Inflation...or is it?

I know I've been out of action here for a long time now. And I can feel that you missed me! So here I am! Source of idea: chance realization of the truth. I've had this habit of keeping an account of all by expenses. Been doing it since a few days before I entered the corporate world. I joined Photon Infotech, on Jun 13, 2007. A few days before that, my folks gave me some cash to keep and do some "shopping". That I counted as my first income and I started keeping accounts ie. income and expenditure. Later of course, the accounting got more organized and I could tell how much am spending monthly on food, travel, gifts etc etc. Anyway, I opened my old accounts "book" to see how much I spent on a shoe I had then bought. I was pleased with myself to see that I had made a single entry for some clothes and the shoe I'd bought and yet I could know the what each item cost. I digress. The thing is, I got a bit nostalgic and decided to scroll down to see what else I'd spent on in the first few weeks of my employment; esp after my first salary.

Time for a bit of history, we were around 90 people then - the bunch of freshers who had joined on the same date. Human nature as it is, we formed groups within ourselves - mostly by geographical proximity - which in itself was by educational history. We celebrated everyone's birthday, India's IPL victory, Independence day - we just needed an excuse. I must thank my company's environment which allowed for this. I digress again. So, I noticed for the Independence day celebration, we cut a cake - everyone contributed for buying it. Rs.10. That was my share. That's what most of us (in our bunch) would've given.

Rupees ten. The habit of cake cutting has continued till date. That's great really. Two years on and we don't think "its getting boring". However, things have changed a lot. The Rs.10 has become Rs.30. The vanilla has become chocolate truffle (thanks to Kunal for this particular observation). The 180 bucks per Kg has thus become 400. And the 18 to 20 have become 7 to 10. (Kunal, chose to call them 'old days' and 'modern days' for some reason). But I think there is a lesson here. Of course, gifts are non-optional social convention (http://twitter.com/lvshankar/statuses/2322419871). Yet, I have a feeling its not just the economic inflation that's causing this difference. Inflated egos perhaps? I don't know. But I still think there's a lesson here. Leave comments...

~LVS
PS: I need to get new shoes, wonder how much that has changed..lets see!
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A Silent Confession

Its been on for nearly two years now. This is the end. I've lost her. She's never going to come back to me. I must confess, I haven't treated her good. In fact, I have used her. Misused her. She gave me everything she could. Devoted herself to me. Never questioned me.

To start from the beginning, it wasn't really a love-at-first-sight kind of thing. I'd seen her before. Though I hadn't noticed, I first saw her on a loose sheet of newspaper. Then when I met her again, got to knew what she was, I became more interested. Then one fine beautiful August evening I knew I had got her. Just like that. (Though I had to run to the ATM just before) and I brought her home that very day. Mom was the usual "Am happy if you are happy" and Dad (when she wasn't around) said "Good choice son. She's very cute. Now you know why I said your previous choice wouldn't be right. Am glad you got this one instead. Anyway, not good to talk about the past..." and so on.

A few months later, the 'previous choice' came into my life again. My brother got her. (It happens people. Hope you understand). Though, it never created a problem, I must say I was like "Damn, I missed my chance". Yet, I never had second thoughts about my choice.

The first few months were great, I was showing her off to a lot of my friends. Many said, "Nice da". Some said "hey...semma cute da!". What else can a guy ask? I loved to look at her. I loved to hold her tight. Am pretty sure she enjoyed the warmth too. She too, did get warm and happy when I talked a lot (which I rarely do). Oh! How I loved fondling her!

And then, I started treating her real bad. From the days where I used to put something soft where she sat, I had come to not caring where she was lying. I started venting my anger on her. Pushed her to the floor a lot. But she took it all without a protest. Never once did she complain. A few more months passed and she started showing physical signs of my behaviour. Scratches and bruises on her face and body and more.

I didn't bother. Once I was so hard on her she cracked her head. Then a few nights later, not being able to take anymore of it, decided to leave me. Suicide. She didn't even leave a bedside note. One morning I woke up and found her lying on the floor beside my bed, in two parts. She had died peacefully in my sleep. I should've taken extra care of her in those last days, but I didn't.

