Halloween Weekend

To get in the mood for Halloween, I saw Paranormal Activity on Friday night with a couple of friends. I had heard mixed things, ranging from the scariest movie ever to not scary at all.

Overall, I would say it had its moments with a pretty scary ending, but it was more psychological thriller than straight-up horror film. It was also a very well-made movie - great character development with good pacing of the storyline. The entire movie takes place in the house, and we only meet 4 characters. I don't know a ton about film and movie-making, but I think it's a great example of how to make a good film.

I searched online afterward, and I have to say that some of the "alternate endings" sound a lot better than the one they went with.

On Saturday, after the UT game (we're #2 now!), a friend and I headed to DC for Halloween fun. Our first choice had a ridiculous line around the corner, so we quickly needed to come up with a plan B. Our plan B place is usually really chill and never has a line. Not sure why (maybe since it was Halloween?), but there was a line there too!

Oh, and on the way to plan B, we went to this other bar that seemed a lot less crowded than every other place so we decided to check it out. Yeah, we quickly figured out why. Not only was it pretty crowded inside, but I got a full bottle of beer spilled on me within 2 minutes of walking around inside. Disgusting.

We finally ended up at another place that had a rooftop bar. This sounds a lot better than it was, especially since it was raining on and off, and we spent a good part of the (rest of the) night trying to huddle under the umbrellas. My friend said that it's usually a packed line to get to the rooftop, and I can see why there was no line now.

For costumes, there were a number of cereal killers (why was that popular this year?), a few Lady Gagas, a few variations of H1N1/swine flu, a couple of people from the Hangover, and a Billy Mays. We also saw a guy wrapped completely in bubble wrap. Not sure who he was supposed to be, maybe the bubble boy?

Lying

I've made an interesting self-observation at work this week.

I'm a terrible liar.

Not in the sense that I can't lie when I need to, because I'm pretty sure I could if the situation called for it. I mean that if someone asks me a question, I'm incredibly honest, almost to a fault.

I've noticed that others tend to "massage the truth," either to lessen the impact of negative news or for self-preservation. Well, that's not me. If someone made a mistake, even if it's me, I'll say it - even if others would rather go with the "we were being conservative" explanation.

I'm not sure if being able to lie more effectively is something that comes with more experience or if it's a personality thing, but my guess is that it's the latter since I have been told numerous times that I need to get better at lying (by my parents, no less!).

Cubes in the Kitchen!

Apparently, there's no more empty cubes left in our building, but we have contractors coming in next week from India and they have no place to sit.

So where to put the new cubes? The kitchen, of course!

Well, not the kitchen, but the break room. So when people are warming up their food or taking a coffee break, or even having lunch at one of the tables, there will be people trying to work just a few feet away. One of the cubes is not even 5 feet away from the TV which is on all day.

I do not envy them. They probably have no idea of their working conditions.

US Open

I've been watching a lot of tennis lately. Usually, I only watch the last weekend, with the men's and womens's semifinals/finals, but this year I started watching since the beginning.

This year's tournament has been really interesting, since a lot of the big names have already fallen - Roddick, Venus Williams, Murray, Sharapova, etc. It will be fun to see who the next crop of tennis players are in a few years after Federer and Nadal have slipped a bit.

I think tennis is one of the more dramatic and fascinating sports because there's no team to help you out. It is just you out there on the court, and you can either sink or swim. Since it's a 3 or 5 set match, it also forces you to play and makes the winner prove that they have both the stamina and skill to beat the other person consistently.

There have already been some great matches, and I'm sure the quality of play will just go up as we move on. Sucks that there aren't any Americans left on the men's side though. It's not looking great for the American wonderchild Oudin either.

OMG

There's no greater motivation to learn something than when you are forced to learn it. Sink or swim.

The main technical lead on our project has been on vacay for the past three weeks, and because the stars have lined up in a particular way, I'm the next most knowledgeable person. Everyone has been asking me all these questions about how things work and why they work the way they do.

