The CPK

Few mornings back, Amish- a friend from Chicago called and for next one hour, we remembered many great times we had last year in Atlanta. We were in Atlanta for a couple of months and despite deadlines with our project, we had very much fun too.
I remember our first meeting in Atlanta when I was in office and in a dire need of my daily dose of caffeine. Amish came in the office and a fellow friend told him about my craze for Starbuck's Java Chip and to my surprise, Amish too was Starbucks fan! Our quick trip to Starbucks that afternoon became a habit for next weeks to come.
In between, I had to go to New Jersey to receive Yogesh who was to join me for Atlanta and other projects. Amish came to drop me at the airport and he came to pick us up too. On our way back, he asked us about the dinner and if we were ok to eat outside. Well, I do not eat out but it was too late and the offer was appealing enough to break my rule! Amish introduced CPK - California Pizza Kitchen to me first time that evening.
One of the challenges I have for eating out is to find the food which is not only vegetarian but does not contain onion or garlic in any form. Amish has the similar food restrictions and so has Yogesh.
Amish assured us that we would get the food of our type in CPK. He suggested to order Tostada which listed as:
Tostada Pizza: "Southwestern black beans, sharp Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses topped with chilled shredded lettuce, fresh tomato salsa, green onions and crispy tortilla strips with our herb ranch dressing. Also available with grilled lime chicken."
He modified Tostada to minus Tomato salsa (contains garlic) and green onions (and no chicken of course) and replaced them with olives, broccoli and corn. Of course, Pepsi and bread accompanied this pizza. It was so yummy and I would recommend this pizza combination to you if you ever end up in CPK.
In coming time, we had many more visits to CPK and though it was 35 miles of drive one way, we were prepared to drive that far even if it was raining heavily!
After the project was over, Amish went back to his hometown Chicago and we traveled to few different cities for next two months. We were in Toronto and had a one night stop over in Chicago before flying to New Jersey. When Amish came to know about our coming to Chicago, he volunteered to pick us up from Airport and as our flight was delayed and we landed very late, only CPK would serve us some food!!!!! :)
So, we ended up one more time (and last time in this trip) to CPK.

We had one more great time and we enjoyed couple of Tostada that night. Unfortunately, I forgot to take the picture of Tostada Pizza. May be I can ask Amish to take one when he visits CPK next time...
Oh, this reminded me about another great pizza we had in "We Cook Pizza" at Grand Canyon.
Yogesh, Bhavesh and me went there from Las Vegas and after visiting Grand Canyon, we had our dinner at "We Cook Pizza" just opposite to our motel. We ensured that its sauce does not contain onion or garlic and there is no meat or any other non-veg product in "Cheese Pizza" it listed in the menu.
The cook promised us to make a pizza the way we needed and he indeed did!
While "Spicy Paneer Pizza" of (Indian) Pizza Hut is still my favorite one, my "no more outside food" restriction has forced me to convince my brain (and tongue) that cheese is no more good for my growing tummy. I have reached the mark of 70 and now my tummy enters the room two seconds before my nose does. Too bad too bad... Let there be summer soon so that I can go swimming and reduce this time difference!

I am impressed!

June 1990:
I had just finished my graduation and before joining Indian Space Research Organization, I applied for my first passport so to avoid any clearance I would need after becoming a government employee. Yes, its a bit strange here in India that if you are a government employee, you will need a no objection certificate from your office to get a passport.
I very distinctly remember that day when I reached passport office to submit my application. There was a long queue and after queuing for almost 4 hours, by the time I reached the submission window, the office time was over. I came back to this office at 4am next morning and my turn came at 1pm noon. I submitted the application and passport fees and I was told that I would get my passport in next 90 days. Almost after two months of this application, a police verification for my application happened and my neighbors endorsed my character.  A month after this inquiry, I received my passport in mail and I was so happy to have it.
August 2000:
My first passport was going to be expired in Sep 2000 and thus, I applied for a new passport in August 2000. The situation at the passport office was unchanged except that delivery period was reduced to 45 days. Same long queue and same manual system. Agents dominated this place but I did not have money for them. As I was due to fly to US that time, I applied for a "Tatkal" passport scheme in which I had to pay additional fees to get my passport in 7 working days. The additional fee was almost double to standard fee but I was prepared for that. I applied somewhere in second week of August 2000 and I had to approach city police commissioner for my police verification. After a week, I collected my second passport from passport office.
Jan 2008:
When I returned from LA/SG in last November, I realized that immigration stamps during many entries/exits in this had left very few blank pages in my passport which was to expire in August 2010. As three more years had to pass and few foreign trips are already lined up, I had to get an additional passport booklet for new visas to be issued. I enquired with my travel agent and he filled up necessary forms for me. Since applicant had to personally submit the application, I reached passport office (which was now relocated to a spacious place) was not crowded at all and I did not face any long queue. The officer at the window refused my application saying that I had to apply online! Now that's something NEWS for me. So, next day, I applied online at https://passport.gov.in/pms/OnlineRegistration.jsp and without much difficulties, I finished the registration in next 5 minutes.

