Blogger vs Wordpress

Ok, Surprised? Yes, I have changed the theme. Did you notice? I was quite happy with the old one, and I am expecting a lot of people to come and say, "the previous one was better". But, somebody who I asked to read my blog said, "The black background puts too much strain on my eyes, I am not gonna read this!!!"

Wow, I was trying to save energy by keeping the black background, and reduce my carbon footprint. But then, I myself had a look at it sometime later, I felt the same. And recently, Blogger just added this new "Theming Feature". I wanted to try it out. Well, as of now, there aren't many themes to choose from. It took me almost 2 hours to decide on one. :(

Google doesn't want to be the No. 2 in anything. It is fighting everywhere, and seems to be winning as well, except for China, where the Government, in a way is trying to throw them out. This would be a huge gain for the local search engine Baidu. Oh, I am deviating. Ok. So, Wordpress is threatening to take over Blogger's title as the best blogging service. Wordpress is great. It has a lot more features. It has hundreds and thousands of themes. So, I guess, Google has taken the first steps to improve Blogger now. I haven't used Wordpress ever, but I have heard that it is just great. But, with the user base that Google has, Wordpress doesn't seem to come anywhere close to Blogger.

I love Blogger and I would not shift to Wordpress for the simple reason that I am not willing to migrate all my blogs to Wordpress even though there are tools which take care of this. I am being faithful to Google, and not lazy as a lot of people might think.

Interviews on the other side

At work, these days, taking interviews are a part of my daily activities. On an average I take 3 interviews a day. And that is hectic and boring. To top it, the technology I am into, there aren't many female professionals out there. What a boring job !!

My first question:

Tell me about yourself. Crap, if someone asks that question in an interview, I will break his head.

My last line:

I am done with your interview. I will send my feedback to the HR and he will get back to you. I always used to get similar responses.

At first I thought it would be fun, but now I think it is the most boring job, well, a female candidate might just help now and then. :-)

I have rejected over 2 dozens of resumes till now. Bye , I have another one lined up right now.

Graduated !!! *After College*

4 years of engineering was fun. Each and every day was as enjoyable  as the first or the last day of college and hostel. But now, things have changed, for good and bad. Hostel life, I guess, was a great experience for me. When I look back, through the hazy memories, I can still clearly re-collect some moments which can never be forgotten. These incidents will one day become stories for our children which we would narrate again and again. Those four years were like a vacation for me, of course, I got a B.Tech Degree. :)

1. At college, ANYTIME is PLAYTIME. There was no fixed playtimes for us. Be it a weekday, exam day or a weekend, in a minutes notice we could make two teams for any game. Cricket, Football, Volleyball, Carrom, Chess, Age of Empires, Counter strike, Water Games, Discussions, Debates, and a lot more. We played it all.

* But now in the corporate world, we only get weekends. :(

2. Dinner, Lunch and Breakfast were just words for us. There was no fixed time for all these. We stretched and skewed the timings so much that these words lost their meaning. We just ate, anytime we liked, and anything we got.

* Out here, we have fixed timings for everything, even for a smoke and tea.

3. Drinking and smoking made people happy and gay. If you didn’t have a hangover next day, you weren’t drunk. Throwing up and to be drunk again was a sign of strength. It was admired.

* You puke once in your office party, and your organization bans alcohol in office parties forever. After the smoking ban, people have to walk out of the campus/building to get some air. :(

4. Six weeks of attendance. That means, in the whole year, you work for 12 weeks. There was a relaxation of 2 weeks as well, if you could think of a nice excuse. The rest of the time, you could be sleeping, watching movies, playing Far Cry, or just gossiping, you had so much time to waste.

* 35 holidays a year!!! That’s ridiculous, when the hell shall I find time to chill out? Office life doesn’t give you time to breathe, let alone a chance to get drunk.

5. Worn out jeans, torn Tees, and Bathroom chappals took us everywhere. Party, lectures, Exams and Interviews. Washing clothes was something which had the least priority for us.

* Formals, Shoes, Ties and a Laptop in all seasons have to be carried 5 days a week. And the weekend’s most important agenda is “Washing clothes”. I hate it.

I can go on writing about things, how they were and how they have changed. Well, I am not complaining about the present. I just want to say, “Wow, how great were those 4 years of hostel”. Now after college, I have responsibilities, towards everything. I have grown up finally. “I have GRADUATED”.

Kunal, you can't beat my phone

Hahaha, let's see how will you beat this. Now I can blog any time I like. This time I will definitely win the competition. Its a bit difficult to type out a blog from a phone but I will do it.

My bike's not well and it could be days before it gets on the road, so till then I would be blogging a lot. A sentence or two each hour. Ahahahaa.

Best of luck.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

Video test

A small video from my office.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

First pic from HTC Hero

Got an Android phone at work. Posted from Blogaway.

