Oh first of all, Marty’s version of Hit Me Baby One More Time (Britney Spears) was awesome on Rockstar:INXS.

And Suzie’s singing was awesome. Why was she in the bottom 3? Again?!? She did not deserve to be in the bottom 3 - if anyone, it was JD who needed to be there.

Anyway, looks like INXS knows that she is good and she does sing those INXS songs well too. So she gets a reprieve again.

Mig was good with the Baby I Love Your Way, but calling Jordis and Marty was a little cheesy.

I have turned on word verification for comments on. Quite timely, since I just started getting comment spammed.

So I have been hit with comment spam. And now I understand why everyone is going crazy about stopping this stupid thing.

Blogger needs to stop this. Quickly.

An excellent blog with a lot of personal accounts from the recent floods in Bombay.

Check Cloudburst Mumbai out.

I did not have much hope of Australia being able to save the match.

A good innings, apparently, by Ponting - but he got out at the absolute wrong time. Just 4 overs to go and he could have really rued that mistake if Lee and McGrath had not been able to play out the last few tense overs.

So, 1-1 and 2 to go. This does not really seem like the mighty Aussie side. They have to really change their bowling lineup/strategy. Let’s see how ‘fair’ they are, because Gillespie needs to sit out. The only thing that can keep him in the side is no replacement.

No replacement? Wow, I never thougt I’d say that about Aussie bench. They have an entire team on the bench. But it does look like they don’t have killer bowlers. The English batsmen have been able to control the match mainly by their positive batting and a great attitude.

The bowlers then have a good target to bowl with, and of course the Australian middle order is shameful and Martyn/Katich need to stand up and be counted. Of course, at the top, Hayden is having his own issues - getting out to pathetic strokes.

On to test 4 now.

Not going to talk much about it except that dropping Kumble seems to be the only “oops” unless the selectors can justify it by making some sensible statement. Not something like ‘in the best interest of India’s future’ or something like that.

And Balaji being dropped was another shocker - there was a time when he was considered a one day bowler and not a test bowler and now the tables have turned, at least if you like to believe the selectors' statement. They said that they want to keep Balaji fresh for the tests. Unbelievable logic.

Not sure if it is a clever ploy by the English media to rip apart the Aussie team mentally, but I read something about a “rift” between Ponting and Warne sometime during the second test.

When they were winning and winning easily, there were absolutely no such rumors or news or anything. Now that they have lost some matches and look completely clueless against this English side, they are showing signs of ‘normalness’. They are showing signs that other teams would also show.

They are beginning to point fingers, they are beginning to make mistakes. The confidence is obviously very low and the performance of the middle order is disastrous. The bowling has not been able to contain the English batsmen, let alone take wickets and breakthroughs. All the stuff that is normally expected to happen to their opposition. But now it is hitting them. And they are cracking.

Will they lose the Ashes? Remains to be seen if they are a true champion side or not.

If not for the time difference, I would have loved to watch this series on TV or on broadband.

So England is once again in the driver’s seat in the Ashes. If it were not for the rain on day 3, I think the game would be close to over by now.

Anyway, Australia has to save the match now by playing around 95-odd overs with a huge task of 399 runs. For a change we may see some match-saving from the Aussies rather than ‘going for the kill’.

But I must reiterate - the fast scoring by England is a great ploy. It is basically giving Aussies a taste of their own medicine.

With 1-2 in the series, the Aussies will have their backs to the wall and will have to try something completely different to change the momentum.

Saw some of Alex Smith’s plays - to say the least, he was shaky. His passes were totally off, and his decision-making was hazy.

But I won’t write him off for the start yet - yes, Rattay did well coming in second, but we have to give Alex Smith a chance. It was his first game - a lot of players cannot adjust for the entire rookie season, so I won’t make any calls on him yet except that he did not play well in his first game. At all.

On a positive note, the defense scored a TD, and more importantly, the 49ers won a game. So what if it was only an exhibition game? It was against the Raiders, it was the Battle of the Bay. And we did not win a single exhibition last year. So considering that, it was a big deal to get this win.

I don’t have much hopes for this season though. Even Arizona may be a tough cookie this year to pass over.

So I want to sell my macally ipod FM transmitter. I go to the usual - craigslist.org, and start creating my ad. At the end the that step, craigslist asks you to check email and click on the link provided in the email to finalize and publish the ad.

I usually give my gmail address because that way I don’t have to worry about correspondence being on my home computer vs my office computer.

But this morning, after logging in to gmail I did not log out and after about 3 hours or so, I saw a pretty weird (at the time) message - something to the effect that I was doing something that violated the gmail policy and that my account was locked out for up to 24 hours.

What? Was my account compromised? Was there a virus that saw I was logged into gmail for a long time and started sending mails by the dozen?

Luckily, at the end of the message, there was an email address where I can send a question about why and how and all that.

I got what looked like an autoresponse within seconds - it said that if I use Firefox extension Greasemonkey, it could be one of the reasons they locked me out.

