Social Networking Full Stop

A few weeks back I had decided to quit Orkut simply because it had become too obsolete when compared to Facebook. Today I decided to quit Facebook too, I just don't like the fact that I should be making changes to my privacy settings each day just because Mr. Mark Zuckerberg wants to add more billions to his already over-flooded bank accounts. If you are going to make sooooooooooooo much money of me, you better provide me a service which makes me money or you share your money with me in some way or at the very least donate some money to charity in my name. I am not going to feed your greed for the rest of my life. My problem is not with people making money, my problem is with people stepping on my privacy and freedom to make money. Mark Zuckerberg has clearly lost the vision if any he had behind FB.

IMHO social networking is anyways over-rated, its nothing more than a cheap way to amuse myself reading other people's status messages or spat comments on pictures and other gossip. I have promised myself I will find myself much better ways to relax and amuse myself. For months now I was telling myself that FB is nothing more than waste of time, energy and my eyesight. These new privacy settings have given me the perfect catalyst to do the right thing. I may have been stupid enough to get sucked into the BS in the first place but I am not stupid enough to stay stuck.

Anybody who wants to stay in touch with me please read my blog to get an insight into my life and of course you are free to call me on my phone.

Ciao

Back to India

A few days back I decided to move back to India for now. I am not doing this out of my own will but I am being forced into it because of financial and visa related issues. It has become practically impossible to spend any more dollars in America and my current work permit expires in February, so realistically speaking I do not see my current future improving anytime soon in America.

Hence, the obvious move back home where jobs are still up for grabs and of course I would be living at home. I am just standing on the verge of taking the flight, I have already sold all my valuable excesses on Craigslist, invaluable ones were made to mate with the trash bags. But the most cherished of my assets (My Car) still remains with me and as soon as I find a buyer for it I will be flying back home in a span of couple of days.

It seems it was just yesterday when I had taken the Lufthansa flight to Syracuse from India, in reality it has been three years and four months since then. Time flies by faster than anything else and it seems even faster when you look back at the happier days standing in the muddle of this economic recession. In more ways than imaginable the recession has destroyed lives, mentally financially psychologically career confidence are just to name a few. A year back from now I was determined to face all this with all my might and come out successful, but today I stand defeated and worst of all I have accepted defeat. I have lost my mentality to fight against odds and I think for the rest of my life I would be preparing myself for such catastrophes that might befall me. 2009 has changed me more than the previous twenty four years of life, and now I just hope all this change is for good.

I am desperately waiting for just any one good thing to happen to me and trust me when I say, my standards of good have dropped drastically in the last one year.

New Desktop

I am bored as hell, hence this invention.



The bars on the left and right are the bars from spectrum analyzer from Winamp playing the song, took me four hours to tweak it to its current form.
Rest is Rainmeter and Evil Lyrics and of course Object Dock at the top.

Ciao

Klueless 5

Every November I play Klueless and have been doing so for the last four years, it is more of a religion to me than Cricket. Honestly speaking the game is really awesome, progressively the levels get harder and harder and its quite fun to solve them all.

I had been waiting for it for quite some time, even had a bookmark to the page since the last 15 days or so. 2009 was not going to be any different and I started on Klueless the very hour it started and was doing pretty good too in terms of progression. I was on level 31 when I discovered that there were going to be 38 levels and that's when lightning struck. I felt cheated and betrayed, IMHO the moderators/creators have clearly abused their right of ownership of the game, it is like South Africa deciding that all matches in the world cup shall last 120 minutes instead of the regular 90 and we will tell this to the players once they have already played their 90 minutes. I call it abusing your powers and I am not one of those who is going to bend down to any kind of abuse by anybody. So as a protest I am leaving the game at level 31.

I promise to play it again next year if the owners/moderators decide to respect the sanctity of the game and play by the rules.

Ciao

She is back, I am in love with her ;)

4th year in a row ...

06
07
08
09

It is the fourth consecutive year when I wouldnt be home for Diwali. Last year I had promised myself that in 09 I would be home for Diwali what may come but here I am very much thousands of miles away from home.

