Book Reading!

Off late, I have started reading more of eBooks than the physical ones. Especially, reading on Kindle for Android on my LG Optimus Black.

I wasn't able to spend too much time reading either because my kids distracted me or I used to return so late that everyone is sleeping and I can't switch on the lights.

I had been resisting reading on kindle for Android as I was biased about getting the reading experience only on a physical book. 

I couldn't have been more wrong. Form of the read content - physical or electronic - doesn't matter. What matters more is the content itself. 

I think going forward I will be slowly migrating to eBooks! Carry your library in your pocket and less physical clutter :-)

Blogger app on Android

One of the reasons I found for writing less on my blog is due to the unavailability of my laptop.

I had two laptops and both are broke now..  My 2 year old broke them.  Even when I had them, It was used by my family. I do have an iPad, but again the same case.

I was thinking about the resolutions I had made this year (My resolutions for this year deserve their own post later) and I just realized how miserably I had failed in the one where I had promised to write at least one post a week.

The last I wrote was around 11 months back.

That was when I thought "hey, anyways my online life has moved to my android smartphone.. Why not just use it for blogging as well!" 

But long blog post are not easy on a smartphone. Smartphones are definitely useful for micro-blogging such as twitter and Facebook updates.

I found that there is an app available for Blogger and just installed it to give it a shot.

In fact, I am writing this post using it.

The app is descent enough. Doesn't have a lot of editing options though.

For example, I still haven't figured out a way to enter images between text.

Also, doesn't show my existing labels.. I will have to type them manually :-(

Definitely not easier to type long post on a smartphone. Thanks to the SwiftKey keyboard, some of the typing pain is reduced by prediction and auto-fill.

Still I think PCs are best for regular blogging. 

Now let me post this to see how this shows up in my blog!

Great Opportunity!

I had a rare opportunity to meet the Verizon Senior Leadership team, on Feb 7th 2011,   which comprised of Lowell McAdam - President and Chief Operating Officer (and a CEO-to-be :)), Roger Gurnani - Chief Information Officer and Bob Toohey - President, Verizon Business. Also, accompanied them was my Verizon Data Services India - Managing Director - Mr. Rahul Saxena.

I think this was once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet all the big guys in one place, given the fact that we are 8000 miles away from the headquarters. It was a honour to meet Lowell whom I have been watching closely in our internal quarterly webcast and other videos.

Our present Chairman and CEO - Ivan Seidenberg is a charismatic personality and has been my favorite. In my view, he represents a fatherly figure and a living legend who started his career as a cable splicer's assistant, who grew up the ladder through his hard work and personality.

So with Lowell to take over Ivan's spot in future, I was trying hard to understand and like this man. My initial self-made impression of this man was not that great. But I was dead wrong.

As I am hearing more and more of Lowell, I am beginning to like him. He seems to be a very principled person and very process-oriented too. He rolled out the Verizon Credo and I see the genuineness in his message and in the way he is driving the Credo at every available opportunity. Lowell is charismatic in his own sense and has a good sense of humour. He is a mechanical engineer, so can find him using lot of mechanical analogies (such as.. "there is always a higher gear.."), which is great :).

So, Lowell, I have bought into you. I am glad Verizon is in great hands and poised to boldly go where no one has gone before (remembering Star Trek ;))

Well, my meeting went flawlessly. All the preparation (mostly mental), on what I wanted to talk and how I wanted to take them through the floor, finally proved fruitful.

After my meeting, I rushed to the Townhall, which was organized in our Cafeteria and was expected to overflow, to grab a seat. As expected, it was wonderful speech by Lowell. He has promised to come back again and I hope I am around by that time.


DISCLAIMER: I usually stay away from my office related topics and this is probably the first one and hopeful is the last one. I had to write this because of my excitement and as an evidence to the fact that I met a great leader. All views expressed here are my own and I solely take responsibility for whatever is expressed here.

Catching up, forever!

Just as I was opening up some two dozen blogs/articles into separate tabs in my browser (Firefox, but occasionally jump to Chrome), I was beginning to wonder how this has become an endless routine for me. Not that I dread doing this. In fact, i am a tech news junkie and would like to keep myself updated with as much latest technology and its related business news as possible.

