Red-throated Pipit at Basai
I saw my first ever Red-throated Pipit at Basai, near Sultanpur.
I saw my first ever Red-throated Pipit at Basai, near Sultanpur.
Today was my fourth appearance before the District Consumer Forum. I expected Exide to respond to my complaint, since they sent someone to collect a copy a month ago, but they weren't there. The judge (the lady who had initially accepted my filing) said she would hear my evidence ex parte at the next hearing in early January. If it's compelling enough, I guess a default judgement will be issued in my favour, and Exide will proceed to ignore that as well.
I usually read a book while waiting for my case to be called, but watching the proceedings can be quite entertaining. Some lawyers argue at length for the reduction of symbolic fines, with no success. Others come prepared to rant and rave about injustice to their clients, but stutter and stumble when questioned about the facts of the case. One case was attended only by two people from the same opposing party. Every once in a while, people are reprimanded for talking in the courtroom.
And while the case drags on, the UPS batteries are now completely dead, and we have been forced to order three (slightly cheaper) 42AH batteries to replace them.
My old server, fugue.toroid.org, is no more. After five years of sterling service, it has been retired and replaced with one of Hetzner's new entry-level root servers (with sixteen times the RAM and a very much faster CPU). It took me a long time to migrate the services across, but everything works now.
The new server is named raven.toroid.org.
After my farcical last appearance before the District Consumer Forum, I wasn't expecting much from today's hearing. To my surprise, however, someone from Exide (an ordinary bloke, not a lawyer) was present today. The (lone) presiding Forum member asked for our names, noted our appearance in the file, gave the Exide guy a copy of the complaint (it turns out that the notification sent by the DCF is only a summons to collect a copy of the complaint), and told us to come back a month later. I didn't need to do anything at all.
I'll have to wait until the end of November (at least) to find out how Exide will respond to my complaint. At this rate, I will need to buy new batteries long before the court decides whether Exide should replace the old ones or not.
I just moved the OBI web site to my new hosted server at Hetzner and—because I couldn't retain my old /29 netblock—to a new IP address as well. Here are a few notes about the migration, including the stupid (but harmless) mistake I made.
I'm back after three weeks spent in Karnataka, a state in which my bird-watching experience has been woefully limited until now. With my family, I spent a few days in Bangalore en route to and from Madikeri in Coorg. I also did a hectic two-day birding trip to Manipal and Karkala, but spent most of my time sipping a fine blend of robusta and arabica coffee in a chair on my hosts' front verandah in Madikeri, watching the birds who visited the garden.
For many months, we have been planning to be away from Delhi during the Commonwealth Games 2010 (October 3–14). Thanks to extra school holidays and invitations from friends, we're spending 25 days in Karnataka. I'm looking forward to this holiday very much.
The Zitting Cisticola is just one familiar example of the many birds whose scientific names are derived from their preferred habitat.
I was scheduled to appear before the District Consumer Forum today, and was curious to see what defence Exide would mount, if any. When my case was announced, I went up to the bench and identified myself. It turned out that the opposing parties (Exide, and the dealer I bought the batteries from) had not even been notified about the case! Their copies of the paperwork were still sitting in the file.
Blah. Next appearance: end of October.
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is exactly how I finally managed to reset the contradictory network configuration on this printer.