Just a little post asking all you surfers and bloggers to spread FireFox!
Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.
By the way, the official date for the launch of Firefox 3 will be posted here soon - so check back! Join our community and this effort by pledging today.
From : http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/
Step 2 is to become an Associate Software Engineer.
In other news, I am now an Associate Software Engineers (surprise, surprise). Which explains my prolonged absence in all forms of the Internet. I got promoted and I got assigned to an urgent project, which means I have less ‘john is doing stuff come again later’ time.
This post is just to inform any of you regular readers who still visit my blog (in case there are any in the first place) about my status. Regular blogging activity does not seem likely to resume at this juncture. Hopefully I’ll be able to work out something new.
On the plus side, I actually get paid to do what I was doing for free in the first place. Developing I mean. In case you get any other ideas.
P.S. - And those of you who tagged me for “10 things that make you happy” will have to wait a bit longer to find out what gets my freak on.
After going 3 days without any human contact i’ve finally gone off my rocker. everyone has gone off to India and im stuck here cos i have exams! right now im bored enough to try to write a post from my mobile More gory details later!
P.S. - I haven’t had human contact cos I have to study for the exams next week
Yesterday I met a friend who had been on my mind for a while. I met the friend while on the bus. It was just a coincidence. And I got to thinking what would have happened if I hadn’t woken up at the unusually (for me) late hour? What would have happened if I had spent a little more time in the shower? What would have happened if it had been a shaving day (I shave every other day)? All these little seemingly inconsequential things came together to make two people meet in the bus.
But that wasn’t what really got my attention.
What about the people I didn’t meet because I woke up earlier or later than my usual time? What about when I gave up on a bus because it was too crowded? What about when I skipped shaving? Did I miss the future Mrs. Pereira because of these events? Did I miss meeting my future business partner? Did I miss meeting the person who would ruin my life (I don’t really miss meeting that person, truth be told)? That is what I was really thinking about? What did we miss in our lives because we took too long to wake up or decided to shave or decided to go back to get our wallet / handbag ?
I know these are stupid questions. None of these things happened so why should it bother us? It bothers me because I’m always in a ‘what if?’ mode. I can’t help it. Hopefully I won’t dwell on these things too much.
This post is dedicated to the people that I missed out on because I took too long to shave. You would have been great. Or maybe not. I’ll never know.
I’ve temporarily halted blogging till events at work and SLIIT regain normalcy. Which should take a couple of more weeks methinks.
In case you missed it, the first paragraph was a joke while the second paragraph was not. In case that got you confused, this is NOT a paradox. It is not paradoxical in any sense of the word.
At any rate I don’t want this blog to go defunct so I will be posting random stuff that I might come across. This week I will be doing a discussion on why watching plants grow is boring work. So I’ll begin by posting this link to this awesome game/simulation/creative bit of programming that I came across.
You can find the download link there as well (Size – 5 MB). I recommend that all of you download it and check it out. I’m sure anyone of any age can enjoy it – IT IS NOT A TECHNICAL IN THE LEAST. It’s quite an entertaining and interesting project. It was apparently done in less than 5 days. That’s less time than what it would take my mom to get me to cut the grass. This is actually the prototype of the project that eventually won the $25k cash prize for the best independent game of the year. Pretty cool stuff.
And that is the primary reason why watching plants grow is boring. As soon I get a few more minutes of idle time I’ll post more facts to back up my theory.
I realize that it’s a bit late for New Year resolutions. But these are Non Resolutions. So I think I will be excused for posting them this late.
This is a list of all the things that I will NOT be doing this year. These are New Year resolutions gone bad. Passed over to the dark side. These are the New Year resolutions you would not like to meet in a dark alley. This is what happens when you don’t hug your resolutions.
This document contains a whole cart load of ‘NOT’s. Because of this it may contain confused sentence structures. I’m very sleepy as I write this so I haven’t been able to keep track of all those negatives mixing with each other and becoming positives only to break up in a huff to become all negative again.
Without any further interruptions I give you, My New Year Non Resolutions
I will NOT spend another needless year learning things that I need to know in order to do a job that I am already doing. Which means, come hell or high water I will NOT be a lazy bum and spend my time NOT studying so I can NOT sit for exams to complete my degree.
