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Before
Patchy grass thanks to the recent rains that had washed away all the top soil.

More big patches ready to get sodified

The tilling begins…I mixed 3 parts soil (from the tilling), 1 part cow manure, 1 part organic compost and 3 parts top soil (mostly on the surface).

More tilling…Took out square blocks of grass so as to accommodate fresh squares (rather rectangles) of sod.

I paid about 1.50 for a 16X24 block @ Home Depot. Lowe’s has the same deal and I did end up buying some from Lowe’s but I must tell you the sod doesn’t stay that great if you show up in the evening, thanks to our Texas sun. I’ve read online that you can get great, fresh sod if you show up early on Fridays at your friendly neighborhood Lowe’s store. Here’s how a not-so-great sod block looks like. Dry and yellow. Worry not, it’s grass. It will grow any which way it can eventually!

Many of our sod blocks were completely parched and were breaking apart into chunks of dirt and dry grass. To fix that, I set them aside and soaked them with a few sprinkles of water. This way, it is easier to get them to blend with one another once you have assembled the checkerboard. Here is an almost-finished picture of our checkerboard. We did not redo the entire lawn, just the bits that had gone bad. All in all, we bought about 30 blocks of sod out of which we ended up using 28. So yes, you will need a lot of sod even if you’re trying to do some ‘patchwork’.

After
Once all the blocks were set to cover the baldness of our lawn, it was time to invite the rain gods. All we had do was chant a few mantras and voila, 15 minutes of perfectly-directed showers on our lawn were bestowed upon us. Haha.

Hope you liked the pix and maybe got a couple of ideas about sodding your lawn in the process. It’s not that hard at all; just a little bit of patience and time (and the ability to undergo some torture in the sun) is all that is expected from you. Please do leave a comment or two and it’d inspire me to write more about my next lawn and garden project (to be kicked-off tomorrow).

This might come in as a big surprise to most of my blog readers. You might wonder, of all things, how can one stay cool, on a frikking IM client? After all, GTalk is nothing but another internet messaging tool like the rest of them out there (Yoohoo, Windows not-so-live etc.) right? Well, you might want to think again. GTalk is different and I’m going to teach you a few cool tricks on GTalk that could make you uber-cool from uber-boring in a jiffy! Ready? Let’s do this.

1. Pick a badass username

This is where all the coolness begins. You ain’t nothing in the G-world if you don’t have a sick username. Don’t pick boring names like reachme12345, emailtime90210 or fungirl2005. I personally knew fungirl2005. It wasn’t fun anymore creating an account every year!  Try something cooler. Something that tells everyone out there how awesome you are. I remember having IDs like LonerInAustin, TostitoLover and KittiesRock.  If you’re a guy, go with names like LifeIsABeach, DramaKing or LoveMahCouch. If you are a chica, something like HeartSugahDad, BootieMama or DonutGal would be the best choices. Never ever use your real name. Believe me, I have gotten into trouble many a times coz of that. I must also mention that zip codes are a straight no-no (makes it easier to locate you).

2. Update your first and last name

A lot of people somehow miss this very basic feature of GTalk. What happens then is, you end up displaying your username to the world and believe me, a lot of us have weird usernames (like the boring ones above). A friend of mine had a username  ’touch_dear’. Now that should get you popular with the ladies huh? His idea behind that ID was, he wanted people to keep in touch with him and also wanted to let them know that they were very dear to him or something like that; you get the drift. So, your first step should be to update your account information. Choose a name that sends a strong message out. I remember having google accounts with names like The Real MacGruber, Furious Loner, Burrito Lovah and Schitt Happins. You will not believe me if I tell you how many friends I have made using those names.

3. Get a cool profile picture

This is extremely important if you want all your friends to talk about you in the G-world. In fact, more important than your username or your first or last name. Like they say, a picture is worth a 1000 blah blah blahs. This is your true identity and you should choose a picture that tells everyone what a beautiful person you are, both inside and out. However, it is also important that it connects well with your username. A few ideas to help you pick one easily.

