BMTC Volvo buses

Its really good!

I took the bus today to work. It takes about an hour and 15 mins. I caught the bus at 7.50. It reached the office around 9.00.

Airconditioned, smooth riding and very comfortable. I was able to read my newspaper on the way. Usually reading anything while on a vehicle in India gives you a headache or worse, this bus turned out to be surprising good!

Bus schedules and other information is available at http://www.bmtcinfo.com/english/volvo.htm

How to burn yourself out

Step 1. Agree to a WW (actually only between US and Ind) teleconf at 6.00PM. The call is pretty important as its a status call where you are one of the presenters

Step 2. Inform Spouse

Step 3. Spouse calls at 5.45 as there is a deadline and she needs to fix something ASAP.

Step 4. Spouse calls in temporary babysitter (a.k.a Granddad) to take over from the real babysitter. GP picks up Granddaughter at 6.15 (win-win for Granddad and Granddaughter).

Step 5. Pick up the little one (already fast asleep) from GP's house at 9.15. From now on, your KRA is to keep her asleep.

Step 6. Check if Spouse is at home. No.. She's still fire-fighting

Step 7. Juggle bundle-of-joy (starting to stir), car keys (which you drop to the garage floor), and house keys

Step 8. Enter house. Find Master bedroom door shut. (As per pre-arranged protocol).

Step 9. Still juggling the Apple-of-my-eye (nearly awake), car keys and house keys, search for master bedroom keys in the study. Don't find it, and so give up.

Step 10. Put the cuppy-cake in her room with the plan to move the crib after dinner. Pray to non-existent superior being that the sugar-plum remains in dreamland. She does!! (Superior Being does exist!)

Step 11. Search for keys and find it! Ya!

Step 12. Change and head to kitchen.

Step 13. Bad luck strikes. No rice. Clean rice, and put the rice cooker to work.

Step 14. Read a blog post about the virtues of having software engineers leave on time - http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2009/03/developers-should-not-be-allowed-to.html. 

To add salt to the burn, skip breakfast, have lunch at 1.20 (instead of the usual 12.20), avoid eating anything since that time.

If that doesn't kill you. Rinse, and Repeat.

Avoiding Traffic

What's the best time to avoid Bangalore traffic in morning? That's what I spent my time thinking today while driving to work. I left home at 7.30 and reached at 8.10. If I were to leave anything after 8.00 it would take me an hour at the least. The peak rush hour is 8.30 to 10.30. So by leaving early, I saved 20 minutes at the least and close to an hour as compared to rush hour.

Leaving for office early, Pros:
1. 20 minutes saved.
2. Not many people in the office, so I get some work done.
3. Fewer autos.

Leaving for office early, Cons:
1. Instead of office traffic, you hit school traffic.
2. Not many people in the office, true..... except my boss and his boss. So.... I'm cornered in the morning.
3. More School buses.

Leaving for office late, Pros:
1. Consistent time. 1 hour. You expect some jams, whereas in the morning, the jams are unexpected and hence more irritating.
2. Most people are already in and busy. The boss is past his "productive" time and so, I can actually get some work done.
3. Fewer cars.

Leaving for office late, Cons:
1. Instead of getting on to the road, you hit a traffic jam right outside the apartment gate.
2. You end up working late because you don't have an excuse for leaving early. You can't leave between 5.30 and 8.00, because of rush hour. So, you end up leaving only by 8.30 or maybe even 9.30
3. Bad parking spot.

Myopic view of bangalore,, traffic,, funny

Tweet!

I'm going to be tweeting for some time. Follow me.

Sat this one out

but I shouldn't have. No TV at home and its the first season in over a decade that I have missed. (I also missed most of the 94, and 95 seasons). From what I saw on Youtube (via), it must have been heartstopping at Brazil last night.

I went to bed early last night, but got up at around 10.30. I knew it was the last race and that I needed to follow it. So, it was formula1's live timing for me. Trust me, I thought that McLaren have messed it up yet again. That's they have succeeded in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. But looks like the Gods were smiling and they finally won a driver championship. I was really astonished to see that LH passed Glock on the last lap. My first thought was that the timing was wrong, but then I saw the commentary which confirmed it. Wow!

Maybe I'm cynical and maybe I read too much into the FIA favours Ferrari line of thinking. I went to bed after SPA thinking, hey! that was a great drive by LH. Even though I was rooting for KR at SPA, I felt that LH really did a fantastic job. Then to wake up and read the newspaper that he's been penalized, made it seem that the results was being scripted and that we were watching a puppet show.

