me

My weekends usually go hibernating copious hours, catching up on lkml, cooking good food, watching a good movie or anything that doesn't make me drive for long hours or take a long flight (well, I used to drive to NYC over the weekends but that was out of sheer necessity). Since my fiancée moved to DC, I persuaded her to do all the traveling while I do the "not very difficult job" of doing nothing. That(persuasion), as everyone knows, is not very easy! So, finally, I decided to give her a break and got myself a round trip shuttle to DC for the (last) weekend.

Now, everyone has their airline horror stories and I tend to take them very seriously. Delta Airlines, fortunately is rarely a part of these stories and I was happy that I was flying with them. And so, with a smile on my face, I took a cab to the Logan airport. Everything was as expected: I had my usual dose of a 3 hour departure delay from Boston. And just like the buses at South Station, I actually saw that the Delta flights were on ground so that they could be filled up with passengers! This may be outright common or may be there was a genuine reason flights were getting delayed but at that moment, nothing seemed like it could be the reason. Finally, my flight took off (and landed in DC) and I was having a good time until Sunday happened. That was the day I took the DC metro to Vienna (suburbs) and had a really terrible motion sickness. My flight back to Boston was on Monday morning and I was optimistic that I would feel better by that time but my body didn't really care for my optimism. It was Monday morning at 8 am, and I had nausea, dizziness and everything unpleasant. That's when the Delta horror story started.

Seeing that I was not in a very good shape to fly, my fiancée called up the Delta customer service asking what it would take to reschedule my flight to Tuesday. She was told that we had to pay a $150 rescheduling fee which was probably fine but at that time it looked like too much for a "little less than" $200 fare. We gave up; still optimistic that I would magically feel better. An hour passed and things were still the same. So, we decided to make the final call and reschedule to Tuesday. Honestly, we still had our doubts that we wouldn't have to pay the difference in fare (which was $650 on Monday for a Tuesday flight!) and so to make sure we know what we are getting into, my fiancée explicitly asked : "Are there any other fees involved that we should know about ?" The answer she received was " No ma'am, you only have to pay a $150 fee rescheduling fee". My fiancée thought that we could probably save a bit more considering the fact that I am actually ill and so wished to talk to the supervisor to ask for a reduction in the rescheduling fee. After explaining the whole story to the supervisor again, what we heard from her completely bowled us over. The supervisor said "We do have to pay the rescheduling fee and *also* have to pay the difference in fair!" And when we confronted her saying that we spoke to two customer reps minutes before her who told us that there was no other fees involved, she didn't really care; in fact, she didn't even offer an apology. All she could offer us were statements like : "The system wouldn't allow such a transaction" or " the customer rep didn't mention anything like that".

At this point, my fiancée was furious and I realized it's probably best to end the call as it was going nowhere! We disconnected the call, and I tried my best to feel better(somehow) and finally took the flight. I actually wanted to feel worse so that I could throw up inside the aircraft but later realized that would be too evil of me and discomfort to fellow passengers. Again, as usual, the flight from DC was late by an hour because of some lame reason, the flight itself was very uncomfortable : my nausea was bad to the extent of being painful and I somehow passed one hour and 12 minutes and finally reached Boston.

So, what exactly am I whining about ?
We spoke to two customer service reps who had no idea that we had to pay the difference in fare along with the rescheduling fee. Does that mean they were irresponsible ? No, that means that Delta doesn't give a damn about customer service (and so is the case with any other airline). Once the ticket is sold, their liability becomes zero. And the way the supervisor handled the misinformation provided by the reps just shows how serious they are about the whole thing.

And Delta, this is what I have to say to you : I will probably fly with you again; because I would have no other option or I would get a really good deal but you really need to pick a role model for yourself and learn what customer service is all about. Here's one for a start.

So well, it has been a long gap before I am back from hibernation again and probably I wouldn't have, had it not been for the important security updates I was missing on my CMS. It's only when I look at the last post that I realize how dead this place has been the last year.

So, here's a new year resolution that I will hopefully fail to achieve just like everybody does with theirs : write more often and write more lines! In fact, it is a pity how we have submitted to the 140 character limit of expressing ourselves imposed by the unavoidable necessity that is twitter.

