Dread and the fugitive mind

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:43:50 GMT

Happy birthday to the Seattle/Microsoft rowdies nash_da_basher and ravi! Have a great one guys ...

WTF???

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:39:05 GMT

WTF???, originally uploaded by sharat.

Imagine spending 1/3rd or 1/4th of your month's salary for driving 20mph over speed limit. Seriously, WTF??? What's even more ridiculous is that out-of-state residents do not have to pay this additional fees. I hope this is some kind of a sick joke ...

Here's a link to the article on The Washington Post. I think i'll just keep my car at home and take a cab to work or something. Too bad, my workplace is not metro accessible :-S I think I should get the fuck out of Virginia soon, there's nothing here anyways ...

H1-B visas this year

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:07:01 GMT

This is sheer madness.

[Update]
More here.
[/Update]

Baltimore and Washington DC pics

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:15:12 GMT

Squirell: vorei! evadra rowdy?
Pinak: Saar, not me saar. I didn't mean to mess with you :-S

The first 10 pics in the album were taken when pinak came to visit me in Fairfax. We both went site seeing in Washington DC during the day time and bar hopping in Adams Morgan, DC during the night. The rest of the pics were taken in Baltimore when iamliberated and I went to Baltimore to celebrate the union ;) The link to the album is here. It was great fun, both the trips.

Some more random pics of University of Maryland - College Park, Coopers Rock State Forest - West Virginia, Adams Morgan - Washington DC are here.

Meme, Intern

Mon, 15 May 2006 19:58:43 GMT

My 10 bad/weird habits: (Tagged by nash_da_basher)

Once you are tagged you MUST write a blog entry about your 10 weird habits/things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next six people to be tagged and list their names.

* I take my college bag wherever I go. Pubs, movies, concerts ... everywhere.

* During an exam, when thinking about an answer, I tend to stare at the invigilator. It sometimes pisses them off.

* 99% of the time i'm invisible on Yahoo Messenger. No particular reason.

* I just cannot sleep before 2am even if I have to get up very early. I work for school but in a different campus and I travel ~50 miles everyday which means I have to wake up at 6am if I have to get to work on time.

* I drink cola/cold drinks even when I have cold and screw up my already-fucked-up health even more.

* I used to wink (it was very unintentional and involuntary) a lot when talking to people but I think I got over it now.

* I can't pick up anything by sitting in class, listening to lectures. Heck, I don't even know why I go to classes.

* I'm hopelessly addicted to Orkut.

* I pick on people who think they can get away with doing absolutely anything after getting drunk. I like spoiling their trip ;) (All in good spirit of course)

* I procrastinate everything. I'm just too addicted to this last minute thing, my mind just refuses to work if I have ample time to finish a task.

I tag namus, pinak, subtle_blues, brainz, _aks_ and ravi.

In other news, I have a 2-month summer internship offer from SWIFT (PHP/Oracle). I don't know if I should be taking it or continue with my RA work (throughout summer and hopefully even in Fall). Both are full time, 40hrs/week and both pay almost the same. Any suggestions?

My new laptop

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 21:44:14 GMT

My sister gifted me an IBM Thinkpad T43. And no, this is no April fools prank :)

Once in a LIVEtime

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 14:22:10 GMT

I'm going to Chicago to see Dream Theater live with my friend Ramki during the Spring break :) The concert/flight tickets are all booked. I'm so excited :D

My Johari Window

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 22:03:24 GMT

http://kevan.org/johari?name=sharat

Free t-shirt, RA

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:33:20 GMT

General Motors is giving away free T-shirts (ships only in the US) to promote E85 (ethanol-gasoline mix). Click on Get stuff -> t-shirts to order your free shirt(s).

In other news, i'm now working with Dr.Maguire of Administration of Justice, GMU as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Trinidad Project (as their IT person, of course). What does this mean to me? Good salary and a chance to take only 6 credit hours this sem :)

:|

Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:12:02 GMT

Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:06:14 UT
From: "Pinak" <lj_notify@livejournal.com>
To: "Sharat" <my_email_address>
Subject: Your friend has sent you a LiveJournal nudge

Hey sharat,
Your mutual friend pinak has noticed that you last updated your journal
on LiveJournal 3 weeks ago. Be a friend and go post.
(http://www.livejournal.com/update.bml)

Sincerely,
The LiveJournal team

Blingo

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:01:03 GMT

I just won a movie ticket on Blingo a few minutes back. Now lets see if this thing is for real ;)

First Snow :)

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 20:23:46 GMT

First Snow, originally uploaded by sharat.

