Miscellaneous

Women as bad drivers is a sexist stereotype

Miscellaneous 0 Comment

These jokes are doing rounds on Facebook, basically about women’s driving skills -


When we laugh at the jokes like these, we think it is innocent fun. Even many women think so, but somewhere at the back of our mind we make an assumption that women are somewhat inferior to men when it comes to technology, driving, gadgets or finance/investment. That mindset is what leads to some men taking it to extreme and showing their power through rapes and other violence against women.

You wouldn’t make a joke against a person having a different skin colour, you wouldn’t make a joke on people from lower castes or from other religion because that is treated as racist, casteist, communal and there are laws against them. But making jokes based on gender stereotypes is universal. People from all over the world will merrily join in to laugh on a girl v/s boy joke.

We inculcate this thinking in our children since a very small age that the girls are weak, they don’t understand things as well as men do and they need protection and direction from men all the time.

Until we change this mindset, men will continue to show their manliness by raping women.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood

Fun, Miscellaneous 0 Comment

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood

This famous tongue twister can be sung on the tune of Uthe sab ke kadam tara rum pum pum….

Here is the original song

I recorded the video on iPad

Copied to computer through USB

The original video was 10 MB, converted it to avi of 3 MB using the awesome Freemake video converter

Uploaded to YouTube and Facebook.

Two types of people

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There are two types of people

1) Those who just perform their biological functions – eating, reproducing and dying – the majority

2) Those who invent new things or new ways of doing things, they change the world, they change the way the majority lives. They are obviously the miniscule minority.

wheel, fire, weapons, farming
steam power, electricity, assembly line
trading, advertising, discounting
gravity, relativity, evolution
printing, telegraph, radio, television, telephone, phonograph
decimal system, zero, binary, transistors, C++, Internet, Google, Facebook

Awesome inventions! They have made the lives of the category 1 people worth living.

So far I belong to category 1.

ICICI bill pay is going from bad to worse

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I have been an ICICI customer since 2003. I have been using their ebill pay facility for many years now and never had any problems but off late I am having so many issues its just too much! The problems started when my registered billers suddenly failed to get paid a few months back. I was surprised when one month my electricity bill came with a warning, I checked and found my LIC premiums weren’t paid and my electricity bill wasn’t paid either. I had no idea what was wrong, so I deleted the biller and added a new one. In the meanwhile I made payment of the LIC premium from LIC’s portal and after a week or so ICICI charged my card again for the premium! So I ended up paying that month’s premium twice and that too with penalties!!

This time around I went in and deleted the scheduled LIC premium since the last premium was paid twice. It went well on the scheduled payment date and today I got a message saying my card was charged for that missed premium with penalty!!! W H A T   T H E   F U C K!

I have removed all my billers from ICICI now and am adding them in Visa bill pay. At least they do not charge my card automatically!

Tips for online book shopping in India

Miscellaneous, Reading , 3 Comments

Tip for online book shoppers in India: Compare prices at Iglooo.in and isbn.net.in before buying. I got The God Delusion from landmarkonnet for Rs. 171 (After 10% discount), which is available for as high as 325 at some other sites. Don’t remember when I last bought a book from Crossword or a bookstore.

Other book price comparison sites are indiabookstore.net and mysmartprice.com.

Also whenever you buy something online always search for discount coupon codes for that site. I searched for a coupon for landmarkonnet and got 10% discount. :) RetailMeNot is the site to find coupons and Google is always there.

http://www.landmarkonthenet.com/

Routine

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I sleep at 3 AM, wake up at 9. Reach office at 11, have lunch at 3, reach home at 10, have dinner at 11, sleep at 3 and the cycle continues…
Days, Weeks, Months, Years. Robotic life. I hate monotony. Sometimes its kick ass stuff, sometimes t]just plain old shit.

What the fuck am I doing here…….

A Chinese way of selling domain names

Miscellaneous 2 Comments

I have been receiving emails from certain companies in China saying they have been approached by some company to register various domains for “Uconomix” like uconomix.cn, uconomix.asia, uconomix.cn, uconomix.com.cn, uconomix.com.hk, uconomix.com.tw etc. And since I own Uconomix.com domain and the Uconomix name, they have kept the application of the other company interested in registering these domains on hold and contacted me! So kind of them!! So if I want to protect my brand name then I must contact them and purchase the said domains from them! And warn that they will wait for my reply only for 7 days after which they will approve the application of the other company.

