Simple Inside

After what seems to be a long and cold winter season, we only started getting warmer this week.

Yesterday was one of those beautiful days with the temperature around 74^* F.
I was driving back to home from work and it was around 5 O clock in the evening.
The road was clear and there is no traffic at all. I kept changing the songs [my iPhone is connected to the car stereo] till it picked one of my favorite songs randomly. It was a smooth ride till I see some flashing lights in the back of my car.

In the USA, it means a police car is behind you and you need to stop and pull over. It means you did some traffic offense and the cop is going to issue a ticket to you.
I pulled over to the side and the cop came around to my side window.
I handed him over my license, registration and the insurance documents.
He : “Do you know why I pulled you over, sir ?”
Me : “I don’t know.”
He : “You were going at 75 miles speed”
Actually it might be true that I was going fast, but I do not know if it is that much.
I told him the truth.
Me : “I don’t know if I was speeding. I think I did not realize how fast I was going.”

He went back to his car with my documents and I was sitting there wondering what would happen.
If he gives me a speeding ticket, then it would cost me a couple of hundred dollars in fine. It will also add “points” to my driving history which would cause my car insurance to go higher too. That will cost me, close to a thousand dollars over the course of next three years. If I go to the court, the prosecutor might reduce the offense to something lower and leave me with just a fine but no “points”, but that means I have to lose some hours from work to go the court. So, what can I do now?

The cop came back after seeing all my driving history.
He : “I saw that you have no points in your license right now.”
I was wondering to myself “So, you are going to add some points now?”
He : “Since you did not lie to me, I am going to let you go this time without a speeding ticket. I will only give a ticket for ‘Obstruction of view in the windshield’. This one does not carry any points but you will have to pay the appropriate fine.”
and then he started talking about all the legal options I have and the court date if I want to challenge this etc and everything was going above my head.
Me : “Thank you, Officer”.

and oh man…did I tell you “Yesterday was a beautiful day” ?

Tags: Living In America

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs announced a $200 price drop on their product “iPhone” within 66 days from its launch.

As an iPhone owner, I already know that they will be dropping the price, but I never expected that it will happen so soon. I was having mixed feelings yesterday.

I saw mixed reactions from the people at websites like gizmodo.com or macrumors.com. Those who have bought the iPhones for $600 were crying for their apparent loss and those who never bought the thing were all happy about that.

Anyone who bought the iPhone within the last 14 days can get the $200 discount from Apple, but I was thinking about the frustration of people who bought the iPhone just 15 days ago.
They are not eligible for the $200 discount from apple, as they exceeded the 14 day return policy. They would be really disappointed, isn’t it ?

Also many of the people who bought the phone during the past 2 months are loyal fanboys to Apple and disappointing them would be bad as well.

As per the policy, Apple does not have to care. If the same thing happens to some other company, they would not care as well.
but Apple made a move yesterday, I would say it is very clever, to give $100 back to those early adopters as a store credit.
Now, with that, they have achieved a lot of things in one shot.
1. Apple got their reputation and they showed that they care.
2. They are now making those people to spend that extra $100 again at the Apple store.
3. Since most of the products are above $100, people would spend more money at Apple again and this way they get a bigger market share.

I would say it is a very clever move from Apple. Good Work Apple !

Tags: apple, iphone, Living In America, price drop

I have been thinking of writing about this stuff, since the day my daughter was born, but never got around to actually putting it down.

I noticed this at the Labor and Delivery room, in the hospital here in the US. The head-nurse, who was supposed to be helping my wife with the delivery, had to go to a computer terminal every 10 minutes to log the events happening at the delivery room.
I took a quick peek at the terminal and watched her writing comments like “mom is pushing hard, husband standing by the side and encouraging” and stuff similar to that.

Every time she comes around and shouts “1, 2, 3 PUSH”, spends a few minutes and goes back to the computer, feeding data.
She was doing this even after the delivery, inputting height / weight and other details of the new born.

and the other thing is, the hospital had introduced a new system in place, and this nurse took a long time to figure out how things work in this new system and believe it or not, she did all the typing with her index finger, looking at the keyboard and monitor making sure when she types “A”, the monitor displays “A”.

My questions is “WHY ???”

Whose fault is this ? is it the hospital that makes these old nurses [less comfortable with operating a computer] to do this whole data entry ? or is it the way we are all heading now, focussing more on technology and forgetting the real humane value.?

While doing all these new technology, we are totally lost on the basic duty of the nurse. isnt it?

Where are we heading ?

Tags: Living In America, Technology Meets Life

You might have noticed that this website has been down for more than ten days.

Not just this website, all my other websites were all down, because 1and1.com has disabled all my websites.

Finally, I was able to contact someone from that company and I was told that my account is locked because they received web server attacks through the xmlrpc.php file I had.
Continue Reading »

Tags: Living In America

I have been waiting to write this post since last week, but couldnt manage to do that.

Last week, My brother came home with an idea to collect the signature and support of people for the Tsunami Relief Fund.
The Idea is to go to the nearby Train Station (He usually takes the train for commute to his work), in the morning rush-hours and collect the possible donations from people.

We sat down and prepared the Flyer content , printed it and made hundreds of copies.
The Flyer explained in detail, how any one can help the Tsunami Victims, by sending money by Check / Money Order / Credit Card. Its basically the same info as in http://simpleinside.com /helpindia/

We went to the station and distributed it to the people. We did not particularly ask for donations. We collected the donations and signatures from people who really came on their own, to donate to this cause, through us.

Today I have made a Money Order(MO) towards “Prime Ministers National Relief Fund” (The Bank Manager waived the bank fee for the MO. Its so nice of her.)

There were so many Kind People, so many that It would fill up the whole space on this blog.

I would like to mention about one kind lady who works as a cleaner in the station.

She is a Spanish-speaking Mexican lady, who doesnt even speak good english. but she understood what we were saying to each one of them and came up voluntarily to donate all the money she had with her at that time.

She didnt stop at that. She went and talked with other spanish people around the station and made them donate too.
She brought a few construction workers, who put all the coins from their pocket.
She went to the Dunkin Donuts shop in the station and talked something in Spanish and made them donate too…

The money she gave might be worth small, her gesture is worth millions.

If we are able to get nearly thousand dollars as MO, within 2 days of time that we spent on the station building, It would have never been possible without those kind hearts.

Our Thanks to each one of you, who did the best they can, to help the victims of the Tsunami.

Tags: Living In America