Our Minor Project-aaruvi 2

It took so much research and time to get things done in flex. A simple “Hello world” with Java connection took entire 2-3 days. By seeing this, our parallel team dropped the idea of using flex. We didn’t want to discourage mam and sincerely tried for small things in flex. Still when we were unable to display a simple value dynamically in a table, we gave up. We failed to connect to database too. Once I and Chashmish was in her lab(without Chakli:)) and got a value printed in a table and rejoiced like anything…her friends started teasing, “What? Why so happy? Project over or what?”…hehehe…but still there were lot of challenges. Once we approached our mam and said we are not able to do things in flex and she came with us and tried her hands on database connection. And after a lot of efforts, database finally got connected on one of the pc but after some days when we tried on laptop, it couldn’t. Mam asked us to drop the idea of using database itself! Since mam insisted on working on flex only(even though we had very less desire to do so…) we continued with flex. We made the homepage screen. I remember we spent 2 days in showing simple popup and tabs. We completed the documentation and got it reviewed. We were preparing for the first review of project which was about to come.

We actually got mad as the date of review was coming nearby. We were burning midnight oil while ‘flexing’. We thought we hadn’t done anything which we can actually put in ppt and spent our time in researching and reading only. We prepared a ppt but scared when it came to ‘flex’ slide-“What if they ask this or that?”. We read a lot of theory about flex, but understood little. We practiced our ppt twice. I remember we were at Chashmish’s place that night and she ordered us to sleep earlier(as usual) but still giving final touches took around 2 o’clock that night.

Finally the day came. We met our guide and she suggested changes in ppt, so we did changes and rehearsed again. Mam sort of inspired us that we actually have done lots of work. When we came to lab, we were looking at who were taking reviews. As 3 of ours luck combined, Vibha mam and Priyanka mam came to take review. Vibha mam was always guide of Chakli in previous sem and Chashmish always had Priyanka mam in her every review. The presentation went well. The reviewers seemed to be happy by looking at cool GUI screen. They asked some fundas of OS which Chakli tried to satisfy. All in all, it was good and we had an ice cream after that.We were even more delighted when we heard that our parallel team(who dropped the idea of using flex) of 2 ranker is not getting good feedback :)

After the first review, the usual college got started and we started ignoring the project. But an incident happened. Chashmish got caught doing some mischief in our guide’s class and mam got very angry on her. Chashmish met her after the class to say sorry but still she was blowing and told her that we are not working sincerely anymore and not meeting her for project and that she is never gonna help in our project. Chashmish told us all these and we all got scared because this project got so much weight in final marks and she might give us bad score. We decided to start work on project all over again. Again we were facing so many difficulties working with flex, since we determined to show some remarkable progress in work, we were totally into the project for a week or two. We fixed one day to meet mam. Chashmish was so scared that she said, she’ll be behind both of us. But fortunately, mam had forgotten that event and talked with us as if nothing has happened! We got relieved. 

After this incident, we decided to work regularly. Then a big problem stuck us-the copy paste problem. You won’t believe but we just couldn’t simply do copy and paste in flex. Let me explain. We had lots of tables and buttons in one tab in screen which we wanted to replicate in 10 tabs. So we simply did copy from one tab and paste in another tab. We did this for 1 tab but then all of a sudden, flex will not allow to do copy-paste, it will not show any errors, it will just not paste!!! This problem almost took 15 days to solve. I used to take my laptop in my project lab and worked on this problem. When nothing seemed to work, we started naming our projects-Nirali, lali :D And one of the ‘Nirali’ worked slightly :) Actually I removed everything from screen and built the whole thing again. Then I could copy the thing upto 4 tabs. I thought now it will work fine so msg Chashmish and she jumped and came to my lab to see. But then we saw that its not working from 5^th tab. We did lot of googling on this, but in vein. We even became the member of orkut community and posted the problem but nobody seemed to understand the problem only, forget about the solutions. We got tired and showed it to mam, mam herself could not believe, but she said it’s ok if we do it for 4 tabs only. We got so many small problems like this which used to eat up our most of the time. I always cursed the ‘Help’ of flex because the examples given never used to work, and when once or twice it worked, both Chakli and Chashmish started shouting at me for shouting at ‘Help’:) Anything in flex, I just used to go thoroughly to solve so both of them named me ‘Flex queen’.

