Koda Episode - Aberration or Norm?

I think we as Indians should be ashamed to call ours a civilized society. There is hardly anything civil about the nature of how these criminal, absolute inhuman rogues get away. In the case of Koda and Ekka as this blogs point out, the two national parties are directly involved breathing life into who eventually turned out to be scumbags. I am not trying to accuse the leaders of these parties but if they have an ounce of spinal fluid left in their system, they would bring these morons to justice in the quickest possible way and distribute all their wealth to protecting the wealth of the state. To hear each day a statement like Rich State, Poor people have to be like a Thorn in the eye.

While it is good to hear speeches, it is time the President does something rather than remain a 'rubber stamp'. I often think whether that post has any use at all. While Manmohan Singh seems a nice man, it takes someone with far more audacity to wipe out the menace once for all.

When we lift are MLA and MP's to safety for purely selfish power grabbing reasons, we are sacrificing the core reason why we exist as humans. It wouldn't be far fetched to say that these leaders are leading us to oblivion and creating more maosits every damn day. With folks like Koda minting at a startling official figure of 4000 crores, all tribals in Jharkand are a Maoist waiting to happen.

Although anecdotal, each trip I've heard stories about how Chandrababu Naidu amassed 1000's of crores, same is the case with late YSR and his son Jagan, Venkaiah Naidu and his brethren, same in Bombay, similar with the 'mining' brothers in Bangalore.

I cannot imagine that YSR and co got away (during recent elections) declaring assets of 50 lakhs as their entire property. How can one for a minute even think of making that document public and absolve the scrutiny that may come with? How dumb can they expect the citizens to get? And, for that matter, the entire legal system. Perhaps, it is for this reason. When the CJI of India and his team can claim their entire earnings are about 40-50 lakhs, anything is possible.

It is certainly not an aberration but a norm. We do live in times where for a few cents more, everyone of these buggers will sell darn anything, including the sovereignty of the country. Folks like Koda and Ekka would have no clue what that would mean...

TheMoth.org

I happened to listen to three stories today on NPR from a collection at TheMoth.org. One of them from Ed Gavagan is on their featured listings. The stories told with no notes, prompts are told live in free form. When I sat down in the car, I had a short drive and the first one started playing. Within the first few minutes, I was so spell bound that I had to pull into a parking lot, turned off the engine and sat there listening to the next full hour.

I was just blown away by the shear eloquence of the story tellers, normal folks like you and I who could recite a deeply moving/funny/serious incident that occurred in their lives. If you have not heard about TheMoth.org, you are missing a great deal. Check'em out.

What a Dick!

Did you see the US open final between Federer and Del Potro? A great game. Dick Enberg, MC interviewed Federer and then Del Potro in English. Del Potro made a very gracious speech in English and then requested the MC to speak a few words in Spanish.

The prick Dick refused the first time saying there was no time and proceeded to ignore him. Del Potro who was living the best moment of his life, and wanted to address his native country had a very confused look and had to ask a second time before Mr. Enberg handed it over saying that he would speak short. What the fuck!!
The man of the evening  wants a minute or two to address his fellow Argentinians and he has to take the permission of the old hag.

Get a life, CBS should ask him to issue an apology and ask him to lock himself with Serena to help her shove that ball that she so wanted to shove. That would work each other out..

The Double Talker -- Just Awesome

I don't usually break out in laughter (esp, alone) at office but this did it. This is just awesome.

Price is Right-Joseph, the "double talker"

Beautiful Rails

This past couple of weeks I was back again working with Rails. This was after an initial discussion with Indian Railways GM who said a prototype/demo might help them with the service proposal. I was after their API but apparently at this point, if someone wants to use their API, it is burdened with huge price and unrealistic requirements. At some point, they had 20 lakhs of deposit and 5 crores of turnover to even qualify to use their API. It is mind-numbingly cruel on their part to ignore young budding entreprenuers but that is for a different topic.

While I was experiment about their APIs, I wondered if it would as restful as Rails is. I still have no idea but I still had to come up with a prototype to discuss what I intended to offer. Rewind 2 weeks, I had no site, no code written. Today, albeit in a dev environment, I have couple of pretty decent Rails sites that talk to each other via XML, all written to be Restful.

Technology is wonderful, the ones that make sense and are easy to use are even more satisfying. Rails is cool, easy to prototype and amazingly fast to adapt. The plugins that are available to support are just limitless.

As part of this effort, I ended up using the following open source resources:

• Ruby on Rails
• Passenger (Deployment of RoR apps in an easy and robust way on Apache)
• Subdomain-Fu
  (Helps in subdomain management)
• Nifty Generators
• AuthLogic
• Dyndns (the site that helps you host on your box by managing your dynamic IP address at home)
  
• ActiveResource (part of rails)
• Apache

I just wish there was open source hosting sites that would let you host until you move to commercial space. Not all of us are seed funded. All in all, exciting two weeks. I plan to enhance it further until the folks in Delhi ask for one or deny. If they do not ask for a demo, backup plans are to contact other OTA's or go solo. Either ways, its exciting.

Time please, more time.

I am busy, heck a lot a busy and I wish there was more time than 24 hours in a day. Work after the layoffs has doubled up. I volunteer as a Director at Austin PMI and am helping AustinPMI launch a new Event Registration System while planning their largest annual event.

Wife and kid are back home and the little one's energy is like a flooded river. She wants to go where we want us not to go, touch things we don't want her to touch and taste things we don't want her to taste. Leaving her out of sight is scary but playing with her is just oodles of fun. So, after work until she sleeps is dedicated to her.

I barely make time for the other half and apparently she is used to it. I am busy with my laptop a whole lot. For the past three weeks, I am. It seems a good 18 hours is spent on the computer, be it at work or after work activity. I have been working on a prototype on something exciting using Ruby on Rails and have pitched the idea to Indian Railways.

This is the first time I have cold called regarding something that I strongly believe has immense potential and is quite original. I have several rounds of ideas but not all I could pursue and fell through. One of them was actually stolen, but, its better used than swept under the rug.

This time, I am serious. I so wish I could just drop the ball and go to India to pursue this service that I am after. In any case, I spoke to a wonderful GM at Delhi who was forthcoming in saying that government matters take time. I wish it didn't and they'd let me demo the prototype. Spent couple of weekends re-learning all of the rails and plugin stuff, and came with a restful, web service.

Hoping for next level of talks...

Inthikhab - InTheKhwab!!

I was shocked today to read Mr. Inthikhab Alam shocked's reaction to ICC's move to strip Pakistan of world cup hosting rights. Is this moron on drugs or does he and his players not understand what just happened to Sri Lankan team? His word was 'unjust'. WTF?

I can understand that an attack can unfortunately happen in any part of the world. The probability in a few countries is relatively less and in a others, a bit more. In Pakistan, with the shit thats going around, the mullahs and madrasas gaining autonomy, with its "International Migraine" status, it becomes just unbelievably important to provide security as good as it gives it own President.

Hmm, lets see, instead, their own giant retards came in motor cycles, took their time, fired at will, and then some walked and others drove free. The video was disgusting. And, he describes what ICC did as unjust. Unjust is what you and your countrymen did to Srilankan team and those poor umpires who came to play in your country.

Sense that the world is laughing at you each and every day. Two months would make no freaking difference. It is certain that the crap you created will keep exploding each day amongst you and your people.