Baejaar

Vodafone India - Fine Print

2011-02-27T04:54:00.000-08:00

Hardly any of us check the terms and conditions before we sign on the dotted line. Specially if it doesn't involve our bank account

Here is what I found when I took a peek into Vodafone India's T&C and Privacy Policy

Terms & Conditions:

Vodafone's contents are copyrighted and cannot be reused by you. But Vodafone reserves the right to use any of your contents that you provide through the website

2. Content (information, communications, images and sounds contained on or available through vodafone.in) is provided by Vodafone, its affiliates, independent content providers and third parties. The contents of vodafone.in are copyright © Vodafone its affiliates, independent content providers or third parties. All rights reserved. The contents of vodafone.in cannot be reproduced, modified, transferred, distributed, republished, downloaded, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means including but not limited to electronic, mechanical photocopying or recording without the prior written permission of Vodafone Essar Limited.

8. By submitting any material to us via the vodafone.in website, via email or otherwise, you do so in the knowledge that Vodafone may copy, modify, distribute or create a derivative work from that content in any form. You warrant that the material is fit for publication and agree to indemnify us if any third party takes action against us in relation to the material that you submit. You warrant that you believe Vodafone may publish the material you submit and/or make use of it or any concepts described in it in our products or services without liability and you agree not to take action against us in relation to it.

You look at some offer on their website, decide to buy it and do so online through vodafone website. Subsequently Vodafone can decide that the price mentioned on the website is not correct and decide to retroactively change it

"You should not assume that vodafone.in or its content is error free or that it will be suitable for the particular purposes that you have in mind when using it. Vodafone reserves the right to make subsequent changes to it, and services may be modified, supplemented or withdrawn. "

If vodafone's website cannot guarantee accuracy, where do they expect us to find accurate info about vodafone's services? In Airtel's website?

"Vodafone Essar is not responsible for any errors, omissions or representations on any of our pages or on any links on any of their pages. The users are requested to verify the accuracy of all information on their own before undertaking any reliance"

Vodafone can disturb you but you should not disturb vodafone

"9. In a few areas of vodafone.in. we may ask you to provide personal information that will enable us to use the information you provide us with to keep you informed of our latest products and services after your visit to vodafone.in"

"You agree not to cause, nor knowingly allow others to cause, any nuisance, annoyance, or inconvenience, whether to Vodafone or ...."

Last T&C is funny. Not only can Vodafone unilaterally change the T&C, its applicable to you immediately without notification or notice period

"15. Vodafone reserve the right to vary the terms of this contract from time to time, such variations becoming effective immediately upon posting of the varied Legal Statement on vodafone.in. By continuing to use vodafone.in you will be deemed to accept such variation."

Privacy Policy:

Vodafone can collect any and all personal information regarding you. They hold on to it indefinitely and share it with other firms for marketing purposes

"We may hold information relating to you that you have provided to us (such as on an application or registration form) or that we may have obtained from another source (such as our suppliers or from marketing organisations and credit agencies).

This information may include, amongst other things, your name, address, telephone numbers, information on how you use our products and services (such as the type, date, time, location and duration of calls or messages, the numbers you call and how much you spend, and information on your browsing activity when visiting one of our group companies' websites), the location of your mobile phone from time to time, lifestyle information and any other information collected in relation to your use of our products and services ("information")."

"2.7 carrying out market and product analysis and marketing our and our group companies’ products and services generally;
2.8 contacting you (including by post, email, fax, short text message (SMS), pager or telephone) about our and our group companies' products and services and the products and services of carefully selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you (unless you ask us in writing not to). For completeness we note that where such contact is via electronic means, our terms and conditions record our agreement with you that the electronic marketing messages we and our selected third parties send need not include an unsubscribe facility;"

If vodafone buys personal information of airtel's customers through third party companies, then vodafone reserves the right to sell your personal information to that third party.

"There may be times when we need to disclose your personal information to third parties. If we do this, we will only disclose your information to:
3.2 those who provide to us or our group companies products or services that support the services that we provide, such as our dealers and suppliers;"

If you accept (this can happen when you don't read the fine print) to receive marketing products/offers from vodafone, vodafone will reserve the right to share your personal information with third party companies. How exactly is the consent for latter implied by consent for the former?

"If you have opted in to receiving marketing material from us, we may also provide your personal information to carefully selected third parties "

Not only vodafone collects personal information, they strive their best to ensure that its accurate and have complete profile about you. It is not sufficient for vodafone to settle down to just the information that is really required to provide mobile services

"We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete, up-to-date "

By chance, you decide that the above privacy policy is reasonable ( possible if competing provider's policy is even worse ), then vodafone reserves the right to change their policy. So once they have a personal profile of million customers in India, they have the option to change the personal policy allowing them to sell this information to the highest bidder

"We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time."

Fine prints of Kotak Credit Card

2011-01-15T06:17:00.000-08:00

Lets admit it. Most of us tend to skim over the terms and conditions of most products and services. Credit card is no exception

So here is a look into the Terms and Conditions of Kotak Credit Card

Before we go into the details, let me at the outset say that I am happy with the way Kotak explains the free revolving credit period and how the interest and charges are computed. The first half of the document is a layman's explanation of the legal statements in the second half. But read on to check as to how the bank blames everything on the customer and tries to get away with it

"No statement will be generated and sent to you for the period in which there has been outstanding due less than or equal to Rs.100 and no transaction on the Card Account"

Cost saving is understandable here

" Non-receipt of statement would not affect your obligations and liabilities under the Cardholder Agreement and you shall be liable to settle at least the Minimum Amount Due before the payment due date"

They absolve of all responsibility. Its the customer's headache if the company doesn't send the account statement

" The Bank also reserves the right to introduce any new fees or charges, as it may deem appropriate, with due intimation to you"

We can entice you to join with good teasing offers. And a few months later, tack on additional charges because customers usually bear with it rather than take the effort to switch to another credit card company

"The Bank may suspend or terminate the Credit Card facility immediately at any time at its discretion or may at any time restrict the use of the Credit Card facility without prior notice if the Bank reasonably believes it necessary for business or security reasons. In the event of Bank terminating the Credit Card facility, all amounts outstanding on the Card Account (including Charges or Cash advances not yet debited) will become due and payable immediately. In such case, the Bank has the Cardholder‟s express authority to debit the card accounts for all withdrawals / transfers affected by the use of Credit Card / PIN as per the Bank‟s records, which shall be conclusive and binding."

If customer needs to close the card, they should send a written letter to the bank requesting the same. But the company can decide to close the account without assigning any reason ( refer to the clause "for business" ) and they don't even need to give a notice for the same. And to top it all, they will ignore the usual credit period and debit immediately from the bank account. It's one more reason, not to give standing instructions with bank to pay credit card bills ( for that matter any bills )

"The Cardholder shall report the loss of the Card to the Bank by calling the 24 hour Customer Contact Centre immediately on such loss or theft or misplacement. The Bank at the request of the Cardholder will attempt to deactivate the card immediately to prevent misuse"

So if we lose our card and so call up the customer care no, they cannot guarantee that they can block it. They will only "attempt" to deactivate it. And if there is a problem in their system, till they can actually do so, all misuse will be borne by the customer

"No liability shall accrue upon the Cardholder for any unauthorized transactions done on the Card from the time such Card has been reported lost/stolen/damaged and upon the Bank having suspended the Card Account"

Note the responsibility is not just till we report the card loss but till the bank actually suspends it. Funny thing is that if the bank decides that we aren't getting them enough profit ( say we pay our bills on time ), they reserve the right to cancel it immediately. But if the card is lost and someone else is using it, they wont promise to block it immediately when reported !

The Cardholder shall then send the following documents to the Bank:
.....
All other documents as required by the Bank and to the satisfaction
of the Bank

All open ended requirements which would allow the bank to wiggle away from their responsibility

" The Bank is not liable or responsible for any transactions incurred on the Card
Account prior to the time of reporting of the loss of card to the Bank and the
Cardholder shall be wholly liable for the same.
- The Cardholder will, however be liable for all losses when someone obtains
and misuses the Card or PIN with / without Cardholder‟s consent, or consent of
an Add-On Cardholder"

Nice contradictory statements. Initially they say that if we lose our card, the responsibility is till we report to the bank. Then they go on to say that if "someone obtains the card without cardholder's consent" ( which is nothing but another phrase for lost/stolen card ) then the cardholder is liable for "all losses" ( even after reporting )

"If the Cardholder has acted fraudulently or acts without reasonable care, the Cardholder will be liable for all losses"

Why isnt there a statement saying that if the "Bank acts without reasonable care, then the Bank will be liable for all losses? The sad reality is that, I can pick holes in the website of most major banks these days and I am not even a IT security expert

"The Cardholder hereby agrees that the information furnished by the Cardholder in the application or otherwise may be further used by the Bank for marketing purposes to sell Card related offers, including but not limited to balance transfer, EMI of fers, cashrelated offers, insurance products, etc. from time to time. Further, the Bank may use this information to market other products of the Bank from time to time in conformity with the disclosure norms as applicable."

So the bank can decide to use our personal information to send out spam emails/letters and we don't have the right to say no to it

"9.1 The Cardholder can use the Card to pay for charges incurred for transactions conducted by the Cardholder at PMEs / through Electronic Media in India and abroad accepting Visa Cards as the case may be. The Bank and PMEs reserve the right at anytime to refuse without any notice to permit the use of the card at the PME for any reason whatsoever. The Bank accepts no responsibility for any such refusal to honour the Card.
9.2 The Bank reserves the right to approve, refer and decline any transaction without assigning any reason whatsoever"

We go out with our friends for dinner and when the time comes to paying for it, the bank can decide to decline our transaction for any or no reason and they are not to be blamed for embarrassing us

"A Sales Slip with the bonafide signature of the Cardholder together with the Card number noted thereon shall be conclusive evidence as between the Bank and the Cardholder as to the extent of liability incurred by the Cardholder. Any Sales Slip not personally signed by the Cardholder shall be deemed to be an authorized Transaction and the Cardholder shall be liable for the same"

While the first statement is innocuous, notice the second statement. Even if the charge slip / sales slip is not signed, it is deemed as authorized transaction !! The lawyer and the financial guy who jointly came up with this, deserves a promotion

"The Cardholder acknowledges that the Bank shall be under no liability whatsoever to the
Cardholder, in respect of any loss or damage arising directly or indirectly out of:
....
(iii) Effecting Transaction instructions other than by a Cardholder, or misuse of Card due to the Cardholder‟s negligence, mistake, dishonesty, misconduct, fraud or handing over the Card to any person;
(ix) Any misstatement, misrepresentation, error or omission in any details disclosed by the Bank or its agents or representatives"

The bank can effect a transaction instruction from any third person?