Now the time of 2^nd review came. This time we were pretty confident. For reviews, everybody’s lab timings were different so we used to choose whomsoever is the first and this time it was my lab. We need not do much effort this time. Chashmish just updated our previous ppt. We were going to show the running application itself. In the lab, when sir asked for review, my other lab mates had some misunderstanding. They said, “Sir, you told me that review is next week”. Sir got angry, “I told u last week that review is next week, which means this week, right? Now whomsoever is giving ready, will review it or else we’ll put zero.” We were ready. Sir took the review and he seemed to be quite impressed with the GUI and animations and all. He didn’t ask much, he knew we are hard working girls. After the lab, we got to know that we got highest or 2^nd highest marks in whole lab and I and Chashmish just jumped with happiness and told everybody. Now I feel, we seriously deserved that.

I mentioned about joining orkut community, right? That itself is another funny incident. There was one guy who seemed to be some super stud in flex because we saw him in every flex community. So Chashmish sent him friend request and after that I started linking both of them together and teasing her like anything. He gave his gtalk id to her and both of them used to discuss problems of flex. Chashmish has written whole topic about this on diary. Once or twice I chatted by Chashmish’s login with him(remember Mujse Dosti Karoge movie?) and he wasn’t able to answer my questions, so I declared(as per my habit) that he’s good for nothing. But still Chashmish continued talking, she used to wish him ‘Good morning sir’ :):):) and he would reply ‘Don’t call me sir…’. When she narrated her chats, I used to laugh and tease her like anything. After sometime, she got him blocked in gtalk because he used to ping her everyday…hehehe…we even made a song for him to make fun of him. I’ll tease her for this entire life. After a long time, we heard by some friend that he actually wants Chashmish’s photograph…my God! Such a chipku (sticky like gum)

Time went on like this and we added lots of enhancements in the project. We added animations and blinking text and cool hovering tooltips. We realized that we couldn’t done this pretty screen in any other tool. We always divided our work. Amity will do googling and documentation, Chakli will work on complex code logic and I will do flex hit and trials and animation part. My God! How can I forget that Chakli’s room in which we used to have 2 laptops on bed and one desktop on which Amity will sit and play songs! It was really so much fun. I remember we completed report at the last moment and Chakli and Chashmish ran to take its printout and spiral binding. It was already 9 and Chakli thought they will not find any shop for photocopy and spiral binding open and we had our final presentation next day! Though they found one, Chakli was still in all her angery+frustrated+scared pose(Chashmish politely explained gave me live demo after coming home :)) Actually we were not able to complete some of the system calls, and some were half completed and so on. So till end we were trying our hands on to complete them but finally when they could not, we had to edit the report again and again. We were delighted to see our colour printed cute-looking screens. After that we finalized the ppt and demo which we were going to show. Actually there was some bug in the project and it used to work for specified sequence of inputs only :) We had no time to look into it so we decided the sequence, “First we’ll click here, then we’ll put this in textbox, then we’ll click here…” something like that. Then we laughed on ourselves only that we are making fool and what if the faculty provides some random inputs? We had no answers.

Exams and vivas were coming near and this project ate up lots of time. We wanted to finish the presentation and all other submissions as soon as possible and do some study. We didn't want to go to college again before exams. Again it was my lab. There were 2 reviewers for my lab and they had got list of projects to take review. Now my roll number is last one. So we had to wait till entire 2 hours. Till then, we set up the project and rehearsed the sequence again and then just waited. One sir was the same who gave us highest in 2^nd review(we wished he came again :)) and there was another mam for taking review. Recess time has already begun but still sir was taking reviews, but mam went to her cabin. When we asked her to take our review, she denied by telling that now its recess and she has lots of work. She asked us to get review in either Chakli or Chashmish’s lab. We were shocked to hear this! I mean, we have been waiting and practicing since so many days and now she is telling to come to college just for 2 hours next day? We requested that sir but our project was in mam’s list. When some friends got to know, they too were angry about this, “What is this? If she can’t complete her reviews in time, its not our mistake!” We finally asked mam once again but she said ‘no’ again and we went out of the lab. Actually to me, it was ok, yeah I didn’t want to come to college and waste time again but we had no choice. It was better to have our review with better faculty next day. But Chashmish and Chakli was angry like anything. We all sat in the grass near b block. Chashmish said, “I just want to go out of this place as soon as possible. Pls, let’s go home.” I said, “Wait wait dear, I need to submit some assignments, and will meet our guide too, ask her what needs to be changed in the report.” Till I came from b-block, Chashmish has finished her crying in front of Chakli(she knows if she cries in front of me, I will be angry). We came home, had some food and both of them went to sleep while I was reading. Then we had tea and sat on swing in garden and discussed about other’s projects and all. We finally started study. When Chashmish finally got out of her frustration, she changed the report as per mam’s suggestions. We bought a ‘thank you’ card and a dairy milk for our guide for helping us and wrote something in pure Gujarati in the card.

