Welcome to U.A.E

Landed in Dubai on the 11th Morning. After a 4 hour visa fiasco where I was trapped at the airport, finally got out, got some home made food and some sleep. On the way to duabi had a one day stopover in Paris, the damn place is very "touristy" but has an awesome public transport system. On the contrarty, Dubai claims to be very touristy, is also unreasonably expensive, and has a public transport system which rivals Bangladesh's public transport. Ofcourse they dont have trains, have few buses, have lots of traffic and also have this


This is what i got when I tried accessing flickr to upload my photos of the Paris trip. I guess seeing my own photographs is against the Shaikh's laws. Oh yeah this is an easy way to see porn, right?
Now Have to figure out which site's allow me to bypass this stupid proxy, an exercise that I indulge in ever year around this time.

State of Indian Cricket

As a true blue Indian, it is my duty to comment on the state of cricket in India or the circus that we call the cricketing establishment in India. I am also one of the arm chair pundits who wants to give his two cents on the issues surrounding Indian cricket. There is a good blog here. The guy articulates his points well, it is fun to read. His blog is featured on the first page on TOI. Mostly honest opinion,but not necessarily correct, but he is passionate about cricket like millions of indians. So am I and I have a solution for this shitty mess. Watch Football, NFL and college football. Now they are not your typical whole day affairs but just 3 hours long with enough breaks for beer etc and they are well played, better managed.I guess there is another word for all this, just more "Professional". I know back in India, people dont get NFL, but people got interested in F-1, so why not these? Plus it fits the desi pysche perfectly. Lots of aggression taken out on the screen with big hits. Just think WWE with pads and REAL hits!. Will miss watching games when I go to India this time.
Whats going on with Indian cricket is like watching a bloody soap opeara, just that this one is more gay than any other on television.
Man I seriously need a few million dollars to start my own cricket team Anyone ready to invest?. Havent had the time to write about how such a team can be managed as a business affair, but have a few ideas that I am going to pen down soon. I guess shouldnt say "pen down", 'cos i cant really pen it on my laptop?
May be I can, but then it will spoil the screen and the keyboard.........Hmmmm but I digress.

The Abu Salem Case

Recently a lot of hype has been created reagrding Abu salem, the gangster extradit from Portugal with his muse Monica Bedi. Depending on which Indian newspaper you read, there are different versions of confession statements that man has given to the police. Whatever his statements are do we really know he was invovled in the Bombay blasts of 93'. I am not trying to defend the man here as you will see later. The police has not made any official statement yet as to what he has conffessed to ,so you have the media going beserk about his so called statements. As usual a high profile case is being mangled up by the CBI etc. Firstly the police should put out an official statement saying "Such and such is going on, and the rest is under investigation" Have a press conference, I am sure the high ranking CBI officers will like that opportunity to get into the limelight.
Now to his interrogation, man get the man to speak plainly through "any means possible". If he is involved and there is a lot of evidence against him, get him to speak in court about his involvement. Dont give the man a plea bargain or make him a govt witness. Find out his role and give the man appropriate sentence. For Monica bedi, do the same. Make her an e.g of what could happen to the aspiring starlets who wish to sleep with the enemy of India.
Sanjay dutt's name has come up again and for the upteenth time he has been linked to the underworld. The last time daddy dear saved his ass but this time he should be in deep shit theoritically. Is there smoke without fire? Going by the media reports(that's all I have sitting here), he has been linked time and again to the underworld dons. Unfortunately, we do not measure the celeberities by the same scale as we do other human beings. Not in the U.S and definately not in India. So if the Indian govt really wants to make a statement against the Mumbai underworld, get him, put him to trial and get him to speak too again "by all means possible".
Its been 12 years since the mumbai blasts and there is little justice for the victimes but there should be one atleast in their lifetimes. Its time to toughen up and put out foot down. At this point i am tempted to write "Jai hind" here but the realist in me tells me "NOTHING is going to happen"
Abu salem will definately go to prison as there is too much attention on him and he probably cant pay his way through now and so will Monica bedi but beyond this ... nothing is going to happen.

Honesty with Newspaper vending machines

I saw this the other day on the back of a WSJ vending
I think all of the WSJ vending machines have these now.
The first time I saw a newspaper vending machine here,
I thought to myself, "Wow people here are not that crazy,they dont take more than one newspaper from the machine, even though they can". They definately can, as the newspapers inside are all stacked up on top of each other, and once you put in the required coins, you open the front panel, and the whole stack is right infront of you. So if anyone wants to be mischieveous, he/she can take one for himself, one for dad, one for the neighbour, one for the office etc etc, but I guess mostly people don't. The only reason I can up for that is, you cant sell newspaper here to a recycler. I guess you can but then you will have to collect a ton of it to make any significant money out of it. The other possible reason is that most people are honest so this system works as there are tons of such vending machines everywhere. I say this for the smaller cities that I have seen here and I dont know about the bigger cities like NY etc.

