You book a ticket on the Indian Railway Internet Reservation System

After trying for about 10 hours on the Indian Railways Internet reservation system at:
http://www.irctc.co.in/
and being faced by errors such as:
- Prs Error : no server available to handle specified key value
- Payment connection failed
- Java language error
- You Were Trying To Use icici Payment Gateway And The Transaction CouldNot Proceed Due To Transaction Failed in ICICI PG(URL Based)
- Unable to retrieve due to communication failure.
- java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.irctc.action.booking.QuickBookAction.perform(QuickBookAction.java:588)

I thought it might help someone else trying to do this - because evetually I think I have it figured out!!
1. Important: Make sure that your Residential and Office addresses (BOTH) match the credit card billing address - including telephone. If not it will fail the authorization during payment. It does not say this anywhere on the site!
2. Do not use Quickbook with Citibank Gateway - it will fail with the Java exception - atleast on Safari 3.0 Mac OS X 10.4
3. If you get the dreaded communication failure error repeatedly, logout completely out of the site and then try again!
4. ICICI payment gateway did not work for me and it also pops-up multiple windows which can be confusing. AXIS gateway also does not work with CC's from USA.
5. Use the Citibank Gateway. Do not choose the Citibank Credit Card payment even if the CC was issued by Citibank elsewhere - it will not work unless the CC was issued in India. Citibank ATM/Debit cards do not work either.
6. Move though each page during booking as quickly as possible using Auto-fill where possible -timeouts will cause the dreaded "communication failure" message.
7. IMPORTANT: You NEED access to a printer - to print the slip confirming the reservation or else a Rs50 charge will be levied! Or you can pay the Rs 50 since Internet cafe's may charge that much in certain parts of India for a printout!

8. Patience - and a lot of it needs to stored in advance.

Finally I did get my ticket from Trivandrum to Ernakulam - now I need to find a printer somewhere!!

Hope this helps someone.
AM

Who died and made him God?

Maybe Rick Warren is an intelligent, all around nice guy. But who died and made him God? Jesus?

The way the presidential candidates grovel at his feet makes you think about the true nature of secular democracy in the USA. Rick Warren must have cured cancer or something. This is no different from India where I was born and politicians had personal guru's to guide them in all their decisions. I thought I came to something better but.....

When did we last see these two president candidates sit down with a leading scientist or a scientific panel and discuss the future of technology and science in America? Never - the president cherry picks scientists to prove and disprove their own fantasy's and ideologies and treats them like dirt. But ..oooh.. if you had a Master's in DIVINITY... you just might be the one controlling America's destiny.

it is amazing how easily Americans are fooled by both these presidential candidates and the religious leaders (not to mention the president).

God save this country.

Samsung S204N Lightscribe works with Mac OS X 10.4

Thanks to Lacie, the "unsupported" drive from Samsung S204N Lightscribe works quite well with my PB G4 1.5ghz, Mac OS 10.4. All the required software is here:
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10096

Yes, the Lacie software DOES work - but you have to make sure you also install the Host software as the page mentions. Its pretty ok speed - the basic design takes about 2 mnutes - including some text and graphics.

You do not have to fork money over to Roxio for yet another upgrade to Toast - I'm using Toast 7 - thank you.

Again, thanks Lacie!

you get ripped off by PayPal and Sellers from China.

I buy this Keyboard Protection Skin from Xskn for my PB G4
http://www.xskn.com/
I get one for an iBook G4. I paid for it through our "Bank of the Internet" PayPal.

So I expect a replacement from the seller or a resolution from Paypal.
I sent multiple e-mails to seller, placed a service ticket on their website - no response - somebody named Lajo Cymbalski seem to run the show there.

So I escalate the dispute to a claim at Paypal for only half the order since one of the skins they shipped was the right one.

Paypal refuses my claim with this asinine, canned response
"As stated in our User Agreement, the claims process only applies to the shipment of goods. It does not apply to complaints about the attributes or quality of goods received. Therefore, we are unable to reverse this transaction or issue a refund."

WHAT!!!!

So if I bought a computer through Paypal and the seller shipped me a rock, Paypal would not do anything because after all the seller did SHIP me something! The "attributes" of the rock may only be slightly different from a "computer" but what the hey - atleast I was shipped something!!

Ebay buying Paypal only meant that Ebay's - ignoring the buyer - culture was transferred to Paypal. See my last problem with eBay and the abusive seller!

My suggestion - avoid stores that use Paypal and use the Credit Card directly. I only used Paypal so that I could track all my online purchases in one spot - NO MORE.

So again there is NO benefit from using Paypal to buy something if the same store offers credit card sales - choose the credit card option and you wont have to waste your time with Paypal.

And ofcourse avoid
http://www.xskn.com/

AM