Monthly Archives: November 2005

I told you so!

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English Murasoli is being whipped by bloggers (thanks PK!) from all over the place for alleged plagiarism. For long, I have been saying that it doesn’t deserve the halo it has around it. I hate that paper coz I feel that it is going from bad to worse and above all, it is very much biased. But it seems that there are few more skeletons in its cup board than I thought of. Though I feel happy that the above has been brought to light, I feel bad that there is a big crowd out there among the younger generation who grow up with this newspaper, of course wrongly thinking that it is the unbiased and honest thing on earth.

Surprising that yesterday’s news on Jaya’s providential escape when her special aircraft narrowly escaped a runway collision didn’t make any waves in the main stream media as it normally would have. I saw the news in Express, Rediff and few other sources. But EM seems to have its own style of reporting (via) that incident.

Miscellany

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The freezing cold for the last two weeks reminds me of the mail forward I got ages ago. If it is zero degree celsius today and if tomorrow would be doubly cold as today, what would be the temperature tomorrow?

Weather thing apart, I – rather Anirud has got a new blog – Footsteps of the Little One. I am planning to record his activities in my words and hopefully present to him one day.

Minnal Software has released the alpha version of Minnal Tamil Search Engine. Is there any other Tamil search engine available?

3 letter long name

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Taking pity at the guys at the Cab booking service and take aways, I normally give my name as Sam. That seems a bit too much for these chaps. Below was the conversation I had with one of them recently.

“Can I have your name Sir?”

“SAM”

“Can you please spell that for me?”

“Sure. S-A-M”

“S-E-N. Thank you Sir”

“?????!!!”

I should have killed that moron in the first place by telling him my full name.

Spam Mails

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Everyone who has an e-mail id would have got at least one spam mail. On an average, I used to get around 25-30 such emails from friendly viagara/phentermine dealers or well wishers from Africa, who would be waiting with few million dollars to make sure that I live comfortably.

I don’t know what happened all of a sudden, for the last couple of days I am receiving not less than 8000 spam emails a day to my primary email id. Thank goodness, Yahoo promptly dispatches them to the Bulk folder. Even if 5% of it makes its way to my Inbox, I would be doomed. On the other hand, if one of the genuine mails sneaks into the Bulk folder, I won’t have any way of knowing that.

Citi, Asin, The Hindu etc.

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  • Citibank guys called me to inform that the fraudulent transfer did happen through online banking. To emphasise the point that it was not just Citibank’s problem, he said that lot of accounts from many different banks had been targetted by criminal gangs from Eastern Europe. That particular transaction was also traced to an Eastern European country though he wouldn’t reveal the name since it is under investigation. To my surprise he said that the police in this country were indifferent to cyber-crime in general, which makes it even more difficult. Basically he called me up to check about the security measures I have taken, but he had no suggestions to offer as he felt that I have been quite careful.

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  • Search for the words “Asin Thottunkal” in Google and see the results. Number of people who search for that phrase and end up here is always on the rise.

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  • This post by Guru on ‘English Murasoli‘ must be his best one so far. I am so glad to find someone echoing my thoughts on the subject.

    • Going Wireless

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    Not so long ago, I was still using the Dial-up connection that even invited dialler virus at my home PC. Little more than a month back, I switched to Broadband and soon after, I decided to go wireless. Not conversant with the networking stuff, I googled for info and bought a Linksys router only to realise that I have a USB modem and need to buy a cable modem if I have to use the former. Thanks to Amazon’s friendly return policy, I returned that and bought a SpeedTouch 580 router, which most the reviewers said that it is great but its a pain to configure. I didn’t take that statement more seriously than I should have, but to my surprise I was able to start browsing as soon as I switched on the router. But the joy didn’t last long as it so happened that my laptop was picking up my neighbour’s signals. Though the configuration appeared very simple, it was a royal pain that I struggled hard for quite a few days to get connected, meanwhile calling every person I know who I thought, knew a thing or two in networking. Last night, I tried once again with a tip from my colleague and bingo – it got connected. Uff… What a relief.. that could well be compared to easing yourself after being caught in an air-conditioned room for long.

    P.S: Speed Touch’s customer service sucks big time. When I e-mailed them asking for help, I got a reply 3 days later asking me to look at the user manual. When I decided to call them over phone, their Customer Service number is a premium number.