Master Foo and the Unix Zealot

A Unix zealot, having heard that Master Foo was wise in the Great Way of Unix, came to him for instruction. Master Foo said to him:

“When the Patriarch Thompson invented Unix, he did not understand it. Then he gained in understanding, and no longer invented it”.

“When the Patriarch McIlroy invented the pipe, he knew that it would transform software, but did not know that it would transform mind”.

“When the Patriarch Ritchie invented C, he condemned programmers to a thousand hells of buffer overruns, heap corruption, and stale-pointer bugs”.

“Truly, the Patriarchs were blind and foolish!”

The zealot was greatly angered by the Master's words.

“These enlightened ones”, he protested. “gave us the Great Way of Unix. Surely, if we mock them we will lose merit and be reborn as beasts or MCSEs”.

“Is your code ever completely without stain and flaw?” demanded Master Foo.

“No”, admitted the zealot, “no man's is”.

“The wisdom of the Patriarchs”, said Master Foo, “was that they knew they were fools”.

Upon hearing this, the zealot was enlightened.

-----------
Taken from "Rootless Root - The unix koans of Master Foo "
http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/unix_koans.html

Woe is me

First I fall down from the stairs and fracture my leg
Then I fall down from the bike and fracture my cheekbone
Now I fall down from my chair in the lab in front of the whole class.

Gravity is a myth. The world just sucks.

In search of Meer

My soul longs for the journey
To the place free of liberties

I am only happy in that town
Where I can feel Her nearness

Among these hollow stone gardens, I find no joy
My desire to travel makes me move towards Her....

O Mother, with eyes like the petals of blue lotus
I offer unto You whatever is left of me.



Yaaron mujhe muaaf rakho, main nashe mein hoon
Ab jaam do to khali hi do, main nashe mein hoon

(Friends you must excuse me, for I am intoxicated.
If you must, give me an empty glass, for I am intoxicated.)

Ya haathon-haath lo mujhe maanind-e-Jaam-e-ma'ay
Ya thodi door saath chalo, main nashe mein hoon

(Either take me hand-in-hand, as you would a glass of wine
Or walk a little distance along me, for I am intoxicated)

Gham se zara najaat mili bekhudi mein aaj
Ab mera intazaar karo, main nashe main hoon

(Got a little relief from sorrow, in being drunk today
Now you have to wait for me, for I am intoxicated.)

After tasting Divine Love, neither earthly wine, nor the kiss of the courtesan, nor the ritual of prayer has power to move one.

Complete shayari can be read here:
http://www.grandpoohbah.net/Grandpoohbah/mirji.htm

I have been spammed

Hurrayyyyyyyyy............. I have been spammed today!!!


Having worked in an internet support company for 2 years, I have been used to starting my day with well over 10 unread mails in my inbox and a couple of spams. After I joined for MTech, nobody seems to be sending me mails :(. I guess I am an internet addict cause I feel very weird when I dont get mails each day.

I have not received mails for a long time now. As a side effect I suffer from extreme depression and a feeling of loneliness. Also I have this feeling in my stomach when I have not eaten for a long time. And I always tend to sleep with m eyes closed. Oh.. things were really getting difficult.


Just when I thought that the end of the world had come and was preparing to kill myself by jumping in front of the internet traffic, I was spammed. Oh sweet lord I was spammed. It was kinda big spam. Some guy in the US wanted me to download and watch free movies. A movie download from the college lab is painful, but I dont care. I was spammed and thats what counts. One of my friends said that the movie downloader is a virus, but I need not worry cause the virus is activated only on Windows 98. I am using Windows 2000. But I dont care. I was willing to manually delete all my files for him and reply:

Hello Spammer,

I am happy to say that your virus has worked on my system and has successfully deleted all the files. I am unable to paste a screenshot for your verification cause it deleted Microsoft Paint too.

Have a nice day.
Regards
Shiv




Hey spammer, if you are reading this I just want to say a BIG THANK YOU. I feel needed again.
Suddenly all things are looking bright and beautiful. Long live the spammers.

Epilouge: I uninstalled all spam assassin software on my machine. I am planning to start a "Save the Spammers; Give them some love" movement in my college. As a first step, I am going to open the local college server to all the spammers in the world.

Peace and Love.

