The Vacuum Tube : funny

DirectX Daddy Alex St. John: The Most Amazing Interview Ever!

Viral Tarpara — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:44:00 GMT

Shacknews has, what can only be described as, the most inspirational interview on the internet as it applies to life at Microsoft ~~or at least how it used to be~~. Joining the company 8 months ago, I've had my fair share of crap happen to me, none of which I'm going to talk about ~~give me 10 years and some stock options~~, but reading this article really put things into perspective as to exactly how an individual really can make all the difference at a company. For those of you who don't know Alex St. John, current CEO of Wildtangent, he was the face of the Microsoft to the gaming industry. He practically created the DirectX ecosystem during the Windows 95-era. Amongst the topics in the article, the insights into the publishing industry, 3rd-party developer relationships, and corporate "politickery" stand out. If you haven't read this article, you're really missing out.

Alex, you're my hero! ~~Sorry Marlboro Man.~~

Gentlemen and Lady ~~I know there's at least one out there~~, your Moment of Zen!

Xbox 360 Welcomes PS3 - It Was Brought..ed

Viral Tarpara — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:12:00 GMT

So I was reading Engadget and ran across this article about how the European Xbox marketing team stuck it to Sony like the East Compton Clovers did to the Toros *sigh* Eliza Dushku. Apparently Microsoft warmly welcomed Sony AND their customers with neat ~~yes i said it~~ swag posters, banners and even chairs for the poor souls waiting in line for the opportunity to buy a PS3. Of course the day wouldn't be complete without a slew of SMS messages sent to attendees wishing them a great night and all day barges decorated with Xbox 360 logos running up and down the river. Although, Xbox people blowing whistles on rooftops seemed a little too supportive of the PS3 Europe launch, no one will argue that there was just such a friendly warmth surrounding the event!

EEX-BOX QUAISONT CAISONT!!! Ladies and gentleman, your moment of zen!

5 Things About Me You All Probably Don't Know

Viral Tarpara — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:12:00 GMT

So apparently my best friend since joining Microsoft, Anand Iyer, feels the need to involve me in his childish online ice breakers. Apparently he is currently involved in an inescapable game of blog tag. To better understand this phenomenon to the masses, I decided to research this odd online social dynamic with the world's definitive source for accurate, updated, and editable information--Wikipedia.org. According to Wikipedia:

Blog Tag, or better known as memetag, and I quote, "is a blog tag that is included in all posts that reference a meme. When a meme is started on a blog — for example, 'your top five favourite movies' — the meme tag is included at the foot of the text of each post that responds to the meme invitation. By including a memetag, bloggers are recognising the initial creator of the meme and allowing them to track how their meme has spread across the blogosphere through the use of social media tools such as Technorati. While inclusion of a memetag is not mandatory, it is done in the spirit of information sharing across the web and is a system based on trust."

In all honesty, if there wasn't a wiki about it, I was going to create one and attribute it to Stephen Colbert ~~hey it's true he created it~~. But I suppose it would be interesting how far my online presence could propagate ~~you can't start a sentence with 'but'~~. So...

#5 - I wrote production design code in Intel's XScale Monahans chip. ~~Did you ever wonder why your battery meter didn't work?~~ I converted old VHDL legacy code into fresh Verilog code. It was pretty cool work and it taught me that I could never work in a cubicle again. After my experience at that company, I was ecstatic to come to Microsoft.

#4 - I use Gmail for my personal email and my personal computer is an iBook G4. I know what all of you are thinking. That being said, if I didn't have my work laptop with Outlook 2007 on it, my productivity would go down 80%. Please forgive me if I seem less than convinced when Eric Schmidt and Douglass Merrill say they completely "eat their dogfood" and use Google Apps within their company. It wouldn't surprise me that they actually have a super-duper version of it running internally, but lets be honest, Google Apps, in its present form, is a half baked attempt at an enterprise suite. Enterprises would be better off with deploying Office Live even if Microsoft is currently only targetting small and medium businesses with that offering. The funniest part of the Google Apps video is when Merrill makes the argument that Google Apps meets your compliance standards because it meets Google's compliance standards. WOW...I'm pissed, I should write an article about this.

