Personal Weblog of Deepak Vasudevan

Flagging on in an Active Financial Year Well! The Financial Year of our country ranges from April to March. But on personal fronts, we seldom count April and May towards investments and long term planning for simple reasons like these months, we tend to be with our families in cool hill resorts, depending upon the personal budgets, escaping the scorching heat of the Kathiri Veyyal (Hot Summer). Perhaps I would like to recall for the readers, an earlier post of Hot summers in Chennai . Start with June, the kids in the family would be busy getting up ready for school and our attention to the work too would be in full swing and hence our focus to investments towards taxation purposes too.  This time, I have a lot of my friends, ushering in on entering new houses rather than getting constrained to rented tenements. While Sengu sent me an invitation for his house-warming ceremony at Pondicherry, there were a couple of house-warmings of my other colleagues in and around Meda...

A lunch outing with a difference... Today had been a bit busy day. I had a couple of personal bank tasks to see through and while at HSBC, there was a tring tring reminder from my Airtel and I got to recall that there was a lunch party of our team scheduled at Hotel Riveria, Adyar. In a way, I do understand and as far as possible, I avoid exorbitant parties like this for a simple reason, which my regular readers would know from here and appreciate. However, even the most established of Windows Self Defense software in its XP2 avatar, Windows Firewall, was devised to accept and live with some exceptions. While it was taught by the folks and brahmas at Redmond only to ruthlessly drop network packets that were originating from the untrusted sources, it still ought to listen to the immediate user for what should be allowed and what should be dropped but of course with little and more freedom and restrictions. Even today, while recieving the invitation-by-call , my personal policy took ...

Away from the city and into sprawling highways... Since May 17, there has'nt been much of city commuting for me. My workplace has been shifted to Ekkaduthangal, near Guindy, well served by long route Metropolitan Transport Corporation buses plying between Tambaram and Ambattur, complimented by long route services connecting to the other parts of Tamil Nadu. I admit that there has'nt been much of a change from the business hub of T. Nagar to the city communication artery of Jawaharlal Nehru Road linking Kathipara junction to Chennai Moffusil Bus Stand via Ashok Nagar. But from my perspective, the amount of time, I need to waste in the city roads and the acuteness of the city traffic snarls and impact of the time wasted can be considerably reduced, since either ways of commuting either through the Velacherry suburb or Tambaram GST road reduces the commuting time or improvises it at least by a significant 35 per cent. I think this should be a significant number at least considerin...

Radha Kalyana Mahotsavam Wedding is a very holy and an important event in anybody's life. It is generally treated as an important milestone in one's life. When this is a case for normal human being, if it comes to the point of wedding of the Lord, it would be a greatest pleasure and boon for the entire universe, beyond doubt. Is'nt it? With this in mind, our ancestors were keen in celebrating Kalyanotsavams for the Lord in various temples and places. Kalyanotsavam is very famous in Tirupathi and even to book the same, you need to have a slot booked months before with the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams. When it comes to Lord Krishna, He is better known and associated with his consorts Lordess Radha (known as Radhika in Hindi) and Lordess Sathyabama (who is considered as a form of Lordess Earth). Many people celebrate the wedding of the Lord with Radha, and this is observed as Radha Kalyana Mahatsavam . I was staying for sometime in Sarada Nagar, Virugambakkam before moving ...

Routine Triplicane Temple > With a difference Monotony always presents and solicits drudgery and boredom. With examinations around the corner, the weekly triplicane schedule has been temporarily shuffled to Saturday for two weeks and then it would be restored back after. And my yesterdays' temple trip was very fruitful in ways in more than one and in a way, it seemed to be an invitation from the Lord too. I could not go to Kanchipuram Garuda Seva for a specific number of years since this or that there would be some schedule. This is inspite of the fact that the same Garuda Seva can be worshipped in all Varadaraja Temples at the same time not alone in Kanchipuram. Some of the other Varadaraja Temples include the following, the list of which I would like to share with the reader. This is the list of the temples in Chennai. I would like to request the reader to share the list of similar temples elsewhere for the benefit of other readers. (Chinna) Kanchipuram (aka) Athigiri Aminjik...

Newer Novel Nourishing Regime in Tamil Nadu There seems to be an unwritten note for Tamil Nadu that the same party never gets elected in Tamil Nadu for two continuous tenures. In a way, this seems to carry a lot of advantages for the state too. Perhaps a significant among them are: The current state administration can not get deep rooted with any of their malpractices since that would come to limelight in the very next tenure. No Monopolies. Competitive Advantage to the state and Strategic Positioning of the state in Economic and social market. The current offering is for DMK , to be lead by Dr. Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi and they have planned to organize the swearing in function sometime tomorrow in Nehru stadium, Chennai . There are but a lot of responsibilities, deliverables and expectations lined up before the new administration. Well. I would'nt start discussing into the internals of the previous administration or the maladies associated with the same. Let us wish our people...

