Slim inbox

My inbox has single digit emails! I try to maintain it below five. I keep the mails that are relevant to my immediate work. So, only two or three mails end up in this category. There are couple of todo items or to be read mails. They stay in the box.

Daily morning I receive around 30 to 40 mails (unsubscribed from unwanted lists). Before reading those mails, I will scan the titles and pick the mails which I dont have to read. That would shrink my new mail list about 15. Out of these 15 mails, 10 would be general info which I would have to scan through and delete. Some of these scanable mails are pretty nice - by reading the subject, I know that I can delete it; so I will delete and start reading, I read till the mail is visible.

The remaining 5 mails might be addressing me to influence my day work. Most of these mails ought to be digested and followed as per the guidelines. One or two might have to be preserved for reference. If I have to preserve them, I will see if I can delete mails from the previous day's stagnant mails (less than 10). Some mails ought to be retained for future requirement, and hence they deserve to be placed in a separate folder.

Having few mails make work simple. Reduces lots of unnecessary searches. If at all searches are to be done, it will be only in the trash :-)

Rotatable heater

As I installed a heater recently, all I can think is about heater. A thought came in the morning while thinking about solar heaters. Instead of fixing the base of such heater, how about allowing the base to rotate.

Think sun flower. If the base can orient itself towards the sun, the sensors will receive maximum sun rays. So, the motor in the base will be receiving feedback from the heat or light from the top layer; this feedback will determine the angle of rotation. At night time, the platform should be turned towards east.

Ya, I should have googled to find if this is already implemented. At times, it is nice to think that we are the first to think about something :-)

Setting an instant heater

After some market research, I narrow down on an instant heater. This is against the normal storage heater what we find in most of the bathrooms.

Instant heater has advantage like providing hot water at the instant instead of requiring to switch on some time before. Also, the water is heated on a need basis opposed to traditional way of heating bulk water even if the need is less.

Also, the instant stuff is very cheap compared to storage heater.
However, the disadvantage is high voltage consumption. Guess this consumption will be compensated to the less amount of heater usage on an overall calculation.

After getting the heater, I was able to assemble the set by myself. Had connected the plug to live, earth, neutral as per the guidance from an electrician. However, the fuse went off when I tried to switch it on. Then the electrician had to come to fix the fuse. Seems like the electrical socket connection in the wall was faulty. After changing the line, the heater worked smooth.

No hassle still then, we are getting hot water at will (not our will, but the EB dept's will).

upgraded the toolkit

Remember, I put my earlier toolkit for sale ... I struck a deal with GA for the same. He is interested in buying it.

Once that is in, I collected requirement details for the toolkit I want to buy. Felt a drill is needed. The drivers were not sufficient.

While shopping for the kit, I found the box with all the tools I was looking for. However the quality was not up to mark. Since I was not impressed, I moved on to buying pieces separately. With this approach, I got good quality equipments. Thou the cost escalated more than the package deal, I was happy to get what I wanted.

The truth

Are we live with a falsehood in this society? Do we pretend and suppress our true feelings, expressions? I think so. At times, I used to think why we have to pretend ourself? Why do we need to maintain a status, dignity, a pseudo-hierarchy ... How about a world without these virtual demarcations and rituals?

While thinking on the other side, that pretension is what we struggled to gain. I feel civilization itself mean to lead a life away from nature, away from being in the true form. Even now we find such ideology - a person from a village who express his/her inner feelings in public is labeled uncivilized.

May be these civilization process is what brought human to the current state.
This leads to the point that falsehood is growth or evolution. hmm .. interesting thought, need to workout further.

disparity

while catching the flight from my city, I called the local taxi guy. This is the taxi we regularly engage as he charges nominally. After dropping at the airport, he happily accepted the 100 bucks I gave.

After getting down from the flight, I moved towards the exit. A placard with my name welcomed me. The man in clean white suite was holding it. He gave a nice, warming smile and took me to a nice car. We had a good discussion about general things. At the drop point, he gave me the bill/receipt. The car agency had swiped 850 bucks from my credit card and I need to formalize it by a signature.

I dont complain about the cost or service etc. I am thinking aloud about the way corporate world function. When a corporate need to fix a solution, it has to pay heavily, right from electricity, phone bills, real estate, construction, printing etc. If such corporate has to survive in such transactions, these amount will have to paid by the customer or buyer.
Wondering what will it be if we strip down many of the pseudo-cost-escalation. We might have better efficient place with less stressful environment.

with the nature

Last weekend I relaxed in a jungle. A scenic place to go among the mountain region. The place is kind of cut of from the rest of the world, as it tucks itself within a valley well gaurded by hill ranges in all direction.

