Bogus message on HDFC online

Once more I had to take a dig at HDFC Online. Today when I logged in, the personalized message at the top of the window, captured my attention.

"Dear RAJA KUMAR T, We have a special message for you. Please Click here for details."

Though I ignored it in the beginning, somehow the curiosity took over me. See for yourself what message did HDFC came up with on clicking the link. Big Bogus!

Non-standards in adapters

With the advent of good non-dry batteries almost all the electronic gadgets come with in-built batteries that need to be charged and used. It is much common these days to see three to four different adapters hanging out of the electical sockets in any house.

Why can't there be any standards enforced on the adapters? Most of the gadgets requires 9v/12v DC input. And at any point of time, no one is going to use more than two. If one single type of adapter could be used for multiple gadgets, it really eases the pain a lot.

Kidnap and ransom - will the trend continue?

Off late I am not catching up completely with the news in TV and print media. Somehow the Anant kidnap case slipped through and caught my attention. I am quiet surprised that the hefty ransom being paid to the kidnappers to seek the safe rescue of the child has been broken out to public. In other such kidnap cases the amount of ransom being paid were never disclosed in public.

I do not question the way adopted to rescue the child. But this should not pave way for anymore future kidnappings. Hope this trend wont continue and the kidnappers would be brought to justice.

Break from inertia

It has been rather a long vacation. Once you go to hibernate mode, I feel it is difficult to ramp it back to normalcy. To break this inertia is this post. Today I became a year younger (over optimistic). Lot of wishes from the loved and dear ones made the day perfect for me.

Blue screen of death

Not sure from where this blue screen of death concept came? The other day when I was watching TV and suddenly when the cable went off, TV started showing blue screen. Originally with the older television sets, we use to get grainy screens. In the new television sets, the grainy screen is replaced by the blue screen of death.

Originaly BSOD is very familiar with Windows OS crash. Where did it came from? Why there is a blue screen instead of red or green?

Chikungunya and the false reports

There is no need for me, right at this moment, to explain what Chikungunya disease is about and its impacts. For people residing in India, particulary in south, they would have known all the bare facts by now. Unlike kerala gov, tamilnadu gov is playing down the spread of this disease. I could state so because I knew around 12 people who had suffered/are suffering from this disease. Within my close knit of people, if such high number of poeple are contacted by the viral spread, one could imagine how many people would have been affected across the state.

But still the ruling gov claims that there is no wide spread chikungunya. A big lie! And they use the media effectively to downplay all the private statistics. People have lost hope long ago on the government hospitals and expect for people in below poverty line, nobody goes to gov hospitals for treatment. The statistics that you get from the gov hospitals are greatly skewed. On effectively hadling the situation, the gov could have done a lot to bring down the spread. Nothing has been done till date. And this barbaric politicians are behind the local body elections slated for next week completely ignoring the health of the people.

Will people teach them a lesson this time?

Observations from a small public function

I had been to a small public function at my mom's school. The public function is all about NSS (National Service Scheme) camp and its closing day. The guests included a few political leaders (councilors belonging to local administrative bodies of the government) and academics (Principal of Carmel Matric School and HM of the government elementary school from where the NSS camp was run)

There are quiet a few observations that I could make.

1. There is a system to motivate students to do service. The system also helps in exposing students to public affairs, management and collaboration
2. Never ever the politicians keep up time! The function was due to begin at 5:30 in the evening and the so-called busy politicians turned up only at 6:30. To the worse one came just when the function was half over
3. The context of speech tendered by politicians and academics have significant difference. One could feel the sense of peace in the speech of academics and fit of rage in politicians (since they have got tuned by attacking the opponents at all the places)

Citibank ATM

Have you ever used Citibank ATMs? Did you notice that the ATM screen after dispatching the money, shows up your account balance to everybody standing in the queue. No looking over the shoulders is required here.

The ATM screen is placed in such an angle that it is clearly visible to all the people standing behind in the queue (even though the queue is about 5 to 6 ft away). Either the screen could be mounted at a lower angle such that it is visible to only the user or else the viewing angle of the LCD panel could be reduced.

As a workaround, the only option left is to hide the screen from others!

Sillunu Oru Kaadhal - review

First time I am writing a review for a Tamil movie. Watched "Sillunu Oru Kaadhal" movie.

The screenplay was very obvious (nothing new or different). I mean the anticipation of what is going to happen in the next frame is quiet obvious. The hero has an usual flashback and there are no surprises. The second half of the movie was quiet boring, a good test for your patience if you could stick to your seat till the climax. The climax was bit different but again predictable. Music is by ARR and I could hardly understand the lyrics. I could just make out only a few tamil words in the songs. It is pity that the good lyrics are thrown to waste. At a few places I feel that flow has been disrupted. For the sake of having comedy Vadivel was shown in a few scenes and disappears forever after that.