Whenever I see such use of technology here, I always think what if a system/machine like this existed in India? So here is a hypothetical situation where a big Indian business daily decides to introduce such machines in India.

1. Most people will definately take more than one, just for kicks even though they may have no use of the extra one.
2. The local aunties will take more than three, the extra ones to use in household work.
3. Someone will change the sign behind to say "Taking two will make you twice as successful"
4. After some hotshot MBA working for the newspaper, realizes that evey such machine gives them only the cost of one paper back everyday even thought they put in 20 in a machine, he will then suggest to post a guard besides such vending machine to make sure people dont take more than one. Ofcourse he will then be rewarded with a raise and some other award.
5. After a few months both the guard and the vending machine will be discontinued because it will be too expensive to maintain and the old vendor system will follow.

Idiot Proof machines

I recently bought an ipod, returned it 'cos couple of days later the video ipod was anounced for the same price. As I write, I am listening to music on my ipod. The device has a very simple external interface, there are only two slots, one for the headphones, the other for the usb cable. To switch it on, there is button which does not say on, but there arent that many buttons, so a user will press one of the 4-5 buttons infront of him and the damn thing will come on. Pretty idiot proof in terms of external design. As far as the cables go, they are of different sizes, so you cant mess those up as well. Overall a b+ idiot proof rating for user interace.
Last night around 12 a.m after fiddling with my new video ipod, i got hungry, and went to Taco Hell to get some grub. Even though they take credit cards, at that point of time, i remembered that they dont take credit cards. The reason being, at Purdue, the damn joint never accepted cards. So being out of cash, I went to a drive through ATM.
First step at the atm. Insert your check card. Now there is a light over the slot, which says insert card here, there is a picture which shows which way to insert the card. So I inserted my card, while inserting it, had to push it a little bit, cos it wasnt so smooth. I then looked at the screen to greet me. Nothing happened. Well I thought, it didnt go in properly, so lets try again. Pressed cancel and again nothing at the prompt, nor did the card come out. Cursed a few times, thought about getting out of the car and give it a yadav style treatment(Couple of thumps here and there and kick as well) but then sized up the machine, realized it was way bigger than me, and decided against it. So pressed cancel again number of times. No use, so cursed louder this time. Took out another card and tried to shove that in as well, The purpose of this act was to pry the card out, or to get the damn machine to say something and it did- "This machine is temporarirly out of service" without giving my card back to me. I decided against cursing this time and just drove off.
Now incase another card was already stuck in that machine, the damn machine should have just shown its' version of blue screen of death so I wouldnt have to go through this crap. It wasnt showing shit when I got there and it was showing all sorts of shit when i left. This is bad design and anyone could have been caught in this situation. If the machine is screwed, it should say " I am screwed, do not use me". If there are certain scenarios left untested where the machine can get screwed and not show this message, then again it is a bad engineering job.
If the machine was not screwed, then I did something wrong which was to shove my card up the machine crack. Now when I shoved the card in, the card did not go in the slot(as it didnt read shit) but went into a space which was above the card reader inside, at an angle.I am taking the blame here even though I am not sure if that really happened. Now this is an e.g of not idiot proofing a design. An ideal design would be if i put my card in the atm machine, I should be able to put/shove it in one place only. If not, then an idiot like me would come and definately take up the challenge of shoving the card down its throat the wrong way and win as well just by instinct. Other such "yadav" instincts of mine are -if something doesnt move, push/pull at it till it does or it gives piece of you that you can move. There are a few others as well which I will don't want to disclose as I dont want to preach violence against machines.
Consumer goods manufacturers need to hire more yadav's to test their user interface apparently.

Visited States in U.S

Pretty cool hack. Looking at it makes me wanna travel some more. Should start making some plans for thanks giving I guess.


