Have you...... !!

Got these by e-mail today morning, edited them slightly to improve the readability!

1. Have you ever wondered that the Titanic met its end why it did, because some engineer defined double values as against float?
2. Have you ever wondered whether to pass the table salt by reference or by value?
3. Have you ever asked someone their physical address as against their residential address?
   

About a Frog!

This is a tale about a frog in the city of Pune and a certain engineering college in the city of Pune. What made this city stand out from others was that apart from being a city slated to be the next IT boomtown, this city was inhabited by frogs! Just frogs and frogs and only frogs! However, as far as our frogs were concerned the college was the city, the city was the college except at times when they would hop over to the cinema!

And believe me when I say these frogs were real smart! At this point it should be mentioned that their city was all wired up by wireless, never mind the low bandwidths they were after all teething problems! But I digress, or maybe not. The city made many of these frogs (who already weren't) tech-savvy and addicted to the internet, specially one notorious lover who would spend hours in the "net centre"! Going back to the smart frogs - hey, they even carried smart cards that weren't smart, teething problems again.... there I digress all over again! However as I talk about their being smart, kindly do not misinterpret it as them being super-frogs, they were like other mortal frogs pouring over texts by human authors like Simon Haykin and John Proakis! (Psst....the preceding text should be read as is, like good engineering students they would rely on plagiarised materials by Pune McGraw Hill!)

Amongst these, there was this one hell of a cute frog, had she been a little bigger she could have passed off as a mouse! A trend setter, this one - wore a skirt in the city one day, and soon half the city was buying skirts, even the not-so-adventurous-ones were talking about skirts! One nice helpful benevolent soul, who even didn't charge the other frogs for the excellent German-English translation services that she offered... But she did go about teaching them "Ich bin verruckt", that literally translates into "I am mad", and these other unknowing frogs proudly said that only to realise the implication of the statement much later!

While the rest of the frogs were publishing papers in state and National level technical symposiums and developing robotic vehicles, there was this one little frog working on smart systems for the blind tadpoles. While her other friends used the sms service with such a frequency that had AT&T continued to keep sms free, as it was back in late 97 if I'm not mistaken, they would have had to resort to text advertisements to recover operational costs... this one believed in telepathy. While her friends would text message hugs and kisses to each other this one telekissed! While the rest of them gave long speeches and presentations and wrote editorials and felt like they owned the city, if not the world, this one helped backstage and helped others pull off what they started - by bunking classes and playing with thermocol and glitter!

And, I could go on and on - a lot of stuff that cannot be put in words, and a lot of things that have gone unnoticed... and the other prominent ones like about the fact that if there ever was a "bad handwriting competition", guess who would have won it?? And then if there ever was someone who kept a record of all blunders by the professors... Guess again? And then about the largest contributer to the canteen and then about the front bench. That reminds me, don't take this little froggy to be all that nice. She's one hell of a mean bitch, more so when it comes to stealing the bench of this other frog... always eyeing her bench!

And I could go on, however before this gets too esoteric and/or boring I shall conclude. This biography is dedicated to the sweetest frog I have known for the last 7 semesters!

Nazdravi Danny, this one's for you!

Cesium 133 - #1

Everyday, at precisely 0249 hours in the morning, or late night if you prefer it that way, Rohan would wake up. Precisely at 0249, like it was something out of a ‘Ripley’s’! The time so precise that you could do away with the complex method to turn cesium atomic resonance into an atomic clock; it would be simpler to calibrate your clocks with the time he would wake up – 0249.

What followed next was a routine of blog-messenger-back to blog and then others. Log on to the computer, and on to his favourite blogger’s haven and then, “Damn, missed it again, by exactly 27 minutes.” The time stamp on the latest post was 0222 that day. He then logged on to the messenger to check if she was online, no luck here either, just a few offline messages, last one at 0238 when she could stay up no further and just had to go! On other days, it would be messenger first then the blog, just in case he managed to catch up with her. Just in case she posts late, just in case she’s up late chatting, just in case….

