Quick update..

Packing my bags atlast, nice feeling to head back home. I will be on vacation for sometime and will get back to work on May 6th.

I am not sure whether you have noticed the change in the "Links" section. I have added some cool techie blogs. One of my favourite techie authors, Thomas Kyte has got his blog, where he speaks about some general topics (just for a change). Recently, he had a big fight with an independent Oracle consultant, Don Burleson. Check it out here.

Chain of Thoughts ....

I was watching a programme in Discovery channel on Psychology.Some randomly chosen people were asked to list down any 20 things that comes to their mind in a span of two minutes. I was pretty intersting, so i tried it out myself to have some fun , here are the things that i came up with:

Signal, Sky, Cab, Salt lake city, Never mind, KdKb, Fenders, sky harbor, Pierce Brsonan, Nayanthara, Monday Morning Blues, Light saber, Honda, Subbu, Commercial street, Landmark, Chennai, Rushdie......stopped with that.

I tried to map what i write with my thoughts.
Signal, Sky - No idea what that means, just came up.
salt lake city- One of my friends mesgd me two minutes before i started this, he lives in Salt lake city
Never Mind, KdKb, Fenders,Sky harbor - All this relates to the music that i listen to these days. Nevermind was the only album from the 90's to be preserved by US Govt, KdKb is the FM station that gave this info. Fenders is related to Guitar. Sky Harbor is where my office is and i listen to KdKb on the way to my workplace.
Pierce Brosnan - Was watching a bond movie yesterday...
Nayanthara - probably this was the place my thoughts moved from hollywood
to Kollywood ;-)
Monday morning blues- today is sunday, so ....
Light saber- was watching star wars today evening
Honda - was discussing with my colleague about cars and fuel consumption.This one may be because of that
Subbu - Probably my attention diverted from car to bikes and the first thing that came to my mind was Subbu's crash last year
Commercial street - No idea
Landmark - probably hopped from Commercial Street --> Crossword --> Landmark
Chennai - Landmark --> Chennai ???
Rushdie - Landmark --> Rushdie ??

Now Playing : "Bad Love" - Eric Clapton

Ghost in my bedroom

I had a horrifying experience yesterday night, i was awakened by this strange feeling of bed sheet trying to wrap me tight ! I couldn't release myself and somehow i managed to jump out of the bed. I looked at the bed and i found that the bed sheet was now frizzled like a think rope ! I switched on the light and saw that the time was 2.45 AM. I just wanted to make sure i was dreaming, i turned on 93.3 FM, it was Dylan playing "Knocking on the heaven's door" and i could hear it quite clearly! After a glass of coke, i decided to go back to sleep, this time with the radio on

Still i am not sure whether it was some ghost's trick or a wild dream ;-)

A marathon.....

.... is gonna start in 15 minutes, it would be another 20 hours
before i hit the finish line...Hope i have the energy to survive this !

Update (6 AM, Apr 16 2005)

The marathon stopped after 11 hours due to some unforeseen technical reasons, I am stranded in the middle of the highway !

Now Playing : "I alone" - LIVE

Office Space
If you haven't watched this movie yet, do watch it ! It is a must for all those blokes in Office, read more on this here

Its Party Time !

Today morning, i heard that two fellas from my "Gang", L and H, made it to one of the Top B-schools in the country. This news made my day !

Myself, L and H went to the same school and College. I still remember those days quite vividly, when L was my quiz partner in an Interschool quiz competition. We loved bunking classes in the name of "quiz preparation" and ended up spending good amount of time in the library, reading a variety of books, ranging from Limca Quiz book to Ananda Vikatan ! We studied in the same school till class 6, after which i moved to a different school. I didn't meet him after that, until one day in my class 11, when i caught a glance of him in IIT coaching class. But that day, i couldn't talk to him. Two years later when i joined college, i had the biggest surprise of my life, when i saw him in the same hostel ! We have been in constant touch ever since ! L is a man of reason, book worm and very good at logic. What amazes me(and everyone else) is the fact that he has read books(or any material in net) on almost every topic under the sun ! He can talk on topics ranging from Advaita to Zoroastrianism, MS to Eminem, Kafka to Karunanidhi, Kernels to Communism and so on. No wonder he is a wiki administrator and an amazing blogger.

I met H when i was in class 6. After that, i met him only in college. He was a part of the "Old Turkey Buzzard" quiz team and we did some projects together.He has a very unusual taste in everything(in "everything"). Even he is like L, reads anything under the sun, but he is more geekish compared to L. Even though he looks very calm, there is a storm beneath him.This guy with a "Never say die" spirit speaks less(unlike L ;-) ) but does a lot more! After college, we moved to different cities. Am happy that he will be coming down to the city where i live, the home of RSAS, Welcome H !

Congrats L and H, I am really proud of you! You guys Rock !

Now playing : "Achilles Last stand" - Nirvana

A wedding and a Funeral

I had a chance to watch two events on Television, that touched the life of millions across the world. One was the Funeral of Pope John Paul ii and other was a repeat telecast of the royal wedding between Princess Di and Prince Charles.

The Funeral coverage of the "most travelled Pope" featured interviews of various people across the world, including Pope's official photopgrapher for the last 30 years, Pope's wardrobe manager, his cook and many more, for whom his death would make a big difference.Several major state heads made it to the funeral.

The Royal wedding was ofcourse a large, grandiose affair. The commoner turned princess was blushing (as expected) but for most part of the event she was in a dilemma, whether to acknowledge the cheering crowd or not ! The Queen was her usual self, with rare flashes of smile whenever Di looked at her !

