shower thoughts

 an sms I sent an hour ago has not been delivered.

it's because the messaging app used RCS by default.

I'm not sure why it's set to do so, but I guess nobody would actually use RCS unless it was turned on by default. 

nobody cares if a message is sent over RCS or SMS as long as it gets to its destination.

these days, everyone has data on, unless they've turned it off, in which case they probably don't want messages either - so that's an advantage.

wonder what other advantages RCS has.

I assume, unlike MMS, there is no fallback system for RCS (MMS used to send you a SMS with a link as an alternative to downloading the MMS itself on the phone).

so RCS probably is completely carrier independent and should be free/unlimited.

can RCS have a fallback like MMS did?

that would require the messaging client to support it over SMS.

any client side SMS to RCS bridge needs an intelligent client, but there is no guarantee of that. after all, you could be sending a SMS to a 25 year old phone.

25 year old phones are interesting. they had a strange sort of data connectivity, WAP.

I wonder how WAP actually worked. it definitely wasn't regular TCP/IP, and while the pages looked like very basic HTML, I'm sure there was more to it.

I wonder what's the application protocol part of WAP. could there be applications other than a browser on WAP?

MMS is an application, in a sense.

If there could be other applications on WAP, I wonder why I never heard of them.

I'm sure if there was a way to use WAP to chat, yahoo and msn messenger would have developed an app.

man, yahoo and msn messenger on WAP was crazy!

remember hitting refresh every 5 seconds to check for new messages? and the contact list that sorted itself by time seen, with online, idle and finally offline sections?

I think there would be an asterisk next to the name of the contact who had an unread message waiting for me.

unvisited links would be blue. visited, magenta.

I wonder how big each page was. definitely under a kilobyte. but they still took time to load!

I guess mobile Internet was so slow and limited back then that there was no point counting data. if you could find a way to use more than what would be considered fair, knock yourself out!

it's so hard to come to terms with that until WiFi came to phones in 2008, the only way in was via mobile networks.

2008 is not that long ago. broadband was pretty fast. MP3s were 10 years old. YouTube existed! and yet the only way to get something on your phone was mobile data or the memory card/USB port. and only data could be realistically called online communication.

it's now November 2023. so that was 15 years ago. my second phone.

my first phone was purchased in February 2004!

i wonder what was the date I purchased it. it definitely deserves a commemorative blog post. 20 years of smartphones!

I know exactly where it would be. my old blog!

ah, my old blog. back when I blogged and nobody read it because nobody around me knew what a blog was.

it's so much easier to blog now.

I miss my old school, hand-crafted blog.

I don't need to miss my old school, hand-crafted blog.

I am going to revive my old school, hand-crafted blog!

I wonder if it'll be safe to run ASP on a windows 2000 VM and expose it via my dynamic DNS.

Nope, definitely won't be safe!

Let's just stick with old school and forget about hand-crafted.

If it's a good platform, I should be able to import all my old posts into the new blog.

wouldn't it look weird? a post a day (or a couple a week) from 2003 to 2006, and then suddenly we jump to December 2023?

actually, it won't be weird. I'm sure I'm still almost the same.

I should take the images from the original website and stick them on the blog though.

"welcome to Kristopher's corner of the world wide web" - it doesn't get more late 90s corny than that!

I remember the font. my favourite font.

did the font make Kristopher look like krist0ph3r?

if it did, I now know where I got my inspiration from.

