Nigerian Scams

Once in a while when you are bored out of your skull and in a chat room, you run into scammers . It is interesting how they trap gullible folks, here is one such conversation.
scammer: hello
me: hello
scammer: pls can u assist me in a business transaction involve a huge amount of money and we both stand to make a good money out of it at the end

[ Ha ha ha ha Nigerian scammer in action]

me: really
scammer: where are u from?
me: US
scammer: 34f from lagos nigeria
scammer: i work as a banker
scammer: u?

[ Really? And we are so dumb]

me: I work as a assistant in an office
scammer: wat post?
me: administrative assistant
me: you know the kind that take calls and book appointments and plan conferences
scammer: oh ic
scammer: ur age and name pls?
me: david 22
scammer: nice meeting u david
me: what is your name
scammer: am Lauren by name
me: nice meeting you lauren
scammer: u are welcome

[ Yawn Pleasantries, establishing rapport]
scammer: i want u to assist me financially in a business transaction involve alot of money and we both stand to make a good profit out of it at the end
me: oh wow
me: how ?
scammer: i need ur assistant to stand as next of kin and sole beneficiary to the sum of $6.5million usd lying unclaimed in the bank i work
me: you are kidding right
scammer: this is not a joke or child play david
me: oh ok

[Show sense of indignation to establish that you are legit]

scammer: i want this transaction to be a top secret between u and me 'cos u know how much am talking about here
scammer: can u keep a top secret?
me: yes yes
scammer: alright
scammer: listen carefuly
me: ok
scammer: This funds was deposited here in the bank by Mr Toni Choate an american contractor who died wit wife and only daughter in an auto accident in the year 2001
me: oh
scammer: ever since the death of the late Mr Toni Choate this funds has been lying down unclaimed in the bank and all effort made by bank to locate the next of kin to this funds prove abbortives
scammer: u wit me?
me: yes
scammer: good
scammer: now i want u to act as the next of kin to the late Mr Toni Choate by contacting the bank managing director for the claim of the funds so this funds can be release into ur bank account in usa
me: huh? wont i get in trouble for acting ?
scammer: listen
scammer: there is no trouble involve in this business
scammer: i want u to be rest assured that this transaction is legal and %100 risk free which am going to protect u from any breach of the law
me: oh ok
scammer: all i just need from u here is ur deep trust and honesty that u wont betray me when u get this funds transfer into ur bank account
me: of course
me: you can trust me
scammer: good

[ Hilarious, trust, its legal, 100 risk free (rotfl), protection from law]

me: what do i do
scammer: if there is nobody found to claim out this funds from the bank the bank wil forfiet the funds and it wil be transfer into the bank treasury room which means this funds could be share among the bank top directors
me: oh, not the bankers!
scammer: good
scammer: i dont want this funds share among the bank top directors 'cos i believe this is a golden opportunity in life
me: yes it sounds like one
scammer: u wil write a letter to the bank email address explaining that Mr Toni Choate is ur late uncle and u are ready to claim out ur funds as the only beneficiary so the bank can instruct u on how the funds wil be wired into the bank account
me: ok and
scammer: at the conclusion of this business %40 wil be ur own share of the total amount of the money
me: oh wow
scammer: dont take this as a joke or child play
scammer: i wil also send u all legal documents that back up this transaction so u can know am for real

[ha ha ha ha legal documents!]

me: okay
me: u have a cell no to talk to you about this ?
scammer: yep
me: what is it
scammer: am contacting u here 'cos this funds can not be approve to a local person here in Nigeria except someone from foreign country who know and have adequate info about the funds can stand as the next of kin
me: i understand
scammer: am only contacting u here as the first foreigner wit believe in God u wil never let me down at the end
me: yes i will not let you down
me: what is your cell number ?
me: do you have a pic ?
scammer: thats my pic in the display
scammer: or u check my profile to see me pic
scammer: +2348080781092
me: okay
me: do you want me to call now ?
me: ur pic is not clear in profile
me: or display
scammer: alright
me: shall i call now ?
scammer: yes
me: says the number is busy
scammer: i got ur missed call
scammer: but is hidden number
me: yes i am using a calling card for international dialing

[ of course i am not gonna call you with my real number! that's what voip phones are for anyway]

scammer: ic
scammer: listen
scammer: before u apply for the claim of the funds there are some vital processing that need to be done by me here in the bank
me: why didn't u answer the phone
scammer: am at work
me: so what
scammer: u really want to speak wit me right?
me: yes
scammer: alright
scammer: call me
me: i can't understand a word
me: u said

[some unintelligible gibberish]

scammer: yep
me: what did you say
scammer: i said my boss is here wit me
scammer: come online so we can talk
scammer: i dont want to get myself in trouble
scammer: u know this as to be a top secret between u and me
me: yes yes

[sure top top top top secret, geez]

scammer: before u apply for the claim of the funds i have to first open a beneficiary file here in ur name
me: ok
scammer: and i wil also insert ur full info into the bank central computer as the next of kin to the late Mr Toni Choate so when u contact the bank managing director for the claim of the funds ur full details wil appear as the next of kin
me: ok
scammer: but if u contact and ur info is not found in the bank central computer the bank wil find it very difficult to believe u as the next of kin
me: of course
scammer: so i wil need the info as follow so i can start the processing rightaway
scammer: Full name
scammer: Residential address
scammer: Occupation
scammer: Fax and Mobile number
scammer: Date of birth
scammer: Email address

[first round of personal information, second round would be bank information anyway]

me: ok
me: and what other information do u need
scammer: thats all i need from u so do the processing
scammer: then after am done u can know apply for the claim of the funds
me: david fubar, 1650 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, 202-001-0911, davidf@419eater.com
scammer: very funny david
scammer: wat do u mean by 419 eater?
me: that's the website i have an email address with
me: what'
me: what's funny about that
scammer: sound funny to me
scammer: well u know wat
scammer: i can never force u to do wat u are not sure of
scammer: i know and also understand how cheat is going on in the internet
scammer: so we dont know who to trust
me: that coming from you is hilarious
me: you complaining about cheating is hilarious
[silence :p]

For those who are wondering what the whole 419eaters.com is , well check it out it a site dedicated to busting Nigerian scams. You can read FBI's warning on these scams here

Arrrgh Winblows!

I hate windows! It is the bane in my life! I have a laptop's whose disk always trashing. I fire up a couple of softwares from sysinternals,

1. procmon
2. procexp
3. filemon
4. autoruns

Jeez, there are so many freaking apps that are running, here is the list that turn out to be the culprits.

1. Windword
2. symantec antivirus daemons
3. spysweeper
4. encryption daemon

2-4 are killing my laptop to the point of no productivity. The folks in IT and security would be very unhappy if I attempted to turn of 2-4. They have promised they are gonna improve performance by Jan. I hope so too. Time to run to my debian box!.

Wine and dine!

A Sunday afternoon, a snow storm raging, all cozy at home, sipping hot choc and I get call from my friend, yo, wanna come over for dinner, I am cooking dinner. Me goes,

Snow storm or not, me gonna have a delicious dinner ;)

Greeted with 4 different kinds of wine and cheese! Wooo hooo. With slices of home made bread, some wine and cheese and Christmas music, the evening is off to a good start! My friend who is a great cook made, sliced oven cooked potatoes, a dish of brussel sprouts, asparagus, baked lamb with gravy made with port, flour and butter and spinach cream. He followed it up desert wine and crepe with filling made from ricotta cheese and strawberry jelly! Yummmy. Following that was a movie screening of "Half Baked", Ha ha ha, it was fun seeing it again. Dave Chappell is hilarious.

