September 29, 2002

Something Is Very Wrong

Nothing is working right now. Looks like I might have hard disk failure on one of my computers. And then there is the printer straight out of Office Space that never works. Not to mention the power failing over and over again, causing my UNIX machine to get file system errors. This doesn't include the headphones that play in one ear only, the speakers that make weird noises late at night, and the monitor that gets white lines every once in a while. Then Outlook crashes and reboots my computer when I attempt to delete a message. Wireless works only when I stand near the bed, but not when I stand near the dresser and NFS never works at all. The wireless card won't work with FreeBSD because of system incompatibilities. SP1 on WinXP seems to be causing instability, Microsoft Office doesn't work anymore, and I have no time to deal with any of it, because I have a Bio midterm tomorrow. FINALLY, best of all, the blogger seems to be messing up my archives, in that it's deleting them. WHAT?! Good for all this. So what does EECS really teach you?? How to fix computers?? Of course not, it just makes you more aware of the futility of attempting such a task.

January 05, 2003

Hackers and Con Artists

I read an interesting article in The New York Times today, which is delivered to my email box on a daily basis, comparing Abagnale in Catch Me If You Can to modern hackers. Read it if you have the time or inclination (and a registration to the N.Y. Times site).

February 08, 2003

Compile, Dammit, COMPILE!

Sadly, I'm not even referring to my own code in this situation, though I have felt this same way when doing my own programming as well. But no, this has nothing to do with me at all. I just wanted to reinstall PostgreSQL because the latest port had come out and it was recommended that updates be made. So I went to the ports section, and tried to just type the usual make install clean, but then it gave me some dumbass bug about how gettext was already installed, so I would have to force a re-register or make deinstall. Fine, I went to the port directory for gettext and uninstalled it (what do I care about international support, anyway, right?).

February 15, 2003

Bored To Sleep

Last night would have been a big bust, but I wasn't really expecting much, so it was no big deal. The only thing that makes me mad is that I had to pay to get in to Cloyne (a coop), and then nothing happened, so I just ended up hanging out with other people. I might as well have not gone, and just chilled with the others the entire night, but I wanted to check it out because of multiple recommendations. Oh well, considering the amount of work for school I want to get done, and the other stuff I want to do (for fun), it's probably a good thing that the party last night didn't end up going on until 3 a.m., because then I would have inevitably ended up waking up at 3 p.m., and then I wouldn't be able to do anything today.

March 24, 2003

Ain't No Place Like Home, Right?

Coming home has become a somewhat bittersweet event these days. While I do enjoy the time off, sleeping in my queen size bed (versus the twin in my apartment from which my feet hang out), watching episodes from the first season of X-Files, and generally doing nothing but eating and chilling, I'm also growing somewhat bored already, and it's only been 2 days. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that many of my friends are not home at the same time as me, so thus I haven't really been hanging out that much. Also, I feel kind of guilty, because when I'm bored and have absolutely nothing to do, I haven't been doing homework like I should be because I have a ton of crap right after break. But it's still early. I'll probably get around to doing my homework soon enough, considering the rate that my boredom is increasing.

July 31, 2004

The Unusual Antidepressant

People often ask me how I can say that I rarely, if ever, get depressed. I don't know if that's a routine question or they are insinuating that I should be more depressed than I am, but I'm just going to ignore that matter for now. Usually, I just cryptically say that I have access to an unusual antidepressant, but this has had the negative effect of bringing my emotional stability into scrutiny. To set the record straight, I'd like to explain my technique for not being depressed.

August 11, 2005

Prozac for the People

Although summer time is usually a happy time for most people, I'm sure everyone goes through a slump despite the warm, sunny days and temperate evenings, for one reason or another. Perhaps that summer fling you were hoping for hasn't materialized, or maybe, that summer fling you just had worked a little bit too well, and now you need to tell your boyfriend/girlfriend who was abroad for the summer about it. Or maybe you're just someone who has a lot to be depressed about, regardless of the season. Regular readers of my site probably remember my post on the unusual antidepressant from last year, and hopefully find solace in it, but for all you unenlightened folks, I'm going take this opportunity to discuss another avenue for finding happiness and self-confidence in this dog-eat-dog world trying very hard to destroy both.

