Appreciate everything.

Hey there people... here's another one of my childish rhymes. Do notice the cool rhyme scheme I have managed to belt out this time.

Appreciation

Blessed are those, who pain, have seen,

For it’s them, who know, what happiness does mean.

Cares more about life, than you, a teen,

About to die, sickeningly lean.

In England, go and ask the queen,

Draped in clothes with a silky sheen.

Does she care, for the soup in her tureen?

And then there’s a homeless, who’d kill for a bean.

How does one keep a garden green?

By wasting water, in amounts obscene?

To know the value, of water, clean,

Travel to a desert, with an empty canteen.

People who always appear pristine,

Also lose their cool, umpteen,

Cussing at people, exhibiting spleen,

Lessons in life they also glean.

The future holds what, who has foreseen,

Something lying around dirty, unclean;

Could also someday bring about, preen.

So nothing in life, should you ever demean.

Nothing in life should you ever demean.

Damn you!!! BSoD

Off lately my system (PC) has been haunted by the Blue-Screen-of-Death. BSoD, which was a common site in earlier versions of the windows operating system, is usually unheard of by most XP users. Back in the time of Windows 98, you made one mistake any you were greeted by the BSoD, eject a CD while accessing its contents and you got a BSoD, press ctr+alt+del and there it was again. Even accessing certain system files caused the system to crash. BSoD basically symbolizes the untimely demise of your operating system. Perhaps the most famous instance of a BSoD covered by the media was that of Bill Gates unveiling the then-new Windows 98. The demo PC cashed with a BSoD when his assistant (who according to Wikipedia still works for MS) connected a scanner to the PC. There was a huge commotion from the crowd, and all the sheepish looking Bill Gates could say was “That must be why we are not shipping Windows 98 yet”. For those of you having difficulties picturing the situation, the video is available on u-tube. Well if the BSoD didn’t spare Bill Gates, what can I, a mere mortal do about it? Even as I type this post, I am plagued by the thought that a BSoD might appear at any instance, and if there wasn’t the auto-save feature of MS Office, I’d be alternating ctrl+s with each word I typed. Wikipedia states that a BSoD is encountered when the OS encounters a critical system error, which can cause the system to shutdown to prevent damage. It also says that they are caused by poorly written device drivers, faulty memory, corrupt registries or incompatible DLLs. What it fails to mention, is that sometimes even hardware errors like a lose hdd or graphics card, or even an incompatible RAM (I think that’s what they mean by a faulty memory). While most people might freak out at the sight of a BSoD, I have been getting these errors, from the day I bought my PC. First night, that I bought my PC, I was really excited, and when I sat down to install the OS, it just wouldn’t install. Right after the installation, I’d get a BSoD. As it turned out that the dealer had put in an incompatible RAM. A couple of months later, there it was again. This time, it was a faulty Alcohol 120% (a virtual DVD drive emulator). Then I’d keep getting it again, on n off, until recently right before I lost my HDD (as in my HDD crashed), it became a common site again. This time I suspect that it is probably an improper installation of codecs, and I think the BSoD appears probably when the thumbnails are loaded. I have reinstalled the codecs n hope the problems disappear... Nope restarted again... lemme see... Ok... uninstalled everything. Now if that doesn't solve the problem, I guess I'll have to reinstall the OS... Wooops... restarted yet again... I guess I will have to reinstall my OS.

Ciao.

Sad but true

Sad but true

Riding my bike, in delight,

I had to stop, at a red light.

I saw a man cross the street,

And in his hand, he carried a treat.

All of a sudden, the light turned green,

And all the others, just had to careen.

In the confusion, his packet slipped,

His food I saw scattered, as my eyes dipped.

There was nothing he could do, but look in dismay,

And I thought about him, all through the way.

Would he go hungry, would he buy some food?

Had I stopped and helped him, would have I been rude?

OMG!!! The death of the internet.

