Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Today's Tuesday made me like a cruel high school teacher with a whip on hand ...

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.
  1. 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.
  2. I had to draw the attention of my colleague towards 'Elevator Culture' today particularly to point 9.1. Out of his good intent, he helped one, who in turn brought in a big bunch of others causing an undue twenty second delay for the elevator. We recalled about a joke of Vadivelu and Vijay wherein the former would be working in a small hotel managed by the latter. When a former's villager was visiting him, Vijay advises him that he should feed him as it is a gesture of good hospitality. The villager first refuses but since Vadivelu persisted on his request, the villager agrees but there is an interesting turning point. Instead of just the villager and his colleague entering the hotel, he invites a big bunch of his colleagues (almost a full bus of them) to the tea shop. Vijay was telling him 'I was believing two but now you brought your entire village to my shop for free lunch' and the comedy goes that way.
  3. There was another big hurl of telemarketing call from Citibank claiming that by virtue of having a salary account with them they wanted to provide some crappy financial planning services. I had to 'shoo shoo' them for their disturbance besides my good citizenship gesture of reporting to my cellular operator.
  4. There was another one part of (3). When I reported the Citibank violation to Airtel, I got a gibberish crappy scribble from the customercare. Inspite of me reporting the number he was telling that I am reporting an anonymous call and he wanted me to register an FIR when it was the cellular operator's responsibility to register report and take action. I had to come down on him little heavily and shower some rather powerful hot and blazing thunderous blows for his bad English-language understanding capabilities besides his unethical attitude of shirking his moral responsibilities for which he is paid for by his organization.
I should thank the Nature for putting me the cap of a teacher today. I admit I was rather harsh with a big whip on hand but the bottomline of the story is actually substantiated by the following proverbs "Spare the rod and spoil the child". In Tamil, the proverb is "அடி உதவுவது போல் அண்ணன் தம்பி உதவ மாட்டார்".

Appreciating my friend who showed green flag to the cumulo nimbus clouds to bless the land with its bountiful showers of blessings...

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 வேண்டாம்
ஒரு கருப்பு கொடி காட்டி யாரும் குடை பிடிக்க வேண்டாம்
இது தேவதையின் பரிசு யாரும் திரும்பி கொள்ள வேண்டாம்
நெடுஞ்சாலையிலே நனைய ஒருவர் சம்மதமும் வேண்டாம்

A quick search in my weblog itself showed a similar welcome gesture to the rain in 2008 too but there was an another incident to accompany it. The earlier discussion is here.

Let us wish and pray for more rain and more prosperity all around!

A Research into Samsung GPRS and a divine Tuesday Today

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 same with other interested readers for everyone's benefit.

Friday, July 24, 2009

Our dumb friends looking out for some small assistance ...

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 interested people can extend their assistance to the little dumb friends. In the above advertisement, you may need to prefix +91 (country code for India) for the first number and +91 44 (country code and long distance area access code of Chennai) if you are reaching from outside the nation or outside Chennai telecom local calling area.

As a matter of fact, I also was feeling that we should make it a point to have a recurring commitment in our Todolists to help out such organizations to live through their turbulent times and facilitate them to see and enjoy the blissful merry sunshines quickly. Feel free to share this with your friends, kith and kind too.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

MTC crew fights for fifty paise whereas SBI ATMs crave for one hundred rupee denomination notes

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 (Metropolitan Transport Corporation), 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 side shops for a bountiful commission. Not sure which set of the arguments weigh more in their degree and intentsity of veracity.

While this happens to be the state of the transport corporation, India's premier bank (SBI) has another story to weave and tell. They frequently get to have their ATMs suffering out of one hundred notes and you can see placards hung to this effect in front of their ATMs. You can also check out a Rupeetimes article to this effect over here.

Perhaps each giants in their own spheres of expertise have their own limitations to reveal and a good strategy to untangle the spaghetti. And again, I believe, this is what turns out be a succinct salient testimony of a well-known Tamil proverb "வீட்டுக்கு வீடு வேற வேற வாசப்படி". :)

An accidental keypress that turned out to be an amicable assistance for some one in the elevator

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, incidentally, could turn out to be an amicable assistance for some one.

Total Solar Eclipse Today

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.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The next time you confront an arrogant MTC Crew ...

The next time you confront an arrogant MTC Crew ...

The MTC (Metropolitan Transport Corporation) 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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, then you can contact +919445030516".

I just thought I would share the same with other readers so that everyone can join hands in solidarity in ensuring that the public transport corporation is really beneficial to a fuller extent to the public.

