What, me worry ?

I’m always worrying whether i’ve locked the car using the remote electronic key crap.  I’ve had to walk back many times to the car after parking to check if I’ve remembered to lock it.  I was thinking why not have an indicator on the key itself which says whether the car is locked or not.  Well I’m pretty sure someone’s thought of this earlier, but why don’t we have something like that ? I badly need a key like that for in fact anything that needs to be locked. The constant worrying about whether I’ve locked something is starting to annoy the crap out of me.  How fucking hard can it be, lock and key industry ?

Here’s a tip that I got from my dad which has proved to be successful many times. Whenever you shop for something and you’re about to pay, ask the seller for a discount. It’s surprising that how many sellers are willing to offer one and how many buyers don’t bother asking.  I’ve saved quite a bit over the years just by asking for discounts.  Here are some tips.  Firstly, don’t demand a discount, ask for one politely. For instance you can start by asking simply “Is there a discount on this item ? “. If the answer is no,  try again by mentioning a season – “What’s the Diwali/New Year discount ?” .  A classic follow up question is to mention that the item in question is available for cheaper elsewhere. Just make up a place and say that you’ve heard is cheaper there.  Another alternative is to play the emotional angle – “Don’t you want me to shop at your place again ? Don’t you want me to refer my friends to your place ? “.  Try these approaches and you will be surprised. I’ve tried it on everything – shoes, clothes, books, spectacles, helmets.  This works on services as well not just products. Don’t ever take anyone’s quote at face value – persist and you’ll save !

You might be thinking – what a cheapskate ! But you know what every seller has a huge margin, so you’re getting ripped off anyway.  Getting something off the price just makes it feel a little better. Don’t feel bad in asking, after all the seller doesn’t feel bad in quoting a price he likes.

Happy bargaining!

I donated to Wikipedia ! I’ve been wanting to do it for sometime, but somehow kept putting it off.  Wikipedia has been running a fund raiser campaign for a while and it served as a perfect reminder for me to donate.  Wikipedia has become such a major part of our lives that we don’t often stop to think about the effort it takes to keep it running.   Right from the hard work of the volunteers that goes in to create and maintain the content to the huge cost the of the IT infrastructure required to run the number five website in the world.  Importantly, Wikipedia is free to use and is kept ad-free !  All this can only happen with support from donors.

This is the e-mail which I received from Sue Gardner, after I made the donation. It does a much better job of explaining on how the donations will be used :

Dear Suhrid,

Thank you for your gift of USD XXX to the Wikimedia Foundation, received on December 11, 2010. I’m very grateful for your support.
Your donation celebrates everything Wikipedia and its sister sites stand for: the power of information to help people live better lives, and the importance of sharing, freedom, learning and discovery. Thank you so much for helping to keep these projects freely available for their more than 400 million monthly readers around the world.

Your money supports technology and people. The Wikimedia Foundation develops and improves the technology behind Wikipedia and nine other projects, and sustains the infrastructure that keeps them up and running. The Foundation has a staff of about fifty, which provides technical, administrative, legal and outreach support for the global community of volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia.
Many people love Wikipedia, but a surprising number don’t know it’s run by a non-profit. Please help us spread the word by telling a few of your friends.

And again, thank you for supporting free knowledge.

Sincerely Yours,

Sue Gardner
Executive Director

* To donate: http://donate.wikimedia.org
* To visit our Blog: http://blog.wikimedia.org
* To follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/wikimedia
* To follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wikipedia

This letter can serve as a record for tax purposes. No goods or
services were provided, in whole or in part, for this contribution.
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable corporation
with 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. Our address is 149 New Montgomery, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94105. Tax-exempt number: 20-0049703

So, say thanks to Wikipedia and make your donation today !

It has been exactly two months since I joined a gym.  Since I paid a considerable amount of money, I was motivated enough to go “regularly”. Other than about a weeks break when I was traveling, I was in the gym pretty often.  So, when I looked at my workout card today, I was surprised to see how many days I actually went.  I always thought that my attendance would be around 75%.   In reality it was 50% !  Damn. So over a period of two months, I was in the gym for just a month.  All those I’m-going-to-skip-today, Sundays and sick days – they weren’t too many, but they added up to be quite a bit.  Anyhow,  this shows how deceptive our perception of commitment to a task can be.  In general it also shows how people being lazy is a good thing for a gym. I always wondered how the gym kept signing up new folks regularly but the place never seemed to get crowded. I suppose the overall attendance averages out to somewhere between 25 to 30%.  So it is in the best business interests of the gym for people to be lazy. (Of course, after they sign up). Freakonomics anyone ? In terms of weight loss, I just lost a couple of kilos over two months. I am reasonably happy with this and I credit this to the fact that I watched what I ate.  This whole working out thing is something that keeps you fit and healthy. It really doesn’t help you to lose weight, at best it keeps you from adding more. You have to eat less. Period. Don’t believe anything what anyone promises in terms of weight loss, losing weight is hard work and it takes time.

Yes, today is Diwali. The worst fucking day of the year. This is when shit-heads all over the country burst crackers the whole freaking day and night. The crackers are ear-drum-puncture loud. OK, it may make sense to light a few symbolic crackers/fireworks to celebrate the festival of light and all that pile of horseshit. But why in God’s name do you have to fucking do it every second of the day you sick retards ?

Why dirty the already filthy streets ? Why turn the chaos into a cacophony ?

