At last .. once again..

It was long since I posted a blog. Couldn't find time these days to write one and you will always have some useless work which requires attention and that too more than one at once :) so it happens like that. Quite busy these days and after that took a vacation and went home. Enjoyed for 5 days, went to beach and visited relatives and all in all it was quite relaxing. Today came back to Bangalore. As usual tired and a bit of work at office. Went home and came back now to office to do attend blah blah blah?.

The past few days were good. As the year ends shortly need to re-cap the past and see if it was fruitful. Of course many things happened and many things didn't happen too :P but at the end what is it. Planning to write a blog entry on few of these by year end. Hopefully may get some time to write. 

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The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

I know many of you have read this poem many times. Time for me now to tell you something about this.

Well today we missed few roads even after following proper signs. That’s the irony of Indian Roads. Only after you reach the end you will know that it closed or a wrong way and you still have directions pointing it :) and you end up in a road that is never taken. Trust me this is what happens on Bangalore – Mysore (Kanakapura Road) highway if you follow proper directions that you will come across. Spoiled my evening :( which I was expecting to be one of the best. That is when I thought of writing some comments about this poem which was on my mind for quite some time. I remember this from the books I have read in my childhood. Of course I don’t read any now. The Road Never Taken made this all :)

This poem didn’t make any sense when I first read it, as a kid. In fact I felt the author might be mad to write such a poem and of course the publisher too to publish it. It was like, what his problem; he can take the 2 different roads on 2 different days and still try both of them. For this he has to write a poem and people read it. And that was the understanding when I was a kid. Don’t laugh; I am sure yours will also be the same.

Now after passing considerable time in my life, I know what it means. You can never take two ways. Always a choice when you have to decide having multiple options. And life has too many choices for everything. Once you chose something, there is no coming back. That’s what ruined my evening too a wrong choice of road. The end of 3rd stanza and the 4th stanza says it all.

What is that one is going to do when it is realized that the way taken was wrong. There is no going back. Stick with it for the life time? Feel bad for opting a wrong choice which took where you are now? Feel good for what you have now? Regret for doing that? Accept that a mistake that cannot be corrected is done? Justify your choice, expecting the other road might have been worse? Ignore the choice taken, the past and focus on the remaining part?

After all this now you have two roads again. Which one to take? :).

So you end up with more confusion considering the past choices and their effects and trying to decide now on what we think the learning from the personal experience.

Ok now can you be sure it is the right choice and “I doubted if I should ever come back”.

The more you live the more you get experience the choices get more and more complicated.

This is what Life is all about. Making your choices right where you don’t have a second chance.

The paths are totally different and so are the things that come along, the people, the places, the joys, the sorrows.

“I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Frost never expressed that the road he took is a better one or worse. All it says is a sigh :), which can be expressed both when one is happy and sad too and also he just says that it is a difference made not making it clear it is a positive or negative.

So there is something tricky about this poem which Frost left it for breaking your heads now :). Now find the sigh and the difference. I am still doing. Join me…? LOL

Need to catch up some sleep before I go to work tomorrow...

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A Designer at HIS Best

Last week on one of sleepless nights not knowing what to do stepped out into my balcony. It has been raining for the past 2 days and it rained that day evening too. I think it was quarter past two when I went out. I actually thought of seeing what the neighbourhood will be like during that time of the night. As I stepped out what I saw was a view that cannot be expressed in any way.  It is just the clouds passing by, not very big but they are travelling very fast. May be in a minute or two you can loose track if you follow them. Added to this the cold night with chilly wind in the light of the moon … well what else to explain..?  Just wondering about the beautiful sight that no painter on earth will ever be able to produce; what can one think of other than the one who made it possible?

The running clouds which carry the rain, why do their speeds vary? There are days where you can still see the same could for hours together and now they disappear in few seconds. Who directs them? And my thoughts went on to whole universe which have everything in place of which these clouds are a part. Everything in the solar system just goes on with ones own systems in place working perfectly each day even after these many thousands of years.

And now coming to the title: Ever wondered what it took to build a system like this which didn’t fail for these many years, is never going to fail and is still in control of the one who created it? We too humans build so many things every day, plan many things, take the small things into consideration, with all the knowledge we have and is in the scope of it, how many of them succeed? It is only Him who can design it so well, flaw less, considering every thing of it from beauty to the functional aspect.

Thinking of all this and comparing myself to this big unimaginable system of which I am part of, how small is me. My eyes are filled with tears as I remembered that He cares for me in all this and He thinks of me and remembers me too in this big whole world where some one close may not do. All I could do is just bow down to the PERFECTIONIST for what He had been, what He is and what he will be.

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Convenience

There are two super markets in the area I live. Now both of them have got almost the same stuff and I always go to only one of them even the other is equally good. I have also purchased in the other one when I am passing by that way (both of them are pretty close by) but these days I end up going to always one which is a more distant of these 2 may be by some 50 meters. 

So it happened today that I went to the same place and while returning I was just wondering what is that it makes me always come here and not the other one.

The answer is Convenience :). I mostly go there for getting some food stuff, daily needs and it is always like a quick buy I want to do having a list of things I need always on my mind. It doesn’t need a leisure shopping of groceries for a single guy. So these things are located close by to the billing counters here. And the other products that are daily essential are just on the way to the billing counter. So this makes my job easier not to walk around a lot. It is like I enter the shop and walk to wards the billing counter may be 30 feet or so and by the time I reach there I have everything I need. In the other one the billing counter is the other end and has a separate entry and exit. I have to walk back the entire length again after the purchase to reach my scooter.Also the daily needs stuff is at one corner of the shop which you need to go pick up and come back to the billing. It is just a matter of hardly few steps but it has got a huge effect psychologically:)

Well the conclusion is Convenience matters!!!

Felt like wasted time reading this.. Any way you would have wasted it but at least you read something now. 

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A date with Linux

My office laptop is on dual boot with Fedora Core 9 and Windows XP Professional. I use Linux at times but not continuously. So yesterday I decided to use Linux at office and see if I will reach a situation where I can do with out Windows. Configuring the IMs and Mail took some time. And next comes playing mp3, support which has been removed due to legal issues. Not knowing what to do have to take the help of Linux Forums on the net and I got what I need in few minutes the sequence of commands to execute to install and play :) Cool and I don’t miss playing my mp3s now. And I went on using at till the evening with out any problems. As my work is also on Linux servers – No Microsoft Technologies:), I didn’t face any problem from that front too.

At the end of the day the experience was quite good. 

Getting used to the fonts, icons and the UI was a bit difficult. Tough there are no technical problems even by evening I was feeling like the UI needs some more control in customization. May be it is already there and I don’t know how to…..

And the animations on the desktop are just awesome. Not sure if MS can provide such features ever. The switching over to the next desktop, dragging and what else … everything almost was really good.  I was playing with them when ever I got bored. 

There are too many options for the utilities required, which confuses what to use and you will end up evaluating all of them.  But almost all the things you need (for a developer) are there by default including the Project Management Tool which is lot better in terms of usability than the Microsoft Project though the options are less. 

All it takes is a better UI and nothing else to make the Linux user-friendly. 

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