Colleagues

I would like to dedicate this post to my friends in LM. These are my feelings I couldn't express(who couldn't hear me) during our gathering and I am glad I did not make our last lunch emotional.

I would like to thank each and everyone of you. These 9 months of working with you are the best of everything,its been pleasure working with THE best of people be it talent or work ethics or team work and for the chances to be part of many interesting experiences. I truly enjoyed working with you and you all have been really inspiring. I have had my good and bad moments and thank you for all the support, guidance and encouragement you have provided me during my time here.



I have picked many good things from you and you have been more as friends rather than colleagues to me. I cherish all the moments we spent at work, potlucks, team lunch, dinners and gatherings. I still remember my initial days in the project and thank you for accepting me as a part of the team. Every one of you have been very sweet to me. I will miss you all.

I wish you all the best in your future endeavors and I hope my new job will give me rewarding experiences and supportive friends.

Today, I felt the pain of leaving my colleagues and realized how important it is to have good colleagues. It took me few seconds to say hello, but I am still struggling to say good bye.

PS: Do not get emotional, I cannot provide kleenex :-)

Cheers,
G

Windows Shortcuts

It’s been a while I updated my blog. I have found few shortcut keys in windows. Most of you know about those, but thought would be good if they are all in one place.
Windows + E – Explorer
Windows + R – Run
Windows + M – Show Desktop
Windows + Shift + M – Maximize all
Windows + L – Lock Desktop
Windows + F – Search

Internet explorer
ALT + D – Address Bar
Notepad
ALT + O + W – Word Wrap
F5 – Date & Time
Will update this with Google/Gmail shortcuts soon!
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6594
Here is the link for gmail shortcuts.

Cheers,
G

For Fun

Well trying to hard to start the post :D

Anywayz here's one joke:

I was supposed to go to meeting at 10'0 clock, so I got ready with the information and notes by 9:45AM. I still had time, so was talking with other colleagues. One of my colleague had to make a phone call, I guess to the Customer Service of some XYZ bank.

You probably know how Customer Service people verify whether you have authorization of the account blah blah... blah. Its pretty common that Americans some times do not understand our typical desi accent. I will not specify the actual name of the person, but lets say his name is Mithun/Seema. We usually explain our name to Customer Service people as M for Miami, I for Indiana or something that is common to everyone. Guess what this person explained ... hahahaaaa ... M for Mithun/S for Seema :-)

It seemed veryyyyyy funny, the way he explained his name. This is situational comedy, it could be fun or may not be. To me, Yes it was!

Cheers,
G

Surprise this weekend

I got a big surprise this weekend, I could never forget it.

How would you feel, when you get a call in the midst of a farewell party and you are asked to check your apartment, because somebody was waiting for you whom you would never expect, and that person is the most dearest one to you personally. It was a very nice experience to me.


It was 11:30 in the night, I got a call from my cousin to return to the apartment to meet a person who has been waiting for me. I was kind of reluctant to leave the party because it was a farewell party for my friend who got a job in other state, and it was night to go alone. Somehow, I managed to come to my apartment, I didn't find anyone :-(. I thought it was my cousin's prank. I went to my room, and was shocked/surprised (mixed feelings) to see another person in my room. That person was the dearest and the most lovable person so far, in my life. I was speechless for few moments, but then I was jumping out of joy :-)

That was my weekend.

Cheers,
G

Things I learnt today

Thank You - Grazie in Italian
- Danke in German
- Gracias in Spanish
- Merci in French
You are welcome - Prego

See you again - Ciao' in Rome
- au revoir in French

hehee ... nice to learn new things :)

Now-a-days I am exploring flickr, its nice to see the pictures of others, appreciate their pictures and getting appreciations from others.

Cheers,
G

QWERTY

Does this sound familiar to you. Yes, it does. This is the most common term when it comes to passwords :-). ohh wait, this word is more familiar to me than the password. Any guesses?? Ok, I will directly come to the point. Those are the first six keys on the keyboard below numbers and our keyboards are called QWERTY keyboards. For more information on QWERTY keyboards, you can go through the below link.

http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html


I was reading newspaper in the metro. There is an article that is published in the newspaper about Emoticon that said " :-)
Twenty-five years ago, three keystrokes - a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis - were first used as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message by Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman, the university said". I was thinking about the professor, how creative he would have been, and then I got a doubt, is there a specific order for the keys on the keyboard or they are just arranged randomly. The order of keys on the keyboard were arranged to increase the typing speed to 100 words per minute on the type writer.

One of my colleague gave me some information about the keyboards that the key Return on the type writers keyboard is in turn replaced by Enter on electronic keyboards produced by IBM and later on special keys like function keys and number pads were included on the keyboards.

Isn't it exciting to know such stuff. To me yes it is, because I didn't know this earlier. Its good to know things we do not know about.

Will come up with such interesting things soon.

Cheers,
G

My vacation trip

Its been a while, I visited my blog. hmm looks like its time to fill my blog :-)

My trip to Chicago and Pittsburgh was awesome, but my flight journey to Chicago was terrible. A long story ... bad weather in Chicago ... airports were shutdown ... flights got canceled ... luggage was missing blah blah blah ... This is the second time I am visiting Chicago, but I never went to heart of Chicago (downtown) earlier. The view of Michigan Lake and downtown from the entrance of the aquarium was amazingly beautiful. I just loved it. We went to the top of Sears tower and for me it was thrilling, to stand on 10x'th floor and viewing Chicago.