I just hope that some day all these sacrifices pay up, they better pay up. Honestly speaking Diwali is the only time of the year when I feel like being home and with my family. It drains me out psychologically when I realize that I am not.

Ciao

Petition Supporting the Extradition of Roman Polanski

Petition Supporting the Extradition of Roman Polanski

Posted using ShareThis

Disgusted

Why in the world Roman Polanski should be forgiven of his crimes ?

I am absolutely disgusted by the artistes who have petitioned for his release and the list includes some very big names like Moncia Bellucci . Even some of the diplomats and politicians have supported the same. I want to ask these petition supporters would you have still signed the petition if it had been your daughter or sister. Would a normal person even have stood a chance if he had raped a 13 year old girl in USA and confessed to the crime. Not a shot in this world. Any other person would have got a life long sex-offender tag as well as at least a 5 year jail term amongst the most hardened criminals in USA.

First he absconded from the country and now he seeks a dismissal of the case, on what grounds? The judge did not deal fairly does not mean you did not commit the rape or your rape was legal.

You may have made the world's best movies but that does not allow you the right to rape children. The man needs to come back, serve his sentence and put this behind him, he should have done that a long long time ago.

In my opinion nail that SOB and get him to his deserved place, PRISON.

Share the petition stated in the previous post if you agree with me.

Ciao

P.S. Big fan of his movies but not him as a person.

New Desktop

Have a lot of time to kill.

Rock Bottom in style

Cities

In the last six months I have lived in four different cities Syracuse, Redlands, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara in chronological order, visited another five Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Las Vegas. It feels like I am on some kinda City steroid regime.

All my life I have been on the move since my father had a transferable job but that was like a move once every 3-4 years, never in my life did I have such a streak of moving around and constantly getting to see new places. Even though all this moving has been part of the job-hunt process, in some ways I feel great that I have seen so much of the world at just 25 years of age.

Some cities I want to live in future are

New York, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, London and a few more, given the current trends I think I can complete this list by the time I am 35 ;). Lucky I would be if I can achieve that.


Ciao

P.S. I have not counted the cities I saw on my cross-country drive from New York to California in April :D.

You call yourself a programmer ??

If yes then try to explain this statement to your brain

some really efficient, extensible,abstract templatized interface ,templatized on the function pointer to some creational policy , possessing user-friendly traits ,providing the client a beautiful mechanism to create the base class pointers to derived classes through createinstance() ,having overloaded operator paran "functor" to hold the previously created function state obtained by parsing a newly dequed XML -serialized message class object , received by a client socket from a remote server thread .............................eventually producing output


Ciao

Funniest Job Interview

Very recently a gaming company contacted me back regarding a job opening they had. Well as always the first step is a phone interview so I agreed to it and sent them a schedule of my availability (on Tuesday) that I am available on Thursday and Friday.

The fun starts here:


I get a call on 'Wednesday', the dude asks me these questions in 10 minutes,

1.Do u play MMO games?
2.What kind of games do you play?
3.Are you familiar with C++?
4.What is a constructor?
5.What is the difference between a constructor and a method?
6.Have you ever worked for a gaming company? (Only No I said in the whole process)
7.Have you worked in a build and release environment?
8.Are you familiar with perforce?
9.Did you make integrations in Perforce?

And within 20 minutes I get a letter of rejection. What could have he possible concluded about my technical abilities specially when I did not make a single mistake. Well there was nothing to make a mistake, the questions were so damn simple.
If he wanted gaming industry experience then it was already evident in my resume that I dint have any of that.

Well if you are out there just to kill time then please do not kill mine :P. I am more than happy to interview as apart from getting the job I stand a very good chance of realizing my weaknesses and areas where I need to work harder, but please do not play around.

Ciao

I don't get it.

Car owners to be offered up to $4,500 for 'guzzlers'

So you reward the dumbfucks who made the stupid decision of buying those gas guzzling vehicles in the first place. I simply don't get it, instead of giving tax rebates to the wise men you reward the stupid ones.

If any of you understand this please enlighten me on the motive behind this decision. I would be more than happy to listen to anything positive about it.

