What a hassle when you see the blue screen with lots of error messages that comes just after your Windows screen. I have a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop running with Windows XP Home, last time I saw it working fine while I was watching a bollywood movie before shutting down for some rest. I got some error before the laptop was completely turned off. I was tired enough to read those messages so I turned off by pushing the power switch. That’s it, I started getting the nightmares from the next day morning. I turned my laptop on when I left my bed, here is a screen that was waiting for me whole night with an error saying “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: System32\Drivers\Ntfs.sys”.

What was my first move after seeing the error message?

What the heck is this? I have another Dell Inspiron 1420 laptop, I started typing in the error message in google to find some help. Wow, lots of help, let me try the first one from Microsoft. I followed the steps with lots of hassles, I kept going further until I saw a file not found in the desired location at step 6 from the article. Well, I want to patch the ntfs.sys but it is not located at the instructed location of the Windows recovery drive. This is strange, I got my first doubt that I might have crashed the hard drive. I restarted the machine to run chkdsk command in recovery console. It got me one lost or corrupted file, I ran it 3 times losing 6-8 hours to get it fixed but couldn’t get any success.

What to do when I can’t fix my ntfs.sys from the Windows XP CD or by running chkdsk command?

I was confused, I thought if I have a bad CD so started to look for the same file from my Windows Vista CD. I got some warnings as the OS is different here. I could see a window where it kind of showed my used space and free space from the hard drive. Now I have more free space than before, I am worried now and thought might have lost some data from My Documents and Desktop folder. Finally couldn’t get any help from the vista CD so got over it.

Now I thought to try windows repair option, I knew I might lose some of my data but I don’t know why I continued with that. Well, I started noticing some IO errors while repairing windows xp but there was only one option to click OK and kip going. It went through the installation process and started rebooting, it is a new blue screen with “STOP: c00021a {fatal system error}. The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly.” error.

Can Data Recovery Professionals Help me?

I thought to give up and started looking for help from professionals to recover my data first. I called my friends, looked in web to find some professionals that master on recovering data from crashed hard drive. One of my friends suggested to browse craigslist.org to find local professionals. He also said the data recovery service typically costs around $20-$50 if it is done through local data recovery professionals else geek squad will charge up to $300-$400. Hey, $400 for data recovery? Are you crazy? I can’t afford such amount so looked for some local experts and noticed the service charges were typically in a range of $40-$60 in Chicago land. I started calling them and write emails, looked for some reviews and had a lookup on their websites as well. Finally settled with Carlos from Semper Wi-Fi, his data recovery charge is $60 that includes pickup and drop. I tried to negotiate for $50 but he insisted to go with $60 as he gives home pickup and delivery service, seems to be a fair deal to me. He also quoted the service would take 2 hours only, though it went to 2 days, I was comfortable at it as I had no emergency.

Carlos dropped back the laptop hard drive in 2 days after recovering around 65GB of data, I insisted to retrieve My Documents and Desktop folder as I had the most important images at these places. He completed the job professionally sparing his valuable 2 hours at my home while transferring the data from his laptop to my external hard drive. It was really slow to transfer the data from his HP laptop to my iomega external hard drive but he was patient enough to complete the job. I recommend Carlos for any data recovery requirement and he is also qualified in giving several computer services, for details please check his website.

He also advised me to buy a new hard drive as there is very less likely I can repair or make a fresh windows install on it. We both tried fixing it for hours but failed to do so. I looked for the same Seagate ST9160821AS Momentus 5400.3 160GB SATA/150 5400RPM 8MB 2.5 Hard Drive and finally got the cheapest one from Amazon for $37.95, remember this is refurbished but I am happy with it. I just looked at it to grab the url and price seems to be bumped by $10 to $47.95. I was really lucky to buy the hard drive in lower price. I am still waiting to receive the laptop hard drive and I have to invest my time in making fresh installation for all my applications along the Operating System, I am planning to install Windows XP Professional this time.

New hard drive is originally sold by digitalet.com and use IMBACK coupon code to get 5% off if you decide to buy something from them.

My Wonderful Parents, You need to know how much you both worth to me.

