An year without cable TV

About a year ago, US went through its digital TV transition. I saw an opportunity to get rid or minimize my addiction to television and I took it.

At that time we used to have Time Warner cable at home and were pretty happy with it. I was aware that I am becoming more and more addicted to TV and used all kinds of techniques like, not watching repeat telecasts, watching only selected channels and so on to reduce my addiction but none seemed to work. My excuse for not getting rid of cable altogether is that the analog transmission at that time was crappy and getting rid of cable means end of TV and I had tried this once before and had failed (I watched a lot of movies and spent money on movie rental than cable TV). When the US went through its long awaited DTV transition I had no more excuses to get rid of the cable and with a strong mind and heart I took the chance and got rid of the cable.

I consider that to be a very wise decision and I must say, I had complete support of my wife in making that decision. The idea was we will give it a 6 month try (of which we were out of town for close to 2 months) and see if we miss cable.


I confess, initial few weeks were tough for me and I used to watch some of the paid programming on ABC and NBC and so on. But over time I discovered the flavor of network TV and I started following certain shows in a day instead of mindless surfing of channels and shows. Currently my favorite channel is CBS and I occasionally switch to ABC, NBC or FOX. I still haven't fallen for reality TV which most of the network channels want to emphasize or developed a condition that says "no David Letterman or Jay Leno", no sleep.


My own analysis says that I do not gain a ton of time on week days but I do gain a lot of time on the weekends. A trial that started with a time limit of 6 months has now reached a year and I am quite happy about the fact that I am saving money every month.


I realized how easy it is to fall back when I discovered Netflix streaming of movies and shows, I started watching the show 24 like a maniac (completed season 1 and season 2 in less than couple of weeks). Thanks to my breathing practices, I am able to get it under control without falling into the cracks.

STOMP

If you thought you need a precision tuned musical instrument to generate music then stomp is here to prove you wrong. If you ever tried generating noise using house hold things and imagined you generated music then check out stomp, they truly generate music with household things. 

Thanks to our Bahraini friend, some of us were fortunate enough to witness the show yesterday at paramount theaters in Austin. The show was spectacular, incredible, no adjective would do justice for the show. 

Never in my wildest imagination I had thought that somebody can generate music with things like broom stick, trash can, pipes, sticks, match box, cigarette lighters, gutter pipes, trash bags, news paper and on and on. They had amazing rhythm and the co-ordination among the members of the team was a feast to watch.  The short hour and half show was an interactive one with the artists interacting with the audience very frequently. The show had comedy too. Some parts of the show were pretty loud but not unpleasant  The show was performed in a single stretch without a break. I definitely would appreciate their stamina and teamwork. I came out of the show thinking, all I need is rhythm and music just happens. At the end of the show the artists got a well deserved standing ovation. 

It wouldn't be fair on my part if I do not complement the acoustics of the paramount theaters and their organizational skills.  I doubt if there is any other theater in Austin with better acoustics than paramount theaters. Their organization skill of employing just enough ushers and distributing them arond the theater in right quantities is something to learn from.    

The group is currently performing at Austin Paramount theaters and they will be there till sunday. The tickets are well worth the price and keep in mind the shows are running houseful.  

Wild flower drive

This blog is dedicated to the people who are in Austin, Texas and like the wild flowers that have sprung all around Austin. If the wild flowers that have sprung in and around Austin have made you want for more then here is the drive you should consider. 

Take TX-71W towards Llano and take TX-16S towards Fredericksburg. You will truly will be in for a feast. Fields are filled with colorful flowers. I am not sure how long will these last, so if you want to make it do it soon. While you are there you can take FM 965 and visit Enchanted Rock and the Wild seed farms in Fredericksburg. If you are even more enthusiastic consider the willow city loop (we didn't do this).  

Here is a glimpse of what you might see. 

The above red flowers were not on the way but at Wild seed farm Fredericksburg. 

  

Some times simple solutions isn't what I want

After I posted a comment on my friend's blog, I realized when it comes to myself, many a times simple solutions is not what I look for. Here is one example for the same. 

I retired my old Athlon based PC and built a new Athlon X2 based PC. Everything was new including the hard disk and the OS and all. The PC was running fine for a few months and then started blue screening and complain "Insert OS disk and boot". I used to faithfully re format the disk and re-install the OS, until I realized I can solve the problem  by unhooking the SATA cable from the hard disk and the motherboard and re insert the same after some time (cooling time). 


Over time the blue screen became more and more frequent, it was like sitting on a time bomb not knowing when it will go off. I suspected the memory interface, so I slowed the memory speed in the bios. I downloaded memory stress test and ran the same, there were no errors in the memory interface. 

