Prashant's Weblog

...this is how a friend referred to me as I broke the news of my engagement a few days ago: "Another one bites the dust". Heh. Thanks Lou. That is very encouraging from some one with tons of experience with a successful marriage.

Been a while since I last posted here. Most of the activity has been from spam-blogs. Not much to say tonight. Just wassup! Oh btw I saw "Stealth"..and surprisingly liked it! Not for good reasons I guess...but because of some unique moments of laughters... like an advanced unmanned stealth bomber sacrificing itself so its master can unite with his girlfriend! :-)

So even though I have been away from the mainstream cricket fever in Indian peninsula for quite some time now, it was an interesting experience to watch a one-day international match between arch-rivals India and Pakistan yesterday. I could recognise merely half of the names in the teams. Nothing has changed besides some player's sponsorship fees and their places may be. Although I grew up skipping college for the same matches, it was hard to believe now how one sport can keep a whole peninsula engaged for 10 straight hours..in burning humid sun! There were housewives with traditional sarees in that sun, swaying infants...sweating..yet attentive. There were old men..that could barely notice a waving flag right in front of their eyes...cheering for Sachin Tendulkar's boundary. Sometimes I wonder if not wars but such games could melt all that these two neighbors have carried for over half a century. And then I realised that I have the same thoughts every time I am witnessing such a match. I drove back home. And crashed...only to wake up another saturday..with neighbor's blasting stereo..a headache..and the anxiety whether I will find any laundry machines free today...

So one of my old colleagues who is in London these days introduced me to Skype... a free PC-PC calling service (voice-o-IP). I wasnt too sure I wanted to try it..until this one time I had him call me...and the voice was actually pretty good! there was a lil sampling rate issue (his voice was getting sampled too much..so it sounded a bit like the Donald Duck's..no offense Thomas:-).

but then again...whts free isnt luxury. or is it? :-)

Last week a news item created much hype at least in the bay area media when a local woman found a chopped off human 'finger' in her Wendy's supposedly delicious-cheesalicious burger. Better yet, if you are a gore fan, different resolution/pan pictures of the flipper were all around the TV (and in international flavor too..spanish..japanese..german...evry local channel featured it:-)

Wonder how else you can get 'bird'-ed? heh:-)

Well as if I was short of reasons to question Microsoft's over-rated technical achievements.. the proof showed itself once again today..just a couple of minutes ago.

So I send an e-mail to our developers mail-list, minimize the outlook window, and as I am starting to move on to the next task, I hear a burst of laughters from outside my room...only to realize that Outlook's smart spell checker had changed my name 'Prashant' to 'Peasant' in an attempt to get rid of a typo.
Well at least I could share a few laughs in the name of the mighty MS :-)

So I am finally closing my hunt for a cheap notebook I could use at home..and wirelessly outside when on trips. Am not looking for any fancy horse-power..as long as I could keep up with the mundane online tasks. One of the product line that caught my eyes was Toshiba's Tecra . Dell's Inspiron series might be another option. Ahh.. I would also like to keep a linux boot partition.... which makes my choices limited.

Any comments, fellas?