Saturday, February 19, 2005

Shutdown

Along with my 2 years here, I will be shutting down my computer also. It has been running for over 28 days now (lost track of it) and now the software used to find out the uptime has begun showing negative numbers. As of now, it shows -23 days, -573 hours, -34409 minutes (seconds also negative).

Thus ends the 2 year long vacation, which I used to buy the time required before I figured out what to do in life. I found out, IT is my passion and I want to go into software development and want to stay there for life. I thank the professors who helped me find out what I wanted, and the great support provided by the students here.

The next two words are not about me, and may not be proper grammatically, but holds a special meaning to me and everyone here - I ROCKS!!!

Friday, February 18, 2005

Ate what?

Probably 18+ or something to that effect :D

We were a bunch of 3 hillbillie and a hillbilliete sitting around and chatting. One hillbillie was a close friend of many hillbillietes which earned him the nickname of 'kishan kanhaiya' (KK), a nickname for krishna the playboy god. He is a lot on the plumper side.

The hillbilliete (FH) asks him where the girls were, and he must be feeling very alone now. Trying to be funny, I point to KK's tummy and said 'He ate them'. I realised my faux paus and bit my lip while the other hillbillie (OH) looks at me in disbelief and says 'what?' I grin at him and thought the discussion might be dropped. No, the tiny sentence I started got a life of its own, and FH & KK are having a discussion over which girl he ate first and who ate whom! She was saying out names and asking if he ate her!! I was biting my lips hard not to crack up, which is a very rare event. I look at OH and blurt out, 'I did not think of that when I said he ate her', he looks at me incredulously asks me, 'what did you not think of?'. 'That this will be a discussion topic'. He might have tried hard not to laugh, but cheekily says, 'exactly'. This may have been a very innocent talk as far as FH and KK are concerned, and that's how I meant it to be. Somewhere along the line, innocence lost out to the knowledge imparted by this big bad world.

Book work - 2nd part & Human Nature

Well, there were two things that happened today.

First, I went to this guy's room to search for a book, while he still maintains that the book I took to his room yesterday was taken by him, later it turns out that I was wrong about him taking the book - my neighbour took the book. He was still wrong and I was still right about him not taking _his_ book to his room.

Second (but chronologically first), I found out the true meaning of what my 12th standard Tamil teacher told about human nature - men are greedy, no exceptions. When a person is not placed yet, he longs for a job offer; when he gets one, he thinks why not one more? when he gets two, he thinks, why not the day before itself & why not a much higher paying company? To fit this somewhere in Maslow's Heirarchy of needs (or some other HR crap), when you are secure with something, you yearn for the next step even when you know it is not possible. I would never complain :)

In a few days, I will be leaving this wonderful place forever and going back to my dusty overgrown village masquerading as a metropolitan city. Content and thankful to all the participants and playboy dudes who supported and reassured me till the end.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Book worm?

There is this guy I am in good terms with. Next, I make a couple of mistakes and things turn sour. First, I borrow one of his books to read - Michael Moore's Stupid White Men. A few days before, I borrowed a book from the library - Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country. About a month later, this guy comes to my room to pick up his book. Instead, he takes my book by mistake, which I do not realise till today, when I have to return the book I borrowed. That's the only Michael Moore book in my now almost empty room. When I realised he took the wrong book by mistake, I take it personally to him to get it exchanged. That was the second mistake - taking it to his room instead of just sending an email. When I go there, he is not in his room, so I wait. Looks like he is having his lunch. After some 20 minutes, his neighbour spots him chatting out in the mess. Even when called, he doesn't come up. OK, his prerorgative. Like an idiot, I leave the book in his room and go down to call him. After pushing him for about 20 minutes, he comes up finally. I tell him that he took the wrong book by mistake. We go to his room and he sees the book I took to his room sitting on the desk. He says that was the book he took earlier. I try to reason with him that was the book I brought just now and tell him to search for my book. He adamantly refuses to listen to me and insists that he took only one book and this was that book. I repeatedly ask him whether he took a book, for which he answers affirmatively. When I try to reason with him that he took the wrong book, he refuses to even consider the possibility that the books might have got exchanged. He then accuses me of losing the book and trying to place the blame on him.

What is it with me that makes me do business with only such guys? If he did take the book and what the hell was the book sitting on my desk for a week? What is the book that I took to his room? Why was I such an idiot to take the book back in the first place? The trust I had in his reason?

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Grades

The final grades for a subject were announced today. While I had got my highest GP in a subject till date, there was a major surprise, rather shock for me. There was this one dude who never attended the class, not even one minute of it, but got a top grade. Infact, he got an A+ for class participation, which includes attendance, participating in discussions, etc. He didn't even attend the presentation his group made at the end of the course.

You broke it!

