Me, Myself & Irene

I met her online, like something out of a movie hmm....now what was that movie, oh yeah! You got a mail!!!, but this was not through mail but through a game called Human-Age, A game that I used to play for fun along with Frantic.

It was not until mid way through Age 2 I actually met her online. Back in Chennai early mornings just before I brush my teeth I sit and play Human Age, and one fine day I saw a message in the message log saying

You have been awarded 2 reputation points by Irene

I thought must have been some honest mistake by someone, so I did a favor by giving my rep points back. And we could only do this once a week. It was not until next week that I noticed that it happened again

You have been awarded 2 reputation points by Irene.

Now this was no coincidence, so I send out a PM to her asking if she had accidentally put the Rep points for me mistaking me for someone else and Then I saw the most polite and sweetest PM ever returned.

No I did not put it in accidentally, I think my points gives you good luck. (Actually she put it that sentence in a sweeter way but I just cant remember that.)

Hmm...Interesting I though, so we used to exchange rep points regularly every week, once in a while I used to send her a PM and she used to send me some PMs.

She was a very self sustaining person in the Game, never asked for any other favors during our little PMs, I found it very interesting as many times I was struggling to keep myself alive in Age 2. I was a little shy to ask her help too.

Now in Age 2 in Human-Age people can get married :D, of course most of my friends know that getting married in Real Life is of last priority to me, but I did not mind getting married Virtually. So one fine day I popped the Question to the sweet Irene, "Will you marry me?"

Being a virtual proposal I did not have ring and did not go down on my knees. I just put a PM to her asking the question. I got a surprising answer she was planning to ask me the same question but she was thinking that I already has someone else in mind, I replied saying that no there was nobody else and then I send her the official proposal and all it took was nothing click from her side and yet another Celtic Wedding took place. the one between Grey.Fox & Irene <3 :)

Now we had a common chat window where we could type messages so we kind of chatting regularly, but it was a kind of deferred chat not a live one. It was like a month that passed by before we exchanged our messenger IDs it was after that I got to know her better.

I haven't met a lot of persons online as such, most people on my list are people whom I have met offline or were friends with. So it is one of the rare circumstances that I add a person whom I haven't met especially after getting to know her through a game :).

She used to be online from 5:30 PM IST to about 9:30 PM IST and sometimes even till late mid night. And it was real nice time zone to be in as I could keep in regular touch with her. And it was during this time I got to know her more. She told me she was working in a company and her job was related to Translating documents. I was surprised to hear that she spoke atleast 5 different languages including Romanian, French, Spanish, English and German. I myself had a hard time understanding my own mothertongue and the national language and not to mention the tough times I had in English class. What was even more surprising is that she was still a student studying Business and Economics. The time she added me to the list was during her exams.

I thought that we both were at two ends of the spectrum when it came to common interests, because on the surface if you look at it I am a guy who is deep into Computers and games and tech stuff and here is a real smart girl who is fluent many languages and is doing a course in Business and Economics and working in a company rest of the time. But things were very different than expected. We shared similar musical tastes, Iron Maiden, Metallica :D are some of them. We both shared the same sun sign. And our date of births are just a week apart. The study pattern during exams where in I used to spend sometime with the books when I get bored I used to hook on the computer and play some game or just log on to Human-Age.

We both liked photography but she had a better camera with her :D, she used to show me pitures from all over Europe, she gave me a tour of France, Italy, Romania, Austria and many other places. I used to show her some of my insect photography and places around here. She was kind enough to show me some of her personal moments like the time she painted her house, her home and family too :).

We also play computer games, Duh!!! Isnt that how I met her? well not just Human-Age, we both have played Diablo and both of us do like to play RPG games :).

We both have similar movie tastes, almost all the good movies and old movies we have seen them. We also used to discuss some of the movies during our chats.

We both got a sister who is studying Medicine. This was total coincidence.

And guess what we both like to have a drink once in a while too :), she once said to me her favorite drink was Vodka and so is mine.

She also used to talk about Indian food and hotels there and she had one very prominent comment "The food is too spicy". She also reads Rabindranth Tagore's Poetry and even attempted to read the Mahabharatha (She said she did not get time to look into it yet). I was like "WOW" I haven't read those things, well I need to get more acquainted with these things, so that I can tell about it when people ask me things and not have a blank face indicating I have no knowledge about these thing after being an Indian.

After getting to know her more, I came to one big conclusion she was way smarter than me, now why I say this is from the following facts. She really knew how to play Human-Age, the tactics and strategies for dealing with Market, buying selling, hunting, playing as a team in game. She is the one who advised me and led me through the game. And she did that better than any in-game mentor could :)

And now what made this girl so special was that she was a good listener too, never used to complain to all the typing I did, it ranged from problems in work to problems in life and she always had a positive and calming answer of every problem. Not an ideal optimist (the kind of person who believe that no matter how bad the situation at some point good will occur) but a real optimist (a person who sees the bad situation and then says may be things will get better but you should never let yourself down and that is the most important thing). She was also one of the few persons who actually whole heartedly supported my decision to resign from the company.

Even though I never met her in person, chatting with her was quite different from most of my friends and yet I never felt that she was a stranger who I had not met. This did bring up a question in my mind, a question that I had not asked myself so far, are the qualities that I should forward in a Woman I wish to marry? Will I meet a person like her again with so much similar tastes as mine? or May be I am just over reacting, hmm I dont know...

May be I should catch a plane to Romania one fine day and then go to Irene and I might ask her out on a date, we both will have a Vodka Maritni (Yup shaken but not stirred) and then dance under the beautiful moonlight...(Oh! yeah dance, yup I know that you all know I do not dance, but I am sure the smart and beautiful Irene will have a strategy up in her head, All I need to do is just listen to her :D), life is all about expecting the unexpected you never know....

P.S 1: Looks like Computers have languages too, I know about 5 of them almost hmm....is that a common thing between Myself and Irene, she knows 5 languages too...

P.S 2: I really miss you these days after you disappeared from the messenger

Fox on Fire

Nop not me, but check out the screenshot


With a little more effort it would have reached 1GB, but then we noticed that the SQL query runner was not executing as expected with the error message "Not enough memory" on a system with 1 GB RAM. After a bit of poking around the problem was traced to a firefox who was eating up memory.

The root cause of the issue wasn't firefox itself but rather a faulty plugin called "Javascript Debugger", we uninstalled the plugin and things were back to normal.

A Haste To The Wedding

I could vaguely make out the voice from my father, and the distant ringing of the phone. And then it struck me like a bolt of lightning I was supposed to get up and get ready to catch the train for Duttan's Wedding and good heavens I am already one hour late and to give me company Frantic was late too.

After a quick brush of my tooth and jumped into my jeans and put on my T-Shirt took my scooter and made off to Frantic's home, the time was 4:50 AM and I had to catch a train at 5:00 A.M, on reaching his home, he was waiting outside with his car, I quickly parked my scooter in his house and went over to the car. His father had agreed to drop us near the next stop of the Train, we reached the platform just in time to catch the train.

We found our seats in the general compartment it was saved by our friends. Reminded me of the old times when used to hang out together like the night outs we had during the LAN Party setup, the times we hung out together in the beaches in the weekends after the college days. But this time the occasion was a bit different, one more among us was getting married.

We were discussing a lot of things in the train, but one very interesting conversation was regarding lecturers in my former college and I had made some nasty remarks only to know later that one of the person sitting opposite to me was a Professor in the Electrical department in that train. But I did not give a fuck about that since that is the place where I lost myself.

