Month: January 2004

I even started typing it out, when my brain fused. I am enjoying a long overdue overdose of music this evening (which explains the timestamp on this post), and my brain is finding it hard to multi-task. In a great way. Was however, strangely able to catch up on a large chunk of unanswered email. So these stolen yet apt enough lyrics will have to suffice.

Cold and frosty morning there’s not a lot to say
About the things caught in my mind
Damn my education I can’t find the words to say
With all the things caught in my mind

Shot from the comfort of home on another such cold and frosty morning. Yes, that explains the dirt on the glass becoming a part of the picture, but it’s a small price to pay to stay warm.

Unrelated, but what I wanted to talk about I think – making people smile is fun, in a life-force-giving-fluid thirst quench sort of necessary joygasmic way. I wonder why everyone doesn’t see this.

This living with people thing is a bit much. I mean really, I am too old for this. Just one fishing evening, and suddenly with three people instead of one, I’ve never felt more cramped in my life. Guests, phone calls, LOUD talking, and general noise. It was perfect. Orderly, and neat. IT WAS ORDERLY. One day, and it’s all back to chaos and entropy’s through the roof. And it’s too hot even by my standards.

And here’s the killer, too much fishing HINDI.

There are so many aspects to this that annoy me in other ways too. I hate being the youngest person by over ten years all the time. I just hate it. ALWAYS being around older people at home is so depressing. I DON’T WANT TO END UP ALL BALD AND BELLIED. I know I probably will, but I’d rather not think about it or be reminded about it at every possible instant.

I think what is bothering me is that somehow I’ve lost my chance at being a kid. I’ve been old and mature as a child. Soon, I’ll be old. Somewhere in there, there should have been fun and carefree. I really would like to know how that feels. This being a wannabe kid in the head, but circumstances and people you live with and so on being “been there done that, I’d rather sleep” old, is fishing crazy.

While I am at it, this doesn’t help either.

First thing tomorrow, I look for a studio. I don’t care if I can’t afford it. I don’t care if I become the… I might as well paste this.

CHANDLER: If I’m gonna be an old, lonely man, I’m gonna need a thing, you know, a hook, like that guy on the subway who eats his own face. So I figure I’ll be Crazy Man with a Snake, y’know. Crazy Snake Man. And I’ll get more snakes, call them my babies, kids will walk past my place, they will run. “Run away from Crazy Snake Man,” they’ll shout!

Remember that? Good times. Good times. I remember being able to laugh so hard.

I have the strangest feeling a new roomie (I’d say housie, but that sounds more like a game than someone you live with) would have moved in and be at home before I get there. Just hope it isn’t too weird.

I’m too old for this.

Today was rather interesting. Showed off the home to more (rather nice) interested (and prospective house mate) people, and reached for work at some 11:30 or so. So far things were pretty normal. And then this shows up in the mail, at 11:42.

Hi all,

A former student in our lab has moved away and left his bike in Ann Arbor …
The bike will be offered on a first-come, first serve basis …
…
(Obviously clipped to the interesting bits because you must be the busy sorts.)

11:44, I have a new (old) bike. Which was pretty good, considering it is a rather decent 18 speed mountain terrain thing. You know, because I am the rough and tough sorts who’ll use it on his next expedition. Anyway, it must be in 20s outside. (Real world units -6 C). Why is that important? Get to that in a bit. So here I am, new bike and all, so the obvious impulse is to check it out. So, wheel it down to the nearest gas station (gasp, I didn’t even think petrol bunk), and filled up the tires (and yes, I didn’t think tyres either). Now the interesting thing here is our friend compressor doesn’t have a pressure gauge, and I have no way of knowing necessary details. Fearing not, I take it out for a spin. It was well balanced (meaning 23 or not, risk breaking teeth or not, you tend to not hold the handle bar as much) and generally fun. An hour or so later I get home and realize I have no way of chaining it to anything. So I wheel it in to the house looking for a makeshift solution, while I begin to wonder, hmm.. 70 degrees inside, 40-50 degree difference from the rest of the environment, I wonder how much the tire tubes will expand. KA-BLAM!! (Reminiscent of fun 60’s and 70’s shows involving grown men running around in tights fighting crime), and I’ve blown one tire. Needless to say, I almost emptied the other one in a little bit. Needless to say, coefficients of thermal expansion are not always your friend.

