When I crashed Windows - My first Accident!!

My Love for Linux

You must have heard about breaking builds but have you heard of breaking a building. Just like, a bad checkin can break a build likewise a bad day can break a building. This is what I did once upon a time. Not to forget the major thing that got destroyed was Windows. Yeah, I Love Linux. Just Kidding. :)

What this article is all about
If you are one of those persons who have just made an horrible accident and is feeling down then this article is for you. As a culprit, If you have questions like what should I do, what should I say, what should I hide and many other questions then this article is for you. This is a true story of my life and about my first ever accident.

Okay, why this article.
I think I made a mistake. And I also think anyone else can make the same mistake. In any case I felt very bad and really sorry, not for my car but for my company because I love my company more than I love my car. So this an attempt to feel light and share with people about what it feels, what you can learn and how you should behave in an event of an accident.

How did it start
Like any other perfect morning, had a good 8 hour sleep, ate a good breakfast prepared by wife, left the home early. Reached office around 8:30 AM (earlier than normal) and parked the vehicle at my usual place. I have been parking at the same place from past 8 months. Everything was normal till this point of time.

So what happened
I was just about to complete the parking but I soon realised that the car has climbed the pavement of the parking slot. Before I could do anything, I saw the car hitting the window of the office. Within moments, there were glass pieces all over the place and I was in dire state of shock. I am Linux guy from past 8 years so this was bound to happen one day. Windows crashed.

But how it really happened
I never tell lies and I don’t like to give excuses. And in this case too, I would be honest. I pressed the gas pedal instead of brake. Holy cow! But I don’t remember how and when I pressed the gas pedal. All I remember is, some how my car climbed the pavement. But believe me, I don’t remember when I pressed the gas pedal. As a matter of fact, I don’t even apply this much pressure on gas pedal while driving on road. :-/

The first thought that came to my mind
The first thing that stuck me was - Oye by god lag gayi..kya se kya hua (English translation - God, I am screwed..what has happened). Thoughts of facing a Police officer, increased insurance premium, what would people think of me, what will I say and what not bombarded my mind. I did not feel like coming out of the car.

Was it really the right thing to worry?
Duniya ka sabse bada rog mere bare mein kya kahen ge log! (English translation - World’s biggest disease is to think what would people think of me). Instead of worrying about police, premium or people, I should have thanked God that I was still alive and no one in the office was injured. Metals and Glasses can be fixed but life once lost is gone forever.

How did my company’s security team behaved
I was so impressed the way my company’s security team handled the scene. Within minutes, there were security officers around the car and they helped me to first come out safely. The first thing they asked, are you okay. They brought a glass of water and said - Relax, it’s okay - Accidents happen, we all are human beings. They were really very polite and kind to me. But they did take the car plate number, insurance policy number and license id number. Chase begins.

The lesson which I learnt and which you can learn too
No one is perfect and we all make mistakes. The important thing is don’t lose your calm when you do or see an accident. Never get angry or rude to someone who has made a mistake. Security officers around me were really helpful and humble and it made me feel slightly less embarrassed. I am so grateful to them for not making a scene out of it.

How did my friends react to it
Soon it happened, I sent an email to my project DL, letting them know about it. Within minutes, I got many condoling emails. My manager and many of my project colleagues immediately came down extending their help and support. I soon realized the importance of asking someone if he or she needs some help. If you see someone is in trouble, just go to him/her and try to help in any which way you can.

What happened to the car and office.
The glass window (I love Linux) of the office was broken to pieces scattering all over the places and all over the car. The office was badly damaged as the car had gone almost inside the office. Holy shit! After an hour, towing team was called, they got the car out of the office, removed millions of glass pieces from the car. My company offers free towing service to their employees. I and car were towed for free of cost.

How did I behave
The biggest challenge is to keep yourself calm & composed when you do such a big blunder. The good thing is that I did not cry. I also did not panic. I told truth to the security officer. Then I sent an honest email to my project team informing them about the incident. It’s not easy to do that but if you can share it with many people, you will feel light. The other good thing which I did was that I immediately started working without worrying too much about the accident.

What should you do in similar event
What I learnt and what I would suggest is that, to always speak the truth and do not hide or give any excuses. At the end of the day, it will always make you feel less embarrassed. Do not think much about it and keep yourself busy for next few days. Within couple of days you would be back to normal routine, respecting and thanking God for this precious life.

But why did it happen to me
I firmly believe in Karma. I always keep a check on my Karma count. Most of the times I know why few things happened to me. But as of now, I don’t know why this embarrassing event happened to me. Some things are bound to happen because they are written. When the time will come, you will come to know the reason. Till that time celebrate that you are still alive.

