PREPARING FOR THE WINTER

Today, I went with my bro, sis-in-law and vini to Allen mall, where there were nice deals on show... I desperately needed a protective wear as the winter is approaching quickly... So, I purchased a winter jacket (Tommy Hilfiger) which was sold at half its price at its wearhouse outlet. On our way back home, we dropped by Starbucks coffee parlour, and a toy store to make few small purchases. Lastly, we had a small fudge cake together at my home.... It was a nice day ~

DOCUMENT IT !

Its a routine activity to document every stage of development while building a computer based application for a project. We document the progress to record the outcomes of the experimental trials during project development. Why not it be applied to LIFE. Living a lifestyle itself is an experimental project... why not document the progress? ? ? Ya ya ... I mean exactly what u r thinking of... Why not maintain a personal diary in which we record all our personal feelings clubbed with unspoken words from our inner voice. Its a nice fun when we browse through the writings later in course of time. Maintaining a paper-based diary is always a pain in mind. But now with the advent of blogsites, maintaining a personal weblog is very easy...

So, I thought of creating a personal blogsite (not to be made public) for my personal reference and also to document my unspoken feelings and thoughts. This is very much different from this blog site where I express my thought to the outside world. It will be a nice fun to browse through my writing when I feel bored. A lot can be recalled tooo...

WHY NOT THERE BE A SECRETS-TELLING DAY ? ? ?

We have days for every silly thought possible. Why not there be a day for people to uncover all the secrets that they managed to hide throughout the year. This is a nice thought as long as people reveal the true secrets. Anyway, such a day can also be treated as a day for surprises and unexpected revelations from the unexpected ones. WARNING !!! The day is sure to end with surprises, but no guaratees abt merriment...

A better thought is ... celebrating SECRETS DAY on April 1st, so that we can merge this day with FOOL's day. A revelation can smartly be converted into an act of fooling a person after observing the post-expressions of the listener. HOWZZZZZ IT !!!

GREATE DEALS ! ! !

Great deals were offered today (the day after Thanksgiving).... I got up early and went to my friends' appt at around 6:00 in the morn. But to my surprise, no one opened the door... may be they were fast asleep or they might have left for shopping... Well~ anyway! I went to the nearby shopping centers by walk. I had my way straight to "Super TARGET", made a glance at the offered deals , and got the items in my list placed into the shopping cart. They were just personal stuff ... CD/mp3 player, skull-cap, geans and a webcam. Atlast, I got myself a webcam that my parents suggested me to get it long time back. I got a fairly good deal out of them. I spent nearly 2 hrs shopping at TARGET.

Then, I went to STAPLES which is located just beside TARGET... I found an amazingly good deal - HP Digital cam for $99. I bought it at once ... having in mind that my dad wanted to get one... Got to wait & hear my dad's response to this ...!

THANKS ... GIVING ... DAY !

Happy Thanksgiving day to all my dear ones.... ~ This day is very well celebrated here in US. Actually, I liked the motive behind celebrating the Thanksgiving day - we wish people to express our gratitude or thankfullness for all that they have done to us. I feel that celebrating this day makes more sense than any other commercial-oriented days. Well... Lot of great deals out there for the thanksgiving day... I have just a small list of items to purchase. Catch u later ~

GLAD NEWS !

My friend Ajit has got a scholorship for the spring and summer semester' 2004 at TAMU (Texas A&M University). I just got a mail from him today abt this surprising news. He must have been a lot happier than everyone... Great job Ajit !

WATCHING THE WHOLE NIGHT PASS BY !

I was awake the whole of last night to complete my project in AOS. It was just a night before the day of submission, when I realized that my project's architectural design was incorrect. So, I had to make changes to the design logic, and the corresponding code right away. I worked on the code that whole night. At 4:00 AM, I and my friend came out of our lab to feel the chilliness in the breeze outside. As I opened the door and placed my foot out of the building, a cold wind blew across my face, making me shiver for a second. Well.... it was refreshing, and then we returned to our lab.... and finally it was at 10:40 AM, when i got my desired results. Thank god... my efforts were not wasted.... Altogether, it was a damn good experience ...

FEELING HOMELY !

