Manish’s Scribble Board

I had heard somewhere that when you are in misery and luck shines “It Rains, and you then desperately need a shelter”. This is what I feel now! In last five sems of my engineering, I did nothing except timepass, orkut, chatting and parties. It was sixth sem when I thought that something really needs to be done to make this degree a meaningful one.

I didnt have anything to write in my resume as any proficiency which I ought to right needs a certi to prove it (which I dont have). I havnt even done any networking course or anything of the sort which others have done. Then in the start of semester I came to know of a golden opportunity, applied for it and I achieved it. I am still short of words to explain the whole experiences.

Even after coming back from Bangalore, I didnt even get a single second to gasp! Assignments, Lab exams, projects etc etc have made my life a hell. I have manged to get outputs in last two lab exams ( ITT- Last Fri and CG-Today) and have to face Compiler lab exam tomorrow. Frankly speaking I dont know anything in viva as I skipped this paper to achieve the *achievement of the semester*.

TCS is coming this Friday,2nd of May. Interviews are scheduled for two days as far as my knowledge is concerned. Everything will be over by 4th May though we are still supposed to show our ITT lab mini project this Friday. Third sessionals are scheduled from 8th May and Semester exams from 16th (which is going to get preponed). I still have to start with S of SE (Software Engineering) and even in Compilers. Too bad situation over this side, never ever faced such in all six semesters of my engineering.

Next update is surely scheduled on Saturday, maybe one even before.

I just want to finish this up in as short as possible. Here is the list of possible companies that are expected to visit the campus for placements during year 2008-2009.

It includes the so called “Mass Recruiters” (MRC) and “Dream Companies”. Though MRC’s are clear to arrive after semester exams, the dream companies will come next semester till the end, We are expected to give names of two companies in which we intend to appear as our Dream Jobs Choosing these two are a great headache as we dont know which company will arrive when and which of them will become open? Lots of tension and confusion is prevailing all around. I am too in a deep fix what to do? Which company? EMC² or Cisco or Microsoft or Yahoo or Freescale or Deloitt? The list is too long and time is less. The worst part is that no one is cooperating. I understand that all of us want a job, but still there is something called humanity. Just imagine someone (not me) who is not able to figure out what to fill in and doest have any idea? What will he do?

Hope, I make up my mind before Monday which is the last date for submission. I have already submitted the academic biodata form yesterday.

And yeah, TCS is coming on 2nd May, not completely sure, but heard. Maybe its true!

When Luck Shines, there’s a heavy downpour of opportunities and success. This is what I felt after being being addressed “Congrats Manish! You have been selected for the internships, just tell us the time frame when you would like to pursue it?” It still echoing in my ears, what a pleasant surprise! I never ever thought of this day. My whole family is delighted, too much delighted, too too much!!

Want to know the whole story? Read patiently below, or test your patience.

We left Manipal for Shimoga at 5PM on Friday leaving behind the sessionals at a risk, well its a bit stupidity on my part to abandon the interview just for the exams. We were total of 7 people who headed on a Qualis. It takes three and a half hour to reach Shimoga by road, which crosses Augumbe Point (better known as Sunset Point). We stopped for five minutes just to have a look at the place and then headed on.

Reached Shimoga at 8 at night, had our dinner and went to station to catch our train, we had a third AC ticket which is supposed to be reimbursed by the Microsoft guys. The train left at 10 and reached Bangalore at 5 in the morning. We took a hotel room, 7 people in a room, got fresh, changed to formals, dumped our belongings and went to Exam Center without breakfast.

At the center we were told to sit in room no 11, after we had done our first question, the Microsoft dudes told us that my mistake they had put us in the wrong section, so now we will face a different pattern of exam. Our paper started at 11AM. First question was traversing a matrix in spiral order and secondly deleting n nodes out of every 2n nodes in a linklist.

Results came out in 5 minutes, 3 out of 8 people got selected. Now I had to face two rounds of interview. IN the first round, I was asked to implement memcpy and second to reverse adjacent nodes of a link list using address not values. The interviewer was very much impressed by my approach as I had prior idea of the both questions, thanks to PCS and DS papers which we had been taught we studied ourselves.

Second round was the most dangerous round. The problem statement is as follows

Given a whole C/C++ program in a program buffer, remove the single and multi line comments from this program. Draw a Finite Automata (or DFA) for it and write down the corresponding program as precise as possible.

After writing this program, he evaluated it thrice each time finding some or the other minute and minutest errors (guess that person was a genius and had an eagle eyes, catching even the smallest bug). He asked me questions on hashing, clash in hashing values, open hashing. Order of hashing etc etc etc. After it was done, he asked me to wait outside.

After 5-10 mins, a guy came out and said exactly the same words which I had mentioned at the top of the post. After that we were busy waiting for Adi’s results. God’s luck shined on them too and rest two of my friends were also selected. Who two? Drown yourself if you didnt come to know by this time. Its Sathvik!. Then had my dinner at 9PM after exactly 24 hrs. All this time I was alive on WATER!

We left Bangalore at 10PM night by a horrible but the only bus available was of come National Travels (or something of the sort). It had only 8 seats left at the last of which we booked 7. God! All the seats were defective . Mine was turned, Harry’s seat didnt slide to semi-sleeper and bulk loads of problems. There were mosquitoes all inside the bus. Reached Manipal at 9:30 in the morning. Am deadly tired, writing this post after sleeping for 3 hrs and missing my lunch!

This is the first biggest update regarding to our batch’s placement for the year 2008. Though yesterday Lister Technologies came for their Pre-Placement Talks, its not so important as today’s update. Today was our section turn to apply for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The application form was online and we were required to furnish our details in the time slot of 20 mins.

Though it was just an event to apply for the exams, it was more of a fun rather than a serious event, everyone was pulling other’s leg for applying leg and showcasing themselves as dumb and persuading other not to apply so that a seat can be spared. Old drama !!! Quite common.

Not everyone applied for this company, many students have their own expectations and they would not be sitting for Mass Recruiters, instead they will sit for big companies which are expected to come next semester. Well no problems, its their own placement strategy. I applied for TCS because I didnt want to repent later that I didnt apply when time should have done.

More Updates later, keep a watch.

Our friend and beloved CR, Ankur Bansal is one of the laziest person on this earth. When he has no work he gets busy with his GF’s. Imagine of the scene what would happened when one of his GF’s messaged him to get online, only when he found that Vikash’s computer had crashed
This happened a long time back. At that time Rock didnt have his laptop and solely relied on Vikash’s desktop for satisfying the unsatisfied lot (Note: pun intended) . Now what can he do? At that time there came an excellent idea in his mind. He just took out an Ubuntu CD which Vikash had ordered long back and booted from it in *Live Mode*. Net works flawlessly out of Box in Ubuntu, which proved out to be a boon.
This story was leaked out by Rwik and he did give an expert comment, which can be well used for publicity of Ubuntu reguarding its ease of use and simplicity. Here I designed the poster highlighting it.

Note: This story is approved by Rock for public display.

Well! It was my first entry at New DT, the premier and highly regarded restaurant cum bar of Manipal, its the place where are drinkers of Manipal throng to get themselves noticed on weekends. Though am not a drinker, still having a feel of this so called elite place is not an offense.

It was my friend’s Mrinal Bday party, the environment was as nice as it could be, and………

More to come,