Relationship Rules !!!

These are some of the Relationship Rules, I stumbled upon on the World Wide Web.

Here we go,
1. The FEMALE always makes the rules.
2. The rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification...by the FEMALE.
3. No MALE can possibly know all the rules.
4. If the FEMALE suspects the MALE knows all the rules, she must immediately change some or all of them.
5. The FEMALE is never wrong.
6. If the FEMALE is wrong, it is due to a misunderstanding which was a direct result of something the MALE did or said wrong.
7. The MALE must apologize immediately for causing the misunderstandings.
8. The FEMALE may change her mind at any time.
9. The MALE must never change his mind without the express written consent of the FEMALE.
10. The FEMALE has every right to be angry or upset at any time.
11. The MALE must remain calm at all times, unless the FEMALE wants him to be angry or upset.
12. The FEMALE must, under no circumstances, let the MALE know whether or not she wants him to be angry or upset.
13. The MALE is expected to "mind read" at all times.
14. The MALE who doesn't abide by the rules; can't take the heat, lacks backbone, and is a wimp!
15. Any attempt to document the rules could result in bodily harm.
16. The FEMALE is ready when SHE is ready.
17. The MALE must be ready at ALL times

Disclaimer: -

Person who created these rules can claim them Suo Moto, I would be more than happy to meet the creative person.

Integrated Thoughts !!!

A famous Marathi proverb goes somewhat like this

"जैसा बोले तैसा चाले तोची खरा संत " !!!

which means " The one who walks exactly like the ways he talks ( read preaches ) , is the Saint".

All these days I was wondering why all the mishaps and the accidents in the world take place. And after I got the 7 stitches, I have kind of figured out what it can be.

How many times

• We have had hiccups while drinking water ?
  
• Bumped into someone accidently ?
  
• Dashed a vehicle by mistake ?
• etc.
• etc.

What could be the reason ? What is it ? Let us dig deep in our mind. In this era, everyone is busy doing so many things at a time, that the mind is cluttered all around by thoughts. Multi-Tasking is the word, so while we are doing one thing physically our mind is in some other task. It is like you are giving your autographs to the person in the front of the queue, but looking at someone else in the crowd. :P

The gist of the above lines is that we (read "I" ) must concentrate on only one thing at a time and not have so many things in our mind at the same time.

Happy Blogging !!!

Timing !!!

They say being at the right place at the right time is the secret of success, in iota, we call it Timing ! For a die hard Indian cricket fan, it only reminds us of one man, the Prince of Kolkata Sourav Ganguly. Sourav was known as " The God of Off side" only because of his exquisite timing.

So what made me write about Timing. These days I am captivated by the importance of timing. The timing of the rains this year went wrong and it managed so, in the worst time of all, to add to the woes of the Recession hit India.

And now that the farmers have had their share of waiting long enough for the rains and almost lost hope Rain Gods are providing with untimely yet pleasant rains. But one wonders whether the rains have come a bit too late. Well, who knows only the time would tell.

Coming back to untimely rains, we are forced to think about the reasons. Without a shadow of a doubt one of the reasons has to be the US. ( It's not US as in United States, It's us the human beings ) . Details are left to the environmentalists, as they only can scrutinize the reasons of such hostile behavior of Mother Nature. Environmentalist can only lighten up US on issues like Global Warming etc...

Timing !!! huh,

• well how do U feel when U r driving and enjoying the pleasure, and suddenly rain pours down
• when U r looking at U r favorite things ( ;) ) and somebody disturbs U.
• when U r concentrating hard, and somebody interrupts U.
• when U r sipping a nice cup of coffee, and suddenly the dool bell rings.
• when U r reading this post, and U r internet disconnects. ( I hope this wouldn't happen)
  

It's all about Timing, at last. My time(-ing) for this post is over. Catch U later.

England win back the Ashes !!!

Congratulations to the England team for winning the Ashes after 4 long years again ! They say history repeats itself and my word it has done again.

