Today, after a long period of time, I found myself sitting in a dark, laptop and a candle lit room with a handful of LEDs flicker around. A classic midnight scenario which I used to enjoy back home. Of course, with a little lot of Rock on the side. Words escape me while trying to describe the exact relation of calming silence of the dark night,  dancing flicker of candle’s warm flame and razor sharp tones coming out of this laptop, piercing the barriers that restrain the enigmatic marvel called mind!

It’s Brilliant !!!

(1:16:38 PM) Nachiket Karve: so, u heard the song
(1:16:44 PM) PJ:
(1:16:46 PM) PJ: yupp
(1:16:52 PM) Nachiket Karve: awesome isnt it?
(1:16:59 PM) PJ: yupp truly nice
(1:17:13 PM) Nachiket Karve: that guy is a genius
(1:17:21 PM) Nachiket Karve: real awesome genius
(1:17:25 PM) Nachiket Karve: weird al yankovik
(1:17:32 PM) Nachiket Karve: listen to “BoB”
(1:17:42 PM) PJ: soreee
(1:17:46 PM) Nachiket Karve: all sentences in the song are palindromes
(1:17:49 PM) Nachiket Karve: busy?
(1:17:50 PM) PJ: connecsion perablem
(1:17:53 PM) Nachiket Karve: oh
(1:17:58 PM) PJ:
(1:18:14 PM) PJ: palindromes…huh….wats tht?
(1:18:39 PM) Nachiket Karve: when you spell it reverse, its the same
(1:18:44 PM) Nachiket Karve: like bob
(1:18:45 PM) Nachiket Karve: mom
(1:18:47 PM) Nachiket Karve: lol
(1:18:50 PM) PJ: ohok
(1:18:50 PM) Nachiket Karve: malayalam
(1:18:58 PM) PJ: brb

After waiting for a long time, I finally went ahead and upgraded my laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7. To my surprise, the upgrade went very, very smooth. All my files, programs and settings are still here and working as they used to on Vista, or, probably working even better. It seems that settings and configurations are migrated to such an extent that my IE, broken on vista, is still broken on Windows 7. Now I need to really look into the situation and see whats happening. NO, reinstalling IE never much helped anyone.

I am surprised and happy that the upgrade went so smooth. Although I’ve learnt my computers mostly on Windows based Operating Systems, I, like many other web developers have grown a dislike towards microsoft products. (IE and the BS of Death are the culprits, no doubts there) But things like this smooth upgrade, or awesomeness of Visual Studio as an IDE does take your mind off from all the crappy IE stuff.

No matter how much I hate IE, I’d like to take a moment here and thank Microsoft for this uneventful Windows 7 upgrade, Visual Studio and the Age of Empires II The Conquerors Expansion.

Thank You,
~JaguarNac

A post after more than a month indeed. Two reasons. One, I , in the meantime, had chosen to concentrate my blogging energies on another blog of mine, “http://mr.jaguarnac.com” . A blog in my mother tongue. A simple experiment to get me in swing with regular posting. To get me into the habit of writing some crap on the internet and take pleasure as random people come across it. For about three weeks now, I was able to make over twelve posts and was able to carry out a tiny experiment for myself that taught me a few things regarding the figures google analytics throws at us. As usual, I am too lazy to note the findings down and come up with something meaningful out of it, but I’ve understood a coupel of things about whats and what nots about blogs and readers. No, I do not want to share them. Not just yet, maybe not ever. Just because I’m lazy to do that.

Two, reason I did not post anything here because I didnt really do anything superspecial over last month or more. Maybe a couple of things I did were potentially superspecial, such as a trip to Las Vegas or San Francisco, but I somehow didnt just felt like posting. I know not why.

Today however, I did a stuff that’s fun, computer-ry and something that should be here. Today, out of random, I went and got myself a USB TV Tuner card and had it set up with my lappy. Intention was to ultimately convert my lappy into a DVR and use it as my entertainment system. All the set-up, installation and configuration went smooth. The configuration wizard with Windows Media Center doesnt quite let you go wrong. Though all of that went well, it turns out that my existing lappy is not good enough to handle the recording, capturing and display of the input fed to it through the tuner card. Over the period of two years I have effectively doomed my lappy with a whole lot of windows applications crap.

In other news, The website jaguarnac.com completed three years in mid February.  I’m happy as ever. Wishing you to be the same.

~JaguarNac~

Just missed it… it was here a minute ago. I was on it, was about to enjoy a nice little train ride on that heavenly express. Just for a few moments, I took a step out and it left the platform.

Funny how it works. Each cargo has its own train.. the passenger is only one though. These trains… their appearance, their speed and the comfort within varies with its cargo. Some journeys are joyous, relaxing treats, some though, take a dark, lifeless path. The only passenger on these, is mostly misguided. For he, is just a traveler on the path. Neither does he know the way, nor does the train. They just follow the path of where the cargo needs to reach.

