Attendance & Proxies

Well most of you might think this is about an entry on attendance that is taken in a class when you are in school or in college, well then you are absolutely wrong. This is more of the attendance and the proxies that you have to deal with in your real life. One of the best situations being that of a wedding / marriage in our culture. Now this is a real pain in the ass (at least for me it is), most people don’t care about it.

A wedding in our culture is like in most culture the union of two people (99% of the cases are Men and a Woman but as we all know there are exceptions these days). The united people ought to live the rest of the life with each other sharing each others’ burden, sorrows, pleasure………. and all that crap about life. I got to blog about that topic later on but the topic for today is the process of photographing a wedding day mostly.

Now most people around here ask camera men to come and record the events on a wedding day. Apart from this the people from the Bride’s side start recording on the day before for the reception at her house and in case of Bridegroom’s side usually till the end of the wedding and the following reception at the Groom’s house.

Ever since the advent of photography things have gone major changes in a usual wedding. You can see photographers from both sides of the families photographing almost all the events taking place on that very auspicious day. Most of the photos include group photos of the family members and friends with the bride and the groom. They do provide a good memory of events that took place everyday. This is where there problem arises after the photos have been processed. It is used as an attendance register by both the families to see who all were present and NOT present in the ceremony =)). Many a time I have felt this a bit hard on me since I am a kind of a camera shy person (. Anyway I do pose for a couple of photos since this is a one time event.

All this is fine until the advent of a video camera and let me tell you its no easy trying to keep up with excuses for not coming up in the photos. Before you could say that the photographer missed you out, now since you are no longer in the video camera it’s harder to make the proxies.

That’s just the beginning of the story. What is even worse is when they photograph you!!! Right at the moment you are having food. In our place is not some kind of buffet dinner party it’s most of the time a full fledged Kerala Lunch and let me tell you its no small thing and these photographers just capture you at that moment of you eating. These guys also carry a bright light with them. I feel that its very rude when somebody photographs you when you are in the middle of a lunch (I usually loose my appetite when these guys come by and most of the time I try to avoid the lunch). They specifically photograph each and everyone of the people and this serves as the “attendance” register for the wedding. You are not in the lunch implies you dint eat lunch. Now this is kinda bad manner in our culture.

Now the same thing happens in the reception. What is worse thing is this is usually a buffet dinner party. This time too they photograph each individual person who comes and goes in. But this is the problem I see with these wedding parties. The photographers must concentrate more on the event in general and less concentrate on every individual who comes in and goes out during the party.

All they want is to make a 4 hr long video about the wedding so that the people who missed it can see the entire thing uncut. LOL all the people want to see actually the Bride and the Groom and the events happening around them. Let me ask Who the Fuck wants to see people eating food at the wedding party? I don’t think anyone wants to. After all I have seen people watch the video and just fast forward the entire thing and see the important ceremony. These cameramen just use the video camera as some kind of still photographic equipment with the ability to capture sounds. These assholes just mix some filmi songs with the final video and give it to the people and they think it’s some kind of a big thing to do this. I fucking hate this. These assholes essentially destroy all the conversation that take place before, during and after the wedding, all those precious moments in the day that take place.

I hope that a day will come when people realize the full potential of a video camera and use it fully in auspicious events such as a wedding to preserve their memories of a wedding.

Disaster Strikes Again

Yup this isn’t the first time that HDD disasters have struck me. But this one was a pretty nasty one. Talk about 60 GB Data loss, it’s a nightmare so it speak. Movies, Downloaded programs, books, songs etc all lost in the blink of an eye. To make matters worse you haven’t even tagged them or made record of the lost items and remembering the items (yeah right 60 G.B of data) is not an easy task.
It was a pleasant morning got up, brushed my teeth, just when I was about to start up my computer Narayan came with his HDD to copy some data. I plugged his HDD and powered up the system all went well till windows popped up. Then I noticed that my 60 GB HDD was missing. I hurriedly copied the data for Narayan and then it was back to troubleshooting techniques. I noticed in computer management that the drive appeared as unpartitioned and then it stuck me HDD FALIURE!!!

But this time I had more experience dealing with failed HDDs and I own a more powerful p4 based system to recover my files compared to the p3 I used to do the stuff on. So I unplugged the drive connected to the p4 installed GetDataBack v2.81 for FAT32 and then began the recovery procedure.

