Driver's License

So, I finally got my Washington State Driver's license, scoring 94 of
100 :). The test was sort of easy, just drove for 2 min, park here,
park there, join trafic, pretty simple basic things. No parking on the
steep hills that rahul made me do, and which made me cry, and not
right hand parking too.

Rainy days are back

After a long dry sunny winter, rainy days seem to be back in seattle.
Its been cloudy since last weekend, and has been drizzling seattle
style for more than 4 days now. I am as usual feeling great about the
weather, yes great and not gloomy. It reminds me so much of the
monsoon. Its just a little colder, although sitting inside warm house,
warm car and then warm office, I do not think that its at all fair to
complain a bit about cold.

Multiple Choices

This book is very different from any book I have read so far. This one
is about real life, about a mother with a teenager daughter (american
of course). Not that I had anything to gain from this book, but it was
an interestingly different reading after all those fantacy, adventure
books which tell stories which happen in some far far away world. Its
the story of a very average american family, no millionairs making
everday trips to london and paris. A nice no brainer bed time read.

A rainy weekend in seattle

Finally when I was beginning to believe that I am doomed to live in a
rain less land, we landed on a rainy weekend in seattle. This was
definately the worst weekend for it to come though. All our hike and
outing plans for the weekend were washed away. Though seattle rain is
definately not the thing that can stop us from having a nice long hike
in the Rainier.

sambhar dosa

What does a person who loves south indian food do living in a area with just one south indian restaurant? Cook. That's what we did this weekend. Not to mention that the food lover and cook were two different people. Rahul as usual was behind the effort and experiment of cooking and I just gave the idea. It took us about 2 and 1/2 hour to get everything done, but in the end the dosas were great, crisp, aalu sabji was amazing (ob my contribution to the cooking) and sambhar was a great daal but not so much of sambhar. It was a great dinner in the end and I was just a little sad why we did not think of this at lunch, we could have had another meal of it at the dinner. But alas, weekend is over and so are the oppertunities of 2&1/2 hr of cooking.

Are You Afraid of the Dark - Sidney Sheldon

I am confused about how to write a review for this book. I found it a interesting reading in general. The end is pretty much expected. It will fit very well into a hindi movie story. The way all the dramatic things happen, a lot, really lot is left to chance in the story line. There are lot of places where you wonder, why would someone do that (if not just to move the story forward). Like why would someone keep their passport in the safety vault of a bank? Overall, its time worth spending for casual bed time reading, but do not make it your priority. Do not skip any pages when reading, there is not too much of fillers in this book.

another SP2 horror story

what can turn a die-hard windows fan against windows? Windows XP SP2.
I was so happy with my machine, with my windows XP, untill one fatal day I installed SP2. After that machine has just been a pain to use. Everytime I switch on the machine, there are a hundred popups about things been not updated, virus hoaxes, no wireless, and what not, and it takes like 20 min, to get rid of all those bubbles and start doing some actual work. Is there any way I can tell this super intelligent SP2 that my machine is offline, and been like that for 6 months and I know things are not up to date and my wireless is not connected.
As if this was not enough. We tried to get cable internet at home, (to update all those things and get rid of the stupid warnings), and guess what, SP2's security would not let us get it online. 3 days of hour long phone calls with internet support also could not help it. Then as last resort, I connected my other machine which does not have SP2 on it, and boom, everything is up with no effort! So much so for a secure system.

Those long b-byes

Have you ever talked, rather chatted on yahoo messenger, with people
who have really really long bye messages. Its funny, its nice too, but
it really annoys me when I end the conversion with, hey, i got to get
back to work, I am running late, etc. etc., and they are all genuine.
You say that and say bye. They also say bye and you are happy, and you
close the window. Then the window pops up with a 'take care'. Nice :),
you say 'you too' and close the window. But its back, 'see you later'.
Oh, how nice, I do want to see you, but laaaaater. You again say 'you
too', uff, its over. Close the window. There again it pops up, now
what!! Just a 'ok, bye', although the bye happened like an hour ago.
Sometimes people are just too nice, but would it not be nicer if they
just complied all these nice bye messages in one. 'Bye, take care and
see you later, ok bye'. End of Conversation!!%%

Digital Fortress - Dan Brown

While I was waiting for DaVinci Code, I came upon this book, actually
suring my short stay at mountain view. Overall its a interesting book,
nothing misleading about the book, its got something to do with
digital security world. There is no mystery to solve here as such, but
its interesting, a book full of plots, pland and surprises, which is
exactly what makes book interesting according to me. Writing is good,
and tastefully different from most of the other popular books. There
are ofcourse weak points, like story unnecessarily stretched at
places, where you just feel like shouting, enough!!! Cannot compare it
with the more popular DaVinci Code as I have not read that.

Finally some drizzle

After more than 2 weeks of unusual weather, we finally got to see some
drizzling in redmond. Its strange how everything is so ulta-pulta this
year, with tonnes of snow in kashmir, plenty rain in the deserts of
california and unlimited sunshine in Seattle. The weather people are
calling it La Nina, the female version of el nino :)