Guitar Shred Show - Mr.Fastfinger

The power of flash animation is exploited at the Guitar Shred Show website. Fun and hilarious! Check it out.

Windows Vista taking shape

Not very often that you see Windows posts from me but here's one. This is a screen from the latest build of Windows Vista which seems to be shaping up rather nicely - the screen shown here appears to be their answer to Exposé. There's more at Paul Thurrott's Windows Vista Center. I like the UI shown in these screens, about time that M$ caught up with Apple and even Linux. Definitely the right direction for Windows.

A star birthday (no, that's not Shahrukh's birthday!) ...

I'm off to the temple here in Livermore for a visit. It's my 'star' birthday if you know that means. The americans have no clue of course, but I've started noticing that even my indian friends are kind of vague about the whole thing. Has the whole star/local calendar birthday concept fallen out of vogue? We still celebrate festivals based on the tamil calendar - festivals like Deepavali, Tamil New Year, Pongal etc. My cousin stayed over at my parents' last night and my mother tells me she had to explain to him what a 'star' birthday is! I found myself in the same position with my indian friends at work. I don't think App's family pays much heed to the tamil birthday either, so is it just my family?

Tamil birthdays were never as 'special' as the so called 'real' birthdays. Kids have always celebrated their birthdays based on the English (what I call it anyway) calendar. However, my family has always celebrated the tamil calendar birthday too, to a lesser extent for sure - no new clothes or birthday cake or sweets for everyone but I get wished and we pray / go to the temple. Most times, my mother would make some small sweet to appease my sweet tooth too! The day is called the star birthday because it falls on the day when your star (the star that was observed on the day you were born) is observed in the current month. It occurs more or less around the same period as the English birthday, differing by days or weeks. In my case this year, it falls 18 days after Dec 1st which is the furthest I remember it being. I'll stop my pointless rambling here but I just felt like writing a bit to say that I think a star birthday adds another special day to one's year and I would definitely want my kids to have the same affinity I have for this 'insignificant' day :)

Holidays are around the corner

There's just about a week of work to go before my 10 day break and the holiday season is in full swing. It's the time of the year to eat, drink and make merry, which translates to the time of the year when we have more parties than the rest of the year combined. Last night I accompanied Darrell to Wente's holiday party which was a lot of fun. The party was actually at Murrieta's Well which is part of Wente but makes fewer and more pricey wines. The location and facility was wonderful, you can find more pictures here. I loved their Zarzuela and would definitely like to taste there sometime.
Last week we had my company's holiday party in San Ramon which was a quiet affair and my ex-CEO's party at his house at the Blackhawk Club in Danville which was quite an indulgence. You can imagine that it is quite hard to try and lose weight in times like these, I would be content to cap it where it is right now till I tide over the season.
App is enjoying some exclusive oranges in Florida, thanks to her work. She will be spending this weekend with her sister's family which will be great because she's been dying to see her niece (Rachna) again!
For my part, I am off to Costco this evening to pick some food for (guess) tomorrow's holiday party at work. Of course, sunday is the party at Stephen and Rachael's!! Ah, the hard life :)

National Public Toilet Map

Hahaha! Check out Australia's National Public Toilet Map. It's the first time I have seen anything like it. You can use the website not just to find toilets, but they actually have a newsletter where you can be alerted of new toilets and you can use their trip planner which will identify public toilets along your route.

Unless you plan in advance, I can't think of the website being terribly useful if you need to go in a hurry! ;)

Nice view of Kirkwood

view of village
Originally uploaded by Windwil.

I found this pic of Kirkwood on Flickr. Just to give you guys an idea of what it's like. The village is down there near the center. This appears to be taken from one of the high runs. :)

Wood family vineyards

Wood family vineyard
Originally uploaded by Jillako.

Here's a picture I took this past weekend when we were in Livermore for "Holidays in the Vineyards". This is at Wood Family Vineyards, one of the most picturesque little wineries in Livermore. There are a couple more pics at Flickr.

Damn brownies

I love chocolate. In fact, I love most things made from Cocoa. Especially the sweet stuff. Chocolate is good, Cadbury's chocolate is better. Dairy Milk chocolate is good, Dairy Milk with fruits and nuts is better. So much better that I couldn't resist a few blocks of it yesterday at lunch. Ever try dark chocolate? The taste grows on you. Try the Belgian dark chocolate from Trader Joe's? Umm, so good. We had some with port last night. It was fine port too, from Cedar Mountain in Livermore. Nice complex flavours, subtle sweetness. Kind of like the dark chocolate that Darrell opened last night. That stuff was great too. Did I mention I love chocolate?

Do you like brownies? How about soft double chocolate brownies? They taste great, I've got a box of them sitting beside me at work. I thought I'd share them with my colleagues at work, they must be on a diet or something because they say the brownies taste great but no one seems to be eating them. These brownies look like they want to be eaten! I swear they're begging me to eat them. I'm wearing headphones just so I can't hear them.

I'm trying to resist temptation. Maybe I should think about the fact that I could lose about 6 kgs. I should focus on how hard those 6 kgs feel everytime I fall down when snowboarding. Yeah, it's 3 days since I've been snowboarding and the body is finally limping back to normal. The others tell me it only gets worse. If 28 feels like this, the body is going to complain a lot more when I'm older. Being leaner might help with boarding; it would also help me use the section of my wardrobe with clothes that I don't fit into anymore!!

Those damn brownies!! Someone eat them up already!!

Gotta focus.. on work.. anything but chocolate.. drink water to fill up stomach.. don't look to the left.. must resist.. no brownies...

And I'm baaack!!

Yes, the site is back up after a brief hiatus. I mailed the two of you that actually read here about it so I know you're back!! ;)
Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes today, it was nice to hear from everyone!
Congrats to Arjun who finally quit his job that he'd beeen wanting to leave for a bit. Of course, congrats to App too who has finally quit her job. These 2 are testament to the fact that working from home is not for everyone!
It's raining hard here so we are mostly at home. That also means it is snowing in Lake Tahoe so I'm looking forward to hitting the slopes soon. Not much else by way of updates right now, till later...