!(just another brick in the wall)

First week in Dublin

Mon, 25 May 2009 22:39:05 GMT

Its been a week exactly since we landed in Ireland. And except for those initial hiccups mentioned in my earlier post, its been a good trip so far. A lot of roaming around and seeing places plus work were the highlights of the week that went by.

Irish are fun loving people. They have fun and frolic written all over the place. They have fun doing whatever they are doing. They specially enjoy Sport and Music. This being the football season, you can see people glued to live matches on tvs at various pubs and restos. Football is religion, very close to their hearts. For that matter, any physical activity is what these people enjoy doing. This is obvious from the number of football and basketball fields that i have seen so far. Also you find a lot of people cycle/jog/walk to work. Like we have 2-wheelers parking lots in India, its cycles here in Dublin.

[Parked cycles in the streets of Dublin]

Come rain or cold winds, these people just cycle. I love this place for that one reason, and seeing so many people cycle, is seriously tempting. But quite unfortunately nobody rents out cycles, so no cycling for me while am here. But i cant wait to come back home and get my hands on my cycle, probably cycle long distance.

Anyways, while am here, lets get back to talking about Dublin.Music is another thing that you find all over Dublin. On weekends, especially, every alley or any major shopping center will have street musicians playing various styles of music. From traditional irish music to Rock and Roll in a group and solo gigs, one can find street music to suit their taste. A few of those bands sell their cds during such performances, while others just put down their instrument cases where people drop money for their performance. Most places where such gigs happen, are streets which are strictly pedestrian only(and cycles ofcourse).

[Graftton Street - is a pedestrian and cycles only street
And is the main high-profile shopping street in Dublin ]

[Shopping for flowers on Graftton Street]

The "Grafton street" and "Temple Bar", the former being the main shopping center and quite expensive too, the latter known as the cultural hub of Dublin are typically the places you can find such street musicians.
Of-course all this happens only when its not raining, which it most of the time, even in summers. But thankfully the last 2-3 days has had excellent weather. And i hope it will remain this way the coming week too.

[Street Gigs on Temple Bar]

[Musician at the Howth Beach Walk way]

A very important part of an irish is beer, and it has got to be Guiness. Drinking is a social activity. People have beer, just like we have water probably (am not sure if thats the perfect analogy). Everybody drinks the Guiness. These people are so much in love with this beer that there is a 'Guiness storehouse tour' - a paid tour (15 euros) - which will take you through the manufacturing process of the Guiness beer. You get a pint of Guiness at the end of the tour(well, i settled for a coke :p ), at the Gravity bar which is at the 7th floor of the Guiness store house and gives you a 360 degree view of Dublin city.

[Guinness Beer served chilled]

[The "waterfall" inside the Guinness Storehouse showing
the purity of water used in the beer

This place is mostly visited by tourists, quite obviously none of the local irish folk visit such places. But you ask any irish, Guiness is all they will have. Nothing else will do. The most obvious difference between a Guiness and any other beer, is its distinct dark color. It looks more like a cola drink than beer as you might have noticed in the picture above.

[A poster saying "A Guinness a day, is good for YOU"

[Me with my coke at the Gravity Bar in the Guinness storehouse]

Although i personally have not tasted Guiness, this is what Abhijit has to say ".. stronger than regular beer and its very heavy..". No wonder, most of the irish folks you find in pubs just drink, and dont eat much. Infact a lot of pubs around, just have stuff to drink and very very little (if any) to eat. And this is a serious problem for people like me. Well for starters drinking more than one coke - not possible - and you only get hungrier with time. I happen to have a first hand experience of such a thing when one evening we were meeting up with Brian Costello (an irish former co-worker and friend and Sun). So, lesson number one - if you are not the beer drinking types never go to a pub with an irish, you are just going to end up hungry.

[L->R: Abhijit, Brian and Dan with their Guinness]

[Its Guinness everywhere baby!!]

