Monstrous Modems and Ruddy Routers - A "Pioneer"'s plight

I was once the co-author of an award winning, published paper on 'Convergence Technologies'. The paper, which took one full evening's dedicated cutting and pasting effort from one member of a five member team was published in one of the leading Telecom magazines of the country, and brought laurels to all five authors. I was one of them, and therefore, automatically qualified to be a pioneer in Convergence Technologies.

This was way back in the early two thousands, when bubbles had more to do with software than with soap. Digital was a buzz word and internet was a mantra that would eventually solve world hunger. You would be cool if you used words starting with 'd', 'i', 'e' (ok, guys who use words starting with 'f' have always been 'cool') - dis-intermediation, de-construction, 'e-value chain'...but since I could say 'Convergence' too, I was super cool!!!! Then the bubble burst, and things much worse than soap came on many faces, but I was (ok, with the four other guys) always the convergence stud!

Cut forward six years. I'm now in the US, sleeping in my own apartment on the floor with a pillow to perch my head high up on, and realization dawns on me – I can live without a mattress, but I can't live without a television or telephone! Internet would've been high up on that list of must have's, but a kindly neighbor who never secured his network catered to that basic necessity in life. But phone,I must have my own!

Back to the i-net to research and I get a list of phone companies who service my areas. I spend a late night researching between these, and get a call early next morning (those days, I had a company cell. this was circa pre-no-credit-history-realization) from one of those 'co-pioneers of convergence technologies', who, with me had hitched a free ride to fame!

It's strange how life gives you opportunities to enact your dreams. (Agreed, convergence wasn't a dream, and the only guy in the team who knew anything about just had a baby today, but if I'm considered a convergence-stud, I'm supposed to dream convergence too! )

After a fifteen minute discussion, when we had done a quick roundup of all college day couples and bashed the West for the hunger in Somalia, he asked me about my phone, and told me about this wonderful technology revolutionizing telephony in the US. Sounded sexy, and I decided six years was enough time to let the technologies converge.

Read about it a bit, and it was super-cool! A cable would run into my house and stick it's tongue into my idiot-box. But before that, I'd pull a wire out of its throat into a splitter, and push the other end of it into a modem. The modem would be connected to a router, the router to a phone adapter, the adapter to a phone and the phone would connect me to the world. If all this sounds too linear, the modem had a USB port, the adapter could connect to two phones and the router had four slots and was wireless enabled too (if I didn't secure my network, I'd be a kind neighbor too!) and together, they could mean laptop-works-in-the-loo to the cyber-kids. To me it would mean chaos, but I'd realize that only later!

As I read, I realize that several technologies have converged in a haphazard way, throwing up more options than I cared to count, for me to get my phone working! The best option turned out to be the one explained above, where cable television converged with high speed internet, and telephony was thrown into this concoction.

Mail-in rebates, another concept in the US that made life challenging and worth living, meant I bought the router, modem and adapter at three different shops, from three different vendors, and in the process ended up making $3.33 (well, actually I pay $333.33, but they'll send back a cheque to my grandson, refunding more than that).

I come home, open the boxes to pull out three UFO-ish devices and enough wire to have an electric fence around my house, and connect them all together as instructed. Just as I'm lifting the receiver, I see three diskettes lying, one in each box. I shove them all into my laptop, one after the other, do the installations as instructed, and wow, I'm connected!!!

Everything works fine for a day. Then the laptop sputters and almost stops downloading data. The phone just has a whizz. Cable TV however is crystal clear! Something somewhere wasn't converging, but I wasn't sure what.

I call the cable guy. He threatens to charge $49.99 if it's not his fault. I decide to take the risk. He comes with a briefcase full of flashing meters, plugs them all over my house and tells me the signal is weak. He goes out, and comes back after just the time it'd take an average man to have a fag, and tells me he's boosted the signal, shakes my hand, renews his threat of charging $49.99 the next time I called him, smiles and leaves.

Things are again fine but just for a day. Now I go one level downstream and look at the router with suspicion. Their tech specialist asks me to go to their webpage, upgrade my firmware, press the reset button, utter an incantation thirty times (one way of counting half a minute), reconnect everything, power on all the stuff, and hope my incantation worked. If that didn't, I could hope the new firmware would work. As if I’d understand all he said.

