September Gazette !

Folks !

It's been a busy but exciting September and I've woken up from ma blog slumber!!

~So let me start the chronicling of this September in the order as i c it...

1. Hutch became Vodafone...
so what the heck the Hutchison network still sucks. Vodafone it appears wants to make it big with the growing indian mobile users segment. Elsewhere its revenues are dwindling...India seems to be a safe bet for Vodafone for now.

2. UTI bank became Axis Bank...
so whats in it for me ????Spare me the re-naming for chrissake which was done for a global audience in the first place. The repeated ads were getting on my nerves and it seemed Axis Bank was euphoric apparently for no rhyme or reason. The ads featured Twins of different ages. While i was elated to see Twins getting attention(being a Twin myself, and coming from a family of twins) I felt the advertisers went overboard about the ad. There was nothing amazing about the ad and repeated broadcasts cud harm than Help the Axis Bank image.

3. Ram setu is being made a target of political vendetta or upmanship.
The congress and DMK governments claim that it will be profitable for the port of Cochin. Sadly this is a white lie as the proposed bridge will not be in same league as the Suez canal and cannot generate the same kind of revenue. In fact it will be costlier for the ships to traverse the route. Also since the land mass is narrow there will be damage to flora and fauna.The study by the government is one-sided and does not involve the srilankan side. Thus it is partisan and too early to decide on one report. But what the heck this government is bent upon taking one-sided decisions. The Nuclear deal is one such example. Noclear decisions seem to be the order of the day with this government.

4. India still remains @

"No Power no Water No Infrastructure Total Network "
Irony in the advertisement had me zapped.

Reliance seems to think ignorance is Bliss for india. Its ad featured a catch line which does not augur well for india. call it old world advertising or mixing of sublime rural pictures with the Gizmos of today.It sadly does paint a bad picture of the times.

While the delivery and content play on human emotions. The content can be termed Paradoxic @ bestFault is not the person who conceived it but the status india exists @ present.

Both rural and urbane i mean.
Saala achar daalogey kya network ka...jab potholes or Traffic jams se bura haal hain !

To draw a distant and distinct parallel...
Truly Total Network has come to mean like the Nokia catch line..."Connecting People" .....except of course its nothing short of "Disconnecting Families"

My Life@Mumbai...where we did not have any Telephone or Mobile service [I hear ppl sayin Not Again! ]was damn peaceful...

Only 1 shop closeby had a Telephone line for a population close to 1 lakh .... and yet everyone was Happy [;-)]

Post cards were the order of the day and people used to wait for their relatives letters.
Thats why neighbours meant so much more those days....So people used to connect to Neighbours and have good platonic friendships.

But what we might see in todays metropolis is some kind of high funda snobbing.
People are used to just talking to their Family members only...I am sure many might not know their third door neighbour by name or face.
So the ad "Total Network" is in some sense introducing hurdles to potent healthy human relations.I hate to say this as I work for Mobile phones....but they are (unknowingly) snuffing away the lives of people.

BOTTOMLINE : Technology progresses @ the cost of human relations. We really need infrastructure before we use technology for the greater good.

5. T20 : vanquishing the Ozzies...
comin back to the Fine performance by india in the T20 World cup...I am short of words...
just cannot verbalize the euphoria and rush of blood to the head i cud feel after the match.
It was a Kodak moment to cherish - Dhoni &Co. with the Trophy.
It made my dream of India beating Pak in a WC final Reality.
One Ericsson Engineer working wid me asked me why i was in such a mad hurry to get home, I told him it is IndiaVsPak in Final buddy and I wud not miss it for my life, impossible!!!He said is it like Life n Death ??? situation....
I told him he was talking out of his depths...its more than that.
In a Life n Death situation one wud try to save his life...An India Pak contest is a Full Fledged War!And we play to win and not just to survive ...
anyways he got enuff vibes that he shud leave me alone :) ROTFL
The match was a total mind game and India Aced the T20 World Series in the end. Righlty So!
Aside to this fact there is one n only lament ... ESPN the broadcaster made 122 crores revenues out of this.

Imagine all the ad money going out of india !!!!What the bloody hell was BCCI doing ???

Indian advertisers must have spent a fortune and now all the Indian money lands in the ESPN basket.

Is there really a way out of this ?

how to stem such revenue outflows ?

A little Contemplative!
-Prasanna.

downed by a Trojan Virus 1st time in ma Desktop life

Yesterday a cosuin of mine came home with a Pen Drive. He wanted soem videos etc.
As soon as i inserted the USB mcAfee cribbed about a Trojan Generic.ep.

I found that this Trojan had messed up a lot of my windows n Registry settings.
The Ordeal...is as below..

