Sify Tales... part 7

Ok guys, so just when you thought that the clog of Sify tales was over, its time for the grand finale! :-)) It so happned that after a lot of emailing and wasting of time, the gurus of swindling thought that they'd give me a free pack. A free pack! Wooo HOOOO! Am I lucky or what! LOL! But then you can hardly call 7 days of free surfing worthy compensation for a 20 day loss. Oh well. I guess I need to learn how to bargain, an art I unfortunately just don't possess.

Well... I used the 7 days to the best that I could. 7 days got over. And well the connection was still working. So I thought since I had read about the connection being enabled late, I had been given some extra days. I used it on that day as well. And then next day when I logged in, it showed my expiry date as NULL. Interesting piece of software they got there. I wonder how many people can understand what NULL means on your expiray date. Well to me it meant, this connection is yours forever! LOL.

Somehow, good things don't last that long and anyway I was getting sick and tired of the pathetically slow speeds they offer in comparison to Triband!!! I logged in and it showed that the account would expire on the 21st of November. Okay... so now something was fishy. It appears that SIFY likes to just disconnect and renew your account without asking you ever if you want to do that. Well I guess like the idiot I am I decided that I won't use cause these guys may come around asking for their dues. Actually I should have vasooled the opportunity but then, you know.. I think I'd get my work done quicker @256 kbps on Triband rather than @64kbps on SIFY...

Ok, cut to a couple of days ago. Local cable wala shows up asking for money. I must say that he was most uncerimonioulsy sent away. Cut to yesterday when I got a call from SIFY. Asked them, "How do you expect a customer to continue with a company that chooses when it shall disconnect and reconnect their connections. Was a pathetic experience."

I wouldn't say that I got fair compensation in the end. I mean you can hardly call 7 days free in lieu of 20 days perfect especially after having taken another internet connection. I should have really gotten one month's money back from them. But anyway, I guess its just a question of what's better:

"Something's better than nothing."

OR

"If you're doing something then do it properly!"

Return of Airtel

This past week has been good. Projects finishing, holidays approaching. There has been one dampner on the situation though. That being, one Airtel sales rep sitting outside of my work place all day selling some wierdo scheme! And to think I thought that I was rid of those chors! Great and now someone I know has just decided to switch from Orange to Airtel. Ani't nothing sacred no more?!

Moving on to better things. I'm about to be off to Bahrain for a nice long Diwali vacation. Shubh Diwali to all of you reading this. May you have a fun filled and safe Diwali and new year!

The the past so many days hasn't been too interesting on the techie front. Either that or I'm just not following news hard enough. Has anyone heard more about the San Francisco WiFi project for which Google was offering to do for free?! Seems to be an interesting area where a new arena of price wars is going to spark off. I think companies like Verizon, Cingular, etc that operate cellular services in the US are getting a bit touchy about the whole affair! Now I wonder why??? :-))

"Wait and watch, There's a whole lot of things happening around you!"

Chocolate...

Chocolate is a neat movie. Slick and shot with cool camera angles. Will have to write about it sometime ... :-)

eBay bought Skype and that's old news.. the fact that they're going to integrate a lot of eBay services into it is well I guess newer but still stale news. Now, eBay giving free WiFi.. That's news I think! Perhaps I'm still behind the times, but it appears that the new mantra out there for advertisement funded online companies is to get a good VoIP client and then start giving free WiFi. Now I wonder what they're all up to?! :-)

Spymac has come up with this cool new interface for web based mail. Not too sure how it works on a slow connection, but its pretty cool. They've emulated an Outlook Express styled layout and you have the option of switching between the two. The only catch being that for the new layout u need to have IE6. So firefox fans... you'll have to hang on.

The interface as such sports a lot of cool features like the preview pane and address book on the side, so you don't need to remember names to get the autocomplete up. :-)) The whole interface sports right click menus to help you get easy access to whatever you want. Its like a full fledged online thick client. Check it out @ www.spymac.com

Well that's where this info post ends.... Am still trying to find something interesting happening, but the only thing I can find these days are crib posts about SIFY broadband! :-)) Its pretty cool though to read!

"When in Rome, do as the Romans say."

Google Talk and Wi Fi: The Rebirth of telephony?

I just happened to be reading this book on computer networking by Andrew S Tanenbaum. For all of you who have ever done something in computer networking I’m sure you don’t need any introduction as to how amazing and author this guy is. Well anyway, I happened to be reading up about mobile communication standards in his book. What struck me in all cases was how most of the time, in the development of computer networks, it has always been telephony that has been developed first and then the same infrastructure is then built upon to support data.

For e.g. you had PSTN first and then dial up internet was built on that. You then got DSL and then ADSL built on that for broadband access. Even cable internet was again technology being put on top of your television channel. If you take mobile communications, then you have GSM on top of which GPRS is built and once CDMA became a hit, you had data services and high speed connections via CDMA. Makes you wonder then what has this got to do with Wi Fi. I’ll come to that later on…

Well now the funny thing is that once you had data over telephony, we then started trying to put voice over this data. Why? It was just cheaper. So you had things like VoIP born. Already popular chat systems like yahoo and msn then grabbed this opportunity to provide voice services (for free) between computers. Not bad. I know when it costed you more than Rs40 a min to call the US, talking for just Rs.20 an hour on your dial up via a messenger was pretty cool!

So messengers became cool and off late a company then spun in to the foray called Skype! Well those guys were a runaway success. Adding users at a rapid pace because their voice technology was just amazing. In fact just today I used Skype and I must say that voice clarity on it is definitely better than what else you have out there. Apart from that Skype also lets you call up land line phones, mobile phones and even have calls coming into your phones diverted to your Skype account. Some pretty nifty features which of course come at a price. So there you have it now, net telephony becoming the hot piece of pie.

