Pink Floyd released their album " THE WALL" in 1979. It is arguably one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. The very best amongst the rest in the album, and my personal favorite is Another Brick in the Wall ( ABITW) 1,2 and 3.
There's no pause, no break between the songs, in fact the transition is almost simultaneous. ABITW - 2 is the most famous part of the "Brick in the Wall trilogy" where Roger Waters goes singing about education , thought control and " Hey Teachers - leave the kids alone".
I simply love listening to this album in particular. It would by large be the most listened album on my Ipod and on my Winamp. Anyways its almost over ... 2005 I mean. Last few days and just 1 month to go before 06 arrives. As I stand dumbstuck - the pace with which 05 went by is undescribable. I still remember the New Year celebration last year. A good start so far - the vacation month has started !!!
Posted by Rajesh @ 9:54 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B 2 B
Monday, November 28, 2005
Now that stands for Back To Boston. It was a superb thanxgiving vacation, I spent in Chicago this time, myself and my friends who landed from as far as Tampa, NJ, Delaware. Although I am doomed after 3 days of travelling and spending $$ to buy some much needed clothing (no digital, E stuff this time) ...
The weather was enjoyable too with about 0 deg F on friday and 40 odd sat/sun I had a nice time driving to some nearby suburbs and visiting places that I used to while I was out there ... Driving back was also fun... Chicago to Philly in about 14 hours ... had some real fun on the road with P & V, friends of mine ...
Now back in Boston, everything seems to be new. Its just a week-end that I was away but still !! And now that the vacation is over, work would be pretty hectic, it would take 3-4 days to get back in the groove and then its Friday again :))
Posted by Rajesh @ 8:31 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes. Its really windy indeed out here in Chicago. Nothing unusual about it, am not sure why am I surprised though. Guess am not used to this kinda weather since about a year...
Hope you guys are enjoying your thanksgiving holidays ( guys/gals in US ) and the Black friday in this part of the world !!!! For the rest of you out there .. the week-end's here again. Would punch in when I get some spare time sigh !!! Enjoy .... :D
Posted by Rajesh @ 3:26 AM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't know what I was doin @ work today. Half the staff had taken a holiday, many of them were working from home, I mean comeon .. working from home ?? ha ha ha ... Every alternate cube in my floor was empty, unoccupied for the day; and those who were in today were trying to do some work, trying being the key word out here ...
Couldn't wait till 3:30, was wondering how was I able to keep myself at my desk till then. Inspite of the holiday atmosphere throughout, accomplised some task though. Anyways would be back later with some more ...
Happy Thanksgiving all of you in the US ... :)
Posted by Rajesh @ 4:03 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Was thinking of getting a haircut lately, but procrastination was killing me and 2 weeks is what it got postponed to. Getting into a week-end mood makes you disabled and getting outta the apt becomes difficult. Enen though I did get out, it didnt quite workout.
So, come Monday and I decided to get it over with. Supercuts is about 10 mins by Bus and that was the 1st thing in my priority list today after coming home. " Happy Thanxgiving " she said with a big Grin on her face. I was like .. yeah Happy indeed .. what's in it for me. Though I don't get involved in these celebrations, I did say " Yeah you too" ...
It was cool, in the mid 40s tonight hence I decided to walk back instead of taking the Bus. Pretty decent day and with 2 more to go before Sanxgiving, work has taken a back seat and I guess its gonna be the same tomorrow and the day after....
Posted by Rajesh @ 10:46 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think it was the year 2000, when "Metallica" responded by filing a lawsuit against them. Although it was a failure, many users were banned from using the service for sharing their song "I Disappear", there have been occassions when the songs had already started floating on Napster before the release of the Album.
It is annoying when you find out that your songs are already in the market before the release of your album and most importantly - for free !! But there have been occassions where such a campaign was advantageous, Radiohead for example had their album Kid A selling like hot cakes and hitting #1 on the charts in its debut week-end.
All said and done, I've seen many ads on subway stations in Boston these days. Park street for example has a good number of ads posted and so does Copley. It all sounds like another ad campaign gearing up, though the popularity of Napster remains to be seen with the market being captured by I-tunes and likes ...
I personally do not like the funda behind sharing music this way. If you have a CD and share it amongst your friends, then fine. But then its trouble when the circle gets bigger and bigger...