Me, myself

A lot of people have recently commented that I have changed a lot since they last met me or interacted with me, and the truth is I definitely have over the last 3 years or so. So let me define my new self here just to keep you people updated ( as if anybody from the past reads this blog :P), but still let me complete my responsibilities.

1. To begin with I am more interested in Mozart, Paul McCartney, Bach, Nicholas Hooper and so on than I am in Metallica, Tiesto or Slipknot.

2. I spend more time reading than I do chatting, socializing, driving, playing combined together.

3. I am single.

4. I cannot eat spicy food everyday anymore.

5. I have no problems staying awake for days at a stretch if its for programming.

6. I really really want to do a PHD from a good school, and I still may opt to enroll for it.

7. I am a strong believer of Murphy's Law.

8. Now I understand European movies, at least much more than before.

9. Evolution is the motto of life.

There are also some things about me which have not changed at all

1. F rule still applies :P, I am sure all the dudes reading this will understand well. Blonds still rule.

2. Favorite vacation destination is still GOA.

3. I am still a boy unwilling to give in.

4. I still am attracted to luxury like a moth to a flame.

5. I still am lazy.


Hope this helps.

Adios

A few standards I maintain in LIFE

Havent posted in a while so thought of making a close to meaning-less post.

Ever since I owned my first computing machine I have had the instinct to maintain a clutter free, beautiful, unique and practical desktop screen. Its been almost a decade of evolution on my machines and so has been in my taste to justify the above stated properties on my desktop screen.

My current desktop looks something like this

I get chills down my spine when I see a desktop with gazillions of icons each smaller than the bacteria residing on my fingers and I salute the people who have such desktops both for their laziness and their endurance to change.

Ciao

Centre Court

For as far as I can remember Lawn Tennis was one of the very first sport I started watching and actually understanding. I remember at the age of 4 or 5 watching with my grandfather a Steffi Graf match and it was Wimbledon. Since early teenage I have had this dream of watching a match at the mecca of tennis "Wimbledon Centre Court".

Last time a British man won the Wimbledon championship was way back in 1936 but even then the British come out every year in rain and heat to watch the game, such is the love of the game. My dream seems to be realizable in the distant future but I have it in the back of my head and someday in this lifetime I will definitely be there.

Wimbledon Centre Court I shall come.


Ciao

P.S. If you can meet with triumph and disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same.

Tired, down and out !

I am mentally tired of this bullshit. For the last 20 years of my life I have worked for this day and when it comes its not even a day its actually the dawn of an era and I am supposed to make daylight for my career out of the setting Sun. I did nothing wrong enough to deserve these times, well not in this life.

Anyways I do not wanna become the cribbing baby, I am very much up for the GAME even if I am on a side which has zero chances of winning. But I guess the time has come to stop for a moment and refresh the mind. And there is only place on Earth where I think that can happen and its back home, well not literally but its GOA. The best vacation I ever spent in life was in GOA, the place has a sound of tranquility about it, its not expensive, has beaches and of course barrels of liquor. Anyways my motive behind the trip would be peace of mind and relaxation. I am starting one last phase of trying really really hard to find a job and if it does not work out then its gonna be Viva La Goa.

So by 15th August either I would be in Goa or I would be employed and playing games on PS3 and honestly that sounds a future to look forward to either ways :D.

Adios

Maths

I am missing Maths in my life, with time I have started appreciating Maths more and more to the extent where I wish my career revolves around Maths to some degree.

I liked a Calculus from the day I got into it but attributed to pure laziness I never scored well in exams though I feel I understand Calculus better than a lot of my peers. If someone knows about interesting programming jobs or open source projects revolving around Calculus then please suggest those to me.

If I had to choose between a pretty girl and Maths I would choose Maths as everything that is TRUE is apparent on paper whereas with a girl everything apparent on a paper is FALSE.


Ciao

Neo

This is my new blog, for loads of reasons I chose to get a new address and let go of the old one. Welcome to the new world.