Life is good! A fun evening

Credits: Image above can be found here

Warmth in the Cold

The snow storm is all raging, dropping loads of snows, the wind blowing and me driving up the street, slowwwwwwwlllllyyyyy. Yeah don't want my car to skid and slam into an ice bank. I see this guy who is like limping slowly bravely, mid 30's and seemed harmless. I pulled over and asked buddy do you need a ride, he was like yeah, a couple of blocks down. 10 mins later he is dropped off front of his house. He goes, "thanks man, thanks a lot, god bless you".

:) Yeah at 12.30am in the harsh snow storm, the warmth from helping another person is far higher! I hope someday someone would help me out when I am need of such help.

Earlier in the day I was reading a news article about a school student group that formed to give people hugs and do acts of kindess and a teacher told them "Go do your nice acts somewhere else" and called the cops on suspicious behaviour. The goal of the student who started it was that, yes it is still okay to help strangers and act of human kindness is still a good thing rather be wrapped in suspicion. I lost the link to that news. One can find the needle in the haystack of news aggregation sites.

Epic Fail!

Recipe for Disaster / What were you thinking / Dumbass moment

1) A snow storm
2) A good evening of fun
3) 1.00am
4) 1ft of snow in ur driveway
5) Broken shovel
6) No parking allowed on the streets.

What would you do? What would you do?


This is all that stands between my apt, my cup of hot choc and me! Snow!



A broken shovel can't be much of help, the dude who is supposed to plow the snow ain't gonna be here for another couple of hours.

A battle between intelligent decisions and stupidity reigns. Lo and behold stupidity wins! Yeah I know, evolution's flaw manifests itself in the combination of curiosity of what would happen if you did the dumbest thing, knowing it is the dumbest thing to do and it would cause you grief.

Well here is the aftermath!

ROTFL! Yup, I backed up my car and just drove through it and I got stuck in the snow. :D Yeah epic fail moment. Man and Machine vs Nature. Nature won. Humbled again.



I had to call a tow truck and got my car out.

FAQ:
1) What the hell were you thinking?
Nothing, just pure fun of challenge of the heavy car and the ability to drive through a couple of feet of fresh layer of snow that hadn't hardened yet. The snow along the kerb was tad harder than the fluffy snow in the driveway. Damn plow trucks!

Credits:
Thinking cap pic source Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com"

Coffee Art 1

What do you do when you get a new mini camera, a real cheap one, a 5 ft coffee machine and free coffee mug from work?

1. Just drink coffee and get on with life
2. Don't drink coffee and be healthy
3. Take pics and drink coffee
4. Take pics and not drink coffee
5. Take pics of you drinking coffee
6. Take pics of just you
7. Other...

Mua, chose other. I looked at the coffee mug after I got some random coffee and I was immediately struck by the spirals. My mind is churning away, fractals, spirals in bubbles, oil films and I never cease to be amazed by the beauty of it. So I figured I would start taking pics of what kind of shapes I could get by just shaking the coffee mug.

This is first cup of coffee, a little shaken. Its kind of interesting, it looks like

• A dolphin
  
• A dude standing inside a structure and operating something
• A mark on the head of a bird.
  

• A mermaid
• A swan
• Still thinking
  

Started with a mushroom shaped and ended up with a spiral below! A lil shake here and there!

Know not I

Know not I,
Soul stirring than thy touch,
Know not I,
Mirth, exciting than thy joy,
Know not I,
Bewitching than thy smile,
Know not I,
Heavenly than thy kiss,
O fair maiden, it is
You, I seek.

When forty winters shall

Time for sonnet 2.

HEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,

Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,

Will be a tottered weed of small worth held:

Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,

Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,

To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes

Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more prasie deserved thy beauty's use

If thou couldst answer, 'This fair child of mine

Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'

Proving his beauty by succession thine.

This were to be new made when thou art old

And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st cold.

Source:

Once I understood that sonnet 1 was about a guy, his vanity and the offerspring that he supposed to have, the context and the meaning of Sonnet 2 becomes more obvious. This sonnet is all about the encouragement and the question of what the youth did with his lustful ways and did he have a son to feel warm in his old age that he is being seen in the form of his son.

Hmm, it is a nice sonnet, didn't feel the rush though.

Belay On!

Belay On
On Belay

Climbing
Climb on!

The four communication phrases that have been a regular exchange during rock climbing. Earlier in the week, I had gone for my second visit. I had to take the belay test. I took the test with a random lady as a climbing partner who turned out to be not so random after all. It was the usual commands, check, harness, carabiner and the fall test.

Aced it! Turns out that the lady was my colleague's friend who was supposed to meet us. Cool. There are 4 of us now and I start climbing. An easy course marked green 5.6 grade, made it up pretty quick. Next one was 5.7 grade, it was alright, kind of cheated in a place or two. The third one was a bitch! It was 5.8 grade, and one had a stretch a lot.

It was one of those routes were the wall starts leaning towards you creating a ledge impression and you need your upper body strength to push your self up. In the first attempt I did some quick moves to get to the ledge and then my arms started to scream, my palms were sweaty, it wasn't gonna be easy trying to reach into the chalk bag to get rid of the sweat, but held on. The arms started to scream loudly and I loose a footing and I fall...

I am dangling in the air, as my climbing partner has me covered, damn I almost had it, I had almost reached over the next hold , damn , I yell "take" and I get lowered. Alright time for another try.

This time I forget to pull the quick moves and I am hanging off, with my arms screaming like a the howl of the strong wind, I fall.. Bah! Another time

Time for a break then climb another route. Attack of the pink happens! It is a 5.7 grade climb and the route is marked in pink! If you are scratching your head wondering what's with the attack of the pink check this.

All in all a couple of climbs it was good. The knots are perfect, I should get some rope from the guy next time to practice on my own different knots.

Fractal Art

Source: This is pretty interesting digital art. Its done by user ricdiggle on flickr.com

Green Pit Viper!

F*** I almost pissed in my pants when I saw that. That's one mean looking f*****. As usual, I was trolling the web, when I landed on national geographic's website. The article which can be found here was talking about new species found in Asia. This is a Gumprecht's green pit viper which can grow upto 4 ft long.

PC vs Mac Vs Linux

I was thumbing through my bookmarks and I came across this link that I had. Ha ha ha! It is a funny flash animation of southpark style. Check out the video.

Fairest Creatures

I have read shakespeare stuff as a kid and have always been interested in reading the sonnets just not gotten around to it to dedicate time to it.

Fun fact: I played the role of Antonio in Merchant of Venice as a kid!

ROM fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory;

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thout that are now the world's fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content

And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee

source:

So reading through the sonnet, I got lost half way through, when I landed on

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,

What on the earth is the WS talking about? I kind of got the idea he was talking about a guy and he being his own enemy and his child. Yeah, tried a couple of times but the above three lines threw me off. So time for www.google.com or wikkiiipppedddiiiaaaaaaaa.COM to understand the context under which the sonnet was written.

It turns out that the sonnet is about a guy and his vanity, that instead of procreating he is lost in his own self and robbing the world of his lineage. Check out this link for more detailed explanation.

