08.21.09
The Next in Line
It’s no secret that professors come and go in an engineering college. In XIE, it’s rare to find profs in the Computers and IT departments who choose to stay for more than a year.
The EXTC department on the other hand has almost no changes which is pretty good not just for the obvious reasons, but because the profs cooperate a lot better and work for the betterment of the students. You can notice this from the staggering 6th semester results of EXTC where almost everyone has a 1st class or above and students with a single ATKT or more form a group of a number easily less than 10 (maybe even 5). Not just that, their experiments for practicals are recorded in printed journals and students studying for their CAT/GRE/GMAT/OTHR/LAME/XAMS are permitted to bunk college for a couple of weeks (this provision is obviously unofficial). Isn’t that effin’ awesome?
In contrast, the situation in computers and IT is an interesting spectacle and uhh…I digress.
Let me cut right to the chase. XIE is looking for a new principal.
![advt%20aug%2009[1]](http://vrsexie.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/advt20aug20091.jpg "advt%20aug%2009[1]")
I find this really absurd and full of WTFs as I heard that Dr. Kirloskar was very enthusiastic about teaching environmental science for the next couple of batches. Even I was interested in attending his lecture just to experience how a Ph.D in Environmental Engineering from IIT approaches the subject.
I have no further information about when he plans to quit but I can only hope that the new principal doesn’t screw around with me for my blog posts. I think I’ve had enough of that for one lifetime.
08.05.09
What The Tux?
I entered the computer lab a couple of days back for the first time this semester. It felt great to be back in the lab, watching Gauri Ma’am and Nandesh sir trying their level best to ensure that nobody fucks around in the computer lab as well as Manuel Sir Uncle (that’s how his name is mentioned officially on a notice with phone numbers of the staff LOL) who watches calmly unlike Anand sir who is totally blatant that he finds every student annoying to say the least.
After dealing with the usual crap which Anand sir throws at me for wearing shorts to college, which is now a commonplace activity for me, I entered one of the labs and I booted the machine.
My reaction to what I saw in the next 10 seconds was a clearly audible WTF ????
Red Hat Linux Enterprise Edition? WTF? Why? WTF could have possibly possessed those guys to have done this? WTF was wrong with Fedora? WTF are they upto? WTF happened to their reasons to choose Linux in the first place? Simply, WTF????
For the technology n00bs (i.e. those who have a life), Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a PAID SOFTWARE and is NOT FREE like Ubuntu or Fedora Linux which our computers ran earlier.
This reminded me of a day two years ago when Fr. John had given me a hard copy of his Linux Research Lab project idea, whose aim in a nutshell was to convert every computer in college from running Windows to Linux to save thousands of bucks in licensing fees. The document stressed heavily on the fact that Linux was completely free and was more secure than Windows and leveraged these points to convert our labs to Linux.
I’ve attached a portion of the document below. Click the picture to view an enlarged version.
And after all that crap about the advantages of free software, they’ve decided to use Red Hat Enterprise Edition which is 4000 rupees (minimum) per year for EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER THAT RUNS IT. What’s ironic is that this operating system is almost as expensive as the retail version of Windows XP Home edition which costs a little more than 4000 rupees. (CLICK HERE FOR THE OFFICIAL RED HAT ENTERPRISE EDITION PRICING OPTIONS)
I don’t know if they pirated the OS and downloaded it for free (notice the irony in the document) or if they actually paid 8 lakhs for the 200 computers (I’m assuming that the actual number of computers XIE has is close to 200. This isn’t the actual figure) this year but to be honest, I don’t really care.
Irrespective of what option they chose, it still contradicts the very arguments that got them permission to install Linux on every machine. Although I support the idea of learning to use an OS which isn’t Windows, this is blasphemy.
I wonder what made them choose this option in the first place? What was wrong with Fedora anyway?
My constant wtf’s are preventing me from writing anything without using profanities so I’ll just close this post with another WTF.
Let me know your thoughts on the issue. Comment away!
08.01.09
Ask me ‘bout XIE
An anonymous reader suggested that I answer a couple of questions that might be useful to the freshers and students from S.E. and T.E. Instead of just letting him/her ask the questions, I’m inviting you to throw in your set of queries about XIE.
So if you’ve got something on your mind that hasn’t been answered by the college authorities to your satisfaction, just fill in the form below and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Just be aware that I’m not authorized to make any statement on behalf of the college so whatever I say is totally unofficial and is not to be used as evidence to strengthen your doubts when you deal with the college authorities. I’m just a student who will answer your questions from my point of view. Since I spend more time in the classroom and the college authorities in the office, remember that they are a more definitive source of information.
Now that we’re clear on that, just fill in a simple form that’ll take less than a minute to fill.
Fire away your questions!!!
If you can’t see the form, fill it up by CLICKING HERE.