Our commute to work everyday, involves a 3 KM walk to the nearest train station (Tara Street Station or the Pearse Street Station) and then take a train to Clontarf road. The walk to the station is particularly interesting because, we try hard to keep pace with the locals who quite briskly (young and old alike) while we are struggling to keep pace with them. The folks in Dublin walk really fast, and after a few days in Dublin everyone gets used to that style of walking. Brian quips "..its a cold country and raining always, we need to head to some place warm and we need to get there fast...". Well Brian, if you say so. But jokes apart, they do walk really fast. Infact after a week of walking around both me and Abhijit are quite accustomed to this brisk walking style or the "Irish walk".

[Abhijit , Dan and Me (behind the camera) travelling to work by DART]

Sun has quite a small footprint here in Ireland, around 250-300 people most of whom work from home. Consequently, the office perennially has a deserted look. And people who we actually had meetings with used to turn up only those days when we had to meet them. Our office building is right beside the Oracle building, making it easier for Oracle during the integration process.

[Me, pretending to be involved with work]

Sunny days are quite hard to come by here, but when there is such a day, the whole of Dublin is out on the beach or in the parks. Dublin being a coastal city has many beautiful beaches, and many beautiful people on these beaches. The last weekend happened to be one such time. The Saturday we spent on this small beach town called Howth to the North of Dublin city, although sunny, it was very very windy. The Sunday though, was not disappointing. Dublin is the home of Europes biggest city park called "The phoenix park".

[Wellington Monumnet, Phoenix Park]

The park apart from housing a few historical buildings and playing areas, also houses the Dublin zoo. It had been a long long time since either of us had been to a zoo, so Dublin zoo it was to start off our Sunday. After spending 4 long hours among small kids and families we were famished and tired. It was a wonderful experience though reminding me of my life as a kid - oh! those small things in life that gave so much of joy, happiness and memories. ... what have you become...sigh!!

[People, queuing up to enter the Zoo. It was swarming with kids and families]

Anyways, getting back to the task at hand. After the tiring walk through the zoo, we decided to lie down in the park, with scores of people who were lying there. And there lying on those beautiful gardens of Phoneix, i came up with this brilliant proportionality theory. Although not brilliant, its quite insightful. In Dublin, the sunnier the days the deeper the necklines plunge and higher the hemlines. Again, interesting, but not *always* a treat to watch.

Dublin is a beautiful city. A perfect holiday city, a place to have fun. Theres something here for everyone. And this first week here has been quite an experience. A few more pictures before i sign off.

[Liffey River by night]

[Angel Gaurding at the beginning of O'Connely Street]

With one more week to go, we have much more to discover. And hopefully it will be as interesting as it has been this past week.

Cheers

Dublin - First Post (written earlier, posted late)

Mon, 25 May 2009 21:41:13 GMT

(originally written on May 17th)
Its been 2 long days since i left india. And its been ok. Work starts from tomorrow. All i have been doing until now is go around Dublin.
This trip was off to a bad start since the beginning. We (me and abhijit, my team-mate at work) - had to wait in the Bengaluru Airport for more than a couple of hours, because the flight got delayed. And obviously, waiting at the airport is not such a great idea, specially when you are like totally tired and sleepy. Thankfully the new airport is much better than the old one. I shudder at such a thought of spending times at the old Bengaluru airport. But thankfully that nightmare is over for bengaluru. Actually the new airport is much better, small still as compared to other international airports, but good. Actually one gets to see a lot of sparrows in the BIAL. And that is quite good. I feel happy to see those birds, since i don't get to see them in bangalore, like earlier.

So finally the Lufthansa flight which had to leave at 1.50 AM left and 4.30 AM. My international travel experience in flights has been with Singapore airlines so far. And trust me, Lufthansa comes no where close in service or comfort, if you are taller than 5 feet and/or weight a little more than 40 kgs say goodbye to comfortably being seated on the Lufthansa seats. The people in the economy class are treated like chicken being shipped or something. And they even did not have any inflight entertainment-system. We reached frankfurt airport at 10.00 Am local time on Saturday, and our connecting flight to Dublin was at 10.25 Am around 5 gates away - and inspite of trying our best - running, like
we are being chased for our lives - we missed our flight. And the next flight out of frankfurt to dublin was around 5 hours later. So we were
stuck in the frankfurt airport for a while, tired, hungry and sleepless and definitely irritated. I was actually cursing myself not to have got a schengen visa. If i had - i would not have been stuck at the airport.