Surprisingly, I did, and more surprisingly, one of those worked, but whichever it was, expired after a day, and the laptop and phone were down again. He asked me if I had any 2.4gHz device in my room. I'd done a course in eM Waves and knew enough to tell him that my pillow couldn't be giving out radiations. He didn’t like the joke and hung up. I tried a trick every Indian kid knows - when something doesn't work, power off and power on. Worked! But again just for a day.

In frustration, I contact the router guys again, and this time, they ask me if I tried the American trick - power off, wait 30 sec, then power on. I try that to realize American tricks are more powerful than Indian tricks. This time it works for 27 hours.

Meanwhile, I lay to rest my convergence dream, also lay to rest my wireless dream (no laptop-in-my-loo) and connect the laptop to my laptop directly.

A day later, something seems to be working. The laptop has been up for 17 hours now and the router guys have admitted the router may be faulty, and are sending a new one.

Pray that the new router will usher the dawn of the Convergence era in my house!!! Long live Convergence. Whatever. Give me a phone connection and an internet connection that's not dependent on my whether my neighbor switches his 2.4gHz gizmo or not!

Bedtime Stories 4 - ...I Sleep. Comfortably I sleep.

No the story doesn't end there. I come home, happy to have made good use of the sale, bought a queen for the price of a double, gotten free delivery, and even managed to get a smile out of that once-friendly salesman by telling him a joke about the ant and the elephant (no, I'm just kidding, but this made even you smile, didn't it?!).

I casually try to look up what the mattress I bought is like, and the reviews I read are horrifying! The sale suddenly doesn't seem as attractive as it seemed and now I'm not sure if I did the right thing! Ofcourse anything in the US can be returned, or so I thought. I look up the company's website just to make sure, and realize they don't have a website!!! What kind of business is this - I didn't even know there was any kind of business that didn't have a website. Panic slowly sets in, and I look up the receipt. It doesn't talk of moneyback. Just exchange under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure. I finally find a loophole - I haven't taken delivery. And so mustering courage, call up the showroom. I show him the loophole and he doesn't see through the hole in my argument, so agrees to cancel the order! Yohooooooo!!!!!!

Today I may not have a mattress, but I have my greenbacks back. And the pride of someone who survived mattress salesmen. Believe me, that's something. You must meet one, or be one, to know what I'm talking about!

I, and my feet may still be on the ground, but I, and the marketing-graduate in me, sleep with the head held high. Afterall, I even convinced him that I should get to keep the pillows that were to be free with the mattress!!!!

PS->This narration may differ slightly from what the sincere historian recording facts may chronicle, but those differences are slight and have been done with the sole, nay dual purposes of keeping it interesting and my prestige intact.

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Bedtime Stories 3 - ...and smiles to go (past)...before.....

And oh yeah, I forgot part of the gyaan. Sizes. Mattresses, like your eyes tell you, are different from shirts. Their sizes are different too. Not for them the simplicity of classifiction as 'S', 'M', 'L', 'XL' yada yada yada (the fascination hasn't worn off). Our good burly friend was kind enough to explain that too, and here's kind of how it goes.

A Double is distinct from a Twin, and while a Double doesn't double up as a sofa, a futon does. A Twin meanwhile is NOT meant for two. It is meant for one. If you need a bed for two, go for a King, but if your room is small go for a Queen. If your room is small and you are small, a Double might do, but again, remember, a double is distinct from a futon. Ofcourse, things come big here, so you also have a California King, even if California never had a king. Ofcourse, you have things like a bunk-bed, a hide-away-bed etc, but those are not for my limited imagination and my small room. I'l never remember this, so my wife made it simple - just look for a queen she said. I just remember the other names to confuse you folks :)

Anyway, continuing on with the story...I went back to the mattress showroom this time with my terminology and phrases well rehearsed. The guy seemed as happy to see me, and gave me the familiar "have I seen you before, oh your first time, then your twin is doing the rounds" story. Not sure what he meant, since in his world, Twin didn't necessarily mean two people.