Location : Domlur, Bengaluru, Karnataka,

Bike Update - Down and Dead

It has been hardly 10 days and my machine has started showing signs of being just a machine. I have learnt one lesson though. Never rely on a damn machine. Mechanical devices are still trustworthy, but when it comes to Electrical and Electronics, no matter how high the reliability of a sytem is, the probability of it failing is quite high at any given time.

So, my battery is dead now. And to add to the problem, there is no kick lever in my bike. They are saying that it would take atleast 2-3 days to fix the battery. WTF. Till then, I have to push and start. Wow, I was looking to join a gym very soon, but now I don't need to. I burn some calories and flex some muscles whenever I want to ride my bike.


I called up the Exide guys, and they said that they will first check and replace if necessary. My advice to people who are planning to buy a bike,

"Do not get a bike without the kick lever"

Lost in Chandigarh

Well, I don't remember exactly the sequence of events, but I don't know how I missed to write about this one. We almost made headlines some years back when I was in college, NIT Kurukshetra. It was a college tour to Chandigarh, a part of our Environmental Studies curriculum. The whole of electrical batch packed in 2 buses.

I don't even remember the names of people who were involved. As far as I can remember there were 6 of us. Rishabh, Kapi, Vivek, Amit, Rahul Singh and Me. We had already decided that we would somehow escape from the group and have beer even before we started. It was a hot afternoon. A bottle of beer was the need of the hour. For lunch, we were given an hours time. As soon as we heard that, we rushed towards a place where we could get all we wanted. It wasn't long enough before we had the bottles in our hands. Some "aloo parathas" and "samosas" was all that we could manage in an hour, we thought. After 4-5 gulps of the liquid, all of us went into a mild state of trance, out in the air, on the streets of Chandigarh.

The next thing I remember was a policeman standing besides me and staring at me. We never knew that it was illegal to drink in the open in Chandigarh. We never bothered to inquire. Then we could also see a bigger crowd surrounding us. I could also see some people with cameras pointed at us, perhaps the press. And suddenly the bottles were snatched from our hands and we were asked to follow a policeman who escorted us to the control room, saving us from the press and the people. Phew, I could see all of us sweating profusely now. The lunch break was almost over and we were quite far from the group and our professors. We knew we would never be able to make it on time. Thoughts about getting thrown out of college, parents wrath and making the headlines made us nervous. And finally, we managed to call some more people from the group who came in time to deal with the police. Sagar and Dheeraj rushed to the spot in 15 minutes.

By that time, the police were completing the paper works, inquiring about us, taking down our addresses. When it was Kapi's turn, I couldn't control my laughter. He started mentioning some imaginary address, a strange address, of-course non-existent. They had also confiscated out ID cards, which was returned to us after-wards. After all this, we were taken to a hospital where a doctor asked us some questions and we answered (don't remember what). He then announced that we were not drunk. This was all a part of the process just to make sure that we don't land up in tomorrow's newspapers. The policemen were very co-operative and Sagar and Dheeraj also helped a lot in finally taking us back to the group. And the excuse was, "Lost in Chandigarh". No one was cross-questioned.

When we returned to our hostels, there was a sense of pride for all that we went through. We were the talk of the hostel for that day. That day, it was fun.I think we had some more beer when we were back.

But, when I think of it now, I feel sad. I am sure that it could have been worse. That was 4 years ago, and we were just engineering students. But for our luck, this incident was not somehow publicized enough to be known to our profs, parents and others, and we were saved.

Time killing

It's Friday. And I am in party mood. But the sad thing is, there's no party!!!!

I will be very busy this weekend, that's for sure. Have to roam around a lot, have to brave the sun. Next Tuesday is a holiday for us. That's a relief.

Time doesn't fly, it crawls when you want it to fly. I have 3 gmail accounts, which I need to check very frequently. Even that doesn't help me kill my time at office. By the way, from next week, it seems that I will be given lots and lots of work. But before that, I am chilling, and trying to kill the 8 hours at office.

I don't know what will happen when that transition comes. From complete idle to loads of stuff, I think I might not be able to handle all this. In a way, I am sure. Let's see.

I get at-least 50 mails a day, to which I have to reply (un-official). Now, it's boring. But have to do it. I try to keep my nails in shape by biting them off.

I don't like IPL and so I am not very excited about it. :)

Finally, Ready to race

Yesterday, I got my Pulsar 180 finally, after such a long wait. I am so so excited. Let's see how long will this excitement last before the Bangalore traffic frustrations get into me. 43kms done. I want to complete 500kms within 15 days so that I can safely break the speed barrier.

In the pic, that's obviously not me. :) I haven't yet got it's photos. And also haven't had any big stories. When I do, I will put them up here.

