My most favorite
American phrase

"It is not what it looks like - I can explain."

Achilles Tendonitis

Achilles tendonitis (or tendinitis) is inflammation of Achilles tendon. Achilles tendon is the tendon (tough fibrous tissues) that attaches the calf muscle with the back of the heel bone. Having Achilles tendonitis is no fun. I know because I have it for two months now, with no relief in sight. I experience a pull and pain in the back of my heel when I try to take a step.

After trying some commonly recommended home remedies with no relief, I had to see an orthopedist for specialized treatment. He said that as the site of my inflammation is right over the heel bone (back of the heel), injecting cortisone locally is very difficult. So he prescribed me a contraption called "removable walking boot". The purpose of it is to immobilize the area (ankle joint) without using plaster cast, thereby allowing the Achilles tendon to rest and heal by itself. I am immensely grateful to my orthopedist for not putting the plaster cast on my leg in this hot (and mostly humid) weather.

The nurse showed me how to use this contraption and put the thing on for me the first time. I was turned into a clown immediately. First of all, the thing is so bulky (and it literally comes upto my knee) that my trouser leg do not go over it. So my trouser leg had be pulled up above my knee and had to be left there. Secondly, the sole of the contraption is so thick that my affected leg instantly became longer than the good leg because on that good foot I had my regular dress shoe with a not-so-thick sole. Thirdly, the "removable walking boot" has a hard (plastic) and curved (convex) bottom so that it can rock (to compensate for my immobile ankle making forward movement possible). It is impossible to walk "normally" with this boot on. If you have to walk with this thing on, you are bound to amuse the onlookers without any special effort from your side.

So I walked out of the doctor's office with different kinds of footwear on my two feet, trouser leg pulled over the knee on one leg, and a terrible gait. Even the taxi driver felt sympathetic when I had great difficulty in getting into the back seat of the taxi with very little leg room and a huge knee-high boot in summer! When I arrived in front of my house and was struggling to get out, the driver suggested that I first lie down on the back seat, and then gently slide myself out of the taxi!

The next thing I had to do was to go out and buy myself a whole new wardrobe. This is because I realized that I cannot go to work with one leg of my dress pants pulled over the knee for the next six weeks! (The orthopedist said that I had to use this boot for at least six weeks.) My wife and I figured out that wearing shorts was the only solution. But as I never wear shorts (it is just not my style), I had no shorts. So that evening we went out to the Mall and bought a few pairs of shorts, some T-shirts and knit shirts to go with them (I normally wear dress shirts), and a few pairs of over-the-calf all cotton socks. Long socks were suggested by the nurse. She warned me that I might have skin irritation if I did not use long socks with this boot, because the boot is made up of all man-made stuff, nothing natural!

When I arrived at the office the next day, it was a hilarious scene. Everybody started laughing seeing me in my new style - boot, shorts and all. Noticing my terrible gait, because of unequal leg length, a colleague became so sympathetic that she offered to loan me a pair of crutches that were lying in her basement. I gratefully accepted her offer. So from next day, I am compensating the shortness of my one leg (the good leg) with one crutch.

To make my Achilles Tendonitis days memorable, another colleague took some pictures of me. I am posting some of these pictures here, so that everybody can have a laugh at my expense! With me in the pictures, is a third colleague. She fell down from a bus two days before I got my boot. A large part of her skin on one arm, from elbow to wrist, got scraped off. She will be in bandages for some time now. Suddenly, our office room started looking like a hospital room.

You don't want to have Achilles Tendonitis.

French Bread

I love French bread though I am not French. But I have a problem. Even though I am a voracious eater, I can never consume all of the 2-feet long thing in one sitting. Usually I can eat only about half of the bread. The problem is the next day the leftover bread becomes dry and hard. It is no longer tasty and hard to chew. If I leave the bread longer than a day or two, it becomes hard like rock and is totally inedible. Not only that, one needs a power saw to slice it! Throwing out the leftover bread is the only option. But imagine the loss. You are eating only half the bread but paying for the full. In other words, the cost of the bread becomes double!

Since money does not grow on a tree in my backyard, I figured out a way to prevent wastage. I use my Haman Dista (a 30-pound gigantic mortar and pestle, made of cast iron, found in all authentic Indian kitchens including mine) to pulverize the hardened French bread and turn it into bread crumbs. That way, I don't have to buy bread crumbs from the market. Whenever needed I use my home-made bread crumbs.

But the problem is how many recipes call for bread crumbs? I already have three large jarfuls of bread crumbs. This probably will last for the next three years! I don't really need any more bread crumbs anytime soon.

So here is the question. Does anybody know what to do with the leftover French bread? Is there a way of preserving the leftover bread so it remains edible the next day or so? I hope the Xanga community has some genuine French members who can advise me on this.

Thanks in advance.

