Monday, October 19, 2009
Proud moment for me. So soon, it has become two years since this blog has been started. This blog was the first useful thing I did after turning 18 and it is growing old along with me! This is the 279th post in my blog. I planned to touch VVS Lakshman's magical figure of 281 to make this post memorable. But couldn't do it. Because I can't post in my blog just for the sake of posting. One kind request to my readers is that, if you want to comment on a post of mine, comment it here rather than mailing me or scrapping me in Orkut. Anyway, thank you for your support without which this milestone would have never been reached.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
This post is called ‘The Drop’.
Internal exam was a cakewalk for me. I had time to study from 8:30 to 10:45. I would study and then write exam from 10:45 to 12:45. Then after noon exam would be 2:00 to 4:00. I didn’t even go to my class during the internal exam. I studied with Raj Kamal in Mechatronics. I performed really well. Only a girl named Gauthami performed better than me. I was quite happy. I also noted that Johnson, Arun, Vimal Kumar were the other guys in the top ten. I took notice of them. Karthikeyan did reasonably well too; think he got the eleventh rank.
And then the classes went on for a month. Here I should mention about three staffs, Vijayanandhi Ma’am (Electrical Engineering), Sengodan Sir (Engineering Physics) and Velmurugan Sir (Engineering Drawing), next to my school teachers, these were rocking. They were giving their very best. I did exceptionally well in the second internal exam where none performed better than me. Till that, I did not make any serious friendship with any of my classmates. Johnson and Vanavan still were the only people I spoke with. Other than this I used to speak with Karthika, Kalyani and Jinju mostly to get the notebooks and observation works from them. He he. What else to speak? :-P.
Karthikeyan used to call me up once in a while. We discussed nothing but the subjects. Life was monotonous.
After the second internals, there was an announcement about a National Conference called Confluence and students could present paper in that. I did not know what a paper was not had idea of presenting a paper. Karthikeyan asked me whether I was interested in presenting paper. He informed me that Arun was already in the team. I thought for a while on the possibilities and replied positively. Karthikeyan became Karthi after sometime and I noticed that Arun was Arun Kumaar. The double a in his name was to be noted. Karthi suggested Solar Cell as the topic for our paper. We discussed with Sengodan sir on this. On a Sunday noon, Arun and Karthi came to my home. Arun was using computer at a rapid speed. Infact I noticed that during an English lab when, he changed the Show Hidden files from the folder option. But his speed was very much evident.
That day was like a training period with Arun and Karthi. Those guys taught me the shortcuts and I had never used Google images before that. That was also taught by those guys. Arun was using MS-Paint and Print Screen like magic. I had never seen such stuff before that. We used to get OD (On Duty attendance) for works on this paper. We later changed the topic as Solar Photo Voltaics. Prabu later joined our team.
Preparation went smooth. Meanwhile I joined Orkut and was introduced to chatting. Well, it was a kind of distraction to me. To be honest, I spent lot of time on this. But it helped me to get new friends. Especially, Deepa. I used to write my fan fiction work of Harry Potter in J K Rowling community. Deepa liked my work and sent me her friend request in Orkut. We used to spend lot of time chatting in Yahoo messenger. From being unknown strangers, we became very close friends. And due to excessive Internet usage (initially I had bandwidth restricted to 250 MB). I got a pretty fat bill! So I switched unlimited bandwidth. So I started downloading lot of movies.
I didn’t spend enough time on studies. In the third internal exam, from 1st rank I dropped alarmingly to the 11th rank. But the convincing part was that my performance was the same except for Maths. I still remember my mark. I scored 58. Karthi and Arun flunked but requested for marks from Sivasakthi Ma’am and cleared. So I wasn’t very much worried about my drop.
It was confluence day
We presented the paper. I don’t remember presenting it with flying colors. But we did a good job. Arun and I presented the paper. Karthi and Prabu took care of the slideshow.
Surge-2007 was an event organised by my seniors and the placement cell. I attended the Mock Press prelims. I had some ten GK questions and dialogue writing between Bill Gates and Lalu Prasad Yadav. I tried to be funny, by making all replies of Lalu in Hindi (I managed with the few words I know in Hindi). So I was able to clear the initial hurdle. And reach the finals. In the finals, I did pretty bad because I got the role as James Bond and I was against Vadivelu. So obviously I didn’t win the event. But, my schoolmate Gopalakrishnan who was studying IT in my college made it to the debate finals. Along with him he brought his friend, Gokul. He was into debate finals as well. They did really well in the finals. But there was one IT senior called Priyanka who stole the show. It was a wonderful evening. It was so late in the evening. I was waiting for my dad to come and pick me up.
Devaki Ma’am finally taught Linked Lists, Queue and Stack. I feel that it was an important phase in my programming career. Learning this stuff was very important.
It was the last week of the semester.
Semester was to be over.
I was not absent even for a single day in that year.
It was a Monday. I had to submit my mechanical lab records. So I took three hours leave. (3, 4, 5)- 6th and 7th hour was Mechanical lab, went to Vanavan’s room in hostel and finished the record. In the same week I had taken another couple of hours leave on Friday to finish Electronics lab record.
Those were the 5 hours; I was totally absent in that semester.
Top ten students from each class were given a scholarship of Rs. 10,000 by my college. Having performed well, I was an instant choice to that list. Unluckily, Johnson missed out. Arun and Karthi got it too.
I feel that, it should have been based on merit. But it had reservations.
1. OC-3
2. BC-3
3. MBC-2
4. SC/ST-2
If OC was 3 then BC, MBC, SC/ST all had rights to compete in OC and their reservation. But it was not the case.
Even when it was based on reservation, the reservation was not well-organised.
In my opinion, Arun was the only OC category guy to deserve it. In my class, there are only 3 OC students who joined through merit:
1. Arun
2. Karthikeyan
3. Kalyani
So naturally what happens is that, every year they would get it.
If it was similar to counseling, only Arun had the chance. But it was not the case. I do not know whose mistake it was. But it was a mistake.
Then the semester exams started. I did well in all the papers, except Engineering Drawing where I made 2 big blunders and knew that I would lose 30 marks in that paper for sure.
Overall I was happy with my performance in the semester examinations. In came holidays. I was glad that I would be entering my department the next semester!
The drop in academic performance was not hurting me because, I always believe, “Form is temporary and Class is Permanent”. I knew I could always bounce back, if I wanted to.