I borrowed a movie from a guy here for making a copy, to take it home. I could not make a copy so I left it with him and told to copy it for me. A few days back, he had said that 'it was not his job' to make copies for others, this time, he agreed. He puts the CD in the drive, opens it and plays and no sound comes out. When I go there, he accuses me of 'corrupting' the CD. Earlier there was sound, now there was no sound, so I broke it. I tried hard to explain to him that it is impossible to remove just the sound track from a VCD. He adamantly refuses to listen to me and says he watched it last night and it was working fine, but he gave it to me and now it was not working, so I broke it. He then tells me how responsible I should have been and all that crap.
'Boss, I gave a CD to you, you should have returned it properly, you broke it!'
I told him to play the CD again for me. Indeed there was no sound. I asked him if he switched on the speakers. He said he was not an idiot. I checked out the player and not surprisingly, the mute button was pressed down. I released it, and sound came roaring back. He asks me(!) 'who could have done that?'
I have worked with some computer science students who were even sillier than he was! If you want to curse me, say that I will work for a techno-impaired boss for eternity.

Monday, February 14, 2005

Privacy and mobile phone cameras

Possibly the first psychoboss story from my first job and probably the last to be posted from here. There are too many articles now coming out on invasion of privacy and mobile phone cameras. There was also a compilation of mobile phone pictures taken in a classroom which I was forced to remove.

My former boss had a mobile phone camera which he flaunted all the time. One day he saw my pathetic 1/2 year old Motorola C350E phone and told me why I did not buy a camera phone. I told him I did not see the need for it. He then went on to explain why a camera phone was so great.

He: You are walking down the road and you see a beautiful girl, what will you do?
Me: I wouldn't do anything Sir
He: A camera phone will be very useful at this point, you just take a picture for later...
Me: But that's wrong!
He: So what? You look at girls, why can't you have their photo?
Me: That's invasion of privacy!
He: Then even looking at them is invasion of privacy. Why do you think they dress so nicely?

He then showed me the pictures of a few girls/women he took and stored in his phone. It was an impressive collection. He was married too! Apart from that, he was very helpful with my work. He told me of the ways I could enjoy trips away from the office, take full advantage of the expense account, etc. Sadly, I was very naive to take advantage of this.

Valentine's Day

One of the most stupid festivals every celebrated on this place, one the most overrated, overhyped, commercialized pseudo-festivals. Pagans celebrate a night of orgy and drunken revelry, church doesn't like it, so Pope changes this day to celebrate the death of a saint who was also a courier and killed by the Romans. Did they account for the days lost when the Gregorian calender was adopted or the days not kept track of in the Julian calendar? It doesn't matter anyway, Jesus was not born in December, still we celebrate his 'birthday'. Since there is love all around the air, there are a few very romantic stories observed by your's truly to share.

Story 1:
This is set in a billion dollar software company's office in a place ruled by a bajari. These 2 young people from different places are brought to work in the same team. After a few days, the boy and the girl fall in love with each other. They are inseperable, roaming all over the city, going places together, eating out of the same plate, talking sweet nothings, etc. There is a catch, the girl is set to get married to her sweetheart from college. An substory is that the sweetheart was her college professor who fell in love with her when he was teaching her. Back to the story, they tell others that they are not lovers really, but just really good friends and the whole world is perverted to cast them in that light.

Story 2:
Hunky boy and bunch of friends sit together on the small walls of college and pass comments at passing girls. Boy meets girl on the internet. First comes friendship then comes love. An intense relationship develops and frustration develops as girl is halfway across the world. Boy thinks he is going to move to USA for MS, so patience is the key. Boy brags with the friends of the boy everyday. Friends are very happy for the boy. One fine day, one guy forwards an email from the boy to friends and boy saying it is not a girl but a boy. Friends laugh and say, ' we know, we wuz the gurl!'

Story 3:
Boy has many girlfriends, takes them out frequently, makes them pay for everything.

Story 4+: Not put because I am a chicken.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Online Photo Albums

I know some people here who are regular visitors to matrimonial and/or dating web-sites. Not because they are reviewing girls to date and/or marry. They are busy collecting pictures of beautiful women out there. It seems there is a strong network to share sites and pictures. I was told of a method to get the most beautiful girl: set the complexion to 'fairest' (Indian - the fairest girl is the most beautiful girl), and save all the pictures. One guy even set it as his messenger avatar. Apparently, photo sharing places like sony, etc are a virtual goldmine for them.

Final exam

My days as a student here will be officially over in a few hours with the last exam that's going to happen. This is a different kind of exam, a normal one! Most of the exams in the last 2 terms have been open book or have been converted to term papers. So, this might be a bit of a challenge - scan through the mind and find the answers in 2 hours instead of scanning through the text book and supporting material. I might also have to start my job hunt immediately, starting tomorrow.