And now she's gone forever. She's not much worth even in an exchange. She's left me in a confused state; I don't know what phone to buy next. Damn it! Read more…

Predicting Death

Death - comes to all. Nobody is spared. What if, you know the day you will die? What if you knew how? Would you take efforts to avoid it? Chances are high that you'd end up doing more harm. OK, am not talking about the movie 'Final Destination' or something. But knowing our future has always been interesting. Many of those who say astrology (Indian or Greek) is a waste of time, can't wait to read the weekly predictions for their zodiac in the local paper. Its because we are all cowards. We want to know in advance what the future holds for us. We aren't ready to face the challenges that lie ahead.



Wait, I didn't mean this post to be philosophical. Just wanted to share with you an online death predictor.

Try it. Its fun!
Here are some of the results myself and my friends got:

"Vidhya Shankar: At age 35 you will become lost during a road trip and wind up living out the movie 'Wrong Turn'. Sorry for ya."

Kalyan*: At age 40 you will die fighting the Interplanetary War on Terrorism on Camp Harmony, Venus.

Ambika*: At age 47 a group of children will text message you continuously for three years, eventually distracting you while driving and causing a fatal wreck; your fatal wreck. (SMS a mixed blessing?!)

Kunal*: At age 72 you will fall into a vat of neutral shoe polish, and your body will never be recovered

Aparna*: At age 69 you will have a heart attack while eating a deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, Elvis style.

Vishal*: At age 70 you will participate in the newest reality game show. Contestants battle each other in an arena with swords and spears. You will have a good run (12+ victories) but eventually be killed, much to the audience's dismay. Go Maximus!

* Names changed to protect privacy

Give it a try and tell me what you got.

PS: If you want a more serious prediction try this

Special thanks to Kunal and Ambika
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The Lost Cosmonaut

Yuri Gagarin. The first man in space. Or was he?
During the 1950s and 60s, following the Cold war, there was a battle between the West (US) and the East (USSR) to establish leadership in space exploration. With the launch of Sputnik I in 1957, the USSR gave a blow to US. Pretty soon, in 1961, when they put the "first man in space" they surged even ahead of US. But there has been some speculation that Yuri wasn't really the first person to be out there. Who was it then? If its true, why hasn't the first person shown himself up? Why would USSR pose someone else as the first when s/he wasn't? After all, space tourism wasn't famous until Dennis Tito.

It turns out that, between 1957 and 1961, USSR had not been quite as they might have seemed. In 1960, two Italian brothers Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia and their team using a home made satellite dish were 'listening' to signals from passing satellites etc and they recorded some astonishing messages. On November 28th, to be precise, they got a signal which read in Morse code "SOS to the entire world". They got this signal thrice. A few days later, the Russians only admitted that there was failed launch but said nothing about the SOS from space. In early February, there were sounds of a "wildly beating human heart" and "laboured breathing"! And then a few more days later, a female voice saying "Conditions growing worse; why don't you answer? . . . we are going slower . . . the world will never know about us.", Russian. There is even a recording of these available online at http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/ but its in Italian. Russia back then denied all such reports. They even went to the extent of removing any evidence of people who were 'lost' in space. The Italian brothers also suggested that the signals appeared to move away from the Earth; that is the spacecraft was deliberately made to escape gravity!

The Straight Dope, states that there's a lot more that Russia has wrapped up regarding their space programs. Although, most of the deaths relating to cosmonauts were proven not unusual the Russian space people did take some enormous risks with their lifes.

I wonder why the US didn't hype this up and put it all over the Internet. Especially, while there was so much FUD about their Apollo 11 moon mission!

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Linux and the Tasmanian Devil

[This ain't a geeky post!] Everyone heard of Linux? Good. You know its mascot? Its a penguin, right. Know what its called? Tux, it is. Tux has always been the mascot for Linux and nobody even thought of replacing it. The penguin was Linus' (the creator) choice and now he has again decided to change it, temporarily. With the latest [kernel] version of Linux, Tuz the Tasmanian Devil was announced as the mascot for Linux. Though temporarily. Its for a cause. This switcheroo is to support the 'Save the Tasmanian Devil' campaign which aims to protect species from extinction.

