IIIT's first alumni meet a great success!

That was 24th December, Chirstamas eve and sure some 60 odd IIIT-Hyderabad alumni members would have something to blog about the day, though not about Santa's await but about the eventful Alumni Meet. And here is my effort. Well perceptions might differ as is the case here too that some felt the event could have been organized in the institute itself so as to have a 'focussed' get-together. Well, this is the first ever alum meet and couldn't be imagined anything to be so heavy. Those who thought it to be just another freak out day without any use and decided to stay away, they were surely mistaken. Inspite of all the fun filled ambience at the venue, the main purpose of alumni meeting still was given due importance and the truly interested got a chance to know how the alum initiatives are directed, what is the scope that as an alumnus he/she can do and more than all, the sense of alumni as a united body is seeded. And it is needless to say that everyone present enjoyed either the Karting(4laps in such a short track is sth to complain, but at Rs.75 I think thats at least OK) or the 'Living Dead' and 'Rain Forest' ambiences (if you didn't go alone then you don't have a reason to complain). Dinner was simple but amidst discussions with long seen friends it sure felt great, just that there should have been less bones and more meat in chicken (hehe!). I should commend Chaitanya Kamisetty for the wonderful job she did all throughout. All in all, the meet was a great success. And to those who lived the day 100%, without even missing morning sports (volleyball and basketball) the day should have been awesome. I, for one, re-lived those good old days at IIIT-Hyderabad playing volleyball and basketball not to mention that I wasn't able to walk owing to my muscle aches all over the body for the hell lot of exercise I had after 18months break ;p.

Yet another surprize!!!

I gave Deepthi a surprize yesterday. When I was first invited for a dinner on December 8th to her home I went with an archies photo frame gift. In the due conversation that day I found out, the family is missing very much that kodak-moment snap of Sangal Sir presenting to Deepthi her B.Tech(CSE) degree. I quickly recollected that I asked Sashikumar, my senior and good friend, to take snaps of myself and all my friends when we were receiving our degree at our convocation ceremony. He did a good job for my friends but unfortunately missed taking the snap when I was on stage :-(. Well, thats a different story all together. After dinner I returned to my room and the next day in my room I searched for those graduation time photos and there IS this much desired photo where Deepthi is receiving her degree. I retained it as my personal copy but then I felt it is more apt to be in her home than with me (anyway I've its negative copy). I did decide to give away the photo but wanted to give it in my style of surprize. I became busy in my work, the issue got diluted and for about ten days I completely forgot about it. Yesterday before starting to my office I somehow got reminded of this photo thingy. And I quickly cooked up a plan. Its past 9:30a.m and there isn't any remote possibility that Deepthi is going to be still at home, unlike me she is always punctual to office. So I went right away to home, telephoned Deepthi's home number from outside the apartments gate, to be sure at least there is someone at home. Aunty lifted the phone and asked me to come over. Took the lift, reached home, opened the almirah where my photo frame is present. Thank God! no other photo was put into it. The default scenary which came with the frame is still adorning the frame. I quickly unscrewed it, slid this invaluable snap behind the default sceenary so that it remains hidden untill Deepthi comes and finds it. Then had a light chat with aunty, had a cup of milk and moved back to my office. At office I framed a simple riddle and mailed it to Deepthi before she left her office for the day. For the shrewd mind that she has, the puzzle was just a peanut to crack. But, though the puzzle was easy, I'm sure the surprize with which it brought her the most craved photo of her life will make her remember the whole episode. The puzzle goes like this...

DEEPS PUZZLE
************
The second thursday this December sure added more glass to ur home
Go get that transparent yet opaque piece into ur hands
For it holds something dear that you very much desire
Worry not that 'once in a life time' moments aren't captured
Though my kodak-lens missed mine it sure caught yours
Remember! things are not always blatant, but you have to 'explore'
Or else you may still not possess what's already in your hand.

Clue:
I made the riddle as easy as it can be, for I don't want you to resort to your mom
to hint you on this as well.

