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."
Typo or genuine error?
Someone sent this mail and I wonder if the misuse was intentional.
Would anyone like to purchase a fancy, corner computer desk?
The desk is practically in brand new condition.
I am selling it for $90.00 obo.
While you will save only around $15.00, you will also save the three hours
of construction time and a few vertebrates you may have lost trying to
lift the desk out of your trunk.
You may come by and see it if you like. Please call me at 604-1905 to
arrange a time. It has to either be sold or moved by Sunday night...so
call now!
(Why do I get the sad feeling that I could be a writer for the Home
Shopping Network???)
Thanks,
Danny (S-17)
Cartophile Heaven
A few days ago a became a proud member of the AAA not AA (not yet atleast :D). This had much less to do with that I now have a car but more to do with their map policy. As a member of the Automobile Association of America you are entitled to unlimited number of maps of cities, states, regions of North America. It was terribly hard to resist the temptation of telling the lady at the counter, "I want every map you have." I just love reading maps.
A map helps quantify the distance travelled. It gives each place a frame of reference. A trip from Ann Arbor to Chicago is not just that. It becomes a trip through all these places, Jackson, Battlecreek, Kalamazoo, Michigan City, Gary. I can see myself as a blip on the map moving at 75 miles/hr across the interstate.
That the sensible reason. The other reason is the way maps are folded. It is quite an interesting problem on how to best fold a large piece of paper. The map fold is the most efficient. Why?
For a person with an insatiable Wanderlust, the map is your scoreboard. Looking at one you can say, "Been there done that".
YAHOOOOOOO-OOO!
Yep,I now have my GMAIL account . I logged on today and I see this message. Do you want to sign up for GMail. "Yes or No?". Using a computer metaphor. OF COURSE YES MAN!! YES , YES YES.
I felt it was redundant question. It was just a matter of typing in an username and password.
I posted the announcement regarding Gmail on this blog on the 1st of April part of my fixation about Google. Some thought it was a hoax considering the timing and the kind of people who work at Google.
I did not get a reply.
Well now I have a Gmail account. It has become a sort of the latest Internet status symbol of late( Since? Since I got mine :)). I shall flaunt it for the short while that it is still exclusive. Hah! For the first time in my life I feel at I am actually riding the crest of 'the-things-to-come'. And its just an email account.
Will Gmail will be as revolutionary as Google was despite the uproar about ad-ware and other sap? I think it will. Free email was revolutionary which got Hotmail fired up and made Sabeer Bhatia a millionaire. The next step companies took was to make email not free with features. It has been an indifferent sucess. Now Google has come up with the ultimate spanner in the works:
Email: Free and Unlimited. As good as it gets
How good can it get?The concept of an unlimited mailbox is going to create the next revolution in the email business. Right now its exclusive so there won't be a public impact will be interesting to see how the Email- War shapes up. Its amazing as its major competitors were trying to eat into Google's business, Google used an age old trick. The best way to defend it to attack. MSN's hotmail and Yahoo the currently biggest free email are aware of the heat. Hate to think how this will affect the Google IPO (whenever that is!)
Getting your Gmail
I bet most of you are regular bloggers and have got this invite when you logged in to blog. Do it now if you have not logged on in days.
Another Tale of Human Greed
Seconds later after I got my Gmail account, Good old Human Nature kicked in. I began to think," Hey why not hit the Back Button and get one more invite and create another new account? Two accounts better than one". Apparently, the Google guys have been savvy about this. It did not work. It appears that somewhow your user ID and name so you can't redo the invite on main screen on Blogger.com. I tried various ways. So One account that's all. So ends the tale of Email Greed. Any Computer gyaani's with ideas if there is a work around this?
Mis-reporting?
The Americans never get cricket right do they?
VOANews.com
Last week the Michigan Daily described the one-day series in complete baseball terms which was hilarious. I shall see if I can dig that up.
Question:
Is a sixer in the same vein as a home run?
'The Little Prince' re-discovered
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Saint-Exupery Lands at Last
Interesting article on the author of the Little Prince, a must-read.
Bad Hair Day
Before
For the past one week I have been trying to have my hair cut. I usually go to a Chinese barberess(sic) on Maynard. Back home I heard that people usually cut their hair at home in the US. I thought that the idea was ridiculous. After seeing the price of a haircut in the US, I realised what the options were. Home Sweet Home! My roomate at that time was a year senior to me which kind of made him more of an expert at cutting than others. The first time (he did not tell me it was his first time!) he almost chopped off my ear. His excuse was that the hair had grown so thick that he could see the ear and nicked it. After that I did not trust him with the scissors. At the same time I thought there had to be a better option. So we went and invested 25$ in automatic clipper which might be able to lessen his brutality with scissors. We were engineers man, we could figure things out or atleast were supposed. How tough could it be to be able to give a crew-cut?. Just snip away. Again my roomate was given the clipper. This time he just was so clipper-happy that my friend Anup was reduced to jail/mental asylum hair cut. That was the unkindest of all cuts and he had to hid in a cap the next two weeks.
Now
That ended my experiments with 'home-cuts'. So I go started going to this barber on Maynard street who charges 12$ smiles a lot, speaks little. After going to her all this time that I have been here, I thought that this time I must try someone different. I looked up the yellow pages and there are tons of barbers.
So one afternoon I call this barber up and find out that they are open till 8. So I reach there by around 7:40 and that lady kicks me out saying she has two clients and she shuts at 8.
"Come tomorrow". So I continue to live with this long hair that has by now become 'freakishly long' for one more day. I noticed while leaving the sign "Open at 9am". So the next day, I reach there bright and early. No sign of the shop opening at 9am. I sat there a while outside on the bench. It was cold and windy. I decide to wait some more time. Till 9:30 the shop did not open. Thinking that freezing to death waiting for a haircut was not an honorable enough death, I took refuge in a library nearby. The library was in Mall and I recalled seeing some sort of barber shop there too. So I went there. The glass was thick so I could not see what was going on inside. I stepped in to discover that it was female gym called Curves. I almost blurted out, 'I need a haricut' to the leotard clad ladies.
Then for a week I could not get to a barber, because in this country everything except bars shut early.
Today I took a bus to 'Supercuts' after calling them and finding out they close at 7pm. I reach there at 6:05 and there are two people sitting there and one lone hairdresser. The girl says, "Sorry we are not taking any more customers!!". WTF!
So then resigned to my fate and my karmic destiny with the Chinese hairdresser I cycled to Maynard Street. It was about 6:15 pm. I reached the door and saw Monday to Friday 10:00am - 6:30 pm. Damn!!! Is there a God?
I tried the door. It opened. The same lady was there. She beamed,
"Welcome. Haircut?"
"Yesss!!"
