Personal Weblog of Deepak Vasudevan

Today's Tuesday made me like a cruel high school teacher with a whip on hand ... Today had been making me to look a little aggressive and appear like a cruel (though not wicked anyway :)) and a harsh high school teacher with a long whip on hand to penalise the bad guys. As a day broke out, I had a few social concern activities that needed my attention. A truant telemarketer allegedly from some underworld vacation club kept pestering for some membership. I have never been carried away by such mundane distractions as one of my previous post describes my personal preference . And this telemarketing 'solicitation' really made me to 'mark him in my Todolist' to teach them a lesson. They also were vehemently violating the NDNC norms and as a good citizen, I would need to help the statutory administration to book them. I would like to draw your attention to my Views and Reviews post of this incident over here . I had to draw the attention of my colleague towards ' Elev...

Appreciating my friend who showed green flag to the cumulo nimbus clouds to bless the land with its bountiful showers of blessings... Today afternoon I just observed my friend who just came in and he walked in with a good green umbrella. Umbrellas normally are imagined with black color. These days it had been a growing trend to have a lot of cartoon or other fascinating designs on the umbrella. And at least in this part of the world, green which is supposed to be synonym of flourishing state and demonstrates lush green nature has unfortunately become equated to an actor called 'Ramarajan' who has been acting mostly in the roles of farmer. There is a common saying for green color as Ramarajan Color . Under these circumstances, a plain vanilla green color for the umbrella naturally raised the eyebrows of us and most of us were very much inspired by it. I was fondly reminded of the following lines of En Swasa Katre in praise of the rain: மழை கவிதை கொண்டு வருது யாரும் கதவடைக்க வே...

A Research into Samsung GPRS and a divine Tuesday Today Today morning even when I reached home quite late night yesterday around 2 AM, there were interesting developments. I was just trying to figure out if I could get a small wallpaper of Sri Ayyappa in my Samsung E1410. It did have GPRS capability. But when I browse to the website I could see the images but not ViewSource it or Save Images from the OpenWave browser onto the storage section. A little research into Samsung E1410 gave me a clue that it supports JPG images of 128x128 dimensions only. Thanks to Samsung Customer Care Helpline 044-30308282 for clarifying the same. I used the wallpaper image from Sabarimala website over here and with the help of Media-Convert pushed it to my mobile. The first attempt failed because of huge dimensions and the mobile was just showing up a question mark. I had to then use Resize2Mail website services to resize it to 128x128 and then push it again to the device. Just thought of sharing the sa...

Our dumb friends looking out for some small assistance ... A whilst back I was reading through a series of information about Animal Welfare Protection Trust which provides shelters to orphaned street dogs in Chennai in Go-Ergo . This organization operates from a small house near Vijayanagaram (off Medavakkam Koot Road; towards Tambaram and a few yards before Santoshapuram bus stop). Go-Ergo had been kind enough to run this appeal right in Page 2 on the right top of the magazine. An Appeal The Animal Welfare and Protection Trust (AWPT) is making an urgent appeal for milk powder. The Trustees use close to 25 kg of milk powder a month for the animals in their shelter. A regular 1 kg donation will help them through the recession that has reduced their funds in recent months. If you can contribute, get in touch with Mrs. Padmavathy at 9962968265 / 22781381 A screenshot of the appeal from Go-Ergo is attached below: I just thought I would share this with other interested readers so that inter...

MTC crew fights for fifty paise whereas SBI ATMs crave for one hundred rupee denomination notes If you have been to Chennai and had an opportunity to take a quick ride in MTC ( M etropolitan T ransport C orporation), you should have got to know about the common argument that the bus conductor has with the passengers -- the need and demand for fifty paise and denial of fifty paise change tendering to the passenger. This is a common incident in every trip and every bus of MTC here. The conductors contend that though MTC gives and seeds them initially with some change at the start of the trips, it is too hard to maintain it through for the trips since passengers give hardship to them by tendering one hundred rupee note for a paltry two rupee fifty paise ticket and they are running out of change very soon. They are hence running into change deficits even before the first trip completes. On the passengers side, there is an allegation that MTC conductors trade off the changes to the road sid...

An accidental keypress that turned out to be an amicable assistance for some one in the elevator This post turns out to be another one on the ' Elevator '. A few minutes back I had to use the elevator to reach my floor. .No sooner did I enter the elevator than when I had to exercise my requirement of punching in the floor of my choice, my fingers tripped and slipped a bit and I keyed in another floor which was the one below my destination. Now I had again enter my floor. It was little crappy thing because the elevator now had to stop unnecessarily in a floor with no utility value, wasting its mechanical energy, electrical resources and loss of time for waiting crowd besides the passengers. But there was one good thing happening. The guy who entered next to me was gleaming with a pleasant smile because he observed the floor of his choice had been already preselected for him. So a little down feeling instantly got supplanted with a pleasant smile that even an inadvertant incident...

