April 2, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Google, Hacking, Life, Linux

Best April Fools’ Day Ever

08:50AM April 1st, 2009

Alarm!!! Ring Ring!!! I had a class at 8:30AM. But thinking that I’ll sleep for few more hours, opted to miss the class.

10:26AM April 1st, 2009

I was in deep sleep (went to bed at 5AM) when my mobile started ringing. I hate it when somebody calls me when I am sleeping. To my surprise it was a call from a faculty member. I took the call and received a congratulatory message. When I asked about the reason, he replied, “You sold videocache for $20000.” I got a thousand volt shock. Immediately all those bollywood flicks (Khosla Ka Ghosla etc.) came to my mind in which X sold property of Y to Z without Y even knowing about it. I totally lost my mind and couldn’t think of anything. He said a few lines after that and I just couldn’t hear him. I diverted the topic, said two-three sentences and hung up.

Woke up, had some water and switched on my monitor. Saw a message from Ankush Kalkote on Kopete saying, “Congrats yaar. ab to party deni hi padegi.”. In another tab Rishab Mukherjee saying congrats. I started believing it. I tried asking about the source of information but they wanted the god damn party desperately and didn’t really care what I was typing. I immediately openned cachevideos.com to check if somebody had hacked that. It was fine and there were no signs of any intrusions. In the meantime, Rishabh asked me to have a look at Rishi’s status message. It read, “Dollar Chacha (they call me so) has become a MILLIONAIRE. Sold videocache for $20000.” I kept browsing through the list and saw a lot of people changing their status message to the same. A few moments later I realized that its April 1 and everyone is trying to fool everyone else. Frustrated by the whole event, banged my head on the wall and went to sleep.

12:25PM April 1st, 2009

Mahaveer knocked my door asking for lunch. He didn’t know the truth. And fired all W questions (what, why, when, to whom) as soon as I openned the door. I switched on monitor and saw huge queue in Kopete. Everyone going crazy about videocache. People wondering about how can you sell a free software. WTF!!!! I immediately observed a huge potential in this venture. And put up my status as “@all it $21k and not $20k.” In the next five minutes almost 15-20 more people flooded me with queries about the sale.

Few sent congratulatory mails and few even came up to my room to congratulate. Sudden change in opinion of few people (who didn’t know the truth) around. e.g. “Studies are a total waste of time”, “I should have developed some god damn thing”, “Four years well wasted :(“, “Getting into a job is foolishness” etc…

Taking advantage of the situation, somebody sent a SMTP mail to UG4 which read,

Hello,

As most of you know, Google has bought VideoCache built by me in 20K $. I am really enthralled on this feat. Since, I wish to share my happiness with all of you, I have decided to give you a fantabulous party tonight in the ground just behind the Motorola. Alok n me are busy making arrangements for that. If someone wishes to help us in making the party more than a memorable one, just mail @ mksharma@students.iiit.ac.in
If you wish to visit the VideoCache website, click http://cachevideos.com

As you must have figured it out by now, I didn’t plan any of this. It was planned by few people as a side-effect of attending Indic class. If anyone was hurt, he/she should go and kick Sachin Goyal, Kapil Bajaj, Rishi Gupta, Ankush Kalkote, Ajay Somani.

All in all it was big fun and best april fools’ day I ever had.

March 27, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life, Linux, Placements, Servers, Victory

Rediff Interview

A few days back I got a call from an alumnus about a job opening at Rediff in my domain (server side craziness :P). Initially I was a bit surprised because I was not expecting something like that at all. After discussing a bit more about it, I returned to my room and forwarded the resume. Two days later while I was in RnD Showcase, I got a call from Rediff regarding the interview timings. It was scheduled on Saturday 21st at 1PM.

Saturday 21st

In the morning at around 9:40AM, I got a call from Sumit Rajwade (VP, Tech, Rediff) asking if interview can be conducted at 10:30AM. I replied positively. I got a bit nervous as I had to quickly arrange a place where we can meet. Arranged a conference room. At around 10:15AM, I got another call from Sumit saying that he was at coffee shop. I was deeply shocked. Coffee Shop :O I couldn’t really figure out what was going on. In my point of view, coffee shop is THE best place in IIIT Hyderabad. For me its a holy place 😛 When I reached coffee shop, I saw two guyz enjoying cold milk. Sumit said, “Whenever I come to IIIT, I always visit coffee shop. I can’t miss this cold milk”. I was still dumbstruck.

