Thursday, December 22, 2005

GoogLeee - Cool things you can do with Google.

I have been reading a few things here and there which I found really cool using google. Not to mention that I am big fan of google( as obviously I use Blogger/Gmail/Google Desktop/Google Earth/Google Local and a lot more). Well this is the regular stuff which probably most of us might be using. But here are some other interesting stuff too which I was also not knowing sometime back and which can save sometime. Check this out. All of this courtsey Google Blog

1) Trends:

If you have been using the personalized search history, this feature helps you to see the trends for your search from the past.

2) Track Packages

Will your package arrive in time? Entering a UPS, USPS or Federal Express tracking number into a Google search box will give you an update on your shipment before you can say "overnight shipping."

3) Find Toll-Free Numbers

OK, here's a secret "the man" doesn't want you to know. Some companies have a toll-free number that's buried deep on their website -- but it would take like a thousand clicks to find it, and these days, who has the time? One way to get to it more quickly is to search Google for the company name and the phrase "customer support." Like this: TiVo Customer Support.

An even trickier way to get at hard-to-reach customer support phone numbers is to search for the company name and the standard toll-free prefixes. That'll dig up some real gems. For example, "[company name] 800 OR 877 OR 888 OR 866". Give it a whirl -- and here's to less holiday stress


4) 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist

The new search trends on Google. What moved up, what came down and etc etc.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Las Vegas

I believe if there is one place any person coming to US must see is Vegas. Terms like "More", "Excess" seems to lose their relevence there. So after 3 years of being in US I decided to visit Las Vegas and see what "More" really means.

Well the entire trip we planned was for 4 days and 4 nites with one day set aside for Grand Canayon. Based on the my visit to Vegas I think the entire trip can be divided as Hotels, Shows and Casinos(Personal tips for winning at casinos). Then there are some paid shows which offer some of the best artists from all over the world performing live in front of you. This can vary from Celine Dione to some of the best acrobats in the show business. If you are in luck you can get some of these tickets for free. Otherwise you can them for half the price.Click on each of these links for more details about Vegas.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Installing the Hard Drive on Dimension 2400

Well it had been more than two weeks since I thought of upgrading the hard drive on my Dimension 2400. I already bought the hard drive "120 GB" and thought adding the hard drive should be a piece of Cake. When I figured out where the hard drive needs to go, I realized there was no slot for the hard drive to add. I started checking the Dell forums and most of people suggested that I need a cage to support the hard drive. Not to mention that I need to pay about 10-15 USD for a cage!!!. I started looking for the cage over the ebay and also checked the local stores like the Best Buy and Circuit city. Well as expected none of them carried small things like these. Well disappointed and disheartened, I returned back and once again opened the hood of the CPU and started looking at it if I can find a place to fit my new hard drive.

Looking at it I realised I hardly use the Floppy drive on my PC and I can take that out and may be with little efforts can install the hard drive in Floppy cage. I once again started my search "google" to see if I can find any directions on this. But when I couldn't find anything else decided that I need to try this.

When I tried removing the star screws on my Dell Dimension, the person who installed this had already put so much effort in tightening the screw that there was no star left and I could hardly open it using a star screw driver. Well I was able to open it with a adjustable spanner. Once the cage was removed putting in a new hard drive was a piece of cake.

Finally I was able to get in the hard drive in place. Well there were minor glitches like finding the power chords, but most PC's do have a spare power chord. Since then every thing has been running smooth.

So if one of you have a Dimension 2400 and plan to upgrade your hard drive, You know where to look for.

p.s With my success with hard drive, I have gone ahead and bought the 512 RAM.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Bostonians Reunion


Bostonians in Bloomington


Boston...not here in USA but in India, Mumbai Vile Parle was the place where we first met. A common group of people who would be joining Patni, Pune in April 2001. The group had the following

Pune : Abhijeet Walimbe, Deepanjan Biswas, Asim vErma, Deepak Mirchandani, Palash Doshi, Sidd baruah, Praveen Shetty, Rajan singh, nalinikanta Sasmal.

Mumbai: Ashutosh Pande, Ajai Gaikwad, Lloyd Stephen, Swapnil Pampatwar, Swapnil Sharma, Sunil Kadiru, Sheetal Iyer, Nabajit, Rutesh Makhijani

Last week Lloyd and Swapnil drove all the way from CT to Bloomington, IL and met myself, Deepanjan and Nalini...Here are some of the recent snaps.

For more fotos copy and paste the following link in a browser. (Clicking on the link might not work)

http://www.snapfish.com/share/
p=825301130702619464/l=65068409/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB


If you are unable to view this photos please send me a mail or post a comment.