We all reached Mavelikara by 7:30 AM, decided to walk to the near by Lodge to get another friend who had come from Chennai to join the Wedding. That was a walk for about 15 to 20 minutes and after that we reached the specificed lodge, we had breakfast from there and then set off on foot to the Auditorium that is about 5 KM away.

Even though it was a supposed to be a walk most of the people bailed out before reaching mid point and then all that was left was me frantic and GP. I never had a walk along the areas outside the City regions around the south. And the experience was the most wonderful ever. We were on a road that could not be straighter, mostly residential average to big size houses on either side, town that is still quiet in the late morning, it felt like it was a holiday even though it was a Monday, it was very different from the Rat race I was facing in Chennai.

For a moment I thought I should give up everything in life and just settle in this place and lead a quiet life far far away from the daily mad rush in life. It seems that that time has slowed down for this place and it seemed like a place in 2008 even though the run looked like it was from the 1980's.

All the walking gave me a glipmse of how the Freedom Walkers might have gone through their ordeal. After walking about 1.5 hour we reached the wedding auditorium, where we met the rest of the group and hung around until Duttan came by and then went down to greet him took a couple of photos and then it was back to the auditorium. Well not much interesting happened except the fact that I was speaking in too much DotA lingo, need to get a hold of that by the way. And then Spawn came by long time since I saw this gamer, a very nice person and a good Quake 3 / UT Gamer. Had a small chat with him and then it was time to tie the knot. The groom came on the podium Frantic grabbed a couple of photos and then the bride came on, and I couldn't make out the red Saree beneath the yellow gold plate of ornamets around her neck and waist.

Then we had a photosession with the no longer bachelor Duttan :P, and we all went for lunch and as usual I just sat outside made calls to some old friends. I always tend to loose my appetite around a crowd. While sitting there making calls I saw people of all shapes and sizes go past me. Then it was time to bid farewell and we were on our way back. We took a bus ride from there to the Kayankulam Bus Depot. Where we stood waiting for the next bus to Trivandrum. And in the midst of all the rush to get into the bus, we got to see Greenhorn do a quick sprint very mucn unexpected of him due to his growing size to catch a seat in the bus.

On our way back for some moments Frantic and I felt that we were sitting in the old back bench of our school, especially when he mentioned about the days we used to spend arguing on topics way in the back bench in our class :).

Frantic, GP and myself got out near technopark where his wife came to pick him up. Frantic took the car back to Technopark to drop her off. Then he made me take the car and for the 1st I drove a Spark from Technopark to Frantic's home, due to his expert guidance we all reached there in one piece and of course the car was also in one piece, of course like all n00bs I had my fareshare of n00bish incidents along the way, but that did not stop me from reaching the target point i.e his home.

I guess that would pretty much sum up the day, may be my title was not appropriate and the entry did not have any interesting incidents but I thought I should scribble this one down as it had attachments to my past :), a past which is lost...or may be not...

The Hunt

Hunted (BF0019): Come in base...(radio static)..come in base, this is blind flight ZERO ZERO ONE NINER, we have a situation. I am lost an am not aware of the location. I seek assistance from any one out there...(static)...

---

Hunter-1(ST): Come in Swift Wings, Looks like a clear sunny morning, how are you doing today?

Hunter-2(SW): Doing good Sharp Talons, Did you find any prey yet?

ST: None SW, it has been a pretty clumsy morning...

SW: You can say that again...

---

BF0019: Come in anyone who can hear this broadcast, this is an emergency, I need to get into shade, I cannot bear this heat....static...

BF0019: I am changing this situation to a "Pan-Pan", "Pan-pan, Pan-pan, Pan-pan.", come in someone please...static...

---

SW: Did you hear that ST on the Emergency broadcast, there is a flight in distress...

ST: Roger that SW, this is going to be the easiest catch ever. You take the lead SW and chase him down.

---

Base: This is base Blind Fight Zero Zero One Niner, we got you "Pan-Pan", How may we assist you?

BF0019: Thank God!!!, I am all lost in this new terrain from base, I am low of fuel and need shade to recharge, can you assist me to find the nearest one?

Base: Zero Zero One Niner you were supposed to be at base at 0600 hrs, you are running late by 4 hrs. Anyway what does your Sonar Reading show, so that we can establish your current location.

BF0019: Sorry about that, my current sonar shows I am passing through a dense building area with walls on either side, my reading also shows open wide spaces about couple of blocks ahead.

Base: That is fine Zero Zero One Niner, keep in your current flight path until further instructions.

BF0019: Roger That, Awaiting further instructions.

---

Swift Wings does a Suka Dive and hits BF0019 right on the left wing

SW: ST I have a confirmed Hit

ST: Tally ho, Tally on Scope.

---

BF0019: "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday", I have been pinged at 3'0 Clock and about to loose control over flight.

Base: SAY AGAIN, Did you say you were Pinged?!!!

BF0019: Roger that, I am switching over to Emergency evasion procedures. I have one bogie at 3'O Clock. I have been engaged in a dogfight.

ST: You are going down boy

Engages the Sharp Talons on the body of BF0019

BF0019: I have been hit on my upper body, I am going down. Wait I see an opening on the right.

BF0019 Takes a sharp 90 degree turn and falls down into the dirt.

Both SW and ST hover over the crash site.

---

SW: ST Lets finish him off...

ST: Wait look...

BF0019: I am hit and down, I am going to try restart the flight using the emergency back up power.

Base: Roger that, we see via sonar you are boxed in. We do not see an escape route.

BF0019: I need back up.

Base: That is not possible Zero Zero One Niner, you are on your own here. Sorry.

---

BF0019 attempts to start up once again. Meanwhile...

ST: SW I have a better idea, lets vulch...

SW: ROGER WILCO ST.

BF0019: My engines are back up and flapping...I cannot gain altitude, I am in direct collision course with a human being.

I see a bat coming towards me and had to turn to my left to avoid it...

BF0019: That was a close call base. I am regaining altitude.

---

SW: Let us chase him down, bring out your talons.

ST: Roger, I am going in for the kill.

I see two crows pass over the metal sheeted roof.

---

BF0019: I am in a furball here.

Gets struck by the sharp talons...

BF0019: We have a hull breach, I cannot maintain altitude.

SW: We got him dude. This is it.

BF0019: I am fubar base, this is my last transmission, It was good knowing you guys. Over and Out.

---

SW comes in a nails him to the ground. SW and ST both rip apart BF0019 to have their well earned breakfast.

All I could do is watch this act of nature...One dies to so that another can live....

Death And Decay

The sky is blue, I can't realize the exact time of the day but I think it is somewhere around late morning. Around me is what I would call a typical scenery that you would witness around Kerala. But not the regular city scape but more of the village scenery.

For a moment I did not realize that I was not in a City. I stood in front of a tattered old gate build using parts of a coconut tree leaves. The boundary of this old hut was not very strong either, again made from the same raw materials. It seemed that the walls and the gate were about to fall off. A strong gust of wind was more than enough to blow them into pieces.

I had absolutely no idea I was doing in this small isolated far from the City and I had this strong urge to get inside the Hut. Something from inside was trying to summon me in. I carefully made my way through the small gap in between the gate not trying to knock down the delicately balanced boundary. The Yard around the hut was very small and seemed pretty much life less, I could sense the sand was moist and bit hard but nothing grew from it. It felt like the land was devoid of any life even with the high water content around the region which flushed in greenery.

All of this seem pretty strange to me, I made my way to the parched hut, the walls of the hut were pretty much made of mud and the roof made from the leaves of coconut trees. The force that summoned me was getting stronger as I entered this hut. The veranda of the hut was empty, I stepped into the veranda and saw a small room, it was small, damp and was lit by oil lit lamps.

