Thursday 27 April, 2006

Sorry...

 
Sorry blog.. been neglecting you lately. Its just that I've been working crazy hours this week. I work from 6:30 in the evening till sometime like 4:00 in the am. This cycle is making it very difficult for me to really post something coherent on the blog.
 
In all seriousness, I feel like I've been doing tequila shots and smoking pot the entire week.
 
 
Well, there was that one shot on saturday.

Friday 21 April, 2006

Somewhere over the rainbow...

Amazing pics of ... well rainbows...
 
Go here
 
 
Great find.... thanks to digg.

Thursday 20 April, 2006

At the movies

 
Note that this same post also exists at Yet Another Ruman Blog
 
Things that movies have taught me... Hollywood Edition

 A cigarette case in a shirt pocket always blocks a bullet.

A single match can brighten any room, no matter the size.

All computer disks work in all computers, regardless of operating system.

All single women have cats.

Anyone can land a plane, provided someone in the control tower talks you through it.

Bullets are unable to penetrate water.

Characters shot with guns will fly backward, or upward and backward, through the air, the laws of physics not-withstanding.

Dinosaurs only eat ugly and/or immoral people.

During emotional confrontations, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, stand behind them and talk to their back.

Explosions in space make noise.

Having a job makes fathers forget their sons' birthdays.
 
If a killer is lurking in your house, it's easy to find him. Just run a bath (even in the middle of the day) and then look in the bathroom mirror. There he is.
 
 

I think that should be it for now...

Wednesday 19 April, 2006

Stayin Home


So I am staying home today. Lot of work going on around the house and I need to be here to keep a watch on things. First day off from work since my sister's wedding back in Jan.

Wordpressed to move


Howdy, folks.. my cheerfulness seems to have come from Wordpress where I migrated all my previous posts from this blog yesterday,

Man, that place looks quite nice and if I really like it more I guess I'll be over there full time.

The link is Yet Another Ruman Blog... of course the name might be changed in the near future.

Love the templates and oh yeah the main reason to consider moving - NO SPAM.

Monday 17 April, 2006

Quotes for the Day

 
Today's topic is absence. Once again thanks to QotD

Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
     - François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
     - Henry Alfred Kissinger

 

Sunday 16 April, 2006

Tis the season

Just ate mangoes after three years.

It was great. Its truly the small things that matter.

Saturday 15 April, 2006

Quotes for the day

 
Today's theme is Poker:
 

Poker is a game of people... It's not the hand I hold, it's the people that I play with. — Amarillo Slim

Luck favours the backbone, not the wishbone. — Doyle Brunson

Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life . — Anthony Holden

There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker... Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kindhearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a 'flush'. It is enough to make one ashamed of one's species. — Mark Twain

The future is here

 
By future I mean that of management. By here I mean India and by saying that I mean it was a statement made by CNN Money.com
 
 
Good stuff.
 
 

Now they tell me...

 
Tips on great note taking.
 
 
Now they tell me.
 
 

Friday 14 April, 2006

Quotes for the day

 
Today's Quotes taken from the Talmud:
 

Be a tail to lions rather than a head to jackals.

If silence be good for the wise, how much better for fools.

A legal decision depends not on the teacher's age, but on the force of his argument.

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Net addicts

 
Section - Humor
 
You may be an internet addict if:-

All your friends have an @ in their names.
At the mall, you see someone of the opposite sex that you'd like to meet and your first thought is to IM her.
At work, the boss constantly reminds you that the word i should be capitalized.
The last girl you picked up was a GIF.
Three words: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
When everyone else goes to bed, you sneak in to your computer.
When looking at a web page full of someone else's links, you notice all of them are already highlighted in purple.
When someone asks, "What did you say?" you reply, "Scroll up!"
You beg your friends to get an account so "we can hang out."
You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again.
You consider being called a "newbie" a major insult.
You don't have a bookmark list, you have a database.
You experience "withdrawal" after not being online for six hours.
You fall asleep, but instead of dreams, you get IMs.
You go online in the morning before you go for coffee.
You go to personal web sites just to see their links page.
You keep more than four browser windows open at the same time.
You log off and the message begins with, "You were on for 3 days, 15 hours…"
You look at an annoying person off-line and wish that you had an "Ignore" button.

ok.... I think I'll stop there cause I could go on and on...

Oh and most of the above apply to me.