The sonnet is pretty interesting!

We ain't here to do e-c-e

F***ing Hilarious

Source: bash.org

Insult:
:arkan: You know, you really ought to have a bra with 403: forbidden on it.
:Labyrinth: And you really ought to have a pair of boxers with 404: not found.

Rap:
:djahandarie: we ain't here to do e-c-e
:djahandarie: we're here to do c-s-e on the w-e-b
:djahandarie: listen to me spit these rhymes
:djahandarie: while i program lines
:djahandarie: and commit web accessibility crimes
:djahandarie: word, son
:http402: You talk like your big on these I-Net kicks,
:http402: But your shit flows slower than a two-eighty-six.
:http402: I'm tracking down hosts and nmap scans,
:http402: While Code Igniter's got you wringing your hands.
:http402: Cut the crap rap,
:http402: Or I'll run ettercap,
:http402: Grab your AIM chat,
:http402: N' send a PC bitch-slap!
:http402: peace
:djahandarie: you're talkin bout down hosts and nmap scans
:djahandarie: while i got other plans
:djahandarie: you're at your new job, but you can't even do it right
:djahandarie: you just create a plight with your http rewrites
:djahandarie: i've been on the web since the age of three
:djahandarie: you just got on directly off the bus from mississippi
:djahandarie: respect yo' elders, bitch
:http402: You've been webbin' since three, but still ain't grown up,
:http402: Gotta update your config and send the brain a SIGHUP.
:http402: You say you're that old? No wonder you're slow!
:http402: You're knocking at the door while I run this show!
:http402: Elders my ass, you're shit's still in school,
:http402: Hunt and pecking at the keyboard like a spaghetti-damned fool,
:http402: Rim-riffing your hard drive like a tool,
:http402: Face it. I rule.
:djahandarie: i erase my harddrives with magnets (bitch)
:djahandarie: all you can do is troll on the fagnets
:djahandarie: and son, my brain's wrapped in a nohup
:djahandarie: it wont be hurt by the words you throwup
:djahandarie: dont mind me while i emerge my ownage
:djahandarie: while you're still over there apt-getting your porridge
:djahandarie: you say i'm still in school
:djahandarie: but the fact is that i know the rule
:djahandarie: cuz you need to go back to grade three
:djahandarie: and you better plea, that they take sucky graduates from c-s-e
:http402: Time to bend over and apply a patch,
:http402: Your brain's throwing static like a CD with a scratch.
:http402: Your connection got nuked and you've met your match.
:http402: You run a single process like a VAX with a batch.
:http402: I'd pass the torch to a real winner
:http402: But it'd just scorch a while-loop spinner
:http402: Caught in a loop that you cant escape,
:http402: I run clock cycles around your words and flows,
:http402: Cuz your rhyme is like a PS fan: it' blows,
:http402: Your water-cooled lyrics leak and it shows,
:http402: Take your ass back to alt.paid.for.windows.
:djahandarie: Good god, I can't even respond to that. :P
:djahandarie: You win haha
* http402 takes a bow

Curiosity killed

Curiosity killed the cat,
Curiosity killed my heart,
Curiosity killed my ignorance
Curiosity killed my hope
Curiosity killed my stupidity
Curiosity killed my boredom
Curiosity killed my love
Curiosity killed everything...
------------------------

Dunno if it qualifies to be a poem, whatever

I believe in Love!

Yup, that was Elton John. I was listening to Elton John when I started on a 3hr drive. Started the car and Nine Inch Nails started to blare, nnooooo NIN at 10.00am. Slapped in the connector to the mp3 player a then Elton John was on, then came the soundtrack of Notting Hill.
I was driving, with the sun rays hitting me alternating between the trees, filling me with the warmth, on a cold day, the music, just did it,

The rendition of She "Elvis Costello" is just great! The lyrics (source: http://www.lyricskeeper.com/notting_hill

_soundtrack-lyrics/64576-she-lyrics.htm) ,

She may be the face I can't forget
The trace of pleasure or regret
May be my treasure or the price I have to pay

She may be the song the summer sings
May be the chill the autumn brings
May be a hundred different things
Within the measure of the day.

She may be the beauty or the beast
May be the famine or the feast
May turn each day into a heaven or a hell

She may be the mirror of my dream
The smile reflected in a stream
She may not be what she may seem
Inside her shell

She, who always seems so happy in a crowd
Whose eyes can be so private and so proud
No one's allowed to see them when they cry

She may be the love that cannot hope to last
May come to me from shadows of the past
That I'll remember till the day I die

She may be the reason I survive
The why and wherefore I'm alive
The one I'll care for through the rough and ready years
Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears
And make them all my souvenirs
For where she goes, I've got to be
The meaning of my life is...she

Whoa, ohhhh...She
-------------------------

Elton John's other songs like the ones below are some of my fav's.

• "Candle in the Wind"
• Sacrifice
• Can You Feel the Love Tonight

Then came some other assorted stuff and out of the blue I was reflected on the moment. At that moment there I was, a part of me

• Enjoying the scenery of the drive
• Enjoying the music
• Maintaining a calculative look at the traffic far ahead
• Maintaining a 3 mirror rule.
• Of course reflecting on the moment

Fun! Yay! for multi-tasking.

Poem or gibberish?

Know know know
know who you are
know know know
know what you are
know know know
know where you are

But

do you ever know who you are?
do you ever know what you are?
do you ever know where you are?

But...

----

it is just one of really random ramblings... Philosophy or superficial bullshit?

Nooo! don't feed your daughter to the croc

LMAO!!!



Image source : tm-tm's photostream (Signage-Set)

Down by the Sally Garden

I had a sudden urge to read poetry. As a kid, I remember memorizing long poetry to recite in competitions in school. William Wadsworth Daffodils, gave me nightmares memorizing that. I remember WB Yeats, so looked him poetry on google and the first one that I come across is this.

DOWN by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

Awww f***, it is poem on love and it is a tragedy, Way to set the mood, buddy! thx.

source: http://www.poetry-archive.com/y/down_by_the_salley_gardens.html

Secrets of a Coffee Machine

I was sitting in the kitchen area at work, during lunch, typing away my previous blog entry, sipping coffee and watching the people pass by and lo and behold I see 2 guys open up the coffee machine and mess with it. They were replacing the labels on the different types of the coffee that it could serve. Now there are lot more options.

I need more coffee, tea bags and water doesn't do it. So I walk up to the coffee machine to see what it looks like inside of a 5.5 ft tall coffee machine. Alright nothing fancy really, no blinking lights and stuff, just regular plastic holders of different powders. So I ask the guy if he could give me how the machine worked.

The guy is all animated now and launches into an explanation. So this machine has several holders. IT has a holders for

• Coffee beans
• Chocolate powder
• Cream made from veges imported from Netherlands (eh? fancy that)
• Vanilla

So the there is a boiler and a piston. When some one gets coffee, the piston pushes the hot water through the freshly grounded coffee causing it have a right mixture of 4oz and it can't do more than that. Apparently in European that is the standard for amount of grounded coffee. He goes on to with disdain that here in the US, people are just used to drippy drippy coffee and lots of it. That made me laugh, seeing his expression, the expression of disdain and pain as if something precious was desecrated!