I was dreaming up the horrific abuses that, given the chance, I could mete out to these vile bastards. I was typing it here, but then realized that these particular sentiments could cause me to be branded as  a social psychopath.

But I think we know who the real psychopaths are. Happy Diwali.

Here is a nifty feature I found in Eclipse regarding generating getters and setters. Normally the names Eclipse assigns to the getter and setter methods are the field names as-is suffixed to get and set. For e.g. if you have a field called “lastName” – the getter would be getLastName() and the setter would be setLastName(). Now some people follow coding conventions by prefixing fields with a certain letter to indicate they are class level variables.  e.g. mLastName, mFirstName etc.  In such a case when Eclipse is used to generate getters/setters, then the method names become getmLastName(), setmLastName() etc.  Those names are nothing short of disgusting:

Getter/setter name has field prefix

Fortunately this can be easily fixed.  You can tell Eclipse that you prefix/suffix your fields in a certain way and the prefix/suffix will automatically be removed from the generated getters and setters. Click on Window -> Preferences -> Java -> Code Style.  Select Fields and click on Edit to specify the field name conventions.

Set field name convention

Now, things are looking good.

Getter/Setter without field prefix

Eclipse, what would life be without it ?

Try this for some fun. Type about:mozilla in the URL bar in Firefox and hit enter.

Quote from the Book of Mozilla

Yup, you get a quote in biblical style about Mozilla. This is what I saw in my Firefox 3.6.10:

“Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the  sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children.Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.”

How cool is that ?  In case you haven’t guessed it, “Mammon”  refers to Internet Explorer.  So you can see how the quote refers to Firefox becoming popular and finally when IE 7 came out, it copied several Firefox features. Turns out these quotes have been part of the Firefox browser ever since the Netscape days.  Wikipedia of course has the whole story superbly covered.

This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movie scenes. Yes, of course the Pulp Fiction Breakfast scene where Samuel Jackson quotes from the bible.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

Pure Gold.

Saw this funny quote about constructors in the very readable Head First Java.

“You have the right to your own constructor.

If you cannot afford a constructor, one will be provided for you by the compiler.”

For someone who watches way less CSI type crap than I do, it’s a clever take on the Miranda warning. That reminds me, here’s a ridiculously hilarious image that I found which spoofs CSI   (Make sure you’re zoomed in enough while viewing)

We Indians are the world’s noisiest (and nosiest people). Let me get done with the nosy part first.  We have a twisted and perverse interest in the affairs of other people.  I will concede that folks world wide have an ear for gossip which explains the whole paparazzi and the tabloid business. However, the point where things get so annoying is that people here make concerted efforts to get private information out – directly or indirectly.  Everyone right from the security guard, the maid, colleagues, neighbours take a keen interest in every stupid little thing. Where did you go ? How come you are late today ? Who is that friend of yours ?  All right, What the fuck ? Yes, you may have these thoughts inside your sick mind, but why ask directly ? What is your fucking business asshole ? Anyway, I have now resigned myself to this and now answer in monosyllables rather than asking the offenders to fuck off.

OK, now to the noisy part. This is probably the most exasperating, frustrating part of daily life in India. There’s noise everywhere – every fucking where. It’s unimaginable.   Loud music/TV, traffic honking, shouting while talking, construction noise and not to mention dogs.   The worst criminals are these “organizers” of local celebrations of all kinds of religious festivals.  Of course complaining against loud noise will only hurt religious sentiments. What a load of bullshit.  Is that how you celebrate a religious festival ? It is an occasion to sincerely thank the almighty for his blessings  and for quiet reflection and prayer. Can there be even an ounce of devotion that is possible with loud blaring music from cheap speakers ? The situation is of course compounded when there are competing local celebrations each attempting to outdo each other in the “who can play the loudest music” game. Do not these morons realize that there can be infants, old people, sick patients who can be severely affected by noise ?

The next bunch of assholes are those who play the fucking TV and radio loudly. What the fuck is their problem ?  Behenchod! There is some thing called headphones for fuck’s sake. What’s really incredible is complaints are met with blank faces – oh my god, how can that even disturb you ?  In general, Indians tend to have a high noise tolerance.  I am frequently surprised to find people not upset by high levels of noise.

It is impossible to find peace, quite and solitude in this country. At home, you are besieged by neighbours and other assholes. At work by co-worker retards who are compelled to loudly discuss everything. While commuting, traffic noise. You cant think straight! You go to a resort in the wilderness and some bastard is chopping wood or playing something obscene on his cellphone.

So, what’s the solution ? Unfortunately none that works. Legislation exists but is rarely enforced and you might get into trouble for complaining.  I have tried noise isolating earphones with limited success.  At home, you can try fitting noise insulating windows and maybe at work you can ask your colleagues to shut the fuck up.

If all else fails, pray. (Quietly of course).

I have been using delicious (the bookmarking website) off and on for quite a while.  I used the Firefox plug in which had a nice big button on the toolbar to create a new bookmark. Now I was using Firefox which didn’t have the delicious plug in installed and I wanted to save a bookmark, so I had to use the website.  For the life of me, I couldn’t find the new bookmark link anywhere. Finally I found it – hidden away in the top-right (just below the search box). What the fuck ?  For a bookmarking website, the add new bookmark button should be the biggest, most conspicuous button on the page – screaming for attention! I dont get it at all – I mean who okays these usability decisions ?

Dammit, where is the submit new bookmark button ?