Journey will continue…
This post would be called Fear.
Yes, fear because I was afraid of the persons who had taken up the same course as me. I picked up when there were 5 seats remaining. Which means that there were nearly 30 people who had far superior cut-off to me and they should be more intelligent than me. So I should work really hard to compete with them.
I had never been industrious in my life except for my eleventh standard and brief period in twelfth standard.
Till tenth, I had never understood the Chemistry equations. What the principle was? Thanks to Chemistry teachers - Suresh Sir, Sekar Sir and Chandra Sekar Sir (It might be odd for you to refer so many persons as sir, but this is how I call them. Habits are hard to die!). I clearly understood the fundamentals of Chemistry in my eleventh and twelfth! Only when the fundamentals are strong, it serves the purpose of being industrious!
Well, there was a bit of selfishness from my side too. I learnt chemistry well because it could come handy for bio-chemistry in first-year if I pick medicine. But learning Chemistry was off no use except that it helped me fetch a seat in Computer Science and Engineering in Kumaraguru College of Technology.
Ok coming back to fear, I enquired to my family members and relatives on what College was about. They said that, I had to learn everything in advance and during lecture hours should get the essence of what the professor or lecturer teaches and get clarity by posing queries.
So, I planned to study the subjects in advance. I studied few chapters from a subject called Electronic Devices and Circuits because I already had that book borrowed from my uncle. My best friend Raj Kamal had joined Kumaraguru College too. He took up Mechatronics course. Since he joined under Management quota he had 3 weeks of bridge course. I enquired him what was taught and how the college was. He was giving positive reviews about the college. I was happy on picking the college.
My First day in College
It was August 31 2006, a Thursday. In the morning there was a meeting for the parents which I attended with my mother and grandfather. A person named Kavidasan gave a wonderful speech.
He told that, days when the proverb applied “Slow and steady wins the race” were bygone and gave a new proverb “Fast and perfect wins the race!” My mother and grandfather left the college after the lunch which was provided by college.
A new life was about to begin.
I was surprised by the fact that, all First years will be in a separate block called Science and Humanities and I Shall enter computer science department only in my second year. I entered the science and humanities block. I quickly skimmed through the notice board. I saw that my Physics teacher was my Class Advisor and his name was Sengodan. I had never heard that name in my life before. There was a teacher in my school called Senram, which was the closest name I could remember.
When I entered the class, the first person I met was a guy called Suresh.
In our lives we don’t like few persons from the first sight. This guy Suresh was one such person. I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him. He introduced to me another guy called Johnson. You know what? I had never been a first bencher in my entire school life, probably due to my height and my talkative nature. Staffs would not prefer to have me in the first bench during school. I was a standing a example to what people call “Chatter Box”. But I planned to take the first bench in College.
And there was a guy called Vanavan who came to the first bench because all other benches were pre-occupied. One major question which all staffs asked during the first class of theirs was, “how many of you are from biology major and how many of you are from computer science major?” My heart would start beating a little faster whenever I see the huge crowd of computer science students (they had computer science as their major in twelfth). I was afraid of them. I feared that they knew the programming languages like C, Java, Visual Basic, HTML etc., which I had seen my school mates studying. I knew nothing!
My dad arranged a person named Kamalakannan he was the nephew of my dad’s colleague.
He taught me looping, arrays and pointers. More than what he taught, I must thank him for introducing me to Yashwant Kanetkar’s book titled ‘LET US C’. I already had a book called ‘Projects Using C’ written by PVN. Varalakshmi. I read ‘LET US C’ like a story book. Tried out few programs and compared my logic with the one in Varalakshmi book. This was how I spent my first two weeks in College. Computer Programming was a paper for me in the first year. It was taught by Prof. Devaki. She was initially teaching the basic computer terms, generation of computers and such theories. Other staffs had entered into the syllabus as well.
I had eight theory subjects:
1. Computer Programming
2. Engineering Physics
3. Engineering Chemistry
4. Engineering Maths
5. Engineering Drawing
6. Electronic Devices and Circuits
7. Electrical Engineering
8. Technical English
Couple of practical subjects
1. Basic Engineering Lab
2. Physics & Chemistry Lab
I had two more labs viz., Electronic Devices and Circuits Lab and Computer Programming lab. But there were no exams for that lab!
Couple of weeks passed. As I hated Suresh at the first look, I liked Shiva Guru at the first look. Since, I was travelling to College by bus, I made few friends in the bus. Shiva Guru, Sriram Ayyapan, Arshad and Prahadeesh.
I used to go to Mechatronics class for lunch with Raj Kamal. So I was not maintaining a great rapport with the day scholars of my class. In fact, my term with both day scholars and hostellers was very bad mainly because of Electronic Devices and Circuits class. Since I had already prepared for that class, I would be able to follow what Sasikala Ma’am teaches. But none in the class except me and Johnson would follow that class completely. Johnson and Vanavan were my only pals in the class. In my Electronic Devices and Circuits Lab, my batchmates were Dinesh and Divya. Though they were not as close as calling pals, atleast they did not stare at me as the other classmates. Raj Kamal introduced to me a guy called Arun who was Raj Kamal’s entrance classmate. When that introduction took place, a guy passed a scorning look at me. I acknowledged it with another scornful look. I later learnt that his name was Karthikeyan.
So far I had spoken to only 5 to 6 odd persons in class. By now, I had known every person in the class by name mainly because of the attendance that is taken once every hour in college. In my school it was one-time attendance in morning and one-time in noon. Every hour attendance was pretty strange for me and it took some time to get used to it.
One day, there was an ellipse drawing exercise in engineering drawing class. I had completed that drawing. During break couple of girls, introduced themselves as Priyadarshini and Ramapriya and asked few doubts on drawing the ellipse. I had been wondering, whenever any person spoke to me, either Johnson or Suresh, it was for asking doubts to me. There was no discussion on movies or Harry Potter or any other book to which I was used to in school.
During bus travel, I used to read some book. So my bus mates that thought I was a nerd :-(. A misconception, most people tend to get when they see me.
The same day, after lunch there was a computer programming class. Devaki Ma’am asked a question on a simple assembly language program. My brain was working slowly; listening to a computer programming class after lunch was daunting task. Arun answered it, before I could get hold of what the question was. I was surprised, but fear factor was more than the surprise factor. There were people in the class who had better knowledge in computer than me.
