Chronicles of Gautam

First of all, let me wish all of you a very happy year ahead! I am back to Bangalore after an eventful week in Mumbai. Back to office, back to work. Quite some things changed in my life in the past week: some for the worse, some for the better. I hope in the long term I will be happy for the past 10 days. I must admit that the year didn't start of well, the shocker of a XAT being the first of several lows. Comments of the paper ranged from a simple 'It was the toughest paper ever..' to creative ones like 'XATack!', 'XATom Bomb!' and 'Even Rajnikanth would have struggled :O'. Really, with the extremely high level of paper that was set (with differential marking and an ambiguous marking scheme), and the resulting luck factor that inevitably creeps in, one tends to question the rationale behind such a paper. I respected the XAT for their impeccable papers and flawless conduction of the exam till now, but this year was a disappointment to say the leas...

Am I connected or not? One of the frustrating things about using Windows is, surprising as it may seem, having to deal with problems involving wi-fi. It would appear that using Windows would at least guarantee a pain-free, hassle free experience with wireless drivers. But Alas! It is not so. Nowadays I can safely declare that any Ubuntu (rather any Linux} box outperforms Windows with regards to just about everything - including driver support. And if just dealing with problems is not enough, there are those confounding messages that as Windows users one must inevitably encounter. Just the other day, I was having some problems connecting to a network, and above is a screenshot of the screen that I was presented with after fiddling around for some time. Now what in the world am I supposed to infer from this? Is some kind of cruel joke being played on my by some bored Microsoft programmer? Poor me (and the legions of other Windows users out there).

Here I was innocuously working on my embedded linux terminal, at the place of my work; when out of the blue I found out that using the Linux operating system might mean supporting terrorism in this world! Or at least supporting the ideas that terrorists seem to believe in. Have a look at the above screenshot of the my terminal. My box does not want peace, has no satisfaction, is not interested in love, but as soon as I say kill, it eagerly asks "Whom to kill?"

Now this is what I call a great MBA's marketing mind at work! This poster, seen at the Philips cafeteria near where I work, had me in splits the first time I saw it. I wonder if there is a tiny possibility that the person who coined this 'We squeeze to please' tagline really had no idea of its sexual connotations. And the 'Juices 'n' More ' doesn't help either. I am convinced that the guy had a stroke genius, or has a really sad life. To this day, I cannot keep a straight face as I say to the person at the counter,"Ondu water melon juice kodi". And add mentally, "freshly squeezed please!".

One of my friends had the following status message on Gtalk: "I had to google for the meaning of JFGI, and the irony of it was overwhelming." It indeed is.

I just found this incredible video which is a must watch. Its inspired from 'We didn't start the fire..' Heres the link: Here comes another bubble ... Please do see it. My best part was about the blog paragraph. I can't resist posting the lyrics here: "Blog, blog, blog it all, Blog it if it’s big or small. Blog at the cineplex, Blog while you’re having sex. Blog in the locker room, Babies blogging in the womb. Blog even if you’re wrong, Won’t you blog about this song?" Well, I did!

No, this is not a post about the Big Bang ( although it is interesting enough to merit a separate post itself ), rather it is a post about The Big Bang Theory, an American situational comedy created and executive produced by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. The story revolves around two nerds who are particle physics scientists, their two friends who again are similar nerds and a simple (and hot) girl waitress who comes to live across the hall. I liked the series from the first episode itself. The dialogues are really witty and they use a combination of good English and complex sentence constructs to create the laughs. There is a lot of scientific jargon thrown in, and I have a hunch that me being an engineer might have something to do with my liking the show so much. I am not quite sure the Average American would appreciate the jokes. The character Sheldon especially likes to use scientific arguments to prove himself right or to prove someone wrong, and it is done in a very amusing way. S...