An Acid Test on my Samsung E1410

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 electronic gadgets within the chassis of the mobile. A quick visit to the Samsung service center in the neighborhood and a call to Samsung customer care flagged green that there was not much damage to it. Towards night, for a couple of calls, I recieved complaints from the other parties that there were crackling sound. Towards redressing the remnant maladies, I chose to continue the 'drying exercise' outlined in a few websites pointed by Google.

I ran through a couple of test calls from today morning to a diversified networks and from different zones like congested places, free isolated and quarantined sections of the city and it seems the situation is out of being grim now. The protective cover needed to be discarded because of the intensity of damage. Perhaps towards this is what we have a saying in Tamil which goes like this "தலைக்கு வந்தது தலைப்பாகையோட போச்சு". This saying has a good relation to the epic tale of Mahabharata. When Karna and Arjuna were directly against each other in the battle field, ferocious Karna aimed a very powerful weapon at Arjuna. Lord Krishna, who was helping Arjuna in the role of charioteer, pressed hard the chariot with His thumb and the chariot started immersing a good deal into the earth. Now the sharp arrow which was aimed at Arjuna's head just hit his crown and went away. The peril that targetted his head got diluted and dispersed off with the head cover alone.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

The Elevator Culture

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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 rendering a good service to the organization and to the country in a number of ways:
    1. Conservation of power
    2. Helping out co-users who need to traverse a number of floors
    3. Saving our own time instead of wasting on waiting for the elevator for a trivia crossing.
    4. A small health exercise
  3. When you enter into the lift and if is going to be unmanned (self-help), then push in the button on the lift control panel first. If you forget, you may reach a wrong floor and then waste your time reaching your floor again.
  4. If you are waiting for some one to join you before entering the elevator, refrain from entering it unless the person has reached it rather than entering it and then holding the lift for a long time causing much discomfort to other passengers.
  5. Whilst within the elevator, ensure that you respect other's privacy. This comes in a wide different forms:
    1. Give way to those who would like to alight at different floors before yours. They would request you when the door opens by telling 'Excuse me', but there is a lot of thing which can talk great about you, when you proactively ensure that you are not a thorn in their pathway.
    2. Mind your mobile ringtones. An elevator is a very small place. Loud ringtones may be pleasing for your ears but sound acidic for others who might be nurturing a lot of other confusions and thoughts in their mind. It would also be better to ensure that your mobiles are shown a silence mode whilst within the realm of elevators.

      For truant users, the organization or the building management should ensure that elevators are befitted with mobile jammers so that this discipline is automatically enforced for the betterment of everyone.
    3. Similar to what has been outlined in 5.2, also ensure that group talking within the elevator is minimized to a low volume level if it can not be avoided. This is to ensure the comfort of everyone in the lift besides the safety factor. In the unforeseen event of some safety hazard, your group talking might interrupt with the public address announcement and people might miss it. Even in the normal course of operation, the automatic announcement of floor arrival in the lift might get missed out by people because of group talking.
  6. It would be better to ensure that the elevators are befitted with closed circuit cameras and monitored round the clock so that girls and women folk can use them with confidence. I would like to draw your attention to our previous discussion on 'Safety Tips for Girls'.
  7. Whilst mentioning this tip (6), I recalled about a recent incident in a very famous business establishment in Chennai where I had a chance to witness a diluted eve-teasing attempt on a girl. It was just a few comments passed as if 'on-a-unrelated-third-party' but succinctly understandable by the onlooker that the two guys were only commenting on her. I did grasp the names of the two persons from the ID cards displayed and have also reported to the organization concerned. Not sure whether they were able to address it or my email just went to the 'Trash Can'. But I just thought I would share this thought that people should learn to respect others with dignity. This was the reason, I mentioned the need of 'closed-circuit-cameras' in the elevators in the preceding point.
  8. Avoid overloading the elevator. If there are enough people in the elevators, it is better to leave it and take the next trip in it. That way you help your effort in not only ensuring the privacy and comfort of others but also the safety of everyone.
  9. When the lift has already started closing its door ...
    1. If you are an insider: Avoid pressing the open door to reopen it if you had seen someone rushing towards the elevator. I appreciate your intent of helping other but in that gesture, you are causing a discomfort to a good many who might be within the elevator and a lot of people who are en route in other floors waiting for the elevator to come, not to mention the additional power consumption because of an extraneous mechanical operation of door opening.
    2. If you are an outside: Avoid pressing the switches to unwarrantedly request for the lift to pick you up. It is not a flight and missing the lift is not going to kill you. In another few seconds, the elevator is going to come back again to pick you up and service you too.
  10. Since these days because even residential apartments are fitted with elevators, ensure that your elevators are checked for quality periodically.
  11. Ensure that kids do not get to operate elevators unattended. I would like to draw your attention to an elevator accident which happened in Jains Abhishek apartments in Chennai.
  12. Most lifts have gadgets like emergency phones/intercom and a wide variety of switches/buttons. They have their own utility values. Do not overuse/abuse it for personal casual purposes other that the purpose for which it has been designated for.
I hope that these few tips can help everyone to make the best use of elevators to strenghthen and add color to our lives. Feel free to add more tips as comments for the benefit of everyone and share the permalink to your friends too.

