Sourabh’s blog

Ladies and Gentlemen, Best Actor in a Television Drama Series 2007 – Hugh Laurie for House. Second time in a row! Congratulations to Hugh Laurie for getting the Golden Globe again. I was probably more nervous than he was till the final results were declared. Now that he has won, I am glad because he deserved every bit of it. There must have been some serious competition between him and Kiefer Sutherland for 24. But in the end, Hugh earned it.

There can be a good show, there can be some great dialogues, there can even be a great story line but to carry off a show like House you need a class act like Hugh Laurie. He is just too good in whatever he does on House. He is just the right guy for the character of House. No one and I mean no one could pull off a better dialogue delivery for his lame, sarcastic, witty, arrogant lines which are unquestionably true every single time. The guy just never fails to impress.

So here’s hoping for another half-a-dozen seasons of House and a million Houseism’s in the future. I would love to see his acceptance speech for the same. People say that it was really funny but sadly it’s not on You Tube yet. It goes something like this,

“I know everyone says they have a wonderful crew and certainly that can’t be the case. We can’t all be wonderful. Somebody somewhere is working with a crew of drunken thieves. But it’s not me. They smell of newly mown grass.”

Life is a bitch. The last few weeks have been really messy. From the post Christmas holidays till date, a lot of things have happened. Sadly, none of them have been pleasant. To ruin my online life, the internet connection has been miserable from the third week of December and it continues to be the same. I have reason to believe the power jack in my laptop has become faulty. The laptop switches to run on battery even when connected to AC power. So, currently I cannot use my laptop for more than 4 hours at a stretch. I get really annoyed and frustrated when anything happens to my laptop. This is the worst time to get a new laptop, so an upgrade is no longer an option. Whether I like it or not, I will have to wait till late May before I could start making plans of my next laptop. SantaRosa and Yokohama are still far, far away.

To add insult to injury, the ASUS CEO (Campus Elite Organisation) interview turned out to be a mere presentation given by them. The whole CEO thing has nothing to do with Computers, Hardware, Technology as you would associate with ASUS. Being a CEO, is what they claim to be MBA of the IT world - minus the degree. But, that is not something which I had in mind when I first appeared for the test. So, frankly speaking I don’t know what to do with it. I feel it would have been a lot better had I not cleared the test.

And well, it doesn’t stop there. To make things worse and cripple my mind with added tension, I received a series of legal notices from Tata Indicom Broadband for alleged non-payment of broadband bills. Although I have everything under the sun to prove the bills raised are completely BS, getting into a legal battle with Tata is something I don’t want to venture in. Although, they are have been ‘generous’ enough so far to accept there has been some error, I would prefer that things get solved out of the court.

As for academics, another semester passed by. So did the vacations. Its time to get back to college.

On brighter side of things, I enjoyed 24. I take this opportunity to thank Raj Anand for sending me the DVDs of all the seasons of 24, without which my holidays would have been very dull to say the least. I really thought I had seen them all - the action/adventure TV shows currently on air. But I was wrong. 24 is the most thrilling, action-adventure television series I have come across over the past 12 months or so. It beats the hell out of Prison Break, Lost, and other similar TV shows. 24 is all about Jack Bauer, a federal agent played by Kiefer Sutherland, saving the country from terrorist attacks. 24 takes continuous heart pounding action, plot twists, no filler, cliff hangers to the next level where you can always expect the unexpected. Really, not even once could I say for sure what the end would be. 24 follows a unique format where an entire season consists of 24 episodes, each episode comprising of a 1 hour of real time action. 5 Seasons, 120 Episodes, 43 minutes each, one after another, all with in a span of less than 10 days! Incidentally the day I finished Season 5 of 24, a few episodes of season 6 have been leaked on the internet. Co-incidence? May be. Nice show. Long live Kiefer Sutherland.

This post is dedicated to all those who have been bugging me for the dead blog. I hope this long post makes up for everything. You really have a lot of patience, if you have made it so far. Thanks and good bye.

This is the worst thing that could happen. µTorrent was one of the very few applications that I actually liked and found it to be perfect for its intended purpose. No non-sense, just worked with minimum system resources. I found it to be the best torrent client out of the contemporaries on the Windows Platform.

Now I don’t really have any hope with the further development of utorrent to become any better. I won’t go ranting about how BT inc will screw utorrent up. A week back, BT inc. signed a deal with Paramount, Lionsgate, Twentieth Century Fox, MTV networks and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment to launch a paid torrent video store for people to pay and download these stuff. So this deal really means utorrent will go in a step forward to create built-in protection measures against illegal sharing of files. DRM! I don’t think there is anything worth on torrents exclusively except pirated movies, music, softwares, etc…

So, when things go awry with utorrent - BitComet would be the only option. I just can’t take this, because I loved utorrent. What next - Adobe buying FoxIt?