Which now brings us to Google. The search company that is practically weaving a thick mist over what they’re really planning to roll out. GMail, Google News and now you have their latest entrant, Google Talk what I prefer to call GTalk now. GTalk is a pretty cool application. Light weight and even a real dumbo could use it without any hassles. No audio tuning wizards, just hit a button and talk. Although I must admit that its still a bit glitchy. Guess that’s why they still label it as a ‘Beta’!

So back to Wi Fi. Hmmm.. Probably something that has come up more as a by product of Ethernet. People wanting to hook up to the network without wires. So there you have a technology which for once evolved out of a networking standard rather than building technology on top of some telephony system. Wi Fi is pretty cool that way and with newer technology you’re getting faster and faster speeds. I mean just take a look at 802.11. Its pretty cool stuff. And now the interesting thing is that there are rumors of Google providing internet access via Wi Fi. So for those who have been wondering why Google has been buying up lots of high speed links. Again a rumor, I’m not claiming any of this to be true, but that’s what’s floating around. So, in the near future Google is going to be bringing you Wi Fi based internet. Interesting…

So now there’s just one link remaining, I hope you’ve read this far cause this is where things get interesting. You have GTalk, and you have G-WiFi. What does that mean. Well ever thought of using google talk to talk to you friends while you were on the move? Not possible right? How could you do that, you’d run a big bill on you cell phone if you were trying to dial up. Or else the GPRS charges would be prohibitive. The whole cost effectiveness of this free system would be lost. Enter WiFi. Now you go around with your notebook connected to the net via WiFi and then use your GTalk, Skype, whatever to communicate with people! Amazing ain’t it?!
For once now, it seems like telephony is going to born out of data based services. And with the increasing number of articles online about WiFi enabled phones, I think you’re looking more and more at a new band of voice providers. We’re going to be seeing WiFi providers providing you with telephony. Log on and start talking with whoever you want. Switch calls, video conference, you name it and WiFi is going to provide it at a very cheap cost. I’m not too sure about how cheap a net connection via WiFi is going to be, but its definitely going to be cheaper to say use GTalk over WiFi to talk to someone in the US than to make a ISD phone call from your normal telephone handset.

Wake up world. Its finally time for the customers to get back some of the money they’ve been pouring into cell cos! Just wait a bit longer and you’ll be able to walk around Wi Fi enabled cities and just log onto the net normally with your WiFi enabled handsets and talk to anyone in the world at well I’m hoping really cheap costs! Ironic though, that what gave birth to the internet is now going to be re-born from its creation! Maybe that’s what they mean by re-birth eh?

“What comes around, goes around!”

MTNL hai tho SAHI HAI!

I never thought that I'd be putting a post like this so quickly. But then the last 2 days has made me feel just like that title to this blog. Actually this place was going to be reserved for SIFY tales 8, 9 ,10, etc but then I've realised that they're now not even wasting blog space on!

Man, after my trysts with Dolphin's networks I never thought I'd be saying this, but then sachchi, MTNL hai tho Sahi hai! I can't believe the blazing speed at which their DSL conneciton is and then, well I was going to blog about this earlier but then didn't want to jinx it, so I didnt. And voila today when I get home from work, the net connection is gone. I was like, "Here we go again!" But then a phone call later (that too at 12 midnight) to their call center and I'm online with a fix like, change your DNS server address to this. I was like, "Whoaaaaaaa. How did you guys come up with that!" That too the first person who picks up the phone tells me that. No asking anyone, no nothing, just plain simple business. THis is something I'm willing to give them 'kudos' for. Amazing stuff. They've made my day.

I hope I'm still not jinxing things, but I think that so far things are just amazing from them. Be it customer care or service. Just got two words, "Sahi hai!". I'm saying it again that I hope I"m not speaking too soon, but I'm sure that these guys are finally serious to things. And to the others out there (aka SIFY), wake up and smell the flowers guys! This is called 'Service'. I think the age has dawned where the private guys can take a leaf out of the book of our good old sarkari blokes. Please please someone stop me know before I go overboard! LOL.

I'm saying it again, louder than ever:

"MTNL hai tho Sahi Hai!!!"

Sify tales... part 6

So I’m a frustrated individual who likes to blog. What can say, except that one tends to get frustrated when you are trying to talk to a person about your problem and they keep avoiding you. Well I’m kind of going through something like that now.

5pm, I call up the SIFY guy. Tring tring… tring tring… tring tring… snap! The line goes off. Ok so the guy doesn’t want to talk to me. 5.30pm I call up the cable wala. I then get to hear this lovely story about how they have told everything to SIFY and that nothing is there in their hands now. How nice? As I said before in a post, that’s ‘business’!

Cut to the night, I’m like kind of bored and in the mood for some entertainment and I just noticed that my SIFY connection is not being restored here. So, I decide to call up the SIFY wala again. 2 rings and he’s on. I tell him my username and then he’s on about how I’ll get this done, can you call me back in 10min. I’m like, “Ok.”

13mins later (why am feeling superstitious now!), I call Mr SIFY again. He picks up and says that his call center people will be talking to me about it. (WHAAAAAAAT?!) So I ask him, when are they going to talk to me and he’s like, “They’ll call up in 5 mins”. Again I’m like ok. 5 mins later, no call, so I call up Mr SIFY again. Basically I’m just hitting redial by now. Now he’s like, “Oh, mein thoda nashta karne gaya. I’m in office only Sir, I’ll tell them to call you up.” Again I’m like, “Ok”. By now I’m sure the educated are wondering why am I going on saying, ‘OK’! LOL. Even I dunno why I’m being so patient about this.