After brief introductions, interview started. He asked some NATing questions seeking answers at TCP level. I was able to answer those. Then we moved on to open source domain. Talked about Apache compression and keepalive for sometime. Then we moved on to squid and caching. I feel so good when somebody asks me something about caching/squid. Have been experimenting with caching/squid since last 1 year. Then we exchanged a few thoughts about our interests. Luckily there were no questions about printf statements. Then I briefed him about things I have been doing since last four years. After that he introduced me to the kind of work they are expecting from me. It looked pretty awesome and inspiring at the same time. Few more thoughts exchanged and it was all done. I was asked to take some time out to visit Rediff Head Office in Mumbai.

All in all, it was fun talking to Sumit. He has been hacking (here hacking means hacking and not cracking) open source softwares since years. Inspiring personality.

The most shocking thing to me was the coffee shop part of it. I never imagined that I’ll be interviewed at Coffee Shop.

March 17, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Camera, Food, Fun, Life, Photography, Temple

PhotoWalk near Mahendra Hills (Anand Buddha Vihar)

Yesterday, as a part of our Photography Club Assignment we went for a PhotoWalk in Anand Buddha Vihar. We, a bunch of UG3 and UG4 students, reached Shenoy Nursing Home in Secunderabad in three groups where Sashidhar met us and guided us to Mahendra Hills. Our destination was a Buddhist Temple in Anand Buddha Vihar. We started walking. After walking about a kilometer, we reached a nice place. It was a small hill with flowers all over the place.

Near Mahendra Hills

Gaganpreet aka Bitgeek

We walked further (about 1.5 kilometers) and reached the Buddhist Temple. It was closed at that time. People tried different type of photography with capturing whatever possible. The temple looked pretty beautiful from outside. We were eager to get in.

A view of the temple from the road

Buddhist Temple in Anand Buddha Vihar

At 4:00PM temple was opened for public. We got in and tried to capture as many objects as possible.

Deepak (A statue near the entrance)

Sashidhar, Aditya, Yogendra, Aakash, Me and Nitin

Shrikant got a bit sentimental and took picture of almost every leaf and flower 😛

Shrikant Nigam

Me inside the temple

Close Up

Woodwork on Doors

I tried goggles but they didn’t really go well with my looks 😛

And finally Sashidhar who made this trip possible but eventually got bored.

Sashidhar

I was totally surprised by the beauty of the place. I was wondering why we never visited this beautiful place. After the photowalk, we had good food at McD, VikramPuri and returned home 😀

PS : Thanks Sashidhar for everything 🙂

PPS : I tag Shrikant, Bitgeek and whoever else who was there.

March 16, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Hardware, Internet, Life

Mouse Middle Click Not Working

Its very easy to hop from one website to another with the help of a middle click while continuing with reading the current website especially when you have to follow the references. Browsing wikipedia is very easy when middle click work. But my mouse’s middle click is not working since last two weeks. I tried to open and check for any physical flaws but it didn’t help at all. I have a wireless mouse also which doesn’t work(i think because of power problems). I opened it to check if there the middle click logic is same and if there is some component which can be interchanged. But the middle click logic turned out to be really different.

Microsoft Wired and Wireless Mouse

So, here I am browsing web in a lot of miseries 😛

Browsing websites was never this miserable (have a close look)

March 14, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Food, Fun, Life

Journey by Train Continued… (Part of Vaishno Devi Trip)

In my last post about our trip, I described the scenario before I almost fell asleep. This is a continuation to the previous post and is a description of the journey. Please ignore language errors.

06:00AM February 27, 2009

I am sitting on a box. A huge stack of bags is placed next to me. Its height is almost equal to that of my shoulders (while I am sitting). I rest my head against the bags. I feel a bit better and now I am trying to sleep. I have covered myself with a piece of cloth. Only Somani is awake now. Next few minutes are as described by Mahaveer (who was sleeping in some other compartment, wakes up and comes to the place where we were sleeping).

Bhai (Kapil A) is sleeping in Somani’s lap. Somani’s face as usual looked like the face of some guy who was beaten all night by few cruel drunkers and left to die 😛 Still giving a strong fight to his laziness, Somani managed act in a manner that expressed his desire to play cards.

