I'm hungry.. so I eat my own words!

Well, here I am, back early from my self imposed exile. Back into the blogging world. Full of lots of topics and lots of things to blabber about. The main reason : I am in USA. And I got the urge to blog about my experiences here.. So, I begin blogging again!

Bye Bye for 2 months!

Got to accept it, I'm just tired of blogging anymore...

Havent got any creative thoughts to share.. and I think I need a break.

So, for any readers who still land up here.. so long.. I will be away from blogging for atleast 2 months.

Thanks for reading!
Rohan

Saved by Fedora 5!

After spending 7 months trying to install any Linux distro on my machine, I finally heard that Fedora 5 will be able to do the job! The problem was with my Sis 965L Sata controller (no driver!).

If this is a lesson to learn from, I think I am going to start writing drivers very soon.

Back in Feb

Well, this is nothing more than a keep alive post. Haven't had much interesting stuff to share apart from a few snaps of mine at GRS water park.

Watch some cool pics of the cool guy (who else? Me!)

Muzeek Mania

I bet anyone of you can't remember a single chapter from your school textbooks. I can't. No one can. But I bet you can remember the song that you heard when you were 16 year old. The first rock song that ever hit your tender ears or the first hindi song that starred your secretly favorite heroine I bet you still can sing correctly to the last word the master pieces of Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, U2 and like. That's music and it's mystery.

My musical tastes have always had a wild swing, sometimes I feel that I am a hard rock fan, sometimes the soft tunes of Jatin Lalit please me. Sometimes, Linkin Park gives me a high, and sometimes Lucky Ali soothes me. Nsync made me do Bye Bye Bye to my childhood and Rob Thomas and Santana made me a man.As much as my parents would love hindustani classical, I used to groan at the sound of it, and still do, though not as loudly as I used to. Though born a marathi, I have never heard marathi music extensively and never really enjoyed what I heard.

My forays have been mostly into hindi film music (mainly Jatin Lalit. How I miss them these days!). Loved early Rehman, still love his tunes in Rang De Basanti. Loved Sandeep Chowta, till he went crazy and liked Anu 'the useless singer' Malik till he decided to kill people with his crooning. In my college, I was shown the world of rock and metal. English was in, hindi was out. Ronan Keating was useless, Dire Straits rocked.

It started when my Dad bought an audio cassette of Joh Jeeta Wohi Sikandar for me (you can trace the Jatin Lalit craze). Never had a CD till I graduated. The audio cassette was the one for me. Those were the days of my first year in college when I used to borrow Balli's walkman to listen to Lucky Ali and Euphoria and try to conquer the sorrows of my homesick mind. Cassettes went away, and MP3s came, and now I used to roam around my hostel searching a willing headphones donor.

Over the 10-12 years that I have enjoyed music, I have come to classify songs for the time and place they should be played at. When down and out in the dumps (usually after a hectic day at the office), it's Aerosmith time. I just love 'Amazing', what a song! Next in line are Cryin, Living on the Edge, Crazy (This one, I like more for the video featuring the two Goddesses – Liv Tyler and Alicia Silverstone. Man, how can an 18 year old boy forget them!), Don't want to miss a thing (Which sane 23 year old doesn't want to be like Ben Affleck with the gorgeous Liv Tyler as his girlfriend?) and the all time favourite of mine 'Janie's got a Gun', which gets the blood flow back in my veins. And then it's time for the new stuff of Aerosmith – Fly away from here and stuff with the latest Steve Tyler song with Santana! And after that, when I am immersed in the music, it's time for the select favs – Santana's Smooth, Metallica's Turn the Page, and Whiskey in the Jar, Guns N Roses – Estranged, Sweet Child of Mine, and the fantastic November Rain.

When bored with listening to the regular stuff out there, I usually turn to Linkin Park. Meteora gets me through these times. I like each and every song, with my personal best being the meteora title track for its guitar works. Or else, some U2 Elevation and Vertigo and some sprinking of Ricky Martin shaken not stirred with Livin The Vida Loca(Video!), She Bangs (Again video!!!!!), La Bomba and Marcia Baila.