Ciao for now

Shantanu Mishra

Hai Apna dil to awara !

hai apanaa dil to aawaaraa, naa jaane kis pe aayegaa

haseenon ne bulaayaa, gale se bhee lagaayaa
bahot samazaayaa, yahee naa samazaa
bahot bholaa hain bechaaraa, naa jaane kis pe aayegaa

ajab hain diwaanaa, naa dar naa thhikaanaa
jameen se begaanaa, falak se judaa
ye yek tootaa huaa taaraa, naa jaane kis pe aayegaa

jamaanaa dekhaa saaraa, hain sab kaa sahaaraa
ye dil hee humaaraa huaa naa kisee kaa
safar mein hain ye banjaaraa, naa jaane kis pe aayegaa

huaa jo kabhee raajee, to milaa naheen kaajee
jahaa pe lagee baazee, wahee pe haaraa
ye yek tootaa huaa taaraa, naa jaane kis pe aayegaa

Master of Science

Mom I love you, this would not have been possible without you.

With all honesty I put forward in pictures my two most cherished possessions, and I think they will stay the most cherished for the rest of my life.

That cap

The Degree

From here on whatever good happens to my life will in some way depend on these two. It feels like I am bragging too much but WTH I have bled for three years for these bragging rights. Not that I bought my Undergrad degree but it certainly feels a joke when compared to the Graduate School. The last three years have been a journey of transforming myself from being a no-ne to being a someone. When I was giving job interviews in college almost anybody could rip me apart with fundamentals only and that is when I promised myself Graduate school is going to be totally different. Three years later I can claim that every interview I have given has been a battle where I have fought like a Gladiator, I have lost quite a lot of them but with respect and dignity. I may not be the best thinker and problem solver but I have earned my degree to every grade I have got and not just walked through it. Apart from academic and technical knowledge MS has taught me a lot of life lessons as well which will stay with me forever even though I might forget propositional calculus. As an example I got an A which i totally did not deserve and I also got a B which again I totally did not deserve, in short life is not always fair but then it would not be fun enough if it was always fair.

I have not seen my family for the last three years, walked more than a mile in the middle of snow storms, lived on Maggi and Pizza for weeks, spent days without a single hour of sleep, spent a lot of my dad's money on the tuition, sacrificed all kinds of recreational interests but in the end it totally feels WORTH IT! I am totally blessed to have been able to achieve my degree.

Adios for now...

Life is a Bitch.

Times are really really bad for me. 2009 is turning out to be an absolute disaster. On top of that staying in America in these wretched times is taking its toll on me in every possible way.

Everything I set my eyes on or I aspire to achieve is being taken away from me for no fault or mistake of mine. Job opportunities, Money, Friends, Partners, Materialistic goods etc. You name a thing and I can assure you I have lost that or about to loose it in a span of 15 days around today.

I hope this loosing streak comes to an end soon.

Ciao

Project 15 days

I have decided to plan towards a new goal in my life. The idea sprung from all the craziness going around in my life.

I want to spend a contiguous stretch of 15 days when I have absolutely nothing to worry about.

Some kinda vacation, alone or with just one other like-minded friend/partner for company. And I definitely have to do this before December 2010. An ideal day on this vacation would consist of a morning jog or swim, Bloody Mary with breakfast ;), scenic places to visit during daytime, and of course liquor and a nightclub for the dark hours.

Will plan more with time.

Ciao

25

SPIRIT

The spirit to make your own future has made USA the super power it is.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/09/hawaii.volunteers.repair/index.html

Kudos to these people.

Ciao

USA never stops to amaze me :D ..

Read this

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/30/python.patrol/index.html

Pythons as pets?
Really?

The inference i draw is the world's biggest economy, world's most powerful nation, world's technological leader, world's blah blah blah also produces some of the most dumb people in the world.

Only a country like USA can produce 30k people in a single state(Florida) who want to keep Pythons as pets and then leave them on their own when they are bored of it. The country has outstretched the meaning of liberty way too far, practicality and common sense should always prevail over liberty. But as said by Voltaire "Common sense is not so common".

Ciao

P.S. I apologize if I have offended any American reading this blog but i really find the case amusing.

Enough is Enough !

I am tired of being jobless and watching videos on Youtube all day long.

So from today onwards I am not watching videos online till my first day of employment(which I am still seeking actively).


CIAO

Sofia Vergara

I just finished watching some talk-show video of hers and I must say, she is like "CRUSH" at first sight. Obviously she is beautiful but more than that she is so jolly talk to, so much fun. I confess an instant crush on her.