Lets wait and watch how it goes this time. Will let you guys know how many days does the ad stay there ;-)
Posted by Rajesh @ 11:47 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, I was watching this an umpteenth time. But not matter what, each time it looks new to me and it generates the same interest and enthu as it did the 1st time. I must say, its a good piece of art, a good theme and some good direction and hell yeah, it generated good interest in the minds of crazy people like me.
Yes, am talking about MATRIX. Was watchin it on TV today, Part II of the sequal though . I can watch it again and again and again and again ... no matter what, each time there's something new to learn and something new to think about and each time it leaves me wondering - could this be true? I bet not, 'cause if it is then I am in great trouble and so are you , and you and every one of you in this planet..
I somehow liked the theme though. Seems quite plausible; and kudos to the director. He has done a superb job - the direction and the stunts are amazing. They call me matrix freak, among my friends. So much so that on one of my yahoo groups, am described as a freak, the MATRIX FREAK. I dont deny that ...
Its just that I start getting into the intriguing details and it starts playing on your mind that getting out from that state becomes difficult, but then who cares... After a long time, I'd say combination of Matrix and Dutch made sense !!
Neo : I know you're out there...I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us, you're afraid of change ... I don't know the future...I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end, I came here to tell you how this is going to begin. Now, I'm going to hang up this phone, and I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you... a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world ... where anything is possible...
Posted by Rajesh @ 10:44 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah that's how this week went by. For that matter, every week in this month, the month before that and the one before that .. and so on ... I've realised that it doesn't take 5 days, anymore, to complete the number of working days a week ...
I dont know whether you guys have experienced the same but even if the work load is less .... ~duh~ .... there comes Friday. I can imagine if one's working his ass off and staying late night, in which case you would only remember spending time in your bed ....
Is this something that we call work culture in US ? 5 days work and then week-ends .. Monday starting again with a hope .... hope - that lets us dream of the coming Friday ... I am not sure if its the same case down under. I guess there is a huge difference in the Work Culture alright. But out here too we've seen guys working their asses off, in Silicon Valley for eg. Thank god the fever hasn't reached EAST COAST... and when the wind starts blowing to this part of US , the momentum is hampered by holidays and longer holidays ... :-)
Like the one on Thanksgiving, where most of them are gonna work Mon, Tue take an off Wed, Thu, Fri .... thats what my colleagues are looking forward to. I agree with them, although its winter they eagerly look forward to meet their Loved ones and you know the Turkey stuff, how much ever superficial it may seem to be !!
I guess Einstein would have been surprised. He should have been alive to watch the 21st century, with time travelling faster than light. Going dead-slow on week-ends and picking up speed on Sundays not to look back - neither to slow down before Friday ;-)
Talking about Einstein and maths, I did a quick calculation and realised the following --- the size of my room (say) is ... X by Y. With the time flying this week I was late in finding out (today) that the size of my room has been reduced drastically [(X/2) * (Y/2)] .. things have started pouring from here and there with the area being eaten up by clothes, gadgets and applicances. But do they belong to me ??
There were days when I used to say SSDD .. but now-a-days its NSDD ...
Posted by Rajesh @ 9:23 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With five U.S Marines killed in an Iraqi firefight, the total military fatalities has reached a whopping 2080 ...
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared in a radio show , the Sean Hannity show to be precise and had this to say:
"Serving on the Intelligence Committee and seeing day after day, week after week briefings on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and his plans on using those weapons, he cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. It's just that simple."
"Do you believe we could have disarmament without regime change?" "I doubt it. I can support the President, I can support an action against Saddam Hussein because I think it's in the long-term interest of our national security."
This is inspite of all the debates going on over the pre-war intelligence and with people basically accusing the administration of being wrong on pre-war intelligence. I think the problem lies somewhere else. You know, once Winston Churchill had to say this; he said ...
"The problem is not winning the war, but persuading people to let you win it."
And I think Mr. Rumsfeld would agree to that .....
