Increasing My H-List

Hate is very strong word and I hardly use in my day to day life and rarely bring it into practice.

My Hate List (H-List) is not at all very big. Till now there was only one entry and that was encompassing all the direct marketing people from companies like m-way, QuickStar or PoleStar and so on. The hate their money making strategy and eventually them who deploy that to milk some money. These direct marketers will accost you anywhere for example Safeway, Walmart, Fry's and so on and ask you some stupid questions like (I think I have seen you before were you in Stanford, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Which shampoo should I buy, ohh that earring looks really great on you ...) and me and friends look at them and just grin and say "Thanks but no thanks". So their strategy is to initiate some talk and get your number and then harass you by luring you to make money and they talk all BS like they are doing great business and every week they get a paycheck of $ 3K and so on. Once they get your number they will harass you for many days till the time you warn them. They are top on my H-List and its shame on them to use such a tactic to get customers for their so called business. Further in bay area most of these are Indians and I hate to see them doing this when I know all of them are well educated and have a good job.

So till now these guys were in my H-List but last weekend when I went to hang out with my friend to one of the school pub in Palo Alto. I was eating something and my friends were drinking. My friends finished one pitcher and then they order two more glasses of beer. So all of a sudden one big American guy came and sat beside me and asked me "Can I have that french fry?" I grinned and looked at him and told him "NO". I shook my head again and said "NO" again and then I thought lets give him a fry who cares. Then he started introducing himself and talking about some BS and I gauged that he is trying to sell something to me, so I asked instantly to him "Now pay for my friends beer" and this guy tells bartender to get 2 more beers for my friends and I got up and told him charge all these beers to him (the one which my friends ordered previously). That guy was all okay with it and then I started showing interest in what he was trying to sell to me. This dude was Stanford graduate (double economic major) and was joining Ameriprise from Nov, 7 2007 and he was about to start their as financial consultant.

I asked this guy few questions that I invest in ETF, MF and Stocks and this guy was not knowing what does ETF stands for and then I thought I did nothing wrong in fetching some beers from him for my friends. Finally after few minutes of goals in life and how to achieve that and all that BS, he asked me my number and I gave him wrong number and pseudo name. So in my H-List i have entered one more entry i.e. Financial Consultants like him who don't have any ethics of business and go down to such an extent to make money.

Previously i was sorry to see only Indians (IITians and well educated with good job in hand) doing this but now seeing Americans are in the same boat, I concluded that its a genre of people who have no ethics how to earn money, not civilized enough to enter into anyone's privacy in public and pushing their business model onto them.

I hate to increase my H-List but can't help when I encounter people like these.But this time may be it was a bummer for that guy as I gauged his intentions and fooled (my friend had a good time though) him for few beers. Sometime people like to learn it hard way.

Hillary says "I am JOYFUL"

I was going through some vidoes and found this video where Republican candidate Hillary Clinton's laughs at almost everything :)

Check this out.



Enjoy!!

Homeless people are Fashion Conscious!!

I went to city (San Francisco) on Saturday night along with my friends (two of them) and parked my car on the street.

I didn't notice what my friends wore (they wore winter jackets on top of shirt and tee-shirt) that night and both of them left their jacket in the back seat (no one likes to pay for coat check-in). I found a free street parking and I was totally unaware that I am keeping these stuff in the back seat of my car and my car is in area where plenty of homeless people live in the city.

When I returned to the place where I have parked my car after partying, I went to the driver's side to check my phone (i forgot my phone in the car) and i said "Thank God" its there. From the other side my friend tells me "Dude somebody broke the window glass of your car and they have stolen my jacket". I was like Oh #$%& !!

Then I looked there and there was one jacket lying there and all the glass on the rear seat. One of my buddy says, "It was my Xpress winter Jacket" and I was like "were u guys wearing jacket and you left it in car"...The other friend's jacket was real cheap one (from Walmart i guess). So the thief took only the Xpress jacket and nothing else from my car (there was GPS, cell phone, CD Player and another jacket).

