< Viveks Rant />

up above in clouds !!!

2006-07-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

camp muir climb 034
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

Last weekend I climbed 10,000 ft to Mt. Rainier basecamp. It was freaking gorgeous and spiritual. We were under a cloud until 8000 ft or so and when we broke out of it, views of mt. adams in front was simply breadthtaking.

No doubt this was hardest physical task i have undertaken and I am so proud that we actually reached the base camp. This is the beginning and I shall continue. One day I will do the summit.

Annette Lake hike !!!

2006-05-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

annette lake hike 049
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

We did another hike of this season. Annette lake hike turned out to be a great one. Snow melted water was coming down with a great force. Sorrounding colors resonated with rainforest ambience. We even hit snow towards the end. We couldnt go all the way to summit. We were so not ready for the snow but in all it was a fun trip. Next is memorial day long weekend and I am planning a camping trip with my frens to Olympics National Park including shi shi beach. It should be lot of fun !!!

[Update] Nishant is talking about the hike on his exploremore blog . Note differences in picture quality. Flickr does far better job than msn spaces. Compare pictures he posted on spaces with my pictures on flickr. I think his are compressed more or may be he uploaded lower resolution pictures to save space. Also I couldnt get a link to his particular album in msn spaces as I could do using a tag in flickr. MSN spaces should allow tagging !!!

first hike of the season ..

2006-05-07T21:55:00.000-07:00

twinfalls hike 014
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

This saturday bunch of us decided to finally get out of couch. We decided to do rattle snake lake and hike but when we reached it was raining. no surprises there :)

So we stayed back and did our lunch and waited it out. Then we decided to try out twin falls which is 3 miles east to rattle snake. It turned out to be a beautful hike as you can see in pics.

Seattle is the best place to be in summer. i am sooo waiting for it.

wells fargo customer service !!

2006-04-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

I wonder why all customer service phone calls end up in frustration. I would have a frustration index inbuilt into customer rep s/w which keeps track of the frustration level. This means everytime a customer hangs up, the phone rep will change the level depending on what went wrong. and next time when customer calls back , rep will be ready to treat and greet so as to enhance over all customer satisfaction. would it work ?

solutions aside. I had one such experience just now. All I wanted to know which of the 3 same looking wellsfargo CC links to my HELOC account. I have mortgage with them and so I have a regular visa, and two other credit cards on HELOC account, all differ only in color and account number. These numbers dont link to original account. I understand this is for my security so I called them. After entering my HELOC account number, loan number and SSN multiple times and some wait time I got through a customer rep. He said he cannot help me with my question and would transfer me to the CC dept. He does that and guess what? That dept. working hours are 4am to 7 pm PST and they dint pick up the phone.I dont have their phone number. Yeah.. the CC dept phone number. I will have to repeat this entire process on a weekday during normal hours. I would kill for a direct line. Next time when i call them - can they auto detect my frustration level and treat me better ?

hope and fear !!!

2006-03-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

more and more i live and more i think about it.. more i talk about it with my friends and more i observe... i can zero in "hope and fear". These are the most powerful emotions that drives me and my actions. I would not care about making a general statement here because it doesnt matter to me. I will simply assume this is true for most of us. There must be exceptions and I will keep looking for them. Like pundits who claim they are free soul - free from fear and hope. Well !! It doesnt matter. I am talking about me and my "Id".

There is this spot light. All i have to do is to decide whether i should step into it or not. Once in it I need to perform. I have performed before alot of times but noone was watching. This time I am watching. And I am not sure if the performance is going to succeed or not.

I hope that I take that step and I fear myself that I will.

I Love Hawaii !!!

2006-03-07T16:52:00.000-08:00

hawaii 120
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

I was going through my pics to find a desktop wall paper, when i found this one. All snorkelling memories keep coming back. hawaii keeps coming back ... i need another vacation to hawaii. i wish msft opens an office there (mebbe buy one of those smaller islands) and entire redmond shifts there.

One year down and counting !!!

2006-02-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

Happy marriage anniversary to us. I cannot believe its already one year. Richa thinks it's all too weird and she doesnt understand how and why we got married. She is talking about it here.

