Day out in Big Apple

It's been a month since my trip to New York and a blog on it has been on the cards for a while now. My friend (lakkad) and his room-mates studying at Northern Illinois University were coming down to new york for a couple of days to experience Big Apple. The fact that I hadn't been around the city a lot motivated me to go there. I left for New Jersey on Friday, 13th May with a friend of mine. We covered 300 miles by road from Penn State to New Jersey in a Ford Mustang, a very popular sports car of my friend. The miles we covered on I-80 weren't eventful, we covered all those miles without a halt.We reached 52nd street in Manhattan at around 8:30pm. From there I took a train to New York penn station and then the NJ transit to newark penn station. I spent 14th may, saturday, at my relative's. On sunday, I caught up with another relative whom I had last seen eons back and we went out to some indian stores to experience "Indianess" in US (sounds ludicrous, i know) . It is quite amazing how I end up meeting a new bunch of relatives each time I visit NJ. That night, I took a train and went to new york. I bunked at another relative's place(yes, another) in Queen's.

Monday was the fun part of this entire trip. I took the subway to New york Penn Station and then took a transfer to Port Authority, 42nd street, New York. I walked upto 46th street and 12th avenue, which was my first stop of the tour, the Intrepid Sea and Air Museum. I caught up with my friends there. We had purchased the New York Pass for a day, trust me, this is the cheapest and the most convenient way to tour NYC as it eliminates waiting in lines for tickets. The sea and air museum houses some of the concords, submarines, ships and war artillery used during world war II. We enjoyed a 3-D simulation ride in one of the concorde, but apart from that, there is nothing very spectacular about his museum especially if aren't a big fan of planes and stuff. Due to time constraints, we decided to skip going into the submarine.
Next stop, Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Tussaud's museum is located in New York, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, London and Hong-kong. I was really excited to see so many celebrities in "real". No words can describe the fine artistry behind every wax model. Every crease and hair seemed to be taken care of. I brushed into celebrities, the likes of which included George Bush, Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, Mahatma Gandhi, Dalai Lama, Yasser Arafat, Chalie Chaplin, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Jennifer Aniston, Beyonce, J-Lo and many more. The 2 hours spent there were certainly short.

Next stop was NBC studios in 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which has to be the most recognizable address in Manhattan. Photography is strictly prohibited inside the studio. A couple of tour guides showed us around the place. A documentary tracing the inception of this studio was screened. We saw the studio where programs such as Saturday night live, dateline NBC and Nightly news are broadcasted.

After lunch at McDonalds, we arrived at Empire state building, which is now the tallest building in New York. It took us 60 seconds in the elevator to reach the 86th floor of the building, which offered a panoramic view of the entire city. The NYC pass had entitled us to a piece of audio equipment which offered good perspective of what we were seeing. Atop empire state we good an incredible view of downtown manhattan, financial district of NY, brooklyn bridge and hudson river, Central park, rockefeller plaza and statue of liberty.

UN buiding was next in line. We took the famous new york subway to reach the headquarters of United Nations. By the time we reached there, the building was closed for the day for general public. We had to be contented with taking pictures from outside. Secondly, some construction in front of the bldg meant that the flags of all countries of the world had been removed and perched together elsewhere. The next time I go there, I will make it a point to visit UN building, Central Park and Madision Square Gardens.

My friends had to go elsewhere from here on. On my way back home, I stopped by in Times Square, 42nd Street. This presented a good opportunity to take some good pictures, which you might want to have a look at. Astonishingly, there are 10 cameras placed at Times Square which monitor movement of public. Click here to view them. As a memorabilia, I purchased a couple of T shirts which costed me a fortune. :)

A couple of lines about New york city. This is certainly one of the most fascinating and intriguing cities I have visited. The tall building, the deafening noise of cabs and people, the sight of seeing people from all across the world, the sight of so many people from sub-continent certainly left a lasting impression in my mind. It amazing to see how people are always on the move here, as if they had skates under the sole of their footwear. All in all, a great experience and hope to be there more often in the coming months and years. The US Open in September is certainly one good opportunity !!!

