Posts filed under 'Personal'
After selling my Nokia E-72, I ordered a used Blackberry Bold 9700 from amazon and got it to India through a friend. Apart from those extra scratches on the phone which were not mentioned by the seller and no headset & memory card, the actual phone itself is in a good condition and am pretty much happy with it. Got the BB services also enabled and it’s all working fine. So, finally goodbye to Symbian 
. The next phone….????…..lets see 
.
January 5th, 2011
I thought I actually made a post about my new E-72 and was trying to link to that but then realized that I never wrote about it . Anyways bought a new nokia E-72 this august and finally I sold it off today. Though I bought it after a lot of research, somehow did not appeal to me much. So, at last took the decision and bid goodbye to it today. Now the search starts all over again. Whether android, rim or apple is the question but no symbian again for sure. Good bye to nokia forever.
December 6th, 2010
Thought of starting a series of posts with all my cooking experiences. Here is the first one starting with my favourite mutton curry. I never liked cooking but somehow yesterday I just felt like making something and then immediately decided to try mutton curry. It was a big risk considering the fact that I never cooked in my life except one previous experience that I posted here before . I called up my mom and asked her the recipe. She explained everything over phone and after a few phone calls and cooking time of one hour, I was done with making the curry.
First good thing was that the pieces were cooked properly. But coming to the taste, I think I did not add enough masala, chilli powder, salt and the tomatoes & onions were more than required. Nevertheless, it was not bad at all given that it was my first try. Now, I know what ingredients were missing and how to get it right the next time (provided I cook again which seems to be highly unlikely ).
Thinking of trying out something else next time but definitely a non-vegetarian dish only .
Btw, recently found a lot of monin syrups (strawberry, caramel, mojito, etc) in the supermarkets here. Looks like time to make some nice beverages.
December 6th, 2010
Rakesh/raki/rocky…..turns 26 today . Another year older and when I look back at the 25th year, it has been one of the most eventful years in my life. There have been many developments both in my personal and work life. But today what made me to actually make this post is not those events but this feeling of mine when I got up this morning……..I was still not completely awake and I heard some activity going on in the kitchen already. It’s my mom in the kitchen who started off with her daily chores. Its been 26 years today and every day….every single day, she has been there for us irrespective of how she was.
I still faintly remember how she used to walk me to my school bus stop when I was a kid….of course I also remember how she used to beat me when I refused to go to school . She gave up her own career so that I can have a good future. Its been 5 years since I left Hyderabad….2 years in IIT and 3 years in bangalore, I was having fun but back in Hyderabad she was always thinking about me. Even now when I go to home, she says its better not to come as she doesn’t like it when I go back to bangalore.
So, this birthday its to my mom because of whom I am what I am today. All I can say is thank you mom .
August 1st, 2010
At last I am getting it….I am getting a MacBook at work … its going to be the newly released MacBook Pro….the 15″ one. But the only problem is the procurement is a long process and I will be able to play with it only after 2 months from now 
….but its definitely worth the wait and I am really excited to get my hands on the new macbook. Will update it here once I get it shipped.
Update May 20th 2010:
Fortunately/unfortunately apple released the new macbook pro hardware at the same time as I was raising a request for mac. So, after a long wait for a month, finally cisco has evaluated the new macbook pro hardware and gave a green signal to ship new macbooks. So, today finally the purchase order has been placed and my new mac book pro will soon be shipped from singapore. Can’t wait to lay my hands on it .
April 22nd, 2010
After 2.5 years of stay in Bangalore I finally decided to rent a 1 bedroom apartment for myself…and that is when the problems started. My requirements were a decent sized apartment for a single person with car parking in a good locality……don’t think it’s asking for too much but it was not that easy to find one.
Even after a month’s search I could not find a decent apartment that I could rent….and in the process of my search (sulekha was the only source of my searches) I found some really interesting houses…….one guy posted an apartment for Rs. 7500 with 10 months advance that did not even have doors for bathrooms, the kitchen which was actually an extended room into the veranda with some asbestos sheet as the roof. Then there was this house that was not even big enough to accommodate a 6′x4′ bed…and the owner says, a software engineer who was staying there until recently moved to US now and even got a citizenship there . So, does that mean, I have to squeeze myself into that matchbox like house in the hope of getting a US citizenship 
!!!
Though I was completely against going with agents, in desperation I finally thought of contacting some and none of these people charge anything less than a month’s rent . So, was back to sulekha again.
Finally after many shocking experiences I could find an apartment suiting all my requirements but for a slightly higher rent but I had no other 
option….and it was through an agent (good part is he did not charge me one month’s rent as commission). But now after a month and a half of stay in this apartment, I must say it was a really good decision. I am enjoying every single moment here especially the amazing view of the lake and coconut grove from my balcony. Its so refresing and worth every paisa .
