Mystery Spot and Monterey Bay

This was my first weekend in US during this visit. I went for some shopping in the morning and stocked groceries (Ready-to-eat meal packets) in the fridge. I also got a battery charger and rechargeable batteries but I soon found out that the charger works for 100 volts only. I will have to go back and return it tomorrow.

Goti and his friends picked me up from my hotel and we decided to head towards a place called Mystery Spot. The place was a mystery to me so we took directions from google maps and headed towards our destination. Jason was driving a car in US for the first time so everyone was contributing to his driving by giving him tips about lane selection and indicator and what not. But it was fun :-)

We had a light lunch at a nearby McDonald's Restaurant and reached Mystery Spot (safely). I won't be posting anything about the place because it will ruin all the fun :-). Instead I will let you people 'surf' the net and find out for yourself. All I can say is, believe it or not, what they are saying is true. I have seen and felt it, I have photographs and even 2 videos :-)

I will be posting some photographs on my photoblog soon.

After Mystery Spot we headed towards 17 Mile Drive in Pacific Grove and went into circles at a place 3 times. All three times we took different and bigger route to circle but we were finally able to find the correct way. We had wasted a lot of time in circles so we decided not to go for 17 mile drive and went to Monterey instead. Monterey is a very beautiful city on the coast of Pacific Ocean (bay actually). I will also be posting photographs of Monterey on my photoblog.

Amod (a colleague) is also in US with me and he was very kind to book tickets for Sacramento Kings Vs. San Antonio Spurs basketball match. It is the 4th match between these two teams in playoffs and it will be my 'first' live NBA match.. Hopefully it will be an interesting match. I am told that the 'arco court' in Sacramento is a good place to watch.

About reservations

Almost everybody has an opinion about reservations. I usually don't have any 'opinion' about most of the things/issues. This one is a similar issue.

I am not comfortable with reservations. Yes, that's true, I am not at all 'at home' with all the reservations for SC/ST and OBCs. My colleague called me about two weeks ago asking about any friend who was in IIT from quota, and I didn't have any names in my mind for 5 minutes. I don't categorize my friends by their caste (not entirely true) and I don't think if a person I am working with is eligible for quotas. I consider reservations to be a way of 'discrimination'. While we should be trying to eradicate the caste system, the reservations make sure that caste system is here to stay. I don't like it.

I think we should have reservations. Inspite of what I said in last paragraph, I believe that it would help Indian economy if we have reservations. I don't necessarily agree with the 'caste' based reservations and will be more happy if a 'economic status' based system can be implemented; but I know that unfortunately caste based system is 'still' a 'good enough' approximation. Since its an assumption it would be rather easy for people to point out exceptions (I know that there are a LOT of them). But its 'one of the best approximations'.

In the long run it will help India if 'all its classes' are equally educated. I may see overall quality of 'output' decrease for some time. I don't know if it will continue for 50 years or 100 or more/less. But 'eventually' we will have a more balanced system in place.

I think that all backward classes can still profit from reservations.

Do I make any sense? I am not going to read it again :-P

I will be travelling to US tonight and will be in Bay Area for around 5 weeks.

I hope to visit some good places over the coming weekends and will be posting the photos soon.

Appul has be posting some really good sher on his blog. Go read.

I also took the quiz taken by Vivek. What a waste of time..

I got tie breaker :-) And then I got these results.

Modernist 94% Materialist 94% Existentialist 81% Fundamentalist 63% Postmodernist 44% Cultural Creative 44% Idealist 31% Romanticist 19% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Google and Da Vinci Code

It's a pity that these guys still don't include India as a big market for their contest/quest. Same for iTunes, they have presence all over the world except India.

My name is Anthony Gonzalves

Hilarious lyrics :

You know the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the hemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own bombasity.

Maybe Varun can get his tagline from this one.

Webaroo vs. Google Gdrive

Recently read the article about launch of Webaroo's product/service. Now this reminds me of two of my old posts.

I had written about Gdrive rumours earlier.

Looks like some people are trying to put the whole web in your laptop, desktop or handhelp PDA/smartphone and at the same time other might try to keep a backup of 'all' your data on web... There is only so much you can do with every increasing but always scarce bandwidth..

My other post was about Google Cache. Now Webaroo is essentially trying to sell a cache and they have gone several steps forward by allowing the user to download the cache. Really cool stuff !

Now that makes me think, how soon will people start using 'Google Desktop' to start searching there Webaroo "web packs". I haven't used Webaroo's offering because it is not yet available for Mac. Gera if you read this entry by mistake, can you please answer these questions..

1. How soon (if ever) do you plan to make a Mac version?
2. Have you guys done anything to 'prevent' google to write a plug-in so that your web packs are searchable by Google Desktop?

My wingmate Teja has created two videos from various photos of their batch taken over last four years. View them here and here.

I will I could get similar videos for my batch. Technology has really improved (and has become commonplace) in last couple of years :)

I have been keeping Discovery of India by Nehru on hold for a long time. I would continue to do so. I plan to finish a technical book first and I have already started reading Isaac Asimov, The complete stories, Volume 1.

IATCSv1 is a collection of his short stories and would take me a really long time to finish. From the foreword :

"There'll be more volumes, but begin by reading this one. You will make an old man very
happy, you know." - Isaac Asimov (March 1990).

Alcatel and Lucent's Merger should be an interesting thing to watch out for. Specially keeping in mind L.N. Mittal's Arcelor takeover bid where he had announced 'no job cuts'. Compared to that - Alcatel and Lucent are already announcing nearly 9000 job cuts.

I am wondering how India Development Centers of these companies would be affected by this move. The article also mentions more possible acquisitions and mergers because of this deal. Lets see.

In 1997 when Apple was down, Wired came up with 101 ways to save Apple

It makes an interesting read, specially if you have followed a bit of recent apple history you would think Apple has adopted these suggestions as corporate strategy and have stuck to it.