Happy New year!

Hello Folks,
It was great having your company this year, I say that with reference to the company i have found both online and off. I look forward to your company, support, help and motivation (whichever applicable to the situation, with many thanks to the ones you have already offered this year long, now that i remember in retrospect!) in the coming year and the experiences, memories and challenges that might be awaiting me/us in the new year which is about to dawn on us all! Hope you all have a good time!

A few things I'd like to shout out to a few people:
Mr Unicorn -->Things were as turbulent to you as it was for me, let's hope the grass is green on the other side :P
Shazo --> I don't think you'd wanna realx ever! :-/ how about a change in your biological time zone for the next year? ;)
Sidd--> Good luck for the "year of the exams"
Mr Rx --> relax, certifications come and go, Jan 1st 2009 comes only once!
Kitt & abhi --> nothing in particular, happy new year anyway! :P

Congrats to all the people who got married/engaged and Hurray to the ones who're not when '09 enters!

All the best of the guys who're flying abroad for studies in early '09

For those who whine about their job every weekend (there're literally millions of them, but only hundreds i know), here, you get one more year to do so! ;)

Clarification: The wishes were in no particular order, so no importance should be given to the order of the list!

And for all my blog followers/readers/commenters, keep blogging, hope to hear more from you people in the new year!

Happy New Year to all of you!

That's All Folks!

Marooned

This weekend was a strange one. With all my friends on their bike in far away Gokarna, the route I've missed twice due to various reasons, I was left almost all alone to spend away the time this weekend. Thursday somehow went well, with Christmas spirit taking over me and a friend, while I got a new pair of Nike running shoes, he got me a pretty huge plum cake & pastries at Loyal World.
Friday, I badly wanted to try out my new running shoes in the morning, but sadly, due to my sleep cycle being a displaced by three hours, mornings for me usually happens as 9AM! So, had to push the plan to evening. I spent all day doing nothing that could be termed important and was waiting for 5:30 to try out my new running shoes. On to Kukkarahalli lake and I immediately found out two things, one, that me left knee still hurts as if I was injured the day before and two, my threshold for pain is not high as I want it to be. I thought it would be a tough job for me on the 10Th of Jan. So, I went ahead anyway trying to complete the course on the injured knee. A sad, and excruciatingly painful, 25 minutes later I finished, almost visibly in pain and very angry! I knew for sure I wasn't gonna be running on Saturday! so had to think about something else to do! When I went home that evening, I got my hands full with a sudden shock! The internet wasn't working! Any sort of fiddling would not bring the ADSL light on my modem back on! I spent the next few hours restarting the modem and staring at the LED trying to will it on and was having anxiety attacks in the process! Quite surprised as to what went wrong, I went to sleep after playing Colin McRae rally for a while.
Saturday was upon me, I had the job of getting my internet fixed. I was at the doorstep of BSNL even before they had a chance to sweep it. They directed me to a room to lodge my complaint. The room was full of WLL devices, new modems and old modems with only on person sitting and working on a computer! So that had to be the broadband service room! I told him what was wrong; he booked a complaint and told me they'd act soon! I wasn't sure how soon, but they seemed concerned enough. In the meanwhile, while I was there, I thought I might as well ask them about the WiFi card for my modem which I would be in need of if I buy a WiFi enabled device. The guy told me that the contract with Huawei, the manufacturer of the modem I have, and BSNL has ended, and therefore there's no stock of the card! I'd heard this story before, so I thought I'll just drag it a bit and went to the box of old modems and asked if I could have a look at it. He said I could. I just picked up a modem which I had and told him I wanted a card for that. He looked around a few times, then came to me and asked me whether I know how to configure it, on hearing a yes, he fished out another old modem from the box. pulled out its WiFi card, and gave it to me, Free of Charge! And said "take it and go"!! I said my share of thanks and left happy knowing I have a card which would otherwise cost me Rs.1000, all because someone was in a good mood that day! The BSNL person attending to complaints then came home and did some tests on my number and announced that it was a line fault since the line had some water inside it, there was some voltage showing up in the tests and therefore the ADSL light wasn't up. He then said that the whole line has to be replaced and since he was not the person with that responsibility, it will have to wait till Monday! I spent the remainder of the day, checking mail on my mobile phone, not because I'm addicted to it, but because of other commitments. And there's no bigger flush for your pocket than checking two mail accounts on GPRS and sometimes replying to them! On Saturday evening it was agreed that my friend and I would go cycling to the Chamundi hill as usual.
Sunday morning, an extremely chilly, icy morning with pockets of fog in many places. My friend and I went up the hill in a leisurely pace, 44 minutes is the time we took to complete it, just under double the time I have taken on my best attempt. We talked for a while, watched a couple of foreigners get robbed off their packet of chips by monkeys. They're evolving, they know how to tear open a packet of lays without spilling it on the ground!

