First week, iPhone!

To say that the first week was pretty hectic would be gross-size-of-the-universe understatement. I'm taking five courses this semester (Calc III for CS Majors, Beginner's French, Intro to Physics, Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java, and Intro to Computing Systems) plus I have work 8 hours a week at the ResNet office (read previous post). I'm liking all my classes so far, all the professors are good and the schedule is pretty cool as well. I've got labs in both Physics and Computing Systems, but they are yet to start. We do all kinds of cool stuff in the Computing Systems lab, and towards the end of the course we'll be doing assembly programming for Nintendo GBA.

One of the good thing about this course is that you can do uber cool stuff like change the opening logo and sound of the GBA and then show it to people. Then when they are shocked and ask you "How does one do this?", you can reply "Well...You can't!". *smiling nod*

Work has been fun as well, I'm learning a lot of cool stuff, in addition to earning some pocket money (well, bank money actually). Freshman move-in week was a very hectic week, as we had to go to all residence halls and make sure that everyone is connected to the internet. I got to play around with all sorts of new and awesome laptops. Now I've realized how much of a pain in arse Vista is. Even though Georgia Tech 'officially does not support Vista yet, most of the freshman had Vistas on their machines and one out of ten gave us a No MAC Address found error.

Anyways, here is how my schedule looks like for this semester:


As you can see, there aren't many free gaps on the weekdays. The good thing is that weekends are totally free.

Now on to the next part of my post.

Ze iPhone.

I ordered the 4GB one two days ago from the Apple website. I was kind of bored of my Nokia 6280 and wasn't too happy with T-Mobile's service either. So I'm going to have to change my carrier to AT&T. As of 11AM Saturday morning, my iPhone is resting at a FedEx sorting facility at Hampton, GA, which is just 17 miles from my place (thanks Google Maps). Hoping to get in a few hours.

I'm going to end this post by leaving you guys with some iPhone pics.















Making-you-feel-jealously,
Dhruv

Ibanez, and new job

After a well spent 3 month summer in India, I'm back to the summer in Atlanta. And Atlanta's summer is a lot worse than India's summer. Some say its because the sun rays have wayy more UV in this part of the world, some say because its not humid at all, I say I don't care, but I hate it.

This semester I'll be living in an on-campus apartment with 5 of my very good friends. I was the first to move in (for reasons you'll learn later in the post) and I completely love the apartment. Its huge, and its beautiful. It took me about a day to unpack, but fortunately I'm done now.

One of the first things I did when I got Internet connectivity was ordering my guitar. After a lot of mind debate between the Epiphone Les Paul and Ibanez IJX121, I finally decided to go for the Japanese monster. Here's a pic for you guys to feel jealous. It should be here tomorrow.

In other news, I started with my new on-campus job. I'm working now as an RTA (ResNet Technology Advisor), and basically my job is to assist people with all their Internet, Cable and Telephone problems. Today was my first day of work and I really enjoyed myself. Since the freshman batch of people have started moving in, we were helping out the freshman get logged on to the GTech network. I must have said "Hi! I'm from ResNet, do you need any help in setting up your internet?" atleast 400 times today, and my knuckles hurt due to excessive knocking on people's door.

One really awesome assignment I worked on was making a switch from the old Cisco switches to the new swanky HP ones. Georgia Tech has recently upgraded its network connection from 100mbps to 1gbps. In order to perform the change, we got access to the data closets of the resident halls, which were the most imposing rooms I've seen in my life. I tried searching for a pic on the internet, and the closest I got was this :

I don't think I had seen these many wires collectively in my whole life. It was a really great learning experience for me to actually go into the room which provided the internet for the whole building.

My job goes on till Sunday, from 8am to 6pm. But I'm not complaining, I'm getting to learn a lot of cool stuff, meeting some really smart people, and earning some good money.

Monday will see my classes start. I'll talk about my classes and schedule for the semester in the next post. Till then, do whatever you want.


Tiredly,
Dhruv

Simpsons, Gandhi, Simpsons, Simpsons, Chak De India, PHEW!

Yea, you're not a genius to figure out I saw the movies.

So, I saw Simpsons, Gandhi, Simpsons, Simpsons, Chak De India in that order. Here's a brief review of all of them :


Simpsons - 2 words. Go watch it. Ok 3 words.

Its mind-bogglingly awesome, for both a hardcore simpsons fan, and even for the unfortunate newbies. Simpsons fans would have realised that there were quite a few repeated gags, but, frankly speaking, I wouldn't mind watching them over and over again.

My favorite line by Homer - "Why does everything I whip leave me?". Pure Simpsons.


