Hehehehe
It makes me want to get another kitten for Vincent to play with right now! :p
10/28/2008
I love my family :)
And my culture, honestly - even how much they might not seem perfect sometimes. I got this in my inbox this morning from my mom:
Dear Neesha and Vijay,
Wishing you a very
Happy Diwali
Tuesday, October 28th is Diwali. The day Bhagvan Ram returned from the forest after 14 years. All of Ayodhya celebrated his return after 14 years of banvas (banishment) from his kingdom due to a promise made based on his values and a life of righteousness. He set an example for mankind on the importance of living life honestly, courageously and with conviction. On his return all of the citizens of Ayodha gave thanks, wore new clothes, illuminated their homes with the divas (lighted candles), also prayed to Goddess Lakshmi for prosperity, ate sweets and Diwali was celebrated. The next day after Diwali is the Indian New Year. Families call their relatives and friends and wish them a Happy New Year.
So, tomorrow, Tuesday October 28th take a moment to give thanks, recap right values (ask yourself if you are meeting your ideals) light a candle (in a safe holder). If need be, place in a bowl of water. Wear something new, eat something sweet and have a Super day. A day illumined with the peace, knowledge and light of infinity. Tell your friends about Diwali, share some sweets.
Your are in our thoughts.
Love,
Mom and Dad
Wishing you a very
Happy Diwali
Tuesday, October 28th is Diwali. The day Bhagvan Ram returned from the forest after 14 years. All of Ayodhya celebrated his return after 14 years of banvas (banishment) from his kingdom due to a promise made based on his values and a life of righteousness. He set an example for mankind on the importance of living life honestly, courageously and with conviction. On his return all of the citizens of Ayodha gave thanks, wore new clothes, illuminated their homes with the divas (lighted candles), also prayed to Goddess Lakshmi for prosperity, ate sweets and Diwali was celebrated. The next day after Diwali is the Indian New Year. Families call their relatives and friends and wish them a Happy New Year.
So, tomorrow, Tuesday October 28th take a moment to give thanks, recap right values (ask yourself if you are meeting your ideals) light a candle (in a safe holder). If need be, place in a bowl of water. Wear something new, eat something sweet and have a Super day. A day illumined with the peace, knowledge and light of infinity. Tell your friends about Diwali, share some sweets.
Your are in our thoughts.
Love,
Mom and Dad
So happy Diwali to everyone! Give thanks, ask yourself if you're meeing your ideals, light a candle (if you so choose), wear something new, eat something sweet, and treat yourself to a wonderful day - be happy today, no matter what :)
And then do your best to do that every day ;)
10/27/2008
Time in a bottle
I had a quick, but interesting discussion with one of my officemates before I left last Thursday night explaining how a combustion engine works. Rooted in the concept of how to work on one's cars themselves and how simple of mechanisms the base is, the higher level discussion was much more one of how to spend your time. Specifically, in this case, whether to spend your few hours away from work (especially in our current state) doing things like car maintenance or not.
Bubble up to a higher level, and you get to something that's been on my mind a lot recently (and has always been, in a lot of ways). Combine the facts that work keeps me away from most everything else right now, my birthday is coming up, I'm not where I really wanted to be days before I turned twenty seven, and that I've been reevaluating my life goals, and you get a recipe for a certainly unhealthy level of introspection.
Needless to say, I thought about this weekend (the only free time I've had recently) and where my time went. Friday night I left work and took the bike to some shops and sat outside a Starbucks to mobile blog a little (yay PitchCar!) and then met up with some friends for a fun and ridiculous dinner at Manny's in uptown, surrounded by a Dallas crowd I had before oh-so unfamiliar with. Only to head home after a few hours and be greeted with a meow from my poor kitty begging for some quality time. I obliged and passed out.
Saturday brought another side out - started the day off with a goal to fix some cars and play some games. Threw some laundry in and fired up Dead Space, which I was determined to beat that day. After a few hours of that, I hung out with John to came to pick up the last of his roommate stuff, and went to the shop to sever my right arm and leg in exchange for my working car with a new fuel pump and window motor back. Spent the rest of the day cooking a late lunch and playing Lego Indiana Jones with Lee - literally the rest of the day, we finished the game at midnight.
Sunday starts up at the crack of dawn with some Discovery Channel with the washer / drier running loudly in the background. Queue up a few trips to Lowes, the bank and Autozone for parts to reassemble cars with, and I'm back on the couch rewiring the door panels to the Firebird that have been sitting on the kitchen table for six months or so. Lather, rinse, repeat the trips to Autozone and Lowes, add some time in the garage in / under the vehicles, and voila, out come a better working bike, a fully assembled Firebird, and a Mustang that still needs some love. A little bit more quality time with the Discovery Channel and some side project work, and end the day before the long week with some Iron Chef and Food Network Challenge.