Magic of Hariharan

It was my dear friend Ajeesh who introduced me to Hariharan and Ghazals.
Since then I have been a huge Hariharan fan....

I wish I could study urdu.....


mareez ishq ka kya hai, jiya jiya na jiya
hai ek saaNs ka jhagDa, liya liya na liya

badan hi aaj agar taar-taar hai mera
to ek chaak gareebaaN siya siya na siya

ye aur baat ke tu har rahe-khayaal meiN hai
ke tera naam zabaaN se liya liya na liya

mere hi naam pe aaya hai jaam mehfil meiN
ye aur baat ke maine piya piya na piya

ye haale dil hai Safi maiN to sochta hi naheeN
ke kyooN kisee ne sahaara diya diya na diya

Album: Hazir
Poet: Dr. Safi Hassan
Music: Hariharan

An illustrated short story

It all started as a simple argument between me and Dharmendra.
Dharam always insists that you need to have a huge mass of muscle. I never agreed with him... I always believed that you just have to be in shape...
( And yes... round is a shape )

Dharam laughed at my opinions:

Dharam: Chup raho Shiv nahi to ma kasam mein tujhe jaan se maar daloonga...


Shiv: You want a peice of me ? Well.. come and get it...

And then it happened:

KA-BOOM

I remember counting upto 4 stars before I fainted. Dharam took the direct literal meaning in my challenge.... He wanted to break me into peices and apparantly select some nice ones from them.

Well.. some people are best left to themselves.

Black

There are some things that I have always wanted to do.
Another one was just added to the list a few days back... though I dont think I will be able to pull it off.
Everytime I go to the mess to have food, I see a lot of people sitting there. The mess tables are lined up in long rows with the hostel wardens standing around. Whenever I see that, I want to stand up on one of the long tables, tear my shirt and sing loudly " All I want to say is that they dont really care about us".
Maybe I can try moonwalking too... that is if the wardens dont pull me down by that time.
I wish I was an alien at home behind the sun
I wish I was a souvenier you kept your housekey on
I wish I was the pedal brakes that you depended on
I wish I was the verb "to trust" and never let you down

I wish I was a radio song
The one that you turn up...
I wish...
I wish...

If Eddie had'nt written this song, I sure would have.. But I would have changed some parts of the lyrics.


Then there is "Black"... Oh man how I want to sing that one on stage..
All I need is a good electric guitar, a good bass and backup guitars and a drummer.
Six months back I would have also needed half a bottle of vodka.

I will let the other guitars do the rhytm and I can just sing...
" All the love gone bad
Turned my world to black
Tatooed all I see
All that I am
All I'll beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Then comes the " do di do do do di do" part...
The rhytm guitar and bass takes care of that.. I can switch to a modest lead. Somewhat like a mix when PJ played in Dallas and State college. I guess I will end the lead like Dallas show... but then I dont want the song to end...

I just want to play "do di do do do di do" till I die.

Somewhere I belong

The past few days have been really messed up.
I am consumed by a overwhelming sense of laziness. And its taking the toll on me.
After the accident, the docter had advised that I will need a lot of physical exercise for completle recovery..... (Sometimes I wonder that the accident was just the cause for a lot of things to happen)
Anyways... I used to force myself to go to the gym for some days. There is always a problem of injuring yourself if you dont do things properly in the gym. Dharmendra now has a slip disc in his neck.

So the doc told me to play something.. He suggested that I play football.
Now I play football everyday. I have installed FIFA 98 on my machine.


To be fair to the doctor and all the people that helped me in the therapy, whatever is fixed now is largely due to their patience and effort. Whatever remains broken is still because I am not making an effort to straighten up the mess.
Linkin Park keeps playing in my head:

When all the vacancy the words revealed
Is the only real thing that I've got left to feel
Nothing to loose
Just stuck, hollow and alone
And the fault is my own and the fault is my own


And I've got nothing to say
I can't believe I didnt fall right down on my face
I was confused
Looking everwhere only to find
That it's not the way I had imagined it all in my mind
So what am I

What do I have but negativity
Cause I cant justify the way everyone is looking at me
Nothing to loose
Nothing to gain, hollow and alone
And the fault is my own and the fault is my own

I will never know
Myself until I do this on my own
And I will never feel
Anything else, until my wounds are healed
I will never be anything
till I break away from me
I will break away
I'll find myself today

Schrodinger V/S Dharmendra

There is this friend of mine from Mumbai. I call him Dharmendra, cause he has a huge body... spends all the time in the gym and he starts every alternate sentence with " Ma kasam" or " Teri maa ki..."

