Rant

Pulpy Screwdriver

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This Sunday I came back home quite early and was pretty bored. Decided to watch “Ek Chalis Ki Last Local” for the 10th time. Had some spare vodka lying around (Haven’t had a drink for a month), as well as some Pulpy Orange so mixed the two and the results were quite satisfying.

The movie was quite excellent too! I had already seen the movie many times but the movie never bores me. The movie is based on a few hours worth of incidents but the special quality of the movie is the characters. The characters are not only extremely funny, but realistic as well.
Abhay Deol Plays the role of a guy from Delhi (Nilesh) who recently moved to Mumbai and works at a call center. Like all Delhi people, he considers Mumbai an inferior place and boasts about what he could have done if he was in Delhi. Neha Dhupia plays the role of a (super hot :P) whore who seduces men who miss the last train out of Kurla. Other characters include a devout don, a corrupt policeman, one who thinks he’s Rajnikant, a few goons, a Transvestite Pimp, a Poetic Gay Gangster, a whore turned hit-woman etc. Each and every character gives in a commendable performance.
Guys who have always lived through monetary shortages in the last days of the month will identify with Abhay Deol’s behavior in the beginning of the movie. From deciding what to order at a bar with only 70 Rupees in his wallet (I once has 10 rupees in my pocket and no fuel in my bike; deserves a separate post), to winning 40lacs at a card game, to being almost encountered by Policemen to being almost raped by the gay Mangesh Chhilka one has to watch the movie at least once to see what fate has in store for Nilesh.
Hmm. I am sleepy now. Goodnight!!
Adventure

Out of town..

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Today, we had an out of town trip after a long long time. It was a refreshing experience after the monotony of Malls and 8 lane expressways. I have to admit though that the trip would have been better on bikes.

The place is called Damdama lake, near Sohna, Haryana. It’s around 40km from Gurgaon and the road is a 2 lane normal Indian road. The last mile is a single lane and mostly mud.

Music, Rant

Why I will continue to download pirated music

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A few days back, I felt the sudden urge to download a few Dire Strait songs. I’d been hearing about online music stores a lot and felt that for some good songs, less than 1$ is a price worth paying. Come to think of it. A few years back an album cost much more than it does now if you buy and download online. You don’t have to leave your computer and your song is there in a few minutes, and all legitimate. Unfortunately,
I didn’t have such luck.

I started with the tab in windows media player that I always saw, but never used; the media guide. I remember how it always pestered me to select an online store during install. I looked all over in vain but it would only give me youtube links for songs that I searched. No store, no song. I tried ITunes next. After I completed the registration process, I was informed that you can buy music online only if you are in the US, or hold a US credit card. I tried amazon, napster everywhere, I had no option to buy music.

Finally I went to torrentz.com, downloaded the whole album for free in fifteen minutes. I have learnt my lesson and I would prefer to spend my money and waste my time elsewhere.

Music

Brothers in Arms

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This is an amazing song I’ve been listening to a lot recently. The song maintains the original Dire Straits‘ bluesy and laid back guitar-based sound. The keyboard portions are reminiscent of the style Richard Wright used around the Dark Side of the Moon era.

These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day youll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And youll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
Ive watched all your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms

Theres so many different worlds
So many differents suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

Now the suns gone to hell
And the moons riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But its written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
Were fools to make war
On our brothers in arms

Rant

Too much to do, too little time

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Lately I have been feeling that I’ve been trying to do too much in my life but don’t have enough time to do it. Time flows by like a river and boredom is a thing I haven’t experienced for a long time. Here’re what I do all week.

During the weekdays, I wake up at 12.30, go out for sometime, come back home at 2, take a bath, play games from 2.30 to 3.30, do a little office work, have my lunch at 4, leave for office at 4.30, come back at 3 in the morning, watch seinfeld and listen to music and sleep at 4.

Saturdays I wake up around 1, play games, watch tv and then go out at around 5 in the evening, roam around cp, relax with a couple of beers, have dinner and come back around 1 at night. Watch a movie or play games and sleep around 4 in the morning. Sundays are similar except that I have to take my parents out instead. Add to all this my chronic laziness.

Here’s a list of things that I really want to do but am too lazy to start or continue

  1. Play guitar and learn some new songs. Watching my guitar gathering dust makes me want to hate myself.
  2. Start exercising again. Shoulders drooping, belly likewise.
  3. Start using my bike more and avoiding the car. I really love my bike and it’s gathering dust.
  4. Watch some good movies. I’ve some really good classics downloaded for months but haven’t watched them.
  5. Read some good books.
  6. Study for my ccnp exams. It’s high time I studied for these exams, otherwise my last exam’s validity will expire.
  7. Ride the metro more
  8. Watch travel and living more.
  9. Read the newspaper.
  10. Play GTA IV more often so that I can finish it and buy a new game before my graphics card goes obsolete.
  11. Meet old school friends who are in the same city but I haven’t met them yet.
  12. Just sit and relax and do nothing for a change.

Whenever I think of these things and how my life has changed for the worse ever since I started working, I start hating myself.

Seems like my life has no purpose.

Rant, Video Games

Playing GTA non-stop has made me crazy

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These days whenever I’m roaming around on my bike, instead of the care-free leisurely way I used to earlier, I’m constantly tensed and looking out for cops. Whenever I see cops anywhere, I either speed up and run away, turn around and go the other way or turn into an alley. Whenever I see a cop car moving slowly behind me, I always think that it’s following me, ready to fire it’s siren anytime and chase and shoot me down. It takes me a while to realize that I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m just being paranoid. I think this is one of the side effects of finishing all the versions of Grand Theft Auto, a game where you’re always breaking the law, risking your life and living on the edge. The worst part is, one day my bike’s tire got punctured and for a moment, I had the sudden impulse to ditch it and steal a parked mercedes, similar to what you’ll do in the game.

