This is an apology blog to all those who regularly read my blog :) !! I have been kinda caught up in other things over the past two weeks, and haven't had the time (or rather the inpiration) to write about anything.
And with the Christmas weekend coming up in a day, am all the more caught up in planning for my weekend ;) !! So there will be no blog for the entire of next week too...
I am trying to write this at 6:30 in the morning, as I wait for my roomie to get ready, so that I can take him to office :) !! Learn time management from me ;) !!!
Merry Christmas!
Friday, December 22, 2006
Mr & Mrs Girish?
Hiya reader! Welcome back to another edition of my ego-centric rantings online :) !! Hey hey, you can't complain. You are on my blog, and I can write only about me . I tried writing about world peace earlier, but somehow neither the peace keepers nor the trouble makers got my message. So, I decided I stick to writing about the things I know best. You guessed it right .. me myself and Girish :) !!
A couple of weeks back I got an innocuous looking letter in my mailbox (Post box you geek. There is life outside the Internet and email too!). It was addressed to a "Mr and Mrs Girish"!! That was shocking.. It proved two things:
1) I look too old to be single
2) I dress too shabbily to be actually a single!
Singles are supposed to be good looking and on the lookout for ... ahem .. you know, the "fairer sex". And I look all withdrawn and content with life, kind of a married guy with four kids who has seen and done it all, who works late in the office and comes home to a nagging wife, and crying kids!
That mail kinda hurt me (a lot!), but then I thought I will give the sender the benefit of doubt, and continued my peaceful non-existence. Until day before when I happened to meet a man dressed as a Santa and mistook me to be the father of my colleagues' 16 year old son! Now, a self-respecting man like me, can only take this much. I imagined myself punching the ol' Santa in his stomach, pulling his beard and telling him "Man gimme a break, I am just 25 :(" !! Being from the country of the great Gandhi, I let peace prevail.
This blog was more of a warning for you. So next time when you meet me, admire my youth :) !!
A couple of weeks back I got an innocuous looking letter in my mailbox (Post box you geek. There is life outside the Internet and email too!). It was addressed to a "Mr and Mrs Girish"!! That was shocking.. It proved two things:
1) I look too old to be single
2) I dress too shabbily to be actually a single!
Singles are supposed to be good looking and on the lookout for ... ahem .. you know, the "fairer sex". And I look all withdrawn and content with life, kind of a married guy with four kids who has seen and done it all, who works late in the office and comes home to a nagging wife, and crying kids!
That mail kinda hurt me (a lot!), but then I thought I will give the sender the benefit of doubt, and continued my peaceful non-existence. Until day before when I happened to meet a man dressed as a Santa and mistook me to be the father of my colleagues' 16 year old son! Now, a self-respecting man like me, can only take this much. I imagined myself punching the ol' Santa in his stomach, pulling his beard and telling him "Man gimme a break, I am just 25 :(" !! Being from the country of the great Gandhi, I let peace prevail.
This blog was more of a warning for you. So next time when you meet me, admire my youth :) !!
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Shopping
Here comes Saturday and I am in all enthusiasm to write. I have realized that in the last two blogs, I have written too much about my fat. Enuff said, no more cracking jokes on my transport vehicle on this planet now (my body!). When we aliens invaded this planet (That is a closely guarded secret! But I know human beings to be so naive that even if we aliens leak a secret unless its sleazy it doesn't spread :)), we had no option of choosing bodies. So I got into the one that I got. Now I have to stick with it :) !!
Now, let me get onto some other interesting topics.. shopping!
With Christmas just two weeks from now, you can't escape sales, discounts, mail in rebates etc. etc. A day is incomplete without at least 10 visits to Deals2buy. I have realized that slowly and steadily I am being infected by SSS (Serial Shopping Syndrome).
What is SSS?
SSS is a new type of disease infecting wanna-be geeks like me. The victim in question gets attracted to words such as "sale", "buy one get one free", "mail in rebate" etc. And then the victim's subconscious mind takes over. Thereafter the subject reaches for its pocket, withdraws its credit card and buys the product in question. In advanced cases (like mine!) the victim has already memorized its credit card number, so it just goes and enters it online and buys things left right and center. At times, while driving down the road, this disease suddenly takes control of your hand and makes you enter a shopping mall parking lot.
There is no known cure for this disease.
Symptoms:
Well, how do you figure out that you have SSS? Its simple, if you tend to stock upon things because they are on sale, or because you will need them 45 years from now (like buying a walking stick when you are 25, or buying diapers when you are still single!), or if you find out that the mail man delivers parcels to you everyday, and you have no idea what is inside, cause you do not remember what all you bought online.
