’isms.. ack!)

Like I was saying, it’s mostly fun.

So, like the usual grad student, I practically live here. I don’t have time for “real life” nonsense. I don’t give a damn either. But to some others out there who have little else to do, this seems odd to comprehend. Take the (now ex) roomie for instance. I get something like this via email when I ask for a couple of days to go through before signing anything with these fishing* retards:

“I personally would like to get this thing done with as soon as possible as for the last 2 weeks I have been running around trying to get it settled, I’ve had little time for anything else.”

First, HELLLLOO, genius with the extreme sentence construction skills – How about attempting to split 3-4 line sentences into 2 or 3 smaller ones? (And what’s pasted above is after obvious? typo removal.)

Anyway, oh, so he is the busy one is he? What am I supposed to do, oh booh hoo I should do it ASAP because he needs to get back to his life?

Hello, genius, you caused the problem, not me. I shouldn’t even be helping fix anything. What’s so hard to comprehend – “You break it, your problem fixing it”.

Like I said, life’s been mostly fun

…once all this unnecessary noise is turned off.

(* Replace ‘fish’ in fishing with any other four letter word you see fitting)

Are you a reality tv fan? Whose reality is it? Do people behave/talk/dress/… like that in real real life?

I’m pretty certain anyone who watches tv (at SOME point of time in the DISTANT past) found themselves a bit more involved with one of these shows than they choose to admit. I mean, who wasn’t? Today, it’s just too much. I mean a network can come up with only so many “shocking twists” before they aren’t shocking or awing any more, just awful. Things are getting downright predictable, not to mention dumb (not that they were ever too bright, but that is besides the point). The worst part is, they don’t feel real. Never did.

Who really watches these shows? Why do they show up on prime tv slots just to make me switch the channel? Don’t the advertisers know this? Why are they funded and still on the air?

And the shows themselves. Let’s look at the highly original ones with radically different ideas and concepts – who wants to marry a millionaire? who wants to marry a guy pretending to be a millionaire? who wants to marry an eligible bachelor? an eligible bachelorette perhaps? What would you do if you had to choose between the hot dude/dudette and a million (or two?) dollars? who wants to marry my dad/mom? And it goes on and on like that. For straight people, gays and lesbians too I suppose. You name it, it’s there.

While we’re on the topic of marriage related reality shows, for “For Love or Money” fans, <Nelson’s voice> haahaa </Nelson’s voice> Rob. When will he ever learn?

Anyway, back to the other class of stuff, the only one I like(d) is the amazing race. But that too, four or five seasons later, hmm.. not so much fun any more. How about some more back stabbing in survivor? or in the big brother house perhaps? or how about eating an animal’s genitalia for fifty grand?

GOOD LORD! Give these network geniuses half a brain, please.

If that doesn’t work, I know what will. Just make it a point not to support any of their sponsors by not buying their products. (Hmm.. this is hard, since you need to watch the show to see what’s being advertised so you don’t buy it hmmm..). Ok, share the responsibility with a group, one super lucky one per day being the dude(tte) who gets to watch the show and not gouge their eyes out.

It has GOT to stop. I neeeed sitcoms when I watch. I don’t get too much time (If you doubt that, just sneak a peek at your neighborhood grad student juggling PhDs in a couple of areas. Don’t see her? I rest my case.) to, but when I do, I’d rather not see some arbitrary person conning some other arbitrary person into marrying her mom who is actually her dad in drag whose ulterior motive is to get the unsuspecting soul’s liquor license to forward his just started restaurant in which two fires or so per episode is reality.

Sheesh.

I boot up, load everybody’s favorite messenger, gaim, when all hell breaks loose. I get a friendly message from M$.

(15:34:25) messenger@microsoft.com: You are running a version of messenger that requires an immediate security update. Please visit http://messenger.msn.com/Help/Upgrades.aspx to complete the update.

(15:34:25) messenger@microsoft.com has closed the conversation window.

In other words, please reboot to our OS and install our client, as part of our Trustworthy Computing initiative. They wish.

