Going Underground

Not underground underground though I do go underground occasionally when I travel by subway trains, but I assure you those trains have got nothing to do with the Subway fast food restaurant chain.

Anyway. I need a break.

So, will be off for a while but I do hope to come back ASAP. Will be reading you guys' posts though. You can't really miss the Lankanosphere can you?

OK then, happy blogging fellas!
Later...

Finally a Final

You know how semi finals have been a bitch for us lately, right? See there, how conveniently I assumed that you're a regular reader here and that you are familiar with every little detail of my life. Of course the chances are you don't, or even you don't care. In case you don't know but do care, well, I've been playing cricket here in Japan, and after two unsuccessful attempts this time we got through to a final! Yey! The match was far easier than we thought, with the opponents (Indians, this time) being bundled out for a below par 70. Being true to our national team's performance of late, we almost fucked up chasing it but managed to reach the target with a couple of wickets to spare. Now, in couple of week's time we'll play the final, and gee don't we wanna win it.

Talking about cricket and Indians, didn't Sachin play one hell of an innings the other day? Man he almost pulled it, but lost the wicket at the most crucial time. Yet it was a true masterpiece, what an innings it was. The dude's been around for like forever and he's still 36! It's gonna be a long time before somebody break all his records.

Autumn is almost about to finish, or has it already? Anyway, too bad couldn't go see any Autumn Leaves this time around which is one of the most beautiful things you'd see here in Japan. I so love the wonderful colors, the feeling and everything. If you're in Paradise Island there are so many things you have that you can make us poor fellas envy you, but this is one where we get to score a point. Ain't that cool?

Anyway, fellas, what's been going on in the Lankanosphere of late? Couldn't even get to read many - this is a time where I could use one of those Lately in the Lankanosphere posts by the Drummer. Wait, has he done one already? Let me check...

Do you want to see your future? Do you really?

Have you ever wished that you could see into your future? Just get a glimpse of it. Just to know what you are, where you will be in few years time? I'm pretty sure most of you have, at least once or twice in your life and I bet you thought that it could only be a cool thing if you could. But have you ever stopped to consider how fucked up things could get if it were the case, instead of all things being nice?

Well, here's your chance.

On October 6th, 2009 every human in the world lost consciousness for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and withing that time they had a glimpse of their own future. Who they will be, where they will be, on the 29th of April 2010 to be exact. But within those 2 minutes and 17 seconds millions of people died from all sorts of accidents; over 800 planes crashed in USA alone, thousands of car accidents, fires - everything imaginable. But that wasn't really the worst part even. Those 137 seconds of their future people saw changed everything. If you thought you would be less concerned about the future if you could see it, you can't be anymore wrong. Instead of being less concerned, people started living for the future they saw. One man who had been sober for seven years see him being piss drunk His wife sees herself having feelings for someone she has never met in her life. Another man who's daughter has been dead for so many years sees her alive. And worst of all, some people saw absolutely nothing, which could only mean one thing...

Now, do you really want to see your future again?

The happiest person on earth...

...will have nothing to change if given a chance to go back in time and change anything they wish in their lives.

The Bug that Follows Me

Not a real one though - if it were I could have easily used some bug sprayer and get rid of him already. This is a virtual bug, one of the more irritating breed. Doesn't make sense, I know, how can a problem involving computers follow you, you might ask. See the importance of punctuation by the way; those two yous would have looked a bit stupid otherwise. Anyway. Have you come across this Windows bug where folders always open in their own windows even when the folder option setting is specified so that they should open in same window? That is perhaps the most annoying but there ever is, don't you think so? So, as I was saying this bug seems to follow me - or rather it comes up in every computer I seems to touch at work. Funnily, and luckily I might add, it didn't come up in my home laptop though. Not yet at least.

Now, this occurred first some months ago while at work. I was using a PC back then, and this came up out of nowhere. I was going to reformat my computer anyway, and did, but the damn thing came up even after that. Several hours of net-searching later, I could fix it. Then a couple of months later I switched to a laptop. Sure enough, the bug came up after a while, and again got rid of it somehow. Funny thing is, one fix that you could use in one machine doesn't work in another. Anyway, then last week I again switched my laptop to another, which has been in use for several months without any trouble at all. I set my hand on it, not two days pass by, lo' and behold, THE DAMN BUG COMES UP AGAIN!

In case there are other souls who has the same problem, thought I might share what I did. Actually there are a few, and you might try each and every one of them until you get it fixed or your brain need fixing. Usually this occurs on Vista, though XP and even Windows 98 are known to have it. If you are using Vista, chances are that you're having IE 8 in your system. First try removing it and switch back to IE 7. This might fix it. Also keep in mind that if/when you download windows updates it will download IE 8 upgrade as well. So make sure you uncheck it before you installing updates - you never really use IE in the first place, do you?

For the other methods you need to tweak the registry a bit. You could try either of the two following, first of which solved it for me but the second one too is known to solve the issue sometimes.

Solution 1

1. Open up the registry and go to HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-xxxxxxxx-1005\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.
   Here, xxx... refers to some numbers which differs from computer to computer. But it should always begin with HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21 and end with 1005. Sometimes this 1005 too can be changed to something like 1000 in your computer but worry not it's all the same.
   