No more walking in the heat. It's getting real hot in Bangalore these days. No buses and autos. And late night movies!!! No problems sir.

Crippled without Internet

Aahhh, No internet connection in office. It's been like this for almost 30 minutes. Everyone is going mad. Everything has stopped. No one's working. :)

There were days when even a pathetically slow computer system brought joy and excitement to people's houses. It was a grand celebration. And before turning it on, the age old custom of breaking a coconut and putting a tilak was never forgotten. I remember, when I turned my PC for the first time at home, everyone was standing right behind me. I was in 10th standard then. Well, a dangerous time though. My parents thought that it would help me in studies. Computer Science was introduced in our curriculum in 8th standard. But they were in for a bigger surprise.

The very next day, a friend of mine, who had never come to my house before, dropped in with 2 game CDs. And he kept on visiting my house very frequently. I am not complaining, I enjoyed it too. We used to sit in-front of the computer for hours, door locked from inside. Our parents had the impression that we were studying hard. This went on for quite some time. And finally we were caught. I don't remember what happened next. But, for the first 2 years, my PC was only used for gaming. It was a 233MHz machine, with 32MB RAM and 40GB hard disk. After 2 years also, we didn't have an internet connection. And we never got bored.

Now I have a laptop with 1.6GHz processor, 1.5GB RAM and a 120GB hard disk. But now, I use it for one more thing. To get connected to the internet. Now I cannot imagine how would I keep myself busy if there was no internet. But I also miss some of my other hobbies. I don't play tabla anymore. Nor do I do any sketches or paintings. The time spend in-front of the TV has also reduced drastically. I don't work out. I eat fast so that I can get back to my laptop as soon as possible. I don't talk on the phone for hours together, well, not as much as I used to. I don't play outdoor games.

Internet has crippled me!!!!! But I love it.

Laptop Worries

Recently, my laptop has been pathetically slow. And it's responsiveness is deteriorating day by day. It has developed a load of issues.  With a 1.5GB RAM, it's still not as fast as I would like it to be. I wonder if it has lived it's life. It's been more than 3 years and sometimes it seems to be dead.

So, today, I sat down to do some maintenance. I don't understand whats with Microsoft. To speed up my laptop, I uninstalled Internet Explorer. The moment I restarted it, it prompted me to re-install IE 8. What the heck. I don't want that anyway.

After a few tweaks here and there, I was able pace it up a bit. But with the stuff I want to do with my laptop, I wonder how long will this one last. But my laptop has always been faithful and reliable. Though it has crashed a few times and I had to re-install the OS and everything, but hey, it's Windows, and it crashes. :) Sometimes, I have kept it running for days together and it didn't give up. But now it is showing signs of aging. :( 

Can't tolerate this heat

These days, Bangalore has gone hotter than ever. And the worst is yet to come.

I can feel my skin burn when I go out in the sun. And there is no escape from this. I thought Bangalore has the best climate in the summers. Now everything has changed. The garden city doesn't have enough trees.

I hate going out in the sun now. But, have to.

These summers are going to get worse. Need to find a way to cope with it. Else, I will be fried someday. :(

Don't walk into Khivraj Bajaj

I haven't yet got my Pulsar. And today, frustrated and fed up with their nonsense replies, I cancelled my booking. I even wrote a review on Google, of course, the worst one that I would ever write about anything.

I hope people don't rely on Khivraj Bajaj showrooms now. My experience with them was the worst that I ever had.

1st day: Sir, the bike will be delievered in 10 days. We are getting the new stock, 2010 models. We will call and let you know when the bike arrives.

10 days gone, no call, I called up.

10th day: Sir, We don't know the status. And the Bajaj people also have no updates as to when you can get your bike.

After 5 more days, still no call, I called up.

15th day: Sir the bikes are on the way from Pune, and they will arrive in 2 days. We will call you.

17th Day: Sir, the whole stock was Pulsar 150. You will have to wait for a week more to get your 180.

23rd day: Still no call, I called up.
Sir, You make the full payment on 2nd march and it will be delivered to you on 3rd. :)

Today: Still no call, WTF. I called up the last time.
Sir, the stock has come. But the stock was damaged and it will take some more days for the new stock.

F**k you. I walked down 4 kms, in the scorching heat to cancel the booking. The executive there had the same monotonous smile on her face as the first day. She said politely, sir, please write an application for cancellation, and we will prepare a cheque in 2-3 days. Once it is ready, WE WILL GIVE YOU A CALL. I know that call will never come.

Only I know how controlled my temper, and didn't shout on her face. And then, finally, when I was about to leave, she says "Thank you", and smiles. Aaargghh, I hate that smile.

Please don't ever go there. Here's the address.

Khivraj Bajaj,
2 & 10, 2nd Stage HAL,
100 Feet Road,
Indiranagar, Bangalore, 560038