Adventures of a Laptop owner

Saturday was an extremely frustrating day. For starters, I had decided to format my lappy and get rid of all the problems. So first I start roaming the hostel ins search of a Windows XP installation CD. After roaming for half an hour, I discover that my next door neighbour has one. I get it and start with the job. Thats when I discovered that my CD drive doesn't work. Any optical disk inserted is shown as a blank CD.

I went to PP's room and asked him to copy the whole installation CD onto a pen drive so that I could install from the pen drive. The pen drive turns out to be malfunctioning as well. Then I try to copy the installation into my portable hard disk to install from the portable hard disk. In the meantime, I uninstall all games out of frustration and stuff. Then I discover that I cant install from a portable that easily. Babu told me that the portable has to be made bootable. I dunno how to do that. I sink into a really depressed state and then in a fit of anger and frustration, decide not to format.

Today afternoon Ghopa tells me to give him my lappy's hard disk. The idea was to fix the hard disk onto Ghopa's laptop and install XP from his laptop. So we try to get the hard disk out of the laptop. Gopa goes out in search of a correct screwdriver and returns half an hour later. By that time, I finish the first 50 pages of David Drake's 'Lord of the Isles'. We succeed on unscrewing the covering but the hard disk itself couldn't be removed coz apparently it needed a smaller screwdriver. So I ask him to leave it. Meanwhile, before closing, I decide to do some cleaning on my lappy. I blow air into the output air vent and then see an amazing sight. Dust clouds literally were coming out of the inlet vents. Soon the whole room was dusty and I was coughing like an old man on his deathbed. I couldn't be happier. I never thought that my laptop could hold so much dust . The processor fan looked light brown from all the dust instead of the regular black. I removed as much dust as I could and when I restarted the laptop, I discover an something amazing. My lappy started working fast! I tried a game of Warcraft to check out and confirmed my findings. Perfect. Seeing my success, Ghopa and PP also decide to open up their lappys and clean them.

So now, no more formatting. HAHAHAH

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It feels good to be the King…

PS: if you decide to clean your laptop/desktop or any device to make it work faster, be careful. I take no responsibility if you screw it up.

ITS BACK!

Wake up and face me
Don't play dead 'cause maybe
Someday I will walk away and say
You disappoint me
Maybe you're better off this way

'Passive'
A Perfect Circle
Constantine OST

*****

Inter hostel LAN is back after a REALLY long time. And as expected, my system is extremely busy. Yesterday night as I was going to sleep, I decided to give my laptop some rest and switched it off and didn't switch it on till today afternoon. This, as far as memory serves, is the single longest time I have switched off the lappy this semester. And I will format this system in the next 2 days. I have to. Else this baby ain't gonna work only.

*****

Downloaded so much shit in the last couple of days that I now have 51.6 MB left in a 160 GB hard disk. I really need another hard disk but already spent so much cash on parties that am a liiittttle hesitant to ask my parents. Sadness.

On Monday, I finally took Mots to town and gave her the treat that I had owed her for a long time. The treat was for –

1. The 4 birthdays that I celebrated after coming here.

2. Her brilliant notes that helped me during exams.

3. For all the diagrams that she drew for me in my Lab Journal (coz I was too lazy to do it)

4. For all the times she completed my notes (coz I was too lazy to do it).

5. For being my best friend.

6. For being what she is.

Thanks Mots, am never gonna forget all that you have done for me .

And for the first time ever in the last 4 years, I didn't mind the trip to town. At least, I didn't hate it as much as I usually do.

*****

IBM still hasn't sent the offer letter. This, coupled with the news that IBM is on a 'firing spree' (apparently, even freshers are not spared) has put my parents in a serious worry. Interestingly (or weirdly), I am not worried.

*****

On the Anime front, I finished watching 'The Vision of Escaflowne'. Too good, 4.5/5.

Got Hunter Hunter and Kenshin (the one that came on Animax as Samurai X). both came highly recommended.