Software Updates

I was away from my computer for a few days. This morning, when I started my computer, Norton Internet Security warned me that my computer was at RISK because my software is not upto date. It urged me to update my software immediately. So I had to postpone checking my e-mail, and allowed Norton to update my software. It took a few minutes to update the software. Then Norton told me I MUST restart the computer for the updates to take effect. I had no option but to obey.

After the computer had restarted, I was about to launch my AOL software, when a notice appeared on the bottom right corner of the monitor. It said, Windows have automatically downloaded important SECURITY updates for me and asked me if I wanted to install them now. I thought, what the heck ... let me do it before I start any real work with the computer. So I clicked on the Yes button. Windows started to install the latest updates and was kind enough to show me graphically with a progress bar how much work is done. In a couple of minutes Windows finished its work. The progress bar reached 100% and the graphic display box disappeared. I heaved a sigh of relief, and was going to double-click on the AOL icon on my desktop, when a notice appeared on my screen saying I MUST restart my computer for the latest updates to take effect. Do I want to restart the computer now? So very reluctantly I clicked on the Yes button again.

After the computer had restarted for the second time, I hastily doule-clicked on the AOL icon to lauch AOL. I needed to check my e-mail. I knew there were going to be at least a hundred new messages, out of which at least a couple of dozens will be "genuine", meaning not junk mail or spam. As soon as I signed on to AOL, again a notice appeared on my screen saying I must update my AOL "Connectivity" software to avoid future problems of connecting to AOL. I was getting real irritated at this point. Again, very reluctantly, I allowed AOL to update the "Connectivity" software. And yes, you guessed right, I had to restart my computer for the third time.

After the computer had restarted, I signed on to AOL again and started going through my e-mail. Soon I came across a message from Google which wanted me to visit a particular page of their site to learn more about something regarding which I had written to them. So I clicked on the link. Within seconds a message from Macromedia appeared on the screen. It said I will not be able to see this page properly until I UPDATE my Flash Player!!! Luckily, on the bottom part of the message it said that the update would be completed in less than one minute on a Broadband connection (which I have, thank God) and IT WOULD NOT BE NECESSARY TO RESTART MY COMPUTER. Thank you Macromedia. You not only saved my day, you saved me from insanity.

Computers are supposed to make our lives easier. They are supposed to save us time. But with all these updates and upgrades aren't they actually making our lives more complicated and wasting our time? What will happen when iPhone hits the market in about two weeks?

Pet Care

Pets, like dogs and cats, go to gym these days to keep fit, to stay in shape, to avoid future heart trouble.

You are supposed to brush your dog's and cat's teeth everyday to keep their teeth and gum healthy.

Is your pet depressed? Stressed out? You should take it to the pet psychologist. May be psychotherapy (for pets) or some prescription medication can take care of the problem.

It goes without saying that you should take your pet to the vet regularly for general check up.

I was wondering if somebody's aging cat cannot see that tiny mouse hiding under the kitchen sink, or if somebody's aging dog cannot hear the oncoming footsteps of the burglar, are there pet eyeglasses or pet hearing aids available to help them? May be some day the vets will be able to implant plastic corrective lenses in the eyes or hearing aids in the ears of our favorite pets. What do you think?

CNN news. POSTED: 9:18 a.m. EDT, May 9, 2007

Just hours before his execution by injection, a Tennessee death row prisoner who was convicted of killing a police officer ordered his final meal -- pizza for a homeless person.

Philip Workman, 53, requested a vegetarian pizza be delivered to a homeless person in Nashville, Workman's attorney confirmed.

Riverbend Maximum Security Institution refused, said Riverbend spokeswoman Dorinda Carter.

"We can get some special things for the inmate but the taxpayers don't really give us permission to donate to charity," Carter said.

According to the state's protocol, a last meal's cost cannot exceed $20.

Workman was executed early Wednesday.

Read the whole news here.

What do you think? Is it heartless, or the killer deserved it?

Tool for Removing Plaque
from Teeth

It used be a simple toothbrush. A straight, smooth plastic handle, one end of which had a "head" consisting of three or four rows of equal height, white nylon bristles. You were supposed to scrub your teeth with those bristles with some toothpaste on it every morning and night to keep your teeth clean. Boy, has the toothbrush changed over time?

In the past, the choices were in the color of the handle, size of the brush head (regular and short), and the hardness or softness of the bristles (soft, medium, and hard). Then the dental professionals and the toothbrush manufacturers conspired to make your life complicated and toothbrush buying decision hard to make, by giving you innumerable choices.

First Oral-B came out with a brushhead, the middle part of which had some blue bristles. The idea was when the blue bristles lose their color on the top, it was time to replace your toothbrush. I still fail to understand how this works. I change my brush when the bristles lose their shape and get kind of flattened on the top.

