Smart phones do have a second life

When I lost my beloved iPhone 4 I was devastated, I replaced it with a new look alike iPhone 4s.

Fast forward 2 years later, the phone started showing its age. First evidence was the lack of voice in FaceTime and then came the day I realized I couldn't plug my earphones to the phone. The last straw was when the power button on the phone broke, imagine not able to lock or power down your phone, it was a night mare for few days.

All the above and the imminent launch of iPhone 6, I had almost made up my mind to wait for the launch and buy the new iPhone. But the new phone looked more Androidsh and to top it off my service provider threatened to hike price if renewed.

All said and done, to get a new phone I would have to pay $400 extra plus the equipment cost over period of 2 years and $180 year on year from there.

That pushed me to look into nexus 5, but after owning nexus 7 I am not a fan of bare bone Android any more.

So, I looked at the last option of repair and resurrect my existing phone, a quick Google search led me to icracked.com, a few phone calls and a day later, all my iPhone problems were fixed and it is working like a champ. The total cost was $65 including the cost of a new battery. Thankfully only 1 part broken and rest of it was just cleaning and removing lint.

How long does it take to sell a Toyota Camry?

How long does it take to sell a Toyota Camry? How does 10hrs sound? Surprised, it's true. When we decided to offload our 2001 Camry and posted the ad on craigslist Austin Friday night around 11:30pm, by 12:15am I started getting text messages and emails inquiring about the car. Initially I thought it was a spam and ignored the same (like the chat messages that popup automatically when you enter a chat room). By Saturday morning 8:00 there were 5 text messages including 1 offer to buy the car outright without even trying the car. I started responding to the texts 1 by one in the order it was received, by 9:00AM I had 1 guy was scheduled to come at 10:30 and other at 11:30 and another 12:30.

While the guy at 10:30 did not confirm back, a lady called and asked if she could come and take a look at the car. I was hesitant as there were others who had inquired before her but she was persistent and I decided to give her the 10:30 slot. It appears she was in a big rush and she showed up at 10:00 itself. She and her husband looked at the car inside, outside, under the hood and inside the boot, did a test drive and said they want to buy. They asked for slightly lower than I was asking and when I declined to negotiate, they agreed for the whole price, paid in cash and signed all the required paperwork and we were done by 11:00am.

I must say, a few things worked to my advantage, considering it was my wife's car it was almost dent free barring a few scratches at few places and well kept both inside and out, another thing was that the car was mostly dealer serviced and hence every single detail of the service was posted on Carfax and it made my selling easy.

I am not vouching for service at the dealership all the time, I do have some bad experiences with my VW dealership.

Not so smart Google maps

I have come to rely on  Google maps for everything related to  travel, so much so that I no longer carry my stand alone trusted Garmin gps with me. It works fairly well in most cases but did utterly bad in one case. The recent example was when Google maps was showing my destination to be in the middle of an elevated freeway, while my actual destination was on the access road of the freeway.

Made me think about the addressing schemes, if the address is something like xxx on yyy freeway, then can I really blame Google for asking me find my destination on an elevated freeway. Another possibility is that the address of the destination existed and the freeways had a make over and became elevated to add more roads underneath. At which point, may be the address ought to have been updated to reflect the change in road schemes but didn’t for some reason, Again benefit of doubt Google. But considering Google is smart and it’s applications like Google maps are one of the best it should realize the destination can't be on an elevated freeway. Yes, I tried both Android and an iOS device with the same result.

All the above being true, the irony was, the blue icon for destination was showing the right location (on the access road) using which I used to reach my destination by manual navigation but the automated routing was telling me to jump off the freeway.

I think its the case of not so smart Google for once :).  

Who discovered America? – satire

They say Christopher Columbus discovered America, I disagree, I think it must be a Kannadiga who first discovered America and Columbus re-invented the same. Here is my argument :)

There is a proverb in Kannada “ಪಾಪಿ ಸಮುದ್ರಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದರು ಮೊಣಕಾಲು ಉದ್ದ ನೀರು”, loosely translated a sinner cannot commit suicide even when he goes to the ocean for the ocean level never rises beyond the ankles. The ankle may be a oversight and they probably meant the knee.  They say proverbs have deeper meanings as they arise from people’s experiences. So, if you think about it at some point in time some “sinner” must have tried to commit suicide by drowning in an ocean or sea and unable to do so for the water never became deep enough. Can you think of 1 sea where it is possible, Gulf of Mexico where you can keep walking from the beach and rarely see a dip in sea floor level :).