Finally my rating would be below average movie!

Review from IndiaGlitz. Their review is quiet positive and I hope that is because IndiaGlitz has sponsored for the movie.

Bitter experience with PVR online movie ticketing system

I was trying to book online movie tickets in PVR cinemas. It is one heck of a pathetic web application that could have ever been built. Firstly, the availability is never updated properly. While trying to book the ticket, the app showed that the seats are available and even gave me the seat numbers. After entering the credit card details and going through the payment screen, it died down. The app never refreshed to show the status of the payment. On refreshing the page, it showed the same seat allocation and the payment screen. Going through it second time also ended in vain. After restarting in fresh browser window, I found that the seats are full instantaneously. There has been no error or update stating that the credit card hasn't been charged.

This made me feel that online train ticket booking is much better app. IRCTC should get a pat on their back!

Need of thin chat clients

My usage level of chat is very sparse. I would prefer picking up the phone and talking rather than chatting. For conveying unimportant things I prefer chat over phone. I have never realized the usage of thin chat clients until my office network blocked the usage of thick chat clients due to a virus outbreak. Chat option in Gmail and Meebo came in really handy at certain points.

Send Email at Residence/Office

The above option at one of the HDFC NetBanking forms made me to think for a while. How can one classify email as residence/office?

Ways to wriggle money from customers

In this materialistic world, almost every other service vendor tries to wriggle the hard earned money from the customers. Airtel and Citibank is no excuse to this.

With Airtel when you get a new connection, they automatically enable Hello Tunes (though you request them not to enable) since it is free for the first month. The customer is never told that it is "only" free for the first month and from the next they will be charged for this petty service. Secondly they never intimate the customer that such a service has been enabled without their approval. Lot of such options are taken for granted.

Secondly, Citibank is very famous and notorious with such promotions. They will send you a life-time free gold credit card without your request on applying for a savings account. Apart from this they will enable Ready credit and all other such options automatically and keep charging heavy penalties and dues if you happen to violate their laws/policies. With a dismissal quality of service they pester you continuously with promotional offers. Nothing useful could be got from them.

I just came across an illogical incident with Citibank. I requested a bank statement and they promised to deliver it through courier only to my residential address. Since this being an account statement I had to sign and collect. With no body at my residence during office hours, the statement will be sent back to Citibank which they will duly thrash for security reasons. And the worst part is yet to come, for such a service I have to pay them charges.

Time to dump rediff

I use to frequent Rediff portal to have a quick glance on the day news and other interesting gossips. Time has come to dump rediff as they have turned on their nagging ad page for each news link you click. CNet use to have this feature but it is very random and doesnt appear for each news link. Hope rediff will learn and rectify sooner.

Blogging vacation

It has been quiet a long time I turned my attention towards blogging. There is no dearth of topics to post, but it has been a deluge so far. I am occupied with personal and professional duties to a large extent. Hoping to return to mainstream soon!

Nice basic articles on EMI

For those who fail to understand the complexities of EMI, the Get Ahead section of rediff reveals the basics of EMI. The whole article is made into three parts and worth a read!

1. Understanding EMI
2. How EMIs are calculated
3. Are you comfortable with your EMI?

How to calculate EMI using Excel functions

Via Rediff

I was never aware that the EMI calculation is a standard across the world and MS Excel features a function to do it easily.
Go through this rediff page.

Flickr leech

Flickr Leech
Excellent utility that gets photos from flickr and displays it as thumbnails. It creates an excellent collage.

Experience with freshers interview

Recently I came across two incidents related to interview of fresh college grads. Both are different scenarios in different places.

1. I interviewed a couple of fresh college grads. When it came to choosing one of them, it was pretty awful. I felt guilty of not able to choose all of them. When all of them are of same calibre, it becomes pretty difficult to choose.

2. In another incident, when you have decided prior hand that you are not going to choose a candidate by screening the resume, it doesn't make sense to call and interview the candidate for namesake. If you happen to do so, then it would be better not to ask some BS questions and reject the candidate. It really spoils the reputation of the organization that you represent. The better way to handle such scenario (in my perspective) is to conduct decent interview, ask relevant questions and let the candidate know the result at the end.

How do you want your boss to be?

For long time, I have been trying to find a convincing answer to this. When I watched Robbert Scoble's exit interview in Channel 9, this question did popup over there too. In his terms, the best boss should not intercept him and should clear way for him to proceed. Again quoting him, "the best boss should be an ice-breaker".