GUYS

GALS

4. Choose a cool status message/icon

If you never thought about this, now is your chance! Twitter made a fortune just by letting people tell other people what they did every minute of their ‘exciting’ lives. And there are a lot of people out there who are really interested in everything you do, right from what shaving cream you use to chop your beard to how many packs of Frito Lay’s you consume in a day. People who care about you more than you care about yourself. For starters, check out Gul Panag’s Twitter page. Now, I care about her and I seriously wanna know what she ate for lunch, if she drinks diet or regular coke, what is she planning to have for dinner, what does (not) she wear at night, what time does she wake up, how many times does she flush her toilet and a lot of other such important stuff. You might laugh at me if I tell you that the status message is the new status symbol. But trust me coz I’m always right. Another one of my fav five Twitterers is Mallika Sherawat. Her account name stands at MallikaLA. Why the LA? She opened her Twitter account in LA dummy! One of the tweets from the sweet seductress was “yes, sir! M indeed veg and proud of it! how do u think I maintain this body figure?“. Now how would I know if she was a vegetarian or not if it were not for her status message? And how would I know whether that was indeed the real reason behind her ‘body figure’ ? So, respect the status. Everybody wants to know what kinda underwear you’re wearing right now. And don’t forget to set it to ‘Busy’ with the red ‘talk to my hand‘ icon. People can be in their underwear and still be busy!

5. Always ‘leave the conversation’

Oh ho ho. I just can’t wait to reveal this G-secret to you. This neat trick can catapult your life in tha G-world overnight. You can thank me later for giving you such valuable piece of advice. When I was new to GTalk, I was like you; naive, innocent and gullible. Then, one fine day, I stumbled upon this cool trick that, all of a sudden, made me look like Antonio Banderas. Eager to know how I did it? Here it goes.

Say you’re talking to a contact on your G-list. He/she types something at you. You type back. And then, immediately, you hit the ‘X’ button on the top. Yes, you close the window. GTalk has this cool little feature that, whenever someone closes their chat window, tells the other person that ‘XYZ has left the conversation‘. That XYZ is you. It is like walking out of a meeting room full of people, without giving two hoots about the rest. Feel it? Feel the energy, the power now? It’s like telling the other person, ‘I have said what I had to, you can go take a hike now.‘  Try it out and let me know the results. You will be a changed man (alright, woman too), I promise.

There are a lot more tricks that I can teach you, however, for that you will need to be at least moderately good at these five. I have put endless hours behind GTalk and it has taken me years to master these techniques. With a lot of practice and hard work, I’m confident that you will be as good as me someday. If you need help with any of the above tricks, please do not hesitate to contact me at LonerInAustin[AT]yahoo.com.

Well, what other lame excuses do I have? Oh yeah, I got a little occupied with my MCTS^ prep as well. I gave my first exam^ on April 25th and thankfully, passed. I still have the second exam, 70-562^ pending, to get the actual certification. I’m not sure when I will finally be prepared for the second one since I have already rescheduled the exam twice by now. There has been a lot of stuff going on at work too. We sent out a major release for www.joe.com^ last month and then I started work on www.lennar.com^.  If we did some cool LINQ on Joe, we got to do tons of nifty jQuery and AJAX on Lennar. There were a lot of painpoints in the project, while being fun and pleasure at the same time. You know the kind when you get whopped by someone and then get to go for a shiatsu massage?   The entire credit for that would go to my huge learning curve with Javascript in general.

A trip to good ole Dallas

To add to all the fun and frolic I bored you with above, I also managed to get a day off from work last week. Yes, a day off! The last time I took a day off was in October of 08. A few more months and K would have buried me alive. For a change, this time I was actually looking forward to my ‘vacation day’. As most of you know, we live in a country called Texas and the country happens to be so huge that, it sort of becomes mandatory to board a flight to visit any place in the neighboring country (United States). However, this time we did not want to mess with all the visa formalities etc. to go to the US, so we decided to stick to Texas and zeroed in on Dallas. Dallas is a 3.5 hour drive from Austin. The drive is not that popular among travel folks nor is the city of Dallas a great tourist destination. Having said that, we still wanted to explore the area and have a good, relaxing time. And relax we did.

We started our trip on Friday evening and reached Dallas by 9.30 or so. Most dining options were out since it was ‘too late’ to eat per American norms! We somehow found an Indian restaurant^ and hurriedly ordered whatever was available at that time. To say the least, it wasn’t one of the best Indian culinary experiences we have had so far (Yelp 1-starrer coming soon).  After finishing our dinner, we headed to our hotel all ready to crash, thanks to a loong Friday filled with craploads of work, a bootcamp and a 4 hour drive. Fortunately, our hotel experience was nowhere close to our Indian meal experience. Just the previous night, we somehow got a pretty sweet deal for The Adolphus^ (pic below).

