I will not be taking a hotel reservation this time. No online booking or nothing. I plan to land there and change rooms every 2 days across every part of Goa and enjoy the whole of Goa. God a budget of Rs 50,000 all inclusive. A jeep would cost Rs 1000 a day, thats Rs 15000, stay would cost another 20,000 in total, and beer would cost another Rs 5000, then the remaining would be for food and fuel. That is a lavish budget I guess, for a man traveling alone to Goa, and that too a low profile Indian who has to blog for a living, and design websites once in a while.

Usually, children born in a huge family having its own business are moulded, brought up, exposed and educated in line with their joining the family business when they are ready. A marble trading family will not let a kid in their family go and learn software engineering and pursue a career in that field while their business is expected to do great for the next few generations and they could use an extra hand from within the family.

The Tatas are a world renowned business family and have been in real big money business for about 2 Centuries, fully successful and never getting themselves into any trouble. Ratan Tata is the current Chairman of the board, and he has been preceded by several others. The Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay was built by one of Ratan Tata’s Ancestors, the world’s first All Jet airline company happens to be Tata Airlines (Now Air India, undertaken by the Govt. of India), was founded by JRD Tata, Ratan’s Predecessor, and Ratan has now produced the cheapest car in the world, that costs about $2500, and he has taken over the Jaguar and Land Rover brands recently. His Steel Factory has taken over Corus, and that wing is now the 5th largest steel producer in the world.

Ratan would have been nowhere if he had started a business of his own. His integrity, his ability to workout such major deals, achieve great goals and moving ahead to the top of the world doesn’t come with just one generation’s expertise in business. The Tata Group owns several companies that include Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Motors and Tata Steel.

Family business does have its draw backs too. Politics can be very high between cousins and uncles. If there is a difference of opinion, it is far too difficult to handle, and the damages that it might cause to the company could be much higher than what it would be if you were working for some other business. And in family business, succession is always a problem. It always creates disputes. There would be certain people of the later generation who work very hard to prove themselves to the current head of the group so that they get a chance to go on the will of the head and become the successor. At times like this, the cousins that you played with when you were young might act against you just to gain the throne, while you might have been working hard to get to it, or by default you are eligible for it, and this could hurt you a lot. The feeling wont be something like what you get when a similar situation arises at some other workplace. It could devastate you mentally, since its family that is working against you now, and not someone else.

There are good and bad aspects to a Family Business. But it is all in the hands of the head of the business. If he can handle everyone in the family, guide them and direct them so that there are no differences between them till the end, and if he defines his successor, and make the others agree to it, everyone is happy, and the business will have nothing but growth.

Havent got the time for all these? Making trips to classes every days, sitting around with others while you would rather be doing something else? www.quickcert.com is a good place from where you could take IT Certification online, without having to visit any class or listen to nay lecture. All material are in electronic format, and you have an interactive learrning system too in their website, which will help you learn and solve problems. This is the best way to get any sory of IT certification./

There are a lot of lenders who offer auto loans around the world, and the trick is to find out who is giving the best deal. You need to spend a good time in comparision of all the service providers who offer loans for financing your vehicle purchase. You need to check out the installment amounts, the tenure, the annual interest that you are bing charged, the total money that you are paying the lender throughout the term of the loan, forclosure policiy, non payment of due charges etc.

If you are doing it offline, communicating with the agents directly, they will misguide you completely and give you all sorts of wrong information, make you sign the papers and ditch you. Otherwise, you will have to go thru their multi paged agreement, one by one for all of them, and then arrive on a decision on which one to choose.

Alternatively, you can do that on the internet. There are a lot of websites that list the available lenders who are willing to finance your automobile, with customer reviews and their own impartial views on the lender. This should save you a lot of time, an dyou will be in a community of other buyers and if you get into trouble later, atleast you will be able to be in a group rather than being left alone.

So, I went on a hunt today to get a list of banks that offer 0 balance accounts, I dont need any feature that the bank may boast of. I am just looking for some basic features listed below.

1. NEFT, or National Electronic Funds Transfer that lets us do some inter bank funds transfers.
2. No Cheque Book is required. No ATM/Debit Card is required. When I need the money, I shall transfer it to my main bank account with State bank of India to withdraw funds.
3. Zero Balance account. And absolutely no unwanted charges for this and that.
4. No annoying calls with loan and credit card offers.
5. Decent and super fast services from the staff of the bank for anything I go to them for.

And, I managed to find that Ing Vysya Bank offers an account with a fee of Rs 1000 flat per year, and with absolutely no charges of any sort. They give you chequebooks on demand, allow you to use their own ATMS, and provide internet banking with NEFT

Secondly, HDFC offers the same, called No Frills account, with complete 0 balance, no charges no nothing for anything at all, and everything such as cheque books, ATM cards are chargeable if you want them. Im more than happy if I have NEFT.

