Bird Poop!!!

Mostly Humorous.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

OK, this post was supposed to be here on Christmas day. But for some reason I had been really busy, and consequently really lazy on the weekends, so haven't been blogging much lately.

Anyway, moving on. I had been thinking of giving Richie a Christmas gift, but couldn't really decide what to get for her. I could have bought something for her, but this time I wanted to do something more "personal". So the best thing which came to my mind was to make her a nice drawing, something Christmas-sy. And what could be better than the famous and lovable poster of movie Its A Wonderful Life. So, I did that :-



Its does looks good, I got it all laminated and presented it to her, and she loved it. That blank area at the top left-hand corner was ideal to write a small message, but that ain't for public viewing. ;)

Geeky Quotes. Vol - II

Here is another bunch of geek quotes, a follow up from previous post. My favorite quotes here are those in green.

  • A printer consists of three main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light.
  • A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
  • To go forward, you must backup.
  • I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.
  • My software never has bugs. It just develops random features.
  • Better to be a geek than an idiot.
  • Windows isn't a virus, viruses do something.
  • Be nice to geeks when you're in school, you might end-up working for one when you grow-up.
  • Difference between a virus and windows ? Viruses rarely fail.
  • Evolution is God's way of issuing upgrades.
  • The only problem with troubleshooting is that sometimes trouble shoots back.
  • The box said 'Required Windows 95 or better'. So, I installed LINUX.
  • Mac users swear by their Mac,
    PC users swear at their PC.
  • Real men don't use backups, they post their stuff on a public ftp server and let the rest of the world make copies.
  • Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
  • If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime."
  • I had a fortune cookie the other day and it said: 'Outlook not so good'. I said: 'Sure, but Microsoft ships it anyway.
  • The term reboot comes from the middle age (before computers). Horses who stopped in mid-stride required a boot to the rear to start again. Thus the term to rear-boot, later abbreviated into reboot."
  • Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code.

The Colored Ones!

Lonely
Hmm...I remember spending a few lonely evenings by looking at the moon from my terrace. ;)
Well, I started to draw this picture above long ago, say in my eight grade i.e. 2006, but then never got a chance to finish it. Around sometime in November last year, while looking through old books, I found this unfinished pic tucked away neatly. Well, I thought I might as well finish it, but I am not really good with oil pastels, specially when I use them after a gap of four years! 

Peeping Sun
Poster colors aren't my thing at all; in fact I used them first and only time while drawing this one in June last year. But hey, it doesn't look too bad! Also, I had stolen these colors from my brother, who ain't really keen on drawing anyway. But I really prefer my pencil-shading thing over these colored stuff. Black & White drawings are kinda 'classic', aren't they?

Long Live the King and the Queen!

Look what's happening in the neighborhood. The little, quiet, hilly yet extremely peaceful and and happy Kingdom of Bhutan has got a new queen!!! Yes that's right, the highly popular king of Bhutan got married yesterday to his fiancee Jetsun Pema. Its really like a fairy tale wediing, Long-long-ago-in-a-land-far-far-away sort of thing. And with democracy displacing the monarchy all over the world, it might as well be last such occasion.
And let's not overlook the fact that the new Queen is rather cute!!! Yes, she is the second woman at a high post in government (well she is the queen, the highest) in Asia who has made it to this category, the first being Pakistan's current Foreign minister. And all we got here in India are ugly old politicians, the youngest of whom is over forty years. Can't we have some good-looking leaders here as well???

Ah well, here are some of the pics of Their Majesties -


Happy Couple!!! Well, they should be. Bhutan is rated as happiest country in Asia. In fact, its the only country in the world Which measures Gross National Happiness (GNP) of its people. About time other countries do the same.
A few years back the king wanted to turn Bhutan from a absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, but this lead to widespread protests there. Funny, ain't it? Usually its the other way round. But then, since that time king had absolute powers, he decided to go against the wishes of the people and made Bhutan a constitutional monarchy, thereby ending his own absolute powers. Now the country has a parliament and a prime minister. That time, the king had famously said "Better to end the monarchy from above before its ended from below."

No wonder people there love their king. It never hurts to have a charming and wise monarchy at your side, it's like soup for the soul, specially if your queen looks something like this -

Why it keeps happening with me???

Gawd, I don't know why do I always get this unlucky with Richie all the time. Every time I try to get together with her (that is, to ask for an unofficial date), some sort of crap comes up and makes all the plans go flat. Most of the time, its she who cancel things at the last moment. Well, cutting up the preamble, here is today's story-

It started with the usual phone call while commuting to our respective institutions (its an one hour long drive, there need to be something better than traffic jams). She said to me that she would be leaving from her classes at 1pm today, as her brother is going back to college in the afternoon and she would like to see him off. Coincidentally, I too was free today after 12:45 today and suggested that since she would be leaving at almost same time, we can come back together. After all, its a long way back home, and it stinks to be in it for one hour all alone. She agreed at once, and said that it was all very cool.

