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...

The Reluctant Linux

It was a surprise when Ubuntu Live CD failed to boot in my new P4 system. It was a total shocker. How come something that usually boots up even in an old PII is failing to boot up in my P4 system. It seemed completely illogical to me at that time.

I tried various distros, Fedora, Ubuntu, Suse even the older version but every single one refused to boot. I couldn't make out the heads and tails of it. However windows did not have any issues. I also did a memtest86+ just to ensure that it was nothing to do with RAM as I had installed a new 1GB Module, and we all know how Linuxes are sensitive to Errors in RAMs.

So I decided to called up Greenhorn and Biosbhai for some clues. Bios suggested that I use a text mode install. And that did work out but then it refused to boot again. It always failed at the time of hardware detection, it would just go into kernel panic mode and the whole thing would throw all sort of exceptions and crash.

Then I explained the situation to Greenhorn and he also did not have a clue in the beginning but then he suggest it must be the graphics card,then it clicked, I said that there might be an issue with that you see my onboard graphics just does not get disabled. And it seems there are always 2 graphics card in my system and windows only recognizes on the other one is left alone. This also explained why it failed exactly when Hardware Detection was going on.


I removed the graphics card and booted and guess what Ubuntu booted without issues. Now comes the fun, I searched the net for a possible solution and after some googling I ended up in the ubuntu forums where they described an elegant solution. I will describe it once again here. For my memory is pretty bad and I like to have a personal copy of this solution.

Here are the steps to do it

1. Remove your addon graphics card, and install linux as usual
2. After this go to command line and edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, what we intend to do here is to blacklist the intel driver so that it is prevented from loading during the boot up.
   
   Edit the file using the following command
   
   sudo emacs /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
   
   Add the following line
   
   blacklist intel_agp
   
   
3. Shutdown the computer, plug in the graphics card and turn on the computer.
4. Boot into Ubuntu, mostly the GUI will fail to load because of the mismatch of drivers in xorg.conf file
5. Just run the sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, to reconfigure the XServer and reboot the system.
6. This time if things have gone right we should have the GUI login come up.

So after about a 5 days struggle I was able to run Linux again in my P4, it was a sight of relief. And the good news is the motherboard isn't busted like I imagined it to be. Otherwise I would have been running all around trying to fix my motherboard all over again. And trust me I had enough of running around with the previous one.

Cool Head Processor

It seems that the new processor fan holder did not hold out long enough. The temperature in no time soared upto 60 Degrees and the the computer shut it self off. Well time to bring in the professional compared to the local ones.

I got myself A Cooler Master Heatsink for my 478 PIN P4 Processor, but this time it was different, it did not have the strap on legs like my previous holder, it had metal clips on instead. And the build looked pretty comfortable to me.

Here are some shots for comparison.

This is the old model

The new one look at the side clip

After placing the new one the temperature stayed well withing the limits. Started at 20 and after some playing around reached something like 34. And always stayed under 38.

Here is a shot from the motherboard monitor while boot up. I took it after some use and the rebooted the computer.


Well there you go so let us see how far this P4 can maintain its cool....

Chat with Glorified Shrinks

Originally posted to the sidebar by "snoofle"...

This morning, I had to deal with one of our HR secretaries, and it was déjà vu.

When I first started to work for this place I was in HR. I had passed my interviews and was doing paperwork as part of the hiring process. The HR secretary and I had the following conversation:

Her: Can I have the phone number of the consulting company where you worked for the past 6 years?
Me: I was self employed. I am the owner and sole employee of the consulting company and I would be happy to answer any questions you have.
Her: No, I need to call to verify!
Me: ...But you'll just be calling me.
Her: I have to call — what's the number?
Me: The number of the office is [my cell number].
(note: I'm standing 2 feet directly in front of her. She dials the phone and I answer.)
Her: Hello — this is Paula from Initrode Global, calling in reference to Snoofle's employment.
Me (both into the cell phone and to her): I know, I'm standing right in front of you.
Her (into the phone): Could you please verify the dates of Snoofle's employment at VirtuDyne, Intelligenuity and Initech?
Me (reading from my résumé that is laying on her desk in front of her): VirtuDyne: a₁ to b₁, Intelligenuity: a₂ to b₂, and Initech: a₃ to b₃.
Her: Great, thank you! *click*
Me (directly to her): ...Did you not notice that you were talking to me right here in front of you?
Her: I know, but I have to call to check these things.

