Aaah.. Shaan is back :)

No posts for the last couple of weeks. The stimuli were there to tell here, but there was no time to react :) And, uh.. there was a little seclusion from my side as well I must admit. 

Last couple of weeks I was in a step-back mode. You know, there are times when whatever you do tends to bizarrely wrong and all. In such situations I usually stop doing stuffs. If you are doing nothing, nothing can go wrong right? :P 

Actually I was in a lot of mess. There were all sort of confusions and doubts in personal life. I guess I have shared some of those stuffs in my last few posts. To get away from them I was putting more efforts in work. Which in turn was getting uglier by day. All it did was to leave a bad taste in the mouth. 

Thankfully like always Life itself took care of its own problems. Loosing friends has always been a toughie for me. It always manages to make me sad. And to add to that, I was feeling scared to loose one more of my sweet friend soon :( Like always.. it made me act like a FOOL. I managed to write one of the sickest mails to her sayin I am dropping this thing. Gosh.. that was soooooooo soooooooo childish. 

Thankfully things dint fall apart big time. Thankfully she understood why I wrote it. Coming to think of it now.. I always keep telling her to keep chasing dreams.. never to shy away from hoping for good blah blah.. and it was I who screwed up :P Hmm anyways.. mistakes should not be repeated. It wont be :)

Got a new roomie. Good ol Den2. Lasting image of him that I have from my hostel days is of him running and screaming like crazzy from College to Hostel after getting selected in IBM :) Another nerd. Another TOTAL SANS_ATTITUDE guy. Veryyyyyyyy talkative. I love talkative folks :) Helps me unwind :) Last night he was giving me lectures on Time Machine. He said it is possible coz of so and so laws which he read in Hawkin's lectures. I managed to piss him off :) He tried to get me interested in Cricket 2007 also. I pissed him off again :) Hey I dont do computer Games! I just dont get hooked to it :P

Ohh and by the way, I had a hair cut after 6 months and shaved after 2 weeks. Trust me.. I dint recognize myself after I woke up from the nap in saloon. I was a little annoyed at first. I trusted the miserable barber too much and dozed off w/o supervising what he was doing with my hair. He over-cut it :( But then.. it feels a little light upstairs with the little lesser load of hairs. So, I guess its okay :)

Last couple of weeks managed to produce the deliverables on time too. Well one was delayed by one day. But that was not our fault. Freaky terrorists decided to start the bombings again and so we had to leave early. Anyway job was done on Monday. Had ISO audit today. The interviewer was sick :( I always hated these interrogative guys - be it police, inspectors, interviewers and now the Audit guys :( Anyways.. looks like we managed to pull off the show this time around as well.

So there it is.. things have managed to auto correct themselves. Life is almost on the balance again. Touch wood. I hate disturbances. I hate screwing up. Especially when it comes to her and to my work.. 

Till next time..

Apple iPhone is coming in India. 2Buy or !2Buy?

Important facts about the Apple iPhone. Look before you leap folks! Came across these facts recently..

No video calling,

no AD2P on the Bluetooth,

CAN'T share ANY (mp3, images,videos....) files via bluetooth, 

can't use as a wireless modem, (you pay ridiculous data charges to activate Internet on your phone, but cannot connect it to your PC and browse when you are at home) 

no copy and paste,(cannot copy a part of a.... say.... email & send it....have to type it out yourself)

no 3.2 or 5 megapixel camera,(the 2MP camera it carries is worst camera I've ever seen..... photos look like they have come out of a VGA camera) 

no video recording with camera,

no front camera,

no flash.

no JAVA support

No physical keyboard (BELIEVE me! this alone is a deal breaker...touch keyboard as good as it looks...once you use it then only you come to know about the importance of having a hard keypad)

No 3G network yet in India..so why pay for expensive 3G phone if you cant use its 3G services ... so, for India, iPhone 2.0 is no better than its first version

