Paddle Shift : Ford Taurus

Its been a long weekend, July 4th, American Independence Day and we set out to see fireworks @ Savannah
This time we got the mean machine, Ford Taurus SEL version.

It has got all the electronic gizmos that you expect a bit more. Yeah Paddle shift baby !!.  Oh if you dont know about paddle shift read about it here.  

If you see the pic the two levers projecting from the steering does the job.  Put the gear in M mode. Drive off u can do up-shift with either of two levers. When u slow down down shift is done automatically. Well this is not as fun  to drive as fully manual but better than Automatic transmission. At-least u can rev her up.

Mission STS 132 : A dream come true

Alright for those who dont know, I'm a space enthusiast. Yeah lets get back and write some boring stuff "AMBITIONS". I had like 3 ambitions. First I wanted to be a test driver for the super car companies, second aerospace engineer, third astronaut. Guess what I ended up being a couch potato starring at the laptop. The  glorified software engineer.

Anyways end of digression back to the point "SPACE". I used to follow the rocket launches, Space station build, Mars landing etc and always wished to see a rocket launch live. Luckily I'm in Florida and the Kennedy Space Center is like 2.5hrs drive from my place, they had a shuttle launch (Mission STS 132) scheduled last Friday and its summer vacation I dont have any classes.

We ( 5 of us ) decided to head to flag off the shuttle. Augmenting the excitement we got a Pontiac G6 with 3.5L V6 monster under the hood.

We started at 11am. Had an awesome drive till Orlando other than annoying toll booths on the highway. WTF. America is so rich still toll !!. Anyways we took a short break at Orlando at Mcd. The Cape Canaveral  launch pad is like 40 mts drive from Orlando. We had a 1 hour buffer. Then comes the traffic. I lived in bangalore for 4 years and I have seen worse. At least here it moves. But still we thought we r gonna miss the launch. After 30 mts the traffic got less and I used my Indian driving experience, floored the gas pedal  to 95-100mph along with crazy lane changes . Thank God I guess cops went for the launch as well.

Yeah we reached the river were most of the people camp for watching the shuttle launch. The place is like 3-4 miles from launch pad. We asked a guy when is it gonna lift off. He said "Dude u've got 15 seconds". Oh boy that could have been a  near miss. The final count down begins 10, 8 ,7 ....1, lift off. Its the best thing I have ever seen. Two long flames from the solid rocket boosters and short flames from shuttle engines. In 10 seconds from lift off we could feel the sonic boom. The cars that parked were kinda vibrating. Well here are some pics. We didn't click the lift off as we didn't wanna miss the initial show.

Seeing all this I got jealous of the astronauts who are in the shuttle. I felt as if they are looking at me and saying What the heck are you doing down there you have better things to do !!. Oh yeah i can do better things. Hey astronaut r u seeing, You are floating at 13000mph.. I'm sitting idle, enjoying the beach breeze and gravity and I'm gonna get "high" soon !!

Family restroom

Ever heard of a family restroom. Well seeing is believing

Found it in KOHLS Gainesville during our thanks giving morning walk. Here is an excerpt from wiki about Family Restroom

Another recent development in public toilets is the gender-neutral toilet or "family restroom". These areas contain multiple stalls designed for maximum privacy and a communal washing area for use by both genders. The family restroom is designed so that a parent with a young child of the opposite gender can take the child into the restroom without the concerns associated with single-gender restrooms. Family restrooms have started appearing in newly-built sports stadiums, amusement parks, shopping malls, and major museums.

Wish List

1)  Sky diving

2)  Drive a Ferrari and Lambhorgini Diablo

3)  Wing suit flying

4)  To fly a F-35 Lightining

5)  To spend a week in International Space station 

Well I'm looking for sponsors..Let me know if anyone is interested :)

Professor names in CLR exercise questions

Im taking the course Analysis of Algorithms under Dr Arunava Banerjee. The textbook is the standard book Introduction to Algorithms by CLR.  Some of the exercise questions  in the book refers to professor names. Like Professor ABC claimed theorem XYZ. Give a counter example etc etc. I wondered if they were really professor names. Well as usual googled and found the answer.

All these are some real personalities (not professors) and the question is to make fun of them.

Example:

Page 557 of the book refers to Professor Deaver

The exercise is on strongly connected components, and Michael Deaver used his connections to excess in the Reagan administration.

Morning Glory Clouds

I stole this from APOD. For those of  you dont know APOD, its Astronomy picture of the Day. The website is maintained by NASA and Michigan Technological University. Each day they upload an astronomy picture and a short description of the picture. For those space enthusiasts out there its worth checking it everyday atleast u can find something to put in your blog :).  Read more about these clouds here.

My First blog

I dont know what to write. Lets start with some rubbish. I Googled a lot to find a catchy name for my blog. But i ended up in a stupid name "gi-random" which is very well my own creation. Dont ask me what it means. Of course the first two letters are from my name and the random is to add a bit of techieness.