Walk Alone

Got the original in my inbox.

Recently there have been a spate of messages on Orkut about a certain creepy mind reader that lets you see the name of your crush(es) on screen. But even after sending that message to everyone, and pressing F8, nothing happened on my screen… Yes, I know it’s very frustrating… I mean I was all high and excited, horny even! What a disappointment!

But then, it’s me, and I work tech, so I decided to get to the bottom of this, and fix the broken creepy mind reader. And being the generous philantrophist that I am, I am going to share with you the secret of how to actually see if anyone has added you to their crush list… So buckle up, here goes(*):

1. Login to Orkut if you haven’t already done so.
2. Go to your friends list.
3. Click on every friend you have on your list (most people prefer only the opposite sex, but if you are one of those who prefer same sex, or are so desperate that you want to maximise your target pool, you are going to have to click on every friend!)
4. That will take you to their profile.
5. Now click on “Add to Crush List” on each of the friend’s profile.
6. All done!

So, now if anybody on your list adds you as a crush, Orkut will work it’s wonders, and send you an email! Ain’t that awesome! You get to know anyone who adds you to your crush list! In fact, you can actually add all 25,377,673 people on Orkut to your crush list… Someone is bound to like you, or else, you really need to get to a psychiatrist pronto due to the extreme depression likely to set in after you do that, and of course, to a physiologist also, for the carpel tunnel syndrome that you will inflict upon yourself by clicking so many times. Of course, the smarter people will write a script in LISP, but those will find their crushes outside of Orkut anyway!

Haan, now comes the more difficult part: What to do if you get many crush emails?

1. You can choose! Take the best among them, and tell the other ones that your crush for them was a long time ago, and you do not think of them like that anymore!
2. Try mena-je-trio or quattro or just keep going higher!
3. Send the ones you don’t want to the less fortunate ones who don’t have a crush, or don’t have access to Orkut. Be the match-maker.

Ideas and suggestions welcome to improve the quality of this method.

——– Fine Print ———–

(*) Please note that this method is currently in Beta. I do not assume any responsibilty for any personal damage consequental or inconsequental arising out of the use of this method. Plus, if you do hook up or something, practice safe sex. STDs are rampant, use a condom!
If you would like to send me gifts, money or any other form of retribution for this amazing fix for the creepy mind reader, I’m available on Orkut, MSN, Yahoo!, Skype, and just about every place you can think of. Though personally, I’d prefer cash!

Au revior! J’aime tout la monde!

Good has to be followed by bad. So it did, in my case.

The first shock came with Gaim. The file transfers were disabled. This behaviour was not new for me, but I had observed it between mismatched versions of the Yahoo! IM. Apparently, the behaviour also extended to non-Yahoo IMs. To be honest, I could just ask the other guy to mail me the damn file. I’m past the “swapping files through IM” stage anyways.

The second shock was a gradual build-up that peaked today. For a week or more now, I had been having trouble downloading attachments in GMail. Anything within the 150 KB limit I had set in the T-Bird would come down nicely. The rest, just refused to - and whats the big deal with GMail blatantly inflating email and attachment sizes? Many a times, I had to resort to forwarding the mail to others (thanks Thite, Das) and getting it through YIM. That makes the statement in the above paragraph null and void, doesn’t it?

Today, just for the heck of it, I decided to do a portscan on my Linux box. I visited auditmypc.com. My box was secure - in both Linux and win32 - for an average user. And because the site provided it, I also decided to do speed tests. The test I used was the Javascript based Broadband Speed Test. Before I list out the results, Pacenet (theoretically) gives me 48 Kbps.

Morning, Linux - 44.3 Kbps
Evening, win32 - 23.73 Kbps, 27.6 Kbps, 16.7 Kbps, 15.84 Kbps, 16.04 Kbps
Immediately after, Linux - 33.55 Kbps, 29.6 Kbps, 18.04 Kbps
Again in win32 - 25.96 Kbps, 22.25 Kbps, 34.42 Kbps, 29.19 Kbps

Just as I was about to curse to the heavens about Pacenet’s you know what, I decided to forward the latest attachment I needed to my Yahoo! account - and I downloaded it comfortably at more than 5 KBps… that would be 40 Kbps. This was just after the 34.42 Kbps reading.