I know some of the answers, but for most of them, I just give my best guess. Hope I'm right!

Luckily, he gets back on Monday so maybe I can get some work done again.

Wedding Fun

I went to a wedding this past weekend in Chapel Hill, NC. I already knew I wouldn't know anyone there (I hadn't seen or spoken to the bride since I was five, and we were on the bride's side!), so the main highlight for me was just going to be seeing the state - Duke, UNC, etc.

The Duke campus was pretty amazing. It was huge - we must have walked 2 miles and I think we only saw a small percentage of the overall campus. The architecture was also beautiful and unique. I can only imagine what it would have been like to go there for undergrad. I guess there's always an MBA, eh?

I actually liked how the couple did their whole wedding. It was a nice hybrid of American and Indian ceremonies - from the "we are gathered here" to the rounds around the fire. My dad commented that an Indian priest would never have conducted the ceremony since it didn't conform to the Indian traditions, but I think it's really admirable that the couple took the parts from each culture and modified it to fit their own vision of a marriage. At the end, it's all about your relationship and how you want your marriage to begin, right?

Most of the toasts were really, really good. As I said at the beginning, I didn't know either the bride or the groom, but based on the toasts, these people sounded awesome! Have you ever noticed that funerals and weddings are the two events where the people are portrayed as practically perfect?

I met a guy there who had the exact same name as me, except he spelled his name with an 'i' instead of two 'e's. I hung out with him after the reception when he met up with some of his high school friends. I'm not a huge fan of someone else having the same name as me, but at least he's pretty cool. His friends were all really nice and laid back too, and it was pretty fun to see another side of North Carolina, or the 919 as I like to call it.

Bribe?

Is it normal for the federal government to outright bribe citizens to buy things?

I'm specifically referring to the 'cash for clunkers' program and the $8,000 tax refund for new homeowners.

It's a tricky situation to get people motivated and confident to buy again, but using outright cold hard cash to get them in the door?

Brief Update

It's been awhile!

This is the second week in my condo. I have the most amazing view (if I got a telescope, I could see right into the penthouse of the Hyatt across the street!), and have way more space than I need. I also love my shower - it feels like the kind of shower you get in the fanciest of hotels. My kitchen is also pretty spacious, and now that the garbage disposal is fixed, I'll be using that more often too.

Also, how sad is it that I can't figure out how to set up a wireless network using a Mac? I've followed the steps in a lot of online forums, but so far, nothing.

All in all, I've spent way more money this year than I thought I would. I easily could have settled for a practical car and a practical condo, but where's the fun in that?

Oh, and just because I bought a condo doesn't mean I'm getting married any time soon. Not sure why every Indian co-worker equates the two.

More about MJ

I'm still fascinated by the media coverage of MJ's death.

The memorial service will be on Tuesday at Staples Center. I called that right after they said it couldn't be at Neverland (not entirely sure why not). But going there will never be the same.

I think it would be a little creepy going to a Lakers or Clippers game there after a memorial service was held there. It would be a little like seeing any sporting event at the Superdome after Katrina.

According to the news, 500 million people tried to hit the website (and brought it down) to get tickets for the memorial service. Is that number right? That's the equivalent of every single person in the United States plus the entire population of Brazil. That's insane. If that's true, I could see the crowd in LA either equaling or surpassing the number of people at Obama's inauguration.

There's some people who are saying that they should stop the media coverage and let him rest in peace. I disagree. I think he would have loved everything that's going on and would thoroughly enjoy the attention.

MJ

Michael Jackson died last Thursday.

It sounds like he went peacefully and anti-climatically, but the by the amount of media coverage and drama, you'd never know it.

I find it fascinating how varied the reports are of his health before he died. One report will say he was incredibly healthy with so much energy, and another will say he was a walking corpse. One will insist he inhaled a few bottles of pills a day, and a fourth says he never took a drug in his life.

The truth is probably somewhere in between, given that he passed a four-hour physical earlier in the year, but clearly had to have some sort of powerful drug injected that would cause death.