Well to put in in light way he/she was very fashion conscious :) and took only the quality stuff by which he won't be tracked (cell phone and GPS can be tracked) and must have thought that by selling that jacket he/she will get some money. Or because winter is starting and he/she genuinely needs winter clothing.

I think, if someone would have asked me or warned me he/she needs winter clothing, i would have happily given my spare sweaters and jackets (which are good and i don't use it). But the world is not that straight and people like easy means to do.

So now the quarter glass of my car is broken and today i went to inquire about the estimate to fix it. And to my surprise I found that glass will cost only $35 but the labor for that is $190 (which is ridiculous). This was from Toyota Service Center. Now I will have to find some better place to fix this (I will post solution after fixing it).
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Publish Post

Election and Pledges

I was reading about the Caucus round 2 in New Hampshire and here is the small snippet from the radio ad about Tax Pledge by Mitt Romney (A republican candidate)-

"When I’m president, for every middle class American, the new tax rate on your interest, dividends, and capital gains will be absolutely zero."

Do we see this happening anytime in future? This seems to be too good to be true and one can infer very easily practically analyzing it that this is total BS!!

Few days back i had a discussion with my friend about paying taxes (eventually in 401K) and she was completely against paying taxes. Some false promises like above can definitely make some people (like my friend ) happy.

Books - Sales and Marketting and Business Life

I would like to read the following two books

• Selling the wheel


• How Starbucks Saved My Life
  

First one is about sales and marketing and second one is about the life of a laid off employee at the age of 60 who joins starbucks and works there.

Books on sales and marketing fall into two categories:

1. Books that tell you the right way to do sales and marketing.

2. Books that tell you lots of good ways to do sales and marketing and how to choose the right approach for your particular situation.

Selling the Wheel is an example of the latter.

About "How Starbucks Saved My Life" i heard good things.

My review after I am done with these books.

Important Message!!

I found this interesting picture



from this site http://m3.bestpicever.com/piles/?s=shopliftdrug

This pictures reminds me of many people whom I have met in my life.

Free Live Cricket - India vs Australia

Watch 2nd ODI (One day International) between India and Australia live from Kochi India for free

http://www.rifa4u.net/HTML/Cricket/sop.html

Download SOPCast and then user IE and you will be all set.
Enjoy!!

Randy Pausch - last lecture from Carnige Mellon University

One of the best lecture I have seen/heard recently



So many good things to take from this lecture.

Free Live Cricket - 20-20 WorldCup Final from South Africa

Watch 20-20 cricket world cup final between India and Pakistan live from Johannesburg South Africa for free

http://livetvfree.blogspot.com/2007/08/cricket-live-tv-tvu-player.html

Download TVU player and then user IE and install ActiveX plugin and you will be all set.
Enjoy!!

Branding and Open Source!!

I came across this really nice talk by Steve Yegee in OSCON (O'Reilly Open Source Convention) 2007, where he talked success and problem associated with branding.

He is right about concluding that there is no branding for Open sources, with 60 something licenses and when we ask a common person about Open source they don't know what exactly is Open source.

Manifestos!! - Better way to propogate ideaas

Change This is a company which is propagating ideas and it is different than the tradition way of doing it.

I liked these reads out here.

Enjoy these reads!!

Free Live Cricket - 20-20 WorldCup from South Africa

Watch 20-20 cricket world cup live from South Africa for free

http://livetvfree.blogspot.com/2007/08/cricket-live-tv-tvu-player.html

Download TVU player and then user IE and install ActiveX plugin and you will be all set.
Enjoy!!

Indian snacks and how Americans relate to it!!

Over the last few years, I have or my friends brought some Indian snacks to our American friends and they have related their names with what they get here. Here I am jotting down few of them and will list more later (and if you know any such co-relation please add it)

Indian snack ==> American Equivalent Name

Kachori ==> Spicy hole (hole is the sweeter one)
Dry bhel ==> Trail mix with peanuts only
Gulab Jamun -==> Bread dipped in sugar
Wada ==> doughnut

Free Live Cricket - 4th ODI - INDIA vs ENGLAND

Watch fourth ODI (one day international) cricket match between India and England live from Old Trafford, Manchester (England) for free

http://www.bollym4u.com/ch1.htm

http://www.rifa4u.net/HTML/Cricket/sop.html

Get sopcast to use the above links and download it here and use IE to watch it.

http://livetvfree.blogspot.com/2007/08/cricket-live-tv-tvu-player.html
To use this link, download TVU player and install its ActiveX plugin for IE.

