Back from vacation. As per internet rules, I must post pictures or it didn't happen. My cousin who lives a few miles outside of Philadelphia opened her new, awesome home to me, Mansi, my little sister and two other cousins. We based out of her place and travelled to "nearby" tourist spots.

Day 1 - Downtown Philadelphia
We were all a little tired from the previous days drive up so we went into Philadelphia and visited the Eastern State Penitentiary. Choice quote goes to my little sister who said, "These prison cells are larger than my dorm room." We then proceeded to the Liberty Bell, which was cool to see. Ended the day with some falafel at Maoz, one of my favorite fast food restaurants.

   

Click here to download:

summer-vacation-mCituqIvysIymwhvonFa.zip (3884 KB)

Day 2 - Chill
I did nothing. Seriously nothing. I sat on a super comfortable couch, watched TV on Demand all day. It was awesome

Day 3 - NYC
We all piled in a car and drove to NYC. We went to see the Statue of Liberty, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, ate at Grimaldi's Pizza, saw the Empire State Building and walked around Times Square. Most importantly, I visited the 5th Ave. Apple Store.

               

Click here to download:

summer-vacation-hiIzpgnJynArgDwrfegD.zip (16129 KB)

Day 4 - DC
Much longer day. We drove to a train station and took the train into DC. First place we visited was the Whitehouse, followed by Air and Space and Natural History museum. We were really lucky that museums were open until 7:30. Even so it wasn't enough time but it was still great to see what we could. We then walked to the Capitol Building, Washington Monument and finally the Lincoln Memorial. 

                 

Click here to download:

summer-vacation-xDfcrAfwBavmjffzldcb.zip (17079 KB)

Day 5 - Ocean City, NJ
Just wanted to hang out at the beach. Had fried Oreos, didn't eve know that was a thing. Dug a hole under our beach towels and tricked a cousin into falling into the hole. Good times until...I cut my foot up on some shelled creatures between slippery rocks which I was jumping around on. 

Raksha Bandhan
The highlight of this trip was having my cousin Hima give me a rakhi for Raksha Bandhan after a long time. She gave me the one with the Om symbol.

A whole lotta driving...

View Larger Map

It's how you fight what is thrown at you that defines you as a person.

Life is a journey and any obstacle you face is meant to test your strength and willingness to fight. A life untested is a life not worth living. So have no regrets, hold no grudges, and live to the fullest.

Mansi and I like to go see my parents on the weekends. To avoid the traffic we've been using an alternate route for getting out of the city and past a good bit of interstate traffic. The first time we wanted to try this new route out our printer wasn't working, so I busted out the trusty legal pad and pen and got to work. I drew two routes in cased we missed Flippen Rd., which is easy to do because there is no traffic light or stop sign at the intersection of N. Henry Blvd and Flippen Rd.

Since then, we've discovered a slightly better route that avoids traffic in town by traveling on south on Boulevard until it dead ends and then going east to get onto Moreland before the 675 on-ramp. As a bonus when you dead end on Boulevard you will be directly across a Federal Prison Camp and Penitentiary that has a great review on Google.

View Larger Map

Some would say that spending 3 hours following 58 pages of instructions to build a Lego version of Darth Vader's TIE Fighter is a waste of time.

Those people are stupid.

Thanks to Matthew and Rebecca for this awesome birthday gift. See below for some photographs I captured during the construction process.

                           

Click here to download:

did-someone-say-lego-tie-fighter-jioxEuijkxtkfugGcdcH.zip (28491 KB)

I received the following email last night. I was compelled to respond to it immediately.

The Email

Hi Nirmal, I found your website via the Google search engine. My husband and I named our daughter (she's about to be one year old) Nirmala. We call her Nirmal for short. I had a friend in college with that name and we have always thought it was very beautiful. We live in the USA and my mother-in-law lives in a predominantly white/Anglo town. My mother-in-law refuses to use Nirmal's name. She calls her "The Baby" and says that Nirmal will run away from us becuase [sic] of her name and that kids in school will be mean to her. We love her name. I believe the world is bigger than her small town / and her small mind. Do you know many Nirmalas? Do you think it's very bad that we call her Nirmal? Does that sound bad to you? Perhaps we do not pronounce it like you may - we pronounce it like it is spelled in English. Do you think kids these days are that closed minded?
Sincerely,
[Anonymized]

My Response

To be honest this is the oddest email I have ever received as a result of my website. That being said I would like to answer all of your questions as best as I can. Also, would it be ok if I posted this conversation on my website? I would not post your names or email address.