Well, I wasn't this way earlier and there is a whole background on why I became such a tech news junkie. In the early years of the last decade, I was young, unmarried and had a new job. As like most youngsters then, I was upto date with the latest technology and gadgets more as a means of keeping in touch with your friends. But as i was aging (lets just call it maturing ;)) and with a marriage and my first kid and with growing responsibilities at my job, I was moving moving away from most friends (except for the very few whom i keep touch on phone) and thus also losing touch with latest happenings in technology.

Another reason, that to some extent that really had kept me away from the web was the social web explosion. It was just too stressful for me to keep up with friends (constantly responding) on a constant basis. At that time, Orkut was the most popular in India. So someday, I had subconsciously decided to unplug myself from the net, of course with some conscious support from the above reasons ;).
 
Then one fine day, while talking to some of the youngsters, I was realizing how much i was like them and how i had lost track of technology. So during the last half of the previous decade, I decided to come back with a vengeance, with a thirst for knowledge on latest happenings. Once I started, I was really hooked to it till date. Since then, i think i am fairly updated with everything that's hot and buzzing in the blogosphere. With confidence I can say that i belong to the Mavens category (with reference to the book from Malcolm Gladwell)

Staying up to date does eat up lot of your time. But as long as you have a passion for it, you will not notice it.

Over a period of time, i have developed unique ways of catching up with information and organizing it for later use and sharing. That in itself deserves a separate post in itself.

But I was thinking it might be a good idea to share some some news/blogs/articles links that i really liked, every week. Of course i keep sharing them real time through twitter and facebook, but posting them into blog on a weekly basis will help others to come back and take a look at it when time permits. Anway, still considering.

Now that I have satisfied one of the resolution points for this year (keep blogging at least one post per week) :)), I am hitting the bed. 

#tweetit

Writing this out of my love for you.. Microsoft!!

Yeah! I am saying it. I don't mind saying this because as far as i can remember, a good part of my computer experience has been on windows operating systems.

And I love these guys. For what people appreciate Apple for their iDevices, was the same love i share for Microsoft when it comes to their operating system.

Beg or steal.. these guys pretty much set the standard for what the graphical UI you and i know that is today.

Of course, they are commercial and they are not open as Linux.. but that doesn't make them evil. But i do know instances where these guys showed their dark side (killing Netscape.. which again i think is back in a different avatar as FireFox) for which i hate them a lot.

Most of their products right from Windows OS, Office Suite, Exchange/Outlook, etc. (hope this not the entire list :)) ) have set a different standard for usability and convenience.

Ok.. So why am i telling all this.. its because i am concerned about the direction in which they are heading. But again, what am i concerned about here.

The concern is that i am not sure if I am ready for any other products apart from the ones mentioned above, for my day to day use. Comeon folks, Apple iPad is much more closed than Windows, Google wants me to use web a lot and Linux is still not ready for mainstream retail use.

I have been techie enough to be branded as a geek. I have built my own distros of Linux and hacked stuff. But still i love Microsoft's products for the sheer pleasure of using them. The difference is that of being a TV Electronics repair guy and the same guy watching TV at the end of the day sipping hot coffee!

You might be wondering what the hell is wrong with me while Microsoft is still here doing just fine. Believe me.. Microsoft is still here.. but i am not sure if they are ready for tomorrow.

Well the trigger for this post was this post here by Russell Beattie - The end of WIMP and rise of Touch. This trigger was backed by a slow build up of frustration on Microsoft's misfirings with their products' strategy.

These guys have lost focus on some of their products. The most important of them of all was Internet Explorer. Having killed Netscape, it was the end of fun and of course business. With literally no competition until FireFox and Chrome actually munched away a good portion of the browser pie. This was too much of a oversight on Microsoft's part.

Browser is the window to a whole new world of connectedness. Children of this generation take this one product/application for granted.

How could you lose sight of a product so important and waiting until guys like Google and Apple to actually catch up with you!!

There has been a steady downfall in terms of their product quality and usability since IE6. I guess a bit of branding change with a serious effort to revamp their technology should do the trick of winning back customers.

With Companies like Apple and Google who are changing the rules of the game by winning customers over by bringing in disruptive technologies (examples: search and iPhone) which have great usability and performance, its time for Microsoft to start taking its products seriously.

The next most important product of all, Microsoft Windows Operating System. Windows has not been doing well since XP. Vista has been good for me though, but a lot of things had gone wrong in Vista too. Customer Expectations, bad PR and negative press/blog coverage did take its toll. Though i haven't used Windows 7 myself, i do hear great reviews from the blogosphere and that its usability is same as, if not better than, Apple Mac OS.