It seems yesterday and so close that we decided to get married and everything happened one after another. But one thing is sure. After staying one year with her I know i was right. I was right every time when i reasoned myself into the relationship and to get married. Its an amazing decision to take and to stick with it. It feels like the single most important decision of my life and it was very rightly so.

This is our first anniversary and we dont have a clue what we do at our anniversary. So we are trying to go back in time and date each other. This week we already had two good dates, and one where i completely fumbled and Richa agreed that she wouldnt have picked me if she knew I was so hopeless. I hope I improve on tonite's date.

Here is the original call for marriage. We went through the invitaion and all our marriage pictures. You will enjoy them too. I hope blogger stays around and keep our marriage invitation alive for years to come... !!!

The Sidebar Video !!!

2006-01-23T23:03:00.000-08:00

If you are wondering whats that video doing in the sidebar and if you havent guessed it yet. #3 from the left is someone you might recognize.

here is the scoop on it.

This guy I know (TGIK now) pings me other day about this stupid video on google and asks me if i am the guy in the video. I was ofcourse in complete oblivion of what he was talking about. But it turns out that he was right. Apparently TGHK was looking for hindi songs on google video. You know how google video is promoting content piracy allowing you to upload any copyrighted material. But thats another story. You can watch full length feature film (Bollywood movies) on google video. Yeah .. so he was looking for one such movie that happened to be the song in the video and was tagged with it. They found it and were making fun of the Indian guys in the clip. Then suddenly it dawns on my friend that he knows one of them. I can only imagine how it must have felt like ... man. Your old school days come to haunt you and people around you take videos and post on internet. I look completely stoned in the video.

If you think this is embarrassing then check another one that was created that time. TGIK is frantically dancing in this video here.

[updated]: Sidebar video on google video is here

blogger mingles rss feeds !!!

2006-01-11T17:59:00.000-08:00

blogger1
Originally uploaded by garg_78.

I dont know if you guys have noticed it or not. I am sure you have if you subscribe to blogs from blogspot.com or if you own one. This cant be happening to just me three times in one month.

So this time i have saved it as a picture. Notice the topmost feed of my blog and this aint my blog. This is some Derek's blog who happens to be talking about alot of technology and microsoft. Which I could very well be writing about. He lives in Seattle too. How sneaky is that. Is it some new way of introducing similar blogs
as mine in my own rss feeds ???

First i thought it was my rss reador (i was using sharpreader at that time). Now i am completely hooked to IE 7 reader and it totally rocks. It happens on IE 7 too. Its not just my blog, it happens to some of my other subscriptions too, common thread is each of them served by blogspot.com.

I am sure there is some nasty bug in RSS generating multithreaded server thats lurking out there and hits me once in a while. Let me know if you get this too. btw here is the link to actual post by Derek.

More on IE 7 reader very soon.

back from Maui

2005-10-30T18:00:00.000-08:00

hawaii 079
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

Got back from my long awaited honeymoon .... Maui is a beautiful place. Amazin scenes and blue water.

had loads of fun. !! Every one should visit Hawaii in their life time.

labor day weekend with frens !!!

2005-09-08T22:44:00.000-07:00

laborday05 047
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

wow .. just had an awesome long weeknd. So many ppl came over to Seattle from Austin, Boston and Orlando. My school frens around seattle and from outside got together and all of us became tourists... we did Mt. Rainer, pike place, seattle center(bumbershoot), EMP, belltown and pioneer square nite life, alki beach and best of all - rented a motor boat for couple hours to ride a very chopy Elliot Bay.

On top of little Si.

2005-08-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

DSC01219
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

I have been trying to get to the summit (of any mt.) for sometime. I had a futile attempt sometime back when I with some of my friends tried to hike Mt. Si. That hike is a strenous one totalling 8 miles up and down. U guessed it right .. we couldnt finish it and turned back halfway. That day I decided that i wanted to reach a summit just to know how it feels. So couple of weekends back, when we decided to try our luck again, We chose an easier hike - thats why its called little Mt. Si. This one is around 5 miles up and down and its an easy mountain to hike .. so here we are. Richa and I are very glad we could make it all the way to the top and we hope we continue doing this !!!!

MSN Search loves me !!!