I must blog this on my main blog. 

crazy coincidences

nothing like being locked in for most of a year with one person to think about the connections that brought you together... and then kept you together.

i don't know if i'm an outlier or everyone else's story is like mine, but here's tracing the story of shruti and myself, through all the chance connections that brought us together.

tl;dr: i probably wouldn't be married to shruti today if my mom hadn't cold called the owner of a computer institute in may 2001.

first of all, it's weird that though shruti and i have lived within 1 mile of each other since about 1987, we only met in late 2014. and we did not have any close mutual friends when we met. i knew her school classmates, but they didn't know her. none of her school friends knew me. i probably had school classmates who knew her, but i didn't/don't know them well enough to know. until the day we met, we never hung out at the same places, ever!

so...tracing backward. shruti and i met on a hike/camping trip in november 2014. the hike was planned by "adventure lovers", a group of outdoor-loving folks based in mumbai.

shruti was introduced to the group by a friend ashok a couple of months earlier. after she was introduced to the group, we planned many hikes, but all of them were canceled - until the one where we met, which was her first hike with the group.

ashok was introduced to the group by me, because we were planning a 19 day motorcycle trip in july 2014, and he wanted to come along. he was involved in the planning - but canceled about a month before the trip was finalized. he stuck with the group though, and as far as i know, has attended only one hike with adventore lovers - the one where shruti and i met. 

i knew ashok from well before "adventure lovers" - more on that later.

as for adventure lovers itself, its formation is another story. i was out clubbing one friday night in february 2014, and didn't check my messages for a few hours. when i got home and checked my phone, there was a message from joylyn. joylyn said that a bunch of her friends were planning a hike on saturday, and she was wondering if i'd be interested. i was so interested i called her at 3am, because i had no idea what time on saturday they were planning to leave, and didn't want to risk missing it by finding out too late. turns out they planned it for saturday night, not morning. joylyn hated the hike-turned-trek so much that i don't think she ever came for one with us ever again. the rest of us guys (salman, amey, abhinav and myself) on the other hand got along so well that we founded "adventure lovers". before that message, joylyn and i have never really chatted much or hung out together, except with marjorie - that's how i know her, and how she landed up on my facebook. how do i know marjorie? that's another strange set of coincidences. 

anyway, chronologically, the next person whose "story" comes up is ashok. ashok and i have known each other for many years, through multiple mutual friends. all those friends have one thing in common: they used to work together at "3" in malad, in 2007 or thereabouts. I didn't know any of them at that time, even though i was working in the next building in 2007! however i got to know a couple of guys from that group quite closely much later. one of them is jude. jude and i were hiking up lohagad with a bunch of friends, when ashok was hiking down lohagad with another bunch of friends. and they bumped into each other, and jude introduced me to ashok.

how do i know jude? jude and i met at a friend's birthday party, sometime in 2010 or 2011 i think. that friend is brandt. brandt and i have known each other since about 2001, more on that later. but while we knew each other for many years, we never had any common friends for some reason. however, that birthday, brandt's friend cleona decided to throw him a surprise party at a restaurant near home. but she didn't know me. however, brandt had mentioned me multiple times in the past, and cleona was in touch with my brother, and that's how i got invited to the birthday party. we got along so well that jude planned a motorcycle ride with the rest of his riding buddies. that's the one where i met ashok.

the other connection with ashok is through nickolai. i don't remember the specifics of that connection, but she definitely mentioned that i should meet him as we're both like minded riders/travelers/free spirits :D and nickolai and i were close enough for her to be able to tell when two of her good friends would get along great ;)

i met nickolai in december 2007. just shy of 13 years ago. how i met her is another strange story: we were on this social website called "orkut" (anyone remember that one?), and there was a small "group" on orkut for people who lived nearby. after a few months on that community, we decided to meet up. about 10 of us met in the area for a short walk, hung out in a park nearby, and then went home. nickolai missed that meet-up though, because she saw the messages late or something. so we swapped numbers and agreed that i will call her and let her know the next time the group meets up... which they never did. but nickolai and i got talking and we got along so well that she's been my bestie ever since. and the strangest thing is that we've lived our entire lives before about one block away, and though we had common friends that neither of us were close to, we never met or even found each other familiar when we did meet.

