I need more time.

I need more time to

1) Read books.

2) Play games.

3) Spend time with family.

4) Tour nations.

5) Sleep without guilty complex.

6) Do something substantial apart from dousing off 20 fires per day.

7) ........................

I remain hopeful. Yeah, being less lazy will also help. :)

Dell.

It seems some disgruntled customer who is also a famous blogger created lot of damage to the repuation of DELL by writing about his experiences with customer service of DELL.
I wish more such consumer activism will lead to better shopping experience.

The relevant URL is

http://buzzmachine.com/archives/cat_dell.html

Everything's fine.

I look like a whiner. I keep complining about many things in life. What am I like in real life? Yeah, I argue a lot, I dish out a lot of facts to support my arguments, I make no effort to hide my jealousy towards lot of things, ...
Above all I am a nice, happy person. :) Difficult to believe? Ask my friends. I am positive about life. I wish for well being of many parties. And hence I am concerned about state of things.
I don't just complain. I try to act. I try to bring in change.

I know, I should cut down on complaining an increase my efforts to make a difference.:)

Violence

Not so infrequent warning. The topic might be vague.

What are different kinds of violence. Domestic violence, Racial abuse, Religious intolerance, Bullies in school, Street Goondas, Mafia, Human right violations, Insanity, tribal wars, border wars, Hunt for WMDs , Resistance against occupation, Againest dictatorship,...? Obviously some of them overlap.
How can a person kill another person? Is it easy to kill using a gun instead of a knife? Is it easy if you are brainwashed about a particular reason? Is it guaranteed that our life will change after our first murder? Is violence related to economic reasons? Is violence a direct outcome of insecurity? Has laziness anything to do with violence?
Violence is bad, generally, that is. But probably at times we don't have any option. Do we use sermon to transform a burgler if we can bludgeon him?
It is a stupid shortcut to achieve objectives. Yes, stupidity attimes can be best approach.
Being involved in a few violent incidents, let me talk about my experience. I hate being involved on either side of fence. (victim/ perpetrator) Say somebody says something uncharitale to me, what options do I have? Shall I go to court? Shall I remain silent? Shall I try to gain sympathy from others for being victim? Or shall I take law into my hands and try to derive satisfaction?
I feel guilty about somethings I shouldn't have done. That doesn't make a buddhist. Not yet.
I feel there's too much injustice that can be corrected/prevented by law. We need dialogue, candle vigils, peace march'.. But they will not be a signifiant factor aytime soon in achieving peace, eliminating brutality in near future.
BTW, violence need not be just physical in nature. Any repression cultural, psychological, racial, physical is violence and will be met with appropriate(for victim) form of resistence.

Whatever crap.

TV and state of Naton.

My new theory. One can assess the state of nation by watching content on local TV. Yeah, it sounds similar to " Roads are index for nation ". I know many such theories can be easily pronounced and probably will be equally (in)valid.
Coming back to my theory. I will first talk about TV content in India. We have sports channels, music channels, news channels, mixed programming channels, Faith channels, movie channels, ..
Let me tak about them in a bit more detail.

Sports Channels: Or should I say Cricket Channels. They buy rights for cricket tournaments at exorbitant prices and milk customers taking turns. Hockey, Football, Tennis, Athletics.. some of them are relevant to elite sections and some to none. Ok, one can always say, why should we blame channels for status quo. Instead of accentuating status quo, they can try to mould public opinion. They can try to make some sports look more attractive instead of pushing cricket all the time. Oh, yeah, I forgot about wwf,wwe,tna,..and other zombi variants of professional wrestling. It is a mockery of all advances civilisation had witnessed till now. What's the point in such shows? Kids trying to emulate such stuff is __________(Fill in the blank). Oh, surrogate advertisement stuff. We have liquor and cigarette comapnies making things like glassware, mineral water, awards (yes, awards) and what not to make their brands known. Why hyprocrisy on this level? Ok, I am digressing now.

