12th March Status report...

3 more days to go... and it's 11PM on a saturday night and I'm sitting here, like all the previous saturday nights.. well most of them.

This time I got the perfect excuse. Due to some delay in payment our salaries are delayed... which is especially bad for me.. since:

1. I'm leaving in 3 days
2. I busted everything in anticipation of this payday.

Thus, I'm penniless. Hopefully they'll pay me on monday before i leave, cause its a long walk to the airport here... and what'll I do in bangkok. Gotta buy trinkets too.... china maal. Damn damn damn... this weekend was supposed to be for that...

Documentation still lacks major portions. Tommorow then !!

Beijing Capital Airport

Been checking the website for info..

has a few tips which u might wanna remember:

First and foremost:

You should arrive at the station building two and a half hours or three hours before the scheduled departure time of the flight

And of course:

Please take the valuables, such as passport, visa, traveling certificate, cash and receipts, with you.

No use dumping your passport and ticket back inthe hotel.. u need it for a few more minutes. and yes, that goes for your MONEY too..

Then..

Passengers should go through the security detective gate and personal baggage should go through the X-ray machines.Thank you for your assistance.

Following items (among others) are prohibited.. for entry and exit

• Print, film, photo, disk, movie, tape, videotape, videodisc, laser disk, computer storage medium and other objects, which are harmful to Chinese politics, economy, culture and morality;
  
• Various acrid poison;
  
• Opium, morphine, diamorphine, bhang, as well as other dope and psychoactive drug that may cause addiction;

WHAT! NO BHANG !! How will I do till then?? Withdrawl.... withdrawl... must get....b..h..a.n...g..

• Endangered and precious animals and plants (their specimen included), as well as their seeds and progenitive materials.

Cant take "progenitive materials" of animals! DAMN! There go all my souveniers.. :'(

Also, cant bring knives on board, but can check the following in luggage:

Professional knives, including surgical knives, sticking knives and gravers, etc.; Knives, spears and swords, etc.,

Will have to say away from my spear for a while. :( Really hard for a hunter-gatherer like me.

Cant take the following AT ALL

Other objects harmful to aviation safety, such as ferromagnetic objects and objects with strong pungent odour

... and that includes aromatically challanged people too.

6:45 AM Update - Sunrise....

It's morning... and the status.....

IT'S DONE!

Well, nearly. Just one last project remaining and that's mostly copy pasting mind maps. Basic exploration. Wont take more than one hour.

But now i gotta go.. pick up clothes from laundry and take a shower. Then come back to office.. or might NOT.... not if the urge to hit the bed gets too strong to resist.

Let's see... let's see... anyway.. i have 3 PM today to finish the job, like the first post said, 24 hours.

5:15 AM report..

Might as well read the earlier post.. it's still stuck there. Somehow i manage to write and copy/paste billions of words and the page count doesnt seem to increase.

Getting fucking cranky now.. it's time for a breath of fresh air outside... and a cup of coffee, with 2 sugar cubes, 2 teaspoons of coffee mate.

Will leave office at 6 45, go back.. have to pick clothes from the laundry - THE FUCKING DRYER DIED! so they will be wet still.... then gotta take a bath and come back. Meeting at 9 30. Then back to the documenting fuckfest..

WILL finish the shit today, or die trying........

4 AM update - NOT HAPPENING !!

Holy shit it's 4 am and i'm still pushing page 20. There's somethign SEEEERIOUSLY wrong.. sun's gonna come up in a few hours. MUST work faster..

Cant smoke any more.... if i take one more puff i'll throw up. Fucking overdosing on caffine and nicotine.. no space left in my bloodstream for oxygen.

Not sleepy.... just that mind's gone vacant..

2:30 AM update - tradegy strikes!

Suffered a wierd outage suddenly. MS anti spyware came to life and started scannin.. and killed nearly every software running.. messed up yahoo messenger, photoshop started saying it's licence has expired jsut now and word crashed... taking my documentation with it.

I couldnt open my hard disk even.. it said My account has expired !!

Troubling dreams of being locked out of my own computer at 2 in the morning started flashing through my head. The thought of going back home at 2 in the morning !!

But i restarted and it seems to work now.... word is working, my document is there. For additional security i am mailing it to myself.... evrey half hour now.