Continuing what I had started a few days ago, here are the rest of the bits from my slam book. I could have gotten all mean and split this over a couple more days, but decided not to.

Your attitude might not win you many admirers, but I really like and respect it man!
Cool, at least someone does :P.

You have a great way of making people feel good, especially when they’re down.
I try, sometimes.

One of the most originally intelligent people I know.
Good god, you need to increase the number of people you know, pronto.

Coolest, most down to earth guy I’ve known. Serious.
Yeah right, look up the advice given to previous dude/dudette.

I guess it’s when you’re different that you stand out in a crowd.
Go ahead and say it, the word you’re looking for is weird. ;)

You are the best teacher.
Attributing that to my near infinite patience with my tutee.

I would really want you to be a lot more patient, and not call others names if they can’t keep up.
hmm.. conflicting reports. Moral of the story, if you want me to be patient, you have to be my tutee. ;)

You are really capable and deserving of going to some top notch school like UMich or Berk.
Woah (s)he’s psychic.

Dear Pundit,
or should that be,
Dear “Omnipresent Light ~ the source that touches all”
That’s a bit extreme isn’t it?

I’ll definitely miss the guy who pulls his hair over his face to see its length.

Little shy at times, and verbose when it comes to people you know.

Sarcasm that you displayed was the best! The exaggerations were even better.
That one made me mighty proud.

In our numerous discussions, I figured you were somewhere between Gadget Guru and Geek God.
Of course, little one.

Hope you didn’t lose your sanity.
Written on some arbit page, diagonally, UPSIDE DOWN. Oh no, I am just fine with it.

Respect your intellect but sometimes your geeky attitude gets on my nerves.

Meet you as department Chair of Mech. Eng. at MIT
Thank god (s)he didn’t expand the acronym and clarify which MIT (s)he was referring to.

Some day when you get your ears pierced and grow your hair.. I’m beginning to have doubts whether they’re ever going to happen at all, I’ll surely give you a pair of dolphin earrings. I only have one now, so I think I’ll buy a new pair.
Having doubts eh? hmm.. I HAVE to do it now. :)
YEAR LATER: Ponytail’s well along the way. The piercing, yes, still under consideration.

And there were also the standard (obligatory) comments about the longish hair, sudden extreme weight loss and about my being (brutally) honest and frank. :P
Obviously my personal favorite in that department,
Funky guy, lots of hair, and lots of brain hidden inside it !

Note to self. Read the comments about the long hair when you’re bald and weight loss when you’re obese again.

On a side and related note, my little experiment with this book just.. well let’s just say the results were interesting. It was supposed to end up doing a few things and answering a few questions. I believe it did.
1. Primarily, did people really care to read a simple instruction page and follow it ;)?
2. By hoping people passed it amongst themselves and filled it in some sort of order, I hoped to get a who-knows-who kinda relation tree. And probably, how long it stays in a clique before it moves out.
3. Since I had stated anyone, even someone who barely knows me could fill it, I was wondering how far it would go and would someone I didn’t know fill it?
4. And, if I was lucky one passing it on, let me observe how people react when they realised I had a slam book, in effect, admitting that I did care a tad about what others thought about me.

I realised people don’t enjoy reading README’s, even if they’re insanely tiny. They don’t care to follow instructions, especially since the person asking them to isn’t in any great position of authority :). Some people read instructions, and for fun, (and to NOT help my sanity) do totally the opposite. The rate of passing the book is insanely slow when not monitored by the owner. It’s, I would say, a 10th of what could have been achieved with me pushing, but bah, this was more fun. People, like any other element of the universe, tend to be most random. If it’s written, ‘Fill in order’, that’s the last thing I see when I see it now. Things don’t cross cliques easily, and matters have to be taken into the hands of the one who wants it done, me. Yes, even people I barely know have taken the time to write something. I was impressed. And yes, as I id get a lot of this.. OMG, you?.. this is Pundit right? You have a book?

It wasn’t a success or a failure. It was supposed to be interesting and it was. I’ll have to wait another few years and try this again some time.
And.. I realise people are inherently nice (..shiver) ;).