At this point I walked away, wondering if the rest of the company would be just as WTF-y.

---

The following extract is taken from Stupid Secretary WTF and it reminded me of my talk with HR when I had raised an issue with my appraisal. HR is cognizant wasn't that stupid but then read this if you are interested

---

Me: Hello Good Afternoon, are you my talent Manager [name of the hr]?

HR: So "Fox (I have changed name here)" shall we discuss in the near by room?

Me: Sure...

We both head into the near by small meeting room and close up the door and our discussion begins.

HR: So tell me what is your problem

Me: I believe that my appraisal rating given is improper and is incorrect. I need a justification why I was given such a rating despite the fact that I have got a mail from my client that I have done excellent work, I am an example employee and I have gone beyond expectation.

HR: Did you discuss the problem with you manager?

Me: Yes I did and it was pretty useless.

HR: Was he able to give an explanation why your rating was reduced?

Me: He did but it was pretty much senseless, he explained that In some areas I have given you "4" instead of "5" but then both "4" and "5" are the same. Then I asked him why did you not put "5" instead of "4" if they both are the same?

HR: OK, anything else he said.

Me: Yes in the explanation he had told that I was not flexible.

HR:....

Me: I have attended status calls @ 3:00 AM in the morning, worked late nights for the completion of the project. And still calling me inflexible is not the right term.

HR: I can understand you. But you should understand that not everybody can be given a rating 1 in this organization.

Me: So I have put all my hard work and even got appreciated by the client but that isn't good enough.

HR: May be you have performed well, but then then when you are compared to the global pool you may have not have met the qualifications.

Me: But then I thought first I am compared with my peers and I believe I have performed better than most and How can my work be compared on a global pool without 1st evaluating among the peers?

HR: OK I understand, Whatever explanation I give you now it will never be satisfied. I cannot help you in this matter you need to discuss this with your senior manager or higher level.

(OK Finally the truth is revealed)

Me: OK, I see that this is going no where, So I have decided to quit the company, I just wanted a formal discussion before I did so.

HR: But do you have a second job offer or anything of that sort?

Me: No I do not. Yes I know I am at great risk. But I am left with no choice.

HR: But you do not have to do this.

Me: It is not like that, I have always been treated like this in this company. I cannot push myself beyond this. I have done my maximum and all it can achieve me is a 2nd rating so why should I even bother to waste my time here.

HR: You should just keep up your performance, keep doing what you are doing now.

Me: That is what I am saying even with the maximum effort I am not able to achieve 1st rating. I believe that I deserve a 1st rating for the work I have done. Do you know that just my appraisal was delayed from my teammates? Just because they wanted to hold it back before I went on my medical leave?

HR: ...

Me: I have lost my motivation to program, I can no longer work under such a situation.

HR: Why have you lost your motivation?

(Haven't I explained enough)

Me: Well for me the performance of my code is my motivation and by rating me lower than expected you are indirectly saying I do not code good enough even when I have given my best and I have proof to do so.

HR: You mean programs motivate you...

(I like it when the talk gets technical, they are total retards here)

Me: Have you ever written a program? How many lines of code have you written 100, 1000, 10000?

HR: ...

Me: Well if you haven't programmed then it is obvious that you cannot understand what I am expressing. Do you know I was kicked out of my previous project for doing things right?

HR: What were you doing in your previous project?

Me: I was supposed to be doing Test Driven Development/

HR: So you were into Testing back then...

(Dang!!! These people will never get it :()

Me: Not it is a programming methodology, anyway I was kicked out from there too for doing things right.

HR: Who was your manager?

Me: That is not important here. Anyway I just wanted to say that I am leaving this company for good as I am treated properly for the work I do. Good Bye.

