Crash

A bus ride.
On the bridge.
Casual conversations.

Crash.
Windshield shattered.
Nobody injured.

A ladder.
It slid.
And slammed.

Pause.
Resume.

No ignition.
Bus stagnant.
Alight.

A short walk.
Board.

Drive past.
And all this while;
traffic continues.

Pot Luck

Thanksgiving was upon us. We hadnt slept for days together. The week began with exams. And results of earlier exams. Projects were flying around us thick and fast. But thanksgiving was upon us. The annual holiday in this continent. The holiday where everything shuts down, and u cant even get a cup of coffee anywhere, let alone turkey.

But thanksgiving was upon us. A four day weekend. No classes. No waking up early. Just your projects , and food. Food? Yeah.. so we organized a pot luck party. Everyone was to cook and come with some delicacies. (In our situation, if its cooked, and involves no cold cuts, bread, and lettuce, its a delicacy.)

We have the greatest chefs amongst us.

Have a look at the menu:

• Chole
• Missal
• Rasam
• Vada
• Pav Bhaji
• Bhajjiya
• Curry
• Cutlets
• Pulao
• Tamarind Rice
• Bhindi
• Tortillas
• Butter Chicken
• Lahori Murg
• Orange Chicken

Dont beleive me? Have a look.

Satisfied? Mouth Watering? :-) That was the intention.

Desserts you say? Well there was kheer, which unfortunately I was too busy devouring to take a picture of. Sorry.
More?
Ice Cream and Walnut Brownie! Yummm....

So that was the food... What followed?
Games. More games. And still more games.

Of course I cant tell you what happened at those games.. Highly sensitive stuff. But yeah, there were proposals, dances, serenades, ice cream feeding sessions and many more.

A blast of a time for the class. And a much needed break. Something that made some of us forget about our labs, if only for some time.

Big Time

Lost in Finance.
A call...

"Its big time. Its snowing!"
Leave the cluster with skepticism.

A peek out the window.
Wow. What majesty.

Go out. Enjoy the pitter patter of snow (yeah it actually did!)
Heavy snow. Lasted abt 5 minutes. But snow it was.

Nice to see you again! :-)
Its been a while.

Rain Dance

They say it runs on logic. As long as what u feed it is perfect, there will be no problems. Well, thats what they say. And now, I'm beginning to doubt them.

I have my reasons. They seem fairly valid to me. These results have been collected over a period of 2 months, and from varying individuals. So its not just me.

Case 1.
Networks: Simulating networks. We set up a network in a simulator which claims to "accelerate network R&D." It all works well and good, until u throw some extra stuff in the scenario. No, i didnt connect them. Its like i brought home an extra server, and left it by the kitchen, in the box, but my network suddenly starts performing better! And thats pretty much what happened in this lab, for nearly all my class. A nifty way to beat the system and get the required performance, I agree, but thats not the R&D i was looking for!!

Case 2.
Embdedded Systems: This happened to my room-mate, R. For those of you who dont know, embedded systems are a highly timing sensitive environment. An extra statement here and there, and the entire program goes for a toss. This leads to tricky debugging issues. A print statement here and there, and thats the end of ur program for good measure. Yet, to fix a bug encountered for 3 days, my R had to add a print statement to the code. The code runs perfectly!
And thats not all. Apparently the order of initializing the clock also makes a difference. Initialize the seconds first, then the minutes, your code hangs... flip the order, and voila!

Case 3.
Malloc: First me. I wrote code. Perfect, if i may say so. Ok, after several rounds of debugging. Yet the program refuses to run properly. Somewhere along the line, it stops running at all. Start commenting my code in pieces. One set of comments later, and half the program is running. Another set of comments. Remove the last set of comments. (drumrolll......) Its all working, and that to, near perfect!
Another friend, RC. Modified a perfectly working program (why someone wud do that is beyond me!), and managed to get the program to crash. Delete that block of code, it works. Add it back, the program still works.

These are some samples of raindance. Something so illogical it actually works!

Crazy Week

It drives me crazy
I just can't sleep
I'm so tired, I'm in too deep

Oh what a crazy week its been, and it still is....

