by Kulbir Saini on Challenge, Fun, Life, Victory

Madness !!!!!

Sometimes you do something, which you can’t even imagine. It will not be something new if I curse mess food for its quality. But what if I suffer overeating in mess, people will think that I have lost my mind. But thats what happened yesterday.

We, alok, somani, deepak, ankush, dharmeet and me of course, went to Yuktaahar at 12:30pm for having lunch as usual. As usual, I didn’t like the food and was eating rotis with some pickle I brought from home. I ate about 8 rotis and alok said that lets see who will eat the largest no. of rotis. Everyone except me and somani quit immediately, which was pretty obvious. At a later stage, somani also quit because he had a nice breakfast and was not in a situation to take the challenge. So, only me and alok left. Then started a counter which was increasing as if it got stuck in a while(true) loop. We were eating as if we never had food.

Kulbir – 10 Alok – 09

Kulbir – 12 Alok – 13

Kulbir – 16 Alok – 15

The queue for rotis was getting longer and longer and there was almost no probability that the competition will proceed. Then we gave a chance to alok that if he ask her (she was standing in the queue) for the rotis, then I will accept that I lost the challenge. But he refused as expected. So, the counter went on and on …

Kulbir – 18 Alok – 19

Kulbir – 21 Alok – 20

Kulbir – 23 Alok – 21

We went to Yuktaahar at 12:30pm and up to 2:00pm we were eating rotis. A lot of people came and left after having lunch. But we, alok, somani and me were there fighting for survival.

So, finally I won eating 23 rotis in mess. hell ?????? How did I manage to eat 23 rotis in the mess? Have I lost my mind ? Anyway I defeated alok. But surprise is that I, Kulbir Saini defeated alok even in eating competition. I know nobody is going to believe this, but it is the TRUTH.

Alok was not well at physical as well as mental level after showing his madness to invite me for the challenge. It was a fatal mistake by alok, but on my part eating 23 rotis was just a pure act of MADNESS !!!!

Don Kulbir

DO NOT CHALLENGE ME !!!

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Hardware, Internet, LAN, Life, Wireless

Yahooooooo !!!! Bandwidth Increased !!!

Long time, no post. Actually nothing significant happened in last one and a half month that might have been worth noticing. But something significant happened suddenly that I couldn’t stop myself from writing this post.

When I came to IIIT-H in year 2005, it has a 4Mbps backbone and a lot of users, may be around 600 or more. The browsing experience at that time was excellent. The average load time of any site was around 4-6 seconds. We used to get around 20-30kbps download speed from internet. Life was pretty easy and one need not to go to coffee shop until a site opens. But as the time passed, the no. of people @ IIIT-H started increasing and with no increment in the bandwidth. So, life became harder and harder. Then, suddenly some day the switch(i think the one of the two available, which used to route the traffic between hostels(wireless) and main building(wired)) was burnt due to some short-circuit or whatever. So, some traffic between the hostels and main building was banned(which includes DC++ traffic) because one switch can’t handle the huge traffic which IIIT-H produces in peak hours and if they allow all the traffic the other will also be burnt due to heating. So, we had a hard time. Due to increased no. of users, internet bandwidth share per user decreased and intranet traffic was also limited due to availability of just one switch.

There were time when you might have really thought of visiting coffee shop until the techtree.com(an Indian site somewhat similar to e-bay) page shows up. This was the situation for almost a year. People were hopeless. There was no other alternative except increasing the bandwidth. And thats what happened. Today we received a mail from the help desk that the bandwidth has been increased to 8Mbps. Twice!!!!! Wow!!!!! The browsing is now much more fun than it was in 2005. Average load time of any site is 2-3 seconds and that too because my PC is slow 🙁 . I have 1GB RAM and my browser still hangs when I load a no. of pages at a time, due to the fact that it can handle a specific amount of data at a time and proxy is swamping the browser with data instantly on request. I think, I have to advance with time and should get additional RAM.

There are some other significant improvements also, which are going to come into effect pretty soon. One that the burnt switch will be replaced soon. I hope that the blocked protocols between hostels and main building will be unblocked soon after that.

The other is that hostel wireless is going to localized with the help of level three switches. So, that if I want to download data from one room to my room in the same hostel, then it need not travel all the way from the other room to the main building and then back from the main building to my room. So, we hope for a better bandwidth utilization.

PS : I wrote what I could understand from the terms used in the mail by Dr. Kamal. They may have been misunderstood.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Hardware, Life, Movies, Windows

Best Summer Ever

One of my friends recently flamed me on yahoo saying what the hell are you up to “Bye Bye Windows, Hi Hi Linux ???”. Because I was having my status messages like “Bye Bye Windows”, “Fedora 7” etc. etc. So, I have chosen the title for this post “Best Summer Ever” instead of “Bye Bye Summer’07”.

