Mugabe has gone insane
This Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has gone nuts and has become a dictator.....now shutting down news paper after news paper.....

We were taught to have respect for him as he was portrayed as the revolutionary leader who won Zimbabwe then known as Rodhesia from British....this was how he was described in our school text......But seems to have become an arbitt off late when it was his turn to retire.....

First came the confiscation of lands from white farmers who considered themserlvers as Zimbabweians first and foremost before anything....then came all crazy stuff like curfeew, censorship of media etc.....

Down with all dictators!

BoneyM
People have mocked me for my passion for BoneyM which was a very popular band during 1980s....for me BoneyM was western music and western Music was BoneyM... That's abt it.....

I listened to BoneyM as a kid at our neighbor's grama phone record player....did not understand a bit....but foot tapping music really hooked me.....

First BoneyM tape that I bought was in 1987 which I still have and still plays......

Later on found so much info abt BoneyM on the net.,...I must Frank Farian the lead behind BoneyM was a very talented artist....he combined all sorts of music to come up with BoneyM.....whatever.... I still enjoy their very foot tapping music.....

Cheers listening to BoneyM !

Aashiquee
Music is good is for the soul....true...it is just that I need reminders for such obvious truths....so when read that music is indeed good for the soul, dusted off my old music collection and started listening to some tapes at random...

The first tape I put was 'Aashiquee' the romantic hit of 1990 which launched the careers of many professional..Rohit Roy, Anu Agarwal were paired as love struck couple.....Kumar Sanu first time reined the music empire at least for that year....Nadeem-Shravan will be immmortal at least for their music composition if not anything else of their compositions.....

Listening to 'Aashiquee' songs after such a long time also evoked many old memories....First time, I listened to songs from 'Aashiquee' were on the campus of my alma mater BITS, Pilani. I was a fresher just trying to get used to hostel life. Stereos in every room balred songs from one of the three hits from that year - Maine Pyaar Kiya or Aashiquee or Dil....

I got to hear songs from 'Aashiquee' over and over again during marathon note copying sessions for seniors during initial ragging period. Gosh...did I curse myself for my beautiful hand writing, patience and tenacity to sit and copy notes for seniors for hours together especially over week ends... I did not mind that much and in return it was a good thing....seniors who got the service helped a lot, saved from notorious raggers and made me to listen to Kumar Sanur pouring his heart out too woo his love or cry.......

Cheers!

Taxes made easy with www.turbotax.com
Topic: My vote.....
There are only two things certain in life- death and taxes.....some smart one told...

I am not sure what can be done with death but taxes can be made simple and annual ritual does not have to be as painful as some make it to be....

I have been using www.turbotax.com for last 4 years to do my taxes online....year after year the product has improved by many folds.....

One thing that I would like to avoid in every place is data entry....it is simply time consuming and error prone....it is also irritating especially when the same data is available in digital format on some computer on this earth..

Looks like smart guys at Intuit understood the problem well and put the latest technology of web service into reality.....

Now, you can have all your W2 (i.e. your pay data) etc directly extracted from those service providers directly into your tax forms....

With me, turbotax.com went to the payroll company of my employer and transferred all the data. I just had to eyeball them to dbl check. Same with my investments, got all the dividend, loss/gain info from my broker's data and filled it for me....so cool and painless....I hardly had to enter any data.....

Like with previous years, automatic debit or credit to your bank account for tax dues or refunds can be set up....Even IRS likes all this electronic based txns.....

Service fee is around 40 bucks if you do both state and federal taxes...There seem to be competitors who can do it for cheap but I stayed with turbotax for several reasons....first of all the historic data is there on their comps which even reduces entering personal data etc.....

As such, people are calling for further simplifying tax code...which I totally support....this whole tax system is a morass.....unnnecessary complicated.....

One thing total waste is going to personal tax prepares who are nothing but data entry clerks who are hired in hundreds by big tax preparing companies during this season... They are many times clueless what they are required to do....If your tax stuff is simple enough then you are lucky to have them not to mangle your data when they enter it manually....Go to a tax professional by all means if your taxes are complicated but just going to those companies which open make shif office in malls is just a waste of your time and money....you can do that yourself using a product like turbotax.com or plain old paper and pen stuff.

Good luck with taxes and may you get huge refunds that too fast :)

Cheers!

My vote....
Topic: My vote.....
My vote - is the new topic that I will start on my BLOG to write about products, goods and service that I have personal experience with and been impressed and would like to recommend....All entries are personal recommendations and do not have any affiliations with makers of those products or anyone else....

Lawyers out there....any help with further refining the fine print is appreciated :)

Thumbs up for Mozilla
Topic: My vote.....
Mozilla new free browser is a formidable contender for internet explorer.....I never thought I would ever switch any other browser but Mozilla changed all that....Have been using it for more than 3 months now...I am all impressed and swithed for good....