I have often imagined old Dharamendra or Dharam for short getting up in the middle of our calculas class and shouting " Chup raho Sirr.. Nahi to ma kasam mein tujhe maar daloonga...!!"

Well.. something similar to that happened and I nearly died of laughing.

It all started with our Quantum Mechanics class. The professor started with the basics and moved over to the dangerous Scrodinger wave equation. It was obvious that we were not understanding anything.
The merciless professor then rudely plucked out an electron from a Helium atom ( in theory of course) and put it in a box. He then began applying the Scrodinger equation to the electron. The poor electron was soo terrified that it gave out soo many equations for its momentum and radiations...
The black board was filled with all kinds of equations and the electron was screaming bloody murder. It was a ghastly sight. If Medha Padkar was present in our class, she would have immediatly started an "Electron Bachao Andolan" and would have fasted till the electron was released and given back to the poor helium atom.

Two hours after the class, all of us were sitting in the canteen discussing what each of us understood over a cup of tea. When it was old Dharams turn to explain, all us looked at him expectingly...
He paused, took a long breath and said.

"Schrodingerrrr..... Teri ma ki aisi ki taisi !!!!"

To be honest, that actually summed up the whole 2 hours of Quantum Mechanics.


Epilouge:
This is what I found at a website:

I don't like it and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
Erwin Schrodinger commenting on Schrodinger's equations

That confirms the "Paap ka Aulat" theory.

Who killed Superman

Christopher Reeve who flew to fame as the star in the "Superman" series passed away today.
The cause of death was determined as heart failure.

Highly placed sources in the intelligence community suspects this could have been due to a major shock recieved by Mr Reeve when he was browsing the internet.

The suspicion was confirmed when the FBI, CIA and CIDs from Tamilnadu scanned a list of articles that were uploaded to the internet just before this tragic incident. They concluded that a particular photo from a recently updated blog was the cause of major shock to the veteran actor. This blog was posted by one of the directors of a very successful Linux support and solutions company called Poornam Info Vision

Things were not looking good for the director Mr. Amarjyoti Krishnan when the White House came to know about this. However it was the CIDs from Tamil Nadu with their ingenius dummy tests who proved that Mr Amar was innocent and it is the model in the picture who is really guilty.

Please click the following link to see the picture.
Warning: Extremely sensitive graphic material.

The Picture that killed Superman

There and Back Again

After 2 weeks in college, I finally got to go home during the last weekend.
I was thrilled to finally sit down and watch TV in my house, although I dont think my parents shared my enthusiasm. It was only on Sunday that my folks looked really happy when I was leaving for college.

Anyways... I am back to my old life here.

yahoo and shaadi.com

I dont know if this is happening to all the yahoo uses, but whenever I log into my yahoo mail, I get this very big ads from shaadi.com
There comes these photos of some "aunty log" with text like,
"Hi I am Sunita Kulkarni, music teacher. I cook. I wash. I iron clothes. I belive in God. I am shy. I will look upon my husband as God."

Almost makes you believe that there is life after marriage.

MTech student commits suicide

Flash News

Ettimadai, Coimatore: An MTech student in Computational Engineering and Networking commited suicide today by jumping in front of the Taylor series expansion.

A Taylor series is a series expansion of a function about a point. A one-dimensional Taylor series is an expansion of a real function f(x) about a point x = a is given by




The poor student died instantly as a term of the Taylor series somewhere close to infinity passed over his skull.

Officials are yet to to determine if this was caused by the careless Calculus teacher who was not able to properly convey to the class what the Taylor series actually meant.

The CIDs from Tamilnadu and the CBI conducted 3 dummy tests. The results of the test were
1st dummy to wall - 12 feet
2nd dummy to wall - 8 feet
Dummy to Dummy - 6 feet

According to CID Ramdas and Vijayan, this indicates a clear case of suicide.

First lessons in MTech

This is my second week in the MTech course. Eventhough the technical side of my brain is struggling with the whole "BIG PICTURE" idea, I was able to experience a lot of different personalities and perspectives.

