Quest for an iPhone

Only an iPhone could get me back to Blogging!! It's really been a while...life's not easy with too much at work and nobody at home :)...
I am not a big gadget guy, but an iPhone just grabbed my attention..that was it, the gadget I was unknowingly waiting for ages with almost everything...a sleek phone, internet tablet, toy and show off all rolled into one :P..now they have a camera and gps too :)..endless are it's virtues!!

Being a guy that believes things have to bought at the right time for the right price at a right place, I just had to wait (1st wait) for 4 grueling months to get to the new 3G version..there were talks, rumours, theories, inside news and what not and then it was announced and when it was announced the hype was so much that people just weren't enough satisfied :)..I was though...faster internet is a great thing to have!!...I didn't want to buy it during the mad rush, so I just "waited" for a month (2nd wait)...ATT increased the rate plan by $10, so I just "waited" a week longer (3rd wait)...well, then I decided enough was enough...no point planning for nothing and then went with my wife to a ATT store to get my iPhone..The guy at the store looked at me funnily and said I would have to wait for 15 days if I ordered for one....I was in no mood to wait any longer (just wanted to buy it that day!!!) and took my wife to the Apple store and obviously things didn't go too well...when I asked the guy at the apple store for an iPhone, he told me that there was no stock and I would have to "wait"...apparently people waited outside the store before it opened to get an iPhone!! He mentioned that I would have to wait (4th wait) and check the availability status on a website every day and then come over....very funny!!

Ofcourse, I had no choice but to wait and so I did the obvious.."waited"...waited for 2 days...third day, stock available but there was a problem at work that I had to attend..so I had to just "wait" again (5th wait)...that next week had been with issues at work, but I kept checking availability status every single day..strange pattern in availability....every single day, stock is available in the morning and stunningly vanishes in an hour...next morning all stock is back...I think this is just a ploy to create an "aura"...how else would you justify stock availability every single day :) :) :)...they have the stock in the godown but they aren't allowed to sell!!! What else ???
On the advice of the shopping assistant at Apple, I went and removed my business discount from my rate plan. I found stock today and then went for it at 8 in the morning :)..yeah, I was finally going to get it!! WRONG!
There was stock when I went there..they handed me a coupon, I had an iPhone in my hand and when they tried transferring my ATT account, there was a problem :( ... apparently, the only way I could buy an iPhone was at a ATT store ... unfortunately that's where I started earlier and now that's where I had to go...so to do the unevitable, I went and ordered an iPhone at the ATT store next door...and ofcourse now I have to wait for 10 - 21 days (6th wait) ... it's all paid for but I am not counting on it!!! Need all the luck in this world////////

IPL controversy

What do we all fight for, live for? Let's take the case of a sportsman...well, the biggest honour for him is to wear the national crown and the happiest moment is to win a World Cup! Sportsmen are worshiped so much that they are sometimes seen as soldiers..soldiers fighting for national pride, soldiers sounding the victory horn, soldiers showing our supremacy over many other menial competitors...Sportsmen become our channel through which we see our frustration expressed..For example, I become a Sreesanth, you become Harbhajan and together we beat Pakistan in the world cup :P...we cheer our team, our team works as a unit and trounces the enemy and declares victory and then there is euphoria all around us :)...Our great team has achieved what we have been longing for and WE are just the best .. (atleast for that momemt)..

You know, all that has changed with IPL! Now, everything is ether...players are drafted from just about anywhere in the world and play for any team within India..in fact they were auctioned! Indian players don't necessarily play for the regional teams they belong to...they just play for the highest bidder...so now, everything is for money...very very clearly money. A big chunk of IPL as you would have expected are players from India...everybody in our national team is playing for one team or the other and most interestingly against each other along with members of teams they used to plot against, play against! Well, a very interesting concept, but it has even more interesting results....now our players cannot get along well with each other and are ending up fighting with each other...Where's our "team India" spirit? Gone, all gone for money? Latest on this is the Bhajji slaps Sreesanth controversy! Harbhajan couldn't take Sreesanth taunting our own players and slapped him! What comedy :)..he is the same Sreesanth we liked when he did the same to our opponents! He was a representation of "aggressive" India..so was Harbhajan....and look at this MESS now!

Now, after all this, when team India plays for national glory, do you think the camaraderie will be back?



Look at this video for a few laughs...media is taking this issue to the extreme...this particular coverage from TV-9 is in Telugu and dramatizes the whole thing, doing some background song mixing for every event that happened/is happening during this controversy...wonder how the world cup would be for India this time with all this going on...do you think all this is due to IPL or are we just seeing some innate human tendencies being exposed?

Communication Revolution?

Really, internet has brought lives closer, but closer the way we like it or just closer? Well, for now, I think it just brought lives closer, thats all..
Mom and I were talking today and we thought...so much to do, so many people to keep in touch with...wasn't it better when we stuck to our families...deeper bonds, lasting relationships and more fun...Are we draining CPU cycles in friend based context switching? Still saying "good old days?"...maybe it's time for communication evolution and not revolution?