Needless to say, ah well, with the general scheme of things, I expected no better.

Was this side of the contry a year or so ago?

I am probably a lot blinder than I think I am.

Having no computer at home has some perks. Like getting to squeeze some quality TV time from the otherwise usually TV-less days. Randomly flippity flopping through channels when I stumbled upon an adorable little film, The seven year itch. It wasn’t great, or as funny as it thought it was, but it was just so cute. People who know my preferences in things know I am not too keen on things I classify “old”. (Since I realize using less “stuff” and replacing all stuff with “things” defeats the purpose, “things” in that last statement refers to movies/music.) And there it was, this darling little thing released a good quarter century before I was born, and yet I liked it. And I found it funny.

Whether I was laughing at or because of it wasn’t clear at times, but it made me laugh and that’s that.

Moving on to other things, not too long ago, during a particularly absent minded week, I lost one pair of glasses AND broke my spare. Inherently, I have no issues with that because I can see well enough without them for most practical purposes. But for some reason I had to blab about this to my parents, and voila, next time a relative flies there and back, I have a brand new shiny pair. Now, this would be good news if its frame colour wasn’t an odd mix of brassy pinky metallicish shinyish .. gah, I can’t even describe it. I hate it. I try not to wear it. And I’m beginning to feel a tad guilty about it.

I’ve screamed about it, but *cough* people responsible don’t seem to mind. I mean if the store doesn’t have too much to choose from, you don’t buy. Or you wait. I know, probably, at times I’ll sound peeved about not being able to choose your own gender, but this rather feminine coloured frame is definitely not one of the reasons.

Grayish metallicish and thereabouts – the only acceptable colour spectrum.

I am quite linguistically biased though I try quite hard not to be. This transcends into my little geek world too as a generic dislike of all things not C/C++. Like eclipse, for instance. In my opinion Java is slow and sucks and that’s that, and hence magically, eclipse does too. I did try it though, and I must say it is quite good. But I’ll stick to real men IDEs, like Emacs, for now.

Click to enlarge if you’re really that curious.

Not getting off the geek train for just a little bit more, been fiddling around with gsl‘s love (or lack of it) for icc. Then built gsl with gcc, as icc failed some checks. Just for fun, (no, not really) I was testing the same proggy under gcc and icc. Got different numbers. Hmm. And not close to (double precision) machine epsilon.

Just one more stop. I noticed on TechTV (yes, no surprise I watch it) and other places how awesome the Canon Rebel is. I was, for just a little bit, not a believer. And then I saw some sample images. It was then clear to me, my life had purpose. I knew what I wanted, until I saw sample images from the EOS 10D. Now I am back to where I started. Just a confused man running (slowly walking) around this rather complicated world.

Eitherway, anyone with brilliant (or even not so brilliant) ways to come up with a spare $1500, should contact me ASAP.

Good, I needed that release.

(Yes, there is something about new years jokes.)

Being home has not been as much fun as I had hoped. Haven’t slept very well for the past couple of nights. I really did try. Been tossing and turning and wake early early with pain all over my body. Not happening. Oh that, and contrary to the usual vibes I might give out, being alone does suck once in a while.

In an attempt to break records of sorts breaking new years resolutions, I’ve been working on a new aggregator. I am not in a frame of mind to explain its purpose or how you can get your journal on it if you want to, but a FAQ is in the works. For now, this is a technology check and a place where I circumvent nasty bugs. If you really want to see how something like this could evolve, check out planet gnome. Yes, hackergotchi heads are sweet.

Update: The FAQ is up.