Kiran Jonnalagadda’s Blog

I can't seem to get any work done when I'm sitting at my box. There are way too many distractions, from sifting through the ~200 unread messages in my Inbox, to downloading the latest Evolution from CVS (but my copy is only 15 minutes old!). I'm therefore going try forcing myself to the floor with my back to the box. If that doesn't work, I'm going to sit by myself in the conference room. Sorry to you guys who page me while I'm trying to not pay attention.

Going home for real now...

Going home now...

I feel lonely, terribly lonely. Funny thing is, I don't even know whom I'm missing. Maybe it's not a person at all, but just a state of mind that I want. Hey Champak, where are you? You were the only one who managed to get me there.

Maybe I should just go home and sleep a bit. I didn't get much last night...

I don't know why I'm being nice to this guy. I was trying to sleep and got a page from an unknown ICQ user who says he wants to learn hacking. A little probing and he switches to being satisfied with learning to code in C. I'm trying to introduce him to Python. Seems like a nice guy though misguided. After all, he hasn't asked me for my A/S/L yet.

Spent the night setting up Jabber on the local server. Now I can have people IM over the LAN, instead of sending the message out to ICQ/AIM servers halfway across the world and back.

Yawn!

It's 53 megs. Putting off the attempt for tonight.

I'm getting ambitious. I'm backing up the entire Zope and Zap directories for a download attempt. Will be over 100 MB...

I love GNOME 1.2! Can't wait to see what 2.0 will be like.

Just noticed that Gtk finally has a cursor that blinks. Hurrah!

Just finished downloading Helix GNOME 1.2, using their new Helix GNOME Installer (83MB!). The most fabulous installer I've ever seen on Linux, and it's standards complaint too! I said I have Mandrake 6.1, so it's gone and downloaded Mandrake RPMs for me. Install in progress right now (all in the wizard/druid interface)...

Woohoo! X ain't dead!

Yawn!

Just upgraded to sawmill 0.27 and the darned thing refuses to start now. Says something about not being able to find a file named "sawmill".

I'm working on setting up an XML based outgoing feed for ZDNetIndia.com today. I've so far managed to get articles to render with the tags I need for the feed. Now I need some method of identifying all new articles across the site, and getting them together into one big text file.

Back in office. More later...

Just finished reading this great article at Feedmag.com on Web loggers.

Explorer just blew up in my face, killing all my IE windows and my tray icons.

This hasn't happened to me in one and a half years. Is it because I've barely used Windows in the last one and a half years?

I can barely wait for this monsoon, when all the major Linux apps get ready for the mainstream (kernel 2.4, XFree86, Nautilus, Evolution, AbiWord). I have Windows around here just because none of the Linux distributions around are ready for mainstream users yet.

Just put together my old system again so that I could get online. Windows 98 on the new box crashes after startup, even in safe mode (as is usual for Windows). And my BIOS refuses to boot from CD-ROM for reasons that are beyond me.

I checked AMD.com to see if Windows 98 had a problem with my processor (AMD K6-2 450). No luck, they only have problems with Windows 95 OSR2.

So now I'm going to copy the Windows CD onto the HD, move it to the new machine and install from it. Hopefully, that'll fix things.

I'm sitting at an Internet browsing centre because my machine back home is halfway through an upgrade and currently unusable (missing a keyboard connector). Saw Stuart Little today with Sandeep, Gautam, Radhika, Nitin and Aby (both from ITspace.com; Aby was previously was with Gartner Group). Then had ice-cream at Corner House, after Gautam left us. Finally, Sandeep and I went over to Music World on Brigade Road and picked up Ultra (for him) and Megadeth, INXS and Cranberries (for me; don't remember the album names).

Spent the last one and a half hours writing out an elaborate mail describing integrating qmail into a MS Exchange wide-area setup. I never imagined the ease with which qmail can be extended like required here. This is dazing!

Went to see Anna and the King today with mom, bro, Radhika and a couple of other people from ITspace.com (where Rads now works). This is my second time, but it was fun anyway. Mom enjoyed it too (which is rare for her).

I'm hoping to make it to Stewart Little tomorrow. Shreyas, Sandeep and Radhika have promised to come too.

Hmm, I'm listening to Sarah McLachlan after a long time, and it sounds good all over again. I used to play these tracks so often, I had gotten sick of them.

I got a Calvin & Hobbes book from Sandeep yesterday. 250 pages of strips! Finished reading them all by the afternoon. Now I have J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" that Radhika gave me. She said I should be able to finish it in about three days.

Oh yeah, I'm in Bangalore. Bandwidth here sucks, and this Windows box feels like it's going to go down any moment.

Got here on Tuesday afternoon and have since met Vinay, Chetan, Radhika, Shreyas and Sandeep (Vatsa: Vinay is my mother's friend's son, and Radhika is ex-copy editor at CHIP, now with ITSpace.com).

I met Shreyas for the first time in one and a half years today. He answered the door, turned his eyes to my stomach, poked it twice, and said "You've got a pot belly!". Do I have to be reminded so often? I need more exercise. Cycling isn't helping at all.

Leaving office now...

Back in office. I have a bus at 5 PM today. Bangalore, here I come. Now to do something about the 52 unread messages in my mailbox...