The other good part about this place is this being a big campus, even at 
midnight you can safely go down for a walk (which I rarely do ) which reminds me of the good old IIT campus days. I am eagerly waiting for a good rain during the day to see how it would look…..will post some more pics then.
April 18th, 2010
I am not going to whine here about the present Telangana movement. Was actually watching American History X movie and that was the initiative.
Has anything you have done made your life better?……… This is the statement that made me write this post. Professor Sweeney in the movie asks Derek this question in prison and that makes Derek to really look back at all his actions against the Afro-Americans. This guy Derek was actually influenced by another person (Cameron) and joins a radical organisation against the Black people. The above question really makes sense. If only people would start thinking rationally and ask themselves such questions before blindly doing/supporting anything, this world would definitely have been a better place.
In the current situation I can correlate this to the on-going Telangana State movement (and that’s the reason for the title ). Instead of people just saying we have been fighting for a separate state for the last 40 years and we want it now, why can’t they just think for a moment in what way is that going to make their life better. In my opinion, oppurtunities be it education/job or whatever it be should be based on talent and not just because you happen to be from some region in a country and so have got more right than someone else from a different region. The sooner people would realize this the better would be our future.
Ofcourse, this applies to whatever we do in our life and its just a coincidence that the Telangana movement was going now and found it to be apt.
And towards the end of the movie, liked the conclusion of Danny in his paper……..Hate is baggage. Life’s too short to be pissed off all the time. It’s just not worth it.
A good movie with a good message.
January 3rd, 2010
Had I known before about internet connection sharing in windows xp, I would have saved some time today. But anyways it was a good learning experience.
I initially connected my laptop’s ethernet port to my pc’s port and on my laptop, gave the default gateway as my pc’s usb connection’s ip address. My idea was to direct all outgoing packets to the pc’s usb interface. But this did not work. Then after a little bit of googling came across the internet connection sharing feature in xp (not sure if the previous windows versions had this). That worked like a charm for the first time itself. So, I had the following setup working now -
Laptop’s ethernet to pc’s ethernet and then bsnl modem’s usb interface connected to pc’s usb port. And on my pc, I enabled the option Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection. This was the easiest solution but it only solves half of my problems. I will now have to sit near my pc to work which is pretty bad. I somehow wanted to get my wireless also working in this mode .
For the wireless to work for me, the WRT54G2 had to be brought into the picture now. Now instead of connecting pc’s ethernet port to laptop directly, I connected it to one of the lan ports of my router and then the laptop’s port to one of the other lan ports. This works fine and I was able to access internet over both pc and laptop. Now the final issue was to get the wi-fi working.
Because of a few failed attempts in getting the wi-fi connected, I thought the access point mode was not supposed to be used. So, tried the client mode, client bridge mode, repeater mode and repeater bridge mode though knowing that these modes were for a different purpose all together. I already had a client bridge mode setup back in my flat in bangalore. But I was so frustrated that I started exploring all the available options . Finally when nothing worked I thought of getting back to AP mode and bingo…..it works!!!!! . Was so happy to get the wi-fi also working. Ofcourse, all this has eaten up 2.5 hours of my time but atlast got what I wanted.
So, here is the final setup just in case some one needs a similar thing to be done -
Scenario – One pc with spare ethernet card and connected to ISP over some alternative interface like USB port or another ethernet card. And need to get wi-fi access and other systems in the lan to be able to share the internet connection along with the host pc.
Solution – Enable Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection under the Internet Connection Sharing on the host pc. Connect the host pc’s ethernet port to one of the wired ports (not the WAN port) of the router. Have the router in AP mode and that’s it. The wireless can now be shared among any number of laptops just like any normal connection and also other systems can be connected to the remaining wired ports of the router.
Update – Jan 4th 2010
Though the wi-fi setup works fine in the above scenario, I noticed that initially when my laptop’s wi-fi gets connected it shows the speed of the connection as 54Mbps but within few minutes it drops down to 1Mbps. And then the speed you get is worse than my reliance datacard. Also one point that I noticed was that when the desktop’s internect connection was being used, we can forget about working on the laptop over wi-fi . Looks like it works by statically alloting specific bandwith to each of the interfaces. Need to explore further. Will keep posting my findings here……
December 28th, 2009
Previous Posts
the Caterpillar 777D mining truck. It’s a 1:50 die cast scaled mode and got this one also as a gift 
caterpillar mining truck is something I would never be bored with. Watched the caterpillar in the making multiple times in mega factories program in NGC and that will always be one of my most favorite ones in mega factories series. The other trucks that I like are the mammoets but still a long way to go before I can think of having one…..of course a scaled model 
