Week ends on weekend

I know what the hell does that title mean..but if you were in my position you would have appreciated the weekends...So I worked the whole week on my proposal only to have it very ruthlessly dissected by my advisor. I almost lost the hope to continue my work on my PhD and decided that it was time for a break..Evening 6pm me, Manas and Ranjana are off to DC...Reached DC by 12.30pm after taking a wrong exit on I-66. eventful..

Saturday..we bought our first digital SLR--Canon EOS Rebel--what a beauty..and so easy to grip contours I must say..the silver body looks attractive....we went to an eventful trip along Skyline drive..to capture the Fall colours of 2007. I recommend everyone to drive along Skyline and see the Fall colors..It's too good a drive to miss..
Sunday was time for some unusual stuff like Raspberry picking. That was topped off with Dosas and Ada from Madras Palace. and ya it was time to get back to BB..with a very very heavy heart I started driving back to BB..I hope I can finish soon and move away from BB.

New Mac software--WOW...!!!

I have noticed that trivial and very random discussions with my roomies lead to very definite destinations. Thanks to my roomie..the "Mac-man-as-ten-Garu" (I am not very sure if this is a very clever misnomer for him--MT for short), I ended up on the rite side of the world when I bought a Mac after a disastrous stint with my dual boot Windows and Fedora Compaq lappy.
I feel so complete using one machine for all my programming, writing reports, thesis, etc. and ya it's such a cool machine. So on one random dinner time, MT mentioned the usage of a better PDF viewer--Skim. Skim is such a lightweight PDF reader and is based on the fact that you can make your comments while reading papers, post stickies, etc. I think coming from the creators of Bibdesk, this is a very handy utility for all graduate students (Sorry for the bias towards graduate students). Neways I was also introduced to TextMate and what can I say about it?? This is truly the best app that can take care of all your text writing tasks such as programming in a host of languages, Latex (this is my fav), etc. Although it's not free you can always try it out for a month and then buy the product for about 30 bucks or so. And ya it's worth the investment. BTW I am not the DEVELOPER of these products and I am NOT in anyway connected to them. After using them both, I am like a kid playing with newly found toys(oops software on my Macbook)
So what are you Mac users waiting for?? Go ahead and try them out..!!!!

Academic life huh....

Academic life takes its toll on every individual. Now yours truly has been pursuing academics for more than 25 years...Wow..that's too much ..!!! The common student starts his/her academic life at the age of three years old and that saga goes on till about 25 or so. I am counting in years of kindergarten, primary, secondary, higher secondary, college, Grad school if any... and ya you reach something near 25....!!! quarter life invested in academics already...Sometimes I wonder is it worth all that effort..most of the techie millionaires made cool products and truck loads of money without even completing their bachelor's degree.

Anyways all the frustration for this blog stemmed from an incident that happened today. Mom happened to ask me a very trivial question (absolutely not trivial for me) " Mone, when will you finish your PhD??" Apparently all my relatives have been asking what I have been upto in the US of A. My parents are concerned about the duration of my PhD, which has been only 4 years to be precise. I got off into a discussion explaining the nuances of a PhD, it's not examination oriented but research oriented...blah blah...research is such a painstaking procedure that follows Murphy's Law....all the wrong things happen on the important demo days..so on and so forth...more blah blah..Finally mom chose to change the topic and that saved me. But how can I convince my mom otherwise that my graduation date is determined by my prof and not me, if he's happy I graduate...

Anyways life's like that..incidents like this motivate you to get closer to your preferred graduation deadline...!!!!

PS: I need to have a drink to drown my woes of spending three years doing my PhD, now that mom reminded me about it...and ya what a nice reason to have a drink on Tuesday...!!!!