So, here’s what happened:
Shortly after 2 PM yesterday (20/04/10), we innocent denizens of MNNIT were caught unawares by a mail that seemed to be the workings of the Devil himself. He sought audience on 24, with demands quite astounding to comprehend. But little did we know at that time, that he was indeed serious about the matter. (Ok, it wasn’t the Devil. And he was not making incomprehensible demands.) He was our SE course coordinator, and wanted us to give Presentations on the projects we’d been seemingly working on for the better half of the semester. But there was a catch. In his words: “all must bring their Lab assignment files and spiral binding of their project in the format that is being attached with this mail. If they don’t do so, then zero marks are given against the software engineering lab weightage”. That seemed rather harsh. 3 days. 1 Project. 1 SRS Documentation. 1 Practical Record. Seemed like a joke. And it was. An epic move played on us.
The day went as usual. People relaxed after a while. Things returned to normal. A calm before a hurricane. Luckily, I got a drift of things to come. And I’m thankful for that. Right after AI (Artificial Intelligence) Lecture, I came to my room and started to chart out a strategy-cum-battle plan. It had to be a blitzkrieg. Hitler had been good at it. Now it was my turn to prove it to him, that I was superior. I feared the thought that brought about his end could well spell trouble for me. But it looks like it hasn’t. Not yet anyway.
After having a quick meal at the mess (yes, it took some 6 hrs for the things penetrate), I started working on the database structures and a way to make their interaction with Flash (hail Adobe.) I was tired, really. Waking up early every day is quite hard. I started feeling sleepy. I battled on, draining my energies to the last bit. But I failed. (In short, I designed the structures and fell asleep.)
If you guys are still reading, I’ve come to the finest part of the post. It’s the part where I prove what I’ve written in the first paragraph. Unlike an organised guy, I had ignored the project all along. Feeble attempts to work on it were dropped due to lack of time. Met with a submission deadline, I got on to the adrenaline wave and got right to it. I started on the project right after lunch, or that’s what I remember. Since then, it’s been a quick and steady progress on and on. And it’s been the kinda shit that would make naïve bystanders (read: computer illiterates) get the cross and pray like they’ve seen Satan. (You won’t get that line if you haven’t seen me work.) David Howrath (the pioneer of multi-programming) would hang himself in shame. (Well, to be honest, I was pushing my XPS to its limits, but by no means outperforming it). But I was doing a hell lot at once. I had medicine, made coffee, made glucose water, watched HIMYM, was coding, playing Spider Solitaire, browsing, chatting, and doing about a dozen other things (Priority based Round Robin rocks.) And to top it all, I managed to do it all so efficiently, I got some time off for the blog 😀
And yes, a screenie is well deserved here. (Note not just the taskbar, but also the number of tabs in Chrome)
Seems like I was meant to be a coder all along. Definitely not my choice though. I love programming. To what extent, I’ve realized now. It was awesome to crunch through code, obstacle after another. Finally go all the user interaction with the database working. Got to work on advanced GUI transformation and more. Its going to be a long week.
But shit. I suddenly realize, I’m going behind schedule! I’ve got just some 2 hrs more to finish a major part of the project. I won’t make it will I? Later.