I have tons of other pictures (LJ meet at Hard Rock Cafe - Baltimore, Fall Colors) to upload. Will do it after i'm done with my final exams (about a week from now)

Flickr

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 20:18:32 GMT

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Random pics

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 23:38:28 GMT

YADCT1 ;) - Yet Another DC Trip and SAL, GMU

Paul, my roommate and I at the Museum of Natural History

My machine

More pics are here

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 04:02:33 GMT

Happy birthday nash_da_basher and ravi (tomorrow) :)

The Megadeth mania continues ...

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 05:29:30 GMT

Waiting for my first pay check ... :D

Life update

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 16:49:09 GMT

So, I moved out of my sister's place and shifted to the one place in Fairfax where the desi grad student population is the most. Whenever we go to the baseball ground to play cricket on holidays/weekends, there will be atleast 15-20 people. That way, its a lot of fun. I moved into a town house in the same apartment complex, a duplex house with 4 bedrooms (technically 3 bedrooms, 1 den). We are 7 people now and planning to get one more person in because the house rent is ridiculously high. Life is good as of now, i'm pretty busy with assignments/projects almost all the time. Lots of beah. Scam wireless internet rules ;)

There seems to be no openings for TA/RA positions in both the CS and ISE departments this semester, so no chances of funding :( But I got a part time job as a programmer in the System Architectures Lab which is paying me $11 an hour as of now which is pretty good for a non-TA/RA student wage position. This job is only for 10hrs a week, so the remaining 10hrs, I plan to work in the food court. Work starts from tomorrow so life will be very hectic. I will not be on YIM/AIM/Skype/GTalk very often so the best way to get in touch with me is to send an email to sgajula2 at gmu dot edu

And also, I got a new phone, a free piece with the Sprint connection. Ping me and i'll give you my number.

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 19:36:01 GMT

Happy birthday brainz! Hope you have a wonderful year ahead.

Washington DC trip

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 20:38:40 GMT

Me and my sis went to DC last saturday because we had nothing better to do on a weekend. And its not very far too from where I stay. The pics are here.

In other news, i'm moving out from my sister's place to live with roommates very soon. Probably a week from now. And, the pics of the craziest, wackiest, most fun filled, my most memorable LJ meet ever will be up very soon on cyberabad

First post from the US of A

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 02:36:59 GMT

How do I start? Well, the flight journey was good. I flew Air France and this was my first time flight experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a 6 hours gap in the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris so I went around the whole place twice and accidentally bumped into the only other person in the airport who looked like he was from the Indian subcontinent. The man was about 35 years old and I later found out that he was a Pakistani by birth and now a US Permanent Resident. He also claimed to be the nephew of some random minister in Pakistan. He was also taking the same flight to Washington DC, so we hung out together (lol!) and then sat together in the flight and all :p I landed in the Washington Dulles International airport at 5:30PM and the same night, we went to see the GMU Fairfax Campus. I have no jetlag whatsoever probably because i was used to sleeping really late back in India.

The day after I landed, I went to the university to finish all the important immigration, checking in and immunization work. And because my scores in B.Tech suck, I didn't get any financial aid/assistanship. Luckily for me, on the same day, the food court guy was on a hiring spree and I got myself a part time on-campus job in Sodexho Campus Services. I'll still keep trying for other jobs though and will plan to keep this as a backup. The next day, I met _aks_ in school and we both went to his apartment. I had some real good time there. It felt really nice to be in a group of telugu speaking guys who were all watching some random Junior NTR movie together. It was fun.