Our presentation went well next day. Sir tried to understand the system and asked reasonable questions(not like other faculties who nods while we explain and ask hopeless questions). Our minor project finally completed. We went to meet our guide to thank her and gave her the card. There was another mam who came to see the system we made and told us that it would really help them to make students understand the operating system concepts. We chatted for sometimes and bid goodbye. All in all our project was great learning+fun experience. At the end, we got A grade:) We were so happy when we got the results because there were very few students who got A. When Chashmish wrote this topic in diary, she has thanked 3 ppl-Lali, that parallel ranker team and that orkut friend of hers. Because anytime we went to Lali’s place, we used to tell her everything(all big IT concepts). Even though she was hardly able to understand, she used listen very patiently. Same with that orkut friend. One of the member in that ranker team helped us in getting flex installed and told us some concepts too. So thanks to them too. Cheers to our rocking aaruvi team :)

Our Minor Project-aaruvi 1

I described about major project but how can I forget minor project which too has lots of funny memories. Let me put some background. We all have to do a minor project in 7^th sem in college. The worst thing was during 6^th sem, our placements were going on and you won’t believe that we were called to attend a class for this minor project when the first company has already arrived! As Chakli says, there’s never a coordination between placement and education departments.

Anyways, we needed to decide our teams ourselves which will include at max 3 ppl. This lead to confusions as we have to choose group mate from lots of friends. Fortunately for me it wasn’t a problem coz it was fixed that I and Chakli will do project together. But Chashmish(who was in CE class) was confused as she wanted somebody who will sincerely do project from her class(so her pointer was set to null :)) We asked lots of faculties whether we can combine CE and IT ppl in a team and when we got acceptance for the same, we were so delighted. We always studied together and now became so compatible that we didn’t want anybody to interfere in 3 of us. I remember a funny incident. When Chashmish asked one of our faculty about our team and she said yes, she came in our class(in her happy-go-lucky jumping jack manner), told us the news. Before I and Chakli could open our mouth, she said something loudly and stroke the table hard 3 times and went, making us in utter bewilderment as what she actually said!!! (She said, "Now my dream of making a project will get fulfilled"). Chashmish noticed Chakli’s confused face while leaving and got tensed thinking Chakli doesn’t want her in project and telling this story to all her classmates. Can you believe she got sympathy for the same with extra knowledge on philosophy of relationship from them? And when we all met after sometimes, we got clarified the matter and laughed a lot. Chashmish always wanted to reassure herself, so every now and then she used to ask one or the other faculty that our team is possible or not…hehehe

So team finally got finalized. Now which topic to choose? We had a list of projects in 6^th sem from which to choose. When we get a list, we usually filter it by faculty guide(obviously we don’t want a nagging faculty) which will actually shorten the list to very limited projects. Then we filtered it by number of ppl in a team and at last looked at project definition(which should be looked first). We narrowed down 3-4 projects and finally selected one, approached the guide madam. She has been my guide since 2 sem for seminars. We went to her and decided the project- Process Management Simulator i.e. PMS. It’s a kind of training simulator which will show some of the operating system concepts by animation. There was another group for similar kind of topic from my class with mam with 2 ranker students. She asked all of us to prepare this project in something called ‘F…L…E…X…’ We were like, “What???”. God knows, from where she heard about this, she just told us to make the project in this tool. When we all were researching on this, we were unsure whether its  “FLAX or FLEX” or something other than this. She said, flex 8 is the latest version and we could find only flex 3 max J We went to library to search a book on this technology or tool or language or whatsoever it is and we find nothing in the whole source of 30000 books! Not even from ieee forums. We were stunned! I asked others “Are u sure mam said flex only? Or was it something else?” We went to our lab and after googling we found there is something known as Flex, which is a kind of tool for making great GUI applications. And aaruvini(short form of our names) started research on it:)