We reached ireland late in the evening, around 5.30 local time dublin. Its a pleasant country. A lot like bangalore actually, just a little less traffic and people - and a little more organized. Makes a lot of difference obviously.
The irish accents are difficult to understand. But so far its been good. We have figured our way around the important places in the city and we have been walking around everywhere - and sometimes taking the bus. There are enough local buses and they are usually on
time too. But everything in ireland is very expensive. Everything. If you want a decent meal - it costs nothing less than 15 €. Taxi minimum
fare is 4€, although the taxis are good - skodas, lancers, toyotas are the most common taxis. So in general its pretty expensive. i called up
one of shilpas friend, and spoke for a couple of minutes and it costed me 1€. So you get the idea. Its expensive.
If you can eat junk food - getting veg food is not a problem. Although eating french fries is a no go. They openly admit that they are fried in beef oil or share the same oil to fry meat. So french fries are a big no, and i think its true for most of the fried stuff. I ask for veg burger - no meet, no egg, no cheese and i get is 2 burger buns and some lettuce, no sauces too - since most of them are meat based. But
actually have been eating a lot. Feeling way to hungry; Abhijit tells me that, ".. its because of the weather, its too cold and one tends to
feel hungry when its cold....." Am not sure about that. I need to look that up somewhere.
Its daylight until 10.30-11.00 PM here. Feels a little wierd. But i guess in the next couple of weeks i would get used to that.

The service apartment we are staying in, is a two bedroom and has a kitchen, living area and entertainment systems and stuff. A balcony with view of the rest of the apartment block. There are pigeons aplenty, and they are perched on the balcony ledge all the time and fly away when we get any close.

Will be getting to work tomorrow. Need to figure out the way to Sun office, which is in a Tech-park a little distance away from the Dublin
City. Hopefully can make it in time. :)

Thats about it for now. Until my next post, cheers.

Opensolaris (snv 111)

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:42:14 GMT

The next scheduled release of Opensolaris is 2009.06. This will be based on snv111. I just recently upgraded to dev snapshot of Opensolaris. And i should say, this release is indeed great. A lot of nitty-gritties have been taken care of.
* The boot-up time has considerably improved. On my Dell Precsion M4400(intel centrino 2.5Ghz, 4 Gig RAM) - it takes 40-50 seconds to boot to the GDM login screen.
* The shutdown is an amazing improvement since the last releases - it just takes 8-9 seconds on an average.
* Comes with gnome 2.24 and firefox 3.1 beta 3
* Lot more packages in the IPS respository (last count 33987).

Heres a screenshot of the Device Driver Utility (ddu) on my machine.

More updates to come soon.

And the Oscar goes to...

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:39:05 GMT

By now, all of us already now about 'Slumdog Millionaires' success at the Oscars. This was a culmination of sorts after all the awards the movie received at the BAFTA and Golden Globe. With all the attention Slumdog was receiving, it was not surprising that the movie won 8 oscars. And our own A R Rahman, has got the much deserved international recognition.

I have been a fan of Rahmans music since Roja. And quite recently listening to the sound-track of Dilli 6 has been a pleasure. Most of the songs that come from Rahman are indeed catchy and at times truly enchanting. The songs “Pudhu Vellai Mazhai" from Roja his first, to "Rehna Tu" from Dilli 6, his latest, never fail to thrill me. There is a clear signature in his music, of an artist that is A R Rahman. And again, there are some tracks that really surprise me and make me wonder what might have gone wrong with this mostly flawless composer. And if you are wondering what i'm referring to, you should listen to some compositions from movies like Yuvraaj (and a few more that i really don't want to mention). Clearly everybody has bad days, and i guess Rahman is no exception. And for me, the soundtrack and songs of Slumdog, have failed to pull the right chord in my heart. Well, agreed hes got an Oscar for that. But i really don't think that his best. And IMHO, i would put it into one of his very average compositions.
If people from all over think that those are his best compositions, they sure are missing a lot. I think the folks in the "Academy" need to listen to tracks from "Thiruda Thiruda", "Roja", "Dil Se" and ofcourse the latest "Dilli 6" just to name a few. Anyways, i'm not the one to decide what he gets the award for. So i will just let it be.