But as Russell Beattie has mentioned in his post, the future is moving towards Tablets which obviously will use touch as the preferred (or the only) interface. I am not confident that Windows is ready as a tablet OS.

Again, I don't think its too late for Microsoft. If it can regroup and focus correct, it can do a great job of coming with a tablet version of its OS. Look at the Apple. I came up with a totally different UI and Usability for its iPad. That should be the approach for Microsoft as well.

The next biggest goof up was with Windows Mobile. In all practical sense, there is no way Microsoft can do anything about it now, unless and until it was do something as drastic as giving away its Mobile OS to OEMs for free and think of a different business model around it.

Guys @ Microsoft.. you are making mistake after mistake and I hope you correct yourself soon. Again i am big fan of your remaining products (though I stopped using IE for many years now).

I know you guys are doing a lot to get things back on track. You are doing good with your Office suite. can see that you are regrouping in terms of your developer languages and tools. But do it fast and get your products back on track.

Back again after a long break with a new Look'n'Feel

Back again after a long time. I really haven't had time to post in this blog. Also, for whatever time I do have left for browsing, most of my thoughts and comments are flowing in the form of my status updates in Facebook and Twitter.

Especially with my discovery of Yoono (addon for Firefox which lets me post/share comments on FB and Twitter at the same time.. also lets me share a site instantly), I have been liberated even more in terms of sharing my thoughts and opinions on the stuff that I like.

So looks like my chances of venting out my thoughts is going to be even more on FB and Twitter!

But nevertheless, my passion for writing has never diminished and my heart still longs to write on my blog(s).

I've decided to give myself a breath of fresh air by changing the boring default skin to something much more attractive and thus motivating myself to come back here often and consequently to post more.

I am loving this new look'n'feel.. and i hope folks visiting my blog like it as well.

Decluttering - My relentless effort so far and tips!

I have been consciously trying to optimize and enhance the way I work/live - both professionally and personally.

One of the things which proved to be an eye-opener for me is the fact that clutter (digital, physical, mental and any form for that matter) plays an important role in bringing down one's over all productivity due to various reasons.

Below are forms of clutter in my life and how I have been tackling them lately (again, the below are specific to me and not many people might have them in their life):

- Digital Clutter in the form of over-flowing mails: I have a separate huge blog post saved in the drafts at the time of this writing. While I really want to spend quality time explaining to you on how to manage your inbox (in a different blog post later) , I would like you to be aware of the ill-effects of overflowing mails. While this may not be a problem for many of us, it did prove to be a huge productivity sucker in my case.

Mail inbox, both personal and official, are the easiest to become cluttered. You can blame that on technology for having brought this kind of ease in delivering information.

The ill-effects of digital clutter is that, applications such as email clients become a burden over a period of time, rather than being a tool which enhances your professional and personal life.

Solution: First of all, do a clean up once to archive and delete all your old mails which are older than 2 months.

Second, unsubscribe from newsletters and mail groups which you haven't been reading for the past 1 month.

Third, Set rules to sort your mails into different folders (or flag them accordingly) to enable you to process the least important ones quickly. When you clear the least important ones quickly, it has 2 advantages - one, you gain immediate confidence due to the fact that you cleared a bulk of your mails real quick. Two, you have cleared the least important ones, so you do not procrastinate reading the important ones by going back to the least important ones (you have none now).

Fourth, you don't have to read every line in mails which are the obvious BAU (Business-As-Usual) mails and mails in which you are copied as a part of the group. You can right away mark them as read.

Fifth, you don't have to respond to a mail using a mail. Some conversations are easily solved by picking up the phone and using your chat software.

Lastly, use a different email account for subscribing to newsletters and for registering at different websites.

- Digital Clutter in the form of a crowded PC Desktop: I bet this a problem for most of us. Desktops have become a convenient way to access the most important files, folders and applications. But it has also become the most convenient place to dump most of the temporaraly files, folders and application shortcuts. To some extent, the application developers are responsible for this confusion.

Though some may argue that dumping as much they want in the desktop enhances productivity, I always believe that it is a source for confusion, iritation and worry for many. Simple analogy is a usual physical desk of yours. Given a choice for your physical desk, how many of your would choose to have a clean and empty desk as against a crowded desk with all the documents spread on it. Thats the same case for the PC Desktop.