• My birth is because of you both, I am highly thankful to you that I am seeing this beautiful world for you.
• Thanks for feeding me 25 years and taking care of all my requirements. I know we as a family don’t have everything but that didn’t restrict you to feed me and get my basic education done.
• Thanks for putting me in boarding school that taught me how to fight with all the odds and build on evens.
• Thanks for giving me good ethics of life that I can live with after you people are gone.

Things that I want you to know about me

• What if I am not the best, I will be living my life in trying to get better every day.
• What if I am not there to take care of you at your required time, believe me or not everyday I think about you people, can’t sleep well when you are not keeping well. Every other day pray to god to keep you both in good shape till the time you are away.
• What if I couldn’t build a castle to live in but trust me I am trying to get the best for you to live with and stay happy.
• I know I am the strongest and can fight any odds but get dishearten and distressed when I see you both not happy. I want say you, I love you both so live happily your rest days.
• Should I be happy that I lived a day happily with some new experiences in my life or be sad of losing one day from our scope of living together?
• My dear parents listen me if you can, happiness and sorrows are picked by people so pick the best and live with it so that it will make my life go easy and help me in picking the better one.

Chili Chicken, I always loved this curry and finally my wife cooked it for me for the first time. I thought this will be interesting to learn and write a post on how to cook this. I remember about my teen age when I was totally crazy about chili chicken, I used to visit my friend’s home and ask her sister to cook for me. I used to visit different restaurants to try this curry, finally I learned this and here is the recipe for cooking this at home.

Chili Chicken Recipe:

- 3/4 lb (330 g) chicken (I prefer boneless chicken)
- 8 onions (I prefer more onions)
- 1 capsicum
- 4 small green peppers (4 chilies)
- 1 tbsp ginger paste
- 1 tbsp garlic paste
- 1/2 tbsp salt (depends on your taste)
- 1/4 tbsp red chili powder
- corn flour
- soya sauce
- tomato sauce
- vegetable oil

Cut your chicken in small pieces and add some salt, chili powder, ginger paste, garlic paste to it. Remember to cut the chicken to half the size you want to see in your curry because this gonna pop after cooked. Marinate it for 15-20 minutes. Now start chopping the onions, make the onions to 8 pieces. Fry the onions adding little salt to it, you can drop the green pepper when onions are turned little red.

Add 2 tbsp soya sauce and 6-8 tbsp tomato sauce to the fried onions. You can also add the capsicum here if you like it, I don’t like so I skipped that in my curry. Let it cook in a low flame for 3-4 minutes and switch your attention to chicken in the meantime.

Add 8-10 tbsp of corn flour with little water, mix it carefully as you might add more water and make the mixture very light.

If you add water carefully then you will not turn up in wasting any corn later. You can dip the chicken pieces to this corn mixture before frying it in vegetable oil. Wait till the fried chicken turns to be red as it is shown in the picture. Be careful while frying the chicken as the water from chicken can lick at anytime and causing to split the hot oil on you.

Once the chicken is fried mix them to the cooked onions and cook it in low flame for 5-7 minutes. I love to have chili chicken gravy styled so I added little water while adding the chicken to the onions. Here is your chili chicken ready to be served to 4 people with fried rice / chapatti / paratha.

Probably it is an end to all costly calls, voip got our family and relatives close at a low cost. In 2003 an call for a minute from USA to India using calling cards used to cost 20 Cents and direct services used to cost 35 – 100 cents depending on the service provider. Now in 2009 this rate has gone down to even pennies. I am not kidding Pinlessworld.com is providing reliable calls to india at a rate of 2.5 cents per minute. This is just Rs1.25 per minute when you call from USA to India, even cheaper than the STD calls in India.

I was surprised to see the cheapest india call rate on their website pinlessworld.com and I decided instantly to give a try after reading some good reviews/comments from blogs. I even noticed the smaller amount like $5 will be enough to register with pinlessworld.com, this was the key to attract me to become their customer. I was using trueroots.us to buy some minutes to call india but pinlessworld.com is giving me in cheaper price at same quality, then why not I use pinlessworld.com when it is charging me 35% of trueroots.us used to charge me.

If you are still using online india calling cards to call india for cheaper rates than this is the time to consider pinlessworld.com and change your thoughts. There are several benefits of using Pinlessworld.com to make long distance call to india, few are noted here.

