Curiosity = -18.64

That was my cell phone balance a few days back. So, I am sitting home getting bored and I decide to explore my phone. I landed somehow on the RSS feeds. Had a few default feeds there. So decided to check it out. I updated the Sony Ericsson feed and to my surprise, it worked. I was literally jumping with joy ( a joy that wouldn’t last long, as I found out later)

Now, you need to know that I use a prepaid connection and a few days back I activated Vodafone Live. (Don’t ask me why.)

Coming back, so I clicked on a link from the feed and was excited to see a web page open. (For the record, I have never previously used GPRS in my life. I previously had a 1100 you see. ) Then I was curious and went right ahead and checked out my blog. Man, was it beautiful. I was thrilled really. I know it’s not much. But I appreciate technology. If you can read your blog (or someone else’s for that matter) from your phone, it’s a big deal. (I know it’s been around for a while. Doesn’t mean I can’t marvel it.)

So I clicked on a couple of pictures and links. I checked the balance after having quit the browser. It was some 12 Rupees. Man, I had 20 odd rupees balance. 8 rupees for this ? Not worth it. Then I go to sleep.

When I get up, I make a call and the call doesn’t go through. I try a couple more times. Then I check my balance. Freakin -(minus)18 rupees!! What ? Where did the money go ? Then I realised it must be the RSS feeds. (Still can’t be certain.) So I am frantically searching for options to turn them off and I can’t find them. Great!! So, instead I delete all my feeds.

I wanted to call Vodafone Care and yell at them, but after my last experience calling them, I decided against it

Indian English-Part 03

Yet another contribution from Gokul. Much thanks to him

Wow. Learning English should be made Mandatury.

Indian English-Part 02.50

I left my post Indian English-Part 02 midway, fuming. Here’s the follow up.

Spotting what’s wrong is left to the reader as an exercise.

Losing Track of Things

I don’t know. Of Late I am losing track of things. I don’t seem to find the time to do anything at all. I have been sleeping a lot. That’s for sure. I manage to watch a couple of movies here and there. But I think the problem is, I am trying to do too many things. What’s worse, I need to do even more things and I don’t see how I am going to find the time to do them. This is the problem with my vacations. I always have a lot to do.

Some of the things I need to do:

• Start clearing those movie backlogs of mine. I have so many movies waiting (even begging) to be watched
• Do a bit of coding.
• Do a bit of Power System Operation and Control.
• Do M1,2,3
• Read other peoples’ blogs. (Something I haven’t had the time to do in the recent past. Weird really.)
• Errr, prepare to get into Infy.
• Get a gat.
• And a few more things.

Let’s hope I sleep less and work more.

Z Ultimate Exam

Tomorrow is going to be the last (regular) exam I shall be writing as a part of my B.E course. Having studied well for the other two exams and totally screwing them, I have decided I shall not be preparing for tomorrow’s exam. So, I am yet to start studying.

However, if I want this to stay my last exam, then I better get going and start studying now.

I just hope, tomorrow I do better than I have so far this semester.

WordPress Bugs Bugging Me

If you read my previous post, you should know that I got mad midway and stopped with the post. Why though ?

Stupid New WordPress Dashboard. I don’t like the new version. I simply hate it. It’s been acting up of late and what was previously a simple process of posting has now become a bloody messy issue.

• I am using IE 8 and I am having problems uploading pictures. Every time I’d upload a picture, this would happen:

Oh, I forgot, I cannot upload pictures with IE (which I am currently on). So, now I will have to switch browser and go to Opera. Wait a minute. Let me do that.

Ok, now I am on Opera. So lemme upload the pic.

If you are asking yourself, what’s wrong with this, this is how it should be,

As you can see, in the first of the two images, the Insert into Post button is missing. So I manage to upload a file, but have no way of inserting that into the post. Wow, really nice.

I also hate this feature of Gallery. It’s annoying at the very least. As George pointed out in one of his comments, you have to first click on an image to get a medium sized picture and then click on it again to get the original sized picture. Ridiculous and not many people clicking on the picture would know and even if they did know would want to click on the image a second time.

• Issues with Thumbnails:

I would upload images and insert thumbnails of them into the post only to find that you cannot click on it to enlarge it. I checked the code and the code was alright. I remember issues even in one of my previous quizzes where in spite of me re-uploading certain pictures, they refused to display properly.

This happened in my previous post too and I hated it. Had to insert the gallery later on which I simply hate.