And a week passed. Devaki Ma’am sent us an alternate in the form of Mr. Sivan Arul Selvan (he looked a perfect person to be cast as Uncle Vernon Dursley in Harry Potter), who did not teach us anything but questioned us on the computer configuration. Karthikeyan was called on to the stage and questioned on that. He said, he had a computer at home but did not know about configuration since he was a biology student.
There is a scene in Tamil film Vaali where the younger brother Shiva explains that his brother Deva is a deaf and mute person. But he hides that he is a dumb person by chewing a bubble gum. And since he can lip-read, nobody would detect that he his disabled.
Same applies to me as well. I was never proud of calling myself as a biology student in my class. Now that I have picked computer science, I like to address myself as a computer science student. I felt bad whenever biology was used as an escape route just as few Tamil medium students take that as an escape route in English classes.
I admired Sivan sir for the lively way in which he took the class. And two more weeks passed away, Internal exams were about to begin. Now I was feared of performing well in the exams.
Fear of losing makes you win. Fear of winning makes you lose! This was the lesson I learnt during this phase of college life!
Journey will continue...
Yes, fear because I was afraid of the persons who had taken up the same course as me. I picked up when there were 5 seats remaining. Which means that there were nearly 30 people who had far superior cut-off to me and they should be more intelligent than me. So I should work really hard to compete with them.
I had never been industrious in my life except for my eleventh standard and brief period in twelfth standard.
Till tenth, I had never understood the Chemistry equations. What the principle was? Thanks to Chemistry teachers - Suresh Sir, Sekar Sir and Chandra Sekar Sir (It might be odd for you to refer so many persons as sir, but this is how I call them. Habits are hard to die!). I clearly understood the fundamentals of Chemistry in my eleventh and twelfth! Only when the fundamentals are strong, it serves the purpose of being industrious!
Well, there was a bit of selfishness from my side too. I learnt chemistry well because it could come handy for bio-chemistry in first-year if I pick medicine. But learning Chemistry was off no use except that it helped me fetch a seat in Computer Science and Engineering in Kumaraguru College of Technology.
Ok coming back to fear, I enquired to my family members and relatives on what College was about. They said that, I had to learn everything in advance and during lecture hours should get the essence of what the professor or lecturer teaches and get clarity by posing queries.
So, I planned to study the subjects in advance. I studied few chapters from a subject called Electronic Devices and Circuits because I already had that book borrowed from my uncle. My best friend Raj Kamal had joined Kumaraguru College too. He took up Mechatronics course. Since he joined under Management quota he had 3 weeks of bridge course. I enquired him what was taught and how the college was. He was giving positive reviews about the college. I was happy on picking the college.
My First day in College
It was August 31 2006, a Thursday. In the morning there was a meeting for the parents which I attended with my mother and grandfather. A person named Kavidasan gave a wonderful speech.
He told that, days when the proverb applied “Slow and steady wins the race” were bygone and gave a new proverb “Fast and perfect wins the race!” My mother and grandfather left the college after the lunch which was provided by college.
A new life was about to begin.
I was surprised by the fact that, all First years will be in a separate block called Science and Humanities and I Shall enter computer science department only in my second year. I entered the science and humanities block. I quickly skimmed through the notice board. I saw that my Physics teacher was my Class Advisor and his name was Sengodan. I had never heard that name in my life before. There was a teacher in my school called Senram, which was the closest name I could remember.
When I entered the class, the first person I met was a guy called Suresh.
In our lives we don’t like few persons from the first sight. This guy Suresh was one such person. I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him. He introduced to me another guy called Johnson. You know what? I had never been a first bencher in my entire school life, probably due to my height and my talkative nature. Staffs would not prefer to have me in the first bench during school. I was a standing a example to what people call “Chatter Box”. But I planned to take the first bench in College.
And there was a guy called Vanavan who came to the first bench because all other benches were pre-occupied. One major question which all staffs asked during the first class of theirs was, “how many of you are from biology major and how many of you are from computer science major?” My heart would start beating a little faster whenever I see the huge crowd of computer science students (they had computer science as their major in twelfth). I was afraid of them. I feared that they knew the programming languages like C, Java, Visual Basic, HTML etc., which I had seen my school mates studying. I knew nothing!
My dad arranged a person named Kamalakannan he was the nephew of my dad’s colleague.
He taught me looping, arrays and pointers. More than what he taught, I must thank him for introducing me to Yashwant Kanetkar’s book titled ‘LET US C’. I already had a book called ‘Projects Using C’ written by PVN. Varalakshmi. I read ‘LET US C’ like a story book. Tried out few programs and compared my logic with the one in Varalakshmi book. This was how I spent my first two weeks in College. Computer Programming was a paper for me in the first year. It was taught by Prof. Devaki. She was initially teaching the basic computer terms, generation of computers and such theories. Other staffs had entered into the syllabus as well.
I had eight theory subjects:
1. Computer Programming
2. Engineering Physics
3. Engineering Chemistry
4. Engineering Maths
5. Engineering Drawing
6. Electronic Devices and Circuits
7. Electrical Engineering
8. Technical English
Couple of practical subjects
1. Basic Engineering Lab
2. Physics & Chemistry Lab
I had two more labs viz., Electronic Devices and Circuits Lab and Computer Programming lab. But there were no exams for that lab!
Couple of weeks passed. As I hated Suresh at the first look, I liked Shiva Guru at the first look. Since, I was travelling to College by bus, I made few friends in the bus. Shiva Guru, Sriram Ayyapan, Arshad and Prahadeesh.
I used to go to Mechatronics class for lunch with Raj Kamal. So I was not maintaining a great rapport with the day scholars of my class. In fact, my term with both day scholars and hostellers was very bad mainly because of Electronic Devices and Circuits class. Since I had already prepared for that class, I would be able to follow what Sasikala Ma’am teaches. But none in the class except me and Johnson would follow that class completely. Johnson and Vanavan were my only pals in the class. In my Electronic Devices and Circuits Lab, my batchmates were Dinesh and Divya. Though they were not as close as calling pals, atleast they did not stare at me as the other classmates. Raj Kamal introduced to me a guy called Arun who was Raj Kamal’s entrance classmate. When that introduction took place, a guy passed a scorning look at me. I acknowledged it with another scornful look. I later learnt that his name was Karthikeyan.
