Goodbye Walmart, Hello eBay!!!

Tomorrow is my last day at Walmart. I will be joining eBay from Oct 3rd. Working for Fortune 1 company with 2million employees was an expereince!!!!

I learned a lot about how the world's largest retailer operates, but now its time to take my skills elsewhere..........

HBD

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY KODALA!

HBD ADITYA

MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY ADITYA!

Happy Birthday, Adi!!!

Many happy returns of the day, Adi...have fun :-)

If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain...

For all those who are not able to come to the annaprasam, here are the house pics:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106282958929086778800/HouseSnaps?authkey=Gv1sRgCPajruCr-eGeMA

And for those who are coming, this should help to ease the shock when you see the vichitra gruham for real!

My QR code

My QR code... A quick response code!

It is a cell phone readable bar code. It can store website URL's, plain text, phone numbers and any other alphanumeric data... It is a pretty old piece of information/technology, but is still interesting.

Scan this one with a barcode scanner on your phone, for a brief info about me!!

Get yours at : http://www.qrstuff.com/

Applabs is now CSC

Recently CSC(Computer sciences corporation) has acquired Applabs. Now, I am an employee of CSC!!!!!

Check out this link

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/companies/csc-acquires-testing-firm-applabs-rs-1500-cr-870

My Trip to Dinosaur Museum

http://iadityablog.blogspot.com/2011/09/trip-to-dinosaur-museum-in-thermopolis.html

Hello from Aditya

Hello! I am excited to start writing in this blog. I will be writing more in the future.

Yellowstone - A glimpse of heaven and hell on Earth

Yellowstone - a place where the primal forces that shaped Earth's history are visible on the surface. One moment you are awed by the wide green meadows bordered by the mountains, with sparkling blue rivers and babbling brooks running through, the next you are staring into a Sulfur Calderon spewing noxious fumes and bubbling with deadly Sulfuric acid.   It is a place of contrasts, rainbow colored pools of water that can boil you alive, herds of calmly grazing bison that can gore you to death in a second, a national PARK that is WILD.

Yellowstone is believed to lie on top of an area called a hotspot where light, hot, molten mantle rock rises towards the surface. This is the cause of many of the Geothermal features that are visible in Yellowstone including Geysers, Mudpots, Hot Springs and Fumaroles.

We started our trip from Cody on Friday, driving to the Old Faithful Geyser. While this is not the most spectacular geyser, it is the most frequent and the most predictable one. To understand how Old Faithful works, imagine an underground reservoir filling up with water from the nearby river. As the heat from rock layers above hot magma superheats the water, the pressure causes it to stay liquid until when the pressure becomes too much and some of the water flashes into steam and the water and steam shoot out together in the form of a Geyser.

From Old Faithful, we visited a few hot springs. They are formed when the hot water rises to the top without the obstructions that cause Geysers to form. The blues and greens of these hot springs resemble brilliant Sapphires and Emeralds. The reds and oranges in the water are from the bacteria that can thrive in such hot temperatures, called Thermophiles. But underneath the beauty lurks great danger. Majority of the deaths in this park are from people falling into the hot springs. The springs shift around, and what is thought of as solid ground might just be a thin crust over boiling water. I DID NOT LET GO of Aditya's hand when we were in that region.

Grand Prismatic Spring

After visiting the hot springs, we drove to our lodge near the Yellowstone lake. It was a log cabin, but with all modern amenities, except TV, Cell signal and Internet. So, we get really unplugged from the world and plugged into nature. The views from our windows were of grazing bisons and lakes and mountains.

Our cabin in Lake Lodge

The next day, we engaged the services of a private tour guide to view the wildlife in the park, in the wild. We had to meet him at 6:30 in the morning at a place 40 miles away and we had to leave by 5 AM from our lodge to make that time. It has been a long time since we saw dawn in such pristine condition. We were also amazed to see the Yellowstone river all fogged up. It was a winding river of fog, that, had we not woken up so early, would never have seen, since the fog dissipates with the sun. Unfortunately, we did not have cameras powerful enough to capture that beauty and had to be satisfied with the memories in our mind.