LMAO! He goes I have trouble with customers, they want 24 oz of coffee, which means regular 4oz of coffee with lots of water. Our machine serves only 8oz. He goes on to rant that the difference between macchiato and regular coffee is the amount of water and of course the preparation style! Ha ha ha ha, yeah buddy laugh away at the difference of amount of water but the preparation style matters :p.

Talk to my Italian friend C about pizza and he will rant the same way :p, you cannot get him to eat dominos pizza! I digress,

So the machine has seperate preparation chambers for hot choc with the creamer, that doesnt mix with vanilla, to give it a better taste and not some lingering taste of vanilla. He then goes on to talk about Starbucks was instrumental in introducing the whole measured way of preparing expresso than the large coffee pot style. That's interesting.

I ask him so what kind of controllers does this vending system use and if there was a SDK available for us with mess with. He laughed, yeah I can connect the coffee machine to the internet or to the phone jack. Now imagine that, before you leave your desk you tell the machine what coffee you want and lo and behold it is ready when you get there! And he goes, I won't be too happy if you guys messed with it. Aww come on what can us innocent engineers do :D We are totally harmless ;)

The coffee machine apparently uses MDB protocol to communicate to a software that runs on windows system (Yuck)! You can hunt for MDB/ICP protocol for details and see this video for open source coffee machine. Well he was done with changing of coffee machine and was on the way out. I couldn't help but laugh at his rants, funny as hell

Thank you Jesus!

My tummy goes growling, demanding attention, demanding that I have some itty bitty to satiate it. Me goes, alright alright, slowly drag my rear off the comfortable chair, groaning looking at the weather outside, f****, it is an eternity to walk 5 mins across to the cafe to get lunch. Yeah I am, being a cry baby and a lazy bum and need a good whack on my head to straighten me out. But hey I was working all night, so cut me some slack!

Each step, oozzzing with laziness, I make it to the cafe, arrrggh, no I am not getting salad today, tired of it and today is not the day for it. No wrap, sandwich either, leaves me with teryaki salmon, rice and mixed veges. hmmn ok, so I get that and a nutrient drink and walk up the checkout lady, she is talking to another customer, "Oh yeah it is friday, finally it is a friday, have a nice day" and I walk up to her, she goes "How are you", I am fine thank you, how about yourself", "Good good, its Friday, its Friday", and then she sings out loudly "Thank you sweet Jesus it is Friday", I am like wtf, whoa lady, easy there, it is nice to be happy and all , but wth is with that shouting?

Maybe I am being a jackass, maybe I need a chill pill, maybe the lady is just too demonstrative and everything is alright with me ;)

I came back to my desk I was laughing my ass off when I thought about it, oh well it is was funny

Rock Climbing

So made it to the local rock climbing place, took the basic course as refresher again. I was able to tie the knots fairly easily. I struggled last year with the knots when I tried them. Itz kind of weird that I was able to get it right on the first time after a year's time. I wonder if somethings that you learn just get etched in your mind that you struggle with it the first time but you do it well a time later. I guess its like how you learn to ride a bike and you never forget.

The instructor seemed like a cool guy and laid back and us (3 of us) let try stuff out, rather than go through a whole drill of lecture. The usual communication of what to do before climbing, checking the harnesses, the knots, the slack etc. Did a couple of climbs, falls and belaying. It was fun. The muscles of my arms were burning after a couple of climbs. I will probably come here more often than just a week since there are guys from the office who come here regularly.

Time to go digging for information on ropes,knots for starters. Wikipediaaaaaa.com!

Dude the expedia ad , with the whole expeeeeedddddiiiiii ddot COOOM! ruined it for me! I was humming wikipedia in my head like that, arrrgggh!

Restless Part Deux

If you are wondering what's with the whole restless saga, read about my first severe bout of it here. Lately I have been a little too restless. I realize of one reason, which is no longer relevant. I haven't run to seek safe haven in the comforting arms of music this time. Gave it a little thought. A large part of it I have concluded is that I have too much of time on my hands now. For the past couple of years I was doing volunteer work which I stopped earlier this year. The volunteer work took up most of my free time during the week and the weekends. After I stopped that, few things at work happened and suddenly the hours doubled and that was for a couple of months.

Now that work pressures have come down, I have a lot more time. This is what is causing me to be more restless. A friend of mine is teaching me salsa, I will be starting rock climbing again from today, I am planning a couple of ski trips as well, but all this is not enough. Wonder what is that I will find that is more full filling....

Expensive Cars!

Fairly recently my interest in expensive cars started. Earlier it was like what car is giving the best mileage and cost yada yada yada. I put a lot of miles on the road in recent years. As usual cruising in cyberspace and I land on this list of most expensive cars. Bugatti Veyron at a cool 1.7million. The videos of the car on Bugatti's website are pretty cool. The handling in the snow at high speeds was pretty impressive. I am not a huge statictisc rattler who has all details of how many seconds does it to take to get to 100MPH. I could care less. It is more of the design, elegance and the sheer power of the car that is interesting.

Speaking of which the second most expensive car Enzo Ferrari eh, not so much in appearance. Same reason the Pagani Zonda C12F not so much, the whole 2 mirror in the front on the hood, doesn't seem to appeal. The Koenigsegg CCX however had me drooling. If I were offered a choice amongst all the ones on that page I would pick this one. The others are kind of cool, but Koenigsegg, oooolllllaaa lllaa!

Archive.org

I had known for a long long time that http://www.archive.org existed. I never took the time to visit the site and look at it. I have been to LibriVox, Gutenberg Audio Books to get audio books of classics. I wanted to listen to some during driving. Somehow the experience is not the same as reading. I don't remember how I landed on archive.org anyway, so I was checking it out. I was ecstatic when I found they have an archive of live recordings! This has opened up a whole new world of music that I haven't explored before. Nice! Since its the end of the year might donate money to the organization.

Don't mess with the ZOHAN!

Ha ha ha ha, turn off your brain and watch the movie. If you are an Adam Sandler fan you will enjoy it. I like some of his movies, they are funny. It had its laughs and moments.

Plot, Adam Sandler a counter-terrorism in expert in Israel, gets tired of stuff he is doing and decides to fake his death and escape to USA to become a hair stylist. After a couple of attempts he then joins a hair salon run by Dalia, a Palestinian woman. The hair salon in in the midst of a street that is split with a Palestinian side and an Israeli side. The movie is about how his identity is discovered and how there are failed attempts to kill him, his antics in the salon and how he joins hands with his arch nemesis to save the street from becoming a mall.

One can watch it if you are in a mood for brain dead comedy.

Double Cross

Yeah, B&N had this book by James Patterson on sale so figured I would buy this. Been reading a lot of heavy stuff lately so figured this would be fun. It was eh! Nothing too exciting. It was okay.

The plot, a serial killer Kyle Craig is in a max security prison and he vows that he will be out soon. He is Alex Cross's former colleague in FBI. As Alex is relaxing taking a break from the force, a new killer is on the loose who acts out different personalities and kills people in front of public audience as if it was a theater performance. The new killer is dubbed as the Audience Killer. The race is on to find this killer and meanwhile Kyle manages to escape from prison adding to Alex's troubles.

Spoiler Alert! The Audience killer is a fan of Kyle. He and his sister are also actors and they enact roles of a marine and a teacher seeking therapy from Alex Cross to add a twist. Rest of the story is how all this comes to an end with both Kyle and Audience Killer having a race to who is gonna kill Alex first.