November 23, 2005

To My Children

Dearest Children,

Forgive me, for if you are indeed reading this letter, that means I am veritably a father and probably have much to atone. I sincerely hope you took most of your qualities from your mother, since quite frankly, with the exception of my unwavering cynicism and prolific hatred, I do not offer much, especially genetically. Moreover, she must be quite an amazing woman to have put up with my antics for such a long time.

December 28, 2005

Facebook Friends

Nearly two years ago, at what might, in retrospect, be seen as a golden age of cynicism and anger in the prolific history of rohitsrealm.com, I ventured that all interpersonal relationships could be defined on the basis of convenience, exploitation, and self-aggrandizement. Well, with the advent of social networks such as Facebook and My Space, I realized today that my trusty pyramid of yesteryear could not be veritably applied to the digital representations of relationships on social networks. Thus, for this entry I decided to prepare a more comprehensive analysis of the purported friendships tauted on social networks.

July 20, 2006

Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!

Popularity. The quality of being well-liked or admired. A nearly universal human impulse, if you ask me. I mean, even hipsters, scenesters, Goths, and all kinds of other counterculture assholes rely on popularity to define their internal social structures. The only difference between them and the yuppie assholes is their delusional belief that they are in fact different from the rest of society. But that's a different discussion altogether.

September 03, 2006

Coming Full Circle (or 270° At Least)

Some of you may have noticed that over this weekend, heretofore private albums in my photo gallery suddenly became public—sort of. This was not a mistake, nor did my site get hacked. After all the fanfare only nine months ago, why did I suddenly reverse my position regarding privacy of photographs?

March 06, 2007

A Tale of Two Feeds

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Though Dickens may have been writing about the French Revolution when he opened his much-exalted A Tale of Two Cities, his proverbial words could just as easily apply to a very different revolution: the RSS revolution, and its still nascent descendant, Atom.

March 13, 2007

Outsourcing My (Digital) Existence

As my last few entries have likely made abundantly clear to all but the most nescient of readers, I am what some people might politely describe as a technophile. (Actually, geek, nerd, asshole, or idiot are significantly more commonplace, but that is hardly the point.) What is likely less obvious based on my sanguine and happy-go-lucky web persona is that I am also about as much of a control freak—in life in general and in technology in particular—as one can be without also possessing a C.P.A. In the past couple years, these two rather dominant characteristics have become increasingly incompatible: my desire to possess the latest and greatest technology stands in stark conflict with my insatiable need to retain control over all my data. Yesterday, this long-standing cold war suddenly became hot over what most will consider a rather mundane commodity: e-mail.

April 18, 2007

Synchronizing Gmail Contacts

I hate to disappoint those readers who have become accustomed to reading my angst-ridden entries of late (I swear I am not in high school still!), but I thought I would take a (brief) break from contemplating suicide to discuss a topic that is likely just as uninteresting for the majority of readers: how do I synchronize my Gmail contacts with my CrackBerry™?

July 03, 2007

OpenID, Gallery, and the Big Three

Besides the withering battles with existential angst and the woeful failures with women, the biggest problems in my life in recent years have revolved around my photo gallery. Specifically, I have struggled with achieving a proper balance between the diametrically opposed goals of providing access to friends and family, and simultaneously, limiting access to the general public. (My political career may well be ruined, but that does not mean I should actively try to ruin that of others.) A quick historical survey of the archive should demonstrate just how much of a problem this has been.

July 24, 2007

Even Though I Sell Rocks

As the venerable Realm has gained increasing fame and notoriety amongst friends, family, and the odd disaffected, suicide-prone, emo high school student, I have frequently been asked questions in real life about the specifics of my web site. The most common series of questions is as follows:

1. What the heck/hell/fuck is wrong with you?
2. What do you use to host your site? and
3. Why don't you put advertising on your site?

As the first question is difficult to answer (and indeed, may have no singular answer at all), I will oblige loyal readers by answering the latter two.