Techo-Incompatibility

Ever noticed that some people are totally techno-incompatible? No matter how much you try to teach them how to operate a new device, they just don't learn. It is not like that they are not smart or anything. Just that hey are really lost when in comes to technology. One such person is my dear mother.

And the best example I can give regarding this curious phenomenon is when my mother got the mobile phone.

She was like a small girl who had got a new toy…naah just kidding. Her face showed no emotion at all. 'Mobile phone? Big deal', said her face. This was around the time when operators charged insane amounts for calls, incoming calls were charged and Reliance, Airtel etc were not even in the scene. So Amma gets this phone with a postpaid connection. Smooth sailing till now. Now comes the problem. She doesn't know how to use it.

That is where the techno-compatible-family member comes in, i.e., Me.

I figure out the basics in 5 minutes (not a big deal considering that the model she had was the most basic model. Basic as in BASIC). Then came the job of teaching her. Took me some time to make her understand that once you dial the number you are supposed to press the green button and not the red button. Finally she managed it and for the next few months, it was smooth sailing.

Then came the new wave of operators like Reliance and BSNL. So she changes her connection and gets a new phone (the old phone came with that particular connection). She gets the 'new' basic model, Nokia 3310. Now this model is, as you may know, extremely similar to a brick. In shape and in other properties (like if you throw it at someone, there is a pretty high chance of fatality). Now she wants to learn to send messages. Now this was no easy task. I labour really hard and finally she manages to get a grasp of SMS. But she just never used it. So she forgot the whole thing in a very short amount of time.

Time goes on.

I am in college.

One day she rings up and asks me to explain to her how to send SMSs.

“But I had already taught you!”

“I forgot. Now tell me fast.”

So I explain. I teach her how to send and read SMSs, over phone, at STD rates. And she gets hold of it pretty fast. So I tell her to send me a trial SMS. She disconnects to send me the SMS.

I wait and wait.

5 minutes later, she calls up and says, “Da, how do you do this thing again?”

Sigh

So I explain again.

Finally, she gets it right.

2 minutes later, I get an SMS. I forgot what the text was, but I remember that the whole text was in CAPS. Next Mission:teach her SMS etiquette. (Never got to that though).

In the next couple of years, she found an interesting hobby: mobile throw ball. I.e. use the mobile phone as a throwing object and throw and smash the phone as much as possible. But because the phone was a 3310 a.k.a. brick, she never managed to smash it to pieces. However, she did manage to ruin the working completely. That particular phone got so screwed up that she had to get a new model. And when I lost my cellphone, I got the old 'brick' instead. In addition to the standard features, by virtue of my mother's brilliant treatment of the phone, the brick has some new and unique properties. Namely,

1. 'Auto off' (like when I am in the middle of a phone conversation, while charging etc)

2. 'Insta-charge'. The phone can charge from No battery to Full battery in mere seconds. Though it can discharge faster than this, thats a completely different matter.

3. 'Shock Response'. Put the phone in the pocket and climb the stairs. By the time I reach the top, the phone is off. OR, drop the phone on the bed really gently/Place phone on table. Phone switches off. Guaranteed.

Etc etc…

During the heydays of the mobile throwball hobby, Amma's phone seemed totally unreachable. Getting connected was virtually impossible. One day, in a fit of frustration, I promised Amma that once I get a job, I would buy her a new phone from my first salary to replace the junk she had.

Now that I am just months away from my first salary, I have started thinking on what models I can get her. I have some specific features in mind, most important of which is a Titanium roll cage for the phone. Though I am not sure many manufactures make phones like that . trust a mother to put the son in a quandary.

Thats my mother. The most techno-incompatible person I have ever seen. The loveliest person in the world. Best mother in the world. Undisputed Best.

I just LOVE my mother.

Spammed :(

Cleaned all the spam in my inbox in the afternoon and now, barely 8 hrs later, the saga continues…

Search introduced

Am feeling pretty darn good. I finally managed to get a search box for the blog (not that I had been looking really hard ). Seems to be working pretty fine…please check it out and tell me if it is helpful.