Then came the strange shaped brush handles, apparently to make your reach better for those hard-to-reach corners of your mouth. My left foot. With this strange shaped handle, I cannot even brush well my easy-to-reach teeth! Furthermore, these stupid brushes do not fit my expensive toothbrush rack which is meant for straight handle toothbrushes, and is a permanent fixture on my bathroom wall next to the sink. Not only that, these stupid brushes have so-called anti-slip handles which make them even worse fit for my toothbrush rack. People drive their cars with bald tires (completely worn out treads) on wet, slippery, and snowy roads but when it comes to toothbrush handles, they complain that a smooth straight handle slips and that is why they cannot brush well. My answer is you get tarter on your teeth because you do not brush long enough and thoroughly enough. A scrub here and a scrub there lasting for about 30-40 seconds do not get the job done!

The evolution of the toothbrush do not stop here. The crooked handled toothbrushes invariably come with even more strange-looking heads. If you look from the top, the head is triangular in shape (as opposed to "normal" rectangular shape). The bristles are tri-color and have various heights. The tip of the head and the bottom of the head have more or less same height bristles, the middle part has bristles of lower height. Each tuft of bristles have their tips slanted in opposite directions, so that two adjacent rows of bristles have tips that look like an A from the side. Please don't tell me that these are all fruits of "research" and designed to clean my teeth better. Absolutely, NOT. I'll tell you why.

Even though I was observing all of the above mentioned evolution of a simple tool like toothbrush for quite sometime, I was sticking to my old-fashioned straight handle, uniform-height bristles toothbrushes, not only because I am more comfortable with them, but because they fit nicely into my old-fashioned (and expensive) toothbrush rack fitted permanently on my bathroom wall. Unfortunately, the last time I went to buy a toothbrush, I COULD NOT find the type I like and I am used to. I tried in at least 5-6 stores (and I live in a major US city). I had to understand that my favorite toothbrush model has been discontinued by the manufacturers and has been replaced by these odd-looking brushes. So, very reluctantly, I had to buy one of these newer models. Guess what? My next dental check-up showed I had more tarter build up than ususal. So how can one say these new model toothbrushes do a better job? These are nothing but sales gimmicks, and they cost more!

Now comes the real part of the story. When I explained to my dentist that I cannot brush effectively with these crooked toothbrushes, he suggested that I use a POWER TOOTHBRUSH! He explained to me that these brushes have bristles that rotate, pulsate (in and out movemovement) AND oscillate (side to side movement) all at the same time at an incredible speed, and hence does the job of removing plaque from teeth much better and more easily.

My POWER TOOTHBRUSH, for which I have spent about $160, have arrived by mail yesterday. I have not used it yet. But I understand it has a computer chip inside to help me brush better! It beeps every 30 seconds to signal it is time to move to the next quadrant of teeth, and shuts off by itself after 2 minutes, the recommended time for brushing teeth. It also stops the bristle movements if it "senses" that I am brushing too hard. Finally, it shows me a smiling face when I complete the recommended 2 minutes of brushing. It has a LCD display to tell me how much battery power is left, and so on. I wonder when it can do all of these, why do I still have to guide the brush over the different areas of my teeth? Dear Braun Oral-B: Charge me a few extra bucks and let the brush do that too while I type my blog!!! (I forgot to mention, the brush came with 4-5 different and odd-looking heads, and I don't know yet what are they for? May be one for cleaning, one for polishing, one for flossing, and so forth. I am not sure if learning to use this POWER BRUSH will be more difficult than learning to use the computer!)

PS: The only real improvement that I had noticed in toothbrush technology was when rounded-tip bristles were introduced in the market many years ago. Older bristles had sharp ends which often scraped and scratched the gum. I now have to see how my $160 POWER BRUSH performs.

Search Directories

Do you use search directories to find something in the Internet? I don't. And I don't understand why anybody would. I don't also understand why do the search directories exist.

I am talking about those silly human edited things like Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/) or Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/) where they list web sites by "categories". These directories boast about the quality of their databases. They claim since their human editors hand-pick the web sites that get enlisted in their database, you can only find the best sites in each category in their directories. My left bloody foot.

I personally prefer search engines over directories for the following reasons:

1. Since virtually anybody can apply and become an editor of these directories (you don't have to be a doctor to become an editor of the medical topics, or you don't need to have a Ph.D. in Computer Science to become an editor of topics dealing with computing), I don't believe the very concept of these directories that since they are human edited, their databases list only the very best. Their categories are not edited by any specialist on the subject. And what about things like incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, nepotism, favoritism, jealousy, and things like that? These can only exist in human beings. Thankfully, search engine spiders and indexers are not known to harbor such traits.

2. I want to see everything that is available out there on the topic I am looking for, and then I want to decide what to use and what to discard. I do not want a third party to make the choice for me.

