Blog


Om's Observations: The Next Generation

June 19, 2022

It's been three years since I first started this blog, and a few weeks ago I finally got around to implementing a simple blog platform using Django. Moving the blog from Blogger to a Django app means it is now nicely integrated into the rest of my website, which I upgraded from static HTML files to a Django project a year ago. In celebration of this redesign (of both the website and now the blog), I'm going to provide some updates and reboot the blog (hence the title of this post).

In my first post three years ago, I had …

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TV Shows and Chess Variants

August 06, 2019

TV Shows

One TV show I finished watching recently is Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in BBC's modern take on the famous detective.  The music is fun to listen to, and the producers do a great job of developing Sherlock as a character, integrating him into the present-day (2010), and breaking down his thought process when he arrives at the most seemingly-ridiculous conclusions.

I also just finished House MD on Amazon Prime a couple of days ago.  House MD stars Hugh Laurie as Gregory House, MD (House being a play on Holmes), a genius diagnostician and infectious disease specialist.  I would …

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AP Exams

July 28, 2019

Background

Everyone knows you can get college credit from taking AP exams. What not everyone knows is that in Texas, you can also get high school credit from taking AP exams, according to an obscure provision in the Texas Administrative Code (the published set of rules and regulations from all of the state agencies in Texas).

According to Title 19 (Education) Part 2 (Texas Education Agency) Chapter 74 (Curriculum Requirements) Subchapter C (Other Provisions) Rule 74.24 (Credit by Examination) section (c) (Assessment for course credit in Grades 6-12) (link)


(8) A student in any of Grades 6-12 must be given …

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The Pacific Northwest

July 23, 2019

We just came back from a fun vacation in Seattle, Vancouver, and Whistler this past week. It was a fun, relaxing trip and we were able to visit some scenic spots both in the cities and out.

We spent the first two days at the Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort about an hour north of Vancouver. It is customary for ski resorts to offer mountain biking and hiking in the non-skiing (summer) season, so the typical thing for non-mountain-bikers like us to do is to take a gondola (apparently not pronounced gun-Daa-laa) up to the top of the mountain. Interestingly, the ski …

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BMM Convention

July 16, 2019

This past weekend, I had the privilege of attending the 2019 Bruhan Maharashtra Mandal (BMM) at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Downtown Dallas. This biennial conference is a chance for the North American Marathi population to congregate every so often and share Marathi culture.

I see my relatives relatively often, so for me this was less of a family reunion and more of a chance to practice my Marathi speaking abilities with a crowd that spoke majority Marathi. Obviously, my speaking abilities aren't near how much I speak English good, but I felt comfortable communicating with the various …

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Old Computers, New Furniture, Random Thoughts on Debating and Birthdays, and Golf

July 09, 2019

Goodbye Old Computers

I finally recycled my old HP Pavilion dm4 (model 3055dx I think) that I've had for seven years. The computer was first my mom's for our India summer trip, and then I used it for much of middle school. I opened the computer to test it out recently and the fan kept making a funny noise, so this was the right time to say goodbye.

This was my first Windows machine, the infamous computer that temporarily broke our iMac and where I learned most of the hardware-related things I know. It was a powerful machine when we …

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Chicago

July 02, 2019

This past weekend I visited the Windy City, also known as Chicago, along with some surrounding areas. I hadn't been to Illinois in a few years, so upon receiving an invitation to the graduation party of one of our relatives I was excited to return.

Thursday

I finished packing most of my bag on Wednesday night, so I spent Thursday morning tying up some loose ends, practicing the violin for a little bit, and packing the last few items into my suitcase.

Around noon I drove with Mom to The Strand at Huebner Oaks to pick up some sandwiches from …

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I Made A Super PAC

June 25, 2019

Introduction

On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month in the year two thousand nineteen of the common era, I, Om Joshi, filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to form an independent-expenditure only committee (commonly referred to as a super PAC). I decided to create this committee because the filing process seemed easy and I enjoy immersing myself in government documents that contain lots of rules and regulations. I named the committee Om Alone PAC because that was the first name that came to me.

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An Interesting Introduction

June 18, 2019

If you're seeing this, you've either stumbled across my blog by accident or I've harassed you enough about visiting it that you decided to check it out. Please read through this post to get some idea about this blog, and then feel free to browse the rest of the site.

I purchased omajoshi.com in November 2017 and have used it as the back-end for a couple of coding projects. On the front-end, it's been a blank page up until now, so I'm finally fulfilling my promise to organize an actual website for myself.

I have a handful of "stated" goals …

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