Now listening...

Hmm, yeah, yeah
Baby, please try to forgive me
Stay here don't put out the glow
Hold me now don't bother if every minute it makes me weaker
You can save me from the man that I've become, oh yeah

Lookin' back on the things I've done
I was tryin' to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

Sadness is beautiful loneliness that's tragical
So heal me I can't win this war, oh no
Touch me now don't bother if every second it makes me weaker
You can save me from the man I've become

Lookin' back on the things I've done
I was tryin' to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

I'm here with my confession
Got nothing to hide no more
I don't know where to start
But to show you the shape of my heart

I'm lookin' back on things I've done
I never wanna play the same old part
I'll keep you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

Lookin' back on the things I've done
I was tryin' to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

Lookin' back on the things I've done
I was tryin' to be someone
I played my part, kept you in the dark
Now let me show you the shape of my heart

Show you the shape of my heart

Yay! We nailed the sucker (partly)!

Here I mentioned the case of a teacher plagiarizing the work of his student and using it as his M.E. thesis and for a paper. To get his attention, I sent him the following email:

Dear Sir,

I recently saw you paper regarding Data flow analysis published at SCRA 2004. I am not sure if this is the correct email address. I had a few questions about your research. Can you please confirm that this is the correct address, and I can send you these questions.

I request you to kindly reply as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,
Rahul

To which I got this reply:

Dear Rahul,
Who are you and how do you get my email id?
Regards,
Rashmik Jivani,
HOD(MCA Dept.),L.J.I.C.A.

In response to which I wrote:

Dear Sir,

I am a software engineer in U.S. now. I saw you paper abstract about data flow analysis here:

http://at.yorku.ca/cgi-bin/amca/cang-32

and it mentions something about maximal reducible flow graphs, which I had developed during my B.E. project. Naturally I am interested in finding out how they were useful in your research. Is the above paper coauthored by you? Please confirm, and I would like to send you my questions, and if possible, I would be very excited to see a draft copy of your paper.

Yours sincerely,
Rahul

After which I get this email from him:

Dear Rahul,
I have not submitted any paper to any conference
in this regard.
Even i am also surprise that someone has sent that
paper on my behalf.

-With Regards,
Rashmik Jivani,
HOD(MCA Dept.)

followed by this email to the organizing committee of the conference (which the guy bcc's to me):

Respected Sir,
I, Rashmik Jivani(HOD-MCA Dept., L.J.I.C.A.) wish
to inform you that someone has submitted paper on Data
Flow Analysis(Node Listing) to the SCRA 2004 and
mentions my name and other name.

It also spoils my name and other's name as it is
mentioned on the web page of your conference.

I am sending you this mail to cancel such submission
as it is not submitted by me.

Also, do not consider such paper for the said
conference as i have not send any mail in this regard.

-With Regards,
Rashmik Jivani,
HOD(MCA Dept.), L.J.I.C.A.

Clearly the dude is pretending that he knows nothing about this and trying to be a good guy when we know that his M.E. thesis is also a copy of someone else's work. Anyway, the plagiarized paper is no longer on the website, so I believe we have been successful in pulling out the paper from the conference. There's still the issue of his thesis which Dr. Khedker is going to handle. The guy probably lost his sleep after seeing my email and thought better to give up on the paper than on the thesis.

Hmm...since we know about his thesis, should we torture him a little more :)? May be yes...ok..I am on it.

Why I am aggressive and why I hate QuickStar people

A friend was surprised by my aggressiveness in the previous posts (I was more of a timid and shy person back in COEP I guess). That's because I have been badly bitten because of this habit of plagiarizing other peoples matter, making Summer 2003 a pretty miserable time.

I was enrolled in three classes in Spring'03: Compiler Construction, Computer Architecture, and a course on dynamic/runtime optimizations. I had come up with an original idea for the dynamic optimization class project and was doing great in all the classes. Almost. I had a friend (an acquaintance from Pune) who was also enrolled in the compiler class, and he used to ask me some difficulties about our programming assignments. I explained him some stuff 2-3 times, and one day I got a distraught phone call from him. The assignment was due in 2 days and the dude was apparently having trouble handling a bizarre case. I tried to explain, but it was difficult over the phone. Also, I was eager to get back to my project (I had found something interesting). The dude asked: "Can you send your files to me? Just to look?". My mistake, in a hurry, I agreed. I got a thank you email after 2 days.

The day when our grades were to be assigned, I was delighted to find an A+ in architecture and an A in the dynamic optimization class. But I had not been assigned the compiler grade. I went to check with the professor, and he said that they had caught me cheating. Told me that my files and that dude's files were the same. I was totally shocked. You try to help someone and this is what you get. I was at fault too I agree. It was not difficult to convince the prof. that I was the one who wrote the code. The prof said "Normally I would fail anyone in such a case, but since the your code is well written and you have excellent grades in your exams, I'll give you a B+ grade. Its unfortunate because you had topped the class and could have received an A+ grade". Mind you, this happened over a period of a month, and I always had this constant anxiety of whether it will be a C (fail) or B or whatever. My research was adversely affected. And I lost my 4.0 GPA because of this stupid mistake (4.0 has its own charm).