The main use for my 60 GB drive was transport / storage so I had just 1 partition of 60 GB which implied just 1 partition to recover the data from and it is much better than recovering from multiple partitions.

• The 1st phase of recovery was to Identify the drive / partition.


• Then select the identified partition from which the data has to be recovered.


• Detection of the missing files (The longest boring phase)


• Showing the various missing files

• Recovering the files on user demand

The p4 showed a 45 min search time to go through the drive to find the missing files and my p3 would have shown at least 2 hours.

It was during this time I gave a thought to my previous experiences with disasters. I point out the most important of them.

• Recovery of Data from a friend’s “Accidentally” deleted partitions of a 10 G.B HDD


• My own 17 G.B HDD that developed bad sectors


• My own 60 G.B HDD that developed bad sectors


• A 40 GB HDD of a friend of mine that developed bad sectors (in the boot sector I think because the drive could never be repartitioned again)

The Last part of the Recovery.
This is the most pleasing when u see all the files

After 45 min it showed the partitions I recovered all the necessary files about 50 G.B and put them all into my 120 G.B. Then wrote some of them into DVDs to reduce the space overhead. Repartitioned the entire 60 G.B as an NTFS drive and then put the data back and verified it using CHKDSK and one whole day was wasted for the entire procedure. Man such disasters can be very frustrating and more than that time consuming.

A Tsunami Story

It’s been some time (about 11 months) since the Tsunami Disaster has struck the world killing over 200,000 people. We all have heard about it in the news. It even caused death and property loss in Kerala to a great extend. But I haven’t met in person anyone who was affected by this killer disaster until yesterday.

Even I haven’t heard of such a relative until the recent Tsunami Disaster. He lives in Andaman & Nicobar Islands off the east coast of India. He came to Trivandrum after the disaster and on his way back, had developed certain medical complications when he was in Chennai. He was admitted to the Apollo Hospital in Chennai who couldn’t exactly diagnose the cause for his ailment. The problem being his body’s sugar content was running low causing Hypoglycemia. After that he came to Trivandrum and was admitted to KIMS Hospital in Trivandrum. After the diagnosis report said that he had an abnormal growth in his Pancreas that was oxidizing sugar in his blood at a very fast uncontrollable rate. The doctor requested an urgent surgery to remove the growth. After the surgery he was back to normal and went back to Andaman & Nicobar. This was 8 months back.

But 1 week ago he developed stomach ache and came back to be admitted to KIMS and my father and I decided to pay him a visit. During the visit we had a face to face chat with him about his life in the islands. Actually I couldn’t believe that he used to quite a big business man there before the Tsunami disaster. He owned a big electrical and electronics goods shop there. He told us that on D-Day he was bathing and then a centipede crawled into his bathroom, he bend down to squash it and then he felt kind of pressure when he was trying to get up along with a roaring noise. After the shower he put on his casual clothes and went out to see what was going on. Everything seemed calm after the little earthquake he experienced. He took his scooter and went out to have a glass of tea. This is when he noticed something unusual in the sea a rather large wave was coming towards the shore. He rode up a small hill near the house in his scooter and he said that the wave had over flowed and wetted the road. The there was a second wave which was a little bigger, followed by a third wave even bigger. Now there was a lot of silence and his shop was the only standing one out there. People said that this would be the last and all returned to their places. He returned to his shop and saw that some of the electronic equipment was washed out and got damage. He said it had concrete floors and was a sturdy building. But then he said he heard a loud noise like a jet plane flying over and then the came the fourth wave. He climbed onto the second floor and watched it was the biggest ever and it came in at a meter high and washed out the entire ground floor of the building while he was standing on the second floor. Then there was a fifth wave of the near same nature. The whole shop was literally washed away in the Tsunami with an estimated loss of about 2 to 3 lakh Rupees.

It was after these events that the medical complication arose and all of the expenses rounded up to about 5 lakh Rupees. The Tsunami compensation that he should have received from the government has not yet been received, to make things worse he dint even insure his shop because such a disaster was never expected so no insurance compensation. As a matter of fact he hasn’t received any compensation of any sort up to now.

