… and slow over rates make for useless cricket. Therefore, imagination isn’t quite cricket, is it now? So, taking that further, to be a good cricketer, you should have no imagination. Or am I just imagining things? Hmm..
So, since we have established that over rates are overrated (or was that imagination), lets move on. I’ve been listening to some good stuff these days. The new album from the Killers, one of my favorite bands, Viva la Vida, and so on. And as I wrote that, I stretched my foot out, and knocked over the adapter for the wireless router, thereby rudely severing my connection to the Internet. Apropos, how limited does it feel to have a computer without the ‘net these days. This brings me to the first computer we bought in 1997. We (my brother and I) used to use Abhishek’s computer (ah that little 286 with 1 MB of RAM, and a 40 MB hard drive… we had some great times with that. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, anyone?), but we didn’t have one of our own. Computers were pretty damn expensive back then, but since my brother was doing Comp Sci at school, he had a (vaguely) legitimate reason to petition Mom for this.
After some negotiation, we bought one! This was a second hand computer picked up via Ranbir Mamosa’s colleague at the bank. It had a 486-DX2 66 Mhz (AMD, and overclocked to 90 MHz!), 16 MB of RAM (a lot back when 8 MB was the norm, and we insisted) and a black and white CGA monitor. It came with a 1 GB HDD, and cost us Rs. 16,000.
Many thanks to Mother for that, since it led directly to where I am today, typing this in on this fancy machine with oodles (that’s a technical term) of storage, kickass monitor, and blah blah blah..
Getting back to what I was saying, back then, that computer was pretty self-contained, and we had ages and acres of fun with it. No need for net, no need for nothing. Now, it’s impertive that we’re connected all the time. Heck, I use a Blackberry, with the unlimited data plan, and am never far from the net. Good thing? Bad thing? I prefer not to go down that road, since I like Asimov, and absolutes are no fun.
The song says, “there was snow, white snow”, and I realize that I’ve never played around in snow. Seen it, from afar on the tops of mountains that looked like jagged teeth, but never actually stepped in it, run in it, felt it go down my shoes and freeze my toes to bits.. It’s quite strange that I haven’t been to a snowy place. And that reminds me that I haven’t read Tintin in ages (Snowy!). It’s expensive these days, but one day, when I have lots of money (or even if I don’t), I’m going to buy the box pack and keep that. It’s one for the ages.
Jingle bells, and Christmas is near. Now, to atheistic me, the festival itself does not hold that special value that it does for the devout, but it’s still got that feeling of holiday spirit. When we were kids, we used to hang up stockings (we had long gray socks that passed for stockings) on our bedpost (no fireplace, y’see), and sometime in the middle of the night, Mom would get up and fill them with, if I remember correctly, one Daily Milk, one little push car (red for me!) and some sundry sweets. So we had our very own Santa moment the next morning.
I took a moment off just now to read some old posts, and I noticed that I had actually set up categories for these posts: Linux, Random, Sad, Happy!, and Xbox. Of these, at this point in time, Linux has two posts, Sad has three, Random has one hundred not counting this new post, and Happy! and Xbox don’t even show up in the list, since I never wrote anything under those categories. This says something about me, but I’ll be hanged if I know what, besides the fact that I am, indeed, very random.
Talking of hanged, heard that old one, “We must hang together gentlemen, else we shall most assuredly hang separately”? Benjamin Franklin said that, I believe (resolutely refusing the temptation of that little box with the big G), and it’s as funny now as it must have been then. I bet they died laughing.
“Fill their heads with rumors of impending gloom.”
Nice line, that. Gloom is such a lovely word. No one can say that enthusiastically. It contains in itself an infinity of gloom and doom. The double oo does it, I think, but not always since boom! is good, but boom can also be something you hang a mic from. Gloom isn’t like that. It’s a very self contained word. It’s the kid in the playground who’s always playing on his own, but seems perfectly happy doing so, to the point where those who observe him feel a sense of vague apprehension. Put gloom in a sentence, and instantly the eye is drawn to it. The two o’s are like wide eyed accusation, staring at you unblinkingly, till you feel like hanging your head and mumbling, “wasn’t me, I didn’t do it”.
Once, long ago, on a dare from someone who shall go unnamed, I wrote a story on The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. It was a funny (ish) story about a minor devil named Bob, who took some of his annual leave and came down to earth, to stay at the Deep Blue Sea inn. Naturally (since I have no imagination), he falls in love with the innkeepers daughter, and then outwits Satan himself to win through in the end. How does he do that? As I recall, it’s because he’s a minor legal clerk, and he wrote the fine print. And as it turns out, even Satan doesn’t read the fine print! This was before I went to law school, by the way. Sadly, I lost that story somewhere; it fell between the cracks of many hard drive transfers.
Here’s some unsolicited advice: Buy the new Killers album.
Random
