I’m sure everyone was told as a kid to categorize needs into “wants” and “needs”. Well, last night I learnt that I must do the same with things I had to do. Can’t believe I never thought of it earlier. I’m sure I must have gone with doing the thing that I wanted to do versus the thing I needed to at least half a million times already in my life. Though having to do the thing you need to over the one you want to feels like shit, I guess its important. I have a feeling I’ll have to do this a lot in the next few months. So if you see me pick things that I don’t particularly enjoy doing over ones which I love, know that I’m not crazy

For those who have no idea wtf I’m going on about, try figuring out why putting “theory to practice” is so important to me

Tags: thoughts

Well not really. Ever witnessed a bomb exploding 300 feet away from you? I can say I have. Ok before someone uses the TADA on me or something, it wasn’t a terrorist activity or anything. Ever heard of a building imploding? Or rather an attempt at it.

About a year ago, there was an explosion at the place where my dad worked. Sadly 2 men died that night. A year on, that part of the structure was decided to be brought down because it was no longer in working condition. Using explosives seemed like the fun logical way to do it.

We stood there for about 2 hours waiting for it to happen. No one was really told the exact timing of the thing. We just knew the timing in the range of say +-1 hour. We waited till it happened. The plan was to blow up the base in such a way that it would fall forwards (where there is nothing but open space). Now what happened was that the explosion cause the building’s base to come down and tilted it forward as expected (explosives on one side were lower than the other causing it to fall). Now it tilted about 10 odd degrees forward. Common sense says it should go over but.. it doesn’t! Something held it up! It actually rocked back and is resting on the building on the other side. A 64 mt tower leaned forward 10 degrees and actually rocked backwards again.. that’s amazing. I have no idea where it got all that force to counter act the momentum! (well we have estimates but meh).

Bottom line is that yes, I got to see a building implosion, a failed one at that. Now it seems they’ll try it again in a few days and I’d like to be there again It was fun.

The explosion was loud but not as loud as expected but you can blame the industrial ear buds my dad gave me for that It didn’t “feel” all that heavy but I wouldn’t dare stand any closer I wish to live!

Here’s a note for timestamp’s sake. I got my glasses on the 19th of March 2003, 2 hours before getting my PC (so stop blaming the poor thing for my eyesight!). A few hours ago, I just went out and bought myself some contact lenses which I’ll be using almost daily. I might switch over to my glasses late at night when working on something (I wouldn’t want to remove them when I’m half sleepy, now would I? :))

Tags: IRL

Today was our visa interview. It wasn’t much of an interview to be honest.

An hour going to the consulate. 5 min wait to be called. 2 mins for QnA, finger printing and pic taking and 10 min wait for a visa Another hour back home

That’s it! The main issue is getting a date and since we had kind of an urgent condition, we had all our documents pre-checked and we called up the consulate for a slightly early date. We called on the 19th and got a date for the 24th. Yesterday, the agent who pre-checked our documents, went and submitted them as well.

The actual process was a breeze. The lady there asked me my name, occupation, college, reason of visit, dates of departure and return, all of which were less than 4 word answers. You can imagine how 14 words, 10 finger prints and one picture can be done in 2 minutes especially when the person on the other side is shooting questions immediately Before I realised I was being asked questions, she asked me to have a seat and wait for my visa

So its confirmed. We’re going to the world finals. I’ve had a look at the stuff they have planned for us and I can tell you its going to be off the hook. I’m trying to get hold of a lappy for work there and for dumping the immense amount of pics i take there because my cam can only take 2GB (yes, I said only. I need vids too you know! :P)

The entire trip so far (India SDI finals at Bangalore and Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator at IIM-A has so far given me about 2.5-3 GB of pics and those were places I’ve been to before and I know I’ll go again pretty soon You can do the math :p