The last time England took on Australia on this ground four years ago, it was a marathon Andrew Flintoff bowling spell either side of lunch on the fourth day which halted the tourists in their tracks after openers Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden struck hundreds.

Today, when Ponting and Hussey were going along nicely on a pitch which was being seen as one of the toughest pitches and an agricultured one, Freddie Flintoff was back in Action. It took a stupendous run out effort from Flintoff to get Ponting out. Had it not been the case, who knows we might have seen again a great Australian chase.

Ponting had been in ominous form, during more than two and a half hours at the crease, and was intent it seemed on driving the series finale into a fifth day.

But his departure opened up an end for England to attack and euphoric celebrations reminiscent of 2005 began at 5.48pm when Hussey was taken at short leg off Graeme Swann.

All is well that ends well, so has it for Andrew Flintoff. A great farewell match to end with and gift from the colleagues as big as the Ashes series is what he would have wanted.Celebrations would have begun and may be up until the next morning. And I guarantee that Freddie will be undoubtedly be the center of those celebrations.

And at last, who say Test Cricket's days are over. Well I have one thing to say, it is far more intriguing and entertaining as we have seen in the last couple of months. Test Cricket is here to stay as it is the real test of a Cricketer.

Bhuvan !!!

Bhuvan!!! Sounds like the name of the Protagonist ( Aamir Khan) in the Oscar nominated Hindi Film "Lagaan".

Just came across this new invention by Indian scientists. If you are thinking what it is, at the outset I would like you to know that it's an indigenous satellite mapping tool developed by the ISRO ( Indian Space Research Organization). You must wondering what this is doing on my blog, to sum it up it is a matter of pride for all Indians that our very own highly talented and intellectual scientists have developed a tool for India. The entire world knows that most of the scientists in the so called Developed countries are Indians, and when they invent or innovate something, the credit goes to the respective country. But now avoiding the Brain Drain and the so called Intellectual Property Rights, Indian scientists are back with a bang.

It's Jai Ho !!! time once again for Indians as in this era of recession there is a dearth of good news.

The talk of town is " Will Bhuvan replace Google Earth ? " Let's see how Bhuvan lives up to the expectations.

Will keep you updated about Bhuvan in the next post.

For further details you can visit the following link and cherish this Indian achievement : -

http://bhuvan2.nrsc.gov.in/Bhuvan/WebClient/PresentationLayer/home/index.aspx?

The 7 Stitches !!!

Well U must be wondering where was I after the "Mobile" lecture. In the next lecture, I punished the culprits by calling their Dad's from my mobile. :P

So, Here I am, back again after a minor incident which has left a deep imprint ( read CUT ) on my right hand. As I write this post, there is definite sting in my forehand.

The story goes like this, we had finished up the Independence Day on 15th August and was looking for one of the lecturers since I had to take money from her, which she had kept since ages. The money she was carrying was of the WAD ( Workshop on Aptitude Development), I being the sincere student of Gole Sir was made the WAD Co-ordinator of my college.

They call it the irony of life, few months back I was denied a place in WAD organizing when I was a student, by some shrewd SRKNEC student organizers of WAD .

Moving on, I was moving with only one thing in mind that I had to take the money from her, as she had kept the money till the last date and if I had not taken it from her on that day; 5 students would not have got a place in the WAD. ( of course blame would have been on her ).

So, as I was moving looking at her ( money in the mind :P ) , came the magic moment. I banged on the glass door and the glass broke. Few glass pieces managed to kiss my forehand rather poked it, And hence the stitches.

I wonder how this might have happened,

• Did somebody ( read the boy whom I punished for giving missed calls ) curse me ?
  
• My mom said, " Nazar lagali" ( read Evil Eye) as she opined I was looking good on that day.
• etc
• etc
• etc :P

Whatever the reason might be, one thing is sure I have to live with stitches for 7 more days. I had to shell out 1000 bucks for the treatment ( again a long story regarding 1000 bucks ), few more for the material they used for operating on my hand.

I should stop typing now, as my hand ( read stitches ) are stinging again . Next post will definitely be " After Effects of the Independence Day " or " After Effects of the Broken Glass", be it anything one thing is sure, it would be interesting.

