the late mr. kristopher.

the problem with getting home after *my* stipulated deadline is:

why did you come home?

never mind that my bed has been made just for me, and dessert has been set on the table (just in case, you know?)

no. dessert can go back in the fridge. don't mention the bed.

the icing on the cake: people who come home after 1am should live in their own houses, or with their friends. then they'll know.

the modest, humble geek

i recently installed connectBot on my phone, and was trying to figure out how to type funny unix-y key combinations. when i found this nice comment on the connectBot project wiki, on a page where people were discussing all the keyboard shortcuts:



now that's a total *burn*, in the nicest way possible!

crappy quotes

i don't know what's with people and dumb quotes these days. i only know i'm being subjected to way more than i deserve.

- Kris

that's right. people seem to have either lowered their standards of quoting others, or (more possibly) lost them altogether.

i have friends who used to come up with amazing one liners like this one:

life is hard, but its harder if you are stupid.

but these days, all i get are things like these:

when dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane

we can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision

my theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything - even if you have no clue what you're doing

why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

the list goes on and on and on...so much that i'm considering making a label called crappy quotes for all the dumb ones that my "friends" share in google reader.

get a life fellas...learn to quote me!!!

playing catch up

not-so-very-hot-on-the-heels-of-facebook, sometime in the last 15 hours, orkut added support for applications.

here's some ideas for more features it should add:
comments on photos.
tags on photos.
a status line.
a mobile interface.
notifications.
posted items.
notes.
...
facebook.

orkut (and hence, google) has gone from doing it's own thing to being just another wannabe. what a sorry trend. and yet it continues unbated. :(

amazing facebook apps

of late, i've been recieving invites to some absolutely amazing facebook apps. the sort that make me wonder why no one ever thought of them before.

for exmaple:

what kind of girl am i (hmmm...the surprised-to-find-out-i'm-one sort?)

What Color Nail Polish Best Fits me? (dunno...is none an option?)

am i Too Picky When It Comes To Men? (oh yes!!! absolutely!!!)

let's make potter president!

let's make potter president...or maybe even god!!!

pottermania seems to have reached the peak of its frenzy these days. however, i've noticed something that now strikes me as alarming instead of funny: a few people think of potter as something other than what he really is - a fictional character in a children's storybook.

i guess there are always people who idolize fictional characters (especially when it comes to kids and kids' literature), and there are always people who delve deeply into their favourite works of fiction (lord of the rings et al). nothing new about that. but when people stop thinking of a fictional character as such, and talk about him like a real person, i get alarmed.

couple of days ago a local newspaper published an article about "what people say harry potter would do if he came to bombay". another similar contest was held yesterday. people really thought a lot about their answers. someone won the contest.

i smell something wrong here. people are mixing rowling's fictional magical world with our reality. and these people are not kids, but adults, albeit young ones - students, people working in call centers, whatever. they are voting citizens of india, who feel that it's somehow potter's job to clean the city, remove potholes, eliminate terrorism, demolish slums (and many more things i'm feeling too lazy to type).

wake up everyone! harry potter is a figment of rowling's imagination! he isn't gonna fix our problems. hell, he doesn't even exist!!! stop praying to him, because he isn't god!!! get a life, you retards!!!

the most surprising error message ever

i just happened to click on a link to the windows live spaces site, and discovered it's currently down. that's fine i guess, sites need to be taken down occasionally for maintenance and stuff, maybe a revamp or to move to another server. whatever. what really surprised me was the error message. here's it, in all it's glory:

Sorry, we are unable to complete your task at this time. The Windows Live Spaces service is experiencing difficulties. Please try your task again later.

that's it. black text on white background, 10 point times new roman. no lines, no nothing. no hint of formatting whatsoever. i checked the source code and was even more surprised. it was just plain text. no hint of html. not even the <html> tag.

someone in the windows live spaces team definitely typed that error message out. i wonder if he/she ever thought about how many users would get to view it. it's been 3 hours now and the message is still there. my guess would be atleast a few hundred thousand.

someone is gonna get fired tomorrow morning. if not, microsoft simply sucks.

let's ban orkut?

the shiv sena has been creating quite a ruckus of late over www.orkut.com. apparently they've forced a lot of cyber-cafes in mumbai to manually ban the site (ie peep over users shoulders and stop people whenever they open the site), threatening violence if the cafe operators don't comply. they also vandalised a few cafes just to show they mean business. and they have applied for the site to be banned by isps too. one of the authorities of the sena's student wing was quoted as saying something to the effect of "if we stop people from using orkut, it will lose money from advertising and run into losses"

their reason: apparently there are a few communities on orkut that speak ill of their party, its leader, mr balasaheb thackeray, and his son mr uddhav thackeray.

the incident leaves me deeply embarrassed for them on many levels. in fact i don't even know how to begin my rant. i expect to get more infuriated and abusive as i progress. my apologies about that. they don't deserve fury or abuse, they deserve sympathy and a free ticket to the nearest asylum. however i don't have any qualms about insulting certain retards. so here goes:

first of all, orkut or google doesn't create communities. users do. the sena should please understand that statement before they do anything.

people speak ill of the sena because they think ill of it. shutting their mouths isn't gonna shut their thoughts. in fact, shutting orkut won't even shut their mouths.

