After a tiring hard day, it feels amazing to relax. I was testing my code yesterday and found something wrong. Afternoon, and post-tea session was spent in carrying out the extensive debug operation. We ( Finally I, when I alone could not find it, involved other teammates also :) ) searched entire code, scratched heads, used all possible logic, looked up all possible branches, tried all possible alternatives. But the outcome was simply "void". Just like a void pointer, all efforts finally pointed nowhere. We took a break, had some coffee, snacks, and when we come back it was a different story. All this time we were looking at the code and trying to search error, we knew something's wrong, we even knew what's going wrong, but we just could not place it. When I came back, and looked at the code, the error was obvious. It was right there in front of everybody, we just ignored it all the time. It was as sipmle as making a spelling mistake. Just like adding a semi-colon at the end of while() or for().

But It teached me few things, or rather reminded me of murphy's laws:-
Whenever something goes wrong, it will never go wrong at the most obvious error-prone places. Whenever you drop something, it will always roll up to the most un-accessible place Or in other words Whenever you start searching something, initially it will always be in the wrong direction.

I had been to hogenekkal again on this sunday.
Remember the guide's words, here on this spot film roja's song "dil hai chhotasa" was shot, here this film's song was shot and so on. The list changes with the venue. This time there had been another addition to guide's list "Five KM's from here towards south, Verappan was shot by STF".
As expected the place is real nice. And now the verappan threat is also over, we enjoyed a lot. It really looks good just after the end of rainy season.

Some of the snaps can be found here.

If you happen to travel behind a truck, you can't keep yourself off from reading whatever has been written on the back of truck. Normally you find "O.K. Sound Horn O.K.", "Buri Nazar wale tera muhh kaala", "Tata...Bye Bye..Phir Milenge", "Maa ka ashirwad" etc. When I was small I used to wonder, why these guys write these statements at all. The probability of seeing the same truck again on a highway is a very small number probably they are very optimistic, or who has a time to stop driving and to crib about.

Today I saw new addition to these statements."Please Don, pollute air!!". At the first I thought finally I saw a truck which has some sensible statement written on its back urging people to stop or reduce pollution, then I was cursing the truck driver for driving a truck emitting a thick blanket of smoke. I re-read the statement when the truck had stopped at the signal "Please Don, Pollute Air", I understood, he's actually urging Don to pollute air.

A small spelling mistake can do so much difference in the statements meaning.

Yesterday, we were discussing about the wireless control networks. You have a controller and an end-device, which is what actually you are trying to control. Now we discussed and debated about everything (how system would work and all) for hours, then at the end a question came up. Okay we have a wireless control network. It may happen that there are two adjuscent rooms, each room has a controller and it is to control fans and lights in respective rooms. How will you be sure whether your controller is controlling lights of fans in room A or room B. How will you know which controller is actually controlling whom?.

Finally we got an answer which is absolutely fool-proof, With the controllers and devices, we will ship tons of lead or two truckload of granite, so that signals from one room cannot enter another room.

If you have any fool-proof solution to above problem, you can spend some time to suggest me.

My friend forwarded this too me. Thought this fits nicely with the bangalore. Sadly the state of roads in bangalore as described below happento be true.

Well, it was that time of the night when loneliness is your only companion, and shadows the only followers. It was around 2.00 AM in the morning.

I was bouncing away merrily on Bannerghatta road, when some bright lights stopped me. It took me a few minutes to realise that it was not a movie shooting. It took me a few more minutes to convince myself that this was not an alien landing either.

Though there was a modicum of clarity, there was a shade of doubt too. I proceeded to gamely question a well-clad man of foreign origin. "Shhh" he cautioned me.

Softly I asked him " What's happening brother". "NASA..."he whispered, "I am Dr. Morgan from The Lunar Exploration programme". Like all of us, I was sure I was drunk, or he was!

On watching a few men in spacesuits bumping around I realised he was speaking the truth. On further enquiry, he told me, that NASA had tried to create surroundings that would resemble the rocky, crater filled Moon's surface and had failed miserably. This led to a desperate search for test sites on planet earth.

Very few in earth qualified, only Iraq (An exploded Oil Well), Sri Lanka, and our own Bannerghatta road.

Of course, we were the lowest cost proposition, with Iraq ruled out as a high-risk venture, Sri Lanka because of the prevailing ceasefire, it was expected to have decent roads soon. What matched their needs best was the irreproducible surface that Bannerghatta road offered.

The Mars rover and Endeavour were bouncing away too, on the rugged surface.

They promised "Millions of dollars for using this road, once this gets approved as a broken earth site it will be used regularly. How all of us mortals, cribbed, raved and ranted every time we came across a broken road. How blind we have all been, eyes shut, we refused to view the big picture. Every bad road is a million dollar opportunity. I bade quiet farewells to Dr. Morgan and quietly rode away.

As I reached the BTM flyover and my tyre went flat, I pushed my bike smiling softly.... a million dollars in every bad road I told myself...what do you think?

This is good, particularly if you are lazy to search an "e-mail conversation". You have saved a file on your hard disk, but forgot where exactly and now you desperately want to search it. The conventional windows program is too slow for it. Google's "Desktop Search" searches almost everything on your computer. It's Good Utility; bringing down the most famous and top ranked internet search engine to search your own computer.

If the link is not working, copy and paste the following in your browser and hit go: http://desktop.google.com

मराठीतुन लिहायची ही मझी पहिलीच वॆळ. तसं आधी काधी विचार कॆला नव्ह्ता आणि शाळॆ नंतर कधी मरठीतुनं लिहीण्याचा प्रसंगच आला नाही. त्यामुळॆ grammar कडॆ लक्षं दॆऊ नका. तॆ काय आहॆ की आज एक्दम मराठीतुन लिहायची ईछा झाली म्हणुन. बऱ्याच दिवसांनी जॆव्हा आपण आपल्या ऒळखीच्या लॊकांना भॆटतॊ तॆव्हाचा आनंद काही औरच आसतॊ. काल बऱ्याच दिवसांनी माझा शाळॆतला मित्र भॆटला तर शाळॆच्या आठ्वणी परत एक्दम दाटून आल्या. बराच वॆळ आम्ही शाळॆतल्या दिवसांच्या आठ्वणींमधॆ, भूतकाळमधॆ परत गॆलॊ हॊतॊ. जर तॆ दिवस परत आलॆ असतॆ तर मी बरच काही कॆल असतं. तॆ शाळॆचॆ दिवस, तॆ सरांच शिकवणं, आणि मला नसमजणं, आईच रागवण, बाबांच सकाळी लवकर शाळॆत जाण्यासठी उठ्वणं, रोजप्रमाणॆ उशीरा उठणं आणि बाबांकडुन मार खाणं, शाळॆत अभ्यासां पॆक्क्षा खॆळ आणि मस्ती जास्ती, ईंन्टर क्लास गॅंगवार, सरांच क्लासमधून बाहॆर कढणं आणि काय नाही संध्याकाळी घरी आल्या बरॊबर दप्तर टाकून खॆळ्यला पळणं. आत्ता तॆ सगळं कितीही बालिश वाटल तरीही परत परत तॆ दिवस यावॆ अस वाटतं. कुठॆतरी अजुनही आपल्यात तॊ लहानपणा आहॆ. तरिच फॊनवरचॆ, कम्पुटरवरचॆ खॆळ, जॊक्स, कार्टुन अजुनही मनॊरंजन करतात.