Now, armed with my so many previous experiences, particularly of her calling off such meet-ups at last minutes, I ask her SPECIFICALLY to be sure that she would be coming, SPECIFICALLY you know. She kinda pinky-swore that she would be definitely coming, no chances of being late or anything. I think I have asked this SPECIFIC question to her around 12 times, till the point of her visible (er.....visible in her voice, you know) irritation. She said that as she had to see-off her brother, she was VERY SPECIFIC that she would be leaving at 01:00pm, no worries there. So far, so good.

Well, I was really looking forward to this meet-up in my particularly boring Chemistry class today, when at around 11:30am my cellphone pinged to to notify me of a text from her. Usually, I rather wait for her texts and calls, but this one made be swore. As, soon as I saw that, I got this instinctive feeling that it bore bad news. Sure enough-
"Once again sorry. I am going to Post Office now, and will be going home from there."
My reply - "Grrr".

Can't things work smoothly anywhere???????

Bullet-time!!!

OMG, its really true, Bullet-time actually works!!! For those who don't know, Bullet time is that thing in some computer games when everything slows down and you get an extra advantage of kicking the bad guys ass. When this sort of thing is on, you can make out almost all details in the game, say the movement of bullets, the slow rotation of arrows, bad guys falling down etc. But this sort of thing has also been claimed to experienced by many people, usually when they suffer an accident or something. They seem to remember every minute detail of whatever happened to them, even how the grass leaves moved when they were falling on the ground (provided they were falling on a grassy sort of ground).

Now I have never experienced any bullet-time experience before, but as they say there is a first time for everything, and that first time was today. What actually happened that I was cutting my fingernails today, which is supposedly a very safe work to do, no chances of accident of any sort. But don't those tiny fingernails which you cut-off sometime fly out in random directions?? And today, one such tiny-weenie nail decided to aim for my left eye, which was not good at all. But even though that fingernail piece flew upwards at a rather high speed, I was able to see its exact rotations, as if everything was going in slow-mo. It was making horizontal rotations, much like a helicopter top wings, and I keep looking at it for almost a full one minute before it hit me, less than a second after which it was released from my original finger nail. (If this sentence didn't make any sense to you, re-read.)

What happened afterward was much quicker. That pointed nail-piece was lodged in my lower eye-lashes. And me, totally understanding the dangers of having any pointer thing poking at my eye at such a close range, carefully moved in front of mirror, and with utmost care, got that thing out.

Who ever thought that there was any potential danger of eye loss while cutting fingernails. I think I should be wearing protective glasses from next time when I cut my nails, just like Jackson used to do in Hannah Montana episodes.

Geeky Quotes. Vol - I

These are a list of Geeky quotes which I collected over internet. Quite funny, and in some cases, quite enlightening.....

  • The Internet: where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents.
  • Some things Man was never meant to know. For everything else, there's Google.
  • unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep"  - my daily unix command list
  • "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." - Robert Firth
  • If Python is executable pseudocode, then perl is executable line noise.
  • The more I C, the less I see.
  • To err is human... to really foul up requires the root password.
  • After Perl everything else is just assembly language.
  • If brute force doesn't solve your problems, then you aren't using enough.
  • Life would be so much easier if we only had the source code.
  • Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who its friends are. (clearly, it doesn't think me as one)
  • COBOL programmers understand why women hate periods. (I am so enlightened!!!)
  • Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.” — Michael Sinz
  • Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips.
  • Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. NO is the answer."   - Erik Naggum
  • SUPERCOMPUTER: what it sounded like before you bought it. 
  • People say Microsoft paid 14M$ for using the Rolling Stones song 'Start me up' in their commercials. This is wrong. Microsoft payed 14M$ only for a part of the song. For instance, they didn't use the line 'You'll make a grown man cry'. (Lol)
  • I'm not anti-social; I'm just not user friendly.
There are too many such quotes to put up in a single entry. So keep a look out for Vol - II.

Mouse Hunt - A Midnight (mis)Adventure

First thing first, this whole incident happened on the midnight of 5th and 6th September, three days ago, but I am only getting time to blog abut it now.

So, this is what actually happened. A very tiny mouse, say about 10 cm long at most (excluding its tail, of course), somehow managed to get into my room and found refuge in my printer. Though it was all very good for mouse, to me it was pure trouble. Seriously, mouse in my printer!!!!! Have to get him out......

