An Index Expurgatorius

(Found here, en route to scrambling to a submission on Managerial Ethics, which has previously also been proved productive..)

The man who marks or leaves with pages bent
The volume that some trusting friend has lent,
Or keeps it over long, or scruples not
To let its due returning be forgot;
The man who guards his books with miser's care,
And does not joy to lend them, and to share;
The man whose shelves are dust begrimed and few,
Who reads when he has nothing else to do;
The man who raves of classic writers, but
Is found to keep them with their leaves uncut;
The man who looks on literature as news,
And gets his culture from the book reviews;
Who loves not fair, clean type, and margins wide --
Or loves these better than the thought inside;
Who buys his books to decorate the shelf,
Or gives a book he has not read himself;
Who reads from priggish motives, or for looks,
Or any reason save the love of books.
Great Lord, who judgest sins of all degrees,
Is there no little private hell for these?

Great ethical questions

1. Who let the dogs out?
2. Who shot the sherriff?
3. Who framed Roger Rabbit?
4. Do the handicapped go to Hell?
5. Who flung dung?
6. Noodles or rice?
7. How much is that doggie in the window?
8. Where's Waldo?
9. Who are 'they'? What are 'they' saying?
10. To be or not to be, that is the great ethical question...
11. How you doin'?
12. Where's the party tonight?
13. Where is the ID Cod?
14. Are those real?
15. Are we there yet?

All formulated in an extremely productive Managerial Ethics class. Any more suggestions?

Back home!

After (a really hot!) summers, brief encounters with relatives and family friends, and a much vaunted traditonal annual encounter with the little/fat/smelly/funny/snarky/gabby/all-of-the-above one at the traditional point of encounter, I'm back where I belong. (What do you know - exactly a year since that post!) And out come the lists, in no particular order, of course..

The good:

• Double breakfasts in Cognizant
• Leh Berry
• Cup N' Saucer
• The Fruit Shop On Greams Road
• Eden
• Casa Piccola
• M.A.C
• Delta Peripherals
• ThinkPad Service
• Realizing true "comp-fundoo"-ness of oneself
• Murugan Idli Shop
• Decent pay :-)
• Non-PITA project colleague
• XLRI Alumni Meet 2007, Chennai Chapter

The bad:

• Randomly having to go hungry on occasions
• Internet access issues

The ugly:

• Chennai weather
• Data loss :-O

The freakin' brilliant:

• Alternate weekends
• Hutch-to-Hutch STD @ Re.1/minute
  

Back to the grind, for now, with the occasional dip into the Indian Maddox.

Continuing...

..the PJ-ness - even though mine is shamelessly ripped off-a Plastic.com - here goes,

Q: What should Lady Rushdie change her name to, if she ever became the President of the United Status?

A: Baberaham Lincoln.

Yes. You may die laughing shortly after you pay me for the privilege :-)

What are Western values?

Taken from this discussion:

Western values? like supporting dictatorships in Chile, central America countries, Greece, Pakistan etc?

Western values like allowing friend countries to invade and occupy foreign countries (Turkey over Cyprus) while doing the exact opposite thing with non-friend countries?

Western values like increasing the price of imported goods from Africa in order to protect domestic production?

Western values like economically supporting all the 'orange' revolutions in former soviet union countries in order to get the geopolitical advantage?

Western values like dismantling Yugoslavia because the southern part has the largest deposits of a rare metal which USA wants for replacing enhanced uranium in its weapons?

Western values like lying about WMDs in Iraq?

Western values like taking the culture of one country and arbitrarily assign it to another (yeap, I am talking about the so called country of 'Macedonia', one of the biggest thefts of cultural identity in history) ?

Western values like giving money under the table to enemies of Chaves so as that he is overthrown, even if he is legally elected?

Western values like illegally giving money to Israel under the table, as well as advanced technology that no other one has?

Western values like don't doing anything about Israel's 200 nuclear warheads, even when they openly admit it?

Western values like privatizing everything and leaving over 60 million americans in the mercy of god, without medical insurance and health care? and with private health care companies sucking everything out of their clients?

Western values like banks increasing their profits 500% each year while the average payment of an american employee has remained almost the same in the last 30 years?

Western values like stealing ancient artifacts from all around the globe and displaying them in your museums?