Advantages of Calling India Using Pinlessworld.com

• A thing that I liked most is the rate per minute to call india, 2.5 cents, this is one among the cheapest rates available as of now.
• You can also recharge your account with smaller amount like $5 and including tax it comes to $5.35.
• It is a pinless service not like airtel that you have to call and enter your pin number every time.
• It has around 515 local access numbers (https://www.pinlessworld.com/view_accessnumbers.cfm) that you can use to call india, benefit of using these local access numbers is that you can use landlines and save from your cell phone daytime minutes. Not like toll free number when it gets busy then you are helpless and can’t call to your family, here if one is not working then you can use other numbers.
• They are not like others where companies call to you to activate your account, here at pinlessworld.com activate the account just after you register with them.
• Pinlessworld.com has a developed control panel where one can manage own’s account very easily, add numbers, recharge easily, view history, etc..

Disadvantages of Pinlessworld.com

I didn’t find any major issues but still noticed some minor ones that I want to share with all of you.

• You have to dial international code + country code + local code + phone number to reach your family and relatives, they are coming soon with hot numbers to call your favorite numbers pretty fast. Hopefully they will get that up and running very soon.
• I called customer care and it went to voice message, later I wrote them using their support ticket (https://www.pinlessworld.com/support.cfm) page and they got back really fast, I appreciate that.

If you are looking for some cheapest rates to call india from US then this is the one that you can try without worrying for a second. I already spoke to my friends, relatives and parents using this service for 10 times before writing this post so I can at least say it is worth to try for once. If you like their services then leave a comment here so that others can get benefited from it.

UPDATE: I just heard from Pinlessworld.com that they are still lowering the rate to 2.2 cents per minute from Mar 22, wow, what a deal. I will try my best to get a coupon for you guys so that you can enjoy the service more. 

@Shweeta, let us know how it works in France. I always wonder about the services available in Europe to call India so I bet many visitors here might be on the same track so help them sharing your thoughts. 

Do you ever realize how shopkeepers take your advantage when you trust them? This is a story of a subway restaurant whose cashier cheated me for last 4 transactions. I regularly visit to this subway restaurant so I became a known face to the cashier, later I stopped asking for the receipt as I knew the rate of my sub. Jignesh Patel/Bharat Patel took the advantage when he saw I am not asking for receipt and every time paying through credit card so he started charging me $7.35 instead of $5.58.

I work for Gaebler Ventures LLC and my office is next to this subway restaurant from 615 W. Lake St, Chicago. I have seen this cashier handling the counter for last 3 years so I doubt if he is the one who owns the restaurant. I asked him for the business card and he handed me one which has two names Jignesh Patel and Bharat Patel on it so I don’t know what his name is. I love subway subs and chicken teriyaki is my favorite one. I normally visit to Jignesh Patel’s subway restaurant 2-3 times a month and I take a footlong chicken teriyaki sub with no drink and snacks. The rate of this sub is $5 and comes to $5.58 with tax. Every time I use my debit/credit card to buy the sub, the cashier noticed that over the time and started billing me more seeing that I am not asking for the receipt after the purchase.

I was going through my statements then I realized I have been billed for $7.35 from the same subway restaurant for 4 times in month of January and February. I decided to go and buy another one and crosscheck what he is billing for. That day he billed me $5.58 then I showed him my statements and asked why he billed me $7.35 for last 4 times. He said me “the combo comes with $7.35 so you might have taken the combo for last 4 times”. I was surprised to listen that from his mouth as he knows I don’t take the combo, I was expecting he will apologize and return my money. I left my statements and visiting card with him and asked him to get back to me. He said to get back in 2 days but he has not called me in last 10 days.

Later I wrote to SUBWAY from their “ASK US” page, here is the detail from our conversation.

Hi,

This subway is near to my work place and I have gone for lunch for 4 times in month of January and February. The cashier Jignesh Patel kept charging me $7.35 for a foot long chicken teriyaki with no drinks and snacks for last 4 times. I visited the store again today and ask for the same one he just charged me $5.58 and this time I asked for the receipt that i was never asking him before. I am a familiar face to him as i visit them regularly, the guy knows that i don’t take the combo still he was charging me $7.35 every time. I left my credit card printouts with him to follow on. This is a serious cheating to customers; i want a follow up on this.

Thanks
San Nayak

————————————

Friday, February 27, 2009
Dear Mr. Nayak:

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with us. Our customers
provide us with valuable input, which we use to improve our operations. As
part of that commitment, we know that we have to continuously seek
improvement and monitor our performance.