Music Channels: We need foreign exchange. So we export all female clothes except lingerie to earn that. Whatever is left is displayed on music channels. Get some punjabi (looking) guys and 8-10 fair skinned girls , make them do some standard routines under garb of Bhangra, if possible get a afro american or white guy to dish out some inane words at regular intervals,..
And remix, my understanding goes like this. Get some nice old song. Add the same club beats or whatever, show a dj who acts as if he has come from some other planet, .. Is this all what is left to music? Please educate us about genres of music, please don't ape western stuff all the time, please differentiate yourselves,..

Faith Channels: O God , O prabhuva (telugu translation), meditation, lyrics, miracles, faith healing, comparision of religions, standrad practises, ...Given a chance I will kill all participants on these channels in a gas chamber on the charges that, they are posining society.

News Channels: Did anything happen? Blame govt. Some thing didn't happen, blame govt.
You caught someone taking 100rs bribe. Sensationalise that. Somebody dying on road, start blaming sombody, start showing opinions all the while showing blood covered gory imagery. Never ask right questions. Be aggresive without reason. Sell your soul for advertisements. Urban population is the only population thats news worthy. Predict everything and anything. Never care to correlate results with your predictions. Blame insensitivity of everybody else. Given a chance, I will hand over to them more cruel punishments that I do to sermonizers on faith channels.

Movie channels: They aren't primary culprits. They are culprits in that they can't do anything about quality of films they transmit.

Mixed Programming: Kyuki, saas, bhahu, pati patni aur woh, ghosts, telebrands, award shows, gossip, ads interrupted by programming, ... Please, please somebody show me one thing I can like about such channels.
I know I am being too negative about stuff on idiot box. Let me talk about somethings I like.

I like cartoon network and pogo in parts. I like CNBC, Discovery and National Geographic and such channels for more time than I dislike them.

If my theory about correlation of content on tv and state of nation is right, then this nation is in a bad shape. And I see no hope. :(

Faith.

Be forewarned. This post will be mundane.

I had faith in God when I was kid. Most probably out of ignorance. Probably because I didn't know that "not having faith" is also a viable option.
It's a viable option but not an happy option. When in trouble, people who believe turn towards god. What are options for agnostics like me? Faith healing, Jihad, pilgrimage, worship of our ancestors,.. Huh, life is interesting for believers. :( :)
Why this boring post now? My companion (spouse) is a believer. She also "believes" that I am an ignorant i***t (she didn't say that explictly) to not follow her in that respect. :)
Faith cannot be instilled by domstic terrorism. I am only worried about kids. Being pulled in 2 opposite directions. :) I am not asking them to be agnostic. Not yet. ;)
I have no problem with their choice as long as they are rational and informed. Like me, that is. ;)
Coming to toher stuff. I was reading a story by Osar wilde. A translated one. Original title is "The Remarkable Rocket". Pure Genious.

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/2177/

Tomorrow I will write a silly stupid short story. You are forewarned again. Later.

A sincere boy and a porn movie.

I don't know why I remember this now. :) I was 17 and you know what curiosity is like at that age. And oppurtunities present themselves for eager parties.
Due to an idiot who is a chief minister (of my province) these days, a town had illicit screenings of XXX films. Or Blue films in our the then lingo.
I was a stranger to town, so had no problem being seen at such infamous locations. But then, I needed a company. I didn't want to feel guilty alone.
I persuaded my cousin who was same aged and hence most probably same desire to find new pleasures. But he had a problem. Reputation. In that small town/ Big village he was an academic star who deserved and got recognition.
So we decided to take a less risky route. Go to a show which starts at around sunset.I.e.. 6:30 pm. Second show or last show , at 9:30 is ruled out because of parents.
Anyway, to cut the chase, we took all precautions we should to commit sin without anybody's knowledge.
After 2 successful attempts, we grew more confident, but didn't lower our guard. But destiny caught up with us. On our 3 rd attempts some idiot asks my cousin "You too Mr Innocent/ studious /..?".
After that exchange which lasted for eterniy (or so it felt), I asn't ready for that look in my cousin's eyes.
He was depressed and wanted to go home. I had to "reluctantly" agree. After all, I wasn't caught. :)

After a while.