Yeah, there are a lot of holes in the plot and chapters end really quick just when you expect some tight knit logic on how the killers got access to the FBI agent who is killed. Buy it if you are bored out of skull and just want to read something.

Drill Baby Drill

Drill baby Drill! Lets wipe out beautiful towns and letz get OIL baby! Lets get the black gold so that we can drive few more miles. Lets wipe out beautiful town that make tasty wines. Lets convert a beautiful country side into a dead zone baby! Letz do it! Letz do it by misleading the locals, lets do it by misrepresenting the project in the papers, let pull a viel over the locals and hope they won't find out.

Well that is what ENI tried to do in small towns of Italy. The struggle of the locals against ENI's proposed oil drilling that would wipe out a lot of rich natural flora, national parks and local wineries is a classic David vs Goliath story. The story has not ended. You can read about it here http://apocalisseitalia.blogspot.com (Italian) and here http://savethemontepulciano.blogspot.com (English).

In this day and age when the focus is on alterative fuels and reducing global warming, it doesn't make any sense to convert lush green areas with people living there making wines for long time, into a dead zone of pollution and destruction. Please take the time to read it and support it. Any information that you can gather about and share would be helpful.

Incredible Hulk

I like to watch a lot of movies. Many from the international arena too. Time to watch another one and I picked the Incredible Hulk, for some reason I thought it was a sequel to the previous one. It wasn't. A surprise. Hmmn.

I am a fan of Edward Norton. He is a great actor, been following his movies from his second movie Primal Fear. He is a brilliant actor. So I was all excited to watch the Incredible Hulk. The movie starts out with laying down the background on how he became the Hulk. an experiment gone wrong. The ultra secret division of US armed forces that does experimental stuff of building a super skeleton is still hunting for him because they wanna make a weapon out what's in him.

The early parts of the movie is all about him learning to control himself. Due to an accidental cut, his blood drops into a soft drink bottle (he works at a bottling factory). The soft drink makes across to US and a guy gets sick and the secret gov group knows. The hunt starts. Meanwhile Banner (Hulk) is communicating secretly with somebody to find a cure, not very successfully though. Well they find him and then he runs and rest of the movie is about how he gets to univ to meet his old love, how the secret gov decides inject the serum into of their own creating the new monster that Hulk as to fight in the end.

The movie was enjoyable. It was a good action movie. Liv Tyler as usual was gorgeous and lit up the screen. :D

Bettle the Bard

Last night I was in Barnes and Noble, I was there to buy the book, Lord of Light. I was getting it based on a ex-colleague's recommendation after he read this blog entry. I stroll around, make my way to the Starbucks there, to get whatever is their this season's offering. I have tasted most of Starbucks stuff, I am not a huge fan. I seem to be a fan of local mom and pop coffee shops which kind of have more life in them. Arrgggh the queue is long, like really long, screw it, I go looking for the book that I am here for and my eye falls on "Tales of Beetle the Bard".

Holy shit. I completely forgot that this book was being released in Dec. Yeah, in case you missed, I am a HP fan. The cover illustration was great. Picked it up and it was pretty thin! I scratch my head and I am like I am going to buy this or just read it here :D . My urge to read the book won out and found a place to sit and started to read it.

Yeah it was laid out as a children's book. Lots of spaces between lines, just a couple of lines per page with the author's introduction to the tales. The tales of

• The Wizard and the Hopping Pot"
• The Fountain of Fair Fortune"
• The Warlock's Hairy Heart"
• Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump"
• The Tale of the Three Brothers"

are there in the book. While the stories themselves are fairly simple ones, with The Warlock's Hairy Heart being a lil graphic. What is most interesting in the book is the notes of Albus Dumbledore. The notes are of what the tales really mean. The notes are brutally honest in conveying their message of what's important in life, what is the smart thing to do. I didnt expect the author to talk about censorship that parents trying bring about in order to protect their lil darlings. On the other hand it is not so hard to imagine why since there have been orgs trying to get HP out of libraries and denounce it. Reads notes of Albus in the story of "The Warlock's Hairy Heart".

I finished the book, returned it to the stack, probably buy it later. I do that sometimes, when I like part of a book or whole of the book, I tend to buy it later if needed. I got the book Lord of Light. It will be a while before I finish this book.

Aah, the coffee shop just announced free pastries! Yummy croissant's with choc filling is what I grabbed. They are closing up in an hour, time for me to bail as well.

After Athens

Itz a Sunday morning, itz a morning for feeling extremely lazy, a desire to just stay under covers and drift away back into sleep. Yeah, itz a day for hot chocolate in bed..... if only wishes had wings. A shout across the room, dude lets go for breakfast, that's my ex-aptmate Q ex(?)-Italian bf C . Grrrrr. Alright, in a couple of mins I am ready, not before I check emails and stuff and we head out. We drive to the middle of the town to see what's open. At 11.00am, the only place that even looks decent is this restaurant "After Athens". I am not really enthusiastic, since the last vist, a long time ago wasn't that great.

So we stroll in and we opt for the brunch. The dude there, directs us to through a door to another big room, which I don't recollect seeing before. My eyes lit up, the room beautifully laid out and the brunch buffet spread was mouth waterring. It was a good surprise. A great way to start the morning. Nice, it is going to be a good day inspite of the rain outside.

We sit down, order our drinks, water no ice for me as usual and we dive in. A start with lil salad, slices of fresh cheese, small muffin shaped french toasts laced with sugar, some bacon to get me rolling. While we dive in, we talk about normal stuff, idle gossip, till I go, "so C, what about that blog you were gonna start a while ago", then the conversation took a serious turn which I shall write about later. Time for in between to get another helping of the delicious food. There was the sausage patty, the chicken cooked in some delicious sauce which I can't name, tomatoes, cucumber, small wraps, boiled and fried veges as a side, to wrap the brunch.

Yeah, I am definitely going back there for when I visit Q again. We head back and I am off on my way to meet my friend from CA who is in town staying with his brother. The last I saw him was almost 2 yrs ago. Yeah this thanksgiving holiday will go down as a good one, save for one weird/embarrassing/insulting incident. The details of course have been long forgotten, conveniently ;)

Alfredo!

I was having dinner with mah Italian pals last night and we were discussing cuisines from different parts of Italy. He goes like yeah there is nothing like Alfredo Sauce, you will get a blank stare if you ask for dish with Alfredo Sauce. Whaaattttt? What do you mean there is no Alfredo Sauce, I have been to Italian restaurants across the country and they all have dishes named with Alfredo.

Then he smiles and says let me guess, you probably don't know that Burritos, dont really exist in Mexico and Burrito means a donkey. A double whammy. Crap! I feel cheated! F***. Got home and ran to wikipedia and searched for Alfredo Sauce and Burrito. The ray of knowledge shines from the heavens! Salvation

In both the cases, the names have their origins thanks to 2 guys.

Alfredo di Lelio attached his name to a recipie of Fettuccini (fettuccine al burro ) called he came up with. Butter is added to the serving dish before and after fettuccini is placed. Alfredo doubled the amount of butter that is added before the fettuccini is added and dish was born! His dish was made famous in US by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. They fell in love with it when they had in his restaurent Alfredo alla Scrofa. They shared the recipie with their friends and the word spread!.

So there was this dude Juan Mendez, way back in 1910's was selling tacos using his donkey as a transport. His taco's became famous and soon ppl were looking for "Food of the burrito", and hence the name Burritos. Now get this, not everyone in Mexico would recognize the word Burrito since it was only northern parts was Burritos or known as taco de harina was known. It is a case of a Mexican food more famous outside Mexico.