I will NOT be taking over the world this year. I mean, come on, have you heard of anyone without at least a masters trying to take over the world? It’s always Dr. whosit or Dr. whatshisname. So frankly, without at least the BSc to add to the end of my name I’m hardly capable of taking over the world. I’m NOT competing with the likes of George Bush without being able to spot market trends or NOT being able to give the probability of it raining when a family who goes out to fish toss a coin to decide who gets to use the hammock. (Which is what I’m NOT learning since I am NOT attending lectures for Probability and Statistics – 203)
I will NOT be a poster child for how NOT to manage your money. As of the time of this post, I am Rs. 1600/= and two weeks away from complete and utter financial ruin. I will NOT be a credit card company’s model customer. I will NOT give up getting my hair cut due to destitution.
UPDATE : I have just received payment for leaves NOT taken in 2007. I am NOT staring at a financial meltdown at the moment. I did NOT just make this up. It really didn’t NOT happen.
I will NOT let my shoes melt into the road before I purchase a new pair. I will NOT be the proud owner of one pair of shoes. Instead, I will be the proud owner of two pairs of shoes. I will NOT wait till my socks are thicker than my shoes to purchase a new pair.
I will NOT be the centerfold for ‘How NOT to Behave at Social Gatherings Monthly’. I will NOT freeze whenever someone makes small talk with me for the first time. My social graces will NOT be ridiculed.
I will NOT be a great dancer. I will NOT be caught dead on a dance floor, unless it is to walk across it to reach the bar. I will NOT look like an arthritic hippo doing a jig.
I will NOT have anymore pending birthday / Christmas (Yes, I have pending Christmas gifts L) gifts this year. I will NOT be caught dead with an IOU. I will make my gift giving habits legendary. I will hone my abilities to such a peak that people will talk about my gift giving habits for a long time to come. Following is a conversation that did NOT happen.
The Bob : Did you watch the documentary about 21st century John’s gift giving habits? A Bob : Oh yes! It was amazing, I wish I had someone like him to buy me gifts. Just thinking about someone like that makes me giddy. The Bob : Yes, I know what you mean. I’m going to have a lie down.
I will NOT NOT watch Broke Back Mountain. This movie is now in my official “To Watch” list. I will NOT laugh at the thought of straight actors acting gay or gay actors acting straight.
I will NOT make New Year Resolutions.
And that’s it. I give you full permission to print this list out and frame it. Don’t be shy.
The year in review. Narcissist style. I still can’t spell ‘Narcissist’ properly. I always have to get it spell checked. I always put in an extra ‘c’ or an ‘s’. I never realized that my blog name would give me so much trouble. If I had known that earlier I would have used something easier to spell like ‘Life of Bob’ or something like that. Much easier to spell. Ignore the grammatical/spelling errors. This was written in a rush while I was supposed to be a contributing member of society.
This is going to be one long boring post. I recommend that you do not read it. Of course the first thing anyone does when they are told not to read something is to read it. Human nature. This is just a log of things from 2007 so that I can read this on the cusp of 2009 and laugh at myself. I suggest you read just the last part of the post and wish me a Happy New Year. Less painful all around.
Well, it’s the first New Year I’m coming around to after starting my blog. I haven’t posted as much as I like but I suppose it’s doing ok. Haven’t gone into the list of ‘Fantastically Successful Blogs’ yet but there’s always next year I suppose.
Where do I begin? First I’d like to wish everyone have a Healthy Wealthy and Wise 2008. I’m not sure whether that is grammatically correct but I suppose that it will have to do. I chose it because I’m going to review the year in that order. And we begin.
Healthy
This year was a rather unhealthy year for me. I caught the flu twice which was rather unusual since I only get the flu once a year and that’s it as far as sickness goes. But this year I got,
As you can see Diarrhea was the sickness of choice this year. I have no idea how this came about. My stomach was never a delicate affair and could handle anything put into it. Even taking into consideration the unhealthy combos that I put up with. Nothing major at any rate for which I am thankful. For example, I could have been afflicted with Jumping Frenchman of Maine. Let me tell you, the firecrackers would not have been fun.