I know, I should post with more frequency. I always have some stuff to read. Rather lot of stuff to read. Usually it's a mixture of "necessary stuff" and "for pleasure" stuff. Unfortunately? "for pleasure" stuff takes precendence. Today I was reading about Socrates' death. How he was calm before imminent death and why he preferred death to escape , while condemning suicide?
He was one brave person. To think of death. My thinking about death reaches a wall too soon. It's always melodramatic with same stupid questions blocking further progress. Questions like "What happens to my parents?" and in recent days "What happens to my kids?". I wish, I could go a little further. Probably with more effort.
I am yet to suffer a death which alters me. Yeah, my cousin's death left me very sad, but after few days, everything seems to be normal again.
I can't imagine my parents getting old, suffering and then the inevitable thing. I wish death to be a more simple affair. But history doesn't provide any hope.

Crazy Machines, Are you experienced, networking, work.

Crazy Machines : New Challenges.
It's a (computer)game that requires logical thinking. We are given certain objects like pulleys, gear wheels, dynamites, push buttons, batteries to be placed and achieve a particual objective.
It's fun and makes your brain work. For more information and demo,

http://www.crazy-machines.com/CMNH_ENG/CMNH_ENG.htm

Are you Experienced.

It's a book by one William Sutcliffe. It's a comedy about a british backpacker. It was ok, when I was reading it. But after completion, it feels substandard. Cliched description of India. I mean beggers, illness, poverty,.. Hero's (and hence Author's) description of India sounds unrealistically bad, condescending. Hero is an empty character with no sense of purpose. Author's attempts at humour work at times. But at the end of it, it is a pointless book. Avoid reading it, if you couldn't avoid buying it.

Networking.

I have experienced data loss on enough number of occasions. Ok, I don't have windows source code to lose. But still. Data loss on previous occasions was due to ignorance, haste, hardware failure and misplaced confidence on destiny. This time, I want to be more cautious. And hence store a copy of data in another computer. Chalo, go for networking. Peer to peer. Wireless? wired? Domains, workgroups, shared folders, shared internet connection, firewall, password protected, .. whatever crap. Did that and started saving the stuff.
Now I need to spend a bit more time and start playing Midtown Madness over home network with my sons. :)

Work.

Going to Pune for the first time on account of work. Need to study about Pune and the work am supposed to do there. My son had alread submitted his wishlist. :)

Blogger's block.

Everyday on 2 or 3 occasions, I feel "I must write about this in blog" , but it doesn't happen. And these days, the output had gone down. Probably going through a blogger's block. (whatever that means)
Substantial updates, hopefully soon.

2 Items.

I bought 2 things a couple of days ago. A cycle, yes, a cycle and a computer table. Hopefully they will help me in being more productive.:)

About India.

I had typed the following 2 days ago.


Tomorrow we celebrate 59th( or is it 58th) Independence day. So let me try to make a list of few things about India.

1)India achieved independence on 15th Aug , 1947. (From nearly 200 yrs of British Rule)

2)India is second most populous country in the world.

3)India is a poor country.

4)No other country probably has as many languages, ethnic communities, religions as India has.

5)India is relatively a safe country. (Compared to some african and asian nations)

6)India is a very, very diverse country with perceptible differences according to geography, religion,..

7)Most of Indians (above 80%) are Hindus, 12-14% Muslims and rest sikhs, christians, buddhists, jains...

8)India is endowed with reasonable natural resources like water, minerals etc. Unfortunately we lack oil. :(

9)India is plagued by caste system. For dummies, caste system is kind of racism that's prevalent for centuries.

10)Indian politicians are percieved to be corrupt, and they are. :(

11)Indian economy was highly regulated till early 1990s. Liberalisation helped in reducing poverty in the past 15 yrs.

12)Except for 3 yrs of emergency , we had a democracy, however flawed it is.

13)Indians are very poor performers in sports. Not even a single individual gold medal in olympics. :( :( :(

14)Indian people are not chritable enough. (personal opinion)

15)Our public policy severly lacks planning.

