Migration!

As of today, I'm moving over to my own domain, http://www.hthite.com.

 

What does this mean?

The blog moves as well. It can now be accessed from http://blog.hthite.com. So update your bookmarks.

 

The blog at Blogger will be officially deprecated as of this post. Do not post comments at Blogger, because they will not be read. You can instead post them at the blog on my web-site. All the old posts and their comments have been migrated as well.

 

RSS and Atom are available as well.

 

Please bear with me while the blogroll and other links are updated.

 

What more should I expect?

Well, a lot. Apart from the blog, the web-site will integrate a lot of my scattered things. Expect a list of projects, a wiki and some great time-pass on the web-site -- in due time.

 

Adios, Blogger. You served me well. [At last count, Daily Blogs! had over 3500 unique hits.]

Simple Pleasures

These are the small things in life, you know, like wanting to have a chocolate, or watching your favourite soap without interruptions, or taking a scented candle-lit bath, or making that perfectly timed morning schedule... Whatever small thing it is that makes you happy.

 

They are not that difficult to arrange, are they?

 

And yet, deny them, and you have one cranky and chronically depressed person.

 

So, what do we suggest to these deprived people? To not sweat the small things.

 

Unfortunately, the small things are what makes us tick... They are all that life is all about. Sure, bigger things happen. And they affect us in ways that we can't even imagine. That is, perhaps, the very reason why we don't care so much about them. But the small things, they are always gnawing at your sub-conscious.

 

So here's a piece of free advice, get the small things sorted out. Satisfy your simple pleasures. Live life.

Sauce Squirter!

One of the best product bundles that I've bought in recent times is this:

 

Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Now with a free Pump!

 

Basically, you attach the reusable pump on the neck of the bottle, and gone are the days of shaking the bottle, tilting it and then tapping at its bottom. Just push and out comes smooth rich Heinz!

 

(No, I don't get any monies for doing this, really!)

 

Of course, some may argue that the traditional sauce pouring technique will now become extinct and blah, but never mind those. I love it this way.

 

And, as I found out on the first day, if you press a little too hard, it just squirts the sauce... To insane lengths. Much to my discomfort. Had to clean up the wall... So, consider yourself forewarned. Though that reminds me of possible use during Holi.

 

Other manufactures might want to reconsider their bundling strategies, while I have some chips and sauce.

What I like about the Internet

is the (almost) permanent availability of whatever is put into it.

 

Once stuff is recorded into it, it stays forever.

 

I wish I could say the same of everything I experience. Ever since I begin experiencing it. And that be given an option to archive it. Even when I can't decide, somebody should do it for me, and if required, allow me to discard it, if I feel so. And even then, not truly discard it, but store it somewhere, so if I ever wish I want to get it back, I can.

 

Of course, that does not mean it should be accessible to all. Only me. Because it's my experience.

 

Probably that is why I like Google Talk so much. It not only records, but makes indexes it and makes it searchable as well!

 

Google Life, anyone?

Limits and Triggers

It amuses me to no end, that people just won't stop looking when they see something disgusting, or stop doing something when they know it's horrible...

 

(Well, actually, there are a few nut cases that do stop, but this isn't about them!)

 

I think there's an inane curiosity among us. To find out stuff that we either know we shouldn't be looking at (*), or just to explore how much more you can take.

 

Only that can explain the popularity of web sites such as Rotten and Adequacy. Or how teenagers (or what is it now, eight- and nine-year-olds?)come to know about sex, and masturbation. Which is still kind of okay, but how do you account for pure disgust?

 

Is it a competition of some sort?

 

And after a time you get desensitized. You need something all the more powerful. Every single time. And yet you want to do it... Find out how much more you can take it.

 

Peeking down your best friends top (assuming it's a gal)... Is that disgusting? Or are you one of those who love pain? Or is it catching someone dig their nose? What sets you on? Or off? What's your trigger?

 

It's everywhere. Sleep deprived as I am, I'd still one last story on /. or watch that one last episode of House. Or post to this blog. Somehow I will always manage to convince myself that I'll take care of whatever it is to be done tomorrow, and most times, I do. But why this urge to see how less I can sleep?

 

Is it temptation?

 

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(*) = On a larger perspective, who decides what we should look at, and what we should do?

 

[This is a repost, since the original post was eaten by Blogger. No donuts for you as well. :-P]

The Office

I don't know what is it with British comedies, but they are the best that there is. Hats off to BBC. Yet again!

 

The two seasons of The Office, six episodes each, are a different kind of comedy that takes time to get in the zone (because of the unusual format of the mockumenatry)... But once you are there, you are hooked.