Even after making a final sign off for project, Chashmish was not getting what actually we were going to make(‘maja nathi avti’). I remember when we were on our way from NIM to B-block, I and Chakli tried to satisfy her. For minor project, we were called 15 days earlier in college. We started making diagrams and documents and started ‘flexing’ tooJ In order to simulate concepts, we first need to understand the concepts. Hence we started reading our Operating System text book from start and narrowed down our project scope. Miss Chakli-the teacher used to make us understand difficult concepts. Since we had to come to college 15 days before the project, whole day we would spend sincerely doing project work because we were scared with the concepts and ‘FLEX’. Since Chashmish was in different class, her labs were different(B-104). I and Chakli too were in different batches so I was in B 201 and Chakli was in B 206. Chakli being Miss Rule will never leave her lab and go anywhere else(“As a rule, we should work in our lab only” J) So we had to come to her lab to read. Chashmish had to tell every faculty who came to supervise the lab her story of why she’s going to the other lab and when she’ll come back for attendance. Her friends used to tease her like anything. “Yes yes, we understand, only you are doing project in this whole world!”, “Wait a min, are you working on 2 projects or what? We need only 1 for minor…” In Chakli’s lab, there was lot of noise and some bad smell too was coming, but still we tolerated it for some days. But then we warned Chakli that we would not work in her lab and finally she bargained to work in B 201. Chashmish must have thought, “What advantage did I get? You ppl will never come to my lab.”

My God! We used to work so hard! We used to download ebooks on Flex and tried connecting Java with it and reading those books and making diagrams and documents and what not! Even after coming home!!! Even in recess!!!!! Meeting our faculty guide itself was a long process. First Chashmish will go downstairs to check whether she is available in the staffroom. If she’s not, she’ll check her timetable, ask other faculties, check other labs and if our unreachable faculty guide becomes reachable, she’ll give me a miss call(Chakli and mobile!!! In your dreams…). Sometimes Chashmish herself becomes unreachable. Hence we named both of them “unreachable code”(an error in C):) Mam’s English accent was tricky so after every meeting, Chashmish used to translate whatever she said in normal English and Chakli will make us understand what it means. In case any of them failed, they were gone…”How can translator stop working? How can compiler fails to understand the concept?”…hehehe…it was so much fun and yet learning.

Chashmish bday 2010

We used to celebrate bdays like festivals when we were all together. I generally start a mail chain or so almost a month ago as per my habit and we discuss a lot about anybody’s bday gift and surprise on phone, sms and mails. Because there has to be some special element for everybody’s bday, its becoming really difficult now to get ideas for gifts and all. But then we used to organize everything. And same happened on Chashmish’s bday in 2009.

Nobody can dare to forget or miss her bday because she start announcing about it a month ago. In 2008, we gave her a surprise by coming at her home exactly at 12 o’clock with cakes and celebration so in 2009 we had to do something different. First usual question was gift??? Chakli is fond of making glass painting and Chashmish liked it very much so we decided to make one for her. Chashmish was fond of(rather habituated) of doing lots of msgs then and always talked about her sms chatting. I once joked her that I’ll give her msg recharge pack on her bday and now we seriously decided to do so. I thought of doing some more fun. Once when I came back home earlier, I took all the empty boxes-big and small in size-and started gift wrapping it and then put those 2 msg recharge cards in the big hierarchy of boxes. And Lali has written some diary pages for Chashmish. “Lali has written something in diary” will itself be a big surprise for her. I got an idea that we should announce a gift hunt for her like treasure hunt where she’ll be given clues and she’ll find her gift from her home. Now hiding the gift at her place was a big task in itself. She was mostly at home so we can’t hide big glass painting in front of her. And even if we could, there was a risk that she’ll find it. We told our desires to her mom and she agreed that she’ll take care of all this. There is a room in her house in which nobody peeps in so we told aunty to hide gifts there somewhere. When all these discussions were going on one side, my parents were organizing a trip another side. That created a lot of confusions for mithu whether to plan her gift her before her bday or after I come back… Finally we decided to organize things after her bday on weekend.