Western values like changing the borders of other countries (for example in the Balkans) so as you can divide and conquer, while in Africa there are thousands of slaughtered people every day in Sudan, yet you say 'it's not your problem'??? (as Angela Merkel told us a few days ago)...

Western values like not destroying the drug factories and plantations of south America, even if you have accurately mapped all the globe with your satellites?

Western values like not doing anything for the environment because it will hurt your wallet?

What western values are you talking about? all your values were invented somewhere else, and you might not know it, but almost all your habits and things you use daily come from other countries that you bash as 'non-western'. Your clothing habbits probably come from Europe. Your food from Europe and Latin America. Your language comes from Europe. Your political system comes from Europe. Your music comes from Africa. Your religion comes from Middle East. Your sports come from Europe and the Far East. The foundations of your technology come from West Germany, where almost all top scientists came to USA before and after WWII.

Get a grip on reality. The battle between USA and Russia is far from over, because Russia got the biggest natural energy resources, and USA is scared to death about Europe depending on Russia for its energy needs. That about sums it up, really.

B-schooler chest thumping

What the Supergirl witnessed was work embedding itself into life. What is witnessed here is too many marketing case studies embedding itself into life..


To be fair, I think most B-schoolers would be guilty of this :-)

Bounds have been overstepped

Long legitimate comments on my blog posts - I love (who doesn't??)

Not so long legitimate comments - I welcome.

Long spam comments - I tolerate.

Long spam comments that sound like they come from all the way from Jerry Falwell roasting on his spit in hell - I grit my teeth and put up with it anyway (hey, what can I say - I'll sell my soul for more visitors to the blog..)

Long spam comment that sounds like it was written by a right-wing, think-of-the-children, Dubya-fellating, homophobic, ID-loving, propaganda-spewing, wannabe neo-Nazi - ouch. Damn. Fine, I'll let it be.

But the title of this post is justified when said long spam comment messes up a perfectly nice post page (with comments from a couple of girls I don't really know! woohoo!) and then adds insult to injury by bad-mouthing BOTH Apple and The Simpsons.

Do not call Homer a bad influence! Die a slow painful death!

I still wont delete the comment, though ;-)

Bwaahahahahahahaha

My Inner Hero - Wizard!




There are many types of magic, but all require a sharp mind and a cool head. There is no puzzle I can't solve, no problem I can't think my way out of. When you feel confused or uncertain, you can always rely on me to untangle the knots and put everything back in order for you.

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

Ooh that Chris Rock...haha..

You know the world is going crazy
when the Best Rapper is a white guy,
the Best Golfer is a black guy;
the Tallest Guy in the NBA is Chinese,
the Swiss hold the America’s Cup,
France is accusing the USA of arrogance,
Germany doesn’t want to go to war,
and the two most powerful men in America are named Bush and Dick.

Well, That Seems Clear Enough

(Paraphrased via a Quicklink from Plastic)

Guess why the average American can't figure out the complexities of foreign policy, domestic violence or other contentious issues? Because their primary sources of news are, to put it succinctly, a bunch of numbskulls, corporate shills and just plain dumbasses. And of course, as the Hoffmanian blog says..


I'll stick to Google News, blogs and discussion forums, thankyouverymuch.

Repost - May The Force Be With You

This was done quite a while back. Reposted for the sake of garnering more eyeballs. [Thanks to AB Wan Kenabe for reminding me of this.]

Vivek and I were doing what software engineers usually do - chatting on the intranet IM service.

Now, Vivek signs off each email of his with "May the Force be with you", so we were discussing how one would use this to wish someone other than Luke Skywalker good luck.

And this is what we came up with. Some of these may not be too correct, but hey, that's the best we could do..

