Thank God for telephones!

When we moved to Erode(this was when I was six), I remember how pleased I was with the fact that I would have a room all to myself. That I didn't sleep in it is a different story! I was too young to sleep in a room too distant from my parents' room. I used to sleep on the diwan in the living room.

One normal day when I was sitting on the diwan I saw a li'l girl, almost my size, peeping apprehensively into the house! She saw me looking at her, wondering who she was, n smiled. I called for my mom. It turned out she was a neighbour n that started it all.

We have spent almost our entire childhood together. We helped each other learn cycling. I would hold her cycle for her while she tried to balance n she would hold mine for me. She taught me how to make paper boats n how to make sure they remain afloat, she even taught me how to make the 'fighter' boat, the one with a blade. She taught me how to get even with the boys in class whose favourite pastime was making fun of my glasses(yes, I had glasses when I was in class 2 :( !). She was like my guardian angel when it came to the neighbourhood kids. She fought all my fights for me n pampered me like I was her li'l sister though we were of the same age n in the same grade.We'd do our homework together n we loved it! She taught me how to play cards n I once spent all saturday playing cards refusing to come home for lunch. I remember that day till date because I was told off from playing cards ever again (I haven't till today. I guess I am jus one of those 'obedient' children.) She was my only help when it came to things 'grown-ups' knew. She taught me the word 'stupid'. My first 'grown-up' word. 'stupid'. 'stupid'. I repeated again n again till I was sure I wont forget it when Dinesh, the class bully teased me. She taught me how to plan my escape from mom's efforts to make me drink milk. She is responsible for my love for rasam saadam which is dear to me till date. I still remember the taste of her mom's rasam n the fact that she used to serve me rice in banana leaves made the whole affair resemble a storybook tale. She was my aide in burying the chick that died because it hit the electric wire while trying to fly. She was my chief counsel in taking care of a set of caterpillars that we assumed would be our pet butterflies. We planned having a tree house on the neem tree opp to our houses. Even tried to shoo away the bird whose nest was on the tree. She told me all about the flowers on the tree next street that were full of honey that we could suck. And she helped me sneak out so my mom wouldn't realize we were off to sthel flowers. She introduced me to yelandai vadai, a favourite till date. My mom hates me having it! She was my companion to our first trip all by ourselves on our cycles to the sangeetha shopping centre in the city market place which involved cycling past the busiest road in town. We didn't tell our parents where we were going, because they wouldn't have let us. They dont know till date.

And suddenly when I was twelve she moved away to a distant place. Far far away. N today after so many years, as I am sitting in my office for yet another mundane day at work, I got this call!It was a voice that was vaguely familiar n then I realized, it was her! Even before she could say so. The elation that I felt talkin to her after this many years, be it for two minutes, cannot be captured in words! I thought I was dreaming but it had to be true, she told me so! After talking to her I got back to work but could not(obviously!) I looked around for somebody to share this feeling with but couldnt see anyone who would understand! I think its one of those feelings, the magnitude of which you realize only when it happens to you.

The most eventful one ever!

It was the 10th of February. All of us were sad and depressed for different reasons. Meena, because she had a test the next day, shwetha because she had one the day after that, me because things were not going too well with school and I was terribly upset with not having been able to make it to the mess at dinner time. And of course all of us realized yet another Valentines day when we would be single was approaching. It was 10:55 in the night, I was hoping I'd make it to the gate before the curfew. I ran, made it n went to NC to get some tea(or was it coffee?). As I was sitting alone drinking tea, an idea struck me. I ran to shwetha's room where both shwetha n meena were supposed to have been studying. That they were chatting need not be mentioned. I looked at them and said, 'Guys, do you want to make a lot of money?' and that started it all. Once I had explained my plan to them, they were a li'l surprised n a li'l apprehensive. I had no idea what they thought. Shwetha was the first to react. She thought it was a decent idea but was not sure of the feasibility. Then we went on looking into various aspects of it n coming up with ideas. Meena also got enthusiastic with time. N we roped in Yashas. Shwetha got to typing down an advertisement on her computer. All of us racked our brains, came up with a decent advertisement, The colour coding scheme was a genius stroke because it attributed to most of our success. We sat up all night making plan, discussing logistics, orders pricing, what not! We had no idea how to send the advertisement over. We thought we'd sent an automated msg to everyone at BITS, but then who'd send it. After a lot of discussion it was decided that all of us would do it. Only the next day we realized it was not possible to send auto msges like that! We had to satisfy ourselves with posters. Posters done, we went about getting orders. All of us put the best of our marketing skills to use n got a whole lot of orders. Shwetha n me left for jaipur next morning while yashas n meens got a lot of orders. We got back from jaipur the next day n god, there was so much to do. Laks n Geetha n a lot of our wing also came over to help. We worked like crazy all night making sure everything was properly organized n marked. Next day was the 14th. We went at 6 in the morn around the campus delivering all the flowers to the right ppl with the right msges!
It was definitely the most eventful valentines day ever. Not to forget that we made a profit of 60%. Howz that for a first business venture?!

Sunshine in your eyes, can make you cry!

I know this is a very late but I came across this only recently thanx to me always reading the previous days' newspaper. I haven't gotten around to subscribing newspaper at the house I recently moved into n hence newspaper reading happens in the work place library. The newspapers here are always occupied, ppl actually queue up waiting for the newspapers,(wonder if the BITSian reservation system would work here :) I could reserve mine when I come in in the morning) n so I always end up reading the previous day's newspaper. This added to the fact tht news paper reports the previous day's news means I always get news two days late.