I hit redial again after 15mins, because still no call center people are calling me. By now I’m like in a mood to really blast this guy. But then ‘lucky me’, he cuts the phone after like 5 or 6 tring trings! Typical! Guess that things aren’t going to get any better. I suppose that I’ll have to call him up now again! J Lets see what he’s go to say now. Probably it’ll be another 10 mins for the call center bungo brains to call up. I guess its getting boring to read this, but then I just keep asking myself, “Where is the professionalism here?!”

“Whatever happened to customer service? Oh, sorry could you please call our call center for your queries?”

Sify Tales… part 5

Ok, so now you’re either like waiting to read this post or you’re like sitting there wondering, “Doesn’t this guy ever stop?!” Well it turned out that the SIFY morons called up at my place when I was at work. Typical! Hmpf! Anyways, I got the message and the rang up the cable wala to find out what was happening. First thing that I’m asked about is, “Do you want to renew your account?” At this point I’m thinking, “Sure I’d love to renew your brain! Why don’t I first bang your current brains out!”

Anyway for some reason I kept my cool and then went through the whole story again. Of course once they heard my username they pretty much knew who I was. So the lady says that ‘shailu bhai’ is not around and will be in later. So I’m like ok, give me the SIFY guy’s number. So I get it. Phew! At least one thing went smoothly.

So, I call up Mr. SIFY and tell him about how I had called him up before and all. First question, “What’s your username” I’m like whatever it was. Pause… Then he’s like, “Oh yeah I remember. Mereko 2 ghanta de mein teek kar dega.” So I said Ok and kept the phone. Now at a time like this you should know that things don’t work so smoothly. Still I was driven by hope that something good would happen today!

I reach home, turn on the pc and voila, NO net connection! I got the good old message of, “Your account has expired!“ It was meant to be right? I mean I guess I was just a bit toooooo gullible today. Oh well. Looks like tomorrow I’ll again have to call him up and get the things done. Hopefully get the things done. Boy am I bored… No tell me how in the world are we supposed to trust service providers like this!

“Sometimes you’ll wonder why you keep trying. Thing will not look like getting resolved you’ll never know why, but then you’ll just try again anyway!”

Sify Tales... part 4

As I right this post, its interesting to note that I’m using a font called perptua, so that this post will perpetuate into the minds of people (aka SIFY for this post) so that they realise that something is a miss with their way of doing ‘business‘.

Business, it’s a funny term and often makes you feel that there ought to be no feelings attached to it. After all, a successful business cannot be run on sympathy! But, that doesn’t mean that a business is run without integrity or transparency. And well, its sad to say this, but what happened to me is just that. I was, to put it a bit harshly, swindled into paying for one month of internet and receiving only 10 days of it! In short ended up doing ‘business’ with people of no integrity, no transparency.

The question here that hits one is WHY? Well it happened because certain individuals prefer to do ‘business’. They don’t like to tell their customers what they are giving them. So for a person who for the past 5 years has never had to worry about download limits on his cable internet connection, suddenly finds himself faced with the harsh reality of seeing his account expire in 10 days simply because a 150MB download limit was suddenly capped on him.

Now, perhaps its alright to have this type of limit imposed, but then it has to be communicated to the person before the take up the plan! And, well ok it slipped your mind, hey we’re all human right? But then why oh why wasn’t it built into the software to warn the user that their 150MB for the day is over? Why I ask you?! I mean that is just sick. How can you as a user then verify that you haven’t been cheated of your limit for the day?

How do you know that when you transit from the paying to time to the free time (you get free access from 10pm onwards till 6am) that you’re not being charged now? How do you know? I’m afraid there is no way to know! You just have to take it on face value. CRAP! In short you just have to trust the integrity of a corporation that is not willing to even tell you when their plans change. So, even today, although you’re told that your quota is over, you could be pretty sure it isn’t because that‘s just how much integrity they have! In fact they probably don’t warn you that you’re reaching your 150MB limit just so that they can swindle some more money from us. Hehehehehe! Great ‘business’ model right?!

Hell, if this person had known that there was such a scheme he wouldn’t have gone to SIFY. He would have stuck on with the providers he was on previously or better still moved on to what he’s doing now. But the sad part here is that after being a customer to a provider (aka the cable wala) for 5 years this person is not at all valued. You’re just another person on the doorstep with the begging bowl as far as they’re concerned. Crap, who’s gonna stand for that!

What hurts you in the end is the fact that you think you’re paying for good service, but your actually stuck with something that gives ‘mediocre’ a bad name. I have no words to describe what has been happening, but I sure have acquired a lot of phone numbers of various personal from SIFY and cable walas. Personally, what’s the use of having those numbers cause every number leads you to another. Its like you’re playing treasure hunt and at the end of it all if you’re the first one to reach the end you’ll get your remaining internet days back!

So here it stands, with yours truly swindled out of 20 days of internet time that he paid for. Maybe there are some die hard SIFY fans out there who wish to bring up my ignorance to changing policies to justify the actions of their demi-god internet provider. But then what can a person do when they receive a receipt which very clearly says unlimited usage for a month. I guess they can’t say much right? Its always too bad for the customer cause the customer didn’t know it. Pity really, but then hey, THAT’S BUSINESS!

“There comes a time in a man’s life when realization shall dawn upon him. When that happens he better wake up!”

Sify tales... part 3

I hope that you’re not surprised by reading this post. Personally I’m not surprised by what happened today. To cut a long story short, basically, my SIFY net connection was cut again. Beats me what the hell those guys are doing up there. Jeepers its getting bugging having to go back to them again and again and again! AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!! Those bungo brains have done it again.