1. Stockbroker - May the bourse be with you
2. Golfer - May the course be with you
3. Richard Stallman - May the source be with you
4. Boatman - May the oars be with you
5. Obelix - May the boars be with you
6. Soldier/sailor returning from a long hard time looking for a good night out - May the whores be with you
7. Congenitally seasick landlubber - May the shores be with you
8. Viking lover - May the Norse be with you
9. Lion recovering from sore throat - May the roars be with you
10. Personal lawyer - May divorce be with you
11. Banker - May endorse be with you
12. Sponge - May the pores be with you
13. Quadruped - May all fours be with you
14. Marvin the Paranoid Android - May the bores be with you
15. Telegraph operator - May the Morse be with you
16. Mallu guy stranded in the desert looking for a way to escape - May the horse be with you
17. Big B/Sachin - May the crores be with you
18. Terminally lazy person - May the snores be with you
19. Housemaid - May clean floors be with you (aside: a housemaid's hesitant lover might say "I may clean floors to be with you")
20. Mafia don - May the chors be with you (can also be used above - chores)
21. Horny Peahen - May the mores be with you
22. Jim Morrison fan - May The Doors be with you
23. Democrat American population in 2000 - May the Gores be with you
24. Winnie the Pooh who's just stolen the donkey's tail because he wants it for himself - May Eeyore's be with you
25. Sutherland employee - May outsource be with you
26. Miner - May the ores be with you
27. Shopaholic - May the stores be with you
28. Selfish person - May what's yours be with you
29. Hot babe who keeps getting annoying IMs from unknown idiots wanting to be friends - May ignores be with you

Any more suggestions?

Orkut hidden SWF

For a few days, I have been noticing a tiny Flash object in every Orkut page I visit, called "datastore2.swf" (full URL - http://www.orkut.com/talk/datastore2.swf)

Every page, bottom right. And it doesn't scroll with the page. Detected, almost just like my random buddy here, with AdBlock Plus.

Poked around the HTML, which says:

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.orkut.com/talk/datastore2.swf" name="plugin" height="100%" width="100%">

Intriguingly, it doesn't seemed to have caught the interest of the Google-baiters. Yet. A Google search for "datastore2.swf" throws up only that blog above, and the directory listing of some enterprising chap who has all the items from the Orkut front page. And an '0wn3d' graphic. Interesting aside, that was - Orkut h4x0r3d? *shakes head* MSN Live Search gives bupkes. Yahoo! Search gives that blog again, with another Portuguese (?) discussion forum. A few (three) Diggs. Some speculation that this is somehow linked to Google Talk.

No doubt this would trigger another wave of privacy concerns with Google. Shady fellows. Can't say they don't deserve it either, not giving Roofie a job properly and all that..

Getting to work

I stay in Chromepet, Chennai for the duration of my summer internship with Cognizant. (Not CTS – Cognizant it is) My office happens to be in this really far-off place called Navalur. A very commonly recurring joke is the appearance of many addresses ending in “Navalur, Chennai”. Navalur, in Chennai? Bah! :-)

In order to reach Navalur, I have to take the office bus. Every day. This is not mandatory, but the company does its best to make you believe it is, by conveniently keeping offices that are closer to Kancheepuram than Chennai. Nobody who lives in Chennai could disclaim knowledge of the Cognizant buses. The organization has so many offices in “Chennai” that it deploys a veritable Armada of buses to every conceivable corner of the city, and then some. This is ostensibly to cater to the commuting needs of the employee, but an ulterior motive does exist – ensure that the employee cannot afford to saunter into office late, or leave early. Well, at least make it decidedly inconvenient to do so.

Which is where I get to the point of this post – every time I am unable to (or prefer not to) catch the bus, I have to whip out the trust old Bajaj Discover DTSi (the 125cc variant) to get me there. With only a small hitch – getting me there involves traversing 27 km of weird roads, with confusing terrain. Yes, twenty-seven kilometres. In one direction. I must add here that I am exceedingly fortunate to be in Chromepet now, as compared to being in Kodambakkam earlier. In that case, my distance would have been closer to 40 km. Would you know it? Not being within city limits has its advantages :-)

I had always figured I could handle long distance bike rides. Hey, I did it for a year when gainfully employed with Verizon India (whose existence Verizon, Inc. will never acknowledge) – traveled 20 km at least, depending on post-work activities, in one direction. But I had failed to reconcile an important factor – boredom.

Every trip to or from Verizon had been with a Nokia 6030 in my pocket, tuned into Radio Mirchi (mostly) and earphones firmly held in place by my blue helmet (which some people take issue with!) The morning rides especially were quite the pleasure, owing to Suchi, and the more than decent breakfast that would follow in the Tidel Park Food Court. The evening/night rides were also tolerable, because of the (usually) kick-ass dinner that would have prefaced them.

