Getting sick of Facebook

http://m.androidcentral.com/facebook-updating-their-android-app-outside-google-play-some-users

Day after day, I am increasingly getting sick of Facebook now. The app takes forever to load anything, even on a 3G connection. Lots of things are broken as they are, and that kind of a delay to load even the basic stuff like notifications has always turned me off for a long time now.

This time round it has gone out of its way to irritate me no end. That download started out of blue on its own, and was going on since last day or so, without my knowledge, eating up my battery, without giving me a choice, outside of Google Play! The already pathetic Facebook, has now resorted to this kinda seedy stuff. Kudos!

I am moving to the sleeker G+ for good. Let facebook burn in hell.

A Day of Extreme Highs and Extreme Lows

Today I went to sign some society formation papers for my new flat. It was supposed to be only about signing the papers and coming back. But since I hadn't visited the site for around half an year now (I know, I am that lazy and care less), I thought to make a site visit.

To my surprise, the flat was ready in almost all respects. Only some minor plumbing and finishing work was all that was remaining.

It was well done. It was a nice flat.

Seeing a nameplate with my name on it, sent me back by around 20 years. Back to the days when my parents had struggled hard to have their own home-sweet-home, collecting all resources they could, bringing in their life's saving. But then they lived in a society and amongst relatives, who rather than becoming the force behind them, became the stumbling blocks in their way. Ultimately, straightforward and weakened by the situation, as my parents were, they gave up this one small dream of having their own small home. Their own home, built on their own piece of land, built with their own hard earned money. They let go of it. Just because someone, who they thought, and still think, to be close to them, actively nuked their plans.

They still don't have a home of their own. They stayed in a rented house all through their life. In a generation which considered having one's own home as a measure of success, they remained virtually homeless.

All those emotions harbored for a long time, came rushing to the fore, just by seeing my name on the nameplate of that impressively well done flat. It's a 2BHK flat. Maybe a bit on the smaller side, yet large enough for us.

That small flat, I had bought all on my own. Not a single penny from anyone else - not even from my parents. Right from booking to registrations to loan processing - every damn bit I had carried out on my own. All I had asked them to do, was sign the papers as co-owners and as beneficiaries of my home and life insurance.

I was elated, making up plans about how and when I should bring my folks and show them the flat...... Till I reached back to my office and checked my mails.....

A professor, one of my favourties, who taught us physics in 12th, and was the reason behind me starting to think analytically, had passed away on Sunday, 29-July-2012 - due to swine flu, of all reasons.

He was a jolly-good fellow with a light angle to everything. He was passionate about what he taught. He never knew me or many other students, but we took his name with implied respect. College going public never mention their teachers with respect. Never. There are always pet-names for professors. That he was an exception to this, alone, speaks how successful a teacher he was.

Maybe now he will teach the gods - SHM (simple harmonic motion) madhe asanaara particle 'quarter marun' kasa yeta te.

Some days are plain bad, while some days are absolutely elating. Both can be managed alone.

It's when both these extremes happen on the same day, that you lose your bearings and then one cheek tries to smile while a virtual tear rolls down the other.

जहाँ देखू बस तुम, तुम और तुम ही तुम

Woot! Deja vu!

आखों में तुम, नीदों में तुम, बातों में तुम, साँसों में तुम, इस दिल की बढती हुई धडकन में भी तुम .... ख्वाबों में तुम, खयालों में तुम, नजरों में तुम, नजारों में तुम, सवालों के सारे जवाबों में तुम ..... यादों में तुम, इशारों में तुम, सितारों में तुम, फिजाओं में भी तुम. जहाँ देखू बस तुम, तुम और तुम ही तुम .... Java EE, my new love.

The days, when I used to code in my dreams, are back!

Abs: olutely Impressed!

He started with "Goal behind each goal is happiness." Ok, impressive. But he was talking like a spiritual guru, not something to my taste.

But ....

Abhimanyu Sable, a fitness trainer and a business man, that too a marathi one(!) , is a brilliant brilliant business man! Impressed beyond doubt!

He being a fitness trainer, that too from a very humble background, listening to his takes on life and business was absolutely delightful!

Usually people with such background tend to have crappy and dogmatic opinions. For various reasons. When people rise from humble background and end up having a fortune, sometimes their ego makes them say disagreeable things. Many a times prevalent conditions around them  help them rise, and they miss the mental conditioning that happens in tough conditions. And such mental conditioning is highly important to have interesting and out-of-box takes on different things, in my opinion.

