As good as it gets

Rat aboard!!

2009-12-22T19:20:00.001-08:00

First it was fog and then it was and then it was blood sucking ministers or a over-enthusiastic (read over idotic) techie gave a hoax bomb scare call to delay the flight...but this is really hilarious....

A rat managed to delay an Air India flight by almost 24 hours on Tuesday

Now just imagine how heroic the rat would have felt when it just heard that the the Boeing has been halted because of its presence...could have felt higher than the fog, the ministers or the Techie!!...So Rats off....;-)
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Barbarians aren't they?

2009-12-22T06:36:00.001-08:00

If you just thought that we are in a civilised society, that you had good laws to protect you against miscreants and antisocial elements and if you are still experiencing that feeling of insouciance just see how barbaric things can get...

A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.

On one hand it is barbaric to what the two men did to the lady, that too for expressing her free will....the Law is even more barbaric. However, one argument that my friend gave to the "eye for an eye" policy is that, by exercising that you are treating the law breaker with the same set of rules that they laid down for the other. I cannot counter that point. I just hope that just things dont happen. I dont know if the punishment will set an example or not ....But atleast it might create a fear in the mind of the people who plan to do such cowardly acts

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Gas Gas every where....

2009-12-19T09:40:00.001-08:00

This piece was really irresistibly funny....

A flatulent pig sparked a gas emergency in southern Australia Thursday when a farmer mistook its odours for a leaking pipe, officials said

Well i think for a moment the Sow felt as a celebrity for having been able to mobilize 15 firefighters and 2 firetrucks. Reminds of the dialog "Sameer, hawa ka ek johnka" from "hum dil de chuke sanam"

NANO to NONO? True or False?

2009-12-18T08:48:00.001-08:00

Personally i like TATA. They are doing the country proud...
However, after reading this and then this....makes me wonder are they building vehicles or fire machines?

Delhi government on Monday imposed a hefty fine of Rs four crore on Tata Motors for "not properly" maintaining the low-floor buses it manufactured, after six of them caught fire in a span of three weeks.

And then

The Nano, the world's cheapest car, appears to have developed a technical snag. Three cases have been reported of the car developing short circuit near the combination switch in the car's steering column, igniting small fires.

Seriously TATA please fix up the mess and don't let others point a finger at you!!

Unique methods

2009-12-12T23:11:00.001-08:00

I would like to give it to Dr.Watsa for his uncanny wit and incredible replies..
Check out his recent answer to a question...

My boyfriend has a unique method of
masturbation. He tends to put his finger in his mouth and then in his
anus. Is it safe? Will he catch any kind of infection?

Is he planning to join the circus? Maybe it's safe, but certainly unsafe if he reversed his action.

Could stop laughing...Kudos Dr.Watsa...Check out the original link here.

Cartoon of the Week !!

2009-12-12T22:48:00.001-08:00

This is what i call "Wishful Thinking" or even...a super optimistic thought....

Travelogue- Hogenkal falls

2009-12-11T06:52:00.001-08:00

Recently my friends and I visited Hogenekal falls. This is a waterfall about 200 odd kms from Bangalore. There are 2 different routes to reach the place. One via the highway (Nice Corridor) and other one which goes through the interior of villages. I suggest you take the smaller route in case you are leaving very early since it is really picturesque. However, the roads in this route are in a bad shape.
We left at 6.45 from Bangalore via the shorter route. After a quick breakfast at Hosur, we proceeded. The atmosphere was wonderful. At the Karnataka TN border you have to shell out about 500 bucks. 250 official 250 unofficial. After travelling for about 2.5 hours you will reach a slight Ghat section.

