Monday, December 03, 2007

Casablanca

Yesterday, I saw Casablanca, a 1942 B&W classic. This is definitely one of the best movies I have ever had a chance to see. It was so great that I watch documentary that was included in DVD and then watched the movie all over again. Highly recommended.

Later I did research and came to know that it ranks at #9 in Top 250 List at imdb and #7 in Berardinelli's All-Time Top 100. Well deserved.

Today I went to rent "Seven Samurai"... too bad Blockbuster didn't have it...

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

iPod ships individually from China!

I recently ordered my iPod Mini and was surprised when looking at the shipment tracking details at FedEx. The shipment originated in Shenzhen, China. I knew that lot of manufacturing happens in China for majority of US products, but was surprised that they are being individually shipped. Rather, I expected a bulk shipment to US warehouses.

Why does it do so? It amazes me. I thought this was the costlier option.

Monday, November 26, 2007

The Drift

Recently watched "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift". It was great. Drift sequences were awesome. It was a good balance of action and storyline. It didn't feel like too much action nor it felt like we are not having action.

DVD features included some real life sequences from real life Drift King Keiichi Tsuchiya. This a new learning experience for me to see how do they do it in real life.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Bollywood in Hollywood

I was watching Inside Man day before yesterday and was pleasantly surprised in its end... There was chhaiyya chhaiyya, a bollywood song and dance number from Dil Se, playing with original music with partial english lyrics thrown in.

I don't think I have seen any other hollywood movie that is using a bollywood number from a bollywood movie keeping original lyrics and music.

Have you?

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Too Busy To Blog

Things have been busy and hectic around here. It is so difficult to keep up with Blog in this life.

This is just to say that I'm alive...

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Disassembling the external hard drive

Well, it had to happen one day... During last few weeks, ever since I'm back from my US trip - about which I need to write - this backup device of mine is giving me troubles. At 200 GB, it is still my primary backup device and when it starts showing signs of fatigue - it is 3 yr old - it is time to take stock. It has developed a problem of shutting itself off without any apparent reason. The music I'm playing stops and almost always data being transferred gets corrupted. Sometimes, it even refuses to start!

I was pretty annoyed with this. May be it is due to Wii, which I installed right next to it, or may be it is just jealous of a newer and smaller 160 GB pocket drive that I purchased recently, whatever it is, I wanted to dig deeper into the cause of its failure, so I got the screwdrivers and started the process of opening the external casing to see what could be the issue. The casing was hot, and I was surprised to find the hard drive inside too hot to hold. Guess, it could be overheating. I found no visible signs of dust inside but gave it a cleaning nonetheless. It took good 10 minutes to cool down. Looks like these drives are not designed for hot weather of India, or should I say Delhi, as it never gave me any problem in Bangalore. With heavy data transfers, it perhaps is getting too hot and shuts off as a precautionary measure. Air conditioner in my room is not enough to dissipate the heat and the casing design with no fans is proving a big deterrent in the thermal process.

The drive looks at peace now and I need to give it time enough to cool down between heavy activities as a workaround. But it was heartening to learn that it can open and replace the internal hard disk to higher capacity as I need. Next buy, 1 TB disk :)

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Need to Write

I need to get back to the writing something on this blog. Long time have passed and lots of things have happened. Perhaps, I can post them this weekend. Let's see. Keep watching.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Airtel Again!

The Airtel is at it again. Last a marathon calls with their call center last month, that damn charges have come back again this month. I'm really pissed off with them. The call center cut me off again. They told that they could see that request is in process! since last month!! more than 35 days to process a cancellation for a service that I never asked for!!! Just does not go well with me...

Friday, February 09, 2007

Airtel Customer Care

Lately, I am very disappointed with customer care 1-2-1 of Airtel. They have been charging me for some "ringtone club" that I never subscribed and I have to call the customer care to cancel the charges every time (I still end up paying taxes) I get the bill. This is real bad.

To make it worse, this time every time I go to billing CSR, call gets mysteriously disconnected with a disconnect tone. This happened atleast 4-5 times. Finally, I get thru to a CSR ("Hemant") and he agrees to reverse the charges and puts me on hold and call gets disconnected. After several attempts, I get reach a CSR ("Imran") who says that nobody named "Hemant" is there. He says that his system does not work and he can't transfer. I ask for superior and call gets disconnected again. Further attempts again don't go thru. After some attempts I get another CSR ("Lalit") and I ask him not to put me on hold. The call gets disconnected again!!! I got real unhappy and wrote this blog.

Now, the "Lalit" has called me back and told that due to some "technical problem" the call got disconnected and he has given the waiver and asked me to check it next morning.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Long time, Lot to say

Plenty of things have happened since my last post so this one may be a big... first I watched couple of movies...

"Dhoom 2" was below expectations except for Hrithik.
"Guru" confirms that Aish is a terrible actress.
"Don 2" was not as bad as I thought though the first one was still better. This one without any songs would have made better experience.

Apple iPhone is looking awesome. I can't wait to get one. But it won't be available till 2008. I know tons of people who are unhappy with PDAs. They are more happy with a fully functional phone and a fully functional laptop rather than carrying a combo that does none in a neat way. They always complain that sound quality on Treo is terrible. I felt the same when I used one briefly. I wondered if using google talk is better option than Treo.

Couple of days back I attended a seminar on "Blue Ocean Strategy". That was good and got me thinking. Also taught me about "yellow tail" wines :)

Finally, I had some time to enjoy Matrix trilogy again on my new LCD TV. This was amazing. I'm more than happy with my choice of Sony Bravia 32". I need to get a UPS now to enjoy the experience non-stop. Only thing I'm worried about is overloading my power outlet. Need to do some maths here.