shameless plug

My cousin, with his company daylife, has been working on a news "relevancy engine" for a couple of years now, and there's now a product demo available:


You can enter any search terms in the text box to see how they compare in terms of "news mentions." You can also click on any of the bars to read more articles about the given topic.

Right now, the product is linked directly to the Huffington Post (and clicking on any of the bars will take you to that site), but I'm guessing it will become more general once the product becomes more widely available.

Read more here.

Christmas in NYC!

Let's kick it day-by-day style, k?

Friday: Arrived in NYC in the evening. The flight appeared to be on time, until on the runway, the pilot announced that we had to be delayed an hour. Instead of circling in the air, he decided it'd be better to just sit on the runway for an hour. That was fun. Finally made it to my sister's boyfriend's apartment around 9ish. His place is NICE. I don't have many points of reference since all I've really seen are my sister's two apartments, but it was a great place. Seemed like a place you can call home. They decorated everything for Christmas (real tree, real wreath on the front door, Christmas lights everywhere). It was beautiful.
My sister had invited over a friend and her brother for dinner. Everyone was enjoying wine and cheese and watching 40-year-old Virgin when I came in. Went to dinner at a nice cozy Italian restaurant.

Saturday (aka Christmas Eve Eve): Met up with my cousin for lunch at this all-vegetarian Asian place in Union Square. Did some last-minute Christmas shopping. Went to Avenue Q (a satire of Sesame Street involving a guy who moves to New York City) in the evening. After the show, met one of my sister's boyfriend's frat brothers at this cool bar where you can play board games. I kicked ass at Connect Four (but not so much at Boggle).

Sunday (aka Christmas Eve): Hung out at the apartment watching Christmas movies (in HD!). Helped the sis' bf assemble an entertainment center for his new TV. In the evening, they had invited a British friend over and we had a nice formal home-cooked lasagna for dinner.

Monday (aka Christmas Day): Opened presents. I've been thinking of having a party at my place at some point, and now I have the perfect dishes! Got some really nice martini glasses, scotch glasses, and shot glasses, a book, as well as a gift certificate for a Wii! My sister received a camera, an ipod, and some books. Her boyfriend got a laptop bag and some books. Everyone seemed pretty content with their gifts. I'm definitely a fan of the stocking stuffer idea. It's a nice little appetizer before you open the other gifts. ;)

Tuesday (aka yesterday): Left NY to go to DC to visit my parents who had just returned from India on Monday. I was dreading it since the Thanksgiving trip was horrible. But they were in a much better mood and I actually had a pretty good time. They showed me pics and all the stuff they got in India and Switzerland. I think more of my trips to see them should be less than 24 hours ;)

Wednesday (aka today): Just got home. Had a fun little trip to the airport in DC where my parents warned me about the dangers of alcohol (apparently if you get a couple of nice glasses for Christmas, that means you're an alcoholic): "Never get to the point where you NEED to have a drink; it's a very difficult habit to break.." Uh, I'll keep that in mind, but I think the 2-3 drinks I have once a week is nowhere near that point. Maybe showing them my Christmas gifts wasn't such a great idea...

All in all, it was an awesome Christmas. Very memorable and enjoyable.

Really?

I thought it'd be pretty hard to top the last happy hour (in terms of number of people), but we had about 20 people show up last night to the Flying Saucer. Most of them didn't come to the last one either, so it was a nice mix of people.


Earlier in the day, we had a cube-decorating contest at work. Our row won Best Row, and one of the cubes in our row won best individual cube too. No one was really in the mood to be productive after the announcement of the winners, so we ended up leaving for happy hour ridiculously early.

There were only like 4 or 5 of us at the beginning, but just like the last happy hour, people kept on coming! And again, I didn't know a lot of them. I hope someone did.

I still prefer the Velvet Hookah though. It was cheaper and had a better atmosphere. This place was packed and loud. My voice was completely hoarse by the end of the night.

Another waste of money...

