I try to say a lot while saying very little. Get used to it.
clubbing together a month’s worth of everything into one big gigantic post
This is the 4th attempt I’m making at trying for a halfway decent beginning to a post. Have I really been reduced to saying such banalities? I can’t quite believe it. When I look at my front page, most of my recent posts are about movies. Reviews, basically. Most of my recent posts have also ended with a sign-off saying that I will have a proper update soon. This post, by virtue of being an “update”, doesn’t count as a proper post either. I have notes here, there and everywhere galore… none of which I have really expanded on. Hell, when I was going through my drafts I realized that I had a started a post last winter which I never got round to finishing.
I’m not happy with that start either, but its a start.
After a while of working on research topics with no apparent end in sight, I had the one-two punch of back-to-back deadlines. My first reminded me of the good old days of last year when I spent every waking moment on work. A lot of my moments were spent awake… to the extent I had a major first-year-PhD flashback when I pulled an all-nighter so as to somehow, anyhow get the paper in shape (it didn’t quite succeed, but anyway). The result of my next deadline was here for all to see… meaning I’m on track with what I expected to finish by now. The missus might say otherwise, but she doesn’t really count. She’s supposed to keep the pressure on, I’m supposed to fool around and ensure she has something to do
It is a gratifying feeling to receive recognition for what you have done. It is gratifying to realize that hell, you really have learnt some things during the course of your degree so far. It is beyond awesome to live well up to the expectations that you had set for yourself for a particular goal. Enough back-patting, all of this just means I have so much more expected of me in the time to come. There are caveats to everything you do. After all this back-to-back work, it is hard to fall back into a normal groove. Sleep doesn’t come easy, your body craves being completely spent when it hits the bed. Sleeping the sleep of the “mentally dead” is a pleasure that you shouldn’t get used to.
In a not-so-shocking update, my laptop actually failed on me 12 hours before my big day. I’m not even kidding. It says a lot that the failure didn’t make the slightest difference to my prep, but I had my revenge. I ripped it apart within the hour of finishing the proposal
I then spent a week modding it with copper and putting it back together. Happy realizations struck: (1) HP laptop architecture could not be worse, (2) I need to blog a long post about how to do what I did, (3) I should have done this ripping-apart 6 months ago. As it is, the damage appears to be too extensive despite my best efforts. I have to bake the motherboard next. You read it right. Bake. The. Motherboard.
For the first time in 4 years, I have no machine to call my own. And it sucks. Sucks. I have a machine which I could borrow so that I’m not completely bereft, but it feels like something is missing nonetheless. I’m looking forward to building a new machine from scratch, if nothing else the HP rip-apart showed me that I really miss that side of engineering. Plugging, modding, figuring out how things go together – the whole shebang. How much I rely on the cloud can be seen in how little I needed to set up on this borrowed machine. On the flip side there are some things I distinctly feel unable to do, and I’m really getting into the mood to do them (photography updating, for example). The heart wants what it can’t quite have, I guess. But then maybe I’ll end up doing it all online, and really move into the cloud. Sounds like a pipe-dream to me.
I have way too many feeds in my Reader. It took me concentrated effort to catch up with a lot of it after the weeks of work, and that was despite at least checking the basic news feeds once a day. Man! I did not see this happening when I started with RSS a long long long time ago. As the missus asked, why not just mark a bunch of them as read? Or better yet, remove ones that I’m not really “reading”. I’ve done this. I honestly believe that I need to keep up 227 subscriptions on a constant basis. I need help.
This post doesn’t even begin to start on some interesting techie things I have thought about. Will I ever concretize that stuff?
And this theme fuckin’ rocks. That is all.
No trackbacks yet.
of savita and sacrilege
about 10 hours ago - 4 comments
‘Tis a little hard to come up with a good way of intro-ing topical posts, while including my own snarkiness in the mix.
Nevertheless, here goes nothing.
It sort of splits up.. oh, you’ll see.
************************************
The infamous Savita Bhabhi was moved to the more focused Kirtu.com. Yes, focused. Only pr0n comics of Indian origin. The market has been More >
pubsubhubbub testing
about 3 weeks ago - 2 comments
If this shows up in Google Reader within a minute of my clicking publish, then we know pubsubhubbub is live on staying.cool.
Fingers crossed.
Sorry for the “nothing” post.
Edit (18 Jan 2010, 2334 hrs): Just showed up on my Reader. Supposedly published at 2331 on my blog. Probably working.. now you guys get to know when I More >
notes: buzzing around
about 3 weeks ago - No comments
Google’s latest experiment – Buzz – has been launched to the world recently, with varying degrees of appreciation, hate, irritation and all the reactions that every new social idea is greeted with. Personally, it is a social media outlet/inlet that I can get on board with – seeing as how it integrates nicely into my More >
my event of a lifetime
about 1 month ago - 21 comments
It’s been too, too long.
Wish I had a good excuse.
Maybe this one: “Marriage does that to you.” Or even: “Things change like this after marriage.”
At the very least, marriage gives you a scapegoat that most married men will commiserate with. “Yes, yes.. I know what you mean.” Its either commiseration or a devilish satisfaction (as More >
my big event of the year is nearly here
about 2 months ago - 7 comments
The time has come.
Back to India.
Madness. All centered around me. And the missus. But me too!
There will probably be no posts for a bit here. I’m not live-blogging my own wedding, or even live-tweeting my honeymoon
Speaking of which, that is probably going to be the best birthday ever
It has taken its More >
dissertatio propositio
about 3 months ago - 7 comments
Completed.
‘Nuff said.
What remains now (for the proposal form, NOT the final dissertation):
Think the missus will be enthu?
tashi: the amazing, awesome (invisible) dog
about 5 months ago - 2 comments
As I spent most of last week getting Windows 7 to work properly on my computer (which will be in a next post – it takes a while for me to get such things together) – I completely missed the chance to post about walking my dog in Brooklyn. Oh, my dog? Tashi. Was invisible. More >
notes: copyrights and comics
about 5 months ago - 6 comments
[Thoughts due to: io9: Who Created Spider-Man? ]
It is a deal-breaking case that has been filed against Marvel Comics, probably fueled by the recent success of Siegel vs DC for the Superman copyright (and the acquisition of Marvel by Disney too?). My own WTF was fueled by whether Spidey even belongs to this dispute (he More >
i should just title this r.i.p. staying.cool
about 5 months ago - 4 comments
Among other things, the probability that random ideas pop into my head has dwindled down to zero. Which makes it a little hard to maintain a space that was somehow meant to ensure that I do not lose touch with writing. Now that I think about it, my blog will turn 5 in a month. More >
life continues to move along its winding trail
about 6 months ago - 7 comments
A break’s a break, no matter how I put it. I last blogged nearly a week or more ago, and here I am now trying to come up with good excuses to myself as to why I haven’t posted. I’m going to skip past it and focus on topic 2: “Life Continues to Move Along More >





about 2 months ago
A long post after so long.. We like!