Bobby

Mission Impossible III

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Watched “Mission Impossible III” yesterday. It was great. The action scenes were awesome. I do have to admit that I liked the first one the best. I don’t remember much about part two :). If you are in for a nice action movie, then this movie is definitely recommended.
Mission Impossible III - click to enlarge (41 kb).
Related Links:
– CNN Review
– Yahoo Movies
– Official Site
Another movie I am looking forward to is “The DaVinci Code” which will be released on May 19th.

Fries With That?

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I was discussing this with my friends previously but they did not believe it. Then I came across this article today. It is an NY Times editorial which talks about how McDonald’s is starting to implement long-distance call centers for taking orders from drive-thru customers! Some 50 McDonald’s franchises are reportedly testing this remote order-taking technology. So, when you are sitting in your car and giving that order for your McChicken, the person you are talking to might actually be sitting in California instead of good ol’ Knoxville! Think about that.
NY Times (4/13/2006): Fries With That?
NY Times (4/11/2006): The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order

Fries With That?
NY Times Editorial. April 13, 2006
Sometimes it’s all too easy to lose perspective in the modern world. On Tuesday, The Times reported that McDonald’s has begun experimenting with a new way of routing menu orders at the drive-through window. The voice you hear at the squawk box comes not from an employee inside the restaurant but from a call center hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. The order is then relayed to the front of the very restaurant where you are bodily present and filled as usual. A man who wants a Big N’ Tasty in Wyoming and a woman who wants an Egg McMuffin in Honolulu may be placing their orders with the same teenager in California. Several customers, told of the fact, seemed taken aback.
And yet where is the surprise? There you sit, perhaps miles from home, idling in a car that was manufactured almost anywhere, burning gasoline refined from a substance pumped out of the ground who knows where and shipped, in all likelihood, across the ocean to be trucked to the station where you last filled up. Meanwhile you’re talking to your best friend on your cellphone

Second time uncle!

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Became a second time uncle today! Dada (Tej – my elder brother) and Iteima (sis-in-law) Mona’s first child was born today at 10:38 AM IST (01:08 AM Eastern). It’s a baby boy and weighs 3 kg. His nickname is Buju.
Buju’s website is at www.maisnam.net/buju/ :). He does not have an email address yet ;).

01:02:03 04/05/06

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This time-date sequence (01:02:03 04/05/06) will only occur once (for each date format) during this millenium. The next one will be in the year 3006!
American Date Format
April 5 2006. 01:02:03 AM
01:02:03 04/05/06
British Date Format
May 4 2006. 01:02:03 AM
01:02:03 04/05/06
Via: email forwards from friends

Hibernate shortcut in Windows Xp

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Create a shorcut (Right click on Desktop > New > Shorcut) and point it to:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Hibernate
Tip: If you do not like the default icon, you can change it by
– right clicking on the icon
– choose “Properties”
– click “Change Icon”
– put the following value in the “Look for icons in this file” field:
%SystemRoot%\system32\SHELL32.dll
– click “Ok”
– choose desired icon
– click “Apply”

UT receives largest gift ever – $32.5M from the Haslam family

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“Community leaders Jim and Natalie Haslam and the Haslam Family Foundation have given the University of Tennessee $32.5 million, the largest gift ever to the university from individuals.”
04/06/2006: http://www.utk.edu/news/haslamgift.shtml
04/06/2006: http://pr.tennessee.edu/news/release.asp?id=2417
04/05/2006: KnoxNews
A very generous gift indeed. And in the true Volunteer spirit.

GoogleMail.com

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One of my friends in the UK sent me an email from his Gmail account and I noticed that he had a username@googlemail.com email address instead of a username@gmail.com one. I went to www.googlemail.com and saw that it redirected to Gmail.
At first I thought that a username@googlemail.com email address will be different from a username@gmail.com email address (for example, if username@yahoo.co.uk works, then username@yahoo.com will not work). But later I sent a test email to my own Gmail account using googlemail.com instead of gmail.com and it worked.
I googled a bit (of course :)) and found that Google has problems with the Gmail trademark in the UK and so they are using the googlemail.com address instead of the gmail.com one. More information about this is here and here (cached).
Maybe, this website (www.gmail.co.uk) is the one they are problems with???