Yes 130

An evil conspiracy is afoot. They've reprogrammed me. Every weekday between 3 and 4, I zombie walk to the vending machine with a dollar in my hand. And punch in 130. The dreaded number 130 that houses my small (75% nitrogen, 25% chips) packet of Jays Hot Stuff potato chips. And they even proclaim 'Can't stop eating 'em'. They are right! As the only close-to-my-spice-level item in the vending machine, I gravitate toward this one item, mesmerized. So day-after-day I'm stuffing my face full of red crunchies that are supposedly 0% Trans-fat, 9g Fat and 260mg Sodium. Hello my dear 65cent ticket to a heart attack.

I also got an eviction notice from my pants this past week. They're unhappy right now, their seams are a-bursting. So unhappy they decided to cover themselves up with lint and other miscellaneous scratchiness from the dryer. And they keep zapping me with static. I know you guys *miraculously* moved the buttons farther apart to make me think I was getting fat. Argh. I hate you too pants, the feeling is mutual. Watch me swipe my credit card, and toss your sorry seams on the street one of these days.

Who am I kidding!

Important, or not?

I have some not-quite-Dear-John letters to write.

- One to my lovely city of 'Chicago', which refuses to believe that it is the middle of June and almost summer. Wake up already, I don't want it to be 55F outside right now. I'm not quitting on you yet, but you need to make your mind up about which season you're in, and stick to it.

- One to the ever elusive 'Dreamless Sleep'. Or for that matter, 'Sleep' itself. Do you hate me THAT much? What did I ever do to offend you? Other than the fact that I couldn’t put a juicy book down every now and then to heed your dark call? Do you hold grudges? Grow up, and put me back on your favor list before I.. I don't know what I can write here. Hmm... Anyways, I have had enough of confusing dreams, and the vivid realistic ones where I have become a mutant, an assassin, a student lost in a reconstructed high school horror, and the likes. Thanks, but seriously, no thanks.

- One to the ugly bag of 'Sona Masoori' sitting in my kitchen right now. When will you ever get over? You are the worst tasting bag of rice I have ever had in all my 5 years in the kitchen. You are vile, tasteless, full of dust, and so tiny I can hardly see the individual grains and decide if you are cooked or not. I hate you. Please get over soon, you 50% remnant, so I can go and buy myself another bag. All said and done, I am not heartless enough to discard your sorry ass in the trash.

Oh my God, have I become a Hater? Look at me!

While I sit here blubbering about my existence (does anyone really care about my bag of rice?!)... B is out there, a mile away, reading Oscillograms 'for future testing and knowledge purposes'. That settles it, I am officially back on the discipline wagon. I will not sit here and rot anymore, while people are doing important things with important sounding names.

Check the word out.. Oscillograms.. All the syllables, vowels and consonants. Sheesh, I don't even have a technical term right now from any of my projects that I can bandy about to convince myself, much less others, that I am important. Such are the times. I'm sure even Prancer and Nan have important sounding word associations at their internships, and are smirking as they read this. And so does DrDro who has reached the 12-component programming mark, and is working toward the 35-component run. Or was it 12-variable versus 35-variable? Anyway, both versions sound important enough.

Poor me. There, there.. Eat a pack of the yummy Pringles Baked Stix. Who said self pity is bad?

On a side note, I counted, and found that I have used the word 'important' in this entry about 6 times towards the end. Or 5 times in one, and 1 time over here while I said that I counted the number of 'important's.. Oops, there I go again, another 'important'. Maybe I should just consider it a system that loops, or rather folds into itself.

I will stop being a nuisance right about now.

Xen Diary 1

Here I am, toiling away at my Xen event. Gee, what a joyride! Sarcasm, if I may.

Come to think of it, I'm usually an enthusiastic participant in all CI initiatives. But, you hit a tipping point - the one where 'Xen Fatigue' hits you. And I'm certainly not immune. The XF hit me on Monday, and has been coloring my judgement ever since. I'm quiet at the meetings. But more importantly, I'm not jumping around trying to lift things more than twice my size like I usually do! Oh yea, let the others take care of that stuff this time. I'm going to be the dainty girl one might assume me to be at first glance. Just crunch numbers, come up with checklists, do all the pretty stuff.

Better make sure you give me my lunch. Else B can attest for the extreme-opposite-of-sugar-and-spice I can turn out to be.

Mmm, so meaty!

Meat - a subject that has no reason really, to be popping up in my blog, but hey, in the spirit of MeatFest! So we're the funky department that celebrates meat. Go Meat! I should be saying 'Gross Meat' - wonder how people actually like to chomp on layers of fat and muscle from animals. Some deep-rooted instincts will never leave mankind I guess. Carnivores that we are.

