Varun Nair’s Personal Blog

Email Jail

A place where the no. of emails coming into your inbox is greater than the speed at which you can read them or respond to them. Sigh.

New year resolutions

Short and simple:

• Sleep less.
• Exercise more.
• Read more.

Score right now is 0 out of 3. Thus it can only get better

Meaningful change

I just found something philosophical and quite true in a very unexpected place. Read this para from the technical blogpost (rant actually) titled “Rails Is A Ghetto” -

I believe that in order for anyone to create meaningful change in their life they must take personal responsibility for their own actions and start with themselves. This is difficult at times since it’s human nature to not want to look at yourself and say, “Damn I suck”. That’s usually the first step though.

Aptly put, isn’t it?

Hutch/Vodafone service in Mumbai terrible

I have lived in 5 cities for more than a month in each city. I have availed mobile services from every single major mobile service provider in India. And I with that kind of experience behind me I can confidently say that the Hutch/Vodafone service in Mumbai is the absolute worst of all of them. Even the second worst is much much much better than Vodafone Mumbai.

I stay in the Borivali area. Voice quality is very poor. Calls get dropped on an average once every call. Often my cell is unreachable. Often due to network congestion I have to try multiple times to dial out to somebody. People call me, they get message X but actual event Y has happened, for e.g. they get a ringing tone and I do not get any call or missed call.

Now I am totally fed up. For me the mobile is very critical in keeping touch with family, friends and for work. I have decided to ditch Vodafone (and my friends say Airtel is equally bad) and go in for a Tata Indicom mobile. My roommate Punit has a Tata Indicom phone and it is very good in terms of reliability and voice quality. Subscription plans (calling tariffs) are identical among ALL service providers so the differentiator has to be the actual mobile service, ease of paying bill, promptness in solving problems etc.

This post is for anybody planning to take a Vodafone connection in Mumbai. My advice - DO NOT.

The new Idea Ad - Too good!

I really loved the new Idea Ad starring Abhishek Bachchan! Check it out on YouTube below. Simple, memorable, ties in with the central “Idea” theme and you like watching it again and again.

via Full2 Faltu

Aaaarghhhh!

No comments. Keep wondering.

My other blog

My old blog actually.

Did you know that I blogged at www.ThoughtfulChaos.com for a year and a half before moving here?

I skimmed through all the blogs on my old blog and picked out my favourite ones. Hey… I am not that bad a blogger after all. I have listed my favourite below in chronological order and grouped by topic. Enjoy!

Family, Friends and Loved ones

• Ji[t|p]son - How Sobha pulled a fast one one me.
• WANTED:Abhishek Patel - An expriment with my blog and Google. Experiment was a success! Follow the comments on this post.
• Still waters run deep - My friend Sahil, the guy who we doubted would ever get married, gets married.
• Rang De Basanti - Hi Roshan!
• Happy Friendship Day to all my friends out there - What’s life without friends?

The nomad that I am (Pune, Delhi and Mumbai)

• Bye Bye Pune Hello Delhi - Pune to Delhi.
• Blah, blah and more blah - Just moved to Delhi.
• When is the next Delhi Bloggers’ Meet? - My first bloggers’ meet
• The Delhi Bloggers’ Meet a.k.a The Mystery of the Missing Butter Chicken - My second bloggers’ meet. Read the post to find out about the chicken.
• Bye Bye Delhi Hello Mumbai - Aha! Here I go again and this time it is aamchi Mumbai.

Silliness

• A chef is born - Now you know why I need a mate who cooks well!
• How NOT to compile a C++ program - Embarassed geek.
• Simply the best blonde joke ever - He he. Cannot stop giggling when I read this.
• My perfect lover - Love… is there anything more engimatic?

Books

• Bye Dumbledore - *sniff* *sniff* Only the second time ever that I felt very very sad on reading a book. First time was when Sherlock Holmes (supposedly) falls into the Reichenbach Falls.
• Dumbledore _might_ not be dead - There is still hope!

Meta (blogging about blogging)

• Hi there! - First post.
• Bye - Last post.

Everything Else

• The man in the glass - Pravs World - One of the best poems I have ever read.
• Monsoons = Lethargy - That’s me.
• Hindi version of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” - I wish I could get this somehow.

09:F9:11:02:9D: 74:E3:5B:D8: 41:56:C5: 63:56:88:C0

09:F9:11:02:9D: 74:E3:5B:D8: 41:56:C5: 63:56:88:C0

If you know what this is you are a fellow geek. If you don’t can you take a guess in the comments?

I will add the answer after a few days… let me see if I get any interesting replies.

Wanna play Scrabble? - Scrabulous.com is THE place to check out

Wanna play Scrabble? - Check out Scrabulous.com.

My friend Jasmine introduced me to this cool site that allows you to play Scrabble online for free, either with yourself, with a friend sitting halfway around the world or with total strangers who share your love of Scrabble.

The software that the site uses is lightweight and really easy to use. It almost feels as if you are sitting in a room with the Scrabble board in front of you ready to go to vocab war. There is almost no learning curve and as long as you know the basic rules you are ready to go as soon as you log in. I am totally addicted. Did I mention that the site also allows you to chat with your opponent during the game?

I have observed a few games (you can just drop in and watch other games in progress… there are some amazing scrabble players in there) and have played a couple of games with Jasmine. I lost both times ( ) but Jazz, in true Arnie style, I WILL BE BACK!

Couple of tips from Scrabble-guru Jasmine:

1. Use the online dictionary before forming a word you are not sure exists (I do that all the time), it will save you some precious seconds.
2. Familiarize yourself with the Two Letter Words list… they come in very very handy in crunch situations and earn some very useful points.

My username for the site is varunvnair, so if you join add me as your buddy and drop me an email or an offliner and we will have a game sometime.

Nooooooooo!