Moved to a new house...

After 2 years of stay at on-campus Waterview Appartments, I moved to a near-by off-campus 2-bedroom appartment on Aug 6. The new one is more luxurious and comfortable than my old one. Here, I live with 2 of my friends. It was indeed a pain to shift my belongings to the new place... it took nearly 4 days. We rented a U-Haul (kind of a large truck) last weekend for moving all my furniture. Huh! Atlast, its all over.

Surround speaker system

Today, I purchased Altec Lancing Surround Speaker System from Buy.com. I got an incredible deal that offered nearly 50% discount. The model number is GT5051, and I find it very impressive. Hmm! Awaiting for its arrival...

An Essay by Einstein

Hey... after having read this article (The World as I see it - An Essay by Einstein), I've become a fan of Einstein.

Essays written by Swami Vivekananda & Einstein are my all-time favorites. The above essay is a must read for everyone... With an excellent selection of words, Einstein expresses his thoughts about life in a succinct manner. I've read several of his essays, and in each one of them, I could find a touch of philosophy and reference to morals of life. He is truely a genius & philosopher combo. Read the article atleast twice to get a better hold of it.

Here, I am quoting some of the most eye catching lines from his essay~

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ...

The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth ...

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed ...

Check out the entire article...

GOOGLE IS POWER

Hey... It was just 2 days ago that I learned to make the most out of Google search. It has numerous capabilities than a mere search... and also has several search options. May be there are similar options in yahoo search as well. But, I am a true Google fan. Just to mention a few functionalities offered by google search:

# As a calculator - Perform arithmetic operations and hit the search button to get the outcome.
# As a dictionary - append the text to the string "define:" and search
# As a converter - Convert any unit to any other unit (Currency, units of measurement, etc.)
# Question & Answer - Type a query such as "population of USA", and it gives the answer.

There is lot more... Read them from the net.

FEAR FACTOR

Be a hero... Always say "I have no fear". Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

This is the message from Swami Vivekananda. Doubtlessly, it sounds highly motivating and brings out the enthusiasm in us to be brave in our lives. Earlier, I used to tell this quote to myself whenever I have a target to meet, or a big task assigned. This helped me a lot. With no fear, we can win the freedom of the world, overcome the barrier of communication, reach new frontiers, and achieve lot more success.

The last time I really feared was before riding the water-scooter (jet-ski) for the first time. It was at HotSprings in Arkansas when all my friends and I decided to have a ride on it. Finally, I am happy that I managed to overcome my fear and had a ride on it. It was easy... and I could get the nack of handling it in a couple of minutes. Now on thinking about the past, I feel silly of me for having feared to have the ride.

A WEEKEND FULL OF ADVENTURE

Well... This summer is turning out to be a great one. Last weekend (June 11 & 12), my friends and I had an adventure trip to Arkansas. Hey! This state is famous for its outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, trekking, boating, etc. We had every kind of fun here...

On Friday night at 10:00 pm, we started our drive to the best known and largest cave in Arkansas (Blanchard spring caverns). It takes nearly nearly 8 hours of non-stop road drive from Dallas. Then, we visited Hotsprings on our way back to Dallas.

The highways of Arkansas are fenced by huge and dense trees. I found greenery everywhere... The Nature beautic scenes gave a feast for my eyes. A lot of hiking and trekking were done in this trip. We were six of us, and the fun we had was infinite.

It was a great experience in exploring the interiors of the forests, driving on the clean & green highways, climbing up the steep rocks, and getting closer to the waterfalls. We had a grand finale to the trip... Guess what? We had a ride on the ski jet (water scooter). It was a thrilling first-time experience involving a small portion of fear-factor too.

We came back home at 10:00 pm on Sunday. We had an awesome and a memorable trip that weekend.

FIRST DAY AT INTERVOICE INC.

It was a good first day experience... All the new interns(including me) had an orientation for nearly 4 hours. Then, we met our respective managers and discussed about the product overview. The work ambience is very friendly and co-operative. I was given a cabin (small room), a phone and a system... thats all I need to start off with. I was also educated about the product on which I will be working on, and I feel very comfortable with it. My work is very interesting, challenging, and has a lot to learn. Hmmm! Greatly looking forward to start off with some coding stuff as soon as possible~

MY LAST DAY AT VIEWLOCITY

It's been a memorable experience for me to work as a developer intern for the last 4 months at Viewlocity. Today is my official last day here, as I've been offered to work as a co-op engineer in the R&D department of Intervoice starting from June 1, 2005.

