Weather update

Since past 3 years; I'd been thinking that one day I will write a post titled above, it's just that this post is going to be very different than what I'd hoped for then. Well, so the weather update is that I quit my job today; I had already decided and given hints on that couple of weeks back and this morning; I officially resigned. Now, that means I am going to be jobless as I don't have any other job opportunity; in fact I wasn't even looking for a new job. I have been feeling so burned out and run over that I think this break is something that I really need. These 3 years have left me emotionally and mentally drained off; where now; I don't have any motivation to achieve anything with my life. So, where I am headed? I wish I had the answer to such questions; there are few things that I always wished I could do; but responsibilities and living on the "materialistic" plane made sure that I was always skeptical to try them out. Now that I have nothing (left) to lose, I should very well give them a full go. Firstly, I have to write the book I promised Chhavi that I'll write, long time back: the book on us and our relationship. I don't know how many people will be interested in reading such a book; well; I don't even know whether she'll be interested in reading it now but I am still going to write it for whatever it's worth. Secondly, we always wanted to open a charitable organization for homeless children; I need to figure out the logistics for opening one: I know it's not easy to do fund-raising and sustaining such a organization but at least I can give it my best.
When I look back at the last 3 years that I've spent of my life; I have no regrets that I tried so much; that I spent all my energy on just one person; in having her back in my life; she deserved every little thing that I did for her if not more. Ever since I was a kid, I always dreamed about having that one person in my life; who understood what it means to be me; for whom I didn't have to change myself, in front of whom; I was equally comfortable laughing and crying. One person, in whom I saw a part of me: a part of me that was always missing in my life, a part which made me complete. I don't care who was right or wrong, in a relationship it doesn't matter who was right; it's just whether you're together or not; whether you get to share your dreams and pains with each other or not. I know all through my life, she will be the missing bit in me; a part which will again make me whole but then somethings are not meant to be...

Lightbox and google maps

I've been very infrequent in updating my Google Maps prototype; had been thinking of improving the image transitions that I use on the slideshow for a long time, but lack of motivation ensured that I only updated it last weekend. Rather than writing something on my own, I updated the Phatfusion's version of slimbox to play well with my code. Next set of "upgrade" includes, adding a location search box and restoring the randomness of flickr images. In case you are interested with how the prototype was implemented, most of the grunt work is done in two js files: functions.js and images.js; & I guess they are easy enough to follow; the only server side code is for MapPoint and wrappers around flickr and fotolia to avoid xss issues.

Y! Mail

In my last post, I mentioned how spam is ending up in my Y! Inbox and though; no matter how much it sucks; I prefer that over false positives (where legit mails end up in your bulk folder). Well, just couple of days back; I had a legit mail delivered to my Bulk Folder and today, somebody told me that he didn't reply back to my mail earlier because it was delivered to his bulk folder! Now, this is something which is completely unacceptable (yes, I know I get what I pay for but remember, free email is a very competitive area with gmail, aol, live mail and yahoo! fighting it out); it's unacceptable because it creates doubt in the mind of sender; I don't know for sure whether the mail that I just sent will be delivered to the recipient where he has a chance to read it. Remember, mails delivered to bulk folder don't bounce back to the sender; so there is no way for sender to know what happened to his mail once he hits the "send" button; and I am not going to call every person whom I mailed asking for an ACK (well, that very much defeats the purpose of emails anyway). Maybe, I am tech-savvy enough not to rely on Yahoo! Spam filters and check my bulk folder regularly; but how many of my recipients check their bulk folders? So, one thing's for sure, every time I send an email, I would always wonder; did it get to the recipient? A not so pleasant situation to be in! Yahoo, please get your act together, you've been my primary email provider for last 12 years and I don't want to change that!

Liar! Liar!

Disclaimer: This post is another one about life and the way we live it and there is tons of unstrung thoughts of asymptotic nature. If you're not interested in reading philosophical musings of a 29 year old, you might want to stop reading now.

There are so many times when we lie about something, either we lie to somebody or unfortunately, we lie to ourselves. The lies could be as small as lying to our parents about how the toy was broken when we were kids or as profound as lying to make someone else's day; and then there are lies; which we tell ourselves; so that we can convince ourselves that the decision that we don't want to make but have to make; is what makes sense. We come up with so many "practical reasons" just to convince ourselves, even though those "practical reasons" don't actually mean anything to us; we try to validate our new found "practical reasoning" abilities by throwing our reasons at different people; where all the while we are only interested in finding one listener, who tells us that no your "reasons" don't make any sense; then we can do what we really wanted to do, deep inside. Sometimes, we lie to others about why we took a particular decision, we again come up with those "practical reasons" which don't mean anything to us; so that people cannot find "flaws" with our decisions cause we know that they can't understand what it means to be us.

Y! Mail Spam

I am just about done with the amount of spams that is slipping through the Y! Mail Spam System. I get around 5-6 spams in my Inbox every day (given that I only get about 10 mails in a day, the signal to noise ratio is really poor), I do agree that this is a lot better than what used to happen with Y! Mail earlier; when even legit emails would end up in Bulk folder but still Yahoo! needs to get its act together. I don't want to win Million Dollar lotteries every day!

Smoking kills...

Whenever someone asks me why don't I quit smoking, I just tell them:

Once upon a time; I had a reason to smoke,
today; I don't have a reason to quit.

Past perfect, future tense

Almost everyone knows how much I love The Moody Blues; and when someone told me that they will be touring in July; they expected it's one show that I won't miss. The fact is; Moody Blues is a band, I won't even mind traveling miles; just to see them live. But then I said no; I've come to realize that in life it's not the activity that matters but the person who you can share it with; that matters. Once upon a time, I would just be at home and talk on phone for hours and still find that life is so beautiful and now even doing things that I "love" doesn't get me involved. Sometimes, I wonder can people really forget their past; a past that they only created, a past that was so beautiful; if they can; then why can't I? If no, then why do they pretend that there is no one they left behind? Someone; who you would like to share all the beautiful moments of your life with, wasn't it the same "someone"; who made the life beautiful at first place? Perhaps, I'm too old to search for answers to such jigsaw puzzles of life...and yes, I will never see Moody Blues live ever.