Thank you, come againKeepin' up with Eric

So today was the day I chose to try to make the final round of the Infosys Mysore DC (Development Center) Bowling tournament.  I needed to make the top six average to make it to the finals and let me tell you, there was some steep competition.

Now I’ve bowled some pretty decent games here, I’ve managed a 206, 182, and several games over 160.  However, my average is only around 140 or so.  For this tournament, the number six spot had an average of 172.33.  That means I was going to have to bowl all of my best games back to back to back.

As you would expect I didn’t manage to do that.  I bowled a warm-up game and managed a 139.  Right around average.  I then bowled a 154, 132, and another 150 something.  My average ended up being 148.xx.  Obviously well below the bump spot.  One good thing that came of it was my average for the 3 games was higher than my overall average which means I’m getting more consistent.

In other news, I have an exam tomorrow (Friday) over Java threading, xml parsing, and RMI.  I am currently writing in an attempt to procrastinate studying even more. I’m out of things to say though, so wish me luck for my exam tomorrow!

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.