One good man.

A man driving along with his pregnant wife gets into an accident through no fault of his. However he keeps his head together and his final act of love for her is to swerve the car to avoid a head on collision thus taking the max impact on his side. He dies while protecting his pregnant wife from harm. I might have read lots of articles about such incidents without stopping to think too much about them so why do I feel differently now? Do I know the man? No. Do I know his wife? No. Yet I feel terrible.... why?

I think the fact that he was a lead designer at a PC Game creation company strikes a chord in me at some level. There is more to gaming than most people realize. It inspires, motivates, serves as a muse and in this case brings people together in hard times. Brian's heroic act is the very epicenter of every PC game and his demise feels like losing someone close to me.... and people say games inspire violence. That is true to some degree but there is a +ve aspect as well that no one cares to highlight. Erin has the support of the entire gaming community to help her get through this.

Here is a letter from her:

Hello.

My name is Erin Wood, and I wanted to send a request to please pass along my most sincere and heartfelt thanks to the gaming community for the overwhelming support provided to me in the past two weeks. I asked coworkers of Brian how I might best send my thanks, and they recommended sending them to Kotaku - hence this email. Any way you can help share this with the community would be much appreciated.

Brian always told me about how close-knit and wonderful the video game community was, but I had no idea until this tragedy just how special a group it really is. From all the articles and comments, to the emails and donations, I am simply stunned and so touched by the love, kindness, and generosity shown to me and my family. As everyone knows, the last 10 days have been the most difficult, dark days of my life. But this journey has been eased tremendously by the thoughts, prayers, and well wishes received from friends, family, and strangers living all over the world. It is so meaningful for me to hear about how his work and enthusiasm for the industry has touched others. Brian was completely and utterly devoted to the game industry, and was pretty much living his dream every day. He woke up every morning excited to be working in such a creative, demanding field. It was such a joy to be married to someone who was absolutely passionate about his professional life.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the compassion and support. It is so appreciated, and has been a light to me in this impossible situation.

Warm wishes,
Erin

Please help out here: http://www.brianwoodmemorialtrust.com/

Words make a sentence

No I'm not talking abt PP here... I mean the literal sentence. Here is a list of a few good ones that I will keep updating:

“If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative.”

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” (Epictetus)

"Keep calm and carry on."

AZ Illegal Immigrant Issue

What the hell is wrong with people here in the US?? Why do they have to make a mountain out of something that is not even higher than a grain of fine sand? I mean finally someone decides to do the right thing and not think of their political career by tackling the illegal immigrant issue the way it is supposed to be handled and few idiots still have to open their mouths and wail at the breakdown of legal rights by attaching the 'racial profiling' tag to justify their cause.

For Christ's sake who the hell cares if the cops do infact select people based on their race for 'random checks'?? If their papers are in order what do they have to worry about? One of my best friend is a Muslim and he get's pulled aside for those 'random checks' at the airport every single time he travels and yet he laughs about it instead of raising a huff n puff. If statistically the Mexicans have been shown to be the ones who reside illegally here then any logical straight talking cop would pay extra attention to those guys. I know I would.

Some people are simply born jackasses with nothing better to do than oppose anything and everything. I bet if the real deal Christ himself was to be born here again these same people would go on another protest march at Capital Hill protesting against him. Seriously people do you not have an iota of logical reasoning left in your extremely large inactive obese bodies? Life is not about eating large triple burgers with fries and gulping down diet soda while turning a blind eye what the right thing to do is. If you MUST protest, I can think of a hundred better issues for this purpose. Get a life!

Scars

The worst part of breaking up with someone you love for whatever reason is not the actual act itself. Its the part of trying to live after that. How does one fill a black hole that is capable of engulfing virtually anything that you might throw at it?

You don't. You just hope to find someone to hold your hand and make the pain bearable or you learn to shut the f* up and start a blog. All the optimism and +ve thinking in the world isn't going to do squat for you and that is just a hard fact of life.

I'm in love! Yet again!

I'm in love! Oh I'm in love!! So much in loooooooooooveeeeeee!

Ok not with what(who) you might expect though.... this time its Hyperion.....again.... ummm... hello! the I be El-Geeko.... ding? First of all I came up with an Essbase app to plan my budget, track my income, expenditure, hours, all the works in short.... and on the seventh day i rested and got drunk :P

Just when I thought I'm done with personal custom Essbase apps, a flash of brilliance crossed my mind while looking at my YouTube Channel video stats. My Quick-Gun-Murugan ishtyle mind started racing as soon as my eyes landed on this little unassuming link labeled "Download reports for this video:csv". :D :D CSV!! I repeat..... CSV!! Ofcourse! If it can be pulled to excel I can definitely make an Essbase app for it! Am I a genius or what! :D:D Now I have another 'project' to keep busy with and prevent me from falling asleep at work :P. It would do my pride great service to be able to slice and dice the stats for every YouTube video of mine and be able to pin point milestone views to specific days on the calender....like the exact day I got 5000 views to "Tu Jaane Na". More days of the year to celebrate on. Though of course in my books, celebrating means staying at home and either googling away in my never ending thirst for knowledge or tweaking my PC to squeeze out the last iota of performance for that extra frame in a game.