   
2. Then, within it is an entry called "Explorer". You need to delete it, but just to be safe rename it to something like Explorer2 so if you mess up everything then you can always go back and change it back to what it was.
   
   
3. Reboot.
   

This should normally do it, though on some machines it doesn't work.


Solution 2

1. Go to registry entry HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\open\command
   
   
2. Change it's default value to %SystemRoot%\Explorer.exe /separate,/e,/idlist,%I,%L
   Again, backing up the original value would be a good idea in case you mess up everything.

If any of that doesn't work, you could look up on the Internet a bit more and you might come up with some other solution. Even if that doesn't work, you should probably find a good 2x2 pollak and smack a couple of blows to the computer and find a job that doesn't involve computers.

Happy debugging guys!

Nobody speaks for our human rights!

Saturday. At work. Tragic, I know. Shouldn't this be considered some kind of human rights violation, being made to work on Saturdays? That Amnesty International and all the other organizations so big on human rights and stuff need to do something about this. Surely they can't ignore such a cruel and inhuman act being carried out in public like this. Where are they when they are needed the most? Just imagine if they took the necessary steps and suddenly the cops break into our office and let us poor victims go freely! Dreaming, I know, but still that's a very pleasing thought. And just in case my boss or any other relevant party reading this, it was meant to be a joke. Of course I love to work, boss; there's nothing that can feel better than working hard for the betterment of my own as well as company's future. There, I covered my bases.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tomorrow there's going to be another cricket match - a semi final in the T20 league we're playing in and hope we'll get through. Then we can think of winning the titled and how we would be glorified and stuff. Oh, no, I shouldn't talk like that, it's not politically correct. This, rather, is how I'm supposed to talk you know. Anyway, wish us luck people - we might need it. Thanks in advance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's lucky that I was always a bit of an ambidextrous. Probably because my mom's a total leftie (not leftie leftie though) and father's a right-handed. Still the hand that I can use better among the two is my right hand, but I write with my left hand and I bat left-handed. And I can use my left had better than a normal right hander would for tasks such as using tools, holding something, ride left handed on a foot bike and pretty much everything else. Also, though I write and draw with my left hand, I can use the right for both the tasks a bit well - of course it's slow, but better than a normal person I'm pretty sure. However, it's lucky because right now here at work I'm using three monitors and two computers with two mouses. Going off topic for a moment, but which is the correct term when it comes to the computer mouse - two mouses or two mice? If you can say Windows is shutting down, surely you can say two mouses can't you? No? Whatever. Anyway, yeah, luckily I could use both the hands so using a mouse with the left hand's a no problem really.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OK then fellas, I'm off. Enjoy your weekends while I'm stuck here with work. And I typed that whole sentence with my left hand.

13 Million Dollars to Kill a Man?

Today I came across this very interesting article which claims that in America the death penalty costs average $10 million more per yer per state than life sentences. That is $500 million more per year if you consider the all 50 states. There have been 37 executions in USA last year, so that roughly accounts to 13.5 millions per execution per year.

WTF!!! was my first, second and third reaction. Way too much money to kill a few bastards, by any standard. Seriously, America needs to get its act together - indeed it's their money, but if you read that article you'll see that many people in USA itself think that it is ridiculous - because there are a lot of things you could do, lot of good things with that much of money.

Personally, I'm not either for or against the capital punishment as I see pretty strong arguments for both the cases. You could of course argue that no human, even a system, has the right to take the life of another human being irrespective of the crimes they might have committed. Also, if you see the brutality of all the methods that are employed in executing - electric chair, gas chamber or even the lethal injection is no better than stoning to death; killing is killing - that is all the more reason to oppose it. On the other hand, some of the crimes people have committed are entirely unimaginable - not to mention how barbaric - and deserve nothing short of death. If you are willing to kill another human being, if you are so desperate to rape a woman, then you so deserve to die as well. On a bit of a different note, those Amnesty International people who scream their lungs out against it amuses me at times - I often wonder how many of them eat meat. How is it OK to kill an innocent animal just so you could eat it, but not OK to get rid of a shameless bastard that has committed darkest of crimes imaginable? Beats me.

However, if the cost of the process of executing a criminal is that high, surely you have to think twice. You can imprison the criminal for good for far less money and put that money into good use. Besides, sometimes I think that imprisonment could be a far worse punishment than the death penalty, in the longer run, but it has to be proper. Someone who's sentence for life should not be able to come out in 20 years. A life sentence should be a life sentence, not a 20 year vacation. If it's made sure they spend the rest of their lives inside four confined walls with no one to talk, then that would perhaps be the meanest of tortures that there is. Living inside a dark and lone room everyday, knowing that there is no escape for the rest of you life is worse than dying, make no mistake. Serves them right. While that is being done, all that saved money can be used to make lives better for people, in turn eliminating the cause for many a crime - poverty. Educate a few children, hell you can educate a lot more than few children with five hundred million dollars. Give them better jobs, make their lives better and that'll serve better for reducing crime more than any punishment that there is.

That will be money well spent.