Confessions of a Lecturer !!! continued...

Well this is the continued episode of the series Confessions of a Lecturer. In my student life, I never gave a thought to what a professor goes through while doing his job. To sum it up, a lecturer's job is not that easy as it seems. The lectures, DMR's (it's Daily Monitoring Reports), juggling with time table to ensure the lectures are taken in proper order (read improper) as per the Time table. There are some lazy bones out there who do not waste an opportunity to take the first lecture, so that they can relax for the rest of the day, and mind you they can go to any extent to pounce on such an opportunity. Well.... it's an opportunistic world anyways.

Well a pretty monotonous day today, nothing much. But yes, a suggestion for people who wish to take up lecturer-ship as a career. Never give your mobile number to your students, as your so called sincere students might take the opportunity to give you that famous MISSED CALL while you are taking a lecture. Thankfully, I had given my number to only one student. The student seemed sincere enough to me so I gave it to him, but one smart student took it from his notebook, and guess what he did today?? The other student started giving missed calls on my mobile.

I called back but there was no answer, I figured out something was wrong and my guess was right, it was a student from the class. I made sure from the boy whether he shared my mobile number with someone else and gave the received number to him. He has told me it's of the student from my class only. Well the day was over by that time. Will look after that boy in the lecture.

Anyways thank you for reading so much. See U later with updated info. Bye . Take care.

Confessions of a Lecturer !!! Unit III

Chapter 1

As before starting any lecture, you don't know what's going to happen in the lecture ; I don't know what will be the content of this post. Today I took 2 lectures, one on DBMS and another on Visual Basic 6.0.

First one went pretty cool. Here are some excerpts from the first one. Frankly speaking, I didn't prepare for today's lecture as the current chapter is all about SQL ( Structured Query Language) which is in a way my forte. There is one interesting thing that I have encountered while teaching, that you must be careful with your words especially refrain from words which might have a double meaning.

After finishing a topic today, I asked the students "Line maro" ( i.e draw a line) few of them mistook it for something else and started laughing. Before I went into splits, I corrected myself and told them " Line maro NOTEBOOK mein"(i.e draw a line IN THE NOTEBOOK) *** Laughter again***. A lesson for the student who had once asked " Sir where to write"( refer LOLism post).
So nothing more interesting in this lecture.

If you thought first lecture was cool, the second was Cooler. Will cover the second lecture in Chapter 2 of this Unit. Till then Goodbye. It was nice to have U here. Adios !!!

Confessions of a Lecturer !!! Unit II

LOLism !!!

Hi Guys (and Gals), welcome back. I am sure U must be wondering y this post is called LOLism :D.?

Well the reason is obvious, I will share all the dumbness that I have encountered during my tenure of lecturership in the last month. So here we go,

Chapter 1 :-

One fine lecture, I was dictating some topic, I explained it on the blackboard and asked the students to draw the diagram. After that I said, "Write Down". One smart student asked, "Sir where to write". ( I said to myself ' Write on my head bloody') Then me again, " where else ? in the notebook of course". ** entire class bursts into laughter**

Chapter 2 : -

My college has a OMS ( Outside Maharashtra Seat) quota. So most of the students are from other states and most of them are Bihari. So the other day, I was teaching Creating Table in Oracle to the students. I gave the syntax to the students, and asked them to create a table of their own. Some were able to do it, some couldn't and the latter had their doubts cleared about Creating a Table in Oracle. So after almost all the students had their tables created, one fine student stood up and asked, " Sir mujhe plz batayiye TABLEWAA kaise banate hai", **laughter in the class**.

When I went to his PC to see what he had written, the Create Table statement looked like this, --->
Create Tablewaa Student ( Rollno number(3), Name varchar2(10));

Consequence is left to the readers to guess. ( I couldn't stop smilling, but somehow had enough patience to explain the correct version of Create Tablewaa statement).

Later on came to know that one of his colleagues from Bihar had asked him, "TABLEWAA banana hai". (OMG)

PS: - This post is not intended to offend the sentiments of the Biharis.

