Training Days

The past 3 weeks which ended with Tuesday were good fun.Why? I was going to college. (Reader at this point screams and jumps off his seat and checks URL to verify he/she is at Nandan's blog.) Before you wonder what has happened to me and whether I have found my sanity again or something let me assure you that I am still the same crazy, Nandan you know. Then why am I saying I had fun in hell and what the hell was I doing there anyway?

Well you see Wipro decided to conduct basic training for people joining in 2005 in their colleges itself for students of some colleges.(the classes are held by the respective college teachers Wipro just supplies the material) So basically I was going to hell and back for 20 days. Here are some of the things I (and some of my classmates) did in those 20 days

Sudoku

The latest craze to have hit town and I am totally crazy about it. After getting to college Anand and I would finish the Sudoku in the Hindu before classes started. I am totally hooked to Sudoku now.

Crossie

I have dabbled with crossies a bit. I am not too good at solving them. But when you have to put with boring lectures in the cool comfort of an aircondioned lab nothing works better than a crossie to keep one engaged. I have come to realise that trying to solve a crossword is way more fun when a class is in progress even if at the end of the day the crossie looks as sparsely populated as Alaska.

Making music

For a week out the 3 we were in a lab different from the lab that we spent the other 2 weeks in. In the '1 week lab' the machines are quite old and probably imported from Bedrock. So these has some old software installed and one of them was Qbasic which is an implementation of BASIC from Microsoft. What does all this have to do with making music. There is wonderful function called “play” and well it does what it says. So basically I was playing around with play and in the process irritating the people around me. Used Qbasic after many years and using it brought back memories of childhood and indeed I year at hell

Chilling out

Did I mention that we had our classes in labs. Well 2 out the 3 weeks were spent in a lab in the new IT block and the AC in the lab actually works. A computer lab where the AC works is a novelty for someone like me who has spent a considerable amount of time in CS department labs playing Mahjongg and Gnibbles and generating core dumps. You can imagine the shock I got when I realized that in this lab the temperature inside is actually going to be less than the outside temperature and am I glad that it was.

Surfing

One of the things that I learnt in the 3 weeks is that surfing the web is a lot more fun when its free and especially if one is not supposed to be surfing in the first place. Its kinda funny when you login to Orkut and your friends list has people who are all in the same room. You should check out this guy at Orkut. I am glad he didn't name the site after his second name ;)

Show me the money

Hell usually shows a complete lack of thought and planning in things they do with one exception – collecting money from students. We were asked to pay 40 rupees a day for the 12 days in June as bus fees. Nothing surprising in the fact that they came after money at the slightest chance they got. What is interesting is the planning, resourcefulness and dedication they showed in collecting the money from us. The people who came to collect the money even brought Rs.20 change !!! If only they showed the same kind of thought processes in the other aspects of college life...

Testing times

During the last week of training we had these mock tests in the various subjects that we had during the training (Have to write a test on 29^th at Wipro and need to get >80% in it so basically they were trying to prep us) When I say the tests were mock tests they really were a joke, seriously. They were so called 'on line' tests basically we took then on a computer. If I go into the flaws of the tests in terms of the system and everything else I'll end up writing a post longer than A Suitable Boy and your hair would have turned white or simply fallen off. But I'll leave you with a sample question. Don't bother about the question itself concentrate on the choices they are just brilliant

ARP module convert the pair to a 48 bit Ethernet address

1. True

2. False

3. None

4. Never

Hell has told us to write a full length 'mock Wipro test' 2 days before the real one

Question: Should I attend it?

1. No

2. Never

3. None

4. All of the above