My Pittsburgh trip was also good. We all know there is a famous temple in Pittsburgh.Apart from that, there are botanical gardens and parks which are worth visiting. I visited 'Phipps', I took some pictures, they are awesome. The glass work in the garden is phenomenal. I also enjoyed the cruise organized by Gateway Clipper Fleet. The duration on the cruise was 2 hrs. with dinner served, it was so romantic. The cruise took us to the intersection of three rivers Allegheny, Mahogany and Ohio at sunset. It was beautiful sight. Will post pictures soon.


Its good to have break occasionally from the usual routine work. I used to believe that we do not know the value of good time if we did not have bad time in our life time. This is something my mom used to teach me from my childhood, and that is true in my case. Its good to have certain small pleasures in life.

Cheers,
G

Consulting

One of my colleague, also a good friend of mine is leaving the project soon, and best friend of mine lost the project because of insufficient funds. This made me write this article. Both of their situations reminded me of one of my friends saying " We are traveling on a rocky road, we do not know which rock is on our way that stops us". Don't you see there is a similarity between this rocky road and our contracting life. If you are asked to terminate the project you have to, even though you have been working for them for couple of years. This may not be true everywhere, but this is happening.



I was thinking about this from past one week. I see both good and bad in this. Good thing is that you will get to know many environments, you will see different kinds of people(managers) with different attitude if you change the projects and you can visit different places. Bad thing is that if you want to settle in one place I feel this is going to be a problem in consulting.

My philosophy about work - Many will be traveling on the road. If you slow your vehicle, nobody will stop/wait for you. In fact they cross you and move forward. Similar is our life/work. If we slow down, other people will grab our opportunity.

What do you say?

Cheers,
G

Hacker Puzzle

I got this link from a community.

http://www.freestuffhotdeals.com/hacker/1.html

I solved it, so just wanted to post the solutions. I did not solve on my own, took the help of Google :-) .. I am not a geek to know Latin, German, and Spanish numbers. But the hints to the puzzle are pretty simple. You have to think, needs simple logical (not complex) thinking.

Lets start with page one. This is what the description of the page.

To solve this puzzle you will have to find secret files on our server. HINT - This is page number one. That should be pretty obvious, because it has the numeral "1" above. But there's a problem... there is no link to page 2! How on earth will you find page 2 without a handy link taking you to it? You have to think like a hacker! To get to page 2, you'll have to play around with the web address (URL) of this page. Change it a little, then go there. If you're right, you'll get the next page. If you're wrong, you'll get an ugly error message.

Displays 1. So the hint for the next level is numeral (2).

Page 2 - Displays two. Hint is it is written in alphabets. so the url to the next page would be three.

Page 3 - Displays iii. Hint here is roman numbers. so the url to the next page would be roman 4 (iv).
"What I have figured out - The hint is what it displays on the page. The next page would be the next number in that form."

Page 4 - ruof - Four written from the back. evif

Page 5 - ffiivvee - In the word five, each alphabet is written twice. ssiixx

Page 6 - 666666 - Number 6 is displayed six times. (If number 6 is displayed 6 times then seventh page is number 7 displayed 7 times)7777777

Page 7 - uranus - is the seventh planet among nine planets. Eighth planet is Neptune

Page 8 - acht - Eight is called acht in Dutch. Nine is called Neun.

Page 9 - sept - September is the ninth month of the year oct
"What I have figured out - Every hint is related to numbers in increasing order."

Page 10 - Playing card with number 10. The series of cards is 1 to 10, Jack, Queen, King.

Page 11 - eLeVeN - The trick is alternate letters are in capital. tWeLvE (Earlier I thought web pages are not case sensitive.)

Page 12 - 144 - Square of 12. square of 13 is 169

Page 13 - This page is kind of tricky. At one stage I thought the game is over. But then somehow I got a doubt because all the pages were white and this one was black. I just dragged my mouse and then I saw the hint :) number13. Obviously the next page is number14

Page 14 - catorce - is the number is Spanish. 15 is called quince.

Page 15 - buchanan - is the 15th president of united states. 16th president of united states is Abraham Lincoln.

Page 16 - sedecim - is called 16 in Latin. 17 is called septendecim.

Page 17 - 10001 - 17 is represented in binary as 10001. 18 is 10010.

Page 18 - argon - is the 18th element in the periodic table. potassium is the nineteenth element in the periodic table.

Page 19 - ojofuffo - 19 is ojofuffo minus one alphabet to each letter, and twenty minus one you get uxfouz

Page 20 - icosagon - is 20 sided pentagon. 21 sided pentagon is called icosihenagon.

Page 21 - 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,....,10946 - Fibonacci Numbers. The 22nd Fibonacci number is 17711. (I don't have that much energy to calculate 22 Fibonacci numbers. I wrote a simple java program to find out this :-)).

Page 22 - Aoozy, Booyy, Cooxy,.....,Vooey - this is some series. I observed first letter is capital letter. 2nd, 3rd, 5th letters are the same. The first letter is increasing in alphabetical order (A,B,C,D,...) and fourth letter is decreasing in the alphabetical order (Z,Y,X,W...). So After V it is 'W','o','o' are the same, before E is 'd' and 'y' is same. Combining all these letters forms 'Woody'.




And all I see is the granny dancing. Yahoo! I solved it.

Cheers,
G

Going Home

Woahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! I am going to my home. This is making me so excited :-), well this shows how much I miss my home. It is so excited to meet my family and friends after couple of years. I can't believe myself that I am going home, and I'm going to have fun. I still remember the days I spent bunking college and went to movies, restaurants (those days won't come though) but I can have the same fun at the roadside panipuri :-P hahaaa hmmmm drooling.


I am just wondering if I miss this place :-P damn sure there is nothing to miss here except for the friends. Sometimes we never know unless we miss something. Ohh!! wait What am I gibbering. huh!!! Don't read this stuff and waste your valuable time.

Cheers,
G