Mac is back :D

So like I said I had some water spilt on my Mac and it was recovering very slowly. I decided to give it some time and packed it away for almost 2 months. The battery was dead and I had already decided to get it replaced.

So I came back from my vacation in Kerala and Bombay and then took my Mac to the iStore. The guy hit the button and hey!!! It booted perfectly well.

The battery life has suffered a bit but it's still way better than my dell / HP

Well thats that. Photo's from my vacation are here. Although there is nothing very kerala about the photos at all. I need to stop macro photography :p

Booohooooo :((

I guess there are thousands of these posts on the internet. But I am still adding one of my own.

My Mac had some water spilt on it and it died!! :( Well, it's slowly coming back to life so its not that bad.

First it didn't run at all.

Then it ran but said there is no battery.

Now it runs and says there is a battery but I don't feel like charging it.

Only time can heal the wounds. It'll come around to charging the battery sooner or later. I hope. So I am using my company's Dell 6500 for now (Windows). More on that in the next post.

The devil's bargain

This is fun!!
Originally uploaded by akshaydhavle

I had loads of fun today. Went around the park and saw that the Children were playing in water. I had the 24-105L on so I had an amazing time clicking portraits of careless, happy children. Someday these kids will be stuck in a company somewhere... writing stories for custom software development... walking around the city downtown... feeling happy for kids playing in water :-)

Ended up getting interviewed by dogstar7 (http://www.youtube.com/user/dogstar7) on the price for peace. Interesting view that the world was appalled and brought about peace after US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago. Dogstar7 asked me if there was a guarantee that the same would happen again, would I support the US bombing civilians for the greater good?

Really? I mean it's a good argument. Thinking of it as an alien (having no interest in human life) I probably would support the movement. But then again as an alien why the hell would I be interested in human peace anyway.

Like I said to him, I don't think peace peace is really possible at all. I think it's just that we are here, alive right now and we see atrocious things happen and we feel really bad about ourselves and the state of the world. But this is exactly what has been happening throughout human history. I think we'll keep having these problems and keep learning to live with them.

Sometimes I wonder if the human ability to adapt is a blessing or a curse.

iPhone :) :(

So I bought the iPod Touch when I got to US. I have enjoyed it a lot. The only bit missing really is network on the go. And the fact that I have to carry
1. My Touch
2. My P1i (quite large)
3. My Card Case
4. 4 Access Cards
5. Bills and Change
and other obvious hardware in my pants :D

Oh! and it's summer so no jackets meaning less pockets...

So I thought let me merge my touch and my cell phone and get the iPhone instead. So I went and stood in the line in the apple store yesterday... for an hour.

Then the guys sets up my account and says "Ha! You don't have a credit card!! So you have never been in debt in the US. I know the likes of you, you debtless immigrant... AT&T would like to relieve you of $500 as security deposit on which you will get no interest :D". He was quite friendly really

Anyways! Like all good consumers I sucked it up and paid as the guy said "This is a refundable deposit so you'll get it back whenever you cancel your contract OR it will be used against your bill amounts at the end of your contract"

One other friend also wanted to buy an iPhone so we went again today. I wanted to pick up a screen guard and a case.

Now the friendly apple guy (a different one) told my friend the same story BUT "This deposit is non-refundable", he said, "If you cancel the contract within one year". My friend said "Thanks" and we came back. (I obviously didn't pick up the guard and the case)

I searched a lot today but this clause is not mentioned anywhere really. So I wait to talk to a friendly AT&T guy tomorrow. Hopefully, things will work out.

But even if they do, I'll be sad in my heart. Apple makes a great product and then goes and makes it impossible for travelling folks such as us to enjoy it. I sincerely don't know where I'll be in the next 3 months... India, UK, Australia maybe (it'll be summer there) OR maybe I will still be in the US. I don't want to know. I like to have no plans but I would like to use an iPhone... let's see.

Another Lotus Notes surprise!!! Err.. Shock rather :(

Lotus Notes never ceases delivering doses of reality in nasty shocks.

It seems that I can create a "Rule" to deal with email. But...
...I can NOT apply a rule to all my current mail??

Really??

Back on the wagon... or is off the wagon?

More commonly used to describe alcoholism, I am talking about my WoW relapse.

Started playing again yesterday after a 4 month break. Feels good :D

Ibanez S470

Wooooohoooooooooooo!!! Finally! Finally I bought an electric guitar.

It's an Ibanez. It's a used S470 which I got at lesser than the price of a new RG350EX.
Advantages?
1. The Zero-Resistance Tremolo
2. Hard Shell Case (included in the price of the guitar)

The Pickups are the basic INF pickups on the starting guitars.

Since I am in Chicago and have to take all this back, I decided to go with the Roland Micro Cube

Here's a demo of the amp. It's good enough for me to practice and my neighbors to know that I am practicing :-p

Twitter is awesome

Just wanted to say that. Downside is, I can't seem to write blog posts anymore :( unless I really concentrate

Only one in each please

That's the look on people's faces as I absent-mindedly entered the same compartment of the revolving door as the person ahead of me.

There was a noise and door jam and multiples of sorries tumbled out of my mouth.

Slightly embarrassing but much more fun :D

Don't try...
OK try but keep saying sorry as you do it.

Next time I am going to try going the wrong way and fight with the people going the right way :D

Suddenly Spammed!!

I don't know what happened. I had a lovely weekend. Came back yesterday and checked office mail. And what do I see? SPAM?? On my Office address. I have only ever submitted that address for a couple of trial downloads of commercial software!!

This was one. Few more people in that Venn Diagram :D

Another guy has randomly mailed people his resume. I looked him up on linked in and he seems like a genuine guy. I don't know if that's called spam these days. I call it spam though.

Then this company who published "latest business directories" or something like that.

And then, two comments on my Business Analysis blog. These guys have actually registered with blogspot (Google) to spam comments.

I hope there's no more. The saving grace is that I see a definite improvement in the quality of spam here... :D