Archive for July, 2007

My birthday gift - A Tetanus Shot!

July 13th, 2007

Yesterday night, after watching Vaccancy @ Adlabs, as I entered the parking area of Mariplex to pickup my bike, I saw a small kitten getting into Chauhan uncle’s scooter. The vehicles’s hood was big enough for the tiny kitten to sleep there (with all the vehicles roaring past it & all the dogs barking at each other in the parking lot).

I had an instant thought - what if Chauhan uncle came down & drove straight to home? He would never ever know what happened inside the hood of his scooter - the kitten would be crushed in just one sec!

I stood there for about 15 minutes, trying to get the kitten out - tried to shoo him out, tried to hush him out, tried to poke him out with a makeshift stick but nothing doing! But I knew he was in there as he was meowing back at me…

Finally the shift changed & Chauhan uncle came down & I asked him to turn the scooter to one side without moving the wheel - he did as carefully as possible & I rotated the wheel slowly & there - I could see the kitten’s head popping out - I tried a few times & I saw his tail - which I pulled as hard as I could.

I did managed to get him out but the dude dug his front teeth right into my left hand’s index finger :D ouch!

Knowing nothing, what to do with him - had I left him there, he would have went inside another car (Mickey always used to hide inside cars! & that always used to scare me alot!) & had we let him on the ground, the nearby dogs would have tore him apart! We (me & Subu - who had joined me till then) decided to let him go free in the lawns where he would have ample places to hide.

I could have let him stay there in the hood of that scooter thinking - to each, his own destiny - but then I would have never forgiven myself for doing nothing when my actions could have mattered!

The vet has suggested me to go for a Tetanus shot - what more weird a birthday gift can be :D But I would be glad when I’ll take it in the evening!

Posted in Life | Comments (6)

Plans for my birthday?

July 12th, 2007

Umm, nothing concrete… but I guess the following are in the pipeline :)

Oh yes, Anna has just uploaded the pics from Ratish’s birthday - find them all here. Some of the memorable ones…


Meet Ratish, our B’day boy!


The yummy, eggless cake - which was cut into innumerable pieces hehe


The gang! From left - Ravi, Anna, Ratish (on phone), Bijith & Rama


& ofcourse, how can I miss myself from the photo shoot :D :D :D


Made for each other - hahahaha hehe - look at that - aww… Ravi & Ratish :D

PS: Just an update - my feet are almost perfect now - after Sunday night’s fall from the stairs. The crepe bandages are gone, pain has vanished & the dudes are getting back into shape with passing time. Though the docs have suggested to keep them on an elevated position while sleeping -maybe just to ease the blood circulation & stuff - tech medic stuff… whoa!

When I went to Ruby Hall Hospital that night, from what I saw in the Casualty ward - really made me believe that since God couldnt be visible to everyone, everywhere, he made doctors! The way these guys work & with such tireless patience - is beyond appreciation. Always ready to help every other patient that comes to them. Really, Hats off for them! :)

Ratish, I owe you a big one! Had you not been there on Sunday night - taking me to the hospital at 12 midnight, I wouldnt have gauged the actual extent of damage (which luckily was very superficial). Thanks a ton dude - you guys are a family away from my family :D

Posted in A strong urge to blog..., Life in Pune, Roomies | Comments (5)

Fast forwarding Ruby…

July 8th, 2007

Saturday was a massively tiring day - Work started at 1AM, prepared atleast 100 questions for the oncoming day after finishing 3 books straight one after another! Slept at 4AM - plan was to get up at 7 & be in office by 9AM - but as always, dear sleep turned out to be so dear that I only managed to get up at 9AM, making it to office at only 10:50AM & got straight down to the business - after almost 6 hours of nonstop interviewing, the moment I reached back home I took the bed, slept from 7PM to 11:30 AM… & guess what? Got straight down to Ruby business as soon as I could - 12:30PM :)

So… just finished 11 chapters from Beginning Ruby & did a few sample programs - & I hope that should be enough to get me started hands on with Rails :D

Off to reading Agile Web Development with Rails

Posted in Ruby | Comments (5)

Understanding the XMMS equalizer

July 7th, 2007

For people like me, who have almost no technical knowledge of what elements compose a sound stream - specially today’s music, managing the equalizer to get just the right music is bit too much experimenting. All I want is my music to sound just right!

Admist all the preparation I’m doing for tomorrow, I managed to get hold of Tyronne (my new roomy, the earlier Sinhalese language maintainer at Red Hat, now working with the JBoss team) and asked him to explain me the equalizer settings & what frequency means what & how to best utilize it.

ATM, i’m listening to Salim Shahzada’a Aaja Nachle & the setting I did a few songs back is still rocking my ears! I’ve tried configuring xmms’s equalizer for pleasant vocals & the following setting is seemingly good for what I wanted :D

Following will help you to decide the best setting for you (what follows is not technical info but what I understood from what Tyronne told me - but the above setting is nice for lyrics heavy songs)

The above equalizer setting is sounding soo good that I’ve saved it as the default preset :D

Posted in Just for archive, Music | Comments (0)

A crash course in Ruby!

July 6th, 2007

First program I saw on Ruby was the greeter code on ruby-lang.org & coming from Python world, it seemed very intuitive. Next came the 20 minutes Ruby Quickstart which actually took a lot less :D - tried some stuff in the browser console :)

I just managed to finish the Appendix A of Beginning Ruby & am already feeling much at home with Ruby. Lets see how soon can I get my hands dirty with Rails! But first… some sleep :D

[Update]

You need to check this out!!!
Envying Rails!

Part 1, 2, 3, 4

[/update]

Posted in Ruby | Comments (2)

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