All restaurants are individually owned and operated. In order for our local
regional office to investigate this properly, we need to know the exact
location of the SUBWAYR restaurant that you have visited.  Can you please
reply by e-mail or by calling me at 1-800-888-4848 to provide me with a
complete address of the location you visited? Please refer to the Customer
ID listed below when replying.

I appreciate that you took the time and effort to contact us and am looking
forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Peggy Mccarthy  x8201
Customer Care Representative

Customer ID: 1751713

————————————-

Hi Peggy,

Thanks for coming back on this issue.

Here is the address:
615 W. Lake St
Chicago, IL, 60661
Store: 312.258.8229

Peggy, I don’t know if I will be able to prove it or not as I have no prove that I have not taken drinks and chips. If you have cameras on stores then that can only prove my honesty but honestly i will write a review on the store on my blog www.sannayak.com on this issue. I know the owner has taken advantage on my simplicity and i hate it.

Thanks
San
Customer ID: 1751713

Theme of the story is never forget your duty even if you know or trust someone. Never forget to ask for a receipt when you buy something.

I know this is a strange topic to write on as everyone online speaks about what and when to write, why it is “when not to write”? This is equally important but most of us never realize that we should be very much particular to the time when not to write a blog post. I have 5 most important reasons when one should not write a blog post, at least not to publish that immediately.

Over Emotional

Emotion is something where you should have your control on. There is hell lot of issues with the emotions so better you just keep your control over it. No doubt people will always try to play with your emotions knowingly or unknowingly but you should know that this is not the time to write anything. Take your time, don’t even create a page to write when you are passing this time. Time will pass and you might regret on writing the stuffs that you were not suppose to write, so let it go and write on things later when you are at your best.

Irritated

Irritation, this is something very much related with individual’s personality, people get irritated on silly things and there are people who even don’t get irritated on major issues. It is very related but you should never write or get closer to your blog when you are passing through some kind of irritation.

Highly Depressed

Depression is a major problem for Americans and there are lots of researches going on for improving people who are going through this phase of life. This could happen to anyone, for any reason so don’t write at all when you think or people say that you are depressed. Normally a person becomes very pessimistic during this period and the words coming out might not take the best of the shape.

Angry

People say that I am bit angry, am I? This is also a complex expression and many just get angry on silly things and people also don’t get angry on major problems. You should be careful and try not to write when you are annoyed, you can write but not make that post live until you get your nerves back.

Over Excited

We get excited many times and later find it not a worth to get that excited for, few things/plans are specially designed to deceive people so take your time to validate those things/issues before you write on them.

Remember, the words coming from you in terms of blog post will be read by many people so be careful before writing anything on your blog. I was going through one out of these 5 phases when I thought about this post, I was very interested to write something but wasn’t very sure about the time and matter so thought not to write that and created this topic.

“When to Give up” is more important than “When to Start”, I think “when to give up” is more important than “when to start”. You will often come with this question in your life, there isn’t a single day that you will live without this question, better you learn when to give up on things because this is more important than anything else.

I already lived 30 years in my life and I know I didn’t start many things on right time but that didn’t hamper me a lot as I am hampered when I didn’t end something on time. When to call for an off is the most important that I learned with my experience. I am very optimistic and modest but people take you as granted when you live with such temperament. Should you change yourself as you are taken in a wrong way? No, I will never go against modesty so I will live as I always lived. What I can do in return to face people who take me as granted and gets me tough time?

Eliminate, there is a process called filtration so use that to find things/object/people that gets you problem and keep them away. Let everything to come on your way, start at any time in your life but end it when things start deliberately bothering you. If you don’t learn how to call it off than the thing/object/person will destroy you so better be picky and keep your focus on who/what are not required in your life and keep them away.

This is what I am writing as I constantly got set backs from a person with whom I have a friendship of last 20 years. This is a time to call it off. I don’t require such people in my life.

If you are a regular visitor to my blog then you might be knowing I got married last month and came back to US leaving my wife back in India. I never knew about my wife before visiting India for a yearly vacation, the reason being I didn’t take the needed documents for processing my wife’s H4 visa. I had to come back for documents that my wife needed to submit to the officer in American Embassy for her H4 visa. After going to various web sites I made a checklist of things that I needed to send my wife for getting one H4 visa.

