Words of Wisdom

One more post for this week. Just found this really long and interesting video that caught my attention. It is a long video (38 mins), but it is worth watching. This video is from youtube titled, Vivek - The Homeless Prophet, and this homeless guy talks about his spiritual views. He is quite interesting and he tries to explain his views to this videographers (who actually spoiled some part of the video by trying to make it funny). The essense of his long speech is that God is one's self, life is not about just making money and being rich, it is about discovering yourself and lead a humble life free of artificial constraints. To be happy you do not need money, fame, power or looks. All you need is a good heart, a passiononite dream and a faith in yourself. Follow your dreams and never give up.
Update: I noticed that the embedded video does not show up properly sometimes. Here is the direct link to the video, Vivek - Homeless Prohphet.

Random Jokes

Hello People:

Forward jokes than, found it from my email inbox back from 2 years. :-)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Types Of Women (as classified in today's IT age!)

HARD-DISK Woman: She remembers everything, FOREVER.

RAM Woman: She forgets about you, the moment you turn her off.

WINDOWS Woman: Everyone knows that she can't do a thing right, but no
one can live without her.

EXCEL Woman: They say she can do a lot of things but you mostly use her
for your four basic needs.

SCREENSAVER Woman: She is good for nothing but at least she is fun!

INTERNET Woman: Difficult to access. Need to keep trying.

SERVER Woman: Always crashes when you need her.

MULTIMEDIA Woman: She makes horrible things look beautiful.

CD-ROM Woman: She is always faster and faster.

E-MAIL Woman: Every ten things she says, eight are nonsense.

VIRUS Woman: Also known as "WIFE"; when you are not expecting her, she
comes, installs herself and uses all your resources.

If you try to uninstall her you will lose something, if you don't try to
uninstall her you will lose everything............

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A woman had 8 sons all named Kevin. On asking how she managed to call
one in particular She replied: That's easy. I call them by their surname!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A small boy wrote to Santa Claus : " Send me a brother "
Santa wrote back : " Send me your mother "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: For all the ladies, no offence intended.

Beware of mechanics!!!

Hello Peps:

As usual, there has been a significant delay in getting this post. I should strongly acknowledge Prithz, BSK, Bharathi, Marutham and others for constantly motivating me to keep this alive. To be honest, I started writing a post following up my post about my car and never got to complete it (I will post it immediately after this post). Oh well.... lets get on to business..

Living in USA, you tend to forget that you could be cheated in your day-to-day life doing simple things like fixing a flat tire. But, there are some creepy mechanics out there, and you gotta keep your eyes wide open. I would like to share an incident that happened to me yesterday fixing a flat tire, so that you will be more careful when fixing your flat tire.

My car got a flat tire in our office parking lot and one of my collegues reported to me that my tire is losing air. We examined the tire very carefully to locate the cause for the puncture and replaced it with my spare. Then I took the flat tire to a tire shop to get it fixed. It was a privately run performance wheels / tire shop near my office. The mechanic examined the tire, told me that it is gonna cost me $25 to fix it and is gonna be another hour before he could start working on it. Sounded reasonable. I didn't ask him many questions, left my phone number and asked him to inform me when it is done. After all, it is just a simple job, fixing a punctured tire. I went back to the office and never received any call from this dude.

After couple of hours, I went back to his shop to pick up the tire and was amazed to notice that the tire didn't look as I gave it to him. It had a big mark on both sides and the mechanic was trying to explain me that I drove the car punctured and hence, the tires are damaged and needs to be replaced. I was 100% sure that this was not the case: (1) It happened on a parking lot, and
(2) I have examined it very carefully. However, I had no way of proving this to him as I didn't ask him all these things when I gave him the tire. He must have either:

1. Intentionally damaged the tire so that he can sell me a new tire, or
2. Had an incompetant worker who spoiled the tire unintentionally and the mechanic was covering up his a**.
   

In any case, it was not a very pleasant experience. It is not about the money, it is just the feeling of getting cheated. Nobody likes the feeling of getting cheated and I am no exception.

I am trying to console myself by assumming that the damage was unintentional. Anyways, I am gonna make sure that he gets what he deserves - a written complaint to the California Auto Repair Beareau and a public disclosure of this event with his name, and address. I am also considering setting up a trap to catch him red-handed. ;-)

I heard that car mechanics are very very dis-honest in the US. Looks like there was a study conducted to measure this. A brand new certified car (with no defects) was taken to different mechanic shops all over the country. Just the spark plug was pulled off so that the car wouldn't start. It was found that a large number of the mechanics were dishonest. They would fix the problem [i.e. plugging the spark plug back] and charge a hefty sum reporting non-existant problems. The worst suggestion of all was to replace the engine transmission.

Beware of mechanics!!!