Anyway I did the usual thing to do, called up the local cable wala, got another cell phone number to someone, who tells me, “Yeah I received an email from those guys, but I haven’t gone through it properly. Anyway I’ll go through it properly tomorrow and let you know about it!” WHAT the hell man! Why can’t you do it now! Ok ok ok so its Sunday afternoon. But then this is the type of professionalism that we are be-fronted by.

Oh well… I can’t crib now though, cause I’ve just watched the most amazing test match. So I’m just going to move on to writing about that and well SIFY and my cable wala can go…. Well whatever I don’t care! LOL.

The match was just awesome! Gripping would be an understatement, but its just totally awesome to see the aussies get kicked! Personally I thought that once Pieterson was out, the aussies were going to nail up the coffin for the poms. But well surprise, surprise the English players aren’t the pushovers they used to be. They just stuck at it and the mental coolness that Hoggard showed in the end was amazing. I mean he could have really choked it up the way their keeper did.

Giles was the other hero in the end. I guess the best site on the field at that time was Ponting’s face! And in the English dressing room, it was Harmison who was just looking like, “Please get this over with cause I don’t wanna bat!” (He was next in if someone got out!) Anyway in the end, Hoggard blasted a four of Lee followed up with 2 more runs at the end of the over. So that left Giles 2 runs to get off Warnie. He played warnie pretty well actually. Except for this one ball, which I still can’t understand, how it missed the off stump! Anyway, in the end, Giles managed the 2 runs and England was partying at the stadium!

An amazing match! Looks like the poms might actually get back the Ashes now! In fact I get a sneaky feeling that they’re going to be learning some rain dances now so that they ensure that the lead in the series is intact! ;-) Of course, I guess its things like this that show you that if you keep your cool anything is achievable not matter how improbable! I guess that also includes dealing with cable walas for internet connections! LOL.

“Stay Kool Guys!”

Sify tales... contd.

So the story continues, and well its come to a rather meek end. Well at least for now. I'm writing this email after logging on from Sify account... :-P. Its pretty crazzzzy really, but when I called up to talk to 'shailu bhai' I didn't get to speak to him. Instead I talked to some lady, who kept asking if I wanted to renew my account. And I had to keep telling her that my account is not going to be renewed, but turned back on! [frustration... can u see my hair standing up now?!][Err what's left of it that is! Not that I'm going bald, but I suffer from insufferable paranoia of my hair falling. D'oh!]

I kept telling her about my 10 days and other stuff and eventually she gave it up to another guy. Not too sure who he was ,but then in the end he just told me not to worry and things would be back to normal. I guess they are, but it hasn't changed my decision. Its becoming an ever increasing pain to keep having to chase up people for petty issues like this. You'd expect a certain degree of professionalism from corporates today but what you get is this.

What cheeses me off in the end over here is that I've been with this guy for 5 years now. And this is the type of treatment that I a customer for so long is doled out. I guess, that's where modern business is heading. Old customers are more or less taken for granted. Pitty really... May the time change!

BTW, this story still ain't done, so keep watching this area and we'll perhaps see soemthing interesting happening! :-))

"He who has the gold , makes the rules!"

SIFY tales…

Notting Hill... 360

Notting Hill is a simply amazing movie. Guess I'm pretty late in seeing this movie, but as luck would have it, I caught it on Star Movies today. That too from the beginning! Somehow I thought I'd change the channel at any minute, but as the story kept rolling it kept getting more and more interesting. People always told me that its a good movie, but then just like coding, you gotta see it to believe it! I'm not going into the story here... for that you'll have to read my really awesome 360deg blog on yahoo! LOL!

Speaking of 360deg, its a pretty awesome thing from yahoo. I mean they've integrated just about all their yahoo services under one hood! Some pretty amazing really and something Google has been pretty pathetic about. Like I mean you have Orkut, GMail, Google Groups, Google News, etc, etc and everywhere you gotta log in and do things. And to share stuff across applications (ummm sites for non-IT personal) you gotta do a lot of well... "magaj maari!" (I'm not translating that... you dont' know hindi... TOO BAD! LOL)

Anyways, 360deg is cool. Damn I wish I knew how to put that little circle to represent degrees.. Anyway getting back, in 360deg, you can blog (a la blogger), you can write a profile and link to friends (a la Orkut), you can view all your yahoogroups from there and publish them for others to see. You can write somethign called blasts which is pretty nifty. You get to link you yahoo photo album with the 360deg profile. So you can easily share photos with friends. Just tell em to check your profile for updates. In short its awesome. I think yahoo is doing a great job with it. The help is cool, actually helps you for once! Trust me, there aren't many pieces of software around that have help that helps you! :-) So in ture salesman style, "Go get your 360deg profile now and avail of all the cool features!" Oh yeah, and add me if you get time. :-)

"One stop shops weren't pulled out of a hat, but they sure are damn useful!"

Of matches and snatches...

Well I'm starting this post in what looks to be a good position for India in the cricket final in Columbo. (Gee I hope its there...) Shittt Yuvraj just got out! Idiot! Oh well... at least 'The Wall' is still ticking.

2 hours later.....
It happened.... As it always does.. India lost the match.... So what else is news. The tag of final chokers is true! :-)) The only thing that I see is that they are now good snatchers! Always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Lets just hope that they learn to do the reverse snatch as well sometime.

Well not in a mood to continue with this post.... snatches and matches and what not... forget it. I guess that's what its all about these days. Snatching the catches to win the matches.

"Catches win matches..."