Aliens found Woo hoo!

Naaaaaaah, not yet, but wouldn't that be fun if we did find them. So, here is the news, they found sugar molecule glycolaldehyde which is an ingredient in forming life. To quote

"Glycolaldehyde, the simplest of the monosaccharide sugars, can react with the substance propenal to form ribose, a central constituent of Ribonucleic acid (RNA), thought to be the central molecule in the origin of life."

Now that's interesting. If indeed is life there or if there is life being formed there or life is evolving there, wonder what it is evolving as. It is something I am never going to know since the place where it is detected is 26,000 light years away! Where is the elixir of life when I need it!!!

Stem Cells

The difference between "God" and a scientist is that God can do things instantaneously if she/he/it wished. A scientist would probably take a several million years or centuries or decades to do the same. It is all a matter of time. If history is any indication "Scientific" progress takes a really long time to happen. A look at Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Roman civilizations and to where we are today, progress has been steady. The question is how long before we have God like powers when it comes to a human body, the ability to rebuild limbs, clone life, create a replica of a human and how quick?

If research of stem cells are any indication, conservatively maybe 50-75 yrs we should be able rebuild the human body. I doubt if the brain can be replicated as is with the same memories and personality. On second thoughts may be it would be possible in a century. I have no scientific basis for such a prediction, just a wild ass guess. :D

The pace at which the research is progressing is amazing, check out this news. If soon it becomes possible to build limbs quickly and recovery period is not long enough, how long would it before soldiers in the field are the first people who are gonna get abused for this kind of thing. They will probably become a being just with a brain with rest of the body fixable in terms of damage. I would of course want all of the technologies be available to common people and not so much for military purpose (yeah then wars will be on forever) so that they are able get a decent life again by regrowing the limbs they need.

Would then mankind become more irresponsible if reattaching a limb was an affair that is a walk in the park? If history is any indication probably yes. Lets not forget robots, they are becoming better, check this news about real time facial expressions. It is not far away before a robot like in the movie Bicentennial Man or A.I is a possibility. Now combine the robots with the human limbs that can be grown, you have an android. The progress on near human like skin tones is amazing. A search on youtube gives you a ton load of videos.

The intersection of stem cells and robotics and knowledge banks of people's memories is should be become possible rebuild a person's replica in real time. Then you have assistants who can represent you. ;)

The dark side to this is resource contention. Will human population be regulated across the world or will nature take care of human population to deal with the storage of resources?

Quantum of Solace

The pain, the pain, yes the pain manifests itself in the form of anger, determination and disregard in the movie Quantum of Solace. This is the first Bond movie that I recollect where Bond has been questioned about the price that is being paid in terms of body count and his dedication. The first Bond movie that I recollect were M is not so confident and is at loss. The first Bond movie where the opening song sequence put me to sleep. Bond was full of pain and vengeance is order of the day.

The movie was awesome. It didn't have the flashy cars with the fancy weapons. It was all hands and guns. It was all "mano a mano". I was hooked. The sidekick Bond girl was kicking ass too not because she was on a good guy;s mission to be beat bad guys but more on a personal vendatta. Bond's desire for revenge leads him to the conspiracy of the "Organization" to control fresh water supplies in Bolivia. He is unable to sleep, unable to forgive himself and unable to let go. The movie doesn't end with the usual passionate love making that Bond movies end with. It ends with letting go.

The rose's fragrance stirs the feeling of Love, the thorn in it tears you apart. Beware of the rose ;)

Restless

Restlessness has its tentacles wrapped around me tightly for the past day or two. Dunno why, can't seem sit and read, or watch a movie, or go for a drive or head to the gym. I am never like this, even as I type this away, my mind is wrenching itself away in different directions and dimensions. I can see colors flashing away , the whirlwind of arts stuff that I saw a while ago, the places I have been too and faces of people. NO I am not on drugs. I don't do drugs or smoke. Need a cure for this,

5 mins, later, I am listening to Infected Mushroom's Shakawkaw (Mayumanna remake), has me moving to the music. There is this undescribleable emotion that is sweeping through when I listen this kind of music. It is like it takes you to a different plane of existence. I close my eyes and listen to it and all my body wants to do is scream , as if there is something waiting to get out and hasn't been able to. I wonder what it is, maybe freedom, freedom for what, I dunno. Maybe it is just the urge to be lost in this world of music forever, the urge to be not limited by the confines of the human body and by time.

Broken windows

Nah, its not a thought about windows that I broke, or the beautiful pics of broken windows, its about this news article. I am sure it has been known for a long time (read centuries) that clean, tidy and well lit places foster more upbeat moods than dark/dingy/unkempt/littered places. This study gives examples of people's behavior in different settings.

Digressing for a moment, I wonder if England's "police state" practices of screaming at people to pick up litter through surveillance cameras is supposed to serve the same purpose of creating a "clean" environment. I seriously doubt it. If you don't know what a police state is, well think of Soviet Union's KGB and you will get the idea.

Its an interesting study, I gave up searching for the original work by Dr Kelling after 2 mins of search on google, too many generic results. Bah!

Pink attacks again!

No for real, I am not kidding! I am not being dramatic as I was here , check out this news. Aliens are here! Run and save your soul :D

Bliding Sun

As a wee lil kid,

I wish I can touch the sun

As a lil kid

I wish I can fly to the sun

As a kid

I wish the sun was out all the time, for me to play

As a bigger kid

Why is this magnifying glass not setting the grass on fire

As a young teenager

Holy crap, is the sun really that big? Wow it appears so small, oh that's how eclipses are formed

As an old teenager

Oh wow this fusion thing is awesome, What the sun will die ? Crap.

As a univ student

Damn there are some many electro magnetic fields and solar storms from the sun? Nice! Thanks atmosphere. :p

and the relationship with sun keeps changing. Was driving to work, today being a cloudy morning, the sun caught me in the full glare at a turn, squinting with one eye, I navigated the turn and I felt peace as the light engulfed me. Yeah it is going to be a good day.

Death

My cruising in the hyperspace came to a screeching halt when I came across this news. Kind of stunned. Dunno what to say.

Frozen Pizza

Damn, check out this video on preparation of Frozen Pizza. Its fun to watch how machines have replaced humans for faster processing and precision and probably save cost. I wonder if there will be a time when human population will be regulated to suit the resources that are available for consumption. China already does this under their one child policy. I forget the name of the Issac Asimov's story that describes a planet with very few humans and ton load of robots. I wonder if it is inevitable that the world in described in Matrix would come true. Machines becoming overlords! Ha ha ha ha.

Lets take a look at life in a developed country, the absence of electricity can bring life to a halt, for

1. Food would perish causing shortage since refrigerators (home,grocery stores) wouldn't work
2. Communication systems will be down (VOIP,Cellphones, Modems,TV)

Hmmn, 1 and 2 seem scary enough. To imagine the cascading effect of absence of electricity on 1, the food distribution networks of companies would all be down, as I would imagine a lot of the process would be automated using systems. Damn! now that is a real scary thought. I wonder what kind of backup processes, companies have if electricity failed.

In developing and underdeveloped countries absence of electricity might not be that huge a problem since many aspects of processes in society are not through systems and still a lot of human intervention.