Solution: First step: Start to clean up your existing desktop. Create a folder called Desktop2 and dump all the files and folders into it. This is the most quickest way to clear the clutter. Then delete all the unwanted application shortcuts. If you haven't clicked on a shortcut in the past 1 month, then there is a slim chance that you would do that now.

Then make sure you create one or two folders to store the temporaray files and folders that you may access very often.

Next step is to make sure you are consicious about not saving folders in the desktop directly. Make sure you save them in the one of the folders you have in your desktop.

I usually have one folder in which I dump all my files and two text files - contacts.txt and to-do.txt.

- Digital Clutter in the form of SMS: I hope, at least off late, agree with me on this. I receive on a average at least 20 SMS advertisements. Some times, even more. And on top of that, I also receive at least 10 more SMSs because I have subscribed with my bank, shop or some online service (Google, Twitter, etc.) to receive them.

SMS becomes a problem over a period of time, especially if you have a phone which does not allow you to easily delete your SMSs. For example, my low-end Nokia phone allows me to very painfully delete SMS on at a time.

Solution: First of all, unsubscribe your self from all the services where you had chosen to receive the SMSs. Second, block the unwanted sms by calling your phone operator and asking them to block numbers which are spamming your sms inbox. Third, if you have a more sophisticated phone, then you may install a free sms spam filter software. Fourth, don't ever disclose your phone number any website or in the back of your cheques or other physical forms. The second one (cheques) is the most common place for spammers to pickup your numbers.

- Digital and/or Physical Clutter in the form of multiple sources of Information: I have had this problem of thousands of news articles from hundreds of RSS sources cluttering my RSS News Reader (I use Google Reader).

That apart, you would have subscribed for a newsletter from lots of news sites. This especially does dual harm. Not only does it clutter your inbox, but also forms a part of information clutter.

Another more common form of clutter is multiple magazines and newspapers. They tend to easly clutter your living room and tables.

Solution: If you have been reading news from a particular site, then you are not going to read them any time in future. You go ahead and remove them from your RSS news reader and/or from your list of favorites.

Unsubscribe yourself from all the newsletters that haven't read for the past 1 month. Again, your wouldn't be reading them anytime in future.

Lastly, try to stay with one particular website and/or newspaper and/or magazine and see if you are able to read/consume every bit of information in it. Most probably, that should be good enough for you to know. Also, remember, most of the news sites and papers repeat the same news. So if you have read it here, then you wouldn't want to be reading it in a different from to finally realize that you just wasted your time.

- Digital Clutter in the form of social networking: No No.. I am not saying not go on Facebook! Social networking is required and sometimes encouraged... especially in these days where life has become hectic and our chances of physically networking has become slim.

But what I am saying is that, you don't have to be network with the same friends in multiple different sites such as facebook, myface, orkut, twitter, etc.

Again, this may not apply for everyone, but it did apply for me :). I had and still have a major problem consolidating so many different social networking platforms.

As of today, I am available on Facebook (relatively active), Twitter and LinkedIn.

Solution: Consolidate. Try to join the social networking site where most of your friends/colleagues are. Invite them to join your social networking site/group.

If you still have to leave a status message in 2/3 different sites where your friends are divided, then try using a software which can do this in one shot. For example, I leave my status in Facebook and Twitter in one shot using TweetDeck.

- Digital Clutter in the form of multiple email accounts: I had around 7 to 8 different personal email accounts with different providers. Again, this may not be the case with everyone.

As of today, I have 2 active accounts and 2 more less active ones as backup.

Solution: No big deal again. Just consolidate your multiple accounts into 2 email accounts. One is for your real communication with family, friends and colleagues. Second one is for subscribing to newsletters (if you absolutely need to do that) and using them to register at different sites. Usually you don't have to worry about consolidating your multiple email accounts. If you don't access them for some days/months, your account automatically gets disabled and your mails cleared :)).

- Physical Clutter in the form of bank and credit card statements: I receive so many statements, from Banks especially, that I had lost interest in reading them entirely. Since, I realized that some of these letters are important, I use to conveniently stack them away at multiple places - my home desk, side tables, office bag, etc.

Over a period of time, you realize that you have so much clutter everywhere because of these statements.

Solution: Go green! Now a days, banks give you an option of going green by choosing to receive statements in your email inbox (of course, banks want to cut down the cost by saving paper and shipping charges). Just go with this option. Receiving statements in your mail is very convenient and reduces your physical clutter a lot.