The Craze of Changing Mobile Numbers at their own whims and fancies ...

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 greeted by Airtel telling that the number was beyond the reach of its wings. When I persisted, Airtel did relent and established the connection in the second attempt. Actually, there wasn't any urgency or pertinent tag associated with his yesterday's call. Just like me calling him today, it was again an attempt for a casual communication. However, the tone sounded a little that way. Perhaps, I should thank God for giving me an opportunity to give a good recent example to substantiate and highlight my more recent post on 'Stress Handling Tips'. One of the topics we quickly touched was regarding the mobile number flick that has happened to him that fast. He was telling me that it was unfortunate because of losing his mobile and hence have to forego that number. There are ways in which we can regain the number by having a suitable liaison with the cellular operator. I admit that somethings the call center confuses us but that would save the hassles of reaching the number change message to a lot of friends.

I admit that the process is also tedious. I would like to share an incident on that front too. I remember my other colleague Sengu (aka) Senguttuvan Haridoss too underwent a similar arduous ordeal right at the time of his wedding. It was when we both were in the same old previous organization. He went to the police station in the vicinity to get a Non-Traceability Certificate. He went in the afternoon. He was told that the inspector and writer were unavailable at that point of time. When he visited again in an hour's time, the same old cabbage reply confronted him. In the evening we made a telephone call to the police station and then he went. This time, I accompanied him too. We were shocked to see that there were a good number of people waiting to get similar certificates and the person who needed to sign was sleeping in the room inside. As usual, we had to open up a fifty rupee note [it was 2003 September] to get this process complete and then visit an Airtel outlet to block that SIM and get a duplicate SIM with the same number.

Coming back to the main discussion -- the bottomline of the story is that let us try to ensure number changes are minimized if it can not be avoided. I admit that the number of bureaucratic red tape speed breakers are mammoth and gigantic to a greater extent to bother us. It is upto us to take good care of our assets. When there is a lapse, we would need to pay it with an effort to fill the gap rather than escaping (like by foregoing it etc) and leaving others in the lurch. I am not finger pointing at anyone. At the same time, even in this there is a good moral that we would need to absorb and emulate in our day-to-day life. Assuming it is a business critical number then I admit that as an organization we can have the respective entities like cops and the cellular operators be summoned at our beck and call to get our things done. However, if it so happens on an individual basis a little effort on our side is indeed required to get things move fast and forward.

A Few Quick Stress Handling Tips

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). Let us see about a few tips discussed over each sphere.

  • Work Atmosphere
    • Have a simple Todolist to walk through your deliverables.
    • Stop comparing against others
    • Stretch your Tolerance
    • Refrain from being judgemental on others
    • Avoid Procrastinating
    • Learn to Say 'No'
    • Take a short break and learn to practice 'relaxation'
    • Turn off your mobiles for shorter periods to listen and enjoy silence and peace
  • General
    • Be gentle with yourself
    • Exercise. A simple gentle deep-breath should help you travel miles with confidence
    • Stop comparing yourself with others
    • Talk the stress out
    • Watch out what you eat

I believe a point like 'Stop comparing yourself with others' seems to be sharing between the spheres. Besides this, we also have something called Todolist, which is normally advocated frequently by me in these columns. I hope these small tips would be useful to one and all for a better, peaceful, planned, systematic and harmonious life.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Did I behave like Vidhura today in feeding the skin and throwing off the banana?

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 show to those websites making a radically novel move and in the enthusiastic mode, there was a little tweak.

Pleasant Looking Dashboards

Pleasant Looking Dashboards


Of late whilst casually browsing through my frequently visited websites, I found some good changes in two of them:
  1. Rediff homepage
  2. 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 experience to a greater extent besides serving as a role model for budding web developers on how best to develop a good looking website. Let us join to appreciate and encourage the team who were behind this radical move towards a novel pleasant user experience for high traffic websites.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

My Eyes are getting red. Am I angry? Nay. The spectacles are being migrated to a more pristine, powerful and cool one...

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 threshold point now and today it had escalated to the next higher level. In the morning during the routine cleaning up exercise, one of the lens just came out and developed an irreparable and an irreversible crack. Now, the Todolist item has been actioned upon. Along with, I had joined together two more things besides satisfying my wallet too.

