Blast From The Past

Two best friends once had this dialogue with each other.

The Purple Lotus

"Live like there’s no tomorrow"
Sounds clichéd, kind of hollow
But it should be my creed, be my motto,
I realize it only when confronted with sorrow.

“Live like there’s no tomorrow”
Yes its clichéd but nay it’s not hollow
Make it your creed; make it your motto,
But not just when you’re confronted with sorrow!

"I'll be fine. it wont happen to me"
I say when I think of tragedy
I refuse to acknowledge my mortality;
Or that of those closest to me.

Tragedies may occur, let them be
It’s the blessings that’s will set you free
Spend your time with closest to thee
Instead of quibbling on philosophical quandaries.

But I can't deny disasters are rife
Destroying cities, destroying lives
Add to that war and strife
And I have to wonder - why ?

Disasters are rife, lives filled with anger
But the Purple Lotus, thrives in the murkiest of waters
Remind us it does of hope never lost
Isn’t that enough for one to wonder?

"Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble"
No longer just the witches' gabble,
All that's left is rubble.

So Clikkety Clakkety Clikkety Clak;
Tap those heels till the floorboards crack
No longer will that be annoying sonic
When accompanied by some graceful swinging.

It makes me scared, it makes me frightened
Makes me question what i thought was certain
However much I exercise caution,
I still might end up in a coffin.

It’s human to be scared, human to be frightened
Now that’s normality for a certain
Have fun building your sanctuary
Instead of distressing about your obituary.

But paranoia and fear everyday,
It’s no good living that way.
I can just hope, I can just pray
That everything will be ok.

Paranoia and fear everyday??
You got that right… no good living that way
Keep alive the hope, freely outside let it flow
In you then will, the Purple Lotus grow.

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.