Jon On Bush

Old one but worth it.

Gandhi 2

Is her story that interesting?

Sans comments

Your tax money and elected officials at work.

Sign of the times

BTW, have you noticed that TV shows, dilberts etc. have the more characters w/ Indian background these days? Some examples: Numbers, ER, Crossing Jordan, Simpsons (Appu is quite an old one though)...

Going to India

Hey guys,

Sorry for the late info. Been busy last couple of weeks.
I am going to India tomorrow for 4 weeks.
Nothing special. Just visiting family after 4 loooooong yrs.
Will be back on June 26th.

Sdarshan, can you email your contact info.
In case, if I come to B'lore, will try to meet you.
Happy blogging :-)

- Suresh

Some relief

According to this news:

In response to international criticism of Chinese workplace inequity and labor rights, China's National Labor Committee agreed Monday to establish an unpaid 15-minute break during the regular 18-hour workday, to allow pregnant women to "expel the child from their body, adjust to being a new parent, wash their hands, and return to work."

File sharing

Of late I have been hearing a lot about file sharing being the new email. Some neat P2P tools have come up that might catch your interest. Here is an article that talks about pros and cons of some of them and their underlying technologies/platform. Just FYI, before moving to VA yours truly was involved in building the platform, which BoxCloud is based on.

I also like FolderShare.

For runners

Shoes that talk to iPod, now this is something I'm looking forward to!

Wireless World

At least the nation.

Free books

Some classics here.

Everything you wanted to know about RAID

Came across this tutorial while trying to setup a highly available NFS with RAID at work.

More free stuff

Get your free mag and free tv fix.

What the hell happened to copyrights? I wonder.

Mango Mania

Indian mangoes are coming to US...

Online banking

May not be as secure as you would like it to be.

Quote

Dyslexics are teople poo.

Came across any interesting quote lately?

Free WSJ

Wall Street Journal Online is free for 10 days. Enjoy it while you can. The yearly subscription costs $90/year.

TV on demand

Per this story.

Spend $27 Save $227 mil

Why the hell it doesn't happen with me?

Yeah right

It's easy to say this when you're worth $50B.

The job

Software engineers have the best jobs in America, according to a survey released on Wednesday.

Could it be bigger?

DLF Cup - Abu Dhabi



















And you thought everything was big in Texas!

Time that was

My earlier post about vacation, Goa etc. lead my thoughts to the times when most of us were at Infosys. I remembered few stories which I thought are interesting enough to be a blog post.

I'm not sure how true they are but the anecdotes about the absent mindedness of Muralikrishna are stuff of legend.

I think Sudarshan had told me this one in which Murali went to the market on his mobike. After finishing his work he forgot that he came by bike and took the bus back home. After reaching home he remembered that the bike is still at the market. He then drove another two-wheeler to the market to fetch the bike. When he reached the market he realized that now there were two vehicles and only one driver (himself). A friend of his had to come and help out.

In another incident Murali (yes the same one), went to watch a movie but at the ticket window he pulled out a soapbox instead of a wallet from his pocket. If that was not enough he insisted that it was a wallet that he kept in his pocket when he left home and it must have turned to a soapbox en-route or something. The wallet was later found on his wash-basin in the bathroom which he must have used before leaving for the movie.

This one (and I'm an eyewitness to it) is about another colleague Praveen Shamain. This was the time when we had just joined Infosys and going thru the orientation and stuff. In one of those gatherings of about 200 people the speaker was explaining the life insurance benefit offered by the company. So the scene is something like:

Speaker: You will pay xxx amount as a premium per month for yyy years. In an unfortunate event of your death the beneficiary will be entitled to zzz amount. Something the latter will have to claim after the fact. Blah...Blah...Blah...

Pretty clear right? Well, to everybody except one. When the speaker asked if the audience had any questions, Praveen raised his hand and,

Praveen Shamain: That is all very nice but how many times can one claim this benefit?

Not every detail may be accurate and there are some embellishments to the stories so if you remember a better account, do post it.

Boarding pass

What do you with it after the flight?

Planning your next vacation?

You might want to consider this, which for some reason reminds me of Madhu and Goa. Wonder why.

American Inventor

Some innovations (?) of the dotcom era.

Net Neutrality - Should you care?

The basic:

The debate centers on whether it is more "neutral" to let consumers reach all Internet content equally or to let providers discriminate if they think they'll make more money that way.

The author argues that the Internet should be considered an "infrastructure" similar to roads, canals, trains etc. Anything otherwise results in unfair advantages to companies ultimately resulting in loss for the consumers.

Interesting article on the subject.

Gates' desktop

Check it out.

Wedding pics

Can you imagine an Indian wedding without some colors!













Surabhi w/ my sisters.













With younger bro.


















With sisters and their husbands. Newly weds on your right.

Synonym

A friend asked me to search for "Failure" on Google.com by hitting "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Try it yourself. The result may force you to chuckle.

And yeah, the break was quite refreshing. The wedding couldn't have gone more smoothly. Will post some pictures soon.

There is lot of catching up to do at work so I might be a little slow in blogging this week but it's good to see that you guys have been active on the blogosphere.

The weather here is just about perfect so it's good to be back!