The Hall of Infame !!!

The recent furor about the Indian players not signing the WADA ( World Anti Doping Agency) has compelled us to rethink about the drug scandals in the past, and how WADA is taking preventive measures to curb the practice of taking drugs. However, this does not mean I support any one particular party in this speculation.

Let's take a look back at some of the incidents in the past where cricketers were found guilty of taking drugs for performance enhancement.

In 2003, just when the World Cup was about to start the Legendary leg spinner Shane Warne was sent home from South Africa after the drug test conducted by Cricket Australia. The drug that Warne used is said to be used to mask the presence of other drugs.


In 2008, the Indian Premier League revealed that a player had tested positive for banned substances during the first edition of the tournament and on July 14, it was revealed that the player in question was Asif.On February 11, 2009, the IPL confirmed that Asif had tested positive for steroids and subsequently imposed a one year ban on him, ending on September 21, 2009. Shortly before the IPL's announcement, Asif was released of his contract by the Delhi DareDevils.

Mohammad Asif's teammate Shoaib Akhtar has been also caught guilty of taking drugs umpteen number of times. A former PCB spokesperson had always suspected Shoaib for doping due to his reluctance towards drug test.

If we go on counting such occurences in the history of Cricket, we would have number of them.

• Legendary England all-rounder Sir Ian Botham was suspended briefly in 1986 for smoking cannabis.
• Asim Butt played three matches in the 2005 season for Scotland, taking three wickets but being expensive, before he tested positive for ecstasy during a match with Somerset.
• Former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming survived controversy in 1995 when he was caught and admitted to smoking marijuana with teammates Matthew Hart and Dion Nash while on the tour to South Africa at their hotel. Nash and Hart were suspended following the incident.
• In May 2005, former England all-rounder Dermot Reeve revealed that he was addicted to cocaine, and that he had commentated on a Test match the previous year under the influence of the drug. Reeve also admitted to using Marijuana whilst he was an active player for Warwickshire but only out of season.

The above incidents are a few of the incidents which can malign the spirit of cricket. But it certainly does not mean all cricketers undergo such (mal)practices. The fact that whether our Indian cricketers should sign the WADA contract or not, is left to them and WADA. As genuine Cricket fans, all we want to see is PURE cricket.

Microsoft's New Search Engine !!! Bing !!!

So here we are again, the clash of the Titans continues. Microsoft has decided to revamp it's LIVE search ( and take on Google search ) and renamed it as Bing. But it's not that only the name has changed. MS has added a whole lot of features. Here are a few of them ( in fact lot's of them).

When I logged on to Bing for the first time, here's what I got







So let's go deeper into the new LIVE search engine.

According to Microsoft, Bing lets you find Web content fast and excels at refining searches so that you can unearth the lowest airfares, discover reviews of neighborhood boutiques, or track down reliable health information from the Mayo Clinic.



In Bing, Microsoft introduces a Quick Previews feature that provides a text-based synopsis of the pages displayed in your search results. When you drag your mouse cursor over individual search results, a Quick Previews box of data pops up, containing information from the site.

Bing peppers its search results with what Microsoft calls Instant Answers. As the name implies, Instant Answers entries serve up answers to common questions related to currency conversion, weather forecasts, movie times, or whatever you're investigating.

Save & Share lets you save, organize, and share recent searches. You can share searches with Facebook or Windows Live friends, or save them to your Microsoft SkyDrive folder. The Save & Share function not only allows you to save your favorite searches, but also lets you organize them into folders and add notes to them.

According to Microsoft, 50 percent of all searches are repeats; saving your favorite searches offers a shortcut to the results of a search that you might otherwise have to repeat from scratch.

The primary difference between Live Search and Bing is the user interface. Bing Image and Video Search is more intuitive than its predecessor, Microsoft says, and all of the filtering tools are conveniently and consistently grouped in the Explorer Pane.

Microsoft retooled Live Search's Image and Video Search to make it easier for users to find full-length TV shows, music videos, and other video content from leading content providers such as Hulu and YouTube.