After giving some poses and looking worse than the monkeys sitting around, we decided it was better to proceed towards the final destination. The curvy roads are a great fun especially if you are nature lover. Next thing i remember was some Tamil mumbo jumbo and a black arm reaching out as if it would just strangle me....I woke up from my slumber to be told that we are entering the Forest area and we have to pay 20 bucks for the ticket...and 20 bucks for something else which did not provide us with a bill. Soon after paying another 20 bucks to enter the Hogenekal area we encountered this dude who started telling us about the boat ride and prices etc. We had hardly caught a breather but our dude was explaining us everything...After 20 minutes and overcoming of the initial shock I realized that we would have to shell out 300 bucks per head for a whole day boat ride.
Well let me explain....There are two major falls in Hogenekal one on the Karnataka side and other on TN side. Both on River Cavery. The area where these falls are is known as Dharmapuri (TN). There are a few small islands on the River. The current is very strong at some points and its quite deep at these points. There are round boats which are technically "Coracle". Each of these Coracles will be able to carry about 7 people excluding the navigator. They will take around on the coracles, let you take the pics of the waterfalls...Our boatman was also ( apparently) a hobby phographer...and clicked tons of photo's of our...in various poses some of them were grotesque to say the least :P.
Then after visit to one falls ( the one on TN side) we were taken to a spot where the water was no deeper than 4 feet and we could enjoy in the water. If you have some aching muscles, you can get massages done here...(using oils which you have never heard of!!). After spending a good one hour in the water with lot fun we had a lunch consisting of fish, rice and sambar. Well the food is cooked on the banks, in pots darker than anything you have seen on firewood by people who have not heard of hygiene in their life...but guys the food rocks. I enjoyed every bit of the sambar with extra chilli. Carrying your own pack of water is good idea as the packaged water is expensive and not authentic. The Karnataka side of the falls is a bit smaller but looks equally good. You can see a lot of salmons's trying to swim upstream and getting caught in the nets places by the local folks.

Over all the place is a real good one to be. Things to remember are

Carry Water with you if you dont want to shell out lot of bucks
Try to negotiate a lot....You should be able to get yourself the whole 3-4 hours journey come enjoyment for less than 200 bucks. But do this if you have sufficient people...Its fair that way since the guy has to carry the coracle on his back at many places and will spend all the time with you.
Carry an extra pair of clothes, you can enjoy the water ( it is really fast and you can have a great time...even though you do not know to swim).
Carry a lot of small change you will have to give 10 bucks for this 20 bucks for that...etc. Btw, the coracle ride will cost you 20bucks per head separately for something...i could not understand for what
Take a good camera...You can get some really nice shots..not like the overexposed ones you find here.
Start early before there is too much crowd...so that you can return early too :-D...before the Bangalore traffic threatens to kill you.

The dilemma of life!!

2009-12-04T04:08:00.001-08:00

Sometimes i feel life is very funny. God gives you things you dont really desire of...and there are times when you do not get the things which you deserve...While i have been cribbing about things all the while a new thought came to me....Is it that because we have something we associate such less importance to it that it really looks unworthy...and when the same thing is present with someone else you say..."Hey, I deserve that but i get some shit!!".
Funny world aint it...or is it our minds that are funny and we blame it on every other thing.....God knows...for now i will go home and check out some movies.....

Pic of the month Dec

2009-12-02T03:17:00.001-08:00

I dont know if this passenger normally travelled Coach class or Business class and was driven to Economy due to recession. I just wonder what the guy would have done when the drinks trolley passed by......
For the full story read this
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Funny cartoon

2009-11-29T07:05:00.001-08:00

Funny but really true. I have lot my sandals atleast 3 times in the past.
(from the email sent by my sister!!)

Creating drives from Folders in XP.

2009-11-29T06:59:00.001-08:00

This is more of a technical post rather than what you normall find on my blog...
This is a problem i faced in Delphi ( my previous employer) and now with my current one too i have the same problem. The problem is that because of maintenance issues i get only one drive "C:" in my office computer. This means i cannot organize my data into different drives. If there are some tool chains ( like the ones that exist in most companies) which need some things to be in certain drives then you are really gonna have a trouble.

How to solve this?
Thankfully, there is command in windows called subst which can be used to make a folder look like a virtual drive. This means you can for example have folders like c:\e, c:\f c:\j etc and then write the following commands to make them appear like drives
subst e: c:\e
subst f: c:\f
etc.
Now the best part is most softwares can use these as if they were real drives. I have known only very few softwares which have a problem with this. One of them is Activestate products like (perl, python). You can put these commands in a batch file and put them in your startup folder so that they will map on every login. The easiest way to remove the drives is by using the command below
subst delete e:
Now aint that really cool ;-). I would be putting some computer related stuff on the blog hence forth since i see a lot of people struggling with these simple tasks.

Apparently the problem is solved in Win 7 using some concept of virtual drives. I need to check that out.
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Meatville

2009-11-29T06:47:00.001-08:00

Makes me wonder if this is really successful one day would it be easy for one to eat....
The article states that

No one has yet tasted their produce, but it is believed the artificial meat
could be on sale within five years.

I find the idea a bit repelling, because by growing artificial meat we are trying to break some of the rules that mother nature has laid down for us. At the same time i see that the idea is welcomed by animal protection activists and also the vegetarian crowd as well. I know that like anything else this would have its own group of folks who will not like the idea and vehemently oppose it. My only question is how safe this artificial meat would be and are we doing the right thing. Criction in his book prey says and i quote....

"They didn’t understand what they were doing. I’m afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race."

