Come August 15 and India will complete 60 years of Independence. TAJA has once again decided to mark this occasion with games and fun activites for children. TAJA wishes allof you a very happy Independence day!

So, get your children all excited, splash on some sunscreen and show up with them at the South Hampton grounds on county road 210 (west of I95 @ exit 329) in St. Johns county to witness the children enjoy themselves. We would like to wrap up the event before it gets too hot. Snacks and drinks will be provided for the participants and the spectators.

The event itself will kick off at 8 A.M. on Saturday, August 18, 2007. Please be on time as we would like to wind up early. Registrations will be accepted on the spot and children will be grouped for the events based on age brackets. For more details, please email us or call us at 904 63-Tazaa and ask for our coordinator Murali.

Time permitting, we will be able to conduct a brief flag hoisting ceremony. We plan on signing off the event with a rendering of India's national anthem. We do hope that you will participate in this small effort of ours in trying to inculcate a sense of pride (in our children) towards our motherland, India.

| India's I-day event | 18 August, 8 am to noon | Sotuh Hampton grounds, CR 210 West of I95 |

Going by the great response that we saw last year, it has got to be obvious that it is just a matter of when the TAJA pool championship will be held again. Well, the time has come for the second coming of this very popular sporting extravaganza (if we may call it that)!

TAJA will be conducting the 2007 edition of the TAJA Pool championship in August. We are now accepting registrations for this event. Our sports coordinator Mahendra Govada will be the main point of contact for all details. Registrations, however, will have to be emailed to TAJA.

And now, onto the when, where and how of this championship.

• When? Saturday August 18th 10 am to 2 pm and Sunday August 19th 11 am to 2 pm
• Where? Seven Bridges Grille and Brewery at Tinseltown (close to the intersection of Gate Parkway and Southside)
• How? Open only to TAJA members aged 18 or more, the championships will be held in the singles as well as doubles categories. Draws will be drawn for doubles partners as well as league line up by the TAJA committee.
• Fee and Registrations: $5 per player per category (singles and doubles). Payment to be made by check in favor of TAJA. You can register by emailing us your name and categor(ies) interested in (singles/doubles/both). If you are a current member and any of your contact information (address, email and phone number) has changed in the last four months, please email the new information too. This will keep us from charging you for membership once again. For more details, please contact Mahendra at 904 610 4254.
• If you are not a TAJA member but you wish to participate, you may do so by taking up membership first. Follow the membership link at the top of this newsletter, download the membership form in Word, fill it up and email it to TAJA along with your registration details (as outlined in the previous bullet). You will need to add the membership fee of $10 per person to the registration fee and submit a check in the full amount to either Mahendra or a TAJA representative on game day.

We do hope that this edition of the Pool championship will be as entertaining as the previous edition and will promote bonhomie and the spirit of freindship amongst all participants. And yes, if you so desire, you can plan on doing lunch (on your own dime) while you are there. Check out the menu of Seven Bridges in case you would like to make such plans.

| TAJA Pool championship 2007 | 18 & 19 August | Seven Bridges Grille and Brewery, Tinseltown |

Publix is offering a free prescription drug program at Publix pharmacies for the following oral antibiotics.

• Amoxicillin
• Cephalexin
• Sulfamethoxazole/Trimethoprim (SMZ-TMP)
• Ciprofloxacin (excluding ciprofloxacin XR)
• Penicillin VK
• Ampicillin and
• Erythromycin (excluding Ery-Tab)

These anitbiotics account for almost 50 percent of the generic, pediatric prescriptions filled at Publix. New or current customers simply need to provide their Publix pharmacist with their prescription, up to a 14-day supply, and it will be filled at no charge. Publix is not limiting the number of prescriptions customers may fill for free. The free antibiotics are offered to customers regardless of their prescription insurance provider.

If you have any type of broadband connection at home and if you have not already tried it out, it is high time to try out the "voice over internet protocol" (VOIP in short) technology that, not long ago, was the brand new kid on the block as far as the internet telephony bandwagon is concerned.