i met marjorie somewhere in the first half of 2007. marjorie traveled to pune to meet me (I was doing my internship there, and i used to spend the week in pune, and travel back to mumbai every weekend). that was, if i remember correctly, one of maybe two or three weekends i didn't travel back to mumbai. i didn't travel back because marjorie was headed to pune. for a funeral, i think. it was something dramatic like that, and marjorie wasn't sure if she should head all the way to pune for it - but i convinced her she should. until that day marjorie and i had never met in person. we had only chatted on the phone.

marjorie had taken my phone number from brandt. marjorie's computer had stopped working. and brandt said i was the only person who might be able to help her fix it just on the phone. and yes, i was able to tell her how to fix it on the phone. if i remember correctly, she had to take out the RAM, clean the contacts, and fit it back in. she was so grateful that she promised me dessert at the place of my choice. i still don't remember what the dessert of my choice was, or where i wanted it from - becasue i never collected it. anyway, marjorie and i ended up besties.

and so, finally: jude and marjorie both lead to brand. how did i meet brandt? brandt and i were coworkers at a summer job. this was 2001, and we were both working at a computer institute during our summer vacations. i was their youngest computer instructor (a shade under 17 years), and brandt was in charge of marketing and sales. we were both based out of the branch of the institute that had recently opened, and for the most part, were the only employees there.

i don't know how brandt got that job, but i remember how i got mine: i was whiling away my summer vacations, and mom thought it's time i got myself a summer job. she knew i loved working with computers. so after sunday church, when she was handed a flyer advertising a new computer institute in the area, she called them and asked if they needed an instructor. if i remember correctly, i got the job without an interview.

tl;dr: i probably wouldn't be married to shruti today if my mom hadn't cold called the owner of a computer institute in may 2001.

terms of endearment

recently, when thinking about the factlet that eskimos have over 50 terms that describe snow, i realized that my wife and i have over 10 ten "secret" terms we use with each other... to call each other fat.

in fact, we have entire conversations that solely involve calling each other fat. there may be days when the only chats we've had involve calling each other fat (and that carries over to in-person conversations as well - though not as exclusively). we usually start and end conversations with calling each other fat. when we want to call each other, we frequently simply call each other fat.

we have never actually used the word fat though. it's always mild metaphors. in fact we use these terms so frequently that we now use acronyms. we have acronyms for combinations of these terms. we sometimes say those acronyms to each other on the phone and in person instead of expanding them. we have even created backronyms for fat.

we call each other fat so often that we have even forgotten that they mean "fat"

in hindsight, it's amazing how we have evolved our own language to communicate endearment while effectively calling each other fat.

ironically, we're not particularly fat (although opinions might differ), and there was a time when shruti was positively thin - i had to repeatedly tell her that she really doesn't need to lose any more weight, or she'd be unhealthily thin!

it's like how most people mostly use the f-word without associating it with sex.

like all languages, i'm sure this one will continue to evolve.

but we'll probably continue to call each other fat.

how to embarrass yourself at work: part 6

okay, there are actually way more than 6 ways to embarrass yourself at work, but this is one i particularly remember:

i was walking from my desk to the restroom. and i felt a bit of flatulence on the way. now i usually am quite the expert at letting 'em loose discreetly (read: silently), so i decided to take my chances. and let out a clearly audible toot, right behind a colleague's (from another team) desk.

i'm not sure if he turned to see who did it, because i walked as briskly as i could to the restroom.

the hilarity of what had just happened was too much to stifle, and so i burst out laughing while i peed. luckily for me, the restroom was empty, and i had an incredibly satisfying fart while peeing.

until, seconds later, the same guy entered the restroom.

and witnessed me laughing, peeing, and farting. simultaneously, and with gusto.

i did my best to stifle my laughter, while staring at the ceiling to avoid eye contact. i'm sure that made me look even funnier, but there was no way i could anyhow acknowledge his presence in that situation.

i'm sure he still thinks i'm some sort of freak. but that moment was priceless... and totally worth it!

i'm not really bald

"just calculated that if you have one haircut a month, i've had as many haircuts in 29 years as you would in 71."