I got up today morning, with a sense of dread. Maybe the newspaper would say that LH was doing something illegal (as per FIA Stewards) or that Glock is reinstated or that Luca D M strode manfully into a certain tinpoint dictator's house and cracked the whip (if you know what I'm saying :-)) or yadda yadda yadda. But that was just my cynical self. So, it was with a sense of relief that I read the headline that confirmed what I knew - LEWIS HAMILTON's THE 2008 F1 CHAMPION! Ya!

Tough luck to Massa and it was really sad for him and his family but today was about LH. I'm not a natural Massa fan, but this was perhaps a touch too cruel. It must have been in the stars and his destiny.  He crossed the line the WDC but for no fault of his ended up losing by 1 point just 20 seconds later. Man! That's tough.

And finally, a bit of gloating.. Guggu, Koli, Gana - BWAHAHAHAHAHAHHA (Evil but satisfied Laugh!) And Kudka - Great huh?. Let's celebrate (when I'm in NYC).

Perhaps, we will buy a TV before next season's starts and perhaps I will follow it. But till then, I can only sit back and wonder - how on earth did they snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

Myopic view of f1, formula1, mclaren, ferrari, lewis, hamilton,

Had to turn it off

I'm a Batman fan and make no bones about it. However, I haven't yet seen the latest Batman movie - The Dark Knight. I wanted to setup an office party and get everyone to see this movie. However, it never materialized and I missed catching it at PVR. 

So, when I was channel surfing today and came across the movie on HBO, I stopped. It was the beginning of the movie and so, I hadn't missed much. However, I could only watch it for 10 minutes or so. Why? Because of the stupid subtitles. 

Looks like HBO has done a half-assed job for the sub-titles for this movie. Its so bad that its not just distracting but just plain irritating and very frustrating. To top it off, (since we don't have TV at home and watching at my in-laws' place), the neighbourhood and household noise made it nearly impossible to follow. The end result? I switched channels. 

Thanks a lot HBO. You just ruined my day. 

Let's see how long it lasts

This may be interesting.

No negotiations

2 nights back, Dew started wimpering at around 4.30 AM. Both Eva and Me were fast asleep but she continued till we got up. Eva took Dew and tried to put her back to sleep. But the wimpering grew and soon she was wailing.

Here's the conversation (Mind you, Dew is just 1 year old)
Eva: Taa chi maa dumma. (Editer: Go to Sleep, while patting Dew)
Dew: Waaaaaa
Eva: Taa chi maa doo. (Editer: with sleep deprived irritation)
Dew: Nana (Editor: Short for Banana)
Eva: No Nana, Taa chi maad doo. (Editor: Quite firmly too)
Dew: <short pause>, Doodoo (Editor: A.K.A milk)
Eva: No Doodoo (Editor: with a tinge of exasperation)
Dew: Doodoo
Eva: Theo, you $%*^&*(#^. Get up and hold her. I will get the milk.
Me: Eh?? Ok... Dew come..
Dew: Doodoo. (Editor: and the wailing continued)

This morning (if you can call it that), 5.30 AM (God forsaken time)... Again, it starts. Wimpering + Doodoo (no banana and no negotiations).
Eva: Theo, you $&%$^. Get up and go get the milk.
Me: Eh?? Ok.. (Stumbling out of the room, reached the kitchen).

After that, I don't remember if I heated up her milk or was it mayo or was it a jar of ice cream, but either way once I got back, and handed the bottle, Dew kicked back and relaxed!

Hmm. My daughter has now reached the age where negotiations with Dad and Mom has begin, and she doesn't take no for an answer. My mom used to keep complaining to me that I would throw a fit if I didn't have milk at 6.00 AM sharp. Apparently, I won't even wait for a minute and I wanted the bottle ASAP.

Looks like karma does exist. One more milestone passed.

Google Chrome - a review

This is my take on Google Chrome. Mind you, I'm a long time firefox user (and occasional opera user). I'm not even going to pretend to be objective here :-)

The Good:

1. Speed. Javascript heavy sites seem to be blazingly fast as compared to Firefox
2. Tabs. I really liked the fact that you can very quickly split a tab into a separate window and vice-versa. I have a dual monitor setup and this is a killer feature!
3. Automatically set up my office proxy without even my asking. Looks like it is using IE's settings directly without any proxy on its own (Unlike FF or Opera)
4. Doesn't crash on Eva's laptop which runs Vista Home. This is one problem with FF3.0 but Opera sails here as well.
   

The Bad:

1. No gestures. I keep trying to use mouse gestures and get frustrated with the lack of them. Once you start using gestures there is no going back.In general, the lack of configurability or more specifically lack of extensions. No Scribefire to publish to this blog, no forecastfox and most importantly for me, no single click mechanism to change proxies. The Proxy item is pretty important for anyone who has to use a office laptop from home. Mind you, this is absent in opera as well but Gestures works out of the box.
   
