Quotes
Topic: Quotable Quotes
"Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgements"

"Women are like tea bags - how strong they are is known when they get into hot water"
-Elaneor Roosevelt

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

February 28

To display His eternal attributes
In their inexhaustible variety,
The Lord made the green fields of time and space.
- Jami

The Lord has strewn little signs of his presence throughout the
universe. The person who is observant will see these signs and know
where the Lord is to be found. There is a marvelous story about a man
looking for the Buddha the way one follows the tracks of an animal in
the jungle. He went around talking to people everywhere, and whenever
he found a person whose life had been transformed he would exclaim,
"Those are the tracks of a really big elephant!"

The men and women who have realized God leave big, unmistakable
tracks. In a smaller way, when we see someone being extremely
patient, someone who can listen quietly to criticism without
retaliating or losing her temper, we might think, "Aha! That's not
my friend Jane; that is the Lord in Jane." Jane is leaving a trail --
broken twigs of patience, torn leaves of kindness -- all subtle signs
by which we can track the Lord's presence.

Though the Lord is present everywhere, the expression of his presence
varies throughout the infinite variety of his creation. Wherever
perfection is approached, his glory is revealed a little more --
among people, among trees, among mountains, among stars.

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

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Quotable Quotes
Topic: Quotable Quotes
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'
Don Marquis (1878 - 1937)

Architecture is the art of how to waste space.
Philip Johnson (1906 - 2005)

What you risk reveals what you value.
Jeanette Winterson

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.
Wilbur Wright (1867 - 1912)

====
From www.quotationspage.com

Sorry....no OSCARS
I am sorry that Ashwin Kumar did not win OSCAR for his "little terrorist" in short film category...

Good luck for the future.

OSCARS....?
Will Ashwin Kumar, nominated for OSCARS for his short film "little terrorist" win? I hope he will....

In the company of giants...
Topic: Books....
In the company of giants.....books containing interviews with giants from digital industry such as Steve Jobs and many others....

Illusion
Aldous Huxley -" The world is an illusion; An illusion that has to be taken seriously"

For the inquisitive mind...
Very informative website ....http://www.howstuffworks.com/

A lot of how works .....info...especiall the one on cellphones....the technology that makes our ubiquitos cellphones works is mind bogglingly complex...

Life
"Life is not measured by number of breaths we take;but by the number of moments that take our breath away"

Hmmmmmm....I think this person enjoys life on the roller coasters (literally).

Whatever for its worth....posted....

Annahat
Topic: Movies
Annahat - starring Sonali Bendre, Anant Nag, Deepti Naval directed by Amol Palekar....Marathi movie with Eng sub-titles.

Very nice movie. Off beat movie from Amol Palekar. Palekar who excelled as an actor during 70s and 80s has been very active on the stage and theatre scene. Started directing movies and delivered many nice movies such as 'Kariee' and other great movie on gays etc.

This movie is set around the kingdom of 'Malla' and royal couple. King has been in power for more than 7 years and still issueless in this case heir to royalty. Per the customs of that time and per applicable scriptures, royal assembly made up of influenctial people like key ministers, royal priest etc. pass a resolution where by the queen will have to choose a 'part-time' husband to conceive royal heir.....

With this back ground, rest of the story revolves first around the anguish and confusion suffered by royal couple....King is coaxed to agree to the decision by being told over and over that he has to endorse it because king's first duty is to care for the welfare of the kingdom and all personal stuff come next.....Queen also goes through similar dilemma...

Finally, the royal couple agree and queen chooses a temporay husband and spends a night with the man...this choosing process is not shown.

When the queen returns after spending the night with chosen stranger...she is a totally transformed person..however her admittance of how she felt as a woman for the first time and how she missed all the pleasures her impotent king husband could not deliver...she comes across as a woman of loose character to kings courtiers....

She argues for the realization of her womanhood and engages in an intellectual debate with her confidant who agrees with her that choosing to fulfil requirements of personal pleasures are ok but not to be shared lest she will forgo all the sympathy that people would have showered ......

Queen has seen the zenith of personal pleasure for the first time and want it more and more like any person....so she asks the ministers to arrange 2 more sessions as allowed by the rules...this comes as a rude shock to them as they expected her to indulge in this activity for the sole purpose of progeny and not to satisfy her personal plasure needs.....

Very well directed.....wish it had been dubbed to hindi as one has to really understand the dialogs which seemed quite powerful.

Deepti Naval excels as the common confidant of king and queen patiently listening to their anguishes....she is a great actresses who excelled in both commerical and art cinema.....

Sonali Bendre delivers a solid performance as the queen...especially after her first encounter....

Anant Nag is also quite good in the role of king....

Palekar has taken every care to make sure that historical scenes are really well shot...all in all he creates the royal kingdom as it might have been 400 years ago...hat's off Palekar....

All in all - 4 stars...

Jim Corbett of Karnataka
Kedambadi Jattppa Rai can be very aptly called as Jim Corbett of Karnataka and Kannada literature....as he pioneered literature on the line of Jim Corbett did in English.....

Mr.Rai's memoir 'beteya nenapugalu' is a riveting account of many of his hunting adventures.....

I have read his book long long time ago....Currently it being put in a series format at www.ourkarnataka.com...

Mr.Rai has been felicitated for his literary contributions with numerous awards....I thinks some of his books have been transalted to other languages as well.

Miss World 2005 is
Miss Isreal, Seema Bakhar, wins 2005 Miss World title held at Amby Valley Resort, India.....

Congratulations to Isreali beauty.....news to share with some of coworkers of Isreali origin...Marci....another feather in your cap.

Gazhal
"Maine muh ko kafan se chupa jab liya
Tab une muje milne ki pursat mili
Jab woh mujse milne ghar se chale
Raste mein une meri mayyat mili"

Traslated this reads as
" When I had covered my face with death cloth,
She found time to meet me
When she left her house to meet me
She met my funeral procession on the way"

This whole gazhal has such beautiful lyrics, and singer Chandan Das renders it in his heart wrenching voice....

Cheers!

Thought for the Day
Topic: Thought for the day

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

February 27

The body is mortal, but the person dwelling in the body is immortal
and immeasurable. - Bhagavad Gita

When I say that this body is not me, I am not making an intellectual
statement. It is an experiential statement. If you were to ask me,
"Who is this body?" I would make an awful pun: "This is my buddy. I
give him good food and good exercise, and I look after him very well,
but he is not me." My body has always been my faithful buddy, through
many trials, and during many difficult times; and I let him know how
much I appreciate his faithful service. We have an understanding: I
take very good care of him, and he looks up to me as the boss.

As Saint Francis used to say, "This body is Brother Donkey. I feed
him, I wash him, but I am going to ride on him." Whenever we use
drugs, or smoke, or drink, or even overeat, the donkey is riding on
us. The mystics challenge us: "Don't you want to get that donkey off
your back and ride on it?"

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

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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!