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Dear all,

As I cannot move over all my selfmade buttons and sidebar menus to wordpress, my decision to move over has stalled.

Continuing to post at sundar72.blogspot.com

More Paavadais and Golus

The Golu season is over. One last frantic round of visiting friends, dressing up and sumptuous treats.

The Saraswati Pooja / Durga pooja is done and now we await the next big one..

Diwali, Deepavali, Deeparaya, Lakshmi Pooja, Festival of Lights or whatever else it goes by!

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What a bunch of… What a load of …

The Zune player gifted by the BIL, via the Microsoft Store with a discount, had the screen crack. This for no apparent reason.

Was fine in the night. Was cracked in the morning!!

No one dropped it, never even went near it.

The player is fine. I can press the play button and songs play. The screen below the top plastic (inside screeen) has cracked! There is a light 2mm x 2mm square and cracks radiating from it.

Note : when the player is off, you just see a normal screen. When you turn it on, you see the cracks light up as in the picture..

Now here is the rub..

1. The Zune warranty does not cover the screen.
2. Microsoft suggests I can go buy this screen at any electronics part store
3. By opening the Zune myself and trying to install this screen, I void all warranties!
4. This LCD thingy is not available at your local store! Plus iPOD/Zune type pod repair shops want 99$ for replacing this thing..

The player cost the BIL only 130 bucks.

I just cannot believe that they can get away with this!!

Internet search on “Zune screen replacement” throws out a ton of webpages where people are telling their sad stories on how they have a cracked screen overnight for no apparent reason and no easy way to address the problem..

Let this add to that count!

Note to BIL: You did your best…and yes, yes.. I know this is like looking a gift horse in the mouth.. But a gift horse which needs a few cavities filled and a couple of root canals done, has to be looked at in the mouth!

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Divide and conquer

A few snippets in the evening news caught my attention today. We are talking about the public radio news, which I am pretty sure has a liberal bias in California and being a liberal, you hear what you like to hear and it is a self fulfilling prophecy!

The funny thing was that, for the first time, I said “What the $*&#?” when I heard these things..

The Sunni Prime Minister of Iraq!!!… went the announcer:

Why would news in America declare a PM of another country by his religious sub sect!! Why else but to keep the divide going? My thoughts went to “would people here in the US be offended if we heard news like Catholic President George Bush or Lutheran Senator XYZ or Episcopelian ABC…” and even before I had jumped to the conclusion, that the Media was rife with bigotry, they proved me wrong.. The next article was about Mormon Presidential candidate MittRomney! I told myself “at least they are consistant!”.

The next news article was equally fascinating. It was about classifying the 1914-1915 killing of Armenians by Turks as “Genocide”. Apparently this thing is a big deal on setting the past right! and has consequences including Turkey’s support to the Iraq war, presidential elections, international relations, the european union, etc. etc.. The list went on and on..

As usual, my stupid half dead brain started wandering and came up with “didn’t we lose that many Indians and Paksistanis in the India Pakistan partition in 1947-48? Should both India and Pakistan argue that the killings on either side of the border be declared a Genocide? Wasn’t that killing also systematic, similar to the definition used by the Armenians.. and.. Why haven’t our politicians thought of passing a bill along these lines and staging a few walkouts in the Parliament yet? Am I a genius? Should I be in Politics? etc. etc.”

At that precise point in time, I spotted this half eaten packet of Parle-G biscuts in the space between the front seats in the van, and promptly devoured them. Once they reached my stomach, the brain got a jump start and the thought process disappeared..

A new one started..

Politicians will be Politicians and the world is a better place without them. I have said this many times before. It is also sad that politicians will do what they do, as long as people do not change! If the collective conscience of a populace is so weak that they have to go back and change the past or give names to it, and in the process mess up the present and make our future bleak, there is no hope! Do not know how many more people will die in the name of a Genocide (or Non Genocide) that happened almost a 100 years ago!

God bless the world we live in…

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Patience is a virtue

That is one virtue that I don’t have and I know it!

Jr. on the other hand seems to have been gifted with infinite patience.

As the video clearly demonstrates, she just sat there for a full 8 mins, then continued to be there for another 5 before she got all upset that the battery charger was not turning green..

Finally I took the half charged battery and put it in the camera. She now takes pictures with the old S30. Her hands shake when she finally clicks the shuttter but the pictures still come out okay.

I seem to be going through a Jinx. The Tamron lens wont autofocus when the subject is close. The Zune player’s screen cracked and it was not even dropped. It cracked because of temperature fluctuation is my guess. To top things off, there is a viral infection in my eye and all this happens on Sunday.

This is one of those weeks where I just want to go close myself in a small room and shout .. no.. scream!!

Would like to think on the brighter side of life though. The manual focus ring still works and my fingers are not bandaged, so I can take pictures. The Zune dudes aka Microsoft, said that this is a most common failure mode on the player and I should be able to get this screen in any local electronics store (although they won’t pay for it) and my eyes are getting better or at least the pain is gone with the drops they gave me.