When coding, I have my select songs – Either a recent hindi movie song (trying out Himesh Reshamiya stuff and Rang De Basanti) or songs from the tamil movie Anniyan (surprising, isnt it?)

When on a trip in Anand's or Raj's car – Eagles 'Hotel California' and 'Take it easy' rule!

When trying to make a Bheja Fry (brain fry) of someone, I make him listen to Altaf Raja and when trying to establish bonds of friendship, I try to test the other person's knowledge of the 'Tailspin' and 'Duck Tales' songs ;-)

And when doing nothing but loitering away, I like to let Winamp do the picking :-)

Btw, Puzzled by the spelling of the title? It's P.G. Wodehouse's The clicking of Cuthbert (Coot-A-Boot) at work. Zank you, Zank you for reading theeze! :-D

Splash - Part 2

Here we go... Ale Ale Ale!

Splash!

Yesterday (26th January) was a holiday for me, and I had a blast with my old buddies from Philips!

Myself, Nikilesh (Guru), Ranga (Myshelf Renga), Raj (Just Raj) and Ananda (Arnold) went in Raj's car to GRS Water Park near Mysore.

What was to be a 4 hour drive became a three hour one due to the heroics of Ananda who was at the wheel. Man, what a rush at 140 kmph! Amazing!

The water park charges 244 rupees for anyone above 4'6"!! Now how did they arrive at a figure of 244 or 4'6" is something that I would not waste my scarce neurons on.
Now all of us being techies, any lay man would have predicted what we did next:
1. Posed for lots of photographs (wearing a goggle that Raj had got. Somehow every techie thinks that he looks like a stud when he wears goggles, it's quite the opposite actually) and did lots of ornitology (in vain, you see, the bird population and quality decreases exponentially with increase in distance from Bangalore).
2. Thought for 15-20 minutes whether to take off our shirts for getting into the water. Again, techies have a huge pot belly, which self respecting techie will want to show off the result of his occupational hazard? Now if you think that going to the gym and toning up is an option, and if you say you are a techie, you are nothing but a big blot on techiedom. Finally, Raj was raring to do a Mallika Sherawat, and we all followed (remember, Ctrl+C is an absolute must for a techie).
3. Fooled around and kept on fooling around on the water slides. Ranga was toppled by Ananda halfway in the waterslide and had to rely on his butt to take him through. Man, that must have really hurt :-P but we were in splits when he emerged from the slide bare butt :-)) Fooled around till 2.00 PM (Nikilesh was trying to capture Raj's dive in the pool, and wasted 7 photographs on the effort) when finally the sun decided to shine hard and we beat the hell out of there.
4. Ate at a nice dhabba on the way, and decided to start our drive back.
5. Fooled around again during the drive back, and Nikilesh almost successfully executed his master plan of putting the car in a road side well.
6. As expected called it quits at the philips office after waking up the sleepy guards with ravana like laughter roars while watching our snaps.

After a very busy week, it was finally time for fun! Yo!

I'm Back

And yes, I forgot to mention,

After tearing my hair over broken code and growing them back again and tearing them apart yet again for useless coding and testing, I am back to the blogging world.

Planning to post some trash regularly here.

Machhar Mayhem

God created the universe...
Then he created man...
And then he created the mosquito to keep his earlier creation busy...

This little pest has become the bane of my existence. My association with this species is rather old.

1. My home at nagpur - my mom would take great care to get rid of these peskies if they came near me. If anyone survived, I would have a good time running all around trying to become a murderer.

2. College - oh hell... there was a swarm. After umpteen claps of desparation (trying to kill them), I gave up, and open sourced my blood. No drastic effects on me, but yes, their population did decrease after that!

3. Bangalore - Atleast 10 in my room (on any given day) before I put the repellant on, and 11-12 after I put the repellant on. So, I take shelter under the blanket, but since God made a design flaw with positioning the human nose and since I would go bust if I start buying oxygen cans, the blanket cover leaves little openings from where these rogues sneak in.
I've gotten used to this, but apparently my roomie Sid has'nt. At 2.30-3.00 AM he can be found clapping in the dark (hunting for macchars). It's quite a sight!

Promise to upload a photo of his nocturnal activities soon.