The Eternal Truth...

There are only 3 ways to write a blog... The Right Way, The Wrong Way and MY Way :-)

Programming Myself....

If you want something you never had, you must do something you never have done!!! - That's meee!!! can't be better:-)

Revamping my old beauty

I was running late for home after i promised wifey i would come in early. I stopped at the stationary shop  near my home to pick up a few items. I saw a shop run by two small boys which was always crowded. This shop was an "arts" shop and they dealt with stickerings and paintings. I just stopped by to enquire if they could help in getting my car painted. The guys who looked like were in early twenties or late teens were very enthusiastic and charged 10 K to do the paint job. I had researched a few places and knew guys were asking closed to 12 K. But i was not in any mood to spend that kind of moolah. Sensing my displeasure , one of them casually told me that instead of painting he could use some of his stickering skills to give a facelift to the car. I was surprised and asked him to give me more details. He quickly fired up his computer screen and mocked my car and showed what he could do to cars with just stickers. I told him to make it look sporty and at the same time did not want too many stickers to spoil the look. He promised a good look and i gave it to him. He really put some life to my car. All around good stickering and also he had my number plate changed to some cool font as well. All for 1k. So i guess my car painting can wait. The car is looking real sporty now. Will post few pics soon.

Revamping my old beauty

Ok, it was getting closer that in order to get my fuel reimbursements, i needed to show that i had a car which i was using. So it was time for getting the old beauty of mine registered in my name. I went to the RTO for this transfer only to realize that since the car was a 1987 model, these guys had to pull the records ( physical files, as RTO was not computerized then) manually and this would require more time and effort to follow up with these guys on a daily basis for the progress. A quick call to an old friend and he coughed up a agent who worked with the RTO. I spoke to him and explained that the car was my dad's and just needed to transfer it into my name and there was no cash was involved. After the initial sync up and showing him my poor old car , i have got it settled for 750 bucks.

So it looks like one item is off my list

Revamping my old beauty

I guess i became quite nostalgic in my last post. So i would not divulge any more into those stories. I quickly made a list of items that i needed to accomplish to revamp my lil red riding hood. On a high level, these were some which needed attention

  • Get the car owner's name changed to mine. I think , the beauty now belongs to me as a paternal gift and i hold all rights to it. I would not make any changes to the car, unless i was sure that all changes were at my discretion.( Ok, you guys know me well now - that's not the truth. :-) I had to get a vehicle under my name to claim some fuel reimbursements in office :-)
  • The wheel rim's were pretty old and had been rusted my inside, making some heavy damages to the tyre tube.
  • Get the car painted/touched for few dents
  • The car's bumper was fading in parts. I needed to get it painted. A lot of look would change if the color is back as new.
  • This model of car does not come with an AC, and driving in bangalore without AC is hell now. I needed to do something to keep me cooler.
  • I needed a good ICE ( in car entertainment ;-), my old one refused to play Mp3 disc anymore.
  • Change the steering wheel to more sporty one
  • Add some sporty wheel hubs
  • Change the windshield, Its like 30 years and the windshield glass was becoming weak. It would fail me every time it would rain
  • Talking about rain, i had to do something for the brakes. The car brakes would turn useless during rain .( A quick trivia  - did you know that Maruti had a defect when it released this model of car - the brakes would turn ineffective if the car reached a top speed of 80 kmph)
  • Work on some upholstery for the car interiors.

These were some of my immediate car revamps that was in waiting. I am also aware that these would cost a lot , but i am in no hurry to have them made overnight. So i decided to take each of these as individual projects per month depending on the cost of the them and work on it. I am also intending to put a lot of research and effort and see that i revamp my car with a limited budget :-).

E51 - my most used apps

The more i use my E51, the more i am discovering its unlimited potential. Here i am listing a few apps which i am using and looks like they have slowly made into my life

I use mail for exchange from Nokia and Road sync from datawiz to have my mails pushed from server to my cell. I can view, read, download attachments.

Best profile is good application, to switch my preferences while i am at office or at home. It helps me maintain the home-office balance

I am always short of words and this dictionary helps me be in constant touch with the english language to learn new words

Gravity is a wonderful application that lets me tweet directly from my mobile. So you expect the twitter to be in full swing :-)

IM plus - A good IM to stay in touch with friends on yahoo, gmail, msn and ICQ all at the same time.

Free call sprite:  This is a good application for managing the way calls are being made. With this i no longer have to wait with phone near my ear till they pick up the call

Explorer - This is more like an file management explorer tool for all file management activities

Flash SMS: I use to send some important sms to friends and colleagues. The sms shows up directly on the screen of your cell. So there is no way you can miss

FolderPlay: I use this to play music after dumping all my fav songs onto a folder.

Phone pilot : This is a good call management tool . I can selective accept calls and also direct blacklisted people to voice mails

Phone wallet: Helps keep me secure my personal info. This is password protected

Quick office : Helps me view - word, excel, presentations and pdf docs right on my cell

S60 Ticker : Displays incomming sms, mails and any other text that i would want

Snaptu : Comprises of a lot of widgets - cricket, twitter are some of them

Youtube : No need to explain this. The streaming is pretty good.

In addition to these apps, the active standby screen is where some of these house so that i can access them from my finger tip.

Corporate email Best Profile Dictionary
Gravity Explore IM FlashSms Freecallsprite Mp3Player 
PhonePilot PhoneWallet Quickoffice
S60Ticker Snaptu Youtube
     
     
     

Revamping my old beauty

After much speculation as to which new car should I  go for, i finally decided to revamp my old beauty. Ok , it was not so easy because i had to disregard - Grand Punto, Linea, Swift and Verna.  But then the recession factor was a huge thing and always back of my mind. I did not want to put myself in any spot. So i carefully plotted a sinister plan to revamp my old car. There were various critical areas that had to be set right for the car. But before i get there, a small rewind and my memoirs of this car when it was young :-)

In 1983, Maruti 800 - a 796 cc hatch back was developed by Maruti with active support from Suzuki. This was India's first car that was affordable to the Indian market and so much was being talked about this car, that even an initial 500 cars were exported to Hungary.

It was in 1987 ,  that this beauty ( Lil RED Riding hood) of mine was conceptualized.  I still remember that in initial day's Dad was very possessive ( he still is) of this car and would not allow anyone to touch it also. I used to fight with my family members to get the pillion seat so that i could watch my dad change gears and hope that i could pick how to drive.

My initial trust with the car was not so good. The first time i laid my hands on the car, it was a dream. I just packed  all my friends and we all went on a long drive ( This was the time when dad was out out on a business trip). After a fruit full drive, it was time to park the car in the garage. Unfortunately i still was not an expert in parking between walls. So when i was parking, i did notice the wall on my left that i was getting close :-) You can guess the remaining. All hell broke loose the next day when dad came back from his business trip. Result : - I was forbidden to touch even the car key :-)

The only saving grace was when i was employed and i would blackmail my dad saying that - I would be buying a new car and would not allow him to touch that :-)

Twitter!!!

I am on twitter now... You can follow me. Hope i will be more diligent there and you can get a real time update on me and my rants!!!