It was a little past midnight when I first saw it poking my tail outside my printer. Well, I spent the next hour trying to get it out by all physical means (banging, shaking the printer upside down, kicking, throwing it on the wall etc etc......), but 'twas all in vain. That mouse had found a real nice cozy corner for itself, and didn't look in a mood to leave it anytime soon. However, I recalled that sometime around 2002 or 2003, the Russians were faced with a similar situation when some terrorists had seiged a theater and weren't very intent on coming out. That time, the Russian troops had pumped some sort of toxic gas in the theater to neutralize the threat. Now, I didn't had any toxic gas around to pump in my printer, but I sure had some cockroach-kill spray around. So I tried filling up the insides of printer with that spray, but again the mouse proved too strong for that. Apparently, that spray only worked on cockroaches. Clearly, I needed to increase the "toxicity" of the gas-thing; now I decided to use my brother's new deodorant for this purpose, which, in my opinion, smells like cat's piss. So bang, as soon as I filled the insides of the printer with this thing, the mouse jumped out (directly on me, but that's not important), clearly unable to breathe in there now.

What followed next was a long chase of the mouse by me all over my room, but in the end, the mouse just disappeared! And guess where it was hiding, inside one of my bed-sheet, right on my bed, no wonder I didn't manage to find it in night. Well, I was too tired to chase it again in morning after a 3 hour sleep, so I let it go at that time.......hoping that he will vacate my room on its own in day.
The printer and the mouse. Note that I have sello-taped the scanner part of the printer to prevent it from coming out when I was shaking it upside down.

Now, there was a s live facebook status update to all this, basically an exchange between me and Sarah. I am copy-pasting the status thing here because its too hilarious, but the photo comments are too long to post., better see them directly on Facebook .


A very small mouse has somehow got inside my printer, and I have been trying to get it out for more than one hour now, have tried so many tricks but its not coming out....
"Please come out, please. I need to sleep"

 ·  · Tuesday at 1:13am via mobile


    • Sarah Camille Cherry Oh wow, try peanut butter! They love that.
      Tuesday at 1:20am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar Its 1:30 am here. I have no idea where butter is in the kitchen (must be in fridge though) but the mouse is like too sacred to think about eating now. Tell me something brutal and direct.
      Tuesday at 1:26am · 

    • Sarah Camille Cherry Um, take the cover off the printer & shake him out?
      Tuesday at 1:30am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar Enough. I am going the Russian way. Fill up the infected area with poisonous gas. Now since I don't have that in hand, I am gonna use this cockroach kill spray to neutralize the threat.
      Tuesday at 1:33am · 

    • Sarah Camille Cherry Yikes! Cover your own face, that's going to stink!
      Tuesday at 1:34am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar I almost took my printer apart to take it out. But he got himself hidden in an almost sealed off sort of part of printer. Only way to get it out of there is to break it, or to go the Russian's way.
      Tuesday at 1:35am · 

    • Sarah Camille Cherry Silly mouse.
      Tuesday at 1:36am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar I posted a pic of it, on my wall. And blimey, Russian methods do work. Last time they had pumped this gas to evict terrorists from a theatre hostage situation, remember.
      Tuesday at 1:46am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar If only I can get a clear shot on its face! This spray can kill humans when inhaled, and you are a mouse.
      Tuesday at 1:51am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar A little change in plan. I better use my brother's deodorant instead of cockroach-kill spray. I can fill that small area of printer totally with this. And trust me, this thing smells like cat's piss. Poor mouse have got no chance. A real nerve gas attack for him.
      Tuesday at 1:58am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar Eeeep! it jumped out on me!
      Tuesday at 2:03am ·  ·  1 person

    • Sarah Camille Cherry Laughing out loud!! Sorry, I have to!
      Tuesday at 2:07am ·  ·  1 person

    • Himanshu Shekhar Ok, I shouldn't have shouted out like a four year old girl. But that jumping thing was unexpected.
      Tuesday at 2:15am ·  ·  1 person

    • Sarah Camille Cherry What would you do if you were in the mouse's predicament? Jumping on the human was actually pretty brave! Haha :)
      Tuesday at 2:19am ·  ·  1 person

    • Himanshu Shekhar Maybe he wasn't looking where he was jumping off too. So he practically assaulted me, now I have got a legal right to attack it lol;)
      Tuesday at 2:28am · 

    • Sarah Camille Cherry Hilarious ;p
      Tuesday at 2:34am · 

    • Himanshu Shekhar Dear mouse, you are guilty of trespassing, home invasion, deliberate assault and evading arrest. Surrender now, or face the consequences.
      Tuesday at 2:37am ·  ·  1 person

    • Sarah Camille Cherry Never have I heard a list of charges like that for a mouse! What a dangerous rascal. I think I like him, lol :)
      Tuesday at 2:47am ·