Ah back to posting videos am I? Naaaa I really liked this one Day in the life of a scrum team

Looks pretty much like most people's cubicle life! The scrum meeting, peeping out of the window, some office clown paying a chatty visit! These guys do a lot of pair programming or something like that it seems.

Does your day look like that too?

Date:	2008-07-02 08:43
Subject:	Wheeee simply explendid!
Security:	Public
Mood:	accomplished

Some time ago I had made this post about a new word I invented "Explendid"!

Today I was just searching the net and am happy to see it's being used all over the place!

Me happy!!!

Yesterday I was almost done making vegetarian manchurian for dinner. I thought it looked nice and smelt nice. And then I tasted it. Ummm hmmmm ummm hhmmm ... ok so it needed some more salt.
Ok that's easy to fix. Let me add half a teaspoon. There almost doneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.... PLOP! SPLASH! BOOM!(ok the BOOM is exaggeration)

The whole salt container fell into the manchurian! Just like that!
Sniff sniff!

This is something I think about a lot. Yes recycling. The reason I think about it a lot is because throwing out stuff isn't as simple as it used to be in the good old days. Don't get me wrong! I'm all for recycling, composting, going green, etc. But today throwing away anything in the 'correct' way involves a very confusing intricate process that I'm still trying to figure out.

To recycle or not to recycle
For example, the simple recycling where you need to sort out garbage from metal, paper, glass. This might seem simple at the face of it. Oh but no! You have to think about each and every wonderful combination of materials some smart people decided to manufacture. Like plastic coated paper/cardboard that makes your milk cartons look all jazzy! (And not to mention every other frozen food you've ever bought) And to top that you have the milk cartons with the cute matching plastic tops. Maybe this isn't a big concern. I could just toss everything right out as they were handed down to me. But I see different rules in different apartment buildings for these. Like some say nothing specific and expect you to get rid of most of your recycling in one place but others are more selective - they can afford multiple bins so they label them as 'paper', 'plastic', 'glass' - and worse 'no plastic', 'no glass','no nothing'. Hmmmm I really don't know what these 2 recycling companies are doing differently but I often hope they could have a nice little chat and come up with some sort of recycling bin standard. Plastic bags are another thing that make me exercise those grey cells a lot. I know I can get rid of them in some store like Safeway. But I do wonder why my previous building did not let me recycle them, my current one lets me do so, and what the heck happens to all those bags Safeway receives. where do they all go? Do Target and Safeway bags all mingle together and create a new Walmart bag? Anyway I know I'm thinking too much. I should just throw everything out. But just as I think of doing that I hear a little voice that reminds me of a thing I heard "When in doubt trash it ... a single bad recycling thing spoils the entire recycling bin ... everything needs resorting"
Hmmm now I wouldn't want to do that right - spoil the entire bin! And once that bin goes and meets other bins imagine the damage my one little plastic windowed envelop might do! Ok I guess I'll just trash it - recycling can be too dangerous!

How
So assuming I've overcome all my recycling doubts and gotten my recycling stuff ready. Now where do I put it? Ah right down in the garage six floors down(14 in my last building) next to the elevator. Maybe it's me but I do find this a little troublesome. Why can't I just throw my recycling stuff down the chute like I throw out trash? If most of what we throw is recyclables shouldn't recycling be made easier than disposing of trash! I think so. Wouldn't it be nice to have chutes for plastic, paper and trash! No not glass - you wouldn't want glass bottle hurtling down a chute from the 6th floor. No that wouldn't leave much to recycle methinks. Anyhoo I've seen buildings where they don't have any chutes whatsoever so I shall count my blessings and tug my goody bag all the way down with me!

Composting
Don't even get me started with composting! Yes I've seen all the videos about apartment composting. But seriously would you want all your 100 tenants feeding worms in their homes! Why can't we just have public composting bins where I can plop all the nice carrot peels, etc. That would make the worms happier too - they'd get more variety!

Anyhoo I shall go and shred these thoughts for a while, put my woes away and not fret about saving the dear planet for the rest of today. I hope.

... that's what my mom always told me. But I never listened. Over the years my posture has gotten from bad to worse. On the bright side, I've gotten better at finding innovative ways to avoid sitting at a desk for writing/typing/anything! Even back in 1997, when we had bulky monitors and keyboards, I'd find a way to bring the keyboard right next to me, on my comfy sofa/bed, and increase the monitor font to silly proportions. Yes it was THAT bad!

