Vivek’s Blog

So I’ve been looking to buy a new cell phone to replace my aging Nokia 6230. Since the past one year.

Surely that’s too much time to be doing research Vivek? Phones come and go and like any other shiny gadget (or bus or train or girl), there’s always a new one around the corner. But as they say, too much research never killed anyone. Except perhaps Marie Curie and her husband.

Well so anyway, I am a year into my “research” and I am no closer to actually buying a phone than I was a year ago. The number of phones I’ve looked at will drive any sane person, well, insane. A question that might pop into your brains, dear readers, is why haven’t I bought a phone yet? The answer is not brief, but convoluted, and one that needs to be given. Let me warn you, this is long. And painful. Proceed only if you really want to.

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I know what you’re thinking: how on earth does this guy get any time to post blog entries? Isn’t he studying engineering? Isn’t that a lot of work?

Sure, it’s fracking hard and it’s also a lot of fracking work. After a month at Columbia, things are the same: do homework, submit it, start again. The cycle of work continues endlessly. I had an exam and I got an 82 on it. That’s 2 points below the mean and two students actually got in the 90s. Better luck next time? You better hope so guy.

Now, coming to the baffling and utterly mysterious title of this post. Why the frack should you care about using a 24-hour format alarm clock? I’ll tell you why. Like right now. It’s coming up. Here it is. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

I had to wake up at 6:15am to get ready and board a bus to Philadelphia at 7:45am. It was for an international students’ trip to the wonderful city. Supposed to be a lot of fun. Well you know what, I set my 12-hour format alarm clock to 6:15pm because I didn’t notice the little PM next to the time. If I had switched the format on it to 24-hours, my alarm would have had to be for 0615 hours rather than 6:15am. The only way to screw up is if you can’t tell the difference between 0615 and 1815. Thankfully, I can tell the difference.

I was really annoyed for not checking the time and for not setting a secondary, back-up alarm. I always set two when I really need to wake up on time but this time I didn’t. My cellphone is on a 24-hour clock and so I wouldn’t have screwed up. Well, I missed the bus and there’s nothing I can do about it. I had even taken care of 75% of my homework by Friday evening so that a day of frolicking wouldn’t affect anything. ‘Twas in vain. DAMN IT!!!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to a corner of my room and weep.

UPDATE: My old I-20 was delivered today, July 18, 2007. One month after it was sent. And in not-so-good condition.

The Indian Postal Service, or Indiapost, is a complete and utter joke. Their mission, taken from their shoddily designed website:

To provide high quality mail, parcel and related services in India and throughout the world ; to be recognized as an efficient and excellent organisation exceeding the expectations of the customers, employees and the society

Yes, that is indeed their mission. And yes, I have copy+pasted the mission statement from the website as it is. The formatting is theirs. You might wonder why I hate Indiapost so much. Hopefully, you don’t.
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Today, The Times of India called well-known games such as Need for Speed, Half Life, and Max Payne MMORPGs or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Granted that people outside the gaming community won’t know an FPS from an MMORPG, but the article smacks of shoddy research. As a longtime gamer myself, I found this piece of writing to be ridiculous:

The games that Mayank plays include Max Payne, Thrones of Chaos, Need For Speed and Half Life. Most of these are Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), which typically require at least six players.

Since when are games needing six players MMORPGs? You want an MMORPG? Look at World of Warcraft. Look at EverQuest 2. Look at The Lord of the Rings Online. A simple Google search of the term “MMORPG” throws up close to 31 million results with the Wikipedia entry prominent on the first page of results. From Wikipedia then:

Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a genre of online role-playing video games (RPGs) in which a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world.

As in all RPGs, players assume the role of a fictional character (most commonly in a fantasy setting) and take control over many of that character’s actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player RPGs by the number of players, and by the game’s persistent world, usually hosted by the game’s publisher, which continues to exist and evolve while the player is away from the game.

Since you’re too lazy to do your research on the games you quote, let me help you. Need for Speed is a racing game. Max Payne is a Third Person Shooter. Half Life is a First Person Shooter.

So the next time you want to do an article on gaming, please do your research Times of India. All it takes is one simple Google search. Or a Wikipedia search for that matter. Don’t mislead your readers.

Times of India Story

A more fun-to-read response to the story.