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 :)

map my India

Does the world already know about this wonderful site which actaully attempted to create a map of roads in India? And it did a pretty good job of it, I can actually locate Pilani and even Chirawa on this map!!
www.mapmyindia.com

neembura neembura neembura.......

i cannot write enough about the uses of neembu (lime / lemon, donno which one, but the smaller one, u get it in green color usually and its harder than yellow one). we all are aware of shikanji, neembu sharbat, lemon soda and blah blah. And daal is always great with some neembu in it, especially the yellow one.
But for long time I have been using neembu raas to clear my face. Apart from getting rid of the pimples, it also makes the skin softer and glowy. Just a little on face every morning and you are good to go. (Ofcourse you have to wash the face after that). No need for any expensive chemicals, and worrying about after effects. And while I am at it, I also drink a glass of warm neembu pani in the morning. Just lemon juice and warm water, (beware NOT cold water), no sugar. And its very good for stomach.
Lately. not wanting to throw away the remining neembu chilka (cover), I just apply it in my hair before washing hair, and amazing!! it works as a great conditioner, again cutting down on more chemicals.
Isn't it just great, can anything as simple as neembu be more useful :)

Google search works!!

Now I am convinced that google search works ##!!$$. If you look for me that is Tulika Agrawal, on google, all the results on top of the page are actaully things related to me, and as expected, my webpage shows up as the top result.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Tulika+Agrawal&btnG=Google+Search
Yahoo is somewhat more confused and only the first result is actually related to me :(
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Tulika+Agrawal&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1

PS: I am not a addicted ego surfer, someone today pointed that out to me, and then I did some more research.

surviving a code review

All of us programmers dred the code review time, looking at each line and wondering what those experts out there are going to find wrong with it and how much of their code is going to survive in a recognizable form. Someone somewhere posted this link to an interesting article about how to survive a code review. Some of us learn these things the hard way after 10s of bleeding red reviews, for others, do read this one.
http://www.jsquared.co.uk/jennyl/verity.htm

sunny days in seattle

Whenever I hear people talking about Seattle, especially in california, its all about rain, gloomy cloudy days, no sun shine and blah blah. I have been here a week now and for last 6 days its just been sunny and clear blue skies. In fact the first time I had to use sunscreen in US is here in Seattle. I was here for the summer and it was hot, so hot that I was sweating and I needed to use talcum powder. I was here in December, it was cold, very cold, it rained, but then there were also sunny days. Infact I have never seen more than 3 continuous cloudy days here. Is it just me! Do I just carry sunshine along? Or is it just a habit of exajuration that people have. (Ofcourse I believe in the former).

checkout my new google search

Checkout my new addition to the blog (in case you are too busy reading this, its on the right side of this text), google search and ads. Let me know how it looks!!

morning drive

Today I finally got a chance to take the car for a morning drive, ofcourse with Rahul. It was nice driving in the morning, little traffic, growing by the minute. Sun was playing little tricks, but it was subdued for most of the time. Today I could do left and right lane changes respectably. Few more days of practice and I'll be zipping through these roads in my Acura RSX.

good quote

"The biggest mistake you can make in life is to think that you work for someone else" - Bob Nelson.
Found this while net surfing today. Interesting quote, I am not sure if this is the biggest mistake that you can make 'in life', but unarguably the biggest you can make in your professional life.

Friday, February 11th 2005

Today I shipped the rest of my boxes to their final destination in Redmond. You never realize how much junk you gather while living, and how hard it is to throw it all away untill you have to move, that too without a car and pay for your move out of your pocket. After a lot of no no, yes yes, throw this, keep this, I finally managed to pack and ship my laundry basket and pillows too, along with all the shoes, shampoos and what not. In all this moving nightmare, one thing that I have learned is to throw, throw and throw ASAP anything that you think that you may not need, rather than keep anything that you think you may need. Anyway, now its just 2 suitcases and 3 bags that need to get on plane with me.

Saturday, February 12th 2005

Today I finally moved to Redmond, with half of my luggage, the other half is still on its way. After such a long time of living like nomad, moving every 6 months, I cannot believe that I am going to be here for long time. I am literally afraid to unpack, scared that I might have to start repacking all this before I even had time to breath. I hope for some time we could just go on pretending that everything is unpacked and we are living like normal, except that to find a sweater to wear, I have to look through 3 suitcases and some boxes. This came as a surprise as usually I love the unpacking part of moving, as that is when you get to arrange everything the way you want to in that enormous space. Oh, I am all excited about unpacking now, can't wait to put back all my clothes and shoes in display again.