Hope that this is not the case here!!

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The hectic week.

2009-11-21T06:30:00.001-08:00

The week that just passed by was a real hectic one to say the least. If i assume Sunday to saturday as a week, then the week began with a visit to the bookfair on palace ground. The last day's of book fairs are always like a double edged sword. On one hand you will find a lot of books at extremely discounted rates, on the other a lot of good books are already taken up. However, there were two interesting things that i found out from the course. First is the website called librarywala.com. This is a library where one can order the book online and it will be delivered at your doorstep. I checked out the prices and they were very reasonable considering that they have a wide range of books starting from fiction, business and self-help. So make sure you go and take a look at the website. Maybe it will help you to satisfy your hunger for new books. The next wonderful things that i found was about a website called flipkart.com. It is a site from where you can order books and you get very good discounts.
In the following days things were not really very interesting. I was responsible for some interviews and trust me they are not the best things to do during the week. Then the models ( matlab ones) did not seem to work the way i expected them. Even a real hard struggle with them only resulted in some very poor solutions. Saturday however came as a great break. I went to the Open day at Goethe-Institut....I will be doing advertising for Goethe by wearing their shirt ...For which i had to shell out 100 bucks :P.

Anyway hope to see some good interesting results with my model this week so that the coming weeks will be more peaceful :D.

Dangerous birds?

2009-11-13T21:09:00.001-08:00

I had heard that a flock of birds is dangerous for an airplane and a flock of girls dangerous for anyone. ...but i did not know this....

Police said the low-flying bird distracted the man, causing him to veer off a road and drive his French-built Bugatti Veyron into a salt marsh.

That too a Bugatti....what where you thinking dude?

Its My way or the Highway- Govt

2009-11-02T05:01:00.001-08:00

This is what happens when you make a bunch of idiots take decisions.

The Government will not sanction any Leave Travel Allowance (LTA) for an employee who uses personal car or taxi as mode of transport.

Ok...from the first statement I understand that the government is trying to provide some business to the State/Central Government owned Transport mechanisms. This also means that it believes that these systems are on par or atleast comparable with the private operators. However, the next line shows something else

However, the rule shall not be applicable to employees with a handicap or disability of self or dependent family member.

What does this show!!...That if I want to travel by JetAirways because it costs me less i should first get my self a disability or bring a physically challenged friend along...WTF!! This is a classic case of solving the wrong problem. The problem is that the sales of tickets in Government carriers is less because they do not offer the value for money ( be it in terms of service quality or comfort). This cannot be solved by forcing people to use it...No!!....Upgrade them, improve them make them attractive...cut down the excessive flab!!

Alas!....Who cares..
Mantriji always insisted on having his aircraft tank full...and would get it fully refuelled everytime it landed. On asking what was the reason...
"The only time you feel you have too much fuel on this worn out planes is when you're on fire"
Good answer mantriji!!

Tooth Biryani

2009-10-31T12:03:00.001-07:00

I always thought that there are a few ways in which one can die when he flies and none of those risks could be avertible...But this came as a shocker!!

Malad-resident Brijesh Lohia;- it seems;- had reason to be angry: he had allegedly found a tooth implant in the food

I am sure it is not long before you would find a whole denture in the food served. It is appalling to see that the national carrier standards have gone down to new low. Now there are more reasons to avoid eating during the flight apart from the poor taste of the served stuff.

It happens only in India

2009-10-31T11:39:00.001-07:00

It happens only In India..(Not really!!)

Bus in Chennai...Photo from Hindu website....

Silence

2009-10-31T00:56:00.001-07:00

I have been silent on this blog for some time now. I have been going through a lot of pressure & questions in my mind in the past few days which have kept me busy...Apart from the Never ending German classes.
I have also invested some time in continuing my reading of Micheal Chricton's "Travels". However, my success in finishing about 30 pages can be largely attributed to the time i spent reading some pages while i spent time on the toilet seat every morning during the past one week. Also, I have invested money in the markets to some time was spent in reading where to invest and into what should i invest. And finally gave up deciding that whatever i do....I love south and so do my investments. No wonder my profits always look southwards oblivious of the market trend...

Of late... I have been trying hard to build a cross-platform GUI + Database based software completely in C. Yeah i know!! I sound like a freak...but i wanted to just see how much of C i still can manage after doing about 10 months of "Model based Development". I think i will soon giving up and switching to python, which is not only faster,simpler and cleaner...but also newer to me ensuring that there the ever drooping learning curve gets some positive slope!!. I have something like a good gui in "C" using GTK ....so it is not really too much of aproblem to port it to Python i trust.

