Death - Invincible.

Kareem just returned from his work, feeling great about the way the day went by, and still feeling great about his first date with the gril he always wanted to be. His performance at work has been great, the girl he wanted is impressed by him, man, he is feeling great. Looking forward, he is filled with the great days that lay ahead of him, where he could see his aspirations of leading a great life coming to reality. He was so engrossed in these thoughts that he could not help smiling. He was so eleated that he could feel the ground shaking, literally. He smiled, thinking how kiddish of him to actually feel it. He was enthralled to literally feel the ground shake. He felt it again, he could not believe it. It was incredible. Before he could see what was happening, his building came tumbling up on him. It was not his elation that made the ground shake, it was an earthquake. His life rolled in front of him, his childhood, his parents, his great job, his first date, his future. He tried to escape from the debris, he found a small crevice in which he could sneak through. He moved a bit, not noticing his movement will cause the debris to move. He struggled to fit through the opening, he could not. He tried harder only to realise that he shook the stability of the fallen debris. He could feel some heavy thing on his head. His head was spinning. He could hardly breath. His eyes were rolling. He is getting suffocated. He thought the is not going to make it. He fell down and he was dead. Death is invincible.
Frank is on his way to office, thinking about the day ahead where he needs to take care of his customer from Japan, his subordinate's problem, and oh yeah that design problem what was it? He cant remember it now. Anyway he can look it up on his computer. He is on ramp to US101 freeway in San Jose. Actually stuck at the ramp and waiting to get to office as soon as possible. Unfortunately the morning traffic doesnt give him a chance. He lookded himself in the rearview mirror. He has been working hard to balance his work and his personal life. He hates to be waya from his wife, but some time he has to. He thought, did I put on weight? Oh yes, of course, his wife has been complaining about for a while. Between his busy schedules and balancing acts he couldnt find any time for physical activities ( except for the acts of love). He smiles. He sighs, looking at the traffic. His heart speaks, is this it? Is this why I am here? Getting stuck in traffic, getting tougher to be with his beloved wife? He feels weight in his heart. Did his cholestrol increase? May be he should consult a doctor. Boy! Another item on the schedule. He hears some frustrated person honking from behind. He turns back and loks at them. He could feel his heart growing heavier. And then he falls on his steering wheel honking. The guy in the front got frustrated with this honking. He gets off his car to blast Frank. He finds Frank dead on his steering wheel. His cholestrol took its blow on him. Cardiac arrest. Death is shattering and unforgiving.
Kamesh finished his graduate studies in electrical engineering an year ago. He has been frantically looking for jobs since then. Due to the inflation, the unemployment is high. He stays in Chennai. After an year of struggle, pulling contacts, at last he got an interview with a great company in Bangalore. He is very excited and apprehensive about he is going to perform in his interview. He has prepared well for it going over the material again and again, wondering if he had missed something. He is pretty confident he can do it well, but somewhere there is this little nagging doubt that keeps popping every now and then. He is in auto now trying to get to Chennai Central to catch a train to Bangalore. Actually he is running late. There had been a small accident on the way and the people gathered around it. It just took a while to pass that. Anyway he should be able to make it. After all, the train might be delayed. He reaches Chennai Central just five minutes before departure time. He pays the auto and sprints towards the platform. Unfortunately he has to take stairs to go the next platform which would delay him. He climbs them, two at a time. Runs over the bridge. The train is about to leave. The green signal has come on. He just dashed descending two stairs at a time. He is almost there, just six more steps to go. He looks at the train starting, looses his concentration on the steps, misses the step, tumbles over and falls down. People hurry to help him. But he doesnt move. They turn him over, he took a blow on his head. He is dead. Just a split of a second ago he was alive. Now he is dead. Death is momentary.
Death - funny thing. Its timing unpredictable, it is inevitable, it is momentary. Is it painful? May be, no one could answer that. Sure, it is painful for others.
I sometimes wonder, is death our destination in the journey of life? Is that where I am headed to? Sure, we all know death is just waiting for us. It is our universal lover. It just cant help loving everyone.
You can run away from life, but you cannot run aways from death.
You can complain about life, you can only ponder about death.
You can break up with your life, you just cant live without death.
Life is journey, death its destination.
Life is enjoyable, death inevitable,
Life is definitely gonna betray us, Death definitely gonna hold us in her arms.

If we realize that death is inevitible, why not live the life to have no regrets. Why not live the current moment to its fulles extent, so as not to regret loosing it, even if it is momentarily. Who knows, may the coming moment could be your last??
Death - inevitable, invincible.

Use libraries more often!

I just picked up "The Complete Photo Guide to homeowner basics" from a county library close to my home. I also picked up "Appointment with Death" and was searching for more interesting books. Got a plenty of great reads that I am going to queue up. They also have reading desks, computers for public usage, printers almost everything anyone wants. The lady next to me is applying for jobs; poor lady probably lost her job in recession and trying to get back on. This library even has a community room where you can have a round table discussion or some sort of practice if you like.
I am amazed by the library system in US. I have never been to a public library in India. I am not sure how they compare, but I remember a friend of mine who used to visit this library in Chikkadapalli and he mentioned that library is full of books. I wish I had started using the library more often.
Well anyway, here I am pledging to use this library more often to pick up good reads. If anyone of you have suggestions on the must read books, do let me know and I will try to pick them from here and read them.

Have you seen Bigdeal.com?