Well, summer’07 will be remembered forever for the extreme entertainment we had. We did all that we could. Bye the way we implies Me, Mahaveer, Sambhav, Deepak, Kiran Dandesh, Sachin, Ajay Somani, Alok, Ojasvi, Abhinav. We played cricket @ basketball court, then dumbC, cards throughout the night, volley ball, counter strike, age of empires, cricket @ ground facing library, outing-shouting and much more …

Karan has written a nice blog entry for cricket @ bbcourt. dumbC was more than enjoyable in group with movie freaks like sachin and dandu. Dandu has some special advantage for movie names. He knows all the movie names, plus their tag lines, plus their imdb ratings and much more. If he gives you a movie to act for, forget that you’ll be able to act. He is really good at remembering the movie names.

After we got bored of this dumbC, then comes the time for cards … we played cards throughout the night for a lot of days or I should say a lot of nights. Cards were just the medium, bc was the only purpose for playing cards. Ajay was the only target during discussions. He is humiliated too much, we (at least me) are really sorry for that. But, that was not serious, it was just for fun.

Then comes the volley ball. Can you imagine that people will go crazy and they will not sleep through the night, just to play volley ball in the early morning. We did this for a lot of days. We spent the nights playing cards and then at 5:30 am we start playing volley ball. Its seriously awesome weather at that time of day. We all enjoyed it a lot.

Then comes counter strike. People who can hardly play Pac-Man, suddenly started playing counter strike. From 11:00pm – 6:00am, we played counter strike for a lot of days. Sambhav, Alok, Deepak played the amazing game for the first time.

In the final days, we are playing cricket @ the ground facing the library in the morning time. You can see the most lazy person (Somani), fielding at 6:00am in the playground, who will prefer dieing on bed instead of fetching a glass of water for himself.

ohh god !!! I forgot the most happening thing this summer… its the blog entry written by mahaveer. check it out here . read the comments carefully.

Beside all that we went to Golconda Fort recently. Had a lot of fun out there. The shop keeper over there was selling cold drinks for 13/- which was priced for 12/-. Somani applied his intelligence and argued. I can’t forget the conversation between somani and shop-keeper. Shop-keeper just ****** him too much that he can’t even utter a word after that. I can’t give you the description, because somani can kill me for doing that.

All in all, this summer was most enjoyable ever. Having a lot of friends around you is just more than fun.

PS1 : I got a brand new Seagate Barracuda 160GB (IDE) hard disk.

PS2 : Leaving for home today. Will return on 6th June.

PS3 : Found this really humorous. A GEEK’S IMAGINATION.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Hardware, Life

Its HOT !!!

Woke up in the morning at 7:30am (hey i am not joking) with no prior engagements. The first task, just rush to OBH mess for parathas (its a part of routine now … me, Mahaveer, Deepak, Alok, Nitin, Ajay and sometimes some more friends are having breakfast with 99% regularity). The quality of the parathas has fallen considerably in last 2-3 days, as we are eating parathas like we were starving for centuries … some of us even eat 10 of them … is 10 bucks for 10 parathas are justified in anyway ? keeping in mind out attendance and starvation, the caterer has finally decided to compromise and quality, so its not a enjoyable anymore the have breakfast. [The first disappointment of the day].

Returned from OBH mess. Sachin has planned to take his laptop to the hp clinic. Now, my hardware obsession played a significant role and I just decided to go with him without any considerations about the hot weather.

While we were passing the main building, we told the security we are taking the laptop for repair, and asked whether the main gate security will allow us to take it out of the college …

the security guard asked in telugu accent : “whhhichhhhh hastel”

sachin : “nbh”

gaurd : “take pass from nbhech guard”

when he said this i uttered the f word three time in mind with increasing intensity of sound[though i was silent].

well, we didn’t give a damn to whatever they said and headed for the main gate .. while on the way we decided that if the main gate security stop us, then we will say that we are doing internship at pramati and sachin –> manish arora and me –> nitin gupta. unfortunately the main gate security didn’t stop us and i couldn’t utter the f word [ a disappointment].