To put it in short, VOIP uses the internet to initiate/terminate/transmit (as the case maybe) your voice calls, so a part of your calls are transmitted over the internet either before or after the traditional POTS kicks in. When you subscribe to a VOIP service, the provider gives you a number of your choice (usually anywhere within the US). Most providers allow you to port your current home number, but given the current state of this industry and the recent debacle of Sunrocket, I would prefer not going that route. There are several providers in the US that offer cheap monthly plans (as low as $20 a month) for unlimited long distance. Some of them have annual plans that would drive down the net cost even further. And then most of them have free in-network calling (all phone numbers of the same provider can call for free amongst themselves). And in all of these cases, features like 3 way calling, call waiting, caller Id., voicemail, call forwarding and many more are standard. Yes, the very same features that would normally cost you a fortune.

I am sure that several of us have tried using VOIP in some form or the other by having a device installed back home with a local (US) number, thus making it literally free for our folks to get in touch with us and vice versa. Of course, we would need to have a broadband connection back home too, but that is becoming the norm in India nowadays. I have tried it myself with some success until a thuderstorm back home sort of "upset the cart" for me.

The only downside seems to be that VOIP would not work well if you don't have power and if your broadband connection is not working. But from personal experience, such incidents have been few and far between and I have not been greatly troubled by them. Even in India, the gripe is mostly about the power cuts rather than the broadband connection. Inspite of that, the whole setup worked just fine until two totally unrelated incidents on both sides of the globe put an end to this little adventure. Want to find out what happened next? Read on...

When the nation’s second largest VOIP service provider bit the rocket (err… bullet) mid-July, it was time for me to start searching for another provider. VOIP providers lost no time in making attempts to woo ex-Sunrocket customers. Back home in India, after the voip modem got reset during a thunderstorm, the broadband provider was giving us a run around when we asked him to configure the voip modem for us. All this prompted me to start looking elsewhere for a solution that would work for me.

A little searching brought me to a device called >magicJack. This is basically a VOIP solution, but it doesn’t involve an adapter or wires. Instead, it comes in the form of a USB device that has a phone jack on the other end. The first time you plug in the device into your computer, you will be allowed to register and choose a US phone number and you are ready to start making/receiving calls. You can receive calls either on the computer itself or on the regular phone that you plug into this device. The only downside is that your computer will have to be constantly on (with an active broadband connection) if you need to make calls. The device has a feature whereby incoming calls can be forwarded to another number and voicemail is included too. Voicemail will be emailed to your email Id. The device can also be carried in your pocket and used wherever there is a broadband connection and a working computer with a USB port. All this for a cost of $20 per year! Yes, that was not a typo; it is really supposed to cost you $20 a year for unlimited long distance within the USA. As this company is still in beta, they have very few area codes available at this time.

With this device, we no longer need to run around broadband providers back home begging them to configure our voip gizmo. And setup is so simple that all you have to do is to plug it in to an USB port of a running computer and the device will then do its own thing without any manual intervention! Want to try it out? You can order a device online and they have a 30 day return policy. MagicJack even did it’s own bit in trying to attract Sunrocket’s base by placing this humorous ad on it’s website.

My search for a reasonably priced VOIP provider brought me to a rather innovative concept. Though it is not a VOIP service, this phone management system caught my attention just because it is different. And then, if Google acquired this company, it has got to be looked up, right?

What caught my attention is the possibility of having one phone number that you would give out to your contacts and then you retain that number for life. You then link all your other numbers (home/cell/work/gizmo etc.) to your GrandCentral number (GCNum). When somebody calls your GCNum, you can have GrandCentral do one of many actions: ring one or more of your linked phone numbers, direct calls to voicemail, direct to spam etc. You can have this setup done at the individual contact level or at the group level too. you can also have your voicemails emailed to any email address. You can even listen in on the voicemail and switch to talk mode if you decide to take the call. You can even transfer an incoming call to other numbers linked to your GCNumber while the call is still active!

Interested but confused? Watch this demo and hopefully, it will clear the air a little bit!

Unfortunately, once Google took over GrandCentral, the numbers are given out by invitation only and hence you will have to wait to be invited in order to try it out. Fortunately, I do have a few invites left and you can leave a comment with your Name and email Id. on my blog if you would like to have an invite. Or else, you can go over to inviteshare and ask for an invite.