First of all there is my HOD. A really brilliant, talented and widely respected character. During the first class, I asked him a doubt regarding how to visualise vectors.
After explaining some concepts, which was punctuated by my frequent "oohs"
he looked straight at my face, paused as if to create an effect and asked me to bombard my brain!!!! I was shocked. There was a 5 minute silence where we both looked at each other.... surely my brain is not so pathetic. Hey I have 90% in my sslc and predegree. My hurt ego was able to utter a feeble " Excuse me sir ?? "
At length my HOD explained... " You should bombard your brain with the concepts and ideas."
I feel better now.

According to the local people here, the cauliflower grown inside the college campus is called college flower.


Then there is my classmate Sachin. There is never a dull moment with him. He made a very intelligent observation about all the theories in science and maths. He explained to me in his Mumbai hindi....
" Dekh Shiv, yeh jo sab theories hai na... Yeh sab paap ka aulat jaisa hai "

Seeing my puzzled expression he graciously offered to explain the theory in detail.

The theory is an analogy of bastards and their illegal children.
There will always be some bastards in the society. They have all the fun.. and in the process leave behind illegal children. Then they walk off or die leaving the children behind.
So now the society has this children.

Similarly, the scientists are the bastards who have fun with science and leave back theories as illegal children. Eventually, they happily die away and we are stuck with the children.

That is Sachin's "Paap ka aulat" theory.

After listening to him, all I could say was:
" How intelligent you are....
Like a diamond in the sky....."

A brief look at my new life.

About my new life as an MTech Student.

There is this small adjustment factor. I am still not on the correct learning track.
There are only 12 people in my course. Most of them are just BTech freshers. Then there are others who are lecturers in the college.
Guess what, there are some people who take this course as their PhD !!!!
Can you believe that ??? I have a classmate who is around 40+ and he is doing the same course as his PhD !! Dont ask me why or how. I still have not figured out that part.
But it is said that in the IIT, they follow this syllabus for PhD.
( That is wonderful hosting!!!)
The only consolation is my friend who has promised to teach me everything. But I am not sure if he will get time for all that.
(Which is even more wonderful hosting !!!! )

The college is a truly beautiful place. Around 400+ acres. It takes a long time to walk from my lab to the hostel. Most ppl here have bought bicycles.

There is no ragging as all ppl here are interested only in studies and stuff like that. I am talking about the Mtech and PhD people. I guess the MBA guys are a lot more cooler.

There is a music and photography club here and I am planning to join them. But I am not sure if I will get time for those as my sir is very strict. He will not allow the students to go home on weekends because he believes this is the "padikkanulla prayam."
( Now thats the real "prayathinte prashnam" )

About my collegues:

The room next to my lab is a place where they are doing a project worth 2 crore.
The cabin next to mine is my teacher whos subject is partial differential equations. So obviously I cannot speak to her. She only understands maths. I dont think she speaks any other language.
2 cabins after mine is a person who is in the same course as I am but is 1 year senior. He is doing a project for ISRO - vibration analysis of space crafts.
At times I ask him if his space craft is stable. He looks at me with a serious expression and does not reply. I wonder what that is supposed to mean. Gives me vibrations at times.


There is this NPOL project that is coming that is about locking targets for submarines. If things are going the way it is, then there is a high probability that they might use me for target practice. And knowing my collegues and faculty members, I am sure they will blow me to vaccum in the first test shot no matter how hard I run.

New Life New Horizons

Oh man

I wrote huge blog here about my college but this thing showed a internal server error when I posted.
:((((((


That is soo bad.
I dont think I can type all that again.

Anyways I am back to studies now. Mtech in Computational Engineering in Amrita Institute of Technology, Ettimadai.

People say college life is fun. I think I will wait for 2 years before making any comments.

But quite frankly I have nothing to complain here. The place is good, the facilities are excellant, the poeple are nice.

Also there is the bus to vallikkavu on weekends. And of course there is a dedicated net connection and Pearl Jam:

Little country store
with a sign tacked to the side
Said 'No L-O-I-T-E-R-I-N-G Allowed'
Underneath that sign
always congregated quite a crowd
Take a bottle, drink it down, pass it around
Take a bottle, drink it down, pass it around
Take a bottle, drink it down, pass it around

A donkey story.