I'm going to be such a bundle of joy for my wife....lol. You've been warned P! :P

Petty humans!

Its sooooo annoying to see Indians fighting over petty issues in the country instead of realizing their self potential and working towards personal and overall betterment. So I just read this article abt MNS activists vandalizing a couple of Airtel locations in Bombay just cuz they failed to change their automated messages to include Marathi :| Srsly Mr Raj?? Was is that important an issue that you had to have ur goons go loose in the city like that? I mean ofcourse I understand that Marathi is the universal platform of awesomeness and that it is the holy grail of personal and spiritual enrichment *slap on the head*. Sigh...

Though honestly I don't blame Raj. Its the common man who is sooo deep in slumber that all it takes is a slight tickle from the politician to get him to dance according to their whims. There is this student in Hyd I believe who committed suicide just cuz of the delay in forming a new state Talangana. Well at least that's what the news reports have to say... don't know if that's really the case or its just another political zealot trying to take advantage of the situation. If the news reports are to be believed, then for one, I'm happy to have one less idiot in my country. Its reading about morons such as this kid which gives me that Aha! feeling as to why the political state of our country is the way that it is. Are we humans really this degenerate? I'm sure the being upstairs might def be having second thoughts on calling humans his greatest creation.... can't blame him.

Utopia!

So this is what it feels like to be in Heaven... errr... Gaming Heaven i.e :P
Finally after months of sweating, researching, disappointments, exhilaration and deal hunting, my top of the line gaming system is online! Got the best parts I could get for my needs, splurged on an ultra slim monitor, pinched dollars on stuff I could afford to and achieved my target of staying under $1000 with change to spare that too! Woot!

The worst part of building "Arrow", as the I solemnly christened it, was the hits, misses and the wait! Started off with the 15% cashback on Tigerdirect... found an amazing deal on the Power Supply, Case, RAM and Monitor only to have the cashback roll down to 8% the day I finally decide to buy it :| ... aal izz well... aal izz well... Took the bite anyway as there was no telling if it would return in time before the MIR's expired on the items. Turns out it was back after a week or so but by then the MIR's had been lost and the original prices were up so I didn't take a huge beating. Next I found a reeeeeeeeeeally awesome deal on the Motherboard I'd been eyeing for a while and it lowered even further after I bought it. Luckily one of the advantages of residing in the US is that the smart consumer is the king. Got the price match and I was good to go. Saaaweeeet! For the processor, god bless good 'ol Microcenter! Those guys sell processors as it they were sown in their own backyard, watered by the rains and fertilized by natural nutrients. A regularly priced Intel i5-750 processor retailing for $200 was priced at $150. Now for the uninitiated, let me tell you that CPU prices do not fall this way unless they get outdated after prolly a good number of years. I think I did a little dance the moment I got my hand on one of those babies. I am El-Geeko what did you expect?

The final piece to the puzzle... the video card. Weeks of hunting finally paid off with a decent deal on the Radeon 5850 DX 11 card. Retailing for $300, I snagged one for $270 which agreed isnt all that great, but considering top of the line GPU's follow the same priceline as CPU's it was a good enough deal. Thats when the wait started. I had everything setup and ready to go with 5850 being the only missing piece. It took a little over a month for me to get my hands on it cuz of manufacturing shortages. One full agonizing month of waking up to my shiny new system knowing that I could not fire it up. Frustration led me to call Dell and what do you know! They offered me a $20 discount! Final price $250! :D:D:D Now THAT my friends was feaking awesome! You think CPU's never fall in prices? Try high end graphic cards! Finally the day arrived when it blessed me with its presence. It felt as if I was high on grass... time itself slowed down to a trickle as I reached out for the package with a content smile on my face. I have no recollection of having smiled that big a smile ever.

Before you could say Jiminy Crickets, everything was in its place and Arrow was online! I have been at peace since.

Arrow
Intel i5-750 2.67Ghz Quad Core Processor
MSI P-55 GD65 Motherboard
VisionTek Radeon 5850 1GB DX11 Graphics Card
4GB OCZ Platinum DDR3 RAM
Samsung Spinpoint F3 7200RPM 1TB HDD
NZXT Lexa S Tower
ASUS MS226 21.5" Widescreen Ultra Slim Monitor
OCZ ModXstream Pro 700W Power Supply
Win 7 Pro x64

Gaming heaven here the i5 come! :P

A strong advocate of laptops over desktops I never imagined I'd actually take the trouble to build me a desktop and while enjoying it, actually look forward to replacing my laptop as my prime machine. Here's the story.

So Raja starts off with saying he will get a desktop as his current laptop is on its deathbed. He shows me this decent config and asks for my opinion. As El Geeko and Dealmaster2000, I promptly start researching every atom of the machine.... seeing if I can land a better configed machine for cheaper. The more I read, the more I fall in love! Man I had no idea how powerfull desktops had become compared to the last one I had! Suddenly I find myself in lala land ogling at CPU's and Graphic cards with mind blowing performance benchmarks.

Funny thing is, Raja isnt getting a desktop anymore and I am building mine. :|

The price I pay for being a geek..... worth every penny I tell you :D High end graphics for Solitaire here the i5 come! :P