Don't procrastinate processing these statement: Reading them immediately and either tear them upfront and file them if you really them. Filing them is better than stacking them away in different places without even removing it from the envelope.

To be continued.. (I have so much to write but I can't wait to share this with you immediately. Will keep updating this post).

Getting back to blogging!

I am trying to get back to my blogging. Has been a long time since i have updated my blog. Especially after my recent travel to US, I never had a chance to update anything here.

And I can understand why folks are finding it hard to blog and are moving to other forms of expressions such as facebook and twitter.. its quick and easy and on the fly (doing it from any where). I myself have been at least updating my facebook status weekly. But never had the motivation to come down here and post anything lengthy.

But again I miss this blogging lengthier posts... and i guess i still love blogging as compared to facebook, orkut and twitter :).

Back again after yet another brief break

And this time my break was due to my travel to US. I had good fun this time around as I had taken my wife and kid along with me. Also I had rented out a car which really helped me going around places.

Some reasoning I have been procastinating blogging.. though I have this passion for blogging.

I am determined to continue blogging like before.

Interesting Read - Similarities of current economic crisis to the crisis of 1870s

I found this article an interesting read (The Real Great Depression).

Though many claim that the current economic crisis is the biggest one after The Great Depression of 1929, most of us mistake the current economic scenario to be same as The Great Depression (that includes me - or maybe just me :)).

Then I came across this article which explains this misunderstanding and also gives some interesting insight on an other great crisis of the 1870s which in many ways, as the article proves, is similar to the existing one.

I found this article interesting. What is also interesting is the point that author makes about the shift in economic power from Europe to America (eventually leading it to its current state) and also hints that the same might happen again and that the power may shift to countries like India and China ;).

Isn't everything coming together.. what say.. Abdul Kalam and other great minds in the recent past claimed that India would become a superpower in the next 20-30 years. That would be great.. isn't it ;)...

Yippee!! I am a PMP

I am glad to tell you that I am a Project Management Institute certified Project Management Professional(R) (PMP) ;)

After more 2 months of hard work (especially the past week has been a gruelling experience), I finally had the confidence to face the exam today.

Personally I felt that the exam was tough. So I was a bit upset half way through the exam. Upset more so because I never had time to review all my answers. I took the exam for the whole 4 hours without a break. But the end result was that I had cleared it.

The exam preparation and test experience has been very good. The exam questions ensure that you truly deserved to be called a PMP (;)). More than the certification, the knowledge I gained is invaluable.

So look out for my changed signature :)

Changing blog's name

I am changing my blog's name from Xprezzions to Mohasin's Weblog.

"Xprezzions" is probably unique. But then again I thought I will change it to much more simpler.. and what could be more simpler than letting you know that its my blog :).

I would also be changing it for my mirror blog in wordpress.

The links to post and RSS feeds remain intact.

Update 1:

I have changed the blog name again to an unique name again. How about "Mind Internals" ? :). Sounds like OS Internals.

Finally buying a laptop - HP Pavilion DV6707US

I am finally buying a laptop after thinking a lot. I was not sure if I really needed a laptop. But I have a reason to get a laptop now. Nazia needs a laptop so that she can complete her pending office work (when it is there) either her parent's home or mine. So, primarily its going to be used by my wife.

HP Pavilion DV6707US 15.4" Widescreen Laptop

I think this laptop is really good in terms of hardware configuration and features. Most of all.. very good value for money.

You can find more about this laptop in HP's product site.

Initially, I was planning to get a HCL Leaptop which is far less in terms of hardware configuration (only 1GB RAM and really bulky). And for which I would have to shell out approximately INR 35,000/- (US$ 875).

But HP Pavilion DV6707US is far better configuration and I would get it for US$729 (from Circuit City) or for US$755 (if I get it directly from HP).

My friend Sankar Dhanapal would be getting it for me today noon and Shafiq (who is my ED) will bring for me next week.

Recovered my Windows - That too in less than a minute

How stupid it makes me look - talking about my over-confidence!!

I was trying to do all kinds of crap in trying to modify the faulty c:\boot.ini.. I was trying to mount the NTFS partition as read-write and I was today trying to boot windows from within Linux (using Qemu). I think I was thinking too complicated.

