In search of the Consulate 11:35 PM, TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 2007 Today, I decided to get the visa for my trip to Guatemala, which is coming up next week. In case you haven't noticed a pattern already, read this. Anyways, I looked up on the web and found the official US government's list of consulates which was updated in August 2006. As you can notice, this publication affirms that there's a Guatemalan Consulate in Seattle at: 2100 5th Ave., 98121. So this morning, armed with all my required documents, I headed over to this address only to find in its location, not the Guatemalan Consulate, but... a Massage Spa! After some inquiries, I found out that the real address for the Consulate is: 2001 6th Ave., 98121. and that the Official Consulate Directory had it wrong! Luckily, this new address wasn't too far - so, I walked a couple blocks over to this building, which was occupied by many foreign consulates. I asked this nice lady at the reception, how I might get to the Guatemalan Consulate. She looked puzzled for a second and then consulted a directory. Sure enough, in the directory was an entry for Consulate of Guatemala - except it was struck out. She called someone on the phone and looked up and told me that the Guatemalan Consulate had moved out about 2 years ago! Great! Now, I'm stuck trying to get a Visa at a Consulate that doesn't exist anymore in Seattle. So, I drive back to work and after a few phone calls, realized that I'd have to make a trip to San Francisco, which by the way was the nearest one. A quick glance on a travel website showed ticket prices upwards of $340 for a day trip to San Francisco. Dejected, I called up the San Francisco Consulate again. This time, I talked to this nice lady, Paola, who after listening to my story, made an exception for me. I don't have to make a personal appearance - and I can send my documents in mail - which I promptly did. So, if everything goes fine, my documents will reach them on Thursday and I should have my passport back during the first half of next week, right in time for my trip late next week! PERMALINK | 7 COMMENT(S)

16 things... 1:57 PM, THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2007 From Scribd: 16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn (Pardon the direct blog rip) 1. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it. 2. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight-saving time. 3. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment. 4. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers. 5. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is: age 11. 6. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." 7. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. 8. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings." 9. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them. 10. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and he decides to deliver a message to humanity, he will NOT use as his messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle or in some cases, really bad make-up too. 11. You should not confuse your career with your life. 12. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter/janitor, is not a nice person. 13. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously. 14. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy. 15. Your true friends love you, anyway. 16. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. PERMALINK | 4 COMMENT(S)

Online music services 10:05 PM, TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2007 Last night, I had a very strong urge to buy a few songs that I've been listening to on Radio (and Ashley's CD). I've been buying songs online for a while now, but with MSN Music closing shop, I haven't made any recent purchases. So, I decided to give the other Music stores a shot. Urge I have Vista at home and it comes with Windows Media Player 11, which has Urge as its default music store. So, I clicked on the menu, downloaded the add-on, registered myself, gave my credit-card and in about 15 minutes, I had downloaded a track for $0.99. Well and good! My joy was short-lived as I soon realized I would need Media Player 11 on all the computers that I wish to play the songs on. This wasn't an option - I am not ready to spend hours upgrading all my home machines (which at last count was 5) to Vista. Walmart Music Walmart! Hmm... I'm not really a Walmart shopper - in fact, I avoid it by principle. However, their music download service seemed promising, so I bit my tongue and downloaded the add-on, registered, gave my credit-card information, etc. Now, Walmart advertises that it sells songs for $0.88, instead of the $0.99 that most online stores charge. However, what they fail to tell you is that they add Sales Tax, which was in my case, 8 cents and it brought the price of the track to $0.96, not much less than other stores. Anyways, I clicked on the download button for the song I wanted and waited. Nothing happened. The song didn't download, but when I went to my account summary, it said I've already downloaded it. Now, that wasn't very nice. But I guess Walmart knew about this bug so they worked around it by offering to "download again" the same song. I did that and this time, the song downloaded fine. Just when I was thinking to myself that I can live with it, I realized the song I downloaded was the "Edited Clean" version. I never asked for the "Clean" version, in fact, I prefer listening to a song, the way it was made - not the edited version. And guess what, Walmart only sells "clean" versions of songs. So long Walmart! Napster With my hopes dwindling, I looked out for other online music stores. As you'd have already figured out, iTunes was *not* an option. All along, I thought Napster only offered subscription based music. But I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that they offered music for download too. So, I downloaded the add-on, registered, etc. and downloaded 5 songs. All of them downloaded without a hitch and overall, I was very pleased with their service. I'm going to stick to Napster for the near future - until something better comes along (or until AllofMP3 starts accepting Visa). PERMALINK | 6 COMMENT(S)

Board Games 10:54 PM, TUESDAY, MARCH 06, 2007 My co-worker Matthew Johnson got me introduced to this board-game called Settlers of Catan and I got immediately hooked on. I went and bought it and have played it more than 20 times in the last 2-3 weeks. It is a highly addictive game - so beware. And then at a party at his place, we played this other game Carcassonne, which was equally addictive. So, in the last 3 weeks, I've bought several board-games and have had friends over for board-game nights at my place - something that I never thought I would do. PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)