The Blog

Thanks to tglx

Rule #1: Pinhead is always right

Rule #2: If for some reason pinhead is not right, see rule #1

There have been some interesting flames I have been seeing on the LKML. These brought me about to the most important rule on the LKML.

Rule -1:  Don’t piss off the big guys unless you have a good enough reason.

And a corollary to Rule -1: No reason is good enough to piss of the big guys.

<peterz> balbir_: think of it as a heisenberg uncertainty rule, the larger your parallel machine, the less acurate you can report on a global state

Its been over 2 years since my first patch was accepted into the Linux Kernel. And even today, having a patch accepted in gives me the same pleasure. Hope this honeymoon continues on for ever and ever.

Some of the random events happening, which I felt like capturing

I finally figured out that by changing a bus at KR Puram, I can go all the way to Manyata in a volvo bus. This comes out to about half the auto fare and is way more comfortable. While returning back one of these days, I was headed out to forum to meet a cousin of mine, who was in bangalore for those couple of days. I was tired, and exhausted as I had just returned the previous night from Mumbai. The bus was not very crowded and midway through a man climbed in with his two kids. The man was noticeably poor, and not someone who would usually climb in the BMTC volvo (fares of which are almost 3 times that of the regular buses) for travel. The kids were on the volvo for maybe their first, maybe one of their very rare rides on these buses. With the bus empty, the kids were very excited and running around. Normally, I would have frowned upon such behaviour, since it troubles the other commuters and after a hard day at work, I would normally like a calm trip back home. But what was different that day was the smiles and obvious joy on their faces. The playful behaviour, as opposed the tantrums I have gotten used to seeing, was a welcome change, and brought about a smile on my face. It just made the long trip on the bus to silk board way more bearable.

–

Valentine’s day! I could have never said that I have broken hearts but this Valentine’s Day was very different. Originally a classmate of mine and I had a plan to head out to some movie on friday, but it turned out I had a two hour conference call scheduled that day, so we decided to spend the night gaming. Turned out that he could not make it, since he was in a 1×1 with his manager and it would be late by the time he would get out. About an hour into the conference call, my doorbell rang, and this dude was here, and he had a disappointed look. Once I got through the conference call, I came to know he had a very stressful (and disappointing) 1×1 with his manager. Both of us were in the mood to bust some stress, and started Resistance in co-operative mode. Now, sometime after midnight I got a phone call from person X (for the purpose of this blog and to protect the person’s identity). My first response is “Can I call you later, I am a bit busy shooting aliens”. Person X wishes me happy valentine’s day and i respond back with a “same to you” and hang up. At this point my classmate asks me, “Dude, was that a girl?”. And I respond in affirmative which shocks him. “Dude, what were you thinking? She must have been waiting since eight and calls you up and you respond back, “I am busy shooting!”. You mad or what.”. Mind you, at this point in time, I had still not realized it was valentine’s day. And I reply back, well I am busy, let’s continue kicking some alien butt. This guy was still flabbergasted, and had just a “Dude!” in response. At this point in time I felt a bit bad for hanging up just like that, but it was late, almost 1 am and it is rude to call up a girl who is not your SO (SO acronym thanks to Paul Mckenney) at such an hour (Yes! I still have not realized its valentine’s day) and decide to call her up the next morning. Thankfully for me, she picked up the phone the next day, and talked with me, which was around the time I realized it was valentine’s day

–

Valentine’s Day had another set of miseries wrought upon me. (Just kidding!). The next day I was taking out my aunt, uncle and cousins for lunch to little italy. When I reached there, I was ambushed by the girls giving me a present, “Happy Birthday, Dhaval Bhaiya!”. I was taken aback because my birthday is still quite some distance away, and I looked down at the box to see a heart shaped label saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day Dhaval bhaiya! Love Richa and KJ”. Now this was something quite unexpected, and I had a book which Richa had asked me long back which on giving her disappointed Kaajal, who went into tears since she also wanted something. My aunt quite enjoyed all this and parts with, “Dhaval, you better learn to handle all this. They don’t change much when they grow older.”