In stark contrast, every trip to or from Cognizant, Navalur has been with a Nokia 6680, for which I was too cheap to buy extra storage, and too dumb to bring the earphones along. So no music. 27 km of silence. At least music-wise. Otherwise, there are always the trucks with their air-horns and other random idiots who believe the accelerator and horn are coupled devices. Thus far, I am ashamed to admit, the only fun I’ve ever had on these rides was racing with a female on a Honda Activa.

Add into all this, my paranoia about getting a flat, and you have a recipe for a thoroughly terrible ride, which I enjoy nonetheless, for it lets me use my bike, which I have foolishly brought with me all the way from Jamshedpur. And yes, I also intend to take it back. Sigh...

Spoems

As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light,
and turn it into something cartoon-funny.
Scrawny wolves, and you,
Life, or only joy, that stands out
Grateful, I know, for just such compensations,
Dim, and die tonight?
In Florida, it's strawberry season—
Not so much of place as of renewed hope,
Onto my frozen fingers.
Hoarfrost is in his bones and on his head,
Appendices
Partly stone, partly the absence of stone,
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
Everywhere, utterly.
III. Earliest Recorded Northern Explorers: The Greeks and the Vikings
XI. Franklin's Last Voyage
(Our fortitude grows dim in
XXI. Flying in the Arctic
How bittersweet it is, on winter's night,

VIII. Russia: The Great Northern Expedition
And trumpet at his lips; nor does he cast
Thinking of your abiding spirit brings
But when, on the timepieces that we call
Shadows keep piling up as surfaces
Beneath a pile of corpses, lying massed
trainer flips young alligators over on their backs,
Like some poor wounded wretch—long left for dead
Snow haze gleams like sand.
In dense bare branches, or the ubiquitous
By bloody pool—rattling, gasping his last.
And I would like
Snaps of ice cracking in the hidden air.
That patch of white at the very end of the road
Toward something that the world is pointing toward
With my foot the supple ball, for perhaps
In Winter Haven, the ballplayers are stretching
At these masses the snow hides from me.
Figures of light and dark, these two are walking

The paths of childhood.
IX. After the Great Northern Expedition
Glimmering of light:
Cascading snowflakes settle in the pines,
From there. Toward . . .
From point to point of meaning—open? closed?—
He never even dreams, being sheer snow;
And the wide arrowhead the road itself
Before those virile women!
The weight of being born into exile is lifted.
And I would like
Shadows keep piling up as surfaces
Covering the land—
And half-starved foxes shake and paw
Will sound, then the Lord's face will luminesce
Glimmering of light:
III. Earliest Recorded Northern Explorers: The Greeks and the Vikings
Nor, indeed, the bit of paint itself can know of.
And Mère Chose's square of world, even as they

All three bits of verse via spam asking me to download Adobe Photoshop CS3 for only $89.

Heh.

The places one ends up when reading Slashdot...

I wanted to check up on the progress of the Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NYC (TM), where I find out that Tulsi Ramsay has made a vampire movie.

Big deal, one would think. He's always does this kind of stuff. Except, this movie is Malay/Indonesian! About a legendary Malay/Indonesian ghost thing!

From the page (which in itself is most interesting):

Penanggalan

Country: Malaysia / Indonesia
Date: 1967
Directed by Tulsi Ramsay

SUMMARY: (from IMDb): Tara (Tanny) is a village girl with extrodinary powers, capable of harvesting both black and white magick elements. However, this girl holds a dark secret that her mother and father (both are magick researchers) have been keeping from her. Tara's sister, Durgha (Suzanna), is a Penanggalan, an undead being that could remove it's head at will to swallow the living whole and has bloodthirty qualities, later turning Tara into a Penanggalan. When Tara finds this out, her family, her boyfriend Rocky and even Tara herself must watch over Durgha and monitor what she does. When the town finds out about Durgha and talks about slaying her, Durgha promises Tara to hand down her powers, so she could break Tara's Penanggalan curse and live a normal life, still having control of her extrodinary abillities.

AKA:
'Headless Terror, The' (1967) (USA)

Friggin Hutch

Hutch - where rationality does not exist.

Hutch - where "Your complaint has been resolved." really means "Your complaint has been forwarded to the concerned department."

Hutch - where the systems screw up, gobble up my money, Customer Care accepts their mistake, and refuses to return my money.

Hutch - a major consumer court case waiting to happen.

This has to be

..one of the oddest URLs I've seen in a while. Oh well, let's see how long this blog lasts...