So, Kannadigas knew Gulf of Mexico and hence knew America :)  

Shame on you Bangalore

The recent incident of rape of a 6 year old kid in a private international school (VIBGYOR High School) has made me lower my head with shame. The incident happened on July 2nd, reported to police on July 9th or 10th and media leak on July 17 or 18 and first arrest on July 21. The incident has bothered me at multiple levels and raised more questions than I can answer. To start with

• The 6 year old kid was sent to a dark room as part of the punishment for mischievous behavior. What behavior entails a dark room punishment and who will be outside the dark room guarding the room?, did the parents of the school knew such punishments existed in the school, if yes why did they not raise a voice against such things? I asked some of my friends and they were totally unaware that such punishments existed.
• Lets say for a second the punishment was justified, was it not time bound? who went back to fetch the kid from the room? didn’t she notice any abnormalities with the kid? what about the damn teacher who ordered the punishment did she not notice anything strange with the kid?
• The incident got reported to the police almost 10 days later, and the media got a whiff of it a few days ago? why was there the delay from the parents to contact media, would they have expelled your kid from the school? to hell with it let them do, who in their right mind wants to send their kid after such incidents back to the same school again?
• The parents thankfully for once gathered and protested against the school and the funny part within a day of the protest the police arrested the first suspect. Is the government/establishment sleeping, does it need people to get to the road before it can take any action?
• A few incidents happen in UP and our honorable union Home minister and Women’s affairs minister make statements cautioning the government of UP, what about this one?, where is Rajnath Singh and where is Maneka Gandhi, doesn’t the lower states exist or they will only comment if the number of MP seats is more than 50?
• The accused was dismissed from a school for conducting similar activity back in 2011, didn’t the VIBGYOR school do any background check or at the least ask the previous employer as to why he was dismissed.
• For the accused to reach this level, it has to be premeditated. I am sure there were warning signs spanning over the 3 years he was employed there which the school/teachers/staff completely ignored.
• The solution from the government is CCTV cameras in every school, how does this help? only our home minister can explain.
• The parents protest also brought to light another incident in a different school a few years ago. Why did it not go to the media?
• For the gathering/protest only 4000 people showed up, again another shame. It was a Sunday and was a peaceful protest why did not more people join the protest.
• I almost forgot “thank you” supreme court for commuting the death sentences of the  accused in Delhi rape case.
• At some level I think we need to make an example of a few convicted rapists and it has to be done at an extremely fast pace. What does it take to do this? Mr. Modiji we have elected you with great hopes, I hope you will live up to our expectations. 

I have nothing against the school but if the school says they have a special coaches for skating and bicycling or some such silly things, I would be very wary. 

Coca-Cola and car battery

My trusty/beloved VW is touchy about the battery, I think I have replaced the battery more times than the tires themselves in the last 12 years.

Other day over the long weekend it refused to start and no amount of pumping gas pedal would help and I presumed a dead or almost dead battery. So, I had to bring out my trusty jump starter (btw, a good investment than cables) and jump started the car. While doing this I noticed that the presumed dead battery was reading the right voltage (slightly less than optimum) and there was some white salty substance on battery lead. I figured the battery is slowly dying and it will last a few more months.

The weekend passed with me pumping gas pedal every time to start the car and figured this would be the way going forward till the battery completely dies.

One thing that kept bugging was the white salt like substance on the battery leads, I remembered in one of my previous life times someone had told me to pour a can of coca-cola to clean the battery leads. I had never practically done it till yesterday. On the way back from work I picked up a can of ice-cold coca-cola from the vending machine and once I reached home opened the hood and poured the entire can on the battery lead. I was surprised to the see the white thing dissolve away and the battery lead has a slight shine to it now. The biggest bang was when the car started without me touching the gas pedal.

ps: There is no significance for ice-cold and I am sure a room temperature coca-cola would have done the trick too but that would have meant I buy a 6 pack or a 12-pack.

pps: If interested in trying please make sure the car is turned off and ignition key out :)     

A case for earth worm composting

It all started about 2 months ago, I was a skeptic then and not sure how it will all work out and what would it take to accomplish successful vermicomposting system. All my skepticism went away last weekend when I saw this in the compost bin. Rich beautiful and earthy smelling vermicompost. 

It was fun to watch all the greens (veggies,fruits) and browns (paper, cardboard and shredded paper) turn into fine compost. I did use it up in the garden and will have to wait a few weeks before I can assess the impact on the garden. I admit this is the fastest way of generating compost, any other technique or method would have taken a few extra months (minimum 8-12 months).

Previously I used to recycle the news paper (1 or 2 free ones I get in a month), now they are part of my worm bin, same goes to the cardboard cylinder in the center of the paper rolls, last week started to use pizza boxes too.

Having reared them for close to 2 months. I have learnt a thing or two about them and figured it would be a good time to share those insights. 

• I use the worm factory to keep these worms, the instructions that come with the bins is fairly self guiding 
• I have the setup in a corner of our garage and that’s where they have been since the day I began.
• The one thing that would become a common sight in your house will be the fruit fly trap (rice vinegar + few drops of dish soap and nothing else)
• Never had any bad odor coming out of the bins
• They prefer a 1:1 ratio of greens to browns, other methods need 1:3 greens to browns 
• They prefer to work autonomously and don’t like being disturbed by raking around or aerating around”
• Unless there is a problem (bad smell) don’t go poking around the bin, at least not frequently (once a few days is very frequent)
• There is a work around to reduce the flies like adding brown to cover the green at the very beginning but trust me they wont go away completely but will surely reduce the flies
• The worms apparently don’t like the office paper, found it the hard way but they are ok if one combines office paper with brown paper (cardboard boxes and so on)
• No citrus and no pineapples or anything that is highly acidic in nature.
• Not much time required for setup or maintenance, most of my time is spent in collecting brown material and keep them shredded 
• They don’t like too much moisture, but this won’t be a concern if you regimentally follow 1:1 for green and brown  
• As with many things in nature, patience, patience and more patience