The indescribable undecipherable rantings and observations of Aniket Apte.
Came in this morning to find 5 bugs assigned to me, all related to the new PI. Then goad porgee (GP) comes over and says I have to forward-port the change to the old PI that I was working on. SHIT! Am I here just to work on the useless PI? The newcomers to the group are getting to work on the core product, while I am stuck doing this mind-numbing crap. This can't go on, I have to talk to the management abotu this.
India defeated Bangladesh by 11 runs to take a 1-0 lead in the 3-match series. Having been put into bat by Bangladesh, India ended up with 245/8 in their allotted 50 overs. Kaif made 80 and Dravid made 53, after India were 45/3 at one stage. India started with 2 debutantes - Joginder Sharma and M.S. Dhoni. Irfan Pathan and Agarkar ensured that India got past 225 with good hitting in the final overs.
In reply, Bangladesh had slipped to 160/7 by the 42nd over, before some lusty rearguard hitting by Khaled Mashud ensured that BD did not lose by a huge margin. Mashud made 50 off just 30 balls, with Habibul Bashar being the other contributor with 65 off 96 balls.
Kaif was adjudged man of the match. The second ODI is on 26 December.
Freedom! After an hour and a half of lies and false promises, the PSSP shit has finally ceased and desisted. The review was finally held at 1:30 PM today.
So we had more fun meeting each other last night, than the dandiya.
It was as late as 7:45 PM before Tarun, Ranjeet and I got together in front of the Domino's outlet near SG. We rode to the venue of the dandiya. Vinay arrived a few minutes later. Dhananjay was engrossed in the dancing, and we were feeling a litle awkward. So we went outside to have a chat. I had hoped I would get to dance with some pretty girls, but the only girl was DSP's fiancee Prajakta. At the first break in the dance and music, we went back inside. DSP came over and urged us to dance. My social backwardness took over, and I made a fake excuse that I'd received a phone call from home and had to hurry back! I left the hall at 9:05 without telling DSP, who had started the second round of dancing.
Before I left, the four of us had been making plans of going bowling at 3-D. There was no indication whether dinner would be served at the dandiya, so Ranjeet was also thinking of going out for dinner. I told them I'd call at 9:45 to see if I can make it or not. I went home, had dinner and called Ranjeet at 10:00. He was having dinner at the dandiya venue, and said Sagar, Anand Sarda and Gauri had also shown up. I talked with Sagar and he said they'd all agreed to go bowling.
I got a big surprise when I saw none other than Prashant Rane with his wife! Apparently, when I came on the scene, PRane had not met Tarun. So when the two came face to face, Prashant wanted to introduce him to his wife. The problem was that no matter how hard he tried, Prashant could not remember Tarun's name. Truly PRane style. Anyways after chatting around the venue, we went to 3D and had a bowling session. It was surprising that PRane accompanied us even though he had come with his wife. We asked him out of decency if he wanted to come, and he agreed!
After the bowling, 6 of us (Ranjeet, Tarun, Vinay, Sagar, Dhananjay and I) decided to go have a drink. It was already quite late, and we found the bar Cactus closed. We went to the coffee shop in Blue Diamond after that, only to find that they did not serve liquor after 11:30! So we all had coffee. Came home at 1:30 AM. Quite a good get-together.
Today I installed this extension which allows us to customize the reply string. Mozilla TB currently allows the setting of the reply string to be either the plain "[Author] wrote" or some combination string of the author and the date. M$ products like OE and Outlook put the reply string to look something like this:
----Original Message----
From: ...
To: ...
CC: ...
Subject: ...
Original message...
On the day after tomorrow is Dhananjay (Dhasu) Phadke's wedding. As part of the festivities, the to-be bride and groom have arranged a dandiya program tonight. Quite a few PICTians besides myself are there - Ranjeet, Tarun, Anand Sarda, Vinay Nazare, and possibly Sagar Dharia and Gauri Dixit. Things to look forward to: a good mini-reunion; and for Ranjeet and myself, a good place to lookout for prospective brides??