Of Virus scanners and rain...

Its raining agian... So what, right? It always rains in the monsoon and anyway its nice to hear that rythmic beating of rain drops on the road. Its mainly nice since I'm sitting nice and dry inside. :-)

Well on a different note though, I installed this new free anitvirus called AntiVir. And I must say that it is really amazing. Already detected a trojan that well my previous antivirus couldn't. It then makes you wonder why you should pay these big corporates like Symantec the big bucks to protect your system when a free piece of software available on the net does a better job.

In fact I'd like to go a step further and say, "Why even take the 'effort' to crack the likes of norton or mcAfee, when you can get a free legal copy of something better!" (Okay I hear someone screaming lazzzzzzy in my ear). But the point is that there are better things out there. It kind of brings me to another point, as to why do we feel our system is safe only with these big corporate softwares? Why should we be so beheld by them? Afterall, in the end you'll find that they often aren't up to the mark when it comes to delivering a quality solution.

I think its been a trend in recent times, for large corporates to ride the wave of the aura that they've created around themseleves. We have the brand name, so even if there are few quality glitches, we can still charge people higher. And why is this possible? Why is it possible for these people to have a business model as successful as that?

Well... The answer is that there are gullible individuals like you and me out there to believe them. We're ready to believe all their big talk about how they 'pioneered' a technology or how they've adapted 'Six Sigma' or other great quality norms to their production lines. What we tend to forget is that in the end if the product doesn't work why should we be trusting them?

I think that there needs to be a change in perception with people. That doesn't mean to say that lets go and get only free software or only buy under dog stuff. I mean as far as usuability goes I'm sure that people will still agree that MS Windows is still easier than Linux. But, the point is don't be duped in by the brand names. Take a product, evaluate it. Make sure that it is giving you exactly what you should be getting. You should be getting value for your investments (by this I mean both time and money.) As I said, no point either wasting money on by a norton or in wasting time cracking it. Its still an inferior product in the end. (Gee I hope I'm not sounding too hard here...).

So people, I call upon you to wake up. Don't take things on face value. Spend a little time to explore the unexplored. If Chris Columbus didn't bother to do that we wouldn't have a booming capitalist country like the US to sell goods in. :-))

"A stitch in time saves nine! And that's the truth!"

Aftermath...

Aftermath... reminds me of slim shady... Well I'm not going to go into any details on that, but just struck me when I came up with that blog titile. LOL.

Well its been a good 4 days now... One might call it the aftermath, but then its been pretty calm. Was kinda hoping for some rain... couple of more days off ya know ;-)). Of course, in a funny kind of way its good to be back. (I think!) Ok so, I got almost a week off and I'm cribbing... I can just hear some of you murmering in your minds (Cribber!!!)

Well its been a slow week. Been cloudy and raining but nothing great. Buses, trains, etc all running well not a 100% normal btu still ok. Like yesterday morning there was this sudden shortage of buses... oh well... But I mean if you look at the traffic you'd think that all was back to normal here. The usual jams and honking on the roads.

Had soemthing weird for lunch.... whole body is hurting... Not sure what the hell is wrong.... Somehow I think I gotta avoid paneer during these next few days...Paneer se fever ho gaya... Sheeeeeeeesh!

Well, I'd type on if my fingers and brain would let me... think I'm receiving the shutd......
...
..
.

mumbai rains pics

First things first, if anyone knows how to change the default font on these blog editors please do comment on this post and let me know!

Next I've put up some pics now that I took with my trust K700i, that has somehow, miraculously remained dry all the way through that trek I just blogged about a couple of minutes ago...

First check this pic:



This is the lead up road to the building where I work.More popularly known as SDF-II. BTW this is like 5 days after the adventure discussed before!

Pic 2: Guess what this is!

So for those who thought it is a river... well it is close to that now... :-)) But it is actually a construction site for a new building in SEEPZ. (Where I work!)

That's all I got for now. Am hoping to get some cool snaps of the railway lines as well... Lets see how that one works out! :-)

A week before tomorrow…

This space was actually reserved for cribbing about the likes of Airtel and other people who had been giving me a hard time over the last month or so. More than them, my so called bad attitude as well… but then as luck would have it I’ve got some better tales to tell which started
off from a week before tomorrow!

Well I guess it was pretty much a normal day, sitting in office for the usual drudgery. Of course there was something unique about it since as soon as I walked in, there was all sorts of preparations going. Got me wondering… What the heck is up?! 20 mins and a couple of emails had me also sitting there getting ready for a conference call. Won’t go into details about what was happening, but the outcome of it was that I was informed that I was now to lead a team.
Time goes on and it makes you wonder how quickly the weather changes. What started out as a sunny day was now really dark with cloud cover and rain lashing down, making you wonder if Mumbai had been engulfed by the ‘dark side’! The rain just kept coming and kind of made one feel that someone up in heaven had left the water running…

Another email later and we were rounding up people to go to Andheri station where we were hoping against hope that we’d get a train. It was to later turn out that this would remain what we thought it would, just a hope!

Everyone was ready to go and we descended the stairs of the building… I saw the waves in the basement hitting the stairs and I thought, “Well perhaps things will be better out on the road.” Wrong again mate! Getting to the road itself involved hiking through water that was flowing and hitting us just below the knees. And once we were out the gate of our complex, it got even worse. We suddenly found ourselves making it to the middle of the road, just to get out of what was now well above knee deep water.