So far I had spoken to only 5 to 6 odd persons in class. By now, I had known every person in the class by name mainly because of the attendance that is taken once every hour in college. In my school it was one-time attendance in morning and one-time in noon. Every hour attendance was pretty strange for me and it took some time to get used to it.
One day, there was an ellipse drawing exercise in engineering drawing class. I had completed that drawing. During break couple of girls, introduced themselves as Priyadarshini and Ramapriya and asked few doubts on drawing the ellipse. I had been wondering, whenever any person spoke to me, either Johnson or Suresh, it was for asking doubts to me. There was no discussion on movies or Harry Potter or any other book to which I was used to in school.
During bus travel, I used to read some book. So my bus mates that thought I was a nerd :-(. A misconception, most people tend to get when they see me.
The same day, after lunch there was a computer programming class. Devaki Ma’am asked a question on a simple assembly language program. My brain was working slowly; listening to a computer programming class after lunch was daunting task. Arun answered it, before I could get hold of what the question was. I was surprised, but fear factor was more than the surprise factor. There were people in the class who had better knowledge in computer than me.
And a week passed. Devaki Ma’am sent us an alternate in the form of Mr. Sivan Arul Selvan (he looked a perfect person to be cast as Uncle Vernon Dursley in Harry Potter), who did not teach us anything but questioned us on the computer configuration. Karthikeyan was called on to the stage and questioned on that. He said, he had a computer at home but did not know about configuration since he was a biology student.
There is a scene in Tamil film Vaali where the younger brother Shiva explains that his brother Deva is a deaf and mute person. But he hides that he is a dumb person by chewing a bubble gum. And since he can lip-read, nobody would detect that he his disabled.
Same applies to me as well. I was never proud of calling myself as a biology student in my class. Now that I have picked computer science, I like to address myself as a computer science student. I felt bad whenever biology was used as an escape route just as few Tamil medium students take that as an escape route in English classes.
I admired Sivan sir for the lively way in which he took the class. And two more weeks passed away, Internal exams were about to begin. Now I was feared of performing well in the exams.
Fear of losing makes you win. Fear of winning makes you lose! This was the lesson I learnt during this phase of college life!
Journey will continue...
I wanted to share my life at college. Its no secret. Its a reminiscence of my college life. I have named this post as Peristaltic Wave. I first heard this term when I was studying about the process of digestion in my zoology book, when I was in twelfth standard.
An interesting fact
When you consume food, whatever might be the posture in which you are, even if you are hanging upside down, the food would reach the stomach.
This gentleman called 'Peristaltic Wave' is responsible for this. In much of the gastrointestinal tract, smooth muscles contract in sequence to produce a peristaltic wave which forces a ball of food along the gastrointestinal tract. This wave helps to carry the food in a direction that is expected!
From the above paragraph it might me evident for you that I had been studying Zoology with a purpose (or even biology for that matter) and I was very passionate about it too. I wanted to be a Doctor.
It was March-2006 and I had my twelfth board examinations. The only exam for which I prepared giving my 100 percent was my biology exam. Though I gave my 100 percent I missed out on few one mark questions and couple of three mark questions. I was sure of getting 190 in the paper. So as I always calculate I calculated this too.
When I was studying twelfth, the medical cut-off was calculated in this pattern
Biology theory-100 marks (200/2)
Physics theory-50 marks (200/4)
Chemistry theory-50 marks (200/4)
Biology Entrance Exam Score-50 (90/90*50)
Physics+Chemistry Entrance Exam Score-50 (90/90*50)
Total: 300
My calculation was that I lose 5 marks in biology.
I had already calculated that I will be losing 16 marks in physics and 4 Marks in chemistry.
So it was losing 10 marks in total.
190/200 was my expectation.
Then came entrance examination.
I performed pretty well in biology and pretty bad in the physics-chemistry entrance examination. Mainly because, I was focussing on biology exam in the morning (I had both the entrance examinations on the same day). It was taxing my brain. My poor preparation resulted in poor performance. I made mistakes even in the easiest of the questions.
Results were announced
I got 189 in biology
185 in physics
193 in chemistry
It was 5.5+5.5. I had lost 11 marks. One more than what I expected.
Biology Entrance Exam Score-44.12
and 38.66 inPhysics+Chemistry Entrance Exam
Total cut-off was 271.78. I thought I will not get the medical seat which such a poor cut-off. In the previous years, it was around 285. I did not apply for the medical counselling itself. My friend Santhosh, who got couple of marks less than me applied with courage and belief that he would get a seat. I was shocked to know that he got a seat while I didn't bother to apply at the fear of not getting the seat.
Though I reconciled myself that I would not have got a seat in Madras Medical College nor Coimbatore Medical College I was quite worried. Infact I still worry!
I had not been telling about my performance in Maths. I scored 199 in Maths and made a blunder in the entrance examination by marking 14 questions wrongly. I usually solve the questions in working sheet and then fill in omr sheet. It was the last minute. In a hurry instead of marking from 77 to 90th question I marked from 78 to 100! So naturally I lost about 4 to 5 crucial marks in that. My maths entrance score was 36.93. Overall cut off was 269.59.
I had to apply for engineering counselling because I did not apply for the medical counselling. I had no other option left. I got the counselling rank. Mine was 2404 overall and I had a community ranking of 1248. I got a call for counselling on the third day. I knew I cannot make it to PSG but I was confident of making it to GCT. On the second day, GCT seats were filled. I was very upset. Infact even Kumaraguru seats were getting filled. On that day evening, I made a stern decision, whatever the college might be, I have to pick only Electronics & Communication or Computer Science or Information Technology. And shortlisted Kumaraguru, Krishna College. The next day, once Kumaraguru Open Category seats were filled, people shifted to other Chennai Colleges. When I was about to enter counselling, there were seven seats in Kumaraguru Computer Science. I was almost certain of getting it. When I entered counselling hall, they verified my certificates and took me to a Computer lab, where seat allocation was done. I was informed that, my session rank in Coimbatore was 1 and Session rank over all in Tamil Nadu was 3. And there were 5 seats in Kumaraguru Computer Science. So I would definitely get a seat.
At that moment, I felt that I was totally relieved. Life was appearing brighter to me. I was very happy.
I had expected something from life and life had given something else to me. The peristaltic wave called life had been taking me in a path which has been pre-determined. Whether I hang upside down or not, my journey through it will be on course! Life is all about making fortunate discoveries by accident. I discovered it on that day.
Journey will continue...
