What will you do if you are in space and no toilet?

I am not sure how technology can help here. Poor guys.

We have a problem Houston, the space toilet's broken!

Bringing world music to India

I was on youtube today and found some interesting videos. I posted (here) one of those findings, but the ones below made me laugh so much that I fell off the chair. I could not resist posting it on my blog.

Pritam ... his effort to bring world music to India ... (or plagiarism) whichever way you want to put it.





Dear Pritam,

Have you heard a term called "Originality"?

Lets make it better

This is a less known single from AR Rahman for a very good cause. Watch it !

New way to salvage failed IT projects

Officials at Nepal's state-run airline have sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, following technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, the carrier said Tuesday.

Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks due the problem.

The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft Sunday at Nepal's only international airport in Kathmandu in accordance with Hindu traditions ... said.

Read the story here.

I was wondering if we could really apply this on failed IT projects and salvage it. But should I do this inside my office building or client site?

Fancy Google T-Shirt

You would not really understand what it is when you see the snap. These were T-Shirts distributed at Google I/O conference. Check it out here.

Britain's got talent

You have got to see this ...



WATCH IT TILL THE END ... This is what is called ORIGINALITY

Hottest IPL Cricketer

No ... it's not what you think it is ...

This is a survey by www.gaybombay.org

Winner: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Chennai SuperKings) - No question about it, the gay community is just as hot as the rest of India for the boy next door hotness of Dhoni. He swept the polls with 22 votes, way ahead of the first runner up.

First Runner-Up: Yuvraj Singh (Kings XI Punjab) - Classically handsome and a winning captain too, with his team already qualified for the semis. He was voted first runner-up with 11 votes

Second Runner-Up: Manpreet Gony (Chennai SuperKings) - One of the revelations of the IPL, both for his bowling and his hunky Punjabi looks. He's the one hottie who's really been exposed by the IPL and the gay community has voted him second runner-up with 10 votes.

Read it here. It is interesting to see such things in India. India is certainly a land of paradoxes.

Guru Gyan

Received these through email from my brother. Hilarious ones !!!

Finally .....

I came back home yesterday by noon and was completely drained. Exhausted. Tired. Slept for a while and woke up fresh.

I needed a break. Time off from work.

Guess what, I am taking a vacation. I am off from work for a week, a COMPLETE week.

Finally !

Uma was super excited to hear this. I will believe myself once I sit on the flight to Kerala.

Paanchvi Paas?

When the show Paanchvi Paas started, I was one of those people who said, what is this publicity stunt? They will definitely ask questions that are not in syllabus and all that crap... I am being honest ...

I happened to see this episode where there was this Class XII pass girl who came in and floored by Mr. Khan's charisma. She kept on saying "I love you". Now came the interesting part.

Question 1:

SRK: Who invented the lamp?
GIRL: Errr .... Edison??
SRK: Are you sure? Was it not bulb?
GIRL: Oh yeah !! Lamp is different, bulb is different... I would like to take a life line?

... and she answers with help of the kids there

This girl even got confused about where Gateway of India is.

In essence, Star Plus has managed to pull of an entertaining show in which people come in and make themselves look like idiots on national television or be made to look like an idiot by Mr. Khan.

With incidents like producer of Paanchvi Paas getting murdered in a crime of passion, the TRP ratings are definitely going up. And hey, this murder story has caught bollywood's attention.

New Site

So ... I changed the domain name and created achilles-punks.com.

Now, this blog(here) is being redirected to the new site.

My technology blog still is in blogspot and will get moved sometime soon.

How to rescue a project !!!

One of the blogs that I read on a regular basis is Geek and Poke. Here is a good one from them. I am sure everyone will relate to this one pretty much.







It's the same everywhere !

Change in title

I was somehow feeling that the previous title was just too common and was not even making me feel that it was really 'My Space'.

