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.