  1. Another quick eye checkup. This time it turns out distinctly a little tangible power change in both the eyes, which should address the inconvenience being suffered hitherto.
  2. Cosmetic touchup to the spectacle eye frames.

The discount offer came in handy saving a good percentage of expenses on lens and frames. The above medical visit and exercise did took a few hours in the forenoon before I could return to work in the afternoon.

As a stopgap arrangement while the previous lens is being addressed of its malady and is being migrated to a newer set, my backup spectacles is being used now. They have a little marginally high power (around six months old) which I would need to endure for a day or two at least. But the transition itself seems to be little tricky. The higher power seems to be causing a little itching sensation and reddening because of prolonged exposure to computer monitors and the high amount of radiation prevailing in the ambience.

No doubt there is no gain without a little pain and effort. A little endurance through this turbulent travail, I hope, should open up green pastures and more brighter window ahead. Wish me!! The caption also travels closely to the traffic lights. There is always the first red light in the traffic light warning you to stop. Then comes the amber (optionally) in high traffic arterial junctions. Finally, you see the green which shouts to you 'Way to go, my darling!'

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Completed my statutory obligation for the assessment year 2009-10 today (ahead of my Todolist directive...)

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 ...

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.
  1. 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)
  2. 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 something called Missed Call Alert subscription active, the sweet little ringtone indicating it is a surestop way to mesmerize you away from the routine chores and enhance the productivity levels.
  3. Voice Recording :: Powerful voice recording of clips from anywhere in the planet filtering out the disturbances in the ambience
  4. Easy to use OpenWave web browser which is fast, flexible and easy to use for GPRS services.

Now comes a few limitations:

  1. The saving of text messages in draft and editing it causes duplicate messages to be created in the folder. You may need to resort to manual removal of old messages.
  2. A little long battery charging time.
  3. Non-availability of the pouch exclusive for this mobile model (in Chennai). Perhaps, I need to wait a bit more for the release in the market.
  4. The 'Cell Info' feature is available as part of 'Broadcast' but takes more battery resources.
    This is my first cut review which I am sharing it out here. As I discover more features, I would keep updating this post for the benefit of all readers. Needless to mention that the advantages and merits of this mobile model outweigh the limitations and it is a good one for everyone.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Good Homer sometimes nods ...

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 birth to a charismatic fictional character out of my doctrine. Any of my webpages might have provided an endorsement to it too. Nevertheless, such transient clouds can not hide the sun besides the fact that I am not the person who would care for grapevines, since I have much more significant things to achieve in my Todolist. But I had to witness a few recent developments wherein my incomplete description of the LD doctrine seems to be disturbing some of my very close proximity too. Hence I just thought I would express the same over here.

I think in the 'Lub Dub' writeup I had just quickly gone through my career progress without giving a strong emphasis on a few points which might be the reason for all sorts of such thoughts. These holes or vulnerabilities, I apprehend, should have been a source for such speculations and apprehensions. This post is an humble endeavor and an earnest initiative to address them and fill the gaps. When I joined my first company, I still remember that even though I was then a fresher, my personal hobby of homepages which started during college gave me an edge. I still remember fresh one of the question asked by then interviewer 'What do you think you would like to do in web technology field or in your career?'. For a fresher and humbly speaking for the then mediocre fresher, the only reply I could see was 'create an internet presence to help others'.
My erstwhile team member ("Prathiba") used to tell that it is upto us to share our expressions as long as it does not hurt others. Not sure what communication gaps inadvertently crept in, a few speculations on my 'Lavanya Deepak' pseudonym had been witnessed by me in more recent times. Hence as a humble propitiation initiative, I am drafting this note besides that except the LD logo all other personal representations are replaced by my favorite Lord. This would propagate across my website, weblogs and social networking websites, wherein I am bringing down my personal preferences in favor of my Lord. I believe, I have actually covered in depth in my 'Lub Dub' editorial and this would again serve as underlined emphasis that LD is none other than my Lord/my conscience/my Lord.

If you call it love, yes it the Love to the Lord ("Bhakthi");
If you call it affection, yes it is Love to my kith and kind ("affection")
If you call it infatuation, yes it is again my Prapatti to my Lord.

Going by my New Year Resolution 2007 I am not pointing fault whatsoever. At the same time, this is a humble endeavor indemnify my 'LD' doctrine against any such grapevines. It is indeed a rarest of the breed to have some one in the chain to match the name and get seeded from thereon. LD also symbolises a lot of other things. Anyone for that matter can not live without his lub-dub.