Tux has now given way for Tuz. Note, that it is Tuz and not Taz as in the looney toons. Here's an image to help you understand the difference!




For me its sad that Tux won't be around for sometime. Besides, Tuz looks horrible! ech! I do hope things are back to normal soon.

Sigh-ing off,
LVS


PS: Will the 'Save the Tasmanian Devil' campaign use Tux for sometime? Because Linux is pretty endangered too :P

Image sources: Wikimedia, The Register, Toons Town
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Undo sending an email

No. This can't be true. Its too good to be true. But it is now possible! Thanks to gmail I can now not resend an email for forgetting an attachment - not slap my forehead for missing an important line in the mail - not regret sending the mail to the wrong person - and so on and so forth. How many time was it that you've felt any of the above? (yes yes. nod nod. many a times) Trust Google to come up with useful features. They've done it again. Now you can actually 'Undo' sending an email that wasn't supposed to be sent the way it was. Don't believe me? Read Gmail offical blog : Undo Send.

How does google accomplish this? Once an email is sent, you can't do much to it. There's no post(wo)man to bribe. Well its simple. Actually that's the limitation to this feature, but its a very fair trade off. When you hit Send, Gmail actually doesn't send it for 5 seconds. Meanwhile, it shows you the following message:


You don't click it in five seconds or you aren't able to because your net connection suddenly went poof, Gmail will send the mail. Neat. But then here's the catch. You have to be bright enough to realize you've goofed up something - within 5 seconds! :P

This can be a problem actually. Say when you have to send a really really ultra urgent email to someone, you're effectively losing 5 seconds! :D So if you need to do that often, you might as well turn it off. Or you can spend 30* seconds going to Settings and turning off the feature! You get to pick it! Perhaps The Gmail Team can add a 'Send now' button. Easy.


Cool,
LVS

PS: Am going to try sending some hate mail and then hit Undo. Gives some temporary satisfaction doesn't it?


*Dependent on your Internet connection speed and your agility with the mouse.

Update: I tried sending a mail to myself and hit undo. However, just before that the new mail actually reflected in my inbox!! :-o
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For the love of surveys

The other day I was filling up a survey for employee satisfaction in IT companies. Its really nice to know someone out there cares what IT professionals feel about their working environment and how its influences their lives. Though for unaltruistic reasons, am sure people would love a(nother) channel where they can express what they really feel about their bosses and/or subordinates. Agreed, the survey ain't going to change their lives overnight. But it gives the satisfaction of being true to oneself, once in a while. Don't we all love reading stuff on magazines and newspapers (they aren't just news anymore, anyway) which talk about the sad state of IT employees? Especially statements which go "a recent survey suggested that IT employees are...blah blah..". It is something even non-IT people can relate to, because its what everyone talks about!

Personally, am glad that the survey was anonymous. Not that I had complained too much, am pretty happy with my job, so there. Anyway, what makes me glad is that several of my answers are just random. I couldn't help it. The questions seemed so redundant to me but thinking it ought to have a different meaning than the previous but being unable to comprehend it I settle for a random answer. Take a look at some of the questions and you'll know what I mean. (all of the below are yes/no questions)

• my life has a clear sense of purpose
• I have discovered a satisfying life purpose
• I have a good sense of what makes my life purposeful

Another set,

• I feel I can chose the way I live my life
  
• I have the freedom to chose my lifestyle
• I feel I is my right to pick my lifestyle

You get the idea? I didn't. That's why I was scared to answer them. What if the questions were there to check my sincerity in taking the survey? Not that I care. Randomness helps. Just be wary next time you take a survey!

Bored,
~LVS

PS: Still not made a decision on the move.
PPS: Kunal will never buy a PC in 2009. He's just putting vetti scene! :P
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