–

The day continued on, as a couple of girls came and sat on the table next to ours, infact the table right next to mine. Now obviously I was not in a position to check them out, but my uncle was in the perfect position. So my aunt looks at me, and then at the girls and then my uncle, and tells him, “I think Dhaval would love to exchange places with you.”

–

Kaajal finally decided to talk to me, and wanted to show me a magic trick which invovled her hiding me behind her napkin. After a few failed attempts, my aunt started getting embarrassed (or maybe decided to embarrass me) and tells Kaajal that “Kaajal stop doing that. Dhaval bhaiya has friends around, and they will make fun of him”. This took me by surprise since I did not know anybody around, and in any case, I don’t quite care about others when I am playing with the girls, and don’t mind them playing around. Kaajal then asks (and quite loudly at that) “Where?” and to me, “Where, Dhaval bhaiya?”. My aunt looked at the two girls in the table next to ours and says, “They are sitting on the table next to ours. Go say hi” (maybe the “go say hi” part was said by my uncle, I don’t quite remember). I haven’t been so embarrassed in a while!

–

Talking about heart breaks, the box Kaajal and Richa gave me consisted of two heart shaped cookies. Now when it was time for dessert, we decided to have the cookies, and they wanted to share one cookie. I passed it to my uncle, who broke it into two, giving me the opportunity to ask my aunt, “Does he do that often?”. (For those who did not follow it, the cookie was heart shaped)

–

Talking about bad days, I could do no right on Monday. One really simple patch went through 6 iterations, before it finally makes sense. See here for an example of how bad it was. And to show you how bad, see the reply to that here.

The mangalore attacks are disturbing and shameful. But watching the media coverage disturbs me even more. Not because of the coverage, but because what it implies.

I cannot understand why the media needs to make this is a men vs women issue. That men are insecure, and women poewr is increasing and such opinions. Let’s be very clear on one thing. This heinous act was not commited by the “Male half” of our society as the media likes to imply. It has been committed by fundamentalists, extremists.

Privacy for one.. Read this and it scares me.

This is one of the times I wish that my parents had given me a far more common name!

EDIT: Fixed link

Maybe I am prejudiced. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am just plain stupid.

I just don’t get the hype behind the movie. I have not seen it yet, its yet to be released (or has just been released) in India. My thoughts come from reading other reviews. The New York Times reviews Slumdog Millionaire and says, “…India, where lost children and dogs sift through trash so fetid you swear you can smell the discarded mango as well as its peel…”.

I had a discussion with another friend, and she says, well isn’t it real? Doesn’t it happen in India. The great bong raises an important point. Sure it happens in India. But all of it doesn’t happen to just one person.

I reached here,  and read, “..where an award for Gandhi was a recognition of India’s amazing struggle for independence, an award for Slumdog is a critical and a stunning indictment of post-independence India..” The review goes to further trash the India part of the performance. So, while the movie is supposedly good, the Indian contribution to it is minimal.

I wonder why it is that this whole trash India approach works in the west. If an Indian makes a movie (or writes a book for that matter) trashing India, its supposed to be great stuff, the real truth and so on. If there is a movie which celebrates India, its not true.

When I went abroad, someone asked me, “Do you have supermarkets in India?”. I was not sure how to respond, this level of ignorance was shocking. And why was this ignorance? Because movies/books like this just tend to portray India as a backward place, reinforcing the stereotypes the west have of India.

And the best part is that, we have Indians who defend such stereotypes, “Does it not happen in India”. I had to wait overnight at Paris, Charles De Gaulle airport. One of the busiest airports in the world, it is closed in the night. And I had to wait outside the secure area the whole night. The only thing I saw the whole night were beggars. Midway through the night I started feeling a bit scared. Someone had tried to pick my pocket (or might have tried something more). This was the point I decided to sit right opposite the passport control where there were cops sitting. Does anyone tell you about that? Do you see movies depicting this aspect of france?

