A toast to Murphy uncle

i had vivas for last three consecutive days .. and all those three days Murphy uncle made his presence felt ...

the first one was lab viva for Embedded systems ..

examiner was Shridevi .. she was RA few months back and then she became a lecturer .. i was in second batch (rno 34) .. so i knew wat are the questions she asking .. went there for lab viva .. was confident that will crack it ( obviously coz the only subject that i love and also the field i am goin to work) .. but something else happen ..

she asked me first question .. wat is POSIX ?? i just heard about this term .. knew that it is one standard .. so told her that it is one of the standard which is followed in UNIX , Linux or any other OS .. but she refused to listen to me .. then she went on to ask me some chaat question till i could not answer them ..

then one funny thing happened .. she told me to write one code to convert decimal no to hexadecimal no .. so i wrote the code and showed to her .. then she asked me what is the guarantee that the entered digit is a decimal no .. and she refused to listen any further and then sent me out ..

the second viva was our project one ..

in our project viva many things happened as we started with good introduction by our own sardar .. in his own words "we are goin for MEMS coz it is cheap " .. we digressed from MEMS to Mechanics and the external examiner instead of askin questions on our project asked questions on mechanics ..so our starting was 3 wickets down in the first over ..

then ET started his part .. after 10 min of introduction the examiner had no idea of our project and ET started with all tech fundaes .. and there was one this equivalent circuit diagram ..

and there was big trouble as they caught the fault that the direction of currents in the circuit is wrong .. at one node all the currents are entering and thats it .. not coming out from that node .. and we were now five wickets down ..

then baggu came ..as always tried to rescue from this mess .. but he could hardly do to save us from this condition ..mean time givin the presentation one page opened suddenly .. "Brontok Virus - Say no to Child Sex - Say no to drugs etc etc .. "

finally i came to end the presentation with conclusions of project .. started well .. but then suddenly my mobile rang( usually dont keep mobile with my self ..but that day had mobile also in ringer mode) one new message in middle of presentation !! thrown my mob on the desk .. and some how completed the presentation .. the only question the examiner asked was "What is ur blood group ?? " ...

thats it .. the thing for which i prepared for some 5 to 6 days .. ended like that .. our final yr project which has weightage of six credits ended like a joke .. the examiner felt that these are Cheel boyz .. had masti and done some chindi project .. btw after comin out from the hall .. i read the message and it was "Download songs of 70s and 80s .. Dial 646 Charges 6Rs/min"

on the third day i had compre viva .. basically viva exam in which they will ask wat u have studied in past four yrs of engg .. so they can ask on any topics ranging from sensors , control systems , computer science , electronics , humanities etc etc ..

for me i was confident that i could i answer reasonably in any topics other than electronics .. coz somehow i hated this topic .. i was more interested in seeing circuits from more larger perspective rather than just interested in one transistor and how it works ..

but sadly for me in the viva he started with MSI,LSI and VLSI .. then he moved to microelectronics .. optics etc etc .. could answer few but in most of the questions i was praying god that he please ask me some question other than microelectronics ..

i didnt thought in my wildest dreams that presentation could go possibly this bad or my lab and compre viva will be this much bad .. thought deeply on these ..one thing was constantly hitting me that was .. "If anything can go wrong, it will, and usually at the most inopportune moment"

my first sanskrit classes ...

started goin for Sanskrit classes from today .. the timing is from 5.15 to 7.30 PM .. today was the first class ... the teacher was from some organization that serves to preserve sanskrit and wants to spread the language ..

madam started with basics like tell ur name in Sanskrit ..she made the class very interactive .. asked everyone to communicate only in Sanskrit .. she told the story of thirsty crow in sanskrit.. was good to listen from someone who had real zeal and enthu to teach .. she forced us to speak in Sanskrit for the entire class .. so it was really fun to communicate in Sanskrit ..

this classes will continue for 10 days .. will see at the end of the class if i am able to talk some crap or at least write one blog in Sanskrit !!

Yanni live at taj mahal

watched this video and was running in my mind for so many days ..

" I don't know if music can change the world .. but its one of the factor that can change the world .. if in some small way .. even can change the mood for the better even a little bit .. how amazing is that ?? "

"There are as many ways to live life ..as many people on the earth "

What is Engineering ??

read one nice article on IEEE spectrum magazine .. it was about one prof. gives lecture to the class about perspective of Engineering .. he goes and write on the board ..

I + I + I = S

and says .. this is the basic equation of engineering .. and this is what u learn while u are doing ur engineering degree ..

the first I is Imagination

because people has to imagine before something has to be carried out .. or something has to built .. because from there only great ideas arises ..

the second I is Innovation

i won't tell much about this I .. coz everyone knows that how important Innovation is in engg .. many companies survived because of their ability of them to innovate at every stage ..

and the final and most important I is Implementation

this one is important because in Engg .. unless you implement certain projects .. then only you will realize the difference between practical and theoretical world .. in theory you will see only rosy picture ..that u do this , add this component and that is !!! you will get the result .. but in practice when u sit and start doing something .. then you will understand what is real world ..

so this way when you add all three I's then only you get S which is Solution ..and that's what important in engineering .. do whatever .. use any method but get a result ..

what is the toughest C code u have written ??

a company named VMware ..came to our campus on 3rd .. initially their package was nice enough and their profile was a software developer .. so i was interested in working with this company .. and their niche area .. the kind of work they do is amazing .. as they shown in their placement talk they won every single award in the area for last some four years ..

the recruitment procedure was rigorous .. they had some 115 min of written test ( software c,os and aptitude ) followed by some three to four rounds of interview ..

i was lucky enough to get through first round ( after some 5 to 6 months i cleared a written test , the one which i cleared in that i eventually got through ) so was excited abt the interview ..

the biggest hurdle was PROJECT !! they were giving more emphasis on project done throughout your ug degree .. they wanted people that has done some kernel code modification like stuff .. and my projects were .. one is effect of parasitic capacitance on a MEMS sensor .. and we did all kind of simulation .. and other projects are we made a Lock Pulley for a nearby village .. so that was it ..

my interview was abt to start at 10 30 am on next day .. read some stuff abt os in the morning ... went for the interview in tp .. found out there that they were calling people in the random order .. so waited chatting outside .. was very hot outside so after some time i removed my tie , folded my sleeves ..

after long wait eventually my interview started at 12 .. just went inside .. there was only one guy taking the interview .. he was looking at my cv ... he just started by asking about Instrumentation engg .. i gave him loads of fundae that it is a interdisciplinary course wherein we study many facets of engg such as instrumentation ( ie sensors ) , electronics , control engg and computer science ..

after that he just started to ask me abt some simple question on os .. which i confidently answered all of them .. after that he started to ask me abt my projects .. and then i thought i am caught here .. i tried to told him some shit abt MEMS project and didnt seem to be that interseted in it .. so he asked me that what is the toughest C code u written ?

told him that i did some code for tree traversal .. linked list .. i couldnt imagine what might be the toughest code which i have written ( as a matter of fact i havent written any code for last 2 year except for Hello World !! ) ..

at end interviewer told me excellent talking to u .. gve me one pen and one registration license .. and i was very sure what he means by "excellent " ..