Its after 2 days that I chatted with my parents this morning (obviously using the yahoo messenger)... and i feel comfy after that... Chatting with mom, dad and sis has been a part of my daily routine. Sometimes... I feel that I can afford to miss any of my routine activities, but never miss chatting with my parents & sis. Even after 3 months of stay away from home, its hard for me to live without chatting with them every morning... Infact, that's the first thing that I do in the morn ~

BTW, my sis suggested me to use a special kind of service provided by www.skype.com, which incorporates a better voice-chat technology than any of the usual messengers. Infact Skype uses P2P Telephony (peer-to-peer) to connect an individual to other users - not to share files this time, but to talk for free with family & friends. I downloaded it today... may be I shall try it out tommorow ~

3 IN 3 DAYS... THREEEE MUCH !

My 3 acad-projects should be... and will be completed by the end of 3rd day from now. Very busy until then.... and very little work thereafter ! Meanwhile, I am thinking of various options to carry out my Masters.... taking up a thesis option (or) will an independent study serve me enough? ? Take a semester break for interns or find one for summer...? Take 4 courses this sem or settle down for 3...? May be...I need to discuss these ones with my acad-advisor and seniors..... and bug them with my questions~

FINALS...

Today, I had the final exam for the course 'Mobile Computing Systems'... The examination lasted for 75 minutes... and the questions had only a little relevance to the actual content of the course. Most part of it was meant to test the creative thinking in us to solve a mobile communication problem. This is infact an interesting approach as there are no fixed answers to the questions. Hmmmm ! Awaiting for the results...

BOREDOM IN AND OUT...

I dont know whats happening... i am just feeling bored with a lonely feeling within... Looking eager for the December hols to come soon! Let these 20 days fly away faster than normal. I have noticed 1 thing... Blogging sometimes pulls me out of boredom. Expressing my feelings and opinions in my blog and reading other blogs make me feel comfortable very often. ~May be this is the reason why, blog sites are mostly maintained by students (especially... the ones away from home).

VERY FEW TO CHOOSE FROM....

Oooops ! Very few high quality courses were offered this semester.... I could hardly short list 4 good courses out of which 3 has to be selected. I am left with no choice .... taking both my pre-requisite courses and one core course for this semester. They include Computer Networks and Probability & Statistics as pre-reqs and Computer Algorithms as my core course. I guess my friend Vinodh accompanies me for the Algos course and Vijay for the Probability course... Hoping to be left with ample time next sem...

CHATTING.... WITH MY FRND

Its was 6 months ago when I last chatted with my friend (Best friend once upon a time), Ramya... and it was today again... the Yahoo messenger did the service. She is doing good and is loaded with tons of work in her MBA program. The same is the case here with me... Work load to its max~ May be all Graduate programs are never different.

FREE STUFF...

As long as I am with my friend Govi... no problem in finding free stuff! He is too good at finding free stuff give-away spots in my campus and informs us about them~ Hmmm ! I just had a few cookies at the Dance program and doubtlessly, we were led by our free-GURU, Mr. Govi Pulliah...

DALLAS OR MADRAS ? ? ?

I fell into a state of dilemna of whether to stay here in Dallas for my summer hols and find an internship for myself, OR go to my home-city (Madras, India) for my 3-month vacation. ~ After a deep thought, I firmly decided to (Guess what ? ? ?)....

FLAVORS IN GOOGLE ...

I was aimlessly browsing the net this afternoon ... and to my surprise, I found a link to Google search engine's experiments page. Click http://labs.google.com to view the flavors of Google. Well done... Google~

LOOK AND FEEL..... GOOD OR BAD ? ? ?

Just to boost up the look and feel of my blogsite, I was experimenting with the layout designs and the color choices. I finally opted for this layout with a "wheat" colored background after spending more than an hour in working on its html codes. Hope this gives a better appearance than the previous ones... Feel free to let me know your remarks~

HEAT OR COLD! ! ! WHICH IS BETTER ?

We had 1 full week of chill weather with temperatures dropping down to less than 25F. Though withstanding the chill temperatures is not very easy for a usual Indian, I still enjoyed the experience... switching ON the heater and packing myself with fanciful jackets, sweaters, sweat T-shirts, jeans...! After a whole week of cold weather, today has been a day with its usual heat as one could expect in Dallas. The temperature controller is put back to its cooler mode of operation and the I got dressed in cotton T-shirt and shorts... However, I enjoyed and had more fun in the cold rather than the heat.

CHANGING MY STANDPOINT

As the academic pressure over me is building up in the form of programming projects and homework assignments, I had to change my standpoint from which I view these tasks. Earlier, I considered them as challenging tasks and worked towards achieving them. Though this viewpoint has created some motivation for a limited period of time, it infact created more stress in me to complete them. Now, I had to switch to another prominent standpoint where, I consider the programming projects as an exclusive opportunity to learn new languages & implement what I have learned. I should enjoy by programming rather than considering it as an academic pressure. I shall enjoy in doing what I have to do rather than being worried abt working over it.