First post from ISB

Eight days, four parties (one of them starting at one in the night), innumerable gyaan sessions from our seniors, one lecture from a prof.. it's been a very sleepless start here at ISB. Can't wait to see how the year unfolds.

My pre-term course starts on Wendesday, so I have some time to breathe today, tomorrow and day after. Let's see how it turns out.

Saturday != Saturday

This saturday was quite different from my usual saturdays. For one, it didn't feel like a weekend at all. Typically, Saturdays mornings involve the following conversation with my Mum.

Mum: Chiru! eddelu, hanneradu ghante aayitu! (Chiru! wake up, it's 12 o'clock!)
Me : zzzzz
Mum: Chiru! Chiru!
Me : umm? hmm.. zzzzz

Well, you get the general state of affairs.

Today was a much different story. Having been off-work for a week, I didn't even realise it was a Saturday. And I woke up at 10:20, really, really early for a Saturday. Considering that I slept at 4:00 last night, it felt quite strange to be up that early. Well, before you start applauding at my Saturday feat, I must warn you that it was a phone call that woke me up. Vinod wanted to ask me how much time was left for him to fill up ISB's ELP survey. I must've mumbled an incoherent reply, for he was soon saying "OK, go back to your sleep". But the reverse happened - I woke up.

An hour later, I was at our bank (this is the third day this week I've found myself at the bank), trying to get hold of a statement of something. A few hours later, I was catching up on some much needed sleep. Sleep done, I pulled my suitcases and bags out. Didn't start packing - it's too early, but I just got the stuff out. It's still not hit me that I'd be in a different city a week from now. And considering the number of things I need to do before I leave Blr, I'm surely taking things very lightly.

Well, evening was more of the lemonade game.. looks like I'm getting very addicted to it. Latest news on the lemonade scene is that Sharad has managed a profit of $125. Put up a screenshot, mate!

I'm about to end the day with more lemonade with a dash of Freakonomics. Good night.

The Lemonade Stand

The details of the Lemonade Stand simulator game are on Manu's blog, and here's how I fared at it.


If you'd like to comment, please do it here

Update (10 April 2006): I've deleted my previous updates and have now posted only my best score - a profit of $114.07

My LDAW syndrome

I've been down today. Down, not with the stuff I was down with two weeks back, but down with the Last Day at Work syndrome. Symptoms: hand possesses a page of paper with loads of signatures, face holds a bit of a smile, but the feeling inside is not good.

When I woke up in the morning, I realised it was going to be a long day. I tried to stay in bed as long as I could, but then couldn't sleep beyond half-past-seven. Got ready, had a light breakfast, for my appetite had taken a holiday.

I reached office at around 9:30, very early by my standards. There were a few final tasks that I needed to do before I got start the exit process.. some configuration work. I got that going, and soon walked into the HR area. Was handed a sheet of paper on which I had to get signatures of people from the various departments. Parked the paper aside to take care of after lunch.

Lunch was a quick affair, I don't even recall what I'd eaten.. my appetite still hadn't returned from wherever it'd gone to.

Started the signature thing after lunch.. While that proceeded on a casual course, I ran into a lot of people, some very old faces, some not-so-old, and some brand new. I still can't believe how fast the people in a company can change. You scan your floor one day, and you realise that you don't know half the people who're working there. Then the exit interview.. there wasn't much to that, a few points of honest feedback, and I got my relieving letter.

It has hit me hard that things would be different from now on. That I won't be around the people that I'd grown to be comfortable with.

I guess the LDAW syndrome is now gone - I no longer work in Adea.

Engineer playing accountant

ISB has put up a test where we get rated on our accounting skills. Based on this test, we are told whether or not we need to attend the pre-term course. After my test, the ISB website politely told me, "Your knowledge of Accounting Concepts is not up to the level required for the core courses. It's highly recommended that you enrol for the pre-term module."

Sure, thanks. I knew I'd have to join the accounting pre-term anyway.

Apparently, one of my other classmates recieved a more comic message saying something like "Dude! your skills are hopeless; forget accounting, you can't even count!" The Rhapsodist describes that message in detail along with his experience of the test, which is similar to mine, if I may add.

Loan trouble; nay, speed-post trouble

At around 12 noon, I called up Andhra Bank asking what's happening to my loan application; and it looks like my loan app has not reached them at all. Well, it's been over a week since I sent the thing by Speed Post, but the bank says they haven't seen my application at all.

The Speed Post tracker (yes, it does exist) says that my package's been delivered to the Cyberabad Post Office (where Hi-Tec Towers are located) on 17 March. Well, the Andhra Bank branch is lying somewhere in Hi-Tec towers, the package should have reached them, shouldn't it? Well, there's been a screw-up somewhere.

Thankfully, I decided to call up AB today and not tomorrow, 'cos it's given me enough time to write up another app and send it to AB (the deadline for the apps is the 25th). My app's all done and packaged waiting to go out. And I'm using Blue Dart this time.

