"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.