Once I came home and slept, I woke up only at 4 after being knocked out cold for more than three hours all thanks to the previous night when I spent gaming and slept at 2! Sunday evening, I loafed about a bit, talked to the returning heroes from Gokarna and went home.
This morning, Monday, the BSNL guys came home at 11 and started digging all over the place searching for some cable that they'd laid long long ago! after many unsuccessful test pits, they found the cable and started tracing it to the junction which they had to search out too. To avoid all this, the person came up with a bright idea to run the tests again from the local switch box for out area. Then it was diagnosed as a CPE (customer premises equipment) fault and not the line fault as it was informed to me on Saturday! Soon there were a swarm of BSNL guys in my home trying to find out what the problem was, then suddenly to our shock! the ADSL lit up as if nothing happened! everything was pinging! no packet loses, full speed, no trace of the chaos which had struck on Friday night! So, they all had a small laugh and left scratching their heads leaving only the poor guy who dug up half the front yard searching for a cable to clean up his mess! he did that and gave me a number to contact for further complaints regarding broadband and he left too! I was quite relieved that it was all over, because a few more hours without internet and I would've been forced to buy a Plug and Play modem! Phew! what a weekend!

Last Minute Troubles

Tomorrow, the 25Th of December 2008, five friends of mine are going on a trip to Gokarna and back, covering many places in between. This is the second time that i am gonna miss riding my bike on that route. The reason why i didn't go this time, is an entirely different philosophical discussion which i shall skip for obvious reasons.
Me and my friend (Mr. RX, if you remember him from my earlier posts), were having our regular brew of strong coffee at our regular hang out hotel. After that I asked him whether he needs some tools, puncture repair kit, spare tube, air pump etc, which have come to great use on earlier trips, just to help the guys if they happen to run into trouble along the way. He had told me that since none of them know how to remove a wheel, any tools that i give would be only extra weight on their backs to carry. So that idea was scratched off the book. Having wished him a happy and safe journey, we left for our homes.
Then at 9:30 at night, i get a call from him saying that his bike has a flat tyre and there're no mechanics around to fix it! People who know me well know that I'm always all excited to do such things, and I'd rather do such things myself than let somebody hammer at my bike mercilessly. I packed up my tools and left for his place. On reaching, it was quite obvious that he had a flat tyre, and there was a nail stuck in it. What was not obvious is that the nail was 2 inches long. And the troubles were just beginning. I found out that the spare tyre i had taken had no pin in it. And i couldn't remove the pin from the punctured tyre to put it on to this one. This happened to be a blessing in disguise as it saved him the trouble of changing tubes again in Hassan tomorrow morning, cause i knew there was no way that the tube i had could withstand those distances on the patch it already had on it. This info we found out from the puncture guy who had to be woken up from sleep to fix the wheel we'd taken to him. He told, the punctured tube was useless and the tube I'd taken to him, the one which was already patched, was of little use too and confirmed my fears that if put, it would give up in under 100km! He goes in and brings a brand new locally-made tube, it's not good, but is surely better than the one i held in my hand. Finally we got it fitted on the tyre and took the wheel home and fitted it back the bike under the light of mobile phones and streetlights! the whole thing took a little more than 1 hour to complete! kinda unfortunate just before a big trip, but better now than in the middle of nowhere! Once again the bike burst into life and the test ride was two-big-thumbs-up! I wish them a happy journey and will be looking forward to meeting them on Sunday evening when they return!

Kaboom!

