Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

As I said in my last post Rakhi was last week and it was fun. Lots of relatives came over to our place and we all really enjoyed. I was planning on posting some of the photos taken then but the cable that connects my camera to the computer has gone MIA (Missing In Action) and the card reader that I have is not working any more… 🙁 So till I get one or the other working you will have to wait for the photos.

I finally transferred my games and pics from my old phone to the current one. I thought I had copied everything using the Nokia Sync but that didn’t copy any of the extra stuff I had installed manually. So first I copied all of it to the memory card and tried copying it to the computer. Unfortunately that didn’t work because the reader was broken. Then I realized that I could talk to the phone using bluetooth, so copied about 40 MB of applications/games to the N95. Yay Me..

The new wireless AP is working great as it gives me wireless access throughout the house instead of just 1/2 of it.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

On the 26th of June I attended Arundhati’s wedding in Gurguan. It was a nice wedding. Really quite. Not like the usual wedding you see up here in the north with the loud music and fire crackers etc. I guess it makes sense as both of them are Bengali’s. Got to meet with a few friends while we were there so that was good. Lately it seems like we all only meet when there’s a wedding or something going on. I guess I should plan a get together or something.

Over the last few weeks the Electricity department here has been digging holes in the ground so that all the overhead power lines here in Sector 44 will be moved underground. They are using a mole machine for it (Don’t know the official name so calling it that). What this does is that they dig a hole at one place and point this machine to where they want it to go and it digs a tunnel underground till it reaches the destination. Which sounds really good in theory but the implimentation sucks as usual.

So far they have managed to cut the Phone lines (Airtel and Reliance) for 1/2 the sector, cut a water pipe in half, mess up other wires. The water pipe was cut right in front of our house so the street in front of the house was completely flooded and they had to cut the water supply for the sector while they repaired it, which took almost 2 days. For the phone lines both Airtel and Reliance have laid down temporary cables and got the phones running. Thankfully our Airtel line wasn’t affected and my net connection still works.

Speaking of the net connection, I had Airtel take a look at it because for some reason my modem was dropping 7-15% of the incoming packets which meant that I couldn’t download a large file or stay connected to FTP/SSH for more than 5-10 mins at a time. They replaced the modem and the phone cable and so far it works great.

Needed to do some work over wireless on my phone so I set up the spare wireless router I had sitting in the closet as a wireless AP, now I get a full wireless signal in most of the house. Earlier I barely got a signal in my room.

What else have I been upto? hmm.. nothing too exciting, just general life.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later. Tomorrow is Rakhi so I have to go sleep early today.

– Suramya

Check out this really old commercial for Mountain Dew: 1st Mountain Dew Commercial with Willie the Hillbilly

I love this drink. Pretty funny advertisement too..

– Suramya

It was mon’s birthday today so me and dad decided to get cake in the morning when coming back from a doctors appointment. Unfortunately we were too early so the shop was closed. The drive was fun, I got to enjoy the heat and the humidity as the AC in the Esteem wasn’t working; actually it does work but only when you drive at more than 50 km/h, which thanks to the traffic we weren’t able to do a lot…

So we got home without the cake, which was a good thing because mom didn’t want to have cake. She wanted to have Ghavar (Its an Indian sweet) so I will be getting that for her tomorrow. In the evening we were planning on going for Mexican food but that also was postponed to later because it was raining and mom had the craving for Garlic bread. So we then ordered food from Papa John’s with lots of extra garlic sticks. Now I am full and we still have 1/2 a pizza left along with some garlic bread. I guess no vampires are going to be coming near us anytime soon.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Yeah, I know… Its not the most imaginative headings… but that’s pretty much how I was feeling when I got back home today. Had to go do bank stuff and taxes stuff today and it was hot outside (again) and humidity must have been more than 80%. Plus I am tired of listening to the same songs in the car. I need to buy an FM transmitter that I can use with my phone so I can play new music in the car without having to burn CD’s.

To top it all I am taking some antibiotics (Nothing serious, Just trying to prevent my nose looking like a clown nose by turning all red and itchy.) and they make my head spin. So while I am typing this, I am also trying really hard not to throw up. This effect lasts for about 2-3 hours so I usually try to take them just before going to sleep. Today mom made me take them early hence the fun 🙁

A friend of mine is in Canada and their house is right next to the bush fire that has been going on over there. They have been put on evacuation watch. The fire closest to them is literally a few miles away and all it would take is a gust of wind for it to spread. Imagine having to pack up your whole life in a car. That’s what she is doing right now, because that’s all they will be able to take with them if they have to evacuate.

I am hoping for the best. But lets see. Send all your good thoughts towards her and the other people trying to survive the fire.

Surabhi’s laptop is still having issues. Installed a temperature monitor on it. Looks like the fan/cooling is not working properly and the system shuts down when the CPU temp gets near 100 deg C. So this means I have to take it back to the IBM service center and get it fixed. 🙁

Well this is all for now. Will write more later when I can think straight again.

– Suramya

Me, Mom and Dad went to visit Rakhi didi today. It had been a while since I visited them so it was great. We stayed over for dinner and as usual she cooked a lot and the food was great.

Spent some quality time with my niece and got to spoil her. 🙂 Other than that the day was pretty normal. Hot as hell but normal.

Surabhi’s laptop is acting up again so trying to diagnose it. Looks like the shutdowns were because of heating issues. Installed a temperature monitor to log the CPU temperature and correlate that with the shutdowns… Plus in my opinion she needs to format the system because it has gotten really slow. (Opening a new explorer window or folder takes more than 5 seconds… )

Need to get up early tomorrow to do stuff and I am really not looking forward to it. 🙁

I guess I should sleep now… just soon as I finish this, oh and I should do that also… plus this… Ah well I guess I will be sleeping at the usual time. I can function without a lot of sleep for a while.

– Suramya

Watched the latest Harry Potter today. Actually yesterday. No today… Hold on. I started watching it yesterday and finished today (We went for the 11 pm show). Surabhi found out at 8 pm that the movie had released so she booked the ticket for the 11 pm show online and we both went for it.

The movie was good. Considering I still haven’t read the 6th & 7th book I liked the movie. I actually might read the 6th and 7th book now. Didn’t read it because I really don’t remember the story from the first 5 books and don’t have the patience or desire to read all 5 of them again when I have so many much more interesting books to read. I wonder if there’s a site out there that summarizes the first 5 books. (Putting it in the to do list for tomorrow)

Well its way past my bed time so going to crash now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Finally managed to watch Transformers II this Saturday. I was supposed to go watch it with friends but due to scheduling issues I just watched it with family (Vinit and Surabhi). The movie was good. Better than the first one. One thing though… the fallen reminded me of the space creature from the ‘Alien’ movies. The plot wasn’t too complicated and had a lot of holes but that didn’t spoil the movie for me. The action was good and the graphics were nice.

After the movie went and met with Piyush and Juhi after a really long time. It was fun catching up with them. I should do this more often.

Also watched the 3rd Season of Torchwood. This season of Torchwood was a hundred times better than the first season (Which sucked) and a few times better than the 2nd one. Too bad they only had 5 episodes in the season; but the good part was that they broadcast them one a day so the season was done in a week.

Currently watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer for the first time. Never watched it when it was being broadcast but had heard a lot of good things about it so decided to watch it. The first season was decent and funny. It showed that the actors in the series were new to acting and in the first few episodes the acting was stilted and horrible. Luckily it got a lot better later in the series.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya