Opinion Poll

I have had a counter on this blog since its inception. I use it for two purposes. First, to inflate my already humongus ego, and secondly, to see if QoH has found this blog. The second one is actually the primary reason the counter is here. However, this means I have to track IP addresses of visitors. I only scan through my log to look for QoH’s and J’s IPs. I never run “whois” queries on any IP I dont recogonize. So as far as I am concerned I am being ethical about this. People who wish to remain anonymous, remain so.

Recently however I have started reading a few blogs that have trackers on them regularly. To circumvent most of the trackers, I read them through RSS aggregators. I near always resist the temptation to comment on any of the posts for the fear of having my IP logged. This got me thinking as to how many people (if any) have the same concerns about the counter here. Hence this poll.

I have created an anon. poll on a 3rd party website. This way even those who read it using RSS feaders and do not really want to disclose their IPs can have a say. I will keep the poll open till April 30th 2005. I will really appreciate if you could take 30 secs to fill this out.

http://www.opinionpower.com/Surveys/946025457.html

The angry professor

I am sure you would have heard of this guy by now. If not, this post is for you. So there is this professor in UC Berkley who got his laptop stolen. He figures he can walk into an undergrad class and scare them shitless. I swear the first time I saw the video (the interesting part starts at 48:50) I was really really shaken up and I am not even in the same university as this guy. Wow… he should consider a profession in investigative interogator. Now that I think about it, nothing he said makes any sense whatsoever. Boy he can lie his ass off and still come off as being strong. I guess thats how he got to be a professor in the first place.

Day Roundup

Today was a just blah. Woke up no energy or enthusiasm. So just stayed home all day. In the morning I sent an half ass email to J with a semi baked analysis he had asked me to do. Then I just sat in front of the TV all day. Late in the evening, I finally got out of the couch, took a walk, went to office. Worked on the book chapter. I think its ready for submission now. Emailed it to QoH.

Oh I nearly forgot. If you want a kick ass drink, try a 60:40 mix of diet cherry coke and hot columbian coffee. I know it sounds weird, but trust me after drinking it you can get some real work done irrespective of how dull you are.

Dreams

After what seems to be eternity I slept well last night. It was calm and peaceful. It was not one of those rushed and unsettling sleep. It was almost surreal. I had dreams. Good ones. Not the usual ones where someone is trying to harm me and the gun wouldnt go off. It wasnt one where a family member is being abusive to my family and we are all helpless. This one was a good one. Just me and my friends hanging out and having fun. Then I was on a date with some really nice person. This is the first time in 7 years I have had a romantic dream that did not have my ex-gf in it. It felt really nice. I woke up with a smile on my face. I am happy.

Am I losing it?

There are days, like yesterday, where every thing is perfect. The roses are blooming. The sun is shining. The birds are chirping. Just perfection all around. These are the days I get so much done. I am really happy when I am productive. That happiness feeds into my energy and I do more stuff.

Then there are days when nothing seems to go right. The coffee is too cold. The cellphone is crapping out. QoH is being unreasonable. The bloody birds are screeching all over. The flowers are irritatingly pink. All I want to do these days is to lie in bed. I often do. At least until its well past noon and my once comfortable blanket is wreaking of stench from all the sweaty heat that has built up.

I have been trying to track my feelings/mood for the last few days. What I was aiming for was to figure out if I was depressed or something. I have been down a lot lately and I am not liking it, which unfortunately feeds back in to the vicious cycle. Sadly the study ended with no concrete result. I am not able extract patterns. None at all. Well I have not run it through eigen value analysis or principle component analysis to say that for sure, but I dont see any thing apparent. So that rules out any medical reason.

I am seriously disturbed by these major swings. For instance this morning was wonderful. Sometime this afternoon I started to sulk. I have no reason to sulk. I mean there are a billion things in my life that could be better, but none of them are that bad that I have to sulk.

I think I am going mad or am mildly bipolar.