3. Since directories are human edited they are extremely slow to list new web pages. You do not get to see the most recent pages on the topic of your interest. This is a big disadvantage of the directories.

4. Sometimes a very good page on a particular topic may never get listed either because the directory do not have an editor for that category for very long time (which happens often), or because the author of the page did not bother to submit his page to the directory to be considered for inclusion. (One has to submit his page to a directory for listing consideration!) Yet another reason may be the author did submit his page to the directory, but he submitted to a category which according to the editor is not quite the correct category for the subject matter of his page; so it got rejected. The editors of these directories do not re-direct a page to its proper category in the directory. That is the responsibility of the author of the page. If he or she is unable to decipher which sub-, sub-, sub-, sub-category of a main category is appropriate for the site, the editorial axe falls on the site, however good the site may be. Strange rules! And finally, the editor (who usually is just a volunteer, and has a fulltime job elsewhere) may decide that the web page does not meet the stringent requirements of the directory, and as such by virtue of the power bestowed on him, rejects it for inclusion in the directory.

5. Some directories, like Yahoo!, collect money from web page owners for review and directory inclusion considerations. Your options are either pay up big bucks for quick reviewing and inclusion in the directory, or apply for free inclusion which do not guarantee when your site will be reviewed or if your site will be reviewed at all. It takes a mimimum of 6 to 8 weeks, most likely longer, for directories to review a site. Yahoo!, of course, says that payment of fees does not guarantee inclusion of a site in their database. It only guarantees review within 48 hours. But since they have both paid and free submission options, I think I can understand why I do not see some excellent "not for profit" sites in their database, whereas I do see many sub-standard commercial sites listed by them.

6. Another reason why I do not use directories is that I can never figure out under what category I should look for something. Suppose I want information on "Peruvian cotton" or "cast iron", where should I begin? Which category to start with (there are only about 14 to 16 main categories)? I find it much easier to perform a keyword search in a search engine like Google to find information on Peruvian cotton or cast iron. And I am certain there are more pages about Peruvian cotton and cast iron listed in Google than Yahoo! or Open Directory Project has in their directories. (Note: Yahoo! now has a portal offering search engine results and everybody I know, who uses Yahoo!, uses their search engines at http://www.yahoo.com/ and not their directory at http://dir.yahoo.com/!)

The bottom line? I can guarantee the so-called Search Directories will die a natural death (due to lack of patronage) before I die. And Google, which is already towering over all other in the serach business, will be the only Search Engine that people will ever use to look for information in the Internet. By the way, I know Google has a Search Directory too. But I don't know who uses it and why.

Go to hell, Search Directories. (And long live Google Search Engine!)

Hello everybody. I'm back. Sorry, I had disappeared for sometime. Now I'am working only halftime. So I hope to be able to spend some time here regularly.

I have three grandchildren now.  They take up quite some time. Yes, you guessed right. They live in the same building, on a different floor. I had published the pictures of two of my grandchildren before. I shall publish the picture of the newest arrival in the family soon.

Guess what. I have published yet another web site. Web site making has become an addiction now. The latest one is called Tour India Through Stamps. Though it will undergo several modifications as usual in the next few months, I would appreciate if you guys check out the first draft and make suggestions for improvement. I think most people will find it quite interesting.

I have forgotten how to use this site to publish blogs. I wanted to make this entry look like the previous ones. But I don't remember what size font was used before. I know it was Verdana. How did I do the titles? Did I use HTML or did I just use the editor? Can I change things, after I publish this blog?

So this is going to be a trial. Thanks for understanding. I have to catch up with other people's blogs too.

Bye for now. See you all later.

A belated HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you.

According to Merriam-Webster Inc., the most looked-up word in the Internet this year is "Blog". Thanks to people like us who have nothing better to do.

Merriam-Webster defines the word as "A Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks". The lexicographers at Merriam-Webster did not think that pictures and even music can be included in a blog. Probably, they never experienced a Xanga blog where many budding bloggers try everything in their blog such as pictures, music, and hyperlinks but they do not try to "write" anything meaningful or otherwise interesting in their journal, paying attention to spelling, grammar, language, and traditional civility that one expects in a document meant for the public.

If the majority of the blogs published in Xanga are supposed to represent what a blog really is, then my definition of blog will be something like this:

"A blog is an online personal journal of an individual who, since he/she has nothing better to do, writes virtually about anything and everything but more often nothing, with or without making any sense, usually paying little or no attention to grammar, language, and spelling, generally using profanity and word abbreviations such as 'ur' for 'your' rather freely, and characteristically filling the journal with unnecessary pictures, music, and hyperlinks, causing a total wastage of his/her own and also the reader's time and energy, as well as wastage of the cyberspace where better and more useful information/data could have been stored." *

* Copyright © 2004 Shoban Sen. All Rights Reserved.