2. No rss based bookmarks. I keep a lot of bookmarks as delicious tags and organize them as folders on my FF setup. Even though Chrome imported my FF bookmarks, it just couldn't import these
3. Auto Dial. Don't quite like the feature, because I want to be able to open blank tab. I definitely don't want anyone to see my browsing history.

Overall, its a good beta but a lot more can be done. With FF 3.1 moving to Tracemonkey, I expect javascript heavy sites to be as fast on FF as well.

In other news, IE 8 is out, but who cares?

An important milestone

Its said that the bond between a daughter and a father is amongst the closest in the world. Daddy's girl is pretty much the norm in our house.

This week my little Dew (all of 11 months) and I took one more step in father-daughter bonding. I had to put in quite a few hours this last week at work and could not spend much time with her. However that all changed over the weekend, when she and I spent a lot of time together.

It was during this weekend that she did a couple interesting things.

Firstly, on Saturday, she left her mom and crawled all the way from her room to the master bedroom where I was having an afternoon nap. She climbed on top of the bed, and then she coo'ed into my ears. She wanted to wake me up!

Next, on Sunday afternoon, again she came up and woke up, but this time accompanied by Eva and a half eat apple. She continued to eat the apple and then decided to give me a piece. She pulled my half asleep face towards her and force a small piece of half eaten apple into my month and made me eat it. LOL!

Needless to say, Eva is very jealous :-)

G 'n' R too, on a violin

Bobby Yang "Sweet Child O' Mine.

Let's Jazz it up!

This is really good stuff...

paul dateh

Now, some metal...

and nothing else matters...

MJ on a Violin

Whew! This is breathtaking stuff...

Chanced upon this on del.icio.us! Who says that Violins don't rock?

Weird'est story of all time

This has to be the most weird cops and robber's story of all time. link. via. (NSFW)

An Aussie man (39) was caught by cops but that's not the only thing.

1. He was being naughty.
2. With himself
3. While driving
4. At 150 km/h (in a 130 km/h zone)
5. Plus, he had with him 5 kilos of cannabis
6. And a Rifle (that he said was to shoot Kangaroos)

LOL!!! This has to be the funniest, if not the weirdest story ever!

But it doesn't end there.

The court granted Mr. Genius bail.... That's so he could marry his Girlfriend! Not just that the guy has 3 kids!

He paid the bail ($10000) and his Dad paid surety ($8000).. I can't imagine they way he would have told his Family. LOL.

I can almost imagine his GF telling his kids that Daddy needs to be away for a little while because he was .....???? LOL

Myopic view of funny

Don't go to this place

I'm p*ssed off. Poor Dew has had a slight stomach upset, diarrhea and so we wanted to take her to the doctor. Nothing serious, just precautionary. She's active and looks ok except that we need to change her nappy 3 times a day. Its a bit green but that's not the point of this post. The last time this happened, we were a bit late on things and so it got a bit worse. This time we did not want to take any changes.

A friend (unmarried, no kids but has plenty of sisters and so has experience with kids that way) suggested this doctor near Deve Gowda Petrol bunk. The last time around, there was a huge rush, and we had to go in the afternoon. However, this time we decided to take an appointment.

Step 1 - 9.30 AM. Eva gives a call to the clinic. Does not get through. Keeps trying.
Step 2 - 10.00 AM. Eva gets through but the receptionist is very rude and says that all appointments are full. She asks if she can walk in. He says no. She asks for an appointment in the evening but he still says NO. Its not possible to give an appointment in the evening. If we need an appointment in the evening then we should call in the evening.
Step 3 - We feel that the doctor is good and so we decide to walk in anyways after lunch. We reach the clinic at 1.15.
Step 4 - We ask the receptionist if he can take down D's name. He haughtly says - NO but we can wait. I talk to the low-life receptionist about the process to get an appointment. He says that people wait in a queue from 8.45 onwards and that they get appointments for 9.30 onwards. Calling at 9.30 does not guarantee an appointment. WTF?? Essentially the idiot says that there is no way to take an appointment even the board outside loudly proclaims that there will be no consultation without an appointment.
Step 5 - At 1.45 we ask again how long it will take. The nasty receptionist just says he will let us know. We wait for a few more minutes and ask again. This time he takes down her name and says that there are 3 people ahead. A couple of women walk in with kids and ask if the doctor is available. The receptionist takes one look at them, decides that they are economically disadvantaged and tells them that "they should call before coming". The feisty lady replies saying that she tried but didn't get through. So, there was no option but for her to come directly.
Step 6 - At 2.00 doctor leaves for lunch. That's not a problem because its a tough day for him as well and as a human being he needs to eat.
Step 7 - We ask the psychopathic receptionist how long will the doctor take. He rudely replies 10 mins.
Step 8 - Its 2.30. No sign of the doctor and the mad receptionist is no help.
Step 9 - Its 2.45. Decide to leave and go back home.