This story was told by Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro. I found this really interesting.



Once there was a farmer and his donkey. The donkey was with the farmer for a long time and was ever faithful to his master. One day they were walking together along a small pond on the farmer's land. Suddenly the donkey slipped and fell into the pond.

Now the donkey had been very faithful to his master and had served his master without any complaints for a long time. So the donkey was sure that his master would save him and started to call out for help. But the farmer seeing the poor donkey drowning in the pond thought " Well... my donkey is very old. I dont think he can do much work now. I have been planning to get a new donkey soon. Might as well cover up this useless pond so that further accidents dont happen."

So he called all his friends to cover up the pond. Soon several baskets of mud came raining down on the drowing donkey and began filling the pond. The animal did not understand as to what was happening. Why is his master not trying to save him. The realisation came slow and painful. There was nobody who was going to save the donkey. If the donkey wanted to get out of the pond. he will have to do it himself.

As soon as this became clear, the animal began to shake the mud off his body. Each time mud poured onto his body, he would shake it off and try to remain above the water. Soon the pond started filling up and the donkey waited patiently. Eventually the pond was filled with enough mud that the donkey could simply walk out of it.


I guess each one of us is a donkey. And we expect a lot from the farmer who becomes the world we live in. And each time we fall into the pond of sorrows or difficulties, we expect the world to save us.

The choice is about walking out of the pond on your own or getting buried in it.

Conversation with my mother

I was very disturbed for a few days. I tried to hide it from a lot of people, but could'nt escape the watchful eyes of my mother. I guess there is something special about mothers.

She asked me what was wrong. And I opened my heart to her... afterall she had been my best friend for years......

I told her that I was feeling really bad because I felt that a person had wronged me.

"Okay" She said. "What are you going to do about it "

" Well.." I replied. " I was comtemplating on my state of mind and I came to this conclusion. You must have courage to beg forgiveness... you must have even greater courage to forgive...

I guess all of us like sympathy and self pity. So its very difficult for us to forgive and let things go... Wipe the slate clean... and never think about it again.

So Mom, I am trying to forgive... but somehow I cannot.. things keep coming back to me."

She listened to all this and asked me:

"What happens when things come back to you"

" I feel bad... I feel terrible"

"Hmm.. Dont you think thats because of self pity ? "

"Well.............Yes" ( Ouch.. did not think about it in that way )

" Is that going to help"

"No" ( Well... what is she getting at )

" You say somebody hurt you badly. But tell me can that person hurt you if you dont allow yourselves to be hurt"

" Hmm no" ... ( Thats interesting)

" So you allowed yourselves to be hurt"

"Yes" .. ( things are not looking good. I wanted her to console me. Now she is having fun.)

" Well so tell me...whom should you forgive, the person who hurt you or yourself ?"

" Myself" ( OUCH !!! )

There was a moment of silence when I was searching for my voice to say " Hey wait a minute... thats not how it is supposed to go." But then what she said made perfect sense.
Who are we to forgive other people....
The Holy Mother says that no matter what justice is always carried out.. in this life or the next. The law of Karma eventually catches up with everybody and sets the records straight.

While I was preparing to leave, my mother asked me
" Anyways.. what does this person feel about the whole thing "

" I guess the person does'nt care anymore" I replied sheepishly

I could still hear my mom laughing when I walked out house and headed for the office.

New improved Blog

This is my new blog site.

I deleted my previous one.

Now people ask me why I deleted my blog. A blog is a place where you write down what you feel ... and dont give a second thought as to what you are writing or who is going to read it. ( Of course you always have the edit button and delete button to cover up your mess).

But hey it was not much of a blog anyways... All it had was a trip log... I was pretty impressed with myself when I started writing that. In fact I had some of the sentences had already formed in my mind when I was on my bike.
So I wrote and wrote. Big sentences, kinda fancy words and puns. But when you look at it as a whole, its just ordinary literature. This is where the edit button comes in. So I did some editing... but was too lazy to read it again.

Also it had some pretty terrible poetry. Now that is where the delete button came in.
Kaput. End of story...

But then, its a nice feeling when you write down things that affected you and later get to read them. You get to analyse yourself... and see if you have grown up or grown out of it.

So now I have a new blog.... Mwaa ha ha ha ha....


All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost
- Lord of the Rings