Saturday, April 23, 2011

Epic MSN Ads Fail!

I just noticed that lately my blog has been filled with too much seriousness. So I thought it might be a good idea to lighten things up a bit. But I wasn't exactly sure how, because I didn't want to (re)post xckd, geek & poke or dilbert. Facebook, lately, it seems is flooding you with such things already. I don't want to add to your spam. Just then an opportunity knocked in the most unusual way.
I was searching for something in my mail archives. A 5 year old email turned up in the results, which I didn't expect to show up for something I was looking for. It was an old email asking my professor at PICT for a letter of recommendation while I was applying for masters.  Google is pretty good with searches (did I already mention that?) so out of curiosity I opened the email.  Lo and behold! I discovered what could easily be one of the biggest Google MSN Ads fail!  Here's the screen shot! Click to read the complete email thread and ads fail!

Epic Google MSN Ads Fail!
I was neither looking for s_x not headache after s_x! Google MSN Ads are supposed to be relevant to the content, or so I thought! But as you can see here, it seems way off the target! There is no correlation, whatsoever, between asking for a letter of recommendation and s_x doctors!  Lol! I thought this was a perfect opportunity to lighten things up a bit!

Keep watching the space, I have a nice post cooked up for some more fun, esp. for geeks! :)
edit, 2011/12/02: You know you are a geek when...

On a completely unrelated note (lazy to make another post?), the weather here in Seattle today was simply outstanding.  It must have been more than 6-8 months (I'm not kidding!) that Sun was out from morning through evening, without any trace of rains or clouds.  I, for sure, haven't see such a beautiful day in Seattle in months.  On freeways, I could see even the farthest of mountain ranges! I felt as ecstatic watching them as a kid feels after watching his favorite Disney character come to life :)

- - - - - - - - - edit, 2011/04/26 - - - - - - - - -
Thanks to my friend, Magesh, for hinting that the ad in question might actually be coming from sender's email client. I verified that and it indeed coming from sender's client, MSN, and NOT from Google Ads. Screenshot below shows URL when I mouse-over the link.
So I stand corrected, it is an Epic MSN Ads fail! :) Or... given that a few years ago hotmail would deliver EVERY junk mail to my inbox and most of legitimate emails to Junk folder, this was expected? :-P

Mouse-over reveals the link.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

One quick note...

I'm racing against deadlines here, but the only way to satiate this overwhelming desire of expressing my gratitude amid increasing disorder (or frenzy, should I say) in life, was to make this quick 2-min post...

Hardly goes by a day when I haven't thanked the musicians/composers, lyricists and singers of Golden Era of Bollywood Music (roughly 1955 through 1975). I re-iterate, these have made my life a little more enjoyable, few minutes at a time!
I am disappointed that I was not born in their era (physically, that is, because many believe I mentally still am!), but then, I'm thankful that, at the least, I am born in an era when it is still possible to have access to some/most of their masterful work!
Once again, I bow to the enviably unprecedented talent these people possessed which produced nothing but magical concoction of words, music and emotions topping it off with a dash of simplicity.
By no means a complete list, but fairly representative, are:
the composers:
O.P. Nayyar, Madan Mohan, R.D. Burman, S.D. Burman, Shankar-Jaikishan, Ravindra Jain, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and Kalyanji-Anandji.
the Poets (Lyricists):
Sahir Ludhianvi, Ravindra Jain, Kaifi Azmi, Shakeel Badayuni, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Shailendra.
the Singers:
Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Dutt, Lata Mangeshkar, Kishore Kumar.
The song that, once again, impressed onto me the power of simplicity, beautiful words and heart warming music is the one from movie Shabnam, composed by Usha Khanna, penned by Javed Anwar and sung by none other than the maestro himself, Mohammed Rafi: the song Yeh Teri Sadgi Yeh Tera Bakpan.

p.s.: Don't focus on the video, it ain't that great. Just take in the song sans video.