Although, what upsets me most is how we as a nation look for approval from the west for whatever we do. Like our fascination with the Oscars( i have no faith, whatsoever, in the Academy). When will we realize our worth? And that it really does not matter what the west thinks of us, What matters most is what we think of ourselves. And what do we think our ourselves? Well, we have people like Pramod Muthalik from the now 'most-talked-about' "Sri Rama Sene", who thinks that "women in our country are not respecting our culture. And by not going to pubs, and not wearing *western-attire* we will be a nation with a rich culture". We have money-laundering politicians who think "we need to let the poor remain poor, and never educate the illiterate. If we do, we have nowhere to go. The people would not need us anymore". Finally, we have a Chief Minister who thinks "We need to please all the gods in all the temples of our state so that good things happen to our state so we can reign supreme", and goes ahead and allots 100 crores for that purpose in the state budget.
The Oscar (for the best act and direction) should actually go to all such people for doing such crap and making us, the people of this nation, believe that it is for own good.

An N810 in my pocket

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 13:32:15 GMT

Last week, i got i got something that i take great pleasure in owning. A Nokia N 810 Internet Tablet. I have seen them with the foss.in team earlier, and now i finally have one of my own. And it really feels great.

First, i should really thank Foss.in team and of-course those guys at Nokia who have been so kind to give out such amazing stuff. And shreyas, thanks a ton dude. I owe it to you.

The N810 runs Linux (on ARM) - and has quite impressive specs. It works quite well mostly, except for a few glitches here and there, specially with the GPS stuff. And it has the camel libs for its tinymail client. I have done a lot of work on the Camel Libs for Evolution, and Philip Van Hoof has made significant changes for camel to work efficiently on a mobile device.

I'm spending sleepless nights, trying to get stuff built and running (using the Maemo SDK). And its been fun so far. I hope to make some significant contributions to the Maemo platform. Will keep my log updated with whatever i do.

+++ The All new RadioVeRVe +++

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 04:04:15 GMT

Mumbai Bleeds Again!

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:41:30 GMT

Last evening, Mumbai (and the entire nation) faced yet another Terror attack. More lives lost. Much more mentally scarred, for life. Of late terrorist attacks in our country have been dangerously on the rise. So much so that there is a Wikipedia entry listing the 'Chronology of the Major Events'.
Such incidents spread uneasiness and fear among all of us. And the obviousness of it was seen on Bangalore streets today. At around 8.30 PM, on my way back home, i noticed quite unusually the traffic, or the lack of it on the roads. People preferred to stay indoors i guess. Or maybe it was just the drizzle.
May the souls of the victims rest in peace. And may God give all those who had go through the traumatizing experience, strength to move on.

Peace.

Mailing List Rants

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:19:46 GMT

<rant>
Each one of us who is subscribed to mailing lists, specially those related to FOSS is quite used to rants. Having ranted on a couple of occasions myself, i don't find most of the rants appalling anymore.
But mails such as this are quite upsetting. They tend to shift the focus from the more important issues at hand.
Everybody is entitled to an opinion. And i do respect everybody's right of speech/thought, after all that is the essence of 'Free'dom, Freedom of expression, in any form. But, i believe, that this 'Freedom' should lead to a constructive/positive outcome at the end of the day. Otherwise it just defeats the whole purpose of a movement rooted in 'Freedom'

The FOSS community in India is relatively a small community, and among us we have so many conflicting opinions. Its not surprising that our Government gets nothing done, since there are so many stake-holders who in trying to express their opinion deviate from the core issues. The people who lose out at the end, are the guys who actually get things done. And such people ultimately get so pissed of with the way things work (or otherwise), they just stop doing whatever good they set out to do. And the world starts to rot even more.
And you will find this happening day-in day-out all around you. Its just like in Ayn Rands' Atlas Shrugged. I wont be surprised if one fine morning if i find those, who slog their lives out for the world to keep ticking, vanish, never to return.

God save us.
</rant>

LKHG

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:12:50 GMT

Linux Kernel Hacker Gathering is happening at FOSS.IN. Be there.

Ah! Am high with anticipation.

TEAM FOSS.IN - Rock On!!

FOSS.IN 2008

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 06:23:28 GMT

FOSS.IN has come a long way over time. This year in its all new form, its probably going to be the best FOSS.IN ever seen. The change in the way the event is going to be held only shows how mature the event has got over years. Kudos to TEAM Foss.in.
Incidentally, there is a promotional video from TEAM Foss.in. The video features louiswu , Atul and Shreyas. check it out here.

Its that time of the year again

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:34:58 GMT

Whats your food??

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:54:59 GMT

If you are meat eater, you should surely check this out. Be warned, its a little disturbing, but *true*.

Also what you need to know about Livestock Farming/Breeding and it's effects on the environment you have to check these links:

http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/ffarms.asp

http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/nspills.asp

Google for Livestock pollution and you would get plenty of matching results.

EAT Healthy and natural Food, and save the environment.

Do your bit.

GIP

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:19:02 GMT

The highlight of the FOSS community has always been availability of wonderful pieces of software that one gets used to so much that cannot do without them. Everybody has their favourite set of tools that has become a part of their regular computer usage.
Emacs, Pidgin, Firefox..... the list goes on.

Another software tool that i can't usually do away with of-late is GIP. GIP is an IP address calculator for GNOME. It provides a simple interface for calculating IP address range, Masks, Subnets and the whole lot.

[ Screenshot of the GIP main tab - Click to enlarge image ]

For a given IP NetMask and Prefix - GIP, among other things, gives you the following information:
* Address range to which the IP belongs to
* Maximum number of subnets
* BroadCast Address
* Hex and Binary Representation of the IP/Mask

GIP also has a subnet calculator.

The project i work on requires me to create and manage large multiple networks. And this tool has saved my day on many occassions. And if you are not such a thing, am sure it will still be helpful.

GIP is available in most distros or can be installed from the distro package repository. On Ubuntu the package is called 'gip'. More about GIP here.

FOSS, is good.

GNOME + KDE

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:52:29 GMT

It is now public, the next GNOME and KDE annual developer/user conferences to be held in 2009 would be co-located.

I just happened to read this post on the gnome-foundation-list. An excerpt from the post:

"The conferences will be separate events, but co-located and hosted by the same organizers, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria and its Secretary of Tourism, Technological Innovation and Foreign Trade."

This is a nice move, specially considering there is a strong inclination towards applications and technologies co-existing and somewhere in the distant future even sharing applications. There are good things in KDE that i want to have in GNOME.
And the bottom line being - the world will be a peaceful place, with one less issue to argue about.

Awesomeness!!

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:19:41 GMT

I watched Kung Fu Panda the other day, and it sure an hour and half of joyride and well written script and amazing one-liners.
The movie begins with this serious commentary about a legendary warrior - and you get to hear lines like "It is said that his enemies would go blind from over-exposure to pure awesomeness!"

It is more of lines like these, that kept me glued till the end. The lead character Po the Panda (voiced by Jack Black), is quite impressively done, And keeps one amused with its on-screen antics. Po, in every frame will inadvertently remind you Jack Black.

Check out the trailer here.

I would suggest that you actually watch this movie, if you haven't already.
I am watching it again, for sure.

spam hits 1K

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:13:02 GMT

[Spam in my Inbox hits 1K]

Google does a good job at filtering SPAM - its very rare that i see spam in Gmail Inbox. In comparison, i quite frequently see SPAM on my Yahoo inbox. I like to get back to Yahoo! mail. But Gmail feels so very convienient.

Buck UP^

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:48:56 GMT

'UP' is the new buzz word. Lately, everything has been going UPward.
Fuel Prices are UP.
Food Prices are UP.
General Cost of Living is UP.
Unemployment is UP.
Consumption (of nearly everything) is UP.
Salaries are *not* going UP.
As a consequence, the common mans' Blood Pressure is UP.

I can't even imagine what else is on its way UP.

I hope somebody puts a full-stop to this &%$* UP.

Some people need to be thanked

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:54:57 GMT

Life is a mixture of good things and bad.

For all those who think there is not much good left in this world anymore, heres some good news. I have come across good people, people who look out for others around them and not just themselves. People who stand by others when then need support the most.
And call it a co-incidence, a whole lot of such good people are together at this once place, Aditi Technologies in Bangalore.

If you have read about Ummi's unfortunate accident here, you would know what am writing about. My last post though, does not cover a lot of details regarding how Ummi got to the hospital. What i missed out in my last post goes here, a few details or the order of events might be wrong, thats because we ourselves are not aware of a lot of things. And there are too many people involved.

[ A picture of Ummis Bullet @ the police station ]

The first person who spotted Ummi lying on the pavement unconscious, was Manjunath, the noble soul, who jumped into action mode by first trying to get in touch with somebody who might be able to identify Ummi [ His wallet and phone were stolen by then]. Using plain common-sense and with the help of the police [ who were informed about the incident by Manjunath ] - they traced down Ummis identification and residence based on the registration number of Ummis bike. Manjunath then took Ummi to the NIMHANS hospital. Meanwhile, the cops went to Ummis place (he stays alone) - spoke to the house owner.

Ummi works at Aditi Technologies, more about the company here. And once Manjunath (and the cops) got to know that he works for Aditi, they called up Aditis' security and informed them about the accident.

All this happened at around 2.00 AM on sunday morning.

Once folks at Aditi got to know about this, all of Ummis team-mates rushed to NIMHANS.[ A word or two about NIMHANS. I have never seen such a worth-less hospital all my life, the staff and their attitude lacks any respect to human life and dignity. But more about that later.] Am glad that Ummis colleagues shared the same opinion about NIMHANS and immediately moved him to HOSMAT, where he is currently being treated.

What the guys at Aditi did was indeed praise-worthy. A few names i can remember of-hand Manas, Chethan P, Chethan S, Deepak..... the list just goes on. I am sorry that i dont remember most of the other names. And the list includes his team-mates, his manager, the HR manager, the GM and a whole lot of others who rushed to the hospital and stood by him and all of his friends. Their presence of mind and their selflessness assured me that there are good people in this world. And they are right among us.

Ummi is actually serving his notice period at Aditi, despite that, folks at Aditi have taken care of the insurance cover. This is indeed commendable. I am not sure how many organizations would do that. Its not surprising for a company with such moral and human values to have employees who share the same ideals.

Manjunath and the gang from Aditi, i bow down to you guys. Thanks a ton for your support, Ummi would not have pulled through without you guys.

who's getting high??

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:34:58 GMT

On saturday night (jun 21st) - a very good friend of mine, Umesh, while returning from a party at his friends place met with an accident. It was in the middle of the night when he was returning home, that he probably lost control of his bullet and hit the pavement and hurt himself real bad. Head injuries to be precise. He lay like that on the road for more than a few hours, when some noble soul passing by (this was around 3.00 early morning Sunday) discovered Ummi, lying there on the pavement with the bullet on the road, rushed him to NIMHANS with the help of J.P.Nagar Police and we ultimately got to know about this unfortunate incident only by around 4.30.

On reaching NIMHANS, and seeing Ummi lying in a totally unconscious and in a very pitiable state is going to be really hard for me to forget. His forehead was swollen beyond imagination and his face was wreathed in pain, and totally lifeless.

Later in the day he was moved to HOSMAT - and he is being treated there. With three blood-clots in his brain, his situation seems to have improved a little since yesterday. We all are hoping that he will pull through. And the doctors say that he might, and if he does the recovery is what is going to be the toughest. Basically the Basal Ganglion tissues in his brain have suffered a slight damage, the effects of which are not easy to recover from.

What we realized after speaking to a few of his friends from the trekking club, with whom he was partying, was that he was drunk. They were celebrating something, god knows what. And as is the 'norm' with any party - there was booze.

I don't mean to sound philosophical, but this incident has disturbed me a lot. As a friend am going through a painful phase looking at him suffer this way - i cant even imagine how difficult it is for his family.

I know ummi well, and he is known to be a careful driver/rider, and has a lot of 'capacity' to drink, at-least thats what he claims. But wherever he is today, it is because of drinking. After what ummi is going through, I have no clue why a lot of us don't understand the serious impact of Drinking for pleasure.
I have not had alcohol - so i don't know how it feels to be drink - and trust me - i don't ever want to know how it feels.

It makes me wonder if 'drinking' is the *only* way to enjoy any situation/achievement. I mean since college i have been seeing this, and things have only got worse. We are earning now, and we have access to more expensive and variety of booze . A lot of my friends drink - if one has to celebrate, for any reason, it has to have a touch of
'Alcohol' to it.

What does it give to those who drink??? A certain high on life?? An escapists pleasure?? Or does it all just boil down to a 'momentary lapse of reasoning', when we lose the ability to respond to situations normally???
I wouldn't know. Be it a glass of beer or a shot of some other drink - Alcohol, ultimately, is doing things to your mind which smells only of disaster.

Well, at-least that is what i think.

I am not preaching. I am just thinking aloud.

Its my friend in question, And it pains to see him this way.

Get well soon Ummi.

Updates et al...

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 09:15:38 GMT

And am back... After a BIG break. :)

Am a married man now. :). Feels a little wierd saying that. But its good. And everythings chill on the personal front. Going great actually. My friends were there for the wedding including say_yes04 and watziznem . Which was surprise since i was not really expecting them to move their butts :). Thanks guys, for making it.

I'm still sorting out the pictures, i shall post them asap.

On the work front. My new employer is a huge disappointment. I have absolutely no meaningful work. I feel totally wasted. So its that time again when i am looking out for a job which gives me something to learn, do and have fun. If any of you find any openings in your respective work places - please do let me know. My email id is ajaysusarla at gmail dot com.
I've been working in C on Linux primarily. But i would love to move to C++. Although am not sure if anybody would give me a job in C++ when i have not worked on it. Basically "Will do anything for Fun!".

Hey, I almost forgot. Wish you all a very happy new year.

And say_yes04 tells me its shwethas wedding. May the God bless you guys. Cheerio

My health taken a beating

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 17:40:15 GMT

My health took a beating yet again - i was down with diarrhea, and have lost more than a few kilos over the weekend. And all this had to happen right in time for foss.in

I missed foss.in :(

Waaahhhh!!!!

Vaz that???

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 03:42:40 GMT

I was just looking thru the latest edition of India today - and i think i saw gaurav vaz's pic in it with the rest of the band members :). Great going Garurav. All the best.
This is the second time am seeing Gaurav in the paper. The first time it was with shreyas and kausthub all three in news for Radio Verve.

Feels good to see the people you know in papers for all the right kind of reasons.

Nice. Very Nice.

Foss.in yet again

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 10:25:46 GMT

just a couple of days more to go and its time for foss.in - all the talks - all the drooling at the speakers... Man am excited or what.

Meanwhile...

My marriage is less than 3 weeks away - and i have been really busy with it. Just finished with the invites. Got them from the printer last evening. Loaded with work at work too.

All the best to the team (http://foss.in/2006/info/Team) at foss.in.

C you guys there.

WoW!

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 06:41:08 GMT

It had been sometime since i built the kernel snapshots and I was just building the latest kernel (2.6.17.3) and notice something new. A new system call called the kexec. More info here: http://www.xmission.com/~ebiederm/files/kexec/README

This is such amazing stuff - its a big step towards making virtualisation defacto in linux.

Hard truth(s) of life!

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 06:15:04 GMT

* It hurts to a give away(read sell) something that you are really passionate about, in this case My Jeep.
* The pulsar, with its disc brakes wont stop before moving a couple of feet after you slam the brakes when you are 'cruising' at 80 kmph on hosur road. The only thing that happens is that you end up hitting the zen which is stalled dead on road all of a sudden, and screw up your bumper and his.
* Never gulp down two cans of red bull at 8.30 in the night, trust me you will not be able to sleep all thru the night. And you will be doing is having a totally useless conversation about the feasibility of a community on Gimpnet.

In other news:
I am leaving Novell. The 28th of this month is my last day out here. Mostly joining Oracle (cos they are paying me a lot more money as comared to the other offers i have been made) on the 31st.