Tikona : Getting Lost

http://www.geocities.com/ranjit_mulye/treks/tikona.html?200723
Was browsing through this site and reminded me of my ventures to tung-tikona and peth
the author here talks of getting lost and we had exactly the same experience at both the places. In fact at the Peth fort we underestimated the "complexity" of finding the right path and started ascending late in the evening - 4:00pm with some of my watumull colleagues (Santosh, Kimpal) and while half the way to top got lost. It started getting pretty dark and some of us got literally scared and distressed with the thought that we will have to spend the night amidst of the forest. We started calling villagers and pleading for help - in fact Santosh actually offered money and insisted they come right at the spot where he was.. "dont you want the money.. come and pick me up from right where i am".. :-)). We finally got through with the help of the villager late at night and then laughed a lot in the morning at the silly incident and when we got to know how simple the route to the fort was

Indiscipline

There have been a whole bunch of thoughts going across my mind since the last time I blogged. Such fantastic topics which I recognised as good topics to blog on but never managed to capture them. It was a sheer lack of personal discipline and it is an indicator of I not being able to manage time effectively. The "Monk" book talks about this and several other things... I mean about time management and personal disciple, emotional fortitude etc. etc..
wounder what will make me get out of this - for sure the books have not, am yet to discover what works for me..

Gadgets, Usability and features

Most of the features on the modern gadgets must be going unused and I guess the famous 80-20 rule must be true in this case - 80% of the users use 20% of the gadget features.. :-)

Usability and confessoins of a dumb Windows user

It was an interesting struggle for past 15 minutes for me to figure out how do i set my editor setting to "put off" the automatic conversion of my content to Hindi as I type. First and formost, I could not figure out how it was automatically set to convert what I type to Hindi (devnagari script). As a semi technical personI like to understand the features and debug a particular issue to resolve and learn the tool/product and I make it a point to do it whenever I get the time to do so. But its good to do so as a hobby than do the compulsive debugging like the instance I exprerienced a few minutes ago. Why ? Well if you do not have enough technical or tool learning aptitude you may get put off and not want to use the tool again.

This is what has also happened to my desire to use the Linux clent on my thinkpad.
For years I have had a dual boot sysem and 99.9% of time I have booted Windows. Out of hte rest of 0.01 times I booted Linux, 0.005 was because I forgot to chenge the default boot. Well I know that there is an option to reset the initial parameter to change the dual boot option using what they call grub, but never had the time and patience to learn it, change it and use it.. and this applied to many features on linux. I wish these inhibitions to adopting linux are eliminated someday and I boot Linux for the rest of my career and never have to boot the Windws OS.

At the IBM Thinkpad repair center

For an IT professional and particularly a manager like me a thinkpad crash can be a nightmare.. I was about to get into one this morning, but luckily the nightmare was shortlived... 2 hrs.. :-)

I went to the thinkpad (laptop) repair center this morning and found a great analogy with we taking our kids to a doctor.... One of the technicians there took the control of laptop and asked me to wait.. Doctors do that as well... Diagnosed the case and told me about the problem. In my case the laptop did not need any spare replacement (medication) but a bios reset did the job. She told me to oberve the laptop for a day and call her back if the problem repeats.. does this not sound very similar to we taking our kid / ourself to doctor. while I was waiting outside in the lounge, this analogy striked to me and I started working back on what should the Thinkpad center learn from Doctor's Dispensery/Clinic and vice versa... for eg: it would have been great if the TP center had magzines/newspapers - like they have in dispenseries/clinics.. :-)
bye and over 'n' out for now.

the world environment day..

The morning newspaper did a couple of columns about "World Environment Day" and "global warming". I keep tracing these articles in general as I have concern and interest about these topics. As an after thought I just thought about creating a list of things that one can do in every day life to keep reducing ones baggage and wrong doing in the direction... quite a few are simple and straight forward ones..


save electricity, battery and energy

• no brainer - switch off lights / music / fans / ac when not needed. Do it and encourage kids/others around to follow.
• switch off the car engine while waiting at the signals.
• service your car regularly and get a emission check done..
• walk when possible or use public transport / car pools can make a lots of difference.
• when you have to go upstairs on floors not too high - say 2nd floor.. and have option of stairs vs elevator.. use stairs particularly when you are going to be only one in the elevator.
• use natural lights for reading/illumination when possible
• Avoid using electric bulbs made of filaments, instead use CFL tubelights.. Its proven that they save electricity and are more economical than bulbs.

Save water

• fix the leaking taps otherwise place an empty bucket under the drip and use the accumalated water.
• do not leave the tap running while washing face/teeth etc.. while you are actually not consuming the water.
• water evaporates during the daytime hence water the plans in the evening.

Save Paper

• Avoid prining - if you print ensure you use papers on both sides.
• Re-use the consumed / wasted printouts from the unused side

Hate Plastic

• Carry used plastic bags - prferably cloth bags to retail and grocery stores

Save / Re-use to the extent you can

• In general use, re-use, repair and use whatever you can in your everyday life. There is a good reason to do so - by not consuming the new product (which you have'nt bought to replace the old) you save your money and need to manufacture a new product and ship it to the locaiton near to you.. it saves the energy and fuel and so on. A very noble thought and difficult to follow but worth considering..

In summary there are many things you could do and they may sound very little/small but if many of us start getting aware and adopt some of these it can make a lots of difference.

orkutting

Its fun orkutting, finding old friends and acquaintances online. Since I began exploring on orkut, I use to wounder if it achieves anything other than just spotting friends and adding them on to your friends list... Well yes, its beyond spotting friends. People watch you - since february '07 : 4 months - 222 people viewed my profile. Is'nt that interesting. you are getting known to others.. You get to watch some of your friends and acquintances. Most communities I have joined do not really help find information or network. One in 100 reads your posts on community and responds.. Its addictive, watching scraps is more addictive than emails..

Email addiction.. I know its addictive and like most other addictions, as an addict I am hating to get out of it.. although I know it can help me in several ways.. thats probably going to be my next post.."my experiments of getting rid of email addiction"..

This is my first stupid post.. my first blog in the www space.
Like the "Hello World" program... :-)). Its going to be a useless and empty.