As a result of being afflicted with Diarrhea I am one of the few people who actually weigh LESS after all the Christmas food. Sad situation. I have also got fully acquainted with our loo. I can navigate it in complete darkness. Even with the mop and brushes and things lying about.
Wealthy
Since my last job, my salary has more than doubled. So has my work but I enjoy it. Of course, With Great Wealth Comes Great expense. Due to this I have been financially destitute for most of the year. Always on the brink of financial collapse. But needless to say I made it through the year with only the equivalent of one month of salary as debt. This is worrying since I don’t even live a life of debauchery. I debauch very little in fact. Mostly during the weekends. I will be adding budgeting and money management to my New Year resolutions.
Still didn’t win a lottery though.
Wise
I completed the final year of my degree. Which would technically make me a degree holder if it wasn’t for the fact that I have a few subjects from the 2nd and 3rd year to complete. I never thought I’d get through the final year so I was dumbstruck when I found out I had gotten through. For the final exam I studied a grand total of 6 hours for each subject for a total of 1 day/s. Did I mention that I did not go to lectures even once? I didn’t even know who was lecturing us. That’s why I was dumbstruck. Sometimes my amazing awesomeness amazes me no end.
Learned about industry standards and such. Trying to put all that into my website. Nothing much to be seen there as yet because it’s a work in process. As usual I’m on the cusp of giddy success.
What else happened during this year? A lot of things actually. This year probably saw the most amount of change for the good I think.
Best of 2007
Discovered My Chemical Romance. Took me awhile to like them and after that they have not left my phone the entire year. Discovered Breaking Benjamin and Arctic monkeys as well. These three bands were the holy trinity in my music list. Yes I realize I lived an empty life before I found these musicians.
Made a bunch of new friends. Most of them from the forum I idle at when I’m supposed to be working. Great bunch of people. No one can call me anti-social now because I did the whole meetup thing and everything. Although I was terrified most of the time.
Fell in love with V for Vendetta. That was the best movie by far for me this year. I don’t think it was released this year but I only got to watch it this year and loved it. Notable mentions movie wise are –
Transformers (This has got to be watched in the theatre! So awesome!)
Hairspray (I sooo wanted to dance for this movie)
Resident Evil (Watched it just last week)
Bourne Ultimatum (This guy is cooler than James Bond)
Blood Diamond (Who thinks that South Africans speak the coolest English?)
Casino Royale (Daniel Craig makes for a much tougher Bond)
I have a pretty basic movie taste. I prefer to just switch off my brain when I watch movies. I love shallow movies with lots of stuff happening.
Started wearing jeans. Heh heh heh.
Started spending loads of time on the Internet as well. At least 10 hours a day on it. This is because of work of course. But now that I see the advantages I’m trying to exorcise my PC of the dialup connection and get ADSL. Dial up is a device of the devil.
I was depressed for a couple of weeks. Complete and utter despair. No joy at all during that time. It was quite the experience.
I found out that I am terrible at first meets. Absolutely horrendous. I just can’t seem to make any conversation. This gets better after the first meet though. But the first meet is always tough.
All in all 2007 was a roller coaster ride. The highs were really high and the lows were really low. I’m hoping that 2008 is going to be better and I think it will be better. All the signs are that next year is going to be the beginning of something really beautiful.
Another month, another post. Yes, I think I have hit on the perfect post to month ratio. A 1 : 1 ratio leaves me enough free time to carry out my various machinations while also allowing me to write about them. And my machinations are better than all other machinations that other machinators carry out. As I type the word “machinators”, MS Word tells me that ‘machinators’ is not a legal word. And I ask it “What do you know?”, needless to say I do not receive an answer and my colleagues give me a strange look.
Back to the perfect ratio. Sticking to this limit will make sure I put out 12 posts a year. Just enough to keep the demand high enough in the future. Because at one point in time, I will print out all the posts and take this blog offline. The immediate result? A massive hue and cry for ‘John Pereira Originals’! I have included an imaginary conversation that might possibly take place in the future to conclusively prove that what I say will come about.
