Inspirational

This was Dr. Randy Pausch's last lecture at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away last week. After watching this lecture, I was very moved and realized how important it is to dream and do everything possible when you have an opportunity to make your dreams come true. There is nothing more imperative than loving one's own life and making the most use of it. After all you live each day just once!

CNN-IBN's latest Cricket news

This is what the title of the article says.. "Sachin's new haircut, thanks to Bhajji!!" Can u believe it?
This links to an article in cricketnext.com.

My iPhone Adventure

It all started with me deciding to buy the iPhone on Thursday evening after my prolonged discussion with friends and tireless forum hopping :) My miscalculation of people's enthusiasm in Dallas made me go to the AT&T store at 7:45 am on Friday. I drove by the store and for the first time I couldn't find a parking in that strip mall. Then I decided to park at a close by shop and walked to ATT. There were some 80 people in front of me.. I actually thought that there might be some 15-20 people max waiting in line on a weekday morning.. Looks like there are a lot of people like me who would go late to work rather than miss getting the iPhone on the day of its release!

I waited in line with no place to sit or even stretch.. By 8:30 am, our dear Mr.Dallas Sun started showing off his colors and brightness and ofcours the heat.. All of us were asked to fill out some form and were patiently waiting in line . There were some onlookers with a smirk and a "how stupid and jobless can u people get" look on their faces.. We waved and smiled and told that some of us came just that morning and there were infact people who camped overnight! After 1.5 hours of wait in the "stand here for a free tan" line and with just 10 people in front of me, the store manager came out and announced that they were SOLD OUT!!! I was so damned.

"A true hero is one who never gives up" said Master Shifu (Kung fu panda). Following his words, I decided not to give up and try again the next day. In order to better prepare for my battle with iPhone, I gathered statistics and found out that one of the stores was getting a shipment that midnight and will be open for sale on Saturday at 10:00 am. After having burnt my finger (actually my whole arm) the previous day, I decided to get to the store early.. how early was the question. I took a poll with my friends and decided to be at the store at 7:30 am. So I missed partying on friday night with some friends here and went to bed early. I set 2 alarms just in case :)

I was at the store at 7:40 and there were 14 people in front of me... People get a life.. There are better things to do than wait in line for an iPhone... Oops, I was there 2.5 hours before store hours for the iPhone.. I better shut up!! But this time around I was well prepared to brave the heat and the boredom. I took a bottle of water, sunscreen, sunglasses, a book, my iPod and my cellphone. I finally got my dear, lovely, amazing and splendid iPhone at 10.30 am!!! Since then I haven't been able to stay away from it :) It is worth the wait but not worth the sunburn.

Nocera to Yang

Oh Jerry, It’s No Longer Your Baby

This was an article/memo published on New York Times about Jerry Yang, the CEO of Yahoo!
It was a pretty strong article addressing how Yang has failed to work in the best interests of the shareholders. An interesting read.

Was it worth the wait?

Picture source: wikipedia.org

After all the waiting and waiting, the movie was finally released. With a lot of expectations my friend and I went to watch the much hyped movie. And the result:

We had to wait in line for 1 hour just to get into the theater. They had a very stupid system. People who had bought the tickets online had to stand in a separate line just to get the ticket stub and join a separate rather long line to enter. After all that we got into the theater.. As expected we got pretty bad seats.. we were sitting on the fourth row from the very front and that too not in the center but the side seats!!

I was just hoping the movie would be worth all that.. The movie finally started (30 min delayed), Kamal's entry as Rangarajan Nambi was awesome. I thought the movie is going to surpass my expectations.. The next Kamal was Govind, a bio-scientist in the US. What was the director and story writer thinking? The character of the Avtaar Singh was absolutely unnecessary. He had nothing to do with the story. It felt like this character was created to fill the 10 roles. In the last 10 mins, the doctor says that the bullet through Avtaar's throat "correctly" removed the cancer better than a surgical procedure!! The only thing I could say was "aiyooo".

Asin was personification of overacting when unnecessary.. It appeared to me like the only dialogue she had in the movie was "give me my God's idol" (I don't remember the exact dialogue).

Overall I felt that the movie did not meet my expectation. Kamal as usual did justice to his roles. The main thing that was lacking was story.. too many characters and unnecessary plots. Go for the movie for Kamal's sake..

My Rating: 2.5/5

Feeding my hunger

I am a Zero when it comes to investing.. Back in India, my mom being a banker was the one incharge of handling our investments and my dad always found it convenient that he doesn't have to bother about it!! I did not know about credit and debit for a very long time, never stood in line to deposit a check.. The only times I have gone to a bank was with my mother or to see my mother :) My first time banking experience was when I came to this country, I went to a local bank in Texas and stood in the hallway like a kid with excitement in her eyes on seeing an alien mother ship ;) I slowly learned personal banking and now that I am working for a finance organization I can say I know a lot more than what I knew 3 years back!

I felt it was high time I learn about managing my $$ in terms of investments. So I asked my friend at work to help me out.. He gave me 4 books on managing your finances. One book which I found very interesting is "Real Money" by Jim Cramer. It is about making educated investments in the stock market. I totally love this book. He talks about doing your 'homework' before buying any stocks. I am not done with this book yet.. Planning to finish it by this week.

So if you are like me, don't know why the numbers change on Yahoo finance every second, don't know what the hell is P/E ratio and want to learn about the stock market, I would definitely recommend this book for starters.

Startling

I was listening to the radio on my way back from work today.. I stay pretty close to work and it is usually a 5 minute drive.. But since I left from office at the peak time around 5.30 or so, it took me 15 minutes to get home!! The traffic at rush hour is just unbelievable..

So getting back to the topic, the radio show had this "call us and tell us" thing happening.. The topic of the day was "Interesting ways in which you have taken revenge on your boyfriend/fiance/husband"... In the 10-15 mins I listened, I was appalled at the things women can do to get back at their guy..

Some of the interesting ones, rather ones that I remember :)

• Wife baked cookies and made their dog lick one side of them.. Put the licked side down on the baking tray and watched her husband eat everyone of them!

• Boyfriend was allergic to fabric softener.. This girl washed all his inner T-shirts and underpants and used fabric softener.. She quietly placed these clothes in his closet and the poor guy was covered in rashes the next day :)

• And the very common one, the couple had a very romantic dinner.. the girl made sure that her fiance realized what he might get that night... She did all the dishes, went to the bedrooom, locked and slept.. The guy slept on the couch that night

So to all you men out there.. Don't think that you can easily fool a woman and take her for granted.. We have our own ways of getting back at you :)

Helium Effect

Found this pretty funny.. Try inhaling helium and then speak - your voice comes out very different.