It may be a day or two before I come back to blog…

Until then..

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Navarathri

Previous posts on the Golu found here and here..

Last year, we did not cover as many golus and we did not have pictures. This year with the little ones both at an age where they take great pleasure in dressing up, the weekend was hectic.

Here are some snaps from the various Golus we visited and the little ones in all their finery..

They would change their dress between visiting different golus!

The visits will keep going till next saturday!

In dire Straits!

For those of you who are catching up on the big news item in Tamilnadu,

here is an update.. Peters Sellers style.

Fact: The sethusamudhram project is high on the news list

Fact: The religious and political connotations have a big role to play in how this project gets decided..

Also Fact: Rama’s monkeys threw little boulders with Ram’s name written on it, into the sea to make this bridge which has apparently lasted 1.356 jillion years. Of course all agencies from NASA to the NSA will vouch for this…

Also also fact: The Government will throw bundles of rupees into the same sea with Mahatma Gandhi’s picture on it to undo Ramas bridge. At which point, Gandhi will turn in his grave so much that he will churn the seas and the bridge will start to disappear!

The end goal is to revive the economy of the local Indian coastline and make Tuticorin a port that would make waves in the international port scene.

One hopes that the amount of money spent on

legal fees and courtroom battles
loss of revenue from protests, bandhs, walkouts
posters printed for and against the case

will be less than than the

total economic benefit from the port
cost savings from fuel economy for ships circling Sri Lanka

over the next 0.0000000000001356 jillion years.

Viva Politics!

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The last quarter

Maybe I should write a whole book called “The last quarter”, instead of a post, is what I am thinking right now as I type at the ungodly hour of 3:00AM.

The good news is that the little one, myself and the MIL are all doing fine and getting ready for the festival season, and the fact that I wake up with a sweat at 2:30 and realize I cannot go back to sleep is actually a good sign. The body has won the battle against any remnant bug, or so I hope. It is a strange coincidence that every time I am up and unable to sleep it means one of two things..

1. The bug is eliminated completelty. This happens a day or two after I start feeling good.
2. I get a phone call with some alarming news about someone I love. It is almost like that person who had something nasty happen to them was trying to reach me..

This time, it is definitely #1.

Do you ever wonder how suddenly life shifts to 6th gear on October 1st?

This for various reasons.

You got Navarathri and the associated Durga or Saraswati Pooja usually coinciding with Id, then Diwali coinciding with Halloween, then thanksgiving and Christmas/ Hanukkah, and anything else that I have left out in the list of festivities..

Almost every weekend there is a birthday party to attend in Oct/Nov! This could be the valentine baby syndrome, if you get my drift..

It is the end of the fiscal year for the worklife and that means a lot more work.

It is also the flu season and no year goes by without two rounds of runny noses, frequent flier miles to the nearest restroom, midnight carpet cleaning sprees, distrubed sleep. . .

The combination of all this makes the last few months in the year just whiz by!

Happy Navarathri.. Id Mubarak.. Can’t wait to get some sundal and sweets from those celebrating…

With that thought, let me get back to catching some sleep, because tomorrow is going to be:

Lights, camera, Sundal!

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The times, they are a changing!

Within 24 hours of posting the massage video, the little one is on a violent throwing up spree! This after a great play session, earlier in the day, with her elder sister and cousins.

She has probably caught some stomach bug and there is a good chance it will go around the house faster than a bag of potato chips. Only time will tell!

So, what is with the title?

Under normal circumstances, the video would have been correlated to the sickness and I would have got orders to shut the blog down.

This time however, there was no such comment from the wife and MIL. It was a refreshing change, to see the throwing up being attributed to the little micro-organisms.

To celebrate this change in the household, here is another video of the little one…

Time to hit the Airborne, Walborne, Riteborne or whatever brandname fizzy tablet, the local drug store dishes out to boost my body with 30,000% the daily dose of anti-cold-flu vitamins, including but not limited to A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H…Z, A1-A256, B1-B26, .. and all the other essential herbal, mineral, vital, nutritional supplements to prepare for the upcoming (or already arrived) flu season!

Here is a stock tip from Dr. Narayanohe. Buy companies that make synthetic vitamin C. You might have a healthy benefit!

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When life gives you a remote control

Have a massage!

The little one is almost two and she is learning fast.

Already tells me “Daddy, sit properly”, “I finished my mammu” and points to a truck with a barrel and says “concrete truck”. The best part of the deal is that she picks up different words from daycare, daddy, mommy, grandma and mostly her akka and gives us pleasant surprises by using these words in some unique situations.

She has also figured out how to give herself a massage!

I bought this Relaxor thing way back in 1998 and sent it by mail to India. It was stuck in customs and they wanted my parents to pay the equivalent of 150 dollars to claim it. Considering that I had bought it for $99 and paid another 9 bucks to ship it, I requested that they return it to sender. That thing came back damaged on the return shipment and has been lying around in the garage till now! I found it, duck taped it and now it is working for the little ones.

My attempts to teach energy conservation obviously failed. Will have to keep trying…

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