Dawn in Lamar Valley

We spent the whole day watching wildlife in their natural habitat with our guide Pat. I now have great respect towards nature photographers and videographers for the extraordinary patience required to capture those amazing visuals.

Aditya with Pat, our guide

We saw a pack of wolves, one of the most reclusive animals, herds of bison, mountain goats, prong horn deer and a black bear, using the powerful spotting scopes and binoculars provided by the guide. We also hiked to the top of a hill to a mountain lake, where we saw lake trout in the clear water.

The silence you can hear at Trout lake

We stopped for a picnic lunch next to a brook with views of mountains and plains.

We spent nearly 10 hours there, but the time flew by amazingly fast. It did not feel like we spent that long.........We went back to the hotel that night for early dinner and sleep.

The next day, we visited the Yellowstone river waterfalls, the Sulfur Caldrons and the mud pits. We stopped by the beautiful Hayden Valley for some photo ops :-)

Family Photo

We vacated the lodge and drove back to Cody for the night. The next morning, we flew out of Yellowstone regional airport to get back to San Francisco after a 5-day very tiring but a very rewarding trip.


More Pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/100439682375564182182/YellowstoneSep2011?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCK6u4PTnpq_m1QE&feat=directlink

Death Claim May Claim Life!!

You may not believe it.But these things do happen even now in India.I was witness to this conversation in a bank(God!not our bank) recently.There are special officers with designation CCO--customer (don't) care officer.They are MBA's, B.Tech's technosavvy and trained.

Always say pleasant things, talk with a smile... BLAH BLAH...

WOMAN :Sir! I have a problem.
CCO :Problem, problem hohoho. NO PROBLEM .Tell me Madam.
WOMAN :My husband died recently and all the heirs are out of place.
CCO :How nice. Delightful.Let us put every heir in place.
WOMAN :You please understand. He was suffering a lot for a long time. He left without assigning a nominee.
CCO :So your problem is nominal. Let me see .It is a good thing that he is dead. His suffering is over.
ME :(aside) Your suffering starts now.
WOMAN :What shall I do?
CCO :You go to the hospital and collect the death certificate. Register it with concerned authorities.
WOMAN :Who?

CCO : Coming coming. Municipal Corporation,Registrar of births and deaths.
It takes some 15 days to get it.
Then go the MRO office and apply for a legal heir certificate submitting the dc.
If the estate is vast you have to apply for succession certificate from court.
Gas, electrical connections,safety lockers,deposits,bonds and all other
things must be included.

WOMAN :No, no, no let us talk about the account in your bank.

CCO : After you obtain the DC and legal heir certificate you come to me. I will give you a claim form.
You must get it signed by all the legal heirs authorizing you to receive the amount from the bank.As they are not here to sign in front of us, their signatures must be attested by proper authorities.
Now follow me very carefully!!
The signatures of these attesting proper authorities must come to us through proper channels, for us to verify their veracity and authencity.After we are satisfied with the signatures,you must get the claim form notarized.
Submit the notarized claim form along with DC, LHC and two guarantees from persons known to the bank. Atleast one of the guarantors must be owning a house in this city.
Then we will process your application.
As of now our customers are falling down left and right like ninepins.We are seriously, serially settling claims .So you will have to wait for your turn.

WOMAN :To fall down?
CCO : No, no, no.For settlement.
WOMAN : I am quite unsettled. Saving grace is its a savings account. The amount in it is paltry. I wanted to feed the poor with that money as a gesture.
You close the account and take that money because you are so poor and dumb.
CCO :No madam! Please don't be angry and leave.Let me serve you.
ME :It serves you right.