DIY here

My cricket Team- Part II

I dont know if there will be more parts to this, but i will write till i have had my fill.
Talking more about infrastructure, the idea would be to have a facility which is atleast at par with the BCCI. Whatever can be done better would be done better. I am talking as if i am sitting on a pair of bags filled with the green.
Now why would a talented guy who has aspirations to play for the Indian cricket team play for a team that I build? He won't, atleast initially. The idea would be to start small, district level. Then compete with the private companies who have their teams like the INdian AIrlines etc. Now if you pay better than the indian airlines, you can get good players to play for you right? yeah but that would not be it.
The right guys to play for a team would be guys just out of college, who played at a competitive level, are either playing ranji or for some private clubs.Have a tryout and give them a contract to play for the team. Tell them here is what you are going to get
1. Full fledged training, that includes a heavy dose of boot camp style physical conditioning along with good nutrition to whip your sorry ass in shape.
2. A decent salary, so you can make a living doing this till you are performing at a desired level
3. The contract can/will be terminated if the player is not found performing at the desired level.
4. A month of vacation every year.
5. 11 months of daily training, or playing circket. Sundays included, but may get a weekday off.
Treat these players like a company would treat its employees, Invest in them and expect damn good results.
When we work for a pvt company, we work either because we love our job for whatever asnine reason or we work cause we are scare of loosing the job. There are other reasons like "To make the world a better place but this is not Miss Universe".
Give the players one of the above two reasons.
Now, get these players in and coach them. The coach will be the most important person in this organization, heavily paid but with a damn sword hanging over his neck. Couple of bad seasons and the door is yours to take. What will this do? Well first of all keep him from playing fav which a lot of the coaches do. So he would be treated like a professional.His Full time job would be to get players ready for the game. When we work.. we work 5-6 day a week, same thing this coach would do and so will the players.
The team- Not one team- Two teams. One would be a back up team from which players would be substituted to the first playing eleven if the coach so desires. Yeah the wining combination would be kept, but as soon as a player starts to dip, he would be relegated to the pratice squad and a fresh talent brought in.
Benefits like life insurance, injury insurance etc would be part of the player contract.
After testing waters at the district level, move up to the state level. Organize informal matches with the state team of lets say U.P. How do you entice them, with greens man. Get them to visit the damn cool stadium. Let them have a look. What will this do? Lure some players to walk on the team during the next tryouts.
The plan should be to get a ranji level team in 5-6 years. The guys in the team should be athletes first and bowlers, batsmen later. Any guy who cant field and is slow on the field should be told to sit out till he improves his fitness to an expected level.The strength and conditioning coach will come into the picture here. I know cricket does not require to be really fit but that was the last century. Sachin tendulkar is damn fit for his age. He runs fast between the wickets, fields well and is overall a good athlete. Who else do you wanna know? How about Brett Lee, the guy is damn good athlete.. look at the way he moves on the field. Two people at the top of their game who show the importance of being a good athlete.
Now coaching these Killers. Thats a name for the team for starters.
No one coach- Three main coaches- One for batting, One for fielding, One for bowling. Its time the specialists train the players for a particular part of the game. Who should be the head coach? One of these guys and should be appointed by the management. The other guys should agree to work with him. ON second thought, have one head coach and ask him to get his own guys for these jobs, but have a specialist fielding coach for sure. Can one of the indian ex-test players coach in this style? No i think most of them have a typical "chalta hai" attitude and wouldnt fit the bill when it came to this style of fast paced-in your face style of coaching.
The team- Specialist team only- Just for one dayers. So from day one the players are focussed towards making as many runs as possible and getting as many wickets for as little runs as possible. Performance at a high energy level in any game. I know the purists will say, you need test cricket to sound out your technique and i say Kiss My A$$ and go make your own team
Next time the business angle of such a team.

My Cricket Team

With the recent controversy between Ganguly bhaiya and Chappell hogging the newspaper headlines, Indian cricket teams performance has taken a back seat. I know they won outside the subcontinent after 17 years and shit like that. Big whoop! they beat a team which would have struggled against a gully cricket team. After performacne against such team(bangladesh included) indian players come back with their egos infalted and heads held high.
I was thinking about this and I am sick of supporting a underachieving bunch of losers who fail at every big match and struggle against opponents of equal stature. If I had a few million dollars, I would do this..
Create my own cricket club and get the best damn players to play for that club. That means players from the indian team hell no.. some of them are good but most of them are as good as a lot of Ranji players.
How to build a team which would beat the crap out of the BCCI's bunch of losers.
First build a huge bloody stadium, not in a metro as that would cost a lot, but in a place that has good weather through most of the year.
What should the stadium have?
A capacity of around 50000 to begin with- It wont fill immediately but it will later on.
1.World class press box
2.A huge and damn good gym.
3. 5 to six net practice(Covered so the team can practice in any weather)
4. A resident physio, a team of damn good physical trainers who will kick the collective ass of all the players who sign up for the club
5. A film room, where the players and coaches can watch film of matches and do post and pre match analysis.
This is the minimum infrastructure.
The second part will come tomorrow.
Its about time someone started a rival team to push these loosers to their limits and beat the shit out them.

Idiots Guide to Dancing at a Party

The following guide is for people

1. Who think the chicken dance is the most complicated dance ever and they are the masters of it and recently realized it is not and now dont know what to do when they go dancing.
2. For people with two left feet and also have a lot of friends who like to shake it, while they stand in one corner sipping drinks or making small talk with weird strangers.
3. For people who are just plain shy but still want to be with their group on the dance floor.