It just struck me as to why not I try this simple thing - Try booting from my Windows XP CD and get into recovery mode.. if there is one. To my surprise there was a recovery mode which just gave a command prompt. I just replaced my faulty boot.ini with the original backup. And thats it.. I am done!!

I had my windows boot as normal as before. :)

But it I learnt a great deal from the whole experience.. about mounting NTFS partitions and about loading Windows from within Linux.

My Windows Boot Time optimization effort ended up in disaster.

I had been very unhappy with the Windows XP boot time for quite some time. In the initial days, the boot time was pretty impressive and I used to get the desktop in a minute and a half.

But as I kept installing lot of software and some of which includes drivers for peripherals such as web cameras, I noticed that the boot time got really bad. As of yesterday, my windows xp home edition took around 4-5 minutes to load everything and stop showing the timer cursor on the desktop.

So I could not put up any more and so I was determined to find out what was causing the slowness.

I wanted to try out the following options to speed up the boot time and I wanted to do it in the order given below:
1.) Remove unwanted startup applications that get launched.
2.) Stop unwanted services permanently from starting.
3.) Look at the boot time logs to see if there were any errors or any drivers were taking time to get loaded.

For point 1.), it is fairly simple to stop applications from getting launched. You can goto Start->Programs->Startup and look at the applications that get launched at the startup of windows. You can either delete these applications under the "Startup" menu or drag and move them to directly under "Programs" or under any other menu item.

For point 2.), goto Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services to see the list of services available in the system. One of the columns tells you the state of the service - Started, Stopped or Automatic. You can know about what this service does by right-clicking on one of the services and then clicking on properties. Service is nothing but a program which runs in the background doing some job which is necessary. For example, Microsoft's indexing service runs in the background indexing files and directories. This indexing ensures that search is very fast.

Now, these services of course consume a good amount of CPU time thus making foreground applications slower.

After reading through the service's description, you will have a fair idea on whether or not you need this service to run. For example, if you don't have wifi at home, then you may not want this service which helps you configure wifi with ease. There are good number of services which run by default, which you may not want. Surprisingly, you may find services that get installed whenever you install applications. For example, when you install iTunes, there are services which get installed which help you detect a new version of iTunes and one which is used to detect an iPod whenever it is inserted. You may want to comment of the first service which is used to check for an updated version of iTunes. You can as well check for that manually. I have services from Google, HP, Symantec, etc. which got installed later.

There is a much easier and safer way of doing Points 1.) and 2.). You can use the application "msconfig" to modify startup programs and services. Launch "msconfig" from Start->Run.

It is easier this way, but why is it safer ?? Its safer because you can undo the changes that you have done.

I would love to post the detailed steps with screenshots. But unfortunately, my windows is screwed up and I am left with the option of only recollecting whatever I remember and write the same over here.

I am yet to talk about option 3.) which is much more dangerous and not recommended for novice users. In fact, having worked on windows internals and driver development in the past, I still managed to screw up my windows installation because of this option.

There are kernel (OS) traces which can be enabled whenever you want. This is primarily used during device driver development. The way you do it is that you specify the "/debug" flag in the file "boot.ini" under C:\. You may want to take a backup of boot.ini file before modifying it.

Debug traces will be diverted to the COM port. So you need to specify the baudrate and other com port details along with the "/debug" flag. Once you have done all that, you can connect the Windows machine being debugged (called as Target) to an Host PC through a Null-modem serial cable and view the debug traces. And if I remember correctly, once the booting and loading of drivers is done, it breaks at some execution point so that you get control from there on to continue debugging.

But I did a stupid assumption that giving "/debug" in the boot.ini and not giving other com port details will dump the debug traces on the same target machine. That was a wrong assumption. When I rebooted my windows with the modified boot.ini (containing "/debug" flag), it took sometime to boot. But I never got any debug traces on the screen. After sometime, the booting came to an halt and nothing happened. I think, the windows broke its execution for me to takeover. But without a second PC, I would never know what actually happened.

Before trying out the "/debug" flag option in boot.ini, I had tried an utility called BootVis.exe which was released by Microsoft earlier. It is not supported right now, but you can still download it from other places. This utility is supposed to profile and tell you where exactly we have the delay in the boot time. But when I tried this utility, it told me at the application level as to where the delay is, but I could not get any information about boot time delays. Thats the reason why I wanted to try the debug option in boot.ini.

So ultimately, my effort to optimize the windows boot time has left my windows installation useless.