A potent combination may result if we link our GrandCentral number with our magicJack number. This is all the more useful when we consider the fact that magicJack doesn't yet offer a Jax area code. GrandCentral forwards the calls for free (atleast for now)!

Before this issue turns into a telephonic special, let us change course and talk about how you may be able to save on your passport photos.

It is not often that one needs passport photos, but when the need arises, it is usually arrives in the form of a deluge! Anyone who has had to file for the I485 or the N400 or Passports/Visa/PIO/OCI for the entire family knows what I am talking about. And those passport photos are not cheap either!

If you have had yours taken recently, you know how it works at the photo shops. They snap your photo using a digital camera and then hand it over to their photo software to do the rest. If you are a little bit enterprising, here is a cheap but efficient way of getting your passport photos.

Use your digital camera to take the photograph. If you choose, you can use photo-editing software like Picasa (a free service) to refine the photo.

Then, use epassportphoto (also a free service) and follow the steps to upload your photograph, format to the desired size and then save it back to your computer. Each image will be automatically sized to fit on a 4x6 paper and will have six to eight copies of your photograph depending on your chosen size. Copy this saved image onto your portable media and take it to a photo-printing lab to have it printed. If you are not able to use portable media, you can even choose a service like Snapfish (listed on the website) to have your photos printed at a neighborhood photo shop. I just noticed that Publix is rolling out self service photo prinitng kiosks!

Alternatively, you can even print them at home provided you already have the required hardware. Once you have the printout, cut out the photographs and you are ready to put them to use! All this for the price (maybe lesser) of having a single 4x6 sheet printed.

Well, I am veering off the tech bandwagon to present another how-to solution that might save you some money. And who doesn't like saving money?

As if the problem of having to deal with the loss of a phone number was not enough, last week, our water heater literally decided to leave us high and dry (well, uh, not exactly dry as we live in this high humidity zone, but I suppose you get the point).

Though the need for hot water is not as crucial during the hot, hazy days of summer, we pampered souls still like the convenience of having hot water at the push of a lever. And then, there are the usual reasons when we cannot do without hot water (like bathing the children, washing clothes/dishes etc.).

Under those situations, our initial reaction would be to reach out for the phone and get in touch with a plumber/electrician that can solve our problem the fastest! Well, I too reacted along similar lines, but instead of hitting the phone book, I took to the web searching for plumbers. An online service allowed me to search for and send requests to plumbers in the area, but all it could find was one plumber who was at least a good half an hour away. To his credit, this plumber called and left a voicemail saying that he could help me get a new heater real fast. While waiting on his reply, I had been trolling the various forums trying to see if I could find suggestions to my predicament. Some went as far as recommending I replace both thermostats as well as both heating elements where as some others suggested I drain the heater tank and clean the elements. But none of them went so far as to suggest replacing the water heater itself.

Our water heater has an auto shut off feature that shuts off power to the heater if the tank temperature becomes too hot. My initial assessment told me that this was what was happening as the water from the faucets became very hot a few hours before it turned dead cold. So, I opened up the heater access panel and hit the reset button. This seemed to rectify the problem, but the next morning, I noticed that the water was hotter than normal. As anticipated, the auto shut off system jumped back in action and turned off the heater. The result? No hot water for the second time in as many days. Further searching on the net brought me to what seemed to be a knowledgeable suggestion from an experienced (plumbing?) mind. The suggestion was to replace the lower thermostat. His explanation? The lower thermostat might have gotten fried and so the lower element doesn’t know when to stop working. When the water becomes overheated, the heater’s auto shut off system kicks in and switches off power to the heater. The only way this can be overridden is by hitting the reset button behind the access panel on the heater.

A quick run to Lowes and back and about fifteen minutes to replace the fried thermostat was all it took for me to have the heater back online and in action.

The Gandhi Memorial Society is inviting High School and College students to submit entries for the first National Gandhi Memorial Essay Competition 2007, in celebration of the anniversary of dedication of the Mahatma Gandhi Statue at UNF campus.

As this competition is being held in the Jacksonville area itself, nothing short of a high local participation will do justice to it. To signup, check out the details on the what, when and where of this competition.