Monday, January 19, 2009

Call me Captain!

89 hours of flying practice....
about $9000 expenditure....
1 and a half year of patient pursuit...
pushing the time limits to make it to the scheduled flight...
a day of grueling oral and 2 hrs of flight test...
a life long license to explore the skies... priceless.

Yes I am done with my private pilot license. Yes, now I am licensed to soar the skies just as the mighty eagle soars the skies. Well not literally, but yes close enough..
Here are the things that I want to do next:
  • Go at night over airports with part time lighting that I can turn on from airplane and turn them on :)
  • Go over the coast line to have a beautiful scenery
  • Take my wife on a full moon day and watch the moonlight shine on our faces
  • Go over salton sea with my friends :)
  • Need to get a multi-engine rating sometime when I get more time
For all those people who think its late to start anything new, come on folks, you got a lot more ahead than what you left behind. And if you think you dont have enough skills, then dodge this, I got my pilot license, anyone can get.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Hilarious business idea got bumped

I have never seen a more innovative idea than what is mentioned in the following story nor have I seen a funny way of describing how it screwed him. Read this and enjoy.

wonderflul

Friday, January 2, 2009

Playing for Pizza

Remember that train scene in the movie "Venki" where Ravi Teja asks the girl sitting across if she reads Johan Greeesham's novel? Well after a long time I read a John Grisham's novel, "Playing for Pizza." It is a novel about a third rated NFL player who couldnt make his mark here in USA, ends up in Parma, Italy playing their league and wins them a championship and everybody is happy. Sounds pretty straightforward? Yes, it is indeed that plain vanilla form. You would think there might be a plot, a unexpected twist or at least some action. Surprise, there is none of these :)
There are a lot of characters in the novel which, frankly,you would wonder why they existed. A few days romance of the hero with a opera singer and she is gone. A game played and a player dropped out. A totally useless supposedly heroine who has no bearing on the story line. Story line, I wonder what the story line for this novel is.
Good things about the novel is that he introduces a lot of foods made in Parma, Italy. Parmesan cheese, Parma ham etc. Some explanation of the arches in Italy.
Overall, it was a waste; spent 6 hrs on the novel; but was worth the time pass from Chicago to San Diego.

Clean up your computer once in a while!

A couple of weeks ago, I observed that my computer got so damn slow I started wondering what happened. When I checked the free space it said I have just 2GB of free space. A month ago it used to be 20 GB. Something terrible happened which I was not aware of. I didnt know where to start looking. So I started checking where the most of the junk lied. I saw there were a lot of files which I no longer use. I deleted them. I deleted few other files, some debug files, it was still just 2GB gain. I looked under Start->Programs -> Accessories -> System tools -> disk clean up. It is a beautiful tool that Windows introduces (I dont know when) to clean up the disk. I ran the disk clean up utility. It took its own sweet time to return back with its analysis. A whooping 16.7GB that it says can be cleaned. It was mostly temporary files, some dump files etc. But I could have never laid hands on them manually. They were hidden in some n number of folders below C:\
After I did the above, my computer was considerably faster. I also ran a spyware software just to make sure I didnt accumulate any of the spyware/adware programs while browsing the internet.
Overall, I am much better now and my laptop is much faster.

While doing so I found out something very interesting. The same happens even at our homes. We keep accumulating a lot of junk (old clothes which you never use, some old mails, magazines, books) that occupy a lot of space and apparently serve no purpose except to take the space and invoke negative feelings in us. Once in a while, we should get rid of them to make more space and peace of mind.
Any suggestions folks?