As the mail said last night, its time to start packing :-D

Tags: Imagine Cup

Oh good freaking god yes! Try working 20 hours day, every day at IIM-A then taking a flight back to Mumbai for an exam; A flight which was got us to Mumbai at 11 pm instead of 9:40 pm. Watching the match at your place.. seeing Ronaldo take the lead, seeing Tavez miss two dead easy shots and then Lampard poaching a lucky goal on a very bad surface to play. Second half honestly, I didn’t watch that well cause I was sleepy but I fought sleep and stayed awake only for my tv cable connection to die at the 88th minute
I check the connections, they are proper so its an tv cable provider thing.
So what do I do? I go to online scores. I talked to a few people on IRC and a friend was live commentating for me (quicker and more detailed than online thingo). It was dead exciting… You couldn’t have written a better script. Tavez misses the 2 chances, scores the penalty. Ronaldo scored a goal but missed the penalty. Terry had to score to win it but he didn’t! In the end, it was Nicolas Anelka who missed it. Sorry but this was just our year
Yay for Manchester United \o/ They have won the UEFA Champions League after drawing the match 1-1 in regular and extra time A special thank you to Drogba for getting a red Wonder why Rooney didn’t take a penalty
(As I was writing the line “so its an tv cable provider thing”, I checked on my pc and got the tv back… now I am seeing us get the trophy I’ll post it just as they lift it up Now only to see the replay :))

Here’s how the penalties panned out

Manchester United	Chelsea
1) Carlos Tevez - Scored	1) Michael Ballack - Scored
2) Michael Carrick - Scored	2) Juliano Belletti - Scored
3) Cristiano Ronaldo - Missed	3) Frank Lampard - Scored
4) Owen Hargreaves - Scored	4) Ashley Cole - Scored
5) Nani - Scored	5) John Terry - Missed
6) Anderson - Scored	6) Salomon Kalou - Scored
7) Ryan Giggs - Scored	7) Nicolas Anelka - Missed

Tags: ManUtd

Thanks to my TV service provider playing Musical Chairs with my TV Channels, I had to listen to the commentary of the match and see no video!
None the less, this was worth watching or rather.. listening to. Manchester United beat Barcalona FC 1-0 thanks to a trademark Scholes shot in the top corner! Nani could have finished the game in the first half if only..
Doesn’t matter. We’re through and as far am I’m concerned, we’re already European Champions. We have a 100% record in the European finals and we will do it this time again. Liverpool would be easy work. Chelsea would be payback for this week’s defeat.
I have my SSOS viva tomorrow, which is the last for this sem. I had promised to wear my Man United jersey if we won 2-0 (blame Nani) but I’ll wear the Man United jersey inside my formal attire. I’ve been told we’re going to have a party after college tomorrow
On a side note, ever had a professor tell you “What am I supposed to ask you in your viva? Just sign the sheet and you can go”? Ever given a viva win which you’ve not been asked a single question and yet you got 22 (apparently)?

Tags: ManUtd

I’ll try to keep this one short because I have an OOAD exam tomorrow and I haven’t really done anything.

Abhiyaan is Bharati Vidyapeeth College of Engineering’s (Navi Mumbai) Technical cum Cultural Festival. I’ve not been attending for the past 2 years for different reasons but this year I had to, considering I was the event head of LAN gaming. We had over 165 entries for our event and that’s quite a lot considering not even the Technical Paper Presentation event, which is supposed to be the crown jewel of Abhiyaan drew that many entries despite what I believe was a Rs. 10,000 prize for each branch’s winner in that event (and there were 5 such branches I believe. Comps/IT, Electronics and Telecommunication, Instrumentation, Mechanical and Chemical). It was indeed hectic with 47 entries for NFS (an event I was in charge of).

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: college, competitions, interview, SKAN

Ever heard this before? If you haven’t its probably good. Read on.
The whole thing started last Thursday, the 21st of February when I was late to a practical. I spent my time in the library doing my work and one of my class mates comes and tells me that Accenture is coming to Pillais this Saturday (23rd of February, 2008) and we (our college’s students) are invited!
The requirement was to have a mere 55%+ aggregate up until your 4th semester. The reporting time was 8AM. So we leave college 3 hours early telling our professors that most students want to prepare their resumes and all of them need to study for the tests.
If you don’t know this already, companies have an aptitude test, group discussion (GD), a HR (Human Resources) interview and a Technical Interview (hence forth referred to as Techni or TR).

