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Showing posts from October, 2007

I'm Back!!!!

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Unfortunately, I could not find anyone to do my work, let alone blog so I have been out of blogosphere for nearly a fortnight now. Between extensive travellling, some work, large bouts of laziness, and family commitments my blogging was forgotten. But I'm back!!!!!!! Missed you all.

I Fix

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Driving down an Indian road, cool wind against your face, a song in your heart, your spirits floating high…… Ouch! You come down to earth after you dive into a pothole. Curses and bad mouthing the civic agencies and every other possible culprit dampens the spirits during the drive ahead. So what is a pothole and why does it cause such mood swings? Wiki to the rescue. Potholes (sometimes called kettle and known in parts of the Western United States as a chuckhole ) is a type of disruption in the surface of a roadway where a portion of the road material has broken away, leaving a hole. Most potholes are formed due to fatigue of the pavement surface. As fatigue cracks develop they typically interlock in a pattern known as "alligator cracking". The chunks of pavement between fatigue cracks are worked loose and may eventually be picked out of the surface by continued wheel loads, thus forming a pothole. The formation of potholes is exacerbated by cold temperatures, as w

Police = Thief

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This is a long but true story of the rogue cops of Chennai. Read on only if you are interested… Yesterday was a day of great lows! It was a good day to start the week and as usual I dropped D off at the university and proceeded to office. On the Gandhi Mandapam road (just a thought, the name is a misnomer since the mandapam is a couple of kilometers away on another road) a cab way ahead in the traffic pulled up suddenly. This caused a sudden application of brakes of the cars following it including me in my third love. In a split second I felt a huge thump and the shattering of glass. As I was securely belted up I got away with no damage but my poor car was damaged very badly. I rushed out to see a sea of confusion; 1) A girl, ostensibly the pillion rider of the bike (A Bajaj Pulsar) that rammed into my car 2) A flustered guy who rushed to the aid of the girl who was by now bleeding and appeared hurt 3) A crowd of irate motorists who found this delay very irritating and 4) The usual goo

Template traumas

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Hi, As you can see QuoVadis has taken yet another avatar. Actually every time I try to get a third party template for my blog it somehow contrives to end up doing a lot of damage. Blame it on my lack of html knowledge or just simple bungling. I managed to get some absolutely wonderful templates and finally I end up with a compromise. A few problems I face: 1) I am not able to back up the widgets from my current template and move them to the proposed one. 2) The proposed template though good still has some scope for improvements and I don't know how to do them 3) I get run time errors when I try to paste third party code and I'm simply clueless to debug. So all you whizkids out there who can do something about this, lease take your cue from the image at the start of the post..... P.S. I think this template is good and it brings to mind a great management technique. KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!!!!

Gossip?? Turn on the news.

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I tend to watch the news channels in the morning after my daily reading of the Hindu. Actually it is more of hearing the news while I go about my daily chores in the process of getting ready for work. Initially it was NDTV 24/7 for want of choice but when CNN IBN was launched I found it a little more appealing and so I switched royalty. However my liking for the channel stops whenever their cricket programme LOC comes on simply because of my aversion for Kris Shrikanth who is affectionately (sic) called Cheeka (a la the Hutch pug). Shrikanth is simply abominable but I will save that for another story. Anyway of late I started watching TV Today as they tend to have at least two pleasant looking well dressed hostesses dishing out the news. Some of you may have seen TV today and may recollect a third woman who looks like Scary Spice and whose histrionics are a serious turn off for any serious news viewer. These news bulletins tend to structure their programme into the headlines, then busi

Credit card capers

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I had a 60K limit on my Visa Silver credit card from the second largest bank in India and very recently de to bad financial planning and a lot of stupidity I had an available cash limit of under a couple of thousands and the interest servicing alone was draining me. So I decided to pay the amount in full from my savings and get rid of this debt trap and based on the bill I did so right down to last paisa. My problems with the card then commenced! When I call up their 24/7 customer care number for some unknown reason every time the officer understood that I wanted to close my card my line invariably gets disconnected. So after several frustrating disconnected calls I finally managed to get through them from the hotline in their branch. Finally I got an assurance that my card will be closed. Happy and flushed with the success of my mission I rested in peace at home. This peace lasted only for a week when my next statement read that I had a couple of hundreds to pay as interest for the in