Extreme annoyance

And that would be putting it mildly.

Not getting to eat at Eden (The Besant Nagar one) the previous night was bad, but the beach air and an LMC at The Fruit Shop has unmatched healing potential. But that's where the okay-ness ends. At least till now.

Woke up too late to be able to take the bus to Navalur, which meant another ~55 kms on the bike.

Enter office to find out that the A.C's turned up pretty high. In Chennai! Goddamn! It feels like 30°C in here!

Crappy lunch.

Hutch screws around with call rates. There's another big wad of money I'm never seeing again, for no fault of mine.

Got chewed out by manager.

Weather sucks. As always, in Chennai.

Sigh...Oh XL, how I pine for thee..

'Dumbing Down Our Kids' by Charles Sykes

[Hat tip: Part 1 and Part 2]

Rule 1: Life is not fair; get used to it.

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping; they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you screw up, it's not your parents' fault so don't whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way by paying your bills, cleaning your room, and listening to you tell how idealistic you are. So before you save the rain forest from the bloodsucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades, they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off, and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Rule 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.

Rule 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.

Hmmm..Largely targeted at Yanklanders, but interesting nevertheless..

Oh man...

This took me a while to comprehend, but once I got it, I died. Laughing, of course.

SEC could someday require [Steve] Jobs to resign

Would he then change his name to "Steve Pinkslips"?

The Yahoo! Messenger =)) emoticon multiple times over.

Step away from the chocs..

OK, that does it! (Score:4, Funny)

by Quiet_Desperation (858215) on 9:39 Tuesday 24 April 2007 (#18849929)

REVOLUTION!!!!!!

First they came for my fats, and I said nothing. Then they came for my carbs, and I said nothing. Then they came for my sugars, and I said nothing.

But NOT MY FUCKING CHOCOLATE!

(insert Star Spangled Banner here)

One nation. One struggle. One destiny.

I had a dream! A chocolatey dream!

One for the veggies

Re:EU has much higher standards for chocolate (Score:3, Funny)

by Mr2001 (90979) on 11:02 Tuesday 24 April 2007 (#18850623)

Just remember the next time you rinse with Listerine Citrus Burst that you're swishing crushed dead pregnant beetles in your mouth.

You know what's even worse... a lot of people like fruit, but don't realize fruit is basically the reproductive organs of trees. Those seeds inside are like the tree's sperm. Eating an apple is the same as chewing on a tree's balls!

Other plants aren't quite as gross as that, but even still, they all grow in dirt. Just think about that next time you're having a salad. Would you eat food off the floor? Well, everything in that salad used to be on or in the ground, and the ground is nature's filthy floor that never gets vacuumed!

Long time, no post

Hence this arbit-ness.

Sign the Open Letter To Steve Jobs

Oh Bushy

Tiny request

Pliss to be leaving your name in the comments. I'd like to know who's saying what :-)

An Ode to Sameer

If Sameer had gone to school,
He wouldn't be such a fool.
His head would have some brains,
Instead of cotton wool.

Sameer likes weird games,
I feel like calling him names.
But what to do? I'm jealous,
'Cos he attracts all the dames.

Sameer deserves a KITA,
'Cos he's such a major PITA,
He's also such a sissyhead,
He's forever complaining to Geeta.

These songs about the freako,
Are written during Eco.
It's time to stop this silliness,
Says the display on my Seiko.

[Largely sung to the tune of Whose Line Is It Anyway's "Irish Drinking Song"]

Macroeconomic scribblings

Money is a matter of functions four,
A medium, a measure, a standard and a store.
But I don't really care, I just keep wanting more,
And that's why, dear readers, I didn't vote for Al Gore.

I now regret it, such terrible luck,
Having supported that goddamn Texan shcmuck.
But what can we do now, with Dubya we're stuck,
Impeachment? Nah, no intern did he fuck...

Wait for the next elections, we thought.
Let us remove this unsightly blot.
But personality and balls, Kerry had not,
A better kinda asshole, but not by a lot.

(This was written down in a class on macroeconomic theory. Hazzah.)

Blatant but valid generalization

Most Indian I.T people are common sense challenged.

Even worse, a large percentage of this are basic intelligence challenged.

(Empirical evidence only, statistics pulled out of you-know-where)