 
 
 

Thursday 13 April, 2006

Quotes for the day

 
Today's Quotes:
 
One man believes in existence,
Another says, "There is nothing!"
Rare is the man who believes in neither.
He is free from confusion.
 
from The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita, by Thomas Byrom
 
 
"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come." -- Rabindranath Tagore

Wednesday 12 April, 2006

Quotes for the day

Today's Quotes:
 
Theme is 'Talk'
 
No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next.
     - Edgar Watson Howe, 1853 - 1937

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, philosophy, and religion all in one.
     - Eudora Welty, 1909 - 2001

We talk on principle, but we act on interest.
     - Walter Savage Landor, 1775 - 1864

I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families, sometimes into no family at all. When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.
     - Russell Baker

The short end of it

Section Humor:
 
The world's shortest books... quite funny.
 
"America's Most Popular Lawyers"
"Career Opportunities for History Majors"
"Different Ways to Spell 'Bob'"
"Ethiopian Tips on World Dominance"
"Everything Men Know About Women"
"Everything Women Know About Men"
"French Hospitality"
"Human Rights Advances in China"
"Things I Can't Afford" by Bill Gates"
"Things I Love About Bill" by Hillary Clinton"
 

3 years down

Wow.. I never thought I would be here. Writing a post three years after the first one graced this blog. I had only hoped to leave a footprint somewhere on this massive beach called the Internet and well, its certainly left a mark. Not to a lot of people but certainly to my immediate family and close friends.

This was the only way the two groups of people mentioned above could keep up with my activities which were interesting on a daily basis back in Buffalo. Does that mean my life has become boring after graduation and moving back home? Hardly; its just that my target audience has really come close to the eye of the storm so as to speak. They know more or less what I am up to on a regular basis.

And while I do admit my days of really going wild with Sumedh, Justin, Laura, Sameer, Shival & the rest of the crew are long gone, it does not change the fact that I have been updating the blog on a regular basis.

When I told my mom a few days ago that this special anniversary was approaching, she told me to start writing something meaningful apart from all those links and humor I post on a regular basis. Which is why the minute I got home then I started composing this post and most likely I will be posting this soon with the dates modified so that it appears on the blog's birthday with precision.

My mom had asked me to write about my life and my dreams... and I thought no one wants to read that... most of my crew know that I tend to get quite philosophical at times (read that as often).

Which is why I quoted Game when he uttered, "They say sleep is the cousin of death. So my eyes wide open cause a dream is akin to your last breath."

So today is gonna be no philosophies.. well....perhaps no more that what I have already scribed above.


Happy birthday blog.. yay.

Tuesday 11 April, 2006

The numbers game

 
A great link to a quirky way of looking at mathematics's five most important numbers.
 
 
Cool stuff.

Sunday 9 April, 2006

Yeh meri kahani translated

I love music. While I do appreciate a good feet-tapper and a great beat every now and then, my favorite songs of all time all have one thing in common - great lyrics.

Nothing moves me as a song with good lyrics does. And very rarely in the recent past has a song moved me as much as a song from the Indian movie Zinda.

The song is titled 'Yeh Meri Kahani' or This my story when translated literally. The movie can be translated as Alive and it is a story of a man who one day for no reason he can think of is taken from his house and imprisoned in a dark place for a very long time. He has no idea why and then one day all of a sudden he is let loose and he attempts to figure things out. While I haven't seen the movie yet, the soundtrack from the movie is very good.

As I usually do when I like a song, I went online to find the lyrics and they were really good. I tried to understand them... I got the gist but let’s face it... I don't understand Urdu that well. I know my Hindi but words in Urdu are more classical and stylish.

The song in question was written, sung and produced by a great Pakistani band called Strings. I share a special bond with them since 1993 when I got their first album. Their songs keep popping up every 4-5 years and I get hooked all over again. Urdu is the language used for Poetry and some of the words are very hard to get. During such cases I simply ask my dad to translate as he knows the language very well and is well versed in Poetry of this form called Ghazal.

Anyway... he just read the lyrics in the past hour and liked them very much and quickly explained things to me. Things which I will attempt to further translate to English so everyone can enjoy.