HR: Good Bye

20 Days Later I put my paper and 60 days Later I was relieved from the company and another 20 days later, I am jobless sitting home and blogging this :)

Tough Times Ahead!!!

With increasing prices in Petrol and Diesel and the recent hike. Traveling in my mean red machine (see the picture below for an exact description of the mean red machine) is going to be real tough.

It does not give a lot of mileage anyway, so pushing it around is going to give a tough time too. And it hasn't been doing well lately too. Recently I took the machine to meet a friend of mine in Statue and I had to feed some petrol to the machine as it was crying out loud.

I took a detour to the Petrol Pump where when I tried to lift the seat up, the thread broke off. You might be thinking "What thread?!!!" well the side lock that opened up the seat got damaged. And now all that helped me was a thread that was connected to the spring that opened up the seat so that I can lift up the seat where I can reach the tank to put the petrol in for this gas guzzler.

Now with a broken thread and a stupid lock I was stuck in the pump, I had to move out of the way to avoid causing the other people waiting to delay their refill. Then I was wrestling with the seat to get it open but it just wouldn't give up and the sun had no mercy either. I called up my father who said that he will come to the pump with a screw driver to force open the seat. Meanwhile the struggle continued and I finally caught hold of a part of a string that was inside the seat and I gave it one hard pull. With the remaining hope that was left, the string was free to go where ever it wanted. The appointment was already late by half an hour. I was so mad at that point I even used profanity LOL.

Then in one final struggle I just stretched opened the seat with all the might, I thought let it break if it wants to and gave it one full upward force. I could see the shiny spring laughing back at me saying "Ahh Finally you have caught hold of me", I said "Hell Yeah!!! now open" and pulled the lever back and Wallah!!! the Seat is open. I the service lady to pour in some petrol and paid them. By the time my father arrived, I said it was ok and I somehow managed to sit on a half open seat and make it to the place where I told I will meet my friend.

Once I reached home, My father and I tied a steel wire to the spring where the string once was tried and after some Beta Testing and User Acceptance Testing the seat was closed again.


I guess it is going to be tough times ahead with increasing prices for petrol and a stubborn machine to deal with.

The Puller of Good Times

It is not every day good things happen in my life. But when it does it feel good.

This is one of the better things that had happened in my life compared to most of the unfortunate ones.

One fine night when I was with my friend at Thiruvanmiyur Beach when my mom called. After the regular whining that I do not call Mom or Dad and the fact that I am a miser who doesn't spend money to call family and I have forgotten about them. Initially I used to debate on the topics, but later on words turned to Yes or No and with even further passage of time It turned to primitive tones like "mmm..." and "mhmmm..." like the sounds you make when you enjoy having food and your mouth is too full to express the goodness :) of the food, interspersed with long silence from me, this sort of submitting behavior proved to useful as calls lasted less longer and I could get back to what ever I was doing quickly. After this regular session, she told me that one of her friend's daughter is there in Chennai and she had given my number to her and I shouldn't be concerned that if a girl calls me up on the phone and says "Hi" and I shouldn't get angry and shout back.

Now how the fuck in the world did my Mom get the idea that I scare off the the girls who call at my number ?!! This is the most absurd idea ever. I have no idea what gave her that idea in the first place, any as usual I just answered her primitive tones, I did not want a fight after all. Now there is true fact that I rarely take calls from my managers who keeps disturbing all day and night long then they started using unlisted numbers and I stopped taking calls from unlisted numbers. But then by the time this even occurred I had resigned from my company and was serving my notice period!!! So I did not care who the fuck called I just attended, and if it was my manager I screwed with them and I loved it >:)

So then about a couple of days later I receive this innocent message from this girl whom I barely knew and it went like "She did not want to disturb me at night by calling me and did not know how I would respond so she just send an SMS" I replied back with a "Hi" and this is how the first contact started. She was a student dentist and was studying in Chennai. And I an engineer doing Shit Job in IT who quit.