- kris, before his 851st haircut

that's right. and here's how:

years	weeks/haircut	total	explanation
2	0	0	dad grew my hair for my first 2 years
15	6	130	a haircut every month and a half, usually by dad
1.5	12	6.5	grew my hair - bit of trimming every 3 months
4.5	0.5	468	my first "bald" years - shaved twice a week, at home!
0.5	6	4.33	took a break cos daphne didn't like my bald look :P
3.5	1	182	my working "bald" years - shaved on weekends only.
2.3	2	59.8	the age of laziness: go to the barber every other week :D

which adds up to 851 (after rounding).

and then people think i'm bald.

naked

just woke up from this dream. one of the weirder ones i've had, recently.

it was easter sunday. about 1pm. i was returning on foot from someone's place in the colony, where i had had a drink with daniel. for some reason, mom and the brother were also walking back with us. while walking back home (along holy cross road, for those of you who know where i live), daniel and i decided we wanted to have a lemonade, so i told my folks to go ahead, and i'll catch up with them later. we were supposed to head to my grandmom's place in bandra, and we were late so they were in a hurry.

we had our lemondade, and then for some reason i wanted to smoke. it was drizzling outside so the shopkeeper said we could stand *inside* the shop, behind the counter. daniel stood in a corner, while i lit the cigarette and then stepped out in the rain.

as i stepped out, i saw a couple of girls standing slightly ahead, and one of them looked like someone i knew. i started walking towards them, but they flagged a rickshaw and went away. i then turned off holy cross road towards my place (via the back road). my walk turned into a jog, then a run.

i don't remember how, but while running, i started taking my clothes off, one by one. last thing to come off was my shirt (incidentally, the same shirt that i wore yesterday).

i crumpled the shirt into a ball in my hand, and kept running.

i realized i was naked only when passed a guy who gave me a really weird stare as i ran by.

i hurriedly unrolled my shirt and tried to wrap it around myself best i could. for some reason, it would only go around half of me. i ran to my building, through the compound, and entered the stairway. as i was running up the stairs, one flight away from my place, i came across one of my neighbours and two women, quite fancily dressed (probably heading to an easter lunch), were walking down the stairs. i waited for them to pass me on the fight itself, cos if i reached the landing i won't be able to cover all sides of myself. they, however, waited on the landing. and they somehow didn't react to my state of undress. i told them not to wait, and as they started walking down the flight, i ran up past them. but when i reached the top of the flight, i realized i had mysteriously reached the 5th floor. and my building has 4 floors in real life.

that's when i woke up.