Needless to say, you gotta pay a price for your actions sometime or the other. And yes, I'm learning a lesson too. I've been hit by a bad condition of RSI (Why do I always think it stands for RIS - repetitive injury syndrome! Maybe syndrome sounds more serious! But repetitive injury sounds dumb - sounds like a moron's disease - a moron who can't help getting repetitively injured or something like that)

Anyhoo, so what's it like. Well my wrists hurt a lot. Actually - I'm lying. They WERE hurting a lot. Now they're getting better. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing this blog post you know. Or it might have been really short - like a little link to RSI with the subject "Booo hooo" or something like that. So good for you - you get to read my rather long post.

So in case you wondering what I did ... well I didn't go to a doctor. I know that's bad but I'm not going to pay the guy to tell me 'stay away from laptop, don't work for 2 months'. I self prescribed hand braces for me(yes I know the article above warns you against precisely that).
I wear them almost all day and night. Things are improving thanks to these but I'll keep you updated if this happens to be a bad idea and that article wins!

Date:	2008-04-08 12:11
Subject:	Amazon Fresh
Security:	Public
Mood:	excited

So I just used Amazon Fresh for the first time. No I didn't get any special discounts due to hubby dearest. In fact I love giving him a tough time about Amazon always.

So in a similar attempt I decided to test their latest online grocery system. I ordered everything - oil, tomatoes, milk, dry pasta, pasta sauce, a melon, mushrooms, sprouts, potatoes, green onion, etc. I added a huge roll of bath tissues and yes eggs to my list - just felt they'd make such great test cases! (always pride myself at my QA-ing skills)

And so, I placed the order yesterday. Got my delivery today at the scheduled time. Of course, this ability of sitting at home and receiving my groceries leaves me really excited but anyway to be more objective - here are some more pros and cons:

Pros:

* Great interface - removing items from the list and searching are especially easy

* No additional signups: I can use the same id on amazon.com here. It also gets my saved credit card info.

* Everything delivered in good condition and with good quality - I checked - all eggs are intact and refrigerated stuff is still pretty cold

* Delivery guy follows my instructions and calls me as soon as he reaches here

* Product prices match my local safeway, where I usually do my grocery

* Smartly sorted groceries so that heavier stuff doesn't crush the soft produce (like I would have if I had brought them home)

Cons:
* Minimum for free delivery is 50 USD so I need to plan out my order more. If I could receive an at-the-door delivery I'd get free delivery at just 25 USD. But I can't have them just leave things in front of my building - it's more suited for single homes. Anyhoo this wasn't as big an issue since I had lot of things to buy this time.
* Some produce that was priced lower (like the less fancier tomatoes) were out of stock. And some produce like avocados was really expensive - 2 USD per avocado - give me a cheaper variety too please! This wasn't really bad - I just didn't order things I felt were expensive. But then that also means I'll have to go out to get some groceries anyway.
* I end up with too many plastic bags. This one was the worst one in my opinion. I'm really particular about avoiding plastic bags while shopping. I always carry my own bags with me. But here I don't have a workaround - every order online would mean 5-6 plastic and paper bags. Just an FYI - it's not that they overuse plastic bags. Also they gave me a mix of paper and plastic bags. Produce was wrapped in plastic and everything was then placed into a few paper bags. I think they need to find a way to help us reusing/avoiding these.

Anyhoo - overall I'm happy! I can make mushroom soup with the mushrooms, green onions and milk from Amazon fresh without stepping out. I LOVE that!

Learnt of Pig Latin today.
I like the sound of my name in pig latin - HavanaBay! Hee hee.

Anyway I learnt that in class today. I'm in a week long training at Sacramento right now. Getting bored in the hotel right now. It's been raining here ever since I arrived. :(
The city is mostly dead on weekdays so not missing my camera. I did go and watch I Am Legend today - and came out feeling very scared. Anyhoo I'll try to fall asleep now and not have nightmares - good night.

Date:	2008-01-19 17:01
Subject:	Craigslist rewards
Security:	Public
Mood:	happy

Beware - if you're coming to me place it's not going to be the same anymore. :)
I started selling my furniture today. Sold my dining table, coffee tables, filing cabinet and side tables - made a nice $340. Craigslist rules! I just put the ads last night.