Oh well it is time to get something to eat, I wonder if the refridgerator is humming just fine? :p

Human Extinction

Click, click, click screams my mouse when I am clicking through random links not knowing where I am going to end up. Lo and Behold! I came across this paper "Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction". I like to read to papers in full or court opinions in full when I get a chance. If you are about to yell "BORING", plz plz plz take a second to go this link. :D

The paper is interesting, a topic that I have given a considerable thought before. Possible causes that come to mind,

1. Human
   
   • Wars (Nuclear/Bio/Chem)
   • Nuclear accidents
   • Bio/Che accidents
   • Diseases
   • Pollution
   • Artificial Intelligence
   • Natural Resources.
2. Extra-terrestrial
   
   • Solar activity
   • Asteroids
   • Unknown ( Probably aliens :D )

The paper talks about the cost effectiveness of preparing and delaying human extinction as much as possible. The debate for ever is going to be when is the returns on the investment going to be seen. I am not going to summarize the paper here, it is small enough for anyone to just go and read it. Talking about ROI, I think the returns are both tangible and intangible. Intangible, is the part what we learn from the identifying and trying so solve a problem. History is replete with examples of accidental discoveries and inventions. Yeah, it is worth investing time and money in such ventures (prudently of course).
Going off tangentially and talking about wars,

Wars have been going on for time immemorial, what makes it really scary is the sophistication and ease of bio/chem/nuclear weaponry today. The quest for oil and religious wars make it even more brain dead. It is not unusual to die for an idea.

The fight for "Freedom" is worth fighting for, but then freedom from or for what? Civil rights, cruelty, equal treatment, misinformation, speech yeah make sense. The war against others, for not believing your religious ideas is the most depraved human act. The fight for resources is inevitable (no I don't condone it). The oldest cause is food.

Food riots that happened earlier in the year are examples of what is to come. Water shortage is the other resource that will become the cause of wars. It is soul crushing to see another human die from thirst/hunger. There are other things that happen in the world that I consider as soul crushing too, like rape of a woman/child etc. I digress.

While exhaustion of natural resources happen in the hands of some countries more than the others, humans are collectively responsible and the same goes for pollution.

Damages from Bio/Chem/Nuclear wars are however from the decisions of very few people, the people who authorized the launch and the people who assisted in the launch. Which is very very very scary. There are supposedly safeguards, but is every situation anticipated? Life is fun because most of it is not stuff one anticipates. :) With humans, however we can never be assured when one can push things over the tipping point. Tom Clancy's Sum of All Fears comes to mind.

Contrast sophistication of wars from like say before 1900 and now. The wars then wouldn't have really wiped out the world as such, but today with the arsenal that we have, we can easily wipe out the whole world literally. The wars before 1900 didn't really destroy a lot of plant and animal life, however today with the bio/chem/nuc we can wipe out most forms of life. Wonder what kind of life forms would evolution lead to.

I wonder if we are really better off than the people who lived centuries ago? Is longer life really worth it in today's environment? Does it really matter if lifeforms get wiped out from Earth? I wouldn't think it would affect the universe at all. Some people however beg to differ with me,

GOD! he/she/it has a divine plan. If the world today is a example of the grand plan, then it is a truly screwed up plan. At work if I built/designed solution like that of Earth, I would be fired before the sun went down.

Random attempt at poetry

seconds, rain drops plenty alike,
minutes, flow a mighty river alike,
hours, flow a mighty ocean alike
my heart, a desert traveller alike,
flounder i, in sands of time,
to quench, the thirst of time,
o time, thou the most cruel of all.

Brisingr!

Harry Potter! Yeah I am a fan of the Harry Potter series, been avoiding them for years and BAM in one week finished 6 of them after being bored after a week of hectic work. I was discussing the plot of HP7 before it came out with a friend and he goes like, there is another series that you might like, Eragon and Eldest. I go like Eragon? Yeah it is a story of dragons and all. I was skeptical. Bought Eragon anyway.

Damn! I was hooked. The book was awesome. The details the author paid attention to in building the characters and the way the plot evolved had me stuck to the couch for the whole weekend. The author Christopher Paloni was 15 when he wrote the book. As Ali G would say "RESPECT". :) Who gives a shit if the author borrowed ideas or was influenced by Lord of the Rings or Star Wars as alleged by "critics". As far as I am concerned the author rocks, the book was fun to read.

The first book is about Eragon finding a dragon egg, then birth of Saphira (the dragon) and a epic journey with Brom, Murtagh and Arya. The second book Eldest is about Eragon gets trained by the Elves and war with King Galbatorix's army. I bought the third book just right after it was released this year. Nah I didn't stand in lines for book. I didn't stand in line for HP7 either. Just walked into a book store the next day bought it without having to spend hours together in lines or put my name on the reservation lists :D.

The author decided that there would be 4 books instead of 3. The wait for the third book, Brisingr was worth it. The plot evolves into the battle between Murtagh and Eragon, a election of the king of drawfs, the last training of Eragon. secret of how Galbatorix just keeps getting more and more powerful.

What I like most about the books are that , the characters are very humane and how magic is explained. Magic as described is about channeling surrounding energies and not something that is quite mysterious unlike in HP where flow of magic is mostly through the wand.

Tree on the Hill

I lost my way to Stone Mountain Park this one weekend. It is an interesting park. It has a tram that takes you all the way upto the mountain. It is not a big park though. I finished the drive in like 10mins. Would be a fun place to bike..

The most amazing thing about the park is the sculpturing on the side of the mountain depicting the Three Confederate leaders of the Civil War, President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson.

The Stone Mountain is a largest exposed granite stone. It was formed during the time when Blue Ridge mountains when magma cooled down. Nature never ceases to amaze me. The resilience of nature and ability of plants to just about grow anywhere is simply amazing. This picture was taken at the top of the Stone Mountain.

This is a picture of Atlanta from Stone Mountain. The view was amazing. The fog made it all the more fun.

This looks almost as if some Dino walked over and made the footprint.

Samoyed Smiling

Man's best friend, DoGs! The barking, running, loving four legged animal that has no equal. Mah colleague has a Samoyed. It was all over me and with the smiley face, wagging tail and eager to lick hands and face. Of the German Shepards, Pomeranians, Dobermans that I have played with I think I liked the Samoyed the best. I am a huge fan of the Bull dog though. The slobbery face and "I give rats ass" and "Don't f*** with me" attitude, the dog rulez.

The Samyoed grows to be a decent big sized dog. Check the pic out!

Allergies! Pink

I came to a screeching halt when I walked by a colleague's desk. She had her Yahoo messenger's color scheme as PINK!! Her lunch box was PINK! WTH??? Yesterday I was snatched from heavenly world of Nine Inch Nails to a shock of the girl on the treadmill next to me was dressed in a blazing pink workout suit. It is the attack of PINK! Why do women insist on pink when there is a spectrum of colors to wear. Beat me. Mah friend goes like dude, next time the doc asks you what you are allergic to you, you should tell him you are to the color PINK. Riiggggghhhhhttt!

Winblows! Viruz

A weird thing happened last night. A friend was looking for episode guide for some TV show. Being a little more adept with Google's search tricks, I found a site that had the videos of the episodes and sent the link over.