Today I'm a veteran mattress shopper, but the first time, I was as lost as a child in a ....Sidhu told you where. This smiling, I was born to help you salesman came by and explained to me how lucky I was! Like the balloons in the shop said, they were having the "Biggest Mattress sale ever", and like the ads in the paper proclaimed "The HAD TO liquidate all stock to make way for new models". As a result, I was getting a a queen for the price of a double a king for the size of a double, essentially anything for the price of a double. Paying what double would cost for one didn't seem to make economic sense to me, but my wife who'd mastered the size ratios by now assured me he wasn't off the rocker. The only catch, the sale ended in two hours so I had to buy soon.

Now now, don't you play your dirty marketing tricks with me, I think, afterall, I graduated in marketing too! I mumble some story about forgetting my credit card, and go over to the other shop. Coincidence but the competing showroom has a similar sale and unfortunately, his sale was ending in two hours too. Moreover, the kind salesman really likes me (my sexy voice again?!) and offers to throw in free delivery too (oh my god, a $35 value for free!). However, he reminds me that he has seventy showrooms being serviced by a single warehouse, and since orders come in, he can never guarantee stocks, unless I order NOW!

I might've graduated in Marketing, but work planning supply chains. There might be something in the warehouse-to-showroom story, but I decide to go back to the first showroom, since he'd promised to beat any competing offer by 5%. I go there and tell him. He's now, "Ah, you had to come back afterall, didn't you, OK, let me see if we have any left...we have eighty shops all over timbuktoo eating out of one warehouse you know", and tells me I'm lucky, the last piece is left. But because I didn't buy from him the first time, he's not going to gimme that zillion dollar smile of his.

Today, I don't know what I saw that day, and I wonder if these salesmen are trained like that or if they're born like that, but that day, forgoing that zillion dollar smile for a mattress made sense somehow. I flashed my credit card and in a moment, I was down a few hundred dollars, up few feet, perched in my dreams on a to-be-delivered-in-a-week mattress!!!!!

Bedtime Stories 2 - ...but I have 'concepts' I seek...

Research!!! This word, I know, is associated with long nights of nightmarish studying in plausibly haunted libraries for all the PhD wannabies and PhD-i-did-its of the world. What I had to do in the name of this word, to locate my dream mattress, might seem like fun in comparison. It's $%*# on the face of research, they may say. "Blasphemy", the researchers of the world may shout out - for calling what I did research. But believe me, all ye researchers, all ye PhD-wannabies, all ye PhD-i-did-its, my work is no less than yours!!!

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Where I come from, a bed is a bed is a bed. Often, it's not even a bed, it's just a cool hard floor. Maybe even the shade of a tree. At best, the bed becomes a bed. It takes form. The form of four legs supporting a frame. A plank of plywood on this frame. A mattress on it, and a bed sheet covering the mattress. And that's it, you're ready to retire. Life is cool and simple.
The mattress is no more complicated. You either have a lumpy cotton mattress for Rs.X or you have a branded mattress available for Rs.47.3X (multiplied by the INR-USD exchange rate to make it sound it's from the US). That makes your choice easy too, and you're ready to sleep.

Here....phew!!! The bed is a 'concept'. You first have to pick up the phrases. Then you have understand what they mean. Then you have to be able to put those together into meaningful phrases. And then you have to face the smiling, what're-you-doing-here-look-on-his-face mattress salesman (more on them later). IN THAT ORDER.
I was a novice. I didn't know this order. I thought the best way to buy a bed was to visit a store that sold those. I went to one. The salesman smiled. I asked for a bed. He showed me he was a mechanical engineer with imagination (Spoke of springs, stress, patterns and packaging). I didn't catch the connection and came back home.

In irritation switched on the television box. Man! That's man's best friend!!!! I switch it on, and immediately, there's an ad for a mattress!!! A fat guy and a fat girl come and ask "Why buy a mattress anywhere else?" (I could write a blog on ads in the US, but that's another story). I'm ok buying from them. I'm ok buying from anyone!!! Luckily the ad shows a phone number. This time I don't want the ignominy of showing the world my face, which is not that of a mechanical engineer, so I call them up.

