Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays…

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate xmas and Happy Holidays to rest others…

have a great holiday week end…

Please leave your shoes on rack…

I was at a local temple one evening recently. There is a fairly big room as soon as we enter in to leave our shoes; and a wash basin to wash our hands before we go upstairs to the main hall where the deities are located.

There are bunch of racks nailed to the walls of that shoe area so people can keep their shoes on those racks so the floor doesn’t look messy. and it is also nice if people abide by that and keep their footwear properly and would be easier for themselves to find their respective footwear. However, it is not often that we see people doing so. Most people just leave their footwear wherever they want and go away.

A little after I went in, I started hearing the voice of some kids saying “keep your shoes on rack” repeatedly from the corner where the footwear room was located. What I thought was some kids were actually cleaning up there while saying this. Why not! they probably wanted to teach lessons to the adults. One of the ways to make culprits guilty is by helping them the right way. Well, I ignored for that moment and went away. I came back 30mins later and still heard the voice, went in to pick up my shoes, and realized there was a boom box playing a CD.

It is a nice move – a great idea, whoever have thought about it. Looks like they have recorded several kids saying the phrase “please leave your shoes on rack” repeatedly and that’s being played at the entrance/exit of that room. Helps in multiple ways

1. Parents who come with little ones, have to abide by that, ‘coz i am sure those parents want their kids to learn right way, at least, if not themselves
2. people without kids would notice kids doing it the right way and they ought to be feeling guilty if they didn’t do so.
3. kids who come in there, obviously hear those words and they start picking up other shoes lying on floor and stack them up on the racks.

but overall, certainly eye opener for adults! I liked that idea – a brilliant idea.

Weather report: 40s and you’ve guessed it…

A local radio channel on my way home this evening reported a weather forecast for next 48 hours.

It has been partly cloudy today with high 40’s. Tonight’s lows around high 30s, light rain and chances of rain. Tomorrow highs and 40s; partly cloudy during the day and chances of rain at night; on Sunday the temperature highs at low 40s, partly cloudy. And at the night, you’ve guessed it, RAIN.

Website Authenticity … How to identify?

There has always been a concern about Phishing sites. We get those URLs via emails, through other sites, hyperlinks everywhere. Those hyperlink targets may or may not go to the sites indicated on the text – of course, depends on how trustworthy the link is.

This has been a concern when the URLs were readable and judge the authenticity based on best of your knowledge. But still, most of us have been victims to unsafe site target at least once irrespective of recent browser versions alerting the users about how genuine the site is via their phishing identification tools / features.

Add on to that, these days, is the concern about shortened URLs. Yes, shortened URLs came into existence ever since the SMS texting, Twitter, or so called 140 characters limit texts – microblogging era started in recent years.

> How do you trust those short URLs?
> On what assumptions would you dare click that link?
> How can you mitigate the risk of not ending up where you didn’t want to end up with?
> How would you make sure you don’t fall victim for identity thefts?

One simple and straight forward answer could be – Do not click those links. well, does it always happen that way?

i recently came across http://www.googlegooglegooglegoogle.com –> it is pretty neat. It presents you 4 frames with google home page and you can provide 4 different search on the same browser instance. Its very handy.

well talking about this googlegooglegooglegoogle site or its authenticity is not the intent of this post. but just thought about other misleading URLs.

Well, if you bing for phishing sites or URL authenticity or “how to trust URLs” etc, you may find umpteen number of resources, Checklists, ToDo’s, guidelines, tons of resources….

Well…. this post did not answer the question “How to identify” because that still remains my question for now.. Please comment your resources and pointers here… and this title seems really misleading here…

Weather for next 10 days

wow – seeing sunshine today, i thought it would be nice for next few days, but Sun doesn’t want to stay here longer. cloudy on 3rd and rain/showers/Snow for the rest..

date	high	low	weather
3-Dec	46	26	partly cloudy
4-Dec	44	28	rain/snow
5-Dec	41	29	showers
6-Dec	35	22	showers
7-Dec	33	17	showers
8-Dec	40	20	Rain
9-Dec	47	29	Rain
10-Dec	36	35	showers
11-Dec	39	35	showers

hmm… time to keep enough gasoline, blankets, food in cars; and stuff up food items at home….