Got this very funny email from Abhishikt Jain, which I forwarded to the pspl.humor newsgroup.
It's really boring during meeting sessions. Many of us even sleep during it. This tip helps a lot for us.
Practical tip...
1. Before (or during) your next meeting, seminar, or conference call, prepare yourself by drawing a square. 5"x 5" is a good size. Divide the card into columns, five across and five down. That will give you 25 one-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
And last but not least
- Synergy
- strategic fit
- core competencies
- best practice
- bottom line
- revisit
- take that off-line
- 24/7
- out of the loop
- benchmark
- value-added
- pro-active
- win-win
- think outside the box
- fast track
- result-driven
- empower (or empowerment)
- knowledge base
- at the end of the day
- touch base
- mind-set
- client focus(ed)
- paradigm
- game plan
- leverage
- MOVING FORWARD......
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout, "BULLSHIT!"
Testimonials from satisfied "BullShit Bingo" players:
"I had been in the meeting for only five minutes when I won."
-Paul D., Caloundra
"My attention span at meetings has improved dramatically."
- DavidD., Rockhampton
"The atmosphere was tense in the last process meeting as 14 of us waited for the fifth box."
- Ben G., Sydney
"The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed 'BULLSHIT!' for the third time in two hours."
- Kathleen L., Canberry
OK... bring in the style. That's the only thing Sanjay Gupta's latest offers. Everything is style, machismo... lockets hanging on necks, rings on fingers, stubbles, gold teeth, bracelets, tattoos, dyed hair, leather jackets, piercings... you name it. And yeah, plenty of sleek cars, item girls, discotheques, smart-ass dialogs... you name it. And yeah, multicolored lenses, motion blurs, split screen, slow motion, sound effects... you name it.
And yes, in between all this, there is the shortlived semblance of a story woven between Lucky (Anil Kapoor ), Sam (Sameera Reddy) and Luca (Mahesh Manjrekar). How you wish the director would have carried that on, because it was really starting to get a little interesting. But no, Billa (Sanjay Dutt) has to intervene at the most inappropriate places and say a few dialogues criticizing Bollywood villains. In fact the title credits say "Presented by Sanjay Dutt", so he pretty much had a free hand in this movie, and ends up as a candyfloss goody-goody sugary "imandaar aur dil ka saccha" types.
This movie has all the Sanjay Gupta regulars... Sandeep Chowta providing background and general music, one Milap Zaveri in charge of dialogues, foreign technicians providing the glitz. Style is good, but it needs some meat in the story. But it's Sanjay Gupta, so... The song "Tez Dhaar" is quite good, a nice beat to it.
Mahesh Manjrekar does very well for a change. He is pretty controlled for the most part, only to become his usual manic self a little later on. It would be a travesty not to mention Shakti Kapoor playing the very apt "Wacko Jacko". In a mere 3 dialogues in the entire movie, he excels with his vulgar tone and mannerisms.
England continued their winning streak by beating South Africa in the first test match. The match was evenly poised at the end of the third day, with South Africa having overhauled England's first-innings lead for the loss of only 2 wickets. However a great bowling spell by Simon Jones sunk any hopes of setting a competitive target. England had to make only 143 to win, with 4 sessions of play remaining. Their chase began disastrously when Trescothick edged the first ball of the innings! England were soon 50/3, but reached 99/3 at the end of the fourth day's play with some gritty batting by Strauss and Thorpe. Any South African hopes for weather interruption were dispelled when England knocked off the remaining 50 odd runs in quick time. Strauss was the man of the match for a 94 not out, in addition to his 130-odd in the first innings.
England have now put together a very good side, with 5 good batsmen, a decent wicketkeeper-batsman, 3 quickies, one spinner, and most importantly a fantastic all-rounder. This man Freddie Flintoff is currently my favorite player.
Review that had been scheduled today is postponed indefinitely because the reviewer is out sick!
Now I'm feeling sick of waiting...