It’s a times like this that people want to have some fun, and I had colleagues constantly trying to pull my umbrella away that I was grasping onto with dear life. Not that it mattered really, since I was anyway already wet from head to toe. That way it probably made sense to close the umbrella, but then I didn’t want my bag getting any wetter than it had to, especially since I had decided to put my phone in it…

Knee deep went to waist deep. People were just sitting in their cars… Made me wonder, will they even reach home today, cause the water wasn’t receding and the cars weren’t moving. It was kind of fun going through the rain, but then we didn’t really know the seriousness of the situation till we hit the highway. That was when we saw it all. Sometimes you wonder what havoc is and trust me, what I saw at the flyover was havoc. People shouting, asking questions, roads to the station being blocked off due to too much water flowing down them, and of course people being carried off from various places. To add to it you had the drops of water pelting down from the sky along with the honking of all the vehicles around…

The group split here. Some needed to head off towards the north, the rest further into Andheri. So we split, those headed north decided to keep to the highway with a hope of getting some transport later on. The rest of us started our way into Andheri. This however, took one detour, since one person wanted to go to Vile Parle, so me and another guy decided to accompany her there and then get back to Andheri since we live fairly nearby to the station. At the second highway junction, the one that went to the west end of Andheri, we bid adieu to two guys and then went on our journey into Vile Parle.

Now, Vile Parle was kind of interesting… empty in-roads and jam packed roads leading to the highway… Hmmm… I wonder why?! Well we walked and walked and walked, oh and did I mention that we walked? J Kept going through all sorts of lanes, not knowing what was lying below the flowing water ahead of us. Was kind of scary actually, especially when your companions decide to tell stories about people getting sucked down open manholes…

So finally we reached the destination and dropped off the person that needed to be dropped off and then started to figure our way back to the highway, which basically just meant following the same roads, but then you know how that is… Oh yeah, and we were like really cold and needed to really needed to answer nature’s howls and pleas to us… I’m not going into any details, but it was relief to have that howling out of my head!

So it was through the gray skies and drops of water that we kept going until we were on the flyover that connects east with west. Again had to go through patches of knee deep water, which, by now was normal. But what I saw from the flyover really amazed me. I just looked down at the railway tracks and there were hordes of people just walking along them, like some exodus. Was amazing, how nothing could kill people’s spirits out there. It was like just keep walking until you reach home!

Upon reaching the west it was now time for me and my friend to go our own ways. I had a simple walk home, but my friend I was to later learn had some adventures which I’m sure he’ll remember forever! Reaching home wasn’t the most enlightening thing, especially since there was no light. Well no light as in no electricity, there were candles and one lamp on… Was a real dampner at that point. Was cold and hungry and it didn’t look like I was going to get a hot shower for some time.

So in the end, there I was sitting at home in the dark, with just a cell phone, that while working, couldn’t call anyone else since no one else’s phone was working. I just had to sit there wondering, what everyone was up to and of course whether me getting into being a team lead had anything to do with the rains! ;-) As for the others, well, whatever adventures they were going to have, I did come to know of them later, but then that’s another story and shall be told another time. For now, this post is already too long and if your still here reading well then… KOOL!

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”

Of MGPTs and oher things....

Its been a long time....since I've been bloggin again... but then I'm always saying this.... So anyway on to the stories.

Well nothing much happenig, just the usual, flunked the MGPT again, had a tough quiz and my project is in dole drums... ok I may sound like I'm cribbing but I'm not... Just getting bugged with all things I'm doing. But basically frustrated with not having come up with the solution to the MGPT problem.

Anyway, probably the best thing week at least according to me is the release of the last installment in the Star Wars saga. Man now that's one amazing saga to follow and I've loved every bit of it. I can't wait to find time to see the last movie. Hopefully I'll get around to it by the next time I blog. :-)) Judging by the immediate reviews it seems to be a really excellent finish to the saga.

I found out this new way of putting songs onto my cellfone. I don't have to convert them to m4a files and then rename them to 3gp. All I do is now convert the files to aac and then run them through a process which puts them within a mp4 layer converting them into mp4 files. Then I just load them on. Its a bit more quicker since the conversion software (dbPoweramp) is a lot quicker than iTunes.

Ok this is getting dry... Me not getting anywhere with my techie geek stuff.. I think I'll call it a day now. Will blog again once I see the 'Revenge of the Sith'!

'The hardest problems have the easiest soultions. Just ask the guys who cleared the MGPT this time!"

Mazee Puneri Sufferchand...

So... Its been some time since I've been on the blog bandwagon... Need to improve on that I guess... But then I'm sure you haven't missed me much. There's been nothing that interesting happening, around really. Gmail last I saw it was at 2150MB. Not bad really. I heard that yahoo is planning on doing 1GB but then my account is still stuck on 250MB.

So now, leaving all that back, let me launch into the story which is what this blog title is all about. Well the story starts with me going to Pune yesterday. Umm that's Saturday in case you missed the timestamp on the blog. So while going I went in this Volvo bus. The bus was nice, air conditioned and had a TV and radio on. Of course once we left mumbai city the radio went 'bonk'!

Anyway it took 2 long hours to get from Andheri to Vashi! Now that is absolutely pathetic, considering that Vashi to Pune also took only 2 hours! So once Vashi was done and we were out near the highway, they turned on a movie. Some sort of 'saucy' dance started off on the movie and I was wondering, what movie is this. Suddenly this image of 'apna mithunda' comes up followed by the title 'Elaan'. E-LAN! Man... was today my luckkky day or what! (sic.) Luckily for me and I'm sure the rest of the passengers in the bus, the CD got stuck during some pathetic actions sequence feature, yes you guessed it, MITHUNDA!!!