Hence, renaming it to 'Random Notes' - the nature of my posts are like that. I am still in search of a good title and then planning to buy own domain and host everything there. Probably, have some kind of Google Apps integration also will be done.

Let's see how it goes.

Suggestions for domain name and blog title are welcome.

Day at home

After a long long time, I got a full day at home ...

Uma was not feeling really well. She went to sleep yesterday night with 100.3ºC and then when I was planning to show up in office because of some deliverables, Uma's situation got worse. She could not even speak.

So, finally I dropped the plan of going to office and did some basic work allocation and analysis work from home during the first half and then started the fun part. Uma started feeling better ...

Both of us, right from noon, have been watching the third season of Desperate Housewives ... even when I am writing this ...

I would not say it was relaxing ... I got so many calls from work, that it looked as if I was virtually there ...

But it was still a day away from work and I can see the smile on Uma's face ...

Terrorist attacks and reactions

“Obviously, it’s a terrorist plot,” A.S. Gill, the police chief of Rajasthan, said hours after the attack. “The way it has been done, the attempt was to cause the maximum damage to human life.”

Totally unexpected from terrorists?

"The wicked designs of terrorists will be thwarted boldly and their attempts will be foiled" - Shivraj Patil

Hmmm ... Terrorists are going to be shit scared !

"So many such acts of terror have taken place, Malegaon, Banaras, Mumbai, but how many places have the communal disharmony erupted? Are the terrorist’s fools to repeat the act which is not having the desired result?" (Here)

Hellooo! They want to kill people. That's about it. They are least bothered about communal disharmony. Please direct that to our politicians.

PM condemns the terrorists attacks

Give me a break boss. What difference does it make? Transform terrorists into saints?

"We are not comfortable at all", "Terrified", "I have wife and 3 kids back in Melbourne and they are less than impressed with the part of the world I am in" - Darren Berry and other Aussie/South African guys in Team Jaipur (IPL)

Oh yeah, I understand. And I am so enjoying what I am seeing on TV, so many dead, Indian population coming down.

Where is your brain boss? We are not aliens. Indians are also human being and we are putting up with the terrorism crap for years now. Would you really refrain from going to NY, US Of A? Well, I heard that there was something called WTC and in 2001 some saint named Osama Bin Laden brought it down entirely by crashing 2 planes.

Stay in the line man !

I do not know what's it with Indians and conveniently evading a queue.

No ... It is not just the illiterate guys, it's the 'educated' bunch also.

Simplest of examples is the canteen in my office. I work for one the leading consulting firms in the world, and we are known to hire "real" professionals. When it comes to buying coupons to get meals, instead of standing in a, it is just chaos at the counter.

People, who try to maintain a queue look like idiots (me !!) and couple of times, few guys had to bear the wrath from me.

What I fail to understand is why it is so difficult to have some basic discipline? From my experience, I have seen this only in India. I have been US, Thailand and UK but never saw this kind of disrespect.

Here is one conversation that my friend Karthik had at our canteen. There were few guys who were just barging in when there were 10 other guys waiting to get the coupons.

Karthik: Hey, dude ... there is a 'Q' here ! would you mind standing in the 'Q'?
XYZ (updated to XYZ after comment from my wife): Oh! there was a 'Q', I thought it was 'P'
Karthik: THAT is not funny !

I am still surprised, why Karthik did not slam that guy's head on to the plate of biriyani kept there.

Women are even better. They want equality and then 'reservation' also. Sonia Gandhi is trying hard. Now, you go to any place in India, you will see separate line for women. OK, I understand to an extent because the way a queue is formed in India is usually a 'warm' experience. The idea is not leave even tiniest of space between you and the person in front. It can be quite a warming experience when the soaring heat touches 42ºC.

But women usually consider it as a privilege.

Last day, this girl happened to bypass a long queue I was standing in and directly went to the canteen counter. I was again the same irritating, pissed off, over reactive self, requested her to stand in the queue. "Queue??? I did not know there was a queue ...", she reacted. Stared me down as if I was from interiors of the Amazon jungle.

