One of the things I like about Gmail is that even ‘the good stuff’ comes for free. For instance, Yahoo! offers free email, but to have your email forwarded to other accounts automat­i­cally, you need to purchase a paid account. POP3 access (that allows users to download their messages using an email client like Thunder­bird) is also a premium service. On the other hand, Gmail offers both these services for free.

There was a time when Yahoo! offered free mail forwarding and POP3 access, but they decided to discon­tinue those services several years ago. That was when I decided to switch to some other email service provider.

In the last few days, Google has started rolling out IMAP access for all accounts. To cut a long story short, IMAP is a better email protocol than POP3, thanks to improved folder manage­ment, message tasks and synchronization.

This service is being rolled out in stages, and I’m still waiting for it to be enabled for my email account. (Amongst a million users, what are the odds of being one of the first few to taste the new stuff?)

EDIT 2007-10-31 23:20 - I finally have it.

We all know this one, of course. But beware! It isn’t as easy as it sounds. People tend to miss a very impor­tant step in the process.

Recipe for “Bread-and-jam”

• Remove one slice of bread from packet
• Keep bread on flat surface
• Remove jam from jar and apply on surface of bread-slice
• Remove another slice of bread from packet and place over the first slice
• Press lightly
• Eat

Now, this seems to be alright, but there is one impor­tant step missing. Somewhere between the first step and the last one, you should insert this one:

• Hunt for greenish-gray fuzzy patches on bread. If found, discard whole loaf and get another

As I said before, this step is critical, yet often missed. The sooner you perform this step, the more time you will save.

Happy eating!

What is different about the place I live in currently (apart from it being a different country and such other minor details) is that I don’t have a view of the distance from any window of the house. For one thing, there is an insect screen that covers all the open windows. This limits visibility to a great extent. And more impor­tantly, all I can see from any window on this level (a floor above ground-level) is the road and the lawn.

I want to have a view of the ocean. I want to feel the sea breeze upon my face.

I knew I had to do it someday — and I finally did it yesterday. What did I do, you ask? Why, bought a little MP3 player of course.

No, it is not an iPod.

The strange thing is, I don’t even know what exactly it should be called. Sure, I could call it an MP3 player, but it does play WMA too. (Regret­tably, it doesn’t seem to play OGG files.) I could call it a music player, but it does play videos too. If I called it a media player…would anyone know what I was talking about? When I say ‘media player’ the first thing that pops into my head is Microsoft’s Windows Media Player. Not the same thing.

Well, on to the details: it’s a 4GB, shiny black thing with USB 2.0 connec­tivity and recharge­able batteries. Hmmm…why am I telling you all this? Just do a quick search on Google for Sansa e260, and you can get the full story.

In case you are wondering, I don’t plan to use it myself. I had a $50 RadioShack gift card, and a 10% discount coupon, and besides, it was already discounted by 16%, so I decided to splurge. Do the reckoning yourself.

Drop whatever you are doing (including reading this blog) and watch this video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueWVV_GnRIA

This is the score from Schindler’s List, composed by John Williams, and performed by Itzhak Perlman (violin). Look at the way Perlman caresses the violin…amazing.…

In case you didn’t know this already, John Williams has composed several of the finest pieces of music that you could ever hope to listen to.

If you are planning a trip to this region (Ithaca), and haven’t been warned about the winters here, then don’t worry — you will be.

In fact, winter in Ithaca is the one topic of discus­sion that is perfect for conver­sa­tion with a complete stranger: it is easy to begin, it is easy to end, and it is something everyone will agree on.

Getting to the point, winters here are cold. I haven’t experi­enced one yet, but it is the middle of October, and the temper­a­ture has started to drop. The minimum these days is around 4 degrees Celsius. For a person from Bombay, this is a good time to start preparing for that igloo you always wanted. (Of course, you can’t actually build it until the temper­a­ture falls below zero.)

I checked out the current temper­a­ture in Bombay — 27 degrees Celsius. *sigh*

If I could give Hewlett-Packard one piece of advice about their laptops, this would be it: put as many stickers on the laptop as you want, but DON’T EVER use adhesive that doesn’t come off cleanly.

Last night, I decided to remove a bunch of colorful stickers from my laptop (HP Pavilion dv6445us) . Most of them came off easily and without much of a fuss, but the AMD64/nVidia/Broadcom and the Windows Vista ones did not. They did come off, but they left a sticky residue that stayed.

I tried every­thing I had — all-purpose cleaner, dish-washing deter­gent, cloth deter­gent, tooth­paste, hydrogen peroxide and toilet cleaner. Nothing worked. I’ll have to find someone with nail-polish remover to see if that gets rid of the gum.

I didn’t ask for stickers. I don’t want stickers. I don’t want sticky gum on my laptop.

Do at the very end, what must be done. For what must be done will be done, and what could be done won’t.

Work as hard as you need to, so that the job gets done. If little work gets the job done, don’t work harder, look for another job.

If you are unsure about what to do, sleep. When you wake up, you will still be unsure, but at least you will no longer be sleepy.

When faced with a task, ask just one question: can you do it? If yes, then there is no need to panic. If no, then there is no need to panic.

History does not predict the future. You have already learnt from it. Try not to waste your energy remem­bering it.

When faced with a choice, do what you like to do. That way, you will always do things that you like to do.

When you have no choice, do not to invent new ones and wail about their non-existence.

Work is just a part of your life, so do it; work is just one part of your life, so don’t do it all the time.