I must admit, this has been one of the best hotels I have checked into in the US and highly recommend it if you’re in or around Dallas. The next morning, after getting a good night’s rest and waking up all refreshed, we decided to venture out, leaving behind our car though. The Adolphus is located right in the heart of Dallas’ downtown and if you’re in Dallas, there are tons of things you can do in the downtown. Our first stop was The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey^. I highly prescribe all Dallas visitors to stop by this modern marvel. The museum brings in front of your eyes, the entire proceedings of the fateful day that JFK was assassinated. A good three hours were spent at the museum. Then, we started to stroll around the ‘grid^’ checking out the wonderful buildings surrounding the museum. A few pictures below for your viewing pleasure.

Sixth Floor Museum on the left. You can see the 6th floor window from where JFK was shot at. The second pic shows where JFK’s car was (right where the crowd is standing) when the shots were fired.

After wandering around for a good six hours, it was time to get out of the Downtown and explore the burbs. At the same time, I was in no mood to get the car out. We said ‘heck, we gotta experience some American public transport now!’. We took an all-day premium pass at a DART kiosk and off we were within 5 minutes, on-board a rail.

We roamed all over the town changing trains and buses, visiting malls, eating and taking naps. Yes, K took a nap at The Galleria^! At about 7 or so, we ended up being dog-tired and thought it was a much saner option to go back to the hotel than to miss our last train and then get mugged. We had made plans to catch a movie at the Angelika^ but, before that, we wanted to hog on some Indian food; but we were looking for something better than the previous night’s onslaught. You might wonder why most Indians are hell bent upon eating Indian food everywhere they go. There is a reason behind that. You see, in America, the food served at almost every Indian restaurant is, ummm, you know, not that Indian. I’m not kidding. Indian restaurants try too hard to Americanize Indian food and in the process, forget the whole Indian deal there is to Indian food. So every Indian is on a self-imposed quest to find that one Indian restaurant you can eat at and say ‘Mmmm.’ Yours truly has been on a similar quest since 2001.

After driving for a good 30 minutes, we reached a place called Chettinad Palace^ in Plano. It was not a fancy place by any stretch of the imagination. But at the same time, we felt a tad optimistic as we had heard good things about it (and we were hungry too). The food arrived in 15 minutes and I must say, we were quite impressed. It was still not the quintessential Indian-American restaurant we were looking for. Ohh well, something to strive for in life you see. We ate to our heart’s content and headed back to the hotel since the last movie at Angelika had started like 45 minutes ago. No regrets though. The food was awesome, the day was pretty uneventful. Mission accomplished.

The next morning, we went back to some of the places that we had visited the previous day in Downtown, to do some picture-clicking. Why again you ask? Well, the first time around, we forgot to put the batteries in our camera. So no pictures!!! This time, we were ready with the batteries and managed to take some good pix. All the above pix were taken on the second day, just in case you haven’t figured it out by now. After an hour’s worth of pix, we headed back to the hotel, checked out and were ready to hit the burbs again. This was never planned to be an action-packed trip Just a good, relaxing time is all we wanted to have. We were going to Plano again not coz we had started missing Chettinad Palace already but to meet some family friends. They had invited us over when they visited Austin last time and it had been more than two years since then. I told you, Texas was a big country after all!  We went to their place, ate some home-cooked Indian food and chit-chatted for a solid two hours. Needless to say, there weren’t too many things left to do for the day. At around 4PM, we were ready to head back to Austin. K had started to miss Dash and Dash is a handful when left alone for more than 4 hours. It had been more than 48 hours this time.

The drive back to Austin, even though on a boring Interstate^, was nothing short of exciting. There were thunderstorms, rainbows, sunshine and a lot of construction! K clicked some random pictures on the way which eventually turned out to be pretty darn beautiful. Well to appreciate the beauty on some of them, you will have to look past Dash’s saliva on the glass window.

By 7PM Sunday, we were back in Austin. We picked up Dash on our way. He wasn’t too excited to see his parents. Maybe it was more fun at the doggie party he had with his siblings, mom and aunt over the weekend. By the time we reached home and he got to see his toys, he was back to normal; ready to cuddle on the couch. The following day, which happened to be the official ‘vacation day’, was reserved for movies and detoxing (Indian food does that to you). Aah, this is my version of a perfect vacation. I do proudly accept that I’m boring

Enjoy

1. Harmony One Universal Remote – $125

2. Logitech Dinovo Mini – $100

3. A 24″ LCD Monitor with DVI/HDMI and a response time of <5ms. And I want a 3 year warranty too. – <$200

4. Canon 18-200mm EF-S Lens – This one’s been on my list for a long long time now. I have the 18-55mm stock lens which can be described as crappy at best. I also have the 70-200 USM lens which is by far the best lens that I have used.

