Sunday, July 30, 2006

LTNS - 1


Hmm, more than a month since my last post.

Not that I have been awfully busy or that I didn't have anything good enuf to say but mainly coz I have been lazy. I did intend to post on several topics that I thought would make for a good post. Let me now refresh my memory and list them out (briefly).

1. After spam, it was scam. Yeah, thanks to my roommate I was forced to sit through a quixstar session. If you dont know what it is, contact me and Ill help you sit through one ;). And it took place at my home at 1AM!!! Thankfully, it didnt last 5 minutes and after we rejected it straight away, we found how we "lacked" ambition in life and how much -ve influence we were on our roomate!! It was a laugh riot that night afterwards though. It probably would have made a really good post but then, I am not sure if Im talented enough with words to have brought out the of the hilarity of it all.

2. Office troubles. I got shifted to a new dept. as an intern and although the work was (is) hard, the most difficult part started the second day. It was my neighbor (was on leave my first day) who s on the phone all the day literally screaming. I was trying to read a 150 page pdf file and couldnt concentrate for a second. And what made it worse was that it was (and still is) a major chunk of his work. Now if you were a new employee and you encounter this situation where everyone else is keeping quiet (he has at least 3 other neighbors and a lot more people who hear him) what would you do? Not to mention, he is not in my team and I dont know him!! Would be funny if I mention what/how he speaks but thats besides the point. What did I finally do? I changed my schedule to work only 2.5 days a week, and am finally adjusting to concentrate inspite of the background noise.

PS: Reminds me of a compsci paper where they proposed a cubicle ettiquette system where it indicated if you were loud enough to disturb your neighbors. Please do let me know if you have any info on that.

3. The Tennis fad. Thanks to the new tennis courts at UC and to friends who were equally enthu about learning to play the game, I bought a racquet (probably the first time in years that I bought a sports item out of interest) and we all "played" fine the first week. Then the second week got tougher as another roommate joined us and 5 of us couldnt play all at once (previously, we usually played doubles matches). Also we had only4 racquets (I am yet to return one I borrowed a while back!!). We used to leave someone out everyday and tried keeping it 4 for the day. After another week of exertion, my knees and elbows were out and I literally limped around this past week. Anymore tennis was temporarily discontinued (the courts are still closed for polishing work). Now Im fit again and hope to compete in the championships (the singles tie-breaks we played when all 5 of us were present) in future.

4. Serena, Sania and Domachowska: Tennis reminds me of the Women's Cincinnati Open I went to, where I saw Serena Williams and Sania Mirza. It was also the first time I was in a tennis stadium and although it wasn't very big or great, the experience was really cool. After an indifferent singles match (who cares if Bardina or Bartoli won/lost !!), I had to choose between Sania's doubles or Serena's singles match. As I had already taken Serena's autograph (I also shook her hands and wished her 'all the best'), I went for Sania's match. Her partner Domachowska was also beautiful and played well. Finally after the 3 set match was over, I was able to get the autographs from both of them. They won the match (it was quarter finals) but eventually lost in the finals.

PS: I have the fotos of the autographs as well as the pen with Sania's figerprints (!!) somewhere in my photo album. Lazy to post link/pictures here now. Will do later.

Im too sleepy to continue (have to wake up at 6AM tomorrow), so I guess I shall continue with the rest of the stuff later (oh yeah a lot more intended posts will be mentioned in brief). Till then, ignore the typos, grammar errors and thank me for being lazy as otherwise you would have been subjected to a detailed post of each !!!
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Sunday, July 02, 2006

Fighting the junkie


SPAM. I am not going to talk about how bad spam is. Everyone hates spam. But can we do something about it? After a lot of thinking, I have come up with a solution that guarantees punitive action against one form of spam - the paper mail kind.

How many times do you open your mailbox to find another letter from a credit card company that says "you have been pre-approved" along with 0% APR for 6 months offers? Do you immediately throw it away? Wait. You can do better. All these "offers" come with a reply envelope with "no postage necessary / postage will be paid by the sender". Why not use that against the company by simply posting it? If you post it empty (or with the unfilled form they sent - to add more weight to the envelope), the company will have to pay for the postage. The company will also be paying someone to open the envelope and to throw it in the dustbin. Isnt that a great way to let them know that you dont want any more offers from them? Well I think so. I am happy, USPS is happy and the company loses money for spamming me. I wish I could do something similar about my email spam or those phone call spam.

Trivia:
Did you know why you call it spam?? The name comes from a Monty Python skit in which all normal conversation was drowned out by the word "spam" being repeated over and over again.
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This is a test. Real posts to follow soon.
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