Mahaveer shouts in a loud voice, “WHAT THE FU**?? GUYZ, THIS PLACE IS HEAVEN. YOU LUCKY BITC**S”. I wake up with a shock and figure out that everybody was up and equally shocked. Later Mahaveer explained that Sambhav took him to some really fu**ed place where they were sleeping since last few hours. We all feeling a bit blessed (as if we were in first AC) . Few minutes later, Sambhav also joins us.

We (me and Sambhav) kicked Somani and Deepak out and went to sleep. Deepak who was sleeping till now, will take care of the luggage. It is a great feeling to have a place where you can actually sleep. Soon I fell asleep.

Checkout Somani in the video.

Mahaveer is not able to find a place to sleep and hence trying to frustrate Somani (which is the easiest thing to do) just for some fun 😛 After a lot of failed efforts, Mahaveer has decided to sleep while sitting against the door. But there is a fight even for that small place. Somani also wants to sleep. So, Mahaveer and Somani has decided to use the place to sleep on a time division basis with no overtime allowed under any circumstances.

Ajay Somani Mahaveer

Ajay Somani

We are now at Nagpur station. Everybody is overwhelmed to see the food that Kapil’s parents has brought for us. We are waiting for the train to start so that all of us can have the awesome food we have just got. A long horn and train starts slowly. Everybody settled. Bhai is serving the food to everyone following the Royal protocol. What an amazing food that was!!! Aaloo-poori, pulao, mithai, all Haldiram stuff from Nagpur and what not … The journey/miseries so far felt like nothing for that awesome food. Thanks a millions Bhai for the food.

After having that awesome lunch we started playing UNO. Sambhav and Kapil are sitting next to wash basin. As it is lunch time a lot of people are coming to wash their hands which is time and again troubling Sambhav. I am thinking of ideas to block the wash basin so that people will automatically prefer the washin in toilets but none of them is working. Now it has got interesting. Two girls (of age group 23-27) are here to wash their hands. First one washes her hands and returns with no trouble. Now its the time for the second girl to wash her hands. OMG she is having difficulties. Her second hand is not able to reach the tap while she is trying to fetch water with the other hand. I am observing every single moment hoping for something to happen. oh shit.. she managed to spill some water over Sambhav (a big fu**ing smile on my face forcing Sambhav to react to the incident). But before Sambhav could say something, the girl shouts, “Hat kar nahin baith sakte kya?? Log haath kaise dhoyenge yahaan??“. Rest of us overjoyed by the incident shouts at Sambhav in chorus, “Kaisa hai be… jab koi aaye to thoda hat ke baitha kar … kab se bol rahe hain tujhe ..“.

Playing UNO

We played UNO for hours. Almost till 5PM. It was damn hot and the hot air through the doors was killing. We reached Bhopal at 6:30PM. Now S10 and S9 was almost emty. Few of us went there and slept.

Thats it for today. The most dangerous part of the journey till Jaipur is still left. Wait till next post.

To be continued…

March 10, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

A Journey by Train (Part of Vaishno Devi Trip)

We (ten guyz : Me, Sachin, Mahaveer, Deepak, Kapil Bajaj, Kapil Royal Agrawal, Sambhav Jain, Nitin Gupta, Nitin Bansal, Ajay Somani) went on a trip to Vaishno Devi routed through Jaipur and Agra. I tried to write down my experiences while traveling. Actually we didn’t have confirmed tickets, so journey was a bit unusual. The content below is whatever I wrote in a copy in train. Ignore language errors.

04:03AM February 27, 2009

I am sitting on a huge box in a train while I am writing this. It seems a lot of things are happening for the first time. We, a group of crazy UG4 guyz, are on a way to a lot of destinations.

Two months ago, when I was at home, I got a call from Pankaj asking whether I want to join them for a trip to Jaipur, Vaishno Devi. I could not think of an answer at that time and replied positively without knowing the consequences. After considerable efforts, people booked round trip tickets from Hyderbad to Jaipur, Jaipur to Jammu and Jammu to Agra, Agra to Hyderbad which were followed by a lot of cancellation and re-reservations as few dropped out.