She used to go to her company on 2 days from 5 to 10pm. So I went to her house at around 9 on Thursday when she was not there. I told all our plans to her mom and handed over gifts. Generally in bday celebrations, whenever we do any secret discussions, and bday girl ask about it, we start lying like anything and afterwards laugh like anything. So when I told Chashmish that I am going on a trip on her bday she was very sure that I am lying her and will give surprise. On her bday when I called her at 12 o’clock night, she finally believed that I was really going. She might be having hopes for Lali and Chakli turning up on that day but everybody knows that nobody initiate the plans without me.

I don’t remember the date(coz I am not ChashmishJ) when we exactly went at her place but it was Sunday. We first all got together at my place. Then just to check that she’s at home only and not having any other plans I called Chashmish and asked all random things in the world and got to know that her project partner had come and they both would be doing project(which we’ll not let them doJ) So up we all went…I think she was not hoping much on Lali so that too added to her surprise element. I was highly animated and gave everybody instructions that we will give her surprise, we’ll shout at entrance, we’ll harass her for gifts and NOBODY WILL TELL HER ANYTHING ABOUT THE GIFTS(nobody followed my instructions and I became popat(parrot)J) Everybody’s head were banging because of me when I started asking whether we should take match sticks for candles. My sis finally got sickened and shouted at me, “She will be obviously having everything in her home. Now shall we please go?”

When we were on the stairs with cake and ribbons, I started taking the video and my sis started grudging, “Off you started. If you are so much enthu, take the video of my face, my hands, see this cake, this ribbon and every minute things u can see here!” When she opened the door, I was expecting everybody to shout, “SURPRISE!!!” but only I did :P My sis started pulling my leg, “Its surprise only for her and not for us…Here is my surprise” and then she started decorating Chashmish with ribbons and spread ribbons everywhere in the room. We turned her house into a fish market, “Amity, do this, do that…change ur cloths…give us the match sticks…bring that table…hurry…do wear that capree…I want this…” She was happily enthralled, “Wait guys, at least let us finish the lunch! Let me clean the kitchen and let me…” Before she could argue any more, we sent her to change. My video recording activity was still on and my sis started giving different poses for video. Finally when everything was arranged, she cut the cake and we clapped and sang songs for her.

Now where’s the gift?? I and Chakli thought it was in that special room. Lali and Chakudi did not had much idea about it, still Chakudi was alarming us that she will tell Chashmish everything, and that she will take the bribe of one extra piece of cake for keeping her mouth shut J Chakli had written a small instruction for Chashmish about gift hunt in a diary paper so we gave that to her and asked her to read aloud. The paper included following:

“On your birthday, we have organized a small gift hunt. You have to identify

1.       Number of gifts

2.       Where the gifts are

3.       What are the gifts

To give you a lil hint, the gifts were placed in your home on 22^nd, and today is 26^th, you are still not able to find out ” 

Chakli explained her the hint in detail. Before she blurts out anything more, I stopped her and asked Chashmish to answer the questions one by one. She guessed the number of gifts-‘One?Two?Three?’ like that. Then she was thinking about the place. We told her, “You’ll not able to find the gifts unless you actually stand up and find”. So she started gift hunt.

I was taking video as usual. People are running behind her. She first entered in her room and said, “I cleaned this room yesterday only!”…hehehe…then she saw under the bed, on her computer table, in her big book boxes, in her cupboards and kept on saying, “I cleaned this cupboard thoroughly, how is it possible that…?” She found one bag and said, “Ah this is the…oh no, these are shoes.” She was confused and roaming here and there in the room and we were enjoying. Chakli took pity on her and said, “You have to search the gift in whole house and your house is not over in your room only”…Then Chashmish got enlightened that the gift cannot be in her room. I slapped Chakli for giving her the idea-“Now you will not give her ANY ANY hints…”  She went to her kitchen and drawing room to search, saw everywhere(even behind the fridge J) but could not find the gift. Tired, she sat on her bed, “Please give me some other hint, where else in the house? Kitchen, my bedroom, that special room, gallery?” I now have already told Lali and Chakudi the place. We have thought that we will give her hints like, “You need authentication to enter the room” etc types but she’ll surely recognize the room so Chakudi told her that, “You already mentioned in your statement about the place” She again started roaming everywhere. We were making fun of her, “See, if you’re not able to find it right now, in next Diwali when you do deep cleaning of your house u’ll surely find…when is Diwali? Oh its still 9 months to go…hehehe…now u’ll deep clean ur house tomorrow only…”