Interesting that in a lot of ways, I could be spending my time better - not wasting time playing video games, working towards bettering my finances, and profitable ventures, pay someone to keep the cars running, clean the house, figure out what I should / want to be doing, read and expand my knowledge, and in general fix the stuff that's broken. But you know, I felt good at the end of the weekend. My car was all nice and pretty, working, running better. I was finally getting some traction on my side projects, I got to do some gaming, and my laundry was even done! Sure, I didn't figure out the meaning of life, or get a lot of the things done I wanted to, but it was a good weekend. It's a bizarre compromise sometimes, work and play (work, in my case being all the "better my life / fix stuff" things). And is honestly pretty difficult, given how many things I would love to accomplish in my life, and how much time you really have to do it all in.
Twenty seven years? Around ten of which there was really potential to do something? I would have expected more. But there are a lot of games played and friends I spent time goofing off with, and I wouldn't change a minute of that :)
Bubble up to a higher level, and you get to something that's been on my mind a lot recently (and has always been, in a lot of ways). Combine the facts that work keeps me away from most everything else right now, my birthday is coming up, I'm not where I really wanted to be days before I turned twenty seven, and that I've been reevaluating my life goals, and you get a recipe for a certainly unhealthy level of introspection.
Needless to say, I thought about this weekend (the only free time I've had recently) and where my time went. Friday night I left work and took the bike to some shops and sat outside a Starbucks to mobile blog a little (yay PitchCar!) and then met up with some friends for a fun and ridiculous dinner at Manny's in uptown, surrounded by a Dallas crowd I had before oh-so unfamiliar with. Only to head home after a few hours and be greeted with a meow from my poor kitty begging for some quality time. I obliged and passed out.
Saturday brought another side out - started the day off with a goal to fix some cars and play some games. Threw some laundry in and fired up Dead Space, which I was determined to beat that day. After a few hours of that, I hung out with John to came to pick up the last of his roommate stuff, and went to the shop to sever my right arm and leg in exchange for my working car with a new fuel pump and window motor back. Spent the rest of the day cooking a late lunch and playing Lego Indiana Jones with Lee - literally the rest of the day, we finished the game at midnight.
Sunday starts up at the crack of dawn with some Discovery Channel with the washer / drier running loudly in the background. Queue up a few trips to Lowes, the bank and Autozone for parts to reassemble cars with, and I'm back on the couch rewiring the door panels to the Firebird that have been sitting on the kitchen table for six months or so. Lather, rinse, repeat the trips to Autozone and Lowes, add some time in the garage in / under the vehicles, and voila, out come a better working bike, a fully assembled Firebird, and a Mustang that still needs some love. A little bit more quality time with the Discovery Channel and some side project work, and end the day before the long week with some Iron Chef and Food Network Challenge.
Interesting that in a lot of ways, I could be spending my time better - not wasting time playing video games, working towards bettering my finances, and profitable ventures, pay someone to keep the cars running, clean the house, figure out what I should / want to be doing, read and expand my knowledge, and in general fix the stuff that's broken. But you know, I felt good at the end of the weekend. My car was all nice and pretty, working, running better. I was finally getting some traction on my side projects, I got to do some gaming, and my laundry was even done! Sure, I didn't figure out the meaning of life, or get a lot of the things done I wanted to, but it was a good weekend. It's a bizarre compromise sometimes, work and play (work, in my case being all the "better my life / fix stuff" things). And is honestly pretty difficult, given how many things I would love to accomplish in my life, and how much time you really have to do it all in.
Twenty seven years? Around ten of which there was really potential to do something? I would have expected more. But there are a lot of games played and friends I spent time goofing off with, and I wouldn't change a minute of that :)
10/24/2008
PitchCar
So we've recently taken to playing this board game called PitchCar at the office before work. It's essentially a giant, table sized, matchbox style race track with little wooden cions as cars. Confused yet? The box art essentially describes it all:
It's basically like a race track plus shuffleboard. Needless to say, its been quite a bit of fun - we even had a tournament last night! (I placed second in the prelims and fourth in the final race - playing with some pitchcar experts lol). Its amazing to see this wide range of people, all of whom have been stresses and working long, long days reverting to silly ten year olds, ooohing and aaahing and applauding each others' good shots and shouting out at each other's losses. Chanting out "knock off" to try and get your opponents to screw the other cars on the board - you can knock other cars off the track if you call it. It really reminded me of the simple pleasures - just goofing off and having fun :)
Strangely it got me really excited about the new opportunity after Ensemble - because it reminded me of what one of our leads on the management team said earlier while talking about the people who may come to the new company. (Paraphrasing and embellishing):
I want to be there - I want to work at a place and with people where we can be goofy kids together and try the craziest awesome ideas that noone else dare try. I want to work with those people becuse they're also some of the most talented people in the industry. I want to work there because I know with those people, that passion, that goofiness, that talent, we can make things noone else would have expected.