Seven of us left IIIT at 8:40PM on 26th to catch the Jaipur-Bangalore express at 2AM on 27th. We spent few hours on the station waiting for the train and killing time by playing card-games. BTW, we didn’t have even a single confirmed ticket. Everybody was hoping that we’ll have at least RAC by the time train arrives. Several attempts of buttering TTEs have already failed. The train arrived. We all rushed in to get some free space somewhere. Luckily I was able to find a huge space for 3-4 people. Me and Somani tried to capture as much space as possible by spreading our luggage as much as possible. After half an hour, Sachin declared that we won’t get any seat via any mechanism possible. This is the first time I am traveling without a confirmed ticket.

We at Kachiguda Station

Well, this is a first experience for Somani and Mahaveer as well. Right now we are in two groups of five and two. Mahaveer and Sambhav are in deep sleep on the floor of a compartment far away.

One of the elite members of a “Royal Family” is reading a book called “Stay Hungry Stay Foolish” while sitting on a bag placed in front of a toilet. I think you should not read a book with a title like that near a toilet.

Another well know personality, a well know coder, Ajay Somani, is sleeping while sitting on the floor beside the wash basin with a book in his hand. This guy had plans to fly to Jaipur instead of traveling by train.

Deepak, the guy who thinks every girl can be trapped, is, I think, in best position right now. He is in deep sleep beside Somani in a very comfortable situation.

Me (Black), Somani (Grey), Deepak (Strips)

Bhai, Somani, Me, Deepak

Sachin is sleeping (on the floor) in a very dangerous situation. Every time someone passes, I get the feeling that he/she may step on his face and I try to move things in mind to avoid the crash, but nothing seems to work here. His face is towards the walkway (corridor) and feet towards Somani and Deepak, three of them forming a 696 configuration. I think half an hour ago, Somani said, “Three heterosexual people can’t sleep in a space this small“. And as I write this they are sleeping. Draw your own conclusions.

This place is fu**ing stinky because of toilets. The writing (on paper) so far suggests that “FU**” is a word which is very easy to pronounce and type but extremely difficult to write on a paper. While typing your fingers automatically slips to type “FU**” in every other sentence.

On the other end of this compartment, I can see a huge number of people near the charging point (where people charge their mobiles). Looking at the crowd at that place at this late hour, it seems few people fu**ing board the train to fu**ing charge their mobiles.

Its 5:30AM now and we have crossed Kazipet. A few minutes ago, Somani enjoyed a cup of tea in front of toilet (the position where Bhai (Kapil A.) was sitting earlier).

In another event, I woke up Sachin. He successfully negotiated for a space for sitting with a person on SU birth. Now, he is trying to tease Somani. Also, Bhai is sleeping in Somani’s lap.

Now its 6:00AM. I have started feeling the hardness of the surface I am sitting on. Also, the effect of tea I had half an hour ago is fading away. It seems I want to sleep but there is no place to realize that dream 😛

That was all I could write before I fell asleep.

To be continued…

February 17, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

NERDVANA

Well, the task was to get a railway ticket preponed. Somehow me and Bansi got pushed for the job. After spending half an hour searching for a bike/scooty/activa, we finally got Harsh’s kinetic. As Bansi doesn’t know how to drive, he handed over the key to me (yes, i know how to drive 😛 ). Me and Bansi standing near the kinetic in front of OBH and me thinking “How on earth we start a kinetic ???” I tried pressing some random buttons on the dashboard(i hope thats what it is called), but it didn’t help.

I know how to drive, but I never drove a kinetic or a two wheeler like that. Totally clueless about the procedure to start it, a scene from Matrix(when the guy or the girl learns to fly the helicopter) hit me. I wish we had some technology like that to learn things. Anyways, I followed almost similar steps. Called up Baba and asked him to teach me the lesson on starting a god damn kinetic 😐 Finally, with Baba’s efforts, I was able to start the machine.

February 5, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life

Volley Ball – The New Time Pass

Whenever I see a new unread item in Google Reader, I try to capture few keywords from the summary. Today I was reading a summary which contained “yuktahaar food”, “food pretty much sucks“, and I eventually got interested to read the entire post. Couldn’t really figure out what was going in the post as I don’t really watch FRIENDS (I don’t understand why they write in all caps), but this line “Well this exercise just goes to show how much free time we have on our hands these days” inspired me to write this post.