Bob 1: Hello Bob
Bob 2: Hi Bob.
Bob 1: I got a new original JP piece for my collection, old flower.
Bob 2: Begorrah! Don’t tell me you managed to get your mittens on that extremely rare piece from his Mahagedara period.
Bob 1: You got it right mate! I was walking my kangaroo past this old antiques shop when this framed parchment caught my eye. Turned out to be a genuine copy of a JP printout. Probably only 3 or 4 of that particular piece of writing.
Bob 2: Aye, well you’ll be one lucky son of a camel.
Bob 1: …
Bob 2: ehem. I love what you’ve done with your hair
In case you missed it, the above conversation is yet to happen and proves without doubt that my blog will be a literary treasure for future generations to come. And yes, all people in the future will be named Bob and will have different accents.
Apart from dreaming about the astronomical rise in popularity of my blog I haven’t been upto much. Any student knows that October to December is the busiest time of the year. And if you’re doing your best at trying to fail exams then you have to start not studying by at least July. It’s a hard life but you have to start being a disappointment at some point of your life.
A couple of pretty interesting things did happen during that time though. The first was that I took The Big Step and met up with some people. Meeting people might not seem like a big step, but I had met this bunch online. Specifically, on the now slightly derelict TNL forum. And more recently on the Lame-Duck forum. It was a fun meetup. Two things happened at the meet (aside from all the usual stuff that happens at meetups)
I stopped associating people with their avatars. I also realized that most people are different from their online personas
Bottle of beer exploded in my face when I opened it. Twice. Thankfully no one noticed the incident. It would have been a bit hard to live down.
The second interesting thing was TNL Onstage. One of the forum members, Lakmaal, was a finalist in the solo category. We went to root for him and I had a brilliant time there as well. Except when I was introduced to some new people.
New Person: Hi John ! I’m xxxx!
Me: … (Thinks “Oh SHIT!”)
New Person: (After being put off by the frantic staring on my part, looks around and moves away. Slowly)
Me: …
This happened a couple of times, and I came to the conclusion that it was the loud noise affecting me. If ever you meet me in a noisy public place, just keep walking. This will save you and me a lot of awkwardness.
Apart from those awkward moments I had a great time.
And something else I wanted to talk about was our forum.
Before I go any further I suppose I should give you some history. Take your mind back to those bygone days……. in October.
Read the post by the Queen of the Dark Asylum for details. Some people got kicked out of the TNL forum. People voiced their thoughts and then some more people got kicked. The end result of all this was that about 30 - 40 people suddenly had no forum to call their own so I (also being a member of the TNL forum) set one up. So now we have a home. It’s a fun place, if you want to join just fill in the form and register. I know for a fact that some of you would fit in there really well.
You might be wondering why I have been rambling on for a page and a half about these mundane activities of mine, well the reason is that a little bird told me that if you don’t post on your blog for more than two months you get taken off Kottu. So to forestall my imminent banishment – before I am able to put my “Plan for Literary Domination” into motion – I decided to put up this filler post. Anyone have any concrete information about this? About Kottu banning, not about plans for literary domination.
Await regular transmissions AFTER Christmas at which point I will again be living on 24 hours a day.
P.S. - The title “In the Future There Will be Bob” should be familiar to all you GTA lovers. It’s supposed to be “In the Future There Will be Robots”
Contrary to popular belief (and general hopefulness) neither I, nor this blog has died. My extended silence was due to a very simple fact. I forgot that I had to MANUALLY update my blog! Yes, what you are feeling now is the same feeling of shock that I felt when I learned this fact. I mean, in this day and age how can you not have a blog that just updates itself? For God’s sake we have washing machines and little gadgets that switch on the power to your hotel room when you stick your key in it (First time I came across this marvel of technology actually)! But self updating blogs? Nope, too complicated. I think it’s a conspiracy by the ISPs to force us to use the Internet. They will probably shut
me down the moment one of their crawlers pick this post up. The bastards.
Well onto the Suicidal Peacocks and Homicidal Elephants of Habarana.
