I have a temperature of 103 Degree F and a pulserate of 97/minute . I am shaking with chills even though I am wearing a sweater and woollen stockings AND drinking a hot cup of tea. My nose and throat are burning as if someone has put in hot embers into them. To add to the irritation my nose is also dripping like a broken faucet. It's not pretty at all. I tried to lie down to sleep but my head hurts with dull pains in a supine position. I am also very dizzy when I get up from a sitting position even though I am fairly certain I am well-hydrated. I can feel that my chest is congested with some really thick mucus. Not much is coming out, which is worrying me. Whatever little comes out once every 2 hours or so is a greyish yellow in colour and very thick.

So here I am typing my detailed symptoms into the new wide (e:strip) text area that I like very much!

Seriously, this is the worst cold at the worst possible time. My work is suffering because I am making a ton of mistakes and I can't go to see my brother.

My flat is littered with lozenge drop wrappers and soup bowls. I can't wait for this cold to go away but it seems like it never will. I am on

• ibuprofen 400 mg X 4-6 hourly for the pain,
• Co-trimoxazole BD (12 hourly) for the secondary infection and
• Paracetamol (Acetaminophen) for the fever.
• Guaiphenesin (oral) 1 tbsp X 2 hourly - expectorant
• Dextromethorphan 1 tbsp X 2 hourly - anti-tussive

AND none of it is working in expected ways!!!!

WHHHHHHYYYYYY do I have to be sick now?? I have so much to do and can't do anything effectively. I hate being sick.

I sometimes wish my desktop was the Chrome browser. What's the point of even having an empty space staring at me. I just want all that space to BE the browser. My nexus one has a small search bar embedded in the desktop. What I want is for the entire browsing to be the desktop.

I am sure there is something like this out there, something that implements this in Debian or maybe Red Hat. I just don't know how to search for it yet.

Update: Found it.


Someone obviously feels like I do.

The real question, however is, is that someone as technically challenged as I am? Can I even get to step 1?!

I think different people have different methods of retaining what they learn. I asked Paul how he keeps notes on the code he writes and he told me he memorizes it and writes notes INTO the pieces of code, probably as comments.

That's good coding practice. But it doesn't help me when I have forgotten where I have used a particular structure or syntax. Since I am not building websites, but rather analyzing data, there is no predictable flow to the code.

Data processing tricks in my repertory need to change with every new data manipulation I want to do and I can't remember what tools I used for each single variable very well. I have found that I learn the most when I take the time to consciously analyse if my mind has absorbed the concepts by writing it down.

I considered using (e:strip) as my code notebook because I wanted to keep everything together. But it does not handle code well. Back and forward slashes produce wonky results. Characters don't escape well even with the code box. The code box itself is a fixed size. I always work in big wide screens and don't see it changing so I also wanted my notebook to have a very generous text area and very little of anything else.

All of these criteria are met by:


I still wish I could do that on (e:strip) though. As my life gets to be more about how to successfully survive in academia, I can distinctly see how that blog will get more entries per week than this one in the near and distant future if I stay on course. But of course, I don't see how I can I wax eloquent over trivia, veggies, food and the side effects of medication in between R, LaTeX and Perl, so maybe that blog does need to be separate.

I woke up today with the most excruciatingly severe throat pain. I had a couple bowls of that squash soup and 400 mg of ibuprofen.

Now the ground is spinning as I type this and my peripheral vision has an extraordinary sense of movement.

I hope to goodness this won't be a repeat of the benedryl drama. I know I am not the biggest of people but common doses of medicine have the weirdest effect on me. The kid dose of 9-10mg/kg comes to around 42 X 10 = 420 mg. I am 20 mg under the kid dose.

And I have dizziness. It is so ludicrous that on the very rare occasions I HAVE to take medicines, ALL the frustrating side effects come on to haunt me in full force. I mean who gets dizzy with ibuprofen, one of the most common NSAIDs?? ME. Arrrgh.

The Acorn Squash is hands-down my most favourite squash among all the other squashes.


I just made a roasted acorn squash soup with shredded coconut, tomatoes, red onions, moong dal, ginger, dried red chilles, cumin, asafoetida powder and dried curry leaves in 17 minutes.

A new record. Take that, rice cooker!

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I always have a timed (and rather unhealthy) competition with my rice cooker. While it steams the beans or lentils or some other staple, I chop and hustle to finish before it can. 80% of the time, its a tie between us, it wins 15% of the time. Today was my croaky and gloaty 5% win!

And victory was tasty! :-)

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Acorn Squash shot from Mango&Tomato: I don't own that kind of photo equipment!