I would like a 5.6 mag earthquake - to go!

:-)

Yep. Just about 40 minutes ago, we experienced a decent earthquake:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/37.39.-123.-121.php

I was showing something to Radhika on the laptop, sitting on the couch, and we felt a sudden rumble. At first I thought our neighbor upstairs started jumping, but when the rumble started to intensify, Radhika screamed: "Its an earthquake!" My first reaction was - lets run outside. The moment we are outside, we see that we have company. Almost all our neighbors were outside.

Well, pretty fun time..as long as there are no damages. Something that I will remember always ;-)

Vista sucks!

I was very happy when I finally returned a Dell Inspiron E1405 and got me an HP dvt6000 with all the niceties.. the only glitch, it was only offered with Vista OS. I thought I could live with it...but see what Microsoft lived upto:

- within a week, I saw it was using 500-600MB memory just for itself, no other processes. I stripped down all the nice borders etc... bye bye Vista!!

- the windows explorer would crash all of a sudden, even when I am not doing anything, closing down all windows browser sessions. Aaaaaaargh!!!

- it would not let me save documents from a webpage, no error, just wouldnt plain allow it!

- heres another one for you: how much time did it take you to figure out which end of a column header you need to grab, and move, to change column width here:

I am so fed up with Vista, and Microsoft. I am seriously considering going to MacOS, or Linux for that matter.

If you are hearing this, you raised a sucky company Mr Gates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DMV, and dil kya kare

It had been my belief that all government offices are equally inefficient, no matter what country, and that belief was fueled again this week. We made an early morning appointment with the San Mateo DMV for Radhika's written driving test. We reached there 15 minutes early...surprised to find a queue... for all. Even people without appointment were in the same queue. Wola!

Well, as if that was'nt enough, on our turn the lady at the counter (who was looking very down and mean for a morning shift) blurted right away without even looking at the documents - "you will need a valid visa status to apply for a license". I frowned, and pointed to the visa approval letter in her hands. She looked at it, and went "Ohhhh. Ok." A minute later, she comes back "But this expires within a year. You cant apply on that basis.".

My first reaction was 'Come on lady'!!! (of course I didnt say that out loud..can you imagine, if I did that?:-) I pointed to the next approval letter. There it was..beyond 2010!

Well she did'nt look too happy to be proved wrong. But wait, she still had more in her stupid arsenal: "You need a SSN number to get a license!". I was like, my wife is on a dependent visa. She is not allowed to work yet. You cant get a SSN without work authorization. Does that mean she cannot drive in this country?? I dont want to stay here if thats the case!

She turns to someone senior on the next desk..of course she was wrong. They took our documents, and Radhika gave the test.

What do you have to do to get something done the right way here? Phew!!!

BTW, dil kya kare is online: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7794976572130763260

Enjoy!

Roja goes live...

A humble effort to render one of the best compositions in the history of Indian cinema music:

Roja Jaan-e-mann

Enjoy! :-)

Our workstation ranks top

Hurray! TeraRecon's 3D workstation was ranked top 3D vendor in a recent independent survey:

http://terarecon.com/news/press/2007/9_5_07_pr.htm

Feels good to be contributing to a top class product, does'nt it? :-)

What's more, I contributed primarily to three of these newly marketed features

http://terarecon.com/news/press/2007/9_27_07_pr.htm

Thats right folks!

Louie and team raise 50k for cancer society

Well my boss from previous company ( Lou Arata ) and his team of athletes raised more than 50K for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He is a fitness geek, and is now channeling all that energy into good causes for others.

Here is his blog:

http://trigramps.blogspot.com/

He will be running again in May 2008 for the noble cause (http://www.tricalifornia.com/wildflower/2007/index.htm).

If you would like to make a donation, please do so here:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntnoh/louarata


Way to go Lou! Proud to have known you!

MAKO going public

My previous employer announced they are going IPO.. (http://www.makosurgical.com/).
Is'nt that great?

I am happy for Rony, Lou, Jeremy, Fritz, and everyone that had been nurturing this dream.

Good job guys!!

Vizworld.com

An ex-colleague, Randall, contributes to this website (http://www.vizworld.com/), which is state of the art source for visualization/graphics hardware advances.

I wish I had such enthusiasm. he even maintains a comparison of newly released cards..with benchmark data..

Kudos!

Swades

Another addition to the junk:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7771415217985339919&hl=en

Looking for a wife ;-)

This is what Radhika saw on a USMLE prep forum.. this is from an aspirant of a career in medicine in US. Apparently he was denied a visa, and posted this (these are the exact wprds as they appeared on the post:-)

"alsalam alykomi m 27 years mthat forum was useful for me so much, i passed step 1 and 2but i failed to gain visa for usi hope to find awife preferably american citizen ,i m so cute,smart ,average sizethank u"


Heheh. You would think this is unreal..until someone posted back:


"well you can have mine"


Life keeps amusing me..always:-)

I'm a rebel....

Paathshala ..is the next one to go live. Man, is Rahman hard to follow!! It took me ~2 hours to sequence this opening piece, still faaaaar from the original composition: