55 Words - No more, no less.

She checked her mailbox when she got home. Nothing. “No one writes to me”, she said to herself. “Maybe if I wrote to people, they’d reply” – so she sat down and wrote letters to her parents, brother, friends. Even a few to first and second cousins. Two weeks later, she checked her mailbox again – Nothing!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

I haven't blogged in a long while because I have been sooooooooo busy. I have been checking my favorite blogs regularly - not very religiously though.

A couple of weeks back, we went to Gloucester, MA for Whale-Watching. On the way I drew this. If you look closely in the left hand corner of the car, you'll see a person's head. It was so perfectly round and shiny, and the ears were so pointy that they stood out clearly even at that distance. I had to draw it!
















Our trip was fun. We saw many whales and had a nice time.

Last friday, I and my parents went to New York City. They loved the SkyRide at the Empire State Building. We are going back this friday. There are way too many attractions to visit in one day. And we're not going to be able to visit them all this time either.

Today I was giddy with happiness. Why? I have this little black skirt - not very little though - that I wore to the office for the first time. And I got soooooooo many compliments! I have owned this skirt for 5 months now but never wore it to office. Reason? Most of the time I am SO bloated that if I wore it, it would look like I am 7 months pregnant :P Today was that rare occasion when I wasn't bloated and the weather was just right for a black dress and I was in just the right mood! I think a lot of ladies will identify with what I am saying. Those of you who don't, DO NOT GLOAT!! The bloating is painful enough without having to go through "No, it doesn't happen to me!!" Now I am just waiting to get home so my husband can also see me in this sexy little number :P

Today was fun in other ways too. One major task I had on hand was to implement a group policy in our domain that would force a password protected screen saver to activate on a user's screen if the computer remained inactive for over a minute. It isn't MAJOR major, but I haven't worked that much with Active Directory, so it took me a little while. The fun started when the policy took effect **evil laughter** I realize that a minute is too short, but I was only following orders. Oh, it was fun to see people go "Huh??".

That's it. I'll blog again soon - if the users don't kill me first, that is.

What's the plan?

Yesterday, after a long time, I spent some mother-daughter time with my daughter. This was while we were walking home from a park. And we (well she – because I was just listening) charted her whole career in that 15 minute walk. It went like this -

S (My daughter): You know, I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to be a teacher.
I : Well that is a good career choice too.
S: Yes. And being a doctor is such hard-work!
I: Every job requires hard work. Even teachers work very hard.
S: I am going to have a BIG, GIANT house. And I will run my school in it. (After thinking a little) And you know what? My husband can have his office in one of the rooms too.
I (Thinking): Huh? When did HE come into the picture? (Out aloud) Yes!!
S: I think I will teach the Kindergarten class. No! I’ll teach the first graders.
I: That should be loads of fun.
S: What will the kids do when I take a day off?
I: You can have a substitute teacher come in then.
S: Maybe we could call Miss Kelly. (Miss Kelly was her first grade teacher)
I: Can I teach in your school too?
S: You can. But won’t you be dead by then?

You can depend on kids to ask such innocent whammers of questions :) I told her that I plan to be around for a long, long time and that I am not going anywhere till I am a hundred and fifty! But this is what even I worry about many times – what if I am not around to watch my daughter grow up to be a fine woman that I know she will be. That will be the biggest heartbreak for me – if you understand what I am saying.

Pictures!!!!

Our new Honda CR-V! Nice, eh?

Taken from aboard the Maid of the Mist.

The Niagara Falls. This picture doesn't capture the majestic beauty of the falls. I will try and find one that does justice to it. Till then, make do with this...

And now, time's up! It's midnight. Gotta go to bed - goodnight!

Watch out for more pics. Now I have pics saved on my laptop and my laptop is connected to my home network now. Wireless network! Means I can sit anywhere in the apartment and blog away :D

PC Troubleshooting for dummies (By Dummies)

Whew! Just finished replacing a hard drive on a computer. Spent the better part of an hour just trying to take the old one out. I don’t understand why computer manufacturers try to out-do themselves with every new model. It is like they are challenging consumers to “Try and take this out!”. This model had two screws hidden on the base that held the hard drive cage in its place. I had already taken 4 (yes, four!!) screws out, looked into every corner of the computer chassis to try and find a release mechanism or a hidden screw when I finally gave up, decided to call the tech support and put the computer down. By mistake, I put it upside-down. And there they were!! Two shiny screws that almost screwed up my day. Now that the installation of operating system on the new drive is under way, I sat down to vent.

For the last few weeks, or may be more, my best approach to troubleshooting issues on users’ computers has been “Let’s reboot it and see what happens”. I kid you not! This solves more problems than I can logically explain (yes, some problems can be solved by rebooting – much like you can start any Bajaj scooter by tipping it over for a few seconds :D ) I have “solved” many problems like IP address conflicts, crazy computer behavior, hung applications, missing Outlook settings, missing profiles, un-cooperative applications like QuickBooks, Adobe, Microsoft Office, connection problems….. The list could go on and on. I have a suspicion that the users snicker behind my back when I ask them to reboot their machine. I am thinking from now on, I will bring their computers to my office, keep them there for three days while I “troubleshoot” the issue, reboot the machine on the third day and give it back to the user. Smart plan, eh? I even fixed a Xerox WorkCentre by restarting it! So the rest of the equipment is catching up on the “restart” craze, huh? Good for me : )

Had loads to write, but the moment I started typing, everything flew right out of my mind. So this is it!