That done, getting back to the article! There has been a lot of talk about McNealy's questionable management with Sun's quarter results showing reduced profits n revenues. I for one stand with McNealy n say that innovation n research will definitely pay off, Their 8- and 16-way multithreaded chips in line that promise to bridge the memory time n CPU time gap are definitely promising.
But this is not supposed to be about Mc Nealy. Wat caught my attention was that Sun was planning to promote its brand by pasting java stickers on all brands tht use a sun technology or are sun technology compatible. Slashdot has a discussion on on this here. I feel that creating brand awareness and getting people to identify your brand with quality goes a long way in sales promotion. Isn't that wat intel has done?!

But why this late? This is a well proven n widely adapted strategy. Why hasn't Sun adopted this before? N the timing couldn't have been better, immediately after the quarter results are out. Is this because the quarter results are not so great n that Sun is desperate to pull any marketing gimmick to get itself a sales boost?By the look of it, it seems Sun avoided this kind of a strategy earlier focusing on research and innovation and letting the product speak for itself.Has sun lost confidence in its innovations? Or has it given up on its strategies? could it be that McNealy has finally given in his board n has accepted to go down the marketing way!

Disclaimer 1: Eeks, I feel like Rita Skeeter (You have to know who she is! If you dont, please please read the Harry Potter-4 or 5, dont remember if she is in 3)! Also you'll completely disregard my musings on the matter! Wat a waste of a blog huh?!
Disclaimer 2: I am strongly in favour of this marketing strategy in general for any product. I feel the more the popularity, the better it is for sales.
Disclaimer 3: I am all for McNealy's innovation centric management. he has proven critics wrong earlier (when Sun was pumping in all its resources to develop Solaris), ll most probably do so this time also.

Update: And thanx to 'TFL'(which is how I shall refer to the firewall from now on.), this is as late as it could have been. Might as well have not posted it at all, but well.

The life of a software engineer

I am sitting here in my cubicle (btw, I've moved from my earlier one to another one.), wondering if I'll become a software engineer, terribly scared of the prospect. Become a software engg?? Why? Aren't you one already???

Wat I am talkin about is BECOMIN a real software engg. I am sure you dont understand, lemme tell you something tht throws more light on this.

Aeons ago, when I was all hardworkin ;) jus into the software industry as an intern (doesn't that remind you of Fred n George in HP3 when they give the mauderer's map to harry?), one day I had to stay back till 10 because I had work to do (OK, I accept! I was chatting!). We have cabs dropping the hard working, free dinner hogging lot home, so I went to the cab which was supposed to take me home. The visions I had of a private Cab to myself were shattered as I saw about 7-9 ppl tryin to jam themselves into the cab I was supposed to take. Anyways, I found myself a place behind the driver's seat! In front of me was a girl who seemed not the least bit tired(yeah! work's not tiring.), talking over the phone to a boy who I thought was most likely to be her boy friend. Also from the content of the talk (OK, I know I was not supposed to listen, but I was terribly bored n there was no way I could block the voice AND it sounded very interesting ;) ), it seemed like he was a software engg too.

You never call! Its always me who calls you! Why cant you also call once in a while?
The usual! Wonder how long it has been since she met him!
I wish you had left a li'l late today,
Wat??! she saw him TODAY n she wanted him to CALL!!! Girls!! Seriously.
I would have shown you something really cute. It had all of us laughing like nobody's business.... No, I wont tell you now, you have to see it.... Its jus a day's wait..... It was so cute...
Wat's it? Wat's it? This sounds really interesting!!!!
Ok fine, I'll tell you now,(Yeah!!) as we were debugging, there was this really cute exception handling that cropped up!

AAaaaaaaaaaarrrgggghhhhhhhh!!! EXCEPTION HANDLING!! CUTE!!!!!???? Is this a software engineer's idea of cute???? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I cant survive this industry!!!!!
Get the picture!?! This is the sort of thing I am talking about n I must say the vision of me talkin over the phone to an engg geek, telling him how cute an exception handling was or how hot an operating system was makes me go mad!!!! I hope I dont live to see myself do it!

P.S. That I never stayed late in office after that need not be mentioned ;)

P.P.S. Namratha, thanx for the vote of confidence, Btw tht brings the total of my readers to three. Yeah!!

update:: I wrote this long time back, Since then I have been not been able to help finding similar symptoms (the cute exception handling bit) in myself too. I guess its jus one of those software world ways you cant escape, or probably this is the only way you liven up your life here.

Politiks politiks

The CEC has put forward few of the most revolutionary and long-awaited suggestions to the PM.
The one where ppl with pending cases must not contest an election might serve as a strategy to keep opposing candidates out. Though the CEC has suggested a six month period before with cases have to be filed, this can still be tampered with. Soon every six months before elections we will end up hearing about cases filed against almost all candidates.
The CEC says "When a person is accused of serious crimes and a court is prima facie satisfied about his involvement in the crime, he should be kept out of the electoral arena as it would be a reasonable restriction in the interest of the public."
This is a very sensible argument but as it has already been pointed out, this could be manipulated by the ruling party. To avoid this the CEC has suggested that cases filed only six months before elections must be considered.
This doesnot serve the purpose either, this ll only end up in cases being filed on a regular basis against politicians.
On the other hand, another suggestion made by the CEC is a very insightful one.He says, politicians must not be allowed to contest from two constituencies at the same time n if they are let to do this n they win both elections n choose one of the seats, they ll have to pay a fine that will cover re-election expenditure. This is a very sensible point. There is no reason why the citizens of this country must pay for politicians' whims n fancies.
We can only wait and watch!

Can life BE more sad!!!

OK OK!!! I know no posts!
I cant help it.
It is all thanx to the fact that I am not allowed to post these days, courtesy 'the firewall'. Donno how it decided to disappear today!
But anywayz, shall post posts that I had written down on my comp all these days.
Also now on, posts might either appear in batches from time to time or be regular or not happen at all depending upon 'the firewall' behaviour.