New Year's eve

So here I am, sitting at home on New Year's eve, wondering what to do (pathetic???). I was thinking about New Year's eve in India. I did not party much in India (chamathu payyan), so my new year's eve revolved around my TV. This is the time for all the channels (movies, music, news, sports) to look back at the best/worst moments of the past year. I always watch the Top 10 Movies (hindi and tamil) of the year and try to count the number of movies that I've seen. This is just my second New year in U.S.A (I was in India for last new year). My first new year here was in Florida and we spent the night playing cards (we spent the entire Christmas hols playing cards and video games.....). I have nothing to do today. I don't feel like going out. So, I wanted to look back at 2008 and bore you all (yes, all 9 of you!!).

I was in India when 2008 dawned. It was great meeting up with all my friends. I even visited my sister in Tanzania last December. Spending 1 month with family again was really refreshing... but good times don't last. I came back to Florida on Jan 10th. I had to complete one more semester. I had a really good semester in the last semester without any pressure. I had a job offer, my prof paid my tuition and also paid me really well, great people in the lab at work (myself, Maapi, Dexiang and Sherry), it was fun!!

I graduated in May. We went on a trip to Miami after my graduation - 7 of us. It was one of the best trips ever. Miami, Keywest, Everglades etc... I can never forget all the arbitrary talk :) cricket on Miami beach and the night club in Miami.... I moved to Washington immediately after the trip, joined MSFT (dream come true - the best event of 2008) and bought my first car. I had money for the first time since I came to the U.S. Summer was lot of fun with the interns. We used to go out almost every weekend. After September the weather was really bad... it kept raining... that's when I found gold mine in Netflix and I was (am) addicted to it!! The rest of the year was uneventful - it was just me, my T.V, Netflix and XBox.

I had the opportunity to end the year with a bang. I spent Christmas in CA, with my FL friends. It was a good reunion. So, here I am, on new year's eve, blogging about 2008. I think this is one of my longest blogs - I don't like writing (or reading) long blogs. I'm sure most of you will just skim through this post, this is a post for me, something that I can read after a few years. Hopefully, this blog should be active for a few more years. That's it about 2008. Looking forward to a great 2009. Happy new year to you all!!!

Cobie Smulders

How I met your mother!

Twitter, IMDB and more

Recently, I came across a lot of articles online that mentioned Twitter. I wanted to find out what that is and so I joined Twitter. I expected to find something like StumbleUpon or Digg, but I was surprised when I found out that it is a website to update your status. Can you believe it? Just to update your status. It's something that you can do on your messenger, orkut or Facebook. So, I don't know what the hype is about.I'll find it out more about this service in the next couple of days.

On Twitter, you can follow someone (similar to adding friends on orkut or facebook) and subscribe to their status updates. Add me to your twitter and follow my updates. What do you call the act of updating your status? Twittering? Tweeting? God knows!! When I asked one of my friends about Twitter's purpose, she said that it is like a micro-blog. Now I have lot of places to express myself - status updates on messengers (I don't do that usually), status updates on orkut (No), Facebook (I do this a lot), blogging and now micro-blogging. I wanted to bring everything together. As the first step, I have added my Twitter feeds to my blog (second gadget on the left). This gadget kind of ties my micro-blogging with my actual blog.

I watch lots and lots of movies. When I was a grad student, I used to watch everything online. Now, I'm paying for each and every movie/T.V series that I watch and I'm proud of that. "Say NO to piracy!" :D When I watch a movie, I usually write a review on Flixster's Facebook app and rate it on IMDB. Now, I have added a feed from my IMDB page (first gadget on the left) to this blog so that it gets updated automatically when I rate a movie on IMDB. Unfortunately, the feed does not display my rating. I'm trying to find some way to display my ratings along with the movie names. When I looked at the source code of these gadgets I found that they are not too complicated. I might try to tweak an existing gadget or write a new gadget to do this. I still have to check if IMDB allows exporting the rating along with the movie name.

I have spent more than 3 hours exploring twitter, IMDB feeds and blogger gadgets. It's well past midnight now. Off to bed... zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZ

Sachin to Aamir: Buddy, what a body!

LOL..... Interesting article...


==============================================
After Hours has learnt that the two had some rounds of ‘secret meetings’ to share fitness tips before Sachin flew off to Chennai for the ongoing Test series against England..
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ROTFL :D

Click here for the full article!

Slumdog Millionaire

It's been a long time since I posted. It's not that I'm lazy. I don't find anything interesting to post. There are only 3 things that I'm doing these days.

Work - No. I can't blog about work. Blogging about MSFT or any other company in this industry will attract people only if it is going to be MSFT bashing. Since I'm NEVER gonna do that... I can't blog about my daily work.

