Praveen’s Journal

Three people check into a hotel. They pay £30 to the manager and go to their room. The manager suddenly remembers that the room rate is £25 and gives £5 to the bellboy to return to the people. On the way to the room the bellboy reasons that £5 would be difficult to share among three people so he pockets £2 and gives £1 to each person. Now each person paid £10 and got back £1. So they paid £9 each, totalling £27. The bellboy has £2, totalling £29. Where is the missing £1?

The distance between Station Atena and Station Barcena is 90 miles. A train starts from Atena towards Barcena. A bird starts at the same time from Barcena straight towards the moving train. On reaching the train, it instantaneously turns back and returns to Barcena. The bird makes these journeys from Barcena to the train and back to Barcena continuously till the train reaches Barcena. The bird finally returns to Barcena and rests. Calculate the total distance in miles the bird travels in the following two cases:

(a) the bird flies at 80 miles per hour and the speed of the train is 60 miles per hour

(b) the bird flies at 60 miles per hour and the speed of the train is 80 miles per hour

CNET News.com says habitual activity (e.g., smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling, etc.) changes neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain when habits are formed. These neural patterns created by habit can be changed or altered. But when a stimulus from the old days returns, the dormant pattern can reassert itself, according to a new study from the M.I.T., putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot… The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning.

To change the splash screen of Gnome, you need to do the following.

1. Download your favourite splash screen and store it in some location.
2. Invoke the GConf editor (Applications –> System Tools –> Configuration Editor).
3. Change the key for the splash screen, '/apps/gnome-session/options' to store the absolute path of the splash screen that you want to use.

To change the background color while the splash screen shows, do the following.

1. Invoke the GDM configuration dialog (System –> Administration –> Login Screen Setup).
2. Change the background screen color to the desired color that suits your theme.

I am really not able to make a clear decision (still) in terms of the distribution to use on my desktop at home (Debian or Ubuntu). I was running Debian SID previously. Once Ubuntu 5.04 was released, I have switched to Ubuntu and came back to Debian again after a couple of weeks. But now, I have again switched to Ubuntu 5.10. Everything seems to be fine till now. I miss emacs-snapshot package. Need to see if I have to add any other repository for it. Think I would stay with Ubuntu. But, may not be!

One month back, I have bought a Linksys WRT54GP2-NA (Wireless-G Broadband Router with 2 Phone Ports) from VeriLAN store. I have decided to buy this from US because, there was no equivalent model available for India. The product itself costs just $159 and the shipping charge was $32 which made the toal as $191 which come approximately INR. 8404.

I thought that I will get this product as peaceful as my Linksys PAP2 from iConnectHere. But this time, the Indian Customs’ Postal Appraisal Department(PAD) played the villian role in the delivery of the product. Tracking the product online showed me that this product landed in India on 11th of September. But I didn’t receive any notification from the customs so far. Waiting till 1st of October, I lost my peace of mind and went to the Postal Appraising Departmet of Indian Customs at Museum Road, Bangalore. I gave my address and the USPS tracking number. One of the attender there was kind enough (for INR. 50) searched the files and told me that the product was lying with them only. He added that there was a memo sent to me regarding that before a couple of weeks. Thank the sincerity of Indian Postal Service, I didn’t receive it at all. I got the parcel number of the router from the attender. I wrote a letter to the Superintended of PAD stating that I bought it for personal use and I attached the invoice along with that letter. For my shock, the PAD Superintended asked me to get the Importer-Exporter Code(IEC) for getting it cleared.

After discussing with my uncle who does a lot of customs transactions, I came to know that IEC is exempted for “Actual User”, a person who imports a product for personal use. I again went to the PAD office and told the Superintended that the IEC was not needed for personal use, he gave me a shock again. He said that he will charge a fine of INR. 5000 for not producing the IEC and a duty of INR. 3400 will be charge against the product. He added that if I am ready to pay a bribe of INR. 3000 to him, he will rule out the fine and also reduce the duty to INR. 1400. I really got too much of anger and shouted at him about his wrong expectation and also asked him to do as per law. I said I will pay whatever is charged as per law. My uncle later assured me that he can’t levy any fine and also the actual duty would come only around INR. 1400. I am just eagarly waiting for the parcel to be cleared.

As long as lazy bastards like this Superintended are there in the Indian Government Offices, it is almost impossible to rule out bribe of any sort in India.