No removable battery. (You cannot change battery. Have to send it to apple outlet.. Come on now!!!!...This is not an iPod. Its a bloody phone. You cannot live without phone for 2-3 days) 

No haptic feedback and

cannot send MMS,

can't use as external storage device (16 GB of utter waste..next time you go to your friend's house & find some interesting songs, movies, etc...sorry you cannot connect your '16 GB' phone and share it!!!! Apple apparently has a solution.. " BUY MUSIC & MOVIES FROM iTUNES STORE "..... Give me a break will you APPLE!!!)

no FM radio,

can't use your mp3 files as ringtones,(This is heights man!!!) 

cannot insert any other SIM card….

completely tied to iTunes... Connect to your friend's iTunes & you risk erasing everything on your phone.

Its good for american market (who have no idea what mobile freedom/choice is) which is in stone age compared to asian/european markets. When they want to buy a phone, they have to go to network operators and buy only those phones that are available on that network. & stick to that company till their contract expires. You want to change carriers? Not before paying damages, & buying another phone on the other network again. 

On the contrary, we in India have so much freedom. We go to handset shops & buy which ever phone we like. Then go to carriers.. checkout the plans & buy SIM.. Dont like the plan or rival carrier came up with a better plan???? EASY .. just remove & replace the SIM. 

Apple are trying to IMPOSE THEIR MODEL ON US riding on the hype iPhone has created in the US (yes it was a flop in Europe ..thats why Apple never talks about its sales in Europe).

Dont fall for the subsidized price of iPhone... CHECKOUT THE DATA PLAN ATTACHED TO ITS SIM ..they will recover the cost through ridiculous data plans. Bill might come to around Rs 2500/month.(ATLEAST AMERICANS PAY THAT MUCH)

Let me clear one thing though.. iphone is the best looking phone (its touch interface is nothing like you have ever seen ), & best browsing experience out there no doubt .... (& others are fast catching up..check out the android demo at Google IO 2008).... BUT AFTER A FEW DAYS IT ALL COMES DOWN TO FUNCTIONALITY...

Friendship.. a few random thoughts

Wow! Thank God its Sunday! I got a day off from office :) Actually I should say I got a night off! Being a patchy insomniac does not help really. You look at the watch. You know its getting late. You know you have to wake up early next morning to catch the office bus. But you just can't sleep! Tonight its different. I don't care if I dont feel sleepy tonight. Coz tomorrow I can wake up late :) Cool!

So what do you do to spend a wonderfully peaceful time like this? You do something that is really close to you ain't it? Yeah same here! I would usually browse through my movie library, pick one up and get lost in the world of cinema. May be I would pick up a book to read. And yes sometimes I would try my hand on blogging too! I would do all that.. some 1 month ago.

When do we decide a person to be our 'Friend'? What makes him/her feel to special to us? I always considered myself to be a choosy picker when it comes to friends. I have very few folks around whom I tag as friend. I tend to get a lot involved with the person I care. If I dont feel like caring for you and paralllely dont believe that you will care a little for me (a little is enough :D ), I wont let you enter my world.

Pretty calculative, right? Ohh yeah I used to be all that.. About 1 month or so ago. All these logic seems to be a little twisted these days. How else would I explan this new friend in my life then? It would have been a realy outrageous thought even 1 month back that I think of some person as if she was some one I knew .. well always! To make matters more scary, I have never met her. Yes you guessed it! She is one online friend.

Damn I keep on asking myself if I have gone crazy. After all, this is the age of short term flirts (relationship is a too pure term for it). Time-pass thing. You add folks on your 'Networking Circle', you tell catchy (if you ask me its actually tacky) stuffs, prove your wit (shit), show how smart (MTV Copy cat) you are. And then you meet one more. The for loop never ends.

On real life, however, you meet. You watch the person for real. You judge him by the way he talks, behaves. Friends and friendships are something that's more tangible then. It has a proper way ahead. I am not saying short time flirts don't exist in real life, but the probabilities of that happening are many times lower.