I got an idea to recover my windows partition. All I had to do was just replace the modified boot.ini with the orginal boot.ini which I had backed up.

One way I could do this is from Ubuntu (yes, my PC is a dual-boot). I could mount by primary windows partition as a read/write and then modify the boot.ini.

I would like to explain about my experience trying to mounting NTFS partitions as read/write in a separate post such that it will benefit others as well.

So.. Wish me luck!! :)

Let me hit back on Bobbie Johnson's post

Let me get emotional and hit back at Bobbie Johnson's comment on Techmeme.

First of all, let me clarify Techmeme is not valley-centric. Sitting here in India, I use Techmeme as much as people in the Valley do.

I think Bobbie is extremely pissed off with the fact that they were listed #57 on the Techmeme Leaderboard.

Bobbie Johnson writes:

But for us, it represents a tiny proportion of referral traffic.

You are lucky that you (Gaurdian) are being referred to a small but really smart and intelligent set of people. And also it shows the fact that Guardian is probably lacking some quality technology news. You can probably spend some time providing quality news rather that criticizing others.

Bobbie Johnson writes:

In the past three months, our biggest referrers included the Drudge Report, those cheeky beggars at Digg, Google News, Reddit and the Huffington Post. Further down the list I see StumbleUpon, Slashdot, BoingBoing and a number of loony New World Order conspiracist site

Again let me reiterate, Techmeme is a site where Technology and other related news is aggregated. Now what kind of news was being referred from the above sites. Most of it has to do with general news. Give us the stats and lets talk more about this.

Bobbie Johnson writes:

But for the people who jostle for position on the site's top 100, what's the use of being part of an aggregator that aggregates but doesn't send readers your way?

Now Bobbie the above comments shows your ignorance. I would beg you to go ahead and use Techmeme's feed in your aggregator (if at all you use one). The feed stories do show a link to the original story.

I hate people who give just articles just to get into lime light. I am going to boycott any news from Guardian and I am removing you guys from my news reader.

As I told you, I am emotional now.

Desperate effort to keep blogging!!

Its been a month since i've blogged. I had so much to blog again, but never really had time.

As one of constant endeavors to find a way to keep blogging, i am trying out this method of blogging through mail.

Even before i pour in my thoughts, let me actually check to see if this post from my mail makes it to my blog or not.

Back Home!!

Finally I am back home!!.. :) So very happy to see my family. Thought of taking a vacation after coming back, but unfortunately got some very important work and had to come back to office the very next day I was back. Our CIO is visiting us and we have make sure we put on a good show in front of him.

Just waiting for his visit to get over and I am planning to take off for a few days!!

Trying hard to sleep

Have been trying hard to sleep today, but am still awake. Now, its almost dawn and now that i am feeling sleepy, I am trying hard to keep myself awake :).

I need to be in office by 9.00AM in the morning to ensure that my tickets to Virginia are booked. I am going on a business visit there today evening. Should be back to Irving on Sunday.

I had a late dinner yesterday. Had been to my colleagues room last night to prepare and eat the dinner. Since I am bad at cooking, I usually join him and help him out with the dinner preparation. The dinner was a feast. We had parathas (Indian bread), egg omelet, grilled chicken and some curry (cannot name it though :).. was invention on the fly).

Then I also had to get my clothes washed at the laundry in the ground floor. All my clothes were used up and had to get them washed for my Virginia trip. Also, I had to press them and have them ready for my trip today.

I've been trying to sleep ever since but no luck :(. Thats when I thought why not blog something. Well, there is nothing interesting in this post. Just some self-talk. I was hesitant to write my personal thoughts. I've always been in a dilemma as to whether or not to mix up my personal thoughts in this blog. I have a reason for that dilemma. I would like to explain more about that, but for now I am stopping here. I will come back and update this post later today.

I am back again. Its 1.12PM now and I am waiting in the lobby for my cab. Happy that my booking for air and hotel for my Virginia trip are confirmed. Well, coming back to the dilemma, I always was not sure if it would be a good idea to mix up my personal and technical postings in my blog. I tried creating a personal blog as well where i thought I would post my personal thoughts. But it din't really help.. I was lazy to update 2 different blogs and I was unable to differentiate between a blog which is personal and blog that i would like others to see (for its news or technical nature). But thats fine. I decided to put all my thoughts in one single place and label/tag them accordingly. Okay, got to rush back to work now..