I must warn you. This is going to be long post explaining the entire process. If in case you’re interested, do read on. This is written for freshers (students) who want to give Accenture interviews, know about their Aptitude test, GD, HR and Technical Interview rounds. I’m going to try to keep the 2 day ordeal as short as possible, yet informative.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Accenture, interview

This is true in so many ways, I don’t know where to start. Work this sem at univ seems endless but things keep changing. A lot of things have changed of late around me but more importantly the day which decides a major part of my future is coming close. The date and time have been decided. At 1300 IST on the 8th of July 2008 I shall give GRE paper. Lets hope for the best. Should be a good birthday present for lopardo, eh?

So this sem is going to be crazy. We need to hand in 3 projects at univ, I need to finish up with j@x and Scribble Scrabble, I need to study for GRE and for this sem itself (since I hope to score good marks this sem) and there is this other project I’ve been contacted about at univ by some seniors. Its awesomely amazing and needs students from at least 4 engineering branches. I always wanted to take part in something like this and if time permits, I’d love to work on it. I’m meeting the guys today so lets see where it goes from there.

On a side note, I got a mail from Google yesterday that my site had badware on it. On investigating I found that I was on a older version of WordPress and that it had a SQL injection vulnerability. WordPress has been updated and the problem has been fixed. I’m on the WordPress notify list now so this shouldn’t happen again.

Oh, and I’ve changed the theme to BloxPress 2. The old theme had a nice christmassy feel to it but it had a few issues. I liked Indigo more but quite sadly it doesn’t work properly here for some weird reason Enjoy the AJAX.

Tags: GRE

I usually keep ranting about my ISP because [a] I deserve to [b] They suck ass [c] They have pathetic service [d] They have awful uptimes.
Well, all of the above still stand true but for the past 5 days, I have had almost an uncapped (or maybe a 2-5MBit) upload connection. Max speed so far? Try 462 KB/s. Yes KiloBytes, not KiloBits. I’m as shocked as you are! This isn’t a one time spike. My connection has almost died and come back a million times. It still randomly dies. Yet I get uncapped uploads.
What about the download speed? Well on a 64kbps line, I would expect 7.5~8 KB/s but for the past 8 months, I’ve had only about 5~5.5 KB/s and the tech support even tried to pass that off as normal (until I told them who I was and I knew how the connections worked..). The current status is that when this crazy upload speed bonanza started off, my download speed came back to 7.5~8 KB/s but now its down to 6~6.5 KB/s. May be the decrease is because its also uploading at 30+ KB/s simultaneously where as the 7.5~8 KB/s was clocked on a line which wasn’t uploading.

This did start off as a 8 KB/s down + 8 KB/s up thing which felt nice. Now it just seems crazy. Needless to say that my ratios which were already through the roof are improving (not that I needed it :P). I just wish that the same would happen to my download cap and that they don’t have a bandwidth cap for the month

Overall, I do hate Exatt. I know that I’m using a pretty powerful word but I’ve earned it over 3 and a half years of shitty service. Everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong with them. Changing plans without notification, adding bandwidth caps without notification, changing prices without notification, substandard service plans and even lower speeds (128k line costing 1K INR; 64k line working at 40k). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. When you need your internet the most like for an important email, project submission or research work you can be sure its not working and even if it is, it will have 40% packet loss. Waiting 10 minutes for a page to load is unacceptable. Having to wait 3 days for them to start your connection when a cable has broken near your house and you stay 40 feet from their office is equally unacceptable, if not more so. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I just hope I can change ISPs soon. So in case any random Google user comes across this, you know you should not, under any circumstance, opt for Exatt. This whole upload thing was seriously one time.

Tags: exatt, internet

No, I didn’t mess up the song. Its the season I’m usually happy about. Nice cool weather is fun (at least here it is. Sucks to be Mr. Nitro :P) I’m grumpy because I have to give a few exams now. I’ll be all caught up giving 5 exams from the 7th of December to the 9th of January. Yes, that’s a month and 2 days for 5 exams. FU MU You seriously fail at time tables.

Anyway, Christmas time is here and so is a special christmassy header Also my forum signatures have a distinct festive feel to them as well. Here are a few of the avatars and signatures I made/adopted from my existing collection.

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Avatars
Godsend:

JA Beta:

Wiggles:

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Signatures
Godsend:

JA Beta:

Wiggles:

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The Godsend signature is brutally screwed up It could have been so much better
What do you think?

PS: Christmas Godsend > Christmas Magical Trevor

Tags: christmas, photoshop, site