After some time of loitering on her blog, hitting ‘F5’ or ‘Ctrl-R’ alternately and, finally updating his blog after Rohan ensured all those refresh operations haven’t got him hit by the carpal tunnel syndrome, he would log off from the WWW, go back to sleep. “Sleep”, he mused, was something he needed. “Afterall, tomorrow is a long day, and I just have to look for a job.”

Long before 0430 he would be back to sleep.

And so the story goes, everyday!

Pearl's not posting

Pearl doesn't post, all she does is sit on my head all day long and read everything I type and eats my head about why I don't post any longer. She's been forcing me to post something, hence this! But now that I'm posting, I remember that she also very nicely put u-pins on both my sleeves like her life depended on it.

But but, there is Dan, who also doesn't post, because she wants all of us to tell her how much we miss her.

And then there is Smitha, who is so not interested in posting; I guess he's still reeling from the culture shock in the big bad United States

And then, then there is Akshay. Had I posted this post a couple of days ago, I could have said he's still trying to catch up on his sleep, but in those couple of days he has done much more than that!

And and and my dear friend Praga, I owe you a story, just give me some time; till I get 3/4 of an hour to myself!

And this, this Ladies and Gentlemen, also sums up the readership of my blog. Any other readers I haven't mentioned, you'll have to comment on my blog before I am able to mention you!

Cheers,
K!

And the bug bites one more...

My baby sister all of 13 years is now blogging!

Whats with the blogging bug? Doesn't she know she's a baby, and there is this big big big bad world out there? Now, (here comes the wicked grin) when I was 13 the only thing on my mind was math homework!

Ladies and gentlemen, none the less, it is my pleasure to do the introductions - Pearl.

Cheers,
Kathak

Take me where my future's lying, St. Elmo's fire

I can climb the highest mountain, cross the wildest sea
I can feel St. Elmo's Fire burnin' in me

How to achieve a state of equilibrium!

Dan, a very good friend of mine, has this awesome (?) fear of spiders. Yes dear readers, spiders. Incidentally, she even feels the same for flies and other insects of the kind. Now, the other day, there was this nice big spider on her side view mirrors, and was so petrified that she ended up putting on an acrobatic show in the middle of the road.

What happens next? No, this is not a James Bond story, so he obviously cannot walk in. Who walks in or rather fluidly dances in and scoops the spider away is none other than, another very good friend (and my project partner, god save her) R!

(Psst... Smitha, this is the same female who you once appealed to knock sense into Me, Bi and Lover. She didn't oblige you ;-) but Dan was saved!)

Dan was saved, and the world was in equilibrium again

Bond, James Bond

#1
There is this company in Faridabad - they manufacture auto components. These components require specialised heat treatment process, known as induction heating, the equipment for which costs lakhs of rupees. Now, this company had picked up a machine from a manufacturer in Kanpur, and for some reason the transformers kept blowing off. After a long R&D, they were told they would have to change all capacitors, incurring a total cost of nothing less then 4-5 lakhs. Somewhere during that, they ordered a transformer from my dad, and looking at how the transformers were blowing off, he said the fault was something different, and wouldn't give a days guarantee on the transformer he supplies for that machine. As expected they transformer blew off, and these people were all ready to shell out the dough for the high frequency capacitors... until, Mr. Bond a.k.a my dad walked in. Surveyed the machine, looked all over and in a couple of hours detected the fault - a burnt insulation with a cost of no more than 50 INR!


#2
Another story with another company, again an auto manufacturer, with a machine from the same company in Kanpur. The machine conked off, and the companies engineer was struggling for days. Finally after a good 8-10 days the engineer states that the oscillator value has to be replaced. Now this oscillator valve is a very small priced component, just 3 lakhs! And the company claims, they sent the "best" engineer in the country... so if it has to be replaced, it has to be replaced. In comes Mr. Bond again. In 3 hours and a couple of adjustments to the PCBs the machine is up and working!


Sometimes I figure Dad's stories are much more interesting than mine. But that doesn't mean I'm going to spare you my stories. Coming soon... I'm not disclosing anything yet!