If you get hit by Generic.ep virus
Install Norton / AVG / mcAfee AV programs.
This virus infects ur windows systems folders.Every directory u then browse has a directory of the same name with a .exe extension. The afore mentioned AV sw shud help u in weeding this out.

But you will find that Task Manager will be disabled.Fire "GPEDIT.msc" from Windows->RUN
Under Administrative template -> System categoryCtrl+alt+del options can be disabled. This will enable ur Task Manager to be launched.

Registry editing also can be enabled back by using this script ...


'Enable/Disable Registry Editing tools'© Doug Knox - rev 12/06/99
Option Explicit
'Declare variablesDim WSHShell, n, MyBox, p, t, mustboot, errnum, versDim enab, disab, jobfunc, itemtype
Set WSHShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")p = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\"p = p & "DisableRegistryTools"itemtype = "REG_DWORD"mustboot = "Log off and back on, or restart your pc to" & vbCR & "effect the changes"enab = "ENABLED"disab = "DISABLED"jobfunc = "Registry Editing Tools are now "
'This section tries to read the registry key value. If not present an 'error is generated. Normal error return should be 0 if value is 'presentt = "Confirmation"Err.ClearOn Error Resume Nextn = WSHShell.RegRead (p)On Error Goto 0errnum = Err.Number
if errnum <> 0 then'Create the registry key value for DisableRegistryTools with value 0 WSHShell.RegWrite p, 0, itemtypeEnd If
'If the key is present, or was created, it is toggled'Confirmations can be disabled by commenting out 'the two MyBox lines below
If n = 0 Then n = 1WSHShell.RegWrite p, n, itemtypeMybox = MsgBox(jobfunc & disab & vbCR & mustboot, 4096, t)ElseIf n = 1 then n = 0WSHShell.RegWrite p, n, itemtypeMybox = MsgBox(jobfunc & enab & vbCR & mustboot, 4096, t)End If


~P

Humming Bird

Lately....I've picked up this habit of humming my fav songs in the company bus while on my way to and back from office. I usually play MP3s from my Mobile fone.

I feel Super lightweight after hearing and humming the songs

I wonder during the course of my humming " what really is a song .. its just not a set of words strewn for some poetic measure...

Its a

• Bunch of emotions
• Bunch of things ur heart wanted to say that day and could not...
• Bunch of TODOs which cud have been accomplished.

I feel Clear & Open rendition of songs frees the mind of the pangs which lurk in the corners of the heart.

So my suggestion dear reader....think out loud, sing out loud...for it rids ur mind of the many cravings life imposes on you and you could not fulfill maybe !

When I croon in the Company bus there are some curious glances....But I am like "Don't stop me now....coz I am having a good time :) "

I am very much reminded of the VH1 ad "If i were a Song" :))

~P

Dahi handi ki yaadein

Story goes a long way back...We were kids then and Gokulastmi was the day we eagerly used to wait.

I used to feel the rush like that of the Drum Beats from a Heavy Metal song which pumps my adrenaline. Dahi Handi used to get me up all excited.

For starters Dahi handi is the festival in Maharashtra/Mumbai. It is an event marking the birth of Lord Krishna(Janmashtami) where a Pot with Curd and some money is tied between two tall rise buildings. It then has to be reached and broken.

The Money Factor goes up the higher the Handi is tied. though it not at all about the money. Just the achivement of being done that!!!

Our building boys were not the enterprising types. Dahi handi actually means forming a human chain of people standing one over another. It is the ultimate test of balance patience perseverance.

Unfortunately it also means a bad fall ;-).

Our building boyz used to tie the Dahi handi alright ... but never managed to break the pot by climbing in a formation.

But best part they tried it every time.

We kiddos used to have a different kind of Fun. Any rival groups which used to come to our lanes to break our handi were the prime targets. We used to fill water in baloons and throw it from behind crowds :) on them so as to give them a bad fall.

Yeah...that was rather Naive and Silly me...but it was a source of Fun for boys my age as we were not big enough to climb and the elders just would not let us.

Still it was a nerve wracking experience just observing the Other Teams across the street achieve the Feat.

Itz an experience which can only be experienced by being there.

yet again my heart yearns for the glimpses of Mumbai that built me. I wish I could start over again in the bylanes of Bombay.

Sometimes Time is such a mean thing...u can;t say roll over time.

So much for the Gheun Tak feeling yeah!
Amchi mumbai it remains....Kai sangu the nostalgic moments just get over me....!

Let me get back to my Black Sabbath Crazy Train!

~P

[Qotm] September !

" It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong. "

-Chris Torek [my Guru for C Programming]

Here comes september and i am not yet ready for it. I mean Sorry September never felt this way for you.

But somehow it seems you could have taken ur own sweet time. But then Time never waits for any1.

Guyz wake me up when september ends. From past 2 months now. I have lost track of day and night and immersed in Work@Office !

~P