Summary of the whole week...

I cannot say anything... It has been one of the best and worst weeks in my life..... First good news (good for me) is that I have finally started to learn to drive a 4 wheeled vehicle.... And I am doing pretty good.. It's been a week (as I already have written in the heading) and I have not scratched the car (that does not mean that I have crashed it, it just means that everything has been going pretty well....).

But the joys and thrills of this driving thing are not enough for me to keep enjoying what has been going on... So there were more things. I have been learning to play an electronic keyboard for a little over a month now. And there was a get together of my tuitions, and I performed in it in front of some 400 people (mostly parents of the students in the class). I played an old Hindi song, "Jeena Yahan", on a huge synthesizer... It was a big moment for me, the first time I was ever going to perform on the stage with a keyboard and that too on a synthesizer? I mean what I have got at my home is a very very small one. (half the size of what I had to play to be precise). But as I said, I did perform and it went well.... (Except for the starting music, where I was so tense that I pressed one button too lightly that no sound came out...).

In between, I went to a friend of mine and bought home a book from him, 'The Amulet of Summerkand' written by 'Jonathan Straud' (hope the spellings of the names are correct, I don't have the book with me right now). And I have been able to read only the first 60 pages of it... Had been very stressful week....

Apart from that, my laptop was behaving strange (again), so I took it to the service station, and they said that we (HP) provide support only if the laptop behaves strange on Windows XP, and not on OpenSuSE 10.2 (which I was and still am using)... So I had to install XP, and guess what, everything was OK. So I came home.

But having had enough experiences with XP, I reinstalled SuSE, but, in the midway, my father spoke with me and I dunno why, but I reinstalled XP, and was going to install Ubuntu on a pen-drive and use it with XP.... I did that in a single day.... 3 OSs installed in a day.... It was bad....

And after proudly (???) using XP for a week, I have switched back to SuSE (:-)) yesterday... And I am lovin' it...

What else?... Yeah, I also have been trying to expand my skills (Whatever I have) in C and learn C++. (We have a subject C++ in this semester for exams). And am thinking of joining the 2 games that I have so far created Tic Tac Toe and Bulls & Cows and present it as the project for the subject....

So, even if these are holidays, I have been nothing but busy... I mean I sleep around 1am or 2am and wake up at 7am... Then sometimes I sleep during the afternoon, but my friends drag me out of the home to play with them.... It's so tiring.... I just want a break... A big break from this stressed life....

Aditya Shevade

4 down.... 2 to go.....

Finally it's going to be over in less than 4 days..... 4 papers over..... Today was chemistry. I was not sure, what was going to be the difficulty level of the paper, but when I saw it, I was mad at myself. I spent hours and hours studying all the crap which was not even mentioned anywhere in the paper....

But, thanks to some good study material and whatever I had studied, the paper was fine. I have tried my best. You know, when you get in a kind of uncertainty, then just go on writing the same sentences again and again and just change the sequence of the words, and you are done.

From what I have heard, they (paper checkers) just measure the length of the answer paper and give the marks accordingly, and the height of it all was when I heard that one boy had written names of movies in his answers and he still managed to get 40/50.... Can you believe it?

Only 4 days to go......

Aditya Shevade

From the bottom of my heart......

From the bottom of my heart.... Don't get excited.. this is not my love story..... What I am saying is that I hate exams from the bottom of my heart.....

Still 3 papers left... first 3 were good.... The problem is that there are 3 more.... 5 more days..... x-( .... I am just waiting for 25th, when it all will be over and there will be a LONG vacation of about 2 months.......

Till then... enjoy my website at Aditya Shevade.

Aditya Shevade

My life is getting worse and worse.......

I have never been more frustrated in my entire life. First I have got the exams coming up from the 14th and then I have not studied as much as I would have wanted to....

Let me start from the beginning.... On the 1st of May, my cousin was getting married at a place about 400KM from where I live. After a lot of discussion and thinking, I decided to go with my parents on the 28th of April.... As it was marriage time, there were about 16-18 people constantly in the house and sometime even up to 30.... How the hell was I supposed to study? I absolutely wasted 5 days.... But it was worth it... I had a lot of fun.

Then I came home... I was kinda hoping that I might start with full speed, but I dunno how it happened but all of a sudden I am thinking of creating a website... A full fledged one, with all my photos, projects some tutorials and even a blog. And so, I have been spending about 3 hours a day in searching all that I need.... Now, if I fail to get a distinction, I think the computer is going out till I get a VERY good score.... (OK... it's not that bad.... I can still get a distinction..... but I know I can do more....)

And because of all this, the exams, my experiments with linuxes and multibooting and all has kept me from writing the posts here.... It's really frustrating as I said..... And I need a break, and I think I will get one after 25th.... Till then, I think this irregularity of the posts will continue. But I am thinking of writing everyday or at least every alternate day in my vacation....

Aditya Shevade.

Making your own Linux..... It's hard, but working on it is a wonderful experience....

Regarding this post, first let me tell you that this time, it was my mistake that caused the trouble. I will start from the beginning, or shall I say scratch?

When I was stumbling on the net using stumble upon... I came across a site where all the information about building your own linux distribution from scratch is available. (click here for more info).