Our stay was quite comfortable in a small cottage. We went around for sight-seeing and spotted few rare animals including a young cheetah. Other common inhabitants to spot there were deer, bison, elephants, monkeys, peacock etc. The night safari was the height of all. A large tusker chased our vehicle! It was standing in the side of the road and when we tried crossing, it gave a thundering trumpet and a chase.

Since my friend spared his cottage there (for a reduced rent), the trip became cheaper.

When I left the city

I had a palacial house, married to a beautiful wife, amassing wealth. However, life was boring. Somehow things became monotonous. Events that were interesting in the past started soring out. I was contemplating about moving away from this life.

Slowly the thought precipitated. Now came the dilemma. What should do with all my luxury cars, should I distribute among friends or leave them in streets? Also, the weapons .. the glorious collection, powerful ones, that saved my life many times and helped to cross scores ... do I return to the shop or can I take selected few when I am migrating?

Will I be coming back? Should I make provision to allow me to resume back to the same status where I am?

This departure somehow reminds me about death. It is so close and comparable. I guess even before I die, I am going to worry about all these artifacts the same way I am doing now.

With such silent and painful manner, I left millions of dollars with torncity and returned to normal life.

Toolkit for sale

Power Maxx Tool set of 12 pieces model.

Very handy assorted instrument to help household activities.

• Bought : one month back
• Condition : hardly used; as good as new
• selling price: Rs 425 (slightly negotiable)
• Reason of selling: Upgrading to higher end toolbox

Here is the list of items available.

• torchlight


• electrical tester


• hammer


• plier


• measurement tape


• adjustable spanner


• adjustable plier


• Thread seal tape


• Flat screw driver


• Star screw driver


• knife


• Tool kit box

More sale
Also, the following set of drivers are available for Rs 100.
Four handle of various size; each one can fit a star or flat type driver. So, we have 8 drivers for Rs 100.

Using large numbers

The numbering system has reached trillions and centillion (which is 10^303).
In India we dont follow millions & billions, instead we go for lakhs and crores. However, we are for left behind without words for larger numbers. Already politicians had crossed thousand crore scams and more. It is time to coin words.

Instead of inventing new words, we can go through the Ancient words and see if they can be re-used, just like lakhs and crores.

Here are the words from Ancient India.
10 ^ 0      eAkam
10 ^ 1      dasha
10 ^ 2      shatham
10 ^ 3      sahasram
10 ^ 4      ayutham
10 ^ 5      laksham
10 ^ 6      niyutham
10 ^ 7      koti           <- this is the crore stuff
10 ^ 8      arbudham
10 ^ 9      vrundham
10 ^ 10     karva
10 ^ 11     nikarva
10 ^ 12     shanga           <- trillion
10 ^ 13     pathrama
10 ^ 14     sAgara
10 ^ 15     anthyam        <- quadrillion
10 ^ 16     mathyam
10 ^ 17     parArdham

These numeric words are preserved in a sanskrit poem.

story of tata broadband

The slogan I would suggest for tata broadband internet connection is, "works smooth; cancel registration upon failure".

I had observed the above functioning for the past couple of months. When there is a problem, there is limited response. The customer care reps are clueless. Repeated call to them are futile. Tickets raised go wasted.

At times, even raising tickets are blocked!! I get either busy tone or continuous ringing. Whereas in normal circumstances, the call should be directed to an automatic phone menu. I doubt that the customer care "switches off" their receiving mode when there are lots of complain.

Anyway, I got an alternate connection to the tata guys. Let us see how they both function. Hope they dont sync up to fail.

Book: The Circle of Innovation

Happen to pick this book written by Tom Peters. It is quite interesting.

Many useful tips on thinking in the direction towards new dimension, unfolds our thoughts for a better way of living. Very nice way of illustrating the danger of clinching to old ideas and the benefit of taking risk into new arena.

Thou the book is more than 10 years old, the ideas are still fresh for these days.

More than the above, the unusual fonts, random pictures, etc etc made the book easy to read.

GA's marriage reception

GA invited us for his reception. We all planned to attend around 7pm. As per the plan, KS to pick me. He reached 40 mins after the agreed meeting time. Still then I was standing at a busy junction and admiring the natural resources of the city. KS asked me the venue and I was stareing blank. I thought he will be knowing. By then LN called for the venue. We asked him to check with RN. Seems like RN came to know about the reception only after LN called.