It has many neat feautures....My fav is password feature which is truly smart....if you are like me who does most of the chores on the net like paying bills, online subscriptions to several magazine etc. then you know the nightmare of maintaining user name and password combo.....

Mozilla simplifies it by offering to remember it for you....so what even internet explorer let's you do that . But, Mozialla is smart by offering you the level of granularity one needs...You can set a master password which you enter once in the beginning and then on all previously saved user name and passwords are plugged in for you....If you do not need that level of protection then you can bypass master password too like the internet explorer does but that's risky should your laptop get into wrong hands...

Then the speed...I can say that Mozilla beats IE handsdown in downloads....

Books marks can be easily imported from IE....

You should be able to visit at least 90% of your fav sites without any problem but there are some web site that use MS technology such controls etc and the companies that provide such third party software may not have Mozilla compatibles yet but that should change in years to come...For all such sites, goold IE exists....

Another area that could be problematic is Indian fonts....some how Mozilla has not been very predictable with Kannada fonts...My home laptop version garbles them but fresh install that I did on work laptop has no problems....So it could be a problem when you have to read news papers etc in your native Indian language. But, many Indidian sites have been putting prominently that they are Mozilla compatible.

All in a all, great to see MS getting some competition.....

Way to go Mozilla.....

Cheers!

Vonage.....phone service simplified
Topic: My vote.....
My bit of advertising for my new age telphone carries, Vonage....www.vonage.com.

Even since I switched to Vonage almost year back, I am quite happy with it. Before that it was a simple sham with conventional phone companies fleecing close to 30 bucks to have that phone outlet in your place....on top of it you need a long distance carrier for out of state calls and international.

Vonage is the pioneer in new telephony serice called VoIP where voice travels over internet....All you need is a cable modem or DSL based internet accesss which many have anyway....then you sign up with a service like Vonage and you are able to make and receive calls using standard telephone eqp to any phone in the world....earlier VoIP required both parties communicate using PCs which made them not very attractive.....

Vonage delivers superb cost savings with plans like 30 buck/mo unlimited....what can beat that...

Recently, they sent me a cap and T-shirt being their customer and also referring a few of my friends...they have a good referral scheme too. Everytime a person you referred signs up, both of you get one month free.....

Now, it appears like there are many players in VoIP industry and prices have come down a lot and some even offer special adapter free of cost....

Check it out and save money that you need to shell out just keep the damn outlet active. If you need referral, I will be more than happy to provide. It's a win-win :)

Cheers !

Maya
Topic: Movies
Maya....art movie directed by Digvijay Singh....theme is diffetrent....bordering on abused 'Devadasi' system but I am not sure if picturization was appropriate or accurate....

The movie revolves around a girl coming to age and trauma inflicted on her in the name of tradition....But, director Digvijay Singh has stretched it too far even if you consider rural background....The depiction in the movie was probably never even close to the reality even in darket days of atrocities on so called lower castes and ignorance....The sheer concept of 5 priests deflowering the girl for the fist time in the name of God simply is repulsive......and far fetched....Yes, actual devadasi system is close where by the girl is forced to something and becomes an addition to the harem of a village rich guy, first opportunity to deflower etc......but priests doing that in the name of God and blessing the girl and her family that she has been blessed once the priests did it first before anyone is bogus.....

But, who knows this may be a case in areas where director grew up....if that is the case then it is simply horrendous.....

Mita Vasishst as girl's aunt steals the show. Anant Nag does a good job as her uncle....The girl's cousin a, 13-14 year old boy is the best in the story from characterization stand point...the screen play writer has done a superb job of capturing his confusion as why he is being kept separate and why the girl and he can not remain the way they did until one fine day when everyone announced her to be 'grown up'. But, the child artist failed to deliver on such a fine characterization......

All in all a movie that makes you think about....There have been several movies on this subject....Best I think was 'Gidd' (Vultures) by B.S.Ranga....there Nana Patekar does the best ........

Cheers!

"Pallang Tod"
"Pallang Tod"......very intriguing term....has always fascinated me ever since I heard it first many years ago in the context of 'Paan' (betel leaves, areca nut, lime etc mix chewed in India and elsewhere).....

A special paan called "Pallang Tod" used to available..do not recall if I had ever tried that paan....but do remember that it was one of pricest and high end paan.....but the actual meaning has eluded me for all along....

Literal meaning should mean "bed breaker" b'cos pallang means kind of bed and tod means to break.....

"Pallang tod" has been used for ecstatic physical encounter or anything that aids such encounters....

But another meaning is on the lines of KLPD.....i.e pouring cold water when you are ready on a new initiative etc.....this one revelation from 'Padmashri Laloo Prasad Yadav" movie.....

