Out-of-control
02.28.05 (4:40 pm) [edit]My sleep has gone out of control and this is irritating me so much. I used to have good control over my sleep. I used to get to bed early and get up early. Even if I go to bed late, I get up fresh as cucumber, whenever I want to and there was no squabbling in my mind whether to get up or not.
I have seen a lot of people complaining of the extra time they sleep after the alarm has gone off but I always got up out of bed quickly and briskly as though I had been awake on a sentry tower all-night. I loved the way I had control over an action that I did for almost one-thrid of a day, all my life.
Now it all seems gone, because of this night shift I have been doing for almost 4 months now. This weekend was the perfect example. I slept at all odd hours ruining my whole weekend plans. Not that I had great plans but I was so irritated at the end of it. It was as good as having no weekend at all. And all this with me having to prepare for an important domain=knowledge exam this wednesday.
The weekdays are not great either. People take for granted that who work in night shifts are available at home in daytime with both eyes open to attend every stupid calls they make and to collect every mails/couriers at the doorsteps with a watm cheering smile. If someone really think so, then please change your opinion. The truth is : WE TRY TO SLEEP.
I wonder when I will get a dream in which I am in lying in a cozy white bed in some cloud where no one disturbs and I sleep till eternity. That would be peaceful...*sigh*
The joy of using a keyboard
02.23.05 (3:06 am) [edit]I have no idea what others feel but I find using a keyboard more fun than a mouse. That doesn't mean that I use mouse less often but then there are certain situations in which I like being a keyboarder. Let me elucidate.
Eventhough the first computer I had touched had a mouse, and I am quite fascinated by the flexibility and agility of a mouse, I prefer using keyboard for important tasks. Playing solitaire for example...lol
Other than the illustrious solitaire, I use keyboard extensively in word processing and even normal day-to-day folder activities. Ofcourse there is a limit in my usage and I certainly don't pain myself in using a keyboard any longer than necessary.
I couldn't fathom, when I conceived this habit, for I very well remember cursing keyboard for being so naive and used it for no more than typing work. Uh...well I have no idea how I did but am not changing atleast for now.
Groupe de stupid (forgive my french)
02.16.05 (9:11 pm) [edit]One December morning in 1973, sport journalist Claude Vorilhon was on his way to work in the French provincial town of Clermont-Ferrand. But - according to a book written by Mr Vorilhon, who is now known as Rael - instead of going to the office, on an impulse, he drove to a nearby volcano. There, he says, he was contacted by an extra-terrestrial being who emerged from a flying saucer and told him - in fluent French - that humans were created in laboratories by people from another planet. The creators were known as the Elohim - a word which, in ancient Hebrew, meant "those who came from the sky".
I assume many would have already guessed where it would have lead to. A movement called 'Raelians' was born and they believe that humans were created by extra-terrestrials. Perhaps the best part of their theory is that they believe in eternal life, but not through soul(as conventionally said) but through DNA i.e, cloning. How interesting!!
Throughout history many such groups have existed. I wonder whether there is a good site that list all these stupid groups' sites. I love to read them. More so I love the FAQ sections of the mock sites about such groups. If you dont have any idea of what I talk about then click this link and enjoy the read. This is about the most famous of all these groups : The flat earth society.
googling all the way!
02.14.05 (10:49 pm) [edit]Googled is one of the few terms that has found into the dictionary recently. Cyberlife could have been as hard as a blind-man if there was no google. And this is more so for software people and this is regardless whether he drools over a assembler code that is written for over 3000 lines to print a report or whether he is doing the interfacing module of a mulit-grid beowulf cluster. We breath google.
I use google a lot but unlike old days(read college days) my current searches are not technical questions but merely subjects that interest me. Too often I open the google window not knowing what to search for and type something that I heard once or wanted to know about. A friend of mine does google-whacking, something that I would love to do but am sure my poor vocabulary would fail me.
So what if google hadn't pop-up one fine day? People may think they might have started using some other search engine, but I have other opinion. I believe usage of search engines would not have become famous at all. During my early days I used Yahoo, Altavista but never found the results good-enough. It took a 'google' to change all that. And they still continue to impress me with their no-nonsense approach. I am using their mail service and even their toolbar and found them more user-friendly than anything else I used before.
do we need to be patriotic?
02.11.05 (10:19 pm) [edit]Patriotism is defined in my desktop dictionary as "Love of country and willingness to sacrifice for it". I cant understand why we need to be so serious about being patriotic at all. Afterall man created the borders and he uses them at his own will to create more and more problems. Only that.