If you thought these were the only things that I’m gonna buy all of 09, then you’re grossly mistaken By the end of the year, this list is going to grow a tad longer. Please feel free to suggest anything you think I should add to my gadget center.

*12/10/2009 Update*
Here are a few more additions to the gadget mix.

*10/18/2008 Update*
Since last time I posted on this page, I have added a few more gadgets to my arsenal

Panasonic 50PZ800U

The highest rated TV on the market as of this writing. CNet gave it a whopping 8.7. I say ‘whopping’ since it bettered the Kuro, arguably the best plasma available. Kuro was rated at 8.3. Before pulling the trigger on this one, I also tried the Samsung LN46A650. Even though it is one of the most popular LCDs right now, I wasn’t that impressed. I have been a plasma fan ever since I got my Philips 3 yrs back. This was my first LCD and man was I disappointed. The black levels were touted to be the best for an LCD. I somehow could not agree. Not only were not blacks black enough, the motion blur started giving me dizziness and headaches. 2 days later, the TV was back on its way. After that I spent almost 2 months on my research and after repeated visits to all the electronics stores in Austin, I finally pulled the trigger on the Panny. I must say, I have been thoroughly impressed. The THX mode is incredible out of the box. No calibration needed whatsoever. We keep watching Planet Earth on Bluray almost every day just to experience the sheer viewing pleasure that this TV has to offer. It’s almost lifelike.

*10/18/2008 Update*

iPhone 3G
- Got the iPhone 3G after selling my old one on CL. For some reason, liked the older one better.

Playstation 3.

I bought this one basically for Bluray. I have never played a game on it As far as Bluray is concerned, I have no complaints at all. I have heard PS3 does better Bluray than most Bluray players out there. For the price I got this for, buying it on Craigslist was just a no-brainer. The ability to do so many more things with the PS3 makes the deal even more sweet. Try TVersity if you’re looking for a media server for PS3. It’s pretty cool.

Previously…

Apple iPhone 8GB
The coolest one so far. I mean how can you have one and not flaunt it? Hehe I reckon this one needs no explanation besides the fact that it’s cool

Garmin Nuvi 360
This is one of the medium-level models to come out of Garmin’s portable GPS lineup recently. The unit comes with a 3.5″ screen equipped with voice-prompted turn by turn directions along with nifty little bells like an MP3 player, photo viewer and a cool little audio book player. All of your media goes into an SD card. The device can also be hooked up to a traffic receiver for real-time traffic updates.
If you’re looking for a fully functional, no-compromise, value GPS device, then look no further, the nuvi 360 does it all for you.

Canon Rebel XT
If you have an inkling towards photography and have been craving for a digital SLR for too long now, then the Canon Rebel XT should satiate almost all of your photographic hunger. Even though a lot of people prefer the Nikons over the Canons when it comes to digiSLRs, I went with a Canon since I wanted to be able to accumulate as many lenses as I could. With Nikons, you’d have to run to the bank everytime you thought of a lens given their premium price tags. But before buying an SLR, do consider what you’d use the camera for. Don’t invest in an SLR if you don’t plan on using it for professional quality photography. You need to master the basics at least. If you’re comfortable with just point and shoot photography, then going for an SLR might turn out to be a blunder in fact. The pictures suck real bad if you do not know what you’re doing. I’d recommend buying one of those slimmer Powershots or Cybershots in such cases. Not only are they great to carry around for day-to-day use, they do take great pictures.

XBox Media Center
You would absolutely love this one. I’ve managed to acquire an old XBox off of craigslist that was modded with an Xecuter chip by some guy who didn’t know what to do with it. This is why I’m crazy about CL. You name it, they got it on CL, literally anything. Most people mod their XBoxes to store game ISOs. Since I’m not that big of a gaming buff, I proceeded to install XBMC on top of it. More about XBMC here. Not a lot of people appreciate what this guy can do to all your media. XBMC supports every damn video/audio/streaming format that is there under the sun. I have two 300 gig hard drives connected over the network that hold all of of video and audio files. XBMC also supports FTP! Pretty cool huh?