It was there in the business section of the newspaper a couple of days ago. But I didn't take it that seriously. It is there again in today's newspaper, and now I am worried about it. Come year 2010, and the internet connection is gonna go KAPUT!!! And guess who will be responsible for it. It'll be me, and you, and quite a few other people who are never gonna come across this blog. Apparently studies show that at the rate at which the internet is growing, and because of the pressure we are putting on the existing infrastructure, your broadband connection is gonna end up becoming highly unstable. And unless nearly 137 Billion Dollars (US) (if my memory serves me right) is invested, i.e. about 60% more than what investors are ready to invest, the internet is not gonna look like the way we have gotten used to seeing it. Unless something is done to bridge the gap, "rich media" sites (like youtube and other sites requiring large amounts of data transfer) are gonna be a thing of the past. Emphasis is gonna be laid on sites being more efficient in the amount of data transfered. I still can't grasp the idea of life without internet, although it is gonna make little difference to my blog. I shall continue to type my posts offline, and since hardly anybody visits my blog, its not gonna make much of a difference. Which reminds me, I finally got my first visitor since I installed a page hit counter (Yeah! the rest of the page hits were by me. Over two weeks and just one page hit. Man! I felt dejected.). The good ol' navigational bar finally remembered my blog. Oh! n it was one of those Internet explorer Users. I thought those things were extinct. Apparently not so in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, 'cause that's were the visitor was from. BTW I don't criticize each n every visitor, and would like to thank Ms. Red Queen, whose comment was analogous to CPR for my blog.
Good Day

The Efficiency Theorem

Fanatics, all over the world, are going crazy trying to figure out means of increasing the efficiency of devices all around us. From the cars we drive, to the cell phones we use, music players, the processors of our computers, air conditioners, even simple things like light bulbs, practically everything around us has been tweaked, to be more efficient in what they do. But what about the human brain I ask? Isn’t there a way to tweak it a lil’ bit (without causing any harm to us) ? From common observation, I have derived (without all those needless calculations) something I would like to a call, The Efficiency Theorem, defined in simple terms as Efficiency is always higher, when your ass in on fire. Every time there is a task at hand, people inevitably tend to temporize. Procrastination is hardwired into most human brains. In no matter what we do, our efficiency always increases as the deadline approaches. Sitting on stuff isn’t always harmful. In fact it provides respite from the monotonous and mundane life. It adds excitement to life. If you start working on a project too hard too soon, you are bound to run out of steam before your project ends. Start too late and you miss the deadline. Think of this process as analogous to the working of an internal combustion engine. It is all in the timing. Set the spark (that’s spray in the fuel in case of a diesel engine) too soon and you get knocking. A bit too late and its equally harmful. So I’d like to advise you to linger on, but mind you, not for too long.

Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned.

Dear Lord,

You and I both know that I am not such a firm believer in you. But it is times like this when I am forced to consider your existence; times when I have sinned and my conscience refuse to forgive me. The other day, I had gone to purchase a few book, and I couldn’t find a parking space for a quite a while. Finally I did find a spot, but alas, it wasn’t wide enough for my bike (I ride a thumper). So I got off my bike and shoved aside the bikes on either side, to make room for my bike. I was gone for barely a couple of minutes, and as I returned I saw a police truck approach, the kind they use to haul wrongly parked two-wheelers. As I unlocked my motorcycle, the truck stopped right behind me, a couple of guys got off and pulled the bike parked next to mine into the truck. I suppose while making space for my bike, I unknowingly pushed the maroon bike out of the assigned parking space. With my heart thumping louder than my bike, I sped away, fearful, lest I be chased by the owner of the maroon motorcycle. I my books, there are few greater sins than harming one’s ride. Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned.

Amen

Addicted!!!

I am Wolfestine... and I am an addict. They say the first step of getting rid of a habit is to accept that you are an addict. No I am not addicted to any intoxicant... or any stimulant for that matter... I am a techno-addict. I am addicted to technology. I was tempted to start this post like I started my last one (Sitting in my room, I look around and...) but it’s just that it is only when I am sitting in my room all alone, do I get these thoughts.

