Graduation Blues

I recently (on the 12th of July) finished my graduate studies at iiit-b and now looking back at the past two years, i realize that it was one heck of a journey.It was an exciting and wonderful experience to come back to the campus atmosphere after working for 3 years. I initially found it a bit hard to cope up with the academic rigour (and you though college life was easy compared to the corporate world!) but i guess i improved along the way.There were many things that i picked up here many of which were a first-time thingy for me:

*Staying up beyond 11pm in the night.I’m glad i realized that 6 hours of sleep is all you need a day
*Staying away from home in a dormitory for the first time
*Ate maggi noodles at 2 a.m. (This was during the one and only time i pulled an all nighter)
*Became an expert in web information retrieval (read ‘google-ing’)
*Gained confidence on tackling projects head on without even having an iota of prior knowledge about the problem domain/complexity (this is probably the best learning that i’ve learnt here)
*Watching movies/ serials back to back on my laptop
*Just-in-time submissions of assignments (Most of the deadlines were at 12:00am and the submissions happen just before it)

Overall, i think it was one of the most memorable two years of my life.I’m not being overly nostalgic but I’m starting to miss my hostel room already.

As of this writing i am still on the look out for a job (another first too, as i was fortunate to start working immediately after undergrad).Blame it on the economic recession but i know its only a matter of time before the wheels of time turn…

My best wishes to the graduated class of 2009!

Stop the music(k) please!

After some self-deliberation on whether is should write this or not, i finally decided that i am going to.WTH!,my blog is called entitled opinions.So whats the fuss all about,you ask.It’s the noise that comes out of mobile phone speakers.Most of the mid range phones that support music playback today have an inbuilt speaker.And the folks who own it seem to think that public broadcast is their birth right.They are everywhere- on the bus, in the road,in the hotel…They think that they are doing a favour by playing songs on their speaker. Little do they realize that others people actually give a damn.In fact the sound is so annoying that at any distance more than a foot away from the phone, all one hears is a cacophony of vessels clanging and glass breaking.For heaven’s sake,use the damn headphones, people.If you think that you are ‘cool’ blasting noise off your cheap phone, think again!If you are like me and come across one of these subnormally intelligent people,i strongly urge you to ask them to stop the inconvenience immediately.It might not work the first time, but i’m sure if they constantly hear the complaint, they might gradually stop it.

Do it folks!Tolerating nonsense is not a virtue.

The year that was

Its been quite some time since my last blog.Not that I’ve been busy but I was kinda lazy to write.

Finally,another year of the Gregorian calendar comes to an end as i March [or is it January ] into the future.2008 has been a mixed experience for me.Some musings:

1.An entire year of work (read ’studies’) without pay (boy, do i miss my salary).
2.Non stellar performance at subjects like DSP,DSD,OS (don’t bother finding if you don’t know what they stand for).
3.Commendable summer-sem performance in Marketing and Technical communication(No, i still don’t want to do an MBA).
4.Completed Prince of Persia-Sands of Time on my lappy(Ok,old game but hey, i finished the game without using a mouse!).
5.Was Tested On my English skills as a Foreign Language (7000 INR->108/120->zero calls.Now do the math).
6.Never watched TV (but compensated by on-demand Internet and downloads).
7.Got in touch with some of my good school friends after a LONG time (Social Networks do have advantages i guess).
8.Wrote two longest term papers of my life (At 3200+ words each,i will put ‘em here depending on my instructor’s feedback).
9.Discovered there exists a DJ Armin Van Burren (His techno is amazing.I personally feel his music is better than Paul Van Dyk).
10.Got an internship offer in the domain that i so longed to switch to(Determined to make the most of it).

Eager to find out what 2009 has in store for me…….

Wishing you all a great new year ahead. Rock on folks.

I Love My ThinkPad

I have a ThinkPad R60 which was given to all students  by the college.Though i knew that ThinkPads are known for their robustness, i hadn’t given much thought to it.That was until the fateful day of 8th September, when the laptop bag fell from my lap while i was travelling in a bus.It was a Volvo and i was sitting on the seat near the door.So thats about a meter and quarter high from the floor of the bus.The driver applied the brakes suddenly and wham ! My bag did a couple of rather gymnastic somersaults before landing on the floor.I was pretty sure that the bag’s contents would have depreciated in value to some peanuts’ worth of garage junk.I reached hostel and examined it. Okay, the LCD casing was split. All the display electronics was jutting out.I tried to fix the display as much as i can and pressed the power button.The thing booted immediately.The OS loaded, the keys were fine and the wi-fi (whose antenna is embedded on the LCD panel)  worked too.All was ok, phew.! But the lid was not closing properly as the interlocks were misaligned.Called up customer care and the guy came and fixed them too.(Thanks Ranjith !)

My lappy is now back to normal, except for a small hole in the corner of the LCD where the plastic had chipped off.This incident has really made me appreciate the robustness of a Thinkpad. I’m sure a Mac or a Viao or a Dell wouldn’t have survived the fall. Alteast the hard disk might have concked off if not the entire system.I am a ThinkPad fan for life now and have decided that my next upgrage is going to be a ThinkPad and a ThinkPad only.

I dont even know what LISP stands for !

Which Programming Language are You?

Update:Looks like i did not miss much

Which OS are you ?

Which OS are You?

Missed Call

“Give me a missed call”, said my friend.”Ok”,i said.
Welcome to the world of missed calls.Not an Indian phenomenon anymore, missed calls were invented by the cost-conscious citizen to make use of the cellular network without paying a paisa for the call.I was amused to find a wiki on it

Top 5 reasons why i give a missed call:
1.Signaling home when i reach office in the morning and leave office in the evening
2.Waiting for a friend who has not turned up yet for a rendezvous
3.Cannot afford my outgoing call tariff (to be read ‘the called party is at a monetarily higher strata of the society’)
4.Giving my number to a person
5.Its nothing urgent and i don’t want to disturb the called party

The best part is you don’t need a mobile or a caller ID to capture the number. As long as you have defined a protocol (say the number of rings at a particular time signals a particular event ) it works fine.No matter how much the call costs come down, missed calls are here to stay

Socially Networked-How many do you have ?

Social networking seems to be the in thing these days . Everybody ,myself included, has a “profile” in one (if not more ) of these social networking sites.Orkut, Facebook, Linkedin -you name it ! Some of the things what you can do to your contacts : scrap, slap, ,poke,pimp (??) ,write on walls ….

The main theme is expanding your network. But i feel that idea is rather over-exploited because all we do is keep adding people as connections-people whom we hardly know. I know folks whose contacts list exceeds 700. Well , the point is, whats the use of adding people if you don’t know them ? Testing the ‘6 degrees of separation’ theory is definitely not a reason.

Interestingly, the ‘e-friends’ made online are higher than the friends whom you physically know. But such an online existence does raise some questions in my mind- Would you really be comfortable meeting that friend’s friend’s friend of yours in person ? Would you consult him/her for advice as you would ask your school/ college mate/colleague ? Would you invite him for your marriage ? Heck, Will you remember his details if the Orkut server is dead ?

Everything said and done, these online avatars do give people a chance to do things that they cannot in real life- a place where everyone is a King or a Queen.