The PR Disaster

Long time no see! Well I have been through worst phases of my four years at IIIT. Details later. I tweeted about convocation dress code yesterday. Nishant (hobbit) pinged me regarding the same. And the conversation after that turned out really funny.

Nishant: dude
when is convo?
(I misread the above as ‘what is convo?’. Was surprised why Nishant wouldn’t know about convo)
me: convocation i suppose …
Nishant: yes
me: does it hv another meaning ..
oh .. (I re-read his question and realized the mistake.)
Nishant: what’s the deal with graduation day dresses?
me: dhoti kurta =))
or payjam kurta πŸ˜€
Nishant: are you f***ing serious?
me: yeah F***ING serious πŸ˜›
wait a minute .. (forwarding the mail to nishant)
Nishant: my God it’s going to be a f***ing pr disaster
dude
me: check ur gmail for serious fun πŸ˜€
how is that going to affect page rank ? (I thought he was talking about page rank of iiit website)
Nishant: damn you
pr = public relations
f***ing geek
me: gawd!!
sorry πŸ˜›

PS1 : A lot of events/things has to be documented on this blog. But no time πŸ™

PS2 : Redesigned my Fedora Blog. Check out.

PS3 : Started using twitter. Follow me.

 

Regular Powercuts

I am totally frustrated by the regular powercuts (3-4 hours a day) and no power-backup in hostels. During the recent power cut I wrote this (inspired by a scene from “One Two Three”).

ChachaS : TinkaS, jab bijliS chali jati hai to kahan jati hai?
TinkaS : InvertorS mein jati hai ChachaS.
ChachaS : InvertorS on karoS!
PintoS : HostelS mein invertorS nahin hain na ChachaS.
VigluS : PintoS, Chacha har jagah S kyun lagate hain?
PintoS : Chacha ka a$$ hai, kahin bhi lagayein.

ChachaS -> Me, TinkaS -> Sambhav, PintoS -> Atul, VigluS -> Deepak.

 

Mushroom or Santro Rock

In last four years, I heard a lot about Mushroom Rock (popular by the name Santro Rock among our super seniors) but never got a chance to visit the same. Today we (Me, Sachin, Alok, Pankaj, Kapil B, Atul, Abhinav Paro) decided to visit Mushroom Rock. It is located near Games Village for World Military Games building which is behind OBH. It was almost 6PM. The dim light in the atmosphere added to the beauty of the place. The ambience was awesome.

Mushroom or Santro Rock

Mushroom or Santro Rock

Mushroom or Santro Rock

Mushroom or Santro Rock

We had difficulties in climbing up but we finally managed it. The wind was awesome. We spent almost two hours there recollecting the happenings in past four years. Then we sang songs from 60s to present day πŸ˜€ It was an awesome feeling.

We at Mushroom Rock

We at Mushroom Rock

Me

Me

Nobody wanted to return but the hunger forced us to return. Don’t forget to take some eatables in case you plan to go there πŸ™‚

PS : Lots of BC lately. Everything coming to an end πŸ™

 

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.Β  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 congratulatoryΒ  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.

 

Mumbai Trip and First Time Flying Experience

As I said in my previous post, I was asked to visit Rediff Office in Mumbai. I thought Wednesday (25th) would be a great idea. Informed the same to HR. I got the return ticket to Mumbai on Tuesday. This was the first time I was going to Mumbai and also the first time I was boarding a flight. Both flights were Indian Airlines.

To Mumbai

Took Aero-Express from Hitech City to Airport. I was at airport (Shamshabad) at 6:15AM. Flight was a 7:50AM. So there was a lot of time that I could waste on the airport. With no idea how to proceed, I kept following a co-passenger (from the bus) and ended up in a queue for international flights πŸ˜› Security redirected me to entrance for domestic flights. I proceeded to check in counters following a very simple approach. Look for counters with hot girls πŸ˜› Among those, look for a counter with smallest number of people in the queue πŸ˜€ And it worked out of the box. Got the tickets. Moved in for security check. It was hassle free as I didn’t have any luggage. It was still an hour for the flight to take off. Used the free internet for few minutes. I was a bit nervous πŸ™‚ About half an hour later, we were asked to proceed for boarding.

Ten minutes later, I was in plane. It was Airbus A320. Luckily I got the window seat. I was surprised as there was no in-flight entertainment system and the airbus looked technologically challenged πŸ™‚ Few minutes later, the plane started crawling. It kept crawling at the same speed (20-30 km/hr) for so long that I got extremely frustrated. I was thinking, “Abe Mumbai paidal lekar jayega kya??” (Are we going to Mumbai by foot). I breathe a sigh of relief when it started accelerating. It was a thrilling experience after that long boredom. Things I imagined while playing NFS and other car games suddenly became live. We were on the ground at almost 300km/hr. The feeling while the plane takes off is damn nice. You feel something in the chest for sometime. After the plane is completely in air, things again become boring as the plane looks static with respect to ground. I was feeling like, “Why the hell its not moving??”. As the charm of flying for the first time was over, I picked up the newspaper. It was business line. Couldn’t really figure out a story to read. Then I picked the Air India magazine. While I was turning the pages, saw Katrina on sidebar of a page. Continued reading the story and figured out that both Airbus A319 and Airbus A321 have in flight entertainment systems. It was a real bad feeling to get stuck into A320 when both A319 and A321 were awesome 😐 The food served in breakfast was pretty good. Few minutes later, it was announced that we were in Mumbai. Landing in Mumbai was awesome. Actually, the planes first goes into the sea and then take a U turn. The landing experience was also awesome. It feels great when the plane decelerates.