I stepped into this room and found people inside, none of whom I recognized from my past. They were all young to middle aged women. Then in the middle there was this mat that had an old lady on it, she was blanketed and she seemed very sick.

The very room made me sick, it felt like ages since light from the outside actually came into this room. All the things in the room were pretty old including the furniture, the utensils etc. The windows and ventilators were pretty much shut tight, the only inlet and outlet of anything was through the door I came in.

Nobody did mind the fact that they had a stranger among them or were they expecting me? The old lady stayed pretty much motionless in her bed, it looked like she has been in this way for a pretty long time. Life has literally been sucked out of her. The only thing that moved was her eyes looking around in the room never fixing on one object. I did not know whether she saw me standing there.

Then from a darker room beside the mat another lady comes out and then takes this blanket off the old lady's body. I could not believe my eyes, she was so old that her body was no longer of any use, all her limbs were lay still as though it were dead in very awkward and twisted positions. She looked very old, I cannot say how old she was, it was like as if Death forgot to visit her.

She was living in a body that was decaying, a body that could not longer sustain itself, yet she couldn't die to relieve herself from this decaying body. She was calling out silently to someone who can relieve her from this situation. I could no longer hear the outside world, the silence was deafening. Then suddenly the ladies around me started to pray and after a short moment of praying the lady who removed the blanket took out a small heavy spherical glass like object that some what reminded me of a paper weight and then with all the might threw it down at the old lady's arm.

"Crack"....there was a noise as though a bone broke. I could see no expression of pain on the old lady's face. I was shocked by the actions, before I could do anything the lady took the spherical object and threw it at the right arm and yet again another "crack"... The next time it was on the knee and there was another "Crack", all this time the lady did not make a noise or change expression on her face. Her eyes still looked at the persons in the room.

I could no longer bear to watch this horrible act and in another jolt I woke from my sleep and got out of the couch, a couch so dear I had slept on it for over 6 years now.

The old lady had suffered more than one life time, I could not imagine how the person could not die and had to suffer to the extend of one's own body being decayed. What were the other people trying to do help her or make her suffer more?

An Advice?

Advice is a form of relating personal opinions, belief systems, personal values and recommendations about certain situations relayed in some context to another person, group or party often offered as a guide to action and/or conduct.

I was just wondering when is that a person was is actually eligible to give advice. Is it when the person has passed a point of experience on an event? I wonder whether some of the advice I gave was actually right for me to give or not.

Why such a question now?

Well I had an experience to put it blankly.

This happened back in Chennai when I was still holding a job and just had put down my paper. A friend of a friend contacted me via a mail, one fine day and was telling me of the consequences of not having a back up plan if you quit your job.

The person said that there was a similar experience with him / her on this issue where a situation like mine arose and the paper was put down on similar grounds without a back up plan.

So I replied with appropriate reasons as to why I am quitting the industry. This person did insist the fact that the period of jobless time made it look bad on that person's resume.

Now the funny thing is, this person is doing studies abroad on the subject of interest and I certainly hope that the times are pretty good too.

So how I am to know whether I can do better without actually taking the risk, the risk like this very person took to see what he / she can do.

OR

As per the advice should I waste myself in the IT industry, rotting away the remaining of my life?

What is exactly the advice that was given to me by the person compared to the action taken by that person?

I think I need to reconsider my advice strategy...

"GRE"pped

I feel freed from 7K+ Rupees and in an unemployed scenario that is a like a fortune to me. But then again what the hell...the die never rolls in my favor, it is hard enough to be playing the game of life with a weighted die and what makes it even more fun is you roll the weighted die in game you are certain to loose.

GRE or Graduate's Record Examination has a well defined definition this is taken from Wikipedia

The Graduate Record Examination or GRE is a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for many graduate schools principally in the United States, but also in other English speaking countries. Created and administered by the Educational Testing Service (or ETS), the exam is primarily focused on testing abstract thinking skills in the areas of math, vocabulary, and analytical writing. The GRE is typically a computer-based exam that is administered by select qualified testing centers; however, paper-based exams are offered in areas of the world that lack the technological requirements.

The GRE is supposed to measure the extent to which undergraduate education has developed an individual's verbal and quantitative skills in abstract thinking.

As usual there is a bunch of bullshit theory saying that it measures all things necessary. I am still not convinced on how it can measure my skills as an engineer. I am pretty sure that if Ramanujan one of the greatest mathematicians of our times had taken this test to test his abstract thinking the results would have been pretty contradictory. I am pretty sure so will be the case with many, I am not putting myself in a class of these people but then I do not trust ETS's claim either.

Another very big claim by ETS is that GRE tests are "un-coachable", I then wonder why there are so many coaching centers for GRE even in this little place I live in. This "un-coachable" exam also has a pattern, it is not like the Value of Pi or the square root of 2 which are both irrational and does not have a pattern that can repeat. But this exam is based on a finite set of words, they may be large but definitely finite and only a subset of these words can be used to make some sense in the ETS way. And on a computer that is running this exam, yet another very deterministic computational machine, I think the pattern can be unique only so for a finite number of tests after which they begin to repeat. I do not mean that the questions will repeat but the pattern will be far too obvious.

More over the very intended aim of the test can be bypassed if a person can memorize a lot of words say about 3000+. Which is what most people do and which is more practical. So you just mug up enough words and you will make it through the barrier. When I registered for the test, I thought there would be some meaning in getting to memorize these words. The more I looked into the list the more senseless and obscure and stupid words I saw became, words that I will never use ever again in my life practically speaking.

For example tell me what the fuck I am supposed to do with "assuage", I can't even shove it up someone's ass. Another word was "ebullience" now what the fuck is that. I wonder whether the word "Fuck" is in their database or may be it is too common in all the languages across the world. Anyway this combined with some lecture classes that I watched over net on one of the toughest subjects in computer science called "Theory of Compuation" was so simple to understand from they language (English) they were using it to explain. I have read journals and papers on computer science which has only contained very big ideas but so elegantly expressed in simple English. So I just gave up.

I did not even prepare once for the test I attended. And I ended up getting 1040. Compared to my friends who prepared for about 2 months who got approximately 400 more than me. I just did not have the room in my head to store such utter crap. So I spent more time on Recursion Theorm and its interesting applications in computer science , one of the coolest being the ability to write a program to print itself out. And I had more fun learning that too.

My language is the language that I program in. It gives me power and more than enough vocabulary to represent and express my ideas to anyone in this world anywhere they are. My language is mathematics where I can express proofs to reinforce and prove my ideas and share with others what I understand. I can express so much in them than the words in GRE can ever do for me in a lot more elegant and sensible way without having to have a giant webster dictionary near by to look at usage of some stupid word that nobody uses practically. I do not want to write a exam and enter a college by using a loop hole in the system. A loop hole that is not even worth attempting.

I Wanna Be A Software Engineer

After being in the IT industry for 2 years (actually I am still one day way from 2 years :P) one term that has been over used is none other than "Software Engineer." In my almost 2 year tenure I have seen "Actual Software Engineering" vs "Looks Like Software Engineering".

Wikipedia has a good definition of Software engineering:

Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software. It encompasses techniques and procedures, often regulated by a software development process, with the purpose of improving the reliability and maintainability of software systems. The effort is necessitated by the potential complexity of those systems, which may contain millions of lines of code.

Unfortunately this is one of those definitions that does not hold up correctly in this industry, especially around this place where I live in. What I have seen in the system we do stuff is neither systematic nor disciplined, on the contrary it is chaotic and and pretty much undisciplined. And frankly speaking I haven't seen any quantifiable approach either.