Since I had already invested too much money on the new PC, I had to fix it and make it stable. I debated on changing the hard disk. but I wasn't sure whether it was the hard disk or the motherboard that was faulty, I decided to ditch the SATA disk completely and installed the OS on an old IDE hard disk. The 80GB space on the IDE disk was not nearly enough to hold the pics and the music among other things, hence I decided to use the SATA disk for data. 


The instability of the PC got solved but every now and then the data disk would drop off and become unavailable. The only way to recover was to unhook the SATA cable and hook it back. I did some research on forums and based on those suggestions, I uninstalled the nvidia SATA drivers. This step did help to some extent and the data disk fail became less frequent. 

One fine day I realized I had an extra SATA cable and decided to swap the cable, I can't believe all my problems with the PC is solved. The fact is I had this cable for ever and could have done this long time ago but my logical mind couldn't accept the cable could be at fault, but turns out it was. If only I had taken this simple step in the first place, I could have saved myself a lot of agony. 

In hindsight I think the cable was failing as the temperature of the CPU box went up and the system used to blue screen once the cable failed. For a long time I had setting "Reboot on failure" and hence I used to get the error "Disk not found". Uninstalling the SATA drivers helped because the data transfer rate reduced and hence the heat generation reduced.  

Not fair at all

Mr. Shoaib Malik - Ms. Sania Mirza wedding hurdle has finally been cleared. For those who read times of India online you couldn't have missed the dispute. For those who don't, turns out the cricketer was already married to another girl by name of Ms. Ayesha. 

Times of India has been running articles on this every day for the last couple of weeks and made sure it got the prime time. I was pissed that the paper is giving such importance to this. They had interviews with this lady Ms. Ayesha and they were posting comments from Mr. Shoaib and Ms. Sania also, in the end they managed to keep the issue alive very well. 

Till today Mr. Shoaib kept denying that he ever knew this girl Ms. Ayesha from Hyderabad and denied even meeting her let alone marry.  Today all of a sudden he decided to divorce the girl he has never met. 

The unfair part I am screaming about is the settlement, a paltry Rs 15,000 that too to be paid in 3 installments over 3 months. To top it all, everybody is happy with the settlement. I feel it is one of those settlements that is not even worth the paper it will be printed on.  

I wonder if the TOI forgot to add a couple of 0's in the end.  

Rainbow inside the apartment

Couple of weeks ago we managed to capture a beautiful rainbow formed on the window blinds. Before the geek inside you start to wonder where was the prism for the rainbow, the light was going through the aquarium. 

Here is another view of the same (playing with settings on the camera). 

Snippets from Corpus Christi trip

After every trip I usually log a travel log about the trip. Since this time the trip was pretty local and we visited standard Texas attractions I will only post snippets.  

A brief history of the trip : we started on Saturday morning and spent most of the day at Seaworld San Antonio. In the evening we headed to Corpus Christi and spent the night. On Sunday we spent the day at Mustang Island state park. In the night we took a stroll on bay front road. On Monday we toured USS Lexington warship and visited Texas State Aquarium. 

• When you book a hotel room through Hotwire, they do not guarantee the room type, for ex: I had asked for a room with 2 queen beds but because the hotel was so completely booked due to a conference and all I ended up getting a room with 1 king size bed. 
• I got pulled over by the highway patrol on the way to Corpus Christi not because I was speeding but one of my license plate lights were out. I didn't get a ticket but a warning (not a verbal one but a printed one).
• Sea world still has shows with the killer whales but I could see that they weren't pushing the whales as they used to do before. I guess it is good both for the whales and the humans. 
• If you ever visit seaworld SA don't forget to do the lori bird feeding, it is a unique experience  of holding a small cup of nectar in hand and having the bird sit on your hand while sucking the nectar. 
• Seaworld SA does not host the Clydesdale horses anymore, instead they have couple of Texas longhorns and couple more uniquely Texan animals. 
• If in corpus christi you decide to tour the aquarium and the warship on the same day, I suggest you do the aquarium first. 
• In the aquarium I suggest not to miss the wild flight show. It is a truly unique and a great show. 
• Driving from Corpus Christi to Austin, if it is spring time and you are a bit adventurous, try the scenic route along highway 181 and highway 123. We truly were in for a surprise when we saw lush wild flowers all along the way. Google says it takes close to 4 and half hours if you take this route, but we managed to do it in less than 3 and half hours. Keep in mind you need a good GPS and a truly alert mind if you decide to take this route. 
• I have been to corpus twice so far and I think mustang Island state park is a better beach than corpus christi beach. 
• The sand in mustang island state park is so fine that it is guaranteed to fill in to all nooks and holes of the car.