Thank you, come again

So one of my four external hard drives that I brought with me decided to take a crap on me and get corrupted.  I have no idea how it happened but it happened.  The drive happened to be a refurbished Maxtor that was sent to me as a replacement for another Maxtor that happened to be DOA.  So I think that my respect for Maxtor has now been corrupted.

Now, at first I was scared that I had just lost 200 GB of data and I was ready to take a loss.  However, I started to look online for a way to recover my data.  I have always heard stories online of people being able to recover their data, but I was always skeptical.

So I started to do some research and came across a program called “File Scavenger 3″ that had great reviews on their website.  But being the person I am I did not trust reviews that are written on the site that is selling the product.  Who knows if the reviews are real or not?  So I found independent reviews on CNet.com and other websites that talked it up just as much.  I decided that I would download their trial program and it proved to be a good move.  The trial program was able to find ALL of the files that were on my hard drive and also found remnants of ALL files that had ever been on there.  I couldn’t have been happier.  I immediately paid the $45 to buy a license for the product and just got done recovering the entire hard drive to another back-up hard drive I have with me.  I then formatted the corrupted drive and it is now in working order again.

So basically, if you ever have any lost data on a hard drive that you just cannot go without then look into buying “File Scavenger 3″, it saved me 200 GB of data.

So yesterday during class we get this email from HR that is telling us that we do not work today and that we work on the coming up Saturday instead.  Naturally we are all confused by this and we found out that the state that we live in here, Karnataka, is under a statewide strike for today only.  I have no idea what the strike is even for, however, we have to not work today for our own safety.  We were also advised not to go into the city for our own safety as well.

So you would think that since the whole state, which has millions of people not working, that they would just let it slide and we would not have to make up a day of work since it wasn’t our choice.  That, however, is not the case.  They decided that even though we had no problem with working during the strike that we are required to come in on Saturday to play catch-up on our missed work day.

I have no issues, I guess, with the idea of not missing a day of work, but this was a choice made by the Company and not by us and I see no reason why our weekend has to be cut short because of some strike.  Oh well, it gives me one more day to procrastinate studying for my next exam coming up.  It is over threading, RMI, and XML parsing in Java.  Sounds like a real thriller of a time.

Most of you have been wanting pictures to be posted and I keep telling you I’m working on it.  Well I have made this site for all of us here at Infosys to post pictures on and I figured you can just look at those.  All of the pictures are on http://gallery.usinfy.com.  There are more than 1200 pictures, as of date, for you to look at.  That should be plenty to keep busy with until I get my own personal picture site up.

Enjoy!

Well I have about 1 month exactly left here in Mysore.  Then it is off to Bangalore until January 20th when I leave to go home.  I recently realized that that will be by far the longest day of my life, figuritively and literally as it will be the 20th of January for about 36 hours for me.  It will all be worth it though.

As of now I have all received all A’s except for one B.  Luckily that B was only worth one credit toward my final grade here and doesn’t really count toward much.  I just had an exam on Wednesday and have yet to find out how I did during that module (Oracle in depth).  Based on my calculations I am right on the borderline for either an A or a B+, it all depends on how the graders round the scores.  If they round in my favor I will have just enough for the A that I want.  If I get a B+ it isn’t the end of the world, and I wouldn’t be surprised, but I am trying to be one of the top 10 performers here.  Sadly it is all a matter of one question on the exam that we had.  They asked the same question twice and unfortunately I did not know the answer.  I asked about it and they said I would just be penalized twice, which sounds incredibly fair.  If I had only missed that question once I would have an A for sure.

One reason I am even on the borderline for the Oracle exam is due to the fact that I was sick for the entire Oracle module.  In fact on Wednesday during class I had some sort of attack (most likely an Anxiety attack) and had to be taken to the hospital.  I ended up being there from Wednesday evening until Friday evening.  It was probably two of the most boring days of my life, however I did manage to rest a lot and I feel much better.  I still have a cold, but that doesn’t bother me too much.