To Rediff Office (Mahim)

I was warned by Sachin about the taxi drivers charging huge fare for no reasons. So I was a bit careful. But still ended up paying twice the actual charge. I left the airport at around 9:40AM. It was damn hot there at that time. My destination was Rediff office which is located somewhere in Mahim(West). Airport to Bandra (Western Express Highway) was totally jam packed. Taxi wallah turned out to be a bit smart and took the service root and managed to save a lot of time. Still it took almost an hour to reach the office.

In Rediff Office

I met Sumit in the office. He introduced me to a lot other people in NOC team. A small HR interview was conducted which was a surprising element for me as I never expected something like that. But it was fun talking to people from HR department. Then I met Sachin there. He introduced me to a lot other people related to domains I like. After that I had a small chit-chat session with managers from the NOC dept. After that Sachin introduced me to CTO, Rediff. We had a long chat session (almost half an hour). We talked about a lot of things in different domains (mainly open source). After that inspiring chat session, Sachin and me went out for lunch. I felt good to see good north Indian food nearby. We returned to office. Few minutes later, Sachin introduced me to CEO and CFO, Rediff. After that I had a long chat with Sachin about company environment and work culture.

Keeping in mind the traffic conditions, I left for the airport at 4:30PM. Unfortunately/fortunately I didn’t encounter any traffic and reached the airport at 5:00PM which was like 2 hours before the flight. To fight boredom, I headed over to Kingfisher check-in counters and found out a place to sit optimizing the view πŸ˜›

To Hyderabad

I was in plane at around 6:50PM. A321 looked really advanced as compared to A320. We were on the runway at scheduled time. But on the way it halted and waited there for another 20 minutes. By the time the plane took off, it was 25-30 minutes late. This time also I got the window seat. BTW plane was almost empty (only 40% of the seats were occupied). We were above sea in a few minutes. The view of the city in night from the sea was beyond my imagination. Every single light adding to the beauty of it. The view was best when the plane took a U turn. The entire Mumbai was visible and lights increased the beauty exponentially. The highways looked like long chains of light sources intersecting each other. It was a really wonderful experience. As we left Mumbai, the in-flight entertainment system was activated. I was browsing the channels and found one of them playing “Sorry Bhai”, one of my favorite pass-time bollywood flick. We reached Hyderabad at around 8:40PM. Took Aero-Express back to Gachibowli.

All in all it was an awesome trip to Rediff Office and also a wonderful first time flying experience πŸ™‚

 

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 πŸ˜› 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.

 

[Tag] Top Playlist

Tagged by Karan and Gagan.

Thanks to Amarok and last.fm for keeping track of what I listen to. Music is on whenever I am in room irrespective of the mode I am in (sleeping or awake). I prefer desi Punjabi music over everything available. But if I am asked to pick one song that I’ll have to listen to for the rest of my life, it will be RUMORS by Lindsay Lohan. If you don’t believe me, just ask my wing-mates.

Following songs are on my playlist these days

  1. Rumors – Lindsay Lohan
  2. Akhan Wich Sharab Goriye – Debi Makhsoospuri (Punjabi)
  3. Mitthe Ber Wargi – Amar Arshi (Punjabi)
  4. Ranjha – Sukhdev Sukh (Punjabi)
  5. Pehli Mulakaar – Amar Arshi (Punjabi)
  6. First – Lidsay Lohan
  7. Disconnected – Lindsay Lohan
  8. Sohni Kuri – Amrinder Gill (Punjabi)
  9. Shounk Hathiaran Da – Babbu Maan (Punjabi)
  10. Bair Bura Hunda Jatt Da – Labh Janjua (Punjabi)

Thanks Karan and Gagan πŸ˜€

 

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 πŸ˜› ). 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.

 

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 πŸ™‚ 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 πŸ™‚

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!

 

My Googling Stats

Thanks Tifosi for tagging me for this.

Google Search Stats

Google Search Stats

Observations

  1. Top queries suggests that I care a lot about my name in Google search!
  2. Top queries also suggests that I tend to care a lot about the visibility of the work I do.
  3. Top sites stats are awesome! I visit my own sites more than orkut and any other website.
  4. November has to be my lucky month!!
  5. Sunday is a jackpot and Monday goes in hangover!
  6. 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 πŸ™