Enjoy!!

Free Live Cricket - 3rd ODI - INDIA vs ENGLAND

Watch third ODI (one day international) cricket match between India and England live from Edgbaston, England for free

http://www.bollym4u.com/ch1.htm

http://www.rifa4u.net/HTML/Cricket/sop.html

Get sopcast to use the above links and download it here and use IE to watch it.

http://livetvfree.blogspot.com/2007/08/cricket-live-tv-tvu-player.html
To use this link, download TVU player and install its ActiveX plugin for IE.

Enjoy!!

Free Live Cricket - 2nd ODI - INDIA vs ENGLAND

Watch second ODI (one day international) cricket match between India and England live from Bristol, England for free

http://www.bollym4u.com/ch1.htm

http://www.rifa4u.net/HTML/Cricket/sop.html

http://bdbimancricketers.us/tv/TNA.html

This is a sopcast link so download sopcast here and use IE to watch it.
Enjoy!!

Free Live Cricket - 1st ODI - INDIA vs ENGLAND

Watch first ODI (one day international) cricket match between India and England live from The Rose Bowl Southampton, England for free

http://www.bollym4u.com/ch1.htm

This is a sopcast link so download sopcast here and use IE to watch it.
Enjoy!!

Business (Technology, Marketting, Strategy) Cliches

Seth Godin has started this thread about Business Cliches which we happen to hear every now and then.

We get to hear this in all the department, right from technology, marketing, operation and so on.

If you happen to know more which is not there in the list, please add it.

Live India vs England third test match - FREE

Here is the free link for the third and final test match between India and England.
http://www.rifa4u.net/HTML/Cricket/sop.html
Install SOPCAST to watch this match. (works in Internet Explorer ONLY)

http://desioutlaws.org/live2.php
Install SOPCAST

Non SOPCast link
mms://a1884.l2472853883.c24728.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/1884/24728/v0001/reflector:53883

Enjoy!!

Update: If the above link is not working you can get live coverage of third test match between India and England on TVU Player. Install TVU player and go to channel 30325

Following link also work with IE. Install Active X plugin for TVU.
http://www.livesportzstreaming.com/voip-tvu.html

Live India vs England second test match - FREE

Here is the free link for the second test match between India and England.
http://www.daruchini.com/

Install SOPCAST to watch this match. (works in Internet Explorer ONLY)

Enjoy!!

Live India vs England first test match - FREE

Here is the free link for the first test match between India and England.
http://desilivetv.com/Documents/index.html

Install SOPCAST to watch this match. (works in Internet Explorer)

If the above link does not work then install TVU player and look for channel number 30325. You can download TVU player here

Enjoy!!

Update: If the above link is not working and you have downloaded sopcast, click on the following link or start your sopcast and go to channel 25574
sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/25574

iPhone - paraody video

I found this video which is a parody on iPhone.

No doubt iPhone is cool and excellent device with many capabilities but it is over hyped entity.

iPhoneDevcamp developing web apps

Raise Your iPhones!
Originally uploaded by tow_adam

I was at iphoneDevCamp on last Saturday.

It was good to see so many people enthusiastically developing web application for iphone.

I am not a mobile/cell phone developer but thought to give it a shot and developing web application for iphone is not difficult at all.

What we followed was a simple and straight forward strategy.
1) Decide what kind of web application to develop.
2) Design it.
3) Start coding and testing it with firefox and safari on windows .

It was a good experience. Me and my friend will work on this application this week and weekend and it will be up soon.

Free Live Cricket - 2nd ODI - INDIA vs SOUTH AFRICA

Watch second ODI (one day international) cricket match between India and South Africa live from Belfast for free

http://www.lovelypk.com/voips/voip-indss.html

http://www.livesportsonline.info/ind_sa.html

This is a sopcast link so download sopcast here and use IE to watch it.
Enjoy!!