An interesting fact
When you consume food, whatever might be the posture in which you are, even if you are hanging upside down, the food would reach the stomach.
This gentleman called 'Peristaltic Wave' is responsible for this. In much of the gastrointestinal tract, smooth muscles contract in sequence to produce a peristaltic wave which forces a ball of food along the gastrointestinal tract. This wave helps to carry the food in a direction that is expected!
From the above paragraph it might me evident for you that I had been studying Zoology with a purpose (or even biology for that matter) and I was very passionate about it too. I wanted to be a Doctor.
It was March-2006 and I had my twelfth board examinations. The only exam for which I prepared giving my 100 percent was my biology exam. Though I gave my 100 percent I missed out on few one mark questions and couple of three mark questions. I was sure of getting 190 in the paper. So as I always calculate I calculated this too.
When I was studying twelfth, the medical cut-off was calculated in this pattern
Biology theory-100 marks (200/2)
Physics theory-50 marks (200/4)
Chemistry theory-50 marks (200/4)
Biology Entrance Exam Score-50 (90/90*50)
Physics+Chemistry Entrance Exam Score-50 (90/90*50)
Total: 300
My calculation was that I lose 5 marks in biology.
I had already calculated that I will be losing 16 marks in physics and 4 Marks in chemistry.
So it was losing 10 marks in total.
190/200 was my expectation.
Then came entrance examination.
I performed pretty well in biology and pretty bad in the physics-chemistry entrance examination. Mainly because, I was focussing on biology exam in the morning (I had both the entrance examinations on the same day). It was taxing my brain. My poor preparation resulted in poor performance. I made mistakes even in the easiest of the questions.
Results were announced
I got 189 in biology
185 in physics
193 in chemistry
It was 5.5+5.5. I had lost 11 marks. One more than what I expected.
Biology Entrance Exam Score-44.12
and 38.66 inPhysics+Chemistry Entrance Exam
Total cut-off was 271.78. I thought I will not get the medical seat which such a poor cut-off. In the previous years, it was around 285. I did not apply for the medical counselling itself. My friend Santhosh, who got couple of marks less than me applied with courage and belief that he would get a seat. I was shocked to know that he got a seat while I didn't bother to apply at the fear of not getting the seat.
Though I reconciled myself that I would not have got a seat in Madras Medical College nor Coimbatore Medical College I was quite worried. Infact I still worry!
I had not been telling about my performance in Maths. I scored 199 in Maths and made a blunder in the entrance examination by marking 14 questions wrongly. I usually solve the questions in working sheet and then fill in omr sheet. It was the last minute. In a hurry instead of marking from 77 to 90th question I marked from 78 to 100! So naturally I lost about 4 to 5 crucial marks in that. My maths entrance score was 36.93. Overall cut off was 269.59.
I had to apply for engineering counselling because I did not apply for the medical counselling. I had no other option left. I got the counselling rank. Mine was 2404 overall and I had a community ranking of 1248. I got a call for counselling on the third day. I knew I cannot make it to PSG but I was confident of making it to GCT. On the second day, GCT seats were filled. I was very upset. Infact even Kumaraguru seats were getting filled. On that day evening, I made a stern decision, whatever the college might be, I have to pick only Electronics & Communication or Computer Science or Information Technology. And shortlisted Kumaraguru, Krishna College. The next day, once Kumaraguru Open Category seats were filled, people shifted to other Chennai Colleges. When I was about to enter counselling, there were seven seats in Kumaraguru Computer Science. I was almost certain of getting it. When I entered counselling hall, they verified my certificates and took me to a Computer lab, where seat allocation was done. I was informed that, my session rank in Coimbatore was 1 and Session rank over all in Tamil Nadu was 3. And there were 5 seats in Kumaraguru Computer Science. So I would definitely get a seat.
At that moment, I felt that I was totally relieved. Life was appearing brighter to me. I was very happy.
I had expected something from life and life had given something else to me. The peristaltic wave called life had been taking me in a path which has been pre-determined. Whether I hang upside down or not, my journey through it will be on course! Life is all about making fortunate discoveries by accident. I discovered it on that day.
Journey will continue...
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
A fictitious Story about an Open Source Program that I attended (Encounter With Pukka Ram!)
0 comments Posted by Deepak at 12:11 PMAll characters in this story are fictitious, but any resemblance to people living or dead may be considered purely intentional ;-).
Last week, there was a program conducted in my department on Open Source technologies. A person named Pukka Ram from LGISL was the one who was to speak on it. Couple of minutes into the meeting, I found that it was not about Open Source but about selling Projects to final year students! What difference does LGISL have compared to the other Student Project Centers? It actually infuriated me. Mainly because, I did not make a single page of word document ready leave alone the print out of it for my CASE tools lab record(I had my semester exams in three days). I planned to do that during the last hour of that day. This meeting took over it. Initially before the meeting started, I thought maybe open source would be of some help. But when this was about selling project I was upset and angry.
He connected his reliance data card to the system available at our seminar hall. And showed us his PACS software. He said that, normally PACS costs around 1.2 crores and he had finished it for 6.5 Lacs. His PACS was very poor. In terms of user interface and in terms of functionality. Poor chap; he didn’t know that I had witnessed far superior PACS software developed by a German Company for 20 Lacs. It was 100 times better than the PACS software he showed us. He was speaking so high of LG Group. Ok, he is their employee, can’t blame him.
His reliance data card often lost signal. He brought a very intelligent assistant who did not know to work with Mozilla Firefox, it switched to ‘work offline mode’, and he did not have a clue of what happened to the browser! I wondered how that person could demonstrate the software which Mr. Pukka Ram had brought us. Anyway, atleast Mr. Pukka Ram knew how to operate Mozilla Firefox, so he changed the mode!
He teasingly said, "This is the problem with Windows you see."
I was holding my anger but at that point I couldn’t control it. I loudly shouted, “No!”
At that instant I remembered the part in The order of the Phoenix, where Harry Potter loses his temper and shouts that ‘Voldemort has returned’. Atleast he got Detentions, Sivan Sir who was attending the meeting was the only staff who was present there. I had no worries what so ever?
I could see anger peeping out of Mr. Pukka Ram’s face, on a person shouting ‘No’. I continued, “I have Ubuntu in my home. It is highly difficult to configure internet to Linux based OS unless you have internet! I could not listen to songs at the instant I install Ubuntu!”