There are three rules before you enter the dance floor. Location,Location,Location. Never ever choose a place in the middle of the dance floor, you know it that people are gonna give you that "eeks" look and move away(unless you look like Brad Pitt) or you will be the butt of endless jokes among your friends. So where should you stand- Preferably a corner, where there are not too many people in the vicinity.
If the dance floor lights moves and stops on you momentarily, you are being exposed(not to mention scaring some people with those "rythmic" expressions on your face)
If you are with a big group, move around a little bit, people forget things that are not exposed to them for a long time.
Learn couple of steps of Bhangra. Now that has to be the easiest dance made 'cos it was invented by the sardars and it couldnt have been too complicated. Use these steps as often as possible specially when you find yourself in the spotlight. Like when people form a circle and one by one they come to the center and show off couple of their funky moves. Reply back! with the bhangra!
Another move on the dance floor- the Kangaroo jump. Use this for songs which are fast and for which your bhangra moves are little slow. Jump with one hand in the air, a move specially made for songs from movies like Dil chahata hai.
The train- When you get people around in a chain and just move around the dance floor, knocking people over, always a fun, annoying group activity and the only move required is simple running.

If you are really... really shy then get a drink(with some alcohol), it will relax you. If you dont drink, then you are hanging out with the wrong people, at a wrong place.

Do not resort to the chicken dance, save it for the marriages. Nobody cares at such events.

Disclaimer- This will not transform you into a dancing Michael Jackson(for that you need 30 plastic surgeries and a plastic nose) but it will help you to shake a leg on the dance floor with your friends and be cool about it.

If you are with a girl and it is a date and you are trying to impress the girl, then let me just say, you should think of plan B 'cos this one is not ending up at either of the houses, unless she is into kangaroos.
Use as directed, void where prohibited and may cause bodily injury. Works for desi parties only.

Day after tomorrow in Mubai

I recently saw the movie Day after tomorrow starring Dennis Quaid and a bunch of unknowns. A day later Mumbai saw the heaviest rains ever in the history of India. The movie has such seens where people are stuck in New york as a result of heavy rains and everything in the Big apple breaks down. Seems from the news report it actually happened in Mumbai... Freaky!! Now my dear co -inahbitants of this world, please stop abusing our natural resources, stop polluting shit, just stop doing whatever you are and think for a moment -" Did I brush my teeth today?"
Everybody knows this is nothing to worry about.. we are fine... nothing is going to happen to us and we should cut some more trees to celeberate the onset of the monsoons in India and if you find a tree hugger around you tie him/her up to the tree before you cut it. Burn that wood with some plastic and rubber with some petrol on top... and feel the fresh air that follows.. wow!!

Triskaidekaphobia

So Friday the 13th passed away without incident and I mean any good incident. I gambled bigger than planned and lost even bigger i.e $2.00. I have now concluded that my bad luck always over rides my good luck. Lady Luck is yet to read my blog.
As for the weird title of the post- Triskaidekaphobia means

A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th.
I dont suffer from it though, just there is a damn word for this kind of shit is
fascinating.