Connecting the dots
Steve Jobs once said in one of his famous speech, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. When I was about to leave the office with my towed vehicle, the security officer said - Sir, its okay. Look it at this way - You have contributed in keeping the job alive, of the security team, janitors, insurance inspection officers and many other people. You have helped in improving the economy of US in one of the most tiniest and rarest form. Your loss could be someones gain. So be happy because you have made someone else happy indirectly and unknowingly.

And finally how has it changed my life.
Life is always good in teaching you lessons which you are never really interested to learn. I don’t mind making driving mistakes (not this big) as long as I learn new things from it. But this was such kind of horrifying accident from which I didn’t learn anything except to never park in front of a office or a glass window. But it still taught me few important things.
1. Always be happy and satisfied. It takes one accident and a second to lose everything.
2. Be polite to people who make mistakes. One kind word can change someones life.
3. Speak truth and don’t hide anything or give any excuses. It will make you feel more courageous.
4. Get involved in things you love and time will heal all the scars.
5. As long as it was unintentional, don’t waste your energy in feeling sad or sorry. Everything happens for a reason. If you are lucky, you will come to know the reason.
6. I cannot park at the same place again because I cannot pull courage to go there. Now imagine if I would have hurt someone physically. I would have never able to forgive myself. Respect life.

My driving history
I started driving cycle on road from the year 1996. Then I started driving motorbike in the year 2000. After 15 years of driving 2 wheeler, I thought I should start driving a car. So I purchased my first car in 2011. Don’t get excited, it’s a used car. In these 15 years, I have had 2 accidents. First accident was in India, when a car hit me from side while I was driving a motorbike. And this was my second accident. Fortunately the car was still in very good and driving condition.

About the Author
I am just another Perl programmer, Linux Lover and a passionately curious user. When I was a toddler, I used to love writing poems and articles for newspapers. Then Internet kicked in. The passion for writing got lost in downloading MP3s, chatting, Orkut, then Facebook and Twitter, some blogging and website development. My blogging was mostly technical and website was purely experimental. Neither of them lasted long. But here I am again after many years, feeling motivated to again start blogging on something different and for a good reason.

Sweets, Parties & Orkut...

It's 26th Jan, 2009 - Republic day. Had a long weekend but couldn't enjoy it. Saturday & Sunday were okay but got ill on Monday. I don't know what happened all of a sudden I started vomiting early Monday morning and then again went to sleep. Woke up @ afternoon and remained down for rest of the day.

I must admit that I have got addicted to few things:

1. Sweets
2. Parties (where I eat too much)
3. And Orkut and wasting time on social networking websites.

I need to do something about them. They have started affecting my personal life and too an extent my professional life. I need to improve my efficiency.

Speculations are going on that I may be moved to new project. Lets see. I am yet to finish the assignment given by Automation team. BTW I celebrated my birthday on 21st Jan in office then threw a party to old friends. I really screwed up that day.

Watched few movies this week - Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Pride & Glory, Yes Man, Nights into Rodanthone - Ok types - Time Pass

Got to go now - Cya next week....

Done with the Release !!!

On 15th Jan, 2008 I saw first release of a software product as a QA engineer. It was indeed a good experience of more than 2 months working as a QA engineer. I must admit that QA team of this project (KA**) is indeed very techie. They just don't log the bugs they in fact debug the entire issue till they reach the root cause. It's indeed amazing how they go to the extreme extent of database. QA team of my previous project (SC*** / PLAT****) and inf act we as a support team never explored the bugs so deep. Standards set by KA** QA team are so high that it indeed requires great troubleshooting skills to surpass them. Anyways KUDOS to Abhay & entire KA** QA team. I am all geared up for the next release if at all it happens. I will have to pull my skin to make

BTW on Friday (16th Jan, 2008) KA** QA team went for a movie called Chandni Chowk to China and I must say that it has been one of the worst ever movies of my life. It was a crappy shit. The movie has set such a high bench mark that it will be really difficult for any director to make such a bad movie. Also it appears that they are going to make a sequel to it - something to do with Africa. It is difficult to imagine how can a director who made Kal Ho Na Ho can direct such an anal pain movie. I couldn't stand that movie even for a minute. BTW topic of movie reminds me of 3 great movies which I have seen this week - 1. Revolutionary Road, 2. Serendipity & 3. Slumdog Millionaire. The first movie deals with post marriage issues - like unfulfilled ambitions, broken dreams, sex, stolen happiness, money, love, abortion, anger, contraceptives, miss-understanding, infidelity and all the awkward emotions. Tremendous performance given by Leonardo DiCaprio & Kate Winslet. Over all a must watch movie. Coming to 2nd Movie it's about pre-marriage drama and a good light romantic movie. Slum dog millionaire has nothing to do with Marriage. It's a about a teenager who ends up winning million of $s in a reality show. Whats shown in the movie is all the reasons because of which he knew the answers to the questions that were asked to him @ the show. Based on India - a must watch movie for every Indian who want to see the true & sorry side of India.