So, as of now, i'm staying with my sister in Oakton, Virginia. It's not very close to the university, I have to take 2 buses (almost 45mins) to get to school. This is one reason why I want to move out. And here, its almost as good as being at home with almost everything taken care of, by my sister. One more reason to move out. Yesterday was my birthday, so my sister and her (our) roommate/friend took me out to an Italian restaurant, Olive Garden for lunch and then to Regal cinemas where we watched Wedding Crashers. My sister bought me Megadeth Greatest Hits and the DVD Almost Famous. All in all, I had a very good birthday, it was way better than what I expected.

So, life is good in Virginia as of now. But I know that there are real tough times ahead. I'm not feeling very homesick as of now but i'm really missing my friends and anything even remotely related to Hyderabad.

Nagarjuna Sagar trip

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 08:56:54 GMT

The trip was amazing. There were 9 people in total. brainz, Harsha, k_n_red, nash_da_basher, pinak, psychog, rajini_priya, sharat (Me :D) and smithi. The weather was not so pleasant but still we went boating in the afternoon. We also went to a place called Ethipotala (spelling anyone?) which is about 15kms from the dam. We were told that there was a chance to spot crocodiles there somewhere near the waterfall but we had no luck. Click here to see the album.

More pics from brainz's cam are here.

New userpic, new cell number

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 06:01:30 GMT

This pic was taken about a couple of weeks back at my friend (Akshay), godthinksimabel's place while we were practising for our last show. And, my new cell number is 9885663350. Sorry for the inconvenience :D

Potta goes to america ;)

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:04:48 GMT

So, my appointment (US F1 visa) was at 8:45AM on the 21st of June and I went early by an hour and I was allowed inside instantly as there were not many people at that time. The interview was normal, I think I answered pretty well and I came out all smiles by 8:30AM wonly. For strange reasons, I chose George Mason University over University of Texas at Dallas. And, University of North Carolina at Charlotte was out for some obvious reasons. So, i'm gonna be gmu material from August, this year :D Apart from this, the chennai trip was pretty boring. ravi was uber-busy but he did find some time to meet up. We went to Gangotree, sipped some coke, chatted for a while and split.

Oh and btw, there's a show happening in One Flight Down this Sunday. It will probably be my last show in Hyderabad for quite some time. I only have about 6 songs this time, so i'll be off the stage for most of the time. It's more of a fun concert this, the show is basically about young musicians getting together and playing some good music and having a good time. So, all my LJ buddies, please try and make it if you can. I'm sure it'll be fun.

When does life truly suck?

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 09:20:43 GMT

When you have met with an accident which should have never happened if it was not for the stupidity of the pedestrian, when your bike is so fubar'ed that it will cost a fortune to make it look like its original self and when your Nokia 6600 slips out of your hand and is run over by a bajaj chetak. I hate to say it but sometimes life truly sucks :((

p.s: I didn't hurt myself very much but my poor bike and cell phone got royally fscked :((

Bombay, Pune trip

Sun, 22 May 2005 09:07:33 GMT

The trip was amazing, the concert was mind blowing. I stayed for only 2 days in Bombay so couldn't meet up with any LJ'ers there. Spoke to charlesj on phone and vighy wasn't at home when I called. Went to Leopold in Colaba for lunch the day after the concert. Great place for a date, unfortunately we didn't have any ;) . I couldn't take my digital camera inside MMRDA grounds and I was standing in the Rs.1000 section anyway so I was too far to take pictures. All in all, it was a great experience because i've never seen such a big crowd before. Hyderabad only has the pub rock scene and we've seldom had more than 500 people for any show. And, its the same set of people everytime who keep coming for shows and the same set of people who start/join the moshpits ;). That's why everybody knows everybody else in the Hyderabad rock circle. Only recently we had some new faces coming in for shows.

Pune was good too. We jammed with this band called Salvation Crusade there. Female vocalist and she growls. Weird it was. Their jam place was at Banjara Hills and the view from their balcony was awesome. I'm still repenting for not taking the digicam there. Went to this place called Apache (yes!) for booze. Pitcher was dirt cheap. Drank lots that night :D And yeah, Rajiv was telling me about the Maharashtrians' unfathomable obsession with Chhatrapati Shivaji. I've seen many places in Bombay and Pune named after him. CST, the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai, the Junglee Maharaja (JM) road and Shivaji nagar in Pune and many more I can't recollect. Whatever!

Oh and btw, a list of all my photo albums is here