The auto-generated appointment time for the submission of supporting documents was fixed on Thursday, Jan 31st at 12:30pm. During the application, I selected to pay the fee in cash during submission time.

On Jan 31st, I reached the office at 12:00pm and when my turn came, the officer there informed me that their automatic account system was down and they were not accepting cash fees. I was told to get a pay order of Rs. 1000 for this application.
I went to all nearby banks and they all were crowded by my type of applicants and after almost two hours, I could manage to get a pay order. When I presented this pay order and my application, looking at my application, the officer got confused. He said that my passport is not near its expiry and I have to come after three years! I told him that my passport has only few blank pages left and I want to apply for an additional booklet. He then went to his manager to confirm about this and on return, he told me that he can accept my application but there is an additional fee to be paid....
So, I again went to few banks and could manage to get an additional pay order in one hour. When the officer accepted my application, he told me that I would get my booklet sent to me in next three working days. At first, I thought he was trying to be good to me and I asked him again about the delivery date. He reconfirmed it to be three working days for processing and two days to reach my home via post. was skeptical about it and made up my mind to wait for at least a month if not more.
To my surprise, on 7th Feb, I received an envelope from Passport office.
If you enlarge above picture of the back of the envelope, you will notice post office stamp dated Feb 06 2008!
Upon opening the envelope and checking the booklet, I noticed that instead of providing me an additional booklet, the office just issued me a new passport (my third one). It  and This new passport has more pages and will expire in 2018... I felt happy and surprised not only that I got my passport so fast but also for the fact that its a new passport valid for next 10 years. Further to this happiness, the new passport is "printed" one and not like my earlier passports which were handwritten... These handwritten passports had created lots of problems at airports and most all times, airport security called the supervisors for passport verification!
I am impressed that my country finally has opted for the use of technology in such areas and now, its progressing towards better governance. I know its very difficult to have everything systematic in India like other countries, but it is definitely not impossible. I am impressed that government departments now value for the time of citizens and they are trying to make the life easy.

Oh No! One more iPhone post...

I put myself on a test of not using my iPhone for a while and I am proud to announce that I successfully passed the test. During entire week of not using iPhone, I never missed it even there were plenty of opportunities of either "turning someone in to ash" or "picture perfect moment".

Few days back, I was browsing through Apple site and came across some iPhone applications which fascinated me and I further discovered that these applications will need iPhone's firmware 1.1.3. I knew about this firmware version but I had not upgraded my iPhone till now. Seeing these applications, I decided to upgrade the firmware.

I started upgrading the firmware at around 11pm on Sunday and half way, I realized that I made a big mistake as I did not confirm if my existing unlocking would continue to work. Well, it was too late and at the end of the uploading new firmware to my iPhone, the phone was dead. SSH did not work nor did PUTTY or WinSCP. I just could not connect to phone using any of these software.

I forced the phone into recovery mode and as this iPhone had 1.0.2 as an original version, the recovery screen looked as below.

It reminded me of the time when we hacked this iPhone few months back in a motel in Grand Canyon...

I then downloaded old firmware and the phone still remained dead... Checking on the net, I found out that in upgrading the firmware to 1.1.3, I damaged the baseband of the phone and I just rendered it useless.... Fortunately, I found a utility on Internet which repaired the damaged baseband to 1.1.1 firmware. I then downloaded 1.1.1 on my iPhone and ended up with this screen.