Here are the documents that anyone in India will need to submit while applying for H4 visa

• You need to deposit the application fees at HDFC Bank, for details on fees and bank visit www.vfs-usa.co.in. You need to keep the original receipt with you and carry it along all the docs to the embassy.
• You need to complete non-immigration visa application form DS-156. This will be done online after the required funds been deposited with HDFC Bank towards the Visa fees.
• You also need to complete Form DS-157 online, be attentive while filling this form. You can save these forms and review it later before you click the submit button. This process can be saved for 7 days.
• You will get an online appointment application letter at the end so carry a hard copy of that letter.
• You need to carry one photograph: 2 and 2 inches square (50 mm square). If you are going to Kokata American Consulate then visit to Bombay Studio to get
  a perfect picture for your visa. This Studio is next to the embassy office so you just need to reach 1 hour early to pick your snap with yourself. US consulates are very strict on photograph so better you carry the one with their guideline else you will have to visit them once more.
• Original marriage certificate is needed, there are two ways in India to get a marriage certificate, they are marriage registration, registered marriage.
  Registered marriage is applied upfront and date is scheduled after 30 days of your application, this is normally for couples those are not married and trying
  to get married. Marriage registrations is a process where you can get a certificate in a day, this is for couple who already got married with the social act and want to register their marriage with government.
• A Weeding photo album with clear close-up snaps with all the family members taken separately and some snaps from the marriage puja.
• Both side marriage invitation cards.
• Photocopy of H1B holder’s passport, take copies of the pages that are not blank, doesn’t need to copy whole book.
• A copy of approved petition I797 / form I-129 of H1B Visa holder
• H1B holder’s employment verification letter is also needed. Get one from the current employer.
• If current H1B holder is already working in US then need to produce 2 recent pay stubs.

I opened a free checking account with Citi Bank before a year from now, while opening I was said this is a free maintenance on $0 balance for 20 years. It is not a direct deposit account and I never paid my bills from this account as well. I never saw any kind of fees till 10 months. All of a sudden I saw some monthly service and check paid service charges coming in to my account. I called the customer care to get an update about those transactions, it happened in Oct’ 2008 and I was said it is a system error. Lady also promised me will never happen in future.

Later in December I went to India for 5 weeks. When I came back from the vacation then I saw more such charges in my account. Today I called the customer care to get an update on what’s happening, now these people are saying this is an account opened with different contract and was set with some period of waiver. What??? Are you guys crazy? I asked, if you can read the requirements. He replied you need to maintain $6000 balance or make a direct deposit to this account in order to have it free. I was surprised to know that, I said if it is the fact then how I was not getting any fees for 10 months, it started coming in from last 2-3 months only. He replied me account was having some kind of waiver on it and it expired already.

Tell me what I should say to this man? Whom should I believe the person who opened this account, the lady who said me it was a system error and will never happen in future or this man who is talking something nonsense. I have no clue, what I should do at this point of time. I am charged with 2 month service fees of $12.50 each and 5 check paid fees of $0.50 each. Why should I let it go? This is a tricky game in US and makes everyone suffer at least once in his/her tenure. I will surely visit to the banker who opened the account but I don’t know about the outcome.

Yesterday someone stole my wallet from the gym closet while I was working out. I figured this after my regular workout hours. I might be lucky for not losing everything with the wallet but I lost a lot with that.

This gym is near to my house in the south side of Chicago, I have been working out in the same gym for last 4 years and I never had such issues though I have some bad experiences from the neighborhood. Yesterday I went to gym around 5.30PM and came out of the weight room at 6.40PM, I found my wallet missing from my cabinet. I also had my ipod, watch, blackberry in the same closet but person stole it was in hurry I guess and forgot to check my backpack. Luckily I saved few things worth about $500.

I lost $30 and few of my credit and debit cards as well. All my cards are having insurance on top of it so I will be safe at that point. I lost my driving license along the state ID, they gonna cost me more $20. Overall I lost $50-$60 and my mental piece. I don’t know why that guy left my coin which I bought from Sani Mandir near to Siridi. Was he one Indian who could recognize that god, goddesses’ coin and left it for god fearing factor? Just guessing!!!

Never leave your personal belongings unlocked in public places. Lesson learned!!!