Think of this situation for yourself in your life. One moment you have everything you love and earned beside you and the next moment everything destroyed in an instant of time. Think of the situation you will be in. We live in a world where we go to sleep every night not knowing that whether we will wake up to see the next day’s sunrise. So people live your life while you can.

Hope In Despair - II

Reached home, had dinner, browsed the net, played CS and watched the prerecorded programs that I programmed the video to do and then went to sleep hopping that tomorrow will be a better day. The phone ringing woke me up the next day and I realized I overslept it was v!p3r, got up brushed my teeth slipped on a jeans and T-Shirt, had a cup of coffee and in the mean while I was listening to the shouts of my father. I bid farewell and set off to v!p3r.

He was already waiting outside, I hopped in his car and we set off. We reached there, I carried the box in and then we were asked to wait in the basement. The thoughts of a blown-out motherboard were still lingering in my mind. After waiting for about 20 min they guy came and told us that we forgot to place the bushes underneath the motherboard to prevent it from grounding and mentioned that we were lucky that the motherboard did not damage. I was relieved to hear it, at least I dint mess up another motherboard.

On our way back we swung by Logtech to get back the dead PIII. We returned to his home. The motherboard needed a BIOS upgrade as it wasn’t recognizing the current processor. And having a sense of relief, I took his couple of old 128 MB SD RAM Sticks from his old PIII for an upgrade to my PIII into 512 MB.

On reaching my home I tried the RAM sticks to my disappointment one of them was a 100 MHz stick and was going to slow down my system. So I upgraded my memory to 384 MB. After this I removed my old 250W SMPS and put a relatively new one 300W SMPS from another dead PIII my cousin brought over. And powered up my old PIII feeling relieved, I sat down in front of it and relaxed that at least something has gone my way this day.

P.S: Two days later v!p3r told me that the CMOS chip had been damaged due to bad earthing and the motherboard had to be changed. Damn! time to retire for me

Hope In Despair - I

After the Windows 2000 ordeal I was taking time off lazing around in the study holidays. Sometime back a PIII based system of a friend of mine died. Obviously the motherboard died, moreover it was getting old and in human terms lets say it was on ventilator, I remember that it got its graphics card replaced, then the SMPS burned out and it had to be replaced. So u see the computer itself was breaking apart, it was only a matter of time before the entire thing became dead and then it happened it just refused to boot. After sending it to Logtech (the Premiere Computer Sales shop in Trivandrum). They said they had no hopes of fixing it. Its bad news like these brings joy to some people like us as its time to buy a new computer.

Now after search for a good budget configuration has been going on for sometime. With a budget of Rs. 9000 we set out for a hunt and found a combination of  2500+ AMD Semphron 64 and an ASUS K8V mobo to go with it. I particularly hate VIA low end chipsets because of bad driver supports as well as low performance compared to nVIDIA chipsets. However it was a cost effective solution and went for it. We took the system from COMSOL a relatively new computer sales shop compared to Logtech.

After taking the mobo + processor + cabinet for about Rs .8700 we found that there was no one to assemble the system. So I suggested we take it home and assemble it ourselves.

On reaching home we found that there were no screws found with the cabinet. Damn! Forgot that, then we took all the available screws in the home and then using it we fitted the computer. Everything went fine in the assembly part, the problem began when we were powering up the system. The system just refused to boot what so ever and then after looking into some of the jumper details the system refused to power up. After doing so much assembly / disassembly by myself I have obviously overlooked something and I still dint know what now this was getting annoying.

After some more tinkering with the system, it came to my mind, Have I caused a static discharge in the system? Have I destroyed a brand new motherboard? How can this happen to me after so much of experience with computer?

This was by far very disappointing. Dint know what to do I turned back home, it was getting late and it was night around 8.45 pm. With an angry father in the home it was no relief here too.

Whew Finally !!!!

Finally tamed Windows 2000 to my needs. And the best of all things is Unreal Tournament 2004 works. However this wasn’t as easy as it sounds, continuing from the last post, I removed all the installed applications to detect all possible faults that could prevent Unreal Tournament 2004 from working finally I was left with nothing but Windows 2000 and Unreal Tournament 2004. :-)

This could only mean one thing, the problem lies within Windows 2000 and then I remembered that I had used a custom made slipstreamed version of Windows 2000 with service pack 4. Obviously I might have messed up some files in the process that dint show up during the setup process. Trust me I had a real hard time trying to find the root cause of the problem.

