Prizes form FSM-2: Qmail Quickstarter

FSM guys have kept me waiting for a long time. I even tried mailing them a couple of times. But compared to many other Indian magazines, they have a prompt customer relationship department. My copy of "Qmail Quickstarter" was shipped from Birmingham, UK. It arrived yesterday, in all its glory. Moreover, I got my laptop yesterday after nearly a month of keeping it at the service center. I'll write about that later. Meanwhile, watch this space...

DC Books Quiz 1st Prize

It was a usual (boring?) day at the college. I had no intention of how to spend it wisely. The first hour went by on its own, if not a lengthy lecture by the HOD. It was during the second hour that things got out of hand... It was Pokémon that came to me and informed me that we'd have to go to DC Books Quiz at Ernakulam — without any bloody preparation? I thought — not that we "prepare" a lot for the quizes, for the matter. HOD said that the competition starts at 10:30am and the organisers were waiting for us. The time then was 10:00am. 30 mins to reach to the destination. The participants were Geo, Don, Pokémon, Pöngs, Bibin (1st year) and me. We reached by 10:45am, I guess. There were a couple of teams by then, the usual players: DC, SCMS, Rajagiri, SMS-CUSAT. Albertian Institute of Management came sometime after us. The prime show was the book exhibition. Wow!! Books! Lots of books! That's something that turns me on. We met the manager Mr. Baiju, who said that only one team per college was allowed. So much for traveling here. But Geo and Pöngs had other plans as well — the placement brochure for this MBA batch. The quiz master was Dr. Anandakuttan B. Unnithan, IIM-Kozhikode. Yeah, the same guy who was behind implementing Debian servers at SNGIST. Yipee! So good to meet another Linuxer. We sure made it through the prelims with 14 points (SMS-CUSAT with 16 points were the only college with higher points in the prelims), from out of 25 questions. Seeing the pattern of questions, I had a hunch that we might have a hope (Hint! Hint!). There were a total of 10 rounds with blazing questions. We were in the lead from the beginning, thanks to the techno-savvy quiz master. Only the buzzer round had something to worry about as DC was answering it like anything. The "Who's who" round even had a pic of Stephen Wozniak! Can you believe it? The Wizard of Oz himself! Boy, I sure had a great time at the quiz. After the 10 rounds, the points stood thus: Team B (SMS-CUSAT): 30 points Team A (DC): 35 points Team D (SCMS): 45 points Team C (SNGCE): 90 points Twice as many points. We definitely shouldn't have left out some questions. Pokémon is always wary of the buzzer round. :-) The winning team gets to inaugurate the DC Book fare exhibition. And gets a Rs1000/- gift voucher. Each. Yo! Rs1000 worth of books! I'd trade anything for that. But as usual, we have this brain-dead pathetic system at the college whereby we have to surrender the prize (only cash prizes or equivalents) to the college. I hate it when I've to part with my belongings. But as the saying goes: Beggars can't be choosers! :-p I bought a copy of Chetan Bhagat's "One Night @ the Call Center" and "Five Point Someone" with cash out of my pocket. The gift voucher, sadly, had to given to the college. There are times that I wish I carried a little more cash.

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The climax of the day was not as shiny. We got stuck in the road because one of our vehicles thought it to be a great time to quit working. We had to spend 2 hours in the road waiting to get a mechanic and try him to fix the problem. Outcome: negative. We got back at to the college at 8:00pm.

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The question of the day: What did you have for breakfast?

Gifts from the Free Software Magazine

Free Software Magazine was always one of my favourite e-zines, until they decided to drop the PDF version of their magazine. That, I saw, as a very bad move. Yet, I continued to enjoy the magazine, not frequenting it as often as before, and reading it only through their monthly newsletter.

One day, as usual at the college, I came around their newsletter announcing an article entitled "The LUG is Dead"  how true, I thought. I had this same notion for sometime, and kept raising this issue in our LUG. Only people were too engrossed in the community news that they never gave it a serious thought.

On the other day, I got a mail announcing that my comment to the article had been selected for their book winner competition. Cool, eh?

My prizes were a copy of "Practical Packet Analysis" AND a copy of "Qmail Quickstarter".

My first book arrived by mail the other day (11^th August, 2007), via USPS. The package was posted from US on 2^nd (or so the cover says), and reached me here in India on 11^th! I should say, these yankees sure know how to do keep their customers happy.

This is the first book I own from No Starch Publications. I just lovvveee them!

Eagerly awaiting Qmail Quickstarter...