Back with Sania!

Hey everyone!
So I must apologize for disappearing again - I figured those 45 entries would keep all of you occupied for 2 months lol Anyway, so this last week was interesting because I finally got a chance to see Sania Mirza play! For those of you who don't know who she is - she's India's tennis superstar, and she made it to the finals of the Bank of the West tournament last year (for singles and won the doubles)!

I got complimentary tickets to the game (thanks to R) and it was great seeing her play. It was a close game, but I don't think she was playing to the best of her ability (probably because of her wrist injury), but fun nonetheless. She lost in the singles and the doubles in the first round, so I guess I won't be seeing her for another year atleast, but it was fun while it lasted.

Archives and Wordpress

After a long hiatus, I'm back and with 45 blog entries!! I just created a blog on wordpress which is an archive of all my blog entries in freshman and sophomore year of undergrad. You can check it out here: http://freshmanyear.wordpress.com/


They should keep you busy for a while. My experience with Wordpress has been good so far, and if things go this way I might convert to Wordpress, but then again I have faith in Google. Let's see what happens.

Blingo - Search and win ?

So what is Blingo? I was first introduced to Blingo in the summer of 06 and I have to admit I was pretty skeptical about it. Time went by and soon enough I had completely forgotten about it. But one of my random stumbles across the internet led me back to Blingo. And so, I've decided to give it a 2nd chance. But what is it? Apparently a way for you to make money for searching the web. Seems to good to be true? Well it is because most probably you're not going to win anything, and if you do, then the odds are that it will be a $5 Amazon gift card or something along those lines. But in the odd chance that you get lucky, you could win anything from an ipod to a car or even $10 million dollars. Thats probably incentive enough to give it a glance.

Most people recommend adding Blingo to your browser and using it as you would google - the only problem being that Blingo's search results page is a lot more cluttered than that of Google and that might not bother you but for someone who's been raised on Google it gets a little frustrating. Even though Blingo is powered by Google and the search results are the same - its still different (for me atleast). But I suppose that's a compromise I'm going to have to make to see if this works. The friend system on Blingo is interesting - if you click on that button on the top of this post and join Blingo as my friend, then whatever you win, I win too! (I dont think it works the other way around). Its a interesting concept and I definitely want to know more about their business model. Enough said, here's a link to Blingo: http://www.blingo.com/about.

Check it out and tell me what you think and if you win!

Go Habs Go!

My first ever NHL game and three goals scored in the first 3 minutes - what are the odds of that? I was supporting the canadiennes (probably because i was with a canadian group and probably also because they were outnumbered in "shark territory" i.e. san jose and finally because the canadiennes are just way cooler). The sharks played really well and they deserved to win - the habs on the other hand had some problems with their goalie - but such is the stuff of life - you win some and you lose some. Overall, a great game! Definitely need to go watch some more NHL games!! Check out the pictures/videos in my gallery...

Pimp my bike!

So its been a while since the last post and even though a lot of things have happened since then, probably the most interesting has to do with this last week being entrepreneurship week. It was only last friday when we thought about doing something - it wasnt until Sunday that we decided to go through - and not until Tuesday that we set up shop and started doing what we wanted to do - we wanted to paint bikes and attach rubberbands to them to increase the value of the rubber bands (that was the goal of the innovation challenge) - but it turned out painting bikes was wayy more successful than attaching rubberbands and so we stuck to painting bikes and came out with some pretty nice pictures that you can check out here - http://picasaweb.google.com/menon.harsh/PimpMyBike

We also had to make a video which you can see here - (kinda cheesy, but oh well) -




Even though we didn't win, it was a lot of work and a lot of fun - which makes it really hard in deciding if I want to do this again next year. Feel free to complement/criticize our work - any suggestions will be appreciated.

Girl Geek Dinner @ Google

So yesterday I went to Google HQ with a few friends (I'm not sure if they want to be named so I'll use initials - M, A and K) and it was interesting. This was part of the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner series. The food was good, there was an open bar and there was good company...Essentially there were a panel of 4 women talking about their lives and their experiences as women entrepreneurs -
- Irene Au, Director of User Experience, Google
- Rashmi Sinha, CEO, SlideShare
- Leah Culver, Lead Developer & Co-Founder, Pownce
- Sumaya Kazi, Entrepreneur & Social Media Manager, Sun Microsystems
- Katherine Barr (moderator), Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures

Katherine was asking the others questions while the audience watched. Each one of those women was unique in her own way- some were too young, some too arrogant, some very humble and family oriented and some just easy going and carefree. I went and talked to a few of them after the discussion was over but didn't really get too much out of it. Probably the highlight of the night was when Leah mentioned the computer science geek's pick up line - "Whats your language?" I have to try that sometime lol.

The time after the panel was spent trying to acquire as many google goodies as possible - the priority being a google umbrella since it was raining pretty hard last night. But despite our irrestible charms and dashing good looks, we couldn't get an umbrella. So much for that.

What kind of person are you?

So I got an email today by Mr. P who decided to use my website to find out what kind of person I am (a decent idea) after which he sent me this email:

"Queried your s/ware on some questions

here is what it gave the answer for
Q) How is harsh as a person

Options
a) Good
b) Average
c) Bad
d) Worst than u can ever imagine
e) No comments

and volla the answer is d) Worst than u can ever imagine"

Now truth be told - generally people stand behind their websites/softwares until the websites/softwares decide to have a mind of their own and go against their creators - but I wouldnt blame my website for doing this to me - after all I gave it free will and this is what I should have expected from it!

More posts...Squash!

So it seems like some famous bloggers (hint hint) have blog-rolled me and so I have to write more - I guess one of the few things I like to talk about is squash! I've gotten into it recently and its a great game - Heres a great website for squash tips:
http://www.squashsite.co.uk/squash_tips.htm
Squash tips from the Khans - (the Pakistanis used to be pretty good at squash at one point of time, primarily because they learned the game by watching British officers play). Nowadays I hear the Egyptians are doing pretty good - because their president (?) is into the sport.

Anyway, I invested in a racket - but after talking around I think I can give some advice to people who are looking to buy a new racket - The major manufacturers out there are Head, Wilson, Prince, Dunlop etc - some specialized ones are Black Knight and Slazenger. I personally have a Prince Air and its been pretty good to me so far- you can see some of the pix below:

If you are a beginner to the sport, get a basic racket - one not too expensive - and once you've played around and think you got a hang of the sport + are willing to commit too it then move on to more advanced rackets - looking at whether you need more power or more maneuverability. Then you can think about getting lighter rackets with a bigger sweet spot - something around 140g should be good.

The Black Knights are also pretty good - they are Canadian made and can be pretty light and very powerful at the same time - definitely a brand to consider once you consider yourself advanced intermediate or so.

News and Updates

So I've been out of action for a bit - but ive got some news and new pictures! Check out my gallery to see days 1 - 3 of shrek's visit to stanford! I also stumbled upon this cool website for blogs - they have some pretty cool stuff for blogs like:

and





to name a few- check out more at http://www.justsayhi.com/bb