His answer was, “Nowadays, companies like DELL are providing Linux based laptops with easy access to internet and other plugins!”
From his answer I could conclude that, he did not clearly understand my question and that he was so obsessed with the ‘Open Source tag’.
Mr. Pukka Ram forgot that the problem was with Mozilla which was the same browser in Linux too.
He continued his speech. Now he was showing us the room management module in his hospital management software.
As he was explaining reliance data card had completely stopped providing signal! Think artificial intelligence had reached its highest level at that point; the data card could read my mind, detect my anger and disconnect. He he:-P.
Mr. Pukka Ram changed the topic, surprisingly, he did not find fault with Reliance data card for not being open source.
He asked ‘How many of you had decided your final year projects? Please raise your hand’
None raised the hand.
He was quite shocked. He changed the question asked ‘How many of you had not decided your final year projects? Please raise your hand’
None raised the hand again.
I have always lamented about this hyper-responsiveness of my class. But on that day, it made me happy.
He said, “It’s very difficult if you people are like this!” And he spoke about recession. Goodness me. These days it has become a common trend to all speakers. After Ladies and Gentleman, recession has become the most sought word in a speech. Mr. Pukka Ram was no exception. Probably he did not know Java, if he had, he would have caught this exception and handled it. He he :-P (Sorry for this mokkai(poor joke), couldn’t help it. Kindly forgive me and continue your read :-|)
He said, “It’s very difficult to get a job in this period of recession”
This was the only point in his speech which I agreed with!
And this man provided a superb solution which was icing on the cake. He said, “Come to LGISL. We provide you quality training in Open Source technologies like PHP, LAMP, Ruby on Rails, Linux etc., And we give you your final year project for Rs.10,000!” That was the pinnacle of that program.
I thought, ‘You sell projects for 10,000 Rs. You ----- (fill in the blank with whatever word that comes to your mind:-P, I can’t write it here because my blog censor board has prevented me from writing it here), what respect do you expect from me’
I lost my temper once again and once again shouted, “Open Source Technology itself is free.” Why the hell I thought, but didn’t say that, I polished the statement and said “Why should I pay you money?”
His reply was, “Open Source technology is free. But you will earn money through it. The skills won’t go waste. It will help you fetch jobs. So the skills you learn will be useful”
I finally concluded, he will speak high of Open Source Technology and the so called final year project which LGISL is providing for the students at a shoe string budget of Rs. 10,000 for the welfare of student community. So there was no point in talking to him. My friend Arun had taken that decision very early. That’s why he always holds an advantage over me!
Then finally when everyone thought that the meeting was over, my friend Karthikeyan came up with a question.
“I already know these open source technologies. Then what does LGISL provide me?”
Mr. Pukka Ram said that such students will get a discount and they can do their own projects by paying Rs. 4,000.
That statement was the master-piece in that program! I had to pay 4,000 to LGISL to do a project of my own.
Couple of week’s back I went to meet my friend Kalyani who was admitted in LG hospital for a surgery. When I left, I was shocked seeing a board, at the hospital exit.
Trauma Care
Heart Attack
Brain Attack
We are available 24 hours a day!
‘Brain Attack’, I was shocked by this term. Ok, they may be referring to the Stroke I thought. But laughed my heart out on seeing that term. Only later, when I attended this program, I understood the meaning of that term!
Was it like some kind of a tax? If he is demanding such stuff from our college students what would be the case in their own engineering and arts and science colleges. I feel pity for those students.
Now after the program, I learnt one thing, don’t ever attend a meeting from a LGISL person.
But one question was lingering in my mind for a long time after this program, “What is Open Source?”
Last week, there was a program conducted in my department on Open Source technologies. A person named Pukka Ram from LGISL was the one who was to speak on it. Couple of minutes into the meeting, I found that it was not about Open Source but about selling Projects to final year students! What difference does LGISL have compared to the other Student Project Centers? It actually infuriated me. Mainly because, I did not make a single page of word document ready leave alone the print out of it for my CASE tools lab record(I had my semester exams in three days). I planned to do that during the last hour of that day. This meeting took over it. Initially before the meeting started, I thought maybe open source would be of some help. But when this was about selling project I was upset and angry.
He connected his reliance data card to the system available at our seminar hall. And showed us his PACS software. He said that, normally PACS costs around 1.2 crores and he had finished it for 6.5 Lacs. His PACS was very poor. In terms of user interface and in terms of functionality. Poor chap; he didn’t know that I had witnessed far superior PACS software developed by a German Company for 20 Lacs. It was 100 times better than the PACS software he showed us. He was speaking so high of LG Group. Ok, he is their employee, can’t blame him.
His reliance data card often lost signal. He brought a very intelligent assistant who did not know to work with Mozilla Firefox, it switched to ‘work offline mode’, and he did not have a clue of what happened to the browser! I wondered how that person could demonstrate the software which Mr. Pukka Ram had brought us. Anyway, atleast Mr. Pukka Ram knew how to operate Mozilla Firefox, so he changed the mode!
He teasingly said, "This is the problem with Windows you see."
I was holding my anger but at that point I couldn’t control it. I loudly shouted, “No!”
At that instant I remembered the part in The order of the Phoenix, where Harry Potter loses his temper and shouts that ‘Voldemort has returned’. Atleast he got Detentions, Sivan Sir who was attending the meeting was the only staff who was present there. I had no worries what so ever?
I could see anger peeping out of Mr. Pukka Ram’s face, on a person shouting ‘No’. I continued, “I have Ubuntu in my home. It is highly difficult to configure internet to Linux based OS unless you have internet! I could not listen to songs at the instant I install Ubuntu!”
His answer was, “Nowadays, companies like DELL are providing Linux based laptops with easy access to internet and other plugins!”
From his answer I could conclude that, he did not clearly understand my question and that he was so obsessed with the ‘Open Source tag’.
Mr. Pukka Ram forgot that the problem was with Mozilla which was the same browser in Linux too.
He continued his speech. Now he was showing us the room management module in his hospital management software.
As he was explaining reliance data card had completely stopped providing signal! Think artificial intelligence had reached its highest level at that point; the data card could read my mind, detect my anger and disconnect. He he:-P.
Mr. Pukka Ram changed the topic, surprisingly, he did not find fault with Reliance data card for not being open source.
He asked ‘How many of you had decided your final year projects? Please raise your hand’
None raised the hand.
He was quite shocked. He changed the question asked ‘How many of you had not decided your final year projects? Please raise your hand’
None raised the hand again.
