Running

I have been running for the past 10 weeks now. Madhura got me this great book: "The Beginning Runners Handbook - The Proven 13-Week Walk/Run Program".
It has motivated me enough to stick to its plan for the past 10 weeks! Can you believe that! I am following it every bit. So much so that I have bought a pair of dedicated running shoes!
Frank is the only marathon and ultra-marathon and 100 miler I know of. I always thought marathon runners were some kind of legendary figures. You know...the ones you see on TV and thats that. He's guided Madhura to stick to her plan and she's run a 5K and a 10K in Michigan. But then, well, she doesn't need much prodding to stick to plans anyways. Unlike me!
One fine evening Madhura kicked my butt on one of her casual run days. I found I just could not run. All those months (or has it been years) of inactivity, puffing and drinking did no good to my lazy muscles. So I am like..."Let's try this. I am going to give up anyways. Since I am home, it will at least tire me enough to help me sleep. Once I land a project and am away, its all going to fizzle away."
But I am holding on! For 10 weeks! Inspite of the move and all the hullaballoo. 3 more weeks to go and I should be able to run a 10K (6.2 miles). Groovy! Me talking of running 'miles'. I sincerely never believed I could run more than 1.5 miles. How did I arrive at that number? That was how much I could do after huffing and puffing for 20 minutes and on the verge of collapsing on that darned treadmill! But that program's put me here where I can now run 5 miles for sure! Kudos Amit! 
Problems so far? Let me put that up in another post. What say?
I found this cool iPhone app and site to log your runs too. That too in some other post.
Madhura's egged me all the way, so far. She's registered us to run for this event on Sept 12th - South Fairfax Chamber of Life Without Limits 10K run. And I am nervous as hell. Just have to stick to the training plan and I think I should be able to get to the finish line. Conscious.

Bollywood songs on your iPhone

We all know that there are not many iPhone apps out there (actually, I didn't find even one) that plays Bollywood songs. Even Pandora does a pathetic job. Thats sad! Considering such a growing population of desis using the iPhone. Did I just give away a good App idea to a developer? :-)

But then, we, as always are resourceful, aren't we?

Check out m.dhingana.com. You gotta go through the Safari browser.

Lo and behold! It's a beautiful and easy interface right there.

What I like? You can minimize Safari and do other stuff. The songs play in the back ground. Except, of course, if you were to access the internet, and the songs stop.

Eliminating the blind spot

Found a great way to eliminate the blind spot while driving.
Simple and easy: Sit as you would normally drive and adjust the rear view mirror the same way you would usually do - centralized view of the rear window. Now, move your head between the driver and the passenger seats (yes, lean over) and adjust the passenger side rear view so that you just see the edge of the rear bumper in the mirror. Next, come back to your normal driving stance, and move your head one head length to your left (don't have to 'lean' as much) and then adjust the driver side rear view mirror so that you just see the driver side rear bumper. Done!
It takes a little time getting used to the new rear view in your side mirrors. A couple of hours of driving, at most, I would guess. But, believe me, it's much better than craning your neck every time you want to change lanes.
Let me know if this works for you. Or if there's any tuning required.

Mail2blogger

Blogger has this great feature where you could post to your blog
directly from your phone. Here's a sample...
Go to Settings > Email and format your Mail2Blogger email ID there.
Select if you would like the blog to post immediately or would like it
to sit in your dashboard to review and post later. Next time you want
to blog on-the-go just send an email to that address. The email will
be your posting and the email's subject the title of your post. Nice!

Sent from my iPhone

Outlook voting and tracking

Sharon showed me this great functionality in Outlook: Voting and tracking.

It's a pretty cool feature. Say you want to get an opinion from a bunch of people regarding, say, "Do you want to go out for lunch today?". Conventionally, you would send out an email to all these guys and try keeping track of who voted what. Well, use the voting and tracking feature and things would be easy.

Compose a new message just as you would normally do. Use the 'Options' button to open up the 'Message Options' and check 'Use voting button'. Scroll down the list to select their options or enter any options you want making sure each option is separated by a semi-colon.

Compose your message as you would normally do and send it. The recipients receive the email with an option to vote. She votes and can send the message back with editions. You get the reply with her vote.

To keep a track of the votes, go to your sent message and hit the tracking tab. Voila! Your recipients' votes are all displayed in a nice form out there.

Simple and very effective.

Swoopo.com

Lisa mentioned about this auction site...Swoopo.com.

After going through it for a while, I must say it is quite a brilliant idea. I have not registered and bought anything there as yet. But I do see myself going for it one of these days.

The concept is brilliant: The auction starts off at $0.00. I have seen 50" plasma tvs go for something like $150! Bids increment at 6c or 12c or 24c! And if you put in your bid in the last 20 secs, the timer jumps up another 20secs. So technically, there is no set end time for the auction. Now here is the catch. Every bid you make, costs you 60c! Aha! So in actuality, if the winning bid was say $120 with a 12c increment, there have been 1200/12=1000 bids made. So, the site actually roped in (1000 x 0.60 = $600). S&H separate. So you see! What a terrific concept! Would I try it? Yes! Sure...for checking it out.

More updates when I try it out.

A new beginning

A lot's been happening for the past few months. My honorable intentions of maitaining a running commentary have proven, if nothing else, a broken promise. Well, life happens, I guess.

So without further ado, let me try and recoup.

We got out of Michigan on the 24th of July 2009. It's been 5 years

that I have been in and around Auburn Hills, MI. Thats where I landed my first job, made a lot of good friends, and Madhura too! It was a bitter sweet moment - leaving Michigan. And thats the longest I have lived in one city in my life! Well, I guess change is good.

Our plans to move to San Diego were washed away after I landed a project with the State of Delaware. Almost overnight we did a 180degree turn and decided to move to Virginia. We cancelled our tickets and ALL those detailed plans to move to SD and booked a Penske truck to move to Virginia.

I drove to Nitin Kalra's place (in Gainesville, VA) on 18th July and then to Delaware. Found a nice place. The boss here and other developer folks are gre

at!

Flew back the next weekend to load up the truck. Gautam, Nate, Taylor and Girish helped us. Slept the last night at Gautam's place and left early in the morning. It took me 11 hours to get to Nitin's place with Maggy a total wreck. She wouldn't eat we

ll for the next 2-3 days and started her puking again. And then the new place, new people...sure was quite difficult for her. Anyways, she managed to pull through.

I had to leave Madhura and Maggy at Nitin's place and drive back to Delaware. Madhura did a terrific job the next couple of weeks balancing the job hunt and apartment search and being a good guest and a good mom to Maggy. There were some stressful moments there. But all in all, she landed a good job with IRG. And we landed up in Fairfax, VA. :-)

Thats as of today.

Last two weekends have been busy getting the apartment set up. Its quite a lot of fun I should say. Planning with Madhura. Playing with Maggy. Beautiful place.

All in all, so far, we are pretty happy with things inspite of the haphazard way they have been happening. :-)