It does take some definite efforts to streamline the schedule of these trains. Build their routes, navigate them to the desired destination safe and sound.
For the better of the passenger, the station has to be good. It has to be clean, well prepared, well scheduled …
Station needs to control the trains that leave, it must asses the cargo before approving the departure.
And the passenger??
Best if he could be the stationmaster.

yours,
~JaguarNac~
(who has no idea why he took this train…)

Kinda running outta titles here, just used the one word that I like and often use. I’m happy. One month here in the new place and I can say that I’m getting used to it quite well. It’s just a matter of time when I get back to my everyday development mood and start learning fun stuff off the internet.

Apart from the office timings, I’ve been concentrating upon keeping myself entertained just so that I could get along with this new little space of mine and keep the boredom and loneliness away from myself. Entertaining yourself is not all that hard here if you have a good Internet connection and Netflix Instant Streaming Disk. So far I completed watching Dexter: Season 1, Heroes: Season 1-3 (running season 4), cought up on a couple of Hindi movies online that I could not watch back home, got a blu-ray for “9”, an awesome animation. OH the fun !

I could not help but notice a tiny sting of a feeling that I am missing “some” fun that I totally like, but am not getting so far over here. For one, I have zero access to kitten furriness here. So, no instant happy mix. Second, I still cant get myself in front of a computer, mashing away the keyboard to learn something new, try something different and enjoy that difference !

For the time being, I’m gonna allow the entertainment continue. After 4th season of Heroes, I’ll move onto the Legend of Seeker. Dexter season II after that. Till who knows when.

one thing I’d like to quote here and is worth repeating.

“cats are soft, meow meow”

~JaguarNac

PlayStation is Awesome !

It’s been years since I wanted to get my hands on that awesome gaming console. I’m loving it and am more than happy about it. Netflix on that is just the cherry on the cake (or something like that) …

Its been over a month here now, total of about four months of my US experience. This time, I’m here for some significant time. So far, I’ve managed to get myself a nice place to stay with descent rent and low commute time. All equipments required to maintain online communications are well in place.

funniest part so far is that I’ve started cooking some stuff at home.

For last 23 years, I had absolute no need to cook any food for myself. For one, my mother and grandmother cook awesome and healthy food and two, they are always in kitchen… its their empire, their rules. Whenever i tried to cook back home, if at all, i always managed to mess something up, further diminishing my interest in cooking food for myself.

I cant just yet say that I’m loving it, but so far, the produce I’ve managed to obtain from my cooking did not taste bad. It was not spicy, interesting, awesome taste. but for sure, it did not taste bad. This result is good enough to keep my faith in myself and improve in this area. Till that happens, whenever I cook, I’m simply playing safe by taking digestive medicine before hitting the bed.

Few initial days, when I had no TV and no Internet, were pretty boring and lonely.  X-mas was good time for me to hunt for the house and get settled. With the help of some friends here, I was able to get up and running with my basic needs !

Thats about it.

PlayStation is fun, netflix is awesome, my daal doesnt taste bad, I like southpark and I hate rains !!!

~Nac

Celebrated my cousin’s birthday today by watching Rocket Singh at City Pride Kothrud, my favorite place for a good relaxation.
Over a past couple of weeks, I’ve been running around the city, preparing for my journey to the US. I’ve been there before, for three months. This time however, its gonna be twelve times more. Three years is a LOT ! There’s a whole lot of stuff that I’m going to get there, but a lot of stuff that I’m definitely going to miss.

Parents, home and family, friends, Olive office , olivians and the office cat, Karve Road, My Vehicle, City Pride, Durga Coffee, Diamond cyber sports (even if I havent been there since last 6 months or more), a whole lot people and a whole lot of places.

gonna miss you all, folks….. will stay in touch over the internet, telephone and all possible modern means of communication.

NO! Telepathy wont do, I haven’t found a suitable service provider for that as of yet !!!

~Nac

A new and exciting change is coming Its exciting enough for me, dunno about others but still, I’ll keep it secret for a few more days.
The new theme, is the change I’m talking about today. I’ve been exploring several themes today and was finally able to settle for this  “Amazing 3.0 by Bingo – Web Design “, a neat and attractive theme that brings the recent activities on the blog to immediate attention. After seeing so many themes today, the long buried itch of trying to create my own theme for Wordpress is kicking back in. I tried doing that a few years ago, and had developed a neat no-images theme using only borders, padding, margins and backgrounds. That theme went down with my windows crash, taking down my overall enthusiasm of creating themes for Wordpress. Now it seems the itch is trying to return again.
The change I want to keep secret should keep me off from it for some more time. But after that… you never know

~JaguarNac

It’s fun exploring Google Wave. It was awesome to see and participate in a wave conversation with over 70 people and about 5-6 bots and gadgets the experience one can only describe as “fun” and “slow”

yeah, when it goes this chunky, its bound to get funky !!! lets see how they do it good and make it better !!!

~Nac