I'm speechless!

So I decided to blog. Just read on cnn.com that a New Orleans police officer committed suicide because he couldn’t deal with the chaos any longer. What a waste of life! How desperate & frustrated he must have been – a police office who is used to bringing chaotic situations under control – to take his own life. He was just 36!! He lost his own home in the flood.

I must confess, much as I would like to, I haven’t had much exposure to the news regarding New Orleans flood situation. Partly because I have been very busy to even pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV. And let’s face it, reading the newspaper doesn’t do anyone any good because they don’t cover much of non-local news. And now they are even making this out to be a racist issue. Trust the journalists to take the focus away from the real crisis (danger to the lives of so many people) and put it on their own agenda (inefficiency of George W. Bush govt. or racism) because that is what gets people’s attention!

Anyway, I heard that even after a mandatory evacuation order, many people chose to stay back. Maybe fear of loss of property and valuables made them stay back. Many of them must have stayed because they had no means of getting out. But some definitely stayed because they had no plans of leaving. That made me wonder about human nature. How materialistic can we get that even a threat to our lives would make us take such foolish decisions? Why did these people stay back? And now they are blaming the authorities for the “misfortune” that fell on them? I even read that one man refused to evacuate even after a rescue team found him and his family (if it was a “rescue” team, it must have been after the flooding, I am assuming). The rescue teams decided not to take any food or water to any such “victims” in order to force them to evacuate. Can you blame them? I don’t!!

The mayor could have put in more efforts to evacuate the city before all this happened. I didn’t hear anyone placing an iota of blame on his administration. He should have known how much of the city’s population will need transportation and help in getting out. Why weren’t people forced to evacuate? I read about visitors flying into the city just before the disaster. Why weren’t they stopped from entering? Preventive efforts like this would have made the after-effects of this calamity less severe.

In my opinion, this situation has two faces to it. On one side is the inefficient local administration who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) evacuate people even after a state of emergency was declared. On the other side are people who refused to heed the evacuation warning. No government or administration can help people if they don’t want to be helped. But, to me, it seems very unfair to place the blame squarely on one person’s administration for all this.

People had adequate prior warning. They could have left before all this started. Many did. Granted, not everyone is well prepared (or even slightly prepared) for a situation like this. But in times of crises one needs to make decisions, and fast! There has to be a priority to everything. In my books, life of my loved ones (and my own – of course) has a priority over everything else – be it money, property, house or anything else.

All said and done, even in the worst of situations, people always have choices. I have been hearing/reading stories about choices people have made all these days. I have been hearing about those who made matters worse for everyone around (rescuers and “rescuees”) by looting, shooting and creating a havoc, in general. What was their motive or reasoning? I dunno. Where will they go with those plasma TVs and loads of jeans they looted?? (For the record, I am not against people who looted food and water to help sustain their families). And then there are people who are still trying their best to help others. Heard a story on today’s news about a man who went around in his boat rescuing people. Amy Henry, the woman who distributed food and water in front of a restaurant after being rescued, and sang in an impromptu church service. These are the stories that lift my spirits up. In my opinion, journalists should stop shouting “Racist!” and highlight the work of these people – if they won’t do anything else to help the victims.

Say what??

I am feeling restless today. I want to pour all my feelings, all my opinions and impressions out. I started this blog with the intentions of doing just that. But then, from the very beginning, I started holding back. Afraid that someone who didn’t like my opinion or what I write about might be offended. And at the same time I advocated “freedom of speech” for other blogs. Talk about hypocrisy!! All this changes NOW. If I don’t like something – you’ll know about it. If something disturbs me, elates me, saddens me, scares me, puzzles me or educates me – you’ll know about it. If something fails to do any of the above, you’ll still know about it – if I have the time to write about it.

Over the years, I have learnt the “art” (?) of diplomacy. I hear everyone’s point of view and rarely voice my own opinion. And no! Talking to you doesn’t count, my dear husband :D I used to be very vociferous where making others aware of my feelings/opinions was concerned. Now I am going to WORK at bringing my previous self back! Watch out world, here I come!! (With my opinions).

My trip to heaven

I meant to post this as soon as we came back from Niagara. Couldn’t find the time, so didn’t.
Our trip was great. This was our 6th trip there. I just love that place. I told my mom - "This is where poor people like us vacation. People who don't have the money to go to Disney Lands and Hawaii and Australia and Europe...." Gosh! Do I sound bitter? Actually, I am not. I am just focused on saving enough for a house, so I don't mind not taking any vacations. Oh, it does hurt like he** when my daughter says "I wish we could go to Hawaii..." or something like that. But I know - this too, shall pass.