August 05, 2007

Digital Marriage Therapy

Though I am not one to generally spend much time or energy with the Wall Street Journal's Pursuits section (my preference runs to the Editorials), every once in a while, a gem will surface that is not only worth reading, but also worth blogging about; this weekend's edition presented such an opportunity with 'Til Tech Do Us Part, an article on the problems of marriage in the digital age. Now, regular readers will likely recall that about a year ago, I published a manifesto that purported to mitigate the hassles of break-ups in the digital age, but that analysis tends to breakdown when one cannot soundly assume the relationship will end in catastrophic failure, i.e., the objective is to remain in said relationship (understandably, this is a distinctly foreign concept for yours truly). In any case, though I may know next to nothing about how (or why) one might sustain any such entanglement beyond a couple months, let alone 'til death do us part, technology remains my forté: allow me to impart my wisdom.

August 12, 2007

On Virtual Worlds and Second Lives

In the past year or so, as Linden Lab's Second Life® has gained accelerating coverage in first technology, and then, mainstream media, I have become increasingly interested in the notion of virtual worlds, as well as I might—they present an incredibly interesting environment for study of human behavior, technology, and economics, all topics near and dear to me. However, the article that really took the cake (so to speak) for me was one I read in this Friday's Journal, about one man's virtual marriage within Second Life and the toll it is having on his actual marriage (in real life). Now, even if we leave aside the (entirely legitimate) question of why one would seek an additional, virtual marriage, with no real (i.e., sexual or financial) benefits, when already encumbered with one in one's first life, we are still left with a number of questions about why someone might feel compelled to join, and more importantly, actively participate in such an environment in the first place.

August 14, 2007

It's the Network, Stupid

Social networking may now be the buzz phrase du jour amongst the iPod-wearing, MacBook-sporting techno-dilettantes constantly drinking grande lattes (or whatever the fuck it is they order) who consider themselves computer scientists because they read about Ruby on Rails, but for me, it is a phenomenon that is nearly five years in the making, and frankly, one which, in recent months, has had me wondering whether it is even worth the trouble.

September 04, 2007

Raising the Bar

Since I was a very young boy, my parents have always warned me about the dangers of tempting Fate, and skeptic that I am, I have generally always looked upon such warnings with a mixture of bemusement and annoyance. Bah! What nonsense! Thus, it should be no surprise that last week, in a bout of characteristic irreverance, I did exactly what my parents have long warned me against: I tempted Fate most egregiously. Writing in reference to my classic 2003 rant about bureaucrat ineptitude in my newly self-published book, I observed that I doubt I have ever experienced a more frustrating level of bureaucratic incompetence in my life [than what was experienced with the College of L&S], though that is not for lack of trying. Lo and behold, my parents were right. The honor that was rightly held for more than four years by the esteemed liberal arts school at my alma mater has now passed to an even more worthy entity (or should I say, adversary): Cingular®—wait, I mean the new AT&T®. Raising the Bar™—of red tape, idiocy, and obstructionism.

December 07, 2007

SuperPoke and the Meaning of Life

Those readers for whom social networking is not a way of life (are there really any of you out there?) will be forgiven if they do not understand the reference in the title, but I would think that the vast majority of people will at least be aware of the concept, if not active participants in its ever-growing popularity. Perhaps you even have an opinion on the topic. In the last few months since the SuperPoke Facebook application took off, I have heard assessments that run the gamut. To some, it is the next best thing since Al Gore invented the In-ter-net. To others, it is simply one more mindless and purposeless activity that has come to represent the worthlessness of the unwashed masses. Cynical readers will likely assume that mere invocation of worthless unwashed masses would draw me to that side of the argument like a moth to flame—or a fly to shit. Au contraire, ye of little faith! [...]

February 03, 2008

Economic Incentives for a Life of Crime

As my dramatically diminished frequency of posting in the new year should suggest, I have been immersed in a lot of unpleasantness in recent weeks. Between increasingly frantic attempts at securing employment for the summer and reuniting with the maladjusted boys of 1524, I hardly had any time before last weekend to work on the quarter's only assignment for Legal Research and Writing, viz. a legal memorandum on intrusion of privacy worth 45% of the grade for the year. Needless to say, I overshot the word limit by over 1,800 words—this blog should be evidence enough of my inability to check the penchant for spewing incoherent nonsense—and had to spend all of last Sunday cutting out entire paragraphs, sentences, and towards the end, prepositions, articles, and other structures vital to sound writing. As hour after tedious hour of reading the same incomprehensible gibberish for expendable words and thoughts passed, I could not help but fall into a state of despair and existential angst (not an infrequent occurrence), pondering the same questions that have haunted me for years on end: (1) What am I doing with my life? and (2) Why did I not choose to pursue a life of crime?

