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.