Microsoft has updated the search engine's interface so that you can extract what the company calls “sentiment” regarding a particular service or business. This feature works by scanning consumer product ratings from sites such as CitySearch.com and Yelp.com, and mashing those results together with Bing search results.

For example, a search for “Chinese restaurants” brings up a 'Local' tab in the left-hand pane (the Explorer Pane) of the search results page. Select this tab, and you can browse local Chinese restaurants within a geographical area you select. Click on one of the restaurants listed in the search results, and Bing serves up a Score Card containing ratings for several key criteria: 'Atmosphere', 'Food Quality', and 'Return Potential'.

Suppose that you're shopping for a Nikon D90 digital SLR (or some other product). Bing will deliver detailed reports--not search results--for the product in question, pulling images, pricing information, user reviews, expert reviews, and much more from various Web sites and neatly displaying the information on a single page. Search reports include active data that you can sort by various criteria, yielding product details in one click, along with expert reviews from leading tech Web sites.

Using technology that it acquired when it purchased Farecast in 2008, Microsoft brings some uniquely advanced technology to search queries involving travel and buying tickets. Farecast, a tool for comparing airfares, uses a predictive algorithm to recommend when you should purchase your airline ticket. The Farecast technology is tightly integrated with Bing, so you can use advanced pricing tools from within Bing's search results.

Farecast technology enables Microsoft to bring smarts to the task of finding good prices for hotel reservations. When you search for accommodations within a specific region, Bing travel results show you a category of results that it calls Hotel Deals. According to Microsoft, Bing calculates the historical price of a room at a specific hotel, compares that price with the current rate that the hotel is offering, and assesses whether the current price is a good deal or not.

Bing offers a wealth of new content from the Mayo Clinic, allowing it to serve up reliable data on health topics such as diabetes, cancer, and swine flu. A test query for "swine flu" yielded a Mayo Clinic overview of the H1N1 type A influenza strain.

Confessions of a Lecturer !!! Unit I

1st of August 2009, Saturday !!! Fondly known as Weekend, and boy what a weekend it was. Simply no work and all play !!!

Well in my college students don't deliberately visit on Saturday, and frankly speaking all the lecturers (including me) are OK ( actually more than OK) with it. So the day was full of fun with no lectures.

Since there were no lectures me and my colleagues had planned a Card game the whole day, but it didn't turn out to be that ways, as one of the colleagues forgot to bring the cards. :( So as any IT guy would do for a pastime, we decided to have an encounter with a PC. First, we thought we could watch a movie on it, but here comes the sad part again, b'coz we didn't have any movie in our USB drives and no other means to get it. So our next venture as it turned out, was walking into the age old lab and find something interesting. :P.

Interestingly, one of my senior lecturers told us to assemble the PC's rightly. So as in any organization, even if you don't like the job you have to do it, although reluctantly. ( Someone rightly said Work is Worship ). So we did our worshipping and got down to our venture again. i.e finding something interesting which would last the whole day as an entertainment.

And guess what we got, a bunch of Flash enabled games which were supposedly saved on one of the PC's by a student. ( I really wish all students should do this, after all lecturers also need some entertainment when they are not busy ).

Now that we had got our share of pastime, we managed to get a PC into Gents Staff room and installed the games. But by then it was 12:20pm, and it was Lunch time so playing games was abandoned. After the lunch, again the same thought of " How to bide time ? " hovered us. So back to PC again, but as after any afternoon meal we started playing.

Here comes the funny part, firstly we decided to put our head down on the benches and sleep, slowly one of us gathered courage to sleep with his back to the wall and then we all thought " What are we doing? " , no we didn't abandon the thought of sleeping, actually we decided to lock the door from inside and had the audacity to sleep with the whole body on the benches.

Finally we woke up after an hour, when the door creaked and all of us were awake. But still some time was left and as usual routine it was spent in the canteen.

So all & all, a Wonderful first part of the weekend. Bye. See U soon. Have a nice time.