SG OwnBlog

I had never used a ThinkPad in my life till 2018. To be honest, I did not really see the benefit of using them anyway. Consumer series laptops (with plastic bodies) were the ones that I had always used before. Then I was introduced to the rugged looks of the T60 and T61 original IBM ThinkPad designs that came out way back in 2004 or so. And I loved it. Finding a ThinkPad that old did not appeal to me. I was impressed with the smaller compact X series laptops and decided to have either an X230 or an X220. Both of these are fairly similar and were launched about 8 years back. But they still sport good processors, plenty of memory upgradability, provision to add a maximum of three hard disks and a decent battery backup to boot. My reasons to get this were simpler -  They are rugged, I like to use my laptops well Memory is not soldered. There are plenty of options to upgrade. The keyboards are probably the best in the world. Why not get the latest ThinkPad? Again, simple.  They co...

Money can not buy everything.  But it does make things easier.  Money can't make you feel good. But an AC on a hot day may make you better better than otherwise. It is one of the biggest cliches that you must have come across numerous times in life. It is not necessarily true though. There have been a lot of dramas, stories and philosophers' notes on this topic. But at the end of the day ONLY those who have the luxury of meeting their basic needs in life can ponder over these questions anyway. The poor do not have this luxury. For the vast majority of them, money is actually ALWAYS a good thing. The next higher rung in society is what we know as the Salaried class today. I am one. We work the week (and sometimes beyond) and get paid for it. We are the ones that actually run the factories, drive the cars for businesses, teach kids in school and colleges, report stuff to papers, manage projects for businesses and so on. We differ in two very crucial aspects to the group that sit...

There are not many places you can go to during this lockdown. There are friends' places you can go to. And relatives.  If you wish to go further and visit more distance places (if you are residing in a city) - things become a lot more difficult.  One - there is the threat of the virus. Second - there is a psychological issue that works. Why go so far when we can just chill at home? The point is that there is only so much 'chill' a person can do at home, especially since the virtual house arrests already make sure you are AT HOME most of the time. And it has been months. So on we went to the last stop the river Hooghly makes before meeting the Bay of Bengal. This was the destination. We did not plan to stay a night, it was just going to be a simple visit - spend a couple of hours and come back. It was raining all the way (almost) on our way to the town. Fortunately it had stopped when we reached there.  We could see the rains pouring on the other bank of the river and the ...