I am now a victim of this disease and I am hoping someone somewhere saves me! The obvious short term cure is that you guys donate a few hundred bucks per head so that I can buy some more stuff for this shopping season ;) !!
Talking of shopping and money reminds me of Microsoft Money. I use it to manage my expenses. I know I know, I should use GnuCash instead. Trust me, I went through a lot of pains to use it (including installing Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my laptop, configuring my stupid Broadcomm wireless card etc). But at the end of all that, I realized that there was a small problem. I do not understand accounting :) and you ain't gonna get any where if the only knowledge of double entry accounting you have is by reading its article on Wikipedia :) !!
Money on the other hand is a typical Microsoft product (read - extremely user friendly! I bet when MS makes products the end users in their mind are chimps like me :)) Well, coming back to the topic of Microsoft Money, it kinda keeps on reminding me that I will go bankrupt if I continue with my current expenses :) !! Hehehe, typical doomsday warnings which I conveniently ignore. After all, predictions always go wrong :) !!
Money also helps me to plan my life ahead. So I told Money that I want to retire at the ripe old age of 35 .. and it predicted that I need to earn at least 500 times what I earn per year now for me to live a happy life in an old age home somewhere in *istan :) !!
That doesn't leave me with much of an option but to look for alternate sources of employment after the age of 35 :( !!! So here is a list of things that I have compiled, which I can probably do..
What I would like to do after I retire at 35?
Become a full time cook: I know most of you who have eaten my food (or atleast tried to look at it!) will die laughing at this statement. I know, I know my cooking is absolutely bland and tasteless and you would rather graze on the lawn outside than eat my food. But let me explain. I will be a cook for someone who is very diet conscious. That way, the person won't be able to eat what I cook and would automatically control his/her diet :) !! Solutions are always out there, you should just know how to look for them :P !!
Non-lethal weapon for crowd disposal: For those of you who don't know, I have awesome vocal chords. I can sing and make the slowest of snails zap by me. I know there are bad singers out there, but what I do is just generate a lot of noise. Cacophony at its best :). Imagine how useful I would be for the Police to control unruly crowds. Instead of using tear gas and other tactics, they could just make me sing "Unchained Melody" in my *original voice* and in no time, not only the protesters, but also the police will be displaced from the scene.
No wonder when I introspect, I find myself to be the most talented person on this planet :) !!
Now, let me get onto some other interesting topics.. shopping!
With Christmas just two weeks from now, you can't escape sales, discounts, mail in rebates etc. etc. A day is incomplete without at least 10 visits to Deals2buy. I have realized that slowly and steadily I am being infected by SSS (Serial Shopping Syndrome).
What is SSS?
SSS is a new type of disease infecting wanna-be geeks like me. The victim in question gets attracted to words such as "sale", "buy one get one free", "mail in rebate" etc. And then the victim's subconscious mind takes over. Thereafter the subject reaches for its pocket, withdraws its credit card and buys the product in question. In advanced cases (like mine!) the victim has already memorized its credit card number, so it just goes and enters it online and buys things left right and center. At times, while driving down the road, this disease suddenly takes control of your hand and makes you enter a shopping mall parking lot.
There is no known cure for this disease.
Symptoms:
Well, how do you figure out that you have SSS? Its simple, if you tend to stock upon things because they are on sale, or because you will need them 45 years from now (like buying a walking stick when you are 25, or buying diapers when you are still single!), or if you find out that the mail man delivers parcels to you everyday, and you have no idea what is inside, cause you do not remember what all you bought online.
I am now a victim of this disease and I am hoping someone somewhere saves me! The obvious short term cure is that you guys donate a few hundred bucks per head so that I can buy some more stuff for this shopping season ;) !!
Talking of shopping and money reminds me of Microsoft Money. I use it to manage my expenses. I know I know, I should use GnuCash instead. Trust me, I went through a lot of pains to use it (including installing Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my laptop, configuring my stupid Broadcomm wireless card etc). But at the end of all that, I realized that there was a small problem. I do not understand accounting :) and you ain't gonna get any where if the only knowledge of double entry accounting you have is by reading its article on Wikipedia :) !!
Money on the other hand is a typical Microsoft product (read - extremely user friendly! I bet when MS makes products the end users in their mind are chimps like me :)) Well, coming back to the topic of Microsoft Money, it kinda keeps on reminding me that I will go bankrupt if I continue with my current expenses :) !! Hehehe, typical doomsday warnings which I conveniently ignore. After all, predictions always go wrong :) !!
