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.
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 5th 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 2nd 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 2nd 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 2nd 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 :)
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