VINAYAKA CHAVITHI IN FREMONT, USA

The latest Singampalli ready for pooja

and performing pooja

Eco-friendly Living-5: Grey water harvesting

We have moved into the new house a couple of weeks ago. One of the systems set up in the house is for grey water harvesting. What exactly is that and how does it help?

The problem: The washing machine runs at least once everyday, and on many days, twice. That is roughly 220 litres of (soapy) water per day that goes down the drain. This has to be seen in the context of the water issues in Bangalore:

Groundwater problem: The rapidly expanding city sucks up groundwater at a stupendous rate. Groundwater takes ages to replenish as the surface water has to seep through the soil layers till it reaches the water table. 

Already, there are massive apartment complexes that depend solely on water trucks to deliver their daily supply of water. And where do these trucks source their water? There are people who have purchased land just to dig a deep borewell- they supply the water by trucks to the city. 

Groundwater extraction has caused the water table to drop variously from 90 to 300 meters (300 to 1000 feet) below ground level (as compared to an average water table depth of about 30 meters (90 feet) two decades ago), according to the Indian Institute of Science. (from Wikipedia)

Hence, total dependence on groundwater is not sustainable. 

Cauvery/Arkavathy Water: Another major source of water for the city are these 2 rivers. Developers of new properties charge hefty premiums to their customers with the promise of 'Cauvery water connection'- a promise that doesn't get delivered.

Imagine a massive pipeline running for more than 100 KM, sucking the water from these rivers to the city with a bevy of motors- the Bangalore water supply board is the biggest customer of the Bangalore Electricity Board. This too is not a sustainable solution.

Lakes: Once a neat system of lakes existed in Bangalore that fed rain to downstream lakes- now most of the lakes are either polluted or have been turned into apartments. 

So water conservation is extremely important in Bangalore. But we have got to wash clothes...what is the solution?

Solution:  The 'grey water' from the washing machine is treated and fed to the toilet cisterns. Since we do not need super-pure water to flush, the recycled water is a good substitute. How it operates:

Water from washing m/c (seen in background) goes to tank (seen in foreground)

Using a motor (can been seen in corner) collected water gets pumped out

To the grey water recycling system: a series of tanks that cascade the water
(the reeds absorb phosphates)

Charcoal filter is the final step (central tank) and then the water gets piped to cisterns  by gravity as the tanks are on top of the house

By this simple system, we avoid wasting the gray water and also avoid wasting fresh water for the cisterns. The system is designed by Biome Environmental Solutions, the architects of this house.

Raghav playing music

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

Salt Lake City to Cody

We are off to a trip to Yellowstone for 3 days. We flew to Salt Lake City yesterday. Picked up a rental car early and drove to Cody, Wyoming, a distance of about 400 miles.

It was an amazing drive through miles and miles of flat plains. For a large part of the drive, we did not see another car. This was probably the highest average speed we drove in US, at about 80 miles per hour. Of course, we also got a speeding ticket for driving 81 in a 65 zone.

We drove through part of the route used by the original pioneers to get to California and Oregon, the Mormon trail(see your study in scarlet), and the original pony express route. It was a condensed journey through American history.

We also drove through Wind River Canyon, where erosion by Big Horn River surfaced rocks from Half a billion years ago to the Triassic, Jurassic and cretaceous periods of 300 to 65 million years ago. We got goosebumps looking at the life history of planet earth.

We stopped in Thermopolis to visit the dinosaur museum, where in addition to casts of fossils found elsewhere, real fossils of a complete Archeopterix, rib bone of a megasaurus and a nautilus are on display. These fossils were found in Wyoming, near Thermopolis. We were thrilled to be walking where Dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago.

We are settled in Cody for the night and will be leaving for Yellowstone tomorrow. There is no Internet, no TV and veryyyyyyyy limited cellphone service in the park, so we will be unplugged from the world and pluggued into nature for a couple of days.

More after we are back in Cody(or SF)