Sourabh’s blog

The Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company officials on Monday disconnected power supply to ‘Ramgiri,’ the official residence of Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, as a step to recover dues to the tune of Rs 120,000.

Entire Story at Rediff.com

This is some nice bit of news, seriously. Something which we dont see that happening to government officials, atleast not to the State’s CM. Nice to see, some actions are actually been taken regardless of the prominence of the person involved. When major parts of Maharashtra face power cuts every single day for hours altogether providing uninterrupted electricity to a few big cities, an action like this is quite justified.

There is just something about this news which makes me feel happy. Probably, I am Evil.

Nearly 2 months after the start of the third year course, I have finally managed to procure books for most of the subjects today. All in a single day. I don’t have any clue whatsoever about the syllabus and whats being taught in the class. With just a couple of weeks away from the Mid Semester tests, I better get started now -as in a few days before the tests.

Checked out ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’ this evening. It was a fun flick but nothing great. Total timepass stuff which makes you forget all your worries (if any) for the length of the film.

Our family has been celebrating Ganeshotsav for the past 40 odd years. Every single year, the statue of Lord Ganesh has always been the same – something which my grandfather always insisted on. Nevermind the simple decoration, almost everyone in our family likes to keep things simple for some reasons (yeah, right – laziness).

PS: Flickr sucks, still no direct support for Opera.

My dad is just too good. He doesn’t need much of a reason to get any service or gadget (which he likes). So all of them come without a confirmation from anybody. Be it for World Space Satellite Radio, Home Theatre Systems or Dish TV. Just a day long bandh from Cable Operators in Mumbai was good enough for him to order Dish TV. Not that I do not like it but sometimes it gets annoying when he lands up with a not-so-good thing.

But well – considering we never payed our cable operators for the connection since eternity, dish tv could very well be worth it. Especially at times when cable network is down. I am eager to check out the quality of video and sound on it.

There is no fun in being alive till the wee hours of the morning and having no one in your messenger list to interact with. Luckily, I never had any difficulties to have friends to resort to and have a nice chat. Last night was a similar one. Anuj had dragged his deadline to get back to work in Gurgaon by another day. For those who are not aware, he is a big philsopher – his blog proves it! What we talked turned out to be real valuable stuff – typical philosophic material! Enough of the backdrop, have a look at it yourself. From what is life and how to live it talks, to what engineering is all about.

It has been three days since I have been having a good fortune of enjoying a broadband internet connection. There has been literally no full fledged downloading.

I am just happy to get back to the internet full-time on a 24×7 connection and just surf! You-tube, Stumble Upon, websites, forums, blogs – you name it. There have been times in these three days that I have actually forgotten where I am and what I am doing – but what the heck! This is some serious fun.

Moreover, I have helped more people in these days than I ever have in the last few years. I dont have a clue how I am doing this. Right now, I am prepping up a project for a friend! I would have never even completed my own things in time before.

I have clicked atleast over 50 google/yahoo and other ads on webpages that I have liked in the past few days. I guess I am just passing some goodwill, may be not. But that doesnt change the fact – I am on a roll! lol… literally

The blog is cursed!

Breaking the curse…..

-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Asus India had organized a laptop service camp for all brands of laptop in Mumbai for 2 days. I wanted to get some things sorted out in my laptop, so I decided to check out the Asus Service. I finally got some company at the last minute to make a trip all the way to Andheri on a lazy Sunday morning.

The Service Center was a well-furnished place with nice aesthetics, appealing environment and a polite staff. It was completely in contrast to that of Acer’s. The Receptionist was kind enough to ask me for some beverages, after I filled up the guest book. As luck may have it, not many people had turned up for the service. I had my ticket to a session with the engineer within no time. It didn’t take me long to explain him the issues with my laptop. Next up, I was handed over a small feedback form to be filled up while the issues were rectified.

The lobby had a sleek 19” widescreen LCD display powered by an ASUS Small Form Factor PC, which looked quite cool on the counter. When I made my way in there, I caught the last 15 minutes of the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. Just when I was done with the feedback form, I was informed that my laptop had been taken care of. I was shocked to see everything done in less than 30 minutes:
(more…)

When you buy things that you do not really need, you need to have an ingenious brain. I was crazy enough in the first place to get a Notebook Cooler for my laptop. After being cool using it and making my laptop receive that extra cooling which it really did not need, I soon realized it was undiluted non-sense. I couldn’t just trash it and had it on my desk – just lying in there for days.

Out of nowhere, a thought clicked to have its outlet blow air on the AC adaptor of the laptop. Honestly speaking, the adaptor was the only component of the laptop that really used to heat up and I mean REALLY like bread straight out of the oven. The original Acer adaptor had blown up once in the past, I was extra careful with it. I had cut down my continuous laptop runtimes for the same. Hell, I even used to give the adaptor a 10 min rest by utilizing the last bit of the laptop batteries and then switching on the main supply.

Surprisingly, using the Notebook Cooler for cooling the Adaptor worked out well. Now even after 8-10 hours of continuous usage, it doesn’t turn too hot to raise any fears for me. So, the whole thing turned out to be actually working pretty well. Nice.

How does an AC Adapter Cooler sound? Yes, I think the same – Stupid. Well, who knows someone might have it patented too! I hope no ones listening

PS: Makes me wonderm what is right – adapter or adaptor?. I guess both must be right- have seen both of them being used. Too sleepy to do any google on this!

I had been working for a while with LaptopLogic in my spare time. A couple of months have passed since I first started, and I must admit it has been an interesting experience. I was completely unaware what online publishing was all about and how professional things could go.

One of my first works with them involved etching out a TV tuner guide for the laptops. I have always tweaked and fiddled with TV tuners from the day I got my first PC for my own use some years back. I couldn’t have thought of a better topic for my first guide at LaptopLogic. Pinnacle India was kind enough to provide the Pinnacle PCTV100e for the review and the guide in general. But as things turned out, due to some reasons the guide could only be published last night. You can have a look at it here.

However, it is not my first guide/review, but I really like how it really shaped up well, with inputs from Thai and Dan from the team. There is this immense satisfaction after going through with the different sections on the guide, which made me scribble this down