What's up with Blue Dart?

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Update (6th Dec 2011) - Blue Dart called me yesterday and asked me about this problem. I gave a brief description of the issue I faced. They apologized for the delay and the confusion caused. They also asked for an email from me. They said they will be opening an incident for this.

I am writing this post since my experience with Blue Dart courier service in India in the last 30 months has not been very smooth. Also, when I connected the dots, there seemed to be some anomaly in the whole process. Read the details below:

In the month of November 2011, I ordered the book Inheritance Cycle - Part 4 for my sister through Landmark website. It was a pre-paid order and Landmark processed it and dispatched the next day itself. A tracking number was emailed to me and it was sent through Blue Dart courier service.

I called up my sister and informed her that it will be delivered soon and told her to make sure that someone will be at home. Since she was on vacation, she opted to stay at home the next day.

The next day evening, when I checked the status of the delivery, it mentioned the following:

Status: Unable to deliver/no one available at given address


I immediately called up my sister and she told me that no one from Blue Dart had come that day. I got the number of Blue Dart's local office, and texted her the tracking number and the contact number.

The next day evening, someone called from Blue Dart and delivered the book. Please note that the house land phone number was provided in the courier.

My question is - If they didn't find anyone at the house the previous day, then why didn't they call up then itself?

Fast forward to Nov 29th, 2011. I ordered Jeffrey Archer's "Only time will tell", again from Landmark. This time, I had given my office address since I wanted to read the book before my sister.

Landmark, as usual, informed me the next day itself by email that the book has been dispatched, again through Blue Dart. On Nov 30th, I checked the status on Blue Dart website and saw that the courier is in transit and expected date of delivery was Nov 30th.

I called up the office reception and informed that I will be getting a courier and they were more that happy to collect it.

At 6 PM on Nov 30th, just before leaving the office, I checked the status of the consignment. I was in for a shock:

It was undelivered !

I checked with reception and they confirmed that no courier came for me that day. I went home empty handed.

Next day morning, I called up Blue Dart's local office and inquired about the consignment. After a couple of dropped calls and all, they told me that it will be delivered today. When I asked whether they need my cell  number or office desk number, they told me that they already have it and they will deliver it today.

Well, this time, they kept their word. The courier was delivered by Dec 1st evening. Here's the update:

I see a pattern in this. As one of my good friends mentioned today, if someone in Blue Dart pulls up a report, they may be able to see a pattern of couriers not being delivered in the first attempt, but getting delivered the next day instead.

Is Blue Dart getting stricter on delivery SLAs and not scaling the operations according to demand which in turn leads to the employees giving vague and fake reasons at first and then delivering on the next day?

Let me know in the comments if any of you have faced such issues with Blue Dart.

Follow me on Twitter  - http://twitter.com/#!/visakhcr

"They said it couldn’t be done, and he did it." RIP, Dennis.

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Couple of days back, we lost one of the most influential innovators of new age, Dennis Ritchie.

Right now, relaxing on his chair at the happy hunting grounds, he will be bragging about C and Unix, his innovations, which changed the way we program and conduct our day to day business. Steve Jobs would have already drawn up plans to redesign and rewrite the entire code base of heaven (or whatever it is called).

To be frank, the untimely demise of Jobs didn't hurt me like how it hurts now. When I saw the Google Plus post which broke the news of Dennis's departure from the material world, my heart sank. Job's death gave me a shock, but Dennis's death pulled me down to the lowest ebb.

Like so many others, my life started with BASIC and FORTRAN, but it was the first class on C which changed my life track. And then came Unix, which saved me from the evil clutches of Windows (which makes people lazy) and Mainframe (which makes life monotonous).

Dennis, hope you had a safe landing. Happy hunting!

Rakht Charitra (Part - 1) - Movie review

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"Revenge is the purest emotion."

The first part of the two-series film, Rakht Charitra, keeps up to its tagline. As the saying goes, revenge makes a man blind. And as Gandhiji said, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind."

After the collateral damage in the form of Aag, Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) has risen from the ashes like a phoenix. He delivers a well paced, well scripted and well shot movie in the form of Rakht Charitra. The film is split into two parts, with the second part slated to release on November 19.

The plot sticks to the actual story of the Telugu politician, Paritala Ravindra. Ravindra started out as a naxalite to avenge the death of his father and brother and later enters mainstream politics. Read the document from Scribd for more details about him.

[spoilers ahead]

Coming back to the film, Vivek Oberoi plays the role of Ravi, who leaves his studies and comes back to his village Anatpur to avenge his father's and brother's death. Aided by his father's people, he succeeds in killing the big shots who were behind the tragedy that occurred in his family. One of the villians son is left and that causes the wannabe politician cum superstar, Sivaji (Shatrughnan Sinha - looks like he is trying to portray NTR) to enter the scene.

He makes Ravi an MLA and a minister. Ravi using his new power wipes out his last enemy. The film ends with the introduction of Suryanarayan Reddy (Suriya Sivakumar) which leaves the story open for the second part.

[spoilers end ]

Most of the cast delivers commendable performances. Vivek Oberoi especially delivers his career best. Shatrughnan Sinha as the shrewd politician is really convincing. The teaser for the second part gives us a glimpse of a powerhouse performance by Suriya. National award winner actress Priyamani also joins Suriya for part 2.

As one will expect, the camera angles are trademark RGV. The background score, which samples heavily from Hindu slokams are apt (though a bit repetitive at some times). There is only one song which was completely unnecessary.

Like any other RGV movie, RC has all the ingredients to make it a dark movie. This time, the blood and gore has gone very high which forced RGV to comment that company will look like Kabhi Khushi Khabhi Gham. Beware, this is not at all for the light hearted.