Total Solar Eclipse Today Today Indian skies sported a total solar eclipse from the wee hours of 0530 till about the normal breakfast time of 0730 hours. I hope everyone would be aware of this longest solar eclipse and people have also been recieving a lot of junk mails on TSunami alerts in this perspective. As normally used to be, today afternoon seems to be reeling with too much sultriness and high amount of perspiration. It is also said that the sun rays immediately after occurences of eclipse and similar natural phenomenon contain high amount of harmful ultraviolet rays. There is also a belief that pregnant woman should refrain venturing out particularly during the periods of eclipse for the wellbeing of the mom and the baby.

The next time you confront an arrogant MTC Crew ... The MTC ( M etropolitan T ransport C orporation ) of Chennai is really doing a great work nowadays in improving the infrastructure of the buses and uplifting the transport face of the nation. Currently, the major eyesore for any onlookers with reference to the drivers and conductors are the following: Drivers are too arrogant. They don't pick you up at the designated bus stops and/or make you run and the board the bus. A similar stance applies for getting down too. The conductors too don't give change in most of the cases. If the exchange is 50 paise then there is a high probability that you may need to forego it. Today whilst commuting from Velachery to Guindy in D70 Express, I found a new placard announcement that is being put by MTC in the bus (right at the entrance/exit doors on top of it from inside). It reads as follows: (translated into English) "If you witness untoward unprofessional gesture from the bus crew, the...

An Acid Test on my Samsung E1410 It seemed to be a testing Monday morning. I was actually having some hot coffee around 11 AM. Somehow a tripartite infiltration of incoming calls landed up on all the ringing devices on my desktop. Not sure which one to prioritize first for a moment and the moment was almost reeling through an impasse decision to come up. Though I could manage the invitees a bit, my 'thirsty mobile' grabbed a good bit of the caffeinated drink. Fortunately, since there was a protective cover on it, the amount of liquid that penetrated was minimized to a greater extent. The rest of the day vested me with an additional onus of 'recovery process' for the same. Whilst Airtel managed to handle with elegance through its Missed Call Alerts facility, I had disassembled the mobile to allow it to dry at least till 7 PM. After that I needed to do quick visual check up of the same to ensure there are no visible water droplets which might rot the fine delicate electro...

The Elevator Culture In these days of skyscrapers mushrooming throughout the city , we can witness elevators (often called lifts ) common in any buildings to help us ascend or descend the multiple floors with ease. Often to accomodate for a huge crowd, the business establishments plan out for at least five to six lifts in the lift lobby. There are a few tips that I just thought would share from the basic observations on what can be deemed as a good lift etiquette and to help other co-users too. Most lifts would have separate directional buttons to request lift arrival in the direction of our travel. Ensure that we press the appropriate button rather than trying to use a finger-jugglery of banging both. If the floor that we are trying to reach is just the neighbor floor to which where we are positioned at (say 1st floor and we are in ground floor), it would be a better deal to take the flight of stairs rather than using the services of the elevator. In this context, we are actually rend...

The Craze of Changing Mobile Numbers at their own whims and fancies ... Yesterday morning there was a telephone call from Aravinthan Narayanan , who was my technical lead in my one of my previous organizations , which is currently no more and is defunct now. The number flashed instead of the name so I was curious on the same. He seemed to be in a kind of hurry and was asking me 'Do you have the number of Sasidharan?'. Sasidharan (aka) Sasi was our the then program manager and currently working with iSoft . Since for a significant time, he hasn't been in my closest circles (including email), my GC chipped in and had reclaimed from immediate use. I had no other way other than to regret unavailability of any contact information pertaining to him. He conceded to the same but added that the number which was flashing was his most correct and recent contact number . Well! Today being sunday, I just thought I would give a casual call and say 'Hi'. The first call to him was...

A Few Quick Stress Handling Tips These are machine-days wherein day in and day out, from dawn to dusk, we are mostly focussed towards multitude of deliverables of varying magnitudes. The intensity of each of them besides the speed and necessity of the same inadvertantly makes a feeling of uneasiness or the magical word called 'Stress' or 'Tension' to creep in. This applies unanimously to everyone. Whilst casually cleaning up my mailbox, I just found out a newsletter (which was a forwarded and forwarded note and part of an email chain) which enumerated on a few quick tips on resilient stress handling tips. I normally delete off email chains but this one remained clipped to my 'Saved Notes' folder since it had some good topics that were being discussed. I just thought instead of having it private to my personal mailbox, I would have the same shared across with others for the benefit of the world. The stress handling tip bifurcates into two arena (Work and General)...