Whats wrong with Sports in India

Imagine a bunch of guys watching a sports broadcast on a sunday with beer and chips and cheering and jeering. Every passing minute there is an "expert" comment from someone 'cos all guys think they are the expert in sports. They will shout, scream,jeer and when the beer gets to the head even get into a fight. Why? 'cos they are passionate about the game. They have their reasons, like they may have played in a under 14 team as a 16 year old and whopped everyones ass or they read the damn sports page every morning even before their eyes have opened up completely.
I fit that latter description. Nope I never played in any team as a teenager 'cos I was no good at any sport. That fact makes me even more passionate about any game that I have watched/played except golf. Now golf has weird jargons "Birdie, eagle... parrots, Tiger etc etc"ok not the last one, but sounds like a game out of seasme street. I know my animals so I dont folllow golf.
Coming back to the topic of sports in India. Does anyone know what is our national game? Hockey. Now, how many of us can sound off more than one hockey players name? I know Dhanraj Pillay, a Puneite from Khadaki(Pune has funny names for areas, I will write about that sometime later) but what about the rest? Gagan ajit singh? Ashish balal. How about Pargat Singh? Does Dhyan chand ring any bells? The G.K geeks are probably smirking and the female readers(if any) have already gone back to checking their email for the 14th time in the last two hours and forwarding the nth "Love is ......" email to everyone on their list.
If you do know who I am talking about thats great, but let me assure you my friend we are a minority. This is the damn national game of India and most of India probably doesnt even know the past/present stars of the game. Why? whats missing? Some may say, popularity, awareness etc. etc. So lets talk about the other game with the willow- cricket which has an abundance of these.
Well cricket is a slow game compare to hockey, the faster version lasts one whole day but still Indians like it. Infact we love it so much that Indian-Pak matches are un official holidays in govt. departments. Great... so cricket should be named our national game, although it can probably do with less popularity and such a status will not do much for it. All the cricket buffs say " Cricket is our religion and Sachin is our God" right back at them man. Although most of my demi gods in cricket are foreign. There is a hell lot of cricket played in India. But how good are we at cricket when compared to the world. Which is the best cricket team in the world? Is it "Team India" as the press calls it now or is it that team from down under. We can draw a lot of parallels between cricket in India and football in Brazil. There is one huge idfference which is Brazilians are world champs. They kick ass when it comes to football and it really is a pleasure watching their team play the game. Can the term world champions be used for Team India. Sure they win big sometimes but that can be explained using the law of averages. Now this is a sport that we are passionate about, is played by millions, loved by millions,has a lot of heroes for the kids to emulate, is backed by the corporate sector like no other sport in India and it also regularly pumps millions of (INR) in the secret caymen island bank account of a certain individual called Jagmohan Dalmiya. Just guessing!(this is for any legal repurcussions if Jaggu's son/daughter reads my blog ever and tells daddy about the guy talking bad things about Daddy"ji")
So whats wrong with cricket? My dad remembers the 83 world cup win, I dont 'cos I was still riding my tri cycle. Will I get to see one in my lifetime? It took us 20 years to get to the finals of the same tournament when the game is just played by 8 countires. So when am I going to see a world beating cricket team.Dont know yet. Although we have improved a lot in the past few years but big whoop man. So has the damn world. Even the Bangladeshi team has improved,they beat us.
This post is not about just what is wrong with cricket but sports in general in India. So I spoke about hockey and cricket. Now lets move on to the other sports
Tennis-Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi did great things and made us proud before they fought over who will go out with Mahima chaudhary and get naughty with her. Just should have played doubles with her man.
Sania Mirza- Well she is good, has potential and should make India proud but is young right now as she is just 18. This is what people say. Sure she is all that, but have those people heard about Maria Sherapova? You know how old she is ? 10+8.. do the math.
Football- Bhaichungs da man and there is nobody else besides him on the scene now. Although this is a team sport which is riding on the shoulder of one man.
Badminton- Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand and ?
Table Tennis- I dont know this one. Did know some players a while ago.
Volleyball- The team travels to UAE once a year and gets beat in the semis by Iranis, Uzbeks or some taller,faster, eatern european team.
What else do we play man?
Chess- Sure.. Vishwanathan Anand and who else has emerged in the last 10 years to challenge him? Surely there is some bench strength in this game and we keep hearing about some 14 year old kid defeating some grandmaster here and there but not many have gone on to challenge the elites. Vishy(I am on first name basis with him) is surely a great player but I like Kasprov(undisputed world champ). I would like to add here that being taller,faster,more athletic gives you no advantage in this game so that is why we have a bunch of good chess players
Swimming- Swimming across the damn channels is just a way to get in the record books but how about swimming in the pool and that too fast.
Track and Field- P.T Usha(80's), Milkha Singh(in the 60's) and now Anju bobby George. What about the 90's?
Snooker- There was Geet sethi and now Pankaj Advani, but again in between nobody.

Statistics show that 80% people stop reading a post as long as this one 90% of the time before they have read 76% of the post. This is true for 54% of the world population barring bollywood/hollywood actors who cant read. Quoting an unknown dead man " Lies, damn lies and statistics".well that was one.
For the rest of the interested readers, I will talk more about what is wrong with the sports culture in a follow up post.

Mera Bharat Mahan

Acutally it goes some thing like
"100 mein se 90 baiman.. lekin phir bhi mera bharat Mahan". For the non Hindi speaking audience, it is roughly translated as "Out of every 100 people 90 are dishonest but still my India is great". Ok that was my pathetic translation but you get the idea right?

This is my rant about India.. my country.
1. Why cant we Drive in Lanes?
2. Why cant we stand in a line anywhere by ourself? Why does it take a man with a stick to police us to actually stand in a line?
3. Why do we have to spit where it is written "Do not spit here" or the Hindi version "Kripya Idhar Thooken Nahin", same for Trash.
4. If we see a sign like "Do not touch" on an exhibhit.. then why do we have to go and touch it?
5. Out on the streets they way people drive, it seems everybody seems in a hurry, so things should move fast in the country but amazingly they dont.
6. Another one related to traffic, why does it take a traffic policemen along with a traffic light for people to actually follow traffic lights?
7. This one is related to cricket, the national past time. Why are we just mediocre even with the best team that we have had in decades?
8. Despite being hailed as an IT super power, why do the internet connections suck for an average home user? ( I am talking about dial-up 'cos thats what i have used there )
9. If you can speak english, you are considered more educated than a person who can only speak hindi, or any other regional language even if he/she may have a damn Phd.
10. Why dont we vote? Now "we" here implies to the massive middle class of India who are educated enough to make informed choices. And our inaction should automatically disqualify us from blaming everything on corrupt politicians.
11. 800+ movies a year, but only a few(the number never reaches double digits) worth watching.. I am not even going to say why?.. just wtf?
12. Why is everything so damn expensive at the airports? especially food.
13. Why do the roads break after every monsoon?
14. Why do we profess our love/date of visit by writing on monuments?
15. Finally, what the hell is "Chalta hai!"