System's back online... back to work. Slightly sleepy now... ONTO project 2. The big one..
--------

A little side whine: Blogger's acting like a complete asshole now. It wont publish and the fucking HELP section says YAAA sorry, its a little slow. Log out, close explorer and re login and it'll work fine. YOU FUCKING BASTARDS! How about asking me to bend over also.. cant keep one fucking service running... Google fucked blogger bad. It's a rotting carcass now. I lost my last post, and i'm posting this one for the 3rd time now...

2 AM update..

Phew! Finally finished ONE project documentation.. with explorations and what not.. there were much screenshots, and mucher sketchbook shots. With cunning use of line spacing it's reached 10 pages !!

ONLY 10 pages!! what the FUCK is wrong here... it's been hours!!



Theres MUCH more to be done.. but now.. i shall take a ciggy break.. in ze loo.....

12:30 AM update: Pratibha speaks...

on chat:

Pratibha: hmm..seem u jst started
Saad: actually.. i started in the afternoon
Saad: and i'm goign to finish all docuemntation in one day..
Saad: TODAY
Pratibha: thats impossible..
Pratibha: u think we are fools
Pratibha: we been doin since months
Saad: No pratibha dear.. nothign is impossible and u are not fools
Pratibha: started in jan..and still documetnin
Saad: u can do it for years if u want..
Saad: or u can do it overnight
Pratibha: yea sure u can...
Pratibha: finish...stop chattin
Pratibha: else u wont finish
Saad: oh i will finish alright..
Pratibha: yeaaa..
Pratibha: keep up the spirit
Saad: woohoo !!
Pratibha: if u dont finish today..u '' finish tomm
Pratibha: Good for u..

Saad: so.. tell me... why have u been documenting for so long? what's keeping u from finishing?
Pratibha: hmmm...i wanted to keep it as short as possible..
Saad: short?? so that took u months?
Saad: to condense it?
Pratibha: and milndo made me realise that theres no escape..
Pratibha: i had to exxagerate on certain issues
Saad: which issues exactly?
Pratibha: the design issues

11:15 pm Update....

Everyone's gone home on yahoo.. except pratibha whose still surfing away to glory.. i'll bug her after i post this.

Seems like one night documentation is a big target to set. I'm only till the 2nd exploration of my 1st project :( and there's 4 more projects to go.

But rest assured.. I'm motivated. I'll sit here till weeds take root around my chair.. they'll have to pry the keyboard from my cold dead fingers. But the work shall be done...

Managed to "liberate" 2 packs of biscuits from the security guard. There's coffee... ciggeretes, water, hot choclate, music and a multi-flavour coke machine.. what more does a person need to finish documentation.

Hear me NID ADMINISTRATION

"If anyone gives me a follow up after this night of toil... I will personally hold a grudge against you for as long as i live, or as long as i wanna, whichever comes first. "

5 45 pm Progress report..

Documentation's going at high speed.... well good speed at least. It's got 1.5 line spacing, full justified alignment. Double spaces for new paragraphs... all this to make it look neat. That's all.

There are footnotes even !! Since a professional looking document can't even be worth that paper it's printed on unless it has neatly catalouged foot notes.

Had an observation while writing the technical and design breif.. Design breif sounds like ... well... Click here to get the Design Breif

The greatest achievement of all times...

...... will be done today.

My grand plan is thus:

I will start documenting my diploma project after i post this.
I will end it by this time tommorow.

If that means putting in an all nighter, so be it.

After all, it took me only 2 months to document my 1/2 month internship. It's only fair by that rationale that a 6 months diploma takes only 24 hours, or less.

Nevertheless, it's a great opportunnity to show that to perform a miracle, all a man needs is enough nicotine and caffeine in his system. And a little hatred for his fellow man.

Well, the coffee machine's stocked to last 24 hours, there's endless supply of ciggeretes.. and hatred is a common commodity these days.

So... there wont be any funny blog postings.. no mp3 player reviews.. no rants no NOTHING.. till the documentation is done.. by tommorow.

A new NID record. Welcome to the diploma document fuckfest.......

Ladies... Gentlemen..... The 2nd Player

After much confusion and much grinding of teeth, they finally changed the player. It was a (gasp) hardware fault after all!

Been playing the built in tracks (Beethoven's 5th) for 1 hour now and it hasnt died yet.... keeping fingers and everything crossed.. hope it stays that way for the next 20 years.

Bad news.... will have to reload all the songs and data on this one.. again..

Other ppl ranting about my player..