Chashmish tried to bribe Chakudi but in vein. She thought of calling her mom, but we told her mom is already involved with us. Finally after giving same hint again, she was sure that the gift is there in that special room. We all went there, nobody knew exactly where the gift was. We tried to look here and there but could not find. Now what?? We all went to ask her dad. And finally he gave a definite hint-“Only gallery”. Now this too wasn’t easy as Chashmish’s house had 3 galleries. We twice searched it and finally Chashmish located the gift which we gently grabbed from herJ Now we all sat in her room asking about what could be the gifts. Again somebody blurted out that 2^nd box is box inside box inside box…so she somehow guessed that it might be some coupon. Finally we all opened the gift and she was delighted to see the gifts but she was even more delighted when we gave her the diary pages written by Lali. She read it aloud and they both became emotional.

Now there was another surprise for mithu from my side. Chashmish knew about it. It was the mithu ppt. Actually we have collected lots of pics of all of us and put everything in a big ppt with music and animation and poetry. It is fantastic. I showed it to everybody and told them how it was started and how we collected the pics, Gujarati fonts, songs, sections and this and that. Then we went to have some food. We took lots of pics in different poses with caps, talked, pulled each other’s leg and finally went home. It was great fun that day.

MIS

Who will not want to live collage life another time? I had the opportunity to live it for additional 6 monthsJ Last semester project of our collage-Major project-was the chance given to all we fortunate 30 ppl. According to tradition, nobody takes this project in college-Nirma due to lots of reasons. The process of finding the project starts 3 months ago where you find any IT company who would take you mostly by reference(sometimes by interviews too!) and give you some training and project with certificate. Then you need to register the company and your project in college. We-Infosys hired ppl-became carefree because Infy was supposed to give us this project, but alas! it cancelled at last moment and lots of ppl like me had no option but to opt for doing project in college. Generally ppl doing project in college are seen as lower rated coz they are assumed not to have been selected in any good company and college doesn’t provide good exploration to IT world. But fortunately this time, our new Dynamic Director(DD-that’s how we used to tease him…that’s another long story) was enthu to make all applications running under one hood, hence he announced a big project-The Nirma Management Information System(MIS)- for 30 ppl in college and we chose it.

The project started with deciding technology and diving modules and team. I and Chakli were praying to be in one team and we became-The Attendance Team, with another girl. 13 modules were decided and we had a small so called ‘training’ on .net. We had a madam and a sir as our project managers. I am not sure whether they did some sort of planning like real projects or not but they used to give us impossible deadlines which was surely not to be met. Apart from them, we had one faculty guide and module lead for each module. I remember when we first went to met our module guide, the first thing he asked us to do was to create a database diagram! I mean, we didn’t know even the requirements of the project, how can we make a diagram? That too, he kept on asking for the same for next 2 days! Like 1^st sem students, he asked us to maintain a file with our daily tasks and keep on updating him. We had to do whatever he told(and being Miss Rule-Chakli in team). We started visiting faculties for asking requirements. We came to know that poor lab assistants have to fill attendance manually from a paper to some historical computer system to generate reports(now I realize why all lab assistants were always angryJ) Every application Nirma like timetable, budget, student registration etc was using was separate, desktop or web applications. The project was to combine all of them.

The design process was long. Each faculty had their own view about how database and forms should be and we had to incorporate all of them. We actually made chart like school students for our complex database hierarchy. Worst thing about our module was, we were dependent on lots of other modules, so even if we completed our work on time, due to the dependency, we had to keep on asking other modules. In every team there was one or the other member who was not working at all! Fortunately there was one guy, who had prepared the base of whole project(whom we called ‘King’ J). Initially it was boring but gradually it became fun. We(MIS team-that’s what we call ourselves) had lots of independence. Mobile is a BIG no-no in college but we were free to use it. We almost took control over that b-104 lab. People actually used to love project, we got wifi internet for free, we almost used to rule, we were getting respect from all the faculties becoz we were building system for them, we all got good marks tooJ Anytime any faculty came and started reviewing our work and giving impossible suggestions to implement. Dead(ly) lines were given to complete the coding part and we used to tell that its MIS-Mission Impossible System J There was a white board in lab in which our managers used to write about deadly lines for project completion which students will erase and write – “Thought of the day”. Everybody used to take turn, raise their hands, to ask Mr ‘King’ doubts about .net. Our lab assistant sir was also coordinating us in database. Initially he asked us to create scripts for creating tables and some ppl’s scripts were so hopeless that he got frustrated like anything. He almost took a lecture on how to write simple ‘create table’ query in Oracle and still ppl submitted bad scripts…hehe…