16)We have 2 corrupt(in every way) parties at the top. Congress & BJP. Regional parties are oppurtunistic. Communists are honest but confused & stupid.

17) Education is given lot of importance atleast in some parts of country. Ofcourse teaching methods are still archaic.

18) Indians form one of largest immigrant communities in as many as 30 countries of world. Manpower export is one of significant exports of this country.

19)Freedom of media is very, very high. But abused by media. :)

20)Our culture is mostly kitschy.

21)People are very tolerant. probably over tolerant.Or shall I say apathetic.

22)We have militancy in many parts of country. But still not strong enough to be a significant threat to the social order and state. (Like as in Nepal)

23) We have a continuous stupid irritant in Pakistan. (And vice versa) Lot of resources are spent on armed forces. in both the countries.

24)North Indians dominate South Indians in politics. South Indians just don't care and live better. :)

25)We have a successful nuclear, space & missile programs. (or so we are told)

26) Only 60% of Indians are literate. I believe that less than 10% are adequately literate.

27)Indian businesses are dominated by certain tribes who have no qualms about anything. :(

28) I suspect a grand alliance of politicans-business people - hooligans is at work to supress all others in India. Or else how can one explain well being of Ambanis, Lalu Prasa yadav and Dawood Ibrahim?

29)Indians make lot of movies, most of them trash by any standard.

30)People use emotion as a weapon, mostly againest themselves. :)

31)Most of marriages are arranged. That shows state of progress in our country.

32)Hygiene is poor at all levels of scoiety.

33)Though people are good on personal level, collectively we can be foolish.

34)Religious intolerance is being encouraged by some mainstream parties.

35)Symbolism often dominates practicality.

36)Too much power is vested in the hands of few.

37) Bureaucrats behave like children of destiny.

38)Indians are these days known for software, diamond trade, textile trade,..

39)Self Reliance policy seems to have helped India in some aspects. Unlike china, foreign capital isn't a big factor in Indian economy. Atleast not yet.

40)Cricket is a national obsession. But unfortunately we don't excel even in that game. Individual pursuits come before anything else. Except for 1 or 2 players, all others play either to save their skin or make more money and not for winning.

41)Roads are ok. In the sense, they always seem to be improving. Ofcourse no comparision with highways of western nations.

42)Railways are a big part of Indian life. Service is ok and affordable. But it can be much better wih better administration and less govt control.

43)Most of Indias, atleast from middle and higher sections of soceity are hypocratic.

44)Spirit of adventure is severly lacking in Indians.

45)Most of Indians are innocent, or shall I say less informed. (Is that good or bad?)

46)Women are denied equal rights in many parts of country.

47)Certain sections of society known as Scheduled Castes & Tribes are severly discriminated againest. :(

48) Civil debate is devoid of intelligence & logic. :(

49)Corruption is a way of life.

50)There is new found optimism across the country these days.

51)we have a great history. Depends on interpretation. We hve some great stories in our mythologies.

52) India is birthplace of 3 religions. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism.

53)China is viewed as a threat in economic and military sense.

I wanted to do atleast 100 things. But I am not in right mood. Some other time. Happy Independence day. (to those who care) To secure future of our children, to preserve and further our values,.. let us cherish our independence. Yeah, I know it sounds like those stupid presidential speeches in hollywood movies. :)

Too much work to do, But..

Sleep cmes first. Let me sleep now.

What is life like?

What is life like for a murderer? (accidental, professional, sadistic,psychotic,..)
What is life like for a top politician? (Honest, dishonest, intelligent, dumb,..)
What is life like for adventure sportsman?
What is life like for a beautiful intelligent girl in repressive societies?
What is life like for billionaires/ rich millionaires? (i.e.. not just 1/2 million)
I have many more such doubts, I wish I knew answers for those.

From 5 to 10.