This morning, a friend had brought over his laptop for some major upgrades. While I was trying to configure the network on the dreaded Vista Home Ultimate, My comp went *poof*!!!!!!!!! It had done that before a few times, but it always started up after fiddling with the wires a little, but this time, nothing! no life!
I thought: "oh man, now Windows affects hardware too",
I felt there was too much load on it so, I disconnected the CD-ROM IDE & the floppy controllers and also the spare fan and then tried, nothing! then I switched off the UPS and switched it on, just in case it might help, the UPS went "ktttrrrrrkkk" and never came back again! hmmm... this was getting serious! One of the good friends trying to help me out, suggested that I should try plugging it in directly to the power outlet. I thought that was sensible, since there was no way my ups would turn on now, I might as well see if my comp is fried or not. I plugged it into the wall outlet and turned it on and it went KABOOM!!! sparks from the motherboard and the house MCB tripped! and that, ladies and gentlemen, was the time dear GK broke out a rare sweat, hurriedly grabbing the torch I searched for blown transistors on the board, nothing was seen thankfully. Without wasting much time, I disconnected all the cables from the back and took it to the repair shop ( I was afraid to explore further after I saw sparks). There he said it was a SMPS problem, he got a brand new 450w SMPS out of the box and fitted it in the cabinet, switched it on, and voilà! worked like a charm! My CPU is filled out with stuff the details of which I will not bore you with here right now!
Then it was time for the UPS, gave it to repair and was asked to come in the evening when I was told that the fuses and the MOSFETs (whose function in a UPS I don't quite understand) were fried! He asked me what all I connect to the UPS, I said, 1 CPU, 2 monitors and one modem. he asks which monitors, I said one 22" LCD and another 14" CRT, and he stared at me as though he would've assaulted me any minute for abusing a product of a company he works for by overloading it with appliances! asks me to either use a higher capacity UPS or stop using the LCD monitor! O_O Since I didn't know I had made such a big mistake in the eyes of the APC community, I kept quiet, took delivery of the UPS and went back home. Connected them all back together and my computer works like a charm again! Considering that I bought this baby in the June of 2004, she's still holding up to my demands pretty well! Anyway, this just saved me from a potential pocket-burning purchase of 30K for a motherboard, processor, ram and graphics card replacement which I should've gone through if my motherboard was fried! It was all over in 750 bucks! A close call! But saved because of my lucky stars!

The Diary Dilemma!