There's another doctor in BTM that we will go to. Atleast the reception is pretty friendly. 6.00 PM I will pick up Eva from her workplace and we will go there.

Note that I have no complaints about the doctor but the whole setup is rubbish.
1. The doctor charges more than Sagar Apollo Hospital OR the other Paediatrician in BTM.
2. There are no kid friendly material in the clinic to keep Dew busy. Just some sterile handouts on immunization. Compare this to Sagar Apollo where there is huge room just as a kids play area. Even the doctor in BTM has a few toys and eye catching posters for kids.
3. The whole clinic is stuffy and one cannot breathe. Sagar Apollo has excellent ventilation and is bright, clean and vibrant. The BTM clinic has the added advantage of being next to my in-laws place and so we can wait there if required.
4. More than all this, the receptionists and support staff at Sagar Apollo is unparallelled. This LKB receptionist at Dr. N's place near Deve Gowda petrol bunk is a real SOB. The doctor is very good but I'm never going back. At Sagar Apollo Dr. B is fantastic and very gentle in his prescriptions. Dr. V in BTM is very enthu and more than happy to listen to what we have to say. So, in no way will I say that they are not as good as Dr. N. The key difference is the receptionist. I remember the BTM clinic guy once even gave me a call back because the Doctor could not come and changed my appointment. That's exceptional service, but that's not what I'm complaining about.

Health care in India is not universal but this is rubbish. Hospitals such as Sagar are jam packed but they are well equiped and have trained support staff to make the whole heathcare package painless.

I lost a whole day of work, Eva lost 1/2 day's work and the worst part is that Dew still hasn't been able to see a doctor. I'm a pretty patient guys but this takes the cake. Even though we had to wait for 3 hours in the Registrar's office when we bought our apartment, it was clear that there was some work going on. People were moving in and out. Our lawyer kept us up to date on things and finally our job got done. At this clinic neither did our work get done nor was it pleasant and it definitely isn't worthwhile.

DONT GO TO THIS PLACE. The Doctor is good but the practice sucks. The receptionist will make the most patient of fathers tear his hair out and blog this rant. I love my daughter and I will NOT take her to this place where its stuffy, intolerable for not just me but her as well, where we have to wait in small room stuffed like sardines in a can.

No F1 Report this time around

Have decided to renounce TV for some time. Hence no reports on F1.

Winners:
Dew

Losers:
None.

Its crazy

For a family of 3, Eva, Dew and I, have 4 vehicles between us. Two cars, One Bike, and One Scooter. No bicycles or tricycles.

Car No. 1 - Battery died tonight and didn't start.
Car No. 2 - Haven't started for months now. Eva tried to start it a couple of days back. It didn't budge.
Bike No. 1 - Less said the better. Haven't started it in years.
Scooter No. 1 - Rear tyre punctured couple of months back. Haven't started it since.

So, we have 4 engines, of which 3 haven't been cranked for sometime, 4 batteries, all of which, I suspect are dead, 15 wheels with tyres (including the stepney for 3 of them), of which one is definitely punctured, 2 haven't had air put in them for years, atleast 5 are low on air and the list goes on...

As they say, the most important part of any vehicle is the nut that holds the steering wheel. Here the DoNut (a.k.a me) is not just grounded, he's up a creek without a paddle. Not good!

Myopic view of personal, funny

He's right where he belongs

F1 Testing has started. Kimi and Massa were in their Brand new Ferraris. De La Rosa and Heikki led the McLaren charge, but its the big boss - Alonso who is in charge!

That too not in the 2008 car, but the old 2007 car. Fisi and Heikki didn't do much with it but Alonso tops the test times.

Myopic view of f1, formula1, alonso

Time for a change

Yes, Yes we all know about the Nano. Not the iPod variety but the one you drive.

So far all the TV channels have been gushing about it, but there are a couple things that struck me.

The Nano employs a CVT gearbox. I remember reading a newspaper article long back, that the Tata's are sourcing this from Kinetic. The Kinetic was famous for bringing the gearless scooter to the Indian market and thereby changing the market forever. "Gearless" essentially is a CVT.

The question is whether the Nano would do the same to the Indian car market. Unlike the US, where a "stick shift" is unusual to find, in India its the norm. The main reason being that Automatics are more expensive and give lesser mileage. But CVTs are different from Automatics, and yet provide the same basic user experience - no manual shifting.

Given the state of traffic in our cities, its logical that we all drive "gear-less" cars. Its less stressful especially for folks who drive on Hosur road and through Koramangala!

Myopic view of CVT, tata, nano