I can't wait :)
It's basically like a race track plus shuffleboard. Needless to say, its been quite a bit of fun - we even had a tournament last night! (I placed second in the prelims and fourth in the final race - playing with some pitchcar experts lol). Its amazing to see this wide range of people, all of whom have been stresses and working long, long days reverting to silly ten year olds, ooohing and aaahing and applauding each others' good shots and shouting out at each other's losses. Chanting out "knock off" to try and get your opponents to screw the other cars on the board - you can knock other cars off the track if you call it. It really reminded me of the simple pleasures - just goofing off and having fun :)
Strangely it got me really excited about the new opportunity after Ensemble - because it reminded me of what one of our leads on the management team said earlier while talking about the people who may come to the new company. (Paraphrasing and embellishing):
"I like working with these people - people where I feel like I can jump up and down getting excited about an idea knowing these people wouldn't be shooting everything down with realism and impracticalities, because they would get carzy excited with me, and riff ideas off of each other. People where I'm not afraid to be goofy and silly, because those people will do the same."
I want to be there - I want to work at a place and with people where we can be goofy kids together and try the craziest awesome ideas that noone else dare try. I want to work with those people becuse they're also some of the most talented people in the industry. I want to work there because I know with those people, that passion, that goofiness, that talent, we can make things noone else would have expected.
I can't wait :)
10/23/2008
*sigh*
Not exactly how I was planning to spend my Thursday, cooped up in my car outside of a Lifetime Fitness parking lot waiting for a tow truck. Oh that's right - car trouble yet again rears its ugly head like a damn plague.
Day started off nice and fine, with an alarm going off barely beating dawn, pulling me to the gym for a good workout and steam before a long day at work, only to come out and not have the engine start. Two separate cars and jumper cables later, the call to the trucking company starts the eventual path to the shop. I think the "tow truck ride to the mechanic" is essentially an adult "walk of shame." At least for a guy that works on his own vehicles.
*sigh*
This, of course comes after a constant berating from my parents to sell the cars and bikes and just buy a new car with a shiny warranty each time anything goes wrong with any of them. Which, by the way, really doesn't help when you're wokring to solve something and people tell you that you doing things totally wrong to begin with.
But for all the pains and nuances that come with them, I love my vehicles. I love that the Mustang is the car that my mom travelled cross country in with her sisters. I love that the Thundercat (motorcycle) gives me control and lets me get out and be with the outside world when I'm riding. I love that the Firebird is the car I always wanted as a kid, and that I can drop the top when it's beautiful outside. And they all look damn sexy.
But they are a lot of work, and (especiallly recently) evaluating where to spend my time is a non-trivial task. Oops tow truck is here, time to go.
Day started off nice and fine, with an alarm going off barely beating dawn, pulling me to the gym for a good workout and steam before a long day at work, only to come out and not have the engine start. Two separate cars and jumper cables later, the call to the trucking company starts the eventual path to the shop. I think the "tow truck ride to the mechanic" is essentially an adult "walk of shame." At least for a guy that works on his own vehicles.
*sigh*
This, of course comes after a constant berating from my parents to sell the cars and bikes and just buy a new car with a shiny warranty each time anything goes wrong with any of them. Which, by the way, really doesn't help when you're wokring to solve something and people tell you that you doing things totally wrong to begin with.
But for all the pains and nuances that come with them, I love my vehicles. I love that the Mustang is the car that my mom travelled cross country in with her sisters. I love that the Thundercat (motorcycle) gives me control and lets me get out and be with the outside world when I'm riding. I love that the Firebird is the car I always wanted as a kid, and that I can drop the top when it's beautiful outside. And they all look damn sexy.
But they are a lot of work, and (especiallly recently) evaluating where to spend my time is a non-trivial task. Oops tow truck is here, time to go.
10/06/2008
LOL!
Hahahaha - ok, I normally don't post webcomics (with the exception of xkcd, which is actually the most discrete representation of awesome on the internet), but this Questionable Content had me rolling. :)
Happy Monday!
Happy Monday!
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