WTF: 'blog' is a spelling mistake according to OpenOffice 2.3.

The great Anime downloading Festival continues to fire on all engines. Current focus is on 'The Vision of Escaflowne', created by Shoji Kawamori (hope I have spelled him right). 26 episodes from beginning to ending. Short and Perfect unlike some others I know (case study – Naruto:220 episodes + 50 from Shippuuden, with the manga indicating at least 150 more to come. Hopefully it will end by the time I have kids).

*****

L and me started this writing things a month ago. The basic idea is that we both together write a story. Fantasy obviously. We take alternate turns writing. I started the story and sent the draft over to L. He added his part and sent it back to me and we have written a fair bit between us. The story is taking an interesting direction. It starts with a man here in Earth and is currently in some other part of the universe. The story is not meant to end. It is more like a place where we can bounce new fantasy ideas and see if they are any good. I haven't sent him my latest addition and it has been more than a week. L is already getting freaked out.

*****

Internet connection in this college is FUKED UP. Totally. Current internet access restricions prevent me from accessing blizzard.com, dota-allstars.com, any URL with 'games' in its address, any URL with 'videos' in its address and so on. I could not even download a free Ebook that Tor.com sent over to my inbox coz it is 'BlockedbyAdmin'. MOREOVER, every user is logged out off the server automatically after every 2-3 hours, meaning that downloading videos and shit is now a real pain. Which takes us to the logical conclusion that the Internet administrators in my college are:- motherfuckers, bastards, assholes, pricks, cunts, limpdicks, asslickers, brainless worms, neutral creeps with 50 hitpoints, imba n00bs, pigs, etc etc. Good thing we have UltraSurf.

*****

Current favourite songs/Albums:

'Lithium' by Evanescence, The Open Door
'Like You' by Evanescence, The Open Door
'Dreams' by The Corrs, Talk on Corners
MCMXC a.D by Enigma

Mother

The only woman with whom I have interacted really well is my mother. And mothers are well,…mothers. Irrational, perma concerned about you, unreasonable, short-tempered and beautiful. My mother is one in a billion. For starters, she is short. Really short. So, the tall ones in the family (my bro and me) used to tease her all the time about being short. I even announced that people might mistake her for my younger sister if they saw us together. One day, during the playful banter, she warned us and said that we should be careful about teasing her since we would also probably get wives as tall as her. Half of that prediction has come true (Mrs Bro compares to Amma in height) and I am the next in line.

The other thing is that I can never seem to figure out how her thought process works. Given a situation, I can, to a reasonble level of accuracy, predict Appa's and Amma's actions and words. But whereas I can figure out why my father acted the way he did, my mother's actions and words seem to be totally…unfigureoutable. Unreasonable. Unjustified. Against conventional wisdom.

My mother and I share a lot of common tastes including in music and food. From her I inherited a taste for pickles, a hatred of garlic, a love for bitter gourd, laziness, disorderliness and many other traits. But no matter how much similar my taste is to hers, I still cant figure out her taste in clothes. For my mother, shopping for Saris is like a pilgrimage. She wanders around floors and floors of saris,comparing hundreds, if not thousands of saris, her leg pains forgotten, her fatigue forgotten and unfortunately, her family also forgotten. I still remember the day I gave my TOEFL exam. After the exam was done, I was instructed to meet my parents in a large textile showroom (yes, showroom seems a much better word than shop). It took me sometime to find her and when I did, I rushed over to her.

“Amma”.

“Um”.

“Exam is finished”.

“Um”.

“I did well”.

“Um”.

“They kicked me out for copying”. //time for some fun

“Um”.

“I walked ten kilometers to find this place”. //lemme try the sympathy way

“Um”.

“AMMA!!!”

“Quit nagging me. Cant you see I am busy?”

I couldn't take it anymore and went in search of Appa. At least he doesn't forget me, even if he is browsing through books in a bookstall.