The big question is - would I be able to download a 680 MB ISO? I had taken it for granted earlier. No longer.

I received an email from a friend.

I’m updating my address book. Please take a moment to update me with your latest contact info. Your information is stored in my personal address book and will not be shared with anyone else.

Powered by Plaxo (No, I’m not going to link to it); a service that aims to help you sync your contact books (read Outlook). Plus, it tracks and updates changes in contact details. Details here - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

While the friend used a Netscape email ID which, frankly, I’ve not seen used much in correspondence with me, the email ID fed in to Plaxo’s servers on my behalf, is my main Yahoo! ID. One or more of the above links will tell you that Plaxo is tracking it by now.

I got an invite to Orkut - ignored. I got invites to Flickr and hi5 - ignored. Well, its not Flickr’s fault that I don’t have pics to share, but hi5 had it coming anyways.

Here’s the point - if you want to stay in touch with me, let me know through an email you have written, not generated by some script. I would be more than happy to take the time and effort to keep you updated about my contact details. Please spare my email IDs from such services. I don’t have 15-20 email IDs in reserve.

Thank you.

Things begin with good intentions. You have to apply restraint and constraint for it to continue to have good intentions.

Bhise started his petition with good intentions. I asked him to desist from using the Instant Messenger as a medium for spreading awareness about it. There are other, less obtrusive means (the restraint part) - a single mail to his groups and his own blog.

Even the mail has potential to snowball unless (the constraint part) Bhise explicitly requests the recipients not to forward the mail. If they do want to help him (by all means, I do wish people would help him in this matter), host the link - on your own blogs, IM status fields and other non-obtrusive media. If someone is interested, he will either follow the link or ask you. This way, your commitment is tested too. Blindly sending the mail to your addressbook is like dropping a coin on a beggar’s palm - the deed is done and your conscience is salved.

I got hit by the exact event I warned Bhise about. I have done my bit for his petition. Signed it. Hosted a link - supported it with my arguments. And yet, I got an IM to “go sign it”. Now isn’t that irritating? Not exactly IM spam as of yet, but any bets on what its going to become? Unless it is controlled right now…

The heat’s getting to Oracle. And to stay in the kitchen, they released a lite version of the 10g, called the Oracle 10g Express Edition. MySQL has some serious competition coming its way. The system requirements are quite lean, almost any PC can be used.

My (prospective) job includes Oracle in its skill-set. I see no harm in getting familiar with it, given this oppurtunity. However, getting your hands on Oracle is one hell of a job if you don’t have a good net connection, or a friend with a good net connection. Here’s how the cookie crumbles (yes, you need to have cookies enabled).

1. It checks whether you are a citizen of any blacklisted nation (North Korea, Libya, et al), or whether you will provide your copy of Oracle 10g XE to any citizen of the aforementioned nations.
2. Sign in to Oracle Technology Network. No membership? Sign up, dude! Its free!
3. Start the download.

Very easy? I forgot to mention this - download managers are a strict no-no. The download will simply fail. That means you will have to rely on your browser to download the file securely. Oracle doesn’t provide a checksum, so the only way to verify the file is to launch it.

I had fun. Six attempts at home; including two overnight ones that left my sister fuming (the PC is in the room where she bunks when at home and at night, in the dead calm, the two cooling fans are damn loud) and one attempt at using the college broadband; that drove Varun crazy (he did all the work; I was busy praying that the attempt would succeed) failed. You see, Pacenet had to have an unexpected disconnection before downloading the 150 MB file, with the result that the browser would summarily “complete” the download. As for the college attempt - the file got corrupted somewhere in the convoluted process - we (as in Varun doing the work and me praying) downloaded the file to a PC, then uploaded it to a local FTP server and finally downloaded it to a PC with a writer. The seventh attempt, at home, went like clockwork.

The download completed, I ran into a new roadblock. My RAM was below the specs. A trip to the hardware shop, a bit of juggling the modules on the mainboard and the machine was set.

Will probably hang around a bit to get the proper tutorials and then start with Oracle 10g XE.