Free Live Cricket - 1st ODI - INDIA vs SOUTH AFRICA

Watch first ODI (one day international) cricket match between India and South Africa live from Belfast for free

http://paktv.net/paknetwork/paktvchannel.php?cn=101

Enjoy!!

Free File Diff (difference) and Dir Diff (directory difference) utility

Many times it happen that we need to see the difference in two versions of a file and some other time we need to synchronize (see how two folder differs) two folders.

If you use source control like perforce then you can diff file and see the file difference. Similarly there are other tools which does this stuff.

Eric Sink and his company (Sourcegear) has made a Diffmerge utility freely available to all. It support wide variety of characters and it provides folder difference feature too.

This kind of utility is typically used during code review, see the changes from the master file or directory, synchronize two folders and the list goes on.

Live Cricket - Test match England vs West Indies & Afro-Asia Cup

To watch live test match cricket between England and WestIndies click the following link (Windows media player will work for this link)

http://desilivetv.com/documents/cric3.html

To watch Afro-Asia cup click the following link (SOP cast link)
http://desilivetv.com/documents/index.html

Enjoy cricket!!

Link for 2nd Test match between India and Bangladesh - Live Free

Free link for 2nd Test match between India and Bangladesh

http://www.live-cricket.net/watch/indbang45987.php (open in Internet Explorer only)

Enjoy and have fun!!

Update: This link is working: http://desilivetv.com/Documents/cric3.html

Cricket 1st Test Match India vs Bangladesh - free live links

Those who like to watch 5 days cricket match - yes by that I mean test match, then here is the free link for 1st Test match between India and Bangladesh

sop://broker.sopcast.com:3912/25129 (open in Internet Explorer only)

To watch this game, you have to download SOPCAST and those who already have sopcast, start it and type "Channel - 25129"

Enjoy and have fun!!

Update: If the above channel is not working try 15408

Cricket Live India vs Bangladesh 2nd ODI - FREE

For cricket fans 2nd ODI (one day international)India vs Bangladesh use the following links

http://www.livesportsonline.info/ban_vs_ind/bd_ind_sop.htm
http://www.bollym4u.com/c4.html

To watch this game, you have to download SOPCAST

Enjoy and have fun!!

Mother's Day Gift - Free CoPilot from Fogcreek Inc.

If you would like to get free software, go to https://www.copilot.com on Sunday (05/13/2007) and a get free pass.

CoPilot is a software which allows you to connect to someone's computer (behind the router, firewall etc.) with ease and then you can work on your peer's computer as if you are working on yours. This is usually useful for remote assistance, fixing someone's computer ( i do get this request many times from my friends).

Fog Creek Software is a based in NYC and is owned by the notable blogger Joel Spolsky. He is distributing free pass on account of Mother's day to spread one of his product. This is really good tactic to market your product and let users try it. Similarly Tmobile customers can SMS (incoming and outgoing) for free for the whole day on account of the Mother's day.

Some other solutions for remote connection are VNC, remote desktop from Microsoft Corporation, Webex and so on.

INDIA VS BANGLADESH 1st One Day Live!!

If you are a avid cricket follower and would like to watch 1st ODI (one day international)India vs Bangladesh use the following links

http://www.mithil.com/cricket24
http://www.mithil.com/cricket242


To watch this game, you have to download SOPCAST

Enjoy!!

First Google and then Digg!

Two days back Google refuted all of Viacom's claims of copyright infringement by YouTube.

Then yesterday and today Digg was all about HD-DVD decryption key. Then the founder of Digg (Kevin Rose) posted this.

One can see the trend here against copyright material. I am guessing that in the next few months there we will some changes in the so called COPYRIGHT infringements. I personally find this as a mere noise (all these copyright things). So now wait and see how things turn up in 2007.