(This is just my observation and does not apply to ALL the women out there)

I do my part in setting things right, but I go down as one of those guys who try and then get 'advise' from people that, "You cannot repair the system. It's all screwed. You will just raise your BP, with no result. Everything will stay as is ... ".

I will still do what I can.

What the hell !!!

Woman Gives Birth to Triplets at her Desk; Finishes Marketing Reports

uughh !!!

I hate corporate life ...

IPL craze

At this very moment I am watching Chennai Super Kings Vs Punjab Kings XI.

IPL has turned out to be a bigger success than what was anticipated. Their trump card was city loyalty and I think Lalith Modi has been successful to certain extent. Let's see what happens when they start trading the NPAs.

Good thing is the matches start late in the evening, so atleast I get some productivity from the guys in the team.

As for me, I am actually loving the game. Short, aggressive and about sheer brute force and innovation ...

Favorite team: Chennai Super Kings
Reason: Nothing special

Aaaah ... Piyush Chawla hit for a six by Dhoni ... !
Let me get back to the game ...
de-stressed !!

Oh yeah! I am going for the Deccan Chargers - Knight Riders game tomorrow...
I want both of them to lose ... Is it possible?

Break from work - for 6 hours

Finally I got proper break from work yesterday. It was for around 6 hours.

The whole project team had an outing and quite a few guys showed up. As usual there were people who chickened out. I do not know when they will understand what professionalism is and how important is it for them to communicate about their absense early. I do not know when they will understand how to gel into a team and not act like demotivated, selfish morons.

Ok. Let me tell the good part of things.

So ... the trip was to Pragati resorts, around 40 kms from office. Scorching heat ... normal bus.

Summer heat was taking it's toll on the guys. No one is used to the heat. Software engineers, being locked in air-conditioned environment, never get to feel the Hyderabad heat. But, now the work around is also simple. Before we reached the resorts, guys gulped around 20 bottles of beer.

It just set the tempo and was exciting to see guys acting like live wires, who otherwise would be sitting in the corner of a project floor and you wouldn't even know when they left office.

There were couple of smarts kids who organized some interesting games. I really had to turn myself into something to that I was not. Making noise and getting guys to be involved in each and every activity. (I am not known for being social AT ALL)

And then came the best part ... DJ
I am the worst dancer in the world ... And I would say that robots are better than me in dancing ...
But 2-3 beers down, it was fun dancing to trance, hip-hop, pop, and the native telugu percussion in less than 5 mins.

I was sweating like a pig ... but it was great fun ...
Away from work ... no conference calls setup ... no official calls coming in ... lots of booze ... team enjoying the time off from work ...

What could be better ? ...

But it was again another day when I reached home after 12 in the night !

Educated morons

Raj Thackeray has been going ballistic about Northies in Mumbai. Well his publicity stunt seems to be working pretty well. I do not know what he has against Mr. Bachchan, but why does he have to finger him so often? It's Mr. Bachchan's free will as to what he wants to do with his life. Atleast he is not promoting regionalism and fueling the already sensitive topic of communities and religion. Even worse is to see other educated and uneducated people in his party going around creating havoc in daily life of people who are leading simple lives in the crowded world called Mumbai. - MORONS !!!

It is the people settled from other regions that has made Mumbai what it is today. Sr. Thackeray also had his issues with people from outside of Maharashtra and Jr. is just following it.

From one of my Marathi friends, what I have known is, Marathi's have left Mumbai because of the Thackerays.

There are enough number of issues haunting Mumbai and other places in Maharasthra. Why are these politicians not spending time in community service instead of mud slinging and adding fuel to fire? I do not see any political party getting involved in community service.

What have the politicians done to make the lives of people better?

Answer: NOTHING - All they are busy is with the pursuit of power, mud slinging and flexing political muscle.