One down, two to go

Thanks to the ridiculously high amounts of time the simulations take to run, I finished making changes to the book chapter today. Its pretty much all I did today. Writing can either be the most excrutiating task ever or the most satisfying task ever. There is no mid way point. There is nothing I hate more than to write on a day when I cannot get my thoughts straight. Those are the days when a blank screen greets you even after nearly putting in couple of hours of work. More often than not, I get my thought chain going, but my vocabulary derails. There are days when I have to most difficult time coming to terms with words more than 2 syllables in them. Thankfully today I had neither of the problems. I was able to concentrate on my work. I was able to get ideas flowing. Words were falling into place as if they were divined to do so. The text was almost poetic. I love it when I can write like this. Its almost like being in deep meditation. The world ceases to exist. Its just you, your thoughts, and your words. A nice comfortable warm safe universe of the trio. Its pure magic.

I still have the conference paper to tackle. Its not high on my priorities. QoH has some funding issues and he might not be able to send to the conference even if I get the paper complete. I have better things to do than waste my time on something that might or might not be published.

The device simulations are progressing well. I think I have basic design parameters down. I was trying to run a few complex simulations a while ago and it was reporting errors. I am too tired to work on it right now. I will get back to it in the morning. I got hot pasta and a movie on my mind now.

The Fourth Reich

So apparently I am very similar to Adolf Hitler. Well I guess things could have been worse, I could been judged to be similar to G.W.Bush!

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I actually like Hitler. More for his tenacity, oratory, discipline, leadership, and people skills than his ideologies. Have you ever read transcripts of his speeches? He knew exactly what to say and when to say it. They dont make them this good anymore. Well, but of course for me.

Weekend Review

So lets see what I did and did not do this weekend:

The good stuff:
1) Ran a whole bunch of simulations for new device design. Looks like this is actually going somewhere.
2) Got an extension on the camera-ready copy of the paper for the conference next month.
3) Attended a workshop on soft skills for graduate students. Didnt learn much there, but it was fun to be in an environment where an equation wasnt the center of discussion. I am considering joining the organization conducting these workshops as a staff member. I am meeting with them on Tuesday regarding this.
4) For once I called home and there wasnt any bad news on the other side. Of late things have been a bit rocky back there.
5) Last but not least, I got some good rest.

The stuff that is going get me into trouble:
1) Did not work on the book chapter as I had promised to QoH. He is going to *mad*.
2) Did not work on the paper for the conference either.
3) Threw the diet out of the window. Had 4 icecreams in 2 days. Mexican dinner on Friday. Indian on Saturday. Thai on Sunday. In other news, my funeral is next weekend.
4) All this eating out has taken a HUGE toll on my itsy bitsy budget.

Well you win some, you lose some.

Kill Time Efficiently

Remember the last time you were bored and didnt know where to look for entertainment? You had gone through the entire list of your daily haunts. Read all the blogs that remotely interest you. You Googled your name and the name of everyone you know to see what pops up and that took only like 6 mins. Remember the frustration that sets in at that point? Not anymore. Unless of course you are one of the billions of morons who continue to use Internet Explorer.

There is a new extension for Firefox. StumbleUpon. You can set your preferences and at a click of a button you will be taken to a random page based on your preferences. I have been using it for 3 weeks now, and I have been loving it. I have come across hundreds of interesting pages that I would have never found otherwise. Now that I know I will die on July 25, 2051 I can rest in peace.

You mean they arent cyborgs?

Just when you start to think that professors are work machines designed to suck the last ounce of blood out of grad students, one of them opens up just enough to let you know that are not cyborgs. I have been reading PowerProf‘s saga for a while now. It helps me stay in touch with the fact that professors are just human irrespective of how venerable/dispecable they are. Her recent posts have got me thinking on what my professor could be going through when he is all nasty and stuff. Maybe he isnt as hard headed as I think he is. May be he is just as vulnarable to life as I am. Just may be.