I shift in focus of responsibilities and priorities

I think its time I start taking things a lot more seriously. Had a talk with mom and she sooo wants me to get married. The surprising thing is that, even I have started to think in the same lines now. I definitely feel a lot older now. I cant keep going on this way all the time. But the problem is that I havent had a girlfriend in a loooong time. So what do I do now. Settling in for an arranged marriage is not an option. I would feel like a whore. I just hope that things work out a lil better this year.

Its been quite some partying for me all this while. I definitely have done a lot of drinking, smoking and fooling around. It definitely is time to start getting serious about a few things. But before all of that, I very badly have to take a vacation. The only way I can do that is to complete all the projects I have on hand at work, get done with all the private gigs and plan out a place to visit. It will most probably be my sisters place in Bombay. Mmmmm…. I am already excited about it.

Upgraded to Windows 7

I was soo excited the whole of this week about the performance improvement in Windows 7 that I decided to finally take the risk. I downloaded the RC from the MS website, burnt it to a DVD and finally started the installation today. The installation went really fast and smooth. But what annoyed me the most is the installation of the drivers. The problem is not with Windows but with the Dell website. It does not have a complete list of software for the laptop. But I managed to get almost all of them working.

This time I decided to partition my drive. One solely for the OS and the Apps and the other only for all my data. Right now I am in the middle of formatting the data partition so that I can copy all my stuff back. Everything seems to be so zippy on 7. The boot is incredibly fast, no unnecessary notifications, beautiful visuals and I simplete LOVE the new taskbar. It just like the Apple doc.

Will keep you posted more about my finding as I start installing more and more softwares on it.

What makes me feel good about my new laptop

Right from the time Windows Vista was released I was wondering what would be a GOOD score of Machine assessment. When I bought my Dell Studio 1737, that was the first things that I did. And I am really happy to brag about the results on my blog.

Windows Assessment score of my laptop

Really hilarious pic from the Bachan family

Now do you think this was deliberate or just coincidence ?

Should I grow a beard?

Iam kinda sick of shaving every alternate day. So now I have decided to let it grow. Initially it might be a little itchy but Iam sure it will start looking cool later. Post comments if you think I shud.

Things changing for better these days

I think at last all the hard work is paying off. At the beginning of this week I got a good news that I was nominated for a peer bonus at work by one of my colleague for a project that I was working on. And yesterday, I got to know that my team(Me, Ujjval and Shyam) won the Google Health Challenge. It feels so good. At first I thought my team stood no chance. But in the end we kicked some serious ass. Now the challenge is to keep the same dedication for the rest of the time. I gotta start working on my health. Have to start working out harder. Also, there are alcohol problems popping up again. But this time I am able to control it. I’ve started playing cricket at a friends place. So that kinda gives me the excercise on the weekends.

Reggae Mania

Its definitely been a long time since I’ve taken a vacation. I’ve started listening to Reggae on monday, and the more I listen to it, the more I wanna be on a sandy beach, with nothing to worry about, sipping on some beer, enjoying the warm glow of the bonfire and talking about old times with friends. I think its serious time I need to plan something out.

The weather is way too good today. It aint as hot as it was last week. Its cloudy and a really good weather to go on a bike ride. But not many among my friends like to ride a bike. Its just a means of transportation to them. Need to find some new company.

I am hungry, gotta get something to eat.

All set on my new laptop

At last I managed to get the proper setup on my new laptop. All the softwares, drivers, plugins, media, everything. All set and done. Just waiting to start using this baby at a live gig.

Just that I need to get my house collection sorted by genre and energy levels. I have more than 800 tracks that I need to get started with sorting. I dont think today is the day I would be doing that. Maybe tommorow.

A good weekend I should say. A little different than the other ones

I made sure that I had nothing to do other than waste time this weekend. I didn’t take up any party to play at and no other work. It started on a few beers with Mazhar, Nash and Kumar. We were in no mood to drink. The beer was just something to go with the conversation. Its really surprising to know that we always had something to talk about. The “not too much drinking” allowed me to wake up at 8:30 AM on Saturday. A really pleasant, typical Hyderabad summer morning. Bright and the feeling that I didn’t have to go to work. But it got boring simply sitting at home. So I rushed to the LIC office to pay my pending premiums(which apparently, because of my negligence took away half of my month’s salary). I then went straight to Sujith’s place with my guitar as it’s been a long time since we jammed. Reuba joined us pretty soon once she got back from work. So did Sandeep after his cricket practice. The suddenly we realized that it’s been a long time since we played cricket. The last time we played cricket together was more than 5 yrs back. We went downstairs and I should say that I didn’t lose all that pace I had packed in my arm. I still can bowl pretty fast. The line and length were the only problems. But that took just a couple of overs to start getting right. Sujith threw us a challenge that if we could get him out in 6 balls, he would buy us beers. I got him out on the first ball. So then we rushed to Club 8 to join Shoheb, Tillu and Ajit. A pretty good couple of hours with good friends. A really nice talk. I loved the way this weekend was going.