Now it comes to what is a country. A country is afterall an area demarked by borders. They are further divided into states and counties and blocks and streets. Do all the people in the country are treated same? No. Then why this distinction. It basically boils down to the fact that from time immemorial man was a social animal and felt he needed a society to live. If each person works for the overall welfare they can strive and survive.
So do we really need patriotism? Yes and No. We do need patriotism for our country but it should not be fanatic...fanatic enough to abuse other countries. We do need to love out country and strive for its welfareness and cheer for it when needed but realise that a country is more than just you and it will disregard you in more than one ways. Politicians are the major corrupt forces who changed the meaning of patriotism.
My basic view is that instead of being so crazy about our motherland, we can try to be a passionate yet calm lover of it. Its far more better.
acrophobia
02.10.05 (8:00 pm) [edit]Recently I had this strange dream. I was running in some entirely new place(for what?1?) and couple of guys(bad?!?) are chasing me. Their faces were not clear, but I could distinctly see my face, as I turned to see them...the face had fear.
I was running among random and oddly shaped concrete structures and I jumped all over them as a skilled jumping artist. A clear sky overhead and a cement floor below indicated I was on the top floor of a building, a skyskraper perhaps. Just as I flip over another diamond shaped concrete slab jutting out from a huge cement block, I saw what I had left behind. There were random concrete structures spread across the vast terrain but the guys were missing.
Then I found a wall with a small metal gate. I opened and went in. No, I didn't go in but went out. For on the other side there was a small balcony with steel fencing with a lone opening at the side. I quickly ran to it, finding a steel ladder that would take me..down...deep down. The ladder had no safety padders at the ends and went zig-zag fashion(emergency exit for what?!?). It was certainly daunting to look down. I stepped aside and saw that on the other side of the balcony there was a narrow concrete slab jutting from the wall, running till eternity(I never saw the end of the wall). Strangely, I took the slab instead of the ladder. I took two steps and with my back against the wall, I looked down. I realised the height. The fear was too much to handle. It was too much to handle that you feel falling from there would be a much better option. I even imagined throwing myself out from the slab to overcome the fear. I would then fall and be peaceful. Its better than the fear...acrophobia
a call to another world
02.10.05 (2:07 am) [edit]I have always liked calling help desks. And thats because I never call them with any big problem at hand. And thats because if I ever get a big problem and want a solution, I prefer not to call them. A trip to service center would be ideal for me. And so, I always found help desks amusing for they talk sweet and most of them are toll-free..lol
Recently as part of work, I had to phone call centers in America. And I enjoyed it more than anything else. First of all, they speak in an entirely new accent. Although I have been calling my sender in US for the past 3 months, he always speaks in a somewhat neutral accent(he is of russian origin) and I had no trouble understanding him or the vice versa. But call centers were a different case.
They talk sweet but are helpless in understanding our names. I have to spell it each time. My name is quite small and easy for them(I dont have a really uncommon last name..hehe). Consider my colleagues, Saravanan Ramakrishnan or Rahul Kumar Madineni who spend atleast 10 mins to spell their names.
Understand their english can be fun. Apart from pronounciation, there is difference in basic sentence formation as well. And occasionally they ask about India and the type of work we do here in the offshore center. And since most of the problems arent solved in a day, we call them regularly. Really cool thing to do, if you have a free phone as I do...lol
sock-tale
02.08.05 (8:29 pm) [edit]Am not someone who gives much importance to my attire. It could be attributed to sans dressing sense but the fact is that I am lazy to work it out and more certainly, careless about such things.
All my company wants is a formal dress on all days except fridays, when we are given the honour to put on something casual. That's what exactly I wear, making sure I dont forget to get into something casual on fridays for if else, I would be the odd man out in the company. Once I forgot it and people stared at me with triumph as though they have successfully proved that I am a nerd.
Despite my meticulous carelessness in my dressing one thing I am really concerned is my socks. Trivial(read funny, if you want) it may sound, I always give importance to it. If that sounds funny, then read some general sock-rules I follow :
I normally wear a formal black shoe to office and so I never use a brown socks(it doesnt go well). I make sure I use my blue socks when I put on a white or light color trouser, for I like that combination. Worse still, I have never used a white socks after my school days, for I somehow think they don't look nice on me.
communication gap
02.07.05 (9:37 pm) [edit]Imagine talking to someone who doesnt know your language(Native English-speakers can think of talking to aliens). Isn't it difficult? Isn't it the same way when you talk your 'heart' to 'others'? By 'heart' I mean all coherent and incoherent gibberish your mind spews out and by 'others' I mean everyone else other than you.