It is so ironic that the funeral coverage was all about life and the latter about death!

Now playing : "Butterfly" - Crazy Town

One hundred not out !

Just noticed that i have posted over 100 blogs, here is a timeline

12 March 2003 - Chaos decides to blog, since he has got nothing else to do during his internship (PS -ii), thanks to Mallela for introducing me the wonderful world of bloggers !

9 May 2003- Reaches 50th post, It wasn't the fastest fifty, but still, a moment to cherish

2 June 2003- Did not realize that there wouldn't be any more posts in 2003 ;-)

24 Jan 2004 - Chaos, a revival.

19 Jun 2004 - Again, no more posts in 2004 ! Second half of the year is always tough...

19 Mar 2005 - After nearly 8 months, Chaos is back with a bang !

4 Apr 2005 - 100 th post online, bah ! I made it atlast, this one really took some pressure off !

Little Soldier !

Dreams Unlimited

This is in response to subbus blog on Dreams, this is just a hypothetical scenario where the same dream is
being "dreamt" by two different human beings.
This is a straight cut-n-paste from what i worte in Subbu's blog:

• I had a dream (wow, this start rocks !), where i was fully drunk and beat
  a guy black and blue, all i could remember was that i had blanked 95% of that
  guy's teeth !
• Over to dream 2: I was a teacher for a class 12 examination,
  after the final bell, i kept asking for the answer sheets to be handed over to
  me, but some stupid short bloke kept writing, i waited for 10 mins and after
  losing all my patience, i walked out of the room !
• Dream 3: I am a ghost, trying to attack this guy who used to stand with his back against a wall. Poor chap, he didn't realize that ghosts can fly, all i did was a huge jump and landed bang on his head and tore his topa off !!
• Dream 4: There was this wedding that i attended as the bride was my ex GF. Suddenly after the wedding,the groom rushes up to a woman and starts crying, telling her that she is married. At this point, i see my ex-GF giggling ;-)

Sorry subbu, just wanted to trip you ;-)Btw, can two people get the same dream in two different angles, as mentioned above? Something like a role playing game, where Subbu gets the dream of a Monkey in a island and i get the dream of a sailor in the same island ??Any thoughts ?

A Dream comes true !

Atlast, my long time dream of attending a live concert in US has come true ! Yesterday, i had been to the Tempe Music festival, featuring bands like Collective Soul, Crossfade, LIVE, LIT etc. I pinched myself, when i was watching Collective Soul from the 4th row from the stage! Collective Soul and LIVE rocked, am still trying to figure out whether it was real or a dream ! It was a 12 hour music festival, from noon till midnight.I was thinking of Ponnaps, when i found out that a beer festival was going on in the same area!

Joe Satriani is coming down on Wednesday, but i wont be going for that, due
to some official commitment. U2 is performing here on 14th and 15th, but the
tickets got sold out in a span of two hours !

Ethiopian Cuisine

Last Friday, i visited an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. Initially i was a bit skeptical about the presence of any veggie dishes in that restaurant. I was surprised to find two pages of Veggie stuff in the menu card. I ordered for a Vegetable Smbussa, Injera and Yeshimbra Assa. Smbussa was exactly similar to our own Samosa ! Injera is a thin, spongy pancake-like flatbread made from teff flour used to scoop up and wrap food in place of utensils. This resembled Dosa to some extent but was much softer. Yeshimbra Assa is a gravy dish made out of chick peas, this had a close resemblance to "rajma". The dishes were a bit spicy, compared to the bland ones that you get in other restaurants. Overall, the food was spicy and tasty.

A Big Kela...once again !

Yesterday, i was asked to attend a seminar on the latest release of Product X ( Name masked to avoid copyright issues ;0 ).The seminar was arranged in the premises of ABC Inc (masked again ! ), which is a very famous Corporation in US for conducting training on Product X.In a way, ABC Inc. somehow sold Product X to our company, so that they can make good business out of their training programmes.I went to ABC Inc around noon, where i was greeted by beautiful blondes and chilled Soda.

Ok, before the actual incident, i have to tell you my personal opinion on Product X. X is supposed to be one of the front runners inBusiness Intelligence arena. Though i have never used it for coding, i have heard a lot about the Product's instability andbugs, that causes a pain in the rear for most developers around the world. The UI is also a bit flaky.

Coming back to the seminar, the first half was the usual jazzy stuff, where they claimed that it is the best thing in the world, next only to J Lo's butt and Naomi's curves. You name the feature, they (claim to) have it (in the future release?)! During the break, a Gentleman introduced himself to me and we started discussing things about the Business Intelligence field. So finally the discussion boiled down to Product X, and here goes the conversation:

Gentleman : "So what's ur opinion on Product X"

Me : "Well, I have never developed anything on X, but from whatever i have heard, X is not that great compared to Products Y and Z"

Gentleman : " Oh is it? Any specific reasons?"

Me: "The product is not very stable, also migration from an earlier version to newer versions is a real pain"

Gentleman :" Why dont you take the help of ABC Inc. on these issues? They will solve it for you"

Me: "They are just too costly, also i guess they have somehow sold that product X to our company, so that they can thrive on Supporting it"

Both of us: " ha ha ha..."
After sometime, we went to cafeteria to have some Ice Tea and snacks.Only then, i realized i didn't introduce myself.

Me:" Btw, I am Chaos, i work for DEF Inc"

Gentleman : " I am Paul, CEO, ABC Inc."

I did a disappearing act immediately !

Now Playing : "Free Bird" - Lynyrd Skynyrd