The Good, Bad, and Ugly

I have been dating this wonderful girl for the last couple of weeks. She is kind a sweet and everything, but I am not that attracted to her. I am not sure why, and I do not want to spend time analyzing why. Here is the conundrum. Typically, I would have broken it off as soon as I figure out there is no chemistry. However this time, there is this inner voice that is telling me to wait until after things get physical. I have been the typical good guy so far, and that hasn’t done much for me. I am tempted to test the dark side. I know what I am doing is wrong on multiple levels, but when I am trying to transform myself in other arenas, why not this?

Grad Student Forums

I was thinking about the general support network for a grad student, and came to a conclusion that most people who need help are not in a position to go discuss the issues one-on-one with anyone they know in person. Here is where the internet comes to the rescue. For me personally, this blog has been a source of information, opinion, and well plain ranting. I am fairly certain it is the same case with other student blogs too. However, there is only one small problem with this approach. The feedback is limited to the number of regular readers of your blog, and typically there are very few of them.

Next step web forums.

The closest I have come to finding forums for grad students are groups like phinished. While they are perform a critical service, their focus is restricted to a small portion of the entire student experience. Instead of my typical whine-and-run routine, I have chosen to be proactive for once and do something about it.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you www.gradanon.com

It is still a work in progress, so it is pretty rough around the edges. Please do let me know if you have any suggestions or criticisms. Oh.. and tell your friends 😉

Life, Universe, and Everything

Its been a while since I have made a meaningful post, so here is a synopsis:

1) My sister went from being single, to nearly engaged, and back to single over the period of last 2 weeks. The guy was nice, but too nice to be true. The more digging we did into his background, more uncomfortable things became. She is handling it amazingly well. Guess she is just a whole lot stronger than I gave her credit for.

2) The whole drama made my mom, well anxious and depressed. Understandable. However, what worries me is the magnitude of her reaction. She confided in me last night that she actually purposefully cut her toe against the rough edge of a chair just to relieve frustration. I have been trying to talk her down, but its going to be a long process.

3) Things with QoH are on a roller coaster as usual. Yesterday he blew a fuse because he could not catch hold of me on my mobile phone for a period of 5 hours in the evening. I refused to apologize for it and told him we could discuss it if he wants. I have made up my mind to put an end to his passive aggressive bullshit. If he wants to be an asshole, he has to come out and outright say it.

4) I might have mentioned that I am actively involved in a student organization on campus that is targeted towards fostering leadership among graduate students. We have been holding regular meetings over the last few months, and things have been progressing really well. I am so happy that I am able to contribute something towards the betterment of the world, however small that contribution might be. Also, I now have a huge ass crush on one other staff member, but she is in a committed relationship. I need to figure out why is it that anyone I am interested in is either already married or well on their way towards it.

Top 11 Ways Blogging is Like Sex

(via bbspot)

11. At first, you’re just blogging once every week or two, but it’s not long before you’re doing it a couple of times a day.

10. A lot of kids fool around with blogs in high school but the serious blogging doesn’t start until college.

9. People really only have one good entry at a time, but will often fake multiple entries because they think it makes their readers happy.

8. It hurts when you’ve blogged and the next day your readers pretend like it never happened.

7. You know better than to blog when you’re drunk, but it’s just more fun, even if you do it with topics you wouldn’t have touched when you were sober.

6. The day after you’ve blogged drunk, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do to your regular readers.

5. Men blog like they’ve got an audience, but women like to keep it intimate.

4. You have to vary your technique once in a while, otherwise your readers will lose interest and you’ll drift apart.

3. When you first start to blog, you don’t ever have any long term readers but all you can ever think about is blogging. After a while, you do find some regular readers, but then blogging becomes a chore and you start to feel guilty if it’s been a while.

2. Most people blog at night, in the privacy of their own homes, but there’s always some jackass strutting around bragging that he prefers to blog in the office at lunch or at the local park.

1. Everyone knows that if he ever did in fact blog in his office or in the park, he was alone and just blogging into his palm.

Phone Call

Its 11.54 PM on Sunday, and I just got a call from QoH. WTF? Who in their right mind calls people at midnight? Anyways, I didn’t answer the call just out of spite; plus I did not want to reward him for calling people at such ungodly hour.

A Backbone.. finally

An early email from QoH rung in the long weekend with a warrant to present myself at his office to join him this weekend to write 3 manuscripts. Mind you, none of them are either important or urgent. I sent him a single line email, saying no. It feels sooo good to finally grow a backbone.

Usefull Tool

For those of us stuck using Windows XP, and need more than 3 clicks to reach any file, a sweet little tool called “Launchy” might be the answer to our prayers. I have been using it for a week now, and now I dont know how I ever lived without it. Give it a try!

PS: Its open source too!

Weekend Update

Didn’t get as much rest this weekend as I had hoped to. All morning was spent with QoH troubleshooting his laptop. Afternoon was spent trying to teach QoH basic algebra. I kid you not. I did get to chill out a bit this evening, but I am not sure if my batteries are recharged enough to sustain another week. Maybe I will take a day off sometime midweek.

Commenting System

Thanks to Zelda for bringing the problem with the comment system to my attention. I have moved to a new “blogger approved” template, and hopefully it should fix the problems. If not, you know where to find me 😉

Things I had for last night’s dinner….

1. 3 slices of pizza
2. One can of diet coke
3. One order of Fried rice from a Thai restaurant
4. Black Sticky Rice for dessert
5. One order of peach cobbler with ice cream
6. 2 Nans from Indian restaurant
7. 1 bowl of breakfast cereals