My World A Blog On All The Things That Happen In My Life

Heading back to Austin
on 08/08/2010 - like it?

Well, I’m heading back to Austin for a second stint. Had an amazing time the last time I was there – was there for almost a year. Learnt a lot – technically & otherwise. Unlike last time when I had a flight from Chennai to Mumbai and then a direct Mumbai to New Jersey flight ( with a Mumbai International Airport to boot) – this time, the flight will be from Chennai.

The route would be Chennai – Doha – Washington – Austin. Worst part about this journey is that flight takes off at 04:45, and I would have to reach there by atleast 2AM – which means – Goodbye sleep. Will be reaching Doha by 06:45 for a 2 hour stopover. The connecting flight leaves Doha at 09:00 and would reach Washington at 16:00. The final flight to Austin is set to depart at 18:50. I’m a little worried about this difference – I’m not sure if this difference is enough for me to finish off the formalities – especially the immigration part. Lets see how it goes. Hope it will not be anything like the last trip!

Tags: 3i, Austin, Chennai, flight, journey, Life, travel

The Getaway – Part 1 – Coming together of The Plan(tm)
on 29/06/2010 - like it?

If you’ve been reading my blog or know me, you probably know that I have a rather regular set of vacation times – ie, a week’s break once every three months or so. This time, however it was slightly different, and it had been about 5 months since I had taken a break. Let’s go back in time for a bit, however.

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Tags: break, holiday, Kerala, mangalore, trip, vacations

Of comatose blogs & vacations
on 19/06/2010 - like it?

Its been a very busy, hectic past few months. Besides my day night job( I work at US timings, PITA), I’ve also started contributing to techie-buzz, though my day night job takes a whole lot of my time, and I’ve not been able to contribute much. My Linux blog and as well as this blog has been lying almost in a coma state. I plan to start posting some articles now and then, got it in shipshape with a new theme, so watch out!  I’m still pretty active on twitter ( again, not as active as I used to be – even with my “low” activity I keep getting requests not to spam the timeline :p. I’ve been fairly active on posterous though.

I started using tumblr as my tumblelog, but switched over to posterous. The primary reason for switching over was at that time, tumblr was incapable of handling multiple attachments – it’d post the first attachment and discard the rest. Started looking for alternatives, and posterous caught my eye. Its unbelievably amazing how simple posterous is. Just send an email to post@posterous.com, and you’re done. That’s it. That floored me over.

I’ve been actively involved in Web communities for quite some time,  and now time constraints mean that current my involvement is at Chip forums where I’m the Super Moderator and at SuperUser( with rep of 7.1k ) – The StackOverflow for Power Users. I also lurk around in Meta – there are some good discussions over there. When I get some time, just drop by Reddit, Hacker News and TED.

Coming back to real life, as mentioned I’ve been pretty deeply involved in work, and come this Wednesday, I’ll be taking a break for about 10 days ( after a span of about 5 months, I believe). Initially, the break was meant just for the weekend – the plan was to head to Thrissur, Kerala and then hop back to Chennai. I decided to extend the plan,  and head over to Mangalore to take a break. Deepti, Ankit & the rest proposed that we meet up at Cochin for the weekend,and so it was settled. So, currently the plan looks like:

Jun 23rd: Chennai to Thrissur

Jun 24/25: Thrissur to Cochin

Jun 25 – Jun 27: Cochin

Jun 27 – Cochin to Mangalore

Jun 28 -  July 4th: Mangalore

Will be good to take a nice break. Hope I don’t calls regarding work, my experience says I will get it :/

Got nothing planned in Mangalore, lets see how it works

Tags: 3i, blogs, break, Chennai, communities, mangalore, vacations

A Snapshot of Me From The Past
on 06/04/2010 - like it?

Picture from 10th standard yearbook, circa 2001. Somethings are priceless

Thanks, Kevin.

Tags: mangalore, Milagres, school

25. My 25th Birthday “Celebration”
on 23/03/2010 - like it?

March 19 1985, 05:28. Date and time a certain SJ (no, not Steve Jobs, me!) came into this world. Fast forward to March 19, 2010. Today. Yesterday. couple of days ago. 25. I’ve “officially” completed 25 years of which 22 years were spent in Mangalore, 9 months in Austin, and the remaining time in Chennai.

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Tags: 3i, 9 feet High, blogger's meet, Chennai, GRT, Indiblogger, Life, meetup, timepass, tweetup, work

A much deserved break: The Bangalore trip
on 08/01/2010 - like it?

First up, Happy New Year folks!

I don’t take off from work very often – the main reason being me working in Chennai means it nigh impossible to visit my hometown of Mangalore over the weekend. So generally I have a set routine of work for about 3-4 months, then take a week or so off (often coinciding with some festivals/holidays/extended weekends to get the maximum number of holidays with minimum number of leaves) to take a nice break, relax and rejuvenate – an approach which had worked very well over the past couple of years that I’ve been working.

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Tags: Bangalore, break, Chennai, Life, timepass

The case of the Neverending SMS Series
on 19/10/2009 - like it?

Most of the Ruby gang are very well aware of the “Stupid SMS series”. For the uninitiated, it was Nitin’s way of…. umm… timepass ? by sending SMS to all of the Ruby gang which made absolutely no sense whatsoever ( I hate to admit it, but it’s true, Nitin is a version of “The Amit“).

Anyways back to the post,  couple of days ago, as I was spending time in morning, my iPhone started to buzz away. It wasn’t very surprising, since getting a message in morning isn’t something out of the ordinary. Opened the message only to see it was a blank SMS from an unknown number. Ignored it at first, but then the buzzing went on continuously. In a matter of few minutes my inbox looked like this:

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Tags: 3i, cell phone, Chennai, Hassles, iBlacklist, iPhone, Life, mobile, Ruby, timepass, tips, trace, work

Back In India
on 29/09/2009 - like it?

Yeah, I’m back in India. Well, actually landed in Chennai long time [ damn it’s been more than a month o_0 ]. So let me recap what’s been happening and what I’ve bene upto.

First thing: the return trip. The return flight was rather uneventful, nowhere near how my flight from Mumbai to Austin was ( well, that’s a good thing).

My flight itself was rather long ( heck what do ya expect from a transcontinental flight anyway), covering 4 different flights – American Airlines from Austin to Chicago, and from Chicago to New York  and Jet Airways from New York to Brussels (stop over) and from Brussels to Chennai.

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Tags: Austin, Chennai, chip, flight, journey, Life, meetup

Celebrating 2 years
on 13/07/2009 - like it?

Couple of days ago, I tweeted this little message. July 9, 2007 is a red letter day for me – for that was the day I started my career as a working professional. As I tweeted that, I was greeted over IM by few of my friends and colleagues. It didn’t strike me much as soon as I tweeted, but few hours later I was just amazed as to how fast time has gone by – and how far I’ve come. To think, I applied for this position as an afterthought (“should I really ? Well..”). That got me into nostalgia mode.

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Tags: 3i, Chennai, Hassles, Life, office, Views, work

Yes I’m alive!
on 14/06/2009 - like it?

It’s been  a while hasn’t it, since I last blogged ? *goes to next tab to check last manual blog post* April 19. God! Hadn’t realized its been so long since I last composed. Yes, I’m alive (hey you’re reading this aren’t ya?). I can hear the collective yells of “where the hell have you been”. Well – work. Been drowned, swamped, overloaded – basically been busy with shit loads of work.

Next question – Am I in Austin ?

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Tags: 3i, Austin, Chennai, Life, office, oracle, SQL, thoughts