Did I behave like Vidhura today in feeding the skin and throwing off the banana? An interesting incident happened whilst I was posting a testimonial on the new UI of Rediff and Yahoo Mail. I took the screenshot of Rediffmail and using Microsoft Paint tool, I tried to ensure that only the screen within the web browser area is clipped off and saved. But in an overly enthusiastic mood, I dropped the clipped picture to save and upload the remnant only. I only realised the folly after the post appeared in the negative. It was similar to Vidhura's incident wherein he and his wife were serving Sri Krishna and in their exuberant love for Sri Krishna, after peeling the banana skin threw away the banana and fed him with the banana skin. You can check out the story here . In anyways, the underlying concept or bottomline is an optimistic and a positive one. In the story, Vidhura demonstrates his extreme love for Lord Krishna. In my experience, it was a token of appreciation that I wanted to...

Pleasant Looking Dashboards Of late whilst casually browsing through my frequently visited websites, I found some good changes in two of them: Rediff homepage Yahoo Mail homepage Rediff homepage used to be cluttered with so much of packed and stuffed information. Adding fuel to the fire, there used to be at least half a dozen popup windows that hit and run along my task bar. At least for a few days now, the homepage looks appealing with a simple nonscrolling homepage and a two column layout. Yahoo mail too, after logon, now addresses me first informing the messages count awaiting to be read, actioned upon and then goes to brief about the various news and other stuff. Way to go. Let us hope that the same style catches up with more websites. I would like to see if IndiaTimes too adopts this. They have a very huge pile of links and one would be virtually lost in the hyperlink jungle, if not careful in his navigation enough. These simple steps, for sure, would really enhance the user expe...

My Eyes are getting red. Am I angry? Nay. The spectacles are being migrated to a more pristine, powerful and cool one... About six months back, my colleague ( Pradeep Joe Felix ) was asking me why is my spectacles little looking imbalanced. I used a little trick to adjust the screws to save budgetary expenses and by taking help of a local optician in my area. About two months back, I attended a eye check camp from Dr. Agarwal . I got some clues regarding my inconvenience in the vision because my power levels has diminished whereas my spectacles were little high powered. I had enqueued a task like 'Visit to my optician' in my Todolist . But it had been lingering around there for a while without much realisation. To support and encourage the visit to the optician, interestingly, I got a post card mailer from him too announcing some good offers and discounts on various spectacles and frames for a limited time period around a month back. It looks like my Todolist has reached the th...

Completed my statutory obligation for the assessment year 2009-10 today (ahead of my Todolist directive...) This year's income tax filing returns falls due on July 31, 2009. For the past few years, I have been clinging onto eFiling to avoid those serpentine crowds, hot suns, dusty lanes, drowsy and dizzy ambience of the IT environment. Besides this, a little effort from my part towards serving as a role model to conserve environment and move to consume less paper and thus support 'Save a Tree' campaign. My Todolist was indicating July 14th as a cutoff date and July 17th to have the same submitted to the ITO. But even today both the tasks are complete and I was able to courier them to the Bangalore Income Tax Department office at Electronics City Post Office. A little pat on the back for myself as a token of self-encouragement to see and have things moving forward with the same vigor, enhancing productivity levels and making the environment more harmonious.

An innovative weblog by Saranathan translating 'Kannanin Aaramudhu' into English on everyday basis ... Sometime back I have announced about the television programme called ' Kannanin Aaramudhu ' by Sri. U. Ve. Velukkudi Krishnan. Today I came across an innovative weblog by Shri Saranathan which is presenting the English translation of everyday's telecast and with pictures of the divyadesams/places that are shown in the telecast. For those who miss out a particular telecast, this weblog would be very handy to fill the gap. You can check out his weblog over here .

E1410 -- The most good companion to enhance productivity levels ... A month back, I have posted about my intention and the then scheduled purchase of a new mobile E1410 from Samsung. You can check out the permalink over here . After a month long sojourn with the same, I just thought I would share a few good things of E1410 and a little limitations that came on the way. Here is the review of the same. Multiple Text Messaging formats. Unlike the Abc and Dictionary On format of Nokia, this has got the following formats: T9 Dictionary, Abc, Numeric, Hing (Not sure what is this still. Yet to play around and figure it out) Call Reject List :: No longer you need to switch off phone from any of your circles for time being just because they are bugging you repeatedly for something. You can tentatively add those numbers to 'Call Reject' list so that it would highlight you of the incoming call without ringing but flashing a message like 'Reject Number '. Besides this, if you have...

Good Homer sometimes nods ... I have always been staying aloof off all politics. At least since my New Year resolution 2007, this further confidently and emphatically extended to ensure that I do not act as a thorn in another's path. If I can help, I endeavor my best to assist them else I just choose to stay off. The core of it is to make people around me to smile. Even when I ensured this throughout for the successive third year, the destiny shook my mental tranquility yesterday quite turbulently. Perhaps, it was the wish of the Lord to give me a small test to me. :) You might have already read the reason behind my 'pen name' from my personal website over here . There had been times when I have been hearing from the diversified associates in varying degrees of proximity to me; fabricated stories by virtue of my pen name. And again just to see the then event is made colorful and to see a smile on others face, I have been letting it go that way and in that process giving bi...