Saturday, Sept 27th marks our 5-year anniversary.  Pretty cool, eh?  Let’s take a quick look back on Sept 27 2003.  It sounds cliched, but 5 years has gone pretty fast.

I would’t say I didn’t have regrets, because that’s what happens in marriage.  You regret stupid arguments and such, but you live and learn together.  My wife and I have accomplished a lot.  We’re starting to get past the stupid arguments, apologizing faster, learning to live with each other.  We’ve got two wonderful kids, a home of our own, 1.5 working cars (oh my poor Honda!), good friends, and plenty of family memories that have brought us many smiles and laughter.

A few years ago, I took one of those online surveys on happiness, and the results came back that I was not happy.  I’m pleased to announce that while life is full of ups and downs, I’m pretty happy these days. I couldn’t have asked for a more wonderful woman to have joined at the hip.

Tomorrow night, we’re celebrating with dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.  I don’t want anyone to think I’m too excited, but I’m getting the Cowboy ribeye steak for my entree, medium-well.

In case you haven’t noticed, new photos from this month have been posted.

• Sept 6, we went to Ethan’s birthday party — thanks for the invite, Pradeesh & Sona.
• Some random shots of the kids.
• Moblog is up-to-date.
• Num’s uncle is visiting the States from Bangalore.  This past Saturday around lunchtime, we went to Makeda in New Brunswick for Ethiopian food.
• On Saturday night, we drove to the city for a little Indian chaat party with friends, at Sayali & Karthik’s place.  [Photos forthcoming.]

How tumultuous the past week has been in the financial world.  Every day, folks at my office to discuss what company just made the news.  Storied investments firms where, in the past, either I wanted to join, or had turned job offers, are either gone, or are soon to be mere shadows of their former greatness.  Shocking, and yet these are the same firms who derided regulatory review by the government.  Greed is powerful.  Do you remember that Bush 1st term proposal to privatize Social Security?  In hindsight, thank goodness that idea died.  The brokerage firms would have been the only ones to benefit from that scheme.

[Short excerpt from a commentary by Chris Farrell, BusinessWeek]

In 1940, Fred Schwed Jr. famously captured the essence ….. with one of the most memorable Wall Street book titles ever: “Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?” It’s worth repeating the allegory that starts off his book:

Once in the dear dead days beyond recall, an out-of-town visitor was being shown the wonders of the New York financial district. When the party arrived at the Battery, one of his guides indicated some handsome ships riding at anchor.

He said, “Look, those are the bankers’ and brokers’ yachts.”

“Where are the customer yachts?” asked the naive visitor.

Indeed.  I’m still looking for my yacht.

It’s been almost a week with my Shure earphones.  They’ve taken some getting used to.  I didn’t think it would be possible to have the need to research how to use headphones, but I’ve been reading this past week.  I’ve tried them in different positions, sleeves, and techniques, but I’ve been struggling to be comfortable.  I used the smallest rubber sleeves initially, but switched to the smallest foam ones.  I’ve read that the best way to use the earphones is to pull you earlobes forward and out to straighten the ear canal, then insert earphones.

My earphones have arrived

With some additional tweaking, I think I’m finally comfortable.  However, it has introduced another question: when is it worth it to listen to music?  Case in point: I’ll get all set up, start listening to music in the conference room, and then someone wants to talk to me.  I’ll scowl, take the earphones out, talk, then spend 2 mins getting set up again.  Then another question.

Still, I think I’m okay, as of this afternoon.  They do sound pretty good.  I think the best way to describe the benefit is how the music sounds clearer — it could even be described as “crisper.”  I did some work late Thursday night, and I found that I can listen to music on the absolute lowest audible volume setting in a quiet house.  Amazingly clear.  Check back with me in a couple of days.

Speaking of music, I read an article over the summer, How we learned to stop listening to music, by Steve Guttenberg.  It made me realize how I was not so much listening to music, as much as enjoying background noise with a beat. I may not be the only one out there.  So for a change of pace, I’m trying to actually listen to what is currently playing, not just have it playing in the background.  I’m enjoying it more.