Money also helps me to plan my life ahead. So I told Money that I want to retire at the ripe old age of 35 .. and it predicted that I need to earn at least 500 times what I earn per year now for me to live a happy life in an old age home somewhere in *istan :) !!
That doesn't leave me with much of an option but to look for alternate sources of employment after the age of 35 :( !!! So here is a list of things that I have compiled, which I can probably do..
What I would like to do after I retire at 35?
Become a full time cook: I know most of you who have eaten my food (or atleast tried to look at it!) will die laughing at this statement. I know, I know my cooking is absolutely bland and tasteless and you would rather graze on the lawn outside than eat my food. But let me explain. I will be a cook for someone who is very diet conscious. That way, the person won't be able to eat what I cook and would automatically control his/her diet :) !! Solutions are always out there, you should just know how to look for them :P !!
Non-lethal weapon for crowd disposal: For those of you who don't know, I have awesome vocal chords. I can sing and make the slowest of snails zap by me. I know there are bad singers out there, but what I do is just generate a lot of noise. Cacophony at its best :). Imagine how useful I would be for the Police to control unruly crowds. Instead of using tear gas and other tactics, they could just make me sing "Unchained Melody" in my *original voice* and in no time, not only the protesters, but also the police will be displaced from the scene.
No wonder when I introspect, I find myself to be the most talented person on this planet :) !!
Amazon filler items
Hiya shoppers! I bet most of you (like me) do not buy products online unless you get free shipping :) !!
Amazon has many products on which it offers free shipping if the total cost of your order is above 25$. Now the problem that I face many times is that my total cost is around 19-23$ and then just because I can't cross that 25 margin, I end up paying 5.99$ on shipping.
Today I came across this site which gives you a list of "Amazon filler items" so that you buy them and take your order total above 25$. I just bought a 22$ camera tripod with free shipping thanks to a filler item (Sony wrap around earphones!).
Check out the site... SlickDeals.net
And that reminds me, I don't get any referrals for doing this :) !! I know, most of my friends have this misconception that Mozilla Firefox gives me referral bonus for forcing them to use Firefox on their computers :) !! I have this something about small companies that compete with the giants. Thats why I swear by Mozilla and AMD (have been using their processors for the last 4 years with AMD Athlon 64 in my desktop and AMD Turion 64 in my laptop) !! Wait until they become giants, and then I will start hating them too :P !!!
Amazon has many products on which it offers free shipping if the total cost of your order is above 25$. Now the problem that I face many times is that my total cost is around 19-23$ and then just because I can't cross that 25 margin, I end up paying 5.99$ on shipping.
Today I came across this site which gives you a list of "Amazon filler items" so that you buy them and take your order total above 25$. I just bought a 22$ camera tripod with free shipping thanks to a filler item (Sony wrap around earphones!).
Check out the site... SlickDeals.net
And that reminds me, I don't get any referrals for doing this :) !! I know, most of my friends have this misconception that Mozilla Firefox gives me referral bonus for forcing them to use Firefox on their computers :) !! I have this something about small companies that compete with the giants. Thats why I swear by Mozilla and AMD (have been using their processors for the last 4 years with AMD Athlon 64 in my desktop and AMD Turion 64 in my laptop) !! Wait until they become giants, and then I will start hating them too :P !!!
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Pedometer and the art of walking!
2 weeks and counting!! My my, sometimes I feel I am the busiest person on this planet! Can you imagine I could not take out 10 minutes in 2 weeks to write something over here? That reminds me, I have started a course on "Time Mismanagement". If you wanna join come to my place on Mondays 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM. But then, it might start late, or get canceled (that was a poor joke, I bet most of you didn't understand :) !!)
Well well, (poor) jokes apart, I have been sporting a rather snazzy little gizmo for the entire of last week and I thought I let ya guys know about it. Its a small device that I clip to my belt (or rather it gets squeezed and gasps for breath between my stomach and my hip) and its called a pedometer. Now there are two parts to this story, and I have neatly divided it into two parts, so read on..
Part 1: How I procured the pedometer?