2005-07-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

compare search on my name here at msn and here at google. MSN has first 3 links pointing to me. when google does a mix with other people with the same name. Interestingly google has first link to my Odeo profile. I dint know Odeo is doing that. It has my page that shows my contact and list of podcasts i am downloading. What if i dint want world to know that i've been sub to suicidegirls :)

Mebbe there is an option on Odeo to make it all private .. podcasting have been fun (but thats for another time ) . enjoy msn search .. its getting better and better.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet !!!!

2005-07-18T15:55:00.000-07:00

What a slick way of doing an aggregator + homepage + onestop shop for your needs .. simplicity at its best .. a very kewl use of AJAX. A very small team within Microsoft. Check out start.com.

I have known this link for a while and its being very lowkey .. not creating a lot of buzz.. mebbe intentional. But its not complete yet and have a long list of things to come. I am waiting for opml import so that i can say goodbye to all other aggregators i use (sharpreader & bloglines) .

enjoy a new start !!!

which site is using which server !!!

2005-07-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

very very kewl stats here... i am blogging about this one so as not to lose this link .. i have stopped using bookmarks .. and started using blogmarks .. blogging + bookmarks .. .anyone ?

mebbe i shud use del.icio.us for this one .

Numbers speak for themselves .. note that we have 10 million domain registration already in 2005 and we might easily beat the record of 16 million domain registration in 2000 .. very exciting era for computing. I am thrilled with the air of innovation around and these numbers reaffirm the general excitement. Do you have a domain name yet ?

YAHOO signin trouble !!!

2005-07-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

I have been noticing from a month of so ... yahoo mail login prompts me for the password twice ... now i am almost convinced that I am typing the right password but somehow it rejects it first time. And accepts next time when I type the exact same password. Early on I was ignoring it thinking it was me who is trying to type blazingly fast and missing some keys ... or my keyboard isnt right . But now its reached the boiling point and started to irritate me. I inquired around and found that lot of other people are finding the same thing. Some of them have solutions like - do secure login and it will fix it. But i dont want to click on that secure button ..and i dont want to do any other fix ups. I want to enter my mail box if I type a right password. isnt that the first step ? ... is that so much to ask after so many years of yahoo being around. I even own some yahoo shares :(

Is Yahoo not listening to its customers anymore? Time to sell ?

coca-cola out of order in india !!!

2005-06-30T13:18:00.000-07:00

Rencently i heard the news that University of Michigan is probating coke for its action in India and Columbia. Seems like Coke is on a tight leash in India for the horrible things they did ... 30% more pesticides than acceptable levels - I wonder how much coke i drank when i was in India last time. But thats not all .

According to the site Coca-Cola in India is Guilty of:
Causing Severe Water Shortages for Communities Across India
Polluting Groundwater and Soil Around its Bottling Facilities
Distributing its Toxic Waste as "Fertilizer" to Farmers
Selling Drinks with Extremely High Levels of Pesticides

more about this here. I am impressed by Amit Shrivastava - someone behind the cause.

Playing with Names !!!

2005-06-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

Earlier post i dint know i could simply copy and paste HTML from the app site to add it to the blog. So i had to screen clip using Microsoft Office's OneNote (what a great tool it is - but thats for another post) and save it as jpeg. Then upload to flickr to link it form this blog . Now this one is simply copyin and pasting html instead of going thru this rig :)

(btw if u guessing .. thats my wife's name right there)

your name from flickr

2005-06-24T16:06:00.000-07:00

myname1
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

check out yet another kewl app using Flicr APIs. You can get your own name or any other word at

http://www.metaatem.net/words.php

Solstice Parade !!!!

2005-06-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

DSC01084
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

Check out the pics i have taken at Fremont solstice parade in Seattle. Richa and I joined the parade towards the end so we dint capture alot. Nonetheless it was lot of fun. !!!

my car is for sale !!!!

2005-06-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

DSC01059
Originally uploaded by vgarg.

Recently i have put my car on the market to see how much it can get. Also there is a more sensible reason to it. We have one parking spot but two cars in d'town seattle and parking is freakin' expensive to rent. With all the mortgage payments et al we have decided to get rid of one of them. I love this car and if you want to buy it - you better take care of it. I am sure you will.

check out the more info at my space blog. and enjoy these car pictures here.

keep riding !!!

Creating routes on google map !!!