So here you go:

Original Lyrics : Translation

Yeh hai meri kahani : This is my story
khamosh zindagani : A silent life
sannata keh raha hai : The silence is saying to me
kyun zulm seh raha hai : Why bear the injustice?

ek dastaan purani : An old story
tanhayi ki zubani : The voice of loneliness
her zakham khil raha hai : Every scar comes out
kuch mujh se keh raha hai : It says something to me

chubtay kantay yadoon ke daaman say chunta hoon : I pick prickly thorns from my past
girti deewaron ke aanchal mai zinda hoon : I live holding onto collapsing walls

bass yeh meri kahani : This is my only story
benishaan nishaani : The mark left by me is unnoticeable
ek darr beh raha hai : A fear flows through me
kuch mujh se keh raha hai : It says something to me

chubtay kaanten yadoon ke daaman se chunta hoon : I pick prickly thorns from my past
girti deewaron ke aanchal mein zinda hoon : I live holding onto collapsing walls

Spoken Poetry

bajay pyaar ki shabnum mere gulistaan mein : Dewdrops of love echo in my garden
baraste rehte hain har simt maut ke saye : Each instant brings a shadow of death
siyahiyon se ulajh padti hain meri aankhein : My eyes meet those of darkness
koi nahi .. koi bhi nahi jo batlaye : There is no one. No one to tell me
kitni der ujalon ki raah dekhe : How much longer must I await light
koi nahi hai koi bhi nahi : There is no one. No one at all
na pass na durr : Neither near nor far
yeh pyaar hai : This is love
dil ki dharkan : The beating of the heart
apni chahat ka jo ellan kiye jaati hai : That keeps declaring its affection
zindagi hai jo jiye jaati hai : That keeps living its life
khoon k ghoont peay jaati hai : That keeps accepting everything
khwaab aankhon se siye jaati hai : It keeps weaving dreams

ab na koi paas hai : Now there is no one near
phir bhi ehsaas hai : Still there is a feeling I have
siyahiyon mai uljhi padi : Entangled in the darkness
jeene ki ek aas hai : Is the will to live
yadoon ka jungle yeh dil : My heart is a forest of memories
kaanton se jal thal yeh dil : My heart is overflowing with thorns

chubtay kaanten yadoon ke daaman se chunta hoon : I pick prickly thorns from my past
girti deewaron ke aanchal mein zinda hoon : I live holding onto collapsing walls


Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

Friday 7 April, 2006

Rules to follow while writing

More humor...
 
Following are some of the rules you should follow when you are writing:
 

"Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation
A writer must not shift your point of view.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
Avoid commas, that are not necessary, and don't overuse exclamation marks!!!
Avoid the use of dyed-in-the-wool cliches like the plague; they are old hat.
Be more or less specific.
Correct speling is esential.
Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
Don't never use no double negatives.
Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
Good writers do not use one verb tense in one part of a sentence, and then have switched to a different tense in the next.
Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
Who needs rhetorical questions?


Enjoy...


 

 

 

 
 

Wednesday 5 April, 2006

Measuring Units

 
Haha nice. Modern units of measurement.. some are pretty funny:
 
2,000 pounds of Chinese soup = won ton
 
Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon
 
1,000 aches = 1 kilohurtz
 
2,000 mockingbirds = Two kilomockingbirds
 
1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche
 
10 rations = 1 decoration
 
8 nickels = 2 paradigms
 
100 Senators = not 1 decision
 
And the last one...

3 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital = 1 IV league

 

From Al Lowe.....

Monday 3 April, 2006

Cubicle Slang and stuff

Haha awesome. Some nice modern Cubicle Slang... Thanks to Al Lowe's Humor Site.
 
Some nice samples:
 
404 - Someone who is clueless. From the Web error message, "404 Not Found," which means the document requested couldn't be located. "Don't bother asking John. He's 404."
 
Blamestorming - A group discussion of why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible.
 
Blowing Your Buffer - Losing one's train of thought. Occurs when the person you are speaking with won't let you get a word in edgewise or has just said something so astonishing that your train gets derailed. "Damn, I just blew my buffer!" (Synonym: "Head Crash")
 
Bookmark - To take note of a person for future reference. "After seeing his cool demo at Siggraph, I bookmarked him."
 
Dorito Syndrome - The feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction triggered by addictive substances that lack nutritional content. "I just spent six hours surfing the Web, and now I've got a bad case of Dorito Syndrome."
 
Gray Matter - Older, experienced business people hired by young entrepreneurial firms trying to appear more professional and established.
 
More to follow in the coming days...
 
One a personal note.. We've got lot of 404's at work. We don't have blamestorming sessions. I occasionally do blow my buffer. I tend to bookmark people, places and things way too much. I also sometime suffer from the Dorito Syndrome and there is some grey matter at work.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Saturday 1 April, 2006

Quotes for the day

 
Today's Quotes:-
 

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
     - Georg Christopher Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
     - Will Rogers, 1879 - 1935