I was a little surprised when I received one such mail a few months back. I thought of contacting them but then used some common sense, if someone wants to book Uconomix.cn domain name They can just go and buy it! The registrar will not come to the owner of .com domain asking for permission!! So this is a ploy to scare domain owners and make them buy a handful of Chinese domains names. And there are many Chinese registrars who engage in such practices. I keep receiving such mails on various email ids. Obviously they have a bot or a a few idle guys sitting and contacting every .com domain owner they come across and send them a similar mail.

Here’s one such email -

(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward to the right person/ department, as this is urgent, thank you!)

Dear CEO,

We are a leading internet solutions organization in Asia, have something urgent to confirm with you. Yesterday we formally received an application from a company which called “Monotia Trading Co.,LTD”, they were seeking to apply for “uconomix” as Brand name and following Domain Names through our organization:

uconomix.asia
uconomix.cn
uconomix.com.cn
uconomix.com.hk
uconomix.com.tw
uconomix.hk
uconomix.in
uconomix.net.cn
uconomix.org.cn
uconomix.tw

After our initial examination, we found that the Brand name and Domain Names applied for registration are similar to your company’s. These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company did not authorize the aforesaid company to register these, please contact us as soon as possible.

In addition, we hereby declare the time limit for this issue is 7 workdays, if your company files no reply within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by  “Monotia Trading Co.,LTD”.

This is nothing but a scam and a way of fooling unsuspecting people!

Phishing email in Hindi

Fun, Miscellaneous 0 Comment

Scamsters have now started sending phishing emails in Hindi! I received one today telling me my Bank of India account has been blocked and I should login and activate it. Of course I dont have an account in Bank of India but what is interesting is the mail is in Hindi. Very bad Hindi actually. Looks like it was translated in some automatic tool like Google Translation.

प्रिय ग्राहकों,

हमारे रिकॉर्ड इंगित करते हैं कि आपके ऑनलाइन खाते की वजह से रोक दिया गया है निम्नलिखित कारणों से.

झूठी जानकारी के साथ परीक्षण में साइन इन करें.

अधूरा या गुम भारत के बैंक में इस्तेमाल किया ऑनलाइन खाते के डेटा.

हम आग्रह करता हूं कि आप भारत के अपने बैंक खाते को पुनर्स्थापित करने के लिए ऑनलाइन तुरंत अपने खाते को बंद करने को रोकने के.

लिंक पर क्लिक करें नीचे भारत के बैंक खाते को पुनर्स्थापित करने के लिए ऑनलाइन:

My favourite line in this – हम आग्रह करता हूं कि.. As if Laloo Prasad Yadav had drafted this email! :P

Server is hung

Fun, Miscellaneous 2 Comments

“Server is hung”, informs Rohit. “Hung”? ins’t it supposed to be “hang”? asks Vijay. “Its past contonous tense” tells Rohit. “Past continous?, I think that is present continous.” Param jumps in the conversation. “I think that is present perfect” I give my opinion. By now everyone is interested in knowing what tense is that. So I grabbed a marker and white board and start writing the twelve tenses.

Simple
I eat – Present
I ate – Past
I will eat – Future

Continuos
I am eating – Present
I was eating – Past
I will be eating – Future

Perfect
I have eaten – Present
I had eaten – Past
I would have eaten – Future

Perfect Continous
I have being eating – Present
I had been eating – Past
I would have been eating – Future

Hung is past participle (3pp) form of verb Hang. And 3pp is used in perfect tense. So the conclusion is “Server is hung” is present perfect tense!

Cool! So we have the answer.

And Rohit reminds “Dude, BUT the server is still down!” Ouch! :P Nobody remembered to reboot the server!

Bye bye 2009, Welcome 2010

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The year 2009 has been particularly good for me. Lots happening both on professional and personal fronts. Business revived taking the team size to 6. Got the new office, new car. My sister in law got married to my best friend – with whom we are going to spend our new year eve :) Watched lots of movies, visited Taj Mahal and enjoyed life and work alike.

2010 looks promising too. Lots of exiting work to be done. Need to double my team size and turnover of the company. Lots of new ideas to be implemented. Bye bye 2009. Welcome 2010!

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