They can lie about any offer, details of the scheme, they can do any fraudulent stuff and get away with it because of the clause (ix). At least thats what they are attempting to do. And notice that if we make an error in filling the application form ( say date of birth ), then we will be liable, marked as default and shared with all financial institutions as can be seen below:

"18.1 The occurrence of any of the under mentioned following events (herein referred to as “Events of Default”) shall be deemed and shall qualify as an Event of Default:
....
If any representation made by the Cardholder or given to the Bank in the Card
Application or otherwise proves to be incorrect, misleading, false, fraudulent or incomplete, including, but not limited to income and/or identification paper/documents
forwarded to the Bank;"

----

"The Bank reserves the right to revise policies, features and benefits offered on the Card and alter these Terms and Conditions from time to time and may notify the Cardholder of any such alterations in any manner it thinks appropriate."

Yeah. The effort you spent in carefully reading the terms and conditions may not matter too much when they reserve the right to toss this out and use a new T&C with/without notification in a manner they "think" is appropriate

" Electronic Banking is permitted only after authentication of the Cardholder by means of Password/ PIN/ User ID or other identifiers of the Cardholder as stipulated by the Bank. The Cardholder hereby grants express authority to the Bank for carrying out any Transaction received by the Bank through Alternate Channels (using his Password/ PIN/ User ID), post authentication and the same will be deemed to have emanated from such Cardholder. The Bank shall have no obligation to verify the authenticity of any Transaction request received through Alternate Channels or purporting to have been sent by the Cardholder other than by means of verification of the Password/PIN /User ID. The Bank will not be liable for acting in good faith on such instructions"

Since when did folks start using "user id" as sufficient for authentication and authorization? Let alone two factor authentication, this Bank don't guarantee even a single factor authentication

" Only the Bank's own record of Transactions over Alternate Channels maintained through computer systems or otherwise shall be accepted by the Bank as conclusive and shall be binding on the Bank and the Cardholder for all purposes and the Cardholder recognizes, undertakes and agrees to accept such record of the Bank without demur or protest. Due to inherent features of some of Alternate Channels, the Cardholder may be able to take out a print of the Transaction attempted to be effected by the Cardholder over Alternate Channels. However, only the record maintained by the Bank shall prevail. The Cardholder unconditionally acknowledges and agrees not to contest any Transaction carried out or not carried out by the Bank upon requesting for the same over Alternate Channel"

Even if you have proof to the contrary, you are forced to accept the "words" of the Bank

"The Cardholder represents and warrants that he has a complete working knowledge of computers/electronic machinery, e-mail and the Internet, which will enable Cardholder to avail the Internet Banking"

Even after 8 years in the field of software engineering, I still can't claim to have "complete working knowledge of computers/electronic machinery". Do they really expect doctors, lawyers, musicians to be aware of it?

BCCI and broadcast rights

2011-01-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

Why? Why? Why?

Why grant license to just one TV channel in India? This has led to broadcast quality deteriorating so much that we are encountering the following:

1) Channels switch to advertisement even before the final ball of the over is dead. Why can't they let us savor the roar of the audience of a nice shot or a wicket going down?

2) Advertisement are overlayed on the live cricket feed. Sometimes these are shown as panels which takes about 20% of the screen.

3) Overlaying ads sometimes include audio at the expense of cricket commentary

4) The full advertisements that come in between overs, have higher volume than the actual cricket feed. So after every over, one is forced to either reach for the remote or learn to tolerate it

Here is what is required from them

1) Conduct auction and grant distribution rights to four different categories ( two in each for a total of 8 licenses

a) paid tv channels

b) free tv channels

c) paid online video feeds

d) free online video feeds

The paid tv channels will have to compete aginst free tv channels by providing more value added services. They could be less ads or better video quality ( say 1080 HD ) or their own chosen expert commentators etc. This ensures that we have a good reach and do not relegate cricket to only those who subscribe to pay channels. Also healthy competition can be a win-win for everyone ( as long as we don't allow cartels )

2) Ensure that the distribution rights are re-auctioned after every year rather than 5 years.

3) Lay down clear mandatory terms and conditions for the distribution license

a) At any given instant, broadcasters can show ad or cricket but not both. Overlay kills the experience of watching a cricket match

b) Ensure that the average volume of the cricket feed and the advertisements should remain the same

c) No ads till the ball is dead

4) Grant permission to the broadcasters to replace the commentary stream with their own commentator's audio feed. This can help them differentiate, if they chose to. Same goes for pre and post match briefings and analysis

Today the broadcasters care only about the bottom line and to be fair, rightfully so. So it is in the best interest of BCCI as care takers and promoters of cricket in India, to balance revenue with quality and public benefit

Open Source Cooks

2007-03-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ever since I came to NY, I have been honing by culinary skills. Thanks to my room mate - Pravin - we have been experimenting successfully everyday for dinner.

Unlike ladies who are generally good at cooking, with guys it is a hit or a miss. Either they are very good at it or else they are hopeless.

Where do I fall in this? I think Pravin can answer this better :)

So we have decided to share some of our recipes for the benefit of bachelors (and for spinsters too). Dont worry these are tried and tested recipes from us. And feel free to update and revise the same - its under creative commons license with attribution ;)

Oops. Is that a burning smell, we left something on the stove while I am blogging............

Massacre in Lebanon

2006-07-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

I was under the impression that I wont be blogging for a long time to come. But today I just had to vent my frustration.

The fact is that atleast 56 people died out of which 34 were children and 12 were adult women. However look at the way the west has portrayed it.

The first culprit is the BBC. It says "Dozens killed in Air Raid". If some one reads just the headlines, does it reveal the full extent?

And try making a complaint in their BBC website. Dont know whether its a firefox related issue. But I have been going around in loops. Usability at its worst.

Now Kathy Gannon from Associated Press Writer has written a new article titled "34 youths among 56 dead in Israeli strike". This was gladly picked up by Yahoo, ABC etc. Can't they call spade a spade and term that as "34 children"?

There is another wonderful quote "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah" by the Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27. Hasn't he used Orkut before? It can be shown that he is some way related to Hezbollah within six hops!!!

Look at this image of a girl. Can you associate the word "youth" with these tiny body bags?

Israel spokes person says that The building itself was not targeted So do they mean that the precision laser guided bombs dont have accuracy? After all a few days back they "accidentally" hit the UN mission killing 4 UN observers despite informing the israel about their location. May be they would have survived, if they had moved to another location and kept the location in dark from the Israel troops.

All that Annan can do is call for peace when Israel primeminister openly says that Israel needed 10 to 14 more days to complete its mission against Hezbollah militia. When the no of casualities of children in lebanon is more than the no of hezbollah members, is that a war? US Secretary of State, Rice says We want a cease-fire as soon as possible. Can some one care to explain as to what "as soon as possible" means.

I wish the reporting was a bit more balanced. I know its expecting too much but there are good ones like Al Jazeera

However the best bet is through decentralized blogs:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/live-from-lebanon.shtml
http://lebanonnewslive.com/
http://beirutlive.blogspot.com/

More statements at the emergency UN meet.

Now I understand as to what Winston Churchill meant by the quote - "History is written by the victors."

Cool Cool

2006-06-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

I and my colleague were chatting with the owner of a restaurant here in London which we haunt regularly for desi food. Today he remarked that his refigerator is giving troubles because weather is hot. We were pretty perplexed bcoz this so called "hot" summer was just 15 degrees. And that is what we would have called as cold winter in most parts of India.

Its another matter that I dont think refigerators are required here except for the freezers. Though to be fair, 90% of the food stuff is frozen.

And I have neither found a tube light (they use either incadescent or the fashionable dim lit ones) nor a fan (except for the electric chimneys in the kitchen).

I was in that bus - Part II

2006-05-15T04:10:00.000-07:00

On saturday, I got the sudden urge to goto chennai. On impulse, I took my black Pulsar and drove all the way to chennai. The 350km highway was beautiful - min 4 lane and it was different experience altogether. Though it took me 14 hours of rest to recupperate from the 7 hours of travel.

Taking my friends advice, I left the bike in chennai and decided to travel by bus since it was supposed to be safer. However as you can see from the snap - its not the case. We met with an accident at 5:30am. We escaped with minor injuries bcoz the driver was slow. In fact he was so slow that I wonder as to how he managed to cause an accident. He took 6 hours to travel just 300 kms in this smooth highway :(

They say that lightning never strikes twice but i guess they were wrong. Nearly a year back, I had a similar close shave on my way to Munnar.

I am still wondering whether I am lucky or lucky. I have met with two accidents in a span of a year or so. But I have managed to walk away from both of them with minor injuries.

Framed

2005-06-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

After having been tied down for the past 6.5 days, I finally managed to squeeze in some time to upload the pics from the blogger's meet - Blogout.

The gang roll call is available at Arnab's blog post And for write ups about the trip, check out sumans writeups and also the compilation of entire list inthis article by AnitaBora.

Meanwhile let me share some pics (rest are reserved for my photoblog) down here.

Flagged off:

Thats the railway station in the background.

Toy Train:

Slow but an enjoyable ride.

Touch me not:

Its a living creature...

Royal Welcome:

Sathish, Adel and Kavitha being welcomed by the King and his knight

Should we trust this king?

That is the expression of Ganesh, Anuja, Anjana, Satheesh, Senthil and Venkat.

So what if you are the king?

Venkat, Anita, Adel, Rupa and Tulsi

Trying to stand in a straight single line circle:

Kripa, Chander, Nithya, Suman and Vasu.

Base camp:

View from the Base camp:

Honnemardu Lake:

Backbenchers?

Carocling:

The Knight:

He was with me and Ganesh in the same Carocle.

Food Court:

Never knew that I would enjoy Sambar rice so much.

Camp:

What?

Can you guess the conversation based on the facial expression of the subjects?

Partin memories:

Left with heavy hearts (soaked to the bone)

Talagapa:

While we were waiting for the connecting shuttle to Shimoga, I sneaked out for a breather. It was worth it.

The snap in this SudaSudaCoffee post was taken at Talagapa only.

Till I get some time to pen things down, let me sign off (literarily and literally)

- Dheepak Ra

Bloggers Meet

2005-06-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

Ooh. What a weekend this has turned out to be!

I wish I had some time to blog about it. But I am putting in 20 hour shifts for a particular deadline. So bear with me till I upload all the picts, give more details and blog roll you all.

Few close up shots of this are available but then its better tocheck out Arnab's post for list of bloggers.

Catch you all in a day or two.

P.S: I have smudged the email ids for privacy reasons. After all, those who need to know the email id must be already knowing it......

Yet another tag

2005-06-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

I am tagged yet again this time on books by Ansh.

Total Number of Books I Own: Got a decent collection stretching from classics like Pride and prejudice in the north, modern Robin cook's Shock in the south, Russian classics in the east to the Enidblyton of the west. But I am not able to quantify them.