Then there was this reinstall spree formatted the primary partition installed Windows 2000 with no SP and then integrated it after the install. I had to install the motherboard drivers which caused a bit of headache as they were not being recognized by Windows and got stuck in between I had to reboot to install the driver selectively. After this the first program to be executed was Unreal Tournament 2004, and it was a joy to see the splash screen of Unreal Tournament 2004. After all the programs installed began the tweaking process, disabling unwanted services, personalizing settings for the programs.

Finally this blog entry was made from this tweaked version of Windows 2000. I m still trying to get to know more about Windows 2000. However, one quick thing I did learn about Windows 2000 was that no matter the OS u still lose in UT2K4 oh yes another defeat in the game this time it was a FFA in DM-Rankin. Five people fighting with each other lost to the 1st place by about 8 frags damn!!!

Frustrated about Windows

Its been a couple of days since I last blogged the reason being I was downgrading to Windows 2000 and converted my existing 80 g hdd as my primary and took out my long term 60 g for mobile purposes.

Now the point is why I downgraded to windows 2000 you might ask. Well it was done for the good of my computer. It a pretty weak one with just 256 MB RAM and powered by a P III. It can’t handle multiple tasks in Windows XP and tend to clog up. So I decided to go to Windows 2000 after all both being built on the near same NT Kernel I expected it to be less stressful on the system as well as I thought that I could do multitasking better.

To my horror things took the turn for the worst first of all the installation wasn’t smooth did screw up in between but nothing serious. Its after the installation did things become real bad. There was this whole driver mix up and windows refused to boot then I had to go through the repair routine. Then there was the problem of finding signed drivers for windows, again another big mess up. Then came the hassles of installing applications, some dint work and others were partially working. One of the greatest disappointments being that Unreal Tournament 2004 dint work, and I m still trying to make it work.

In the mean while the feel of Windows 2000 was pretty much like Windows 98 with some added features. I expected it to be friendlier like Windows XP but it isn’t. I m also feeling pretty much isolated because none of my friends use Windows 2000. So it’s pretty hard to find solutions to problems like the former mentioned one.


Another problem I faced was after I connected to the Internet. I started seeing pop up message alerts as soon as I got connected. It was pretty much similar to the local messenger service as we see in LAN environments. Later on I realized that it was a bug in the Windows 2000 environment so that spammers can use messenger service remotely to sent unsolicited messages. Later on I had to disable the messenger service.

All this is taking place even after I have Installed service pack 4 for windows 2000. This is the most frustrating part of it.

I still miss the Windows XP environment, I like the colorful and vividness of the interface compared to Windows 2000. But As a Part of Learning I m trying to learn about Windows 2000 in more detail by using it. Hopefully it will pay off.

The K.K Problem

What a waste of a day was today! I was expecting to study something for the exam tomorrow and up to now have done nothing. This means I m going to get all fucked up tomorrow in the series examination.

First of all I had 3 days to study for it and fooled around for 2 days and just when I had done enough of fooling around for the 3rd day at about 2.15 in the afternoon I decided to open the book. Which was the exact timing for K.K to barge in to take his hopeless Laptop home.

What turned out to be a casual visit to take the laptop home became an ordeal to resurrect the dead laptop. The laptop a HP OmniBook 4100 just refuses to boot after the 1st phase of windows setup (for all versions of the windows). Causing me to fiddle with the laptop for about 4 hours straight.

Now another problem with the laptop was that it had a non working Floppy Drive, no CD-ROM Drive. Now this was a total disaster. With no other alternate input to this laptop it was real hard to copy the windows setup. Now data transfer to the hard disk was conducted by a USB interface with the help of a desktop computer.

Now after hours of hopeless copying and installing. K.K managed to persuade me to go to Kadu’s house to get his CD-ROM Drive. I told him this was a bad idea. But he just had to do it and it ended up in a bigger disaster. All in the name of saving some money and as they say money begets money. Trying to save some causes a bigger loss somewhere else. This is what exactly happened.

The most interesting problem here is not the laptop but K.K !! The guy is real stingy guy when I got to know him first. He refuses to spent money on the laptop to repair it. He just dosent accept the logical solution to the problem and he wants a cheaper solution. And if u are familiar with the laptop world u know things are pretty expensive around there. But then again I feel sympathy for this guy as he makes living off winning quiz competitions and does a pretty well job in that. So I know the reason why he is this stingy. He also comes from a Brahmin background from palakad. And he is a pretty hard working chap too.