Politics, politicians Corruption, cleanliness - Now thats another blog and I am not even going to start in this post.
If you feel there is something else that irks you.. feel free to comment. I would like to see what other people think are oddities of India.

Philosophy of Life

I had been procastinating for a while now so didnt post anything for a while plus everytime I thought about writing some shit, I realized, I had nothing to write about. Now that I have got off my butt for this week, here is something interesting that a friend sent me. Just sums up the philosophy of life in one line no matter what your religious belief. I am sure some of you have read it before as it is an old email fwd.

Religions of the World

Warning! This is offensive, but take it with a light heart.

Taoism: Shit happens

Hare Krishna: Shit happens rama rama ding ding
Hinduism: This shit happened before
Islam: If shit happens, take a hostage
Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?
Bhuddism: When shit happens, is it really shit?
Confucianism: Confucius says, "Shit happens."
7th Day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays
Jehovah's Witness: Knock knock, "Shit happens."
Unitarian: What is this shit?
Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again
Televangelism: Send money or shit will happen to you
Protestantism: Shit won't happen if I work harder
Catholicism: If shit happens I deserve it
Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to me?
Atheism: There is no such thing as shit
Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens and maybe it doesn't
Rastafarianism: Smoke that shit

If I ever decide to pursue a different religious belief for whatever asnine reason, it will definately be "Rastafarianism"

Spam filtering with yahoo mail

Of late I have been using yahoo mail as my primary email client. I have had this account since 98. Over the years spam has increased to my account owing to the general increase in spam in internet traffic. Yahoo has pretty good spam filtering technique by default but a lot of the spam still manages to reach the mailbox. To block this kind of spam yahoo provides 15 free filters that you can use to stop these unwanted messages from clogging your mailbox and deliver them in a location of your choice (like the trash folder for e.g.). Sometimes I find that over a period of a few hours there is more unwanted mail in my trash, then in the bulk mail folder. That means the filters that I have setup are Kicking a$$ baby! Things that excite geeks...
Here are some of the filters that I use. I created these after observing certain patterns in the spam mail that I used to get.
If subject contains "Free, Porn, Mortgage, Loan,Sex,Credit" Deliver to trash.
Some specific ones
If subject contains "ShopNow, E-Alert Site" trash it as well.
If address contains "@c, @a,@j,@z,@f" trash it as well. Warning- These generic type filters may filter out genuine messages also known as false positives in geek speak. So once you have set up such filters you should start checking your trash folder regularly to see if you have filtered out some genuine messages. This way you can add a filter for the genuine messages to be delivered to the in box. There is something that should be remembered is the sequence of these filters. So if there is a filter which trashes all messages from any address which has a "@c" but if you have a friend whose email ID is chimp@chittanoga.net then his/her email will get filtered. You see that mail in your trash and you set up another filter saying that if email address contains chimp then deliver to mailbox. Your beloved chimp sends you another email with snaps of his chimp group but it never reaches you. You call him up and complain and he complains that you don’t check your mail and you get angry and call him a monkey, thus pissing the chimp off who then sends a gang of chimps after you and now you are afraid to walk out of your house. To avoid getting in a situation like this you should go and see where exactly is your filter related to chimp. If it appears below the "@c" filter then it wont work.. by now the solution should be obvious.
Some "obvious" tips to lessen your spam mail. These may not be obvious to some so I am listing them here.
1. Use two email Ids at least. One for personal work, i.e. the one that you physically give out to friends/family and use to communicate with others. The second one should be used when you register at some weird websites that you know you won’t visit more than once or can’t be trusted with your information. I use hotmail for these as their service sucks in any case.

2. When you post on news groups etc put in weird words in your email id. For e.g. Abhinav_SPAM_YOUR_MOTHER at yahoo.com. Now add a note in your post saying remove all letters in caps. This way mail harvesting programs can’t automatically pick up your id from your post and add it to the 1000 mail/min spam list.

3. Do not reply to spam (isn’t that kind of obvious?) No do not reply to "unsubscribe" address listed in the spam mail. This will only confirm that your mail id is legit and there by increasing junk mail to your account.
You can also use the "spam" button which your will see along side of move, delete buttons when you open a particular mail. This just adds the address to your blocked address list. You can block only 100 addresses this way. Use them judicially.
With this post, i am officially a "power user of Yahoo mail".

Disclaimer- I dont work for yahoo or any of its subsidary.