This evening when I had been to Sapna Book Store, I saw the most comprehensive collection of diaries for the coming year that I have ever seen in my ten years that I've been visiting Sapna. Each year, the diaries get more exquisite and complex adding more features and better paper. To top it all, enter a company called Nightingale, probably the finest paper in India that I have ever seen, and even in their range, there are only a few papers which take my M-nibbed Parker which I've been using for nearly 11 years now! Consequently, people say it writes like a sketch-pen! but glide it does! it's the smoothing thing I've ever written with, so smooth that it almost goes out of control while writing! I know what you're thinking, no you may not write with it when you meet me and yes I'll stop bragging about my fountain pen! It was because of this fountain pen that I started getting addicted to Nightingale.
I'll tell you why I brought this topic about my Parker. Well, I have a habit of writing (do I have to add the word literally at the end of that sentence? :P) yes, writing with a pen! Well, all you "Abhimani DevruagLu" out there, as NataSarvabhouma "Annavru" Dr. Rajkumar used to say, happened to catch me in a story telling mood, now face it! I'll have to tell you why I started writing! ok here goes,
When we shifted to Mysore from B'lore for second PU, I was nearly into clinical depression for a few months! I'd never seen a college where people studied in lunch breaks, refused to share notes and wrote in the same page in three different colours! The roads were too empty and I'd never seen a traffic signal for miles on end! so I thought I'll get back to reality and contact my friends in B'lore to ask what's happening there! What better way than to call up huh? yeah, go ok GK call and talk, you too are human, I thought. What I heard from them wasn't good, it seemed Forum was all the buzz there. I'd shifted in April, and to my luck, on July 3rd 2002 radio city FM 91, B'lore's first FM radio station started! "Man full English, Early morning metallica, Saturdays are club nights with Suresh Venkat and DJ Ivan, The late show with Priya Ganapathy, Rebel Yell with Jonzie and Santosh Gnaynakan a.k.a saggy" is what my friends told me over the phone, even letting me listen to a song! After a month, dad almost burst a vein seeing the telephone bill. He said, the next time I got him such a bill, the telephone goes and I along with it! So, I had to resort to more primitive methods to keep in touch and keep listening.
Those were the days of quality, a plain black-and-white cellphone would cost you 6K and you could hammer a coffin with it, not like the cheap mobiles of today which stop working once you drop it! So, I could never afford a mobile too. So, struck a deal with my dad to supply me with 25 inland letters every month and I'd stay away from the phone. I'd never seen a quicker response from him, for the letters were on my desk the same evening by the time I came back from college! Letter problem solved. Now listening.
During those days of 2002, there would be a power cut every evening and during that time I'd write letters to all my friends, listening to a new-found interest of mine, Shortwave Radio first on my Panasonic System and later on my old Sony IFC-22, I'd usually listen to the BBC world service, which I do even today. So, while I was listening, an idea struck me, "why not make the biggest possible antenna and put it on the terrace, Shortwaves require no orientation, so it'll work" , so I went around stealing all the stray telephone wires, skinning them for hours and then joining them to make one hell of an antenna, probably a hundred or more feet long, which went out of my window to the terrace, I had to instruct people at home not to touch the wire or the system while it was raining, I didn't want to get myself or them zapped with a billion volts of lightning. Work it did! For the next three years, I got near crystal clear reception of Radio City which ended only when other newer radio stations started polluting the signal and also cause of increased use of cellphone and cellphone towers everywhere!
Anyway, letter writing, right, stick to the point GK. I used to write letters, with my fountain pen, till it started blotting on the letters, that's when I switched over to pencils for letters. From then on, I've been writing letters, when I was not able to write letters, I would write a diary and those two hobbies have stayed with me till today, albeit a little dormant. So, the habit of buying diaries every year. As the years passed, the stuff I write in them has diminished to only a shadow of what it used to be when I had all the time for it. Buy the buying hasn't stopped.
But recently there was a revolution of thought process in my head (I like coining such terms, it makes me feel intelligent :P) and I suddenly had a rush of ideas and thoughts which were extremely volatile but seemed immensely profound and eternally useful because of which I felt I should always have a book & a pen with me so that I can write them down and use it later. So, when I got some money, I went and got a compact Nightingale Jute bound diary. But then the actual dilemma started, the diary was too small and I wasn't able to write more than four lines in a day's space, but, if I had bought a bigger one, it wouldn't have been portable enough. So eventually only half the diary got filled and the other half of all the "revolutionary thoughts" vanished into thin air!
And this evening in Sapna, I committed the same mistake again, I bought an identical sized Rayon bound compact diary, But then this year, I'm staying pretty much glued to my seat at home scratching my head. So this bright red thing should be pretty much right in front of my eyes all the time. So, look out world! I'm armed with my "thoughts & ideas" (sounds similar to "ideas and opinions" eh? ) and it's all going to come down in ink on my brand new diary from the 1St of Jan '09! hurray for that!
So, will I get the mood to write again, Peace!
Cheers!

Midnight Marathon? Anyone? Anyone?

When i casually browsed this page (http://toimidnightmarathon.in/) i was happy to see the dates re announced. The marathon which was supposed to happen tonight, has been pushed forward to the 10th of January. The move was made because of safety reasons! It was a blessing for me indeed, giving me more time to prepare, nearly a month. Before i start preparing, i first have to get over the injury to my left knee so that i don't have to face the trauma like the Sunfeast Open 10K back in April!
Tomorrow I am supposed to cycle to Chamundi Hill, but now looking at this announcement, i am deciding whether i should run on cycle! Here's the deal which is actually troubling me, if i start running now with this irritating iliotibial band, I'm more prone to injury, if i cycle till i recover, i'll be too late to train for the whole distance that i wanna run. as of now 10K is almost certain, but adding 11 more Km to it is gonna be tricky!
Hmmm, Any suggestions? My legs can store energy till about 7-8 km, then on i'll have to be eating something which is gonna be absorbed real fast or i'll risk hitting the wall and in my case, there's no wall for me to hit! my body has no fat to burn! i'll just have to collapse on the road and be wheeled back to base! That's one thing i really, really wanna avoid! So, how do i go about it! If only i had started earlier! but no! my lazy butt would refuse to leave the bed at 6 in the morning! face it GK!!
Well, as i said before, any pointers on how to train? or would you say just run and take care of the consequences later? :-/ sounds scary, but many ppl actually do that! I'll have to think this one out!