Last Book I bought: The monk who sold his ferrari (First time I bought a book purely on my friends recommendation)

Last Book I was gifted: Abdul Kalams work

Last Book I read: Michael Crichton's TimeLine

I am currently reading: Planning to start on The Last Don (Better late than never)

Five Books that mean a lot to me:

Let me modify this tag as the "five non-fictional books"

1. The Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh
This book succeeded in rekindling my interest in Mathematics where 12 years of heavy books and lectures had failed.
2. The Code Book by Simon Singh
Well it taught me in two days the world of cryptography which would have normally taken me two semesters to acquire. Simon singh is perhaps the only non-fiction author whom I recommend for everyone. His works are not only inspiring, but the way he dissects and exposes the subject for the common man that makes me rank him higher.
3. The World's 100 Most Influential People:
Is it a beautiful book? May be not.
Did it influence me? May be yes.
This was the first book which I had recieved as a gift some 15 years back. It has left a subtle impression on me......
4 and 5 - cant recollect off hand. May be its bcoz I spend most of my time immersed in fictional stuff.

As usual let me leave it to the readers discretion whether they would like to continue this tag or not.

Tagged......

2005-06-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Folks,

It seems as if Ashish has caught me. So here it goes: "a list of things that i'd like to do for the earth"

As usual let me start with the cribs first, the requirement wasnt too clear. Was it what I would like to do (just idealistic), or what I can possibly do (more realistic) or what I will do. (more probablistic).

What I currently do:
(The first 5 things which pops into my head)
1. Switch off the lights/fans whenever it isnt essential (Hey not in home. In office too)
2. Use both sides of paper.
3. Close the taps. (Not all taps have been retrofitted with sensors. Atleast not yet)
4. Use public transport system (Let me admit, I dont have a car right now)
5. Buy fountain coke instead of PET bottled cokes.

What I can/would do:
1. Use solar power in my home.
2. Spread the goodness of OTEC (I should have written under previous 5 points but just now it struck me)
3. Reduce Alkaline battery consumption (I use too many) - Need to stick only to rechargable batteries.
4. Reduce the amount of water, I consume during hot shower. (I can learn this by spending a fortnight in Chennai)
5. Reduce the plastic bag consumption. Currently on average, I am using 1 per day :-(

What I would like to do: (but most probably wont)
Well its same as what everyone writes about. You dont want me to repeat it here.

BTW I am supposed to tag a five more. However let me leave it open ended. By reading this post, you are accepting that you are tagged (similar to EULA of software - by opening the package, you are accepting the terms and conditions. Though the terms and conditions are available only within the package). Do write about what you do or what you would like either yourself or somebody else(say govt) should do to improve the environment. Most importantly leave the link in the comments.......

- Dheepak Ra

Movies worth watching

2005-06-06T12:04:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the few, I had watched recently in theatres:

1. Flight of the Phoenix: (2 out of 5)
Its about how a flight crashlands in a desert and their successful attempt to make it flying again. Well nothing great about this movie. Not worth shelling out 150 bucks for this.

2. Kingdom of Heaven: (3 out of 5)
This is better than the previous one, yet it doesnt make it to my must watch list. If you have time to spare, you can goto this movie. As long as you dont have much expectations, this wont disappoint you.

A few in CDs:

1. Schindler's List: (4.5 out of 5)
No wonder spielberg wont the oscar for his performance. A beautiful, touching movie based on true story and novel which preceded it. I am falling in love with period films (like Aviator, Finding Neverland and now this one)

2. Man on Fire: (3 out of 5)
A typical story of revenge, set in Latin America. Sleek editing, nice shots and very good acting by Denzel washington. First part is slow and second part is fast (atleast supposed to be fast). However the movie as such is still just ok. But you can afford to watch it once though.

3. Seven Seconds: (1.5 out of 5)
Wesley snipe's stars in this movie which is best avoided. Its not even worth a review.....

Nope. There is no hindi rating down here. Its intentional. Except for Bunty Aur Babli (which i m planning to watch this weekend), there isnt one good movie for quite some time.

In the fields

2005-05-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Well I had to go to a village in TN last week. It was short visit but just before returning I fished out my camera and captured a few shots. The main snap is being used in this post at SudaSudaCoffee

But what amazed me is this snap. Cant believe that my teeth is reddish in color.

I know what you are thinking, but no
- I wasnt involved in any road side brawl
- I didnt eat any raw/live chicken (I am a veggie)
- I stay away from paan/beetlenut and its varied stuff

What else could be the reason? Either I need to get my eyes checked (for color blindness) or else I need to get my camera checked.

- Dheepak Ra

Shaadi

2005-05-30T10:02:00.000-07:00

Well every story ends with "they married and lived happily ever after". Let this blog entry begin from that place.

Bride: Rebecca (becky)
Groom: Kiran

Now wait a minute, have I interchanged the Bride and Groom? I used to mix up those two terms quite often but no, not this time.

Anyway Rebecca was my lecturer in college who taught Construction Management for us in the final year of Engineering. Usually in our college days, the lecturers were classified in two groups - the minority with whom we had such a great relationship that we admit frankly and goto movies and the majority with whom we just walk out (Any minister/pm reading this - we make good candidates for parliament). Rebecca was one of the few lecturers who managed to gain a neutral ground with us.

When we passed out from college, she joined another - to pursue her MBA from UK. On graduation she continued to work in UK with Babtie. She was one of the few lecturers, with whom I am still in touch via email (God bless these guys who invented internet and email). So ever since her marriage date was fixed - May 23, 2005, preparations were underway. Starting from the hotel to stay in, friends to be met, travels etc.

Departed to Hyderabad on 20th night itself, watching "Josh" along the way. Cant review this movie - slept within the first 30mins of travel. Arriving in Hyderabad, I stayed in Hotel ****** (Man, I never thought I can forget the name of this hotel but I have. Will check up the visiting card and update this later). They charged 600 ruppees per day for a non-ac room and there was no housekeeping whatsoever. Despite the apalling service the hotel had 100% occupancy ratio. Either everybody is getting fooled like me or else there is dearth of decent hotels.

Despite huge plans of site seeing (for photos in sudasudacoffee), I had to settle down with just two places in three days. One was Ramoji film city and the other was the good old museum. But then let me reserve them for separate blog entry.

Mercury was hovering above 40 and it was sapping everyone's energy. Having lived in Chennai for 21 years, I had always believed that heat will never affect me. I was proved wrong. Each day, I was taking 3 litres of water and 2.5 litres of juice yet I felt as if I would die of thirst......

So stayed put in hotel counting the hours till marriage. On the D-day met another lecturer of mine - Jessy. She and Preetha madam taught us Building Drawing. I still remember those days when I submitted my drawings either last or first. When given the freedom, came up with those school (my first drawing to get an "A"), clinic, bungalows and not to mention the Pyramid (dont know whether my classmate who is working now with Shoba, stole those drawings and built it for Infy, Bangalore. Need to check up with him some day, as to how my drawings got leaked) I tend to go off the track pretty easily. Now let me get back to marriage.

As far as the marriage itself, it went smoothly. For the first time, I had witnessed a christian marriage in person. Anyway after marriage and reception, I was back to my hotel - just in time to steal a quick nap before catching the AirDeccan flight back to Bangalore in time for work. Its another issues that Air Deccan was an utter disappointment - the pilot flew so high that ground wasnt distinguishable. Technically speaking the spatial resolution was pretty bad around 5m (I did my college project using satellite imageries)

I had setout to write about the marriage and now it seems I have written about everything except marriage. Still in this blog, I never edit anything. This is supposed to be a free flowing one and so bear with me.

BTW just wondering as to how many of you had the patience to read till this point. If you did please leave your signateure in the comments so that others can also admire your patience......

- Dheepak Ra

Unfulfilled promise

2005-05-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

I had promised quite some time back, to update this site. But then promises were meant to be broken (mind you usually I dont)

Quite a lot of you, drop in here via my blogger profile (this site is the first entry). Well I advise you to jump to my photoblog first......

Having got used to posting only pictures in my other photo blog, I am struggling to key in the words. Now where do I begin with - the salary hike, my friend's marriage, relative's death, movie reviews? On second thoughts let me reserve them for future posts.

This is just a post to indicate that this blog is still alive......

Firefox Vulnerability

2005-05-10T10:13:00.000-07:00

Just a week back Firefox browser downloads crossed the magical 50 million mark, signifying the growing acceptance of open source softwares.

However on 8th May 2005, two critical bugs were discovered in Firefox. Eventhough both are critical in nature, their effectiveness increased when they were exploited in conjuction.

Check out the Secunia Advisories which is accepted by all in the software industry.

Greyhat security - one of the discoveres of this bug, has this to say.

Normally all critical bugs are patched up in a day or two by Firefox. This one still hasnt been fixed (today is the third day since the discovery). However they have made a workaround and renamed their update servers, making sure that default installations arent vulnerable.

And before you bash Mozilla and dump Firefox, just remember that we got a workaround and response from Mozilla (changing their servers & few more) in hours instead of days and weeks by Microsoft. Not to mention the fact that MS, takes months & years if not never, to patch some of the vulnerabilties. Whereas in Firefox, one can trace the bug status and see what effort is put into it.

If you are interested in tracing the bug status, then check out this bugzilla entry [Update on 11 May: Due to security reasons, one needs to be a registered member to access the details.]

Reproducible Test Case:
If you are keen on testing whether your browser is vulnerable. Then here is a neat test:
Add a website say "http://sudasudacoffee.blogspot.com" as Allowed websites via Tools->options->Allowed sites. Open the sudasudacoffee website in the browser. After that copy and paste this in the url (excluding the double quotes)- "javascript:InstallTrigger.install({'blah':{URL:'http://www.mozilla.org',IconURL:"javascript:eval('alert(Components.stack)')"}});void(0)" If you are vulnerable, you can see an alert box.

Temporary Solution
To protect yourself, goto Tools->Options-> uncheck "allow websites to install software" that should reduce most of the issues. For 100% effectiveness, javascript should be temporarily disabled. However I dont suggest it bcoz the probability is too low and most of the sites expect javascript to be enabled.

Waiting for Firefox update.......

Update on 12 May:
Fixed:
On 11th may itself, updated version 1.0.4 has been rolled out. You can download your copy at http://www.getfirefox.com

Bangalore Bloggers Meet

2005-05-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

Eventhough blogging has mutated from a "me too" to "hobby" to "part time work(I spend 3 hours a day on blogging)" However I had never been to a bloggers meet before. Atleast not till 30th April 2005. Thanks to Prabha and Prabhu for having introduced me to the rest of the bloggers.

Cup of Coffee:

Its always nice to meet people from varied back ground, tastes and interest bounded by the their passion for blogging. Its nice to spend an evening chit-chatting and cracking jokes over a cup of coffee at Barista. Well I am more of a photographer (mind you - a beginner) than a writer. So I am not expending any effort in penning it down.

Autographs:

- Dheepak Ra

I was in that bus.......

