I finished reading "Dragons of Summer Flame", one of the books in Dragonlance series. Bit of extreme fantasy, I think. I like fantasy stories,but this didn't have even a wee bit of logic in it. Random events kept happening all along. It seemed like the authors didn't know what do with
all the characters. Anyways, I managed to finish it because it was a easy read and didn't take that long.

Next week, I am off to Bay area with some of my group members to attend Hotchips. I am staying there for the weekend. My taste buds have already started to anticipate some authentic south indian food at Saravana Bhavan.

I had been wanting to do something about my resume for sometime, it looked so unprofessional. So I copied some script from the net and made a more maintainable form of my resume. From a single Latex file,the HTML, PDF and text form of my resume get generated. Pretty cool.


I went camping to Michigan's upper peninsula. The campsite was pretty domesticated, but still I enjoyed sleeping under the stars for a night. We visited walked along the shores of one of the Great Lakes,visited St. Ignace downtown and went to Tahquamenon falls. Overall, a refreshing break.

Fank, Rajiv and I went to Diary Queen today. We had a rather amusing
(according to me) conversation that veered off into multiple directions.
Here's an approximate version of it..


kvm : You know how many calories an adult requires per day?
rajiv : 2000 maybe...
kvm : (pointing to chocalate malt that rajiv was sucking on)
Well, thats 560 of it.
rajiv : Oh, man!
fank : Hmm.. I wonder how they calculate the food calorie rating.
(All of us wondering..)
rajiv : Maybe they calculate it using the formula E = mc2
kvm : Hmm, what's the unit for energy again? How come its
kgs times metres squared over seconds squared?
fank : Is that right ?
kvm : Well, I don't think Einstein would have invented a formula
in which the units don't match up..
(Laughter. More wondering..)
kvm : What is energy again? Force times what..?
fank : Force time distance..
kvm : So it works out. Energy is force times distance and Force
is mass times acceleration. kgs times (metres over seconds squared) times
metres.
fank : Ah.
rajiv : Ah.
kvm : Ah.
...
fank : Man, in high school I used to remember all these formulas
very well. In fact, formulas more complex than these..
kvm : In high school, my physics teacher used to cut off marks
for not writing correct units for answers.. He would ask "Whats this?
x oranges? x apples? "..
rajiv : We used to do complex problems, right? Like calculating
sine and cosine components of force, and so on..

Well, it went on in some other nerdy directions, that I don't recall
fully. Like I said, It was amusing.

Bad things keep happening to my car. When I turn on the AC or the headlights or the right indicator, the windshield wiper switches on. Really weird.Also, I drove on the freeway today. When I went beyond 60 mph the car started having an eerie vibration. I have never gone faster than 60 mph before, so this is the first time I am noticing it. Maybe I am imagining. Should ask a better driver. Another visit to the mechanic to fix the wiper is adding on to the car's cost. That sucks.


Four of us went rock climbing last weekend. Lot of fun. Thanks to Florent for the pictures.

All avid readers of this diary are complaining about the inactivity.So here goes..

I got a car, a 1993 MAZDA MX-6. I thought it was quite a good deal, but I had to spend more money on it to replace its muffler. Doesn't feel like a good deal anymore. Anyways, if it holds good until I finish my Ph.D, I will be satisfied.


I locked myself out of the car. Left the headlights on, the battery drained,the remote wouldn't open the door, the key wouldn't open the door, and due to an enthusiastic maneuver by Fank, the key broke in half and one half got stuck inside the driver door. I am not blaming him, the key was already flimsy. Anyhow, I got a free tow to the mechanic from AAA, got the half key out, made a new key.


I got a 20 inch flat panel in the office. Pretty cool. I used to have 1024x768 resolution, the 1600x1200 used to hurt my eyes for some reason. I started to try the 1600x1200 on the new monitor, its quite ok now. Maybe my eyesight improved.


Fank blogged about fireflies. I was reminded of a bus journey I had between Chennai and Bangalore. The bus was going through thick vegetation, not a forest exactly, but a stretch of road with no towns. I remember 100s of fireflies near bushes and around trees. It was as if a whole tree was aglow. I see fireflies here, but I never again saw as many in one place.