The plain post

Why is it so difficult to write? So MANY people write so frequently about so many things. So why do I find it so difficult? I just tried to post about something that has been bothering me for the last couple of days. But I failed. As I typed in on my keyboard, I realised that I was trying to reason out the problem, was tryng to find out why and put it across. But it's easier said than done. If I had only tried to put across the problem here, it would have worked. But I did not want to do that. I wanted to put forth my understanding of the probem too. That is when this post would provide utility to aimless browsers on Blogspot :-) Well, I guess that will have to wait. It'll take me a long time to figure that one out. But in the meanwhile, I hope I blog more frequently. Just plain statistics. Just plain data. Just plain feelings. Just plain happenings. The reasoning will follow (I hope). Crossing my fingers...

OK. I did not go to work today. Because Iguess I should also have the mandatory sore throat, cold, sniffles post similar to so many post of this variety. Feeling awful. Sore throat. Croaky voice. Mild headache. My work is getting delayed. And I hope to have done it at home by today. I should... considering that there is nobody at home to disturb me. Amen.

Explosion Truly

The site Blog Explosion is true to it's word (very surprisingly, I'd say!) It's truly exploded the number of hits that I have been getting. Since I've just started to blog, I never expected any visitors except myself. And I have been loath to give out my URL so soon to people while commenting on their blog entries. (My "lame" contention is that I should wait until 20 blog entries have been written before I give it out)

However, I read about Blog Explosion sometime back on some blog, and I registered. And promptly forgot about it since the site had too many details to read and understand what it was all about :-) But this site is GOOD. I am impressed. I have regularly started getting hits, especially during my night time when the USA wakes. My BlogPatrol stats show that almost all the hits that this site has received has been through Blog Explosion! Cool eh?

Well, I tried out this "tool" today for sometime. It seems to be some sort of an enhancement to the StumbleUpon idea to me. Anyways, what happens is that people are served blogs randomly and they can choose to rate it etc. And then I suppose if someone rates my blog favorably, I could go rate his/her blog favorably :-p There's some funda of managing traffic flows etc. but I am really too lazy to go through all that. Wish they had a simpler method to explain stuff.

Anyways, if you want to try this tool out, you could click on the small BLOG EXPLOSION image on the right or here. That ways I get some referral. What good will that to me is yet to be found out :-)

Ciao for now. BTW, someone rated this blog as a 7/10!! Thank you, whoever it was.

The Lost Art of Context Switching

Guess. Guess what is this post about.
Nopes. Not about this context switching. What I am trying to explain/understand is why I don't blog more frequently (or even write mails to friends). Recently, I have been trusted (rather foolishly, methinks) by my managers with more work. Funnily, this is not the case where good work is being rewarded with more work, but the case when layoffs in the USA and other countries are forcing some poor Indian to take on other people's work in addition to his own, for the same pay.

And I fail to context switch smoothly and evenly. Early morning I can't enjoy a cuppa tea or the newspaper because there's work to be done. Then I choose the wrong documents to read. Then my manager has an idea and wants me to try out something (different from what I had been doing). Then suddenly some wiseguy would want to prepone meetings. And by late evening, I am already deciding how early can I get up the next day! And in the meanwhile, I keep losing out on life. I really don't have THAT much work that I can't blog say once a week, or reply to my brother's SMS that comes once in a month maybe, or reply to my friend's email that I got last week. I could have made time for all this and more if only I knew how to context switch. The issue is not that 24 hours is not enough. The issue is that I am not multi-tasking.

Many friend's have made this complaint. So I am not alone. And I don't even seem to have the time to learn how to manage my time better! All because I don't know how to manage my time better. Because I don't know how to... :-) Cool, I blogged today.

Bush Won!!!