2005-04-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

I was out with my crew - Neel Arurkar and Subhabrato for outdoor shoot in Munnar. On 21 April 2005, we were travelling in that ill fated bus which met with an accident. As can be seen from the clipping two died on the spot whereas unconfirmed reports added that two more died in the hospital. 10 more are still in the ICU.

All was well when we boarded the 19:15 KSRTC Rajahamsa vehicle bound for Ernakulam via Mysore. With lots of dreams for a nice vacation as well as snaps for the SudaSudaCoffee, we had set out for Kerala. We reached Mysore when coincidentally we were joined by 5 more Infoscions from Mysore DC. Three from Mysore too had planned on vacation to the same spot where we were headed to and the other two were visiting their home town.

Within 10mins infront of Mysore Palace, a container vehicle grazed against the bus. The glass windows disintegrated and they were flying everywhere. The bus driver lost control and rammed into a tree. Two passengers who were travelling in the cabin along with the driver died on the spot. And scores of people were injured. There was pandemonium everywhere bcoz the main door was jammed and there was no emergency exit.

Since it was very close to Mysore city, ambulance rushed to the scene in 10 mins. Critically injured were shifted in the ambulance whereas the rest of us were evacuated via passing bus to K.R.Hospital. One of the infoscion had called up is colleague via mobile who inturn informed the security incharge. Within minutes they marshalled their resources and they reached the hospital before us!!! They helped us clear all the formalities/paperwork. Since its a medico-legal case, they dont handover the xray to the patients. Due to this, some of us were taken to Apollo for personal medical treatment. Except for one who had fracture and may be spinal injuries, rest of us were really lucky. We had cuts/bruises/swollen heads/limbs and eye-lids. Still we were stirred but not shaken. Except for 1 who was admitted into Apollo, rest of us were escorted back to Infy Mysore where we recupperated in the guest house.

In Infy we even met over lunch and dinner.

Lunch:

Leftmost: The one who rushed along with the ambulance. Cant thank u enough dude
Second: Anuj, one of the few who didnt get hurt much.
Third: Ankit who was reported in the paper as Amitabh !!! Swollen Arm - Still cant help laughing thinking about the treatment suggested by Apollo :-)
Fourth: Thats me. Nothing more than swollen head (due to impact), glass piercing here and there, cut in the eye-lids. Thankfully it wasnt down by a few cms!!!!
Fifth: Subh - swollen legs. Still limping - recover soon buddy.
Sixth: Neel with some pain in the hips but recovered after some sound sleep

Dinner:

Leftmost: Supriya. Thanks a lot for translating that kannada newspaper.
Rightmost: Hrishikesh - Not a single scratch on him. Infact he was searching for the next bus to continue his trip !!!!

Couple of persons arent covered in the snap :-(. Meanwhile lets pray that Jayanth recovers soon from Apollo. Guys plz post the updates as comments in this blog or else email us.

- Dheepak Ra

Matrix

2005-04-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

I was one of those who enjoyed the Matrix movie but never believed those slow-motion action sequences. Atleast till that accident happened. As soon as the container coming in the opposite direction grazed our bus, the glass windows shattered. The broken glasses passed in front of my eyes in slow motion (believe me - I could see those sparkling pieces in flight). And before I could appreciate that beautiful trajectory and artisitc motion, the bus rammed into the tree.

Sixth Sense

2005-04-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

Till the time the accident happened there were several pointers to the upcoming incident. Some will call it as co-incidence, some will call it as divine intervention. But I prefer to categorize it as sixth sense.

1. The local bus which we took to the KSRTC bus stand rammed into a car (Inauspicious start)
2. Subh's parents were extremely uneasy this time regarding the trip. Normally they arent (Subh is a frequent traveller)
3. When the bus stopped at Mysore - I had asked my colleagues to cancel the kerala plan and stay back in Mysore itself. Unfortunately they took it as a joke :-( and I couldnt convince them what with return ticket also booked to kerala.

Luck:
All the infoscions were sitting in the left side of the bus which saved us. Right side was heavily damaged.

Coincidence:
A newly married couple was sitting in separate seats due to last minute booking. They had swapped seats with Hrishikesh. It turned out that both of them died (couldnt personally confirm though). We comforted hrishikesh bcoz its better than one of the couple being alive.

Press Reports

2005-04-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

We found a similar clipping in Times of India also.

Like the majority, I trust the newspaper like a bible. However my confidence was shattered after seeing the news reports in the newspapers. Not one but several had wrong details. Some where down right lazy to write a report after just visiting the Apollo hospital.

Errors:

1) The no of injuries reported - took into account only those who had taken x-rays in Apollo. Atleast this is true with regard to reports under the heading "from Infosys". What about those who were treated in K.R. Hopsital. Infact non-Infoscion co-passenger had eye-surgery there (likelihood of recovering his vision is just 20%)

2) "Eye witness attributed the accident to slippery road condition" - hmm that is news for us. The road wasnt slippery by any counts. It was just moist....

3) "driver of the bus lost control over the vehicle when a truck (HR 55B 7205) while trying to overtake, hit the bus from behind." As passenger in the bus we can confirm that we grazed only against a container coming from the opposite direction. Infact the speed at which our bus was travelling, no truck could have even thought about overtaking. These people cant even get some facts straight before publishing. This is being lapped up by other news agencies also :-(

4) "Amitabh babbar" - Please dont rechristen anybody without their permission. Please check the bills/patient records in Apollo or ask us (guess the reporter came very late after we had been discharged). He is Ankit Babbar.

Emergency Contact No

2005-04-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

Immediately after the accident, I dialled 1062 from reliance only to get "Plz check the no u hav dialled". Later on came to realize that I have to put the STD code in front :-(

Neel called up 100 while I tried 101/2/3 in vain. Atlast it got through in 100 and we reported the incident.

However another infoscion had called Infosys and they responded so rushed with the Ambulance in 15 mins straight. Infact the govt should send their emergency response team to be trained under these folks. Not only did they rush to the hospital, they had even passed the information to Bangalore also just in case somebody enquired. We were surprised that even our Manager was appraised about the situation.

We felt proud that we were working in Infosys. No other company would have taken care better than this. Others might tempt with better salary but when it comes to care and values, Infy tops by a mile.

We have concluded that from next time, instead of trying to remember all the emergency nos - just memorize Infosys no.

Frog and the magic mirror

2005-04-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

Mirror Mirror on the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?

Beautiful Day

2005-04-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

The last 24 hours have been awesome for several reasons.

First of all, I got a call from Priyank Pant. He was my former colleague, batchmate, PC mate and project mate during training. Eventhough I have some awesome colleagues working with me, no one can ever replace him. During the training days, we used to be in the "zone". When all others rush into coding to meet the deadlines, we used to laze around just brainstorming new design ideas and features. We spend 33% of the project time, debating and finalizing the entire design. Though we will be the last one to start coding the project, we have never exceeded the time limit. We used to push each other through the limits and both of us believed that design was the most important thing. If it werent for him, I wouldnt have obtained a CGPA of 5/5. Thanks dude.

Secondly my faith in my company was restored. I had set the grievance redressal mechanism in motion and it worked so well, that I trust the values of the company. If you are a regular follower of my other blogs, you would have guessed as to what I am talking too. Anyway watch out for updates :-)

Last (atleast last till the time of this blog) but not the least I recieved an sms from my long lost friend wishing for the New Year.

I dont want to goto bed. I want to utilize this day to the max and no point in wasting a lovely and lucky day by hitting the bed.

Leaning Tower

2005-03-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Our own version - Leaning tower of E-City.

Just study the contrast - garbage bin, MIG housing, Car and few more which I have edited out......

- Dheepak Ra

Golf

2005-03-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

Tiger Woods here we come..........

Myself and Neeel as shot by Ashish.

- Dheepak Ra

Accident in Hosur Road

2005-03-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

I had the privilige :-( of watching yet another accident on the Hosur Road. One of the most dangerous stretches in Bangalore.

- Dheepak Ra

Bomb Scare

2005-03-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

Bomb Threat in Infosys
From our special correspondent

It was 00:15 when an anonymous person tipped about a possible bomb being planted in Infosys Bangalore. Infosys rapid action emergency response team took control. They evacuated all the employees of both Infosys as well as Progeon. Nearly 1500 employees were evacuated in less than 20 minutes. The individual project leads took charge, gathered their teams and took roll calls. To reduce the possible loss of man hours, structures were checked, certified and released in phased manner. Progeon with most no of employees was cleared by 1:30 itself. Normalcy was restored within a few hours.

Even though several hours were spent over a hoax call, it gave an opportunity to test the emergency preparedness. It showed the management skills of the employees who took control during an emergency as well as the efficiency of the security team who were able to clear the structure in an hour.

- Dheepak Ra

The Hindu breaches the million barrier

2005-03-13T20:33:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to share some good news. "The Hindu" newspaper now has more than 1 million subscribers. For all my colleagues who know nothing but "Times of India", here is a gentle introduction. It is one of the oldest surviving print dailies. It has lasted 126 years and it has seen everything from India's freedom struggle, all world wars and survived till date. By avoiding commercialization to creep in, they had to forgo lot of revenue. But they have made up for it with the loyal fan following who will vouch for the integrity and authenticity of their reports. If you are looking for some interesting news/articles either pick up Times of India or some magazines. However if you want fresh, unbiased news and opinions, you will never be disappointed with this.

Link - Click here

- Dheepak Ra

More Movie Reviews

2005-03-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

"National Treasure" is an action/adventure staring Nicolas Cage. Dont mistake me, I do like his movies. But this is one movie, you can afford to give it a skip. There are much better movies which are running currently.

"Kill Bill" - Watched it based on the recommendations in my friend's blog. Acting is wonderful, dialogues are good and music isnt bad. Hmm, Let me add like Lord of the Rings, you need to watch all the parts together for the story to complete. However its way too predictable. Usually such films offset it with some nice action sequence or atleast the director compensates by making a fast paced film. But this film lacks both. Instead of trying to bring out the emotions in the lead cast this movie just shows gruesome violence. I just lost track of the no of times there were beheadings/amputations followed by first generation graphics depicting the blood spurting out. To cut a long story short, this is another movie to be avoided.

- Dheepak Ra

Finding Never Land

2005-03-13T09:59:00.000-08:00

This week it is the turn of "Finding Never Land". Its the portrayal of the life of the author of "Peter Pan". Its a heart wrenching true story which is sure to tug the hearts of all the viewers. Its about how the author comes in contact with a widow (Kate Winslet) and her kids for and of whom the Peter Pan is based.

If it was Leondardo De Caprio who shone in Aviator, this was the turn of Kate Winslet. But she never stood out bcoz the other characters did their roles admirably. Look out for the performance of the kid - "Peter".

There is a lot in common between Aviator and this one. Both had stars from Titanic. Both are period films which were released at the same time.

In parts this movie might be a tinge slow and sad which puts off quite a few. When I went not even half the theatre was filled :-( I know, I know. I have been giving a good rating for quite a few movies. But trust me, if you dont watch this, you will never know what you are missing out on.

