Howlers from emails
Culled from a recent email:
Do you know of any descent colleges?
Does it matter? You are going to descend anyways, buddy.
..right now I am feeling up forms,
Please don't tell me what/who you are feeling up next.
Bill puts limit on ads in e-mail / State Senate action privacy concerns
Bill puts limit on ads in e-mail / State Senate action privacy concerns over Google service
In Search of a Perfect Dinner
Of late, since I moved to Cleveland, I have been cooking a lot. Today I decided to make(rather have) a classy meal. Got some Swiss fondue, Chianti wine and crusty French bread.
Went home, put music for the ambience and started heating the fondue. Its a criminal offence not to have good music with good food. Then I started looking frantically for the corkscrew. "Gotta get the wine out before the fondue boils over."
Everthing was in place. The fondue pot, the wine, the music and the bread. Yet it was not at all the fun that I had first imagined. Eating alone and definitely drinking alone are not that fun whatever the menu. I ate much too quickly and choked on the wine while gulping it down.
Perfect dinner = Perfect company
Google update
Whatever would come up next on the net?
gmail swap. Anybody wanting to donate to the cause. As usual there is some nut who wants an opportunity for a breast exam.
What would you want in return for swapping the gmail account?
Me?
A small island in the tropics
A free trip round the world
Free dinners for a whole year
Dr. Seuss' Art
I was walking with friends, who had come down to Cleveland, through the Italian village and I noticed this art gallery tucked away in a corner. 'Dick Kleinman Art'. Through the window I saw what I had seen in a another art gallery in Monterey.
I stepped in and looked around at the amazing art of Dr. Seuss.
Loved the title Self-Portrait As A Young Man Shaving. The titles are full of puns, literary and musical allusions. eg:Venetian Cat singing Oh Solo Meow. He parodies the masters, the Cubists, Impressionists, and yet creates what is still all Seuss.
Later I learned that this gallery was the original gallery where the exhibition was first displayed. Dick told me a number of anecdotes about Seuss. Of how difficult Dr. Seuss found it to sell his art (at the price of 14$). Seuss he told me was a manic depressive. It is interesting that before all modern drugs, Seuss treated himself, by painting. Healing and science, in general are simpler than we sometimes make them out to be.
New Interface
I like the new interface of Blogger. Especially the Dashboard concept. I have now been through two major revisions of blogger.com and each time it gets better and better.
I am glad about the fact that they have made it more zippier and snazzier, not at the expense of keeping it still simple. I really like the idea of the Post Page. This reminds me to start a blog-roll. Also it will be easy now to have 'The Best of the blog'
Though I kinda of miss seeing the old post below the edit window. So now you cannot actually see the posts on the same page. Will have to use it a bit more to see if this new feature is a better idea.
The Preview link is an awesome addition. Also it seems to load much quicker than having to wait(Hope this is not just an artifact of my current machine). Another good thing is that an incorrect tag will not propagate through.
Off the Interstate
Today I went off the great I-80/90 taking a wrong exit,thanks to some road construction that got me confused. I was in no particular hurry and also I was armed with lethal arsenal of AAA maps; so I did not panic. I have come to grief often and so have many who have taken a Mapquest prinout of directions. Its great if you follow it, but if you take a wrong exit or miss one, you are lost, lost as a babe in the woods.
I am great fan of the Interstates, but they are boring after a while. Extremely soporific to say the least. The smaller highway that I found myself on was so different. It passed by houses of people working in their yards, children playing basketball. I had to stop for a goods train to pass. I saw self-styled 'historic' towns, of quaint antique shops and local restaurants. There was so much happening around that I was not watching the road anymore.
I was about 10 miles away from the US 23 Interstate before my detour ended and I saw a local restaurant serving ice-cream. I stopped. It was about 8pm and the sun was setting in the horizon, as I stepped in this homely place run by Scott. For a few moments I got this feeling of being some cowboy passing through this town. How brown guys stopped by this place in shorts, a straw hat and a half sleeved leather hunting jacket? Yet I felt like home. Hero served me the stuffed potatoes and French fried mushrooms. I saw a kid hug a wooden statue on his way out. I wondered if I had stayed on the Interstate I would have probably eaten at a McDonalds, or a Arby's or one of their junk ilk.
The route that I took was not a scenic one or even the road less travelled. It was just different and it was worth it. We miss so much more by flying on the interstates, skirting around the small towns and places to where we want to go. Wonder if it is always worth it? A read a sign in some deli which said, "Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers." It was a bit like that.
Google update
Interesting story on how to price Google."Count the number of pigeon droppings":
See
Full Story:To Derive Bid, Use Dow + Pi Your Age (washingtonpost.com) from where I picked this piece of doggerel,
"Hooray, hooray for the first of May
The EU was set to enlarge yesterday.
They tried to announce it by blowing their bugle,
But the markets ignored them, going ga-ga over Google."
A Graduate
Yesterday I wore the mortarboard and the red tassel, the black cloak and the orange College of Engineering sash and graduated with one of the two degrees in progress, in the magnificent Hill Auditorium. I have added two letters to my name. Mary Sue Coleman, the president of the University of Michigan gave an excellent speech welcoming us to the 'community of scholars'. I was not prepared for such honour. I was there in my sneakers, wearing a T-shirt banking on the fact that the cloak would mask my 'underdressing for the occasion'. It did to quite an extent, except that I required a safety pin to tie one of those things which I don't the name of. In the men's locker room your chances of finding a safety pin are equivalent to the chances of finding WMD in Iraq. Thanks to a shining damsel who gallantly produced a safety pin and I was then able to secure the damn thing. Mary Sue Coleman quoted Robert Henlein,
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects" (Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love). She added, " .. and graduate students."