I'm not sure how all this will play out, but I think it would have been fun to grow up when he really hit it big. We'll probably never see another celebrity break down barriers and dominate the world the way he did, and it would have been interesting to live that experience.

Wacky Weekend!

Well, it wasn't really wacky, but it made for a good headline, no?

It was pretty busy though. I went into DC on Friday night to meet a friend for drinks. I promised myself I wouldn't drink that much since I had to go to Delaware to visit another friend the next morning, but these promises are rarely kept.

I was supposed to leave at 10 on Saturday, but ended up leaving closer to 11:30. I must say that the drive was much, much nicer in my new car. It was way smoother and more comfortable and the time went by pretty quickly. Plus, it's nice to have a reliable CD player again.

Delaware was fun too. Obviously, no one goes to that state for touristy things, but my friend is moving to Colorado so I wanted to visit him one last time. We had debated whether he should come to DC or I should go up there, and I said that there would rarely be other opportunities to visit good ol' Delaware.

It turns out there are some nice places to visit, and I think once the monsoon season calms down, it would be fun to go back and see some of the natural places.

The Dupont family also apparently owns a good part of the state, and we went to see one of their estates. One of the Duponts clearly had no interest in furthering the family business, so he decided to start collecting American furniture. He built an extension to the house just to house whatever new pieces he found. There were literally rooms in the house that were just to hold furniture. Ridiculous.

After touring the estate, we ate at a funky little restaurant on the main street. It would have been nice to stay a night in Delaware just to see what the bars are like, but I again had plans the next morning - more on that later. I was good this time though, and didn't have anythign to drink at dinner.

So I got home at around 9pm, and the next morning - well at 1am, we had a fucking install for our new product at work. The timing was insane. I can understand if we had customers beating down the door to try our new product, but as of today, I still don't think anyone has tried to use it. It took us until 9am to finish, and then we had another session at 7pm to fix an issue that was discovered in the morning. Not a fun day.

Looking back, maybe it was a pretty wacky weekend.

Movies!

Summer may be my favorite time of year. I don't think I appreciated it as much in Texas, since it was pretty much hot year-round.

However, up here, there is a noticeable difference in temperature, and summer is the one reliable season where you can go out in t-shirts and flip-flops.

Summer is also great because of all the awesome movies. So far, I've seen Up and The Hangover. Completely different genres, but both were great movies. I was really surprised that for Up in 3D you still need to wear the cheesy glasses. You'd think with all the great technological innovations, you wouldn't need the glasses any more.

I'm looking forward to Year One and Bruno also. I've been a bit disappointed with the previews for Year One, but figure with such a funny cast, it has to be good. They also had a preview for Bruno before The Hangover and it looks just as hysterical/politically-incorrect as Borat (if not more so).

Drunk Tank

The drunk tank (aka any Metro ride from DC back to the 'burbs from like 12am - 3am) is by far the highlight of any night out in DC.

Last night, there were people racing down an escalator going the opposite way, a guy telling another to "meet me.. fucking wherever", and a group of guys who I'm pretty sure caused a girl to get off earlier than her actual stop.

Obviously, it's also luck of the draw depending on which car you're in. Sometimes there will just be a bunch of passed out people, but if you're lucky you'll get at least a few rowdy people who make the trip quite entertaining.

New Car

I bought a 2009 Infiniti G37x yesterday.

It's slightly used with about 7k miles, but looks completely new.

It's a very slick car, and is leaps and bounds above the Civic in terms of performance, comfort, pretty much everything.

It's crazy quiet, even at 60mph, and the sound system is ridiculous.

My favorite feature is the push-button ignition. Instead of using a key to start the car, you just push a button. I need an AV cable to connect my ipod to the stereo system and then I'll be set.

There's also a feature that tells you how many miles are left before you run out of gas.

