Arun Has A Blog

This year I received some awesome holiday gifts!

First up is Monty Python Fluxx. My roommate John gave it to me. I can’t wait to play it.

Next is the gift I received in the annual secret santa that my group of friends from Columbia do together. Sean was my secret santa this year and he gave me this awesome DIY twin lens reflex camera kit. I already built it and hope to try it out soon.

Last year was the first year I participated in Reddit Secret Santa. My secret santa was really awesome. He did some stalking on the internet and found my flickr page. He then framed and matted the photo that he liked the best. It was a great gift. This year’s secret santa again didn’t disappoint. He bought me a load of stuff from thinkgeek.com. My favorite item is the remote controlled LED bulb. I think it is going to make great mood lighting for my room.

Last week, Sean, Vinny, Meixin, and Phil came to the bay to hang out and sight see. Since a bunch of us from the same group in Columbia were already living in the bay, we had a holiday potluck and white elephant exchange. I first picked an angry bird plushie, but that was stolen from me. In the ensuing chain of stealing, I ended up with a Lego set!

Caroline sent me a great travel journal. I wish I could travel soon so that I can use it. ^^ She also sent me a load of candy. She explained that the flat rate box wasn’t full and that she sent the chocolate to fill it. I’m pretty sure she actually sent it to try to make me fat. ;P

My parents sent me a huge K’NEX roller coaster set. It is actually the first K’NEX set I have ever owned. As a kid I was a huge Lego fan and never bought into any of the other construction toy systems. When completed, the set features two mirror image tracks, plenty of inversions and curves and a motor to drive the chain. It also came with a speaker to connect a music player to.

The biggest surprise was the gift Chithra gave me. She bought me a KitchenAid stand mixer! I always dreamed of having one, but I never expected to have one before I settle down and have my own place. Time to do some baking!

The first thing I noticed when I moved from Plano to Palo Alto is the beauty of the area. The streets are lined with colorful trees and the houses are all painted in cute pastel colors. I started documenting the beauty in photos and this is the first of probably many posts featuring them.

The first three photos are of my street after many of the trees all started losing their leaves.

At the end of November this year, there was a day when most of the bay was blanketed in fog. It was too cold and I was too hungry to venture out for a long time to capture some shots, but I did manage a few.

Finally, a self portrait.

Back in October, Caroline made a visit to California for a week. I didn’t take too many photos when she was here, but I did carry my 30D and 28-135 along when we visited the Natural Bridges State Beach. The state beach is famous not only for its rock formations on the coast, but also its population of Monarch Butterflies. The eucalyptus grove on the grounds acts as a sanctuary for migrating butterflies.

The first butterfly we saw wasn’t a monarch, but it was beautiful nevertheless.

We spotted a few chrysalises in the caterpillar nursery.

Caterpillars were munching away and becoming fat in preparation for their transformation to butterflies.

The sanctuary was packed with butterflies. I have never seen so many in my life. Next time I go, I’m going to go with a lens with longer reach so that I can capture much bigger photos of the monarchs.

The views off the coast.

Looked like mother was teaching her baby how to fish.

After some time at Natural Bridges, we made our way over to Año Nuevo State Park to take a short hike and to get a look at the Elephant Seals.

This guy was fearlessly resting on the hiking path. He looked battle worn.

The hiking terrain varied from gravel paths to sand dunes.

At the end of the hike, we finally reached the seals. Unfortunately, most of them were sleeping. -_-

Before heading home, we rested and made zen gardens in the sand . ^^

I recently installed Skype on my work PC. When I tried to exit, I found that I had to jump through hoops to close Skype. It isn’t the most favorable experience. Here is how it went:

In most Windows applications, pressing the large red X button on the top right closes that window. If that window is the last window left of that application, the whole application exits and you don’t see it in the start taskbar or in the notification area. You can assume that Skype on windows should behave the same way. Right?

Wrong! Pressing the X just collapses the window into the taskbar. That is the exact same behavior that is observed when you press the minimize button. I don’t get it. Whey even have the X up there if it does the exact same thing as the minimize button?

At this point, I am tempted to just ctrl+alt+del and kill the process, but instead I give Skype a chance and right click the icon on the taskbar to see if it gives me any options. And there it is! The elusive option to actually quit Skype.

I click the option and guess what! Skype pops up a dialog box asking me if I actually want to exit. Really? You think I right clicked the icon on the taskbar, and then clicked “quit skype” all on accident?

This sort of stuff really bugs me. Why is Skype ignoring already established patterns? Why is Skype making it so annoying to use their product?