Naveen's Journal

Many of you, unlike me, might have come across this long ago, as it is in circulation for years now. But I just received it today and was spellbound by the incident. For those who are not aware of it, it goes like this -
Never underestimate your Clients’ Complaint, no matter how funny it might seem!

This is a real story that happened between the customer of General Motors and its Customer-Care Executive. Please read on…..

A complaint was received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors:

‘This is the second time I have written to you, and I don’t blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we’ve eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It’s also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a  problem….

You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won’t start. If I get any other kind of ice cream, the car starts just fine. I want you to know I’m serious about this question, no matter how silly it sounds “What is there about a Pontiac that makes it not start when I get vanilla ice cream, and easy to start whenever I get any other kind?” The Pontiac President was understandably skeptical about the letter, but sent an Engineer to check it out anyway.

The latter was surprised to be greeted by a successful, obviously well educated man in a fine neighborhood. He had arranged to meet the man just after dinner time, so the two hopped into the car and drove to the ice cream store. It was vanilla ice cream that night and, sure enough, after they came back to the car, it wouldn’t start.

The Engineer returned for three more nights. The first night, they got chocolate. The car started. The second night, he got strawberry. The car started. The third night he ordered vanilla. The car failed to start.

Now the engineer, being a logical man, refused to believe that this man’s car was allergic to vanilla ice cream. He arranged, therefore, to continue his visits for as long as it took to solve the problem. And toward this end he began to take notes: He jotted down all sorts of data: time of day, type of gas uses, time to drive back and forth etc.

In a short time, he had a clue: the man took less time to buy vanilla than any other flavor. Why? The answer was in the layout of the store. Vanilla, being the most popular flavor, was in a separate case at the front of the store for quick pickup. All the other flavors were kept in the back of the store at a different counter where it took considerably longer to check out the flavor.

Now, the question for the Engineer was why the car wouldn’t start when it took less time. Eureka – Time was now the problem – not the vanilla ice cream!!!! The engineer quickly came up with the answer: “vapor lock”.

It was happening every night; but the extra time taken to get the other flavors allowed the engine to cool down sufficiently to start. When the man got vanilla, the engine was still too hot for the vapor lock to dissipate.

Even crazy looking problems are sometimes real and all problems seem to be simple only when we find the solution, with cool thinking.

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Huh!!

I couldn’t resist clicking this morning, as I was about to take cab for office from Park Circus. As always, the Durga Puja pandal at PC is turning out to be magnificent and this year’s theme is Golden Temple, Amritsar. Although not yet completed, with ornamentation and much of the frills yet to be done, it is strikingly similar to the original masterpiece. It is one of the biggest Pujas in Kolkata with millions thronging the Puja fair, which lasts well over a month after the Pujas are over. Below are 2 snaps from my cell, will keep on posting more

Finally after procrastinating for long, I decided to tread the path traversed only by the GODs of PERL – writing JAPHs!! And my brain storming for about 6 hours finally ended with a JAPH, not too bad for a debut, albeit a little amateur. For those of who are still wondering what the heck is a JAPH – it refers to a PERL program which prints the phrase JUST ANOTHER PERL HACKER. It is an art initiated by Randal Schwartz and further mastered by the likes of Abigail. My piece of code is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl

@b=map +{keys %$_} , map +{chr}, grep {!/6[68]|7[0137]|81/} (65..85);

%hs1=(74,1,85,2,83,3,84,4);
%hs2=(65,1,78,2,79,3,84,4,72,5,69,6,82,7);
%hs3=(80,1,69,2,82,3,76,4);
%hs4=(72,1,65,2,67,3,75,4,69,5,82,6);

for $i(1..4) { $n=”h2″.$i;for (0..13) {@abc=keys %{$b[$_]};$k=pop @abc;map { ${$n}{$_}++ } keys %{$b[$_]} if ((($i==1) && ($k=~m![tsuj]!i)) || (($i==2) && ($k=~m![rehtona]!i)) || (($i==3) && ($k=~m![lrep]!i)) || (($i==4) && ($k=~m![rekcah]!i))); }}

for (1..4){$m=”h2″.$_;$ms=”hs”.$_; print sort {${$ms}{ord $a} <=> ${$ms}{ord $b}} keys %{$m}, ” “;}

I particularly don’t like two parts of the above code -

1) The 4 hashes at the top – they are used to sort the letters in the words (It took most of my time)

2) The big if ( ) { } block – it kinda gives the code a very amateurish look.

So while I work on improving myself, do give in some suggestions if you may please

And if you think that was smart, then have a look at http://www.cpan.org/misc/japh or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAPH for some of the most astonishing piece of coding across any language on this planet.

The first of its kind Web Technology Conference on Open Source Technologies, WEBOSS ’07 is being organised in Kolkata on Saturday 13th October, 2007. I was pleasantly surprised when Hussain (Hussu) , friend of Pradeep, called upon me to ask whether I would be interested in speaking at the event. The event focuses on Web 2.0 technologies and is a great attempt by Hussu’s Teks to create awareness about what standards and practices are dominating the industry today. Other speakers include Hussu himself – on RIA, Choosing the right Technology and Ruby on Rails , Pradeep on AJAX, Shabbir bhai on Speeding up Web Apps.

I will be sharing my thoughts mostly on Perl and CGI with some flavour of Web 2.0 as well. Its really exciting to be a part of such a great initiative and kudos to Hussain and his team for pulling it off!

The venue will be WBUT Main Campus (West Bengal University of Technology) in Salt Lake, Kolkata – Click Here for Google Maps Location. So a good proportion of technology students, who will be joining the industry very soon, will be a part of the audience.