Updates: I have been pinged by readers enquiring as to why I dont write about the story like other reviews. Its pretty simple - I dont want to play spoil sport by mentioned the storyline. Nope disclosing just the ending is not good enough. The virginity of the movie needs to be preserved.

- Dheepak Ra

Whatz the time?

2005-03-13T09:51:00.000-08:00

My manager has suggested/advised/demanded that all data used in the prototype software needs to be encrypted. I guess I have taken it too personally. Even my digital wrist watch shows time in encrypted format only. I am tolerating the performance hit (It takes 1.2 seconds for manually decrypting the time). I do get some stares when my friends notice the strange time. But my colleagues assume that my watch corresponds to the on-site client's time zone.

Siblings

2005-03-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

In quite a few households, parents will love their eldest child more but pamper the youngest. Wondering whether its the same case down here. I love this blog after all this is an extension of me. However I have to take care of the sibling blog. After all when there are 50 regular readers from around the world excluding those who follow this in Bulletin Boards and mailling list, I cant afford to miss the daily post.

Filter Coffee

2005-03-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

When I started the SudaSudaCoffee Blog, I had mentioned that for many old timers a day starts only with The Hindu Newspaper and a cup of filter (or degree) coffee.

I have had lot of enquiries as to what is filter coffee. So for the benefit of my dear friends who know nothing but cappuccino and espresso series, I am passing the following links. Trust me, any day a good filter coffee wins hands down against Cafe Coffee Day's products.

If only these food courts could serve me, original filter coffee in those huge take away paper cups while maintaining the ambience....... Mum, if you are reading this I m sorry but u too use only electrical coffee makers :-(.

Links:
From WIKI
Nice description of filter coffee

Primary Blog

2005-03-09T00:43:00.000-08:00

Hey I just cant believe it. When I traced the weblogs, I came to know that suda suda coffee has more visitors than the one you are currently reading.

I never knew that there were so many readers of my photoblog. And I was really amazed as to the list of people who were dropping in. By checking the IP address, I noticed people as varied from Singapore, Australia, US, ofcourse India. I was too lazy to do "whois" query for the rest of the IP addresses.

Another surprising note was the no of people coming via yahoo search. I cant figure out as to what search term they are using. If they know suda suda coffee, they must also be knowing the address. And no, "dheepak" fetches baejaar and not sudasudacoffee blog.

On 07 March 2005 alone, I had 61 page hits from exactly 50 unique visitors (IP addresses). Not bad considering the fact that people to whom I email wont check out the blog. Another fact which I came to know through my friend in China is that China's ISPs block all blogspot websites. Due to that I can only email him :-(.

Let me gather enough data (atleat a month), then I can get back with some interesting statistics.

- Dheepak Ra

Movie Reviews

2005-03-09T00:30:00.000-08:00

Its been four days since I watched three movies. Till date I couldnt decide as to which is better. None of them was exceptional but all of them were good.

Page 3:
A welcome change from the run of the mill hindi movies. The songs failed to live up to my expectations but the movie did. To me, all the characters are new but they acted really well. I doubt whether any hindi movie this year can stand up to this except Black (Yet to see it). If you havent watched it do so now.

Aviator:
This is a true story about a millionare (though inherited) who follows his instincts and passions. Set in the 1930s, its about how he makes an epic movie on aerial warfare and his business dealings in the Airline industry. In between it is peppered with his love affairs. Eventhough there are some portion where the movie sags, all in all it is a very good movie. Particularly the scene where he defends himself during the commission's hearing is beautifully protrayed.

Leonardo de caprio - The first thing that strikes my mind is Titanic. I had assumed that he is a good looking chap who can't act. But this movie banished all those myths. Though he missed out on the Oscar (he was nominated for it), he deserves credit.

And thank the director too for this wonderful movie which won the most oscar 2005 nomination.

Coach Carter:
Its about how a basket ball coach transforms a losing, indisciplined school team into the one which storms into the finals of the championship.

This is yet to be released in India but my friend who is in US, recommended this to me. I couldnt resist my temptation to watch it in VCD. Though I am waiting for the Indian release to watch it again.

And one thing is for sure, you wont repent watching any of these three movies.

It hurts.......

2005-03-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

As soon as my eyes rested on this building, my heart cringed. How can somebody construct a structure like this?

Initially I feel sorry for the owner of this house. I doubt whether it will last a couple of years. Just notice that the right concrete column is resting on solid ground. The left brick pillar is resting on compound wall!!! You dont need a Phd but atleast some common sense........

I was about to go and advise the owner but then restrained my urge to do so. They deserve this.

If people are ready to insist that only genuine photographers can shoot their wedding snap, can't they realize that it is the same with building construction? Initially they started ditching Civil Engineers and used Diploma holders. Now they are directly using masons for construction of their houses. If a construction costs Rs.5 lakhs (bare minimum) for 3 months, can't they employ a fresh engineer for a salary of Rs.8000 per month? Its just Rs.24k or 5% of your building cost. If you cant afford that atleast opt for an engineering student. He should be able to complete it as summer job for a stipend of Rs.3000 per month. I pray that these people look at Cost-Benefit ratio.

Yahoo lets me down........

2005-03-05T13:36:00.000-08:00

Here was a canvas where I could paint my thoughts without giving it a second thought. Atleast it was so, till a few days back. But on March 04, 2005 (Black Friday), my mother searched and found out this site via yahoo. So here goes my privacy. I guess I dont have any choice now, so let me welcome you - mum. Anyway from hereon, I will be more careful with what I post. And for the rest of my dear blogopers, reserved posts will be emailed to you ;-)

Purpose

2005-03-03T05:32:00.000-08:00

Nope. Its not about purpose in life, its the purpose of this blog.

Several times I stumble across incredible blogs where each and every post can be copied and pasted into some magazine. Usually they take several days for single post but they are worth the wait. There are other blogs which are specific to some domain and all the posts are targetted.

But the purpose of my blog is different. Its supposed to be an uncensored snapshot of what I think. It can be short or long, it can be cryptic or simple but it should reflect whatever occurs to my mind without being censored. I dont intend to think about a suitable topic for the blog and then start writing. After all this blog was by me, about me and meant for me.

Infact this was one of the prime reason as to why I refused to pass the address of my blog out. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have got some good avid browsers frequenting this. But I am resisting my temptation to change. I apologize if I sound rude. This blogs should reflect me and not target the audience. But I believe that even in such case, there will be some who would like it, for what it is. I am happy satisfying their curiosity alone.

- Dheepak Ra

Last 10 years

2005-03-02T05:15:00.000-08:00

Today Yahoo celebrated its 10th birthday. When I first went online, there were just three sites worth remembering - hotmail, yahoo and google. After Microsoft acquired Hotmail, it was yahoo all the way atleast till google came up. Google is best for searches and yahoo is best for its syndication of content. The email service is a good tie between the two.

To celebrate its birthday, yahoo had a surprise for all its registerd users in select countries like US, UK, Australia etc. They were provided with online gift coupons which can be exchanged for Baskin and Robin Icecreams. Though I wonder how many will touch the icecream, when its snowing in UK and US. As expected, it isnt available in India.

Meanwhile here is a collection of some important events in the last 10 years - Netrospective

- Dheepak Ra

Happy Birthday

2005-03-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

Lets admit it. All of us at some point in our life, has sung the "Happy Birthday" song in public. Atleast I used to in my school days which is continuing till date via colleagues birthdays.

However today I stumbled across this - Un Happy Birthday. It seems as if the Birthday song has been copyrighted. We have to take a license to sing/perform public :-(

I guess it is time, we thought of an alternative. "En iniya manamarntha pirantha naal nal valthukal" - Gave it a thought but somehow it doesnt strike the right chord.

I would like to sing the birthday song for my colleague whose birthday is fast approaching. Either compose an alternative song for me or else donate money to aid me in purchasing the required license. Please ping me, I will collect cash at your door step. And dont worry, I wont place any upper limit for accepting donations from individuals like you ;-)

Suda Suda Coffee

2005-03-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

An update was long overdue. I havent blogged here for more than 4 days. And so here are the excuses.

To begin with, I have started another blog sudasudacoffee.blogspot.com. Even before this, I used to compose images and email them. But now, I have to double check the copyrights. Most of the images in the web cant be used in your blog, let alone modifying them. Even after you find one, it requires lot of editing to get it into some decent shape. After which I need to upload the image in a file server, followed by blog post. Finally I email them for the benefit of my colleagues who have restricted internet access during working hours. Nowadays the average turn around time for a single image is one hour.

Let me add, I am tired and sick of copyrights. So from tomorrow, you are in for a surprise. So dont forget to check out the sudasudacoffee blog.

Apart from that I had been to Chennai, my home town. I was just trying to rekindle my childhood memories. Eventhough I went with the sole intention of meeting my school teachers and classmates, I couldnt catch up with them. However lady luck smiled upon me. During my school days, there used to be a gang in my colony. They are composed of three generations. Guys in my age, those 4 years elder to me and 4 years younger to me. Yeah generation gaps did exist though the generations were just 4 years. After school days, we parted ways. Now less than 20% of them are still in my neighbourhood. But there was a pleasant surprise waiting for me. Every sunday evening, all of them regroup in the colony over a cricket match. If anybody is in Chennai, they will turn up for sure. Now I miss chennai, more than what I used to.

Need more excuse, I also have to work. I know that some of you, may not believe it. But I do. Here is proof of that.

Naa. I hate to decieve you. Let me admit, I was working on an image for the blog. This was snapped by my colleague. I was concentrating so much that I didnt even notice it. Got to know about it, much later.

- Dheepak Ra

Memory

2005-02-23T12:50:00.000-08:00

People tend to assume that it is very good to have excellent memory. I beg to differ. You need to have the power to forget things. You need to carry some good memories forward and leave unpleasant memories behind. In such scenarios, great memory power will only hinder us.

Here is an instance of a guy with photogenic memory.

Yesterday, my friend stumbled across an old classmate of hers. They had studied together only till First Std. But when they bumped into each other, he not only recollected her by name but also her sister's name as well. Its amazing but true. Sometimes people get etched in the memories and even after years, you can recollect them very well.

Dont ask about me. Though I can recognize most of my classmates, I remember the names of only a few.

Infact today is the 500th day since I joined my present job. But it feels as if I walked into this company only a few months back.

- Dheepak Ra

Glass of Water

2005-02-23T12:41:00.000-08:00

That is all, it took to ruin the seal in my passport. At that time, I thought well here goes some few thousand rupees down the drain. Little did I anticipate the troubles to follow.