OpenSUSE 11.1

Get the button, spread the word! Go ahead, click it, it won't eat you up! :P

Running - An Update!

Nearly 30 hours after my running stint to chamundi hill, 12 of which were spent in a coma-like sleep, my body still feels like it has been run over by a Dakar-prepared Kamaz at full speed! Whats even stranger is that parts of my body are aching today which were not yesterday! I mean my back.
But then, things are really on the bright side, the pains in my leg have reduced and I'm able to jump into my jeans albeit a little slower than usual, faster than yesterday nonetheless. most of last night was spent in learning how to flip myself from one side to the other in a way which inflicts the minimum possible pain, this, all you logical thinkers might derive requires the maximum possible effort! it wasn't easy falling asleep and it still isn't anywhere close to easy trying to walk fast! I'm having to calculate each step i take, thinking whether it's necessary or not, taking steps are a premium now a days! so are climbing stairs, especially when you keep forgetting which leg you should bend at the knee and which one you need to keep straight as you descent, a slip up in that could have to screaming for dear life! But then, things are moving in the way of progress, and lots of it! So, hopefully I'll be back to form by tomorrow morning for my usual cycling. Till then! chao!

Lament!

Friend has a problem with Honda, They're hellbent on screwing up his bike at the least chance they get to lay their hands on it. He tried to avoid those clumsy mechanics as much as possible, but without proper tools to do the job on your own, sometimes you have to take it to those retards who fit things backwards, literally! This has left him very agitated, so much so that he has written to HMSI about the whole incident and a lot other which he has personally experienced with his stint at showrooms before he took the leap of faith to decide he'll repair everything on his own. Let me see what explanation HMSI gives.
There is this another friend of mine who has had a problem too many with this brand new Nokia, apparently, that particular model in nokia looks to be designed to be used in clean-rooms. They can't make it moisture resistant even to the smallest extent, what's worse is that they've probably made is extremely sensitive to such things to which you'd normally expect a resistance from! Spent time, effort and money trying to get it fixed only so that it can blow up again!
A third person, also my friend, has been changing hard disks every month for the past three or four months. The reason, bad sectors, increasing with every new HDD gives as a replacement under the warranty.
I have been a victim of such things too, my Motorola's touch screen gave up just under a year after i purchased it. Luckily i claimed the warranty with only a day or two remaining before it lapsed which saved me around a thousand INR. But, I wouldn't be spared just yet, the side lock switch of my phone broke, to my misfortune it happened when the phone was locked leaving me no choice but to get it fixed and lighten myself off 350 INR in one hour!
Why has manufacturing quality taken such serious and downward turns? isn't there any way to keep up volume and quality with increasing demand? Are new work forces being recruited only to meet quantity requirements of productions? Or is this some sort of a return-business policy to make sure that you will need a new bike/HDD/phone after X number of years, a trick to keep the money circulating and ensure a market for the new produce?
Sometimes i remember this good article by the late great Bertrand Russell. It's called "how to be a man of genius". I don't know whether I've written something about that in my previous posts, but i feel it's appropriate to mention something i understood from the article, with great difficulty because of the superior English and my inferior intellect/comprehension/both.
It basically goes like this. If you happen to be a doctor, will you just think about saving lives? or will you think that by saving all the lives you possibly can because of the advancement in medical science, you'll be placing more demands on the planet's resources, it's food supply, housing, basic necessities of civilized life? Russell says, the latter is the Genius.
Putting that into my perspective on the talk about the manufacturing of faulty equipment these days, should we be expecting things to last forever once bought? or should we also be considering the point-of-view that if things lasted forever once bought, most of the jobs in the manufacturing sector would be lost, ppl are gonna be homeless and poverty will soon take over many societies? What is the price you're willing to pay to keep the world go round? A new set of oil seals? UI interface? HDD? Touchscreen module? Do you think as paying customers you're entitled to have products of the utmost quality which under near-ideal circumstances would last an extraordinarily long time if not forever. Is a "design-period" important? is the question it all narrows down to!
Is the manufacturing sector capitalizing on the purchasing power of the general public these days or are they really doing this cause making things eternal would be an overkill, of ppl would just get "bored" of it? or is it cause it's a loss to them? If its a combination of all the above reasons, then, is the combination convincing enough for them to take a decision to reduce the quality to such low standards as is being seen these days? I still don't know which view i would support, guess that makes me a non-genius! But I'd like to examine the whole scenario more closely before calling a shot on this one!