Posted by Rajesh @ 11:09 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah .. kinda experiencing the Phase shift these days with sun coming up early and getting dark pretty soon too. Well - I realised that 'cause I was out of my office today @ 4.30 and found it quite odd with all the street lamps ON and the vehicles with their headlights .... thats winter for you and with the Daylight Savings coming into play .. its all messed up. Am sure it would be scaring the crap outta creatures other than humans .... those nocturnal creatures wouldn't be too happy extra hours of work for them. Its strange how their life ( working hours ;-) are being controlled)
Talking about humans ... listened to this after quite a lllllllong time today
There is just enough Christ in me
To make me feel almost guilty
Is that why God made us bleed
To make us see we're Humans Being?
Have been from Mexico to Holland in the past week and have started to listen to all sorta music when am out there .. especially Floyd, Nickelback and the above ... Van Halen ... The afore mentioned countries should be pretty much clear for you 'cause its ..." what "... 2 countries trying to keep the world thin and happy I should say ?? I'll drink to that ... :)
Posted by Rajesh @ 11:48 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are some cool links that you might find useful ...
* Find all the cell phone towers near you -
http://www.cellreception.com/towers/index.html
* Cool weather map
http://www.weatherbonk.com/weather/index.jsp?&refurl=http://www.lifehacker.com/software/search-engines/google-maps-weather-and-web-cams-111451.php
* Check out the traffic -
http://traffic.poly9.com/
* CTA MAPS on google
http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2005/04/19/0216
* Cheapest gas near you
http://gasbuddy.com/
* Search TV shows and /or Videos with Google
http://video.google.com/
7. Amazing flight deals
http://www.mobissimo.com/search_airfare.php
I found some of them useful. There is so much you can search @ Google, I guess will have to create another blogpost dedicated for that.
Posted by Rajesh @ 10:50 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pot Luck
Friday, November 11, 2005
Yup I think I spelled it right. A week ago when our Project Director told us that we would have a Pot Luck this friday .. I was looking ( staring rather ) at everyone .. and so were others. But little did I realise that he was serious. We had Outlook Meetings set up for this Friday and since FRI being "almost a holiday" what better occassion eh ? I thought he 's kidding but he wasn't ... each and every one would bring something or the other ... sigh !!
Okay so this thing was playing in my mind Thursday Evening and I was like what to prepare amongst all the Indian food that onw could think about? So I decided to make some " Fried rice and Sambar (a South Indian dish - for short) " spend some 1.5 hours yesterday from 8-10 to prepare .. but then I knew that out there we would have tuns of stuff
Reach work @ 9.30 to find the big table near my table .. on top of that were 2 huge Boxes .. 2 I mean like the TV boxes ... I was like - What the hell ? But then I couldnt have cared less . By noon we didn't have space to keep all the stuff that came along. Man !! we had food --- I mean ETHNIC food ... from Russia, Mid east, India and the US
So, for about 1 hour we all ( 10 of us ) struggled to finish the stuff .. but couldnt .. the whole place was a bloody mess and am sure the Janitor would faint .. not 'cause of the smell but 'cause of the "sorry sight" . Work? You mean after this ? All of us were Yawning .. and being a partial holiday we had a quite afternoon.
An eventful day I guess .. loved the get together. It should be done more often .. less work more food. What do you say guys/ gals ? Oh yeah then I got some 300 Mb load of songs Nickelback and others from my colleague @ work cool chap, I had already gotten about 40 Gigs from him for my IPod ;-). That was an easy Friday I guess .. now its back to my week-end mood with lots of time being spent on the WWW and related stuff ..
Posted by Rajesh @ 11:05 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~Amplify~Me~
Thursday, November 10, 2005
I've realised today that Music is an ingrained part of my life. Didn't come as a surprise to me, though. The very 1st thing I do once I reach my apt is to turn my PC on and tune into them playlists. I was very uncomfortable today, I drained the batteries of my Ipod Y'day and couldn't take it to work . All along I was wondering what should I do and gaped at the vehicles on the road and of course other commuters ... lol ... Thank god, I had a book to read, atleast could pretend that I was reading ;-) ... even though I wasn't able to concentrate 'cause Floyd, Metallica, Tool, Led Zep was not playing in my ears ...sob..
Okay so the very 1st thing I do after coming home is to listen to my playlists ... after about 1/2 an hour I was able to gather my senses and I felt like I was alright ... Have you ever felt this ? I mean not only music, but say you are used to certain stuff and all of a sudden u are not able to get it done or a somewhat similar situation.. am sure it would have hit you atleast once in your lifetime.. what do you do ? Am pretty much dazed and confused, though this is not the 1st time its hit me. Help !!
