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.

Bleep, Bleep and more Bleep

Prime time, its 8:30 PM and I was flipping channels and stopped for a minute to watch Hell's Kitchen. Chef Ramsey was running one of his kitchen boot camps and was in his worst mood (he seldom has another expression on his face). Most often he is filled with disgust, taunts his campers and fires them at the end of it. I cannot see a decent meal come out of that place...

To top it off, every sentence either starts with an expletive or ends with another expletive. Of course, it's all ok since the media bleeps the expletive. So, the sentence sounds like 'bleep the bleep out, where's my bleepin rare steak', 'my bleepin salad looks like a bleepin desert'.

Media claims that they bleep because people take objection to the expletives or children may watch this objectionable material. Here is news to them: the damn word is too obvious, so why bleep at all? Just lift the curtains or cut the crap from prime time.

Wait, we know the answer. They bleepin don't care!!

India - update 2

Being home is awesome. But, being away also teaches you to look at certain things in a different perspective. If you are in country that has infrastructure in a far better fashion, you tend to think why India cannot be that way. When you look at some of the road projects that are underway, its hardly something India can be proud of. As an example, we drove on the Nellore - Chennai highway that is fairly decent to drive on only if you don't have a RTC bus in front of you or if you don't have a truck that is merging into the highway. Some of the lane merges and bus stops defy basic civil engineering principles and the architect of these roads got to surrender his Civil Engineering license. It is shameful to say the least when you could have looked at hundreds of examples of how a road should be.

Talking of examples, a developing country like India can choose to acquire the best technology there is. Seems like that is happening in the mobile telephone infrastructure. I was travelling by the local train from my village to Chennai during rush hour. On my plinky wooden seat, there were five of us squeezed together. It was an hour's ride where I saw someone easily making a 500 bucks in matter of minutes selling his 'Lovely' juicer, a small little tool that could help the juice out. I saw three daily wage workers with the most sophisticated telephones that you could ever see. It had movie streaming, audio and syncing  capabilites and the best part all three were being put to use by someone who probably never had an opportunity to read. One of them said, 'da matchi, andha song enga anpe (send me that song)' and the other oblidged by connecting to this other device via blue tooth. In a matter of seconds, both were synced up. Beauty of technology -- present it in a usable fashion and the masses will take care of the rest. If that only were followed in our road system, we would have seen better infra.

Come elections, several of us have heard politicians promise color TV's, gold for women in the manifestos. What in the world is the Election commision doing letting this craptards promise such ludicrous agendas? When a family out there is searching for food, a color TV's in his/her dining room would serve no good.

Expecting a sensible government in India is to expect a religion without hell.

The last week was a breeze. Few dinners, last minute get togethers and a promise that I would return soon enough occupied most of it. Headed to the Hyderabad airport at 2 in the morning. The airport and its facilities are certainly world class but the security sub-standard. Neither are they patient enough to understand what the passenger talks nor are they prepared to deal with such things. I had a BA e-ticket and in my anxiety to leave home, I had forgotten to take the print out. If an e-ticket is issued, most places across the world don't need to have one. The first security guy started showing full attitude and said go get the print out. Some other person with some sense had an itinerary of passengers flying with BA. Simple solution. If the politicians let some sensible people get on board, we would soon see a much better India. In a year or more time, I hope to get there either to change or be changed.

Kaizen Technologies Review

Its H1-B time of the year when folks start searching for companies to apply their H1's. It is very similar to the scene where hundreds of deer cross the river knowing mightly the fact that there are crocodiles lurking. Their only hope, I might get lucky due to sheer numbers and escape unhurt.

After years of hearing body shopping companies exploiting folks, a friend of mine and I finally succumbed to fall in the line of GC aspirants and got suckered into a tie up with a company called Kaizen Techonlogies in NJ. The sad part was that these folks were known to me and thus felt trustworthy.

Kaizen supposedly means continous improvement and I find them no different than any other body shopping place who primarily look for ways to cover their ass while they leave their employees high and dry. In our case, it wasn't for GC's but for both our I140s.

The disagreement came when both of us had asked them to support the denial of I140 by responding in a concrete fashion to argue that they have the capability to pay our wages. They insisted that I paid 1500 dollars before and they may consider. By this point, I had already paid enough for I140 expenses and had lost all confidence in the way they respond to emails, phone calls and their so called law-firm was below par. It seems that their auditors do not approve 'such' expenses. When the company's financial strength is at question, the least you could do if you haven't earned it the wrong way is to respond. I guess their decision not to respond says quite a bit.

What is it that these companies get that they always do things that is against the very name that they started with? Kaizen -- continous improvement? You sure are improving at deceit and unprofessionalism.

Vijay who handles most of this said 'it is our first denial'. I guess at the very first denial if they decide to cop out and run for cover, my sincere advice to people who stumble across this post searching for review on Kaizen technologies -- Run real hard the other way. When the company deserts you when it matters the most, then they don't deserve a thought and definitely not your presence. Stay away.