OMG LINUX!

I have gotten hooked onto Linux these days. Ever since I started my new job, I have gotten a chance to actually work in a Unix/Linux environment. I used to be a Linux buff back in the day, but my previous job did not give me much time to work in the Linux environment (and World of Warcraft taking over my personal time).

I have an old Toshiba laptop - it is almost three years old (antediluvian going by the rate computers get obsolete these days). It appeared the laptop was beyond repair as I had repeatedly formatted the hard disk and installed XP. I had completely given up. I was playing around with different flavors of Linux on my office laptop when Ubuntu caught my eye. And I decided to get my old laptop back to life.

Ubuntu has brought my old laptop back to life. Ubuntu recognizing my wireless network adapter automatically surprised to me considering I had problems with Red Hat doing the same. Soooo, here I am sitting in my living room, with my old laptop posting on my blog using this cool desktop blog publishing tool called Post Blog Entry a.k.a. gnome-blog.

Edit: It does not support Atom API. Trying to get this tool called Drivel to work.

Mama I'm Coming Home...

A lot many of us live outside home and we visit home once every few years/months/weeks/days as the case may be. I am wondering what one feels when you are at home for a short visit and before you know it, you are counting down your return. A strange thought to enter one's head at 1AM sitting on your bed at home.

I got here 40 hours ago and I have a little more than 60 hours left before I head back to the West. I do not know how time went by so fast and I am sure my parents are wondering the same. Well, I did spend most of today hanging with buddies in New York City (someone remind me to write about the city sometime; I just love the Big Apple!) - but this was something I was completely prepared for when I left California. Due to my job schedule, I do not know how long it will be before I come back home again. But this time there is some reprieve - my folks are planning to visit me for the first time since I moved out more than two years ago.

I am currently a mixed bag of emotions - while I am excited to be at home, I am also a little sad I have to catch my flight in a couple of days. I am also a little confused as to whether I should look for a job in this part of the country so I can stay close to family or stay in California where there are a lot more opportunities career -wise. The next few months are going to be interesting to say the least taking a lot of hard decisions. Ones I hope I will not regret for the rest of my life.

Anywho, I have decided on my new car - a Nissan 350Z Touring. I will make a toast to that!

Winds of Change

My last post here talked about changes in my life. The winds of change are inevitable. They blew and changed my life in a way I did not expect. As my dear friends The Scorpions elegantly say:
The future's in the air
I can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change
(I know I know the context is different, but don't you think it kinda fits??)

It made me get off my lazy butt and get my act going; made me realise the slow pace of Orange County was probably not right for me at this time; made me realise the world is a much much bigger place waiting to be explored. So I took the next steps. I have moved on from Orange County; left behind lots of friends and familiar faces and places and carried with me a plethora of memories - movies at G's place, dinner and long talks at A and A's, card games at V's, the "nothing" sessions at Krispy Kreme, the dosas at Dosa Palace, the South Indian thali at Bhima's, beer with H and S at all the Yardhouses in the area, my first job, the fried rice at Cha Thai, my very first PvP kill in WoW, and the list goes on. The two something years I spent at Orange County will always be very special to me. I may probably never hang out with all the friends I made there in the same way ever again, but I can take comfort in knowing that whenever I do meet up with them, I will have a fun-filled few minutes hanging out.

Epitome of Nothingness

Some people say the popular sitcom Seinfeld is the "Epitome of Nothingness". I respectfully disagree. This post on my friend's blog shows how one can take nothingness to the next level. V, S, G and myself have spent many an evening at the local Krispy Kreme donut store pondering over mindless thoughts like the ones in the post. Believe you me when I say that is not all we discussed. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. Also, the best among the lot.

Why we did it, you ask. Well, we had the time to kill and there is always time for a donut (or two or a dozen; who keeps count anyway??). No! We are not on the local police force.

Things have changed a bit over the past few weeks. A bit is probably undermining the changes that happened. A lot of things have changed. Every one of us has a lot of things on our mind. Everyone of us is under a lot of stress. Hopefully we will get back to our original selves and relive the good times. We have a few more to join us on our donut binges - V's husband VI and SH. As the popular saying goes - The more the merrier!

Hiatus

Wow! I cannot believe it has been about a year since I last posted. Not that I am too surprised - I was completely inebriated by an entity so interesting that all I could think of, see and breathe for over a year was just that. I call it World of Warcraft. I have done pretty much everything a casual player could do in the game. I have spent more than 14 months playing it and realised there is nothing more that I want to do in the game. Most of my friends IRL and in game have almost stopped playing and I too decided it is time to devote time to the more important things in life. I hope to be be updating this blog soon. I wish myself luck!

Anyways, before I forget - Happy New Year!!!

Mood for the day...

Music: Kryptos - Spiral Ascent
Book: Scimitar SL2
Game: World of Warcraft (halfway into level 44 now...16.5 levels to go before epics!!!)
Mood: Horribly horribly horribly bored!!

Since I have not posted in a long time...Happy New Year all!!

Layoffs!

As much as I was complaining about software developers writing unnecessary complex code most of the time, my heart goes out to the same people today! My client laid off thousands of people today and most of those were from the IT departments. A black day in the history of my relationship with these people. It was very disheartening to hear that starting tomorrow morning, many of the people we had worked with over the past months will not be at their desks. The sad part in this whole affair is, this time around it is not the IT industry which is on a slump, yet it is the IT personnel who get the axe. I find it very unfair!

Apparently, the rate at which the projects are going to progress is going to be very slow; the projects will have to be rescoped. Since my program was not affected much, I hope the fixes I am expecting for my module and future analyses will not be affected.

All the best to everyone in their future endeavors!