Cool adjectives

Peeve of the day -
There used to be a time when compute was a verb. I woke up from a deep slumber and realized it became an adjective somehow, with everyone talking of compute resources!

Register feeble protest and move on.

Modi !

Fantastic speeches by Modi in New York. Loving every minute of his speech at Madison square. Go India !

Excellent, Excel.

Did you know that Indian tax returns can be filed online ? I found this to be fantastic, until I started working on it. Seems they have an excel macro which generates an XML file with your tax data, which you then upload to their website with a digital signature.

All very high tech, until I realized I don't have Microsoft office software on the home machine, office machine, either of the two laptops or on the android tablet. And, openoffice somehow does not understand the macro code they have in their template file.
Grr.

Dada and Didi

"The Congress choice narrowed down to dada after Didi’s challenge misfired" - in the headlines of today's Hindu newspaper.  

My first flight (as a pilot) !

Flew a plane ! A small piper plane, with the instructor by my side doing the take off and landing parts. But he let me take control above 3000 feet, and we went upto 5-6 thousand feet, did a few turns, admired the view from above and generally had a blast !

Corruption in India

All these news articles of Suresh Kalmadi, Karunanidhi's daughter and Raja in recent times makes me hopeful. I hope the punishment is strict, and the crackdown on others severe as well. 

The Hindu and Julian Assange

I'm reading today's The Hindu newspaper, and found it very interesting to see a picture of Julian Assange reading The Hindu on the front page !

If he read's this particular day's newspaper, he'll basically see himself reading The Hindu in The Hindu ! I wonder if the editors thought this was clever, and are rubbing their hands in glee while enjoying this.

Music in Golden Gate park

We spent a good evening yesterday, listening to good music at the Arthur De Young museum in Golden Gate park. There was a quartet paying the violin, viola and the cello. There was also the SF opera group - just mind blowing! Highly recommend Friday nights at the De Young!
Look out for them at http://funcheapsf.com.

Have rack, will bike.

Having gone back and forth trying to decide on a bike rack for the car, we finally ordered the Allen Trunk mounted bike rack. Walmart helpfully shipped it home for free, and it came all assembled - all for a nice low price of 37$ !

Now, to try it on, test it out and go biking in hitherto unreachable places!

Saw this plane going down :(

I usually come home from work to have lunch, leaving at about 11:45 AM. Today was no different, and I was waiting for a green signal at the intersection of Ralston Ave and Oracle Parkway, when I saw this plane going really low.

Usually, these planes taking off from nearby San Carlos airport fly a little higher than this one; and so I was curious. It was not even going fast, somehow seemed very slow to be airborne. Then, it did a sharp right turn, and went further downwards and out of sight behind a building. I remember thinking someone must be feeling very acrobatic, the way the flight looked from below. I came home and found in Mercury News that the plane crashed into the Redwood Shores Lagoon, and folks in the plane died. Here is the article: http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_15975084

Reading about such accidents seems so surreal when you were witness to them. Its an odd feeling.