This past weekend were the birthdays of two very special people in my life. Times like these i wish i was at home, to celebrate the best of times with my nearest and dearest ones. Probably one of the biggest hurdles for humans to overcome is physical distance. Technology has let us see and talk to other people over thousands of miles, but it does not let us feel the emotions and the touch. No technology can substitute for a hug or a kiss.

Apart from that, it was also my buddy Jen's birthday on friday. Didn't do much over the weekend since all my friends were busy studying for their exams. Looking forward to the next weekend when i have to attend a religious ceremony and i will get to see some of my buddies.

I was looking to buy a WiFi-G router for a long time so i finally went ahead and gifted myself a WRT54GC for christmas. I set it up for the first time in January and it lasted for only 2 days before it first crashed. One would ask how does a router crash ? Well, i could not ping any website in the outside world nor could i ping the router itself (192.168.1.1). My machine is connected using a wired connection to the router so its not a wireless problem. Checked all my cables...still no go. Once i reset the power on it, it started working flawlessly again ! Assuming it to be a rare incident, i moved on, but the same thing happened again after 1-2 days. Once again, resetting the power did the trick. This shows that my ISP was not down but it was actually a problem with the router. I went ahead and returned the router to get another one of the same model/make. This one shows similar symptoms.

Last night FTP access to my site would not work from my laptop, so i thought of trying it out with my Tablet PC. It worked on the Tablet PC. One would say that something is wrong with my DELL Inspiron 1100. No, actually i had enabled the DMZ function on the router and put my dell on the DMZ. Disabling DMZ made FTP work on the machine. Now i am wondering if all the problems previously experienced by me were due to the DMZ function. Lets see if the router lasts for another couple of days without a reset then my doubts would be confirmed. Otherwise I would love to stick with a trusty old Dlink DI524.

Going back to downtown Halifax after moving to Tantallon has become a weekly (or rather 'weekend-ly') ritual now. Its so much fun and only when there is a scarcity of something does one realize the value of that object/person/activity. In this case its somthing called "social life" that has become a prized commodity for me. So this past weekend was fun as I went back to Halifax and met up with my friends. Due to time constraints, a movie did not happen, but I very much enjoyed coffee with one of my friends. Since we both are on our co-op work terms, we discussed the pros-cons of our jobs. Thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

I recently got my domain name www.anando.org and now i am busy setting up a website . At work, I am currently designing a web-interface for one of our Digital HD FM transmitters. Sound like fun ?

It seems that its the season of beta invites. Omar Shahine has a limited bunch of Windows Live Mail invites (formerly known as "Kahuna"). Go and bug him !

I have about 8 Windows Live Messenger 8.0 BETA invites. If you want an invite, please leave a comment convincing me to give you one

On a side note, here is an awesome blonde joke that i found. Its a must read

So today i shipped my first ever software with all documentation, help files, readme and the works in a "setup.exe" package. Detailed troubleshooting etc. was done before shipping it to one of our clients. Although it was a very small piece of software (a ping program which writes to a log file), i still feel very satisfied about the whole thing. One of our clients wants to ping a FM radio transmitter on the top of a remote mountain somewhere in USA and thats where my software would be used. Love it !!

No, this is not one of those 'run-of-the-mill' top 10 reasons. Maryam Scoble, wife of the famous Robert Scoble blogs about the top 10 reasons to date a geek from her perspective. So here we go

So i have been here at Hackett's cove for the past 4 days. This place has absolutely no civillisation and after living in downtown Halifax for more than 2 years, this place really sucks. Good for scenic ocean views, but not good for living on a long term basis. The nearest superstore is 19 kms away...need i say more ?

The past three days at Nautel have been extremely boring. I havent been assigned any work and i just sit there all day doing nothing. All the employees out there are way above my age group and there is a huge lack in ethnic diversity. To top things off, there are only two co-op students including myself.

My friends Sean, Rachel and Danny came over to visit me last night and i went for a movie. I got to see some human beings for a change, YAY !! I am still wondering how i would get to Halifax and back on the weekends.

All in all i can say that stuff sucks right now, but hopefully it will get better (keeping my fingers crossed).

I have been cut-off from the rest of the world due to no access to the internet for the past 2 days. Hopefully, I will be able to get online by tomorrow and then i can post about my first day of work at Nautel and life in general.