dhunay.blog

Saturday, January 31, 2004

Fool Proof Plan

It's a scary time of year for us men. Valentine's Day is coming up and it'll be on us before you can say "you are my chicken curry and I am your nan", or "you are my idli and I am your sambar", or "you are my mango and I am your lassie". And each year we men are faced with the dilemma of what to buy for our significant others to show our affection. Well this year I've decided to take an alternative route to spice up the year's most romantic day... for myself, at least.

This year, April Fool's Day will come a little earlier for my little dhunni (Mrs. Dhunay). Unfortunately for her, Ebay has proven The Beatles wrong by selling, what was previously thought as unattainable with money: LOVE.

An article in the New York Post tells how it's possible to purchase an imaginary girlfriend/boyfriend for a fee of about $50 US. What your money gets you is a few letters, a phone call or two, a digital picture and even gifts... for an additional charge, of course. You can request the letters to be as naughty or nice as you wish and an actual "girlfriend" will pretend to be your love interest.

So before I spend a fortune on Bernard Callebaut, flowers or a fancy-shmancy dinner, I'm going to get my wife steamed by "accidentally" misplacing a couple of love letters from an imaginary girlfriend. And just as she's about to call the lawyer to write up the divorce papers, I'll let her in on the joke and we'll have a big laugh out of it. Hopefully she'll completely forget about needing chocolates or flowers and just be happy with me being true.

I mean, really, how could a plan like this back-fire??

# posted by Nav : 11:48 AM

Monday, January 26, 2004

How dumb

Recently I read a story about a man who became angry with his wife. So angry that he chose to shoot her with his hand gun. When shot she folded over and fell to the ground. The man so distraught over this chose to commit suicide. He shot himself.

As luck would have it, the woman did not die. In fact, she proceeded to get up and make her way over to her neighbors’ house and call 911. The man was however not so lucky. He died.

So take my advice. If you ever chose to kill your wife, make sure she's actually dead before you proceed to kill yourself.

# posted by Nav : 8:43 PM

Saturday, January 17, 2004

Designer Dog

Designer Dogs are the latest trend to hit Calgary. I was introduced to this whole concept by one of my ultra-trendy neighbors who seems to have an insatiable need to have the latest edition and style of everything.

My neighbor introduced me to his four-month-old Labradoodle, one of the rising popular dog breeds (yeah, I know, I also chuckled when I first heard it). As the name clearly indicates, the little rascal is a combination of a Labrador retriever and Poodle. Separating themselves from the average "mutt", these dogs are specifically mated to match the newer lifestyle in today's culture.

After a lengthy conversation with my neighbor, I found that other cross-breeds were being successfully raised, such as the Cocker Spaniel/Poodle "Cockapoo", the Yorkie/Poodle "Yorkipoo" and the Schnauzer/Poodle "Schnoodle". Apparently, a poodle can mate with just about any breed of dog it wishes - I'm not talking about the actual act of mating. And even though the names of these breeds may be nauseatingly corny, the mixed canines are actually pretty cute.

Supposedly, the Labradoodle pups inherit all the good traits of the two parent breeds. The mix reputedly combines the intelligence, indifferent nature, delicate frame and non-shedding features of the poodle with the playfulness, lovability and loyalty of a lab. With this trend of mix-breeding catching on, let's just hope no one takes a cue from the film "Dumb and Dumber" and attempt mating a bulldog and shih-tzu. No one wants to own a "Bullshit".

# posted by Nav : 10:17 AM

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Nav To The Rescue

I was sitting in a local pub waiting for a friend to arrive, when I pulled out my iPaq to kill some time. Within seconds a young woman sitting at the table next to me said, "Does your Palm Pilot do, uh, um, uh...that wireless thing?"

After I politely explained to her that my iPaq was a Pocket PC, and not a Palm Pilot, she explained that she was on a business trip and had forgotten what hotel her reservation was for. The woman explained to me that if she could just get one e-mail, all the information would be there.

Everything was in place for my finest gadget moment ever. In my most authoritative and reassuring voice, I said, "Don't worry, ma'am, we'll get to that e-mail." (I lived in South Carolina for half a life, so I do actually use words such as "ma'am").