Gaming on my 360 - Hmm.... I'm just a beginner here. I'll start blogging about games once I start playing a variety of games

Movies and TV Series - This is where I spend a major chunk of my time. I have blogged about few TV Series earlier. Since most of my blog readers are not in U.S (I know that 7 people read my blog regularly... lol.... :D and only 2 of them are in the U.S). So, this blog is about a movie I watched yesterday.

It was snowing in Redmond yesterday. We went to the Bellevue Botanical Garden at 5PM. The place was decorated for Christmas - it was really really good. They tried to make different interesting themes with lights. I'll upload few pics of that later. We were roaming there until 6.30. We then decided to go to the Bellevue Square. Since none of us had any plans for the evening we decided to catch a movie - Twilight. (Yeah, I know that its kinda girly movie, but I read the book and was curious to see how they adapted that for the big screen). When we were standing in the line, we met another friend who was there to watch Slumdog Millionaire. So, change of plans. We got the tickets fot Slumdog Millionaire instead. Here is my review of the movie from Flixster.

Amazing screenplay... One of my friends commented "The movie did not portray India properly and that it focussed on the dirty slums of India". Yes. That is where the story is set. Nothing wrong in focussing on the slums. When Americans make movies on/in India, they tend to exaggerate everything. People relate India to elephants and men in turban. The beauty of this movie is that nothing was exaggerated. Every single incident shown in the movie happens in India. Some of those incidents might be embarassing for us Indians (especially when we see the movie in America with an American crowd). But that's the truth and we have to accept it. Hats off to the director!!

Try to watch this movie if you get a chance. Last I checked, it was 201 on the IMDB top 250.

RIP

Two Google Services shut down this week.

Lively is no more

Searchmash has gone the way of the dinosaur :P

I did not realize this...... Awesome!!!

India bring Australians back to Earth with a bump: Cricket - Telegraph: "Australia’s record since the turn of the century is quite phenomenal, even after their reverse in Nagpur on Monday. They have played 98 Tests, won 70 and lost just 13. India have been responsible for seven of those defeats – more than half the total. England come in second, with four wins over the old enemy, while both South Africa and West Indies have won once.
If we take dead rubbers out of the equation, the numbers are even clearer: just eight defeats in the decade for Australia, of which six have been inflicted by India, and the other two took place during the 2005 Ashes. Only one team has worried the Aussies consistently during the 21st century, and it is not England."

Election '08

Now that the election is over (Congrats Mr. Obama!!), I'm going to miss Sarah Palin!! She has been a great source of entertainment for the past two months. She attracted larged crowds throughout her campaign. It is just a pleasure to listen to her interviews / campaign speeches. She makes you laugh so much that she puts all the comedians on late night shows and Comedy Central to shame. Here is a sample.


Saturday Night Live (and Tina Fey) had a homerun because of Palin. When one of my friends watched Tina Fey's interview he thought that the real Sarah Palin was actually asking for a life line during her interview!! Don't miss this!!



After the elections, McCain's camp has accused Sarah Palin of being one of the stupidest politicians. They claim that Palin did not know if Africa was a continent or a country!!! Just search for Palin's interviews or "Tina Fey Palin" on youtube to catch up on all the fun in case you missed it. I'm sad that the Palin/McCain camp lost the election. Now, we won't see her on T.V anymore. Sarah Palin for President in 2012!!!!

30 Rock

During the presidential campaign all the major networks had a blast by mocking / making fun of the candidates (SuperStar Sarah in particular). Saturday Night Live on NBC gathered the best ratings mainly due to Tinay Fey's impersonation of Palin. For 2 weeks, SNL was telecast at 9.30 on Thursdays. I was wondering why would they want to telecast Saturday Night Live on a Thursday. 2 weeks later, Tinay Fey's sitcom - 30 Rock started its 3rd season on NBC (Thursday's at 9.30). NBC wanted to make sure that people notice Tina Fey as Palin so that they would continue to watch her on 30 Rock. This was a really good marketing strategy and this is how I started watching 30 Rock :-D

30 Rock is a sitcom about a show on NBC. They make fun of NBC, GE (NBC's parent company) and even other shows on NBC. Of all the sitcoms that I have watched so far, Friends and Seinfeld are my favorite. I like a sitcom if the characters are well developed and consistent. Friends, Seinfeld, and now 30 Rock, have immensely likeable (weird, crazy, distinct) characters. Tina Fe(who plays the writer of a show on NBC) and Alec Baldwin (who plays a network executive at NBC) are simply brilliant!! It has lots of guest appearances too like other sitcoms. Friend's star David Schwimmer guest starred in an episode where they parodied NBC's green movement (which was on for most part of last year). This Thursday, Oprah Winfrey is going to be on the show. I'm almost done watching the first 2 seasons and the third season has just begun on TV. So, I'm searching for the next sitcom.... Suggestions??? "How I met your mother" maybe.......