Gandhi, My Father - It was an interesting watch, brought out a side of the nation's daddy not many of us are aware about. I love movies which show two sides in a balanced manner and leave it for audience to take their stance themselves, and this did just that. Akshaye Khanna acted pretty well, way beyond my expectations.

The movie was a pretty slow, though. My mind wandered quite a lot, like thinking about what decides the shapes of clouds during the movie, but well, my mind, just like Homer's, wanders easily.


Chak De India - Again, a very good watch. I actually thought that Shahrukh Khan played the role flawlessly, hell, I even thought he wouldn't cry, till the last few frames. Thats still pretty good looking at his average.

The whole movie was pretty realistic, no crappy bollywood drama. I felt it tackled a lot of important issues :

1) Feminism
2) Racism - The whole North East and the Telugu/Tamil scenes
3) Cricket overshadowing all other sports
4) Corruption at the Sport Authorities
5) Language barriers in sport teams
6) Independence of a married woman
7) Stereotypes against Muslims in Indian teams
8) Levels players stoop to for personal gains
9) Treatment of new players by experienced players

If you like sports, or/and India, or neither, go watch it.



In other news, I have been following the test match again, and guess what, we're winning again! Coincidence? I think not.

In other important news, I slept for only 7 hours last night.

In other unimportant news, I leave for US in a few hours.



Au revoir,
Dhruv

My first 'chalan', and other news.

Yes, me, Dhruv, Dhruv Chopra, (methead), got (most probably) a 'chalan'.

I was on my way to Ansal Plaza, taking a right turn under the Panchsheel flyover. As most of you aren't aware, and I wasn't either, the right turn opens for less than 10 seconds. On top of that, there was a Tata Sumo in front of me, which, in accordace with its name, doesn't let you see anything beyond it, including a red signal.

This traffic policeman sprang out of no where and asked me to stop since it was a red light. I hadn't really jumped it by then, I had merely bent my knees and clutched my fists. I reversed back to the zebra crossing line, however I saw him note down my license plate number. #@#@!@%#$@.

In other news, India won the test match. Yay! After a long long time I followed a test match closely. There were a lot of factors which helped us, the seamers finally getting their line and length right, the openers giving us a good start, Kumble destroying their tail-end, but the fact that I followed it closely is crucial.

Will I follow more matches in future? I'll think about it.

Also, Sanjay Dutt has been sentenced for 6 years in prison, under the Arms Act for his role in the 93 Mumbai blasts. I have no sympathy for him, even though Munnabhai is amongst the only two hindi movies I've enjoyed in the past few years (the other is mentioned at the bottom of the past, do NOT scroll down though!!). I just hope that him being a celebrity doesn't work against him.

Our news channels are rutheless, one of them is constantly playing the ironic song by Sanjay Dutt "Main nayak nahin, khalnayak hoon main". I know it perfectly fits the situation, but come on. This other channel is playing the song "Yeh hain meri kahani", showing footage of him going to the jail.

*Note to self - I need to be careful of what songs I decide to figure in.

On that note (lamest no pun), I'll leave.


Cheers,
Dhruv

PS - I asked you NOT to scroll down, didn't I? Control yourself buddy.

PPS - Oh you didn't scroll down? Good. But you thought of it, didn't you?

PPS - The other movie was Rang De Basanti.

Shocking concert, car accident, and tyre poker.

Phew! What a weekend!

Saturday saw me bidding goodbye to Bengaluru. I had been living there for two months, and had the time of my life. I totally fell in love with the weather, and the Infosys campus. Also the food. Infact, if I had cut myself a week ago, I would have bled sambhar.

However, this post is not about Bangalore.

Its not about sambhar either.

Its about the weekend I spent in Delhi right after returning from Bangalore.

I reached Delhi around 1:30 PM, after watching two hours of Great Indian Laughter Challenge onboard my Kingfisher flight, and Raju Shrivastav has definitely not lost his touch. I came by a morning flight because I wanted to go to Channel [V] Launchpad final, being held at Pragati Maidan on the same evening. I reached the venue around 4:30 with my school friends, just in time for the rain to start pouring, and hence we were drenched even before the first chord was strummed.

Dhruv's advice of the month - Rain + Large sound system + Moshing + Leaning on the railing = ELECTRIC SCHOCK!

I learnt it the hard way.

The concert wasn't the best I've been to, but still it was nice meeting friends again. However the electric shock wasn't the only thing that happened that day. If you read the title properly, there was a car accident as well.

So we had a car accident as well.
A friend of mine was dropping me off when someone tried to overtake us from the right while we were turning right. Not the 'right' thing to do. Specially when we gave the indicator around 200mtrs before the turn. They got all the sympathy since there was a lady and a child in the car. I had to call my parents, and so did my friend who was driving. It all ended fine, since those people were the patients of my friend's parents who were doctors. Yes, definitely, phew!

