You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you
It’s been 5 years since I stopped smoking.
To be precise:
5 years 1 hour 52 minutes 33 seconds.
I have not smoked 36,521 cigarettes
I have saved Rs.118,695
My life has been extended by 4 months, 4 days, 19 hours 27 minutes and 53 seconds.
My AS3 Milestone is OOF.
(Statistics thanks to PuffFree)
How do I feel?
Not much different from last year.
In a late night chat, I was asked by a friend what I would consider to be the thing that drives me the most – what is it that more than anything else makes me want to stay involved, no matter how hard something is.
I was kind of stumped. It wasn’t something I had ever considered before. I always took it for granted that it is plain old interest that keeps me going.
Turns out, after a night of discussing this with my pillow, that I was wrong.
I took a step back, and looked at several long and short term projects that I have been involved with over the past few years. These included FOSS.IN and Linux Bangalore, Phenom, Exocore, Infinity Radio, Barcamp Mumbai, the BLUG and its involvement in Bangalore IT.COM ’99, the PC Quest Linux Project, and several others.
In all of them, I found myself driven by the enthusiasm shown by other people involved in the project. No matter how hard or how impossible something seemed – if the team was enthusiastic about it, and people contributed their efforts to it, then I found my own interest, and hence drive, soaring.
On the other hand, lack of visible enthusiasm sucks my drive like a flat tire. I lose interest, and eventually fade out of the project.
The conclusion I drew from my late-night introspective was that for me to succeed at anything, I have to work on something that involves people who are at least as enthusiastic about it as I am, and show it.
In short, their enthusiasm is the fuel that drives my engine. 
Be aware that as of this time, BSNL has *NOT* enabled the Unlimited Schemes (UL 900 Plus and UL 900), though they have appear to have cut down the speed for people who applied for a switch from higher speeds.
When I spoke to BSNL at Bangalore this evening, I was told that as of now, all transfers are still subject to the original scheme’s download limits, and transfers *will* be charged.
So don’t go and do something stupid like lining up a several huge downloads until your visit to http://10.240.43.216/ (only from DataOne connections, and only using IE or Opera) tells you that your Current Service (under User Info) is UL 900 Plus or UL 900). In fact the BSNL person told me that “customers will be informed about the conversion when it is done”. Don’t hold your breath on that one, though.
To make sure that your request for conversion has been registered, go to “Service Order Records”.
There is a very good likelyhood that BSNL may take several days to do the actual conversion of billing schemes, and all usage until then will be billed.
Update: The above was written at 23:45, after checking my User Info on the portal, which still said HOME 1000. About 20 minutes after I posted this, my link suddenly dropped, and came back a minute later. Guessing what had happened, I checked my User Info on the portal, and sure enough it had changed to HOME UL 900 Plus. A quick speed test confirmed that the speed was now 256/64.
![[BLUG]](http://blug.in/bluglogos/7.png)
Tomorrow (Saturday) is the monthly meet of the Bangalore Linux Users Group.
Lots of talks lined up – including one on Stellarium by Sridhar from Infosys, phpwiki and Zwiki by Shahnawaz from Mindtree, OpenVPN by Shilpa from PESIT and MediaWiki tips, ticks and extensions by me.
As usual, anyone is free to attend the meet – details are on http://blug.in.
See you there!
So thanks to Jayakumar, we finally have *some* videos of FOSS.IN/2005:
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=FOSS.IN/2005
Many thanks, Jayakumar!
Hey! Reporting from BarCamp Mumbai! We are here, wirelress network and other stuff is up, and we are slowly getting ready to get the sessions going.
I hope everyone broiught pens, because Anjali forgot to pack the pens I was supposed to bring! Aaaarrrgghhh!!!
Will update this entryy as the day goes by, hopefully with photos.
Remember my rant from about 3 years ago, about Dominos and Pizza Hut not delivering pizza to my area?
Well, things looked up when Pizza Hut opened stores in RT Nagar and more recently on BEL Road, but Dominos continued to hold out – out of service area.
That’s a pity, because I like Domino’s Pizza more than most others.
Well, it looks like things are about to change.
I received mail from someone at Dominos who had read my rant, asking which area I am in. I told him (Sanjaynagar), and he replied that they are opening 6 more outlets this year, and they are actively scouting for a suitable location in my area!
Yay!
Hopefully, they will get open up here before I leave the area, or the town!
This Saturday, the 13th of May, is BarCamp Mumbai – the next in the series of BarCamps sweeping India, after Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.
For some reason, we have been extremely lucky with BarCamp Mumbai – while searching for a venue, I hesitatingly asked IIT Bombay if they could help, and they not only obliged, but gave us three rooms at the prestigious Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, complete with Wireless Networks, canteen, and all the good stuff one needs to hold a successful event. Holding an event like this in an educational institution makes a lot of sense – BarCamp Chennai was held in the Anna University, and it was a fantastic environment.
A few people are still puzzled about what a BarCamp is, so here is an explanation:
Thursday, I received news that my landlord, Mr.S.Ramdas, had passed away at his home in Canada.
This was a terrible shock for me, and I would like to write a little bit about him here in my diary:
On last Thursday, I was a panelist at a conclave organised by the Project Management Institute, which was quite fun – especially when one of the panelists (Partha from Mindtree) decided to stand up for the rights of hapless project managers who get theblame if things go wrong.
Unfortunately, I had to leave a little later because of a crisis I needed to resolve, but I am glad that I went to the function – met many interesting people.
On Thursday, the 10th, I am off on a short tour. On the 11th, I will be giving a couple of talks at my alma mater, the Gogte Institute of Technology in Belgaum. I have not been to my old hometown in almost 8 years, and in the meanwhile, the college has moved to different premises. This is going to be a mind-bender of an experience.
On the 12th, I head to Mumbai, to attend the BarCamp Mumbai, which is being held on the 13th at the KReSIT/IITB. I hope to have as much fun there as I had at BarCamp Chennai, where I spoke about Mobile Computing (see short video here).
In other news, the managers of Linux Bangalore/FOSS.IN decided to put out a statement about things that needed clarification.
There have been some bad news as well, but I will keep them for an independent post.