Now most of the people just get into a company and get labeled as a "Software Engineer", it has become such a cliche that it represents any idiot who sits in front of computer and wears a dog tag and dresses in formals. The subject "Software Engineering" especially tagged along with the famous book Roger Pressman is so generic that any guy / girl who can read and understand English can take a big long lecture on it. Last I heard the guy even started writing fiction "The Aymara Bridge", so by applying reverse logic just think how he got the experience to write the fiction...Bang your head on the wall long enough and then you see that he did it by practicing in the other 6 editions of "Software Engineering: A Practitioners Approach". And he even got a Press of his own to do all the printing. LOL!!!!

There are so many people who do this job and once out of the office would say something more or less the same about their job. May be there are some exceptional few who would actually go on to say they have the best job in their world, but I think most people once they have a dog tag on they rather put on a make up smile on their face and go to work.

Why would anyone work in a concentration camp and still be happy about it? I couldn't find a proper explanation to this strange habit until I started paying more attention to Nickelback. Yup Chad Kroeger says it all in his song Rockstar. I couldn't have put in a better way myself...may be a little, I just have highlighted some of the more salient points and some corrections here and there not much.

I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name

'Cause we all just wanna be big rock stars software engineers
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny as we just won't eat
And we'll
Hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny with her bleach blond hair and well,
And we'll
Hide out in the private rooms
With the latest dictionary and today's who's who
They'll get you anything with that evil smile
Everybody's got a Drug dealer on speed dial, well

Hey hey I wanna be a rock star software engineer

Hmm...not so sure on the playboy bunny part, well unless you really get lucky. But I guess that is why even the best of us who have a choice to make the world a better place end up becoming a "Software Engineer", who cannot resist the temptation of the forbidden fruit.

May be my search for the True Art of engineering software has yet to begin. I hope I find it before it gets lost forever.

Brothers In Arms

I sit here staring at a blinking cursor as I have no words to describe him. A very close friend of mine. Who is about to get married in 2 days.

I do not know where to begin or end. I always run out of words when I need them.

May be some relations does not require words to describe them.

There used to be time, when such an event was on the verge of improbability. But time again proved it wrong.

I think about the times we spend together in the weekends.

The times I spend learning Physics from him back in School.

The times we have been together arguing, cursing and helping one another during school days.

The times we sat in quiz competitions and gave right and wrong answers.

The times he used to host a CS Server on the eve of Exams and we used to play way beyond Mid Night, only to have droopy eyes during the exams.

The times we played together in Steam, fragging in Tandem taking out enemies.

The times we played as a part of a CS clan and lost and won games.

The times we spend in LAN Parties in College, MeTech.

The times we spend riding real "Fast" in his car.

The times we spend discussing theories of various things very thing ranging from atoms to universe.

The trips to Shanghumukham Beach, during the days of my depression, he is the one who dragged me out of a sinking situation. I owe it to him.

These are times I will certainly miss. Times that has become imprinted into my memory, something in between sounds and in between pictures, I can see it, hear it and yet not feel the moment again, but I know that I experienced it.


It is these moments captured in memory and stored independent of time like a photograph, makes this something even harder to let go.

But the time has come to let go of certain things for greater good. You can't hold on to them forever, I do not intend to do so either.

I am sure that a lot of changes are yet to be seen, I believe that "The Best Is Yet To Come", things that were declared to be on the verge of improbability. Changes that are going to be good.

I just can't wait to see what happens after 9-11 (The D Day).

P.S: 9-11 refers to the 11-09-2008, not the other one on which a couple of Jackass terrorists flew planes into WTC ending the lives of 100s of people.

BSNL Benchmark

After some days of downloading this is the statistics I got. Not bad I did say.


That is roughly 32.7 KBps Download Rate, which is what BSNL is promising for the 750 UL Plan that I got :).

A Small World, It Is

I hate databases it was about to make less of a difference whether I was learning it for GATE or for the sake of just passing an exam in Semester 7 (oh! boy that was real hard thing), I still remember the pain in the ass as well as the fact that I passed because I just got moderation in the subject. 40 / 100 Call myself lucky, the horrors of writing that exam again was just a bit too much for me to handle.

What goes around comes around is what they say, Even in work I faced the dreaded databases. After 1.5 years of tinkering I finally felt I had seen all things in Databases, but NO!!! when I joined the GATE Coaching they were back to haunt me and last Sunday was filled with old memories of Databases once again. And the boy next to me asked how did you manage databases in your course, I said I slept through most of it and all this is mostly new to me.

He also asked me if we use these concepts in IT industry I said that it depends on what kind of a project you are put it and if you are in Data Warehousing then you can expect a lot of these concepts to be put in there. He told me he had to explain a lot of these concepts to his brother who was working in another IT Company. Then I asked him the same question about how was Databases taken for him and he said that they had a good teacher and she was able to explain things to them very clearly and he was able grasp a lot of concept. I said that is good, then I asked him what does your teacher do now?

He pointed me to the Girl sitting across my left (Please Refer Picture) and told me that she was his teacher.

I was kind of speechless. But then again it is a small, small world or Was it Ironic?

Trying out NetBSD

As a part of the NetBSD Adventures here is a screenshot from the VirtualPC in my computer.

I guess the GUI doesn't look that attractive, it is sort of primitive, did not install gnome or KDE.

The Complete Picture

I have been going for GATE coaching class here. I passed out of engineering couple of years back and I should have done this then. Instead I went for a job and got out of touch with computer science for quite sometime now. I feel my chances for getting through are pretty slim but then I thought of getting in touch with my old subjects. I miss them actually.

Once in a Physics, the professor was explaining the derivation of the Schrodinger Equation on a 3 Dimesional Plane and when we resolved the partial differentials they had imaginary parts. So I asked him (which might have been a foolish and naive question) why do we need an imaginary part when we have real part? Since we can only estimate real quatities and not the imaginary ones, He polietly explained to me that with real part our analysis will only be partially complete and one may not get a complete picture. He stated an analogy that we initially we studied only whole numbers, but then later we studied rational numbers and realized that number can have a fractional part and that helps in making a clearer picture. And this is something of similar nature.

It has been sometime since I took the seat of a student, coming from a corporate environment, it felt pretty different to be sitting in a bench and desk with a professor standing in front explaining Algorithms and Data Structures. But things sounded different, rather than sitting at one end and listening to "Which is most efficient algorithm for a given problem?", I had seen and been exposed to situations where just questions require practical answers.

So this was the problem stated. Let us assume there is a problem and there are 2 algorithms that can get the job done. The performance of the algorithm is as follows for increasing input for processing.

Quantity	Time in Seconds for A	Time in Seconds for B
10	10	12
50	12	15
100	15	16
1000	18	18
10000	20	19
20000	23	21

Of course the case if purely hypothetical, after drawing this table on the board he asked us which algorithm is better performing and which will you choose for solving the problem. The natural choice by most people was B. I said it will depending on your usage and input. Now he explained that we always go for the better performing algorithm in such a scenario and we drop the other other algorithm. So B was the choice. I opposed saying that it need not be true always and there are exceptions to this rule and stated the famous "grep" utility as the basis of my argument.