All said and done and known. I still let her enter my world! "Crazzy, Man! This is Insane" - I keep telling myself. But then, I can control myself!

Now this will sound scary but there is cool fundah from Bhagwat Geeta that I always try to follow when I feel confused. I try and decide what all factors are under my control and what are not. Often it comes out that 70-80% of things bothering me are not in my control. I stop thinking about them. Things become easier to handle. The power of detachment is really useful. Gosh, even that technique is not helping here! :( Its in my control how I behave to here. I can either stop talkin to her or otherwise. I dont want to follow the former. What is not in my control is what/how she will behave. Does she trust me? Or is she taking it as one more of those time-pass stuffs. Heck, I wish I knew!

Good thing about this mayhem is.. its keeping me going through one of the toughest phases of my life. If there is something to look forward to in the non-existent private life of mine is her and a couple of folks whom I really look forward to meeting/chatting. Life feels so fresh after that!

Aaah.. enough for today.. All of a sudden I feel like I am writing crap :D To end the story, I guess I will choose the later path and parallely keep my fingers crossed.. Lets give this thing a chance.. Surely, bad things won't always happen to Good people, right? Cant help but think of that sooper cool movie called "Pursuit of Happyness". Idea of the word 'pursuit' is so apt when it comes to happiness. You have to chase it.. Sometimes you win, you are not so lucky other times. The hope of something beautiful keeps the persistence alive. And well, it takes some guts (knack of gambling, some will say) to chase it :D

I had decided not to stop dreaming and not to stop chasing dreams long back..
Cheers!

Zone Alarm Pro Issue

I have been using this anti-virus called Zone Alarm Pro for last one month or so. It has some good features - the antivirus check is really good, and proficient. The bundled firewall, though a little complicated for 'casual' users, it really strong once you get a hang of it. This blog, however is not about the cool features about Zone Alarm Pro. Its about a wicked problem this guy throws up. And I am yet to figure out a way to avert it.

The problem starts after you update your virus library. As in most of other softwares, once update is over, it will ask you to restart the machine to let the changes take effect. You do that, the machine boots up, OS gets loaded. "Great! I have an updated set of virus definitions!" - you say to yourself.  

The celebration ends as soon as you connect to internet. The moment the firewall detects an available network connection, it starts some crazy process to update some informations. It is displayed by the name "vsmon.exe" on the Task Manager Pane and consumes at least 60% of you CPU. All other systems will come to a grinding halt. No new processes will start up.

Thankfully, the woe somehow ends in 10 minutes or so. I have searched the net for some way around to this problem, but unfortunately, yet to find a satisfactory remedy. The official Zone Alarm Pro site acknowledges this as an issue. They claim that the CPU hogging duration of the process is supposed to get lower and lower. I dont see much changes on those terms.

If any one of you who is reading this know some better answers, kindly help me out. You can mail me or leave a comment here. Thanks!

Jaane Tuu yaa Jaane Naa, Shaan is Workoholic!

Yippee! Monday is here!!!!!!! Rarely I welcome Mondays with so much enthusiasm and happiness. This week was different. That's because the weekend was different. My mind was really thinking too much on the same thing for too long. The hectic life of work comes as an amazing aid to that. When you are busy saving you bummy against the tight deadlines at office, you tend to some how forget all the things that otherwise will keep you gloomy. And whereas few things are always there on the back of your mind.. all day you get a kind of "High" by meeting deadlines. Its intoxicating. It really is! I guess the fact that you realise you are in control of a few things in your life makes you feel better.. 

Last night was weird. I went off to bed at 2:30 am. I got up at 7:15. The 5 hour sleep was punctuated by two nightmares. I got up both times. Weird part is, I did not feel that tired in the morning.. The Insomnia is coming back is it?.. The same old feeling was there. You are not awake fully, nor are you sleeping/dozing..  Lets go to sleep early tonight.