More PI work... the old one. Got "knowledge transfer" from "goad porgee" (GP) that took more than an hour! And when I tried to setup the thing on my machine, I needed some more intervention from her. I finally got the darn thing to start doing its initial work, something GP said would take a long time to complete. So I'm typing this posting while I wait for it to finish. Not that I'm going to do any extra work after that, because it will almost be time to go home.
We had a fairly exciting and tiring trek yesterday to Kamalgad. The ascent was not quite as difficult as Torana, but quite challenging nonetheless. When I arrived at B at 5:50 AM, it looked like there was not going to be a trek at all. I had expected to find most people already there, but there was not a soul except for the security guards. V had urged everyone to reach at 5:45 so we could leave at 6 AM, but this was quite unexpected. My fears that the bus had left were put to rest when the security guard told me that the bus hadn't come yet. I called up K and he said he was on the way. Relieved, I went inside the building and waited there. Inside I met Sri who was coming too.
It took until 6:45 for everyone to gather after repeated phone calls. We were finally off from B at 7 AM, 24 of us. After an 80-odd kilometer ride on NH-4, we broke off towards Wai, arriving there around 9:30. We had tea and refreshments, and after asking for directions were off towards Kamalgad. The base of the ascent was at a village called Tupegao, and to reach there we had to go around the catchment area of the Dhom Dam. This part of the ride was extremely bumpy, and on some portions there was no road surface at all! We arrived at the village at 10:45 AM.
The villagers insisted we take a guide along with us since the route was very confusing with many forks which could lead us astray. We finally began the ascent at 11 AM through heavily wooded terrain. The going was quite easy till we reached the mountainside, when it got quite steep at places. Our pace was slowed down numerous times due to the girls insisting on taking breaks. At one point, J had cramps in our toes and we had to stop. At another point, the guide suddenly said that we were going the wrong way and asked us to wait where we were while he made a reconnassaince!
The route to Kamalgad actually took us in the opposite direction of our destination for some time as the direct approach was too steep. There were actually two hills to scale, with a flat portion once atop the first hill. After the initial ascent, we had bifurcated into two groups. I was in the group that first scaled the first hill, and we had to wait 20 minutes for the other group to catch up. It was 1:45 before we assembled at the base of the second hill. This ascent took only 15 minutes, with the final entry into the fort being an all-fours climb. We were atop at 2 PM.
Kamalgad is not actually a fort as there are no structures on the peak, apart from a stone quarry which was probably built in recent times. It probably was used only as a watch point as it commands a splendid view of the countryside. The peak of the hill is a square patch about 50 meters wide. To the south west and west are Panchgani and Mahabaleshwar. There is a dam (Badlapur I think, cant remember) due west. Beyond the catchment area of this dam is another mountain, beyond which lies the Konkan. Due east is the catchment area of the Dhom dam. Beyond that are three forts which were clearly visible - Kenjalgad, Raireshwar and another whose name I can't remember.
After plenty of photography sessions, we started the descent at around 2:40. We reached the peak of the first hill and settled down for lunch. Everyone had got eatables along with them, so we had a very satisfying lunch. There were parathas, chapatis, loncha, bhaajees and even aamra-khanD! After lunch, some people including myself took a nap, while the rest took on the amazingly arbitrary task of making ONE cup of tea!
We started the descent at 3:35, and the route was different from the ascent. The guide reasoned that it would be very difficult to descend the way we came up, so he took us down via a more gently sloping route. This route was much longer, and took 2 hours to get back to Tupegao after numerous rests and pitstops. The trek was over at around 5:45, and we were off home.
It quickly got dark, and the bus driver had to drive slowly till Wai because of the bad road and numerous villagers herding their buffaloes and sheep and goats back to their villages. We did not stop at Wai, but took a pitstop once we hit NH-4. It took almost half an hour before tea was prepared for our party, and we were off towards Pune at 7:30. We reached B at 9:15, and I was home at 9:30. It wasn't as tiring as Torana, but a memorable outing nevertheless.
