Thoughts of a semi-nerd

My first post from outside my motherland India; also long time since my last post. Well, here I am - back in business. Those working in Indian IT companies very well know what Onsite is; I had dreamt of it many a time when I was in offshore working for a foreign client from India. Onsite is working directly from the client location - so higher salary, global exposure and better client visibility (my preference in the same order). Major leap in career too they say. I have been looking for an Onsite opportunity for close to 2 years and became desperate at a point. My desperation came to an end last month when I got my UK visa. I was asked to start last week. Got my tickets with Dubai being the transit point. This was my first air travel - was very excited and nervous at the same time. My parents, sister and my eldest niece had come to airport to see me off. After bidding them bye, I went through Immigration and Security check. Earlier I had got my boarding passes after luggage chec

Speed breakers - I hate them as much as anybody. When laid proper, they can prevent accidents; but most of the speed breakers, I think, are laid with very less common sense. They are either huge, steep or both. Very rarely I have come across a proper speed bump. There is a road near my home, that I use every day to go to office; 3 new speed breakers within 30 metres. Not only they are laid in cement to be rigid, but also steeep; I have not made a spelling mistake, but emphasising on the needless insensitivity. Yes, we need speed bumps to control rash driving and prevent a mishap. This does not mean that the road is to be filled with them. I sometimes wonder, do we have any standards for laying speed breakers - the height, width, how rigid they must be and most importantly the distance between 2 consecutive speed bumps. If not already, we must have one. I also feel there must be a formal approval from a Government body to lay a speed bump. It is often ridiculous to see a speed bre

According to me, a movie should make us think, laugh or cry. Here is the list of English movies that made me cry: Cars The Game Plan Black Swan Glory The Pursuit of Happyness Marley and me 300 The Sixth Sense Schindler's List The Fisher King Children of Men Saving Private Ryan The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Requiem for a Dream I Am Sam The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Cinderella Man Million Dollar Baby Real Steel Forrest Gump Enemy at the Gates The girl with the dragon tattoo The greatest game ever played I hope these movies give you the same feeling as it did to me. :) The above list can be accessed in  imdb as well.

My first post in 2012. Happy new year to all my readers. :) This post is the second in 'My Software Pick' series. First part can be accessed here . This list too contains useful utilities. As usual, only legal and legitimate softwares - no crack or pirated copies. 1. Shaplus Bandwidth Meter This is a free tool to track your internet usage.  This tool tracks every KB you download. I have been using this to track my internet usage, for over 5 years. This is a must have for us broadband users to keep our download limit in check, so that we are not surprised seeing our internet bill. Also, this occupies less than 200KB of your disk space after installation and less than 2MB of memory when runs in the background. 2. vlc media player vlc media player is one of best media players out there and it is free. It plays almost all formats. Till date, I have not seen vlc returning errors for a video. In my system, it even played corrupted avi file which was abando