Sunday saw me all geared up for the European grand prix. And the greatest thing in sports happened, TYRE POKER (actually the second greatest, first is 6 red cards in one half of a soccer game, thats always fun).

For the un-formula1-ated, tyre poker is a term given to the state of the teams in F1 when they are unsure about the weather, basically what tyres to put on since it all depends on how wet the track is, and it makes for spectacular viewing. Around 7 cars went off track in the first few laps due to aqua plating of the track, and the race had to be restarted with a safety car in front. It was one awesome race, and I'm happy that Alonso won, and I'm sad that Hamilton lost. Nevermind, still. We still are kicking some crimson-arse.

Saw Parry Horter and the Porder of the Ohenix today. Pretty crappy. I'm glad I never fell for whole hype surrounding HP.

Touching wood,
Dhruv

Huddo!

OK, the title of this post has a very unique and suttle pronunciation, more commonly known as the Mallu Hello. Its most commonly used by people from the state of Kerala who speak Malayalam and spell out Malayalam as Yem-Yay-Yel-Yay-Why-Yay-Yel-Yay-Yem. How does Dhruv know all this, you might ask. How does Dhruv know all this, I shall tell.

I went to Cochin for the weekend.

The great mighty global Infy had sponsored a trip for all the interns to Kerala for the weekend, which also happened to be my last weekend in South India land. We stayed at Taj Malabar, the good point. We travelled by overnight trains, the bad point. But nevertheless, it was a lot of fun spending time with people from all around the globe and learning quite a few new (drinking) games.

What was terrible on Infy's part was to make all of work on the Monday, when we just returned at 5 AM in the morning on the same day. This has lead me to non-drug induced drugged state. Add to this the fact that today was probably the longest day in office over the period of my internship. Add to this another fact that I would probably break this record tomorrow. My internship ends this Friday and I would be flying back to Delhi on Saturday, just in time to catch the finals of Channel [V] Launchpad. I'm definitely looking forward to it. Been ages since I went to a gig in India, apart from Aerosmith (which deserves another post in itself).

I still remember my first few days at Infy, everything was so disorganized, crazy and tough. In three days, I started to love it. It definitely has been one of the best experiences of my life and I have no regrets at all, though now I kind of want to go back to my shiny new car and the ultra shiny new Sony Xplode music system.

Right now I'm in Catch 22 situation, that is, I'm reading the book Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. Been fun so far.

Also right now, my Dominoe's Gourmet pizza with extra topping of spicy chicken and garlic bread sticks with cheesy dip are staring at me, waiting to be gulped. I can't disappoint them, can I?

Yours truly,
Dhruv

Ramblin' Wreck

Ramblin' Wreck is Georgia Tech's fight song, and is played every time the Yellow Jackets score in a Football game and frequently during time-outs in Basketball games. I absolutely love this song and it gives me a great sense of pride whenever I listen to/sing it.

To make a few things clear, our official colors are White and Gold, and our main rivals are University of Georgia (called UGA, or Georgia, or Bull Dogs). 'To Hell With Georgia' is one of our most famous slogans, and no, it doesn't mean that we hate our state.

Here are the lyrics:

I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech, and a hell of an Engineer
A Helluva, Helluva, Helluva, Helluva, Helluva Engineer
Like all the jolly good fellows, I drink my whiskey clear.
I'm a Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of an Engineer

Oh, if I had a daughter, sir,
I'd dress her in white and gold,
And put her on the campus
To cheer the brave and bold.
But if I had a son, sir,
I'll tell you what he'd do--
He'd yell: 'TO HELL WITH GEORGIA!'
Like his daddy used to do.

Oh, I wish I had a barrel of rum,
and Sugar three thousand pounds
A college bell to put it in,
And a clapper to stir it round.
I'd drink to all the good fellows,
who come from far and near.
I'm a Ramblin', Gamblin', HELL OF AN ENGINEER!

Over the years, the line 'To cheer the brave and bold' has been replaced by 'To increase the ratio' by frustrated students like me :)

At the conclusion of the song there is a call of 'Go Jackets!' responded to with 'Bust their ass!'. Following 3 of these calls and responses, the song is ended with a call of 'Go Jackets! Fight!'. Recently, however, the student body has yelled 'Fight! Win! Drink! Get Naked!'. A Georgia Tech football game is the only place where 40,000 people yelling 'Fight! Win! Drink! Get Naked!' doesn't seem odd at all.

Signing off,
Dhruv