07.13.09
T minus 7 days
Life is about to change….for the worse. ‘Chilling Out’ as we know it, will soon cease to exist. It’s the time of the year where you can’t even do anything else thanks to God’s gift of sporadic heavy rains in Mumbai and drought in every other farm in the country which only asks for a modicum of rain.
College reopens on the 20th of July. What’s weird is that most people don’t even know this. They still think the big day is on 3rd of August and yet I doubt I’ll ever see those guys even in the first week of August.
To us, the new final year students of XIE (hopefully), this day adds another headache as we need to present a PowerPoint presentation about our project on the 23rd and I haven’t even decided on a project yet.
I guess we can only vent our frustration out on the freshers who will turn up shortly after they complete the completely unnecessary and cumbersome procedure that is CAP (Centralized Admission Process, jeez…).
Luckily, this time a couple of things outside of XIE have changed and you can expect to see some of these things for real:
- The new Railway Budget has further cut down costs for a student railway season ticket. Although I’m not sure if this is applicable for both 1st and 2nd class coaches, I’m fairly certain that at least the 2nd class passes are covered under this scheme.
- Aah, the freakin’
Bandra-WorliRajiv Gandhi Sea Link (I’m waiting congress…where’s my effing money) is finally going to almost entirely transfer all the traffic that originates from Lower Parel till Mahim along Senapati Bapat Road and should ease the flow of traffic outside XIE (which is a good thing as I had to pay 20 bucks once as taxi fare thanks to good ’ol traffic.) - XIE has a new coat of paint which will enthral those with olfactory fetishes.
- The scum of XIE (previous B.E. batch) are gone *phew* (lol, kidding. it’s not like we’re gonna miss you but u know what I mean
) Some of the other scums (profs) of XIE are gone.(Note to self: Never ever write something like this especially when they have you by the balls when it comes to internals)
I also hope that some of these things are implemented this semester:
- Upload class assignment and project files on the XIE website (like ex-lecturer Reef who used to do that). That saves me some fucking time and doesn’t require me to carry a pen drive to college every fucking day like a kiss-ass just to make sure I get all the presentations from the lecturers as soon as they use them, along with making false promises to every other bugger in class without a pen-drive about mailing them everything that I copied.
- UPDATE THE @&(^%$ WEBSITE! What’s the point of hosting it when there’s no relevant info on it? Universities today use twitter to broadcast college related news and we can’t even keep a website up-to-date. Ask the students, we’ll help. (okay okay okay…Rahul sir asked me a couple of times earlier about this, but I had my vivas and sem exams….Sorry man. I can *hopefully* help now
) - Better organization of the college magazine. I can’t blame anyone for last year’s disaster because I saw what unrealistic deadlines and politics the magazine team had to put up with. The good thing is that Meera ma’am wants to start collecting articles right away so start scribbling some neat shit during boring lectures and pass it on to her.
- Be lenient to us about our Spandan budget. We’re undergrad engineering students for fucks sake, not hardcore management gurus. Cut us some slack. Engineering events always include unavoidable costs such as components and hardware so there’s nothing we can do about it (other than make Spandan a software only event which would be uber-lame)
- Let us play football/basketball/table-tennis during college hours. It’s not like you’re reducing bunking. People bunk anyway so at least you’ll keep a couple of us hovering around the college premises. Think about it.
I have a warm fuzzy feeling that this semester is going be really interesting, so let’s hope for the best as we enter the gates of hell letting our lives be vulnerable to Mumbai University’s charming fuck ups.
Cya in college!
EDIT: The college website now mentions that college reopens on 21st July. So don’t turn up on the 20th
07.02.09
Play Counter-Strike Online
For those who can’t imagine life without Counter-Strike, here’s some good news.
A couple of guys play CS 1.6 on Hamachi on weekends during the semester but now that we’ve got a couple more weeks left of our vacations, it’s become more of an everyday thing.
If you wanna join in, download Hamachi (Free) and join the following network:
Username : xie47
Password : xie47
You’ll often find me pumping bullets out there, so be sure to drop in.
The server IP depends on who’s online so ask for the server IP in the network chat-room. If you have a microphone, connect it to your computer as many of use ‘team-speak‘ as we’re playing. The most popular maps that are used are de_dust2, de_dust, cs_untitled and de_inferno.
P.S: As this post will be crawled by search engines, it might attract spammers and other players. If you’re just a random dude looking to play some CS, you’re more than welcome to join in but even a single spam chat message will get you banned.
And So It Begins…
After 3 excruciating years in Engineering at XIE, we were finally awarded a 1.5 month vacation by Mumbai University.
I flipped out on hearing the news and started chalking out plans on how to spend 1.5 months in the best way possible. I knew it was too good to be true. There had to be a catch. But every passing day after June 11th kept inspiring me to give up my cynical nature.
A few days later, a SMS message was being circulated which looked like this:
Suvarna mam wants 2 address T.E.Comps.Mon,29-06-09 at 9.00 am.Pass on d word.