• Gallery, no thanks

Another stupid issue. Once you have uploaded a picture, you have to immediately insert it into your post. If you make the mistake of uploading another picture, then both go and sit in the gallery and you can no longer upload the first picture separately into your post. Wunderba!! How very inconvenient.

• Word unwrap ?

One weird thing I noticed and this is what pissed me off the most was that as I was typing like I am right now, the line just went on like it happens on notepad when word wrap is not turned on. Once again, I checked the code and it was fine. I published the post, looked at in on different browsers and my whole page was now spoilt.

I know the service is free and has been good for most part. But then this is just ridiculous.

Indian English-Part 02

There’s more of these things to compile a site. But then I have limited time and my eyes are open only for a few ours everyday in which to spot these.

If anyone said, ”But they are just house brokers, why would they require to know English ?” , Here’s an advertisement from The Hindu

OK WORDPRESS IS PISSING ME OFF. ILL POST ON THAT NEXT!! I AM FRUSTRATED!!

 

Indian English-Part I

After completing today’s ISRO Scientist Entry Test (which I am sure to flunk), I was walking back home from Thriuvanmiyur Signal. (The one between Bus Depot and RTO) and I saw this poster. How we Indians kill English. 

Ness Wadia (and hence Preity Zinta too )sure has reasons to be happy about. Bombay Dyeing is creating quite an impact on Indians.

Oh, the numbers are blanked out because I don’t want to be flooded with comments saying “I want a house in Adyar, Thiruvamniyur Area. Can you please SEND ?” No, don’t!! I am not a house broker.

Miss-Spellings

Things I keep coming across and forget to write about.

On the Internet,

I am not blah blah blah. So please bare with me.

Yea, ok. I’ll bare with you. Will you bare with me ?  (Assuming the person is of the opposite sex of course.)

On Orkut,

This guy is really Circastic.

Yea, yea. You must be too.

On gtalk, by Harish 

Deccan Chargers are expensive Chockers.

Well, this was a typo. 

Semester 08-First Exam-Electric Energy Generation, Utilisation and Conservation-30/04/2008

The name of the subject is that long really.

So, exams are here again and unlike the last semester when I was blogging like mad even when I had exams (and it cost me too, even if only a bit.), this time over, I haven’t had the time somehow.

But in spite of studying (or at least trying to) hard, I have done my exams abysmally.

So I have been studying hard from two books, one, Generation of Electrical Energy by B.R.Gupta and another Generation,Distribution and Utilization of Electrical Energy by C.L.Wadhwa. While Gupta is one of the prescribed books, Wadhwa is one of the reference books. I go to college on the day of the exam and talk to my classmates who are sitting under a tree hoping to be enlightened.

Me: Hey, so have you guys done units 3,4 and 5. I found it quite hard.

Random: Yea da, we guys completed it. Pretty easy really.

Me: Whaaa ? You’re kidding me, right ?

Random: Of course not. What do you find hard in those units da ? It’s all pretty simple really.

Me: Wow, so you guys actually found Illumination due to a strip, due to a circular disc and due to a rectangular source easy ? You’ve done the derivations and problems ?

Random: What ?

Me: huh ?

Random: What are you talking about ?

Me: (Showing them the book) This.

Random: What on earth is that ? Never seen it.

Me: But this is the prescribed book.

Random: Our book doesn’t have it.

Me: What book are you guys using anyway ?

Random: Local Author.

Me: Great. All of you guys ?

Random: Yes.

Me: Ah, just perfect.

None of these guys had bothered themselves with the derivations and problems in various units. What’s more, they didn’t have an idea what was in the syllabus, because they were all using some local author book.

So, after preparing 4 units really well and parts of the 5th unit, I go into to exam hall. This is the question paper I get.

V4172-01

V4172-02

V4172-03

V4172-04

V4172-05

Gupta

Wadhwa

Now, the 2 mark questions were no trouble at all and went well. Coming to the 16 mark questions, this is what pissed me off. Everything I had taken the trouble of studying did not appear. I am sure the guys who used the “Local Author” must be laughing at me. (Actually they did too.)

God only knows how the evaluation will be. For instance, 11(a) the prescribed book only had derivations. Whereas, it seems these guys drew block diagrams and all. :(  I screwed 14 (a) i by writing some shitty stuff and messed up 14(a) ii by once again writing something else.15 (b) is once again messed, mainly because it was simply not there in my book and I was compelled to write what I knew.

There goes the first exam. The second wasn’t any better.