Shubh Diwali !!!

Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous Diwali !!!

eventful day

India won the second test at Mohali today against Australia with a margin of 320 runs. excellent work !!! ALso a certain political leader was arrested in Mumbai today for indulging in regional politics. I think that the government should have arrested him long time back. Imagine what would happen, if every state in India gave preferential treatment to people from that state. I wonder if Bengaluru would be so popular as the Silicon Valley of Asia, if Chennai would be synonymous as the Detroit of India, etc. What hurts RT, if a Bihari writes the Civil Services examination in Mumbai?? In this case, I wonder what RT would say if a non-Marathi married a Marathi mulgi? Missus's threat to RT: "Tujha Nanachi Taang !!!"

Peace: Listening to Rahman's heavenly compositions from Yuvvraaj specially this one.

Open source goodness for FIL

So dear Missus decided to gift a laptop to her Papa on his 60th birthday. Ok it's his 62nd birthday and Madam decided to gift a laptop now. In all earnestness, I suggested that we gift a laptop loaded with Linux. After 3-4 weeks (actually months) of procrastinations and looking over Best Buy ads, we bought a Dell Inspiron 1525. I was surprised when the BestBuy guy mentioned that they would remove all the adware that came with Dell laptops and that would cost a cool $125. This is one of the reasons, I desist Windoze. So I installed Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04LTS). Installation was easy and I followed the guide here. I installed Google repos for Picasa. The webcam was fixed by installing ekiga and cheese. Skype was chosen as the medium for communicating with 10-month old grand daughter. [:P] BTW Skype worked out of the box. I had some problems with the microphone/speaker and that was fixed using the instructions given here. Last but not least I also got the S-video to work by reading this instruction/post on ubuntuforums.org
I also made a small presentation/manual on how to use the essential features. I hope that this experiment pays off. At least they won't be bothered with viruses, spyware, ad ware, etc. and can use their laptop to chat with their grand daughter here. I deserve a pat on the back for 1. making Linux OS an alternative to Windoze for them, so that they won't miss having Windoze, 2. making Open Source software flourish.

Soldiers deserve better !

This is a very though provoking article, that appeared in Rediff. I agree with the author's point of view. After all, defense personnel should be provided with better pay packages. In today's scenario, nobody would opt to go for the Defense services. A new movie trailer of Heroes (hindi movie no connection to the series on TV) tells the viewers about seeing why the defense services are not good. This alone makes me want to watch the movie.

nostalgia...

I was surprised to find an invitation on LinkedIn from a friend. Apparently another friend/acquaintance/student wanted to send me a message after seeing my profile. Now he works with a very reputed company and his group has positions for a fresh PhD graduate and wanted to contact me wrt that position. Now what's the common link? So this friend was my student or the other way around I was the TA for a VLSI design class he had taken. 6 years back, I dealt with 150 students in the class. Honestly, I cannot remember his face, but it feels nice to be remembered.

Thankfully, this week looks bright atleast due to my Genius playlist featuring songs from Fashion, Welcome to Sajjanpur, Drona, Vaaranam Aayiram..!!! Mundhiram Parthe is my current favourite...!!!!

Dow(n)

Monday morning: What's the financial scenario today? OMG !!! Wachovia got bought by Citigroup. and then again my favourite Apple stocks fell again. The financial market is in a BIG mess !!!

Mile sur mera tumhara..!!!

Why this title? It's a sarcastic take on the song that preaches national integration. I hitched a ride on Friday with a colleague/friend to another friend's place. My colleague was on his way to meet his girl friend, still studying in school. He mentioned that though both of them speak Hindi, they were not sure about their future in terms of what their parents would say. I bolstered his confidence by making the point that in any case, they spoke the same language, moreover Punjabi is an offshoot of Hindi. (No offense Punjus). It's disappointing to see parents not accept inter-caste marriages because of the Indian society. Who defines society? It's 'WE' as a collective individual defining the norms of 'SOCIETY'. I have been at the receiving end of this. Lot of my friends have gone through inter-caste/regional marriages and are living happily. Parents teach their children to live a good life, but I don't know why they cannot see that if they agree with their children on such a small issue, they are at least seeing their children happy. I know that it's every parent's dream to choose a prospective bride or groom for their children. But there's no fixed path for everyone. You may end up liking someone and would like to marry that certain individual. The only obstacle then is the mutual acceptance of the prospective bride or groom by the parents. Some cases are easy, because the parents are not so orthodox. I don't know what to say when I hear parents saying that they want you to come to India, see a girl, get married and go back. Is this horse-trading?? or cattle-trading??
I have heard this "what will your children be ?? what culture will they follow??" My answer: They will be good human beings and they will have the best of both worlds. Why marry someone to keep the society happy?? It's this hypocrite society that is responsible for this mess. The media goes crazy when AB marries Ash..and it's this same media/society that ridicules an inter-caste marriage. So what does the common man lack?? I wish parents were open-minded about the marriage stuff, after all we have been seeing 'Mile Sur' for the past so many years. Haven't we become mature enough to learn something about national integration from it?