Super Summer

It has been a great summer. Was thinking of what all I did on weekends, after my thesis defense on the 8th of June and here's what I could compile:

20th-21st June: Milford Lake Picnic

22nd June : Left Kansas for good, flew to Philly

27th-28th June: Washington DC, Baltimore
4th-6th July : Niagara
11th-12th July : New York City
18th-19th July: Philly darshan
25th-26th July: Atlantic City & NJ coastline
1st-2nd August: Pocono Mountains

7th August: Flew to Seattle.

8th-9th August: Snowqualmie Falls
15th-16th August: House Shifting + Cricket
22nd-23rd August: Cricket + Microsoft Ganpati
29th-30th August: Franklin Falls
4th-5th Sept: Olympic National Park, Boeing FOF museum
11th-12th Sept: St. Helens
19th-20th Sept: Rainier
25th-26th Sept: Lake Tapps + Space Needle
3rd-4th Oct: Golder Garden, Alkai beach
10th-11th Oct: Carne Mountain, Leavenworth
17th-18th Oct: Diwali in Philly

Take that for utilization of weekends :).
Indeed, has been a very fun filled summer. All prepared now to endure a harsh winter, the next 4 months are going to be crucial.

Laptops and I

In the last couple of years, Laptops and I have not gone well together. In fact, we've not just gone together. For the records, I haven't owned a laptop for the last two years almost. Why do I not have a laptop, why do I not buy one, and how I survive without one are questions I face often. But the questions had been on the rise recently, both amongst friends as well as at work, and that just made me think more about my quest with laptops.

Back in 2005, I was very happy to get a brand new thinkpad T42, from IBM. For the next 2 years, I was quite addicted and even emotionally attached to it. So much so that felt very sad while returning it back to IBM when my time there was up. Soon after, on landing in the US, I purchased another thinkpad, this time a T61. Used it through the first sem of my masters and I was very happy with it.

In Spring 2008, I had to surrender the laptop. That time, it was unthinkable for me to live without one. How will I do my homeworks without it? How about orkut, facebook, movies, music? My assignments and entertainment would suffer, I thought. Decided, I would buy a new laptop soon. For some reason I got a little too busy and was not able to order one for a few days. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and the sem got over. It was unbelievable that I'd spent one semeter without a laptop.
What was more unbelievable to me was that it ended up being the best 4-5 months in my life. In terms of work, I was amazingly efficient. A kind of discipline had set into my routine, something that had always been missing earlier. Spent most of my time in department. What would I do going home without a laptop? So used to go home only for lunch, dinner and the night sleep. The extra time spent in the department helped. People: Friends and acquaintances, kept getting bemused about me not having a laptop. The difficulty associated with coming to lab in cold/heat/rain soon became a motivation, that spurred me to do even better in my work. It was because of these factors that I was really able to successfully juggle with a lot of things going on in my life then. In terms of entertainment, I never missed my lappy: Movies/music/mails were taken care of in labs. Being in lab also meant I never felt alone. Thankfully, the "working in lab" syndrome caught up with a lot of other friends as well even though they had their laptops and it turned out that the lab became one awesome "adda". Quite amazing those days were.

Looking back, I feel thrilled about having successfully completed masters in "Computer" science without a computer of my own. Back in IBM days, we'd discussed about the prospect of making an attempt to live without cell phones. Not sure if I can manage that, but living without laptop has been one step in rebellion to prove that we really don't need these gadgets to make our lives better. Its all in our mind really when we think we "cant" do something, "cant" live without something. Ofcourse we can, nothing is impossible if we give it a wholehearted try. And simple is sweet. Our life can be much better if we can keep it a little simple, technology-free and reduce dependency on these gadgets. Probably, that's the point I have been trying to drive through in the last two years!!

Ofcourse, things are a little different now that I've stated working. But they say never change a winning formula :). So here I am, still hitting an old fashioned metal keyboard and staring into a 22 inch monitor to type this in. Recently, I'd started thinking once again of buying my fav IBM thinkpad. But as it turns out, now I won't need to. More on that later :)