We had done such things constantly at COEP, and most of the times, without any trouble. But I have learned the hard way how bad this habit is.

As an aside, the dude in question had several times followed me during that semester to get me join QuickStar, the chain marketing thing that I mentioned in my previous post. Wouldn't he have been better off focusing on his assignments and getting them done by himself instead of attending these QuickStar meetings? By correlation, I somehow have a bad feeling about anyone in this business (apologies if you are one of them) and I spite them. Or atleast I don't want to develop any friendship or acquaintance with them...

I am extremely pissed off....

Here's something that has made me go crazy. I mean, what the hell is this?

I see that a part of my B.E. project is being published in some conference under the name of some person I don't know and I cannot do a thing? Well, here's the story. There exists one Mr. Rashmik Jivani who is a lecturer in some BVM Engineering College in Gujarat. His student did a B.E. project with Dr. Uday Kheder from IIT Bombay. The project was related to node listing based data flow analyis. I also did my B.E. project with Dr. Khedker and the research has been going on in steps through different B.E/B.Tech projects. So this student (name anonymous) dervied some heuristics and did some experiments regarding these node listings. He documented them in this B.E. project and submitted it to his internal project guide, our Mr. Jivani. The clever Mr. Jivani does 2 things: (1) he copies the report and submits it as his M.E. project report, and (2) writes a paper on the findings and publishes it in some conference.

What are all the students (about 8-10 of them) who have worked on this research to think? Dr Khedker even sent an email to the organizing committee of the conference, but with no reply. Something has to be done. Such plagiarism by academic people is not only unacceptable but also dampens the spirits of the victim students. I am not about to let this go. The conference is sponsored by the University of South Alabama, so I hope to get the attention of atleast some people who are conscious about these issues....

(probably) I did that

Here's a risky think I had done in college which now is ok to reveal...

The thing that's triggering me to write this is just 2 minutes ago, I saw an abstract for a paper in some conference which suspiciously is very similar to my BE project report abstract.

Back in COEP, many a times I had to make a moral decision: which book to use for study? There were two options: (1) the book that was prescribed in the syllabus by the Univerity of Pune, or (2) "text books" published by local authors. These local authors are lecturers in the many engineering colleges in Pune. And these text books consisted of just the relevant sections from the reference books (the ones in option 1) necessary to pass the exams. So basically, studying from the local books will probably get you through the exams, but most likely you won't understand anything about the subject. On the other hand, studying from the reference books is harder because you have to spend time understanding things that may not be a part of the syllabus and you have to make a choice about what is relevant and what is not. Naturally, many people preferred the local books. But these local authors were making money by just copying stuff from other books. That's bullshit..it just pissed me off. So one day (in my third year I believe), when I was in one of my adventureous moods, I decided to do something about this. I sent an email to the general editor of Prentice Hall of India saying that these local authors are infringing the copyrights of the original authors by duplicating matter without any legal permission. Also, I sent an email to Roger Pressman, the author of "Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach", a popular software engineering book, asking him to do something and requesting him to keep my name out. Unbelievably, after 4-5 days, I actually received his reply, saying that he had contacted his editor at McGraw Hill about this. After a few months, I also heard that one of the professors at PICT was in trouble over something like this. Now I don't know if it was my email that did this or something else, but in any case, I felt good about what I did, and even today, I do.

Solo Hike

Hiking is a popular weekend activity in CA. I have been on such hikes 2-3 time before with the Desi Hikers group. However, today I was late for the their usual meeting time, so I decided to go with another group, sfbaycafe, but I missed them too. I didn't want to go home, so I decided to try a solo hike. I went to the Long Ridge Open Space. It was an enjoyable 5.5 mile hike, although having someone else with you is definitely better. I had done this trail once before, but still, I was a little scared at first to go there alone (there may be wild animals and also muggers etc). However, I kept seeing other people there, and then it was much more comfortable. Took me about 2 hours to finish the hike. All in all, it was a good thing, and I think I'll be doing more in future. I also saw many mountain bikers on the trail. I want to try that too sometime. May be next week or tomorrow.

First person shooters

At work yesterday, I has to run some benchmarks for the newly released Half-Life2 game. Its a first person shooter, and I am really uncomfortable with them. That environment itself makes me dizzy after 10-15 seconds. My head starts spinning and I get an uneasy feeling in my stomach. My first encounter with these games was when I was in my second year (sophomore) at COEP (PIET now). It was a Quake demo, and I remember I played the entire demo for about an hour. After I was done, I literally went flat on the floor for 15 mins before I could get up. It was then that I realized that these games were not for me.

