Orkut and Facebook predicament

Ever had to approve friend requests simply because you don't want to seem rude? Orkut and facebook as awesome as they are for staying in touch and finding old friends they pose this problem of unwanted people finding us.

I've had to approve friend requests from certain people who I know do nothing but criticize my actions or fabricate stories about me. In reality, if not for these sites I could simply get away from these people by simply not staying in touch. In all honesty, approving such friend requests never leads to anything useful, the other person probably just wants to be friend to pry.

There were times I used to feel guilty about not staying in touch with certain old acquaintances, relatives, etc..., every time I think of it, I remember this conversation I had with a friend of mine who never responded to any mails from another friend of mine. When I asked her, "don't you think you'll be hurting her feelings?" she simply told me it would be even worse if I acted like I respect and like her when I really don't. Well, she had a point.

Sometimes, I feel the same way too. Having said all this, I seriously think facebook is a little better as I can find the people that I don't want to get request from and block them completely. It's really useful simply because you'll never receive the friend request you always dread and they would never know. This way no one feels hurt probably ;)

But then, most of the time the kind of feeling (like or hate) between two people is very mutual, it might just be better for some people to not add me as friend, cos except for the initial Hi, I practically am not gonna have a conversation with them and they do the same too. I always wonder if these people ever feel bad about adding someone and then not even having the common decency to say hi to them. It's more like basic manners 101. Sometimes, I say hi and ask them how they do (so that I don't feel guilty of having ignored them or being rude) and they would simply reply saying "ya fine", I sort of find that rude, neither do they thank you for asking nor do they ask you how you are doing. Yea, they pry on me but this is what I really worry about.

I might be the only one that feels this way, as I have seen several others that bad mouth each other to others going about greeting and wishing each other. Every time I see this, I go "what a phony". I don't know how people still feel good about themselves when they don't like someone and still woo them. Well, their business is their business.

As for me, I felt like writing this and I wrote it...

Demetri Martin Game on Comedy Central

Last night since there was nothing interesting on TV to watch during primetime hours, I went to comedycentral.com to catch up on Colber Report and I got completely sidetracked and found this game.

This game put together by Demetri Martin that appears in Jon Stewart's show is basically trying to identify the anagrams using a given clue. I played a couple of levels yesterday and i completely loved the game.

I'm mostly into crosswords or any other game that has to do with english language, vocab, etc... I'm sure you get the idea. If you love such stuff this game is brilliant as there are 20 levels and it does seem to get complex with every new level :)

give it a try, I hope you like it...

Blueberry Muffins

My husband and I try a new dish every week and we had tried making muffins a couple of weeks ago they turned out great, so this time I changed the quantity of ingredients a little bit and now the muffins taste even better.

I prefer homemade muffins to store bought muffins simply because the ones that are sold in stores are a bit big for one person to finish.

I got the base muffin recipe from allrecipes.com, I prefer using recipes from this site simply because they have user rating and you also read the suggested changes that could be made to make the dish more tasty. My cousin also tried this recipe and she said it came out great...so, I here I write my improvised recipe:

Servings: 12

Ingredients:

1.75 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2.5 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter (oil can be used instead)
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons of vanilla
1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions:

1. In a large bowl add the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder and mix them nicely.
2. Take butter and cut into small pea sized cubes and measure 1/2 cup and add it to the flour mixture. Make sure the butter is mixed well with the flour that no large pieces of butter is seen.
3. Break two eggs and mix them well, and then add milk to the beaten eggs, add 2 teaspoons of vanilla to this mixture.
4. Now pour the entire egg and milk mixture in the flour and mix until the flour is fully moistened. It's okay to have lumps, as overworking the batter might end up ruining the end result.
5. Add blueberries to the mixture.
6. Grease the muffin pan with oil and fill each muffin cup to almost full. Fill the empty ones with water.
7. Bake at 400 degrees F for 20-25 minutes, you can either insert a toothpick to see if the muffin is done or just press it lightly to see if the top springs back.

I don't use baking soda simply because it reacts quickly and causes the muffin tops to crack and makes the muffins look ugly. By replacing baking soda with baking powder we get a much better moist and smooth muffins, that look elegant.

My husband and I loved it and we use these as our evening snack and it's wonderful :)

Klipsch Image X5 IEMs

This post has been long due and every single time I start writing, something or the other comes up :(. Hoping to make some progress today...

First let me make it clear that I prefer IEM over the full-size headphones. I got the Klipsch Image X5 IEM as a gift from my husband immediately after our wedding (what better occassion!!). First of all I loved it when I saw five ear tips instead of the usual three. I finally found one that fits my tiny ears really well :)

I have pretty much listened to most of Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Dave Matthews Band, Nirvana, Steely Dan, White Stripes, Pink Floyd, etc...and I can confidently say that these are the best IEMs I've ever used. They produce excellent sound isolation. Noise filtering is just terrific, once I have these on all that I could listen is just the music and nothing else, no more distractions and outside noise when listening to music. In terms of sound quality, the X5s are truly brilliant, the highs and lows are crisp and clear, all frequencies sound just about perfect. Using these I can actually see the kind of detail at the low frequencies that the other IEMs miss out. It was quite a thrill to discover the sounds that I missed out in certain songs when I used my old IEMs.

The design of the IEMs are unique and really nice. They fit nicely in the ears without causing any ear ache and aid comfortable listening for longer durations. The housing is a little bigger than the other IEMs but then others cannot hold a candle against the X5s sound quality besides, being bigger doesn't make them uglier, they look good and unique. The cable does seem very delicate but it seems to hold up well, so I am not complaining about it.

The X5s also come with a cleaning kit and small leather box to store them when not in use. This box is one of the best storage boxes I've seen for an IEM, its elegant and nice and has enough room to store the whole thing without having to wind the cable too much.

I don't really have anything negative to say about these IEMs, its built well, looks great, comfortable to use and above all listening to music in this just blows me away. Listening to music has never been so pleasurable. Before I got this one, wanting to listen to a specific band was why I would listen to music, but this IEM has totally changed it. Even when I am not that crazy about listening to a specific band, I would like to listen to music old or new simply because this IEM sounds awesome. Image X5s have become a motivation to listen to music everyday :) (The previous sentence might not have made much sense to everyone, but I'm sure you get the point ;)).

Long live Klipsch Image X5s.

So early?

I had to wake early today morning because I had a meeting at 7 am. I wasn't very enthusiastic about this meeting, as I'm used to waking up late. I used to wake up early and used to be at work around 8:30 am and for no apparent reason I drifted and started waking up late to a point where I consider 7 am still a part of midnight.

Living closer to work might have made that difference, because my commute is no longer affected by Bus, train delay, traffic, etc... The only factors are the speed at which I walk and one signal that I need to cross.

But I would really love to wake up early especially now, simply because I needn't spend the time in commute instead I could actually water my plants, make nice coffee, catch up with the morning news and ease into my day slowly...
When I was walking to work I notice that there's more cars at 8:30 than at 9:30 and it actually feels nice to walk during that time as the warmth of the sun is still mild and there's still some cool air.

Well anyways, I would be happy if I'm even able to do the same tomorrow ;)