I knew it... nay felt it. I barely take any interest in Indian politics and I am too obsessed with myself to worry about Bush. But what has struck me funny after reading so many blog entries by various people about the elections and after the elections, is that ALL blog entries bar none have supported Kerry over Bush. Somehow nobody in blogworld wants Bush, but they must be too lazy to go out and vote for Kerry!! I don't get it, but here's what has been going around which might have worked: "Guys love Bush. Girls love Dick" :-D

Hmmm... not a good template this...

This isn't a great template after all i.e. the one that I am using at the moment. I wanted to link a www.quizilla.com test that I took. But what happened was the image was so big that it just went off the page under some layers of DHTML :-(

Well, not much to write right now. Am supposed to be busy with work that I am not doing. Am doing what I am not supposed to be doing (aka blogging). Also just tried a www.quizilla.com test that i WILL put up now... look bad or not.

"You must remember this, a kiss is still a
kiss". Your romance is Casablanca. A
classic story of love in trying times, chock
full of both cynicism and hope. You obviously
believe in true love, but you're also
constantly aware of practicality and societal
expectations. That's not always fun, but at
least it's realistic. Try not to let the Nazis
get you down too much.


What Romance Movie Best Represents Your Love Life?
brought to you by Quizilla

Haven't seen the movie ever. But I'll remember. Ciao for now.

That's not new!

Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologized to by a pretty girl.

[from "Something New" by P. G. Wodehouse]

I told you I was reading this book; 5-minute chunks in 15 minutes.

Who is dirc on Bloglines?

Click on this link. Links of this kind, i.e. http://bloglines.com/public/XXX are the shared weblogs of people using Bloglines to access feeds, where XXX is the username. I use Bloglines to access a variety of feeds, about a 100-odd in number at the moment (that I find almost impossible to keep up with). 100. That is what I said. And difficult to keep up with, I said. Now look at dirc's feeds. There must be thousands of feeds!! Is this guy crazy? When does he get all this time in the whole world? AND he's sorted out so many feeds in folders! NUTS.

I pointed it out to a friend. He saw the username "dirc" and pronounced it as "dir c". "dir c". Of course! Get it? The C drive on a computer. Is that it?? Is it the C drive of the Bloglines.com server? So i tried "dird", "dire" etc. Only dird has worked till now with another HUGE list of feeds. Some others worked but did not have any listings. Wonder if this is their master list of some sort. Cool eh? I subscribed to some more feeds from here but god, there are just too many :-)


UPDATE: Damn. The access to these shared blogs have been restricted now with the message "That user has restricted access to their subscriptions." Awww.

You're a sap!

Yes. This is what I was told after I did this quiz. [Link via Tank's Grrl]

You're a sap. Either that or it's all just a way for you to get some ass. You might have an illegitimate child somewhere.

What band from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now, who the hell is Peter Cetera? Have never heard of him, but then I am not exactly into music... especially into English music.

By the way, I wasn't sure what the word "sap" meant. So I looked it up on Dictionary.com. Here are the ones that seem to fit:
1. Slang. A gullible person; a dupe.
2. A simpleton; a saphead; a milksop. [Slang]
3. a person who lacks good judgment.

Like I did not know :-D

But I definitely don't know about any "illegitimate child somewhere". LOL.

Third-party password collectors (aka Me, the paranoid)

I just tried out the Mail Notifier software. Got the link from Inside Google. Absolutely cool software. Works with GMail, Yahoo! and Hotmail (and another option called POP3; still have to try that out). You configure it with your mail account passwords, and tell it to check for new mail every N minutes. And it works! I just got notified that I got new mail on my Yahoo account :-)

But that got me thinking. This is a great way to collect my ultra-secretive, super-sensitive Yahoo! password. So i deleted the Yahoo! entry. But that's no guarantee that it really has been deleted. It might still be in it's database, waiting for spammers to collect :-( Damn.

Ever heard the saying: Only the paranoid survive?

Classic Novels in 5-minute bites

This is a great idea. Once upon a time I used to dunk story books like crazy. I'd huddle into some corner and forget about everything else. Just me and my book. That was when I had access to libraries with a huge collection. Unfortunately that ended sometime when I was about 14 years old. (What happpened? The details can wait some time) Anywayz, what happened was that I lost the ability to concentrate for hours reading a book. Also, an uninterrupted span of a few hours when I would not be disturbed became very scarce.

