Archive for December, 2007

lub-dub

December 24, 2007 at 1:50 pm · Filed under Life ·Tagged , ,

We would have watched a lot of indian movies where the artists would say “I don’t have my heart with me”(En ithayam en kitta illai :D ) and a hell lotta songs with the word heart in lyrics.

Why is all this commotion about a muscular organ that is merely the size of our palm, which contracts and expands involuntarily? I didn’t realize the importance of heart even in my Biology classes at high school. Not until the day my father had myocardial infarction.

I’ve met a lot of people in the last 35 days. Inspired by the dedication and commitment of the nurses, Envious about the quality of work done by cardiac surgeons and cardiac consultants, Amazed about the administrative staff being both compassionate and firm (the importance of Hospital Administration course). Hats off to NH

Few small things that impacted me,
- A lady dressed in an ordinary sari, looking at her bills for a long time.
- Cute boy from Gujarath sleeping, unaware that he’ll be operated in a few days.
- A 5 year old kid playing in waiting area after his surgery.
- An infant being shifted for surgery with an oxygen mask bigger than his face.

I do not need a camera to record these little instances. These were big punches on my face that implied my work isn’t as great as cardiologists in terms of challenge and the impact it creates to people around me. Neither could I get comfort from the fact that the product I work on is deployed mostly in health care industry.

I read “Chicken soup for the soul: Heart Disease” in this span of time. It covers everything related to cardiology: Impact of Cholesterol, Stress, Hypertension, facts about CPR, Valve Replacement, Angioplast, Cardiac Arrest and Heart Transplantation. This should be the best gift to a heart patient as it talks about the BP levels, type of food to take, how to deal with emergency situations and more. The right combination of true stories and facts put together. I liked the way the book ends with the story of a lady having done a heart transplantation. She ends it with “After all, every day is a bonus day”.

My dad had the same problem Ex-Cheif Minister of Karnataka had 3 days back. It was surprising for me to see the same description of the problem on newspaper.
http://www.hindu.com/2007/12/21/stories/2007122153840400.htm
http://www.starofmysore.com/main.asp?type=news&item=15203

Let me end this post with a lil bit of humour. Minutes after my dad was taken for operation, there was a power cut for few seconds. And I was reminded of this video. :) Funny Video (Warning: Not advised for cardiac surgeons. You might get a heart attack)

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Infectados pelo Virus do Orkut

December 21, 2007 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Tech ·Tagged , ,

Google’s Orkut was affected with a XSS worm recently. It is similar to Samy Worm which infected MySpace users. Following are links to understand Cross Site scripting.

Robert McArdle’s Blog
WhiteHat Security describes XSS in detail
Wat is XSS? – From Wikipedia

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Tux

December 21, 2007 at 7:22 am · Filed under Tech ·Tagged , , , ,

This was my first post in my private blog..Tux

I was browsing through images of Tux in Google. Just thought, why don’t i write a script that keeps changing my background image every few minutes? Got into action sometime last week. Wrote a small script that changes gconf entry. The script was done. I had learnt a little bit of awk by the time i completed the script.

Setting up the script in crontab created some issues. Took a long time to resolve my silly mistakes like ending statements with ; in scripts :-) . The following are the links that helped me learn more about crontab.

http://reallylinux.com/docs/basiccron.shtml
http://www.adminschoice.com/docs/crontab.htm
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-do-i-add-jobs-to-cron-under-linux-or-unix-oses/

And this is my small script: changemytux.sh

dir=$HOME/tux
cd $dir
old=$(gconftool-2 -g /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename)
count=$(ls -1 $dir/*.png $dir/*.jpg | wc -l)
if [ $count -lt 2 ]; then
exit 1
fi
while :
do
rn=$(($RANDOM%$count+1))
new=$(ls -1 *.png *.jpg | sort | awk -v rd="$rn" 'NR==rd {print $1}')
new=$dir"/"$new
if [ "$new" != "$old" ]; then
break
fi
done
/opt/gnome/bin/gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename -t string $new

At the end of the day, I had learnt awk, something about crontab and not to end all statements with semicolon;

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Is Scott Adams hiding in my cubicle?

December 18, 2007 at 5:51 am · Filed under Life, work ·Tagged , ,

“My only association with Scott Adams is through his book ‘Dilbert Principle’ and everyday comic strips, I read as RSS feeds. My future association with him will also be through his books and comic strips.”

Well, that is a statement which implies I’m not giving any ideas to Scott for his recent comic strips. :-)

I found the last 20 days of comic strips very similar to things happening around me at work. The one on agile programming, the one in which the PHB explains about Progress, the one on decision making. I had a hearty laugh when reading the recent strips. Especially when Asok dies and reincarnates into his clone as a half man and half candy bar. Applause to Scott’s brilliance. I wonder if Scott is putting on an invisible cream and standing beside me in my cubicle?

It was disheartening to know Scott has focal dystopia, a condition which affects movement of hand. Scott has been using a pressure sensitive tablet and stylus to overcome this condition. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050901066.html

The best way to enjoy Dilbert is to step back and watch real world Wally, Dilbert, PHB and Dogbert around us. :D

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