It is a free for all event and participation/volunteering is highly appreciated. The details of the event can be found at http://weboss07.pbwiki.com/ . So register yourself for the event and be a part of tomorrow. Sponsorships Welcome

Flash Movie Courtesy – http://www.friendskolkata.com/

Durga Puja, or better – Durga Pujo. You don’t need to be a Bengali by birth to know the significance of this great festival. People like myself, who have become de facto Bongs by the virtue of making Kolkata their home city, have long felt the fervour that prevails during the Pujas in this part of the world. The four days bring with them a lot more than joy, belief, celebration, shopping and what not. The city becomes the scene for the most electrifying display of artistry, faith, madness, populace and sheer awe, anyone can ever witness, anywhere. Thousands of pandals are setup in different themes housing Goddess Durga along with other Gods and Goddesses, and are thronged by millions of devotees from all over the globe all day all night. The craftsmanship is jaw dropping, illuminations – just scintillating, and crowds – maddening. Many people take this opportunity to have a vacation somewhere else, but its the bustling streets and lanes and by-lanes which reinstate the fact that India is a country driven by its culture, a culture so rich that in spite of all the wrong doings that blemish her almost every moment in some corner or the other, sanctity finds its way out to the open air and compels even the hard core atheists to simply stand and take notice!

Another forwarded email which I could not resist posting!

I just received this forwarded email with instructions on how to activate multiple instances of Yahoo! Messenger on the same machine without the use of any software. I tried it out and its awesome! Working really fine. Just follow the instructions below and you are all set:

1. Go to Start —-> Run . Type regedit, then enter
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER ——–> Software —> Yahoo!  —–>pager—->Test
3. On the right pane , right-click and choose new Dword value
4. Rename it as Plural
5. Double click and assign a decimal value of 1
6. Now close registry and restart Yahoo! messenger .For signing in with new id open another messenger. Open as many messengers u need

The above has been tested on Windows XP and Yahoo! Messenger Version 8.1.

Cheers

Perhaps I wrote my previous post (WTF!) too early! Continuing its assault of emails, the count reached a phenomenal 207!! Way to go Calcutta Telephones Click on the following image to get an idea:

(Click on the image to enlarge)

I guess the guys at BSNL need a good sleep! I opened my mailbox a while ago to be shocked by the number of times the payment notification mail had been sent by their mail server. I know that it is an automated process but something is going amiss big time. Just imagine the magnitude of bandwidth and network resources this dirty exercise would have consumed, as the same would be have occurred for all customers who have opted for email notifications (and by conservative estimates, it should run into lakhs). Thank God for Gmail, which has a conversation view which condensed the whole mess into just 2 rows, else 3 pages of my inbox would have been gulped by the same trash! WTF!

It was an occasion which probably comes once in a lifetime – India vs Pakistan in a World Cup Cricket Final, and no one would have dared to bite the nails in the solitude of their living rooms. So all gathered at Rahul’s place at 5 PM sharp to cheer up Team India. I left office at 4:30 sharp hoping to beat the incessant rain and reach on time. With knee deep water logged at most places, I still managed to enter the arena 5 minutes before the start of the extravaganza, and boy, was that place prepared for the match! The Indian Tricolour donning the front wall, most were dressed in blue (so was I) and eyes fixed at the idiot box as the Indian warriors descended the pitch. Each shot was followed by deafening shouts of cheer and every wicket brought pin drop silence in the room. Pulses raced as close calls were made and after a rather decent start, India started to lose it in the later stages. With the fall of Yuvraj, dejection loomed on everyone’s face as a winning target seemed more difficult.

As everyone waited for the final overs to see India make a match out of it, a thunderous bolt in the sky set the cable signals off and alas, we were left with no coverage of the match! Before we could even think of rushing to someone else’s place to catch the action, we were given a harsh reality check by the incessant rain outside – the whole of C.I.T Rd submerged in waist deep water! Even the car could not be taken out, nor was any conveyance available. So the final 7 overs we just managed to cover through live scores from the internet.

But at no cost we could afford to miss the 2nd Innings. So after the cable operator confirmed a non-resumption of services indefinitely, we set out to Nivesh’s place in heavy rainfall! A 100 meter distance was covered in about 15 minutes, as the guys had cartons over their heads. With the cellphones, wallets and other belongings already back home, no one cared getting drenched any more. As a bunch of 8 guys, with water dripping from all over them, entered the living room, we all erupted to see the back of Pakistani Opener. But soon Imran Nazir sent Sreesanth’s over for a toss and gloom prevailed. Each wicket was then cheered with a frenzied fanaticism as we inched closer to the victory which had eluded us for so long. Towards the end of the match, everyone was on the edge of their seats and every bad ball by Joginder Sharma was greeted with curses and abuses from me! But as it was destined, India won sending all of us rollicking over one another!

The scenes and sounds from out on the streets were unimaginable, as hoards of men, women and children took to the roads-turned-canals with trumpets, drums, whistles and ever-lasting songs of victory. Victory never tasted so sweet, with the victim being Pakistan and World Cup coming home after 24 years. On a day when it rained more than 200 mm, and it still continued, all of us set out for a victory lap and the scenes were amazing! Saffron, White and Green seemed to be the only colours around as we waded and chanted, giving the odd ambulance-stuck-in-water a much required push. Pictures and Video (apologies for poor picture quality, but its just a cellcam!) follow, as I was the only one carrying his stuff

Download Frenzied Celebration in Muddle!