Unfortunately, even if it's been a year, there is nothing much that has been happening : yeah life's been stagnant pretty much. However despite the slumbering economy, I have kept my promise of increasing my debt: Examples include getting myself a new riding machine , trying to do something else after coming back from work rather than just watching those sinister but somewhat addictive episodes of family guy, south park and everything else that's not sex and the city, setting up a living room that looks less like a garbage forest and more like a living room etc etc.

However, there has been a not-that-significant-yet-important change in my life: I got engaged :) (and so I am not sure on how much I can keep up on my promise of writing more often).

Nothing much! No, really, I really have no clue why I couldn't get time to post something; or maybe, I didn't have anything to write about! Well, whatever the reason, I thought I would sum it up. To be honest, making a sudden thrust to a "so called busy life" has made me busy :), that's what I think happened to me. I mean, ofcourse, school was busy but you tend to fall into that daily routine and then you find ways of being free, err.. don't understand what I am trying to say here ? Me neither, just forget it!

Among other things, i got a chance to put my carpentry skills to test with this DIY computer table kit (courtesy my girlfriend). Here is how it looks now:

Yeah I know, it looks *abused* now but at some point it was shining new! If you lift your head up towards upper left, you will notice the alien-ish blue LED clock that is also a DIY. The kit is a perfect gift to yourself for those unthinkable boring times and you can get it here . The best part, however is that you don't even have to solder anything and the connections simply look cute. Here's how the backside looks:

And this is how the front looks (Lights switched off to bring out the best ^-^)

Then, there was also this trip to India last December. Going back home was more than refreshing. No, I don't have any pictures; I mean c'mon I was out there enjoying! Not snapping photographs to post on my blog! Yes, you got me there ! As a matter of fact, I was but I am just too lazy. Here's a picture of a dam I visited which is supposed to be Asia's largest in terms of (catchment) area.

Here's one more of the whole catchment area

Coming back to the snow haven was absolutely not very pleasant. But maybe, that was the reason why I got to stay indoors and write this post :)

Being the time of the year when finances have made a bad hit on me, life couldn't have been better without a credit card scam. Yes, you heard it right, finally I made the grand entry to the list of people who have been scammed. All the usual bragging about specializing in Computer Security was now worth two cents or may be less.

Orkut sucks! Once, an interesting social networking site that I have used often to reunite with old friends, it has become a haven for spammers and suckers that are eager to try out their idiotic javascript nuisances. Yes, I am talking about the scrapbook: once an interesting feature, it's now like a symlink to my mail spam folder. I mean, why on earth do they allow javascript in the scrapbook ? Can I disable it somehow ? Even if I can, why is it hidden somewhere in the depths of the Marina Trench because I simply can't FIND it! Hey,the scrapbook is meant to be used to drop off a small message to someone, right ? Why has it to do some javascript coolness or madness to be more precise. And you know what, that (madness) is absolutely ok with me. What's not ok is that with all the spam floating around in my spambook(Oh yes, I am fed up of deleting them), I miss out on the genuine get-in-touch and say-hi-how-are-you scraps that my friends send me once in while.

Orkut dev team ! I know you are a brilliant bunch of people out there. Please please do something about it. I really don't want to delete my account because it's the best address book I can ever have (had)!

UPDATE: Here's something which is a more serious concern: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gU98JC3pwFFdUMNRnqQ_CNA7u25g

Oh my gaawwwd! It's still there! I thought some crazy alien should have already hacked in by now! But I gave it a try and voila, I am in :)

So here I am in a Starbucks, somewhere in Manhattan at 3:50 am. Not that I am not smart enough to figure out where exactly I am; I just don't care enough presently to find that out. When the world has more reasons to suck besides her gravitational pull, the only option I was left with was to go on a trip :) That way,although my mind is thinking of something else, my body is pretending to do something else and it's a really good way of fooling yourself (that you don't give a damn)

Just a few days back I was complaining about life being unfair to me; Today, I still do it but there's a catch. Now it's unfair because one of my most dreamed of dreams came true!! Oh God! I am not used to this!! An internship opportunity with a company that runs on the same philosophy that has fascinated me since its inception. Nothing more to say except

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!