 

The two Christmas specials are especially beautiful... Make you wonder why they did it the way they are doing it, and if they really wanted to do it. It reaches levels... And they are not superficial, somehow. I for one, almost felt sorry for David, and Tim and Dawn. Of course, you can say that it all ends well, but that's not the point.

 

I wonder if there is an association somewhere. Actually am fairly certain that there is one, but haven't explored it yet.

 

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One thing is for sure, I'd love my office to be like theirs. Probably not with the characters, though.

Stupid Template

I absolutely detest the off-white on black Blogger template seen here, for example.

 

If I knew how to, or had the courage to, I'd have killed the person who made it.

 

Kills my eyes! Oh my eyes!

 

Opera User CSS mode, here I come!

 

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Nothing personal with that particular blog, just that I ran into it.

Battling with the System and Other Nonsense

The past week has been the worse computer week in my life.

 

First, for some reason that's known only to the Sony people who made my DVD Drive and the Moser Baer people, I managed to waste 25 DVDs. They all burned fine, only I can't read data off them. That's like two months of downloads!

 

Then, my antivirus (Kaspersky) is about to expire. And I get a trojan. Don't ask me how, but I managed to catch one as well. That basically screwed up my Windows installation.

 

Very well, since it was already over a year old, I decided to install another copy of Windows in parallel on my other hard disk (so that I won't have to install all my programs again, at least for the time being, it being viva season and all!). Only, I can't, because my partition table is, for some weird reason, invalid.

 

Hmmm... So, I get this shiny new Maxtor 250 GB SATA drive from a friend (thanks, buddy) and decide to backup my 160 GB on to that. Only, stupid drive has write rates slower than a floppy! For some reason, the drive won't have it's write cache enabled, and so it takes two days for me to copy everything to it. Very well.

 

So, then I format and everything, and the next morning, Yahoo! and Outlook Express decided to tick me off... Apparently, OE reset itself, and so wanted to download all of my mails, right from 2005. That's around 7862 messages, a total of 506 MB!

 

The forces have combined! So, I first try to contact Yahoo! And the morons at their service center know nothing, and kept sending alternating between two standard responses, even when I try to reason out with them that my problem isn't solved!

 

Then, I tried to transfer them to another Yahoo! account, since I wanted to retain all my mail for web access, except Yahoo! won't allow me that. And Gmail won't collect external mail from Yahoo! So that sucked. I tried some long shot methods, and ended up getting so frustrated, that I deleted all my web mail!

 

And Yahoo! just lost a user. And Gmail gained one. Because Gmail does wonderful stuff with POP3. It pops mails that I send from the web interface, and also adds to the web interface the mails that I've send from my client. No other service does that, AFAIK... Wonderful!

 

Anyway, things are slowly returning to normalcy (yes, I know that's not even a word). But vivas start tomorrow, and project report is yet to see the light of the laser printer...

Not All Companies Provide Bad Service

In fact, some of them are rather excellent.

 

In today's mass-fabrication-and-not-enough-quality-testing world, most manufacturers accept that out of every thousand products pieces, a few will bomb, choke and die. And rather than eliminating these broken products at their assembly line, they still ship them, and expect the consumer to report to them that these have gone bad. They have set up extensive networks and customer care offices to take care of exactly this. And apparently, it is cheaper this way, for them.

 

So, I'm one of the heavy buyers of said products, and run aground when they give up on me. So far, I've had it with Nokia and Intel (and UMAX, but don't even get me started on that one)... One was horrible, and the other just bearable, but then comes APC, the leading manufacturers of UPS and such stuff...

 

Well, my UPS started acting up, and would not do it's job, which isn't so good for the PC. So I decided to report it to APC, since they very generously had given me a two year warranty. First off, I get their local number from the internet. And call a certain Mr. Dominique. He was very kind and helpful, and redirected me to their Bangaluru call centre, which had a toll free number.

 

I called them up. The customer support executive there had a very hard to understand accent, but that's ok, I can work with that. He did his thing, and verified the product. Except, from his records, it was out of warranty. So I explained to him that I had a bill with the purchase date that was less than two years old. He agreed to log the call, and asked me to fax the bill.

 

Which I did not, since I really had no time. Then one fine day, after about two, actually, APC calls me up, asking me if I was available that day for the UPS check-up. I asked them to come the following day, and one chap from their service partner in Goregaon did indeed appear at the door step.

 

He thoroughly checked the UPS, the battery and decided (with very little intervention from me) that the battery was faulty. And here's the best part: He had got a spare with himself, replaced mine, and resolved the issue.

 

For free.

 

(Yes, I know it was the warranty. But still. Some others don't. Or won't.)

 

Wonderful!

 

Now if only every other company decides to work like them, the world would head a tad towards Utopia.

 

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Disclaimer: I do not hold any association with APC, except that of a happy consumer.