> My husband and I named our daughter (she's about to be 
> one year old) Nirmala.  We call her Nirmal for short.
> I had a friend in college with that name and we have 
> always thought it was very beautiful.

A little clarification Nirmala and Nirmal are two distinct names. Nirmala is a girl's name and Nirmal is the corresponding boy's name. I personally don't see a problem with you calling your daughter Nirmal, nicknames are nicknames. Nirmal is also a word and not just a name. You may already know this but it is composed of two parts "nir" which roughly translates to "without" and "mal" which roughly translates to "bad" and the combined form means something closer to the English phrase "pure of heart/mind".

> We live in the USA and my mother-in-law
> lives in a predominantly white/Anglo town. My mother-in-law 
> refuses to use Nirmal's name.  She calls her "The Baby" 
> and says that Nirmal will run away from us because of her 
> name and that kids in school will be mean to her.

I will not attempt to pass judgement on the actions of your mother-in-law as that is not my place. As far as kids in school, I did have some problems growing up, however I was always told to not waste my mind by thinking about immature people so I developed a pretty thick skin.

> Do you know many Nirmalas?

I actually don't know any Nirmala's. However, I know two guys named Nirmal. We never really discussed the impacts of our names on our lives so I do not have anything else to say on that matter.

> Do you think it's very bad that we call her Nirmal? 
> Does that sound bad to you?

Like I said, you may want to consider that the name Nirmal is a masculine name. However, that does not stop people from using "Sam" as a short form for Samantha even though Sam would be perceived as masculine.

> Perhaps we do not pronounce it like you may - we 
> pronounce it like it is spelled in English.

Most of my American friends also do not pronounce it in the original pronunciation. In fact, I do not bother correcting because it detracts from whatever introduction is being made. Most people pronounce it "nermull", while the original pronunciation is closer to "neer-mull". If you have a computer running OS X try typing "say nermull" and "say neermull" in a Terminal to hear the difference. It's not perfect but it is close. Also, if you are a fan of Garfield the "nermull" pronunciation is the same as the pronunciation of Garfield's cousin Nermal.

> Do you think kids these days are that closed minded?

Kids are not kids forever, and, in my opinion, those who stay kids are not worth your, or your daughter's, time.

It is on this keyboard that I spent countless nights writing code, papers or just googling to figure out why something that should work did not and why something that should not work did. Today, I was having a tough time focusing my thoughts so I decided it was time to do some mindful labor and clean this keyboard and clear my mind at the same time. I believe I was successful at both.

                 

Click here to download:

keyboard-cleaning-catharsis-apyGDfBvIBqAdelFiFAw.zip (2525 KB)

Growl To Notifo is a system service which sends any Growl notifications on your desktop/laptop and sends them to your mobile device using Notifo when Growl thinks you are idle. Growl To Notifo works by using hidden settings within Growl which enable logging all notifications to a file. If you are using this functionality please do not install Growl To Notifo unless you are sure of what you're doing. Growl To Notifo does not save messages and clears the log as it processes notifications.

Get it here.

Update (06/10/2010): See this github thread for more details but I believe this fix only works for Snow Leopard users. Unfortunately, I do not have a machine with Leopard installed to try and fix it there as well.

If you've just installed Safari 5 and are also a Keywurl user you may be getting an error regarding Keywurl when starting up Safari (Image 1). I've gotten around this by editing the Info.plist in the Keywurl bundle. Note, these steps are not guaranteed to not cause a problem. Follow at your own risk.

1. In a Finder window, go to /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
2. Right-Click Keywurl.bundle and click Show Package Contents
3. Right-Click on Info.plist and open it with TextEdit
4. Search for the String associated with the Key MaxBundleVersion
5. Edit this to match the version number of Safari 5, 6553.6

If Safari is open, you will need to quit completely and re-open.

       

Click here to download:

making-keywurl-work-with-safari-5-gzzCFrviBBmDrzkctdpk.zip (161 KB)