On Saturday I attended Nidhi's engagement. The food was really good. We all had a blast and cherishing photo session.

Economy, Education & Environment

Neither I am a Finance expert nor I am a Management guru. In fact I would be the last person from whom you would ever dare to take any financial advice. Also I have no interest what so ever in understanding these financial jargons like "Liquidity", "Capital", "Credit"....bla bla bla

I often hear people saying that Economy is plunging, Market is crashing, Banks are going bankrupt, Companies are laying of their employees and what not.

The big question here arises whom to blame? I know each one of you has their own set of rules and theories. Like ways I have my own. But don't worry I won't bore you. I would keep it short & simple. I will just tell you the root cause of the above mentioned crises and leave it to you to figure out the details.

There are only two reasons as far as India is concerned:

• Lack of quality education that can provide practical knowledge.
• Our ignorance towards environment.

I think education in India has lost it' s charm. Now it's more of a business. We just want to clear the exams, get a degree and then secure a job. We are least interested in applying our knowledge. To make the situation worst there is reservation category & quota system even for prestigious institutes like IIT. What it all leads to is that industry fall shorts of technically sound people and majority of us end up becoming managers. We have more people to monitor & manage the work of the people who actually work. Students these days miss that extra punch and the extra metal. When Jet laid of it's employees why did the employees took the situation to road and made scene out of it. The reason was that they didn't have the faith on their abilities. I still feel what Jet did was right.

Coming to my last point, over past few years we have gone just too ignorant about the environment. We cut trees, we waste water but we more worried about economy. As the old Indian saying goes: Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.

So unless we act with more responsibility and try to save our nature neither can we save economy nor can we save ourselves.

Cheers,
Parag

First Powerless & then Powerful

It wasn't a great week for me. Starting from work it took hell lot of time to accomplish even smallest of small things. I spent more than 12 hours in office throughout this week but honestly speaking I am loving it because I am doing what I love. I must also add that I have throughly mastered FreeBSD (UNIX) because of my new project. BTW my first project is finally over.

Just when the week was about to end first MSEB declared that there will be power shutdowns for more than 8 hours that means we will have to spend many powerless hours. It's so difficult for a person like me who sits 18 hours in front of PC. This is one more reason I love spending my time in office. Unlike my friends (college) who don't like spending a single second extra in office, I just loved to work. It's perhaps because as I said earlier I am doing what I love. Coming back to load shedding issue, all I want to say it should take place uniformly across all parts of Maharashtra.

And just about the same time two of the major metros of India were rocked by series of powerful bombs. All I want to say that no one can achieve anything by killing someone. It was really sad. I never feel bad or rather I am unmoved when ever such event takes place but for the first time I felt uneasy or perhaps scared. BTW I am writing this article on Sunday morning & the weekend is not yet over. Who knows whats next.

Time for some alma-matter

As my first project got extended by few months I have been handling both the projects simultaneously from a long time now. Also my new project has started in full swing and it's very exciting. I have learnt many new things in a short span of time. Coming week will be perhaps my last week of first project but still I will always miss it. In my case first project has been like first love...very difficult to forget.......

Aakash (Azad) has turned up this week from Pune after a considerable long period of time. Both of us even went to college, took some snaps and revived our old memories. It was my first visit after I got job. I don't know why but I felt as if college was not in good shape. Nothing has changed. Neither the teachers...nor the students....Teachers are still being paid for off lectures and students are still getting IT jobs without making even slightest of struggle....OH BOY....BTW college is undergoing complete renovation and within few months you may see RKNEC in completely new clothes. But don't worry inside stuff would remain same. Its just old wine in a new glass.

Mom & Dad are back......feels like heaven

I had a good experience of spending a week alone without anyone. As I told you last week, my family went to Kerla on a vacation however I had to withdraw my leave due to professional reasons so couldn't accompany them.

I used to leave @ 6 AM and used to come back @ 7 PM (presently I am handling two projects hence such a hectic schedule). I used to take lunch @ office and used to take dinner in Kamat restaurant. I got bored going to restaurants. Actually you don't feel like going to restaurant after coming from office. Nothing can replace home food. I had a hard time managing clothes stock. I gave cloths to laundry and just washed my undergarments.

Home was at sixes & sevens and it took no time for MoM too make it spic & span. I am very lazy. You know what I have realized that I can't leave alone. I can either stay with my parents or I will have to get married.

I am looking forward to next week. I have made some plans. Lets see if I can execute them.