After being such a huge CNC and RA fan, I didn’t expect RA3 to disappoint. It was so well done before, and now, it looks like it’s a mix between warcraft and a 12 year old’s laser light show fantasy. The graphics are terrible, not to mention the game is such a resource hog. Honestly, it just looks like one big cartoon drawn by a 12 box set of crayons. Seriously, Electronic Arts has ruined one of the best games franchises out there. Way to go guys.
Author Archive for Rizwan Alvi
Definitely one of the best bands I’ve heard in a long time. If you haven’t heard them yet, get to it.
I realize this has been known for quite some time now, but by blogging about it, I want to show my appreciation to whoever came up with this neat trick to get around ISP blocks and Pandora’s own block to anyone outside of the US.
For those of you who don’t know, Pandora is a cool radio site where you control the music you want to hear. If you haven’t checked it out already, get over there now- you’ll be happy you did.
Anyway, Pandora doesn’t allow use of their service to anyone outside of the US. Fortunately, neat little programs like Hotspot shield allow you to connect to an American VPN that give you an American IP and also prevent your ISP from monitoring your browser traffic, for the most part. This is also a sweet program that gets around anything else your ISP might be blocking. If your ISP is pretty strict on keeping their blocks active, they’ll eventually block the IP of the VPN that you’re connecting to.
Never fear. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium provides four or five more programs which are basically identical to Hotspot shield (without the annoying banner ad) and allow you do the exact same thing.
Now all you non-US users, go out their and stick it to the man.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably post here less and less. I had planned on keeping this site up to date, but of course the more important things in life (food, video games, computers, and of course, video games) take priority.
My fourth year at Shifa College of Medicine is finally at an end, and I have only finals to look forward to for now. Winter break, although 2 months long, is going to be speant doing volunteer research (electives!) in ophthalmology, though I’m not sure where as of yet. Right now Duke, Michigan, JHU, and Bascom Palmer are all possibilities. Finally, I’ll get to start my long-awaited final year of medical school next February, after four long, long years. It’s now more than ever that I wish the MBBS program was also only a 4 year stint instead of five, but no such luck. Another whole 12 months to go! Continue reading ‘Updates- better late than never’
Today I had the steak tacos from Chipotle and to be frank, they were terrible. The steak was incredibly chewy and completely resistant to all 200lbs of brute force from my molars. Even after about 2 minutes, I had to swallow the steak “cubes” almost whole. Definitely not the way steak should be.
Then again it only cost five bucks- you get what you pay for.
I remain a die-hard fan of their barbacoa, chips/guac combo, and their hidden menu items.
Also known as “electives,” away rotations are pretty fun. I like to do mine in ophthalmology every year, since our school doesn’t give us nearly enough of it in the current curriculum. For the past few weeks I’ve gotten to see lots of neuro-ophtho patients here in LA, all of who are suffering from some pretty interesting stuff like pseudotumors, myasthenia, and Charles Bonnet syndrome- which reminds me, of all the thing you could have named after you, why would you want it to be a syndrome? If it was me, I wouldn’t tell anyone about the syndrome I’ve discovered until I had also discovered the cure.
Anyway, I’ve only got a few weeks left now, and then I’ll be back on my way to med school in Islamabad. Can’t believe there was another bombing in Lahore the other day. That makes two in one summer. It’s the strangest thing how crazy it gets out there every time I leave. Last year there was the whole red mosque fiasco plus the Bhutto assassination, and this year- bombings. I’m really inclined to think I’m some sort of good luck charm. Then I come out here and everyone asks me, “How can you possibly go to school out there? Isn’t it crazy and wild and full of terrorism?” No, except when I come over here. It’s really amazing how I can sit in my room in Islamabad at my desk, in total comfort and forget that I’m even in Pakistan- what with the high speed dsl, online gaming, 360, AC, etc. As soon as I hit up Google news though, I see more stuff going on in Pakistan on there than I ever do by just wandering around the streets of Islamabad. My neighbor at home here in California though, will swear by it that the city “is just a hot bed for terrorism.” I think not.
Oh yeah and for medical students who are wondering about the 5-hour Energy drink and how well it works, let me join the millions of people out there by saying, it doesn’t. Red bull ftw. Thanks. I’m out.
It’s not everyday that I go run three miles, though if I had to, I know that I could. I used to do it regularly about one year back. Now that I’m back in Los Angeles for a few weeks for my summer internship (and away from all of my work out equipment in isb) I saw my old 3 mile route and thought about running it again- it just seemed too boring though. I knew that I’d be able to run it without any trouble at all, just like I had been when I left it last year.
Still, I wanted something physical to do. I hadn’t worked out in a couple of days and I was starting to get restless. That’s when it hit me. I needed to go EXTREEEME.
For those of you who don’t know (and if you’re in this group then you’re definitely NOT EXTREEME) being EXTREEME means doing something you would normally do, and then intensifying the hell out of it, be it through force, speed, or volume. For example, you like to go paintballing. That’s pretty fun, I GUESS. What would be more fun? EXTREEEME Paintballing! How do you do that? Well, you basically go skydiving… and then PAINTBALL on your way down. Yeah, that’s right. Continue reading ‘Being EXTREEEEME!’
I was at work one day when I got another annoying call from a telemarketer. As a business location, they seemed to target us even more than they did my house. Today’s telemarketer was no different than the rest so I waited patiently for him to finish his sales pitch so that I could tell him I wasn’t interested and say goodbye. It did occur to me that I should just hang up then and there like I normally do at home, but then I thought that might make the business look bad, and it wasn’t very polite either- so I thought better of it. After all, they know their job sucks. No one wants to be a freakin telemarketer of all things. They know they get hung up on all the time! Well, this bafoon finally came to a stop giving me a chance to use a gung-ho sales pitch voice of my very own to tell him, “Sorry, but we’re not interested.” Ah, the end.
Not quite. He was persistent. He changed the sales pitch and began from the very beginning. I cleared my throat and inhaled loudly, to try and speed him along, and when he finished this time, I tried it again. “Like I said, sorry, but we’re not interested.”
Commence round three. This time I wasn’t in the mood though. I cut him off and with a curt ‘look here buddy,’ and stressed how I was trying to be polite and how I honestly didn’t care about what he had to offer when all of a sudden I hear, CLICK.
WTH? He hung up on me. That rat bastard. I decided then and there, that was the last time I would try to talk it out with a telemarketer. Next time you get a call, hang up, for my sake.
So I was sitting around in ENT, not being productive when these kids started messin around with my steth. What else could I do but make a movie and make weird noises at them?
NOT that interesting. That’s how far I got into the above sentence in my pathology book before counting all the other things I’d rather be doing. I know what you’re all thinking, “Hey wait a minute, don’t you nerds love to study?” Well, the answer is YES, of course we do, but, I like studying on my own time, without the pressure of a test overhead, and with much better sources than one big fat book. In actuality, the cardiac myocyte is probably WAY interesting, but I’m just not feeling it from ‘Robbins,’ right now. Instead, I suddenly felt compelled to come give an update on my chronically neglected blog. I had planned to keep updating regularly this time around, so without further adieu… Continue reading ‘The cardiac myocyte is generally…’
Recent Comments