I was stumbling today and I found this website called bigdeal.com. not sure if you ever looked at it. it claims to be a bidding game and claims to sell products at obscenely cheap prices, about 95% less than retail price. I was totally surprised on how that can be. So I started following. Here is my analysis.
As it happens I thought I will give it a try to see what it is about and to see if it is really true. So I loaded $20 into the account and started bidding on an ipad. No more than 5 bids later I realized how their business works. First the bid amount starts with 1 cent and goes up by 1 cent everytime someone places a bid. The bid itself costs 75 cents. Even though the price shows as 2 cents the true price is 75 cents. Typically the auctions have a limited time by which the auction closes. In here there is no deadline for the auction. As long as there are bidders the auction goes on. Everytime someone places a bid, the auction time goes up by 30 sec. In essence, there is no guarantee when the auction would end. Moreover, if you run out of your bids (the ones you purchased initially), you are doomed, since loading them will take more than 30sec and you would loose on the item you were bidding on.
Lets see how the company makes money now:
1. You pay the company to buy bids; first source of income
2. On the item itself:
    - to give an example, there was kindle-3 wi-fi graphite for sale. the so called sale price is around $13.90 in an 1 cent auction (meaning, the price goes up by 1 centeach time someone bids on it). So, there were already 1390 bids on it. Each bid costs 75 cents, which means company already got $1042 on someothing that costs aroud $140 on Amazon. phew.. if I had thought of it, it would have been great
3. How does the guy who bids win?
  Now lets say I bid on the auction, and I only placed 50 bids to win the above item. I paid about $38 for it, plus the final $13.9 which totals to about $52. So, thats almost 50% less than the retail price. yay! great! i got a great deal. but wait there is more ....
4. What if I didnt win the bid?
 I lost $38 on the item which I didnt get. but if the item happens to be retailable, then i can use $38 towards buying it. hmm.. the company makes either way :)
so, pay careful attention to these kind of websites. in fact, i feel that these companies should be shut down. very few people would understand what is going on and by the time you realize this, it would all be over. This is no different from gambling. I dont know which govt agency, but someone should pay attention to these kinda of websites and shut them down.
If you know who I can speak to on such things, let me know and I would love to follow it up.
Please pass this on to others ; make sure your friends are aware of this. If they want to go ahead and bid on it, please make sure they understand pros and cons.

P.S: I found some interesting books on Amazon; here are the links to them:
Corporate Fraud Handbook: Prevention and Detection
Fraud Casebook: Lessons from the Bad Side of Business
How to Smell a Rat: The Five Signs of Financial Fraud
Expert Fraud Investigation: A Step-by-Step Guide

Excellent drawing tool

I havent heard a single person not complain about visio not being easy to use. yes indeed it is cumbersome at times and takes way more time to draw something simple. for a while i lived with it until i saw one of my colleague use a tool and his speed of drawing is about 10x faster than mine. at times it is a beauty to just watch him draw diagrams. so i thought,man, i should learn that too. it will help me in long run.
the tool is XCircuit. I downloaded it and am playing with it. it does seem very fast. it is easy to draw what you want. it is more or less how you draw something on a sheet of paper. i strongly recommend people who dont have visio or are fed up with it to try to use xcircuit. it is easy to learn.
 It is not very intuitive at first, but I am sure with a bit of experience it would be a great tool.

New arrangements at home

Its been about a month since we got our home. My mom has been after me to get a webcam to show the home. So here I am ; bought this camera:



And then realized we have an old HP printer , but dont have a USB cable to connect to the PC. So I had to buy it:
Cables To Go - 13401 - 5M (16.4ft) USB 2.0 A/B Cable (White)

Might have to buy more electronics as and when needed. Want to make the home the way I want it, yay!

Indian beliefs and their roots - Belief 1

Indians have weird beliefs. Sort of superstitions. Here I intend to come up with the true reason (or similar one) that probably gave rise to such beliefs. Here we go...
Belief: Dont clean your ears at night

Someday I was feeling so itchy in my ears that got a earbud and started cleaning it. My mom was for a minute frozen to death. She said "dont clean your ears at night". Promptly I asked her why? She said thats the rule, dont ask why. I argued with her for a while not to believe in all these things, but in vain. Then I started thinking, there must be a reason for introducing such a rule. Indian civilization has been around for a long time and were far more advanced than other parts of the world. There must be a reason to have such a saying. So I thought for a while. Here is what I came up with.

• The time when these rules were written, they didnt have electricity or light bulbs; they had lamps at the most
• they didnt have ear buds from Johnson & Johnson. they prepared their own from a stick and cotton hopefully, but mostly primitive.
• groping in dark is never good, especially if the path is so constricted as your ear canal
• if anything goes wrong, you would directly puncture your ear

and hence dont do anything that can harm yourself in dark. This must be the reason (or in similar lines) for them to have introduced such a rule.
I got back with my mom to discuss this. Thankfully she was open to discussion on such a topic and agreed that something like that must be the true reason. But most moms in India would just brand you as a spoiled child if you argue with them about the blind beliefs.
I intend to write more about such superstitious beliefs. If you have a question, write it in the comments and we can try to come up with the reasoning.

HTML editing for emails.

I was disappointed with all the free email clients when it comes to adding html code in between the email. Yes, they have the simple ways to add bold, italics etc but what I want is to have html code added in the middle of email and the result should be just what it would be if I had inserted that html on my website. For example, here I am inserting html code to point to an add banner. And you could see the image, and if you click it will take you to the destination.

But if I want to do the same through an email, it doesnt seem like a possibility. First, most of the email clients dont allow inserting html (google doesnt). I found thunderbird does that. So I inserted html and from Thunderbird it shows the image etc as long as you are in the composer. Once the code is sent out to google mail, the image is gone when you receive the mail. I guess this was expected, but I am disappointed. How do we compose emails and make them behave just like a website? Is it a possibility?