I am talking aout speed of my internet connection.One of very few things I hate about living in a small place is bandwidth. I am jealous of all my friends/ non friends who don't deserve all that high badnwidth hey have. ;)
I thought about every option to make my life/ my downloads a more pleasurable affair.
Satellite internet, leased line,.. and ofcourse waiting for highly inefficient telcos to start offering braodband connections in my area.
Today a milestone was reached after installation of RF PICO Repeater. What's that? Something that enhances signal strength of my CDMA phone through which I connect to net. Yagi Antenna & Repeater made wonders to signal strength and my internet speed. That is, relatively speaking. From 5 KBps to 10 KBps.
And I keep waiting for more such miracles. Later.

Frustration.

Today my job required me to bang(verbally) few people. I am sure each one of them will hate me for some time to come. It's no fun to hurt others. It's no fun to indicate to them their actions which go againest interests of company. And when it comes to chiding, there is no formula to determine the right amount of chiding.
If disciplinary action is planned, sleep is lost on the night before and night after. If it is instantaneous, sleep is lost after the event.
I hate anything that involves dealing with people. I wish I had a job which dealt only with machines (preferably gadgets).
Anyway, I don't want to just keep crying. Those who did no mistakes never did anything. So here I go, getting involved in action and LIVING LIFE.

Friendship Day.

Some of my friends visit this blog. So I may not be completly honest here. I don't have high opinion about special "days".. especially things like fathers day, mothers day,....
Can't imagine greeting my father ot mother specially. :) Valentine's day. Yeah, it had it's charm till I married. (It's supposed to work that way, right?) For sometime I believed that all these days are a conspiracy by greeting card companies and such.
Coming back to friendship day, I never noticed this day till now. I feel odd to greet any of my friends. But let me take this oppurtunity to remember few things about friends, friendship..
I am blessed to have had nice friends all through. Was I a good friend to atleast some people? I would like to believe so.
I learnt lot of things from friends. Decent behaviour, being (acting) humble, being positive, taking risks, ..
I remember cricket matches, tutions, walks along rail track, night study, stealing,
fighting, hotels, greeting cards, wishes, faith,entrance tests, college,girls (and their constructive/destructive role) ,.. I wish to thank everybody who made my life a pleasurable experience till now. I guess, I was lucky.
Yes, there were some disappointments. Some friends no longer remain friends. Some lost their relevance. I lost few friends with my actions. I cannot regret enough about that.
Let me stop here, as this may sound boring.

Not being lazy for a moment.

My 5 yr old son started taking active interest in sport. He needs either his mom/dad while he is being coached. Today it was my turn to accompany him. I was ashamed to remember that I left playing/ exercise for 1 yr. Though I am doing fine physically, I can do better. I started playing, but within 15/20 mts exhaustion took over.
Time to revive practise.Time to feel good again.:)

Wasting Time

For the past 1 week, I had been wasting considerable amount of time on SuDoku.(No, not again) I have been wasting time all through my life. Watching Cricket, TV, Reading junk, Internet, ...or just being plain lazy.
What is "wasting time"? Not being productive. What is "being Productive"? Learning something. What "something"? Something that results in making life more easy.:) Ok, this is looking like "fisherman & Bill Gates" story.
We work to afford to be lazy. Some wise people remain lazy all the time. Some lucky people get to remain lazy and still not get adversly affected. Like me.;)

Reading Newspapers

I remember reading news papers since I was 7 or 8 yrs old. That's more than 20 yrs. That habit did help me in appearng informed. I can even say, it wasn't "habit", it was "addiction". I must read atleast 3 or 4 papers every morning.
Ok,ok what about it now? As I grew wise along with the age, I learnt about hidden agendas that can be, sensationalism, giving them what they want and not what they need...
I wanted to get out of this habit. I mean reading news papers. Did I tell you, I hit a reporter once? :)
Let me not digress. In a most unexpected way, I got rid of habit.
SuDoku. ;) Yeah, you heard it right. The time I spend (30-45 mts) for reading news paper is spent on filling empty spaces of already-mentioned SuDoku.
And I am so happy. I may outgrow SuDoku, but I don't want to go back to the habit of reading news papers.
Today I was reading somewhere that, once you stop watching TV, reading newspapers your perspective of world changes. Yes, I am ready.:)