But whatever may be, life in the game is much exciting than real life. And the best part is, you can save and reload later.

Movies

Nice movies..

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I’m blogging after a long time today. Today was a nice day. I saw two very good hindi movies. The first one was Gulaal which I saw at PVR. The movie is funny, shocking, meaningful and realistic, all at the same time. It kind of reminded me of Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi which is another one of my favorite hindi movies. The character are very well defined and each one stands out on it’s own. Leaving the hall, you can’t help but feel a little sad on how things turned out.

The other movie was Ek Chaalis ki last local. This is like one of those fast paced hollywood movies. You don’t feel bored for a moment as one event unfolds after another, full of surprises. The whole movie is 150 minutes and the events in the movie are spread over almost a similar time. Actually, I’d already seen this movie twice in the theaters but can never get bored of it.

Rant, Technology

My job is like a medical intern’s

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I’ve been watching scrubs a lot lately and I think I can relate to that lifestyle because I have a similar job. Now, I’m not remotely connected to the medical profession, but there are many similarities between my job and that of a medical intern.

1. We both work in shifts, mostly nights.
2. We both have to work under high pressure situations, time being of essence.
3. We both get to work on cases. Some are easy and get solved right away, some take months.
4. There are high priority cases where you can’t do anything unless they gets solved and there are normal ones. Just like an ICU.
5. You don’t feel that happy when you escape at the end of the shift because you know when you return the next day, the cases will be waiting for you.
6. Some cases you don’t know what to do but they got solved by themselves, some cases seem very easy but go on for months.
7. We all have to work on holidays.
8. Research is your best friend.
9. When you don’t know what to do, you go beg your mentor to tell you something.

Motorcycle

I can adjust pushrods!!!

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DISCLAIMER: If after reading this, someone burns his engine valves or manages to get the pushrod off it’s rocker, please don’t come to me to claim damages.

This is one of the things that have been plaguing enfield owners from over half a century. The feature that gives the bullet it’s distinctive thump is also one of the performance bottlenecks of the engine and also a source of racket. Unlike other bikes which use a chain drive to open and close the valves, the enfield uses pushrods which are simply 2 rods which move up and down due to the motion of the cam and in turn open and close the valves. The most common drawback of the pushrods in a bullet is that if they are loose, the produce a lot of racket which only gets worse as the engine warms up. Quite frankly, I was tired of all the racket and even more tired of all the mechanics that “try” to adjust the “tappets” but the noise just doesn’t go away. The last straw was when the last mechanic loosened my pushrods even more and it was almost impossible to ride the back. It was time to take matters into my own hand.

Firstly, “adjusting tappets” is a wrong term because you don’t actually adjust the tappets, you just adjust the pushrods which in turn reduces tappet noise. I had tried my hand on this once before and even got a good setting but I forgot to tighten the locking nut and before I knew it, after revving the engine for a few seconds, the pushrod came off the rocker and I was left with a dead engine.

It took me almost 1.5 years to get my courage back and try this myself one more time. This is a step-by-step guide on what you need to do.

1. Bring the piston to TDC. On the cast iron engine, work the kick starter with the decompressor and wait for the moment when the Ampere meter shows 0. On the AVL engine, work the kick starter with the decompressor pressed till the time the decompressor is fully free. Open up the tappet cover while the engine is hot.
2. Feel both the pushrods and try to rotate them. They should just be free enough to rotate using some pressure from the thumb. If they don;t rotate at all, they are too tight. If they rotate too freely, or move up and down, they are too loose.
3. There are three nuts in each pushrod. The top HEX nut, the middle locking nut and the bottom adjusting nut. First unscrew the locking nut a little while holding the HEX nut in place with a spanner so that you can rotate the adjusting nut.
4. Increase or decrease the length of the pushrod by rotating the adjusting nut so that there’s no play and you can just rotate the pushrod with some pressure. Do this while holding the top hex nut with a spanner.
5. When you feel the setting is just right, hold both the hex and the adjusting nut in place with 2 spanners and slowly tighten the locking nut. This is the trickiest part because it is difficult to hold 2 spanners steady and adjust with the third one. It took me around 2 hours myself to perfect this part.
6. When you are done, just check if the adjusting nut is firmly tightened and if the pushrod setting is right. If you’re a newbie to this, it will take a few more tries.
7. Do the same with the other pushrod.

It is necessary that you do this while the engine is hot. If the engine cools appreciably while you’re doing this, your adjustment will be fine for a cold engine but the racket will start again when the engine warms up. This is what happened with me and I adjusted the pushrods too tight to compensate for the cold engine. After I had put the tappet cover back in, I realized that the kick starter was completely free and the engine didn’t have any compression at all. This was because I had adjusted the inlet pushrod too tight and the inlet valve wasn’t closing completely. I had to open it up again and start all over again by warming the bike. Just check that the kick starter should meet some resistance at a point on it’s way down. Also, adjusting them too tight may burn the valves, so be careful.

The best guide for bulleteers who want to maintain their own bike is Gurunandan’s website. This guy is an ace whom many people look up to for their bike queries. He’s very helpful and replies to your queries by mail(As long as they are valid).

Or, you can just go ahead and buy Pete Snidal’s bullet manual which is now for sale in India as well.

Rant

My trip to Las Vegas

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Apparently I had a fabulous weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada. Don’t believe me? Check out the google maps screenshot. According to the google maps on my mobile, my location with an accuracy of 700m is at or near Las Vegas. In reality, I spend my weekend rotting at home watching TV 🙁 Talk about buggy software.

Earth bound misfit, I