Money is the root of all problems he says not having the money to maintain an expensive system like laptop was one thing he dint foresee when he was buying one that to a second hand laptop. What is worse is that he don’t have the supervisor password for this laptop making it a worthless piece of junk. But least does he know that problems of money are not big but problems of a person having shattered dreams is far painful and agonizing.

Days of Innocence

Continuing from the story of my life from where I left off……….

I did not enjoy my childhood as it should have been. My physical enjoyment wasn’t much as even a little sweating on playing outside can cause recurring throat infections. This was bad more over the summer years in the desert is a bit taxing. I remember being the only kid in the whole building who used to eat ice cream after it melted. Come on people the objective of an ice cream was that u eat it before it is melted and look at the irony in my case.

I was growing older and I became more aware of the surroundings. I began making friends. I became more aware of where i stayed, could memorize people’s names, places etc.

I came to know my names the official and nickname. The official I have mentioned before the nick can be translated into "small". I remember I used to stay in Fahaheel, Kuwait. In a building @ the 5th Floor. It was the top most floor. My father used to work in commercial bank in Kuwait. And my mother used to work as a nurse in Kuwait Oil Company (K.O.C) Hospital Division .

My friends during this time were, my neighbour Donny, who was same age of mine. We used to have little fights then. Then there were his two elder sisters who were friendlier. Then on the third floor of the building there lived another two of my closest friends Vipin and Veena we were so close I still don’t remember their actual names. All of us used to go to the ground floor @ about 5.00 pm in the evening to play. Main course entertainment being cycling. Then the next most popular thing being police and robber, hide and seek. Thinking of them gives me nostalgic sensations all over.

Mean while these frequent infections was a real fun killer. I don’t remember a lot about the world outside the Fahaheel buildings. But I do remember going outside Kuwait to India pretty occasionally.

Most of these visits were vague to me. But after one such visit to Kerala then Bombay, a good doctor in Bombay suggested a stronger version of penicillin. That could provide a better protection against the disease. Now there was a catch to this, u see the dosage of the medicine was only once a month being in form of an injection right in the butt. Believe me it was no ride in the park. The pain was piercing and u had to massage my butt with a hot water bottle before i could walk properly. The usual procedure consisted of someone fooling me to lye down in someone’s lap and then someone else poking the needle in my butt. Followed by agony, pain and crying followed by swearing, and as a conclusion giving me some sweet to calm me down.

To be continued......

Yet another Loss

Long time I couldn’t write. Depression mostly, putting on weight too. The HP incident really is taking the toll. Along with that I just found out that some of my closest friends are really spineless (Rest Is Censored). Now why do I say that u ask eh ?
Well what can I say, I expected them to support my idea or at the least consider it for that matter when we were going to take up the Main Project. But they wanted to chicken out.

Why to chicken out ? Because Obviously they all got second jobs in IBM, Deloitte and HP and why risk when u can have a secure project in VSSC. It’s all warm an cosy nothing worry they will give u everything and u just need to do some programming. We are engineers for Gods sake we are people who think, invent and innovate ideas into this world in which we live in.

The project they gave was in simple terms nothing but to acquire data from rocket launches like velocity, acceleration, tilt etc and then plot it all in real time in a graphical environment. If anybody reads this and has common sense we all know its not engineering rather its some kids programming stuff to represent acquired data graphically no innovation, no thinking, no engineering principles involved. How does one call this a main project ?

I m so much dishonored by their approach. Even to my surprise even the most brilliant in the group just gave in. I feel like a samurai who has lost a battle a long battle that he had fought and In this shame of defeat a samurai takes his life.

But the battle is not over yet I may be down but not yet dead. I have survived other battles during my days and lost many but will keep fighting until I die whether I lose or win is no longer a point in this battle. After even the closest of my friends abandoned me in the middle of the battlefield I feel that my enemies those forces who cause the chain of events in my life are better to be called friends now.

