Making of me...

Writing after quite a few days now...

Did a dual boot configuration on my personal laptop with Vista Home Premium and Linux Mint. This Linux distro rocks. The stability and the assortment of applications included in the distro is simply awesome. The installation is a breeze and anyone who have the basics of disks partitioning will sail through the installation process in seconds. I was a fan of Ubuntu, but now this spin-off of Ubuntu makes me it's fan. The desktop is Gnome by default, and it looks pretty awesome. And the kernel it uses basically supports all the current hardware configs, with the exception of some old Dial-up modems and some proprietary drivers (Like the NVidia graphics drivers). Here is the link to the distro: http://www.linuxmint.com. Hail Linux Mint!!!

Life has always big surprises for you. You never know what's gonna come ahead in your life. I had no idea of Computers till my 3rd year of graduation in Science. And the subjects group which I have opted in the graduation were "awesome" (One of my friend asked if I didn't got any other harder combination!!!). I had Physics, Mathematics and Statistics as the combination. Before joining graduation, I had dropped (or rather it dropped me!) one year for Engineering entrance. I had studied harder to some how get into the IITs or RECs; I got a rank too in the Engineering Entrance in Rajasthan, but when the free seat were alloted, I had been given a seat in REC Silchar (Assam). So the Engineering dream also washed away. After the final year exams of graduation and the results declared, I was the topper in Statistics in the whole University. I got a memento and a certificate, which is still displayed at the front room in my home at Jaipur... :-)

When I was in my third year of Graduation , one day my friend called me to come to an institute (CIStems school of Computing at Jaipur). CIStems was the turning point in my life. I got attached to computers due to this; Basically CIStems was an accredited institute for DOEACC Society's courses. I have first enrolled for the 'O' level examinations, but then I upgraded it to 'A' level. The lecturers there were awesome; and I still remember one Shazia madam who taught us DBMS (Database management Systems) and SAD (Systems Analysis and Design). She and other Lecturers of the institute taught the subjects so well, you can't forget the basics till now. And while doing my 'A' level course from CIStems, I had written entrance examination for MCA. I don't know if CIStems still exists, there have been news that it got shut down. How sad!!!

I still remember during the MCA Entrance Interview, a lady interviewer asked me if I knew about IRC (She was asking this in the then current affairs context; IRC was International Rajasthan Conclave, some cultural program being organized in the state). I answered confidently, yeah IRC is "Internet Related Chat" and it is used for conferencing and group discussions. I still remember the confused face of that interviewer, but one another interviewer sitting there got interested and he asked me some more tech questions. At last the interviewer told me that the lady interviewer was asking about International Rajasthan Conclave and not about the IRC which I talked about. Anyways, the interviewing panel was impressed and I got admission to MCA.

So I got the admission to MCA in year fall 2000 (The famous IT Slump time!!!) and the college allocated to me was Maharishi Aravind Instt. of Science and Management, popularly called MAISM. Initially I used to go to the college regularly, but then I realized that it's a waste of time going there...I am not criticizing the Institute; The institute is one of the best in whole Rajasthan now. But the then lecturers were all either under-knowledged or they don't know how to give a lecture. And after studying from an institute like CIStems, I greatly felt so. So I was scarcely seen in the campus, and my HOD always prowled about me for not coming to the institute. Anyways, I passed out my MCA with "Honors" (someone who gets more than 75% without any back log papers).

Oh yeah, the 6th Semester of MCA, as usual, were for Project Internship. I searched for internships in some companies in Delhi and NCR regions, but didn't got any. Then I got a project for a firm called "Macrosoft inc." head quartered at new jersey and whose branch is at Technopark, Trivandrum. The project was for a charity called "Home Care" (situated at Trivandrum Medical College) which takes care of under privileged Cancer patients in and around Trivandrum region. My mentor for this project was a free-lancer who guided me for the project. I still remember the lodge at Kesavadasapuram, where I stayed for the project completion. Have seen it again recently, when I went to drop my cousin sister to her hostel; When i stayed in the lodge, there was a Nursing school just behind the lodge and every evening my time passed with "bird-watching".... :-) I had seen the animals called "Software Engineers" for the first time at Technopark; and later realized that I also am gonna be one of those animals some day...

And here I am, a Software Engineer writing this blog in the dead of the night.......