From the same CNET review that made me buy this.. other users:

Had high hopes for this product. Excited when i bought it. Dissapointed when it freezed within 15 minutes of opening the box, while listening to its default mp3 selection. Then froze the next day wile transfering files. Today is day 3. "Firmware Problem". Resetting doesnt work. Rebooting doesnt work. WTF?? How can a product be so faulty?? Emailed tech support. Waiting for answer. Taking it back to shop first thing in the morning, prolly getting an Ipod. Hopefully works better. STAY AWAY. NO PRODUCT SHOULD GIVE SO MUCH GRIEF.

Another one

I would not buy this if I were you!
Initially I was very happy with it. It's ability to play WMA and it's great sound EQ made for REALLY good sound. The battery life also lated from Denver CO to San Diego CA without a single recharge. AMAZING!

The downsides, definitely outweigh the upside though. Where to begin. After using this for 6 days the hard drive stopped working and the player wouldn't respond to any commands, not even Creative's so-called "Rescue Mode". A brand new $250 MP3 player ceases to stop functioning after 6 days. RIDICULOUS.
Then I called Creative Support. Got some guy in Singapore who couldn't speak English worth a damn. 3 days later I finally got the problem resolved after about 12 hours on the phone. VERY unprofessional service, with RUDE and IGNORANT techs.
Then I had to send it in. It has been 3 weeks, and NO WORD from Creative AT ALL. I don't even know if I'll ever be getting it back.
The player is also HUGE and feels like a cinder block in the pocket.
It's also UGLY and the control interface and touch pad are absolutely HORRIBLE>

Stick with Rio or Apple. This product S UCKS!

Dear GOD !! Why me.. WHY ME? Just because I dont like Apple? Is this the result.... ??

Tragedy Struck !!!!!

Dear Readers,

Tragedy struck last night.. my MP3 player couldnt survive 5 hours after coming out of the box... it hung.. then restarted.. then hung again... x 4 times.

It's HUNG right now and rotting in my bag.

Now i gotta go back to the shithole where I bought this motherfucker and slaughter the FUCKFACE who sold this shit to me.

Easier said than done, he dont speaka ze englis and i dont skeaka ze chinis.. it'll be fun. More fun that buying stuff by showing printouts and negotiating on the calculator.

Some trends on the net are pointing that creative mp3 players have this sickness quit a lot and most fail to survive the real world. There will be more reports on that soon.. right now I gotta make a list of phrases in english and get them translated by a guy in office...

After arming myself with that weapon, i shall proceed to the market, whence I shall proceed to the shop and rip out his still beating heart and burn it in ritual sacrifice. After which I will disembowel him and feed his entrails to rabid dogs. Then I shall burn the dogs in ritual sacrifice.

Be right back....

Hieroglyph-

Hieroglyph- don't levitate over your motorbike in this fucking parking lot. or else., originally uploaded by a superhero by night.

don't levitate over your motorbike in this fucking parking lot. or else.

New Hitchhiker trailer

Get it here, get it here....

It's new... got more Vogons... marvin's speaking in this one (dont like his voice)

More MORE MORE... there's a date even April 29.

Make yourself free... cause it wont come to India till a few months after that LOL

Previous trailer
Previous Blog Entry

The voices spoke again...

Yesterday morning the voices in my head commanded that I proceed to the electronics market and buy me a MP3 player. As the voices cannot be questioned on the validity of such demands, nor can they be silenced till their will is done.. i did some prelimanery research on the different NON-iPOD players available... and the best option was Creative Jukebox series...

1. Zen Micro 5 gb
2. Nomad Touch 20 gb
3. Nomad Jukebox xtra 60gb

Unfortunatly the 60gb one wasnt avaibable.. and the prioe difference between the Micro and the Touch was only a few hundred. Hence, the choice was obvious.

But fate prevented me yesterday from satisfying the will of the voices, like a vicious conspiracy against the WILL, all the atm machines around that market seemed to have run out of dough. I tried 4 machines from 4 different bank, even 1 with only chinese interface.

Thus, this morning I got the cash from my office machine, and as I type this, the Nomad Touch player is charging in my bag. In my bag because we cant use MP3 players in office... it's considered the most heinous crime we can commit, 2nd only to using open source software.



Thus... i shall charge it... i shall listen to it... i shall spit on more iPods with their irreplacable batteries and thir ACM playing format and the maggot eaten apple logo at their back.

I shall take it back home and do a complete photo shoot of it.. expect pictures tomrow.

Read the complete review here, from CNET. Expect a more detailed and abusive review in a few days, til i get used to this baby.

Die iPOD DIE DIE DIE!!