Bay Area Traffic

Ever since the toll on Dumbarton bridge was increased, I have noticed a significant decrease in traffic along this route! I wonder if there is any data available on this. 880 on the other hand continues to be a nightmare in rush hour. The mess at the 237 junction has been fixed for the most part (the exit for the car pool lane will ease things more when completed). The 880 bottleneck happens now between Warren Ave and Dixon Landing exits. There seems to be stop and go traffic between these points at virtually all times (especially peak hours). Wonder why? I don’t think its 680 off Mission that is the cause. In general, Bay Area traffic is no where close to the way it was in the hey days of the valley (late 90s). The only reason not wish for the return of the hey days!! Oh well…

Quote of the day!

“There is only a veneer of democracy in the United States, and we have a real democracy,” he said, brushing aside suggestions that Iran’s election rules unfairly favor the hard-liners who control much of the government. “Election laws are so complicated in your country that people have no choice but to vote for one of the candidates who are with one of the two parties.” Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran. Check out the complete article in NY Times. (registration required)

While there might be some partial truths in this, its ironical that it has to come from a politician in Iran!

Diluting the IIT brand?

On the one hand you have events such as the recent pan IIT meet to improve and enhance the IIT brand at a global level. But on the other you have a rapid increase in number of IITs, unfortunately driven by partisan government proposals. Will the next government release a new list of universities to be blessed with the IIT brand? Will fake IIT degrees soon be available? Does India have the resources to upgrade so many universities in a short period of time? The existing IITs are already struggling without quality new faculty to replace retiring faculty. How are these new IITs going to cope with these challenges?

Is the Govt. diluting one of India’s best brands? The ominous signs of it are certainly there.

India Cricket Team: Opportunity to experiment

Sachin is going to be unavailable. Ganguly will be serving a ban. This opens up two slots in the playing eleven in the Indian team for the WI-India-SL ODI series. Great opportunity to try out some newcomers. I hope the selectors don’t fall back on the discards like Mongia, VVS and others but instead give some newcomers proven in the domestic tournaments, a chance to prove themselves at the international level. This will help expand the talent pool when it comes to selecting the team for the next World Cup.

Google Custom Home Page

Tried out the new Google custom home page feature. As always, simple, yet cool. The drag and move feature is way cool. Unlike my Yahoo (where there are simply too many options), I like the fact that the options are relatively few to start with (I’m sure they’ll expand over time!). The ability to have Gmail on the home page saves a few extra clicks. It will be really cool if Google adds Blogger and a couple of other common applications (say a spreadsheet, and presentation software) to be run online.

The Google News page customization was a little annoying. I customized it a couple of times (I saved it too!), and yet when I re-started Firefox, the customization was gone! Oh well…the price (not quite, mostly frustration!) you pay for being an early adopter.

Man, All these browsers!

Netscape, IE, Firefox, Safari etc etc. and each of their versions, extensions and what not! Testing websites and applications on each of these has become quite a task. Check out Rediff (a pretty popular site) on Firefox. The home page is pretty messed up. It has been so for quite a few months now. Or maybe its something unique to my PC.

Its about time someone (Microsoft, huh??) came out with a master browsers (Netscape seems to be trying this with its new release) and destroyed all other browsers once and for all. It will make everyone’s life so much easier on the net. There was an article some years back in Time magazine (I think) where the writer suggested that we give all the software business on the planet to Microsoft, then the next time we have trouble we’ll have only one company to blame! (Of course, it could be a hardware issue!).

p.s: Btw, can someone tell me how to prevent pop-ups from this site! I use Firefox for the most part and sometimes IE.

Senate Crisis: What a pity!

The US Senate crisis appears to have been averted.

After all the excitement created by the Presidential elections last year, there has been a relative lull on the US political scene. Barring the boring opposition (which systematically ended in failure) from Democrats to virtually every nominee proposed for every single post by the President, there has hardly been any new exciting developments since the Presidential polls (with Howard Dean in charge there is some hope of an literal outburst sooner or later). Unfortunately, just when it seemed like some new excitement will creep into the mainstream the Senators have arrived at a comprise. What a pity! (They just saved the world from a few thousand hours of TV analysis and speculation and several thousands of pages of online commentary!)

Chappell it is…Dada still wields clout

Greg Chappell landed the job of the coach for the Indian cricket. Given that Ganguly was in favor of him, its a sign that Dada is still a force to reckon with behind the scenes in Indian cricket. I just hope Chappell can influence the selection to a point where India is not simply re-cycling the same superstars from match to match (only to end up with the current pathetic world ODI ranking). He managed to convince the committee that he is the best choice for the job. Its time now for him to convince the Indian cricket crazy public that the committee made the right choice.

Personally, I am glad its not an Indian coach. In case you haven’t been following Jimmy Amarnath took 2 hours to complete his allotted 45 min interview thanks to computer trouble. He brought along a relative to help with the computer. Just one more reason our former stars might not be good fits for job in this day and age of technology driven analysis and strategy.