Maybe thats why she is the single most important person in my life. Because she is unreasonable, nonnegotiable, short-tempered, perma concerned, unreasonable, short, unfigureoutable, forgetful, unreasonable, panicky, strong willed, clever, unreasonable. Because she is my mother.

Fantastic Loneliness

Loneliness
I feel Loneliness,
In my room…

I Love You..I Kill You
ENIGMA
The Cross of Changes, 1994

Lately, I have been feeling this surge of loneliness. Sometimes, I would rather spend 3 hours with myself than leave my room and talk to someone else. Its not like I am in rapture when I am alone, I just feel…content.

Since my bro left home for college, I have been alone at home much longer than any kid should have been. Everyday after coming home from school, 2 hours alone…any vacations and I would be alone the whole day. Summer vacations were the worst. Add to it the fact that we did not have cable TV at home, I had to spend the whole day watching how to improve sanitation, how to plant pepper and all that crap on the great Doordarshan. And I studied in a Kendriya Vidyalaya till I was in 8^th. Because of KV’s briliant system of having one month of next year’s class before the summer vacation, when the summer vacation actually came, I found that I did not have much time to spend with my friends as they had their classes.

In this way, over time, I came to consider loneliness as one of my companions. A companion who would disappear as soon as I came in contact with a friend. And I found that loneliness was a better friend than the others. He never lies, never betrays, never hurts and you can call him up in an instant, never leaves you alone. All your secrets are safe with him.

Seems like I am more of an introvert than I thought.

Onto other stuff, I hereby declare that I have outdone myself. The book-reading-frenzy-during-exams has one more victim. I finished Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn-The Final Empire yesterday.

Pretty well written book I must admit. When I first heard that Brandon Sanderson had been selected to finish Robert Jordan’s unfinished Magnum Opus ‘The Wheel of Time’, I was pretty skeptical. I mean ,how can you expect an author you have never heard of, one who has almost no stature in front of the great RJ, how can you expect him to finish the book? The most interesting thing I have seen in WoT is the writing style and the character portrayals. The story is nothing. I mean everyone knows the story right? Everyone knows how it is gonna end. The only thing left to see is how exactly it is going to happen. So I thought my fears of some unknown author coming up to finish WoT were pretty justified. But after reading Mistborn: The Final Empire, I see that most of my fears were unfounded.

To any fantasy fan out there who has enjoyed reading Tolkien’s Legendarium and WoT (well, if you didn’t enjoy those books, you can hardly call yourself a fantasy fan can you?), try Mistborn. I am pretty sure you will enjoy it too.

Why I love Anime

Met Mad online today. Dunno when was the last time we had a chat. The wounds are still there and I hope they never break open again. Ever.

PP downloaded this Japanese Anime called “School Days”. He downloaded only one episode and I finally understood why I just LOVE Japanese Anime. This particular one has a sort of Love triangle story unlike most others that involve imba kids with imba powers and imba villains. The love story in this one seems to be better portrayed than those in Indian Movies.

And of course there are the mini skirts. Nor mini actually but (micro)ⁿ skirt. Brilliantly shaped long sexy legs, brilliant curves, cute females not ashamed to show off their chests…ah…male paradise. What more can a man want? It is not perverted to enjoy nature is it?

Article in The Hindu says “Males find it harder to forgive than females: study”. Hey, they didn’t have to conduct a study and all to know that. All they had to do was ask me or read “The Wheel of Time” in which Thom Merillin says that “Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget”.

There are some songs which are brilliant when heard in the right context. Hearing it outside of the context takes some luster off from the song but nevertheless they are still brilliant. There is this particular song by Do as Infinity called “Rakuen” (Paradise). Brilliant song. I first heard it in the movie Inuyasha 4: Fire in Mystic Isle where the song played with the end titles. After seeing the movie, the song was like …paradise. You can download it for free from here. No registration and no hassles. Just click and download.

Xams are still on. Will give a recap of them later.

PS: For Anime downloading, visit realitylapse.