#3 - My first computer was my Dad's AT&T 8088 machine with two double-density floppy drives and a green monochrome monitor. I was age 4. I learned how to turn on and load "Zaxxon" and "Wheel of Fortune" from disks. Oddly I got glasses by age 5. I wonder if it is a coincidence?

#2 - I've seen a lot of the world and done some amazing things in my life so far. I've gone skiing in the Himalayas, went white-water rafting in Nepal, seen half of Europe, seen some of Hinduism's and Jainism's most holiest shrines, and faced certain death in a Los Angeles drive-by but survived ~~don't ever flip the bird at LAX~~. If my life ended today, I would leave satisfied.

#1 - And finally the number one thing you probably don't know about me, when I was 3, I rode a red tricycle down the stairs in my uncle's house because I saw a guy do it on a motorcycle on TV. Let's just say to this day, every person in my family never fails to remind me of my...err..daring ~~retarded~~ nature.

*Tags TBA*

Thank you. That is all. Here it is! Your moment of zen! ~~milk does her body good~~ *cards flying* *laughing like Letterman*

Video: Milk does body good! It did for Carmen.

I'm Famous Now...in Ontario...

Viral Tarpara — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 12:06:00 GMT

So even though my first solo event didn't run flawless ~~2 demos crashed~~, I met some amazing people and interacted with the local tech community. I even got some press attention! Unconfirmed, I was on the front page of the business section of the Inland Express Daily Bulliten. Hopefully I won't have to buy $300 torn jeans and fake ripped t-shirts like Brad Pitt so that I can continue to stroll amongst the common folk. Being the modest type, I haven't let my new found fame go to my head, for example, I'm not mad that I have yet to hear from Maserati about the car they want me to drive around when I go to all my events. They probably just haven't read the papers yet.

Next Week is Gonna Be Fun!

Viral Tarpara — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 02:45:00 GMT

I am finally going to be presenting solo at a Microsoft Across America event! Next week, I'll be presenting in front 400 people in Riverside and 500 people at the San Diego Convention Center! If that wasn't enough, the following week, 1000 people in Anaheim. The thought of it just makes me want to vomit. I can see it now, during my 4 hour presentation, some open-source junkie interrupts me to complain about why Vista needs 1GB of RAM to run well while his Suse Linux box running kernal 2.1 chugs along happily with 128MB. Not to be outdone, I'll no doubt have some church members from Apple asking me why Vista copied everything from OS X. But worst of all, I'm dreading the fact that I'm gonna flip out and lose my cool. District managers, General managers, VPs, and Directors are all gonna be there cheering me on ~~no pressure.~~ It's basically my moment of truth for the last 6 months of preparation.

Questions I have to ask myself: What if the projector goes down? What if my laptop battery blows up? By the ghost of Paul Allen! What if they all scream at me wanting a shrubbery but the only place to find one is in a cave hosted by rabbits with sharp pointy teeth? K...gotta go, pizza's here! *publish*

Google Study on Harddrive Failure Released

Viral Tarpara — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:08:00 GMT

Google Labs is known for periodically releasing internal statistics and research to the general public. Just released a few days ago is a study showing the rate of failure for Google's harddisk infrastructure in their insanely huge data centers. Surprisingly, "heat" is not concluded to be a significant factor in harddrive failure, relatively speaking. Among other things, it breaks down the failure rates of drive between 0-5 years old and acknowledges the benefits and short-comings of SMART (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) that is built into all modern drives today. If you're planning on building a data center in the near future ~~5 FIOS in my mom's basement muahahaha~~ this is a must read!

On a related noted and as a Hindu, I am eagarly waiting for Google Caste Beta to be released! ~~Beyonce Subhramaniradhakrishan?~~

And now ladies and gentlemen, "your moment of zen."

What if Apple Made the Wii?

Viral Tarpara — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:41:00 GMT

While I was testing out MSN's Soapbox Beta, a YouTube competitor, I found that someone had uploaded a video that would make every Wii ~~Borat~~ lover out there exclaim, "very nice!" Unlike Apple however, this ad didn't have resort to misinformation to make a compelling ad. The whole ad is true! Check it out below!

On a side note, Soapbox is really slick in the UI department. I think that the main site is a little too aggressive in look that it may turn off users who are used to YouTube in its simplisitic utilitarian..er...whiteness, but it is still early beta. I'm hoping it will open up to general viewing soon!

Video: PS3 vs. Wii - Apple Style