The journey from IIIT to Panjagutta was fine but the struggle was about to start … we stepped down the bus and now we have to walk by foot to the hp clinic(its hp service center … i don’t know why i am calling it hp clinic…). I didn’t know where is this hp clinic, so followed sachin … damn it … it was about a kilometer from Panjagutta and walking by foot in the sun …. uf … it sux … [second disappointment]

we reached the hp clinic somehow … its good … at least it has AC … amazed to see that even HP service center has the same class stuff … i didn’t see any receptionist 🙁 (the receptionist @ fiitjee, delhi was gorgeous ..) I heard and read on some news sites that hp is world leading laptop seller … [third disappoint]

now its time for the laptop repair .. it has got a strange problem .. its not booting up … the hp guy tried removing the batteries .. changing the charger … and finally declared that motherboard is ****ed … added that it’ll cost around 25000 bucks to replace it because laptop was not in warranty period … this is major reason i hate these branded companies … 25000 for a motherboard … hell … [fourth disappoint]

but thanks to the other hp guy who gave us the address of a hp dealer somewhere near anand theater … sachin managed to bargain with some autowalah (its really an art … i think these autowalahs are good random number generators … ask them the price … they’ll same something which is not anywhere near the actual price ..) and we traveled to the anand theater …

the dealer over there treated us like he had a customer after centuries … he was a genuine hp dealer so he agreed upon bringing the laptop in warranty period at a cost of 6760 for a period of two years … now it rocks in india .. the laptop was out of warranty since dec, 2006 … the guy logged in and filled some form and see we have our laptop in warranty again (a spoiled piece in warranty .. getting insurance of a dead person 🙂 )

we came out of the shop and now its like a mania … i have urge to inquire for some hardware prices .. asked sachin to get to paradise(for those who don’t know, its a place in hyderabad) .. so he again bargained with some autowalahs … but this time it was strange … when autowalah asked him for the price … sachin said … 10 12 15 20 .. what the hell .. has he gone mad … i was feeling very embaraced .. how can you bargain at such levels …

we got to paradise … i inquired about some hardware(processor, gfx card, hdd etc) … was this a good reason to travel to paradise in this hot summer 😕

we headed back to IIIT, but i suddenly feel urge for eating biryani (the only south indian food, i like sometimes) … had a nice lunch in paradise … and headed back ..

while we were waiting on the bus stop at paradise … a bus numbered 49 came … though i knew that 49M is that actual bus we have to catch … sachin inquired from a person in the bus whether the bus will go to mehndipatannam and the damn person replied “YES” … we get in .. and on the way asked for the ticket .. the conductor said that the bus will not go to mehndipattnam and we have step down on the way … he dropped us somewhere near some under construction fly over at 2:00pm… ufff that was the hottest part of the day …. we stood there in the sun for 20 minutes(no sheds or shadows at all) … FcUk .. 🙁 .. [fifth disappointment]

we get a bus after that and came back to IIIT ….

while passing the TV room … just took a look at news … bomb blast in some masjid … hell .. its a shame …[sixth disappointment] …

a day full of disappointments .. it was my first day when i went out of IIIT in this summer vacations and it was reaaaalllllyyyyyyy HOT and disappointing ….

PS0: my longest post ever … dunno how it happened 🙂

PS1:came across 3-4 server room tragedies this week .. but will not report them …

PS2: thanks to saini for downloading the “paani aali paani pyade” a haryanvi song … i heard it for around 60 times in a row … great song ..

PS3:pati has written a really great post here …

PS4:amd has announced something really ambitious ….

PS5:cricket at basket-ball court is really enjoyable .. i am the bowler of the day 😉 …

PS6:learnt from the last post that a large part of IIIT janta love sleeping in the lab 😉 …

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Life, Windows

Exciting Summer

This summer, life is pretty much exiciting as compared to the last year because a lot of colleagues are here in the campus. Age of Empires day and night along with a bit of project work and some other coding stuff. Day before yesterday, I was up all the night playing AOE. I slept between 11am-03pm in the ug2 lab. I attended my project meeting between 4pm-5pm. I was almost dead in the meeting due to sleep. Then, I slept between 5pm-00:30am in the hostel. After that canteen and from 2:00am-7:00am, guess what … AOE again.

I mentioned, I slept in the lab. Believe me, sleeping in the lab rocks, because you can wake up any time and start playing AOE again or browse some stuff or check your mails(No wastage of time in the transportation from hostel to lab). Though you can do all this from the hostel room as well, its kinda fun to spend time in lab and the CooL AC advantage.

Sometime we play AOE with seniors as well. They are quite ahead of us in the game but thats just due to the experience they gain in one/two extra years. In the beginning, a III year senior beat us in a 5 Vs 1 match :(. But now we can beat them in 2/3 Vs 1 match. Our AOE team mainly consist of me, ajay somani, kiran dandu, deepak vig, sanket and sometimes ankush and ojasvi as well …

Well, apart from all the above masti and fun, I am doing my project as well. Currently, I am mentoring two students in an Open Source project “True Type To Open Type Font Converter” under the guidance of Dr. C.V. Jawahar with the help of Mr. Sunil Mohan Adapa (IIIT Alumni).