I am sure almost all of you reading this post would agree that to some degree you too are addicted to technology. Although it is more of the younger generation that is addicted to it, the older ones are just as susceptible to getting captivated. Like in the case of any habit, it usually takes a while to realize the fact that you are hooked on. The realization usually comes with the loss of a gadget of service. For me it all began when I was without a net connection for almost 6 months. I became famished for the internet, a scavenger for bandwidth. They say time is the best healer, and so I waited. I waited until I finally got an internet connection. It was then that I realized the importance of a simple transfer of data packets, from my computer to my ISP, in my life.

The final blow, which proved my dependence on technology, came when my hard-disk crashed. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t use my computer for a while. It was accompanied by a grave implication. All my (though seemingly unimportant) data was now gone. Everything that I had been hoarding for over two years was gone in a flash. (For the record, I had also been writing more posts for my blog, which I intended to post once I got the time to do so. They too were lost in this catastrophe.) And for some reason this tragedy left a hollow spot within me. It was like losing a near n dear one. Okay I agree I exaggerated it a bit too much  but lets not digress. My point was that I for one just can’t live without some gadgetry in my vicinity, be it my computer, my phone or even a television remote, of course each of them accompanied by their respective service (i.e. a net connection, a service provider, and a cable TV).

Can you even imagine what it would be like to live without anything that ran on an electronic circuit? Something that could help us simulate such a condition would be a pinch. Well I could explain you what a pinch is with references to Wikipedia n other encyclopedias. Or I could quote Basher Tarr (played by Don Cheadle) from the movie Ocean’s Eleven “A pinch is a device that creates like a cardiac arrest for any broadband circuitry. Or better yet, a pinch is a bomb, now but without a bomb. See when a nuclear weapon detonates, it unleashes an electro magnetic pulse, which shuts down any power source within its blast radius. And it tends not to matter in most cases because a nuclear weapon usually destroys anything you might want to need power for anyway. You see a pinch creates a similar electromagnetic pulse, but without the fuss of mass destruction and death. So instead of Hiroshima, you’d be getting a 17^th century.”

Life in the absence of technology has often been depicted in movies of the likes of The Day After Tomorrow and more recently, in Die Hard 4 where this terrorist holds up a fire-sale in the US. And no it’s not the regular fire-sale. It is a three step systematic attack on the entire national infrastructure. In step one take out all the transportation, step two the financial base and telecoms, step three is get rid of the all the utilities gas, water, electric, nuclear, pretty much everything that is run by computers, which today is almost everything. So that’s why they call it a fire sale, because everything must go.

Though it all may seem like fiction to you, the latest in war-fare technology doesn’t really depends on wiping out an entire population, but more on disabling it. No matter how much you deny it, but the fact remains that if you knock out the infrastructure of a country, you will cause more havoc than bombing a couple of its cities would.

Being tech-savvy also affects our health adversely. So much technology, all around us has also forced us to incorporate a sedentary lifestyle. This in turn leads to obesity which of course brings along with it a whole lot of other complication.

No matter how hard I try, to spend a day away from technology, I eventually end up fiddling with my cell phone, or switching on my computer. There is this advertisement on the national geographic channel called find the genius within you. They claim Einstein’s brain weighed in at around 1240 grams, while the average human brain weighs somewhere close to 1400 grams. So according to them, we are better equipped at becoming a genius. The common knowledge and skills of an average human being of today is far greater than what it used to be in the 18^th century. As a result, we ought to be better equipped to handle the complications in our life, and this is all so because of the technological revolution.

One question that arise is should we embrace technology and let it dominate our world. Once again, highlighting the imaginations of many a fiction writers, I would like to mention the case where technology, originally designed to make human life simper and peaceful, ends up making it worse (Think in the lines of The Terminator Series, iRobot, Stealth). But of course in these movies, the (good) guys successfully regain control of the world again. What if, in real life, we are not able to defeat what we created? Is it safe to let be a techno-addict? I am not so sure. All I can say is I am Wolfestine... and I am an addict.