I will give it 9/10.

One more thing. If you are going for the part 1, book your calendars for November 19 for part 2. Otherwise, it will be like just having the starters and skipping an 8 course meal!!.

Ars Technica forum user details hacked??

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Today, I got the following email from Ars Technica.

The following is an e-mail sent to you by an administrator of "Ars Technica
OpenForum". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other comments you
find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at the following
address:

civis@arstechnica.com

Include this full e-mail (particularly the headers).

Message sent to you follows:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello,

You are receiving this message because you have a registered an Ars
Technica account with this email address.

Our previous forum provider (Social Strata, formerly known as Groupee and
Infopop) had a server hacked recently, and has advised us that private
registration email addresses were harvested. These included email
addresses for anyone who registered with Ars Technica while we were still
using their services. In addition, the rooted server was used to send out
at least one mass phishing attempt.

Although Groupee/Social Strata tells us that no password information of any
kind was accessible from that server, we still recommend that you change
your Ars Technica password (and any account on a third party site you use
that password with) just to be safe.

We became aware of this issue this morning and are following up with
Groupee/Social Strata to see if we can get more details and assurances on
the scope of the compromise. We have also requested that they purge all
Ars Technica data from their systems so future problems don't affect our
users.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you would like
to read further updates on this issue, please see the active announcement
we have in our new forums:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1108748

Please contact us with any questions.

Thanks,
Kurt Mackey
Technical Directory, Ars Technica

Well, nowadays everyone seems to be a victim of hacking....!!

Tuzhilin Report - How Google fights fraud clicks

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Alexander Tuzhilin's paper on how Google handle's fraud clicks.

Tuzhilin Report - How Google fights fraud clicks

You can download it here.

Delhi High Court's ruling legalizing homosexuality

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Here's the full ruling of Delhi High Court which legalizes homosexuality and voids section 377 of Indian Penal Code. (105 pages, nice info for lawyers)

Delhi High Court Ruling - 2nd July

You can download the pdf from BBC.

The King of the World

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The King of the World is a novella which I wrote some time back. I have published it online at The King of the World. 

Check it out and let me know how it is. I am embedding it below. 

The King of the World

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Fiction Books novel horror

"Leave Out All the Rest"

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When Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight released two years back, other than Shadow of the Day, Bleed it Out and What I have done!, I didn't like any other song. 

But after watching the not-so-good (or better, I would say ok) movie Twilight last week, the song Leave Out All the Rest is growing on me. I have listened to it countless times after that. Maybe the beautiful lyrics and the awesome rendoring is making me addicted to it. Fantastic job by Linkin Park.

Here's lyrics of Leave Out All the Rest.

I dreamed I was missing

You were so scared

But no one would listen

Cause no one else cared

 

After my dreaming

I woke with this fear

What am I leaving

When I'm done here

 

So if you're asking me

I want you to know

 

[Chorus]

When my time comes

Forget the wrong that I've done

Help me leave behind some

Reasons to be missed

 

And don't resent me

And when you're feeling empty

Keep me in your memory

 

Leave out all the rest

Leave out all the rest

[End Chorus]

 

Don't be afraid

I've taking my beating

I've shared what I've been

 

I'm strong on the surface

Not all the way through

I've never been perfect

But neither have you

 

So if you're asking me

I want you to know

 

[Chorus]

When my time comes

Forget the wrong that I've done

Help me leave behind some

Reasons to be missed

 

Don't resent me

And when you're feeling empty

Keep me in your memory

 

Leave out all the rest

Leave out all the rest

[End Chorus]

 

Forgetting

All the hurt inside

You've learned to hide so well

 

Pretending

Someone else can come and save me from myself

I can't be who you are

 

[Chorus]

When my time comes

Forget the wrong that ive done

Help me leave behind some

Reasons to be missed

 

Don't resent me

And when you're feeling empty

Keep me in your memory

 

Leave out all the rest

Leave out all the rest

 

Forgetting

All the hurt inside

You've learned to hide so well

 

Pretending

Someone else can come and save me from myself

I can't be who you are

I can't be who you are

 

Congrats, Manmohan!

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Dear Dr Manmohan Singhji 

My heartiest felicitations to you on being chosen as the Leader of the Congress parliamentary party. 

Having regard to the fact that you head the single largest party and the largest pre-election alliance and taking note of the letters of support enabling you to command majority support of the newly constituted 15th Lok Sabha, I have the pleasure to appoint you the prime minister and request you to advice me as to the names of others to be appointed in the council of ministers. 

I propose to administer the oath of office and secrecy on Friday, May 22, 2009, at Rashtrapati Bhavan at a mutually convenient time. 

With regards, 

Yours sincerely, 

Pratibha Devisingh Patil

(Source: Indiatimes)

Unix, AWK and me!

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I am a database guy. Or to be more specific, I am a Dataware housing developer. I work in Teradata and Mainframe. I was doing my regular Fastloads and Multiloads and suddenly it happened.

Recession!!

Recession mean less money. Which translates to less spending. On everything. Which again means less jobs. Which can mean I might lose my job anytime.

So, I was asked to learn Unix and Oracle (PL/SQL) so that there is no need to hire someone else to do these stuff. And well, for the last one week, I have been learning awk and how to work on Unix platform. And I should say I find it pretty good! I used to do some stuff on Linux in my college days, but this is far above those things.

I could write one awk script to do an expression matching in 2 days. I wrote a shell script to call the awk and then the PL/SQL in one day. And in 5 days, I was able to fine tune it and write a proper script. I should say, I am pretty proud.