I had filed for duplicate passport on Dec 13, 2004 at Bangalore Regional Passport Office(RPO). On Dec 17 they claim to have dispatched it to S.P - Bangalore. After several visits in vain to my local police station, I went to SP office in Feb 2005. They said that as per their records, they never received it. When it is dispatched via speed post, I cant fathom as to how they can lose it. Anyway mistakes do happen, so I filled up another Personal Verification Form at the enquiry counter at RPO. After a week, the second copy too didnt reach the SP office. When I went to enquiry counter on Feb 22, the guy said that usually it is dispatched to SP office on the same day. When I asked him to check and confirm the exact date in which he sent the duplicate form to police, he defended himself "We process several thousands of applications per day and it takes time". He asked me to file a duplicate for the third time. At this stage, I lost my temper.[ U guys might vouch for me, that I hardly lose my temper ]. If these guys cant dispatch a single form via speed post to SP office within two months, what are for are they over there? What amazes me is that he is asking me to keep filing duplicate forms instead of following up the original.

Finally I managed to get hold of the dispatch clerk. In front of the police, he demanded Rs.200 if the form is ever to leave the RPO. When I turned to the SP police personel, he said "What you are paying is separate from what you are supposed to pay me". That literally shook me. I know there are corrupt persons but these corrupt policemen encourage these petty criminals like dispatch clerk to openly demand for money. Finally I paid the dispatch clerk Rs.200 and left.

To my surprise the very same day in the evening, the clerk called to inform that my forms will reach SP office tomorrow. Now if the forms were present why did the enquiry personel ask me to file a duplicate? The next day (23-Feb) I got a call from the SP police personel in the afternoon. He said that the form has arrived and asked me to collect it by 5:30pm. Unfortunately I had a client presentation due to which I couldnt make it. Lo and behold, he calls up at 6:30pm and he is advising me to collect it on the same day. [He recieves the bribe only when he gives the form to me].

Did I add, the passport website http://kar.nic.in/passport updates the status only once in a while. For my application, it says "File under processing". Heaven knows as to what that means. It has remained in that state since the day I submitted my form. When I enquired at RPO, they said that the status is "Expedite Police Verification". So much for their e-system. BTW you should have seen the homepage of Bangalore Passport site. I think a tenth std school kid, would design a better site than these "computer proffessionals". Wonder what is their qualification and how much they are being paid!!!!

I have already taken two half days off to follow up at SP and RPO. I have got some understanding boses who are giving me permission to take half day off. But I shouldnt push things beyond a limit.

I am going to SP office on 24 Feb Morning session and then to local police station for verification. Lets see, what is the current bribe rates :-(

All these troubles originated from a glass of water!!!!!!!

Update:
I collected the verification form from SP office after paying him 100 bucks. If only looks could kill, I didnt stare at him though. Eventhough he isnt supposed to dispatch it directly, he gladly handed it over to me. I took it to the local police station for verification. First day I was sent back to bring two of my colleagues for verification. Next day when I did bring the colleagues, he took the witness verbatium and their signatures. He demanded that I pay him Rs.300 and in advance. (Nope he wont take it while handing over the signed verification forms either) Eventhough I did pay the amount, it took 9 days to get it signed by SI who is either in my company campus for visitor security or on election duty. Finally I took the signed forms to the SP office who again after 100 bucks (filed under travel cost to RPO)closed it. After few more weeks, I did recieve the passport on March 28, 2005.

105 days to get a duplicate passport :-(

Eventhough initially I resisted all shortcuts and bribes, I had to give in. I had taken so many half day permission from office (must have been atleast 10) without considering the saturdays I had spent travelling pillar to post. If I had a less understanding manager - Loss of Pay alone would have boiled down to Rs. 5000 not to mention the travelling cost and the effort involved. Rs.5000 was after I decided to cut down on my losses and call it quits - I simply started paying the bribes. When the police itself openly accepts bribe whom do I complain to? Some commission who doesnt have any power to even suspend anyone (they can only recommend suspension which is most often not heeded to by the seniors)

If only this was during my college days - I would have taken it to the finish. But not as an employee where time is money.....

Do you disagree with me?

Plight of Iranian Bloggers

2005-02-22T06:09:00.000-08:00

Today is "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day"

I felt sorry for this guy. If you have some time to spare, read this interview.

- Dheepak Ra

Phissing Attacks

2005-02-21T03:44:00.000-08:00

For a long time, this blog was kept as private and revealed only to a selected few. Finally this weekend, I decided to let my brother view it. I gave him the link to the blog http://baejaar.blogpsot.com. In a few minutes, he got back "U never told us that you got converted?". And a few more words, which are censored here.

It took me some time to realize that there was a typo. Instead of blogspot, I had typed blogpsot. And there is some website called "Amazingbiblestudies.com" which opens up. They claim "SEARCH ENGINE/DIRECTORY—World’s highest hitting English sites in major categories". I am unable to interpret their claims. But one thing is for sure, they are utilizing the popularity of this blog, to increase the no of hits on their site.

Anybody knows a good lawyer who is ready to fight for a noble cause like this, for free?

Atleast send an email to those guys, advising them that it is not morally right to do so.

- Dheepak Ra

25 Million Downloads

2005-02-20T23:39:00.000-08:00

I am trying to curb my tendency to blog about Firefox too much. But I couldnt resist on this occasion. Firefox 1.0 has been downloaded 25 million times in just 99 days. We should keep in mind that this figure excludes the unofficial mirrors, caching at local proxies and more importantly a single download is used to install in several PCs.

Way to go FireFox. Check out Spread FireFox

- Dheepak Ra

Update: Few hours after I posted this blog, Spread FireFox website has gone down. This is one of the very few instances when I have seen the site down. May be, too many of my visitors are following the link and overburdening their servers ;-)

Book and Cine Reviews

2005-02-20T07:11:00.000-08:00

I had watched Fida today with decent expectations. To say that I was disappointed is an understatement. Here is the same guy who was the hero of my favourite Hindi movie - "Ishq Vishq". A movie in which the character - "Payal" enacted by Amrita Rao is still fresh in my memory. I think we should sue the director of this movie for wasting 3 hours of my precious time. This was the first weekend I was free in nearly 2 months and I had to waste 120 mins.

On the contrary, I read a novel titled "Amazonia". It was the work of an unknown (atleast to me) author - James Rollins. Surprisingly I finished the 623 page book, in a single sitting of 10 hours. I am even tempted to take another novel by the same author tonight.

Borewells

2005-02-20T03:39:00.000-08:00

My neighbour is planning to drill a borewell in her plot.

It reminded me of my college project. Myself, Muralidharan (right now in Shoba Developers) and Shivaraman (in ahmendabad) did the project "Ground Water Potential assessment using GIS and Remotesensing" under the guidance of Dr. George Bakose. In lay mans terms, that is figuring out the ground water level using Insate satellite images and GIS software. It tooks us several months to complete it but most of them accepted that it was worth the wait.

But guess what my neighbour did? They got hold of some guy for predicting the optimal spot to drill the bore. He carried the Y - stick btn the two faces of his palms. As he moved around, the Y stick "rotated" at some particular spot. And they fixed that spot for drilling the bore. All they took was 15 mins and Rs.100. In hindsight may be I should have hired these guys to help me out with my project.

- Dheepak Ra

Quick Update

2005-02-20T03:31:00.000-08:00

I know that this blog wasnt updated for more than 10 days. But I didnt have a choice. I was bogged down with work. To top it all, I wasnt in Banglore. I had to goto Mysore to conduct workshop on Grid Computing. And when I was in Banglore, I had to work on ...... (Sorry censored. I have signed NDA with my employers. So I cant reveal that).

And I am trying to compensate for it today with the no of blogs.

Wanna date?

2005-02-20T02:37:00.000-08:00

Top 5 Mistakes by Guys:

1) Ping her frequently
Dont call/email/sms too much. Give them some time. Let them comeback. After all there is truth in the oft repeated quote - "If you love somebody, set them free. If they dont comeback, it wasnt yours in the first place. But if they do comeback, they will be with you forever".

2) Pamper her with care
Yeah I know the suggestions doesnt seem to be intuitive. Surprisingly they tend to choke under too much love and care. Even if you truly care for her, dont express it too much. Now and then reassure her.

3) Take her out often.
Never ever gift ur fiance unless its her birthday or valentine's day. Reserve it for special occasions.

4) Dont smoke/drink/freak out.
You are considered as cool only if you smoke and drink a bit. (Hey I m not advising you to do so. Bcoz neither do I. But that is a frank comment)

5) Xcuse yourself when she is down
I am truly surprised to see so many guys who walk away from her at the time of need. There is something called priorities. You dont have to be with her to share the happy moments. But when she is down, you should be the first person to listen and comfort her.

Top 5 Mistakes by Girls:

1) Take him for granted
Guys usually have more patience than opposite sex but still dont push them beyond a limit.

2) Lean on him too much
Neither should you swing to the opposite end of the spectrum.

3) Smoke/Drink/Party around.
Your guy might think it is cool, to take you out on date. But dont expect him to settle down with you.

4) Change urself for ur fiancee.
You should be flexible and accomodating. But you need to be yourself. You shouldnt live a life for somebody else. Instead you should share and live your life with somebody else.

5) Not in touch with future in-laws.
When you marry somebody, you are not only marrying the guy but also the entire family. So take your time to figure out as to whether you are mutually compatible with their family members.

Top 5 Mistakes by Me:
1) Posting this blog
2) Posting this blog
3) Posting this blog
4) Posting this blog
5) Posting this blog

Yeah I know this is controversial, but feel free to air your views.

Disclaimer: All opinions are mine. They do not reflect the views of my gurus. Both of my gurus are out of station. Onsite Guru is on leave and the offshore Guru (v call him as Infyguruji) is meditating in Pune after celebrating his birthday on 19 Feb.

- Dheepak Ra

Banglore

2005-02-20T02:12:00.000-08:00

This is a follow up to my previous post on Madras. Those nostalgic pictures made my friends to forward these pictures to me. For those in Banglore (& i m sure that there are quite a lot of u), this should be a treat.

BTW if you have any interesting snaps, pass it around.

Starting with the place where I live - the good old Hosur Road. Its interesting to note that the cattles still cause traffic jam down there :-)

Do u need any intro on these - our good old MGRoad snaps?

And this is the famous structure at the MG Road and Residency Junction.

CoxTown - Heard about this in passing:

St. Joseph College

St. Patrick Church

Race Course and Race Stand:

Cantonment:

Govt Musueum:

Offsite

2005-02-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Jan 28, 2005
Our entire department in office decided to take the day off. We went to a nearby club. Our group of slightly more than 100 persons had a nice time. Apart from the usual speech which is expected, there was a wonderful crossword section. We were split up into several groups. Mine was the smallest group, due to which we named it as "Fabulous Five". Despite the size we came third in the crossword. Anyway there was a boring domino round and indoor games like TT, Carrom etc. But the best portion was the cricket game. We had enthusiastic participation both from the youngsters as well as the seniors. Its nice to see a fresher bowl to his boss. What happened after that, I will leave it to your imagination ;-) In the challenger finals, we won the game with no loss. Obviously what else do you expect when I open the innings while chasing. Let me admit I was not out on 1 run. But importantly I stone-walled one end and made sure no wicket fell down. Did I tell you? I am a wicket-keeper who opens the batting.