But this guy's takes were absolutely brilliant. His observations, about difference in Indian and western cultures and why his business model would sustain and flourish in India, were so shrewed and spot on that I felt like standing up and clapping as if my hands had caught fire!

The fact that he isn't from the software or techie's world, made him even larger than life in my mind for having such learned and shrewed views.

Abs: olutely impressed and inspired hearing this guy's story and his talk.

The Temple of Ganapatipule

Current state of the temple, though well managed and seemingly well maintained, is sad.

Barricaded from all sides with a fence, and mobbed by other stray buildings around, the beauty of the temple is completely lost. What remains is a place protected from sadistic minds, and equipped for the whims and desires of those who come to seek blessings of Lord Ganesh and want their desires fulfilled.

Back in the time, when it was 2003-2004, if I remember correctly, the place was absolutely serene. No barricades, no stray buildings around, no huge touristy traffic. Just a gorgeous temple with a hill behind and a white sand beach with a gentle sea in front. It was absolutely serene and hence beautiful. I remember clicking photos of the temple from the beach, with people sitting in the windows of the temple. It was a wonderful sight back then.

Really feeling sad seeing the current state of the temple. Guess I will have to find and cherish the photos clicked in those easier times.

A Rikshaw and A Bicycle: Sweet Revenge

Losing in front of young impressable group of children must be quite ennervating.

I was working up a small climb on my bicycle at the top gear (48-11) when I noticed an autorikshaw driver, at my left rear, revving his rikshaw at as high RPM as the rikshaw could do, to get past me. I had just overtaken that rikshaw and had seen couple of young kiddos gawking at me, their eyes popping out. The rikshaw driver must have gone all mad that a bicycle rider was getting the better of him. So revvvv high.

He tried all he could. His revving and my power burst went on for a minute or two. But nothing doing. I get hyper competitive in such situations when on my bicycle. Finally he gave up.

Love it when I can comprehensively show these prime traffic violators down. They cannot compete with other vehicles since they have an alibi of a low powered engine. But with a bicycle? Hey! A bicycle is not even powered. It must be irritating these guys no end. Especially when they cannot ever brag in front of those young kiddos without being pointed out that they lost to a bicycle rider. Haha!

Sweet revenge for all the anxiety and frustrations these rikshaw drivers subject me to, with their rash and inconsiderate traffic manners.

THIS IS WHY I HATE MICROSOFT AND ITS CRONIES

These crazy-ass people seemingly have a FOSS-o-phobia, so much so that everytime the open-source community finds a way to make open-source software interoperable with MS products, Microsoft finds a way to break that in the next version, by making everything propriatory! This is like you are sure you wont make money by playing fair, so you resort to crippling your competition by any which way possible. LOSERS!

The Pidgin-SIPE developers had made Office Communicator interoperable with other platforms that ran Pidgin. Life was beautiful, with me developing in Linux, and still being able to stay accessible via Pidgin-Sipe on OCS and Exchange mail in Thunderbird.
Now, with Microsoft Lync 2010, Pidgin no longer works, for, to quote the MS support staff - "3rd party clients will not connect to Lync Online regardless of the settings you may try, because they do not contain the necessary proprietary coding"!! Why can't communication protocols be standardized? I wish someone finds a way to sue them big time, either in the US or in the EU, for such monopolistic practices and for stifling standardization and competition.

Check this thread on the Office 365 forum -
http://community.office365.com/en-us/f/166/t/6903.aspx
The reaction of one user - TummyStixxx - tells the whole story.

What frustrates me even more are these douche-bags who manage IT infrastructure. Why can't they find and deploy a technology that's vendor-agnostic and standards-compliant? When you are deploying something at the organizational level, you should find something which is standards compliant and works across all major platforms - LINUX INCLUDED!

Now that Lync has been deployed wef today, after trying to figure out why pidgin stopped logging into communicator, I suddenly realize that it's thanks to Lync - that there is no way I can have an office intranet communicator on my linux workstation! Awesome, isn't it!! THIS IS WHY I FUCKING HATE MICROSOFT!

Boy, in future, I want to work for a techie-centric company which respects Linux and open technologies and makes sure that technologies deployed in the organization are standards compliant and work across all platforms. I hate being at the receiving end everytime, just because I use an efficient devleoper's OS, and because some dumb-ass admin thinks that that OS is not important. Pissed off beyond all repairs.