Just what I fucking needed. It was the fly in the ointment. As soon as I read that I said to myself ”Pessimism FTW!” and I made a few calls to gain some more information about the message.
Apparently Suvarna Ma’am wanted to talk to us about the final year project. She told us how the system works in a nutshell and asked us to submit our project groups there itself. She also expected us to make a presentation about the overview of our short-listed projects on the 21st or 23rd of July. Now wait a minute….We haven’t even got a confirmation from a company yet and she wants us to submit a fucking presentation? Every company we approach politely show us the finger and who can blame them during this slump?
Then we were told that college would be reopening on the 21st of July so that they would have more time to complete the syllabus. What the fuck happened to Mumbai University’s circular stating that all colleges should reopen on 3rd August? If you delve into all the technical intricacies of that statement, you’ll realize that the circular is just a guideline and what it really means is that colleges should reopen latest by 3rd August.
Then we are reminded that the next two semesters are going to be university exams and given the same lectures about how messed up our lives can get (as if it isn’t already) if we screw up those exams. And to add to that, almost everyone is giving the GRE/TOEFL/CAT/GMAT/etc. so that’s going to be an additional headache.
It’s amazing how one SMS can snowball into such a major pain in the ass.
So basically, the next (read: last) 2 weeks of our vacation are to be spent in exploiting every influence in this shit-hole of a system (which BTW prides itself on being meritocratic in nature) and work on a project under the guidance of a company.
The next semester has essentially commenced so brace yourself to deal with it.
In other news, apparently nobody cares about throwing a farewell party for the B.E. batch that passed out recently so they’re planning a little something for themselves which is being financed by the college. If it weren’t for the freakin’ general elections ruining the entire semester exam schedule, we’d (current T.E. batch) throw a helluva party. Sorry guys, but there ain’t much we can do about it.
Also in other news, speaking as a senior now in XIE, I can assure you that any extra-curricular or co-curricular activity that I’m involved in will be an attempt to set standards in awesomeness. I’ll also try and reduce all the crappy red-tape that’s required for any idea to be implemented.
Also Also in other news, since this will (hopefully) be my last year in XIE, I’ve decided to blog extensively about my college experiences and will share the greatest and the worst moments of our lives in XIE as the days progress.
Hasta la proxima.
02.15.09
1 Year Deadline
As you may or may not have noticed, the domain name has been renewed till next year. Gaurav D’Costa (AKA GDiz) added some more time for the domain but I’m not sure if he was aware of the expiry date. My guess is that his domain reseller account must have had some provision to detect expiring domains and that might have caught his attention, (or maybe it was the blog after all 
)
Keep your browsers hooked on to the Transmission website as there are going to be massive changes in a few days.
ciao.
02.13.09
1 Week Deadline
Not many people including the college administration know this, but the domain name of our college website xavierengg.com is going to expire on the 19th of February.
After that, although the website will remain online, nobody will be able to access it by typing the domain name. You’ll need to type the IP Address to get to it. Let’s see if anybody realizes this (heh heh)
Speaking of IP Addresses, we’re also thinking about getting a new domain name for the Transmission website. As of now we have none and you have to type in the IP Address to access the website or you can click here but soon you’ll either see a completely new domain name or something like xavierengg.com/transmission
It’s worth the wait to see how things turn out.
02.10.09
Look me in the Eye
Although he’s taken a couple of lectures earlier, I attended Cyrus Sir’s first lecture today and found him pretty impressive. He teaches really well, even his practical sessions are pretty useful but I was pretty surprised to know that nobody in my class realized that he never looks at anyone while teaching, esp. when he’s writing something on the black-board.
A few friends have suggested that he only looks at one row which comprises only of guys and hence deduce an inference stating that he’s too shy to talk to girls. An interesting concept, isn’t it? I’ll hunt for more clues leading to the truth in the coming lectures.
Well, imagine sitting in a class where the prof doesn’t even look at you. I looked around and I saw people talking on their cell phones like there was nobody around. Some guys were involved in a pen-fight tournament and the rest were just enjoying a good uninterrupted conversation.
I couldn’t help but screw around a little bit, so I took out my camera and I caught a portion of his lecture to show you guys that he really doesn’t look at us while teaching. In his one hour lecture, he looked at the class only about 4-5 times.
The first video that I’ve posted below is about 5 and a half minutes long and you can hear him teaching “us” about various line drawing algorithms. You can also hear a few friends and me commenting on a few things (no offence people) as well as planning my ultimate test which I carry out at the 5th minute, so if you want to jump straight into the action, I suggest viewing from the 5th minute although you should really see the entire video and notice if he even looks back once.
As you must have seen, I went right behind him with a camera and he didn’t even notice. Obviously, I was pretty nervious as you can see from the unstable camera once I stand up and walk towards him.
I attempted it again a little later and went a lot closer to him this time but he didn’t notice.
I can only wonder what we can do in his forthcoming lectures, a coordinated mexican wave maybe? I’ll give it a shot.
