Just read about this…City of Durham has enacted ‘Stage III Moderate Mandatory Conservation of the City of Durham’s Water Conservation Ordinance’ effective today. While the goal remains to reduce water consumption by about 30% in light of the current drought conditions, the thing that surprised me for a bit was the following restriction:
‘Do not serve water in a restaurant or similar establishment except upon request’
Talk about a drought!
I just realized that I have completely transitioned myself out of using any sort of free email service (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.). One of the lures of free email used to be the cost associated with getting our own domain, along with hosting services, but thanks to mass consumer adoption and services like Google Apps for Domains, that no longer holds true.
If I am scared of spam, I just create a temporary email address on my domain; if I am scared of running out of storage, well, Google provides 2 GB!
Apart from my personal domain, I now use .Mac for almost everything else. It costs a lot, but is more than just an email service.
I wonder if this is going to be an increasing trend as people move away from free email services for personal communication.
Isn’t it funny – Entrepreneurs work harder than “corporate drones” only to build something with hopes of getting acquired by another bigger corporation, and then end up as drones in the acquiring company for next few years.
In the last few years, I have only seen a handful of entrepreneurs who actually move on to newer ideas after selling their first one off. It’s just too rare, though.
One of my next posts will talk about the lessons I learned in my very early-on bout(s) with high-tech entrepreneurship. Anyone can do it, but are the trade-offs worth the gains?
Posting this from my new iPhone, and have to say that I am pretty impressed!
I was thinking how much things have changed in the last 10 years. We now live in an increasingly connected society, at least from a technological point of view. Yet, at the same time, there are things that haven’t changed at all. We still have the middle east crisis. We’re still fighting hunger and poverty, and we’re still in search of a new source of energy!
10 years ago:
Now, things that have remained unchanged:
I got rid of my leg cast yesterday. The good news is that the lesion was not malignant. Even though the cast is gone, I still have about half of my sutures still remaining, and am avoiding putting force on the incision area, which means no driving for yet another week.
Now, I got a chance to look at my toe for the very first time post-surgery, and I almost had an upset stomach. Basically, I was wrong when I mentioned that the incision was only 2cm long. It was actually about 2 inches in length, in the shape of a curve that extended from one end of the toe to the other. As you can see in the illustration, the surgeon removed the circular lesion by making a rectangular incision, but also made 2 additional cuts at the opposite ends to help sew up the incision. A straight line cut would not have held steady. According to him, it was one of the most difficult plastic surgery operations on the bottom part of the big toe, simply because of the lack of available skin and flesh. The incision is called a “Hurricane incision“, with the eye of the hurricane in the center. In his words, the post-surgery toe “looked like it was a gunshot wound”.
I am wearing what they call a “post-op shoe”, which is basically a well-padded protected slipper. Working from home has been a good, albeit boring experience so far. The good thing is that I saved a whole lot of money on gas by switching to telecommuting 😉
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html
I’ll post my comments later.
First the iPod Shuffle, and now a Macbook! Granted, that the shuffle was a raffle prize at work, it still was my first official Apple possession. For the longest time, I imagined myself never ever buying a Mac simply because to me it never appeared as a serious development platform. Having grown up with DOS and then the ever evolving Windows platform, adopting an OS that still used Objective C for most app development just didn’t seem interesting to me.
This past Friday, I had to undergo an hour long plastic surgery procedure to get rid of a lesion that had formed at the bottom of my left big toe. According to the surgeon, there’s a
“one in a million” chance of it being malignant, but I am still awaiting the biopsy report.
The lesion was circular, but the surgeon mentioned that he would have to take out a square chunk of tissue, followed by performing plastic surgery to compensate for the lost tissue. The incision was a 2cm square and took more than 23 stitches to cover up! I was pretty nervous during the entire ordeal as I had never had surgery before, but I have to say that it wasn’t that bad, except for the excruciating pain once the local anesthesia wore off in the middle of the night.
I have a cast on my leg for the next 2 weeks. Of course, this means that I would be unable to drive to work, or anywhere else, for that matter. Thanks to my superiors at work, I would be able to telecommute/work from home until then.
Amazing how a harmless looking wound turned out to be something so serious….
I finally took the plunge into Amateur Radio and successfully qualified for the Technician Level license on the 12th. Although, I am still waiting for my license to arrive by mail and the call sign to show up on FCC’s website, I am also preparing to qualify for my General Level license, which would give me access to almost all the High Frequency bands for very long distance communications.
The preparation was pretty easy, and between purchasing the study guide and passing the license exam, I spent about 15 days. The Technician level is supposed to be an easy entry path for anyone interested in being a Ham. On the other hand, the General and Amateur Extra levels require much more intensive training in the fundamentals of radio communications, engineering, and regulations. It is definitely to my advantage that I have a degree in electrical engineering with extensive coursework in radio theory and antenna design.
There are exam sessions organized by volunteer examiners several times during a week, and all it takes is a simple email/phone call to register. The exam session I attended was organized at the Police Station/Courthouse in Wake Forest. I got a perfect score on the exam! The VEs coerced me into taking the exam for the General level license on the spot, even though I wasn’t prepared, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to qualify for that. Needless to say, I am happy that I am now a “ham”, and look forward to graduating to the next level very soon!
Now that I have my license, I intend to complete the requisite courses mandated by the Department of Homeland Security, and successfully enroll in the ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) and the RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service). Other than volunteering, my other interests at this point are DXing (contacting other fellow hams around the globe), antenna design, and digital communications. There are a multitude of clubs and organizations around the globe, and regular events/conventions are organized on a fairly regular basis (hamfests, Field Day, nets), which makes it very easy for beginners to get their feet wet.
If you are interested in becoming a ham, too, please don’t hesitate in sending me an email for further information/guidance!
UPDATE: I just got my license information from FCC. I will now be known as Saurabh Garg, KI4WAH !