I Posted a farewell message to all the employees of Viewlocity, and had taken photos with all my colleagues. I thanked every one of them for making me a good developer and a better team player. My team lead (Murali) took me for lunch as a token of appreciation of my work. Just before leaving the office, I met all of them in person to say good-bye. Its sad to depart from the company that offered me the first job in the industry... but I told myself that I need to keep moving to achieve my career goals.

GETTING INTO INTERVOICE INC.

Great to get the offer-letter from Intervoice Inc. for a software developer co-op position. I feel lucky and happy about it. Thanks to Intervoice ~

MY SUMMER TOUR - VEGAS AND GRAND CANYON

One Evening, Naveen and I were having our usual useless talk... and there was a mention about a tour to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. But at that moment, not much thought was given to it. However the next day, both of us started getting ambitious to make this plan work out. We spoke to our room-mate Satyajit, and he at once agreed to join us. Now, we are three of us ready for the trip... but it was very hard for us to find a fourth guy. No one was ready to spend some bucks on a jolly trip to Vegas. After lot of pains, Naveen atlast got hold of Pulkit, convinced him, and we all started off for the yatra on May 7th, 2005. This day is very special to Naveen, as he had his Graduation Ceremony on this day. Naveen is no more a student from now onwards :-)

We rented out a mid-sized car (Dodge Stratus) for 6 days. The car is very spacious for 4 guys, with enough leg-room for the back-seaters. Though the road-trip to Vegas takes nearly 19 hours from Dallas, we were feeling comfortable in the car at any given point of time. We crossed Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and reached Las Vegas located in Nevada. The drive across New Mexico and Arizona was uninteresting due to their barren lands and deserted roads, and not much of living force exists.

May 8, 2005

We reached Vegas at around 10:00 am local time, and had a drive through "Las Vegas Blvd". I was peeping out of the window, gazing at the architecture of the buildings and replication of various monuments. We then drove straight to the hotel where we had our room reserved, moved in our luggage, and got refreshed. At around 3:00 pm, we left the hotel, and started exploring every casino located at "Las Vegas Blvd". At the end of the day, we had covered half of them in Vegas. Some of the casinos visited on this day include... Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, Wynn, Tropicana, Paris, etc.

May 9, 2005

Rrrrrnnnngggg... The cell phone alarm rang early in the morning. We got ready to visit the Hover Dam, which is just 1/2 hr drive from Vegas. It is one of the most beautiful dams in United States. The Dam is built between the walls of the Canyon in 1932. It was built within the budget constraints during the years of depression, and was completed well before its due date. This dam is well know for its architecture and the technologies that were used to build it.

Here are some statistics...
726.4 feet high (221m)
1,244 feet wide (379 m)
660 feet (203 m) thick at the base
45 feet (13 m) thick at the top
$165 million dollars to build
4.5 years to build
4.4 million yards of concrete used for construction
March 1931 building began
Lake Mead serves as its Reservoir
September 30, 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the completed dam

In the afternoon, we went ahead exploring the remaining Casinos in Vegas. They include... Excaliber, MGM Grand, Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Stratosphere, New York, Luxor, Aladdin, and many others.

May 10, 2005

We had our breakfast in the morning, and vacated the city at 10:00 am. A four-hour drive took us to Williams (a small village located near Grand Canyon). We had our room reserved in one of the hotels here. In the evening, we visited Grand Canyon to see the sunset. At my first sight, I was surprised by the vastness and depth of the canyon, and the splendid colors reflected by the layered walls. This canyon was formed by the erosion created by the Colorado river for millions years.

We had a 3-mile walk in the chill weather, admiring at the canyon. After gazing at the canyon for more than 1/2 hr, I was reminded of the fact that nothing is permanent on earth. Its all pure materialism that we go after... instead we should also go insearch of Divinity. The materialistic pleasures should go hand in hand with our search for the TRUTH.

We waited patiently in the cold weather to view the sunset over the canyon. Lot of pics were taken in my digi-cam ofcourse. At around 7:30 pm, we had a chance to see the IMAX film on Grand Canyon that was on our way back to the hotel.

May 11, 2005

We explored the country side stuff at Williams... tasted freshly made sandwiches, spoke to hand-full of people who were living there, watched the "Wild West Show" and the Steam Engine, and visited the museum. For the first time, I've been to the country-side life at US. One thing that surprised me is the tidyness of the village. The roads are very clean and people care very much for their place. The people here are very friendly, and are willing to spend time talking to strangers. This is unlikely the case in urban cities of USA. Anyways, we left the village at 12:00 noon local time. We fortunately visited a Meteor Crator on our way to Dallas.

We reached home at 6:40 am on May 12, 2005. It is indeed a very memorable trip !