I am kind of person open to the persons who contact me, I replied that I am not that much of a social person, I can't usually sustain a conversation via phone and SMS would be a better method of communication. She was mostly sarcastic in many of the replies I couldn't make it out initially whether this was a joke or serious thing. Later on she would admit that she was just "pulling" and do not take it seriously. Well this wasn't the first time I have been pulled but this was just too good, she can take you out without even knowing. Hence "The Puller", The Puller exactly knew at time and place to execute a pull and I would fall for it most of the times too. I guess dentists are pretty good talkers, otherwise imagine how you make patient sit in that chair with your mouth wide open. It is not irony that it was a dentist who invented the electric chair.

Now pulling is a thing like those Ad Jingles, they are annoying initially, then on repetition you pay attention and then later of you can't live without them :D. As days passed by the pulls grew stronger and I started enjoying it more and more often. Whenever she goes back to her hometown for a week or so, I would definitely miss the pulls :D.

So this person "The Puller" knew me better than I knew myself, she had an almost accurate description of myself. But there was one fundamental difference she was a very social person, lots of friends around. Attached to humans to such an extend that a friend leaving will definitely bring tears to her eyes. I on the other hand is a person is attached more to inanimate objects rather than live ones. She was also a strong believer in God, I on the other hand an atheist.

We have met before but not in detail, just seen each other once in Kuwait and twice in Kerala, almost no words were exchanged. As most people know I like keeping things quiet and simple when it comes to strangers. Now let me see if I can describe her right, she has a round face, fair looking, has big eyes, beautiful chubby cheeks and a cute nose. By cute I do not mean small, but does not mean it is fairly large too, I would say just the right size :). I believe that this remembrance did require a considerable amount of effort and is still believed to be the root cause of the migraine that started on May 20th LOL.

As time passed we got to knew more of each other and on April 30th Midnight I made my 1st call, though a very hesitant one I did not want to disappoint her by not wishing her on her birthday. That is the first time we talked, I kept it as short as possible, no offense here but I did not have a lot to say. It was a pleasant experience.

The more I got to know this person the more interesting things became, It gave me a whole new insight into the female perspective of this world :D. She was a Taurus (A Tauren With a Big Totem I did say, one she uses to stun people when she fights with them. Sorry for the DotA here but I couldn't avoid it) and being a Taurus she did show the characteristics of a typical taurus too. She did not want me to multi-task when SMSing or chatting with her, a good sense of humor (talk about the pulls), artistic (she used to study dance and she still loves to do classical dance) and many such things. She even once said she had some Vodka but did not like the taste it seems :P, me be a lesson or two should clear that :D.

One thing I do regret is we never got to meet in person while my stay in Chennai, one is due to the fact that we never got enough time and some how the appointments we fixed never worked out, mostly because I was unavailable or some thing popped up in between.

Anyways that did not stop the pulling, I also learned to pull a bit from the master puller, but my pulls did have a serious tone and she thought I was being serious on the topic. Unfortunately it took the fun out of the pull as she does not like people getting serious when being pulled. She used to call such pulls as a foul LOL, I did say all is fair in Love, War and Pull. It was a good counter pull technique unfortunately I had to change tactics and try to keep up with her methodology.

We did have one common topic though, food :D, we both did have similar tastes when it came to food. Down right even to the pickles Both of us just loved tender mango pickles. And both western and traditional food. This is one place where we least disagreed.

One thing that did shock me is even after claiming to have a social life, she never had a relationship in her life. Which is kind of strange from what she appears to be!!! And like most of the Indians she has left this job of finding the soul mate to her parents (Which I think is pretty unnatural) She always said she is afraid into getting into a relationship as she fears what if she chooses the wrong person. Well I do not have a lot of comments on that, may be it is a typical Taurus behavior.

And like my most friends she is a positive thinker, believes that there is always a time for things to happen. Unfortunately the die rolls never in my favor so may be the rules do not apply to me. I have to make the time is there is ever going to be one :D. But none the less it has been a wonderful experience knowing this person, who once in a while pulls you from where you sit.

This Post is dedicated to that wonder person, who came to me may be as an angel during the bitter times in Chennai.

P.S: May be my next dentist appoint needs to be fixed with her :D, so that she can really pull of some teeth.