To view pictures at the places mentioned below, click on them:

42nd Street, 7th Avenue... At the Crossroads of the world

Madamme Tussaud's Museum, New York City

Empire State Building

Intrepid Sea and Air Museum

HQ Of United Nations

Corporate America, cricket, movies among others

It's been a while since I posted my previous blog. I haven't mentioned this before, I am currently doing an internship with General Electric Fanuc Automation, in Charlottesville, Virginia. I started out on 23rd May, 2005 and will work with GE until the last week of August. Incidently, Charlottesville was recently voted as the best place to live in America, by Frommer. To read more about this click here. For reasons which I won't divulge, I contest this claim. On the work front, things have been good. I spent the first 3 weeks updating the UL files for various GE Fanuc products. Underwriters' Laboratory (UL) certification is needed for GE products before they can be released in the market for which the files for the products have to be updated with information about every component in the product along with the component number, component rating and the vendor name. These files had not been updated by GE for more than 4 years now, as a result of which a lot of changes had to be made on them. I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed the work as it was fricking monotonous. However, last week I was informed that I would be working on developing a software for GE for which I have started reading up on Visual Basic 6.0. This programming language is similar to C programming, and I am having a good time learning it up.
On the 8th of June, I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. It's a pretty sweet l'll thing, with 1.5GHz Pentium processor, 512MB DDR RAM, 60GB hard disk space, CD and DVD R/W capability. I got a free color printer with this laptop, though I haven't opened the box containing the printer yet, and don't see myself doing so in a while !! As luck would have it, had I waited for a couple of weeks, I would have got the same model for a couple of hundred bucks less.
I feel empowered with a laptop as now I have something to keep me busy in this small town.

Last weekend, I visited New Jersey for the second time in less than a month. This visit was a pure accidental one. A fellow co-op at GE was driving down to NJ to visit his family and I took this as a good opportunity to make a social trip to one of my relative's place which I hadn't visited in a while. The best thing to come out from this trip (apart for the delicious food ofcourse) was that I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The movie was pretty good, however, it din't quite live up to its hype. Cinematography and execution of action sequences were top notch and so was the acting of the lead star casts, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. This pair seem to be making waves in real and reel life. I finally managed to catch up with Ocean's Twelve last night on a DVD from Blockbuster. Movie was good but wasn't any match for its prequel.

The week gone by was a stange one in sports. On the cricket field, Australia suffered 4 consecutive defeats in a week. Ponting laughed off his side's 100 run defeat at the hands of England in the 20-20 fixure, was "embarrassed" and "frustrated" by his team's inability to defend 342 runs in 50 overs against a modest Somerset batting line up. However, no one was prepared for the epochal victory the minnows Bangladesh pulled off against triple world champions Australia at Bristol. For sometime now, critics have been baying for Bangladesh to be stripped off their test status but in the wake of this giant killing act, they might be eating their words. This defeat left the aussies red-faced like never before and the poms revelled in it like never before. In less than 24 hrs of suffering on of the biggest upsets in history of one-day cricket, Australia blew hot and cold before getting Pietersened as they lost the ODI to england by 3 wickets. Every non-australian cricket supporter seemed to have enjoyed seeing aussies get pummeled to submission over the last week. From the look of things, this Australian team seems to be on a decline and age might just be catching up with one of the best teams to have ever walked on the cricket field. All this talk might be premature, but from what we saw this week, things don't bode too well for the kangaroos in the upcoming ashes. Not that anyone is complaining though, because most of the people have for sometime now got tired of aussies trampling over all their opponents. A special mention for that man Kevin Pietersen. From time he bust into the scene against South Africa last winter, he has been on a roll scoring centuries at will. He ability to win matches from hopeless situations with his big powerful hitting might just be a short in the arm for england as they attempt to bring the ashes home after 8 futile attempt.

The US grand prix. this weekend, was embroiled in controversy as 7 out of the 10 teams using Michilen tires pulled out before the race leaving only 6 drivers to compete. Michael Schumacher won one of the most farcial "race" in the history of F1 and catapulted himself and his team in contention for the driver's and constructor's championship. For the record, Indian star Narain Karthikeyan finished at a career high 4th position. This race has left a bad taste in the mouth of the fans and the race's future in America is being speculated by critics.