This sunday, I decided not to drink. till about 30 mins back. I took a nap in the afternoon(unwantedly) because of which I will not be able to sleep till 2AM. So I went and got me some Whiskey. Yet to open the bottle. Mom said she wanted to watch ‘Delhi 6′ but in about an hour into the movie, I realized it was pathetic. I mean, my mom can take some of the shittiest movies. But she was not able to understand where this one was going. So we shut down everything. She is in her room asleep and I am blogging after working on a few lines of code. A pretty relaxing weekend I should say. I surely deserved this one.

The weather is very pleasant outside. Cool breeze, the sound of FM radios from far away, a lot of time to waste and nothing to do. It reminds me of Anakapalli. That was the place I was born in. Just that the air was a lot more fresher and cleaner there. I think I love that place.

I should have had some company today to have a coffee with. I recently started talking to this one girl who is pretty interesting to talk to. I think she likes talking to me as well. I am just taking this slow and not really expecting something out of it immediately. I wanna get to know her well. I wanna spend more time listening to her(I bet every girl likes to be listened to).

I gave away this old Motorola Rokr to my mom and it took me a neat couple of hours to explain all the features. She is pretty excited about it though. She is also excited about her new orkut account. She said she saw me on Orkut but did not know how to add me. Now if I teach her that, I assume thats going to be a lot of spying into my personal life

Right now I am restless as there is not much I have to do. I think its time to crack open the bottle. Gotta sleep early to go to office tmrw.

Received my Dell Studio 17 (1737)

Today morning I was convincing myself that I will have to wait just another couple of days to receive my new laptop. But then at around 10AM I received a phone call. The caller said that he was from BlueDart. I knew what it was. I was really excited. I signed the papers and took the box. But the security at the gate would not allow me to take the box inside saying that it was a personal laptop which was not allowed inside. I told myself that I can talk him out of this situation. So I opened the box at the security, checked all the contents and left it with them. I finished my work real soon and left for home by sharp 5:30pm. My first impression? This baby is friggin huge. I weighed almost twice my old Compaq laptop.

I started it up and the screen was enormous, I think I dont have to connect my laptop to the LCD now to watch a movie. Anyway, I set off to do what I usually do on any new computer. Reinstall Windows. This thing came with Windows Vista Premium shipped with it. So I could get all the Aero effects with the 256MB ATI card that was powering them.

Anyway, there is one thing that I havent been able to find on. I saw that a lot of users complained about the reinstallation of Dell Media Direct. They said that you have first install the Media Direct CD which will then take you through the Windows Vista installation. I tried following the instructions but this one came with Media Direct 4 and the CD was not bootable at all. The Vista CD booted pretty well though. So where was I going wrong? I tried contacting the support on chat but they were closed for the day. So I did a little reasearch and found out that in Media Direct 4, there was no longer a seperate partition for Media Direct software. In fact you have to boot the whole of Vista and the only function that the Media Direct button would do was to boot Vista and start the Media Direct software automatically.

So the process is that you have to go with the regular Windows Vista installation process and install the Media Direct software from withing Vista.

But I was really impressed with the performance of the laptop. This baby has some serious firepower in it. I think I can start with my Audio recording and production as well as I get to use this darling to play at a party this Saturday.

If anyone is thinking of getting the Dell Studio 17 (1737) in India or Hyderabad, I would ask you to just go for it. This thing costed me about INR 58,500/- after a few discounts and taxes. The upgrades that I did was to opt for a backlit keyboard and the Creative Audio drivers which I think are worth the money.

Now the interesting part that I noticed just a while ago. I started writing this post after starting the Windows installation on this machine. It’s done now. This baby flies. I think this is what I call “Money well spent”

Do leave comments if you think you need more information on this laptop, its features or its performance.