TelePhishy!

So, like I am working away at office and I get a call on my office number:

Caller: Is this Nikhil
Me: Yes this is he
Caller: Sir, I am calling from Amazon!
Me (a bit interestedly): Ok, and
Caller: Sir, you see we are having a convention in Bangalore coming Saturday
Me (interestedly): Ok, and
Caller: Sir, we would like to invite you to be a part of our elite discussion panel about Databases
Me (chest starting to puff up): Why me?
Caller: Sir, you have experience. Don't worry we will pay for your to-fro airfare
Me (reeking of interest): Oh, do you have a website with information about this
Caller: Sir, its happening in Leela. As you know its a 7 star hotel and rest assured we will make all arrangements. I have provided all information, we do not have a website though..
Me (sold on the proposal but suspicious about no online information, its Amazon - hellooo): Ok
Caller: Sir, if you can give me your personal emailid and personal cell number and also refer us to your friends....
Me (chest deflated): Sorry can't do.

There goes my interest poof in a cloud of smoke. If he is inviting me, why does he want me to refer my friends - I am the expert ain't I! Then stupid me realizes that this is tele phishing at its best. He needs mine and my friends information so that he can maybe headhunt me and them later. My office pals, Pavan and Atuld had similar phone calls - but am proud that mine was the grandest tale of them all :P

You know, for a while, I was already on the dais addressing an august assembly, giving fundaes about databases and whatever little I know about it - dream on.. :)

Under the OAK tree

So, last weekend, my cousin bro who is studying engineering at a college in Pune, took me to a counseling workshop by Dilip Oak. It was supposed to be a workshop on how to interpret the I 20 (it is a form received by hopeful US college admission seekers) and then how to fill up the relevant US visa forms. People (cousin included) had paid huge sums of money for this additional counseling. I was like WTF!!!! Is this the amount of spoon feeding people need nowadays? Aren't students intelligent enough to figure out how to fill up a form?

On retrospection, it seems people always try to be safe (I guess, I would too. I have been guilty of spending my mom's hard earned money on tuitions for my senior high school..). At the end of the day it is just some financial inconvenience, but I guess the peace of mind that one derives by settling for such counseling outweighs the inconvenience. One thing I am sure about though - Dilip Oak does not mind all of this and is surely laughing all the way to his bank with the enormous kitty :)

Am I Online!

So, some time back I wrote about Open Contributions. As a follow up, me and Ashish (my friend and office colleague who also happens to be the spokesperson for PostgreSQL in India) met up with folks from the media. We had a good session of Q & A, with us trying to put across the gist of what open source and contributing to it means. Check it out!

The article is pretty fine, but what got me a bit amused was the reference to me as "Nikhil S"! I am sure my visiting card mentions my full name (goes and affirmatively cross checks). But I figured that maybe, it has to do with my online presence. I tend to use "NikhilS" in a lot of my conversations on mailing lists and generally on emails too! Blame it on my tryst at this place quite a while back. But this reference surely means that I have an online presence (pretty small though) where people actually might know me as "Nikhil S"! I am not sure who amongst us is Jekyll and Hyde though. Keep guessing ;)

Rough Road !!

Is what certainly participants of the reality show MTV Roadies have to tread on! I have never watched the earlier series completely ever, but this time I have been following these bunch of people around their international sojourn with one eye open. It's an interesting show in many ways. For one, people get to bike around for fun doing odd stunts here and there.
But what is more interesting is to see this game bring out the beast from within you! I read Animal Farm some time back and the summary there was that "All animals are political by nature". The same applies to this show, and it brings out all the machiavellian instincts to the fore out of these participants. Guys and girls alike, scheme, plot, curse, form temporarily beneficial bonds only to regroup in distinctly different ways on the exit of one participant every week. I think its a remarkable display of the entire possible range of human behaviorism necessary for survival and to stay in the game till the end. Check it out whenever you can and marvel at us complex beings :)

Tarantino Valentino!

So, another Valentine's day is around the corner. Am sure, we will see the usual self-imposing moralists breaking some hard-working man's greeting cards store on the occasion. Am sure, the price of a rose will shoot up to justify your LOVE on that day. Am sure, couples will try to be as effusively mushy as possible on that day. Am sure, an inappropriate number of candles will be sacrificed at the altars of the 'them-lit' dinners on that day. Oh am sure, that all love related cliches will abound on that very day.

Its a bit ho-hum actually if you ask me. Pi too was not enthused by my suggestions of a working lunch or a definitely-crowded dinner routine. So for us, its going to be an evening show of "American Gangster" - the recent Denzel Washington starrer, supposedly an excellent telling of a true crime story!! Romantic - eh ;)

Open Contributions

One of the things that I wanted to do on joining my current place-of-work was to contribute in an open source manner. But whoever thinks contributing to open source is a piece of cake is mistaken! First of all, most open source projects are thoroughly professional nowadays. PostgreSQL is a prime example. It's not as easy as submitting any piece of code which compiles and works, to be pushed into the product. Infact, its an arduous journey where patience is a great virtue to possess. It starts off with one identifying what the project needs. Many projects have official TODO lists around which make the job easier. Then an important thing is to identify which is the piece of the pie that you can eat - meaning identifying the work item which you think you can contribute to as per your current capacity/knowledge of the code base. After that begins the journey of putting your case in the community mailing lists. The list does make it hard on you by trying to ask all kinds of difficult questions. Why should we do it, why and how you propose to do it, will you be able to do it. It's all in your face literally and can easily intimidate a person and to make him think twice about contributing. Patience again comes to your rescue. After the list agrees that something should be worked upon, then one starts coding and producing work-in-progress patches that should be periodically sent to the list just to let them know that you are not in deep slumber pondering over the work. Some good souls, even take it upon themselves to test your work out and provide constructive feedback. Some established souls, take a look at your work-in-progress and can immediately suggest further course of actions, feedback and the likes. Then comes the final day, after toiling around for quite a while, when you submit the final code and it gets committed!

How do I know this - you ask. Well, I too have been brave enough in the past to take on this path and have succeeded a wee bit in making humble contributions back to my current favourite open source project - PostgreSQL. Today PostgreSQL 8.3 was released and it was gratifying to see my name as one of the contributors to some new functionality added. Now that I have been through this before, its a bit easier and I will definitely be contributing to the future releases whenever I can.

CARnama!

So, I like big cars. I am an average Indian, but when it comes to cars, most Indians prefer small cars. Its a no-brainer then that Nano is an indigenous product and from the looks of it a nifty little one at that.

Lately, I have been harboring thoughts of upgrading my car. And when I say I harbor thoughts, I don't just keep the thought ship docked at the port, I actually venture out to deep waters. Whether the thought ship reaches its destination or not is another matter :)

I had zeroed out on a City ZX GXi model, but my amigos mentioned that for it's worth one does not even get safety features like ABS, Driver/Passenger side Airbags. I mean, WTF! for the price tag, I had thought these mid-sized cars should have everything thrown in, leather seats and stuff!

After some hours of internet research later, SX4 seems to be the only car which has everything thrown in (yeah, even an input socket in its music player, for your IPOD like gizmos).

Hmmm, sad part, I don't like the way it looks and reports say its difficult for 3 people to be comfy in the back seat. Looks like this thought ship might just get watered out soon :p