Now grep is a very interesting tool. As strange as it sounds, the name comes from a command used in the old Unix editor called "ed", the command was "g//p", It means do a "global" search for the mentioned "regular expression" and "print" out the lines that meet the criteria, it was so handy that it spawned into a utility called "grep", now grep has 3 forms the normal grep, extended regular expression grep (egrep) and fixed string grep (fgrep), now all the 3 utility does the same job of searching files for specific patterns and then printing them out in standard output unless other wise stated. So why do we need 3 different utilities? Isn't one going to suffice our need? Let us take the example of egrep VS fgrep , in egrep the searching time becomes independent on the regular expression given, there is an initial over head for execution but this is compensated by the independence of time on execution. And in fgrep, the seaching time becomes independent on the amount of input files to be seached for regardless of the fixed string this number of files could very well out run the capacity of egrep but fgrep accomplises this by avoiding the usage of regular expressions.

Now I am not claiming that these algorithms are radically different there may be slight modifications when you compare them to make them efficient for the purpose they were build. And in the example we are discussing we need to use algorithm A for smaller inputs and algorithm B for bigger inputs.

I do not know if I stand correct or wrong, but this did give me a complete picture of the problem at hand :)

Amor fati

Sometimes when I sit alone and think, I look back at life, mine and of others. I ask myself how do I know what is right from wrong? Why do things happen the way they happen? The suffering, the losses, Is it for the greater good?

By assuming that everything that happens is for the greater good, that everything is pre-destined, I will be disowning my beliefs in Science and Logic. But then even Science and Logic cannot explain everything thing, may be there is a next level of enlightenment that one needs to reach.

The past may be gone, but what if I conducted a post-mortem analysis. Those little choices insignificant at that point in time, could it ripple itself into the future causing destruction of one's self?

Everybody has a fair share of happiness and suffering in their life I agree, but are they actually leading a life they are wanting to live or Is it just that they are leading a life that others want them to lead? People are restricted to think in terms of others want them to do, at least that is what is happening around here. They are just puppets of who is controlled by a collective intelligence called society. There is only one thing the collective intelligence dictates is to do sacrifice your freedom in thought and creativity and desires and become a bot hence be assimilated into the intelligence and be a part of a system for the "greater good." The collective intelligence is only capable on 4 basic functionality eat, sleep, excrete and reproduce. Hence forcing all individuals to abandon their free will. There are those who have broken the bonds, freed themselves from this collective intelligence's grip over them. Some have gone to follow their dreams then there are others who were not that successful.

What is the definition of success here assimilation or self realization? It is a subjective term that varies.

I sit back and look through the glimpses of my life and ask what if I did it this way? I do not regret my actions but what if the possibilities are infinite. I enjoy these glimpses, they remind me of what I have become today. But does it make me love of my fate? I do not believe in fate as in a pre-destined set of events that we are going through, so I guess that question does not come here.

Are we as human beings pre-programmed in genes to do things that they do? Or is it an act by choice by the realization of the existence of one's self?

Hotels, Prisoners and Propositional Calculus

It is not every day that you get to argue on topics like Prisoner's Dilemma and Logic and Propositional Calculus, especially if it were between you and the other person is a Cognizant senior manager.

Before I go into our argument let me explain the situation at hand.

The times were hard, we all commit mistakes in our life, we screw up things that is of utmost importance to others. And we committed a terrible mistake, after nearly getting stranded in the office for over 18+ hours (which started 10 Hours back at my colleague's home) on a failed billing cycle on credit card processing (again a wonder Cognizant software created for free and hence you can guess the way it worked) and about 2K+ Credit card records to be updated we commited a mistake in the query we ran, because of the lack of knowledge on the business rules of the system that we dealt with. We stayed in the office without even burshing our teeth and even forgetting about hunger and thirst because we needed to finish the job or get grilled. And with an asshole manager on our back who demoralizes us more than encourage us we were left with little choice.

Little did we knew that the query we were about to run was about to change our lives. About couple of weeks after the presumed successful completion of the much hyped billing cycle (due to the new Cognizant Credit Card Processing software implemented) the problems came up. It seems for every rejected credit card we deactivated every single user for the credit card account instead of checking if the user was actually applicable to such a deactivation. The company commonly called the "Big Red" was pissed off by our actions decided to sue my client for 1M $, well this figure was told to us do not know how true is it, but this is what I heard from the Managers (seasoned liars). Anyway things do not end there, it seems one whole weekend was spoiled on this. And to add to the agony we were shown as criminals and black marked.

Then we even had one of those reprimanding speech from the Senior Manager. Who said "Our Application is Money and Other applications are just felt money", Hell yeah, who the fuck cares about human beings under going suffering without sleep to complete the job you asshole. And if this were not enough we were all made to stand in front of all the other teams in the same account and made to publicly apologize for the Mistake we committed (as though we had killed a human being) just like we were punished back in school.

All of this was a bit too much for any profession for that matter, but nothing hurt me more badly than the next event that came up. It seems that there was an incident "Post Mortem" report send to my client. They did a big mistake, they showed this report to us. In this report they mentioned the name of a colleague who left the company and put the blame on this particular person. The whole team raised their voice against this, I did not stand down either, I had for the first time raised my voice against a manager and fought with them fiercely for the injustice done to my colleague. This was the last of what I expected from a company that preaches high level of ethics.

It seems that the word of my acts reached the ears of my senior manager. Later that day my colleague and I were down at the cafeteria having some dinner (sitting late nights in this shit job is something I had to get used to), we were discussing on the events that happened and my colleague was also surprised by the fact that I had raised my voice against a Manager.

I was telling my colleague how the situation was very similar to the problem of Prisoner's Dilemma. In this scenario the Prisoners where "my team" on one side and "managers" on the other, the form of punishment here is the client not providing us with the projects or proper pay is the punishment, of course the punishment to the one of the parties is less if the opposing party is trying to put blame on the other, with us given no say on the topic, they got the lesser punishment.

In comes the Senior Manager, and this guy is not a complete idiot compared to the other two. He was an opportunist and business minded individual who "Does things to get things done", it seems that he wanted to have a chat and this is where our story begins.

Senoir Manager (SM): So you guys having dinner?

Me & my Colleague: Yes

SM: Let me also order a dosa.

Me: OK

(SM leaves to order a Dosa)

Me: This is going to be very interesting (I said to my colleague)

(SM Gets the Dosa and comes back, My Colleague and I are half way through the dinner)

SM: So tell me what is going on?

Colleague: Well the report did mention who was not involved in this process. We suggest to remove this and put our names instead.

SM: OK, what else?

Me: We need not have blamed the incident on one single person, you should have mentioned all our names as responsible persons for this incident.

SM: Ok

Me: Also the learnings from the incident were not right. We did not have adequate knowledge of the system, we cannot test a system that is out of our scope and the team was under fatigue. These were not mentioned.

SM: OK, I have understood that we have some disagreements.

Me: I never thought a Cognizant company that preaches so much ethics, will do such unethical activities.

SM: In this business when we say ethics we have to take it with a pinch of salt. That is how things are in this industry.

Me: OK, but I have never seen such a scenario where in we blame a person was non existant.

SM: All I can do is take in your consideration make the appropriate changes in the document and redistribute it.

(This was a lie, I knew it, Managers are good Liars)

Me: But then this has already been shared with the client. So how will the change be reflected.

SM: See I have come here to talk with you guys, to make you understand this situation and if that will smoothen things out then that is what I am here to do.

(I told you this guy does things to get things done)

Me: You see this is not the place I have seen software development being done, in OSS we do have such scenarios but we never blame the person this is not in the picture.

SM: You guys were shown a document that in other circumstances would have never been shown to you at all. Most companies hide such things and you should appreciate the fact that you are being shown this document.

Me: We do appreciate it...

SM (Agitated): you guys are not trying to appreciate it.

Me: We do...

SM (Even more Agitated): No you are not...

