Moved: Kapil's Korner

Kapil's Korner has now moved to a new place

This blog will now be updated at the new spot. So get going and change also change your RSS feeds if you have been a regular around here.

• Blog URL: http://kapilb.com/blog/
• Blog Feed RSS 2.0
• Comments RSS 2.0

All comments on this blog will be de-activated now.

What's cooking?

Tomato & Basil Soup with Malaysian Noodles. Read more at my Khana Peena blog.

Look ma, I saved some money

In the last two weeks I identified two areas where I could save some money by being just a little more smarter. I thought I should share this here, so that you could pick a tip incase you were paying for something which does not need to be paid for.

Credit Card Annual Fees
The credit card company charged me Rs.700 as annual fees. I called their helpline and told them I have this charge on my current statement - what must I do? In a prompt response the customer service rep replies "Sir, we see that you have been a customer with us since 2003, and I would like to waive off this fee as a special for you." Within less than 5 minutes it was solved and I saved some good bucks.

MSN Messages on Hutch
My latest bill from Hutch said something I had not been aware about so far. My friends use MSN Messenger to send SMS on my mobile. All this while, it has been free incoming and I would be charged only to reply. But it seems from now, they are even charging for incoming SMS from the MSN network. So watch out, that message which appears on MSN "your contact maybe charged for receiving messages by his network provider" is actually true and could run up a bill for your dear friend. Unless of course you hate him/her and want him to pay a heavy mobile bill, then go ahead and do it. And if you are one of those unlucky ones who does get bombarded with MSN messages, just delete your cell number from there, simple.

So that's all for now, will keep sharing such more tips whenever I can save some little money. More from you? feel free to share it with me.

Happy Sankranti

Wishing you all a very Happy Sankranti. Received some delicious "tilgur ladoos" for this special occasion. I remember as kids we did a lot of kite flying during this season. We used to cut our fingers with the manja, buy lots of manja months in advance and spend sometime rubbing finely broken glass over it so that it would be sharpest and cut other kites in the sky on this day.

This year is not going to be anything special, it's going to be just an ordinary day at work with lots of sweet ladoos being exchanged and yes my team is also conducting the "Screwdriver" session at office. It's going to be an exciting Saturday evening. More updates after the event.

Tags: Makar Sankranti , Ladoos , Indian Festival

kapilb.com has moved

After spending more than one year at blogger.com, I have finally decided to move into my personal domain kapilb.com and set-up the blog there. As a starter I changed my hosting company and moved my domain to Jodohost. They seemed very helpful in the sign-up and it was very prompt indeed. I got a phone call as soon as I had signed up, they made the necessary verification (since I used the CC, I suppose) and immediately sent across the DNS details to activate the domain. Thank you Arjun for recommending jodohost to me.

I have started reading the necessary installation docs for the Wordpress set-up but I am sure it's going to take me a little more time to move things around. Work load at office is at an all-time high so I am not getting much time to do the "after office" net sessions from home. Although I did spend a little time trying to explore the vast collection of themes available for the Wordpress platform. It's a difficult choice, but I am going to make one - Hopefully over the weekend if no work over-flows.

hotmuggs in office

This week we got delivery of the new coffee mugs which we wanted for our office. They are these smart looking hotmuggs which come with a little tilt. So when you see the coffee inside its not flat but rather tilting towards you making you feel the coffee will pour out anytime now.

What we have also done is come up with some great copy lines which have been etched on one side of the cup. Let me share a few with you:

• There is nothing called after office hours. Minutes are all we are usually left with.

• I must be in love with my boss.
  Every night I see him screaming in my dreams.

• Considering the deadlines I meet everyday, I have already died a thousand times.

So here's to another long session of coffee and ideas. Actually make that "tea" for me, please.

Reading for 2006

I was supposed to accompany N for clothes shopping on Saturday evening, but she made a mistake - She made me walk past Crossword. And at that moment I could not resist myself from entering the place and picking up a few of the books from my "wish-list" which I very efficiently store in my mobile phone. However half-way through my list, I realised that I was actually not enjoying the titles I had short-listed and there were a lot many more interesting books around there and eventually ended up picking up books which I did not intend to. So the year 2006 starts with 2 picks:

The Spirit of Lagaan by Satyajit Bhatkal
This one is a Sriram recommendation. And let me tell you, this guy never goes wrong. His first recommendation - The Goal was also a great read. I picked this book only because I have always been interested in knowing more about the energy and activities that go behind making a feature film. I cherish to become a film director one day.

No Logo by Naomi Klein
I wanted to actually pick another book in advertising/marketing, but it looked more like a text book and kind of gave a boring feel. So I picked up this one which had some interesting case studies of famous companies and all about their marketing/branding activities. Look forward to reading this.

(Out of Stock) The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
I was looking forward to pick this one with great interest. It supposedly has been ranked as one of the best business books of year 2005. Don't ask me for a source. I read this somewhere in The Times of India, Mumbai edition.

Besides the new ones, I also have The Blink to complete. So much to read, so little time.

You can comment now

A few days back I noticed that my create new comment link was broken and gave an error page when clicked. Thanks to Gangadhar and Anumita, I reminded once again that it should be corrected immediately.

Thank you to them and all those who had trouble, can now continue to comment.

Plumber in my face

Have had to look at this plumber on my desktop all of today. Seems bloglines is going through a major technical downtime. It's been about 6 hours now since I last saw them online.

But it's been a very busy day at office, so I really didn't miss my blog list much since I haven't got those few free moments to catch up on what's happening elsewhere.

Just hit me - this is my first post for the new year. I am yet to upload the photos from the New Year party we celebrated at the US Club.