Insomniac Desi

... no I'm not going to sit under a tree and meditate for the next few coming weeks!

I'm taking the GREs (Graduate Record Examination) on March 8th and have already submitted my application for a Masters in Mathematical Finance. Anyone who wants to get into graduate school has to either write the GRE or the GMAT - GMAT for Business programs and GRE for everything else. Both of those are quite similar and quite frankly I don't know why there are 2 different exams out there. Just like the SATs, it tests your verbal, quantitative and reading abilities, but on a much tougher scale - its a 4 hour exam with 2 five minute breaks in between, I think.

Wish me luck!

On a gaming note, my XBOX 360 has stopped playing games. For some odd reason it plays DVDs just fine, but no games at all... initially I thought my system must have overheated, but the DVDs vs. games deal just doesn't make sense. I'm finally coming to this sad conclusion I guess -> All electronic gadgets die eventually for whatever reasons, but Microsoft products a lot sooner than most. Sucks.

Have you ever had a Boss who'd steal your work and pass it on as their own?

PHB = Pointy-Haired Boss, a phrase founded by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert Comics).

Yes, I currently do have one of that kind. Initially I hadn't noticed him doing so, but lately all I hear is about how much hard work and dedication he's put into turning this team into a great team... that would have been fine if they were solely commending his managerial skills, but no, they were in fact commending his ideas, thoughts and vision. I'll give you an example of what I think is a rip-off:

Last week one of our upstream systems (an IT group that provided us with financial input in a file) came to us saying that they were going to modify the file format including the filename which would possibly impact us, so they wanted to give us a heads up. He got this mail from them at around 5:30 pm and subsequently he forwards this mail to me at 5:30 pm obviously because he doesn't know 2 cents about how it would impact us. I reply back promptly telling him in detail about how this would impact us, why it would and how this should be resolved and suggest that we talk about this as soon as I get into work the next day. Next day, I don't hear anything till about 12:30 pm and then out of the blue I hear a bunch of people discussing about the possible resolution in my boss's cube. I'm almost pissed off for not being dragged into the meeting in the first place. Then, I hear my boss say that he researched extensively and found exactly how this should be resolved... then I overhear him repeat what I mailed him yesterday! Later in the evening I see a mail from him CC-ed to his bosses about how he spent 6 hours on solving this. Good God!! 5 minutes after he shot off that mail, he walks by my cube to ask me if foresee any other downstream processes having trouble with the file modification. I did, but I said no... obviously red faced by now. Another 5 mins and I see another mail from my boss's boss commending him on his hard work.

Life sucks working under a good-for-nothing boss. =/

Do you have a nervous habit?
Submitted by Herding Cats.

All through my childhood till about 5-6 years back, I used to be a nail biter. If I was biting away within an arm's distance of my dad, he's slap my fingers/almost-my-mouth and shout "don't bite!!". I don't exactly know how I stopped or when, but I don't do it anymore and can't remember when I did it last...

Now I play with my goatee or simply pull my hair out if I'm frustrated enough.

Got my new XBOX 360 2 days back and have been playing it almost non-stop (except for when I'm working or sleeping). Wanted to buy the Gears of War game, but it was sold out at BestBuy... so I guess I will have to wait on that and do with FIFA '07 and Splinter Cell for now.

Will post a pic of my wired-up room sometime later. I'm thinking about investing in a liquid coolant to cool down all systems that run 24 hours, every day... so far, its 1 laptop, 1 desktop and now an xbox.

Have you ever Googled your own name? How did you feel about the results?
Submitted by elen.

Yes, I have. I do it every once a while to see which one of my results pop up in the first page. I have had my grade list at a foreign university show up once, a mention in a local newspaper that I didn't know of till I googled my name and a couple other useless hits on my personal ex-website.

I would have to say the grade list was the worst, simply because I made an F in that particular course... and my only non-A IT class ever. What are the odds, ha?

I'm seriously thinking about buying a XBOX 360 sometime soon... well maybe by Xmas or New Years. A couple months back, I was thinking about buying a PS3 instead since I love playing NFL Madden '07, Fifa futbol and Basketball games on PlayStation more than on XBOX.

Gears-of-war-xbox-360

Then I came across a review on Gears of War and upcoming HALO-3 on XBOX. So that pretty much outweighed any reason I had for buying a PS instead. The Wii looks good, but better for people who love waving around their hands while playing any game... that'd be annoying to me after a while.

... yikes.