One more day that has to be forgotten

Before I continue my story, I would like to say on the monday of this week was my seminar. If i were in the audience seeing myself, trust me I would have slept off. A typical Technical Seminar lasts about 10 to 20 min maximium of 30 minutes. Now comes that joke what seemed like 15 minutes to me was approximately 1 hr! Damn why dint anyone warn me, or was it that everyone just slept off. I dont think so GOD can answer that, probably "GOD" was asleep too :-)). After all being a |053|2 is a tough job especially when doin it full time.

Anyway the topic of the seminar was "The CELL Microprocessor", well its a highly advanced microprocessor designed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba. Its pretty interesting and it motivated me when I wasnt a complete |053|2 yet. And let me tell u it wasnt smooth, my presentation did have a couple of videos and just when I was about to start I realized there were no WMP10 codecs in the system. Damn I hate that now I went back to the hostel and then took the WMP10 and returned by this time most of the audience realized, that there may not me any more seminar all were happy but when I returned u could see a very gloomy faces (or at lest that’s what it seemed to me).

O.K then the presentation began; I put myself in an audience chair and saw myself come in front of the crowd to present. I could see that the people around me was getting restless and wanted me to get over with it. And then he began, it was pretty unusual to hear him in this loud voice. After a not so bad neither good start by criticism abt the bad experiences with microprocessors in the past he said he will try not be like that.

Then the blabbering started he kept on going, my god we were hungry and this guy was hogging it all up. There were a couple of videos within the presentation. I could see that no one was paying any attention wat so ever to this blabber stuff. The only persons listening to this was some geeks @ the front. Then wat seemed like hours, it ended. Quite surprisingly there were a couple of questions asked by some from the audience and he stood there answering that, wat made it even more interesting was the fact that our sir who was judging the seminar dint have any questions, most probably he was hungry and wanted to get over all of this just quickly.

One "Name" to rule them all (out)

Oh yes u got to be named @ some point in ur life. After all people use that as a reference to u. Well its been some time since I have begun to realise the surroundings around me. And my parents were thinking abt wat to call me for the rest of my life. Not to say the fair share of nick names I have got by all the people visiting me regularly. But it was time it got an official name. The "name" that I was going to be known by my friends, my peers and the name that I was going to be used for official purposes.

After a lot of thinking my parents named me what can be literally translated to "Happy" in English. But then they must have been happy as I was the first child in the family. But then again "Happy" is only a word nothin more than a word. It was the only "Happy" thing in my life for a long time to come.

I was a weekling prone to regular attacks of acute tonsillitis. Now those were pretty painful. Accompanied by many other related ailments. I couldnt be exposed to cold or heat. Regular sickness caused weekly antibiotcs followed by another 2 weeks free from sickness. But then again the cycle repeated.

Believe me its not easy trying to live with this kind of sickness.

To be continued......

The Birth of a |053|2

How does it feel to know u are a parasite even before the day u are born ? Well face the truth we all were (and some of us continue to be). Let me define what a parasite is for further clarification

"A parasite is an organism that lives in or on the living tissue of a host organism at the expense of that host. The biological interaction between the host and the parasite is called parasitism. Parasitism is a type of symbiosis, by one definition, although another definition of symbiosis excludes parasitism, since it requires that the host benefit from the interaction as well as the parasite."

We are created in a human body (the host) and continue to feast on that body's resources until the day we are born. We form a symbiotic relationship. It is an inevitable fact that we were all born parasites. But not all are born "|053|2", this is pretty much the case with me. I was a born "|053|2", rumors say that after my symbiotic relationship ended @ 15.25 Kuwait Time February 25th 1984 (One thing is for sure that the whole of Kuwait was celebrating, Oh no no, it wasnt me but its just that my bithday coincided with their national day) and I couldnt handle it. It is said that they put me in an "incubator" for about a week. Well I was too young to remember the exact nature of events that took place back then.

One thing was sure I am not the guy who was designed to face the real world. And so the "|053|2" who is the highlight of this blog comes to life.

Why create a Blog ?

A good question even for a |053|2. Well desperate times calls for desperate measures and this is one of those measures. Losing is a part of life, just as winning but it does have a profound effect on an indivudial when Losing dominates over winning. As u read my blog u will get a clearer picture y I say this. But for the time being I create this blog as a back up for myself just in case I get an amnesia (due to the unlucky course of events goin on in my life :-) ) and want to see the path I have taken in my life.