2005-05-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

Sometime I wonder what's stopping Google to go ahead and give full functionality of Street and Trips on Google Maps.

It cant be technical, I think if you can connect point A to B and B to C in two different maps you can do so in the same map showing routes in different colors. I cant be sure as I dont know the details of finding a route on a map ... may be I should consult someone like Chandu Thota and ask him this question or may be someone on the map point team. Or even better may be someone in google.

I will really appreciate this feature on google or mappoint. Anyone listening there .... ????

moved to Seattle !!!

2005-05-05T22:44:00.000-07:00

We finally moved to Seattle from east side last weekend. I am hoping that we wont complain any more about driving long distances when we have to party. We have bought a condo in belltown so we can pretty much walk down to most of the happening places... including art galleries, famous pike place market,the city library and not to forget night life.

Looking for the first weekend when we hit the street ... watch out Seattle !!!

like'em ?

2005-04-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

It's rather like getting tenure.

My blog meets its map !!!!

2005-04-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

If you are an observer you wud have noticed a map on my side bar showing my location and a count of number of bloggers around where I live.

What a neat idea. Geo code your blog with the help of Chandu Thota. He works for microsoft and his feedmap/blogmap can put your blog on geography.

Get geo coded today !!!!

update on blogtraction !!!

2005-01-11T15:40:00.000-08:00

1. reading too many blog entries continously for hours can mess up with your brain given the amount of info to digest at the same time.
2. I shall divide my one hour of reading blogs into chunks. Mebbe couple of chunks of half an hr each.

my brain is going to blast ... i am going to get some caffeine. spills from recent blogtraction ... i love ipod shuffle .. also new head less mac looks kewl .. i have to give it to apple for their looks. scoble compared to PR .. yahoo desktop search .. core dump.

Will keep the space updated if i successfully quit blogtraction !!@#@$#@!!@

BLOGTRACTION - distraction or attraction?

2005-01-10T17:17:00.000-08:00

Distraction from blogs is what i am calling blogtraction (its fun coining new terms starting with blog - latest fad). I am sure i am not the only one who is devoting more and more time reading blogs. I follow around twenty subscriptions now. I have added them to bloglines so that I can read them from anywhere. And I am coining new terms :)

I use sharpreaded on my desktop and it keeps on running. Anytime it updates new feed, it notifies me and if that catches my attention I can lose upto an hour reading more about the topic. The real problem is that I cannot cut down on other form of entertainment for blogs. I still watch movies. I still watch lot of TV. And I still play XBOX. Thing thats not happening alot lately is reading books. But I still manage to read something if I find interesting (like I read purple cow last week - and guess what. I got it's reference by reading joelonsoftware blog feeds). And last but in no means least, I still have lot of fun hanging out with my girlfren. And blogging is now slowly growing into this personal space. Before this goes too far I am creating some rules for myself as a preventive measure to blogtraction.

1. I am going to devote one and only one hour every day reading my blog entries. Or more if I have absolutely nothing to do.
2. At the time when i am reading my feeds I shall not do anything else.
3. I can devote as much time to write as I like since I am not a regular writer. This should change if I catch Cough Scobleizer Cough (writing 20 posts a day) unless i take up Evangelism.
4. I shall not run my aggregator in real time.

Is it distraction from blogs or attraction towards them?

Beware of blogtraction folks !!!!

PS: howz blogdiction - blog addiction.

2004-12-30T01:47:00.000-08:00

My link blog !!!

2004-12-30T01:18:00.000-08:00

Check out my link blog at msn spaces. MSN spaces is kinda growing on me given its ability to accept emails and the ease of use.

also very soon i am planning a new blog at msdn where i can put my technical thoughts. keep watching the space !!!

2004-12-30T00:10:00.000-08:00

Gondola rides at The venetian

2004-12-30T00:09:00.000-08:00

Venetian Celing at casino entrance

2004-12-30T00:06:00.000-08:00

Richa is trying a mask at The Venetian

Vegas Rocks !!!

2004-12-29T23:10:00.000-08:00

I had my first trip to vegas this christmas vacation for 4 days. I had an incredible time. My girlfren and I ended up visiting all the hotels on the strip (Las vegas Blvd). My favourite ones are Mandalay Bay and The Venetian. I loved the modern interiors of Mandalay Bay and also various scluptures inside. The Venetian has this incredible look once you are inside with its fake sky ceiling.