by infringing people's freedom of speech, they make more people think ill of the sena, and hence speak ill of them - this post is a case in point :)

orkut has many millions of users. banning it in one city won't make the slightest dent in its popularity.

orkut isn't even the most popular social networking site out there. it's just extra visible because it's filled with the retard-scum of the earth. wonder if the sena has heard of facebook or myspace. we could slam dunk the sena into the nearest commode on slashdot and no one would notice. that's because slashdotters have a significantly higher average iq than orkutters. (citation missing)

the sena is worried about the few (hundreds at max) communities that poke fun at them, while there are several thousands of india bashing communities out there. it's ok, we never really thought they were patriotic anyway, so there's no need to back up and cover their ass now.

dunno if the average indian realises this, but you can generally judge the strength of a person (or group of people) by how they take criticism. i can't overemphasise this point. mr bal thackeray needs a good dose of self esteem more than he needs the cocktail of medicines that's keeping him alive these days (assuming he does have anything to do with this farce). if this is uddhav's idea, then he probably (personal comment about uddhav's sex life deleted for decency's sake. use your imagination)

hmmm...i think i've got infuriated and abusive enough. bring on the sympathy and the free ride to the asylum.

on a sweeter note, when people make dumb blonde jokes i'll have my "smart" tiger jokes to one-up them. yay!!!

ps: i now realise why online privacy is so important. if i die or get castrated unexpectedly, you know who did it.

my lack of sense of humor

this is a certain miss x's (pun intended) idea of a joke:

• call me on wednesday and tell me she wants to meet me on saturday.


• call me on friday night and tell me she can't meet me as her best friend gets only one off a week, and it's on saturday.


• call me 11 hours later and tell me that she was joking, and that she really (seriously) wants to meet me.

this is *not* the same miss x's idea of a joke:

• call me 2 hours later and tell me that she can't meet me because there's no electricity in her house and she can't leave home without a bath taken in electrically heated water.

i guess i have lost my sense of humor. people's jokes don't seem funny and their serious statements do.

ps: i hope someone isn't in splits reading this. if you are, please don't forget to blame it on my lack of sense of humor.

bill gates is giving his money away!

i get a lot of these chain mails stating that bill gates is giving his fortune away to people who forward a given mail, or that aol will donate 10 cents to some kid who needs a brain transplant. all these mails have one common feature that they claim microsoft, aol or some other combination of big internet/computer related companies are tracking this mail.

this kind of stupid misinformation and waste of internet bandwidth (not to mention unwanted filling up of my inbox) pisses me off no end. i've tried many approaches, none of which have worked so far. these include replying with:

"this is a rumor - check (insert link here) for more info"

"i can't believe someone as intelligent as you can think that one big co can track every single mail. do you think if they had so much power they wouldn't have known all your secrets by now?"

"i know how email works. it's not possible for any one organisation to track any email"

"i can't believe that a computer student like you spreads rumors like this...were you sleeping in class for all of last year???"

anyway...neither of them have worked frequently enough to be touted as generic solutions to this generic problem. so i finally hit upon this solution - and surprisingly it works better than all of the above!!!

"i just checked with (paste big co's name here from original mail) and they told me they are not monitoring this mail."

talk about fighting misinformation with misinformation!!! i guess thats the only way you can convince misinformed people :D

cellphone virus

today i got this very funny mail from my MCA classmate:

---

Hi All,
Its very important news for all of you. Do not pick up calls from the Under given numbers.

9888308001,
9316048121,
9876266211,
9888854137,
9876715587,

These numbers will come in red color, if the call comes up from these numbers. Its with very high wave length, and frequency. If a call is received on mobile from these numbers, it creates a very high frequency and it causes brain hamrrage. It's not a joke rather, it's TRUE. 27 persons died just on receiving calls from these numbers. Watch Aaj Tak (NEWS), DD News and IBN 7.

Forward this message to all u'r friends and colleagues, and relatives.

---

reply-freak that i am, i couldn't help sending this mail in response:

---

if you get a call from 9833511193, please do not answer it. it's a very dangerous virus. it's called kristopher and is a cellphone virus. after you answer the call, you will have to listen to a half an hour lecture about how gullible you are and how you should not believe anything you hear before verifying the facts. you will also have to listen to a very emotional lecture about how people don't think anymore, and how even MCA students who have (hopefully) studied wireless technology do not have the intelligence to realise that such a thing is not possible. in such a situation, please do not say that "i was bored and forwarded it for timepass", or anything similar, because that will trigger off a hidden payload in the virus which will cause it to make a hypersonic wave through the cellular network, which will cause the phone to explode and kill atleast 10 people in the radius, and cause permanent brain damage to people within a 20 km radius of the phone.

this is real. it was on the news. 45 people died in the past 30 minutes. it was in the times of india, dna, mid day and hindustan times. it was also on aaj tak, ndtv, dd news and cnbc. nokia has confirmed that this threat is real and is trying to make a fix for it. the fix is applicable as a special 'brain patch' to be worn over the head. this brain patch will prevent all radiation, but it will also block all sounds too. executives at sony-ericsson were unavailable for comment.

---

feel free to put your name and number in place of mine and use it on unsuspecting/naive/mentally challenged acquaintances of yours who send you similar mails :)