(Ok you wanna play hard lets get things rolling you little pip squeak)

Me: But this is not the way this has to be done. Can't you see this is the one of the best case of Prisoner's Dilemma.

(By this time we both finish our dinner wash our hands and meet at the exit, all 3 of us take a walk to the car park).

SM: See you should understand all decisions are not simple. They are not some case of prisoner's Dilemma or Logic.

Me: I am a programmer and I always see problems from a logical perspective and to me all decisions are pretty much logical decisions derived from conclusions. You just need to evaluate the situation correctly.

SM: It is not as simple as it seems. Ok let us take an example here.

(This is where things get real interesting and trust me I know it his hard to corner this guy in an argument)

Me: Well ok.

SM: Suppose you were the owner of a Hotel in a city and you have the best chef in town. And most of your income comes from one regular client of yours.

(Ok this guy just applied Pareto principle, on my hotel business).

Me: Ok

SM: One fine day, there is a food poisioning in the hotel and unfortunately it also includes this client of yours too. What would you do now?

(OK, this is where he wants to put forward the argument, he has stated the conditions and constraints)

Me: Now the first thing I would do is to get to know the root cause of what caused this poisoning. It could be bad food or water, we wouldnt know unless it is investigated.

SM: Why couldnt it be the chef?

Me: Well he is the best chef he possibly cannot make a grave mistake like this.

SM: But what if he did and your client demands action to be taken?

Me: Action like fire the Chef?

SM: Yes

Me: I wouldnt do that.

SM: This client brings you most of the money, if you lose your client you loose your business.

Me: But firing the Chef wouldnt solve the problem now would it?

SM: Then what would you do?

Me: I will try negotiating with the Client, as of now I do not know if the Chef delibratly poisoned the client, if he did so then I will have no choice but to fire him, but if it were due to some other reasons then I need to reconsider my decision.

SM: But then you will lose the client, and then the client wants an immediate action and you do not have time.

(This is where he was trying to corner me, a typical answer would be to blame it all on the Chef's assistant and fire him, show an action has been taken, client is happy, Chef is getting the pay and I am happy. But then is it worth putting the blame on an innocent? Like what my former company did?)

Me: I will keep the chef and lose the client

SM: Then you run out of business

(According to Pareto Principle yes I did, but then...)

Me: If I fire my chef I lose the best chef and since any chef I hire will not be as good as my current chef (as he is the "best") I lose my whole business instead of one client. I can live with this loss, my Hotel is run on reputation of my chef's dishes not by one client who bosses me and tells me how to run my business.

(This is what I love about Discrete Mathematics especially on Logic and Propositional Calculus)

SM (Stunned...): But...

Me: As you said he is the best Chef and I believe no one else can replace him in his skills, so I would not let him go unless a full and through investigation is completed.

(The guy stands there searching for words)

SM: Now Imagine that you have your Sister's wedding on the line in the income is very crucial

Me: As I said I have nothing to lose by losing the client, I stand by my Chef assuming that he did not delibrately poison the food, I will not hold my Employee as a scapegoat. It my Chef that actually gives reputation to my Hotel.

SM: I really appreciate you for the decision you have taken, if you were ever to start a company I will join that. And I am not joking about it.

(Must have been another lie)

Me: But that is what I would do, as I said to me it is just a simple logical decision

SM: Unfortunately in Business the decisions aren't that simple, we are in a corporate ditch and we all get dirty.

Me: I can see that.

SM: You did not have to go to your Manager and fight for this matter.

Me: We never did actually, we just send a polite mail stating these matters and this was not the way that things had to be done, it is they who called us for the meeting.

SM: I see...

(We bid goodbye, it was nearly 9 PM, he was going home and my colleague and I were walking back to our cubicle.)

Well I still do not know if the Hotel Example was a good representation of this scenario as another one of my Colleagues told me in another discussion. But it was certainly something that did make an interesting conversation.

She is Back!!!!

It has been 1 yr 7 months and 20 days since I last has a dream of her

And she makes an appearance out of no where just like that about 16 hours a ago in my dream.

I was on my way to Tigers to return an Item, I had borrowed. It seems like a cloudy day in Chennai. The half tarred road and the long narrow road was a common sight when I was working there. I was taking my regular walking path to my home when I decided to make my pit stop at Tigers to return this item. Nothing particularly interesting, a normal 2 tier house with the bottom half rented out to the Tiger guys.

It was interesting that the bikes were missing and the door was left unlocked. I thought I leave the item in side the house. I opened the door, the creak of the door echoed in the hall. I shut the door behind me and proceeded to the bed room at the left after going straight through the hall.

I placed the item beside the bed and then was about to leave when I noticed that there was dark cellar room in the there. One that was never there, this wasn't the first time I had been there. I have been drunk and stoned in this place and I am pretty sure that even in those wildest of imagination in that state I would have never thought about a cellar there.

What was ever more strange was I had a familiar feeling about this cellar. I knew There were 2 doors on the right the closest to the entrance one was a bed room. I had this faint picture of light coming out of that room, then there was this room which was always locked, I thought it was a boiler room and I had this strong urge to check it out. I decided to take a hasty step into the cellar. After a couple of steps down I met with a person, I couldn't make it out first but then I realized that it was not ordinary person but rather the "Girl from my dreams", She was wearing a school uniform, it reminded me of the school which I used to go to. Her uniform was well pressed and looked neat and clean her hair was tied in on both sides. I do not exactly know what kind of a hair tie it is called but the kind where girls split the hair flow from center onto their left and right and then take a 3 way split and tie them together and again put the tied part on the top and pin it there (I know I make a mockery of explaining it but I hope you get the point.) And she had this graceful smile on her face.

I was a bit taken back by the sudden appearance, I assumed that it was her room and I had never known that she was living in this cellar in Chennai all these days. I said "Hello, It has been a long time" and for the first time ever She replied, "Yes it has been a long time". I back tracked my steps and she climbed the steps and went over to the table and started making coffee. I was left almost speechless. I sat on the bed and watched her closely making the coffee.

I haven't seen her in a long time, a really long time. And she looked graceful as ever. She was preparing the coffee as though it was a task that required extreme attention. Se was measuring the exact amount of coffee powder and put it in the pot and then measured the right quantity of water to add to the powder. Then I noticed that her lips were moving too. May be she was talking to me, but then I couldn't make out anything from what she was saying. It was as though a sudden vacuum filled up the entire room.

I had to run out suddenly and lost awareness of time and then I enter the house again, to see that my friends are there this time. This was like a deja vu, I went straight to the room and saw her again there making coffee. It was though time stood still in the room. I looked at my friend beside me, who did not seem to be aware that there was a girl in the room.

I could still see that time did not move an inch and it was like the events were paused when I left and she resumed to make coffee and was talking to me. My friend who was unaware of all this left the room, with me stranded there watching the girl make some coffee.

Was she a ghost? My imagination ? or It might have just been a dream after all.

Why have you come back my dear? ...

Dogs of War

Dogs of War a term applied to mercenaries hired in a battle and then it was not irony that Cognizant had a calender that published, which contained the picture of a dog with "C" all over it.

This was one of the comments that I published in blog when I was back in Cognizant. During the Salary hike issues.

We are something like the Mercenaries of this war and they are pretty well doing a good job in treating us like one also.

Bootcamp in Academy for 2 months, reminded me of How the US Army recruits were trained for the WWII, during which they were given a 2 weeks training in basic firing and Armed with a Gun and sent to the battle field to do or die.

Just like that trained in Java, .Net, Mainframe, Testing...etc for 2 months we are sent into project just as a mass workforce.

