::Blame It On Blogger::

If you've been looking into my blog for, well, the last month, consider yourself lucky. I think it would have easily qualified for, if not won an award for the worst blog available. Just like Saurav struggles initially to get his eye in and his feet moving against Shoaib before playing his first gorgeous Cover-Drive(Now that we are in Indo-Pak Cricketing times), I have found out the hard way of making your blog looking pleasing to the eye. The tale of woe about my efforts to change my blog skin go back a month.

The story starts in the computer lab of Sri Sairam Engineering College .We are supposed to be preparing for an event called Pot Pourri to be conducted at Convergence-04, an tech-symposium for the first years.By this time,all three of us,i.e. Me,Vinod and Shrikant have set up our blogs and Vinod has taken his first steps to making his blog look decent(I won't exaggerate myself).Anyway, we are sitting in the computer lab, and basically doing nothing,(Which is what we had planned to do in the first case) and I Google (Used as a verb in this case) for "blogger+blog skins" to get links to about a Million sites(Those guys at Google really know what they are doing!).Opening up about 20 windows, which is what I usually do, I look at the different sites that had blog skins to offer for download. I download about five skins, which looked pretty decent and put them onto the machine I was sitting on. Then I try opening them. And guess what, the machine didn't have WinZip on it. And off you go to the Lab Administrator(Lab Assistant is more like the post he ought to hold, but who cares about posts anyway!) to ask, "Sir, andha machinela Winzippa install panni tharingla?"(Sir, can you install WinZip on that machine?).And in typical SSEC ishtyle, he replies, "Naalekki vaa pa."(Come tomorrow).So, Day-1 ends up with me feeling pleased with myself;Atleast I managed to download stuff to try out on my blog.

Day-2 of the ordeal begins. After persuasion and kissing-up for about an hour, I manage to get the attention of the Lab Admin to install, or at least give me permission to install WinZip on that machine. With the formalities done, it's time to get down to business. Or so I think. I type out blogger.com on my browser window, and I get "Http Error:425 - Unable to Connect". Now, the proxy server on our college doesn't want my Cyber Identity looking good. And the lab assistant can't do anything about it this time. And my conscience tells me at this point," Take your time, Vivek, this is not going to be easy."

Day-3 comes a good week later. I've almost forgotten about the time I downloaded Blog skins on some machine in the Lab. Coming into the lab and feeling too bored to do Java programs, I make up my mind to finish off the job today. Uploading the blog is no mean task. You just have to copy and paste it in the template window once you're logged into Blogger.This is where Blogger goes cranky, and thus the name of this entry. Having selected The Simpsons skin from the ones I downloaded, I just paste it in and republish my brogan then I click the "View Blog" link on the window to get one nasty shock(OK, I'm exaggerating a bit on the nasty shock thingy!..but a shock nonetheless). My blog shows me one single entry, no links, no description of my blog, and Homer Simpson is staring me in the face."Doh!"is to put it mildly.

I let the blog look the way it was for about two weeks before I go to the lab and again got myself bored with Java(As far as I'm concerned, Nothing can beat plain old C++).I select the default skin (the one you see now)and republished my blog, and I see that it at least got to display all my entries. Then I go to the template window again to see it still displaying the old template(The Simpsons).And republishing the blog gets the old, bad looking blog running again. Talk about photographic memory! Boy, you guys at Blogger should make a patent out of this.

One week later, because of our unit tests, or because of my lethargy, I come back to the computer lab to find my blog still displaying one entry. I consult with Vindy, sitting in the next machine, equally jobless, but he's equally clueless. I mutter curses under my breath, not because I have the decency, but because I'll get thrown out of the lab if I curse out loudly." This is it !" I tell myself," This is the limit and I don't know what to do". Then I say to myself that this is the final attempt. If it doesn't do something now, I'm bringing down this blog, and I probably won't blog anymore. And by my unbelievable luck or malfunctioning Blogger
technology, the site finally displays a proper, if not great looking blog.

So,If you people have had similar problems with blogging, don't come around bothering me, coz I ain't gonna help you!

Moral of the story: What the F@#$?!This story has no morals.Infact, it is Immoral! I'm no Aesop you know!

© Officially the longest blog written by Vivek; not because he intended it to be this big, but because he was getting too bored studying for the exams.

The Vahana of my Dreams

My battered old Bajaj M80 refuses to carry me around anymore..It gave out it's last plea for letting go last week..The point is that I've been driving ths beast for around 5 years now, without license,RC book,or any insurance..(Traffic police of chennai plz note!)

Me goes to a friend's place and decide to go"triples" on the M80, to go to another friend's place..Note that one of the guys with me already has a fractured arm, weighs about 90 kilos, and is damn scared of dogs(that's koushik for you!)..

So, merrily, we head out and board the great one...

I try to kick start it..it doesn't listen..and after 5 mins of kicking, it starts!

whoa! and we're on our way!

somehow, we manage to sit, with koushik sitting in the middle, me driving and deepesh almost hanging out of the vehicle, right at the back..Starting out..we drive for about two minutes, when koushik looks to the front and says"Machan, there are a bunch of dogs ahead da!"

who cares..I tell him..and then it happens.

The head of the pack, as if he's been waiting for us all the time,jumps into action..

Our M80 lets out moan after moan, as I try desparately to accelarate, with koushik and deepesh lifting their legs into the air, to make sure Mr.Dog does'nt snap at their legs..I lose balance and "We All Fall down!"

The moral of this story:Never go triples with one of the people being a fat guy with a broken arm who is scared of doggies ! Or better yet, don't drive at all !

PS:For all you people out there who are itching to know if we survived the dog attack, we did..and we live to tell about it.