IIIT

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.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Life

[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 😀

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Internet, Life

Upgraded to WP 2.7 + Yahoo Chat + SMS

Finally gathered some energy to fight my laziness and upgraded to wordpress 2.7. This one looks neat, has tons of new features. I hope this wont crash and my hard work wont go to Trash.

On the other hand when I logged into my yahoo account today (though I don’t use my yahoo email anymore, I just login to yahoo once a day just for the heck of it), I was surprised by new notification from yahoo asking me to use their new chat and SMS feature. I thought this would be yet another f*** up from yahoo just like the previous messenger in flash version. But I thought I’ll try it for some time pass 😀 And it turned out to be awesome 🙂 Somehow the widget looks like an IPhone. And nobody really beats Yahoo when it comes to web designing (remember YUI ??). Well, it seems yahoo is finally serious after pretty much f***ing up their business.

Here is shot of the chat thing. And yeah, the chat window has tabs (a feature liked by almost everyone :D)

Yahoo Chat

Yahoo Chat

And to my surprise, the SMS thing also works out of the box. But Yahoo is not obeying the TRAI’s DO NOT DISTURB policy as I was able to send message to my number successfully. A shot for SMS interface below.

Yahoo SMS

Yahoo SMS

Also, a new on tech crunch reported an increase in yahoo’s share in US core search by 0.5% and drop in Google’s share by 0.5% during Jan, 2009 😛

Good luck Maruti 😛

 
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.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Life, Movies

When you are sick?

When you watch 40 episodes of a third class Indian family comedy show called “YES BOSS” back to back and actually laugh while watching it, you know you are sick!!!

Before watching that I watched a movie “Amal” in which nobody from director, producer, writer to actor(ess) knew what they were doing or rather trying to do. I just remember one dialog by Nassiru Din Shah, “The poorest of men on earth can be the richest”. And since then, I somehow can’t get this out of my mind, “Did he try to point out Bill Gates?”.

Reason for watching all that : “The lack of mental power to read those unreadable and hard to sync english subtitles for the HD movies :(“.

PS1 : A lot of pending working.

PS2 : Try to proxy for someone and failed miserably. Sounds like wasting four years. What did I really learn??? :((

 
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!

 
by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Google, Internet, Life

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 🙁

 
by Kulbir Saini on Fun, Internet, Life, Placements, Success, Tips n Tricks, Wireless

Air Nirvana ( Got the job :P )

After countless written tests and two interviews I finally got the job offer from Airvana ( A mobile broadband company). This was the second written test which I cleared. The interview was very simple and straight forward. You can obviously outperform when somebody asks you something from your areas of interest. Main focus during interview was IntelligentMirror and VideoCache, you can guess the rest 😀

Before The Interview

**FUNNY PART**

Checklist before going for interview

  1. Company’s website’s page rank
    • Airvana.com (6 years) has a page rank (Google) of 5. Well thats good. Equals to my website Fedora.co.in (less than 1 year).
  2. Company’s website’s Alexa rank
  3. Domain Availability
    • Checked for Airvana keyword and airvana.in and airvana.co.in was available. Mouth watering. Isn’t it 😀 But somehow convinced myself not to spend another couple of dollars.

**STRANGE PART**

Both Saini(s) of my batch ( Me and Pankaj Saini) are placed together 😀 WTF!!!

Well, finally I am not a jobless anymore!!!

PS : Congratulations to Pankaj and Yogesh 🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hacking, Life, Servers

To be or not to be Marcus Cocoza

The feeling that B.Tech. is almost over forces me to feel a bit nervous. I spend (I am not sure whether to call it wastage) a lot of time socializing (at coffee shop and in BC with friends) and rest of the time I am sitting in front of my computer screen trying to develop or explore something. My life at IIIT has been influenced by a lot of factors from Dr. Kamal‘s use of a tablet pc and wifi to connect to the projector for a lecture or Dr. Sangal‘s outstanding way of teaching or the limited bandwidth forcing me to think of alternatives or Nirnimesh‘s inclination towards Linux or Ranta‘s entrepreneurial skills or Sandeep Saini‘s dedication towards downloading. You have so many people around you with exceptional skills in their fields. All these have forced me rethink about myself in one or the other way.

Today there was a mail on squid development mailing list with a link to this page. I was pissed off by the C++ code on the page. At one time I was very good at C/C++ but python killed the interest and knowledge over time. I was strongly inclined towards OOP back then. When I saw the above page today, I felt an inclination towards C++ yet another time. Well, thats me. Just think about something and start doing it without thinking what would be the result. I picked up “The C++ Programming Language” by “Bjarne Stroustrup” from the cupboard and started turning pages. While doing that the page after the Introduction caught my attention. There was a long quote. I generally don’t read stuff like this but I felt some urge to read it. It was

… and you, Marcus, have given me many things; now I shall give you this good advice. Be many people. Give up the game of being always Marcus Cocoza. You have worried too much about Marcus Cocoza, so that you have been really his slave and prisoner. You have not done anything without first considering how it would affect Marcus Cocoza’s happiness and prestige. You were always much afraid that Marcus might do a stupid thing, or be bored. What would it really have mattered? All over the world people are doing stupid things… I should like you to be easy, your little heart to be light again. You must from now, be more than one, many people, as many as you can think of…

— Karen Blixen (writing under the pseudonym “Isak Dinesin”),
from “The Dreamers”, from “Seven Gothic Tales”.

It was a wonderful reading. Inspiring enough to force me to blog about it. Looking forward for reading a bit about C++ also and becoming a squid developer from a squid plugin developer 🙂

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

The Mobile Blah – 2 ( Job Offer )

THIS IS MY 101ST 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 😉