I never thought of blogging this but I came across this snap which I couldnt resist. The two guys in blue dress as well as the lady in white/yellow were all part of the "Fabulous Five" team. I loved this picture because they caught our unique facial expressions without our knowledge. Just notice the expressions - smile, sadness, surprise, seriousness........

- Dheepak Ra

It can't be a Parrot

2005-02-09T05:05:00.000-08:00

I just submitted an outline draft of RFP to my manager and I am waiting for the comments. In between those few minutes, I thought let me catch up on email. I came across this beautiful site Pets. It was so good that I decided to blog it then and there before I forget about it. Hmm, I can see my manager getting up from his cubicle. So I have to cut this short...........

- Dheepak Ra

Ballad of the Heart

2005-02-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

I am in the middle of one of those weeks, when you are so busy that you cant even remember what work is pending. I am surviving only because of those periodic reminders churned out by Microsoft Outlook, about in which meeting or seminar I am supposed to be in.

It is very rare that I dont reply to my emails immediately. But it happened today. I was checking my emails at intervals of 2 hours!!!!

Let me welcome back Priya (after her operation) and Rebecca, my college lecturer (on sick leave for the last couple of weeks) back to work. Its nice to see you both hale and hearty. I know, I know. I havent seen you. Still I have heard that you people are fine.

Anyway its 1am in the night and I have decided to take a break. Several months back, I wrote something and saved it in my mobile. I forgot all about it, until today. So I decided to dump it here, so that I can clear my sms inbox.

Title:
( Cant see it? Sorry, the color of the font is white :-) )

Ballad of the heart
Orchestrated to the dot
Evolving and innovating
As it flickers through
Captivating me but dancing with thee
In rythmic splendor
With all its grandeur
Synchronized to perfection
While navigating the uncharted borders
It crosses the limits
Testing the resolve
Deciphering the parity
Losing the rythm
Losing the sync
But with patience to dwarf
The receptacle of life
With suppleness to enthral
Waiting for the spark
That lit the flame
My hope - thee didnt bid adieu
And so I bow to you

- Baejaar

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

2005-02-08T11:52:00.000-08:00

Wondering what the title means?

It is a chinese greeting for the new year.

Today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. No I am not making it up. My colleague is in Shanghai and he is the one who gives me an insight into their culture.

New year is usually celebrated grandly and it lasts for a full week. The highlight is a grand feast for dinner on New year eve.

Did you know that this is the year of the Chicken? All kids born on this year, correspond to chicken. So my dear friends who are expecting this year, give it a serious thought ;-)

- Dheepak Ra

Close call

2005-02-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

It was a typical, misty Bangalore winter night. As usual I was returning home late on Feb 5th, when I noticed a lorry idling its engine for nearly five minutes. In all those five minutes - the time it took me to cover that stretch of the road, it hardly covered 2 metres. I crossed the vehicle on the way, wondering as to what it was upto in a service lane. I had hardly walked 10m ahead when I heard a loud crash. The lorry had taken with it, the overhanging roof of nearby shop. Worst thing was that it still hadnt stopped. The engine was still purring with life and 1m in front was a live electricity pole. Well I knew that if that driver, persisted with those antics both he and I am in mortal danger of being electrocuted. And my nightmare (yeah I know - my nightmare is your lovely dream) nearly came true. After 15sec, the vehicle did jerk and hit the pole. Even though the concrete pole bent (by 20 degrees), luckily it with stood the impact. Atlast the driver came back to his senses and stopped the vehicle. Having got down from the vehicle, he approached me. I didnt want to vent my anger (though justifiable) on that guy. To avoid that I immediately pushed off to my home.

Till date the lorry is still there, brushing against the electricity pole. I have no clue what so ever as to why that guy behaved like that. But the bad news is that, the pole is so heavily damaged, it can come down anytime. And as usual our govt bodies take their own sweet time, to replace it.

- Dheepak Ra

FireFox 1.0

2005-02-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

I was so satisifed with FireFox 0.93 that I didnt switch over to Firefox 1.0. Er..Well.. let me admit it, I was afraid that I might lose the book marks and plugins which I had meticulously collected over the last few months.

Still curiosity gave way and I tried it after 22 million people had taken the plunge. Let me admit, it was awesome. (Well what else did you expect from me) Not only did it import everything perfectly, it also had quite a few features. Now let me leave it to you to explore or else check out Spread FireFox

Here are some of the plugin which I am using. One is the GMail Notifier which pings and notifies about new emails in your gmail account and the second is Foxy Tunes. Its truly awesome extension which allows you to control your favourite media player from/within FireFox itself. Now I can continue to browse my favourite sites and blogs (including urs) while simultaneously fiddling with the playlist.

Here is a screen shot for your benefit. Just notice the buttons for mplayer in the status bar of the browser as well as the gmail notifier to the extreme right.

Let me see, as to what excuse my colleagues can figure out, for avoiding this. Mind you they are creative, in these respects :-)

- Dheepak Ra

Blog - User Stats

2005-02-07T07:22:00.000-08:00

Has anybody checked up the user stats in the profile section of blogger. It is way out-dated for me. Only consolation is the fact that I am not the only one who is victimized. Check yours today. I guess yours too might be outdated.

- Dheepak Ra

Paladin

2005-02-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

Wondering what Paladin means? Dont worry you are not alone. You are added to the long list of persons wondering as to what that means.

All this started bcoz I came across a link in my friends blog. I am posting the full description, it churned out about me. Trust me, this one seems to fit me to the T. Another point to note: If you check out the "Warning" section, they suggest me to befriend a warrior. Guess what, my friend in whose blog I first came across this site, is a "Warrior".

I suggest you too, to check out your profile and let me know abt the same. BTW if you believe that the generated profile deviates from the guy - you know, I would be glad to hear from you.

My Inner Hero - Paladin!

I strive to help others, and to bring truth and harmony to the world however I can. Whether times are good or bad, you can always count on me. I'm a shoulder to cry on, a champion for the helpless, and an all around nice person.

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.
Though I havent been spammed me, let me warn you in advance. This site requires you to create an account (name and email id collected).

*************************************************************************************

Your Profile:

You're compassionate, forward-thinking, and devoted to doing the right thing. If you're still in school, your teachers probably adore you, even if your grades aren't very strong. If you work, you're more concerned with doing your job well than climbing the corporate ladder. When it comes to leisure, you'd rather pursue the arts, spend time in nature, or enjoy quiet time with a close friend than spend all night at a raucous party. You seek out peace, beauty, and harmony wherever you can find it.

Above all, you love helping others and bringing a little light to the world wherever you can. You have strong artistic talent, even if you haven't discovered it yet. You aren't a social butterfly, but the friendships you have tend to be long-lasting and devoted. You feel a deep sense of contentment when you have the opportunity to show someone how much you care.

Your Mission:

You were put on this earth to help others. They will trust you, because they are attracted to your sincerity, your kindness, and your willingness to do what's right. You are the one who has to stand up for the little guy, because everyone else is too busy looking after number one.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to Fix Something. Something small, or something big. Put a new chain on your brother's bike. Reconcile a family feud. Take a stray cat to the vet to be spayed. Donate blood. Fix a friend's car for free. Fix SOMETHING.

The Famous Adventurer of Silmaria trusts you to complete your mission. Don't feel guilty about procrastination - start now!

A Warning:

Try to remember: sometimes you need to fight for what you believe in. When someone steps on your rights, or the rights of others, you have to forget being "the nice guy/girl" and set things the way they should be. If necessary, befriend a Warrior and enlist him or her in your cause. Then just turn your Warrior loose and watch the fireworks.

Sometimes you're just going to have to face reality. Because you yourself are trustworthy, you tend to be too trusting. But not everyone is as kind and honest as you are. You may need a Rogue on your side to let you know when you're being hoodwinked, swindled, or made a fool of.

************************************************************************************

Time does fly

2005-02-07T03:06:00.000-08:00

Did somebody mention about Pongal Resolutions? Yeah they did. But resolutions are always meant to be broken.

Time does fly, doesnt it? It seems it was only couple of days ago that I posted here. I realized that I was wrong only when I noticed that the no of firefox downloads (that was the topic of my previous post) has galloped from 20 million to 23 million.

I have got a meeting in another 5 mins. So I decided to make a quick post before that.

I am not going to apologize for not blogging for quite sometime. My calendar was really hectic. In ten days, I had three seminars to attend, two courses (in classroom) to be completed, I had to conduct a course, prepare a demonstration for my VP and hotshots of LifeScience dept. No wonder I was busy.

Meanwhile I took a weekend off. Its not a typo. I meant a weekend off. I watched some films like "one two ka four" and "Veer Zara". The first one wasnt pretty bad and the latter was pathetic. It was so bad that I couldn't stand even half the film. Compared to these, swades was much better. All these were after I watched some good films (via cd ofcourse) like hum tum, kal ho na, main hoon na etc.

Just now came to know about the blog of my school mate. Its a nice one with loads of links and debates. Searching for the same? Sorry I am too selfish to share the link. I suggest you to search via google. Its not too tough to figure out. After all I dont categorize somebody easily as a friend........

There are not many posts in that blog but everyone of them is worth a read and lenghty too. I wonder how people manage it. In my rantlings and (g)rumblings, I can never post like that.

Meanwhile today one of my close friend "Sandhya Naga Hota" (U can call her as SH the way I do) is completing 100 days of married life and tomorrow is another friend - Taruna Arora's birthday too. The former is in Hyderabad and latter is in Panchkula - Haryana. Congratulations and best wishes to both of them.

- Dheepak Ra

FireFox on a roll

2005-01-25T07:59:00.000-08:00

Atlast the no of downloads of Firefox 1.0 has crossed 20 Millions. This is phenomenal for an open source product. I am proud that I am one of their evangelist having influenced lots of people in my company to switch to Firefox. Surprisingly I have not been able to convince my immediate colleagues in the project to switch. They are loyal fans of Microsoft :-(

Usually I reply to technical queries in Bulletin Board. Yesterday there was a post on Unix which I followed up. I have spent more than a man day in trying to solve their problem. Several solutions were shot down bcoz I develop in Linux but deployment in Unix. The Linux version of commands like find, date, touch etc have lot more options than their equivalent Unix kins. Lets see whether my latest solution was acceptable or not.

- Dheepak Ra

More on SUN

2005-01-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

As a follow up to my previous posts, let me add that SUN developers were pretty co-operative. Eventhought their products arent that great, they were ready to own up to bugs and they even fixed it within two days sinced I emailed those fellows.

Atlast I finished some profiling and soak testing using JFluid. Now its time to do some stress testing. Gearing up for another long weeek end filled with couple of training sessions too. One is on testing and another on performance engineering.