Away from home, the only thing I enjoy is sleeping. It had been something which I kept myself aloof from in the past few years until now. A four or max five hours sleep was enough to keep my alive the next day.

Over the past few days, I have been lucky enough to sleep for nearly 10-11 hours a day. And I must admit, sleeping is just awesome. It recharges your system and keeps you interesting in things.. as in a newer, fresher you.

Another couple of days, and home-sweet-home!

Exam fever is on. The past week or so has been completely hopeless to say the least. I have lost all my hopes of a good preparation before an exam. So, I just end up studying a few hours on the examination day. Nothing gives me enough inspiration to start studying for the exams early. I am miserable and I know that.

The question papers are fun. I have been very lucky with them. The joy of seeing you know enough to clear the exam is next to none. Everything above it is a bonus. The only thing I hate about these question papers is:

Assume suitable data if necessary.

When professors who set the exam papers decide to fiddle with that firepower in their armory - there is nothing worse. I have had a hard time with this fact lately. It has probably to do with my study habits to work things out from what is given in problems.

I get a nice month long break after tomorrow’s test. Looking forward to it, as in how to waste it. Good bye.

Alright, this is a blog post after ages. It is really tough to get out of the shell, once you are inside it. I hope you will agree, if you don’t - watch the Indian Cricket team in action tomorrow.

As for Acer being clean, rather the batteries in the laptops they sell. They have finally confirmed they do not need to recall any batteries they used in their laptops. From exploding batteries to laptops on fire due to them, they were all in news over the last couple of months. During all this time, I eagerly awaited for some word from Acer about their battery recall, if any. No, I am not an over cautious person. I only aspired to get the batteries replaced for free. Anything to replace the dying batteries which give a backup of max 15 minutes. Can’t blame me for thinking like that

So, what I hoped for isn’t coming. Feels great to own something which has no issues. As for Sony, they are just cursed as the battery recall number nears a 8 digit numeral. Great!

Read this

PS: Very few Acer’s used Sony batteries. Sanyo mostly. But then again I am just bitching. Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hitachi, IBM/Lenovo, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba all have had issues. Acer shouldn’t miss a trick in the trade and make a most of things going in their favor. Best of Luck!

I must admit this day was an adventurous day of sorts. It is not always that you get to visit the construction site of the tallest building in Mumbai and quite possibly this part of Asia. Being on the edge of the 40 odd floor under contruction wasn’t thrilling enough, the birds eye view of the entire Mumbai was just awesome! You have to see it to believe it. Despite some heavy smog(Mumbai’s pollution!), we could clearly see distant places - like Nehru Planetarium from Mumbai Central!

The project for S.D. Towers, consists of two twin towers, each around 62 odd storeys by S.D. Corporation. (If you think like me, there is no connecting bridge! ‘It is a resendial building’ - I was answered. Our batch of 30 students were well instructed with the project details, construction fundas and the structural design of the same from the contractors - Shapurji Palanji (or is it Shapurji & Pallonji & Co.). The other prominent names with the project include Hafeez Contractor for the Architecture and the Pune based Y.S.Sane for the Structural Design.

That is pretty much it. When I returned home, I was happy to see the Dish TV package getting upgraded. While I was still trying to come to terms with the slew of channels on the full package, I had fallen asleep. When I woke up, it was late evenings and the rain Gods were at it again. The window just behind my desk was left open, and my laptop enjoyed a nice bath. I had to let it dry off for a few hours before I could gather the courage to power it on.

The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company officials on Monday disconnected power supply to ‘Ramgiri,’ the official residence of Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, as a step to recover dues to the tune of Rs 120,000.

Entire Story at Rediff.com

This is some nice bit of news, seriously. Something which we dont see that happening to government officials, atleast not to the State’s CM. Nice to see, some actions are actually been taken regardless of the prominence of the person involved. When major parts of Maharashtra face power cuts every single day for hours altogether providing uninterrupted electricity to a few big cities, an action like this is quite justified.

There is just something about this news which makes me feel happy. Probably, I am Evil.

Nearly 2 months after the start of the third year course, I have finally managed to procure books for most of the subjects today. All in a single day. I don’t have any clue whatsoever about the syllabus and whats being taught in the class. With just a couple of weeks away from the Mid Semester tests, I better get started now -as in a few days before the tests.

Checked out ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ this evening. It was a fun flick but nothing great. Total timepass stuff which makes you forget all your worries (if any) for the length of the film.

Our family has been celebrating Ganeshotsav for the past 40 odd years. Every single year, the statue of Lord Ganesh has always been the same - something which my grandfather always insisted on. Nevermind the simple decoration, almost everyone in our family likes to keep things simple for some reasons (yeah, right - laziness).

PS: Flickr sucks, still no direct support for Opera.