PS: Found this site very useful if you are pretty upset …

 
by Kulbir Saini on Life

Declaration !!!

This is the declaration for the readers of this blog, if any 😉 for their future readings. After this I’ll not be responsible if you feel hurt at any stage reading my blog.
Note:- This blog is not at all written for those who are looking for a good presentation using hi-fi english vocabulary and a good readability. I am not going to use any paragraphs and heading because as far as I think this is not my English literature note book where everything should be as accurate as defined by the rules. I am going to make the hazardous egnlish grramar mistooks and you may not like them. So, if you are looking for a very stylish, accurate, good looking blog, go here. As far as I think everybody tries to prove himself as the leader and more intelligent and so do I. If you feel hurt at any stage while reading my blog because I am trying to prove myself a geek or something like that, I’ll not be responsible. I generally post things which are useless but I dont find any reasons not to post. I am paying for the internet connection as my college fee and I have bought this microsoft keyboard for around 500/-, so I should use it as much as possible, irrespective of what garbage I type. Also you may not know me, but believe me, I am not posting here to introduce myself to you. Hey, wait you can read my blog if you hate PSs, because I use them on rare occasions.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Hacking, Life, Tips n Tricks

Golden opportunity for lovers ! Dont miss it …

Hey guyz there is something very attractive for those who are in love. Nowadays our students server is flooded with these loving spam mails. Some are from faculty ids with subjects which I dont want to mention. 🙁 I dont know why, but this guy srinivas is very famous, there are almost 20 mails from his id with subjects like “see you tonight!”, “fwd:love” ,”will you be my valentine ?” but beleive me reading these mails is fun in itself. They contain awesome heart touching love poems. I am making an archinve of those spam mails on my gmail account as a remeberence of our greatest sysadmin we can ever have.

Spam At IIIT Hyderabad - Kulbir Saini, general bordeaux

OK, in the mean time if you want to propose someone, its a golden oppertunity for you. Just send a mail proposing him/her from your students account. You can either announce your love, by sending it to the whole mailing list on which he/she is subscribed. Others will consider it a spam, and you will end up proposing him/her.

PS: If you have any other idea let us know…

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Hacking, Life, Linux, Programming

My Geek Code Block …

—–BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK—–
Version: 3.1
GCS>/E/M d? s:>+:+ a19 C++++ UL++>++++ P+>++++ L+++>++++
E—>+++ W++ N+ !o K- w>– O– !M V- PS PE Y–
PGP—>+ !t !5 X R tv- b+ DI- D+ G++ e>++ h r- y–
——END GEEK CODE BLOCK——

I found this geek code block very instersting. Making a geek code block is a real fun of almost one hour. You can also make one for you. check it out here …

 
by Kulbir Saini on Life

B’day bumps to a senior :D

Isnt it so amazing… you are giving birthday bumps to a person whom you never knew, and would never know if a moment like this doesnt come. Well he was the only senior in GHEB who felt like ragging the students when we arrived in the hostel last year, who approached my room for the second time (first time to ask for a matchbox … i really dont know for what purpose he want that) and asked us to come and give b'day bumps to one of his batchmates. I and my friends (three of them) are electrified instantly. We were in a dilemma, neither we can refuse to go, nor we can give bumps.. after all the person who is to be given bumps is our senior … well after a damn small thought to the situation, we all stood up and followed him … all were exicited to give bumps but when we saw a herd of seniors outside, we just got scared .. it sounds like a plan, roger(CZ) … all were just looking at us. But who cares … two of us helped to lift the b'day boy with other seniors and other just hit him traditionally …

ohh .. for the first time in life … pleasant experience to hit(ohhh sorry … 😀 to give bumps to) a senior … neway many many happy returns of the day to the b'day boy … 😀

 
by Kulbir Saini on Life, Movies

Dus Gangster …

Today I am going to start a new category on My blog … Movies. The movie I’ll see, I’ll post my reviews on it. So here I go …

Today I saw Dus and Gangster in succession, not even a break of an interval. Dus was worth watching and I liked the suspense very much. Sanjay-Shilpa love story was quite bad … Half of the movie was copied and thats quite good thing which fascinates us – The Engineers, b’cos copy-paste is the key feature that we learn while doing our engg. degree course. I like this spirit. Overall I liked the movie and it was not a time waste.

The gangster was not bad. Here also, I liked the suspense in the story but the girl’s dialog delivery was toooo bad. She never spoke like an actress. “Ek dari hui si aawaj”. Again, Emran did his job quite well. No mistakes at all. The songs was very good, especially the “Tu hi meri shab hai …”. Overall the movies was worth watching and focused on the terror. I liked them …..