A lady picks it up. I put on my sexiest sweetest bestest voice and tell her I don't know what I need to buy a mattress. She talks something about money. I explain to her that big as that issue is, the bigger one is that I didn't understand the 'concept' behind the bed. I tell her that the last time I'd gone to buy a bed, the guy had spoken of components I thought went into an aeroplane. She probably thinks I'm acting smart and calls a guy (her boyfriend?), whose 'burliness' is audible at this end of the wire! "Hoouuwwww may I haaallpppp you???" he asks in a bury-friendly voice. (OK, not boyfriend, pissed boyfriends won't go about helping me! My sexy voice was working!) I tell him I didn't understand the concept of a mattress and it's components.

There's a theory that says that fat people have more patience than thinner ones (different issue that you have a bigger problem to tackle, literally, when they run out of it) .The 'burlyness' of his voice indicated a rotundity of figure, and his patience indicated the truth in the theory. That lady might've been slim, but this guy had the patience of a thousand slim ladies, and at the end of it, I was definitely wiser!

I came to know that a bed, in all its complexity, can be broken down into three distinct pieces that one has to acquire. A mattress, a frame, and something called a box-spring (oh damn, that bastard wasn't a mechanical engineer who designed planes afterall!!!). He told me that the frame can be unscrewed into further components, or can be taken as a whole. That the frame had to be arranged in place and locked with pegs. Then I had to place the box spring on it, so that the spring would make me bounce. And then you put a mattress on the box spring so that the bouncing becomes softer. Oh yeah, then there are varieties in mattresses from double pillow top to break your backs, but from what he said my affordability restricted my choice to a tenth of a percentile of the variety available. So far so good. Things can get more complicated when the mechanical engineers play with permutations, and put pillow tops on box springs but thankfully budget rendered those combinations immaterial too!

He also explained something about what goes over the mattress - half a dozen things - spreads, sheets, quilts, yada yada yada (I like this more than etc). When he spoke of buying skirts for the bed, and said something about a sham, I decided it was over me, and I'd go to Walmart and buy that 'package'. That's another day's story! For now, I had mastered the concept!!! I was good to go!!!!....

(contd....)

Bedtime Stories 1 - The (hotel) bed is lovely, cozy and neat...

My first few trips to the US were short, and were spent living in hotels. The hotels were all quite good, cozy rooms that faced the five foot pool in which a three forty pound (yeah, I talk weights in pounds too, since it makes you sound like a yanky!) mammoth would be splashing about displacing a zillion gallons of water, five pillows for my one head, wireless internet that you might even get going before you check out, microwave that'll warm your coffee overnight, an ironing board, that might warm your coffee faster than the microwave and a bed that'll support your back as firmly as Mamtha Bannerjee supports the party in power or Nauru supported the Gulf war. In all, a happy setup for a bachelor. Except for the bed that is, if you didn't get my joke! Believe me, I sunk in so much one night, I bounced off the belly of the 340 lb guy (yeah that confirmed it was a guy) in the room below!!!

But then once I mastered making cabbage kootu in the microwave and warming coffee on my laptop, my tongue started yearning for more. Meanwhile, I was here on a longer trip, and so the happy compromise between both was to rent an apartment.

An apartment was a challenge in many ways - after paying the deposit, I would've have enough money to buy a cake for my sixty second birthday - and that too because I decided not to have a cell phone. The deposit on that would have put that cake off by another fifteen years, considering current rate of inflation. All this deposit in the name of something called "Credit History", which along with a yankee accent was among two things I apparently lacked.

But look at the positive - I can atleast choose my bed! And make it as firm as my budget would allow! The first piece of news I received would've made me kiss even Mamta B. if she were in the vicinity (I'm no duffer, I know she's not here!) - the softer the mattress, the costlier it is - and vice versa I learnt!! Yohoooooo - they're gonna pay me to not bounce off that bald headed pot bellied guy!!!!

And so I started (re)searching on beds.
(contd.)

"Re-Org"

Here I am taking technology by the horns and changing the name, look and hopefully fortunes of my blog! So if any of you -I'm still an optimist and think there were hundreds of you reading my blog silently, waiting patiently for me to start again - were on http://read-jks.blogspot.com or http://jks-travels.blogspot.com - you'll have to update your Favorites. No, not favorite bloggers, just favorite links in your browser!!! JK is still here to regale you!