Marketing guru Seth Godin might visit India

Visiting India

Marketing guru Seth Godin is about to visit India very soon. (I don't know the purpose of the visit, guest lecturer, invitation by some Indian company or MNC, or for personal business trip)

He wrote a post about his visit to Indian consulate in NYC. It would be great if he goes to American Consulate in Mumbai or any other city in India where we have American Consulate.

Book reading!

I came across this book Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun.

This will be my next read. I will post review about it once I am done reading it.

Live World Cup Cricket Final Link Free

Today few of my friends called me to watch world cup live on web and this is how you can watch it live.

Here is the link for watching cricket world cup final between Australia and SriLanka. (Aus Vs SL World cup final)

If you have SOPCast installed, open the following link in internet explorer.

http:www.mithil.com/cricket24

Enjoy!!

Embedding Windows Media Player in your blog or webpage

Embedding windows media player in your blog or webpage

It is very easy to embed media player. You just need to have media files which you would like to play in your page or post.




Copy paste the following HTML code to embed windows media player where ever you wish. (left or right side bar or within your post as I have done above)

<object id="MediaPlayer" classid="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6" style="WIDTH: 250px; HEIGHT: 200px" width="300" height="200" type="application/x-oleobject">
<param value="URL_VALUE>" name="URL"/>
<param value="1" name="rate"/>
<param value="0" name="balance"/>
<param value="0" name="currentPosition"/>
<param value="" name="defaultFrame"/>
<param value="1" name="playCount"/>
<param value="-1" name="autoStart"/>
<param value="0" name="currentMarker"/>
<param value="-1" name="invokeURLs"/>
<param value="" name="baseURL"/>
<param value="80" name="volume"/>
<param value="0" name="mute"/>
<param value="full" name="uiMode"/>
<param value="-1" name="stretchToFit"/>
<param value="0" name="windowlessVideo"/>
<param value="-1" name="enabled"/>
<param value="0" name="enableContextMenu"/>
<param value="1" name="fullScreen"/>
<param value="" name="SAMIStyle"/>
<param value="" name="SAMILang"/>
<param value="" name="SAMIFilename"/>
<param value="" name="captioningID"/>
<param value="0" name="enableErrorDialogs"/>
<param value="10742" name="_cx"/>
<param value="10266" name="_cy"/>
</object>

I have tested this in IE and Firefox and both seems to work fine. In the URL_VALUE (shown in bold above) provide the URL where you have your media files.

How to unit testing Asynchronous Threads in Multithreaded Enviornment

Unit testing thread using one of the unit test frame like JUnit, NUnit etc. is really good exercise and quite simple to do. Some people have posted about it in the following places

here, and here

and many other places.

But I think following is much simple and easy to understand
To test single threaded or synchronous or blocking request
1) You will call some function of some class from your main function. In the calling function, set the value of it's member variable as current thread's thread id. Compare this value with current thread's thread id in the main method. They should be same.

Main Method
<br />int mainThreadId = CurrentThread.threadId ;<br />TestClass tc = new TestClass();<br />tc.executeRequest();<br />int threadIdFromCallingMethod = tc.getRequestId();<br />assertEqual("Thread id should be same", mainThreadId, threadIdFromCallingMethod);<br />

TestClass's execute request method
tcThreadId = CurrentThread.threadId;<br />:<br />:<br />

TestClass's getRequestId
<br /><br />return tcThreadId<br /><br />


Similarly for asynchronous or not blocking request in which we spawn another thread to server our async request, it will return different id and it should not match with main thread's threadId.

Isn't it simple to test asynchronous (non-blocking) and synchronous (blocking) threads?

testing feed flare again

let see whether it works or not

Testing feedburner flare code

Testing feed flare

Embedding music in your blog

Today when I was reading this article from Cyber -Knowledge.net, I thought to share the same.

RadioBlogClub allows you to embed songs from number of artist on your blog. It is quite simple to add something from there, just search for your favorite artist, it will list down all the songs available for that artist. Click on the blue arrow button and it creates a snippet of code for you to just copy and paste on your blog. I have pasted the code for linkin park's numb



It seems to be quite cool but I will do some more research about it's usage and legal issues and not sure till what time we will be able to use this. But till then enjoy music on your blog