Harakiri in style

Craigslist is great! A free billboard for just about any place and for just about anything. My wife found a job in Columbus and we have been depending on it for quite a few needs..right from a roomate to tickets to finding a used car...Nobody can match it's openness, the fact that is free and the fact that it has such a lot of "visibility"..Ask anybody anything and the first reply you hear is, "Have you looked at Craigslist?"....Great thing, ain't it?

It surely is!! But for every system that has a lot of benefits, there are abusers. There will be! Otherwise, this world wouldn't be interesting. In our pursuit of finding a new old car, we met one such. We saw a post in Craigslist that looked very promising, so promising that the deal looked deceptive :P...a honda for $4000 less than market value! Interesting, very interesting....

So, we couldn't hold our greed and ofcourse contacted them..my wife did...we got back a reply a day later from the seller asking for more details and mentioned a company that could do our transaction "online"..somebody like an escrow agent. She said we could try the car for 7 days and return it back if we didn't find it good...sounded too good to be true :)...So, then started our investigation...

We asked her for the VIN..she gave us the VIN and also a carfax report...Well, we ran our own check and that report was wrong :P..too bad for her..

Just for the heck of it, we contacted the escrow company..with great difficulty we got their e-mail address and sent an e-mail to them. We got a response in 5 minutes! And the response said that this lady was trustworthy etc etc...Great, somebody was vouching for this lady! How very silly on their part :P...

So, we said, lets humor ourselves a little more and then we went and looked up this new third party escrow company's DNS "easyasales.com"...for our amusement and yours, that DNS was created the day before!!
So, this lady or man, whoever it was did all this and all in style! Tried to look professional...maybe somebody else would've believed them, but luckily for us, we didn't and it helped :)

We went a filed a complaint at http://www.ic3.gov/ about this scam...so, if you are buying something on Craigslist, better be sure or gEt ReAdY fOr ThE rIdE !

Did I go to Pittsburgh?

Did I really go and meet my sister in Pittsburgh or was it just a dream? Even if it was true, it sure does seem just like a dream...nothing seems to be patient in life and neither am I :)...I just seem to be in a railway junction and trains are just whizzing past me! Wonder how I can make a few moments stick in my life! I know I will remember our trip to Columbus and especially to Pittsburgh because that was the first time I ever surprised somebody so unexpectedly :)...but, it happened so fast that it just seems like a dream.

Feel bad every day that I am paying lesser and lesser attention to friends and family who are more and more important to me...can't call this a conscious or an unconscious choice...all that I wanna say is this is something I have "fallen" into and I don't like it! Living a life and leading a life are just two different things!

Shrinking world

Yesterday, my BIL from India asked me about the Clinton vs Obama duel going on and I was pleasantly surprised...It's like somebody here asking whether Manmohan Singh/ Sonia Gandhi would/should be our next Prime Ministerial candidate...well, they might not even know Manmohan, but that's a different issue :).

I have never ever followed the presidential campaign so closely myself and for the first the whole process of a presidential election is clear to me...don't know what pricked my interest, but something surely did...what pricked my BIL's interest? Why does this whole process have such high visibility this time? You know, there was a headline in Rediff that said "Obama wins Mississippi"...Obama wins Mississipppi and we have it our biggest portal in India!! He didn't even win the nominee :)..and Mississippi is a small state that almost doesn't count towards the tally (well, if the race weren't so close ...)

So, why do you think this sudden surge in interest? Is it the result of an extremely close race or the case of an economy in doldrums or Obama's charisma and the fact that he will really be "from the people" or just a lack of other interesting things going on in the world or is it because the "World is Flat and Shrinking"? Me thinks that it is a mixture of all of those but most importantly the last one! We are in a truly globalized world and any significant effect anywhere will have deep connotation s to other parts of the world!!

Btw, Obama and Clinton have been very actively campaigning on the web! Have we ever seen that...social networking too and it is taking all this a step higher!!

A Father is born

This week was so eventful for all reasons good and bad..never have worked so hard in my life, India has never won a tri-match series in Australia so convincingly, Hillary beat Obama and SSG, the product I work for is almost beating me down to death...but between all this, a shimmer of light glowed brightly...a father was born and it was so pleasant to see this one. My friend Prasad had Sneha, his baby join his life...all looks different now from his eyes..a father is truly born!

Here's a picture of him with his kid. Such pure expression of love is truly divine. Feelings at their unadulterated best! Wish Prasad, Neelima and Sneha all the very best and it was really touching to see this :)

My Grand Central

Grand Idea! Atleast for small businesses! Enroll into Google's grand central from blogger.com/home and have the liberty of people calling you from a web page without exposing your number! You can have all calls forwarded to a voicemail if you would like, block callers, listen to voicemail as it is being recorded and more! A real boon for businesses on the web and a lot of flexibility for people on the run (you can have a fixed number that can forward calls to home, cell, work or any other number ;P)...and all this from the Google stable!! that's why they say "paisa talks"...(Google acquired GrandCentral for a decent sum :P)