Motor Car Insurance Renewal Errands

Thought of narrating a small experience that I had to go through today renewing my car insurance which was associated with New India Assurance company.  The insurance had expired 1 day before which I had not noticed.   The New India Assurance company web site did not allow me to renew the insurance indicating that it had expired and hence it cannot be renewed !.   It did not provide any easy means to purchase a new policy too.   It was a nightmare using their insurance portal.   Later, I tried TATA AIG with some hope of getting positive news, but landed into the same issues ("would not allow renewal of already expired policy").    When I contacted them over their toll free number, I was told that it would take 4-7 days to get a new policy :-) which was pretty disgusting.   Further, their premium calculator was showing a whopping 24,000 Rupees.

I then tried ICICI Lombard which was pretty easy to use, very intuitive and gave me an option to renew my expired policy.  Their executive over phone were friendly and guided me easily through some issues in their portal page which I overlooked.   I got my policy in less than 30 minutes.   Further, the premium was just Rs 15,000 Rupees.   What a difference between TATA AIG and ICICI Lombard!

I think for people looking for easy and online buying/renewing of motor car insurance, ICICI Lombard is the way to go.

I also heard the claims if any are pretty hastle free with some prompt service.  

Thanks to ICICI lombard for making my life easy.  

Security and Privacy Best Practices

This is a security policy recommended by IEEE with regards to dealing with passwords on the internet.   
I thought I should broadcast this out.

Changing Your Password: 
• Never change your password by following a link in an email that you did not request, since those links might be compromised and redirect you to the wrong place.
• In order for passwords to be effective, you should aim to update your online account passwords every few months or at least once a quarter.

Creating a Strong Password: 
• Variety – Do not use the same password on all the sites you visit.
• Do not use a word from the dictionary.
• Length – Select strong passwords that cannot easily be guessed with 10 or more characters.
• Think of a meaningful phrase, song or quote and turn it into a complex password using the first letter of each word.
• Complexity – Randomly add capital letters, punctuation, or symbols.
• Substitute numbers for letters that look similar (for example, substitute “0“ for “o” or “3“ for “E”.)
• Never give your password to others or write it down.

A few other account security and privacy best practices to keep in mind are:
• Sign out of your account after you use a publicly shared computer.
• Keep your antivirus software up to date.
• Report any privacy issues to relevant service or customer content centers

Data Mining and Operations Research : Excellent Field Of Research

The world is flooded with data from different sources and it is becoming increasingly challenging to extract out useful and meaningful information.   Although enterprises are building large data warehouses where they put some useful facts and dimensions to gather strategy information, maintaining such data warehouses and data marts are becoming costly.

Data mining as a subject offers useful techniques in classifying, predicting and extracting meaningful information using mathematical and scientific approaches, but there is lot to be done in discovering new algorithms and approaches to retrieving meaningful information.

Operations Research offers several mathematical techniques for optimizing and retrieving information solutions.   By researching the techniques using OR and Data mining, there is a potential to unleash exciting ways to mine and efficiently retrieve meaningful information.

This is a field that has not been unleashed yet and is a potential research area.

Excellent Taxi Cab Service At Kodaikkanal (Kodai)

I recently visited Kodaikkanal with my family.   I engaged a driver named Abbas who runs a cab company called Masha Alla cabs.    He not only took us to every nook and corner of Kodaikkanal, but acted like a guide to us at no extra charge explaining every bit of details.   The guy hails from Kodai and hence has indepth authentic knowledge about it.    He was also friendly and patient with us which is rather more important than anything else.  And most importantly, he strikes a clear balance between being a friend and a taxi driver and doesn't indulge much into our personal space.

It was a lasting experience for us.

I suggest you seriously consider this guy if you happened to visit Kodaikkanal.

For your benefit, I am putting all the details here.

Inspirational Video - Attitude is Altitude

This is a story of Nick Vujicic who was born with no arms and no legs.  It was not his mistake. Neither it was his parents' mistake nor society's mistake.  So, whose mistake was it? We could point to God....that's easy for us.

Please watch and share this video. It might better you, your family, your friends
and most importantly, your children. In today's era of crime and corruption, it
is important to look at life with a different perspective.

Believe me, after watching this video, if tears do not whoop out of your eyes,
then you are not a ..... what do I say...!

But, this is an inspirational video that everyone should watch.
Anyone who has an aversion towards life and mankind can see
and learn from this video.

I saw this with my wife and son yesterday and we were so
moved by Nick and his attitude towards life. We felt happy and good after
watching it. We also felt that it was a Sunday well spent.

I thought I should share it with some of my friends like you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbX6mDnMwM

Naked Atrocities - Whose fault it is ?

I was shocked and deeply saddened to witness this scene at Hosur Railway station today at 6:30 am.
A family of 8 with children and toddlers had to face major discrimination.  They were fast asleep on the railway platform when a cop who came from nowhere took a stick and started beating every elder of the family including women.  The "crime" committed by the family was nothing but having slept on the railway platform.   The cop probably would have got a directive from his superiors to get them vacated.  But is this a way to behave in public?  The family probably did not have a permanent home.  The act of the cop to me was extremely disheartening in a civilized society of modern India and should be condemned.  That minute I was ashamed to call myself an "Indian".   Just imagine what would the young minds would have undergone seeing their own kiths and kins getting beaten up.  God only knows what atrocities those young minds are facing daily.  Was it their fault of having born in a poor society?   No doubt, we are grooming terrorists.

Cell Tamil Kavithai (Poem)

My wife wrote this Tamil Poem yesterday!