Fun

Vegas Trip : Day 1

What a day!! :).Highlights of the day.

Airport : Sucks!! I guess I just had a lot of expectations for the airport. It was dingy, smoky and dark. And I got the first glimpse of the “addicted” gamblers. The ones with the weary, worn out look on them. At least that is my theory :). Naveed thinks that I am crazy..

The Strip : One of the most magnificient creations of the human race!! Regardless of what one is told, I don’t think anyone is prepared for the “garishness” of the strip. It is bright, it is loud, it is large and it is addicting :).

The Hotel : I think this was one of our (or the only!!) bad decision for the trip. We decided to skimp on the money a bit and decided to stay at CirusCircus. As soon as we dropped off at the hotel, we were surprised at the lenght of the line for registration. It took me ~40 minutes to get to the counter. And then, we were offered a “smoking room”!!! because they didn’t have any non-smoking left. Me being the “take-whatever-you-get” type, just took the keys. When we went to the room, Naveed was like “Hell no!!!, we are not staying here”. He called the frontdesk and gave them a piece of his mind (him being smoke allergic and all!! 🙂 ). Surprise-Surprise-Surprise, the hotel suddenly found a non-smoking room for us. The rooms are still not something one would be excited about… I would not reccomend “CircusCircus” to anyone going to Vegas. Unless, you are there just for “gambling” :)..

Breakfast : We had breakfast at the “Bagel Store” in Circus Circus. Made plans for the day and had some bagels.. Hmm.. creamcheese. Shailah wanted to go the Spa and the rest of us decided to run some errands and get tickets for some shows. We planned on meeting up at noon.

Morning Fiasco : So, my IPod Nano decided to take a crap recently. It just wouldn’t start up. A “www.apple.com/support” error message shows up when booting it. Formatting it or restoring it, didn’t help. Hearing about Apple’slegendary support, I decided to take it to the apple store in Vegas. We had to wait for ~1.5 hours, but they swapped my Nano without any questions. Kudos to the apple support team.

Afternoon : Went to Wal Mart to get a camera for the trip.. here is one of my most memorable shots from the trip..

I know..I know!! It is crazy… Don’t ask, why we have to have the anonymous shot :).

November 19, 2005 by Fun Travel Uncategorized

First trip to Vegas

Am going to Vegas for the first time to celebrate a friends 30th birthday.. Am very excited and looking forward to what Vegas can offer :). Am sure that there will be a few pictures to post.

November 18, 2005 by Fun Travel Uncategorized

Lazy weekend

It was a rather lazy weekend.. but got to attend two parties at some friends houses. Today afternoon, went to Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba to try out some tapas. Highly reccomend the Chicken Paella at this restaurant. It was a bit on the pricey end, but the atmosphere was rather casual and laid back. Love places like this.

Here is a shot of me enjoying a good pint of english ale with my friend Sri.

And the Chicago Bears are on a rampage :). Looks like 2005 is going to be a good year for the Chicago sports fans..

Go BEARS!!!!

November 13, 2005 by Food Fun Travel Uncategorized

2005 Half Marathon

It’s been a while since I updated the site :). Wanted to give some updates on my running accomplishments for 2005. After finishing last years Lasalle Marathon, I thought that I could train on my own this year. BIG MISTAKE!! :). Unless you are really (and I mean REALLY) motivated, it is very difficult to train alone for a marathon. So my training was pretty bad this year. I did manage to finish the marathon though. Only 30 minutes longer than last year :).

Here is a picture from the 2005 Chicago Half Marathon, I ran as part of my training

2005 Chicago Half Marathon
November 9, 2005 by Fun Running Sports Uncategorized

|–=Happy New Year=–|

And so has ended the year of the Monkey [2004] and starts the year of the Rooster [2005].

2004 has been quite an interesting year for me..

I moved all the way from Hawaii, back to the Mainland..
I trained and ran a marathon.
Started working at one of the most exciting tech. company.
Made new friends (no links for this unfortunately 🙂 )

In general, life was fun..

Here is wishing that 2005 is going to bring us all more joy, better health and love..

C Novim Godom 🙂

December 31, 2004 by Fun Uncategorized 0

DARPA – Grand Challenge Results

DARPA announced a challenge (open to everyone) to build an autonomous ground vehicle which can travel without any human supervision on rough terrain. The track was an undisclosed path between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, passing through the Majove desert. A total of 15 vehicles qualified for the challenge which took place today. Unfortunately none of the vehicles came even close to finishing the 142 mile race. The farthest distance (7.2 miles)was by covered by a modified HUMMV, build by Red Team. Even though none of the teams could finish the race, I think it was a great event and both the government and the industry learnt a lot from it. For a complete list of the competing teams, click here .

March 13, 2004 by Fun Uncategorized 0

spam stats

While following this threat on slasdot, I came across this site by a system admin who tracks where the spam he fights on a daily basis originates from. This is further proof to break the myth of spamming that “Most spam originates from outside the US”. From this site, we can see that ~35% of spam originates from the US. I am not sure how the author is getting the country of origin from the IP address. I work at an ISP and know that even though all the IP addresses belong (are allocated) to us, they are all allocated to our customers (located outside the US). And we don’t SWIP them as we are required to :). So if any of our customers send out spam, for the rest of the world, it would look as if though it is originating from the US. Wonder how much of the 35% is made up of such spammers.

March 12, 2004 by Fun Rantings Technology Uncategorized 0

Achievement

Have been pretty bad lately with the updates on the website. I was preparing hard for the Aloha Run. I finally finished it today :). I completed the race in < 75 minutes. I was expecting that I will finish it in ~2 hours. But what do you know.. :). Running with 22 thousand people seems to have given me some extra energy. I will add some pictures soon.

February 16, 2004 by Fun Sports Uncategorized 0

Swimming Lessons – Day IV

This was the first day of swimming lessons that I didn’t manage to drink half the water in the pool :). I was not even planning on going to the lesson this week. I was pretty tired after a 12 hour shift a 3 hour Japanese lesson (more on that later). I come home and lay down. I came with the lame excuse of “1 week of missing lessons won’t matter :)”. But luckily for me, one of my colleagues woke me up regarding an issue at work. Although I am not a firm believer in God, this just seemed too much of a coincidence. So off I went to the lesson. The only new thing we learnt in this lesson was “frog kick“.

Frog Kick
1) Kick with your legs in a frog like fashion. Pull in legs and bend knees. Then kick out both the legs spread out. Click the legs together and then pull them in. Repeat..

2) The same time that you are doing the above with your legs, push your self forward with both the arms.

February 3, 2004 by Fun Uncategorized 0