5 mins later, my friend goes like "I think I have a virus". I am like whaaaaattttt???? My friend was like, yeah my box just turned off when I clicked on that page., That'd didn't make any sense. I was on the site earlier and then had clicked on the link to play the video and nothing had happened to me. Then it hit me, I was not using IE and that is a possible reason that I didn't see any attack if any. Groan! Bah! F**** Stupid IE.

I use firefox with noscript, flashblocker and adblock extentions. I fired up IE and went to the same link. Dude was I in for a surprise or what? The page was loaded with ton load of flash ads and there was a pop up for registry cleaner ad. The page took about a minute to load.

Now, I have a fairly decent box and it did suck up resources considering the number of instances of ads that loaded up. No wonder my friend's box which is probably not upto to date and an older system, turned off or crashed. It could have easily eaten up loads of memory and just went poof!. Arrrggggghhhh Winblows!

My friend all too tired to do anything just went to sleep. I was wondering what I would have done. I would have probably installed taken 2 different approaches.

a) Install anti virus and run a scan.
b) if I didn't have a anti virus then I would try trailware from Symantec or Clamav or other tools.
c) I would download Spybot and CCleaner first and disconnect myself from the internet.
d) Then install Spybot and have run trojans/virus scan and locked down hosts file after updating the definitions.
e) Installed CCleaner clean up the registry and the temporary Internet files.
f) b) c) , d) should give sufficient to identify what virus are there. There are virus specific removal tools from Symantec that can be used.
g) Call a friend for help!

or the other extreme

Wipe the disk out and install windows from scratch and run windows updates. Extreme way though, wouldn't recommend it.

When I have to browse the web and need to used IE from Winblows, I use a virtual instance of Windows. Makes it easy. This one time I had gone out of my way to a warez site and got myself infected with a virus to see how I could recover from it. To make a long story short, I simply wiped out the vm instance. It was FUBAR and I was too lazy to recover it. But saying it was FUBAR makes it all more believable! :p

Many a time Knoppix can come to rescue when some stubborn virus files don't allow themselves to be deleted. It certainly did rescue me from some tight spots.

If you are wondering why I chose to disconnect myself from the net, well it is because I didn't want some trojan/virus sending off files from my system.

If you want to a lil step further and do some forensics on the box, then you would be better off using some basic tools from Sysinternals. I would use at RootkitRevealer, TCPView and Process Monitor to start looking at things. Obvious indicators of processes trashing the hardisk and Processor would be the culprits to look at.

Playing for pizza

I have been a huge fan of John Grisham's works for a long time. Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Brethren, The Partner had me riveted, till I finished the books. Alas Playing for Pizza doesn't compare to any of his previous works. I was struggling to the finish the book. The plot goes some thing like this. There is a disgraced NFL player who goes and plays for a local team in ITALY and wins their first Super Bowl. That's about it. There is nothing more . Nada. You have just finished the book in that one line.

The story has no twists or have you wondering what is going to happen and is not a page turner. There is a lot of descriptions of the deceltable meats and cheese in Parma, Italy and some football play. YAWN!

Lights on Emily Dickinson

A lil nightingale slipped in a word on a poet Emily Dickinson. Piqued, I looked her up and whoa! Her poetry was different from what I had read so far. It kind of blew my head off and I was like wow! Check some of them out here. I haven't seen poets use a lot of hypens in their poems. Need to dig in to see if it was a common writting style of that age. It annoys me when people edit the original author's work to make them more marketable/publishable especially when it is posthumus.

Oh well, whatever. This particular poem titled "The Heart asks for Pleasure first", had me stunned for a moment. It just seem so profound. Damn!

Mad Lord Snapcase

Who is this Mad Lord Snapcase? Quoting the Librarian of the Unseen University.

The Patrician who came to power after Lord Winder. During his reign, he was considered "eccentric" rather than mad by the upper classes, but he is now known by most Morporkians, including the nobles, as the Mad Lord. He was sadistic, and extremely fond of torture, much like his predecessor. Mad (sometimes Psychoneurotic) Lord Snapcase was succeeded by Lord Vetinari. There are very few historical records of Lord Snapcase's Tyranny, but one documented case is that he called for the killing of John Keel / Sam Vimes.

I figured it would be fun to have a blog after a character who I am totally not like! :D

Lighten up! Foamy the squirrel

If you are big into animation that has characters rant (R Rated) you should say hello to Foamy the Squirrel. Some of it is outrageously funny!

Shadow cast by College Bubble

Again I tumbled upon this link talking about the cost of education today in US. If you have spare money do buy the book. It is a informal write up, more a like brain dump by a person who knows what he is talking about. I agree on some of his points. To beat the bubble the way he outlines requires imho :

1. A backbone and pair of balls to take risk.
2. Know what you want.
   
3. Ability to think and plan far ahead.
4. To be street smart and know how the system works.
   
5. Support from parents or the ability to be your master.

Read the book and come to your conclusion, but I expect majority of the reaction to be "But it is not so easy as you say it is....... ".

If anyone has a success story of how you built your life the non-traditional way and not be affected by the rat race, share away, it would nice to how you did it.

This also reminds me about the book, Rich Dad and Poor Dad. I tend to take most of these kind of books with ton load of salt about results that one can get. They offer good food for thought though and a chance to reflect how one is doing things.

Lights on Younger Generation!

Tumbled upon this link that talks about the younger generation is smarter, quicker and tolerant because they use the internet a lot. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. It was a funny article to read. A quick peek at history shows that fundamental human emotions haven't really changed. They are still the same. The only thing that has changed is the tools.

Tools have, time immemorial, have changed lifestyles but not humans. Starting from the time when man made fire from stones to the time we are working on stem cells to regenerate body parts, we have improved life span and made travel easy and access to information easy and nothing more than that. The notion that the younger generation is smarter is a flawed since it is based on the idea that they have easier access to information. Humans being emotional beings interpret data different ways. Societal notion of what is right and wrong determine whether a decision is smart or not. Societal notions of what is right and wrong changes, so what was considered a dumb decision a decade ago could be considered as a smart decision today. What can be considered as a smart decision today could be considered as dumb decision a decade from now.

I could agree with the notion that we are more tolerant to diversity, but I don't think it is a big deal and something to be proud of and look it as an achievement over the older generation. The tolerance of diversity is a by product of information exchange and is not something original. History has many examples of tolerance of diversity being there too. If there was no tolerance of diversity then would have been never been cultural and trade exchanges.

There is a cost to everything, the cost of generations that grow up on the net would manifest itself in the coming decades. It would be interesting to see what they would be. In the decades to come the definition of who is a human itself is going to change. It would be fun if stories of Isaac Asimov come true.

May you live in interesting times!

(which by the way is not a true Chinese curse)

Action!

And the lights come on my first post on windy fall day! Sipping hot apple cider with cinnamon and watching the leaves float away. Aah the myriad colors of the fall! I am sitting in a park and watching the frenzy activity. There is your usual couple exercising away like there no tomorrow, then the couple who need to a get a room, the lacrosse players (is it still the season?) , a small group with their mini picnic, the studious guy who is oblivious to the whole world, the young girls chatting away animatedly and the roar of the motorcade of cars whizzing by! Then there is your group of photographers. The long lenses and the patient look of the guy modeling, the impatient lights guy and photographer fumbling to get the right angle. A pleasant day indeed.

Lo and behold you find the girl with cans spray paint adding letters to the word BUST to make it BUSTED on a rock. Fun times! I wish I had my camera with me. Note to self, carry the camera at all times!