Cake or death?

So I promised to write more. Then waited two days in which I wrote nothing. And now, faced with the choice of studying ES2 or writing, I say, "ES2, no wait! Blogging!" Oh no, you said ES2 first! Transformers await. I shoot the voice in my head, curse Messrs Nagrath and Kothari, and decide to do what you do when you can't write, you write about writing. Tweeting, to be precise.

So, I finally came to terms with this whole Tweeting business and decided that the whole "I'm not on social networking sites because I have a life" argument is defeated by a lack of said life. My mother's frequent diatribes on the subject, which I happen to agree with, echo in my head, but voices in my head have an abnormally high mortality rate. Stop that bandwagon!

I sit on my bed, laptop on the chair, sweating profusely (it's hot, is it not?), cursing myself for not registering a complaint against this excessively slow fan of mine, and I decide to sign up for Twitter. Easier said than done. Twitter, it seems is blocked. What?! After a minute of frantic Refreshing, I give up. I regurgitate my mother's arguments, sulk, then start randomly Wikiing.

Days, then weeks pass. I start reading Kundera, fall in love with Immortality (the book, not the concept), and annoy the hell out of everyone with recommendations. Quark rolls up, and BITSMUN doesn't leave me any time to think, what with the shouting and being shouted at. But then, the Bogmalo party happens, and certain developments make me rethink my position on social networking. Facebook doesn't work, so I think about Twitter. So, I sit on my bed, laptop on the chair, sweating profusely, cursing myself for not registering a complaint against this excessively slow fan of mine, and I decide to sign up for Twitter (totally, @Prashant). Easier said than done. This time, Twitter opens, and I click on Sign Up. It's blocked. I try again. This time, I get a little further. A protozoically low graphics HTML form presents itself, which I fill, only to find that the word verification thingy isn't showing any words. I Refresh. The Network Proxy is not accepting any connections. Proxy ki maa ka! So, I go off and watch some Nordic Skiing.

You get the drift. I tried a number of times, but failed. To top it all, a Danish female called Miriam Vatshelle is already using the nick 'ajachi'. Feels good, though, to have someone who's not called ajachi, voluntarily pick it to be her nick. Not having ever been conferred a nickname better than Chaachi, I stick with marcopolar. Still no luck.

Eventually, I stop trying again. Buzzing, after all, is a suitable substitute. Then, JD tells me about Twestival Goa, and I decide, fuck it, I'm going to get on Twitter, even if I die trying. I know it sounds pathetic, and I really don't know why I wanted to Tweet any more. It's just something to do, I guess. Maybe it's an Ubuntu complex. You finally shift to Open Source, and you think, screw you Microsoft. I am the master of my own computer! And then you can't play any games, Open Office is a bitch, and you can't download VLC for reasons unknown. And you can't blame Bill Gates for it. So, when something doesn't work, you get pissed off and decide to make it work. Unfortunately, my lack of computer literacy - extremely dangerous for a prospective engineer, but I'll get to that in a future post - prevented me from doing anything about this Twitter situation, other than Refreshing harder and threatening to pour chocolate milk into the laptop's circuitry. So it still didn't work.

So, yesterday, JD says that I can try Signing Up on his comp. I try, and predictably fail. He's as baffled as me. Then I think, maybe it's something to do with my name. So I enter Engelbert Humpledink, because that's obviously the first name you use when you want a fake name, and try markovpolar instead. I don't know which, but one of them does the trick. And there, I have a Twitter account! Social acceptance awaits. The world is my oyster. Or at least, Engelbert's oyster. Somehow, changing names proves to be a bitch, what with a password I've already forgotten, and my utter ineptitude for navigation on a Web page. To cut a long story a little less long, it all works out in the end.

There was a point to all this...