Here goes yet another study proving what was already known (at least to me):

"A study of thousands of men and women revealed that those who stick to a vegetarian diet have IQs that are around five points higher than those who regularly eat meat."

Yup, all I have to do is look at my meat-eating friends and realize that this is most definitely true ;)

Rurple

"Next summer Jay will unveil an entirely new way of marketing himself: a color called Jay-Z Blue."  -Rolling Stone, Dec 2005

If I had a color, I think it would be a mix of red and purple, and I'd call it Sumeet Rurple.  Hard to say? Maybe, but at least you'd remember it, and I wouldn't steal the name of a primary color like Jay-Z.  If you're going to trademark a color, it might as well be a brand new color with a brand new name.

As for phrase, I don't know what my trademark would be.  I liked "that's hot," but Paris Hilton's already taken that one.

Greatest hour of TV this year?

No, no, not Veronica Mars (it was a repeat last night).

I'm talking, of course, about the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

I've never been a fan of Justin Timberlake, but I have to say he got himself a nice gig last night starting the show by singing his horrid song Sexyback while the models strutted their stuff down the runway.  I suppose the song fit the event, but it still sucks. 

Later in the show, he sang his halfway decent song My Love, but managed to ruin it with some awkward dance moves and backup dancers.  Also, why is there a performance in the middle of a fashion show? Why did he get more screen time than the models?   This isn't the Justin Timberlake hour.  We see enough of him on every other award show.

Besides the JT overload,  the show rocked.  Very stylishly done, great music (besides the obvious), and nice eye candy.  They should really do these more often.  I'd definitely watch.

I wonder if it's in her contract or something, but it seemed like Gisele always started off the procession of models.  She's not even the hottest model.  I can see why people might think she is, but she isn't.

Some people might call the show softcore pornography; I call it a great hour of television.

One more (added to the last post)

Another phrase from Friday night (I promised myself that I'd never edit a post that already has a comment, so it's a new post):
"This is your fault. If you hadn't called, I'd be at home reading."

Just for reference, the first phrase was said at lunch, the second was at the hookah bar, the one above was after the bars closed at Greenville, and the last phrase was walking back to the car on Greenville.

11-hour Happy Hour (Dec 2006 edition)

Yeah, amazingly enough, we had another "11-hour" one back in April.

I'm surprised so many people came out (I counted about 23 total), considering the time and day had changed twice within a week (the time because I didn't realize it opened so late, and the day because of the crazy Dallas weather).

We started out the night with a pre-Happy Hour at the Fox & Hound across the street from work. Our ultimate destination was the Velvet Hookah, but it doesn't open until 7, so we had to kill some time. Pretty good crowd, had some people actually request to come, and had some other people come who almost never do.

Then, it was off to the Velvet Hookah. I told some people who were already there to get a table for 10-12, and somehow we got an entire room to ourselves. We turned out needing it though, as more and more people kept coming!

This is, by far, my favorite Happy Hour venue so far. You sit on the floor while smoking the hookah, and there's some great Middle Eastern music playing in the background. It's got an awesome ambience. Somehow, we ended up having more girls than guys. I believe that's the first time that's ever happened. Who knew girls loved the hookah? I sure didn't.

Oh, and I mentioned in a previous post that I always end up with way more pictures than I remember taking. Same thing happened last night. I figured I had maybe 50 on my camera, but it was more like 140. Good pics though.

As the happy hour died down, we went down to Greenville for a couple of hours and then finished off the night with some Taco Cabana.

The best part of the night was at TC when a friend thought he could jump through the open car window back into the car, missed completely and landed flat on his back outside. I think the rest of us in the car were just stunned that he would even attempt such a feat. Gotta love alcohol and the crazy stuff it'll make you do (and think you can do).

Definitely the most fun I've had in awhile.

My favorite phrases from the day:
"You're an asshole, Sumeet." (Agreed.)
"I love you." (Weird to hear the previous comment and this on the same day..)
"Sumeet hasn't said a word. He's being very un-Sumeet." (There was some drama on Greenville, and I didn't want to get involved. I still like to think I'm quiet in general though.)