. : : Valar Morghulis : : .

Dealing With Indians

One of the few great things about living on the campus here is that you can tell off all the assholes that infest the place. Today a guy was testing out deodorants in the supermarket, right next to a board that warned that none of the cans were to be used for testing. I pointed out this fact to him loudly, gesturing at the sign. The asshole mumbled “I know…” and moved off (only to repeat the same thing a few minutes later and get scolded by a store employee this time). The point is, he had to take the insult and fuck off or he’d have to deal with the HR department the next day*.

Similarly there are other assholes that play music on their cellphones inside the classroom with no regard for other people occupying the place. I can insult them all I want without regard for what they’ll think or do and they have no choice but to take the abuse, having violated an explicit rule**. Same goes for morons using the drinking water glasses for coffee/tea, walking around the campus with tinny music blaring from their cellphones, cutting queues, passing food tokens to people they know further up the line… the list goes on.

*If he starts to argue I can simply take down his name and send HR a nice email about him and they’ll take care of him.
**The rule is: “Don’t play your fucking music in the fucking classroom, you fucktard.” Only in more polite terms.

Foodsick

After almost three months of living in the campus here, I am thoroughly bored of the food from the food courts. It’s always the same old stuff with no significant changes to the base item. I’m so tired sick of the same old rice and chappati items that sandwiches from Cafe Coffee Day and subs from Subway are much more appealing, even though they are double of triple the cost of a standard meal. I used to get pizza from Dominos now and then but stopped because pizza in India is ridiculously overpriced for some reason.

One thing that never seems to get old are Subway’s salads and subs. I’ve developed a(n) (un)healthy fascination for the chicken teriyaki sub, mostly because the meat is dry, and I feel I could eat that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. For variety there is also chicken seekh (whatever that is) and the more expensive lamb meats. (Here’s a tip: Ask for your meat to be finely chopped or you’ll end up with large slices of meat hanging out of your mouth when you take a bite.)

My backup food, when I’m feeling too lazy to leave my room and travel to one of the food courts, is Wai Wai noodles (the chicken version, obviously; vegetable is inedible) supplemented by biscuits and other processed stuff along with some bread (if the damn Mallus at the supermarket feel like stocking it). There’s also a bottle of ‘Chyawanprash’ that I’m trying to force myself to eat (with little success) and a few packs of Fox’s candies and mints.

If the situation continues, I will have to travel to the city to find some food but that’s such a bother. The bike parking area is about a kilometer away from my room.

Living With A Netbook

Recently I had the opportunity to take over my friend’s laptop for a few days while he was away on vacation. The differences between my netbook (I have a ASUS EeePc 1000H) and the laptop (some Dell model) were readily apparent.

The laptop had a huge screen and had a decent amount of computing power which made it good for playing some slightly old games at low to medium settings. The large screen was definitely the main plus. The problem was that the laptop completely failed as a mobile device. It was huge and even though it was not that heavy it was definitely not light enough to place on your lap. It was more like a movable desktop PC that you could move from one desk to another once in a while. The left side of the laptop near the exhaust vent also got uncomfortably warm. Packed in its bag with the power cable it was definitely a pain to lug around due to the weight.

In comparison, the small form factor and the weight of my EeePc is an invitation to place it in various configurations on your lap. I can carry it around like a large book easily in the awesome slip case that ASUS provided and I don’t even need to pack the power adapter due to the battery life. In contrast carrying around the other laptop was a pain since I had to take it in the padded laptop bag and also had to take the power cable if I wanted to run it for more than a couple of hours. The main problem is that the screen of the netbook is small and that makes watching movies not very enjoyable. Additionally, it is completely unsuited for running any game due to the inexpensive nature of the device. What is it good for is reading text (I’ve read 5 or 6 novels on it so far), comics, anime (since screen size and quality are not an issue) and connecting to the internet. I also play some old games like Counter Strike Condition Zero.

Now I’m glad that I bought the netbook instead of an expensive ‘performance’ laptop. Sure, I miss playing the latest games but I’d rather wait a few months and play those games at maximum settings on a powerful desktop than shell out cash for an expensive laptop that won’t even run the latest games at maximum settings for the obscene price I’d be paying for it. I’d rather have my EeePc and use the Rs. 30K I saved to buy a desktop when my geographical position stabilises. Then, my desktop would be the gaming and entertainment machine while the netbook would be the device I would take with me when I was going outside or when I wanted to settle down in a quiet corner and read something in peace or bother people who were unfortunate enough to be on instant messenger at that time.

Enter At Your Own Peril…

…past the vaulted door where impossible things may happen that the world has never seen before…

Age of Retards

Today I met a guy who was convinced Age of Empires was a realistic battle simulation.

This was his argument:

A Chinese swordsman unit can hit five times during which a Teutonic knight can hit two times. They have even implemented these calculations in the game!

Dumbass.

Anime… Sun TV… What?!

It’s a sad day when The Scene has to source material from Sun TV.

http://www.live-evil.org/archives/2009/05/23/haruhi-s2-ep-01-hq-release

Free Realms Is Out!

Sony’s Free Realms is finally out of beta! You should definitely try it. It’s a casual MMO for all ages with a whole lot of social networking features thrown in.

Sign up and feel free to pick any server cause you can move around later. See ya in game!

Buy This Bag

I’m selling this awesome Reebok bag:

It’s brand new and in its original packaging. MRP is Rs. 1500 but you can have it for Rs. 1000 but no lower.

Also for sale:

GeForce 7300GT AGP (my trusty card, not needed anymore) – Rs. 2000
500 GB Western Digital external hard disk (20 days old, bill included) – Rs. 6000

Studying, For Real

I expected studying to be the last thing I’d do with this netbook. A curious turn of events led to this situation. Well, it’s not like it’s a gaming machine anyway. I’m playing Final Fantasy 6 on it! When we get some free time we’re going to have a CS game with the few laptops we have. Except that I didn’t think of buying a mouse and now I need one. I tried playing with the trackpad and you can guess how that would have gone. There’s a big freaking LCD TV in my room. Too bad it has only S-Video and HDMI inputs and I don’t have outputs for either. Also, my GeForcee 7300 GT AGP is for sale. It’s my card that I don’t need anymore now that I’m not using my desktop. There’s still warranty time left and I need the money to buy a EVDO modem so help me out here! Edit: The TV does have a video port hidden at the back. Woohoo! Still stuck in my room though. Hopefully I get a ticket on tomorrow’s train at least.