One week of silence (from my total of four weeks) is because I went to Habarana last week. I am still recovering from the emotional and physical after effects. We left on Thursday and came back Friday night. It was an office trip so we didn’t have to pay. For once I agree that the best things in life are free. I took lots of blurry pictures of trees, dust, elephants, dust, monkeys, dust, friends and dust. My friends took pictures of flowers and lakes and things, none of which I ever saw. I doubt we went on the same trip.
A highpoint of the trip was the elephant safari. It involved a trip into the Minneriya reserve. The safari can be succinctly described thus,
A jeep safari which involves forty minutes of traveling through and tasting various types of dust (brown, red, powdery, sticky) punctuated by twenty minutes of looking at elephants, peacocks, foxes, eagles and cows (bloody cows are everywhere apparently) followed another forty minutes of dust tasting during the return trip.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it. Forget the fact that all of us had brown tinted hair and that my brother is still removing dust from inside his ear (which leads us to the conclusion that he does not bathe regularly). We were traveling on the back of an open top TATA jeep. There were eight of us in all, including four bloggers – Jester, Chamara, Jahufar and of course me. The common denominator was that we were all somehow connected to Proporta (benevolent employer). Chamara and I work there, Jahufar used to, and Jester is the sibling of a good looking and intelligent current employee (moi).
The safari started out pretty tame. We went through a path that had lots of trees and dried up streams. And plenty of dust. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that it had not rained in a while. We passed a few peacocks that that kept trying to jump in front of the vehicle. I think they were depressed. Who’d like to be called a peacock anyway? If I were a peacock I would kill myself too. Saw a massive eagle (at first I thought it was a seagull but then my friend pointed out to me that we were nowhere near the bloody sea) take off right over us with a fish clutched in its claws. Failed to take a picture of that though. Then we turn a corner and BAM! Elephants. Masses of elephants. A herd in fact. None of them had tusks though, which was surprising.
The next bit was exciting because it happened without any warning whatever. Our driver took us towards a particular elephant and passed it at a distance when suddenly it charged us! An elephant was charging the vehicle! It was right behind us and closing fast. The driver slowly accelerated away but the elephant kept chasing us for about fifty feet before it gave up. The driver stopped the vehicle. The elephant charged again. This time it got closer before the driver accelerated away again. The second time it chased us it was trumpeting loudly and hissing as well. Apparently the reason for this behavior (as the driver told us, it might be a yarn) is that the elephants offspring was killed when it was hit by a truck (not while inside the preserve) and it had been attacking vehicles that got close to it ever since.
We don’t have much video evidence of the chase for the simple reason that everyone was trying not to piss their pants and holding on to the rails around the jeep, which meant that all the cameras ended up filming our feet. Needless to say it was dusty. Some of us managed to get the chase on cam the second time and I will be posting them soon. In the comment section some people may allude that I uttered words to the effect of “holy shit! We’re all going to die”. I categorically deny that I ever uttered those words. Even if video evidence clearly shows that someone is uttering those words there is no proof it was me. All the witnesses were unreliable since they had just been chased by an elephant. End of story.
Apart from that the trip was like any other. We played cricket. Some people played really well and others not so well. Our team captain (again the same bunch that went on the jeep ended up on the same side), Chamara was the pick of the bowlers. As usual I was the loudest and played horrible cricket, although I did bowl a couple of nifty overs.
I thought I’d have a separate paragraph talking about the food but then I realized I would be too hungry by the end of it. Pissu forewarned me that the food would be great, armed with this knowledge I put my plate to good use. The food was delicious.
Well I think that just about covers my trip to Habarana and my post for the month. I guess I will have to keep this up until they ‘discover’ the auto updating blog. In any case I doubt I will be posting anything again before my exams are over at the end of this month. Wish me luck.
EDIT: Since embedding Youtube seems to break my style sheet, the video can be found here
First video. End of the second chase.
Horny Monkeys Drunk Monkey 1 Drunk Monkey 2
P.S. – If you really have nothing else to do with your time and you want to look at blurry trees and strangers and such you can find pictures here and hereP.S.S – Videos to follow
More gory details later!
