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.

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

Just another chat :P

One of those crazy chats :D


2:03 PM me: yellow!
Sumita: blueeeeeeeeeeeee
me: i hate you
2:04 PM Sumita: huh
ok
me: rhyme ho raha tha
Sumita: but kyun
me: :P
2:06 PM Sumita: kuch bhi
letz start againn
chal
yellow bol
2:08 PM me: yellow
2:09 PM Sumita: blue
2:10 PM me: i love u
ab khush?
Sumita: u have to
;)
me: :D
Sumita: hehehehe
me: that rhymes too!
wah!
Sumita: how can u doubt my blue
me: not at all... ur color is true
2:11 PM Sumita: but d swine flew
me: while the hedge grew
2:12 PM Sumita: over it d shrubz grew
plus d wind blew
me: soon enough everyone knew
Sumita: tht her skirt flew
2:13 PM ;)
me: and the boy's eyes grew
:D
Sumita: his heart said woooooo hooooooooooo
2:14 PM me: it must be my lucky day too!
Sumita: it cant b true !!
2:15 PM me: sure it can... cuz im chatting with u!
Sumita: itz ur dream come true
wit dazzling starz stuck with glue
2:16 PM me: the dark night which they slew
2:17 PM Sumita: but the dricketz r few
2:18 PM cricketz*
2:19 PM me: and the wise old owls did hoot
Sumita: after the gang was satisfied wit the loot
2:21 PM me: for which the lock they did shoot
Sumita: but they left behind a boot !!!
me: while hanging from the ventilation chute
2:22 PM Sumita: carryin d bag of parashute
2:23 PM me: over the gathered late night dew
2:25 PM Sumita: a man slipped while d witch was busy wit the sew
2:26 PM me: closer and closer danger loomed
2:27 PM Sumita: coz d bride was gettin closer 2 d groom
me: who was hiding in the closet full of brooms
2:28 PM Sumita: where d ghost looms
in d attic above d room
me: and the air feels chill
Sumita: suddenly d groom hears a shrill
2:29 PM me: he marches out... up and down like a drill
2:30 PM Sumita: but he deprives al possible skill
me: he finds the bride with all her frills
2:31 PM and suddenly he feels all thrilled!
2:32 PM Sumita: coz his bride was wit another tramp on a hill
2:34 PM me: out of happiness, dizzyness sinks in
Sumita: he rushes n throwz up in d bin
2:35 PM me: oblivious of all the people and all the din
2:36 PM Sumita: d bride dint commit a sin !!!
2:37 PM eventhough she heard d sound of d devilz kin
;)
2:38 PM me: come to her as the grooms twin
2:39 PM Sumita: like a worm under d skin
me: but still wearing the evil grin
2:40 PM Sumita: she let him towards d suit n let him in
me: brb


17 minutes

2:57 PM Sumita: chal me goin
byeeee
nite
2:58 PM me: okii
gotta to go for a meeting
cyaa

College

College. So far I had still lived a pretty much protected life. One moment I was at home being pampered by my mom and the next I was in a hostel 732km away and staring at my feet (you were not allowed to look at seniors in their eyes). This concentration camp was my home now. Surprisingly, I loved this new feeling of having to fend for myself. It tingled my core and showed with a sparkle in my eyes (or it might have been the reflection of the light on my glasses...). Aug 16th is when I quietly celebrate my Independence Day... this is the day I left home for college. Suddenly I was seeing the world in a whole new perspective and I was in awe with what all it had to offer... from petty people to true gems... from acts of absolute selfishness to gestures of great kindness... I got to experience this all (Here I could have gone on to describe quite a few incidents but alas! my memory fails me... it might have something to do with the fact I've trained it to retain only what is important while flushing out the irrelevant stuff... yes I hate extra baggage... mental or physical. If it were up to me, I would probably be flying to India with a single carry on bag but yet again I drift from the topic). Most importantly, I learnt how to think for myself and make decisions without having them being made for me. This freedom is intoxicating indeed!