- Dheepak Ra

Madras

2005-01-23T07:43:00.000-08:00

Well here it is - Another attempt to photo-blog the Golden age of Madras. Last time, I had connection timeouts. Lets hope I am luckier this time. [ Update: Yeah I u can read this it means that I was lucky. ]

Here is the good old Central Railway station - the gateway to South India. Look at those beautiful river and ferry system. Though they are in disuse, we are trying to get it back soon. I have been working with Sivaraman regarding inland navigation system. Things were shaping up well when I was called up to handle the Nuclear Power Plant construction at Kaiga and Sivaraman is freaking out in Ahmedabad under the cover of Masters in Environmental Architecture or something one those lines. Still the proposal and project plans are still valid. If you know anybody who can either invest money or influence decision making, then get in touch with us. Together we can change the face of Chennai.

Here is the beach road. I never knew that it had so many trees. Is that the campus of University of Madras?

Here is the good old Marina beach. Though not as great as Elliots for hanging out, still it is one of the most popular beaches in India. This is the same beach which was hit by Tsunami nearly a month back.

Parrys Corner - This is also pretty close to Central Railway station. For majority of us, it is the northern limit of Chennai. Notice the ships at the dock.

Napier's bridge is the one in which Tamil version of Yuva was shot by Maniratnam. Eventhough I believe the current one is a renovated or rebuilt version. Look at the line of bullock carts - a sight to behold. Also notice the river joining the bay of bengal.

The pious Mylapore region. It has one of the most famous and biggest temple in Chennai. I join my parents in visiting this atleast during important occasions like birthdays or anniversaries. I never knew that there was so much free space dotted with coconut trees surrounding the Temple Tank. Currently majority of the space is taken up by Jewelery shop.

The longest and most famour road in Chennai - Mount Road. The place to hangout, if you dont prefer East Coast Road and partying stuff. First thing which strikes is the abudance of good theatres. Devi complex may not be posh, but the college students atmosphere is omnipresent. Satyam - multiplex which is 5 min walk away is perhaps one of the best in India. Atleast much better than Forum, Innovative, Rex and everyother theatre which Bangalore can throw at it. After all where do you get such posh theatre (really comfortable) with great ambience in the heart of the city at 60bucks and more importantly showcasing movies of all languages as and when they are released.

Apart from that there is the British Council library where I used to hang around atleast thrice a week. But who can forget the Chit-Chat restaurant at Teynampet or the magnificient Spencer Plaza. For starters it is India's largets shopping mall and several times bigger than Bangalore Forum. I hate to admit it but till date I still get lost within the mall. Several Pentagons linked together isnt easy to remember. I think spencer deserves a separate blog. But before I wind up, let me add my mothers office is also in this road. So I had to keep my eyes open......

I have few more which you can check for yourself.
Pycrofts Road
Moubrays Road
Esplanade Road

Let me thank the sponsor www.photobucket.com for hosting the images of this blog.

Update: Sorry I forgot to add that these images were forwarded by my college senior last week to me.

Java IDEs

2005-01-23T03:16:00.000-08:00

Initially when I started working in Java I had an option between Eclipse 3.0 and NetBeans 3.6. Eclipse was miles ahead of Netbeans and I had no hesitation to use it. But recently NetBeans4.0 was released. And I decided to give it a shot mainly because it had a free plugin for profiling. I have to admit that it has improved by leaps and bounds since its intial days. Some of the features they offer are note worthy like collabration, profiling, builtin J2EE Management, UML integration etc. I think Eclipse can learn from them. Yet if Eclipse release a stable version, it means it is stable unlike NetBeans.

Socks?

2005-01-20T14:06:00.000-08:00

Well I just came across this site which claims to describe you. It seemed funny at first. Still I tried it and here is my report card which it generated. However I would like to know your results also. Please leave it as a comment in my Blog.

You are a sock.

You are a cozy, fuzzy, warm-hearted person. A lot of your friends describe you as a hopeless romantic. You fall for the opposite sex very easily. But be careful, because usually you don't know what you are getting into, and because you are very sensitive, you can get hurt... especially in early relationships. Also, don't exclude the cold-hearted from your "want-list", because they just might be looking for a kind person to warm up their heart.... or a sock to warm up their feet.

Most compatible with: Toilet Paper.

Click here -- What Random Object Represents Your Inner Self?

Two hours down the drain

2005-01-20T13:57:00.001-08:00

Today I had attended a session on creative writing along with my colleagues. To make sure that it didnt go as a waste, I had decided to pen a beautiful blog today.

I spent more than an hour and half in the middle of the night between 1:30 to 3:30 am in composing one. It was supposed to be the biggest blog, I have ever written. It was so big that it was longer than all my previous post combined. I had tweaked it, edited it and previewed it several times.

Finally when I clicked on "Publish", all I got was a connection time out error. I did a refresh but it was of no use. So I pressed the back button and to my horror, it showed me a clean blank page with the message that the page had expired. Give that shit a decent burial.

I had done this with Microsoft IE6.0. I am not too sure as to whether this error was with the server or the browser. I normally use only firefox but in this instance the www.blogger.com site wasnt coded perfectly. Hence I was forced to use IE and now I paid for it :-(

I am being paid roughly Rs. 1000 per day. Which turns out to be Rs. 125 per hour. So I have lost 250 bucks. Not to mention the mental agony. I guess I should sue them. May be my dad will represent my case.

Infact the blogger website's home page had also gone down. So I wasnt even able to login for the first 10mins to post this post-mortem post.........

It was one valuable lesson which I wont forget in a hurry. No matter what save incrementally. Atleast the data & effort lost wasnt official with deadlines to be met.

Follow-Up on 23 Jan 2005. I read the help pages of Blogger website. Bcoz they are from Google, they claim that their site supports Firefox. Infact it seems all their developers use Firefox only. Its surprising bcoz I am not the only one having problem even for my colleague the buttons dont work in firefox browser.

Links 4 U

2005-01-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

My school mate is also in Infy. I was wondering whether we were utilizing the net to the best potential. So we decided yesterday that we will pass each other atleast one interesting website link per day. Lets see as to how long we can maintain this.

And here are the links for the past two days:

http://slashdot.org
This is my favourite. I browse this site for atleast 1 hour per day. Its a great site where you can find views on latest news. They vary from sound debate to rib-tickling funny comments.

http://www.csszengarden.com
This was the first link which I recieved from my friend. It is a beautiful site where you get immersed in the beauty of Cascading Style Sheets. They have some really simple but elegant CSS which bring website to life.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com
This site is dedicated to spreading the Firefox browser. It is one of the first successful cross-platform open source product which has targeted non-techies and won. Just the 1.0 version has been downloaded 18million times. It has tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, no ActiveX, adheres to W3C standards, has themes and extensions but best of all it is open-source. If you are using IE then check out this site atleast once.

http://www.thefruitpages.com
Targeted at health conscious people (it rules me out) but it really held my attention for quite some time. It extols the virtue of different fruits and juices. Apart from facts, they also have recipes.

If you come across any interesting website, either email me or else leave it in the comment section.

Pongal Resolutions

2005-01-18T09:19:00.000-08:00

Yes folks. I have decided to given in to your pressure. This blog is back.

After all didnt somebody say that "Starting a blog is easy, keeping it updated is the challenge". I do realize what he meant.

Usually I dont make any New Year resolutions. But this time I have one - to keep this site updated. Jan 18, is too late for New Year resolutions. May be we should call it as Pongal resolution.

Speaking of Pongal, here is a mini intro for my colleagues. It is a festival spread over three days - Jan 14-16.

Jan 14 - Farmers thank God for the past yield and pray for the next harvest. As can be expected offerings and prayers are done. But more importantly couple of dishes called 'Pongal' (yeah same name as that of the festival) is prepared. First dish is called "Chakkarai Pongal" which literally means Sugar Pongal. It lives up to its reputation as really sweet. But I prefer the second dish called "Ven Pongal". Ven is white. It is a bit bland dish and it contrasts well with Chakkarai Pongal. Come on guys, dont ask me why I didnt distribute it in office. It is a dish which is meant to be eaten when its hot.

Jan 15 - Today is Mattu Pongal (Cow's Pongal). Cow is an integral part of any farmer in South India. Its a day in which Cows are treated royally. They can get away with anything. In E-City where I live, I saw a cow which reached into a petty shop and ate the banana which was hung there. Normally this would have resulted in sound thrashing but on this occasion, it just recieved a gentle pat on the back. In villages there is an event called "JalliKattu" where young men show their mettle by subduing fiery bulls. This is similar to the Mexican bull fight but the tradition in South India predate them by several centuries.

Jan 16 - It is Kannum Pongal. It literally means "Deknekha pongal" in Hindi. On this day majority of the people go on outings or visit their friends and relatives. This is the worst day to get stuck in public place like Park or Beach.

I wanted to keep it short but couldnt help it. Sorry it was a bit too long.

Forum

2004-08-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

Aug 25th was my Birthday. I had a great time in Bangalore with two of my closest friends. One had dropped in all the way from Mysore and the other had taken permission and left office early to join us. We went out where else except the good old M.G.Road. It was an evening to remember. Hats off to both of you and thanks to all those wished me.

Surprisingly it was only on Aug 28 that I gathered myself to finally visit Forum - shopping mall. Its a small scale version of the Chennai - Spencer Plaza. Did some shopping in Archies and Landmark. They are pretty standardized and same wherever you go. But the "Lush" outlet is good. It is the first Indian outlet of the UK MNC. It sells exotic - hand made natural cosmetics. They have wide range from Facials, Shampooes, Conditioners, Aromatherapy etc. Though the price is on the higher side, it might be worth it.

Fight Club

2004-08-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

Brad Pitt stars in David Fincher's movie "Fight Club". It is not the regular hollywood fare which we are used to. Its a slick, beautifully directed movie. I don't want to spoil the fun by giving you a preview. You better get hold of a DVD. I can assure you that you will not repent for the time you spent.

The paper tigers choke again

2004-08-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the media will be baying for the blood of Indian sportspersons. So I don’t have to waste my time on that. Still for the records, I am posting the results over here.

Today the Indian cricket team went down by 66 runs to Pakistan in the Videocon tournament which commenced today in Holland. Indian Team was without its star players. Sachin was ruled out of the tournament due to Tennis Elbow whereas Nehra and Harbhajan were struck by viral fever. Pakistan reached 192 in 33 overs and India could muster only 127 runs.

This was preceded by Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi - the famed doubles pair losing the bronze play off in the Olympics.

The day before that the Indian hockey team lost the semi-final berth when they went down 1-2 to Newzealand.

The only silver lining was the India A team lifting the Triangular Cricket Tournament by defeating Pakistan A by 6 wickets in the final.

Up and Running.....

2004-08-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

Wondering what the title "Baejaar" stands for? Don't worry you are not alone. Its a secret which has been closely guarded till date.

This online diary wasnt meant for the eyes of mortals. But with you, I am making an exception. So please dont misuse the trust, by passing the word around about this blog.