I'm pretty sure I can be a lot more lenient with it (take curves a lot sharper, brake with a lot less room), but so far I'm being careful. Otherwise it's only a couple of weeks before I'd get a ticket/get into an accident ;)

I can see why some people fall in love with their cars.

new favorite website

TFLN

They finally have an RSS feed (went live today), but surprisingly you can't text your text to them - you have to either email it to them or fill out a form on their website. Isn't that ironic?

Does anyone else think it's weird that you can say 'text your text' and not even blink? Using the same word as a verb and noun in the same sentence!

I can't even imagine trying to maintain a site where they get such a massive amount of input and uploading them in a timely fashion. From what I can tell, they don't have any ads or any other source of revenue, yet getting them up on the site is a full-time job. Not sure how they're able to do it.

At least on TFLN and FML, they don't have to come up with witty headlines like the overheard sites.

FML, fo real

So after the awesome beginning to the weekend with my hard drive crash on Friday, I went to volunteer on Sunday at the National Science Bowl. Why? Because I'm just that cool.

I was the scorekeeper and basically marked the score on this massive flipchart. The training session in the morning was pretty intimidating and it seemed pretty hard since there's a bunch of rules and different ways each question can be scored, but it wasn't that bad once you got the hang of it. I also figured out that coaches from both teams are also keeping track and there's an official "rules judge" who also keeps score, so you're not alone - and if you fuck up, people will let you know immediately. Out of 9 rounds, I only messed up twice, which isn't bad at all.

I'm not sure how the teams are created, but it seemed like every team had 1 or 2 good people, and the rest were just sort of there for the free trip. There was probably 1 person on every team who didn't answer a single question.

My favorite part of the rounds was definitely the bonus questions cause you heard them actually discussing the question. It was great when everyone on the team was just as clueless about the question as the audience ;)

My favorite team was The Meadows School from Las Vegas. Shoutout! I don't think they won any games, but they had the most personality, and they had 2 cute, but kinda dumb, Indian girls.

So the tournament was pretty fun and interesting for the first 7 rounds. After that, I was done. They only gave us food in the morning, so I had a massive headache and was really tired by Round 8. On the way home, I got into a car accident. I was getting on the highway when I hit a slick spot and my car turned 90 degrees and half of it ended up on the pavement. I was about to back out again onto the highway when an oncoming car hit me. Fun times. I'm fine though, and so is the other guy. But my car's done, and it's officially time to get a new one.

We're getting an estimate for the damage tomorrow, but there's really no rational reason to get it fixed since it's old and its time has passed.

It's been a great weekend. Hope yours was just as eventful!

MacBook HD failure!

So I thought Macs were supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Well, even sliced bread can have its flaws apparently. On Friday night, when I was just using my computer normally, my Mac just froze. This was the first time that had happened since I got it 1.5 years ago, so I thought it was pretty strange.

I restarted it, and even more bizarre behavior continued - a flashing folder with a question mark appeared, instead of the normal apple. Yeah, so after surfing the web on my iPhone, I found out that it was most likely a hard drive failure. Luckily, I didn't have much important data on there, except for songs and photos, so I wasn't too worried.

I have to admit that the people at the Apple store are pretty good at their jobs. I was sort of expecting the people at the Genius Bar to be condescending and rude (just look at the name!), but they were actually pretty nice and helpful. They were able to replace the hard drive (for free!) in about 20 minutes.

Apparantly, there was a "known issue" with the hard drives in my model of the MacBook, so they didn't charge me. I dunno how they do it at Apple, but at my company, we put known issues in our release notes so that we can't be blamed for it later. It would have been nice to have known about the known issue so I could have backed up my non-essential data before it just disappeared.

Well, that was expensive

My friend and I somehow missed our stop on the Metro (it might be because were drinking), so what would have been a $3 ride ended up costing about $12.50 in cab fare - it was the last Metro.