Click on the Link..Click.. Click.. Click

I came across this site while surfing where this guy had a link posted to a website which allegedly gives you a free ipod shuffle. For those of you who dont know(though Even the jungle animals know this by now) its another portable Mp3 player from apple. More info here. Moving on.. I did click on the link asI like to live on the edge you see.
It took me to the home page where I was supposed to to create a login name with a valid email(used my for junk hotmail Id) along with a password. Remembered to uncheck everything and answered "NO" to everything after that. They did ask for my home address and telephone. I didnt have the patience to read the leagalese of their terms and condition but I did scroll through it and found out that they "have the right to share this info with others and contact me with offers". That means they will pimp out my contact info to other firms and make some money on that. Well i gave them my correct home address as that was my shipping address for the "FREE" ipod shuffle that I will get and by now I was greedy, BUT I didnt give them my correct phone number. I hate the dinner time calls. The correct mailing address may result in more snail mail spam though. After all this was done I was taken to a page where there were bunch of links to legitimate sites like Discover Card, Blockbuster etc etc. I had to click on these links and sign up for one of those "offers". Now if you sign up for the credit cards you dont spend anything. Well and good. If you dont provide these companies the correct info you never get your card. I did click on the link and it did take me to the real discover card site over a secure connection.(So no phishing involved here). There was also blockbuster where you get free one month movie rentals. So all legit offers till now. So I signed up with discover card(with loads of B.S).
I am kind of wondering Is this a scam? They do need three referrals for them to send me my "FREE" iposhuffle so I am gonna let my greedy side take over and paste a link to it in the end.
After this exercise a few questions cropped up in my mind.
1. How do these Freeipodshuffle guys make their money?
Ans1. They are dumb and dont know anythign. Well if I sign up with bullshit info and I refer three friends who also sign up with bullshit info then they are liable to give me a freeipod right? So for 4 dead leads except for one correct mailing address,they potentially have to give a free ipod! and in return they have harvested just one correct mailing address. Dont know if that is worth an ipod.
Man this reminds me of the dot bomb days.. Back in the days(I think I can say that now), there were sites like iwin.com that gave away 10000$ in a week just for surfing. This was before spyware, what they wanted you to do was to go on their website and click on a bunch of links and collect points, each link being worth some points. Then you are in a draw for the money and you had a pretty decent chance of winning as not many people knew about it and they were trying to be famous. Easy as Click Click Click.... There was another one, cant remember the name, but that one took like 1/4 of your screen with a banner which showed ever changing bullshit ads. You had to be online so that their program could fetch the ads and while it was running it would keep track of the websites your were visiting and again sell thoes to marketers. All you needed to do was be online and once you had been online for a certian nunber of hours which their program used to determine, your get your check in $$$. Easy right? But you were online for 5 hours but their program used to calculate on like 30 mins. Turns out they used to keep track of how long does your mouse move and used that as a measure of if you are actually online other wise you could fool the program into thinking you are online but just logging on and going to the bar and getting drunk with your buddies with a fake id. There are programmer and there are hackers. The programmers programmed and the hackers hacked it(I am not calling them crackers as they did nothing to the original binary)They came up with a VB program which would open your web browser, start moving your mouse diagonally accross the screen, and keep changing the websites on your address bar to fool the program into thinking that you are actually browsing, while your were doing the drinking thing. My roomie got a check from that company for 20$ while he did just that. Easy as click click....

Ans2. They could just be fooling people by making them apply for one of those products and then collecting money from the companies for every referral from their site and also pimping out the address info to other marketers and in return you get a lot of spam, a lot of junk mail. But then they run the risk of being sued and arrested. This is America baby.. more lawyers in the country then pet dogs!
Interesting huh? Is this site legit like the dot bomb days one or is this scam.. dont know yet. will find out in sometime and will keep you posted.
Interested in finding out more. Click on the link.. Yeah that is with my referral ID, so If you sign up I get a referral. Thanks guys! I love you all. Since the prime audience of this blog is mostly Indian, sitting in India, its actually useless for them, but if you are in the US... please do and help me get the ipod ;-)

http://www.FreeiPodShuffle.com/?r=16194089.
Click on the link.. Click.... Click...

Something aweful

Here is a link to somethingawful. You can safely view it in an office environement. It is not really that bad and the rest you can find out after you click on it.

Didnt Rock

Chris Rock didnt exactly rock the show atleast I thought so. He was kinda...... mmmm... boring! and it showed in the TRP ratings. He was supposed to be a big draw but I guess he wasnt supposed to say much and be funny. As many people didnt tune into the oscars as last year and ratings were down. There was a gag order on the use of "uncivlised words" during the cremony.Is America becoming a totalitarian society? There was the five sec delay in the "live" broadcast this year.. wonder what next year. The oscars will be telecast after a week so that network executives can edit all the spoken words, cover up celebs who showed more skin than is allowed by the FCC and in the end people will get a 5 min silent clip of the winners taking their trophies and walking down the stage. Here is a link to another story reported on slashdot couple of days ago where a senator is trying to apply decency standards to subcription based satellite channels. Well somebody tell me if I "consciously" SUBSCRIBE to a channel and the channel tells me about the kind of programming they have or I am aware of the kind of programs shown on that channel and I am ok with it, then who the fuck is someone to come and tell me .. "NO you are not going to watch this shit.. This is too indecent for you and we know better because we are the government". Decency standard my a**(that was decent, I didnt swear technically). Read people's comments below the article. Some of them are interesting and logical.
Here is another link about how ABC gagged Robin Williams routine. It is link to Google's cache. The original article was at Hindustantimes website couple of days ago and now it has been removed from their website and archives. What do they archive anyways if they cant archive a two day old article??
Thats my rant for the day

Chris Rocks!!