Hotel rooms in Luxor (only pyramidal shaped hotel in this world) looked scary to live in :)

Dough and Gambling ....
I lost some dough on my first day but i learnt fast how to gamble and recuperated my balances by the End of the trip. Slots are most wasteful unless you are thirsty. If you need a drink you should sit down on a slot machine and enjoy the free cocktail service in every casino. I enjoyed playing Roulette. Apparently craps and blackjack are two games where you have best odds for winning but i dint do too bad on roulette as well.

Mistakes ..

U should never think that you can walk the entire strip. Its waste of time and energy. First day we decided to walk and we couldnt even finish quarter of it. There is lot of walking involved inside the hotels so you should always drive till the hotels .. if u dont have a car you should take the day pass for the trolleys that takes you from one hotel to another.

Another mistake is to start your day early. Vegas is all about nite life. You should not get on the roads before evening. And then have fun the entire nite.

Vegas is also a hotel experience. Its allright to pay extra to stay in a good hotel right on the strip. It really adds to the trip. I stayed in stratosphere, hotel that is at the end of the strip. Not a bad hotel but kinda far from the main attractions.

Must see ..

Siegfield and Roy secret garden.
Erupting Volcano at the Mirage
Dancing fountains infront of Bellagio
Gondola rides in the Venetion
Pirates show at the Treasure Island
Forum shops @ Ceasors Palace - permium shops for window shopping :)
Bungee jumping at nite / reverse bungee and the ride at the top of stratosphere / another thrilling roller coasters at new york new york and at sahara.

and the list goes on .. i just listed some of the best fres stuff you could do. And ofcourse you can pay for the myriad of shows. We dint watch any of the shows for they were extremely costly and we dint have so much time to kill.

Am uploading a couple of photos ... also will write more as and when i get more time.

2004-12-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

Christmas vacation in vegas .. infront of Sahara hotel

Trying to claim my blog

2004-08-26T18:03:00.000-07:00

Technorati got my attention from a RSS feed that said something about RSS getting real money. News is Technorati got $6.5 mil in first round of funding. So I visited the site to check it out. If you checked it out too and making your own login you should know by now why I should be claiming my own blog. So here i am ... trying to claim mine.

Apparently their crawlers should see that i have listed my technorati profile on my blog and validate my claim.

Waldrobe Malfunction !!

2004-08-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

I am in madmak's pants right now since I had waldrobe malfunction (remember janet in super bowl) with mine. From this corner of my wardrobe I got my 3 years old cargos and I wore it to work today w/o realizing that fly was broken.

Fortunately I noticed it myself and took corrective measures before it was too late :)

End of today.

2004-08-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

I have cleared a major doubt regarding my work (after 15 mins of brainstorming with my manager and a senior dev) so i am looking forward to tommorow when i can be more lucid and implement what i have newly learnt.

Also I am waiting for my galfren to come and pick me up for yoga and meditation session. this is the first time i am trying my hands on these things. it better be good.

tonite its greek cuisine for XXVIII olympic games .. and the GOLD GOES TO PUMMY who is going to pick up our tabs.

life is not a paragraph.

2004-08-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am currently working on some typography stuff and I was reading about Tex in the Tex book by Donald Knuth. And one of the epigrams said ....

for life's not a paragraph

And death I think is no parenthesis.

This was good stuff ... i like these two lines and wanted to look for more. I found a complete poem by E.E Cummings titled "Since feeling is first..."

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

this is awesome ... i love this poem. I think i am getting addicted to blogging. this is my first day and i have already posted 3 times .. lets see if this rate continues.

The Realms of the Unknown

2004-08-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

The Realms of the Unknown

what, why and how are the 3 biggest questions of life universe and everything. if u want to learn more about this chaos u shud give Benoit Mandelbrot a try !!

my first blog

2004-08-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

This is my first experience with blogging and i have no clue what i shud write. I guess blogging is to write whatever u feel like writing .... :)

this is also like a test .... i have succesfully created an account and now i am trying to create my very first blog. lemme try this one and get back to work .. if this one works then i will be back for more later !!!