The week began, like any other, with a hectic Sunday. Woke up rather late, and had to rush off to a meeting with my project partners, as we had to work on, what else, our project. It was a crunch time meeting, as we had lots of deliverables piling up. Some issues were resolved.
A quick hiatus, to the department to work on the strategy for my business management course. We had to run a company over a few years, and our annual report was to be prepared. The meeting progressed, with a little analysis, and some roles were given. And then back to the lab. Till about 1 am. Back home, and some more project work.. till I sleep at 3 am.

Monday : Early morning lecture (0930 hrs). A short nap, and I'm awake. Off to the lecture. And then the one that follows. Lunch, and then a meeting with a prof. Then back to tackle my project. Still no rest. A quick dash to the lab. Return to the department, to give some strategic inputs for the running of the company. The results came on Tuesday. Then off to the department, and then the lab. Some more project work. Sleep at 3 am again.

Tuesday: Wake up at 10, slightly feverish. Go back to sleep. Wake up at noon. Finally caught up with some sleep for the week. Get a call from one of the vice-presidents of the company. Apparently, our decisions took the market by storm. High Quality and low price goods. Something unheard of. We stocked out. Big time. Hit our income. Made a net loss of $3 million. Missed the lecture for this course, as I was still not well enough to go out, and I wanted to make sure I could attend the project class. Apparently nobody turned up for the lecture. Our company was made the laughing stock of the world! But we knew, we would show them.....
Network lab, and a discussion with the prof. Some more work done, but feeling ill, i left, and decided to go home and sleep. Unfortunately, got caught in another lab. The design and implementation of a dynamic memory allocator for the C programming language. (For the geeks, the malloc package in C).
And then we had the craziness of compatibilities. Writing our strategy document for the company, the various VPs all used their own systems. President on Dell with OpenOffice, VP Finance on Mac with MS Office, VP Marketing on IBM with MS Office, VP Production on Dell with MS Office. Now one would think the MS Office would be compatible. But MS is full of smart people ;-) So a rush of madness till midnight as we compiled the document and submitted just as the clock struck witching hours.
And then back to malloc! Slept at 5.

Wednesday: Woke up at 1130 am. Too late for the morning lecture. Half asleep and exhausted, back to the department to work on malloc. In between, a small break to watch the video of the lecture missed. (The great thing abt this place I tell you! Some lectures are recorded for later viewing... thankfully this one was!) Back to malloc. Some more inputs to our business company somewhere in the middle of the day. And what a turnaround it was, something we found out on Thursday. More malloc. Slept at 6 am.

Thursday: Woke up 1030 am. A friend had just had an interview. Got the lowdown on the interview, and then some more malloc. Lunch at my place, with the egg chef, making his trademark omelete, and feeding the recent interview. Off to business class, and we discover that we have had a remarkable turnaround in our company. From being the ones with the maximum stockouts and the lowest ROE, we are now the best company in the world. Back to the lab. SOme network design. And then malloc.
But stop. We had homework due that night. Business Management the bane of this part of the semester. Calculate the financial ratios of a company. Started at 8. Soon realized it was not feasible as a solo effort. Congregations happened. And things happened ala bombay U. Finished it at 10 pm, 15 seconds before deadline. And then malloc.
This was one long night. Implementation finally got under way. And the the debugging began. Was at it till almost 7 am! Left the department when there was light. The first of many times I am given to believe. Finally slept at 7 am.

Friday: Woke up at 1100 hrs. Some more malloc. In the department. Then class. Listend to a guy from Morgan Stanley talk his way through wireless communications. The first glib speaker so far this semester. Its impressive how bankers can keep a straight face and make up stuff as they talk. Back to the department and malloc. Now the frustrations were just creeping. From some parts of the code working, by midnight, it had completely stopped. A short break for a couple of bdays. A nice celebration as usual. And the cakes and ice cream were devoured.
Happy birthday to you too again! Back to the code. By 3, I had completely given up. Just sat there. FInally left the department at 5 am. Slept at 6 am.

Saturday: Woke up at 1230 am. Finally had some decent sleep. A quick brunch and down to the department to work on malloc. Now a day a late, knew I had to get it working properly today for sure! Commented a few functions. Fixed a couple of lines. And then uncommented them. The entire program ran today. Reminds me of a story my room-mate told me abt a tribal dance around the computer. Should probably have tried it last night itself!
Now commenting and some formatting. And the code is ready to be submitted. What a relief.

But the semester is not over yet, and more weeks promise to be like this.... so stop thinking abt it, and time for a smoothie!!