Windows 7

I'm blogging from work - just want to be quick. Some of you have been asking me about Win7. Today, we officially distributed the Pre-beta builds at the Professional Developers Conference.

You can find a lot of screenshots and a brief overview of what's new here.

More on this later.

Joker Vs Joker

I had a chance to watch ”The Dark Knight” before the world could watch it. We had a special screening for our team the day before it released. I’m sure everyone was amazed at Heath Ledger’s performance. Bale was almost over-shadowed in the movie. When I returned home I started reading articles and reviews about the movie. Almost everyone agreed that it was a masterpiece and Ledger had given a performance so that the world will remember him for a long time. People started comparing his performance with Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman. I came across this wonderful video on youtube that compares the two Jokers. When people said that Heath Ledger’s performance was better than Jack Nicholson’s, I could not believe it. No one can perform any role better than Nicholson. I got Batman’s (1989) DVD from Netflix and watched it. It was a truly magnificent performance from Jack Nicholson as usual. I also understood why people felt that Ledger was better than Nicholson.

One of the major reasons for Ledger’s performance was the characterization of the Joker. The credit goes to Christopher Nolan. He is a master director and he completely changed the way Joker was portrayed on screen. In all the previous versions (Nicholson and the animations) Joker was portrayed as a crazy, animated  person with exaggerated reactions. He was portrayed a sociopath who sings, dances and then mercilessly shoots people. Nolan portrayed Joker in a manner that would have impressed even the creators of Joker (The credit for the original creation of this character is still being disputed) and Heath Ledger gave life to Nolan’s Joker. The dialogs were powerful and it was a battle of minds. Ledger does not even use guns  in the movie (One of my favorite quotes from the movie: “Do you wanna know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the... little... emotions. In... you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards?”).

If you were impressed by Ledger try to watch the older version. You‘ll know that Nicholson has done justice to his role. It is unfair to compare Ledger and Nicholson. It just shows that Christopher Nolan is better than Tim Burton. It is not Ledger’s Joker Vs Nicholson’s Joker. It is Nolan’s Joker Vs Burton’s Joker and the former wins hands-down.

My Fall Schedule ;-)

September 22nd marks the beginning of the fall TV season this year (Friends premiered on September 22, 1994 and Lost premiered on September 22, 2004). ABC calls it the "National Stay at home" week. Wish I could stay at home!!

This year, Heroes returns on September 22nd with a two hour season premiere. The second season of Heroes was not as good as the first. One of the major reasons for this was the writer's strike which reduced the number of episodes to 14. They had to cut down on more than 10 episodes. Volume 2 ended with Sylar returning getting back his powers. Tim Kring mentioned in an interview that Volume 3: Villains will have a lot of new characters with new powers. I can only hope that this season is as good as the first. It would be great to watch Hayden Pannetiere in action again!! Catch "Heroes" on NBC - Mondays at 9PM.

Family Guy (Season 7) and American Dad! (Season 4) return September 28th on Fox. This brings Seth MacFarlane 's foul mouthed, crazy, racist characters back after a short break. You can also check out Seth's short videos here. Family Guy and American Dad! will be telecast on Sundays 9 - 10 PM on Fox.

A new series premiered on Fox 2 weeks ago. It's called Fringe and it is Fox's attempt to challenge NBC's Heroes. It is based on Fringe science and Fox has spent lots and lots of money (atleast for the first two episodes). The first two episodes were not very interesting and I would stop watching it if it does not improve in the next two episodes - Tuesdays 9PM on Fox.

The Big Bang Theory returns for its second season September 22nd on CBS. Scrubs and Lost will not return this fall. They will premiere in January on ABC (Scrubs moves from NBC to ABC).

My Saturdays are reserved for College Football. Gators are in good form this year. They should be able to win the SEC this year if Tim Tebow continues his Heisman winning form.

I have started following NFL this year and I watch at least 2 games every Sunday. I was disappointed with Seattle Seahawks' game last Sunday and I hope they would get back their form at least this week.

So, that is my TV schedule this fall. Check out IMDB's Fall Preview if you are interested. Have fun!!!

War of the Browsers

I think a new law has been passed in the blogosphere. If you are a blogger, you must blog about Chrome. So, here I go.
I don't want to write a review about Chrome or a review about reviews. I've written most of the things that I want to say in the comments section of this blog.I wrote these comments on the day after Chrome's release. I'm happy that one of my predictions has come true (at least until now). The statistics from the past 2 days (If you don't like statistics please make sure that you visit this useless blog by a useless person). Chrome has been able to capture approx 1% of the market share. The major chunk of this share comes from Firefox (as expected) and a small portion of it from Safari. IE's share has increased after Chrome's release. I agree that this might not indicate any trend. It's just that people are trying out the new browsers. Still, I feel that if Chrome is successful the loss would be greater for Firefox than for IE. I can write pages and pages about this (I posted 7 or 8 comments in Gopi's blog) but I don't want to do that again. Let's just use the browser that we are satisfied with.