The meaning I want to convey is that no matter how you do, no one else would understand you, when you want to convey them your heart's matter. For the process of feeling is very different from listening.
Too often we are worried about people not understanding us. The truth is that its wrong on our part to expect them to understand it. People close to heart do it more than people who aren't but there is always something they miss. Its better to leave it as that for they might be feeling the same towards us.
Does that mean that I recommend people not to show emotions to others? no. But dont expect them to understand you always. They never will for there is a law of averages...and it is applicable to everything.
finally, I am made responsible!
02.04.05 (9:06 pm) [edit]I finally got work. I have been in this job for almost 7 months now but was underoi ng training all these days. There was the mainframe training, assembler language training, process framework training and two more training with acronyms which I forgot, and finally the knowledge transfer(its not training, theoretically but then its something far more worser than that).
So after all this, I got some work assigned to me yesterday. Now I have something to work upon and a deadline to look forward to(look forward?!?). Not that I didnt do anything before, but that was with the help of a mentor(a real good guy) and quite frankly he was good enough not to give me difficult jobs.
But now, I am on my own and I like it. I believe I am not good at doing something until they have me plastered with my back to the wall. I need pressure to work and they have given me just that.
I am not sure how it will turn out. I expect a lot from myself in this and it may not be met. But am feeling a lot better now. Sometime in the near future I will be crammed up with work. I can sense it now, as good as i sensed the sick feeling seven months before, when I sat for the first day of my first training.
my sports interests
02.03.05 (8:24 pm) [edit]The topic was purely accidental. I came to write something else but since I felt that it was so heavy for today, I decided to pick a topic from the drop-box in the 'Add a Blog' page. Since I seldom used it before, I wanted to choose a topic and then write. I chose sports and here we go.
My sport interests are varying. I am a forever-lover of cricket and soccer, but quite often tune into some sports channel just to pass time. Cricket is more of a passion and it is probably the only game I play among the ones listed here. Its quite long, but I always loved watching and playing it. Am not a good player by any means...lol
Am soccer-mad. I love Manchester United and I always love to watch them play. Quite often I watch those soccer shows wherein they show all the goals scored in the week's matches.
Other than that I watch tennis(Oz Open fever!), wrestling(is it sports??), hockey(not ice-hockey) and ofcourse formula one racing(Go! Schumacher).
genetic memory!
02.02.05 (6:31 pm) [edit]Genetic memory, is a recent but widely accepted theory. It states that all living organisms carry basic instincts in their DNA, rather than their brain. Though the theory is opposed by neuroscientists, who claim brain to be the only source of all memory, they haven't given any concrete evidence to disprove it.
A new born chicken placed in the same chamber with a hawk runs for cover as soon as it sees it. This is because, the new born inherited this instinct from its parents and is stored in its DNA. This experiment may sounds trivial but other observations showed the true prowess of such a phenomenon. For example, in Africa during extreme dry weather, elephants were known to use new water sources that were not used in the past. But the routes they took were extremely efficient, as though they have already travelled in the same route before. It was later found that those water resources were used by their ancestors long back and they had passed on that memory in a chain, unknowingly.
But why should all this be stored in DNA? There are many reasons for the phenomenon but the simple reason is that memory in DNA is a more efficient and simple solution. More than 97% of the DNA have no specific function and can be leisurely used. They are more stable than synapses(neuron bridges) in the brain, the only other viable place for storing such basic instincts.
The theory has opened a floodgate for other theories and observations. This could mean that the deja vu's we have may have other meaning. Some have already started giving answers about sixth sense behaviour and other related activities which had no precise explanations before. It is exciting and lets wait for more.
they deserve the ridicule?!?
02.01.05 (6:28 pm) [edit]So many jokes are written about managers/boss and will be written in the future too. Sometimes I feel that they do deserve the ridicule. But a joke is a joke and it is to intended to make you laugh.
I have read a lot of jokes about them, but this is the best I have read. It is a bit old and you could have read it before. If you have, please fo rgive me.
How to start your day with a positive attitude?
1. Create a "New Folder" on your computer
2. Name it "Manager"
3. Send it to trash
4. Empty the trash
5. Your computer will ask you "Do you really want to get rid of
"Manager"?"
6. Answer calmly, "Yes", and press the mouse button firmly.. (AND YOU
FEEL BETTER ALL DAY...YES
YES!)