I do use Firefox, and I do use Greasemonkey and along with that, another popular extension called CustomizeGoogle, which among other things lets me hide those googe ads. I did not turn that option on, except once, to show the wife what that extension can possibly do. I use the extension mainly to put two extra buttons on gmail main page - ‘Mark Read’ and ‘Delete’.

Anyway, the email also said that anywhere from 1 minute to 24 hours from that point, I can expect my account to be unlocked. What?? 1 minute to 24 hours??? What kind of a process is that?

Anyway, I tried opening gmail for a few minutes after then, but no luck. So I gave up and after 3 hours, I tried again, and this time with IE, and it worked.

I am scared to go to gmail from firefox now. But what is more scary is that they are disallowing me to do something on my computer that potentially does not do ANYTHING on their computers! Why is that?

Is Google quickly becoming the next Microsoft? The Big Bully Part Deux?

I would consider myself a techie to a certain extent, though I am not too familiar with networking, at least from a technological standpoint.

So here’s my story - I have been using a wireless ‘b’ (802.11b) router for quite some time now and have no real problems. The only thing is that the Linksys BEFW11S4 is a little bulky and I was eyeing the new Linksys compact routers in the market. Till last week, they were quite expensive, so I did not even consider upgrading.

Last week, Best Buy had a no rebate required $35 price tag on one of the compact routers. So I thought to myself, it is a good price, and I will be upgrading my speed (Wireless ‘g’ - 802.11g) and range. So why not.

So I bought it. Came home and quickly unplugged the old router and connected the new one.

The Admin screen was slightly different, and I went through the various setups and I was good to go.

Or so I thought.

Basically, nothing worked. I have a Dell laptop with internal Intel wireless, and it started going crazy on me with the signal strength. It would start at ‘Excellent’ and then start going down to Very Good to Good to Low and finally, to Very Low. It came to a point where I could not be more than 5 feet away from the router to be able to get a consistent signal strength.

So the first thing I did was to upgrade the firmware on the router. The firmware upgrade seemed to improve the signal strength problem, but my pings to the router itself were crazy. I was getting 5% loss going from my laptop to my router! It was nonsense.

After several (at least 10) chats with Linksys chat, and quite a few (at least 4) calls to Linksys support, I got some tips on changing some advanced wireless settings which stabilized the pings. I have no losses now, which is a big relief.

Then I opened my company laptop, which is quite old, and in there, I have an external wireless ‘b’ card. Not so surprisingly, it would not even connect to the router! It would find 10 other wireless networks around my area, but not mine! At that point I was ready to throw something out of the window.

I upgraded the driver on the wireless card and it seemed to resolve some of the issues. I was able to connect to the router and get an IP address, but I did not get anything more than ‘Low’ on the signal strength on that one. For a while, I tried changing stuff on the card properties and stuff, but when none of that worked, I gave up on that.

Currently, my problem is that even on the Dell laptop, my wireless speed decreases as I browse web pages. That is bizarre, but true. So last night, I had a few friends come over for dinner and all of them are in the networking industry. They quickly were able to tell me ‘There is a bug in the router software - just return it and get a completely different model’.

Right. Good call. I will return it. But not get anything else. I am tired of wireless ‘g’ with all the fragility. Who needs speed more than 11Mbps when your internet connection itself is only 4Mbps at best? I don’t do music streaming across my network. I don’t do file transfers across the network much.

I am actually quite saddened to say that I am going back to wireless ‘b’ and won’t be changing the status quo for quite some time now.

And I actually wonder how other people, who are not inclined to upgrade firmware themselves or update wireless card drivers themselves, work in today’s complicated networking world.

Networking, especially with Windows, is so complex today, it is almost a farce. It is such a critical piece of being totally connected, with constant drops in prices of computing devices, but still it remains one of the most unintuitive thing to set up for a lay person.

Something must be done to ease networking - wired and wireless.

Not sure when it happened last, but in the exhibition game last night between New England and Cincinnati had Matt Cassel against Carson Palmer.

It was good to read the comments from both of them. Good to also see the Cassell was quite comfortable in whatever chance he got - hope he gets the gig. Doing a no-huddle in the last 4 minutes of an NFL game, is quite a good achievement for a pure rookie.

I am of course bummed that Cincinnati lost. I am rooting for them to make it to the playoffs this year. Fingers crossed.

So the story continues. Past few tournaments, she was winning or reaching the intended goal for her, but Davenport kept doing the same, so Maria was not able to get to the top.

This week, Davenport is not playing, and Sharapova just had to win three matches. She won two, and injury forced her out of her world #1 ranking.

Too bad. I guess it is just a matter of time.



- photo taken from Yahoo Sports.

So, let’s make one thing clear. He has not been ‘appointed’ the captain. Like BBC Sports says, he returns as a captain.

Dravid fans, take a step back before starting to ask why he is being ‘demoted’. He is not. He was stepping in for Ganguly and now that he is back out of the ban, it is time for him to get back where he should be.