Anyway, "Pallang Tod" is a cool term...use it...whenever you have to describe success in a typical B'bay style......or together with another term "maidan maar liya"

Cheers!

Kagaz ki kashti barish ka paani
Kagaz ki kashti barish ka paani .....evergreeen gazal sung by Jagjit and chitra Singh is one of my all times favs for various reasons...the melody....Singh couple sing their heart out reminiscing on childhood which could have been anyone's for that matter...secondly lyrics.....so beautiful.....if you can understand the meaning.....

Another master piece of Singh couple is a set of few songs in oldie movie Masum....gosh...that's so melodious and fills your hear with all kinds of emotions......

Got to look for more of Singh's renditions.....

Cheers !

X'mas trip
Topic: Personal Updates
I have not been able to post related to my trip to down south during X'mas of 2004. Since my laptops had broken down on top of everything just before the trip, that added to the misery.

Started on 12/25, road trip across NY City, DC.....reminded me of 1997 similar trip....

Halted for the first day at Richmond, VA for R&R (rest and recuperation)....

Next day started quite late (due to lil extra partying on the previous nite).....wasted quite sometime at the Bestbuy at Richmond trying to buy a wireless transmitter so that I could connect to my last remaining clunker laptop which has my GPS tracking attached...Hi-tech navigation was that I was trying to do....but to my bad luck....it never worked out...so wasted time buying, returning and what not....

Once got into North Carolina, traffic on I-95 came to a grinding halt....somewhere sometime the previous it had snowed a bit and that's it for them....all traffic stopped....crawled on four 4 hours....believe it or not covering only 60 odd miles.....

Traffic picked up and drove till 9 PM and halted at Savanna, GA for another nite of R&R.

Next day started and breezed across GA to reach desitnation Tampa, FL at around 2 PM. Checked into the hotel and what else R&R.

Next day went to Busch Gardens.....liked it a lot....the park designed on African theme....reminded me of the days in Tanzania....cable car ride overlooking mock-up Serengeti in Africa, train ride across the same watching giraffes, zebras, rhinos was the best....took those ride multiple time....roller coasters....I am not that much of fan of stomach churning experiences......Simulated ride on the river Zambezi was the best.....

Came back late nite.....R&R

Next day....drove to Clearwater beach....walked for a couple miles.....had a good view of Marina.....

Then drove to Lowry Park Zoo in downtown Tampa....Nice Zoo....Anotehr mini African experience....In the evening went a for eco-boat ride on Hillsboro river....did not see any alligators....probably because it was already quite dark.....

Back to R&R.....

Next day started back and reached Raleigh, NC in the night...

Next two days spent with my brother and his family at Raligh, NC. Had a lot of fun and of course food.....
Celebrated new year eve.....Watched 'Swades' premeire...admired Gayatri Joshi....man, isn't she really gorgeous......

Started back to Boston on Suday....After a 14 hour trip...back in Boston.....Overall close 3000 miles...thanks to Honda Accord V6 and of course GOD for making it hasslefree.....

Cheers!

Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day


A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 26

Purity of heart is to will one thing. - Kierkegaard

There is a Hindu story comparing the mind to the trunk of an elephant
-- restless, inquisitive, always straying. In our villages in India,
elephants are sometimes taken in religious processions through the
streets to the temple. The streets are crooked and narrow, lined on
either side with fruit and vegetable stalls. Along comes the elephant
with his restless trunk, and in one sinuous motion, he grabs a whole
bunch of bananas. He opens his cavernous mouth, and tosses the
bananas in -- stalk and all. From the next stall he picks up a
coconut and tosses it in after the bananas.

No threats or promises can make this restless trunk settle down.
But the wise mahout will give that trunk a short bamboo stick to
hold. Then the elephant will walk along proudly, holding the bamboo
stick in front like a drum major with a baton. He doesn't steal
bananas and coconuts now, because his trunk has something to hold
on to.

The mind works in the same way. We can keep it from straying into
all kinds of situations if we just give it the mantram.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Padmashree Laloo Prasad Yadav
Topic: Movies
Padmashree Laloo Prasad Yadav-starring Suneil Shetty, Kim Sharma, Mahesh Manjrekar etc.....directed Mahesh Manjrekar......

First I thought it must have been satirical on Laloo Yadav but smart director Manjrekar has a different story.......

Dialogs are quite funny....but loose story...that may be the reason why you find a lot of negative reviews of this film......

"Deewana" song sung by Sukwinder Singh is really catchy.....I have listened to it till I passed out....

Decent movie to watch with friends while making jokes of jokes.....

Sheesha
Topic: Movies
Sheesha -- starring Neha Dhupia, Sonu Sood .......total waste movie.....