Axis TCPMON tool usage

Axis1.x has all the reason for its acceptance by the industry as a soap-stack competent to other commercial soap-stacks. Its open source and free in the first place, has tremendous functionality bundled and shipped with just those three jars (axis.jar, jaxrpc.jar and saaj.jar). But more than all these what strikes me fond of this product is that it has this nice debugging tool "TCPMON" (org.apache.axis.utils.tcpmon) that comes bundled in axis.jar which actually allows the developer to debug 80% of his problems. I'd rate this tool as one among the high utility tools, for its useful not just for axis developers but for anybody wishing to listen on to what goes/comes on wire from/to his client code. There are 'n' number of wire sniffing toolkits but this is my favourite for its jiffy time setting up. In this post I felt like writing a few lines about the tool usage so that it might help someone out there in need of it.

Using axis's tcpmon tool is simple...
Basically you bring up the tcpmon tool to listen on some port in local machine and then redirect the listened packet as is to the actual destination server.
(i) Have axis.jar in classpath and fire the command

C:\...\> java org.apache.axis.utils.tcpmon <localport> <remoteHost> <port on which remote server is up>

where <localport> is the port number where you want tcpmon to listen.

(ii) Make sure now the TargetEndpointAddress of your client program should have in its url string the server name as localhost:
(iii) Fire your client application. You should be able to see in the tcpmon what request is being sent out to the server and what response is being returned from the server.

While debugging, one could just check from the outgoing packet whats wrong with his/her soap request and rectify it.

Surprize to Naani

It was real great fun that we had last night. Started from office at around 8p.m with the idea of buying a flower bouquet to Naani and get it delivered by a door delivery guy who resides close by near Stanza building (previously I took that guy's details, in case I'd need it). As I drove the bike, several thoughts flashed by and I began to refine my choice of flower bouquet to something that can adorn the home for a longer time and I thought I'd buy a concrete gift than flowers. And when I decided that I'm gonna buy a 'gift' obviously InTouch came to my mind. I did stop (or slowed my bike at least) infront of GiftPlanet at B'Hills, but my uncanny 6th sense told InTouch is more a reliable choice than GiftPlanet. So moved ahead and reached InTouch and there I've seen the sun sign gifts and I liked a couple of them but none of those liked models has something on Sagittarius (the guys checked and rechecked whole of their stock that too infront of my eyes and declared there is no sagittarius sun-sign gift from the suggested models). Then having not getting any fresh thoughts about gift choice I moved to browse by the greeting cards section, initially I've seen a few tens of them, I didn't like any of them for the inappropriate content they had for the relationship that we share or for the weirdness they had in their design. In the end I came across some good ones and finally chose the most expensive card of the lot which had just the apt content written inside it. Its a real BIG card, but I didn't mind b'coz its worthy.
After browsing and selecting the card I was moving my way towards cash counter, where I saw a nice frame with hand made artistic work saying 'Wish you a Happy Birthday', I loved it and in the first look, picked it up and decided to buy it. Done! bill made, packed, paid and started off on my bike to ... HimayathNagar. I stopped in front of Stanza building and I did locate the door delivery guy but then I thought I was giving unnecessary extra access to some third person which might not be all that safe considering the contemporary troubled times. So decided to myself do the surprize door delivery. Surroundings were just so co-operative and the door remained closed. I slowly neared the flat door and dropped the gift + card + puzzle (key to know the sender) outside it and came out of the premises and telephoned aunty and said that some door delivery guy just delivered a gift packet on my behalf at your door step. That its safe to open it and that it should be kept as a tight secret to Naani. Aunty opened the door, took the packet inside and might have just itereated that its an anonymous courier. Naani along with her friends breaked open the puzzle containing envelope not able to resist the surprize with which it came. And since the riddle was easy enough, she (her classmates might have helped her crack that) cracked and called me, while I was just near Tankbund flyover. I pretended that I was at office and I don't know what the courier is all about. After she said that she solved the puzzle and is calling I agreed that it was me and I even agreed that I personally delivered it in front of their house. For which she immediately invited me for dinner, if I was still nearby. I went to their home, shared a light moment with aunty and her classmates and had a sumptous dinner with 'endu chepalu', chikkudu kaaya, beerakaaya curries and just as it neared 12 o'clock her friends took her to Necklace Road to have the cake cutting done. I follwed them. The magic candle on the cake was really amazing. Aunty and Naani, requested that I spend the night there for it is too cold outside to return home. But I decided that its good I go back home and as I'm the master of my deeds returned home.
Thats the whole anecdote, and of course there was a nice lunch at orphanage home the following afternoon. I took a break from office and attended the lunch. The food was good, esp chicken fry and prawn curry.

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