Life before the Quals

I am going through what I would call a pre-qualifier phase. Last semester, I thought that I will study in December and then in December it was postponed for spring and now when there is less than a month remaining for the exam, I finally feel the heat. However, this is a strange phase. There is nothing actually dramatically unusual. It’s not that I am not getting enough sleep or not watching enough movies for that matter, but the difference is that there is always this little prick in the back of my mind that I might just fail in the quals on 13th. Yes, it is scheduled on Friday the 13th of April. Is that just a coincidence? Time will tell!

That date has occupied an eminent position in all pending plans. Where should I go for a holiday in summers … mmmm, well let’s decide after 13th; what are the things I need to for the research, to be decided after 13th …. My roomies are going for a trip to LA and LV, can I go with them …. nopes, not before 13th ….you should go to the gym everyday … yeah, I know but I have to study before 13th …. Hey, what’s up dude? How are things going? … It’s fine right now but I don’t know what’s gonna happen on 13th … It reminds me of the first few dialogues in ‘Y2K othoba sex krome asiteche” where the guy proposes a girl over the phone and the girl says that she can’t answer till the exams are over … silly crap!

It’s a post after quite some time on my blog and when will there be the next post? … Well, you know the answer!

Apple Cares

I had bought a 20GB refurbished ipod for $100 in December; a pretty good deal, the only glitch was that it was ‘refurbished‘. Some people advised me against it but anyway I went ahead and bought it because the warranty period was the same as that of a new one.
About a month back, I started having problems with it. Some songs won’t play or pause or stop in-between. Finally around two weeks back, it just stopped working. I tried resetting, restoring, reinstalling whatever I could but eventually I gave up. On start up, it was showing an icon suggesting hardware failure. I thought I should have listened to the people advising me against a refurbished ipod. My only faith was in the warranty. So I booked an appointment with the genius bar of an apple store in downtown. You can do it from apple.com/retail for an appointment on the same day. Advanced booking can be done only by procare members. I arrived for the appointment 2 minutes late. Luckily, the lady in front had taken more than the stipulated time and I didn’t have to miss my turn. I went to the ipod bar, told about my problem and the person immediately confirmed that it was a hardware failure. He checked whether I was within warranty period (from their database, no need to carry your proof unless there is a mistake in their database) and replaced my ipod with a functioning one. The whole process took less than 5 minutes. I am impressed with the customer care of apple.

Snow! We had enough!

It’s over. The craze for snow. I remember the first day it snowed and the excitement in people who had witnessed it for the first time. Yours truly was not that big an enthusiast to play with snowballs, dancing in the snow or taking a snap of the name written on snow and putting it up on the orkut profile, but it’s a fact that he was thrilled to see the snowed neighborhood nonetheless. However the zeal of the desi public has finally subsided and for good reason. Who likes to be out in a weather of -30C with the feet trapped in inches-deep show waiting for the bus which doesn’t show up in time! In addition, if you have ever slipped and fell on your back, while trying to move faster on the snow than you should, the snow-god had to bear the worst swearing ever invented by the people on earth. The welcome exclamations of “Wow! It’s snowing!” has been replaced with the cursing ones “WTF! It’s snowing again!”

Life as we know it

It’s going very normal. Bit of problems here and there but overall cruising through. I received an email from the graduate committee chairman today. Finally, the switching of advisors is officially accepted. Good way to start a Sunday morning. End of an episode in my life, I suppose; I hope. Have two exams next week, one on 14th Feb, one on the day after; what a coincidence. Getting along with a lovely relationship with the profs :D I hate that. Got some work in the lab too, the ‘fun’ days are over as they say it. I have actually heard that term quite a few times in my last job. Thankfully the fun days were never actually over until I, eventually, decided to end it. The qualifiers are in April. We have to take the exams in two areas, I have chosen controls and solid-state. I wish there was something with electrical circuits excluding computer architecture. Unfortunately that is not the case and I have to go by that. It’s a written exam and should not be TOO tough, only thing is that I need to study because I literally know nothing about them. But you know the typical engineering attitude!! No work till the deadline is due tomorrow. All the best to me …

Chilly Figures

This is what weather.com has to say about our area -
"-18°C

Feels Like
-28°C"

This is continuing for quite some time now and no hope of respite in near future.
The weather sucks.

I have heard that the lake has frozen. In summer, I had plans to visit the frozen lake. Now .... no way