Back to running again!

Today was a special day. A usual, sometimes my weirdness knows no bounds! Because, today saw another one of my display of sporadic running. The last time i ran any distance more than 3km was for the Sunfeast Open 10K in B'lore, heh! i don't even remember the date that happened! Must be in April i guess. anyway, ppl who know me on a daily basis know what happened after that, Ilio-tibial band syndrome and the subsequent stoppage of running for more than 4 months during which all i did was jump rope and cycle once in a while. Later i took up cycling somewhat seriously, especially after i met a cyclist on my way to the chamundi hill once while i was cycling and agreed to train with him for a few days, after that, my friends and i have been regular to the hill every Sunday. A good way to begin a Sunday, getting tired early in the morning so that you can laze around for the rest of the day. This started in October, this is December and there's a new event, in running, not cycling mind you, called midnight run. I was looking forward to this, hoping it would happen in April or may like it happened the previous year, but this had to be announced in December for reasons unknown. So, again my interest turns towards running and i decided to go for the biggie, a half marathon, 21km of pure pain and running action. But to have a hope of completing it alive and not in an ambulance half-dead or in a mortuary van completely, you need training, and lots of it, somewhere to the tune of 25 km at a stretch at least once in two weeks.
Luckily the marathon got postponed indefinitely, so i thought i might as well start preparing. Sunday, today, i ran, 8km uphill to chamundi, although the experience was really eye opening, refreshing, painful and liberating at the same time, it was done quite slowly, my body had switched into life-saving mode without me knowing. my strides were short, slow and to a rhythm, my breathing still not at it's max and heart-rate somewhere around 120-130s approx when i can actually do 155-160 at my max (that's the most I've recorded), i was able to talk to my friends who were nice enough to video the whole ordeal, i was able to give chocolates which i had bought to top myself up with calories on top of the biscuits, jam and a glass of glucose i had in the morning. When i finished, some 50 mins later at the top i was still smiling and talkign to friends i bumped into at the top.
Having cooled down and returned home, i now notice that i cannot life my left leg, it hurts! excruciating pain in the muscle/ligament connecting my leg to the rest of my body! so much to that i cannot lift my leg to get into my jeans, making getting dressed a half-hour ordeal and getting on the bike, a 10 minute exercise in tolerating pain!
I know what you're thinking "why?" you would ask, why did i push myself to do all this when i could just sit at home and sleep all day? well, i could tell you, but, i wouldn't be doing justice to the way i feel, the sense of accomplishment that i get when i complete, by putting it into words! you have to try it out for yourself!
So, that was 8, kind of half way, considering the uphill run makes me feel like its 12. so, another 9km remaining for me to endure, without damage cause i surely don't wanna putting on my jeans for half an hour for a week every time i run for 10km! Some training in the blocks, damage limitation mode is on. Tomorrow, well, i still can't walk, so running is pretty much suicidal for three more days, ruled out!
Hmmm.... lemme see. Nah! i need sleep for now, i'll look into the training plan tomorrow. It's not that i can move around tomorrow anyway! goodnight!

recommend!

recommendation letters, as the name would suggest, are the letters which a person would give you in support of.... well, what ever it is that you're going to start doing, kind of a public announcement: "yes i know this guy, and these are the things he has done which has impressed me, and these are the other things he's capable of doing" and such sort. Sadly enough, ppl who are supposed to issue these letters will not be able to compose a proper passage. This adds to the complication that the end users of these so called recommendation letters are looking precisely for ppl with valid qualification and position who can vouch for your/my abilities and talents. So, comes the ironic point, you type out a letter all by yourself, take it to them, if you have struck the right chord and have to really gone beyond yourself in praising, you get it signed, sealed and stamped. else, minor changes and you get it signed, sealed and stamped nonetheless. So, to a great extent it'll be what you want your prospective reader to read about you and what you wish to hide from him, like the fact that you really didn't know calculus will your second year of engineering, or you thought that college sucked, teachers were partial and and you were always irregular and definitely not punctual when you chose to be regular due to attendance reasons! strange! i suppose that all these things should not matter, the teachers are nice enough to sign all the rubbish that i write about myself. And kudos to them!