So, then we were lucky enough to get another movie on. This one being Mujhse Shaadi Karoge.Now that's a decent movie. Some really light humor to tickle the ribs. Tis a nice movie. But then that also got stuck along the way. My favourite scene in that is when Salmaan pops the champagne cork onto an urn containing the remains of Amrish Puri's mother. The cork goes in slow motion towards the urn and then 'BANG' shatters it into pieces with ash flying all over the place.

Finally, we reach Pune. Needed to get down earlier but then ended up overshooting the place we had to get down and then had to do some sort of back tracking.....

Ok so I hadn't continued this for a long time so I'm continuing with it now.

So after overshooting and then hanging around in the Pune heat for a good part of the day it was time to start making a move back towards Mumbai. Now the idea was to first go to some place called lakshmi market. Now I dunno why this happens to me but then that place was just ultra jammed packed with people and vehicles. And then they have this weirdo system where every alternate road is a one way a different way. Ok so you didnt' get that, well its something like you're going one way along a cross road. The next road parallel to you is also one way but in the opposite direction. Oh and did I mention that the main road for lakshmi market is also one way. That too it was opposite to the direction in which we wanted to go. Sheeeeeeeesh! :-P

So eventually we got stuck on one of those side alleys that allows two way traffic boht up and down parallel to that main road. Its no wonder that road is one way with the number of bikes parked on the sides. Well to cut a long story short, we didnt' find the place we were looking for. Lost our way to where the car was parked and was hot and stuff and getting late to get back to Mumbai. Anyway eventually got out of there and back on to what was the main road towards Chinchwad (hope I got the spelling right there). The more I travelled on those roads there the more I was longing for Amchi Mumbai. Man... it still beats me how people commute there!

Anyway, I then got into this Sumo that was going to take me back. At a Rs.100 per head it was pretty good... although I was in the back seats... you know the ones where they make 4 of you sit nice and squashed up. Well no one else was there yet and I was getting impatient to go. Thought that I'd have the whole back to myself! :-)) Unfortunately, it wasnt' to be and 3 guys came and got in and then we were off. Oh well not quite, cause suddenly 2 chaps decided to go get something to eat! (grumble mumble.... )

Finally we took off! Yipeeeeee! I was going back! Half an hour later we stopped. Why?! Cause some nutty cop decides that he wants to stop us. Some serious haggling going on a few feet away between the driver and cop. We're all sweating in the back of the sumo... Then the driver comes back. Hopes of finally going get dashed as he takes out some documents and goes back. Cop is not impressed. Then this guy comes back and asks 3 people for their ride ka fare. Takes it and then forces that into the cop's hands and then comes back. Cop was trying valiantly to refuse, but then ends up stuffing the notes down his back pocket. Funny this world is, isn't it. So we're off again and finally hit the freeway. Only to stop again for fuel. And then we had to pay up our fares as well. So until then I was on a 'phukat' journey. Short-lived though.....

After that it was pure pleasure. Smooth sailing down the straight highway at around 90kph. Not at all fast, but good enough. Was pretty cool. Saw this open truck. Had no roof, no body, no nothing. Just seemed like a seat perched up on a bunch of rods connected to base with four wheels running. Oh and there was a steering wheel and closed bonnet in front to cover the engine and whatever else goes in there. :-)) I know someone is going to hit me after reading this description. LOL. Then there were these cool tunnels that I missed on the way up since I was caught with 'Mujhse Shaadi Karoge' in the bus. But then at night it looks much better! Now for the best part! There was this indica that decided to really zooooooooom past us. The driver was laughing when he saw that and I was wondering why?! I mean most people are pretty edgy about getting overtaken by what would definately look like an inferior vehicle. Well around 1km down the road I saw why he was laughing. That very same indica was on the side of the road with the hood popped cooling off. LOL. So much for those people reaching Mumbai in quick time.

So then we kept zooming along and I was like cool we'll be there soon! And then, this guy suddenly stops in the middle of the freeway and then some people in front get down. I thought they wanted to relieve themselves, but then to my surprise in 5 mins we were rolling again. Oh well so much for them. Guess there was some villa out there for them to stay in. So this story is getting long and you're getting bored, and well nothing else happened on the way until we reached Mumbai!.

So we finally reached Mumbai. Man what a sight for sore eyes! Felt good to see good old vashi and even better when we were crusing over the Mankhurd flyover. Thought I'd be home by 11 cause it was around 10.15 then. But then disaster. I asked for Mumbai and boy did I get it. Right in Sion at 10.30pm at night there was this huge traffic jam! I needed to go like 10 mins ahead to take a train from king's circle to get to andheri, and it took 1 hour. The traffic was crawling. I missed Mumbai and I got a very good taste of it back that evening! :-)) Man I can never miss this city! LOL.

Anyway finally got down in King's circle and then walked back to the station. The most deserted road you'll ever see. I went up the stairs to the station and man was that spooksville. Its like this dark patch of path with no one there and just this tiny light of the station in the distance. These people were sleeping on the path to top it off. Then I entered the station and bought my ticket. And then to my surprise there are like tonnes of people on the platform, all dressed up as if they've just got back from some party. Whoaa.. I never expected that! And what type of party could there have possibly been in King's circle! Oh well.... that's life I guess.

So finally got the 11.30 to Andheri. Reached there, went home and crashed. Had to get up early again tomorrow for NCST. :-P So that was the trip to Pune, in a nutshell of course. :-))

"Never try to hard, everything is fixed anyway!"

Kaala chasma..

So you've probably taken a look at the post name and are wondering, "what the .... ". Acutally its just a title inspired from this new song that I was listening to on the radio j..j...just now. Go92.5FM rox! And well if you're not from Mumbai then you're missing something! And if you are from Mumbai and dont' listen to this radio channel, then you better go 'GET A LIFE!' ;-)

So gmail... yaaaaaaaaaawn.... has gotten all boring again. And their space ticker is like rolling on a snail mail pace. So now I'm gonna quit commenting on this for some time. Lets see if something interesting starts happening.