February 11, 2008

Say It Ain't So, Rohit

Those readers who have only recently joined me in the meaningless and ultimately futile enterprise known as my life—I mean, the Realm—may justly assume that the purpose of this blog (insofar as it has one) is to indulge the self-absorbed, narcissistic tendencies of its (optimistically) cynical author as he drifts aimlessly in a turbulent sea of mediocrity, loneliness, and despair. While this may indeed be what the illustrious Realm is about these days, incoherent rambling about mediocrity, loneliness, and despair was not where it got its start. In its original manifestation, the Realm existed for two purposes: (1) to counteract a world obsessed with and deluded by theoretical agents of purported happiness such as love, marriage, and children; and (2) to hate on bums. In a much-referenced entry last year, I acknowledged my shameful hypocrisy with respect to the former; today, I shall do so with respect to the latter. Say it ain't so, Rohit. Say it ain't so.

March 03, 2008

Four Reasons Why Google Reader Shared Items Suck

As many of you who know me in real life could attest to, I am a fairly hardcore user of Google Reader for all my syndication needs. Until quite recently, I would venture that I was a very satisfied user. The introduction of the Shared Items and Friends, however may just change my mind.

April 26, 2008

Much Ado About Chicago Law's Classroom Internet Ban: A Faux-Empirical Study

It has been a month since Spring Quarter classes commenced at The Law School, and more importantly, since the policies outlined in the now infamous e-mail read 'round the world went into effect. Of course, here I refer to the e-mail from the Dean which informed us, much to our chagrin, that the beloved Internet which had once been provided in its full edu-network glory—for educational purposes only, of course—would no longer be available to us in the classroom.

Worse still, this was not a result of the so-called democratic process, where poor and starving law students, induced by promises of free food from sub-par establishments in the greater Hyde Park area arrive to do whatever it is they need to do to get said food, but instead, an onerous mandate from the administration. People had complained, they said. Learning would be enhanced, they told us. In the end, our experience will be better without classroom Internet, they assured us. Somewhere, a University of Chicago Nobel Laureate rolled over in his grave. Paternalism, the bane of libertarians, conservatives, and Federalist Society members near and far, had supposedly arrived at the once stalwart home of the free market economy. Oh, the irony.

May 05, 2008

Stable Marriage and Information Failure in the Social Marketplace

Standing around at a bar last Friday night, sipping a dirty martini and semi-engaged in a lackluster conversation with some random woman I had met approximately ninety seconds earlier, I felt my thoughts drift almost involuntarily from trying to figure out whether she was attractive or I was hallucinating, to the Stable Marriage Algorithm and pervasive information failures in day-to-day existence. This is only one of the many reasons why I do not have a girlfriend.

July 11, 2008

If You Can't Beat 'Em . . .

HFK recently pointed out that it was rather surprising that my shared items were regularly appearing in his reader given that I had excoriated the feature only months before with characteristic vitriol and bitterness. Admittedly, this is quite an about-face. To whom or what do we attribute this nontrivial change of heart?

July 19, 2008

Reflections on Life, Law, and the UNIX Command Line

With grades from the last quarter of my 1L year (finally) in, the dreadful journal competition (finally) complete, and the summer winding down faster than it began, I was already left poised this week for reflection (as though I need any help with that!). Surprisingly, however, it was a minor calamity involving my photo server (the noble autocrat.rohitsrealm.com) that ended up providing the catalyzing spark necessary for me to contemplate the perennial question that has come to define not only me, but more importantly, this blog: what am I doing with my life (and why have I not yet killed myself)?

August 10, 2008

The Other One: Confessions of an Unapologetic Adulterer

News that former presidential candidate John Edwards lied about an extramarital affair got me thinking about my own licentious ways and especially the torrid—and tawdry!—affair that I have been carrying on for past few years. Since it has transitioned from the realm of mere physical attraction to that of true emotional attachment, I can no longer keep it a secret. And unlike Messr. Edwards, who in a race to the bottom justified his affair on the basis that his wife's cancer was in remission, I will not attempt to effect disingenuous contrition; I stand proud and unapologetic over my adulterous ways.