Ohh and btw, if you are reading this and haven't see Jaane Tuu Yaa Jaane Naa, go and watch it! Imran Khan is terrific, the story is depicted in a unique witty way which you will definitely like, the songs rock, and Genelia is cute :) My Saturday was made by this film :)

Unsettling times

Blog post after a gap of 2+ weeks.. Yaah I was busy folks. I was busy. Not in the true sense of the term per se. The work related "busy"-ness was and will always be there. I can manage that. Problem is, things are getting a lot complicated on personal front. Last few months I am being made to pass through a series of "acid tests" on some emotions I have never been used to giving tests at. That's tough. Inside me, I am still a kid yaar! :)

Work is good. Work is good when your personal life is too complex. When work is there, you stop thinking about those things and peacefully live you 'busy' life. One more good thing about work is that even if you are in a complex, frustrating situation, you more or less know what all things you have to do to come out of it. The same fact does not apply for problems in personal life.

In case you are wondering whether Shaan is going to talk in abstract syntax only.. No I am not! Of course there is a limit to the level of granularity to which I can (and therefore will) go about the stuffs happening in my life, but I will definitely not be abstract.

First thing first. I am feeling sad about a few pals leaving our friend circle. Well in the last one year, a lot of friends have decided to bid adieu to the shores of Bangalore and go back to the safety of Kolkata. But somehow in our flat here in BTM Layout, the things were a lil different. We good ol band of 6 boys somehow managed to stay together (pun unintended). However, the attrition has started here as well. 

Suman has decided to say No to onsite offer and more astonishingly, the Huawei offer and go back to kolkata. He has put more priority to is future wife's wishes. I know he will strongly deny it, but, he really wanted a Huawei job - its taxing there in terms of hard work they make you do, but in the end, your career will get a solid touch in Huawei. 

Subham is going away as well. His case is a little different in the sense that he is joining Freescale, with a staggering hike of 133% :) Way to go, Bro! Sadness of loosing a good room partner will be there, but then at least, he is successfully chasing his dreams!

Lets come to the second topic of the night. The age-old confusion I am having about my own career. Oh Boy! When do this end! I am sick-and-tired of always cribbing about my career. I hate it. But unfortunately, am yet to get a decent answer. The client side show of LTE is yet to start off. Although the management keeps on pacifying/reassuring us about it, memories of some not-so-pleasant past projects (which ultimately did not come) make us go - "Deja Vu". I myself keep on pushing myself and other colleagues on it. But I can understand their frustration, coz its there within me too! I am just putting a good cover on it. This is one thing which is really on a razor's edge right now. We keep on tilting from on side to another.. We are barely managing to hold on to our balance now.

Okkay.. that brings us to the third topic of this post. The third reason of my uneasiness - I have fallen for a girl. Gosh, I look at the above line and cant help but think how stupid this whole thing is. No I am not saying that a guy falling for a girl is stupid.. its the way I have fallen for is what I refer to as STUPID. I met her online. I have never talked to her.. only chatted (so cant vouch 100% about what kind of a person she is).. she is from kolkata, where I have no chance of visiting in the next three months (and that too, for hardly 10 days). It would be a highly imaginative, romantic type of guy to fall like this. Which I am not. Damn! I did not need this at this stage of my life. My career is in a tight balance. It would have been great to only concentrate only on it. Life plays all these sort of games at you. 

So there you are.. three crazy problems.. screwing up my already screwed up life. The 3rd thing might well be infatuation, u never know.. But as of now, I don't want to loose this person. I am not letting her go from my side, if she wants to fly away, its cool too :) I will go back to the life with only one primary goal. Sounds like I am saying this only to comfort myself? No way! I have already done that once in past :) 

As Tom Cruise 'the Maverik' will say: It was Crash and Burn 1st time.. 2nd time - I will tell you in a few months :)