Another blog with no name!!

I hate computers….They definitely have a mind of their own, I am convinced. Unfortunately, in some way they also happen to be a source of my bread and butter. I get blue screens on my desktop for no apparent reason. Just when I fixed that problem, the monitor literally blew up. There was some smoke seen emanating from the monitor followed by a rather toxic smell. The blowing was attributed by the technician to be due to a faulty capacitor. 700 Rs of expenditure later, the monitor was back in business. Now it was the turn of the mouse. Now, the mouse and me are sworn enemies. I happen to have exactly 4 mice with me at this point of time, of course none of them work. Correction!! The last one works, but in its own way. When I move it to the left, the cursor moves pretty much in all directions except the one its supposed to, somewhat like Narain Karthikeyan in his Jordan. Ooh..!! that’s an unjust statement, I guess. He does deserve the credit for being at the top level, maybe the car is to be blamed then.

But I digress, coming back to my mouse collection again. I am in a very generous mood right now and willing to donate them to anyone. The 4 mice also come along with an old keyboard, which requires a heavy weight to be dropped on it for it to actually type out anything. With it also comes an old motherboard, which also blew a few years back and the generous technician let me have it. I seem to have accumulated enough computer accessories to start a store.

And have you ever tried looking at whatever lies behind the computer. I counted exactly 1 billion and 3 wires this weekend. I do not have enough strength to untangle this wire mess. I am afraid that I myself will get entangled in it. Drastic actions are called for i.e. throw away the computer, the accessories and all the wires will disappear with them.

On an ending note, this week saw me return to one of my passions, quizzing. Managed to to do a very decent job in the audio-visual quiz inspite of the absence of Rajjo, Akshai and Chilli. If these three guys were also there, I am sure we would have stood to gain at least 2000 Rs. Maybe next time.

Ban the words!!!

I am seriously beginning to think that some of the following words ought to be removed from the dictionary:-

touchbase
vis-à-vis
per se
bandwidth
placeholder
arbitrary
ad-hoc

Welcome to the world of office lingo. I am absolutely sick of hearing these words. What makes it worse is the fact that I have started using some of these words in normal conversations with my friends. I am ashamed to say that I actually used the words “per se” and “arbitrary” in the same sentence yesterday and was rightly pointed about this my a friend of mine. Use of this kind of lingo has become very fashionable even if you don’t really know the meaning of these words. The number of times you use these words is directly proportional to your designation/grade.

I say remove these words from the dictionary and make the world a better place. I could come up with only the words mentioned above. The esteemed reader is encouraged to give more examples of this kind.

On a different note as usual, I have now managed to successfully fail in all my first attempts in anything that I do.

Of roads and bus-stops

Just made a new discovery two days back. I found that there exists a place in Bangalore called the Banashankari Mini Zoo. In my 16 years in Bangalore, the only zoo I have ever heard of is the Bannerghatta one. Never thought there might be other zoos hidden right in the centre of the city. I quickly set out to investigate this particular location, only to be disappointed and found that this was merely the name of a bus-stop and that no such mini zoo existed in reality. But then again, a bus stop is anyway like a zoo, so the name is more than appropriate. I would rather call it the Banashankari Mega zoo given the number of the people at the Bus stop.

We (as in the gang) have come up with a classification for the different types of people who tread on the roads of our Bangalore. I am guessing this classification will apply to most of India. The classification goes like this

a) The Shankar Nag’s or the Basha’s: These are the illustrious auto drivers. I won’t bother describing these people. The nicknames have been derived from a movie titled Auto Raja starring Shankar Nag and the Rajnikanth starrer titled Basha.
b) The Cycle Schumachers: The credit for this goes to Kiddo1. These are the cycle guys as the name suggests, who obstruct the traffic by riding right in the middle of the road at approximately 5 kmph. I happen to think that the luna and tvs should also come in this category.
c) The “motor”cycle schumachers: This is my own extention of kiddo1’s classification. These are the guys on the relatively faster bikes, but who happen to have the illusion that they are on a Ferrari or a Mclaren. Any free space left on the road is used by them
d) The uncles and the aunties: These are people on scooters/kinetic honda’s/scooty who tend to take their kids along with them, wear no helmet and drive slower than the cycle schumachers on the right lanes.
e) The Lance Armstrong : My own addition. I saw this category 2 days back. These guys are also on the cycle. But they think that the whole riding thing is like a big race and have no qualms about competing with cars and motorbikes. I saw this cycle dude break a signal, then arrogantly signal an incoming truck to give him the right of way and then race past 2 bikes. The guy was sure in a hurry and he was very confident that the cycle would get him to his destination in time.

Suggestions on some more categories are more than welcome.