And Before i forget....I had been on a team building excursion with my team....It was nice fun with a lot of take home. I always thought i had the right ingredients to make a good leader...but apparently not!!.....I am sure a lot of those who are reading this would just shrug off saying...We always knew that!!....But yes, i gather that there are a few things that i suck at and i should fix those before i can even imagine of taking some responsibility.....

Finally, hairfall has been always my friend....And i think a point of time has come when i should take a decision if i should go completely bald on my own or let nature do this job...However, I have decided to just hang on and continue for a while..

Now that i have found some time and some hope that i might be able to procure a netbook soon, I shall try to write more....
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Deepavali Wishlist

2009-10-17T00:51:00.001-07:00

Deepavali the festival of lights is here. It is a great to have a few days of fun and celebration. ( eating of sweets and meeting of friends) . The festival marks perishing of Darkness by light. While all this is great there a few things that irritate the hell outta me during these days!! ( Yeah!!, i know i always complain) So i have put down my 3 point wishlist for Deepavali.....Gods can you grant even one?

Time It: Bursting crackers is perhaps the only way kids and a whole bunch of adults identify Deepavali. I have a problem that people are free to burst crackers anytime during the Deepavali days. I was harshly woken up today when a neighbour of mine who never wakes up until the sun warms up his butt.....woke up early just to light a loud-sounding cracker and go back to sleep after ensuring that mine was destroyed!!...Why cant we have timings for bursting crackers? This would not only ensure that the pollution window is restricted but also ensure that there are no annoying moments for Elders, Infants etc.
Place It: Malleshwaram is a zero garbage area. So i see BBMP workers cleaning the roads all the time. It pains me to see that while at one end folks are doing the backbreaking work of cleaning the streets of the mess created by crackers on the other end folks are dirtying the roads again. Why cannot we use large open grounds to burst our crackers. In densely packed localities bursting of crackers is not only a health hazard but also significantly increases the probability of fire mishaps and accidents on the roads when drivers try to avoid the crackers!!. Go out to grounds and celebrate...this way you can see lot more variety of crackers...enjoy the lighting too and ensure that the pollutions is localized. Also it is easier to provide first aid and medication in case there are any mishaps....BBMP can organize this the same way they organize immersion of Idols during Ganesh Chaturthi or Durga Pooja ....Alas who cares?
Control It : While bursting of crackers cannot be avoided and should not be totally irradiated because that would mean pushing a big part our community to Unemployment. However, the crackers should be made safer, cleaner and better. This means that we should have proper controlling authorities who monitor the quality, monitor the cost and safety issues at the manufacturing areas.

I have seen the crackers that are used in Germany, when i happened to be there during the Silvester ( New Year) a couple of years back. These things look much better, safer and you really can be sure that you can use them without risking yourself too much.

So Let the festival of lamps bring a lot of light into your homes too....Enjoy Maadi

Beans

2009-10-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

Found this 1X2 beans....and thought will put a pic...

And if you say ..what so special....then my reply...When this can become breaking news...this beans deserves some justice

Dilbert says

2009-10-07T03:50:00.001-07:00

Could not refrain from sharing

Looks like all managers follow Dilbert religiously....especially mine!!
[ Thanks to my friend Divya from status message i got this!!]

Pic of the Month - Oct

2009-10-06T02:42:00.001-07:00

This time the picture of the month is far from funny....

My caption: When even gods were not spared by nature!!
[Image from Hindu website]

When Roles reversed

2009-10-03T11:47:00.001-07:00

Roles reversed.....ain't that cool

Drunk poll officer, vigilant citizen and a unique trial

I salute this vigilant citizen...who chose to risk his life and in the end just let the man go with a real lesson for life....However, on the hindsight i feel a couple of tight slaps would have still gone a long way...(Dandam Dashagunam Bhaveth).

<br />

The Ig Nobel award goes to

2009-10-03T11:09:00.001-07:00

I should share this....coz i really loved it...the Ig Nobel awards for 2009

Dr Elena Bodnar won for her bra that converts into a pair of gas masks — one for the wearer, the other for a friend.

I am sure a few of our dudes would love some gas leaks of sets of bollywood....especially when Rakhi sawant or Mallika Sherawat is around...In the hope to get a chance to be shaved by them ( when they lent their br...er.. gas-masks!!).
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Deo-dead-rent

2009-09-24T23:12:00.001-07:00

This is why guys ....we should not wear deo's the way the show it in the advertisements.

Man became human fireball after deodorant caught fire as he lit barbecue

Anyway, This shows that when you are out of luck even a harmless deo can f**k you....