Adriana Jenkins left a message on your guestbook

BABE... i guess your not getting any of my email huh? ive been tryign to email u so many times but this dam laptop is such a piece of garbage and keeps freezing.. anyways how u been? In case u dont know who this is its ME ADRIANA.. we used to chat a bit on facebook and then I think u deleted me :( haha.. anyways guess what... I got 2 things to tell u.. both good news.. 1) im single now.. yup me and my bf broke up about 3 months ago... and 2) guess where im moving? RIGHT EFFING NEAR U.. lol... ur actually the only person im gonna know there.. well 3 cousins too but i cant chill with them lol..I remember when we chatted u told me u thought i was cute and u wanted to chill so now we finally can HAHA! im kinda scared to move.. im hoping this email addy is still the one you use and u can chat with me ebfore i get there.. maybe even help me move my shit in...are u still on facebook? i cudnt find ui was soo confused...anyways im gonna need someone to show me the town and take me out so u better be around bebe...we only chatted a couple times but i remember thinking to myself i wanted to get ot know u better when i was single..a nd i thoguth u were cute too but cudnt tell u cause i wasnt single lol...ok so more info about me.. well im 23.. virgo.. love the outdoors and love to socialize, go out for drinks, restaurants, movies etc.. travel.. i have a lil kitty named BOO and i luv her to death... uhhh oh im a super horny gurl too but every gurl is they just wont admit it. so ilove watching p0rn and all that.. love sex etc blah blah blah...who doesnt..I really hope we get a chance to chat for a bit either online or on the fone before i get there enxt week.. i hope u remmeber me and still wanna chill and arent married yet lol.. OH YA also.. i need to find a job when i get there.. do u have any hookups or know anybody hiring? id LOVE to work in a bar or osmehting like that...really anythgin cause my current job is fun and all.. and technically i CUD keep doign it but i want a change.. i currently work from home and well thats cool but i need ot be out meeting people.. oh wait. i dont think i ever actually told u what i did? hmm shud i......???? ok WELLLL... and dont get all weirded out on me.. i work on a webcam chat community site and i get paid to chat with people and get naked HHAHA... BOMB right :)? I KNOW.. like i figure iim horny anyways why not get paid to chat with people and play with myself heheh...anyways i hope u dont look down on that and NO THATS NOT WHY IM CONTACTING U RELAX URSELF lol... i actually need help once i move and i remembered u live there so im reaching out....like i said before this computer is a complete piece of CRAP and freezes NON STOP.. ive tried ot send this email to u maybe 3 times already and im hopign this time i can hit SEND before i run into trouble lol.. ANYWAYS.. heres the deal....every month natalie (my boss) gives each of us 3 VIP codes to give out to whoever we want.. so with this code u can lgoin to watch me at work for free and dont have to pay like everyone else... the only way i can give u one of the codes (so we can chat) is if you absolutey DO NOT give it out to anyone else and u ONLY USE IT FOR URSELF... i only get 3 a month and she gets pissed if more than 3 people use them so DONT SHARE IT MISTER... i figured u cud always email me back instead but my email account doesnt even let me login half the time.. so the bets palce ot chat me is my chat room... if theres anyone else logged in when u sign in ill boot them out.. but remember DONT SHARE THIS PASSWORD PLEASE BABE IM BEGGING U.. I TRUST U... im online most of the day now to try and save money for my move.. also since im in such a huge debt already form my student loan :( I really thingk we need to chat before i get there and make sure u evern remember me hahha.. anyways ive rambled on and on now and ur probably soooo annnoyed with me so ill stop now.. im gonna go start work.. i really hope u come chat me. it wud make my day and releive a lot of my stress about the move... REALLY i mean that....anyways once i see u in insdie ill shoot u myc ell number and u can gimme yours.. if u dont wanna come chat i understand but its really the only palce to find me now days.. if u email me abck ill probably get it once i get there after my internet is setup so about 2-3 weeks fomr now.. but im hopign to see u in my chat room.. rmemeber its 100% free with this code im gonna give u.. just DONT GIVE IT OUT OR ILL KICK U IN THE BALLS INSTEAD OF LICK U IN THE BALLS WHEN IS EE U hahahahha...k babe im out for now... chat ya soon.. kisses xoxo ADRIANA FREE VIP BYPASS LINK ------>> [LINK DELETED :P]

ps: this was a message sent to me on bebo.com: turns out i created an account there even before i joined orkut... and never ever used it!

the sardar joke

there's this old sardar joke (okay, before i begin, i have nothing against sardars - and you will know why shortly) that i remembered recently:

a sardar entered a bus, and when the conductor asks him the destination for the ticket, he opened his bag to check his tiffin.

a co-passenger asked him what he was doing. he replied: "i'm checking if i'm going home or to work."

and i was reminded of the joke because...

last sunday, while showering, i was so lost in thought, that i had to smell my armpits to figure if i was starting or finishing with my shower.

ps: sunday holds the record for maximum number of times i've carefully smelled my armpits on any given day. and the number is two. but the rest of that story is for another post, another day :)

save me from my madness

i touched cotton today because i wanted to unpack and set up my amp and speakers and ipod before i went to the 'room.

i had just transported the system via a rickshaw, a boat, a car, and another rickshaw, from my friend's farewell party at manori beach.

all for an awesome dump with a background score by dj tiesto, and the *doorframe* rattling with the bass.