I've decided that the best place to people-watch at a bar is at the bar itself. We saw a girl who bought and downed 2 shots, and then came back later for another drink. She was clearly alone, but the second time, she was talking to a guy who you would think would offer to buy the drink. I wonder what her story was. There was also another girl who was getting free drinks from the bartender. First I thought they were just friends, but I think there was a lot more to that story too. The female bartender also kept texting people in between breaks - she actually kept her phone open next to all the alcohol so she could do it quicker.

Top of the Rock(s)!

I went to NYC this past weekend to celebrate my birthday (the best day of the year). My sister planned the whole thing out, so I basically could just relax and enjoy. That's one of the best parts about visiting friends/family in another city. You can leave everything up to them.

The weather gods were on my side this year, as the city saw its best weekend weather-wise in months, and definitely the best one of 2009 - 70s all day on Saturday and Sunday.

We started out on Saturday morning (well a New York morning, it was probably about 1pm) at Top of the Rock, aka 30 Rock, aka the GE/NBC building, where we had an amazing view of the city. I'm a sucker for views, and love to find the tallest observation decks in a city just to see what it looks like from the top. There's just something about it that makes you feel both very big and very small at the same time. The view did not disappoint. You could see everything, from Central Park to the Statue of Liberty, both rivers, Queens, Brooklyn, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building. Even the skeptical of our group were pretty amazed.

From there, it was off to Central Park to picnic and enjoy the weather from a different altitude. We picked up some food from a nearby Whole Foods (where it was absolute madness!) and proceeded towards the park. We were deciding where to sit, when my sister's boyfriend said that we could sit on 'top of a rock.' The rest of us were like 'yeah, we could find a stone to sit on.' But he kept on insisting that, it'd be cool to sit on top of a rock. It took us awhile to figure out his wittiness, but we finally ended up on 'top of a rock' again for the second time that day!

After that, we went to a rooftop bar for a quick drink before dinner. I had no idea we were going somewhere so trendy! It was "sunglasses-indoors", "everyone looks like they could be a celebrity" trendy. We were incredibly underdressed, and I never quite got over how trendy the place was. It was interesting to see that kind of place though - my sister said we probably wouldn't have gotten in later that same night.

It had already been a pretty busy day, and the fun was just starting! First it was dinner at a tapas place and then drinks at a nautical-themed bar just downstairs from my cousin's condo. I thought the bar would be different, but it really just felt like a typical dive bar. My sister had made up her own drink earlier that day (vodka/sprite with a splash of pineapple juice), and tried to get the bartenders to catch on, but I don't think it worked too well. If you hear about that drink in the future, just remember you heard it here first ;)

When we were just about to leave the bar, the bartender came over to our table and offered to buy us a round of drinks if we left the table. How weird is that? I've heard of other people offering drinks if you want the table, but for the bar itself to ask you to leave a table? I'm pretty sure you can't reserve tables at a dive bar. Bizarre.

We went up to my cousin's place afterwards for my second favorite part of the day (first being the Top of the Rock obviously), playing DDR! I hadn't played in a long time and it was a great way to end the evening. I also got to see my other friend who I hadn't seen in probably 10 years, so it was really cool to see him too.

On Sunday, we got a bit of a late start and didn't have much time since I had an afternoon bus back to DC. We got brunch at a nearby restaurant and then went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. That place is huge! You always hear about these other great musuems in Manhattan, but the Brooklyn one is a hidden gem. 5 floors of art you don't see in most places, plus way less crowded - definitely worth it to go a little out of your way.

Overall, a really fun birthday weekend. Everyone should feel like a million bucks on their birthday, and this year did not disappoint.

Music from YouTube

For some reason, my family thinks I'm really good with technology and know the ins and outs of the Internet. I don't. I get by with the bare minimum.

My aunt asked me the other day how to get the music from a YouTube video, and she seemed skeptical when I said I had no idea.

I looked it up though, and it turns out there's lots of ways and lots of software to do it.

The easiest, by far, is this site:

http://www.zamzar.com/url/

Enter the YouTube address and your email address, and bam, it'll email you a link to pick up your mp3. Done and done.