That’s it for now.

Well I never got to writing about Bangalore the first time I went, so I decided to write about it now that I have gone again.

Bangalore is about 2 hours 45 minutes by train from Mysore and about 3 hours by taxi.  It is a metropolis compared to the “tiny” town of Mysore.  It is funny that Indians refer to Mysore as a town although it has over a million people living here, but when you compare it to a city like Bangalore which has 6,158,677 people (5th largest city) you can see why they might say that.  Mysore, however, isn’t even in the top 20 most populated cities in India.

Bangalore, as you would expect, has many more things to do compared to Mysore.  It is like any other metropolis in the United States except that the streets are filled with many more beggers and homeless people than any city I have seen in the major U.S. cities (Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, D.C. to name a few).

The first time I was there we went to a place called The Forum.  This is the equivalent of a U.S. mall.  However, since it is in the middle of a big city with little room to build horizontally, they have built skyward.  The mall is six stories tall, about three taller than any other mall I have been to in the midwest, and about a block and a half in size.  Inside the mall are many stores that we would know in the U.S. and many others that are similar in nature to stores in the U.S.  As far as food in the mall goes there is KFC, Subway, and McDonalds.  Each differing in some way from that of the respective U.S. restaurants.  McDonalds, for instance, doesn’t have any kind of beef, no surprise, nor do they have simple things like chicken McNuggets.  The french fries, or what the Indians call “finger chips”, are good but don’t taste the same at all.

As far as shopping outside of the mall is concerned there are a few streets that are great for shopping.  There is Brigade Rd., MG (Mahatma Ghandi) Road, and Commercial Street.  These streets are full of shops for as far as the eye can see.  Some of the shops are very westernized whereas some are just ma and pa type shops we would have in the U.S.

One of the stores that I visited was Lacoste.  If you don’t know the brand name it is the company that has the little green alligator as its logo.  I found out from my friends that a simple polo shirt from Lacoste in the U.S. would run a person anywhere from $70-$95.  However, at this official outlet a Lacoste shirt runs around $25-$35.  So I picked one up for myself on the first trip and picked up another one this weekend along with one for Jeni for a birthday present.

Another store I visited this weekend was a computer/game store, image that right.  I asked if they sold xbox games, as I was looking for Cricket 2005, and the clerk’s first question was if I had a mod chip.  That is when I knew these games would be cheap.  Needless to say I bought 8 games for Rs. 1600.  That is roughly $35 for 8 games total.  Sadly they didn’t have Cricket 2005 but I found it today at another store for a cheap price as well.

The first time I was there we managed to make it to a club called Fuga.  I found this to be very similar to what the U.S. clubs are like, from what I hear anyway.  They played decent music and it seemed that the dance floor was overcrowded.  I chose not to partake in that and went to the upstairs portion and chilled on some couches with other Infoscions.  We ended up having only a few drinks as the club closed at 11:15 pm as does everything else in Bangalore.  They are very strict about their curfews here.

Both of my trips have been fun and exciting.  I have seen some more things that I am glad to have experienced.  On the train ride I saw many rice fields (patties) and it is exactly like what I’ve seen on TV.  Fields that are flooded and workers walking calf deep in the muck.  I have experienced what real pollution is.  In West Lafayette we complain about the foul smell of the air, but that air is like that of a meadow compared to the air in Bangalore.  I ended up with a sore throat just from a day and a half in that city.  There are people everywhere wearing handkerchiefs over their faces due to the density of the pollution.  It is so bad that you can actually see it lingering in the air.

Regardless of some of the few problems with the city, pollution, overcrowdedness, litter, and the homeless it is a very nice place to visit.  I’m glad that I’ve made the trip and now know where to go to have some fun and get those hard to find goods that I can’t find in Mysore.

I’m sure it is a place I will be frequenting much more in the future.