Sibling rivalry among two sisters after one sister's husband....

OK...add raw flesh....pour some ketchup (for blood), add some gore....you get this meaningless movie called Sheesha......

I had lil more hopes from producer like Guddu Dhanoa....who had made some lil better movies.....

Waste.....unless you want to watch Neha Dhupia exposing tastelessly.......

1/2 star.

Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day
A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 25

If you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things,
you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite
for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is
certain in them. - Saint John of the Cross

The mind should be a reliable instrument of observation, but it very
often is not, because it is so deeply influenced by the compulsive
habits and addictions that characterize so much of modern life.
Comparing the mind to a camera, you could say that these habits
skew the focus, alter the depth of field, and in general do all they
can to make us see not what is really there but what the mind wants
us to see. And what it wants us to see is the profit or momentary
gratification it is interested in, whether it is a pastry or a sports
car, a promotion or a dividend. When our attention is glued to these
things, we see only the fragmented, turbulent surface of life, not
the vast interconnected web of relationships supporting that surface.

Through meditation, we unglue the mind from the tantalizing surface
and make it turn inwards. Then we begin to see life in a completely
new way -- not as a struggle to get what we want no matter what
the cost, but as a compassionate dance where each creature has
a beautiful role.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day


A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 24

The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing.
- Sri Ramakrishna

All that you and I have to do is to put up our sails and let the wind
of grace carry us across the sea of life to the other shore. But most
of us are firmly stuck on this shore. Our sail is in tatters and our
boat cannot move because of all the excess baggage weighing it down:
our likes and dislikes, our habits and opinions, all the resentments
and hostilities which we have carefully acquired. But just as
it is we, ourselves, who have acquired this baggage, it is we who
can gradually learn to toss it overboard. The wind is blowing, but
we have to make our boat seaworthy. We can patch up our sail, and
unfurl it to catch the wind that will carry us to the other shore.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Any suggestions?
I am looking for good books on managing software companies....mainly focussed on financial side of it...

As part of traditional management...many books are written on justifying projects, capital expenses, cost control etc... I am looking for a book which shows the practical applications of those core concepts for s/w companies and busineses....

TIA

Cricket Trivia
Just for trivia lovers...

What is common between Gary Sobers and Ravi Shastri?
Six sixers in one over...

Who were those unfortunate bowlers?
Malcom Nash and Tilak Patel (respectively)

In what game?
English county cricket, Ranaji Trophy(respectively)

Commonality between Viv Richarads and Gary Sobers?
Many...both are west Indians (duh, PJ)
Both captained WI (duh)
Both had an Indian girl friend or mistress or whatever...

Who?
Neen Gupta (Richards), Anju Mahendru(Sobers)

Which cricketer of Indian origin led the first rebel WI team to SA?
Alwyn Kalicharan (in those Apartheid days..SA was boycotted from cricket world....those cricket loving SAs used to entice cricketers with tonnes of money)

Who was the other Kalicharan who played for WI?
Derek Kalicharan but not as famous as his bro Alwyn..

Who are two cricketers of Indian origin played for WI shared 'Shiva' as part of their name?
Shiv Shiv Narain...Shiv Chandrapaul......

Who used to be known as deadly quartet?
Micheal Holding, Andy Roberts, Collin Craft, Joel Garner....speedsters from WI

Who got the bat from Sunil Gavaskar after he beat the record of maximum centuries back in 1984?
Jeff Dujon, WI keeper

Where did G'kar score that centuray?
Chepauk, Madras

That's it for now....

Yours
Trivia Junkie

Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day


A Thought for the Day From Sri Eknath Easwaran
----------------------------------------------

February 23

The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the
mind. - Mahatma Gandhi

I first became interested in improving my diet under the influence of
Mahatma Gandhi, who used to include articles on diet and heath in his
weekly newspaper along with all the latest political news. I had been
brought up on traditional South Indian cuisine. I had enjoyed it all
thoroughly, but I had never asked what the purpose of food is. At
Gandhi's prompting, I started asking this kind of question and
concluded to my great surprise that food is meant to nourish the body.
I started changing. I began to eat foods that wouldn't have appealed
to me in earlier days. Now asparagus tastes better than chocolate
torte.

The palate is the ideal starting point for getting some mastery over
your senses. You have three, four, maybe more opportunities a day:
breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any number of between-meal snacks. No
need to talk of fasting or strange diets. Just resolve to move away
from foods that don't benefit your health and begin choosing foods
that do. With this simple resolution, you'll strengthen your will
and deepen your meditation.

-----
>From Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" (Nilgiri Press, 1997)
http://www.nilgiri.org/Html/Thoughts/today.html

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Quote for bachelors
Marriages are made in heaven....wait till you get there before you can get married :)