Its been a whole 9 years now.... and just how fast this period has gone! Like a Shepard silently admiring his flock, reflecting on that time brings me a feeling of great contentment. I have risen, come spiralling down, picked myself up and learnt to laugh at myself along the way. In the end after all said and done in my moulding days, I must say I shaped up pretty well.

Cupid Attack!

Love... amor... aimer...liebe... pyar... amore... a thousand ways to say, a single emotion to express. Funny how it makes monkeys out of perfectly sane people. Are we born with an inherent x-factor that gets triggered under a cupid attack or is it the result of the preachings of Jesus who commanded us to love one another? As a technical person I have this need to have a logical reasoning and understanding behind everything but breaching this topic leaves me stumped with a unique answer every single time I ponder about it. Purists might argue that it is better to leave some things like this unexplained and just revel in its mystery but then again I am a umm... (insert antonym of purist here) after all.

Here is what I feel. As a social animal, we have the need to be accepted in the society and put up a decent front that most of us might not really be comfortable with. We all want some one in who's company we don't need to be politically correct or wear the Cloak of Falsehood.... to unwind from the rigour's of daily stress.... be partners in crime! Yes I know one might say that's what friends are for but honestly when did you last share something with your friend without the fear of being judged? Admittedly there is a very fine line between friendship and love with equal number of advocates on both sides arguing as to what comes first. Ignoring the order of coming to being, I think the easiest way to distinguish between the two is to identify which person's touch brings out the poet in you. Its amazing to see how compositions embellishing great emotions come forth from otherwise unimaginative uncreative people. That is when you know it is love alright.

Falling in love is such a misnomer because never once have I felt as if I've lost altitude when in love. You kinda feel very light and seem to bounce about with an Acme spring under your shoes that too if all! You might not catch the road runner but hey! you will definitely enjoy the flight :P

My Fatherland

Nigeria. What do I tell you about this place? This is the place I truely call my first home. Here is
where the lump of clay that I was, got its first impression. And what an impression. I have no qualms about stating the fact that I would not be the person I am today had it not been for the time spent in Nigeria with her people. Nice folks down there I tell you. Thought they have the queerest lingo one might come across if on a world tour. Pidgin English is what it de be called o! You no de understand aam right if eh de speak to you. But slow slow u go get it. Wetin de stare at? I no no make aam o... if u laugh at me I go woze you finis.

Then there was Indian Language School... ILS... (I could rat off a choice of full forms we creatively came up with but lets not digress). The friends that I made there.... the teachers who instructed us... the local non-teaching staff that attended to us... each a class on their own. I would have never in my wildest dreams thought that a decade down the line, ILS would offer me something more.... precious..... that it would be the origin of my life's most painful lesson.....

Rs250

Rs250 per month (~ $5 for the uninitiated). You probably spend more than that on a coffee everyday but its inspiring to see what my dad has achieved from such humble beginnings. Yeah yeah I know it wasn't that small an amount back in the 70's but then again, it didn't really afford one more than the average basic living... lifestyle might probably be too big a word so you get an idea of what I mean (or ur pretty thick if u don't). I don't have any accurate recollection of our 'lifestyle' when I was a kid but what I can recall however are how the seemingly small thing's were appreciated. How every ice gola that we devoured was a treat and every chocolate a luxury. I have no memory of us ever going out for dinner.

Taking up a job that moved us out of India is probably the best and most important step that my dad took. Though the money wasn't a whole lot, the move however was crucial in shaping me into becoming who I am today. I have grown up in an environment that was overly protective.... which is not surprising considering I was the youngest (and cutest not to forget) with 2 elder sisters. I grew up learning values which I hope to pass onto my kids the way they were instilled in me. Simplicity has been the core of our upbringing and our parents never showered us with worldly stuff nor was every whim or fancy obliged despite their being in a better financial situation. Save now and want later than want now and save later kinda was the motto of my parents and still is to this day. No they are not misers but they know where to draw the line between wasteful spending and an austere living.... something that my mom never fails to remind me.