Update (01/04/06): The speed-post that I'd sent to Andhra Bank came back on Wednesday. Reason: There is no such person as Mr NR in Andhra Bank, Madhapur branch. Hmm, interesting. I ought to sue Blue Dart then, for delivering my package to a non-existent person.

BTW, my loan-app that I sent through Blue Dart has reached AB, and has been duly processed and approved.

Greasemonkey scripts for Orkut users

I found some orkut-specific Greasemonkey scripts today. I've only tried two scripts so far - the Scrapbook & Album viewer and the My Scrabook Link

gyaan: greasemonkey is an extension for the firefox browser that allows one to modify the behaviour of websites. For instance, by using this script, here's how my visit to dilbert.com looks:

that's right - no pesky ads!


You can find more nifty scripts at www.userscripts.org

Lightning 0.1 Released

Lightning 0.1 Released - MozillaZine Talkback

There's been some activity on the calendar front in Mozilla. Hope this project turns out to be better than the existing calendar or sunbird extensions.

Update
I got back home and downloaded Lightning. The installation was quick and painless.. my first view is that it looks pretty much like the old calendar, only tightly integrated with thunderbird.

Anyway, there is something that did catch my attention. The lightning app takes away a good chunk of my folder list's real-estate; and there's no way to disable it without uninstalling it.

For a person with an extremely long folder list, this is a bit of a problem. Hopefully, the next releases would have an option to turn off the calendar, or put it away in the background.

Middle click in Firefox opens a new tab

How would you word this message strongly? Check out the attempt by the folks at Wizz RSS News Reader

ISB's email address

This is a suggestion for my batchmates at ISB.

If you're trying to email the ISB folks, please use the new email address that has been listed on the new admits' micro-site. It is meant to be used for queries by the new batch, and I suspect one gets a prompt reply if one contacts ISB on that. I'm sure ISB usually gets flooded on the other email addresses, which is why they've set up this new mailbox for queries from incoming students.

Secondly, the hyperlink on that email address is incorrect. Do not click on the link to email them. Instead, copy the text of the email address and use it.

I'm not listing that email address here on my blog, for obvious reasons. I would appreciate it if no one posts that in the comments either.

one month to choo-choo

This time next month, I would be sitting in a train heading to Hyderabad.. let's look at my checklist and the status of each task which I should have done before that journey:

• Apply for loans - not done
• Apply for accomodation - not done
• Finish up the some miscellaneous applications on the ISB website - not even started
• Get my wisdom tooth removed - this has been pending for four months now

Hmm, it seems only yesterday that I was telling my parents that there was loads of time for everything.. well, time does speed up when you don't want it to, doesn't it?

Wherever you go, pug-rank follows

Here's a blog-entry from Nickey on the official Google blog.

A good number of folks, especially women, would qualify Nickey with adjectives such as "cho-chweet". Guys would too, but they'd acknowledge it only to their girlfriends or significant others... anyway, that's not the main reason why I'm posting.

My question is, why would Nickey elicit a "cho-chweet" response, while the the maniacal Mr Tinkles of the Cats and Dogs fame come quite low on the cuteness index? After all, Mr Tinkles looks more well-groomed than Nickey does. So, what makes people rate an animal (or any other character) as cute, or otherwise?

My theory comes in one of my next posts, hopefully in a few days' time.

Cell-phone not working

My cell-phone has not been keeping well the last few days... and I have not had the time to get it repaired.

Email's the best way to contact me till I sort this thing out. My email address is chiranth dot channappa at gmail dot com.

More missing docs

Uggh.. I've got more and more obstacles in my loan application.

I don't have all my bank statements for the last three years. My bank statements till September 2003 are missing in action.

I don't recall Andhra Bank asking for my bank statements - they only want my guarantor's. Thankfully, my Dad's a lot more organised than I am. I hope it turns out OK.

Online puzzles

I'd posted something about a game called Paheli earlier. Well the link for that has changed - thanks to a lack of bandwidth - and the game can now be found here.

BTW, I still have not finished Paheli.. stuck on level 23 with a clue showing a picture of a city and a picture of gold buiscuits. Let's see where that goes.

During the time I didn't find the alternate link for Paheli, I found another game by the IIM-Indore blokes called klueLESS. Yes, there is a blog to discuss hints. I've completed this game, all 30 levels of it. I did receive a congratulatory note from the folks behind it. They've acknowledged over 800 people for completing the game - and there are more un-acknowledged ones out there.

Apparently, both games have taken the idea from notpron, which is claims itself to be the hardest riddle on the Internet, something that only 96 people have cracked completely. Well, here's my take. It may be difficult all right. But the reason why only a few people can crack it is that it's got over a 100 levels. Even if one is smart enough to get over the difficulty, one might not have the time to solve as many levels.