The origins of this awesome festival date way back (~12 years?) to when everyone unanimously hated one of our co-workers, and she being vegetarian, they celebrated her leaving with a big bang! All this meat! I know its uncanny how it all started because of one girl who was vegetarian. But hey, I've been assured by everyone that I am the total opposite of her, and that they all love me. Yay me :)

So we have the banner up, the table all labeled and arranged in a very fine display of meat, and everyone who is in on the secret drops in from all over the company. Haha. Of course, we pulled everyone's leg this year when we brought in this veggie (soy) meatball that tastes and looks exactly like actual meat, and then I ate it. Everyone considered it an 'event' and much ado was made about it. And we're waiting for the right moment to actually break the news to them that we were planning this all along ;) Fun.

Lockers!?

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who would watch a lot of English movies and sitcoms, read several high-school novels etc. And invariably she would end up thinking how cool it was that the American kids didn't have to carry huge loads of books to school. They just had lockers! Cool lockers with a lot of pictures on the inside. Battered lockers against which the school's jocks would lean and flirt with the eyelash-batting swooning female fans. Rigged-nerd-lockers that were waiting to spill out the awesomely gruesome stuff that the school bully had stashed in there as a prank. And invariably those damsel-in-distress lockers that would stay jammed until someone who you have a crush on (or vice versa) comes and opens it for you.. Ah, lockers.

But all that was once upon a time. Right here, right now, in la-la-land.. I stand looking at my locker in desperation. Face it, I've never owned a locker before! But the idea was so cool that I got myself one at work. To stash a spare set of clothes just in case I ripped/snagged my pant, or God forbid sprayed myself with a batch of epoxy like one of those B-grade-sci-fi-horrors at midnight. And then, 'Fly-style' or last-week's-episode-of-Heroes-Mohinder-style, I'd just mutate and wreak havoc on society, wuhahaha. (That’s my version of the evil-laugh, by the way).

Anyhow.. I got my locker - one of those styles where the combination lock is a part of the door itself. And you just enter the combination, shimmy the latch a bit, and voila, open sesame. But sadly, what happened was far from it. I tried, and tried.. add a dozen 'and tried's to the statement.. and I gave up. After a week or so, I caught hold of one of the women who share the locker room and asked her to show me how. She did it so easily. I watched and thanked her profusely for educating this locker-ingenue. And then once she left, I decided to try it again. And what do you know!! No luck.

Three months have passed since then. Today, with renewed vigor, I stood there trying to open up my combination lock. No success. I got back and researched it online.. Google, eHow, wikiHow. OMG, how tough is it to open a damned locker? And I still struggle in vain.

Its me against the bleedy locker. Me, in all my scrunched-up-face, hope-nobody-is-watching, I-have-a-Masters-in-ChemE-damn-you-evil-locker, fervently-Googling-"Tips to Open Lockers", getting-ready-to-kick-the-locker-door glory..

The score is 0-22.

Serves me right!

Lunch Drama

Friday lunches are festive. The hours leading up to the lunches, even more so. To illustrate:

a. My department goes to lunch every Friday to a G's. And we've been doing so since the beginning of time, so we just fax in our orders at 11.45 and our lunch is at our table the minute we walk into the restaurant. The fax part of it is usually a task assigned to the co-op/intern bakras. Rumor has it that at one point of time, since we did not have a co-op around, Rb picked up the job. Now that he isn't around anymore, the boss runs around for the same chore. Hence, at this morning's all important scrap meeting, we finish up with a solution. The Excel fax file is now on the company's shared R: drive, thereby enabling all the folks from different departments that join us to access it. They will get an Outlook reminder at a specified time in the morning that will in fact remind them to go to that file and add their order to it! Bingo, no one needs to run around asking people for their orders anymore. Aah, the marvels of modern technology.

b. One upping the whole arrangement above, is my little coterie of friends that does lunch so many times together that we do not go to the same place every week. We'd be brain dead by now if we did! So, our debates are usually about where to go. Case in point - today. Everyone is OK for everything. Our choices: Panini Panini, Ras Dashen, Indian. So, after a thread of about 10 emails, we decide to leave the decision to the point once we all get into the car. But, here comes the magic e-mail from JohnH. Read on:

Okay, we’re all engineers, and we’re all smart people. What we need is a quick, easy, and uncomplicated solution that is guaranteed to produce a fair outcome for all those involved. What I’m proposing is that I’ll write up a little FORTRAN code in my Argonne Mesa phase II PSCAD case study to simulate high frequency noise on a DC voltage line. Each of you will then pick a number between 0 and 1 and a multiple of .003 (the solution time step) and then I will randomly sample the AC component of the bus at that time to determine the AC voltage. I’ll average each of your respective voltages and if the final summation is positive, we’ll go to Panini-Panini, if it’s negative we’ll get Ethiopian. Clearly this is the best, easiest solution, and I should have something compiled and working for us to use by Monday afternoon. See you all at noon :-D

Blink, blink. And JohnG starts the number thread, and we all follow. We add two numbers each.. one between 0 and 1, and one that is a multiple of .003! Sabina sent a single number - Pi, as best as she could remember it. BUT, we were all wrong, WHY? JohnH wanted ONE number that satisfied both criteria!!! Oh well, another spate of emails unleashed..

And you say engineers are boring people? Not as exciting as investment bankers, lawyers and doctors?