The phone was not yet jailbroken and I had to connect it to Internet for downloading Jailbreaking program from Jailbreakme.com. I used the trick mentioned at www.hackthatphone.com to connect this iPhone to Internet using Emergency Calling. After Jailbreaking this phone, it looked like as below.
 
You could have noticed that a wireless icon is already visible on left top of this screenshot and I could install BSD Subsystem and SSH on the phone along with.

I than downloaded anySIM to unlock this phone and in few minutes, the phone was unlocked!

After downloading and executing anySIM, the phone unlocked itself and now, I could resume using this phone.

I then followed the steps mentioned at www.hackthatphone.com and upgraded the firmware to 1.1.2. I also downloaded some applications and my screen now looks as below.

You will notice that this phone is connected to wireless network. You will also notice that I installed "Flashlight" and "ScreenShot" applications from the web and using ScreenShot, I took these pictures. Thanks to Brent Jensen at www.Freeit4Less.com for Flashlight and Robota Software at www.polarbearfarm.com for ScreenShot applications.

By the time I finished this upgrade and installation of additional applications, it was 5 o'clock in morning!

Note:
આઈ નો ધેટ આઈ હેવ મેસ્ડ્ અપ વિથ ધ ટાઈમીંગ ઓફ ધીઝ પીક્ચર્સ. આઈ કુડ નોટ ટેક પીક્ચર્સ ડ્યુરીંગ ધ અપડેટ પ્રોસેસ.

No Brain.... No Headache...

Sometimes, I wonder what's there inside my head that it keeps on giving me so much headache when I wake up. Of course, I get happy when I get occasional headaches.. it confirms that I got the brain. But in this case, I had been struggling with this headache since almost a month. At first, I blamed it to my overeating of ice-cream in winter time. But even though my not eating ice-cream for few days (nights actually), headache continued. I then feared that I might have been accidentally stuck with nail in my skull during the reconstruction of 11KKN... or may be there is a brain tumor which is generating an excessive pressure on my brain... or may be my eye balls are inflating and are about to blast... or may be my brain is aging out and is sending me a signal for a D-Day...

Since last few days, this headache had been worst and finally, I decided to see a doctor. He advised me for a PMS X-Ray.

Well, on first look, I was happy to see that it did not show any nail or a knife in my skull or brain... It also did not show any tumor as it did not show if a brain is there or not... Since PMS x-ray can not show eyeballs, I assumed that eyeballs are not the cause....

When Dr saw this x-ray, he goes: "Oh, so you got frontal sinusitis!." Too bad too bad... He prescribed me Cefpodoxime 200mg (2D) to cure the infection, Lemoson 500mg (2D) as decongestant and Levocetrizine 5mg(1D) for anti-allergy. Its third day of this treatment and I had no headaches for last two mornings. So, yes, the medicine is working!

Loyalty Shift

Loyalty shifts either when you are betrayed or you are compelled! I have been always SpiceJet Loyal and till now, be it a trip to New Delhi, Chennai or Bangalore, I have flew SpiceJet only. There is no loyalty rewards with SpiceJet (or any economy airlines in India) and thus, when I found Air Deccan Rs. 300 cheaper then SpiceJet for my another impromptu trip to New Delhi, I chose Air Deccan.
Both flights - to and fro were on time and crew was very warm and cordial. It was my first experience of flying Air Deccan. The service was at par compared to SpiceJet.
While waiting for the flight to New Delhi, I noticed that the escalator there has been out of order since almost two months. The same notice hanging there over an I section!
This happens only in India!
I have been using iPhone extensively though I keep on complaining about it. I still keep on complaining that its not a good "phone" though its a very cool gadget. I don't use a holster for this phone and I keep it in my pocket all the time except when using. I am a very rough user of any gadgets and have dropped this phone two times already. As I keep it in my pocket, many a times, it has a company of a bunch of keys and it ends up scratching itself. Fortunately, I have put a protective film on screen to avoid any scratches. This morning, I noticed that there are too many scratches and its a time for a change.
Scratches are all over the screen and some of them are horrible. My old 6320i is still with me and ready to go. I also have an unlocked Palm Treo which I can give a chance. Its bulky phone and may not fit in my pocket. So, let me know which one to use?