Well, since last three days we are regularly playing volley ball for almost 2 hours after coffee shop (around 4PM) and we are looking forward to continue this 🙂 I still remember the time when we used to play volley ball at 5AM (after night out) in summer vacations of second year and it was amazing experience. Volley is one of the outdoor games which I love the most. I don’t know why but it has something to do with my childhood. My father used to play volley ball a lot. So I got attracted to this sport.

Vellapanthi is really forcing us to try the things which we never did and thats really messing up with social life! Hope we’ll come with sane ideas to conquer this vellapanthi 🙂

Keeping this post a bit short because I have to take an exam at 9:30 in the morning. It’ll be better if I learn something before its too late.

Don’t argue about the title. time pass OR pass time!

January 26, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Google, Internet, Life

My Googling Stats

Thanks Tifosi for tagging me for this.

Google Search Stats

Observations

Top queries suggests that I care a lot about my name in Google search!
Top queries also suggests that I tend to care a lot about the visibility of the work I do.
Top sites stats are awesome! I visit my own sites more than orkut and any other website.
November has to be my lucky month!!
Sunday is a jackpot and Monday goes in hangover!
It seems I am most productive after returning from Coffee Shop at around 11PM as the mid-night stats outperform every other hour! It suggests that I should visit Coffee Shop more often!

I tag ZenWalker!

PS1 : Cleaned my room after 7 months!!

PS2 : Song of the B.Tech. : “Rumors” by “Lindsay Lohan”.

PS3 : Felicity is not coming. We are going there!!!

PS4 : Posting after 20 days 🙁

December 23, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Fun, Life, Success, Tips n Tricks

The Mobile Blah – 2 ( Job Offer )

THIS IS MY 101^ST POST

I wrote about a mobile blah almost two months ago and something similar happened today. Previously they were looking for a PhD but this time scenario was totally different 😀

Me, Deepak Vig, Dharmeet Hora were having lunch in our favorite mess “Yuktahaar”. Deepak’s phone rang. He started talking to someone and started looking at me. I thought it was Randeep, who has called and asked Deepak not to say anything about me. But he passed on the phone to me. Though I didn’t want to talk, I had to.

But I was totally surprised on listening a lady’s voice. (WTF!!!) Why Deepak would pass on his girl friend’s call to me 😛

Lady : The one who called.
K : Me 🙂

Note : Every single line is true to my knowledge. Confirm with Deepak or Dharmeet if you don’t believe me.

Lady : (Awesomely politely) Hello!

K : Hello. (Surprised!!!!)

Lady : Is this Ravi?

K : (WTF!!! Now who is this Ravi??) Yeah. (Turning to polite mode.) I am Ravi.

Lady : I am calling from SOME consultancy services? (Sorry guyz, couldn’t hear the first word clearly due to some disturbance.)

K : (Having no clue of whats going on.. continuing the talk) Ok.

Lady : Are you looking for a call center job?

K : (Feeling damn happy about it. Finally somebody is offering a “JOB“. Raising the voice with confidence.) YEAH!! I would love to hear about it.

Lady : (Feeling that she finally caught someone 😀 ) We are conducting an interview tomorrow at 10AM.

K : (Whenever you feel like conducting it 😛 ) Ok.

Lady : Please bring your resume and two passport size photographs.

K : Yeah. Sure.

Lady : We are offering Rs. 10000/- per month for the job.

K : Thats nice. Do you offer benefits other than the compensation? (Few MNCs offer pencils and caps as “Other Benefits” 😛 )

Lady : (Never expected something like this from a guy looking for a call center job 😛 ) Pardon please?

K : (Repeating in a much clearer voice) Do you offer any benefits other than compensation? Like insurance 😉

Lady : (Feeling sorry about it) No.

K : Ok. Anyways thats a nice package.

Lady : Do you know our address?

K : Yeah. (As if I visit their office every other day, looking for a job 😛 )

Lady : Ok. Be there at 10 AM with your resume and two passport size photographs.

K : Thank you very much for calling.

Lady : Thank you. Have a nice day.

K : You too.

Well, finally got a job offer 😛 Later, Deepak told that the lady was looking for some ‘Ravi Kiran’.

PS : Forgot to ask her name 😉