I still haven't uploaded the blog about my trip to New york last month, but I promise it will be up very soon with the pictures..So long ....
P.S: The controvesy regarding Advani's comments on Jinnah during his Pakistan trip came to a predictable end with his withdrawing his resignation from BJP. Now, how many of us din't expect this.. Things people do to stay in the news.. phew

Jinnahland and Advani's gambit

The furore in the BJP camp over Advani's praise of Jinnah during his recent visit to Jinnah-land has grabbed most of the headlines. Advani for all these years has been carrying the image of anti-Pakistani and is rumored to have been the cheif wrecker of the Agra summit. During his recent visit to Jinnah-land, L.K. Advani pulled off one of the biggest surprises of all time by remarking that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a secular man. Unsurprisingly, this has ruffled the feathers of the Sangh Parivar which resulted in Advani resign from his post as party president. What is surprising thought is that none of the BJP leaders except for the venerable Atal Behari Vajpayee stood by him. Vajpayee rightly remarked that Advani has right to freedom of speech and that Jinnah wanted people of india and jinnah-land to live in peace. If Advani's exit is indeed irrevocable, BJP will be the biggest loser because they would have lost a leader who was capable of keeping the flock together even in tough times.

Advani's adversaries might look at this entire episode as an eyewash in order to score brownie points. Opposition 'leaders' like Lalu Prasad have already barked hoarse. My guess is that majority of the Indians don't identify themselves as hardline Hindus not do they patronize the Sangh Parivar, and thus Advani has risen in their esteem. BJP has been embroiled in one crisis after another ever since their surprising Lok Sabha debacle, and this move will surely help their cause. Advani has not only redeemed himself in the eye of Pakistanis but also risen in the eye of the public.

It is highly possible that all this is hogwash and done for political gains and that Advani will withdraw his resignation and come back to BJP, thereby enabling it to get a large share of mouslem votes in the next election.

On the other hand, Advani might be contrite for his hardline stand all these years and that would have prompted him to make this move, in which case I give him two-thumbs up !!

....and it keeps getting shorter

I just read a news article which talked about Ram Gopal Verma's next film release titled 'D' !!! At first, I thought that the author of the article was using an acronym for a long name, but soon realised that the title of the film indeed is 'D'. In this day and age when Hindi film titles are getting longer and longer, the name 'D' arouses curiosity. If nothing, people are going to try to find out what the film is about. When they realise it is a Ram Gopal Verma production and is about underworld, they will want to watch it. I am already queing up to watch this movie. The film is rumored to be based on the life of underworld kingpin Dawood Ibrahim. There were reports that Ram Gopal Verma received threatening phone calls from Chotta Rajan, arch rival of Dawood. Chotta is supposed to have demanded a special screening of the movie to ascertain that Dawood wasn't being glorified in the movie. At this rate, the underworld dons will soon take over censorship of hindi movies.
RGV, however, vehemently denied media reports about the phone call, saying he never accepts calls from unknown numbers. All this certainly provides publicity to the movie. Having been an ardent follower of hindi movies over the years, it doesn't surprise me anymore how the cast and crew will go to any length to entire public interest in their movie just before its release. Girlfriend, EK Choti se love story are just some examples.
Anyways, I am looking forward to watching 'D'. If the movie is half as good as his earlier chart-busters 'Company' and 'Satya', it will be worth a watch.

How top IT companies got their names

I decided to give my blogspot a technical feel, which is what has actuated me to blog the article below. You bet I had to do a lot of research to come up with this blog !!


Adobe came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.

Apache - It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server -- thus, the name Apache

Apple Computers - Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock.

CISCO – It’s not an acronym but the short for San Francisco.

Google - the name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page resented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

HP - Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

Intel - Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company 'Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

Lotus (Notes) - Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Microsoft - coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.

Motorola - Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

ORACLE - Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). Acronym for: One Real Asshole Called Larry Ellison?

Red Hat - Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

SAP - "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applications/Projects' group of IBM.

Sony - from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

SUN - founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym for Stanford University Network.

Xerox - The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say dry' (as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.

Yahoo! - the word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels'. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.