Somewhere in between I forgot that. Just 2 months back, I had sold my laptop and went to Circuit City to get a TV and DVD player. I saw an XBOX there, and for some reason I decided to get that instead of the DVD player (XBOX can play DVD's). I also purchased a copy of Microsoft's Halo, a first person shooter. I came home all excited, setup the TV and the XBOX and started playing. 10 minutes into the game and I again had that dizzy feeling that I had forgotten about. Well, that was it. I immediately packed the XBOX and returned it the same day, and got a real DVD player instead.

Games that work best for me are strategy games (like Commandos, Cesar, Command and Conquer) . Anyway I am not at all into gaming, so it does not matter. On that subject, I also remember that in my second year, I had wasted a lot of time playing Prince of Persia. Even before the exams. I had almost got myself failed. At that time, I had decided I will not work for any company that develops games. However, here I am, working for a company that makes most of its profit because of the gaming industry. Well, who cares...

Are you Rajesh/Ramakant?

Since I came to CA, I have been asked this question atleast 3-4 times while I was roaming in the aisle of Albertson or Fry's Electronics. These are Indian people who are doing some chain marketing type of thing and are in search of new people to join their "business". They initiate contact with questions like "Are you Rajesh?" or "Are you from Mumbai?". Now I don't have any problem with anyone doing any such business, but if I am not interested in it, please don't call me again and again to see if I want to attend your next meeting. These people are unbelievable. I know a guy who called me atleast 10 times for this, each time getting the same answer: no (He was in my college back in India, so I gave him my number. That was a mistake in the first place).

Back at UIUC, I had attended one of their "conventions" in Rochester. I knew I wasn't going to join. It was summer and the all my friends at the university were away (either in India or doing their internships). I was damn bored and decided to go there with a group of people from my university because they were also going to go to Niagara falls. The trip to Niagara falls was great, but the convention was a real waste of time. It was simply brain washing and there were a bunch of students who were ready to spend 2-3 evenings of their time doing this business (trying to convince other people to join). I don't know how a grad student can devote so much time to this. I would rather do my work or just relax. Anyway, the next 2 days, I used to go with the group to the place where the convention was held, and sneak out and roam around in Rochester downtown.

I cannot run after people trying to get them in when they are so reluctant. Its so demeaning. I think I am better off focusing on my job rather than pursuing an additional source of income.

I got up today at 11:30 in the morning again. Whats wrong with me? I am still feeling sleepy...

Thanks to the artists

Finally got up at 7:00 AM today. Hopefully will stick to that schedule.

Before coming to US, I was a total stranger to English music. My favourites that time were mainly old Hindi songs from Anand, Amar Prem, and the likes. The only English songs that I knew were from The Sound of Music. The main problem with English music was that it was fast paced and I could hardly understand the words. However, now I can both understand the lyrics and take the loud/fast music. And I have to agree, the variety is much more than Hindi. Now I listen to English songs most of the time. I do have a TV now, but I have spent the last 2 years with no TV and music was my main source of entertainment, and remains that today. I remember that at UIUC I regularly used to spend about an hour in the evening just listening to music to freshen up. I haven't stopped listening to Hindi songs (a good song forever remains a good song) but my playing list is populated by mostly English music.

Right now, my list has:

• Shania Twain - Party for two
• Avril Lavigne - Losing Grip
• Michael Learns to Rock - Digging your love
• Michael Learns to Rock - You took my heart away
• Michael Learns to Rock - Tell it to your heart
• Lakshya - Lakshya
• Dil Chahta Hai - Dil Chahta Hai
• Bon Jovi - Its my life
• Tu Theva Tashi (Marathi)

Time to go to sleep...

The road trip

My legs are hurting...

Sunday afternoon I was damn bored. Got out of the house for a little stroll. What started as a stroll ended up being a long walking trip. I live on the boundary of Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. I walked across Sunnyvale, entered Mountain View, and found myself at the entrance of the Steven's Creek trail. I decided to go on the trail. Ended up behind the Shoreline park in Mountain View. I had started at about 2:30 PM, and was at Shoreline at 4:30 PM. Sat there for 1/2 an hour. The return journey was horrible (Am I a masochist?). My legs were in pain and are still aching. I could have taken a bus, but I did not. I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I can do these long walks (so that I can go hiking with groups without doubting that I'll bail out in between). I reached home at 8:00 PM, so I was walking for about 5 1/2 hrs.

Hmm..I can walk to my office (should take about 40 mins). That would be possible if I get up on time! (Today I got up at 10:30!!. Its so hopeless)

My first post

I regularly read my friend Ramanand's blog. Saw Nikhil's Marathi blog today. Thought I'll also start writing something...

Its 2:45 AM, haven't been sleeping (and getting up) at "usual" times for a week. Need to desperately get my schedule back to normal.