There's still some time to leave San Francisco so not going to sell the rest yet - especially the rugs - without those the house will look too empty methinks and that'll get me depressed.

It was a difficult decision to start selling things early but with the 100 things I have on my hands right now, I'm relieved to get a some done. Leaves less to worry about later.

All this business of moving reminds me of the time I moved in. Not being able to drive leaves one pretty handicapped in terms of buying furniture, etc. And the fact that all Ikeas and Targets are miles away from the city doesn't make things any better. And so I found innovative ways of getting things delivered to my house. Some things I figured and might be valuable gyaan (knowledge in Hindi) for future movers is:

*For big stuff you probably want to see it and buy it. Try to visit the showroom, see things and place the order there and ask them to ship it. Order multiple things from the same store so that you pay for shipping and assembly once.
*Find online shops that have low shipping costs. In my case I used http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com. Got the rugs and a lot of other things delivered. Others to consider are Overstock.com and more recently target.com has come up with better shipping.
*Never think of renting furniture if you plan to to live in a place for more than 3 months. Renting companies have amazing furniture but they also have a minimum amount you need to rent for per month. The money you  spend for not even owning anything is money down the drain. I'm glad I didn't take that option, though I did explore it a bit.
*Use craigslist - find who is selling near your home. But be somewhat selective about what you buy second hand. I'd rather buy lamps and fans second hand than a mattress or any kind of kitchen stuff. If you can drive a truck/SUV, buying second hand furniture is a good option.

Anyway back to my $340. What should I get with it! I'm thinking of buying something nice for the living room. That table carrying the TV will soon be deprecated. :D

Fireworks on 17 Jan
Originally uploaded by bhavana

Want to learn a new language? Try out Livemocha. An interesting way to learn a new language and make friends at the same time!

I liked this concept http://freerice.com

An addictive way of making donations!

Hi everyone

Yes it's been a long time! I've been reading some posts off and on but haven't really felt like writing anything. No excuses really. Life's been keeping me busy. Doing a 100 things - some I love doing and others I have to! :(

One of the latter is - going to work Monday morning. I hate it! Monday evenings I usually get a lot done - by then I've settled in the rhythm. But mornings! BAH! Hate them hate them hate them. And in the everyday meeting aka Scrum you gotta remember what you did on the Friday before the weekend. I don't know about others but I have the hardest time remembering anything I did on Fridays ... except maybe the fact that I was awfully cheery that it was a Friday and crying TGIF, TGIF in my head. So tomorrow's gonna be the same story. I'll fumble and look blankly at the task board and try in vain to pull my brain out of selective amnesia. If it's a good day I'll remember something and chirp my way through the whole thing but if notttttttttt ... hmmm I'll just cook up another story!

Date:	2007-10-14 22:42
Subject:	:D
Security:	Public
Mood:	cheerful

Thanks pinchhitter for sharing this gem of a video! Those were some really fun times!

Funny bid on ebay.

Hi everyone

I volunteer with AID India and we're hosting the band Indian Ocean on 14 July, 2007 in the Bay Area. It's a fundraiser. I do need all the help I can get in getting our tickets sold quickly. So could you please tell all your friends in and around the Bay Area.

The link to the event is http://www.indianoceaninbayarea.org/ and you can go to http://www.sulekha.com/events/evtdpnew.aspx?cid=215080 to buy the tickets.

Do spread the word.

Update It's a great group and they've added new songs to their performances.

Thanks

Bhavana

People in SF can check out http://www.pillowfightclub.org/ - nice way of spending the evening :)

I won't be able to make it incase you're wondering.

http://rajshri.com/malgudidays/

and lots more out there for those who like old Hindi movies and programs.

BTW some documentaries are cool too.

Hey people

I don't know much about the jobs in the hardware chip making industry. But one of my friends is looking for a job as an Analog Designer. Do let me know if your companies do something of the kind and are hiring. Could you write your email and company as a comment and then delete it if you like - I'd get the email with the info.

Thanks!

Here's wishing everybody a very happy new 2007! Chocolates, gifts, love, romance, peace, money and everything you wish for! May all your dreams come true.

I don't feel well. It's gotten so cold here lately and everyone's falling sick. Oh I don't want the holiday season to be sick and all waaaaaaaaaaaaah.