I got this link today via Lockergnome. Cool, isn't it? I subscribe to some novel out of their collection. They mail me small chunks to read everyday. This is how they advertise:
Classic Novels - In 5 Minutes A Day brings you the world's best classic novels, delivered in daily five-minute installments to your e-mail

Spoonfeeding this dumb brain of mine :-) And it took me more than five mintes! To start with, I chose "Something New (Something Fresh) by P.G. Wodehouse". I hope it is good.

Yet Another Lame Start?

This blog business is tiring. Very tiring. Have had so many false starts. Damn. I hope this is it. I hope I can stick to this blog now for a long long time.

The following are reminders for me:
1. I can choose to publish at a brand new URL any time I want and need not create a new blog for that.
2. This is IT. No more hiding. No more new blog creation. No more trying to portray only my dark side on the blog. This will be me. The good. The bad. The ugly. All at the same place. I just don't have it in me to keep multiple blogs for my multiple faces or personalities that I might have.
3. I try to keep this blog away from my friends as much as possible. AND not be paranoid about it. If they are my friends they will not meddle or show unwanted interest. If they are not, I hope they slip on a banana peel and twist their neck for life. However much I would love to torture them slowly and kill them finally for not letting me have my privacy, it will never happen. I can never become a don or a murderer or a fighter however much I want to. I am going to be a plain ordinary civilian forever in this life, and there is NOTHING that will change it. I'll blame my parents for that. (Yeah, that's my first lame excuse of the blog. Wow.)

The following are some to-do notes for me:
1. I need to change the template as soon as I get some time. (Ha!)
2. After I have about 10-20 posts here, I need to evaluate whether the blog title is appropriate. Right now, I expect that all my posts will be extremely lame in nature. "Lame" meaning, "pathetically lacking in force or effectiveness" or "someone who doesn't understand what is going on", as according to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lame. Most posts will be triggered because I read something or hear something or experience something that is beyond my comprehension or understanding. Or something that I don't agree with even though it is an absolutely ordinary thing in the world. At these times, when there is no one to vent my frustrations at, this blog should come to my rescue; the place where I will rant, rave, scream and purge my troubled thoughts and then leave a cleaner soul, more at peace with himself, and able to get back to his mundane existence on this planet. In addition, this blog will also contain links to stuff that I come across that I find interesting on the Internet. I'd rather put these things here and reduce/stop sending my usual crap info emails to the various groups/mailing lists that I have access to.
3. Collate stuff to clutter up this blog of mine. Things like, a sitemeter (can somebody tell me which free sitemeter one is the best?) and flashy items like random quotes or a clock or a calendar etc.
4. Publish my blogroll here. This is useful for Google reasons. Not mandatory at all. Nobody needs to know that I exist. Nobody at all. I can want want and want to be famous. And dream dream and dream about it. It is just not going to happen. Deal with it. This blog is mine and mine alone. And I don't need visitors. They are welcome. But not needed. (Hey, then why do i want a sitemeter? I must be crazy.)

I am "Lame". I will publish on this blog with this name, whatever be the URL or that blog title. You can construe whatever you want to of this name that I have given myself. If you ask me, I think I call myself this because I have a severe lack of conviction in my thoughts. This is perhaps because I have never got any support from anyone. I have for some reason always stood out, not wanting OR BOTHERING to be "normal", but "right" always. And rarely managed to convince people to start thinking like me. And have in the process made many a soul unhappy. But I have till now been too selfish to bother about that. I am what I am. And I want to be what I am. I like myself, albeit not very proud of myself. There is nothing to be proud or vain of. But all in all, I am ok, I think. But with nobody to say that I am correct or right in what I do or think, I consider myself lame. Very Lame.

Hello Lame. Welcome to the world of blogging.