Her Hispanic accent seems to be the sweetest thing you have ever heard :P. Watch the videos and decide for yourself

With Chelsea Handler





On Jimmy Kimmel

Disaster February

2009 has not started on the right note for me. January was cold, bitter, irritating, dull and till now February has been nothing less than a disaster. All my interview results are out and to say the least I am still employ-able [:D].

Well apart from the interviews I had my share of trouble with the "government", thankfully and hopefully it has been resolved. I have had some minor troubles with the health too. And as always the bank account does not say anything good about me [;)]. Only thing nice I have in my life is my (lady-like)-love my car.

So for the remaining days of February my aim is to come up with a plan so that my March is not a disaster [:)].

Shall get back in March, Pray for me :).

Ciao

Spring is here :) !

Well finally winter is cooling down in Syracuse, weather has been absolutely fantastic for the last one week or so. Its not snowing that bad, temperatures stays around zero degrees and there have been no blizzards or snow storms unlike the last two Februaries :) .

Almost similar is my life these days, its plain and simple without much action. Its kinda comfortable but I would still prefer to have a job instead and be working 12 hours a day;), huhhhh I think I do have a few Capricorn traits ;). Days are mostly spent on Youtube and career websites, oh actually nights are spent that way, days are spent sleeping in the bed. My routine has gone a total haywire again and I am desperate to get it back on track. I am awake every morning around 9 AM but then i doze off again for the rest of the day, as a result I wake up at sunset and then I am awake till sunrise and the cycle continues :D.

Last two months have been a complete waste in a sense but then in some other sense they have been very useful :P. I have done and learnt some things I wouldnt have done in any other phase of my life :). Anyways I hope i get out of all this soon and start the new life just like any other graduate student who has just graduated, by getting a JOB :).


Ciao

Worst Birthday Ever !!

Its 9th January and I am in my hotel room in Madison, WI. It was the worst birthday I have had in my life.

I spent the day alone and without much to do, and even worse I am paying 10$/day for the internet I am using here. Bad news had started flowing in from the 7th itself when i lost some fantastic opportunities to the recession. Then my flight to Detroit got delayed by 4 hours, so when i reached Madison at 10 i was tired, down and out physically. So i switched my phone off and went straight to sleep without caring about the people who would try to call me at midnight. Selfish of me but i wanted to give more importance to the interview that was waiting for me the next day.

And i woke up at 4 A.M. to prepare myself for the interview and more bad news followed into my mailbox and chat windows. I got a little behind on my schedule and had to skip breakfast before leaving for the interview. Not a big setback but i would have preferred a stomach full of food ;). The only high point of the day was the trip to the fantastic campus of Epic Systems. I personally think by far they have the best "workspace environment" aesthetically and materialistically I have ever seen. It feels like a very posh mansion inside their offices. It was fantastic to sit there, attend presentations and give interviews. I thank Epic for the opportunity they gave me. But my personal rules for calling a day fun are very different than how I spent this 8th January.

No big worries, I am sure I will get more birthdays which would be much more fun. I am glad 8th Jan 2009 is over now, maybe the rest of the month would be better. At least, I hope so.

Ciao

2009

Now that I am finally sober and over with hang-overs I thought lets write the first post of the year.

2008 was a year with lot of ups and downs and even more mids. Here is what i learnt in the last one year.

1.Always, always, always have a considerable stash of hidden money which is never to be used, just the presence of the stash makes one very comfortable.

2.After 2.5 years in a foreign land i finally started to feel homesick, and would be going to India at first opportunity I get.

3.Nothing is more fulfilling in life than "Peace of Mind".

4.Education(formal+informal) is what differentiates between men.

5.There will be times in life when nobody but a select few friends and family will stand by your side, make sure you earn the right to their favors.

As for 2009, I have the following goals

1.Get Employed.

2.Find myself some new "good" friends, god forbid but I think I am about to loose some I already have.

3.Meet and hug my MOM.

4.Accrue some specific materialistic possessions.

5.Take better care of my health and body with exercise and healthy food.

Ciao