I have always lamented about this hyper-responsiveness of my class. But on that day, it made me happy.
He said, “It’s very difficult if you people are like this!” And he spoke about recession. Goodness me. These days it has become a common trend to all speakers. After Ladies and Gentleman, recession has become the most sought word in a speech. Mr. Pukka Ram was no exception. Probably he did not know Java, if he had, he would have caught this exception and handled it. He he :-P (Sorry for this mokkai(poor joke), couldn’t help it. Kindly forgive me and continue your read :-|)
He said, “It’s very difficult to get a job in this period of recession”
This was the only point in his speech which I agreed with!
And this man provided a superb solution which was icing on the cake. He said, “Come to LGISL. We provide you quality training in Open Source technologies like PHP, LAMP, Ruby on Rails, Linux etc., And we give you your final year project for Rs.10,000!” That was the pinnacle of that program.
I thought, ‘You sell projects for 10,000 Rs. You ----- (fill in the blank with whatever word that comes to your mind:-P, I can’t write it here because my blog censor board has prevented me from writing it here), what respect do you expect from me’
I lost my temper once again and once again shouted, “Open Source Technology itself is free.” Why the hell I thought, but didn’t say that, I polished the statement and said “Why should I pay you money?”
His reply was, “Open Source technology is free. But you will earn money through it. The skills won’t go waste. It will help you fetch jobs. So the skills you learn will be useful”
I finally concluded, he will speak high of Open Source Technology and the so called final year project which LGISL is providing for the students at a shoe string budget of Rs. 10,000 for the welfare of student community. So there was no point in talking to him. My friend Arun had taken that decision very early. That’s why he always holds an advantage over me!
Then finally when everyone thought that the meeting was over, my friend Karthikeyan came up with a question.
“I already know these open source technologies. Then what does LGISL provide me?”
Mr. Pukka Ram said that such students will get a discount and they can do their own projects by paying Rs. 4,000.
That statement was the master-piece in that program! I had to pay 4,000 to LGISL to do a project of my own.
Couple of week’s back I went to meet my friend Kalyani who was admitted in LG hospital for a surgery. When I left, I was shocked seeing a board, at the hospital exit.
Trauma Care
Heart Attack
Brain Attack
We are available 24 hours a day!
‘Brain Attack’, I was shocked by this term. Ok, they may be referring to the Stroke I thought. But laughed my heart out on seeing that term. Only later, when I attended this program, I understood the meaning of that term!
Was it like some kind of a tax? If he is demanding such stuff from our college students what would be the case in their own engineering and arts and science colleges. I feel pity for those students.
Now after the program, I learnt one thing, don’t ever attend a meeting from a LGISL person.
But one question was lingering in my mind for a long time after this program, “What is Open Source?”
Atlast I have joined twitter. I have the habit of reading Singer Chinmayi's blog(though she has many other faces, I would like to refer her so!), once in a while. She had a side widget saying, "Follow me on twitter"!
My friend Surya had been saying that Twitter was an innovative concept and was different from the normal websites, couple of months back. I used to wonder about his statement. I have read in newspapers that Twitter was a social networking site. Already we have n number of social networking sites (I favour Orkut). Then whats so special about Twitter. Surya always speaks so high of mozilla, linux, open source etc., and thrashes windows. I have always believed that except for a few most of the people confuse between open source and freeware. It is strictly my view(not to be generalized). To be honest, I didn't bother about the Twitter mainly because Surya spoke so high of it! Thought it must be one of those open source projects which he admires just because it is open source :-P. But it was not to be so!
Anyway, today I was pretty free, with no other job except to relax, which I usually do after the exams!
I followed the link to Twitter from Chinmayi's blog, just like the poor Alice following the white rabbit. I found that there were few messages that Chinmayi had typed in Twitter! They appeared to me like quick sms's that she had typed (Later, I found that those messages are called as tweets). I registered into twitter.
To know more about Twitter, I wikied about it. It's become my regular practice to search as "searchterm wiki" instead of "searchterm" in google.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service, itself, costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
The 140 character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shortening services such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.
So I have to agree with Surya that Twitter is a different social networking site! But, when I was skimming about Twitter in wikipeida, I found this statement, "The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework". Ruby in Rails is a open source technology, to which Surya is closely associated to! Afterall my conclusion about Surya proves to be right!
My friend Surya had been saying that Twitter was an innovative concept and was different from the normal websites, couple of months back. I used to wonder about his statement. I have read in newspapers that Twitter was a social networking site. Already we have n number of social networking sites (I favour Orkut). Then whats so special about Twitter. Surya always speaks so high of mozilla, linux, open source etc., and thrashes windows. I have always believed that except for a few most of the people confuse between open source and freeware. It is strictly my view(not to be generalized). To be honest, I didn't bother about the Twitter mainly because Surya spoke so high of it! Thought it must be one of those open source projects which he admires just because it is open source :-P. But it was not to be so!
Anyway, today I was pretty free, with no other job except to relax, which I usually do after the exams!
I followed the link to Twitter from Chinmayi's blog, just like the poor Alice following the white rabbit. I found that there were few messages that Chinmayi had typed in Twitter! They appeared to me like quick sms's that she had typed (Later, I found that those messages are called as tweets). I registered into twitter.
To know more about Twitter, I wikied about it. It's become my regular practice to search as "searchterm wiki" instead of "searchterm" in google.
Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service, itself, costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
The 140 character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging, and has brought to the web the kind of shorthand notation and slang commonly used in SMS messages. The 140 character limit has also spurred the usage of URL shortening services such as tinyurl, bit.ly and tr.im, and content hosting services, such as Twitpic and NotePub to accommodate multimedia content and text longer than 140 characters.
So I have to agree with Surya that Twitter is a different social networking site! But, when I was skimming about Twitter in wikipeida, I found this statement, "The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework". Ruby in Rails is a open source technology, to which Surya is closely associated to! Afterall my conclusion about Surya proves to be right!
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Today, I had my semester practical examination in Internet Programming lab, which turned out to be quite special in many ways. I must admit, I didn't invest much time in preparing for it; only about 30 minutes earlier in the morning, from 6:15 to 6:45. The lab required us to create a chat program, the only one that needed some prior preparation. However, my mind was still lingering on the excitement of watching Champions League T20 games and playing International Cricket Captain the previous day, where I was delighted to see another team from IPL making it to the next round. With my thoughts on cricket and fun, I wasn't exactly in the mood to study.