Quick update:

1. We spent the weekend cleaning up the house.  We had some free time, and took advantage of the free time to take back the night.  I mean, the house.  Having children means constantly battling against the tides of messiness.  Often, I think back to 2002 when my friend Leena was telling me how she spent an afternoon cleaning her car, vacuuming up all the Cheerios that her daughter Alisha left.  It took me 6-7 years later to understand what she was talking about. 
2. I find it humorous how some of these online vendors encourage you to spend extra on faster shipping by telling you that opting for free shipping will require you to wait 20 days or whatever for your much-desired purchase to arrive.  In the meantime, it shows up within 3 days anyway.  Happens to me all the time with anything I purchase from Amazon.com.  This happened with Circuit City too.  The website informed me that while the item would ship on 9/16, estimated arrival time was 9/30.  How were they shipping it?  By mule?  Later, I received the Fedex tracking number, and Fedex anticipates delivering it 9/16.  Yes, that’s right, 9/16.  Dear Circuit City, get a clue.  I can’t wait to try the new earphones out.
3. Joshua attended his first-ever Sunday School class this weekend.  He liked it, but I think he just did some coloring (he is only 3-years old.)  My little guy is growing up!

Milton Waddams: “And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…”

Office Space is a great movie, except for that whole stupid steal-a-penny scheme at the end.  That was kinda trite.

The new HTC Touch Pro looks cool.

I can not believe the trials and tribulations that I am enduring regarding cellphone holsters.

1. In January 2008, I bought a cellphone holster for $30, as I didn’t want to take the chance of losing my BlackBerry.  I once lost a Nokia 8260 back in 2000 when it slipped out of my pants pocket (that’s what you get for being heavily inebriated with your friends (see Aug 30 2002) walking out at 4am.  BTW, check out this page from PC World — I used to own both of these Nokia phones, in chronological order.  They were nice phones, but archaic by today’s standards.  Ah, the memories.
2. I appear to have misplaced the holster somewhere, so I purchased one online for the amazing price of $8.  I proceeded to break it within 24 hours after getting in my car, and snapping the clip off against the driver seat.
3. Afraid to lose the phone while attending meetings in the city, I found an AT&T Wireless store in Times Square, and purchased another holster for the now-I-realize-marked-up price of $30.  For a short time, I thought maybe the $8 one was inferior, and that’s why it broke.
4. 48-72 hours later, I proceed to break the holster. On the driver seat.  Again.
5. This week, I found the holsters online for $6, and ordered TWO of them.  I figure the price is right — if anything happens to the first one, I have a spare.  They arrived today.  I’m going to construct a glass case, put the holster in it, and hang the case on the wall.  One of those “In case of emergency, break glass” type deals.

I did consider getting one black and one red, but I wasn’t sure if the red one was considered “unmanly.”  When in doubt, always bet on black, as Wesley Snipes eloquently put it.  I decided to purchase two identical black holsters.  I also resolved myself, going forward, to carefully enter and exit my car.

Nokia 6160

Nokia 8260

Curve 8300 Holster (black)

Curve 8300 Holster (red)

In other news, I have been searching the Earth for decent in-ear headphones. Here comes another stupid history lesson:

1. Back when I had purchased my 4G iPod in November 2004, I used the included white headphones, but I wanted something better.
2. In Sept 2005, I purchased the well-reviewed Sony Fontopia Headphones MDR-EX71SL in-ear headphones.  Within 3-5 months, they literally fell apart — insulation opened up exposing the wires.  So much for Sony brand name quality.  Feh. Sony, your Quality Control Department sucks.
3. Fast-forward to this week.  I’ve looked at the Shure, Etymiotic, Jayz, Bose headsets, and they have been all more than what I want to comfortably spend.  I could argue spending between $50-$100, but they gotta be good.  Well, the fat lady sung.  CircuitCity.com is offering a 15% discount on MP3 & accessories until Sept 13 2008.  I also had a $75 Circuit City gift card to spend unwisely.  I had my eye on the Shure SE210 headphones in black (good reviews all around), but they were out-of-stock on Monday.  They just restocked on Friday, and I put the order in.  Instead of $124, final cost (and free shipping) is $38.  This Indian in me rejoices.  Should be here in 4-10 business days.

Original iPod Headphones

Sony MDR-EX71SL

Shure SE210 (black)