Even worse is Mercenaries are not even treated as a Solider after being caught, i.e. they are not P.O.Ws but they are considered as Criminals and put under trial and finally most of them end up seeing the 6 Feet rope or are in eternal darkness in solitary chambers...

All I can say is that we have to be aware of what we are doing and remember there will be no mercy for our mistakes and the only way to progress, is through backstabbing and sneak attacks.

Don't question ethics or what is fair or unfair, because it is easy to forget what is ethics in this Industry!!! even though they preach it with loudspeakers, Just make sure your trails are covered and you justify your acts.

As far as your loyalty is concerned owe your loyalty to yourself and not to anyone else. We are not tools to be worked with and then thrown out when it is broken, when you do something believe in what you do, don't do it because you are forced to or paid to do it.

All I can say is watch your back. We are all nothing but pawns in the big game of chess, in this industry and Let me tell you nobody would mind losing a couple of pawns so long as they are winning the game....

Of course most of the, managerial assholes and motherfuckers kind of disagreed but unfortunately this is IT industry and they are also "Dogs of War" Paid to do what "The Company" says. But quite a lot of people did agree to this :). How many can handle the truth?

The 1337 Machine

Well I do not go beyond computers, games and myself in my blog. This can be considered an exception.

My friend Frantic recently brought a Chevrolet Spark, a compact car. So I thought I will blog a little about it. Here are some of the pictures of the car and its interior.

The Dashboard

The Car

The strange thing was the, speedometer was placed in the middle region of the Dash rather than in the usual place around the steering.

There was enough leg space in the front region and the back region was ok after a bit of adjusting the front.


The ride was pretty smooth, the engine was silent and the car design was able to cut out most noise from the outside world.

Oh By the way I did not tell you why it is called "The 1337 Machine" check this out. For the uneducated in the gamer lingo, "1337" stands for "leet" another way of saying "Elite", an excellent player of the game.



:D, That cost extra 2.5k, Anyway I am not much of a Car or Bike person. So I will end this entry with a thing that Frantic should really own.



We took the snap shot from this 1337 Machine :), a truly "1337 Machine it is"

Setting Up Apache, MySQL, PHP and Drupal in Ubuntu

I decided to blog some of my learnings from Zyxware (more about these guys later), so that it will serve as a note to myself and may help others in the future.

I am currently working on a Content Management System (CMS) called Drupal, Build on PHP and MySQL framework, the system does require some prerequisite setting up before you actually become trigger happy and start coding right away.

This is divided into subsections each dealing with a specific task.

1. Apache2 Server Setup
2. Installing MySQL and PHP5
3. Installing Drupal & Configuring Drupal
4. Clean URLs Configuration in Apache2 for Drupal

Apache2 Server Setup

1. Used Synaptic to install Apache2 as a part of Lamp
2. Install PHPMyAdmin also using synaptic. After this changes were made in the apache2 conf file to support PHPMyAdmin

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

At the bottom the following command was added

# Enable PHPMyAdmin
Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

3. Server was restarted using the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
4. Virtual Hosts were added by editing the following file

sudo gedit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
5. The following Configuration XML Tags were added for the virtual host

<VirtualHost *>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot /home/user01/public_html

<Directory /home/user01/public_html/>
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory >

</Virtualhost>

6. /home/user01/public_html -- > this is the place where we place all the PHP / HTML files that will be displayed by the server
7. All URLs are accessed by the following format http://localhost/~username. To enable this we must enable usedir feature in apache2
8. The UserDir configuration is located at

/etc/apache2/apache2.conf

9. Ensure the following lines are there

< IfModule mod_userdir.c >
UserDir public_html
UserDir disabled root
< Directory /home/*/public_html >
AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch IncludesNoExec
< /Directory >
< /IfModule>

10. The following commands where used to load this module into the apache2 server

sudo a2enmod userdir

11. Then the server was reloaded using this command

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

Installing MySQL and PHP5

Almost no configuration changes were required for these applications. All the extra effort that was required was the setting up of the Play / Sample databases in MySQL from MySQL Website.

PHP5 GD Library had to be installed for Drupal compatibility. After this the apache2 server was restarted using the command sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart



Installing Drupal

1. Download drupal 5.7 from http://drual.org, set up is as simple as copying the entire drupal folder to the virtual host directory of the apache2 configuration.

2. The ./drupal-5.7sites/default/settings.php, should me made writable to all the users

3. Once the things has been completed access the directory thru the browser.

4. Also a database named drupal_db has to be premade in the MySQL DB for drupal's usage.

5. After a couple of simple questions to be anserwed drupal is up and running.

Configuring Drupal

1. GD Libraries needed to be intalled from PHP for proper functioning.

2. The getting started guide from http://drupal.org, is pretty good for getting to know how to use Drupal

3. Drupal has a feature called multisite that allows the person to host multiple independent sites on the same drupal core

4. There are 2 basic content types “Pages” and “story”

Clean URLs Configuration in Apache2 for Drupal

Clean urls take out the unwanted bits and ends on a normal drupal URL that exposes the node value etc. Now by enabling Clean URL one can have more meaning URLs on the screen

This requires a new module to be loaded in to the Apache2 server which is not loaded by default.

1. Check if the mods are avialable in the /etc/apache2/mods-available directory, shows all the mods for Apache2

2. Check if it is loaded in the /etc/apache2/mods-enabled, alternately one can also use the apache2ctl -M to see the loaded modules

3. If the module is not loaded one can use “sudo a2enmod rewrite” command to load the module if it is avialable, else we need to get it installed.

4. Once done we need to restart the apache2 server sudo /etc/init.d/apache2
force-reload

5. In the above Virtual Host configuration, change AllowOverride to All, from none

< Directory /home/user01/public_html/ >
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
< /Directory >

6. Restart the Apache2 server sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

7. Go To Drupal Administration and enable clean URL

Reference

Clean URL In Drupal

Sex Trade Near Temples

It was very disturbing to see this news clip. That is why I decided to blog this event. Must keep it as a reminder.

I was flipping through the TV Channels , it is filled with lousy Reality shows these days Sing, dance, fight, do-what-ever-you-want-and-get-to-the-top, most of them were the same repetitions and remakes of one another from each of these Malayalam TV Channels. But this particular one caught my eye.

It was a Reality show all right but unlike the other it was not the glamor and glory, but rather a competition to see who is the best "Citizen Journalist", and out of all the stories presented in that particular episode this particular one caught my eye. It revolved around a guy who was trying to find the "Sex Trade" Industry, not just anywhere (being a big country this was pretty expected) but specifically places that are called "Holy"!!!!

I am not taking out names here. But I would like to mention this one person's outstanding work, dedication and courage in the effort taken to expose such things to the public. His work did consist of going to 3 "Holy" place. The first being "Guruvayur", the famous Temple of Lord Sree Krishna in Kerala and in South India too. The guy went to a popular lodge near by and asked for a lady to spend the night with, after some initial hesitation they called up the agent, the rates for the person ranged from 1,500 to 3000 Rupees. And the camera shows the entire process taking place. The second place was yet another big temple in the Kerala, where after some initial investigation they met the person who gets these sorts of deal done. The most ironic scene in the camera was the fact that a person who does this sort of Pimp business is a big time worshiper and always comes at the time of daily evening Puja of the Temple. The rates were like 500 Rupees for 20 Minutes, 600 for 30 Minutes and 750 Rupees for 45 Minutes. The range included from 17 year olds to young ladies in their mid 20s, and rates were different and dependent. In this scenario out Citizen Journalist found about this lady who has been locked up in a room against her will for over an year. Her soul job was to sell herself to customers and her salary was a meager 100 Rupees, while these Pimps made 5 times that amount. Our Journalist not only documented this, but also brought the police into this and successfully freed the girl from her confinement. This was completely documented in the camera. And the Report ends with the girl being send back to her native.