P.S: IE refers to IE8 and not any of its predecessors :)

Breathtaking view

We went on a hike to RattleSnake Ledge this weekend. It was a very short hike. I did not expect much but when we went to the ledge we were treated to one of the best views you can get!! People in WA should check this out. I tried to capture the view but I don't think this pic does justice to the magnificent view we had there. Click on the picture to view.

I have uploaded a video on youtube.


I'll update this blog with some more pictures later.

Good bye Interns! Thanks for a great Summer!!

This weekend I had to say goodbye to the last intern I knew. It was great fun throughout summer. We went out almost every weekend. I was trying to recollect all the places that we visited during the last 3 months.

• Snoqualmie falls
• Little Si
• Mt. Rainier
• July 4th @ Seattle
• Company Picnic
• Olympic National Park
• Rafting
• Camping
• Annette Lake
• Lots of dinners, few movies, few games of pool and those Wednesday nights (Yes, we are crazy!!)

Now that they are back in school I have to get back to work like an FTE :( My manager has been teasing me that I'm always hanging out with the interns and I realize that now. I feel lonely in my office without my officemate and I have been having lunch alone in my office for the past 2 days! What the interns said is true. The social life of a full-timer sucks! But there is a limit to spending money. I can't keep spending the way I spent in the last 3 months. I'm just going to spend the weekends with Lost, South Park and movies! Netflix is my best friend now.

Thanks a lot for all the great time guys. Hope you'll be back soon.

P.S: These are comics that my office-mate drew on the board. She was very popular in our corridor. Click on the image to read the comics.

Olympics 2008

As the curtain closes on the Olympics at Beijing, various aritcles have started analyzing the performance of different teams. I came across a very interesting article on msn. It is titled National wealth worth weight in gold (medals) and analyzes the business of the Olympics. The article is neatly summarized in the first line : The winning formula is just so simple: Gold equals gold (few exceptions). The article makes a comparison between the GDP of a country and the number of medals won. A University of South Australia analysis found that one gold medal typically costs a country $37 million in training funds. The countries that won the most number of medals are those with a very fat economy (China, US, Russia, Japan, Great Britain). It’s not known how much money China has plowed into its Olympic program, but it’s thought to be far more than the United States.

Here is the table.

And now for the exceptions.

• India, which ranks 4th in GDP, could win only 3 medals. It is ranked 51 in the medal table.
• Small countries like Jamaica and Belarus - The GDP of Jamaica is $12 Billion compared to India's $4.2 trillion. Jamaica won 10 medals including 6 Gold medals!! Even a country named Belarus (do you even know where it is?) won 16 medals including 4 gold medals!!

There has been a really big discussion on this on some Indian groups in my office. They tried to find out why India sucks big time at sports. Do we even play any sport other than cricket? It's not that we are world champions even in cricket. We still get beaten by even Sri Lanka. I'm sure that this question does not have a simple answer. We have a very convoluted and shitty system in India and it is going to be very difficult to change that. We try to compete with China in everything. But this is one field where we cannot even compare the two countries.

Jai Hind!!

How Nerdy are you?

I came across a Google Gadget that linked to a website. It was a test to measure your nerdiness. I took the test.The result was not surprising.

Your nerdiness is: All hail the monstrous nerd. You are by far the SUPREME NERD GOD!!!

My office-mate then took the test and it seems that she is nerdier than 89% of the people who took the test. I really liked the questions that they asked in the test. Try it out if you want to know your nerdiness! Post your score as a comment if you decide to take the test :)

My latest addiction

A quick word about my latest addiction - Netflix. I am amazed at the business model of this company. They have a really HUGE collection of DVDs. Almost all released DVDs of english movies and TV series. All famous Hindi movies and a good collection of tamil movies too. Last week I even rented a Crazy Mohan stage play from Netflix. I don't have a cable connection at home as I felt that this is a much better investment than a cable connection. I can choose what I want to watch and when I want to watch. I receive the DVDs by mail and I have to return them by mail. Highly convenient for lazy ppl like me. For all of you in the U.S, you should definitely give it a try.

A fresh beginning

I am starting my second innings now. My first innings lasted just one blog as expected. I had to delete that one. None of my posts will be long. I'll use this to post some interesting stuff I find on the net and to discuss some tech stuff. I've started reading a lot of blog posts and I've been spending too much time on this at office. I thought this might be the time for me to start writing. Thanks to Shareef!! He asked me if I had a blog profile. Here it is Shareef!! Today he blogged about iphone in India and I gave my thoughts on that in the comments section. Check that out here.