Do you know the plight of the homeless in France? How many of them die in the cold winters? Does anyone mention it? Does anyone know about how lonely it is abroad, and how Indian people are so much more warmer and friendlier. Why don’t we get such movies about the west, and instead get movies which only show them in great light. Isn’t it hypocrisy then to portray the feel good bollywood movies as lies and the american movies as realistic?

I feel as Indians we should reject slumdog millionaire. It is not an Indian movie, and it does not depict India instead of celebrating the golden globe as an Indian victory.

So at work, we use IRC for communicating. Sometimes there are interesting conversations that take place due to nick collisions. Most of the IRC clients have an autocomplete feature, and most of them beep/highlight when your nick is mentioned. And that generally calls for an interesting conversations whenever someone is looking for me and just blindly hits autocomplete . An example..

<ramon> dhansen: the codes and examples presented will work on any power based system
<dhansen> ramon: dhaval ^^
<dhaval> ramon, you mean dhaval . sorry dhansen
<ramon> hahaha
<ramon> dhansen: sorry
<ramon> dhaval: ^
<dhaval> ramon, dhansen is used to that by now
<ramon> dhansen: dhansen:
<ramon> ops
<ramon> again
<ramon> hahaha
<dhansen> this seals it, dhaval needs a new nick
* dhaval goes to hide before dhansen comes back
<ramon>

I met a old school friend of mine, from days long gone, the last person I expected to meet at IBM. And it was great finally to meet someone with an upbringing very similar to mine, and we have been reliving some of our old days and relieving old memories. Anyway, so once in a while, we head out to see a movie, a good old action movie, and have fun. This is a tale three such movies.

We wanted to see Quantum of Solace (come on, James Bond, can there not be enough action in that one.) (whoops, James Bond is a sissy, he fights for love. bah!) but did not get tickets for it, but we did get tickets for Body of Lies. Now Body of Lies was an eye-opener. We were very pleasantly surprised and quite enjoyed the movie. Body of lies has a character by the name of Hani Pasha. Now, if I were a girl, I surely would have fallen for this guy. He is impeccable. Amazingly dressed, what style, what charm, what class, what… You got it, we are huge fans of this guy. Anyway, we are digressing from the story. Couple of sequences that stood out were, they are at a bar, and this dude comes up and grabs hold of him. And Mr. Pasha responds, “Get your hands of the suit. Its an armani.” and we are like, woah! But this was nothing. The CIA top boss is talking with Pasha, wanting access to a man Pasha has placed inside the terrorist organization. Pasha refuses, and the CIA dude threatens him, that he will go above Pasha, and get orders from the King of Jordan. Pasha looks at him straight in the eye, and responds, “In matters of Jordanian intelligence, Mr. Hoffman, you are speaking to the king” and we were totally floored. This is the man!

Anyway, that was the first touch we had with the principle of the suit. Next, we saw Transporter 3 (trust me, quantum of solace is nothing to write home about. Its a mockery of the James Bond series!). It starts of with Frank Martin surrounded by a number of gunmen wanting him to accept the job they are offering him. He refuses and the head dude comes and grabs hold of him and threatens him, “You have 10 seconds to say yes”. At this very moment, we are like, “Dude! Don’t touch the suit!”. Anyway, in the movie, Frank Martin responds with, “I give you 5 seconds to get your hands of my suit”. And we are like, “Dude, I told you so! Now get your hands off him”. Needless to say, he does not remove his hands of him, and all the gunmen get their assess kicked. And we are just left saying, “Why don’t these villains ever learn?! DON’T touch the suit!” And not to mention how Frank gets the girl, just by dressing up in front of her in the suit! The power of the suit man!

And if that wasn’t enough. We went to Dil Kabaddi (ok, that is a story for another time, if someone reminds me write about it, and pesters me enough). There, Veer takes Mita out, and they are walking on Marine Drive. Now, they want to sit down, and she feels the bench is too dirty and so this dude, takes off his jacket and puts it down for her to sit on. And we are like, “Dude, Do NOT insult the suit!”. No, he does not get that. And guess what, he does not get the girl in the end.

And now, we finally believe in the power of the suit. The principle holds good!