I have a sweet friend, Nidhi, who happened to go to a women's health seminar and like all seminars *collected* a few goodies on her way back. I happened to visit her cubicle one day and instantly recognized that one of her goodies was a pedometer (yippee!!). When you are a kid and all rolly polly, you just have to stand in front of someone put your hands on your cheeks roll yourself around and say "Can I take this please?", and you look so cute that the unsuspecting adult falls prey to your trick (shooo shweet!!). I happen to still use this trick at times, and I for one still succeed :P (may be the scene looks so gross, that the adult in question can't stand it any longer :P !) !!
In this context, I would like to put forward a new theory. "The chubbier you are as a kid, the fatter you become as an adult", a corollary that you can obviously derive from this statement is "The cuter you are as a kid, the uglier you become as an adult" :) !! I for one, now don't want any chubby and cute kids (see I care so much for their well being!). When I was a kid, I was an instant hit with all the *elder* gals around me, and now .. ahem, I don't even wanna talk about it :) !!
All said and done, I procured the pedometer by hook or by crook, and have been sporting it on my belt ever since!
Part 2: How the pedometer works?
Well, I wont get into the nitty grittys of the whole mechanism, but to put it in one sentence, the pedometer counts the number of times the body vibrates when you walk. For an average human being, one step equals one vibration.
So, I started proudly wearing the pedometer and would read it every once a while to see the steps that I walked. I was kinda amazed by the number of steps I took , with me hitting 100 steps in less than 30 seconds! Just to test the accuracy of it, I measured the steps before and after I took a single step, and it gave me a reading of 6!! Now, that was weird!!
Off I went on a quest for self discovery and here is what I concluded. Viscous solids produce something called damped waves. Fat is a viscous solid, so when it is subject to motion, it produces damped waves. In layman's terms, every step I take my body vibrates a lot more than it should, thanks to damped waves in my fat :) !!! Well, I understand that that was the most complex joke I ever cracked :) !! If you take a slow motion video of me, when I am walking you will see my whole body shaking off centered like it happens to the jaw of a bad guy when the hero hits him in slow motion :) !! I bet I am boosting your visualization!!
That's it from me, adios amigos until my next post :) !!
Well well, (poor) jokes apart, I have been sporting a rather snazzy little gizmo for the entire of last week and I thought I let ya guys know about it. Its a small device that I clip to my belt (or rather it gets squeezed and gasps for breath between my stomach and my hip) and its called a pedometer. Now there are two parts to this story, and I have neatly divided it into two parts, so read on..
Part 1: How I procured the pedometer?
I have a sweet friend, Nidhi, who happened to go to a women's health seminar and like all seminars *collected* a few goodies on her way back. I happened to visit her cubicle one day and instantly recognized that one of her goodies was a pedometer (yippee!!). When you are a kid and all rolly polly, you just have to stand in front of someone put your hands on your cheeks roll yourself around and say "Can I take this please?", and you look so cute that the unsuspecting adult falls prey to your trick (shooo shweet!!). I happen to still use this trick at times, and I for one still succeed :P (may be the scene looks so gross, that the adult in question can't stand it any longer :P !) !!
In this context, I would like to put forward a new theory. "The chubbier you are as a kid, the fatter you become as an adult", a corollary that you can obviously derive from this statement is "The cuter you are as a kid, the uglier you become as an adult" :) !! I for one, now don't want any chubby and cute kids (see I care so much for their well being!). When I was a kid, I was an instant hit with all the *elder* gals around me, and now .. ahem, I don't even wanna talk about it :) !!
All said and done, I procured the pedometer by hook or by crook, and have been sporting it on my belt ever since!
Part 2: How the pedometer works?
Well, I wont get into the nitty grittys of the whole mechanism, but to put it in one sentence, the pedometer counts the number of times the body vibrates when you walk. For an average human being, one step equals one vibration.
So, I started proudly wearing the pedometer and would read it every once a while to see the steps that I walked. I was kinda amazed by the number of steps I took , with me hitting 100 steps in less than 30 seconds! Just to test the accuracy of it, I measured the steps before and after I took a single step, and it gave me a reading of 6!! Now, that was weird!!
Off I went on a quest for self discovery and here is what I concluded. Viscous solids produce something called damped waves. Fat is a viscous solid, so when it is subject to motion, it produces damped waves. In layman's terms, every step I take my body vibrates a lot more than it should, thanks to damped waves in my fat :) !!! Well, I understand that that was the most complex joke I ever cracked :) !! If you take a slow motion video of me, when I am walking you will see my whole body shaking off centered like it happens to the jaw of a bad guy when the hero hits him in slow motion :) !! I bet I am boosting your visualization!!
That's it from me, adios amigos until my next post :) !!
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