Pooh-pah!

'Tis the season..

Yes, the flu, but also Christmas is around the corner. Therein lies my biggest confusion. It started with the days back in a Christian Convent School, and I still have this craving for a Christmas tree of my own in my house. So I thought, why not? This is my third Christmas here, and maybe I should start the tradition too! A nice spacious living room sure deserves a funky tree..

There began my dumb questions about the trees to A, who sure had a laugh over it all. Looks like I've spent the entire day at work browsing for trees?! I wanted a tree taller than I am (d'uh!), but imagine how many ornaments that would require to get all covered up. And we can't really have a naked tree can we? I'd love the fresh cut ones, but lets face it, I am NOT in the mood to sweep up fallen needles once the season is over, nor am I enthused over lugging it home tied to the top of my car, or trying to schedule a recycle pick-up.. Agreed, a real tree smells divine, the pine-y scent etc, etc,. But nah, an artificial one makes more sense, I can stow it away until the next season, and in the long run, it is the right thing to do!

But then Th enlightened me about the issue of the number of ornaments I'd have to buy.. which would definitely skyrocket.. and hooha, I'd spend twice as much on ornaments than on the tree. But c'mon, can't I indulge myself? Yes I can.. and I WILL. I am going to buy a big 7ft tree..

Or should I buy the 4.5 foot one.. its only 30 bucks, sensible right?

But I want the 7ft one though its 75 bucks..

Mummyyyy.... I can't make up my mind.

By the way, do I even need a Christmas tree? Hmm..

Salsa Thursday!

Every morning, when I pack myself some food for the day at work, I feel like I'm preparing for a picnic! All the food I take, apart from my junk-food-vending-machine.. It gets me through the individual day, but how do I get through an entire week? The secret: Salsa Thursdays.. Tada!!! Every Thursday, Pam brings in Salsa that she makes at home, plus two bags of chips, and sets them down on the table downstairs.. This countdown to Thursday kinda takes the blues off the first three days back at work, how psycho am I! Oooh, I wait till its 9:00 am on Thursdays to rush down and pretty much be among her first 'customers'. The interesting part is about the salsa.

Americans, in general, don't seem to be too tolerant of spicy stuff. Look at all the cheese - my point has been made. But of course, me the great, would die without spice in all probability. And Pam makes this spicy stuff, and if I say spicy, then you should understand how spicy it must be! And I simply looove it. So, the funny thing is to see how these folks eat the salsa. They take a bunchload of chips, sprinkle some salsa over it, like we sprinkle holy water on our food after a puja!!! And then, they huff and puff about the spice, and drink a gallon of Coke/water! Hehe.. and when they see me dip my chip in the salsa bowl and bring up a pile of 'liquid fire' to my mouth, they just watch like I'm one of those 'freakshow' corners at the carnivals! Tickles me pink.. Long live salsa.. I'll surely miss these Thursdays once I'm done with the internship!

Twiddly thumbs?

As has been the habit for the past week, here I sit, "at work".. and my current project? God-only-knows!! Anyways, not that I'm complaining about it! It is quite nice to sit around at times and do nothing, isn't it? AND get paid for it ;)

There is quite a bit of stuff floating out there in the "Internet", enough to keep you sitting still for atleast an hour (provided you don't keep jumping up and down everytime someone goes past your cubicle!) and man.. somehow at the end of the day, no matter what you read, what you learn, it feels like you haven't really done anything! I am of the firm belief that you have "done" something when you are physically tired. Yes, I loved that week where all I did was sit next to the reactor and troubleshoot it at 125 degF, when I ran around inventorying all the doors that needed weather proofing, shuttled between departments trying to figure out what was going wrong where in the process.. But there you have it, I am one of the dwindling species on the earth who look at work from this angle. What with the computer boom, where the work is all in your mind, and the physical part of it is office ergonomics!!!! No offence to the software folks (ooh, have so many friends in that huge part of the working world).. Aren't we slowly moving toward a period where physical work isn't really considered glamorous? Where suits and laptops rule the day? Well, I still stay the same

As they say.. all in a days work ;)

Ticket Tuesday.

It began with a speeding ticket.

B, I told you about a zillion times, that the way you were driving guaranteed a speeding ticket soon.. Well, lets mark this day Tuesday, 27th June, as the day that changed B's habits (atleast for some time to come). Crappy reasoning:

1. I won't get a ticket as long as I am only 15 above the limit
(fyi = Limit: a. The point, edge, or line beyond which something cannot or may not proceed. b. The greatest or least amount, number, or extent allowed or possible)
2. Everyone's going at this speed, how will I be the only one to get caught? (case in point, today)
3. C'mon, whats the thrill otherwise..

Anyways, my be-sweet-to-B-coz-he-got-himself-a-ticket day is kinda turning the other way around ;) I'm kicking B's ass, and having such a good time at it! But poor soul, bad luck, real tough luck.. There goes the cricket bat out the window, and so does the digicam :))

Alright, will stop before I get beaten up! And look forward to more posts here..