We started out later than we planned, but got there in time to take the “Maid of the Mist” tour and caught the fireworks at night. The hotel room was nice – we were staying at HoJo (Howard Johnson) and had booked “Crayola Rooms”. These are rooms that have been decorated by Crayola (the crayon makers) specially for kids. They had art specifically made for kids, bed covers, night lamps, alarm clocks all revolving around a colorful theme, a special table & chair set & an art easel. Our daughter was ecstatic! And I was happy to see her so happy. All in all, a relaxing a happy weekend. We came back from the trip on Sunday morning at 4 o’clock. Slept like logs till 9:30 and then it was just another Sunday – spent preparing for the next week.

I love going to The Falls. The water mesmerizes me. I love the Maid of the Mist tours – doesn’t matter that I have been in them 6 times! This time, since we now have our Green cards, we could have gone to the Canadian side. But we didn’t, because that would have meant leaving my parents alone on this side. Not that they would have been lost or something, but it just didn’t feel right. We'll make another trip to go to the Canadian side.

There is a new aquarium near the falls now. We took a tour through there too. They had a Sea-lion show when we reached there. Caught almost all of that on our camcorder before I ran out of tape. And then toward the end of our trip, the battery in the digital camera died on us. Classic story of our lives :P We did take the charger with us, but where do you suppose we could charge it after checking out of the hotel? But anyway, I am becoming less of a control freak so all our vacations don’t have to have pictorial evidence now :D

The rest of this week was crazy. Had loads of work to do – seems like a lot of problems arose while I was gone. And almost all of them had to be handled by me. I don’t mind that actually – I had been jobless for so long before this one came along, that I actually enjoy my day when it is packed full of emergencies : )

My mom and dad are great help. I don’t let them work in the kitchen much (of course – with my control freak-ish-ness what else would you expect?) but they spend a lot of time with my daughter which is the only thing I ever wished for, from them.

I promise I will post pictures from the trip soon – don’t go away!

First day of school, and a jumble of other thoughts

Note: I wrote this post yesterday when it WAS Wednesday but couldn’t put it up on the site.

It is the last Wednesday of August. Significance? Norwalk Public Schools open today. So we drove down to the school with our daughter. She is going into second grade this year. I took two hours off from work, my husband took one. We “bonded” with the teachers and other parents, and with the bus driver on our way to school :) We are sad that some of our daughter’s good friends are not with her this year (the school has a policy to reassign students to different classes each year) but we are glad that some other friends of hers are.

On my way out of the door to drop our daughter off, I remembered to grab the digital camera. And my husband did remember to recharge the battery after we returned from our Niagara trip. BUT he forgot to put it back in the camera!! So, for the second year in a row, we have no “first day of school” pictures :( Last year we forgot to take the camera. What a pair we make :D Oh well! At least we remembered the camera this year. Next year will be even better – we will remember to put the recharged battery back in the camera – I promise!! I have been wondering though – can I cheat? I mean, I can take pictures tomorrow and label them as “first day of school” pictures and no one would know – right?! Hmmmm!!!

Note: I added this today….

MY classes started too – on Monday. It was quite a last-minute thing for me. The class that I actually signed up for was cancelled. I decided I won’t sign up for any other class and will just take the semester off. Then, at the last moment I decided to look up the course catalog and found a course that might help me in my job. Talked to the professor who said I could attend the first class and register later. I like the instructor, like the course and already made a new friend in class!!

Work is slow today. I have a lot to do but am in the middle-of-the-week slump here. Hope to pick up after this post.

Just took a quick look at the news reports about the flood situation in New Orleans. My heart goes out to the people who have lost so much there, who are still stranded there, who are hoping that help will arrive soon. I worry about those who might need medical help but aren’t getting any, babies, mothers, mothers-to-be. There must be so many people who absolutely need to get out of there immediately. Imagine the helplessness they must be feeling!

I remember watching a documentary film at least 5 years ago – it was about New Orleans and how it was like a bowl sitting below sea level. At one point in the film, the commentator said that it is a city waiting for a flooding disaster to happen. And when (not if) such a disaster does happen, there will be little anyone will be able to do. How true that has turned out to be! I have caught myself wondering in the past few days – why didn’t the people who are stranded there listen to the evacuation warnings? Why did they still stick around? I know these questions are not going to help anyone now. I know that maybe they thought they could ride this one out too. My prayers are with them!

I read a few news stories about the looting going on there. Again, I have ambiguous opinion about it. There are some who really need the stuff – like food, water, baby supplies. Then there are the “real” looters – who had the foresight to loot guns before proceeding to loot other stores. They are doing this for the plasma TVs and the drugs. THAT is ugly! How do you stop the latter without stopping the former? It is interesting to observe how different people react under same circumstances.

I also read in a news article (and heard it on the radio too) that shots were fired on rescue helicopters. WHY? Why would someone do that? Did they do it just to have “fun” seeing everyone’s hopes of being rescued dashed to pieces? Or were “they” mad that they weren’t the ones being rescued first – so they shot at the helicopters with the twisted idea that no one will be rescued if they weren’t.

I am so overwhelmed with all my thoughts on the situation that I think I am getting incoherent. I am unable to express what I think clearly. So I’ll stop.