Moving on to more interesting things.... I flunked my MGPT again..... for the uninitiated that's a programming test in which you're given 75mins to code and debug a problem and hope that grading machine is verrrry nice to you. The only thing that gets me here is that it was an oh so easy problem and I had to go into writing recursive delete functions and trying to set parent references to null. Forget it I'm not getting into details.But the problem was soooo easy and I messed it up. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!

Well moving on to more interesting things, there is this new site that offers you unlimited email storage! And the title for this goes to Mail2World. Now that is something to pitch against ppl lke gmail and now yahoo who also seems to have entered in on the 1GB bandwagon. Of course, I dunno... @mail2world... sounds kinda tacky. But then unlimited space is like a big bonus now isn't it!

Ok that's it. Was signing up there and you dont' need to have @mail2world. You get to pick from this outrageous plethora of domain names! So dudes! Go get your account now!

Guess what??? I actually got 'venkat@mail2wiz.com' Amazzzzzzzzzzzing! :-)

"Some people just act dumb, some people were born that way!"

Static HTML... give me a break!

Well I noticed this some time ago... just never got time to get around to it. Yes I'm back on the gmail bandwagon again. This time its about the static HTML view. Well... personally I'm neva gonna use it. I mean I just love the way the screen dynamically changes when you open a mail or go to another area of your gmail. I just hate having to see my screen flicker as the new page loads. Unfortunately I have to do that, to read certain emails on other email accounts that offer certain features, which unfortunately the big 'G' is still not offering... Pitty really... But then I just tell myself, patience.. patience!

Ok, but just to get off the rambling, the question I guess is, WHY do they need to provide something like this static HTML view. Well one thing that strikes me is that some people are just, plain stick-in-the-muds and hate change, so they probably kept cribbing for something like their good old mail clients. The other reason I think would have been to cater to the people in this world that are suffering from ultra 'javascript paranoia'. Pitty really that people could suffer from something like that! LOL.

But then that's how it goes folks. You gotta do what gets you the most customers!

Googleeee gone crazzzzzzzzy??? I dont' think so!

Was just checking my gmail again and I must the say the first thing I did was to see how many more Megs of space I've got after a good night's sleep! No new emails :-( and it got me wondering as to how in the wold Google can do this.... So I went to take a shower, its amazing how a nice a shower is to clear the brain, and I came up with this theory.

Google doesn't really give you that much memory up front. Hell I dont' even think they alloted 1 gig for u in the first place when we all went and signed up in the first place. The whole thing is a bit like mp3 music. With mp3s you dont' get all the sounds that were originally recorded, but only enough so that you percieve it to be absolutely correct. Well the same thing goes here with email space. You are made to believe by that indicator at the bottom that you have 1 gig of space. Doesn't really mean that there is whole 1 gig of space alloted on some server for you. ;-)

Now you may be thinking that whoaaaa these guys are cheating me. Not really if you look at it. I mean as long as you haven't stored 1 gig worth of data why should anyone make that available to you. And supposing you had a way to make the data being stored smaller, for your own purposes then again, why should I let you know about it. :-)) Getting the picture now guys?

Ok, let me explain in my favorite bulleted style. What I think is that potentially the following things are done behind the scenes with your emails:

• 1 GB is not pre-allocated to you. Memory is just given to you as long as you haven't exceeded 1 gig.
  
• 1 GB will never be the actual physcial size of your account. C'mon guys, is an mp3 the actual CD size of the music u listen to? Oh and CS guys, have you forgotten all those great compression algos that we studied. What I'm saying is that your data would surely be compressed and kept somewhere to save space under the hood.
  
• To extrapolate further, it might be that a lot of the data is shared. So if someone forwarded you a message, only their mail headers would be newly created, but the original message could potentially be stored only once and just shared around. Here I'm talking about a mail from one gmail account to another.
• Maybe they've become geniuses now and can even compare content across mail boxes and store only a single copy!
  

Ok so I'm starting to go a bit overboard, but then that is what a lot of you perceive gmail to be. Simply crazzzzzy. :-))

But what I simply love is the type of tension and panic these guys must be creating across other companies. I can hear people yelling yahooooooo while in some board room there are people wonderign where the hell did these guys get so much cash to start buying disk space from. Hello, wake up ding a lings they aren't that imbecilic to be buying up disk space to store data this early. I mean get real! Would it be even practical to be implementing those types of hardware systems ... Well I wouldnt' know really... I'm just another programmer who often thinks that there is infinite memory available to me ;-)

But I think there's something to learn here. I mean there are corporations out there who are going on about 'imagination at work' but then ummm.... ok no comments there. But at least its nice to see that someone is actually doing that now. :-))

It may seem impossible that someone can potentially offer you infinity+1 but then if you go back to the matrix you can still hear Morpheus telling Neo,

"This is a system just like any other. It has rules and those rules can be broken. You just need to believe."

Well I'm not going to dwell on this but then think about it.

my FIRST blog

Well this is funny now isn't it! I'm starting my blogging on the first of April1. Jeepers I hope I dont' jinx the whole thing!

Anyways just finished another week at work! Phew! TGIF... Hey that's not a file format btw, its Thank God Its Friday! But then you knew that right?!

Good to see the weekend now. Probably going to be meeting up with some buddies from college and need to get on with small project i'm working on.

So tell me what you think. What you wanna know about.

Mezzzzz gonna catch some ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz