NetWorked

Dear all,

Its finally time when I blogged again, and because this is after a long time, this is going to be long.

Loads of interesting things happened from then to now. But I´ll try and stick to the main features.

1. Raha Travels Pvt. Ltd.

To start it off was the 10 hour long bus journey from Durgapur to Kolkata in an AC bus (which was basically no use as most of the time we spent outside the bus( we as in me and Mayank Daga the new LUG NITDGP president). The journey consisted of a non stop 1.5 hour ride from Durgapur to Saktigarh(that´s midway) and the rest of the time on the other half. There were times when :

• we had about 20 lorries with drivers-in-deep-sleep that had to be woken up and requested to move their vehicles out of the way so that our bus could move ahead.
• ten of us tried in vain to push a trailer that suddenly finished all its fuel and refused to move further disrupting more traffic.

We had experienced about 8 jams that day within 8 hours. Some people stranded with us were of the opinion that the traffic disruption was because of the IPL T20 match between Kolkata Knight Riders and the Mumbai Indians but none could explain how that jam could extent, more so devided among 8 smaller jams to midway between Durgapur and Kolkata.

Not to mention KKR lost the match that evening.

2. Error 678

The first thing I had done after returning home for the holidays was to apply for a BSNL broadband connection. The whole Cossipore Telephone exchange knows me by now. Mine was a special case. Not that no one applies for a HOME 500 plan, no, but then I required the connection within a week (that was some 7 weeks before normal) and I would be surrendering it within 3 months( dunno what´s the norm in this case! ).

So there I was practically almost everyday at the Exchange making my presence felt personally or over phone.

I managed to squeeze out a DSL modem within 3 days... my dream of getting an internet connection close. Was maybe only 2 days more till I got my username and password. Meanwhile I was trying all different usernames and passwords even Anish´s valid ones with the same result.

Error 678 "The remote computer did not respond"

There came a time when I finally got irritated of the error message. But I did not stop connecting.

3. Mantra: The Lifestyle Management Club

And here´s the part which we were all waiting for. I joined a Gym.

As of now I have already been Gymming for 2 weeks. But the 1st day there was awesome.

I started off with funny-named and funny-looking Streaching and Joint Movement exercises.

Funny named ones

• Tadasana
• Pec-Dec-Fly

Funny Looking ones

• Butterfly : involved joining your feet together close to your crotch and flapping your legs like a, ummm.... butterfly!!??
• Crocodile : you lie on your front and put your palms on your face with elbows on the ground which makes you look like someone in deep thought and nowhere remotely close to a croc.

Then came the aerobics. I was to do 2x5 mins of cycling, 5 mins on the jogger and 5 mins on th treadmill.
I stated off with cycling followed by the Jogger keeping the relatively easy treadmill for the end.
I don´t know from where I got this notion that all treadmills were automatic. Turned out this wasn't.

After what seemed like hours of sweat-dripping and leg-numbing walking I glanced at the watch- only 1 minute had passed.

To top it all I was made to do 100 crunches and had to walk home( The gym is some 20 minutes from home by walking).

It was a miracle that I had managed to return home in one piece and somewhat 3-dimensional.

4. #2, Church Lane:

This year will be my happiest ever for at last I was able to resolve my Identity Crisis.

Now I have a Birth Certificate, a Ration Card, a Bank Account and the newest in the line, my Voters ID card.

A year ago I had none of those.

Came to know that they were handing out new Voter ID cards at Church Lane for new applicants whose name had appeared in the voter´s list. Mummy and Daddy told me to grace them with a visit.

So I went there with by application form´s counterpart. I had expected a decent office. Instead it was an accountancy firm converted into an election office. People were like normal people are in such a place. No matter how many times they were told to sit and wait and not line up before they were called, just one person had to move in the direction of the office and there was a whole queue behind him. Then they had to be told off and they would come back and sit down.

This continued for an hour. Finally were were asked to make a queue and fortunately I was right at the beginning this time. Minutes later I was heading back home with a new 4 GB Flash Drive( I lost the last one I had brought a month ago spending Rs 50 on the new one) and a Samsung DVD writer.

The Voter ID Card lay forgotten in my pocket.

5. Wipro :

Ms Bhardwaj had me in her cc whenever she sent a mail to our TPO regarding Wipro Internships. Except when she mails the final selected candidates, she decides to leave me out.

So just 2 days before the students are to report at the Wipro I come to know that such a mail has been sent.

Times when I wish I had an internet connection. I spent 2 hours in the hot cafe sorting out names and sending the selected candidates emails.

That´s ok. But when a Week ago both our TPO and asst. TPO decides to call at 8 p.m. remind me one after the other what a lazy idiot I am while I am watching The Sound of Music, that really got irritating. I had to contact all the TPR´s most at home without Internet like me and some even in the train. But Fortunately Layek got whatever he wanted by the afternoon next day.


6. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps :

It was 10 days since I had applied for the Broadband connection. The person I was in contact with me had assured me action within 7 days and was not answering my calls. So I made another visit to the Telephone Exchange.

This time they checked it up and told me that my application had been sent to Bangalore and it will be at least 7 more days before I get my Username and Password. This gave me time. (didn´t stop me from trying to connect with ´all sorts of ´ usernames and passwords though).

I licked thought the entire 4 seasons of Coupling twice and all of The Simpsons once.

I liked Coupling. It had this rare sense of situational comedy that appealed to me. The character I liked the most was Jeff, with hair all spiky (but that isn´t the reason of me liking him).

I am not including excerpts for fear of censorship which I very much wanted to. But I would like you to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Murdock#.22Jeff_concepts.22

7. Eden Gardens:

And when you would be least expecting it, a friend will come up with 8 tickets to the Kolkata Knight Riders vs Delhi Daredevils match at Eden Gardens. As usual I will First agree to go along, then when I find out no one else is going I would say no and go to sleep. Then the rest of them would call me up and say that everyone is going as it will be fun, and again I agree. Then when I look at the watch its just 10 mins before everybody leaves for Eden.

Nevertheless I go along. I get in and am excited to see the cheerleaders up close, more excited when I learn that I get to sit close to them.

The first half is boring with KKR scoring a low total. But when you start having doubts that you wasted Rs 325/- Shoaib bowls and steals the show.

I saw every ball of the match except of the over when I was busy searching where Shah Rukh Khan was.

KKR had won the match, we were ecstatic. So much that we missed all the buses returning home.

A few more misadventures later at 1 a.m. there we were on a bus passing Sovabazar when I saw them for the first time. They were standing in groups along the road. The bus conductor was having his share of fun calling them names like Champa and Bulbul. But I was too tired to give them an afterthought.

8. Broadband:

I had bunked gym for the first time after joining. Coudn´t help, no possible way I could wake up at 5:30 am after a night at Eden. I woke up with an sms. It stated my username and password. I had an Internet connection last.

After trying in vain to connect the normal, I had to try unknown techniques of getting connected. And at last I did.

A lot of things were pending since I left colleges.

1. Cleared my inbox of the 200 or so mail that had come up after leaving college thanks to orkut and all the mailing lists I had enthusiastically subscribed to.

2. Finished downloading Mandriva 2008 Spring on the LUG server and Put it up on the repository for download.

3. Mailed and chatted up the NOSIP people on the IRC. Started up on LDTP.

TODAY

4. Set up and configured NTP on the LUG server. Applied to the NTP site as a pool server. Was accepted. Initial score of the LUG server was -5 at 12 noon today. At 12:30 a.m. it has current score 11.7. For a NTP server to be among the recognized ones it should have a score of above 5. No wonder India had just one NTP server in the morning.

Now it has two.

5. The broadband guy came up at 9:30 p.m. (is Bengal suddenly getting so nocturnal, makes me feel good) and configured net correctly for windows. Then I find that its not running on Linux, so I had to reset the modem to factory defaults. Now everything is back to normal (normal- depends on how you define it).

6. And of course I wrote this blog.



P.S. And the Results:

Finally out of the 6.5 loop as Souvik correctly puts it. Somewhat happy with my marks, but ....