Bringing things up to..

Let us say that a forty year old person gets sick and goes to the hospital. The doctors admit the person in the hospital and they bring him/her out of sickness to a recovery point after working very hard on the patient.

Then the patient's relatives tell the doctor "it is not enough if you bring him/her to this level or even to the same level of health before the person was sick. The new requirement for a healthy forty year old has now been set. So please keep him/her in the hospital till the person is able to run a marathon, have 20/20 vision and also meets these new list of requirements" and they hand the doctor a list.. 

Would that make sense?

Let us now take another simpler case. Your car tail lights stop working. You find out that it is a fused bulb after taking it to the local auto repair shop. You ask that person to replace the bulb and hand you back the car. The repairman goes "whoa whoa whoa.. stop it right there! you cannot just replace that bulb with a another filament bulb. The energy standards have changed now in the last ten years. you have to put in an LED lamp that meets the lastest energy rating.  Also, the bulb housing in the car is only for a filament lamp. You have to gut part of the insides of the car just to make this lamp change, as that is the only way to meet the current standard"

Would that make sense? 

Maybe it does to some people. It does not to me!

Yesterday I made grand plans to come home a little early and write something for work, go to yoga, take a nice shower (since the previous night the shower had turned cold midway) only to find out that our water heater had started leaking and it was pretty much broken. We had to replace it in short notice. 

Just going into that area to shut off the inlet water and drain the tank, cost me a nights sleep thanks to all that dust that had accumulated in that closet over the last 8 years! 

Here was how the typical conversation went with the plumbers :

Can you replace the heater?

P: yes we can within 24 hours. but they dont sell the 40 gallons any more. they sell 38 or 48 gallons. 

What is the difference ?

P: not much. you get the same pressure etc. some government requirement to save the 2 gallons somewhere!

How much is the heater and install ?

P: (quotes us a number that is way more than what the cost of heater at home depot is + a normal labor rate for install, given it is a 3 hour job)

Why so much?

P: you see these connecting hoses, braces, etc. etc. We have to bring all these upto code. Looks like this was done 8 years ago. The codes are different now. Let me show you this book. you have to cut this piping, weld this tubing, go underground, above ground, blah blah blah.. and that is why it is an extra grand

But it was working fine till yesterday and it was installed 10 years ago by the previous house owner. We had to change the connects when we upgraded the house. All I want is to get the same thing back. 

P: Sorry Sir. We have to bring this up to code! It is the law. we are licensed and this is how we will do it so it will pass the permitting.

Given the "Law", we had no choice but to go with the cheapest quote that still did the new tubing, piping stuff. That pretty much took out the saturday morning routine. 

On the bright side, we now have hot water again.

On the dark side, I went into a rage on hearing about this "bringing up to code.." stuff. At this rate we have to tear down the whole house again every 10 years in the name of "bringing it up"

They sure get creative, don't they?

This crossed the spam filter and presented itself in the Inbox!

Very creative way to get your account info, no?

.

I'm flattered!!!

I have been notified, that a whole bunch of women, started following me on twitter.

Naturally curious, I logged onto twitter and found that all those different women under different names had the same picture on the profile photo and in reality it was just one person under many guises following me, following me, following me...

The photograph was that of a blonde, possibly twenty something in a relatively provocative pose, which baffled me some more...

Why would anyone want to do this? What exactly is the scam here?

If somebody did want to find out something about me, they could follow me once. Why follow me multiple times under multiple names?

I'm not flattered anymore, but now I'm curious.

If anyone out there knows the answer, please let me know!

.

Copy wopy, plagiarize vagiarize...blog shwog..

Have been watching how the mommy blogger circle is catching up on plagiarizing of posts. Kiran, who I read regularly (especially her self deprecating posts crack me up) was copied. So were other Mommy bloggers.

One possible theory based on a funny conversation I had at a party recently with a friends friend.

Me : So what are all those guys in that circle doing these days?
FF : Most of them have gone back to India over the last two years.
Me : what about that dude? and his roomate?
FF : "that dude" is still here. His roomate went back and is now settled in UP and he is doing great.
Me : what does he do?
FF : Oh, he is making a lot of money in advertising!
Me : Wow! that is nice. didn't know that he was into advertising..
FF : No NO.. not that type of advertising. He is making money by generating internet traffic!
Me : ????

FF goes on to explain

FF : He has hired a lot of women, mostly women with kids who want to work parttime from home. They all generate a network of websites using blogger and generate cross traffic. The people he hires read other blogs, pick up things of interest and create cross linked blogs. He promotes these and gets a cut on the ad. revenue!

Me : My god.. this puts Amway to shame by a wide margin! This is like the Borg that keeps assimilating things in star trek! Even people who are not part of the original clique will get sucked into this ring!

FF : exactly!

This conversation is now three months old. I guess the whole thing is so legit that it has blurred the difference between real traffic and fake traffic.

Imagine a thousand people clicking on each other's blog ad's a few hours a day..

now Imagine some dude laughing his ass off watching people who pour their heart out in blog posts realize

1. they have been plagiarized
2. they are fuming
3. the more they fume the more traffic comes to these sites
4. the copycats get to make money and blur the lines
5. they can calmly lose a few of the sites and start new ones and keep making money

It is a funny world, no?

ps. Not sure if that is what is happening here, but thought all bloggers should know that there is such an outfit out there with hundreds of "employees" working on a blog generating company!

pps. How do you find out if you have been plagiarized? Is there a utility? Or like the iphone ads say "is there an app for it?"

.

Vadivelu revisted ?

Recently a video was chosen (not by me) from the local Indian Grocery store for the usual weekend viewing.

This one said "Vaigaipuyal Vadivelu acting superbly in 9 roles"!

Vadivelu is by far the reigning comedian in Tamizh movies today. He has become increasingly popular in the last three or four years. We had never heard of him doing 9 roles in any movie.

Once the wife and MIL started watching this movie, they were in for a rude shock.
Vadivelu was not the main focus of the movie. At least not in the first 20 minutes. They got sick of it and returned the movie.

I have selected a few bad movies in the past. Looks like my track record has improved, just because I did NOT select "Thesiya Paravai"!!

.