The French Connection!

I was in New York again today. Went there with Ashish as he hasn't been there till now. He had asked me to come with him today. The weather was good, thunderstorm were predicted in the later part of day and it was mostly cloudy. Even then, I decided to go. When we left home, it was drizzling but we were like "lets' go.
So, what made me name this post like this? Well, I was waiting at the Staten Island Ferry Complex for the ferry when a French chick sitting on the bench beside us came over and asked for a cigarette. I told her that I don't smoke and she left. She seemed desperate for it as she asked 3 more people standing there before she got one from a Chinese fella who sat on the bench next to her's. Actually this girl was accompanied by another friend of hers, she also being a girl. This friend was not all interested in smoking and so was busy looking inside her bag. Well, both of them were beautiful n hot. But the other one, who was not interested in smoking was more hot in a way :)
Soon she was done with her smoke and then they were talking again in French between themselves. Few minutes later she (the one who smoked) came over to me and asked me as to "Do I speak English?" I answered her in affirmative. Then she asked me what place in NY she can see. First of all, honestly I was startled, by the fact that a good looking girl is talking to me. Not that none has talked me before. A many had and day in and day out I talk to a number of them here and there at work and outside. But for this one I was not expecting for some reason. So here we go back, well I told her that she can go to Times Square, Central Park, roam around 34th. At that point her friend too came over and joined. She said that they were looking for some nice place where they can have fun. A part of my mind was stunned and thought exactly what they were looking for and asking. At this I took a step back (which I feel sorry for now :( thinking of them) and said that they can go to Central Park and sit there in peace and spend some time if they are looking for a cool place away from hustles. But she insisted that they wanna go to a "nice place". She then said that where can she get drinks. I told her that why not try in Times square as there as some bars, I know, and then they can have good time spent there. After this she inquired where we are from and what are we doing here. Well, we exchanged our origins and purpose of being there. At that time, I asked them as to where they are coming from and they told that they are from France. Some talks here and there and then greetings exchanged and they left.
I sat there thinking of them and waiting for the ferry and looking again for them but they were not there to my sorrow.

The Icons!

I came across a slide show on Discovery website regarding early days of the three icons of the computer industry, viz. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Bill Gates.
Have a look to know about their early days. And yes, there's a mugshot too. Guess whose?

The All Time Hits!

In India, everyone of us have grown up with those utterly butterly delicious Amul advertisements. Be it in print or on tv. I always used to love those ads. The print ads still continue to come on the billboards. They have a knack of coming beautifully on the current affairs which make me love the creators and the ideas more and more.

So, here it goes for all the lovers of the utterly butterly ads. Check out & Enjoy!

Strike!

Strikes were so common back in India for me. Everyday someone somewhere in the city was on strike for some reason. At times, I had faced hardship due to them in a way or another.
When I came to USA, one of the many things I thought don't happen here was a strike! But I was proved wrong today. And what a day they chose to call a strike. This is a long weekend here as we have a holiday on Monday for Memorial Day. I was supposed to leave for Virginia today afternoon. In the morning, I thought I would take a Shortline bus to my office as I had some luggage and going with Manish can be troublesome as Ashish and Harpreet will also be carrying their stuff to office. So much fitting in the car's trunk would not have been a certain problem but I didn't wanted to give it a chance. So, there I was waiting for 8:47am bus, but it didn't came. Harpreet had joined me at the bus stop as he had decided to take the bus today for office. We waited till 9:00am when a fellow standing there and waiting for the bus like us inquired as to "how long have we been waiting there?". We said that its more than 15 minutes to which he replied that it may be a strike as he heard somewhere in the morning on tv or radio. He was not sure but we were. It was indeed a strike as no bus had passed from the other side also and we were waiting for almost half an hour. So we decided to go back. We came to office with Manish without any hassles for the luggage we all were having.
Anyways, I checked on their website, and they had the strike information on the schedules page. I had only one alternative now and that was to take a train. But to my misery, there was a train from Ramsey station at 12:07pm which reached NY at 1:10pm and after that at 1:07 which reached NY at 2:10pm. Well, my bus from NY to DC was to leave at 2:00pm and in no way I would be able to make it if I was supposed to board the 1:07 train. I could not leave office at 11:30 to make for the 12:07 train as I had came out out weekly meeting and I had some things to work on prioirty. So I decided to call it off and informed my relatives that I would be taking the bus on Saturday morning now. I hate this stuff, when I am all in mood and something crap happens.
Now I am just sitting idle in home, doing nothing but writing this blog and watching Prison Break.
Happy Weekend to you all!

Another Lawsuit against MS

Well, well well MS seems to being better at facing lawsuits. I'm not pretty sure but is it a part of their marketing strategy? I know, it's not but then I don't know how they are handling it and managing it so beautifully.
Back in March, a lawsuit was filed agains Microsoft and guess who's to blame this time? Dude, it's pretty simple. Comeon, yeah its their so hyped baby, all thanks to Vista.

The plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006, before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that turned out to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits.

What's intersting that a whole pack of internal company documents, emails and communications have been unearthed. Many of these documents concern senior executives and the way they are unhappy with Vista in one or another way. At times, peopl inside MS who had a sying felt that things are not good with Vista thing at all.

Check out the New York Times article here.

Happy Birthday Spam!

30 years ago, on May 3, 1978 Spam was born on Arpanet. Gary Thuerk, a marketer at Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the US government run computer network which eventually became Internet. Gary had sent an sales email for latest series of DEC computers that were going to be launched. The email contained venues for product display in California.

You can see the original email verbatim here.

An exhaustive story on Spam is posted on New Scientist Tech.