Last night Chris Rock was on Jay Leno... Man he is funny...
A small Glimpse...
Leno: So why did you take up the Oscar Gig?
Rock: I need the money
Leno: You already have money...
Rock : Baby needs New Diamond Shoes man...
Rock: No Straight man sees the oscars(actually he said the Tonies)
Rock: (To Leno) Man your movies went straight to Audio...
Rock: Anything that can shut my kids up for 90 mins has to be a good movie
Rock: Dont thank God in your acceptance speech.. thank your agent who got you rthat movie. Gods a little busy in S. Asia
Apparently there will be a 5 sec delay..so Chris Rock cant swear on air. He didnt do much of that just said.."That bitch is just crazy!!" Bitch is not a swear word... It is just how you
I will see the oscars.. just for Chris Rock.. I am hoping he swears a LOT!!

My trials with Blogspot are over

Well well... after a few hours of banging my fists at my plastic table and creating a crack in it(which I have hidden with strategically placed books so that wifey cant see it), I found out why I wasnt able to post my shit. The genius that I am .. I had created another blog... yes another blog, I have left it hanging at whatsthatshit.blogspot.com. It has my previous posts just to let people (is there anyone reading??)
know that I did infact try to update the crap that I have here.
Now my usual gripe with software... and this one i know is not my mistake. I use mozilla on Windows. So after you update your blog and publish it, you wanna see how the fruits of your labor look like but mozilla wants to be super efficient and will refuse to fetch the new copy from the server, so I ended up posting the same thing thrice before I used IE to see it and there was another bang of the fists after that on the table.

Flight Information at London Gatwick..What world do they live in.. Do planes fly with Windows at auto pilot? 

Well I tried updating my blog after reaching US. For some weird reason, i wasnt able to do so with netscape 7.0 so I got around after a lot of procastinating to install mozilla, after I got rid of spyware and adware on my wifes laptop. The laptop was working like a calculator, well I have seen calculators faster than that thing.
So first about my trip to US. Well on my way to US I transited through UK. Now EU has been trying to stop Microsoft from killing competition with un-fair means. Mr Gates tried to arm twist Danish PM to pass a directive on software patents. Here is the link to that news . Well I guess he must have already done something like that to the UK airports authorities "Use windows for your flight anouncement systems or I will ask my buddy Bush to tax your airlines in the US" and then they bought windows 95 and havent looked back. This is a picture that I took at London Gatwick. God knows what this screen was supposed to display.
Well I landed at Houston without my luggage....Continental decided to leave it in London. "Hey we got you to US in one piece.. then why are you cribbing??". After waiting at the luggage belt for my two pieces(both didnt arrive) I cleared customs, which was a breaze anyways as I had no luggage, I ran a mile with my handbag to catch my connection. People in the plane gave my looks as if I had just come put of jail or from some jungle in africa. After looking at myself in the toilet, I realized why... I hate long distance journeys specially the ones that take you from one part of the world to the other. They mess up your sleep patterns, your hair and you have to run to catch your connections and there is 0.1% chance of all of your luggage arriving with you.
Did I say I HATE long distance travel...

Unemployed and homeless

Not out on the streets yet and I hope not in the near future.. I am moving out of India for greener(???) pastures. Something that you may notice if you are ever in my situation is that you dont have any keys left with you since you dont go to work and neither do you live in your own house. My key chain right now is empty. Before I acquire a very sentimental tone I will shut up.
Btw the test shit was to see how the hell do you add a new posting. I tried three times to publish some shit that i wrote but it gave me and error saying "F**** main template is empty". Why is most technology non intuitive ?? that is something i will talk about some other time.

Test shit

The Prologue

This is the place where I will post my shit and lots of shit to say the least(thats the plan for now).
Why did I get into blogging 'cos I am into the tech field and everyone is doing it and if I dont have a blog of my own, then I wont be as cool as the ones who do. Moreover I wasnt able to use lines like "you know about this shit.. check out my blog man.. I have got some shit there on this shit.. yeah its on blogspot called lotsofshit". Dont know if people actually market themselves like that.
On a serious note.. I will be unemployed in couple of weeks.. will have some(read lots) of time on hand and want to give my writer pretensions some air.