You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to explode, later in the evening, you lie awake in bed with the echoes of the amplifiers ringing in your head and remember what you've been through, scary eh ? Yup thats where I'am right now but the soothe comfort of the amplifiers are keeping me tied in one piece or else I'd have melted down like wax ....
@ Garage Inc - Metallica
@ Division Bell - Pink Floyd
@ Kashmir - Led Zepp
Posted by Rajesh @ 10:13 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How true ?
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Somehow landed upon this caricature. It's quite true ... with the gas prices getting high and on top of that the winter approaching. Prices went high about a month back but haven't recovered ever since. With thanxgiving approaching, one starts thinking of the long drives and ... Bingo !!double thoughts ... Y not fly then eh ? Considerable .....
Posted by Rajesh @ 10:44 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was a usual monday morning for me, getting out of the Copley Square, green line for a minute walk to my office at the John Hancock tower. I gotta pass the huge pavement - Copley square on my way. And today out there was the gathering...
Eyes wide open a protest against the war in Iraq, displayed by a widely acclaimed exibition of human cost of the Iraq War. It features a pair of boots honoring each U.S military casuality. 2049 was the number displayed out there and the whole ground and the pavements were covered with pair of shoes tied by their laces.
A lady was standing there reading the names of the soldiers who had died since the invasion. Many banners were displayed, one of them read Not one more death, Not one more dollar. When would this end ? How many more ?
Posted by Rajesh @ 11:12 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The moment I woke up today, there was something going on the back of my mind. A struggle if you would like to call it; but then for what .... It took me a while to gather my senses, got out of the bed and turned on the monitor of my Machine and I dont know how or why, enqueued up the whole list of floyd songs I had on my winamp. Oh well that's what was going on upstairs, stirring my mind for about 15 minutes after I woke up and if I remember correctly, for quite a while, when I was asleep..
But this struggle I encounter quite often esp. on week-ends. This time round it was time for Pink Floyd. Yeah baby .. Its been a while since I listened to Floyd and only Floyd. I havent been listenin to them lately, simply cause you need lot of things goin on before you can make up your mind to listen to them. But would say one thing, they rock...
Its a different class of music and I luv each and every one of their creations.. the wall, division bell, animals, dark side of the moon, a momentary lapse of reason and I wish you were here ... Although they were formed quite some time back (65 I believe) but then who said they didnt have good music back then ? It was actually in the 70s, 80s and early 90s that the revolution took place and I'm thankful to those 3 decades. I dont know what I would have done or what I'd have to listen to if I take out those 3 decades from history...
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb
Posted by Rajesh @ 8:54 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now, what a weather we got out here in Boston. I can't believe its the same me. Was complaining about all the snow last week-end and voila - I think god wanted to surprise us !!
But believe me on the T today early morning, saw the blue Charles River and out there while crossing over @ MGH, I knew that its gonna be pleasant out there.
Its not that often ( atleast not in this part of the world) that you have such a climate in NOV ! Talking about wind, it becomes quite windy out there near the Hancock tower, and when I say quite windy, believe me .. had some trouble walking down to Copley yesterday evening. I could feel the wind gushing - the force was unbelievable.
What am I doin ? Cut the crap .. It looks like an excellent week-end ahead (atleast weather wise) .. so get out there and enjoy Bostonites !!
Friday - Low 48 - Cloudy
Saturday - Low 51 - Partly Cloudy
Sunday - Low 45 - Cloudy
Posted by Rajesh @ 7:48 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You scored as Metallica....
You are a Metal Licka! You are one cool, oldschool dude! You love the raw beauty of greats whether it be an appreciation for a fine wine, or a fine lady. You have the rhythm.
Metallica | | 100% |
Rammstein | | 81% |
Static-X | | 81% |
Mudvayne | | 81% |
System Of a Down | | 56% |
KoRn | | 56% |
Marilyn Manson | | 25% |
Slipknot | | 13% |
What Metal Band Are You!?
created with QuizFarm.com
Posted by Rajesh @ 6:20 PM; PERMALINK,
,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