Canara Bank insista that you maintain atleast a balance of Rs 1000 per day per quarter, which is around $25, and that is not a big deal. So, right now, with accounts at ICICI, SBI, Union Bank of Indian in Chennai, Canara Bank, Ing Vysya and HDFC, I guess I would be OK for some time.

The hydro electric power station uses gravity. It uses gravity to transport water from a Dam to the turbines, and then turn them to produce power.

Water seems to be indespensable when it comes to generating electricity in huge volumes in most places. Hydro electric plants, as the name suggests uses water, and so does the Thermal and Nuclear Power stations.

Thermal Power Stations

Thermal power stations have huge boilers dedicated for each generator that they have. These boilers are structures made with solid metal made with extreme care and perfection that they can hold steam in pressures equivalent to that of the water pressure that is 5 KM below the sea level. If a live man is put inside it, he would die of the heat first, and then his body would be compressed to a hair strand in seconds.

The bottom of these boilers are pumped with water and recycled steam from the turbines (so as not to waste energy), and the source of heat in these power stations are coal or lignite that burn in a huge furnace built at the bottom of the boiler. The heat in these furnaces can reach over 1000 degrees Celsius, hot enough to melt iron. Luckily these boilers are made with alloys that can withstand the heat.

Coal or lignite what ever is used, is ground into fine dust and is sprayed with great force into the furnace with a blower, ideally mixed with pure air that has a lot of oxygen. This produces very high effeciency, and makes sure that each and every particle of the coal is burnt, and the furnace is built so well that the heat is effected fully on the boiler, and the smoke, after loosing most of its heat to the boiler and flows out thru the chimney. Ofcourse, government regulations are in place to make sure that the smoke that leaves the furnace are filtered so well off the carbon so that it doesnt pollute the air.

Thus, the water is boiled and converted into steam, and the steam is held in high preassure inside the boiler, which is something like a massive pressure cooker. The outlet of the boiler is usually at its top, and steam is directed thru pipes controlled by automated regulatory valves, which is similar to the governor valves found in Hydro Electric power plants, and is passed on to the turbine chamber.

The turbine chamber is a highly enclosed areo dynamic circular chamber into which the steam is passed, and made to blow into the blades of the turbine, and after a full rotation, it is let out and is passed back to the boiler where it is recycled.

The speed of the generator is controlled by the valve which controls the flow of the steam.

Contd…….

I was so damn sure that replacing the xorg.conf from the live cd to the hard disk mightnot work and could only make things worse. Anyways, I had no other choise. Either wait for Hardy, or format and install fiesty. So it was worth a try anyways.

So i just went ahead, replaced the file, and booted again, and guess what happened. It worked. Looks like they didnt work on anything while creating gutsy from fiesty.

It is capable of handling speeds of about 120 Kms per hour, with its 798 CC engine with an output of about 32 BHP, comes with a 4 speed transmission, and a multi point fuel injection (MPFI) engine in its petrol versions. However, the recently launched LPG model comes with an old fashioned Carburetor engine, and that gives bad efficiency on petrol, but performs well with LPG. On LPG, it is the cheapest machine on the road, cheaper than an average motor cycle on the Indian roads.

The only problem is that there is nothing in front of the driver, and if he hits someone, with only inches of metal sheet that is in front of him, the damage to the driver could be devestating. Then again, the engine will not be dislocated and pushed back to crush the river on a heavy impact. But, of all the accidents that I have heard of in an Omni, the driver breaks his legs. The legroom for the driver is so cramped up, and there is no space even to move around, and long hours of driving is almost impossible.

The engine is fixed under the driver’s seat, and therefore no AC can be installed on the car. Even if an AC is installed with all possible sorts of mechanical modifications, the cabin is quite big and you need quite a lot of power to cool that off, and your 796 CC engine should either cool the cabin or spin the wheels at a time. You cant expect it to do both at the same time.

Also, since you are sitting over the engine, you will be burning your butt off on those long drives even if the makers claim that enough insulation has been done. And without an AC, it could be very difficult to drive long distances on it.

It comes in 2 versions, that is the 8 seater and the 5 seater. Legroom is ample in a 5 seater, and you have a lot of luggage space, while in an 8 seater, you have ample legroom too, shared among 6 people sitting in the back.

With 8 people, and all their luggage, and an 800 CC engine with about 32 BHP, and the cars weight itself, no great fuel effeciency would be there, or the driving pleasure. You could rather invest some more and get a bigger car or an MUV.

But at its price, the cost of running and maintenance, as a first car for drives within the city, to take your family around for shopping, it is cheaper than travelling in rickshaws all the time. Good for travels upto 50 Kms per day. Not more than that.