I set up my iPaq to connect via Bluetooth to my Sony-Ericsson Bluetooth phone, which I used to dial out to a local ISP. Much to the ladies amazement, I connected to the Internet via the cell phone, handed over my iPaq, and she logged into her Web-based e-mail. The hotel reservation was buried deep in her e-mail, because she scrolled through several screens, and the dialup connection was admittedly not very speedy.

Then, someone should have rolled the cameras because it would have made a great commercial. A military man in a table beside her said incredulously (and with a red-neck drawl that was truly Hollywood-worthy), "Are you on the Internet??!!" She said, "Yes!” The military guy turned around to everyone around his table and announced, "Hey everybody, this woman over here is on the Internet and see NO WIRES!" He waved his hands around an imaginary computer, like a magician performing levitation. His gestures were met by nods of amazement all around. At that moment, it seemed as if everyone around was leaning in to see the magic. She clicked and waited, clicked and waited, then "YES!" She found her reservation. She was so excited I was afraid she was going to kiss me.

This experience encapsulated so many benefits about technology that I don't really know where to begin. There's the wireless angle, the smart phone angle, the utility of Bluetooth, and the maturation of the Internet itself as a tool for the average person to get things done in daily life. For me though the experience demonstrates something more transcendent than any one technology: when quick thinking and the right solution come together at the right time, technology can be downright heroic. In my daily work, I sometimes get bogged down in business issues and management issues that have nothing to do with technology, but in the end, it's the sheer wonder of technology that energizes me.

# posted by Nav : 10:43 PM

Friday, January 09, 2004

Mad Salmon

There was a story in the paper today about the couple that owned that last cow. You know the mad one? They'd never sold their cows before, they were award winning milk cows, you see. But the husband, after a particularly bad bout of meningitis has had 4 limbs partially amputated. Meaning he's had part of every single leg and arm he's got - cut off. And even though they'd modified his tractor he couldn't keep up with the milking. So, they sold the cows. The mad cow had a name, you know. They'd named it....Sakerviskoe. It had put food on their table.

But it was born four months before Canada and the US placed the ban on what cows were fed. In April of 1997.

Far be it for me to point out that terrorists could kill you at any second, a bus could hit you first thing in the morning, that salmon could give you cancer and that cigarette you're jamming in your gate will kill you more surely than anything else. But I do feel the need to pose the following quote from Macleans for consideration....."At its height, the British mad cow crisis was discovering 1,000 new cases a week. In North America, there have now been two isolated cases in a year."

In Canada, if there's a cow that looks sick, they kill it and test it. As far as I've read, in the US, they don't. So, yeah, maybe poor little Sakerviskoe went out to market. But blame your government for that, not ours.

This is destroying our livelihood. And, yes, Canadians do appreciate cheap meat. And, yes, we will go on in our don't-rock-the-boat tolerant fashion. But I don't think we're the ones with the mad cow problem. I think it's the rest of the world.

And I don't think it's the cows that are mad.

It's all very well to go on and on about the "mad cows" but seriously, get over it and push your governments to test as well as Canada's does. Stop your moaning and complaining and use your voice to make a change. Does anyone who eats British beef wonder if they're going to die or do you all have it in for the Canadians? Let's just sit about and watch another country die, that sounds like fun, "pass the dip will ya? Cause you know, I've always hated those damn smug war-mongering Canadians. Let's just stick it to them."

Don't get me wrong, but next time you go to a restaurant and order salmon are you going to ask if it's farmed or not?

# posted by Nav : 7:21 PM

Monday, January 05, 2004

Arrogance

This past weekend, NASA successfully landed a robot on the Mars surface. The goal is clear: determine whether the red planet does or ever did harbor life.

The problem as I see it is that the search is necessarily limited to life as we know it, carbon based organisms dependent on liquid water. Scientists' approach to finding life is very Earth-centric.

Are we as humans so arrogant, that we believe any other form of life will be just like us?

If life does exist outside of our planet, care we capable of recognizing it?

Our current spacecrafts and others in the works may well not recognize what's right under their mechanical noses.

# posted by Nav : 8:28 PM