having to watch a couple smooch over each other every two 2 minutes for 2 hours in the airport and 3 hours in the plane….And I swear, I could hear their smooches from two rows behind in the plane :). Get a room folks!!!
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Most exciting game of the 2008 NFL season..
I think, we just saw the most exciting game in the 2008 NFL season. The game between the NY Giants and Greenbay Packers, was a nailbiter till the last minute. The game went into overtime and the final score was 23 – 20. I loved the way, NY Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes, who missed two not so difficult goals earlier in the game, made a come back and scored the field goal in overtime to win the game for the Giants.
I should confess.. I am not a big sports guy.. But this game was exciting :).Â
Tools of the trade : SysInternals for Windows
SysInternals, a company founded by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, and later acquired by Microsoft, produces some of the well known “must have” tools for a system administrator. Top on my list would be
If a sys admin (esp Windows admin) says that they don’t know these tools.. don’t hire them :).
Sankranthi Subhakankshalu..
Sankranthi is the festival of harvest and is celebrated with much jest in India (esp Southern India). Back in my childhood, when we used to live in a village, this festival denoted the start of harvesting the rice fields and we used to have a lot of fun lighting up “Bhoghi Mantalu”, which were essentially large bonfires of old stuff that needed to be discarded. And being a kid, everything in the house “qualified” to be discarded for me :).
Another thing that distinguished this festival was that all the household entrances were decorated with colored rice flour. Here’s a picture of a typical decoration
For the kids, it was also the festival of kites. And boy, some folks were pretty serious about their kites and the competitions. Here’s a nice picture showing the landscape littered with kites..
Wishing everyone a happy Sankranthi :).
Did you know?
I recently typed “Hyderabad Time” in Google and it actually showed the current time in Hyderabad :). Apparently, this feature has been around for quite some time. And all this time, I was drudging along to www.worldtimeserver.com and clicking on a particular country/city to find the time there.. Google rules :).
A moment of silence..
Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the greatest adventurers of our time, passed away today. Sir Edmund, was the first man to climb Mt. Everest along with the Nepalese sherpa Tenzing Norgay. I personally believe, his humanitarian deeds eclipse his physical achievements. Think the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Ms. Helen Clark, said it best “He was an heroic figure who not only ‘knocked off’ Everest but lived a life of determination, humility and generosity”
Google does it again..
The almighty Google has come out with a new toy for me to play with :). I don’t claim, that I am a programmer by any means, but like to dabble in scripting now and then. So, I was really excited to see this new simple API from Google for creating charts. I can already imagine, how this can be used in generating some cool reports. Here’s my “Hello World” graph using the API.
The code I used to generate this graph is
“http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250×100&chl=Vinay|Rocks&chtt=My+Hello+World”
Looks like some smart and entrepenuring programmer is already making some money out of this API :). Check out this link for a very cool and smart implementation of the API
Weekend of bumming around in Napa Valley
On a whim, I decided to bum around in the Napa Valley for the weekend. And it was a pretty bad time to have such a whim :), with California experiencing some of the worst weather in recent history. I persisted, and luckily I had a great time. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.. Here’s a picture trail of my weekend
My adda was the RedWodd Inn in Napa Valley. Not the most romantic place to stay, but good bang for buck. It only cost me $49 a day.
Since, I didn’t have a lot of time, I was only able to visit one winery (Castello Di Amorosa) . Don’t ask my why, but this entrepreneur decides to build a winery in the form of a medieval castle for $37MM. But boy, did he build it with style. Apparently, he spent 13 years building the winery and went through the pain of building it with 100 year old brick to make it as authentic as possible. Here’s a snapshot of the Winery from outside
Here are some pictures with the wine barrels and some cool interiors
And for what ever reason, there is a torture room in the Castle. Guess, how this was used!! 🙂
After the tour, being the sucker that I am, I spent ~$200 on buying wine and moved on to hike at the Bathe-Napa valley state park. One word!!, alright six words :), Best value in the Napa Valley!!. If you are into outdoors, this is the place to visit in Napa. Forget the snobby wineries :).
So I came
I conquered
And ran into this surprise at the peak
I never ran into a GeoCache before. And being the outgoing person I am (that is a joke BTW 🙂 ), I took the opportunity to put my signature on the GeoCache.
(only problem was that I messed up on the date!! 🙂 )
If you have all the time in the world, you can browse the complete list of pictures here.