I read the information, then proceeded with the download. Read the first introductory chapters in the book and then thought that I might be able to get it working. So I downloaded all the necessary packages and then proceeded with building. At the first time it did not work, but then second time, it looked like I might get it working (for the second time on this day).

First thing was to create a dedicated partition and install the OS there, so that it does not interfere with the existing system. I did all that was described. I succesfully installed 4-5 softwares as well. But as soon as I came to the place, where I had to install gcc for the second time, all the problems started.

It did not pas the make test. I waited for 1 hour for the whole process to get executed, but I just could not do it. Then my parents began to remind me of my upcoming exams. And eventually I had to give it up, so as to study a bit.

But it really was a great feeling. I mean, I am not an old wise owl of linux. It's only been about 3-4 months that I am using it. And after that much of knowledge, I feel quite satisfied, still it hurts deep down inside that I was not able to finish it in the first go. But I guess that is life after all.....

And as I said above, this time it was my fault that things went wrong. Now I have decided that I should better get my hand on a good guide to learn linux shell scripting. And then, as soon as my exams are over, I am going to have another go at this.....

Aditya Shevade

Mr. Gawaskar has lost his head........

My first question is, why? Why did he have to begin with this issue before the world cup? The more I think on it, I am beginning to feel like that the old man is losing his head.

First of all, the statement that he made that Australia are not popular winners is wrong. Only if you do not support them, it does not mean that the rest of the world does not. Australia have a very big fan support around the globe. You cannot say that they are not popular, there are plenty like me, who support Australia, even after being Indians. So that is completely crazy.

Next thing, it was Ponting's turn. Of course, when someone criticizes your team like that, anyone would lose their head. I completely back Ponting on this issue. Not just because I am a hardcore fan of his, but because this time it was Gawaskar's fault. What Ponting said is all true. The man who left the crease with his partner has no authority whatsoever to lecture anyone. Had it been anyone else, then that person would have been criticized around the world. It's only his name and fame that has kept people from going against him. Old man is really losing his head.

What Ponting said is true. Look at India. Why should Gawaskar always have a go at the Aussies? Look what Pakistani players are on the stadium. Why he never criticizes them? Due to national relations? Or because we have been defeating Pak for a long time, and not Aussies, and he cannot digest it, and that is why it's Aussies and not Pak? Coming back to Indian team, it's only because Indians lack professionalism and the attitude and urge to win that holds them back. Look at the last WC. They were terrified by Aussies. Our Mr. Opening Bowler started of with a wide and then gave it all away. Look what is performance of Sachin in big games. They are afraid and they lack the attitude. Had I been in any team, I would have done what Aussies are doing right now.

Then, what Gawaskar said on this statement of Ponting is... “We are not discussing the performance of any team, but their behavior on the field”. Then he defends his decision to leave the crease. In short he is just having a go at Aussies cause he has nothing else to do. Now my question, on one hand he says that he is talking about the on field behavior and then he says that if Aussies behave like this in a bar then they will get whacked. Now I don't think that there are bars on Cricket ground. Why do you care? They might get whacked or might hit someone, or get killed. Why are you brining this issue?

And in fact, Ponting was involved in a bar fight once and he is still standing. He is right now, arguably the best batsman in the world cricket. Best batsman in test for sure and one of the best captains and fielders the game has ever seen. And according me, unless you have a mindset and attitude like Ponting, you cannot perform that well.

To sum it all up, I would say that Mr. Gawaskar should stop criticizing Aussies now. It's been quite a long time that he is having a go at them. And in my opinion, it's the attitude of Aussies which makes them the world winners and that too popular winners.

Aditya Shevade

And we were not selected......

Again, I really do wonder how these things happen in life. Today, we had a competition, we means me and my friend. It was a PowerPoint presentation competition. We were to face a screening test first and then we were going to be given some not technical subjects, on which we would have had to prepare a presentation, with the help of the Internet in one hour. That was, of course, given the fact that we were selected.

But, it all went wrong. First, the time management. The screening was scheduled at 8:30am. We were present at the spot at that time, but we came to know that screening was on 9:30. But it didn't start at 9:30 as well. Then finally it did begin at 11:30am.

We were under the impression that the screening was going to be an aptitude test, but alas. We are not that lucky. Only some 12 out of 60 questions were based on the Mental Ability Test (MAT), rest were stupid general knowledge questions, like who is president of LETTA. I don't have any idea what the hell is LETTA. Cause, I am not at all concerned with it. And I really can't see how can it be a screening test for a PowerPoint presentation contest.

They could have checked out PowerPoint knowledge or our language, the ability to present our thoughts and such things, but no, they wanted to see if we knew where the hell are the "Venkatgiri" or "Devangiri" or something like that Saree's are manufactured, like we want to start a new business there.

So, in the end, only 10 teams were selected out of some 60. And the saddest part is that ours was 11th. (I know people will not believe in me, when I say ours was 11th, but believe me, they had sorted our name, but I think they received 2 papers with scores more than ours, so my team and one more were rejected). They said that 24/60 was the last team and so, we must have had got anything from 23.75 to god knows what.

There was 1 mark for correct answer and -0.25 for a wrong one, and now I only wish, that we should not have hit arrows in air to see if we catch a pray. Those -0.25 marks did make a difference and we lost our spot. Bad luck. Maybe next time.........

Aditya Shevade