Test via Windows Live Writer

I am writing this post from Windows Live Writer.  This software is a way to post to and manage multiple blogs from the same software.

Hey, this is a test...

Hey, this is a test of new phone to blog service called Jott. It's also a white messaging service I thought I will try this out by writing my first blog post to the phone. Hope you had a nice warm Sunday, I am trying out all kinds of fungle things on the web, I found it's one of the most exciting ones, hear see if this technology really works.

Click here to listen

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$100 laptop

Folks, check this out.. the first look at the $100 laptop!!

The one laptop per child project.

My first election coming up

For the first time in my life I am eligible to vote and at a location where I can. On June 6th, CA has a primary election where there are a couple of propositions on the ballot too. I got a call yesterday from a LA Times pollster asking me a ton of questions. He made me realize that I better bone up and get educated on the local issues. For those of you wh0 havent done so, here is a link to the secretary of state's information booklet.

Mostly it seemed like the pollster wanted to know whether I thought any of the democrats could beat Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other questions included whether I could name recognize a bunch of people. Except for Senators Fienstein and Boxer, I dont think I recognized the rest.

But what I think about the main political issues is that californians have not been well served by their elected leaders. Hence they have resorted to propositions to circumvent the elected leadership. Unfortunately since most of the people are apathetic and dont vote, the propostions get used by special interests to get bad and binding decisions.

I think it was a very bad decision to put a cap on the property taxes. Home owners should pay taxes proportionate to the value of their asset. This would raise most of the money necessary for the state to function. More importantly I think it would lead to a significant cooling in housing prices.

Wine Tasting & Jazz Film Noir in the city!

Went to a great wine tasting in the city today. Hopped on the train in the afternoon to meet a bunch of people at Ghirardelli Square. The event was Uncorked!. For about $35 you get to see a bunch of wineries (quite eclectic ones) along the street close to the square.

The day was one of those brilliant sunny days in San Franciso, an ideal day to go drink wine. Every now and then we would go off to the steps on the waters edge and watch the bay swimmers as well as the many sail boats. We tasted some great wine and got a very good deal on an excellent cabernet.

I then capped the day off with another one of my favorite combinations: Film Noir and Jazz. This was a movie series at the Balboa theatre from the SF Jazz Noir film festival. We watched this really well made and well accompanied movie I Want To Live. Susan Hayward gives a very powerful performance as Barbara Graham, the last woman to be executed in California.

After watching this movie, I cannot think of anyone who can still support the death penalty.

Company trip to see the Da Vinci code

We had a company outing to see the Da Vinci Code. I had previosly listenened to the book on a CD and was sorta OK with the movie. While the movie seemed mostly true to the book, it did not seem to capture any of the drama. The characters seemed very flat and the acting seemed sorta tiring. I dont know whose fault it is, but I think they all could have done a better job.

I also realised that as a company outing, movies are inconvenient in getting to know your co-workers. Would much prefer a more active event like bowling or hiking etc..

The Play Pump

Today I watched an amazing episode of PBS Frontline World. Thank you PBS for bringing this amazing quality programming. Among the episodes stories, the one that appealed to me most being engineer myself was the Play Pump.

Trevor Field, a retired advertising executive came up with this amazingly simple idea for helping thousands of african women solve a very important problem: How to get clean water? And he did this with such a simple yet efficient solution: harness the power of children at play. He designed the play pump. This is basically a pump built into a children's merry-go-round. When the children play with the merry-go-round, they actually are causing a pump to work to pull water from bore well and store it in an overhead tank. Check out the full story at the above included link.

I just love such cool engineering solution to some of the world's pressing problems...