In light of these things, it brings back to our mind whether we live in "God's Own Country", In a country where public kissing is seen as a Taboo and people break Card Shops on Valentine's day saying this is not our culture, We should ask the question to these very "people" is this a part of our glorious culture? Doing Sex Trade near by holy places, is this what our society has come down to? I feel sad that I have been brought up in such a hypocritic society. Where there are governments which bans books for "Sex Education" because they have "obscene" pictures in them!!!! Yet there are people who pray to God and conduct such business within the temple premises.

Even though I am an atheist, I still strongly believe in the fact that a holy place and the near by areas should not be used for such illegitimate activities. It might sound like a lame belief, but it is similar to saying I do not mind killing people, then taking a chain gun and going all rampage.

This world is a twisted one, filled with Hypocrites, Liars and back stabbers. Only the hardy ones will survive the rest are to perish.

Me, An Old Friend and The Fork

I haven't met in a long time, by that I mean something like over 5 years. I knew him back in college when I just joined college as a freshman. My first year in College of Engineering as a computer science undergraduate.

It was a totally unexpected thing when he popped up in the messenger window at 2 AM and said a "Hi" to me, I did not mind saying a "Hi" back and he started to ask about how I was and we were having a regular chit chat and it seems that he was doing pretty good. He was doing his masters in MIT, Boston with full scholarship. I always believed he had the skill to do so.

Back in college I knew him as he was our class representative for the short period of time he was present there. Later on he left our college to pursue his interests in IIT, so I never got to know him better. But he used to keep touch once in a while through messenger.

We decided to meet on the next day and he said he wanted to discuss things with me. I thought why not anyway I am jobless and sitting on my ass here why not catch some fresh air too in the meanwhile. So after having a tough time with my mean machine I headed off to our meeting point, I was late by half-an-hour but he had the patience to wait, I apologized for my late arrival.

He want to go to some place quiet where we could chat, I said the nearest is the Pizza Corner. We started with our short walk. And chatted in-between

Me: So how you been it has been quite sometime now?

Friend: I am fine, I am here for my summer break actually.

Me: OK, so till when are you here?

Friend: July end, may be till August 1st week

Me: OK, so been in touch with anybody?

Friend: Yup some old classmates, So how about you what are you doing now?

Me: I am doing absolutely nothing, I was working though in Cognizant, the job was unsatisfactory and I quit. IT was never for me, I understood that so I had to quit.

(We both reached Pizza Corner and sat down in one corner :P, we were provided the menu, I did not want anything heavy, So I ordered a Lemonade and He ordered a vanilla ice cream)

Friend: So about this thing I wanted to discuss....

Me: Go ahead.

Friend: I have this idea to construct mini-dams. We have so many streams in Kerala, they are very good potential source for generating electricity in a small scale. Providing enough electricity to the houses near by. This will help in development of these areas and any excess electricity produced can be sold.

Me: That is nice.

Friend: So we have decided on how to build the dam, the raw materials used will come from the locality itself so no imported things will be required, except for the generator and may be the turbine the makes the electricity, they have to imported. And the best of all is we will not be asking for any money, it will be done as a non profit activity. And the only thing we will be asking for is a part of the land from the farmer so that we construct the necessary infrastructure to run the Dam. The project is also a long term investment and will give us returns though carbon trading

Me: Really good idea, but then have you experimented this in any place? Any scientific studies you conducted on the practical feasibility?

Friend: I have a fair idea, some of my research back in college was on Fluid Mechanics. And I got some friends who have worked on the other areas.

Me: Well that is good, the only problem is I do not know how I fit in, since this is more of Civil + Mechanical + Electrical. I am a guy who deals with computer systems and programming so I do not know if I will be of help to you.

Our discussion revolved around many subjects technical and non technical and were pretty interesting. We discussed about how IIT lacks a lot of girls and being a girl there can be like being in heaven as there are lots of people to get the job done. We did discuss about how the medical fees in US is so costly the people try not to go to a doctor since the consultation fee is around $200 and then he told about how a doctor is setting up an online method to do consultation and he had a suggestion for building such a system especially using LISP which is not bad and then on building a secure system for outsourcing legal issues, yet another good idea.

I also told him about why I quit my job and I realized it was not the path I should have taken. He said that he had the same issue back in College when we joined CET and he decided not to as he would not have got what he wanted by studying there. Then he told me that the thing that inspired him most in this situation was a poem by Robert Frost called "Road Not Taken", he told me the poem is on about taking decisions in life when the person is face with the "Proverbial Fork in the Road Scenario." I decided to quote it here, I also liked the poem.

Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920. Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

He pulled his Apple iPhone and quickly took this poem on his safari browser and shared it with me. We then chatted about Apple and Microsoft and he pulled out his Apple iBook and showed some features that he believes is really cool and which Microsoft Lacks one of them was how the task switch (Alt-Tab) appeared in Mac, it was a feature where we move the mouse pointer and all the windows will get reduced in size and we can pick one of them. Pretty cool I did say. I was telling him that no one can beat Mac in Aesthetics.

I assured him that if anything comes up that requires a computer science guy be present do not hesitate.

After a little more chit chat we parted our ways.

But after that I was still left with the fork...Which road will I take?

Remote Desktop Unlimited

This is one particular habit a bad habit that I developed back in Cognizant. Everything was done in remote desktops.

We just had our terminals on our hand we connected to systems across seas and get job done there :D.

Now I have two computers in my home, I call them Alpha and Beta :). I changed the windows so that I can remote between the machines, that was pretty much of an easy task. Next came the hard task Between Linux and Windows. This was a hard one to crack. Now you might think why would I want to do something like that when all this can be done using the simple terminal and ssh. Well I have done that already, just run the OpenSSH daemon and you are done with that. But like most programmers I am lazy very lazy and I just cant get up and go to the GUI in the other machine (alpha) . I know it is just a couple of feet away from me, but then this will be more fun :D, I do not need to move my heavy butt from one chair to another.

So I tried to do with Ubuntu and Windows XP initially I was using the VNC thing it was pretty good in doing the job except one thing, I had to log in locally in the Linux machine before I could actually start using it, that was pretty annoying at times (remember I am pretty lazy...) so I thought of something like in the terms of RDP in windows, where you can login windows once the machine is turned on and booted into the operating system.

It seems Ubuntu did have this feature but not like windows, I was first fiddling around in the "System->Preferences-> Remote Desktop" but this basically dealt with VNC Settings, then After some more fiddling around I went to "System->Administration->Login Window" where it had an option for "Remote Login"


From what I have understood this worked with the XDMCP thing. XDMCP stands for X Display Manager Control Protocol, more information can be found here. From what I read about it in the ubuntu forums, I understood it can be used to achieve something similar to RDP for windows between Linux machines as well as a windows and Linux system, this was good news. Now getting things working is the hard part, like in most Linux Ordeals.

Thanks to google I ended up in this forum again where I read about connecting between Ubuntu and Windows and the issues. Like mentioned I downloaded Xming and did the XLaunch. Once I was able to establish the connection I got this screen.



All things did not turn out to be happy (as expected with most Linux things), as soon as I logged in the system just hung and the desktop was not shown. The above forum mentioned that I should not leave the clipboard checked as this may still cause issues.



After unchecking we have the final accomplishment.


Well then this just means more lazy days ahead, so remote desktop here I come...

P.S: Need to investigate on that Clipboard thingy...