OK, so here's what I've done. Started three blogs for now:

1 word - Mine ( http://jks-1word.blogspot.com ) :
Where I write my serious thoughts. Coz when I'm talking seriously, it's only my word that matters. To me.People who know me will tell you that this blog will be updated next when Calvin grows up, or Hobbes actually finds a babe, but I beg to diff....oh, did I contradict myself by talking of Calvin & Hobbes?!!!!! Anyway, keep checking, I do get serious thoughts sometimes! Seriously!!!

100 Words.....too many! ( http://jks-100words.blogspot.com ) :
I thought I'd fit this between 1 Word and 1000 words (next, read on), and so named it 100 words too many...but Million Words too many would probably have been factually more correct. Afterall, when I'm not saying anything, why should I be stingy in saying it?

1000 Words ( http://jks-1000words.blogspot.com ) :
A free trip to Azarbeijan to anyone who guessed what's in here correct. No, words like these should go into 100 words, where they would have no meaning anyway. This place is only for photos. That I click and want to show off.

But yeah, if you still want to go to Azerbaijan....

Well, if you thought that's all there was to it, hold on - here's where I merged creativity with craziness and came up with a concoction I'm well, proud of! After doing all this, I wiped the sweat off my brow and went to MSN Spaces. Liked the backgrounds there, so decided I must use those too. And since it was my 'Space', I decided to set up 'Mission Control' there!

So go to http://spaces.msn.com/jkrish and you're in Mission Control, from where you can see my space. Btw, that dude Einstein was bang on the point when he spoke about Space and Time. If you didn't understand what he said, never mind. In short, he said both change or one changes with the other or something to that effect. And here's living proof of that. Space, Mission Control will keep changing with Time...and it's Bright and Sunny in that space today...but who knows, one day, it might actually look like well, "space"!!!

Wait wait....there's more coming!!! Here's where I got on the cutting edge of Technology, took it by the horns...whatever!!! I liberally borrowed ideas from other blog sites and am trying to put in a lot of cool stuff like Site Counter (yeah, each time you visit me, my ratio inproves and I feel better!), Subscriptions(now you know when crap hits you!) ....etc - you know what ....etc means right? That's all I have for now, but you must believe I have a lot more to come!!!!

And before I end - tomorrow, if my blog suddenly has a lots of <<>><><@#$!!!!// - no, it's not coz I'm really excited. Sorry, but it's not even that I'm swearing at you. It's just that I've slipped off the edge, and Technology has gotten me! So you'll have to wait till I get the "....etc" right, and the blog will be back again!!!!

Back in Business!!!!!!!!!!

OK that was a long hiatus. And believe me, I wasn't spending all my time wondering what to write about!

I wrote two blogs. TWO FULL BLOGS damnit. And when I write, I expect the world to read.

The day after writing those, I logged in, expecting the comments to run into four digits at the least. It stood at one. Six months later, it still stood at one. That one comment would've been very encouraging, had I not known that it was my wife's, with whom btw, I'd succeeded on my sixth attempt, to make her sit and read both blogs!

And so, if the world doesn't want to read, it wouldn't write, I thought, and stopped blogging. That explains this long hiatus of almost an year!!!

But two things happened in the last few weeks. First I read a close friend's blog. His counter was doing as badly as mine.

Infact, I first encouraged myself by thinking that my "Comment Count/BLOGs" ratio was way way better than his, due to the fact that his denominator was way higher!!! Then I realized - HIS DENOMINATOR WAS WAY HIGHER!!! Which meant he had kept writing, inspite of the low numerator. He was realizing the joy there was, in writing for writing's sake, while I was missing out on all the fun, just because you, you dumbhead, wouldn't come by and read what I wrote!!!

Secondly, he came on my blog and wrote some very kind comments....(these took my ratio sky-high btw ;) ).

And so, now I'm back in circulation. No, not because of what the second reason did to my ratio!! ;)
I'm back. Not because you want to read, but because I want to write. If you read, that's coincidental. I write if I want to, and I don't, if I don't want to. So that's how this blog works, going forward...so Happy Reading.....ahhmmmm....Happy Writing to myself!!!!