I came up with the idea of dialing GA's mobile. I was sure that someone else wil b holding the phone while GA is busy at the stage. My guess was correct. GA's brother answered the phone and gave us the direction.

That saved the day for all of our unplanned, unorganized friends!

airtel saga

Still the airtel is behind me with their greedy tongue. Here is what happened before.

There was no response from the company inspite of 8 emails. Phone calls were answered without any conclusions. Their standard response was that someone from the concerned dept will be calling me. Needless to say, that never occured.

After consulting with a lawyer friend, I drafted a 'professional' letter. Sent it through courier. In two days I got an acknowledgement .. at last! However the message was the usual one. Seems like the concerned dept will contact me in two days; that was four days ago.

Anyway, let me wait for one more month to see if they are making any move.

Mahjongg

I had increased the phase of playing Mahjongg game from Moraff. Quite addictive one. The idea is simple. A collection of tiles are piled up in the screen. Each titles have colorful images and symbols. We have to click the titles having the same image. Few rules for clicking a tiles like - tiles have to in the corner and no other tile should be above this one. Aim of the game is to clear all the tiles from the board.

After repetitive playing, it occurred to me that I was able to get the images I was looking for and I am able to get only those I was looking. Thou few tiles might be in prominent position, which were clickabe, I seldom located them. I read this idea elsewhere in a management book saying, we will get what we look for and hence we ought to set our goals clearly.

Insurance policy benefitors

I do have this opinion about life insurance: why do I need it? If I die, why should I worry about the current kith and kin? (my wife also shares similar idea). Only when we think at the family level, it starts making sense. We feel uncomfortable to think about our family in a financial difficulty in the absence of the bread winner. That is exactly the emotional blackmailing weapon used by the insurance agents.

I used to think why the government, (atleast the Indian govt) is encouraging insurance. They give lots of tax rebate and other benefits. May be it will be a headache for govt when the income of a family is totally cut (ie, when a single person is the sole person earning in the family). If such insurances are not encouraged, govt will have to take the headache of providing plans for widows and kids.

Tool kit

My long time goal was met last weekend. I got a tool kit for house use. The kit has trivial things like screw drivers, pliers, hammer etc placed in a neat box. Quite handy set of instrument, got the power by holding it.

It is a magic tool kit box - just in a day, many of the nitty-griddy problems at home vanished. I was able to split the phone line into two, assemble a book shelf, fix the cot. May be I worked on them with initial enthu, let us see how things go.

Dodging airtel

Inspite of repeated request to cancel the number, airtel sent the monthly bill (for the month I didn't use the number and surrendered the same). I didnt want to waste time in going behind them to revert it. I have automatic payment of airtel bills through my bank account. I tried to stop that but the bank ppl insisted on getting a letter from airtel for closure.

I emptied the bank account and waited for the fun. During the monthly bill cycle, airtel tried to take money from my account. It was fun watching the disappointment in its face. However, the bank has placed a penalty of Rs 200 since the account was empty when the automatic service tried to retrieve money.

Now I am in the process of closing the bank account as I no longer need it. Let us see what airtel is upto.

Romance

This posting is continuation of the title Human Fantasies.

Olden
In all parts of the world, people had their local version of erotica and other pornographic materials. Based on movies, we get an impression that there were special villas for the big shots which had erotic paintings and statues. The Indian version of erotica or the sex guide, Kamasutra, rules till date. Most of the temples of India which are 1000+ years old have nude images and sculpture with sexual positions (hmmm .. are these possible to do? I dare not to try).

Modern
Do you know what drives the internet boom? Porno. Any new technology is put to test by applying on the porno sites. Even better, the porno sites drives the technology by demanding new features. World wide these sites have a good customer base. It would be interesting to find if there were any contribution by porno movies in improving the technology behind flim industry,vcr, dvd etc.

Dont assume that I am totally corrupt and hence I am stating the above. I rarely go to those sites.


If you could think any more fantasies, please place them in the comments.

Good service

The wireless mouse had some issue. It didnt function. I tried replacing the batteries. That didnt help, moreover the keyboard also stopped working. Different combinations of pressing those reset/sync up buttons failed to bring them live.

Monday morning I called up the person running Krishna Computer Care, the place where I bought the computer and accessories. He told he is busy today and he can send technician the next day. As it is not a pressing issue, I agreed for it.

The surprise came in by afternoon. Technicians arrived inspite of rain, and fixed the keyboard problem.

It was very nice of them and I felt happy.