It happened about 3 weeks back and thought I SHOULD blog this.  A lot of people I know form a natural bonding with inanimate things they own, like I know my friend N is crazy about her monkey( soft toy)  since she was a year old , N2 is very possessive about her cell phone, S is too attached to his bag and so on. Similarly I share a “connection” with my laptop, not just because my living depends on computers (being a software professional)but because the machine means a lot more to me. Mainly because when I bought a Macbook (a little reminder here and here) I thought it was exorbitant for my student’s pocket and I  had to calculate ten times and budget before I made the big decision of giving my old Dell back home and get another machine.  It was the first most expensive piece I gifted myself, and boy I was proud! The machine worked like a charm for last two years, it has passed the ultimate stress tests till now, never complained even when I ran my Netflix project with humongous data. For the first time Shreyas thought I made a wise decision!

But finally it’s destiny changed. I somehow broke the entire screen of my shining macbook three weeks back, I was numb, shattered, tried restarting the machine some hundred million times, removed the battery, put it back, All I could see on screen was 4 blue lines and black out. I called Apple support with trembling hands and was disappointed knowing that I had to wait till next morning for their working hours. Next day I scheduled an appointment at the genius bar and called Apple support, when the voice on phone said 750$ or more charge I knew it was the end of happy times, I shamelessly cried on phone not just because it costs worth a new machine but because I made such a huge mistake.

That is when the story took a different turn, the lead actor made his appearance, Shreyas pinged me and told me about this site where we could order the screen for 140$ with overnight delivery, the tricky part was that, it needed an absolute expert to replace the old screen as the machine had to be disintegrated completely  (you see where the remaining 610$ go).  I had  faith in the expert but I wasn’t sure about the quality of the screen,  after much research I made up my mind, placed the order and got the brand new screen delivered next morning. The screen replacement process took exactly 4.5 hours and n’th degree of patience. If you ever have to go though this (touches wood quickly) follow these precautionary steps:

1. Before you sit and start the actual process, make sure you have a plastic knife, lot of white papers, pen, coin, screw drivers, clean workspace with sufficient lighting. (No music in the background please)

2. Follow all the 68 steps in the guide with super dedication (Do not opt for a shortcut method)

3. After each step when you take out the screw , make a note on separate white paper where you write the step number, screw size, it’s description and keep the screw on the paper (now you get the clean space point)

4. Do not get panicked when you see your beautiful machine in pieces at one point, use this time to appreciate the engineering that was put behind it’s creation. Infact it’s a good point to take a coffee/beer/coke break according to your preference.

5. After the 58th step, hold your breath and start the machine to check if everything comes up ok, (Everything looked fine for me at this step), check the wireless connection, iSight camera settings and backlight.

6. After successfully completing 68th step, bless your friend/self whichever is applicable. (In my case I am forever thankful to Shreyas who was wicked cool throughout the process…who am I kidding there were lots of not-so-nice-sounding words involved)

This is how I learned my lesson the hard way, Thank you for your concern, you may breath now. Please be good!

This doesn’t help someone already hopelessly addicted to coffee, Elaichi tea, mountain dew and similar. Take away either of these for a day and find me wild or sulking at the corner.
And I just noticed the following:
-I use Jasmine oil,
- order Jasmine rice,
- wear Nina ricci perfume with Jasmine fragrance and
- drink Jasmine tea
In short I am a Mogra girl! (This post needs to be skipped)

Just came home after attending the Google tech talk in school and can’t wait to put down my experience! yes I m feeling lucky as I won the lucky gift from them; a super smart Google bag and a cool Google Tshirt . I must say this was one of the best tech talks I have ever attended. The speaker Eric Flatt explained few very interesting algorithms used for Google searching, loved the concept of considering each document as a vector and then finding cosine(vector dot product) to get the closely matching results. I regret for not taking Algorithms in first semester of MS, obviously I will be taking it in Fall 2007.

The best thing about the event was, there was a young guy roaming around in the hall with beard, wearing a crumpled Tshirt. Later Eric introduced him to the audience saying he works in the search (engine) team of Google and was a part of the recruitment program. Obviously when the guy started talking I came to know how smart he was, now I know how a true geek dresses like. In the question answer round a guy asked a very bold question (we had the same discussion in car on the way back home) that other than advertisements where does Google earn their revenue from. Eric gave a quick answer that advertisements itself earn enough(he meant unimaginable) revenue and ofcourse not to forget the Google Tshirts which are the coolest thing around campus these days .

BTW we have a diwali puja in school tomorrow evening, will post the pics soon. Happy Diwali to everybody!

Went through the tapes of  architecture framework and the project which I would be working on , it was a looongg video too many new concepts to grasp. Had lunch with shreyas and his manager Jeffrey. The lunch included spinach cream soup, salad and noodles, the cafeteria seems pretty decent. Had a first meeting with my manager after lunch break, he was one of my interviewers and even remembered my answers .Today EMC acquired yet another company Interlink, North American-based IT professional services firm.

Reading my favorite book C++ Primer by Stanley Lippman the writing style always reminds me the way
Sunil (My best buddy) used to teach me. I am  already waiting for tomorrow evening cause that is when the weekend starts

(This one dedicated to Shreyas )