Our faculty managers shifted our recess from 1pm to 12.30pm so that we can complete our meals earlier and come back to work quickly. But this in turn created confusions in ppl and we used to have our recess anytime we wanted. If anybody has bunked, we used to tell that he’s in canteen for recess J Many ppl actually hardly came and at the end of the project we realized that he too was in project!!! Our usual timings were 8 to 4 but in coding phase we-sincere students-used to stay till 6 o’clock because that was the time we could work peacefully else there was lot of noise of antaxari and comments and doubts and this and that. And besides, we loved working in ac lab. Our lab assistants used to pull us out after 6 o’clock…hehe…And every Friday, there was a faculty meeting in lab so we got additional half hour recess.

As its Nirma, there has to be harassment for attendance always. So many ppl hardly came still their proxy was taken care of. We had to fill 2 attendance sheet daily-one lab register(in which ppl hardly signed) and one in faculty staff room(which was the main). Many times our managers suddenly came to our lab to verify attendance. So somebody has stolen the main attendance sheet itself!!! Now ppl who did not regularly signed in lab register, got their names in short attendance even if they were coming! After sometime, our managers created another main sheet which too was stolen! Hehehe...then they left creating 3rd one, they knew partially who ppl are coming and hard working, so they gave marks accordingly. I, Chakli and Mr King got A+ :)

Coding time was so less that sincere students like me used to work even after college. I, Chakli and Chashmish used to work together. I many times went to Chashmish’s home and told her everything on what happened today and how team course registration harassed us and how Chakli harassed me and what faculties told and this and that. She used to tell me about her project-how her project partners are not working and she had to work double and this and that. I and Chakli were always together or on phone or on chat. My other teammate named our pair-Tom and Jerry-always together and always fighting…hehehe…When we all work together, the room will become a Cyber Café with 2 laptops, books and a desktop and wires spread everywhere. In our lab also, most of the ppl used to work on laptops only because Nirma’s pc had lightning fast speed J We had fixed our places there and there were wires spread here and there.

We had n number of reviews-reviews in front of faculty guide, in front of faculty managers, in front of HOD, in front of Director(DD), in front of external faculties for viva, in front of random faculties, in front of senior faculties…and these too multiple times! I remember when we had review in front of HOD, he suggested lots of major changes after completion of half of the project. But our faculty managers were really supportive, they always cleared our doubts and helped us and told only to implement things which really mattered. We had presentation in from of Director and all branch’s HOD which lasted for 3 days only for 4 modules! Because every HOD used to give their suggestion and there was a cat-fight among HODs. It was fun to watch this entertainment. I remember in the last viva, we were banned to work because our database server frequently got down, and our deployed project was many times throwing errors.

When other students had already submitted their reports, we started making it. Our faculties were lesser worried about reports and more about system correctly working. Though our King integrated all the modules even after getting frustrated from hopeless errors in all modules, we did not have much time to test it properly. There were lots of pits and falls in many modules. But our managers told us, that they were going to have juniors to enhance the system, so any kind of change came, we told-it will be future enhancementJ We worked till the end, when rest of students had already given their vivas and all, we used to come to college. For all our dedication and after a lot of shout for party, we finally got one in college. We took group photos and had small funny award ceremony in which our King was awarded as best Employee and had a big round of applause for him and we were awarded as best team. There were other funny awards too like most chatting, most absent, best orkut user etc etc. It was so much fun at the end. I remember people took their pics in funny posed to put it in ‘About us’ section in the site. There is so much to write about these 6 great months. I would say, you’ll learn a lot about college’s processes and technology and customer satisfaction because our managers and faculties were our customers and they were never satisfied J I am proud that I was part of the MIS team.