Travel Advisory

Never ever ever ever travel Greyhound. You are guaranteed to be
1) Cold
2) Very Late
3) All those things that come from being cold and late e.g. irritable, sleep deprived etc etc.
Why am I ranting like this?
I took this greyhound from Champaign Illinois to Rochester, New York with connections at Chicago and Cleveland.
1) The bus to Chicago got delayed. I missed my 8:45PM connection to Cleveland.
2) I got a 2:30 AM connection to Cleveland. This thing breaks down in the middle of the highway in the dead of the might in the middle of a freezing snowstorm.The drive dude HAD to turn off the engine and the heating. Which meant that the occupants were freezing for the better part of the night. Then our man gets it up to a gas station where yours truly had to wait for another 3 hours for a replacement bus.
Final Result: 12 hours late, Cold, Tired and Ranting

Memories...

Today I got an email from my tennis team partner in IIT telling me about inter-IIT. It's next week in IIT-Madras. It's coming here after 4 years. It was here the year before I joined IIT and it is back the year after I leave!
All of a sudden I am getting back all kinds of memories- this is the first time in a long time that I am not playing in inter-IIT. Memories of endless practice session in the sun, getting up bleary eyed on my Kinetic and running to the insti-courts,coming back dead and having those naps you can have only when you are dead, traveling in the train to the host IIT, staying in the hostel, cheering the other teams, having strat sessions, sitting back after the game and lazing around with friends...endless list of things..some of the happiest moments of my time in IIT. Arrgghh..you know what..if someone gave me an offer to chuck all this crap and rewind time and get back to IIT. I will take it!

Minnessota Trip and More

I spent thanksgiving week in Minn. with KP. Jigar had also come along. We had a great time- went to a basketball game, went to a riverdance show, watched Veer Zara the new SRK movie and more. It was good to get away from all the work and come back refreshed. I also saw a good amount of snow. The first since I came to the US. Well, now its back to work.I cant wait for the 18th. Thats when the semester end. I plan to go to NY to spend a week with Arrvindh. We plan to make a 'university tour' of NY. Rent out a car and drive around basically. Then,I leave for India on the 25th. It's going to be good to be back home- no worries, no work, no cooking, no taking care of myself, friends, family of course..I can go on forever!

The IBM T42-One Amazing Laptop

The IBM T42 is the best laptop I have ever come across. I bought a 15" version with1.8 Ghz, 80GB , 512 MB RAM . It has a fingerprint reader which replaces any kind of log on screen. The reader works pretty well too! The screen is good. It has a 64MB ATI Radeon Graphics Card. It's light, about 5.7 lbs. That's way lighter than other models with the same config. Sony's starts at 7lbs! It's fast. The HDD runs at 7200 RPM which makes large programs load quickly. The frame seems sturdy and capable of putting up with hard use.
The only downside is that it's expensive. Costed about 2800$. It didnt matter for me because I was buying it for my dad and his company would be paying for it. It would be possible to get a toned down version for about 1800$. Maybe less. But it would still be a couple of hundred dollars more expensive than comparable configs from other vendors. But, I feel its worth it.