Eventually, I did manage to get myself to study, but I ended up playing International Cricket Captain until 8:00 AM. Consequently, I left home quite late, at 8:15 AM, but thanks to my trusty Getz and the uncrowded road, I reached college by 8:25 AM. The exam was scheduled to start at 8:30 AM, and although I didn't even bother to study the other programs, I felt oddly confident about this exam—similar to how I had felt during my OOPS lab exam.
As I entered the lab, I had to pick my lucky draw from a stack of sheets, signed in on the attendance sheet, and glanced at the questions. One question required creating a simple HTML page, while the other involved displaying the date and time as the mouse moved. Initially, I thought it would be a piece of cake, and I took my seat with optimism. However, the second question had a slight twist—it demanded the date and time to move along with the cursor of the mouse. It was then that my brain conjured up a solution involving the use of "document.getElementId('component').style.left = '100px'," but I had forgotten this detail, which I later recalled after some time. I eventually managed to add a div and set the innerHTML so that a span inside the div moved accordingly. It took some trial and error, but I eventually got it to work.
By 10:15 AM, I had completed both programs. This lab was the second most challenging one I've encountered, with the first being data structures during my third semester. I still remember the pleasure of doing something different from the usual routine while grouping a set of numbers based on the number of digits repeating in the numbers. As luck would have it, I had only prepared the chat program for this exam, and it turned out that I didn't even get that one. It seems this kind of luck follows me since a couple of semesters back, I had painstakingly learned 8086 Microprocessor programs, even simplifying some given by my Ma'am to the class, but during the exam, I ended up with the simpler 8085 programs.
Today's lab marked the end of my B.E. degree labs, and I can't help but feel a tinge of sadness knowing that I won't be experiencing labs again. Nevertheless, this last lab exam will be etched in my memory, mainly due to that tricky mouse question that challenged me to think creatively.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
You can switch users without going through the Welcome screen: From Task Manager, go to the Users tab, right-click a user, and select Connect.
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Hold down the shift key in the shutdown dialog to change "Stand By" to "Hibernate". Or just press H to hibernate instantly. You can even use the Power Control Panel to configure your power button to hibernate.
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To disable the password when resuming from standby or hibernation, open the Power Control Panel and uncheck "Prompt for password after returning from standby" on the Advanced tab.
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You can rename multiple files all at once: Select a group of files, right-click the first file, and select "Rename". Type in a name for the first file, and the rest will follow.
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Hold down the shift key when switching to thumbnail view to hide the file names. Do it again to bring them back.
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When dragging a file in Explorer, you can control the operation that will be performed when you release the mouse button:
Hold the Control Key to force a Copy.
Hold the Shift key to force a Move.
Hold the Alt key to force a Create Shortcut.
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If you create a file called Folder.jpg, that image will be used as the thumbnail for the folder. What's more, that image will also be used as the album art in Windows Media Player for all media files in that folder.
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From the View Menu, select "Choose Details" to select which file properties should be shown in the Explorer window. To sort by a file property, check its name in the "Choose Details" in order to make that property available in the "Arrange Icons by" menu.
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To display the volume control icon in the taskbar, go to the Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel and select "Place volume icon in the taskbar".
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Hold down the shift key when deleting a file to delete it immediately instead of placing it in the Recycle Bin. Files deleted in this way cannot be restored.
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If you hold down the shift key while clicking "No" in a Confirm File Operation dialog, the response will be interpreted as "No to All".
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To save a document with an extension other than the one a program wants to use, enclose the entire name in quotation makes. For example, if you run Notepad and save a file under the name:
Dr.Z
it will actually be saved under the name Dr.Z.txt
But if you type:
"Dr.Z"
then the document will be saved under the name:
Dr.Z
(Note that a document so-named cannot be opened via double-clicking since the extension is no longer ".txt").
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Put a shortcut to your favorite editor in your Send To folder and it will appear in your "Send To" menu. You can then right-click any file and send it to your editor.
Ctrl+Shift+Escape will launch Task Manager.
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To arrange two windows side-by-side, switch to the first window, then hold the Control key while right-clicking the taskbar button of the second window. Select "Tile Vertically".
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To close several windows at once, hold down the Control key while clicking on the taskbar buttons of each window. Once you have selected all the windows you want to close, right-click the last button you selected and pick "Close Group".
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You can turn a folder into a desktop toolbar by dragging the icon of the desired folder to the edge of the screen. You can then turn it into a floating toolbar by dragging it from the edge of the screen into the middle of the screen. (It helps if you minimize all application windows first.)
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You can turn a folder into a taskbar toolbar. First, unlock your taskbar. Next drag the icon of the desired folder to the space between the taskbar buttons and the clock. (Wait for the no-entry cursor to change to an arrow. It's a very tiny space; you will have to hunt for it.) You can rearrange and resize the taskbar toolbar you just created. You can even turn the taskbar toolbar into a menu by resizing it until only its name is visible.
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In the Address Bar, type a domain name like "microsoft" an hit Ctrl+Enter. Internet Explorer autmatically inserts the "http://www." and the ".com" for you.
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To remove an AutoComplete entry from a Web form, highlight the item in the AutoComplete dropdown and press the Delete key. To remove all Web form AutoComplete entries, go to the Internet Explorer Tools menu, select Internet Options, Content, AutoComplete, then press the "Clear Forms" button.
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To organize your Favorites in Explorer instead of using the Organize Favorites dialog, hold the shift key while selecting "Organize Favorites" from the Favorites menu of an Explorer window.
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You can organize your Favorites by dragging the items around your Favorites menu. Alternatively, you can open the Favorites pane and hold the Alt key while pressing the up and down arrows to change the order of your Favorites.
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To run Internet Explorer fullscreen, press F11. Press it again to return to normal mode.
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To add or remove columns from the Details mode, select Choose Details from the View m menu, or just right-click the column header bar.
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In Internet Explorer, hold the Shift key while turning the mouse wheel to go forwards or backwards.
In Internet Explorer, hold the Shift key while clicking on a link to open the Web page in a new window.
In Internet Explorer, type Ctrl+D to add the current page to your Favorites. This and many more keyboard shortcuts can be found by going to Internet Explorer, clicking the Help menu, then selecting Contents and Index. From the table of contents, open Accessibility and click "Using Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts".
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