Network Subsystem Troubleshooting My BSNL Landline seems to be on an unannounced summer vacation since yesterday. While contacting BSNL fault booking numbers through Airtel Mobile, even the number in its own exchange is getting denied with the message 'This number is not serviced by this exchange'. Then I devised an innovative idea of putting somebody else to call the Sangamam Call Center, Chennai servicing BSNL customers and have the fault booked. I was particular to have the fault booked at the earliest since otherwise, the queue number would be very back and proportionately, you need to give more undertable gratification to the line man to address your issue. My friend, Seshadri , immediately called Sangamam but he, too was facing some issue in getting the customer care since only the hold music was going on for a long time, I guess. After repeated attempts, we got the docket number addressed. I have asked my other colleague in Selaiyur, to have the line man come over t...

"Bharat Darshan" on Wheels Aspiring to take up a tour of all important places in India but feeling daunted since the cost involved is quite prohibitive and so much of pains taken that overwhelm the pleasure of tourism. The Indian Railway Ministry has brought in a concept tour called Bharat Darshan , the train arranged for the same starts from Madurai and visits as many tourist spots in India, reaching upto Chandigarh. They are planning upto three days halt at Chandigarh where you are given an option of taking a local sight seeing tour and nearby places or pay a premium and take up a dedicated trip to Kulu-Manali . I came across this news in Tamil Murasu , a leading evening daily in Tamil Nadu. I am not able to locate this information in IRCTC and hence giving the news clip address of Tamil Murasu here . If some other reader has an English version of the same, please feel free to share the same with others as a comment.

Cops Snore is an Eye Sore The most important business hub of Chennai -- T Nagar, which contributes to so many crores of business to umpty number of people and revenue to the government. But is this an internationally praise worthy location in Chennai. When you do a bit of introspection, I think, it is far from truth. Ranging from the length and spagetti traffic snarls to the more unrelenting cops that support undertable revenues from everyone ranging from small traders to vehicle owners, I think T. Nagar is uncrowned in the negative perspective of Indian economic development. Adding to the woes, is the T. Nagar bus stand which has a cherished heritage of making the passengers to practice marathon since there would always be two buses in the same route waiting and the bus crew would be more happy to anchor a maraton or a musical chair contest to make the passengers dart between the buses. I think, some advertisors can take this opportunity, to sponsor a 'T Nagar Maraton', and...

Elections in full Swing in Tamil Nadu Polling in Tamil Nadu begins with full swing today. Thanks to the Election Commissions' more stringent security measures and systematic observation of procedures for free and fair conduct of polls, exercising the franchise for the citizens is a breeze. I went to our booth at New Prince College near Medawalkam, on the Velacherry - Tambaram road. I guess, this would be 5th poll vote that I am casting. About there in Valasaravalkam. One in Mambalam. Some of the salient features witnessed at the polling station are: Tighter and surprise security checks that were being planned has instilled fear in the minds of candidates and as well polling/presiding officers. And hence you can hardly witness the usual fish-market crowds that you can see near the ballot room. The normal police behavior of resting in the corner of the road was observed. Huge traffic chaos near even the mofussil booth and the police pickets posted only to remain as silent and mute sp...

Novel Wizard to Control Telephone Bills While browsing Orkut Communities, I came across a website called YourBillBuddy . It is based on a registration and once registered, it tries to analyse your telephone bill (either landline or wireless) and suggests you different plans and options currently available with the same or different providers, which would try to bring down your mobile phone bill. Some of the providers have'nt seemed to have tied up yet and there might be an occasional 'We do not have any preferred tariff plans' message.  But, I think the Recommendation Wizard is a novel and an innovative one to visit.

Weblog with a new face and presentation ... There has been a couple of small technical glitches in this weblog. I have addressed the same and also have applied a couple of new features and upgradations. Now you can see a new HowToBeAHero link and along with some advanced web analysis applications. I guess the new template update should also be relatively more faster in presentation and rendering. Do post your suggestions towards the same.

In the wireless world with Nokia 6030... Yesterday afternoon, I was feeling bit sleepy and just thought I would go out and come since I had some bank work. After completing the bank work, since Univercell was quite near, I was visiting it and my old mobile Nokia 3315 had some problems, I had a plan of having it upgraded to some new model.  After a brief tour of the showcased wireless solutions, I met my sweetie, Nokia 6030 , with a more innovative embedded Java solutions, worldwide web connectivity with GPRS and an entertaining FM world. I firmly believe and emphasize that the plan which had been postponing for a while got materialised and I had purchased only with the blessings of my little friend, Sabarimala Swami Saranam Ayyappa . Airtel seems to have brought in with an innovative free GPRS solutions and I chose to activate them. During the course of the activation process, there were some nice discoveries too. It is heartening that automatic mobile handset d...