Black Friday sales…

View at one of the stores that we went this evening…

not sure if it was due to year end inventory clean up or black friday (day after thanksgiving)…

Where is my Computer?

I remember talking about this in one of my blog posts before, that most often one of tricks my 4yr daughter has learned to get me do anything viz., wake up, go to her toy room, go over to car, etc has become through my laptop computer. the Typical conversation:

V: Daddy, please look at at this
me: okay, good (without even looking at her)
V: daddy. lets go, it is going to be late for school
me: okay, lets go. please wear your shoes
V: i need your help
me: ok, lets get to the car (daddy not even moved from the chair)
V: (now getting irritated a bit) closes my laptop computer takes it along with her.
daddy now follows wherever she goes with the laptop computer in hand.

last night, a similar instance happened when she was about to sleep and perhaps needed me or her mom to put her to bed. I didn’t nudge but doing something else in living room allowing my computer battery to charge.

She looks at the computer around and picks it up, and goes upstairs.

I followed her but I was a bit late by the time I had a cup of water in Kitchen on the way, and she didn’t have the computer in hand later. I came over to the bedroom to put her to sleep; checked with her several times for my computer. She would say, she would not give it and apparently she doesn’t know and laughs..

I kept asking “where is my computer?” “Where did you hide my computer?” I looked at my bedroom, bathroom, 2nd room, 3rd room, closets, drawers, etc but it wasn’t around. Where would she have kept it in that brief few mins.

Finally, I went to her closet and found my computer. While I had some fun with her on this game – however, I think I need to reduce being on computer so long every day…

Diwali Greetings from White house

It  is so nice to see a note of greetings from Prez Obama on the occasion of Diwali – Festival of Lights. such a fine gesture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuiAW_6XKVM

Fellow people – all who celebrate Diwali – Have a great time – Be safe – Happy Diwali.

Namaste,

Join Bone Marrow Registry – Save a Life

I have volunteered for a Marrow Donor Registry Drive at work. It is a great sense of satisfaction to be a part of helping out. I heard that about 70 blood related diseases (leukemia, lymphoma, … ) can be cured with a Marrow Transplant.

personally, I have been looking for such a drive for almost over a year; had enquired several people about the drive events. Either I had the drive location but the timing and the location was not convenient or I wasn’t around for the local drives. It worked out earlier this year that I went and registered myself in one such donor event.

According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2008 more than 130,000 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma (cancers of blood and bone marrow). About 53,000 patients died from these diseases last year: this means that someone is diagnosed with blood cancer every 5 minutes and someone dies from blood cancer every 10 minutes in the U.S. alone, including many children. 3 out of 4 patients will not find a donor in their family. They will depend on unrelated marrow donors for a match.

Genetic diversity: 90% of the patients are likely to find a match within their own racial or ethnic heritage. This creates a need for much stronger representation of all ethnic groups in the  registry.   Currently South Asians represent only 1.86 % of the registered donors on the registry. The match rate is only 1 in 20,000.

Readers here: I urge you, if you haven’t thought so yet, to please consider registering as a Marrow Donor. We do not know which patient might need your help and when. Not all donors’ marrow would match with the patient’s blood cells. Thousands of patients are waiting for a miracle, they are searching for a matching bone marrow donor.  You can change the world one person at a time.

I hope, if you are interested, not wait like the way I did without registering for over a year. you can find the nearest marrow drives/  events on
http://www.marrow.org
http://www.bethematch.org
http://www.aadp.org
http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Join_in_Person/index.html 
http://www.samarinfo.org/
India – http://www.datriworld.org/  
International List of Bone Marrow Registries (for other countries) http://www.bmdw.org/index.php?id=addresses

Thank you,

Happy Diwali to you all …Be safe

Namaste,

Ok / Cancel?

I was on a BillPay page on a banking web site today, provided name, address and other information and about to confirm –> Continue / Edit / Cancel

Now i changed my mind and thought of waiting since I didn’t have the account number to pay to, handy at that time. Decided to hit “Cancel”.

Cancel takes me to an alert with a question mark and two buttons Ok / Cancel – what is expected from the user? Ok or Cancel?

what does a OK supposed to do?
what does a Cancel supposed to do?

does it mean my account is now somebody else’s if I hit Ok? or does it mean “Thank you for bill pay sign up, we give you $10/- as a token of thanks” –> hit cancel