I totally agree with the move.

Ty did get to do the encore performance on last night’s elimination round of Rockstar:INXS.

I, like INXS and Dave Navarro, was surprised to see Suzie in the bottom three after her performance. But she gave a killer performance of the INXS song, and was easily the best among the three.

I called Brandon’s exit as soon as he was done with his performance - making up words to INXS songs in front of INXS is a sure shot to get out of the competition.

So, now it gets even tighter. Not sure how the ‘public’ votes, but talent-wise, the next person to go should be Jessica.

Yea, this had to come … I’m surprised it came so late.

Donald Trump has a blog. Check it out - sounds like emptiness to me at this point, but will add it to my Live Bookmarks and see if he/they have anything interesting to say.

That guy is cool.

Just as I got familiar with the names, and saw some performances, I told the wife that Marty has the best chance of making it as INXS lead vocalist at the end of Rockstar:INXS and among the women, even though Jordis has a great voice, Suzie will make it.

Both of them have not disappointed since then - and are on track along with Ty and JD to go on deep into the competition.

I called it, remember.

Rediff had an article about Emmy awards coming to Bombay and picking the international winners.

Given that half the shows have the same concept (domestic issues), half the cast repeats itself in multiple shows (!!!) and some of the popular shows are knock-offs of things like Millionaire and Idol, I wonder what the panelists will find :-)

I think we are back into the 80’s with the Indian captain and management reporting standard phrases about why the team lost. Or should I say, ‘snatched victory from the jaws of defeat’.

Right now both Dravid and Chappell are saying ‘we are low on confidence’ and ‘we need to bat, bowl and field better’.

Come on guys. There was no improvement from match to match except for singular performances here and there. The team is not working as a team.

Time to bring back Ganguly as the captain and let him use his whip a little bit. Dravid needs to focus on batting and fielding and forget captaincy.

No, I am not going to start a ‘campaign’ like I did for American Dreams.

But I have not heard too many people talk about it, so I thought I’d mention - Entourage is a fab show on HBO (Sundays at 9pm).

It is about an actor and his entourage - best friend who is also his manager; brother who is also an aspiring actor; and a good-for-nothing guy just there to enjoy the $$$. And of course his agent - Ari, who is probably the cream of the crop in terms of acting.

The Hollywood life has been stereotyped very well and the show has quite a few good moments. The acting is good and the writing is good. The chemistry among the cast is great and it makes for a good 30-minute, commercial-free watch.

This is season two and if you are starting off, I would advise renting Season 1 and getting up to speed with the life of Vinnie and the gang, though you don’t really need to.

I liked The Killers from the time they released Somebody Told Me. Don’t know why, but it is just a superb song. Not classically superb, but in terms of being catchy and melodious.

Then came their next single - Mr. Brightside. Much better in terms of music, and I liked it even more than the first single.

And then, last night Marty sang it accoustic on Rockstar:INXS. It was well sung and I started liking the song even more. I think The Killers also have an accoustic version of it, but in general, the song is quite nice.

Last night’s Rockstar had only a couple of good performances. My take is that Ty may get the encore call tonight.

History is going to be made tomorrow, when NASDAQ rings the opening bell outside NASDAQ building for the first time in history - and it will be on the campus of Cisco Systems in San Jose.

What a wonderful moment.

Wow - the summer as usual seems to have flown past us. It is football time. It means good news and bad news. It means summer is almost over and fall is about to begin. But the good news is that football will be here!

Can’t wait to see how the 49ers do. Also, want to see Vick a little more. Wonder how Mike Williams will do in Detroit. And Shaun Cody. And Lofa in Seattle.

And of course, we are only a few weeks away from college football too. USC opens in Hawaii. Can’t wait to see the defense, which is basically brand new.

So India lost. In the finals. Again.

This is becoming too common.

At least now people will not be able to blame Ganguly for being a losing captain. It was the much-loved Dravid.

At least now people will not be able to blame Sachin for not winning it for India. For not playing in key matches. It was the much-loved Dravid who did not win it for India. Again!

The saddest part is, this is the core of the WC 2007 team. I don’t know if this team can go to the knock out stage. But first things first - fix the mindset where the team just cannot close out games.

At least the coach can now say that the initial settling down is done and it is time to get down to business with the extremely long, highly packed season. Better get better.

Wow, what a day! I opened the sports site and realized that Australia actually came within 2 runs of winning the match! That after they had only 2 wickets remaining and 107 runs to win the match.

But the thing is, if they came so close, I feel bad that they did not win it. England, I would say, escaped with a win. Right?

I still believe that England is more hype than substance. Though this team, I keep saying, is better than a lot of the past teams that have had similar hype.

1-1 and 3 tests to go. If McGrath does not come back, Australia will be under similar pressure next test to. And of course the top and middle order needs to stand up and be counted. Too much aggressiveness in the team is making them lose wickets when they really should not.